Britain and France, who are both members of the G7, have expressed interest in assisting with demining the critical waterway once the conflict is paused.

The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on ground rules set by the White House, said Trump also plans to meet on the sideline of the summit with the leaders of Egypt, Qatar and United Arab Emirates to discuss efforts to wind down the Iran war.

The summit begins Monday.

Separately, Iran's state-run television announced Saturday that funeral ceremonies for former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will take place in July.

Pakistan says a deal to end the war is imminent

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said a deal aimed at ending the war was closer than “ever before” and expected to be finalized within 24 hours. Pakistan was preparing for the electronic signing of the agreement, to be followed immediately by technical-level talks next week.

In a post on X, Sharif said: “We would like to thank United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran for their ongoing commitment during the negotiations, and we extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in the region for their support."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment, and Iran signaled caution.

“Although it will not happen tomorrow, the possibility that it could take place in the coming days cannot be ruled out,” foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said in a statement carried by state TV.

Baghaei added that the Islamabad memorandum under discussion was focused on ending the war and "at this stage, it has been decided that there will be no discussion of the nuclear issue.”

Iran's nuclear program and highly enriched uranium have long been at the center of tensions with the U.S. and Israel and an international source of concern.

Three regional officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations, said Friday they expected a signing ceremony in the coming days after officials in Washington and Tehran approve the agreement.

The apparent breakthrough came after Iran exchanged fire with the U.S. and Israel earlier in the week, threatening to rupture a fragile ceasefire and push the Middle East back into full-scale war.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted on X Friday that an agreement “has never been closer.” U.S. President Donald Trump, who has asserted multiple times in recent weeks the countries were on the cusp of a deal, shared Araghchi’s post on social media.

Trump on Thursday claimed significant progress in negotiations, hours after he threatened to seize Iran’s oil industry.

The war has rattled the Middle East. Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for attacks virtually shut down oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf, and the U.S. has blockaded Iranian ports. The ceasefire has been in place since April 7.

Khamenei to be buried at the holiest of Shiite shrines

Funeral ceremonies for former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be in July, the country’s state-run television said Saturday, as mediators said an agreement to end the war was close.

The funeral, burial and farewell events for Khamenei will take place between July 4 and 9 during Muharram, a traditional period of mourning in the Shiite Muslim calendar.

Khamenei was killed in the opening attack of the war that Israel and the United States launched against Iran in late February. He is succeeded by his son, Mojtaba, who is seen as even less compromising.

The funeral ceremonies for Khamenei are expected to begin in Tehran, and the procession will move to Qom, a stronghold of many senior Shiite clerics, and then to Mashhad, his birthplace. He’ll be buried there at the Imam Reza Shrine, considered the holiest place among Shiite devotees.

Funerals for Khamenei's daughter and son-in-law, also killed in the February strike, will be on the same day.

Khamenei remolded the Islamic Republic after taking the reins following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini was the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics.

Khamenei ruled far longer than Khomeini. He greatly expanded the Shiite clerical class and built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the most important body underpinning his rule. The Guard became a military and business behemoth, the country’s most elite force and head of its ballistic missile arsenal.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo and Madhani from Washington. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price in Washington and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.

Israel's military appears to be trying to make as many gains as possible in case a U.S.-Iran agreement is reached to end the war in the region, which is likely to include Lebanon.

The departure from the army barracks in Kfar Tebnit came as the Israeli military issued an evacuation warning for about 20 locations, including the southern city of Nabatiyeh and nearby villages.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported airstrikes on Saturday on different villages near Nabatiyeh, including one that killed two people in Deir al-Zahrani. It added that Nabatiyeh was subjected to artillery shelling on Saturday.

A senior Lebanese military official told The Associated Press that the Lebanese army moved its forces from the Kfar Tebnit barracks following an incursion by Israeli forces into the area. The official, who did not elaborate, spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Israeli troops were likely trying to capture the strategic Ali Taher hill on the edge of Kfar Tebnit that overlooks large parts of Nabatiyeh and some of the roads that link the city with nearby villages.

Israeli troops held the Ali Taher hill for 18 years until they withdrew from Lebanon in May 2000.

Hezbollah said in statements that its fighters carried out several attacks on Saturday including a morning one that targeted Israeli troops on the edge of Kfar Tibnit with two drones.

Hezbollah has been using fiber-optic drones since the start of the latest war inflicting casualties among Israeli troops.

In late May, Israeli troops captured a nearby strategic mountain topped with the Crusader-built Beaufort Castle in the deepest incursion into the country since 2000.

The Lebanese army said that later Saturday an Israeli drone targeted a soldier who was traveling near a hospital in Nabatiyeh, but missed. Later, however, another drone struck the soldier as he traveled on the road linking Nabatiyeh with the nearby village of Kfar Rumman, seriously wounding him.

The push on the edge of Kfar Tebnit came a day after Pakistan’s prime minister said that the United States and Iran have agreed to wording of an agreement aimed at ending their war in the Middle East and that mediators are working with both sides to finalize a deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Iranian state TV on Friday that both sides were working toward signing an initial agreement declaring an end to the war “on all fronts, including Lebanon.”

Senior Hezbollah official Hussein Haj Hassan told Al Jazeera TV that they have been informed by Iranian officials that Lebanon will be part of a future ceasefire deal between the U.S. and Iran.

Iran is Hezbollah’s main backer, supplying the group with different types of weapons over the past four decades as well as billions of dollars.

Attacks by Israel and Hezbollah have continued despite a ceasefire that went into effect on April 17 and was renewed several times but remains a ceasefire in name only.

Israel continues to occupy large swaths of southern Lebanon while battling Hezbollah fighters, causing civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure. Hezbollah, which is not part of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, has launched frequent rocket and drone attacks.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the U.S. and Israel began their attacks on Iran.

More than 3,700 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest fighting, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Also, 30 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon, and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.

“When I walked out for the ninth, my whole body shivered and the adrenaline really kicked in,” he said.

Misiorowski threw a 104.5 mph pitch, the fastest by a starting pitcher since tracking began, and struck out 15 with no walks in a one-hitter that led the Milwaukee Brewers over the Philadelphia Phillies 6-0 on Friday night.

“That was as good as it gets,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said. “To pitch a game like that against an offense like that with all those All-Stars over there, it was an incredible performance.”

Misiorowski had never pitched past the seventh inning in 27 previous big league starts.

As he strode to the mound for the ninth inning, the capacity crowd of 40,205 rose in unison. Misiorowski retired Gabriel Rincones Jr. and J.T. Realmuto on groundouts, then struck out Justin Crawford with a 103.1 mph pitch that ended the game.

Misiorowski raised his hands in the air and turned to embrace catcher William Contreras.

“There was no chance I was going to throw anything other than a heater right there. I was amped up,” Misiorowski said.

He struck out Kyle Schwarber leading off the game with his fifth pitch, a 104.5 mph offering at the low, outsider corner that was tipped into Contreras' mitt.

Misiorowski (8-2) threw four pitches of 104 mph or higher, all faster than the previous high for a starter of 103.7 mph he set at Colorado on June 7. The fastest pitch overall since tracking began in 2008 was 105.8 mph by Cincinnati reliever Aroldis Chapman in September 2010.

Misiorowski reached 100 mph with a record 58 pitches, one more than he threw against St. Louis on May 25. He tossed 74 of 95 pitches for strikes and lowered his major league-leading ERA to 1.34 in just the eighth complete game and fifth individual shutout in the majors this year.

He has a 0.17 ERA in his last eight starts and the 15 strikeouts were the most by any pitcher this season. Milwaukee had not had a complete game since Brandon Woodruff on Sept. 11, 2023, against Miami.

Misiorowski started the game with four straight strikeouts and fanned eight of his first nine batters.

“You pretty much better be ready to hit the fastball. You don’t see guys like this often,” Phillies manager Don Mattingly said before the game. “We see more guys throw 100 mph or up in that range, but you don’t see guys that are consistent like him. If you can’t hit a fastball, you’re in big trouble.”

Misiorowsk faced one batter over the minimum. Schwarber singled on a slider on the first pitch of the fourth and, after Bryce Harper struck out, Trea Turner grounded into an inning-ending double play.

“It was a backdoor slider that I located well, but maybe slightly off,” Misiorowski said of the pitch to Schwarber. "I was trying to jump out ahead of him. He made good contact and poked it through. End of the story.”

Murphy said Misiorowski has continued to mature.

“His work between starts is consistent,” Murphy said. “He’s worked hard in the weight room. He’s worked hard building a routine. This guy loves the ball in his hand.”

___

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

FIFA’s lightning plan (8-mile rule)

In a statement provided to KPRC 2, a spokesperson with the FIFA Houston Host Committee, said:

“HPD and HFD are monitoring weather at FIFA Fan Festival, and if there is lightning detected within an eight-mile radius, fans will need to exit the grounds and move to a safe location. Following a 30-minute period without any additional lightning detected within that radius, the gates will reopen. The 30-minute clock will restart with each lightning strike within that eight-mile radius.”

Sunday weather timeline

KPRC 2 Chief Meteorologist Anthony Yanez said the heat index could again hit the triple digits Sunday as Southeast Texas shifts into a stormier pattern.

• TIMELINE: A stormy week starts Sunday, but first another day of triple-digit heat

Storms are expected to increase around noon, with the peak window for lightning and heavy rain from about 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. The forecast also includes a 60% chance for lightning around Houston Stadium (which locals know as NRG Stadium), making weather monitoring especially important for visitors not used to how quickly conditions can turn dangerous in Houston.

A low-pressure system in the Bay of Campeche is expected to pull deep tropical moisture into the region starting Sunday. Even if it doesn’t become a named tropical storm, it could still bring significant rain.

Looking ahead

Heavier rain is possible Monday into Tuesday, with forecast totals of 1–3 inches from Sunday through Tuesday and isolated spots up to 5–6 inches.

As of Saturday morning around 9 a.m. two center lanes and the right lane are still closed as crews continue their work, according to Houston TranStar.

TxDOT said bridge repairs are expected to continue throughout Saturday and lanes will be stay closed for most of the day. They are advising drivers to seek alternate routes.

The bridge has been struck multiple times this year by 18-wheelers.

E/B IH 10 at Houston Ave. only two lanes are open due to a bridge strike. 202 pic.twitter.com/s5KduCcBln

— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) June 13, 2026

Prepare for delays if in the area.

Pitching one year to the day of his major league debut, the 24-year-old right-hander struck out Kyle Schwarber leading off the game with his fifth pitch, a 104.5 mph offering at the low, outside corner that was tipped into the mitt of catcher William Contreras.

Misiorowski (8-2) threw four pitches of 104 mph or higher, all faster than the previous high for a starter of 103.7 mph he set at Colorado on June 7. The fastest pitch overall since tracking began in 2008 was 105.8 mph by Cincinnati reliever Aroldis Chapman in September 2010.

Misiorowski reached 100 mph with a record 58 pitches, one more than he threw against St. Louis on May 25. He tossed 74 of 95 pitches for strikes and lowered his major league-leading ERA to 1.34.

He faced one batter over the minimum. Schwarber singled on a slider on the first pitch of the fourth and, after Bryce Harper struck out, Trea Turner grounded into an inning-ending double play.

With the capacity crowd of 40,205 at American Family Field on its feet, Misiorowski struck out Justin Crawford to finish the game and raised his hands in the air in his first professional complete game. It was just the eighth complete game and fifth individual shutout in the major leagues this year.

Contreras put Milwaukee ahead in the first with a two-out RBI double off opener Tanner Banks (0-4) and Andrew Painter threw a run-scoring wild pitch in the second.

Jake Bauers hit a three-run homer in the fifth off Painter and Jackson Chourio added a run-scoring single in the sixth.

Philadelphia placed outfielder Adolis García on the 60-day injured list with a right lat tear and recalled outfielder Gabriel Rincones Jr. from Triple-A Lehigh Valley. García left in the seventh inning of Wednesday night’s game at Toronto after making consecutive throws to home plate on sacrifice flies. The team also placed outfielder Steward Berroa on the paternity list.

Milwaukee put right-hander Coleman Crow on the 15-day injured list with a right flexor strain and recalled right-hander Craig Yoho from Triple-A Nashville.

Up next

Aaron Nola (3-4, 5.86 ERA) gets the start for the Phillies on Saturday against the Brewers' Shane Drohan (3-1, 3.11 ERA).

___

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

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Saturday that a deal aimed at ending the war in the Middle East is closer than ever before and expected to be finalized within 24 hours. Pakistan is preparing for the electronic signing of the agreement, followed by technical-level talks next week.

But the White House did not answer questions about where things stood in negotiations or when a deal might be signed. Iran's foreign ministry spokesperson said no signing would occur Sunday, while leaving the possibility open for the coming days.

Previous declarations of an imminent breakthrough failed to materialize.

Iran exchanged fire with the U.S. and Israel earlier in the week, threatening to push the region back into a full-scale war. U.S. Central Command late Friday said on social media that it intercepted Iranian attack drones targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

The war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28 has rattled the region and virtually shut down oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since April 7.

Here's what to know:

A 60-day period would address Iran's nuclear program

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday the terms of dealing with Iran’s nuclear program would be finalized in the 60 days after the initial agreement is signed and that the parties could decide to extend that period.

The U.S. and Israel fear Iran’s nuclear program could lead to an atomic weapon — a main reason their leaders cited for going to war. Tehran has insisted its nuclear efforts are for peaceful purposes.

A senior U.S. administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said Friday that the emerging agreement would begin the process of destroying or removing Tehran’s highly enriched uranium.

The official said the 60-day period after both sides sign the deal would be used to work out technical details for removing the uranium. The official did not say who the U.S. envisions taking charge of removing the uranium, which is believed to be entombed under three nuclear sites battered by U.S. strikes last year.

The deal would include address reopening the Strait of Hormuz

The U.S. official said the emerging agreement includes provisions for reopening the strait.

Araghchi said Iran wants a deal that allows Tehran to charge ships “for services rendered” when they transit the strait. Iran imposed a toll system during the war, which the U.S. and other nations have said violates international law.

Transit through the strait, a vital shipping lane for oil and natural gas, has disrupted global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics like fertilizer more expensive well beyond the region.

The agreement would include Iranian sanctions relief

Three regional officials said the emerging deal was expected to include the phased lifting of sanctions on Iran and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

They said they expect a signing ceremony for the agreement in the coming days after officials in Washington and Tehran approve it.

What will happen to Lebanon remains unclear

Iran has insisted that any deal must also include a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has been fighting the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Friday that Israel could still act independently toward Iran and that the country would not pull out of the zones it is occupying in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, nor would it withdraw from the northern refugee camps of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Fighting continued in southern Lebanon on Saturday.

___

Weissert reported from Washington and Mednick from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Michelle L. Price and Aamer Madhani in Washington and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

After a day of legal maneuvers and thunderstorms, workers began the process in the early morning hours of removing the letters spelling out the Republican president's name from the facade of the iconic performing arts venue. They were a few hours past a court-ordered deadline and did their work shrouded by a tarp, much to the frustration of onlookers who had gathered for hours hoping to witness a dramatic moment symbolizing the limits of Trump's power.

As the sun rose over Washington, the tarp remained in place, leaving it impossible to determine whether all the letters had been removed. Shortly after midnight, the Kennedy Center asked a judge to extend the deadline until noon EDT, citing the storms for delaying the work. The court agreed to that request Saturday morning.

The removal of Trump's name closes one of the more unusual chapters in the history of the Kennedy Center, which began construction in 1964 and was dedicated to the memory of the slain president, Democrat John F. Kennedy. At what is typically one of the few relatively nonpartisan spaces in Washington, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his second term.

Though he rarely discussed the Kennedy Center during his 2024 campaign, Trump moved quickly to oust the institution's leadership when he returned to office in January 2025 and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. His name was quickly added to the building.

While the removal of his name marks a setback for Trump, he is moving forward with plans to reshape the physical landscape of the nation's capital in ways that have few modern parallels.

He demolished the East Wing of the White House and is building a controversial ballroom in its place. He remodeled the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and plans extensive renovations of a golf course in East Potomac Park, moves that could significantly reduce the public's access to running and biking paths. He is also moving forward with a triumphal arch that will sit near Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in Virginia.

Indeed as Trump's name is being removed from the Kennedy Center, the South Lawn of the White House has been transformed into a venue for a UFC match intended to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence but also coinciding with Trump's birthday on Sunday.

Back at the Kennedy Center, there are many questions about the institution's future. The same May court decision that ordered Trump's name to be removed from the building also blocked a planned two-year closure for renovations that was set to begin next month.

The Kennedy Center's calendar for the weeks ahead include performances of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Bluey's Big Play.” Comedian Bill Maher is to be awarded the Mark Twain Award for American Humor during a ceremony on June 28.

But little is scheduled for the stages beyond that and, after substantially reducing staff, it is unclear how quickly the Kennedy Center could build out a robust performance list. Trump, angered by the court's order to remove his name, has said he would turn the Kennedy Center over to Congress and has suggested it might simply shutter because of public safety concerns.

In its unsuccessful appeal on Friday seeking a pause on the order removing Trump's name, the Kennedy Center's leadership argued, in terms that seemed similar to the president's speech patterns, that the lower court was interfering with needed renovations.

“The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below,” according to the appeal. “Indeed, total collapse!”

The institution also suggested that the president's name could return to the building if the Kennedy Center later wins its appeal.

If the court denied the venue's request for a pause, the Kennedy Center argued it would “be forced to squander time and money — by both removing the signage and then potentially returning it after appeal.”

The incident happened around 2:20 a.m. in the 5600 block of West Tidwell Road, Lt. Pulido with the Houston Police Department said.

Pulido said a man was lying on the railroad tracks when the train’s conductor saw him and sounded the horn. The man did not move, and although the conductor attempted to stop, the train was unable to stop in time, Pulido said.

• Woman found lying dead outside Westchase apartment complex

BNSF Railway police are investigating. No additional details about the man’s identity or what led up to the incident were immediately available.

Of course, that won’t stop orange-and-blue-blooded Knicks fans from teeming into the area near the team’s Manhattan arena to watch on bar TVs and big screens as their team — playing 1,580 miles (2,545 kilometers) away in San Antonio — looks to clinch its first title in 53 years.

After a rift with the city over security measures for Game 4, the Knicks are again holding a watch party outside Madison Square Garden. Up to 3,000 fans can attend, the team said. Advanced registration is required and all fans in attendance will be screened by police. Other watch parties are being held at Radio City Music Hall and Wollman Rink in Central Park.

For Game 4 at the Garden on Wednesday, the Knicks were granted a permit for a watch party for up to 1,000 people, but team owner James Dolan declined to hold one as he lashed out at Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the police department for keeping in place a security perimeter, metal detectors and other restrictions after President Donald Trump‘s visit to Game 3 on Monday.

All postseason, Knicks fans have flocked to the Garden by the thousands, making playoff pilgrimages to a place known as the “Mecca of Basketball” to cheer, commune and revel in a remarkable feat: 14 wins in 15 games since April 23, and a 3-1 lead over the Spurs in the best-of-seven series.

On Saturday, Knicks fever collides with the New York City area’s first World Cup game in 32 years. The match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey kicks off about three hours before the Knicks game, but traffic and transit restrictions extend to Manhattan, and soccer fans returning to the city by train will be arriving at Penn Station — right underneath the Garden.

Complicating matters: a concert at the Garden that is expected to bring another 15,000 to 20,000 people to the area and prevents a watch party inside the arena and a scorching heatwave that has city officials advising people to stay indoors. On Sunday, the city is hosting another big event, the National Puerto Rican Day Parade.

The concert, by the Australian pop band 5 Seconds of Summer, follows the Knicks’ 4.5 seconds of delirium Wednesday night at the Garden — a magical sequence in which OG Anunoby tipped in a Jalen Brunson miss to complete a historic 29-point comeback and put them a game from the third title in team history.

Wild scenes outside the Garden

Outside, it was pandemonium.

Fans in blue Brunson and orange Karl-Anthony Towns jerseys ran through the streets. Subway cars erupted in cheers as fans peeped the winning shot on their cellphones, their feeds interrupted at times by spotty underground reception.

Just beyond the Garden’s police-prescribed security perimeter, crowds swelled to about 10,000 people, the NYPD said. Thousands more were taking in the game and its see-it-to-believe-it ending at watch parties at nearby Bryant Park and Wollman Rink in Central Park.

But as the game progressed, the police department said in a statement, “the crowds became increasingly destructive, and there were many incidents of incredibly reckless and dangerous behavior.”

People fought in the streets and set off fireworks. They climbed scaffolding and traffic lights and smashed the windshields of four police vehicles. Some people tried to physically flip over a taxi or jump on top of moving trucks and other vehicles, police said. One group broke into a tractor trailer, took items from inside and threw them at police officers.

At least 10 officers were hurt in the mayhem, police said. One was hit in the head with a glass bottle.

In all, 56 people were taken into police custody during and after Game 4. Of them, 15 were arrested and 41 were released with criminal court summonses.

Other Knicks-related crimes remain unsolved.

On Wednesday, about two blocks from the Garden, a 17-year-old boy was beaten into a coma by people who had been arguing with him about the Knicks after their Game 4 comeback win, the NYPD said. Later, at the Spurs hotel five blocks from the arena, someone hurled an egg at star Spurs center Victor Wembanyama, but missed.

After the Spurs won Game 3 on Monday, a 39-year-old Spurs fan had his Tim Duncan jersey ripped from his body while walking back to his hotel near Times Square, the NYPD said.

New York declares Gridlock Alert

With the confluence of events on the pitch, court and stage, the city has declared a Gridlock Alert for Saturday, with severe traffic congestion expected in midtown Manhattan. Street closures and limited access to parts of Penn Station will be in effect for each of the eight World Cup matches at MetLife Stadium.

Starting at noon, two streets adjacent to the Garden — 32nd and 33rd — will be closed to vehicle traffic and used as queues for people waiting for trains from Penn Station to the World Cup. They will reopen three hours after the match ends.

The city is also barring truck deliveries from 30th Street to 60th Street from noon to 11 p.m., closing streets around the Lincoln Tunnel to New Jersey and converting some streets to bus-only corridors, including 42nd Street, which traverses Times Square. Of late, the tourist haven has been co-opted as yet another place for New York fans to cheer.

If the Knicks win Game 5, the next stop for their roving faithful will be a celebratory parade in Lower Manhattan, through a skyscraper-filled stretch of the city known as the Canyon of Heroes.

If not, the Knicks and their fans will be back at the Garden on Tuesday for Game 6.

Electric vehicles. Brain implants. Underground tunnels. A social media platform once called Twitter. And a rocket maker that blasted off its trading from Wall Street this week.

Over time, more and more of these ventures have found themselves under the same roof. Musk merged SpaceX — which went public on Friday — with his artificial intelligence company xAI just earlier this year. But he still holds the CEO role at several corporations today, in addition to other various executive titles or ownership stakes.

Here's a look at Musk's vast business empire.

SpaceX

Musk is CEO of SpaceX, which he founded in 2002. The company has grown far beyond rockets. It owns satellite communications service Starlink, a big source of cash for the company that generated $4.4 billion in operating income last year. SpaceX also houses social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, which Musk bought for $44 billion in 2022 and parked it under xAI, the maker of the Grok chatbot.

Both xAI and X are money losers (the AI business lost $6.4 billion in operations last year). Nonetheless, SpaceX — which lost $2.6 billion overall from operations last year — was able to whip up enough market hype to debut with the biggest initial public offering in history on Friday, closing at just below $161 per share, or a total market value of $2.1 trillion.

Some think that price tag significantly overvalues the company. SpaceX has promised it will become a leader in AI and one day help make human life multiplanetary — with lofty, and at times sci-fi sounding, goals that range from putting data centers in space to colonizing Mars. But the bulk of that hinges on unproven technology and massive capital needs.

Tesla

Musk is also CEO of Tesla, a role he has held at the electric car maker since 2008.

Tesla has struggled with rising competition in the EV space. Last year, the company lost its crown as the world’s largest EV maker to China’s BYD. Sales were also bruised during boycotts over Musk’s politics. Those numbers have since rebounded some, but Musk has repeatedly shrugged off troubles — emphasizing that Tesla’s future lies less in car sales than getting people to take rides in them as self-driving taxis.

Beyond the road, Tesla has been upping production of robots for homes and businesses. And it's also been in the solar energy business for about a decade with it purchase of SolarCity, which was founded by Musk and two of his cousins. Tesla went public in 2010, and went on to join the trillion dollar club on the S&P 500. Its market cap currently stands around $1.5 trillion.

Neuralink

Musk has also the CEO title at Neuralink, a brain-computer interface company he co-founded in 2016.

Neuralink is one of many groups working to connect the human nervous system to machines. It's launched clinical trials for people who have spinal cord injuries, ALS and other conditions. The company (and sometimes Musk himself ) has announced a handful of brain implants over recent years. In January, Neuralink said it had 21 trial participants worldwide.

The Boring Company

Musk also founded The Boring Company, a decade-old tunnel digging and underground transportation business.

The Boring Company is behind projects like the “Vegas Loop” — a network of underground, Tesla-hailing tunnels that first opened around around the Las Vegas Convention Center in 2021. It's promised to deliver a network of high speed transit — with plans to also make tunnels in Dubai and Nashville. Still, pushback has piled up along the way. The company has been accused of breaking multiple safety and environmental requirements in Las Vegas, where its full route is still unfinished, and other criticism from some local officials in Nashville.

Paypal and other previous endeavors

Musk made his initial fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal ( once X.com ). Those then-startups were sold to new owners decades ago — but netted him about $200 million at sale, which Musk used to later start SpaceX and invest in Tesla.

The news conference Friday night featured the fighters who are preparing to face off Sunday in the Octagon built outside the White House. But it was also a chance to see the UFC fans who have thronged to Washington and endured lightning, humidity and bugs for the spectacle.

Tracy Philbeck and his son Levi drove from Charlotte, North Carolina, with a group of friends to support their favorite fighter, American Justin Gaethje, in the upcoming lightweight title bout against Georgian Ilia Topuria.

"You will hear an eagle screaming when Justin Gaethje wins,” the elder Philbeck chuckled.

David Halstead journeyed from Albany, in Western Australia, to watch the sport he has loved for a decade. Halstead said Trump, who regularly attends the fights, “put UFC on the map."

The UFC has said it spent $60 million on this weekend's festivities, and Republican president has billed it as “the greatest show on earth.”

Not everyone agrees.

The Public Integrity Project described the event as a “private, commercial, corrupt use of our most sacred national monuments for private gain” in a lawsuit the watchdog group filed to try to stop it from happening on federal land. A federal judge ruled on Friday that the White House was allowed to go ahead.

Only about 1 in 10 U.S. adults consider themselves mixed martial arts fans, according to Ipsos Sports polling conducted in February and March. That polling suggests MMA fans skew male and nonwhite. They are more likely to identify as Republicans than Democrats.

“One misconception is that everyone who watches UFC is a Trump supporter, but that’s not the case," said Ricardo Rodriguez, 24, explaining he loves the physicality of the sport. “People also expect a knock out every time," he said.

Ellie Louizes, who practices Muay Thai, or Thai kickboxing, and jujitsu martial arts, drove from Daytona Beach, Florida, with her boyfriend, Jacob Purvis.

Female fans of MMA are the minority. But Louizes said she knows a lot of women who get into watching the sport through their male partners. She said “female fighters are often way more aggressive” than the men.

Fans brushed off the criticism about White House as host

The fans at the Lincoln Memorial brushed off criticism about the bouts being held at the White House.

Holding fights at the “People's House,” Tracy Philbeck said, "goes back to the days of Teddy Roosevelt.”

Roosevelt regularly held sparring sessions at the White House, though they were not formal public prizefights. He was an enthusiastic amateur boxer who had boxed at Harvard and continued the sport throughout much of his life.

Boxing fans also make up a large part of the UFC's fan base.

At a UFC-sponsored community event this week at the District of Columbia's Midtown Youth Academy, the boxing gym's executive director was helping out with a visit from UFC fighter Randy Brown, who sparred with more than dozen local teenagers and preteens.

Gloria Lee said meeting the fighter was a big deal for kids at her gym. “It's just been a thrilling week, and I was about to fall out when he came in the door!” she said.

Asked about her personal UFC fandom, Lee said she had not watched it much. But by the end of Brown's visit, she got into the ring with the professional fighter and threw some slugs of her own.

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Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.

• Timing of storms: The main timeline for storms Sunday will be early afternoon lasting into the evening hours. Only isolated showers and t-storms are expected during the morning hours.
• With a focus of more rain as we get into Monday through Tuesday - with rainfall amounts 2-3 inches and we’re not ruling out the chance that some of our isolated cells could produce 3 to 5 inches.

Today’s forecast:

Houston will need to contend with brutal heat to start our weekend. Saturday morning temperatures will start in the upper 70s to lower 80s, rising to the lower to mid-90s by afternoon. The heat index, which measures how hot it really feels, could spike as high as 105° between noon and 6 p.m., making for challenging (and potentially hazardous) conditions outside, especially of you are going to Fan Fest.

Recognizing the signs of heat illness:

The free FIFA Fan Festival is outdoors with giant screens, food, and a 7v7 synthetic turf field for pickup games. I was there Thursday and I’ll tell you there isn’t much shade. There are misters but that’s it. Water is free so stay hydrated and try not to overexert yourself. Below are the signs of heat exhaustion. If this happens to you get help immediately. Officials have already treated dozens of fans and a handful had to go to the hospital for heat illness treatment.

Sunday’s forecast:

And we’ll continue to track triple-digit “feels-like” temperatures on Sunday as we shift into a stormy weather pattern.

Anyone spending time outdoors, especially at large gatherings, should take precautions and stay hydrated. If lightning occurs near Fan Fest in Downtown Houston people will have to exit the facility. This is what the FIFA World Cup Houston Host Committee press office said, “HPD and HFD are monitoring weather at FIFA Fan Festival, and if there is lightning detected within an eight-mile radius, fans will need to exit the grounds and move to a safe location. Following a 30-minute period without any additional lightning detected within that radius, the gates will reopen. The 30-minute clock will restart with each lightning strike within that eight-mile radius.”

A low-pressure system in the Bay of Campeche is expected to funnel deep, rich tropical moisture into the area beginning Sunday. Even though the chance of this system developing into a named tropical storm is small, rainfall totals could still be significant with or without a name.

The city’s World Cup festivities, including the highly anticipated Germany vs Curacao match at Houston Stadium, are falling right in the window of this weekend’s active weather pattern. There’s a chance of a passing shower in the morning, but storms are forecast to ramp up starting around noon. The peak window for lightning and heavy rain is expected between 2 and 8 p.m. There’s a 60% chance for lightning around Houston Stadium and scattered storms throughout Southeast Texas, making weather monitoring especially important for visitors who aren’t used to how quickly our weather can become dangerous in Houston.

Monday’s forecast:

There is the potential for a Monday washout! We could wake up to widespread heavy rain with more downpours possible in the afternoon. Our highest street flooding threat is this day in Houston.

Tuesday’s forecast:

Our last round of widespread heavy rain is Tuesday morning. By the early afternoon all of the organized thunderstorms will move out of southeast Texas. Rain totals Sunday to Tuesday range from 1″ to 3″ with a few places getting 5″ to 6″.

10-day forecast:

There could be some hit and miss storms Wednesday but once we get to Thursday Houston heads into our next hot and humid weather pattern.

Beating the heat is the name of the game for tens of thousands of fans attending the FIFA Fan Fest in Houston’s East Downtown. With temperatures soaring, organizers and attendees alike are finding creative ways to stay cool and safe.

More than 30,000 people were in the area serviced by the Emergency Medical Center on opening day, Thursday. Despite the large crowds and high temperatures, the FIFA World Cup 2026 Houston Host Committee says comprehensive heat mitigation measures helped fans enjoy the event.

• TIMELINE: When the heat and humidity transition to a flood threat in Houston

Medical teams respond to 110 incidents on Day 1

Of the 110 medical incidents reported Thursday, 85 people were treated at the on-site cooling center and returned to the festivities. 27 others were treated at the on-site Emergency Medical Center — 21 of whom were released. Four people were transported to a hospital for heat-related concerns requiring a higher level of care.

Ryan Walsh, CEO of the Harris County Sports Authority, said the medical response team was well-prepared for the demand.

“We were ready for what happened. We did have some medical emergencies we responded to — we were well within the capacity within the medical people on site. Most of them were treated on site,” Walsh said.

Mist stations, cooling centers keep fans comfortable

Mist stations across the festival grounds are among the most popular relief options for fans. Five stations are set up on-site, and crews made a key adjustment after Day 1 — lowering the mist nozzles by about two feet to improve coverage.

“These are not A/C systems — they are dependent on the air temperature and humidity levels — but the goal is for you to be comfortable when you are standing underneath without getting wet,” said Bashil Patel, with MistCooling.

In addition to the mist stations, the Houston Host Committee and public safety officials put several heat mitigation measures in place, including cooling stations, hydration stations, shade structures and air-conditioned spaces.

• RELATED: Houston survival guide for FIFA Fan Festival

Fans come prepared

Festivalgoers are doing their part to beat the heat, too. Linda Pham said her strategy is simple.

“We take frequent breaks, drink water, Powerade,” Pham said.

Haley Arteaga came ready with her own gear.

“I feel great and I brought my reusable water bottle, and you always want to make sure you stay hydrated,” Arteaga said.

Mercedez Soliz took a particularly well-stocked approach to the festival.

“I also brought a mini umbrella — very travel friendly. I also brought a towel in case I wanted to sit, because I know turf feeling on the butt is not a good feeling when you are hot and sweaty,” Soliz said.

Know the warning signs

Health officials on-site are urging festivalgoers to know the warning signs of heat-related illness. If you step under a mist station and still aren’t feeling relief, stop sweating, feel dizzy or nauseated, contact Houston Fire EMS immediately.

• RELATED: Heat to tropical downpours: Houston weather outlook for FIFA World Cup 2026

For those waiting in long lines for food and drinks, officials recommend wearing light-colored clothing, applying sunscreen and staying consistently hydrated.

Volunteers at the Fan Fest are also handing out towels and encouraging fans to soak them at water stations — a cooling trick fans are using both inside and outside the venue.

For Soliz, the Houston heat is nothing new — and nothing that was going to keep her away.

“I used to play soccer in this heat, so it is a bit of a throwback,” she said. When asked if anything could have stopped her from attending, she didn’t hesitate. “Oh no, no — I wanted to experience everything,” Soliz said.

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Officers were called around 8:12 p.m. to the Woodland Park Apartments on Woodland Park Drive after receiving a report of an assault, according to Houston Police Department Lt. Pulido.

A 911 caller told dispatchers they had found a woman’s body lying on the ground at the apartment complex, police said.

When officers arrived, they found the woman dead. The Houston Fire Department responded to the scene and pronounced her dead.

Houston Police Homicide detectives and Crime Scene Unit investigators spent several hours processing the scene and searching for evidence.

Investigators were also canvassing the area for surveillance video and potential witnesses who may have information about what happened, Pulido said.

• Houston residents carry nearly $45,000 in debt on average, new study shows

The woman is believed to have been in her mid-30s, but authorities had not identified her as of Saturday morning.

Police said they do not yet know whether the woman lived at the apartment complex or was visiting.

“We haven’t been able to identify her yet,” Pulido said. “We’re gonna have to wait for the autopsy. There’s no identifying markers or IDs left around.”

No information about a suspect or a possible motive was immediately released.

The investigation remains ongoing.

SpaceX is now worth $2.1 trillion after its stock launched 19.2% higher in its debut on Wall Street. Whether or not you believe it deserves to be worth more than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined, the collective market does. And if SpaceX maintains that big a value, it will join some high-profile stock indexes.

Many of these indexes don't care about how realistic a company's growth plans are or who its CEO is. They're simply trying to show how slices of the market, or the whole thing, are performing. And if SpaceX is big enough to meet the qualifications to join those indexes, whether it's in a few weeks or a year, it will gain entry.

That matters for investors and their 401(k) accounts because they're depending more than ever on funds that simply mimic these indexes. It's a lower-cost way to invest, allowing savers to keep more of their investments. Partly because of that, such index funds have usually proven to be better performers than funds that try to pick and choose individual stocks.

Just one in five actively managed U.S. stock funds survived and beat their average index peer over the last decade, at 21%, according to Morningstar's data through 2025. Such disparities in performance meant investors had more money invested in U.S. index funds than actively managed ones beginning in 2024, and the gap has only grown since then.

Here's a look at what's going on:

What indexes are

They're things the investment industry has created to answer the question: What is the market doing? It's otherwise tough to answer quickly when the U.S. market has thousands of stocks moving in different directions at any moment.

The S&P 500 is perhaps the most famous and influential index. It tracks 500 of the biggest U.S. stocks, and trillions of dollars in investments are either directly mimicking it or at least benchmarking themselves against it.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is well known because it's been around since the 19th century, but it tracks only 30 big stocks so Wall Street pays it little attention.

Companies want to be in indexes

Because index funds are the way so many investors put money into the stock market, companies want to be part of indexes. Stocks can see a big jump in their prices after S&P Dow Jones Indices, Nasdaq, FTSE Russell or other companies announce they'll be joining their indexes.

The investment industry has created funds, including both traditional mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, to track almost every kind of index. More than 1,000 index funds were available at the end of last year, according to the Investment Company Institute. Of them, 185 tracked the S&P 500.

SpaceX could soon be in indexes

Nasdaq changed its rules to allow some huge companies to join its Nasdaq 100 index after just 15 trading days. That's a break from the past, where it would wait until each December to add new members in an annual reconstitution to make sure it includes the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq.

Some popular funds track the Nasdaq 100 index, including the QQQ exchange-traded fund from Invesco that has roughly $477 billion in total investments. That means QQQ holders could soon own shares of SpaceX, without doing anything on their own.

Other AI giants could as well

Anthropic and OpenAI are two other huge AI-related companies looking to sell their own stocks soon on a U.S. exchange for the first time. Their IPOs could potentially make each worth close to $1 trillion.

It used to be that companies would have an IPO long before they got that big. But SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI swelled to tremendous sizes thanks to dollars from private investors, including pension funds, companies and rich investors, away from the public market.

That's forcing the reconsideration for the investment industry about how quickly to add companies to indexes that they say track the biggest companies.

Not every index is making changes to fast-track big IPOs

The company behind the S&P 500 is not making changes to allow SpaceX and other “mega” IPOs faster entry into the index. For it, a stock needs to trade on an eligible exchange for at least 12 months before it can join the index.

Not only that, S&P Dow Jones Indices also requires companies to have made a profit in its most recent quarter and over the sum of its last four quarters.

SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and another $4.3 billion through the first three months of 2026. It acknowledges that it “may not achieve profitability in the future.” Over the long term, a stock’s price tends to track with how much profit the company is making.

Not everyone is happy about SpaceX's IPO entry to indexes

Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying its corporate governance, including how much power Musk will hold over the company through his ownership of a special class of stock with more voting power.

They said they could become owners of SpaceX stock because they hold index funds.

If Musk is able to control so much of the voting power on the board of directors, it would make him tremendously powerful atop SpaceX, “essentially making him unfireable without his own consent,” the CEO of California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the New York state comptroller and the New York City comptroller wrote in their letter.

If an investor doesn’t like certain companies in the index

Index funds track indexes. And if a stock is in an index, the index fund will buy it, even if investors may not like it.

Tesla has remained in the S&P 500 even though critics called it overvalued for years, for example, and Musk's electric-vehicle company has grown to become one of Wall Street's 10 biggest companies.

Some indexes say they will not include companies that have poor corporate governance standards or other narrowed criteria, but investors need to look for them.

The S&P 500 ESG index famously kicked Tesla out in 2022, for example.

The Pentagon on Monday added several non-state-owned Chinese companies, including electric vehicle maker BYD, tech giants Alibaba and Baidu to its list that seeks to identify Chinese companies it deems to have ties to the Chinese military, preventing them from landing U.S. defense contracts.

By adding these firms to the list, “the U.S. side has ignored the consensus reached during the meeting between the heads of state of the two countries in Beijing,” a Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesperson said Saturday in a statement.

The U.S. has “disregarded the overall interests of bilateral economic and trade relations, continuously generalized the concept of national security, and abused state power to unjustifiably suppress Chinese enterprises,” the spokesperson added.

BYD, Alibaba and Baidu said earlier there’s no basis to include them in the list.

Trump in mid-May visited Beijing in a much-anticipated summit with Xi. The two leaders agreed to boost economic ties between the countries, including China's purchase of more U.S. agricultural products and Boeing jets, and the setting up separate boards of trade and investment.

The posture is an escalation from a year ago, when Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer was widely criticized within his party for a spring vote with Republicans to keep the government open. Since then, Democrats have forced government shutdowns, slowed Trump’s nominations and now blocked the bipartisan intelligence law as they seek leverage in a Republican-led Congress.

The risky strategy has consequences when government programs go dark, and Democrats have little to show for it so far in terms of policy victories. Republicans say it is a grave threat to national security to let the surveillance law, which aims to prevent terrorist attacks, expire just as millions of people are entering the United States for World Cup games and as celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary get underway.

But the hardball approach has helped unite Democrats inside and outside of the Capitol as they say they have no other choice — and that the blame should fall on Trump for how he is governing.

“I don’t deny that this is dangerous,” Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Thursday about Democrats allowing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to expire starting Saturday. “But this didn’t have to happen.”

Democrats’ growing confidence also comes at a time when Republicans are often sparring with Trump, who has made clear he has little interest in compromise with lawmakers in either party. Democrats are blocking renewal of the law, known as FISA, in protest of Trump’s appointment of federal housing regulator and loyalist Bill Pulte to temporarily lead the nation’s intelligence agencies. The choice also rankled Republicans, who said Pulte lacks the required experience for the job.

Lawmakers in both parties urged Trump all week to pull the appointment, and on Thursday he nominated a permanent replacement for the job just after lawmakers left Washington for the weekend. But the Senate confirmation process will take time, and Trump has not budged on Pulte’s appointment as an interim director.

With no change, Democrats “are going to use every tool we have to fight back,” said Schumer, D-N.Y.

The standoff over FISA has won Senate Democrats some respect with base voters revolted a year ago. Schumer and the caucus have “shifted to more of a fight posture,” says Joel Payne, a Democratic strategist who served as an aide to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

Republicans say blocking FISA is a dangerous strategy

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Democrats have been playing “fast and loose” with national security for the past year. He pointed to the 43-day government shutdown last fall and a monthslong delay in funding for Trump’s immigration enforcement operations.

“How did we get to the point where one party has completely abdicated any responsibility for our nation’s security?” Thune asked.

Democrats argue that Pulte, with little national security background, is a greater threat. They note that as a federal housing regulator, he has pushed for investigations of high-profile political figures whom Trump considers political foes.

“It’s not a close call,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn. “We cannot extend these capabilities if the president is making clear that he’s going to use them not to protect the nation, but to protect himself politically.”

Democrats fight for more leverage

Strategist Payne says he believes Democrats have gained a bit of leverage since the shutdown in the fall.

Democrats did not get the extension in health care subsidies they demanded because a small group of moderate Democrats voted with Republicans to end the impasse. They did not achieve the changes to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol that they sought when they delayed passage of funding for those agencies for months. But the White House did agree to negotiate, even if those talks ultimately failed.

Democrats also have grown more unified. While moderates ended the fall shutdown, the party stayed together in blocking the immigration funding and the surveillance authority.

“They’ve showed Republicans they are not going to fold,” Payne said.

Still, it may not be enough for some in the party base or to win Democrats a majority in November's midterm elections.

Andrew O’Neill, national advocacy director for the Democratic resistance group Indivisible, said he was concerned to see some Democrats praise Jay Clayton, Trump’s permanent pick for the intelligence job.

Republicans are rushing to confirm Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and a former Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, before Tulsi Gabbard leaves the job and Pulte takes over as interim director on June 19.

It is unclear, so far, if Democrats will support Clayton or allow Republicans to speed up the process and confirm him quickly.

O’Neill said he is glad Democrats blocked FISA over Pulte’s appointment, but activists are wary.

“It’s a mixed bag,” O’Neill said of the past year. “The frustration is it took so long.”

Republicans navigate Democrats and Trump

Caught in the middle are Senate Republicans, who had to spend months to fund border enforcement agencies and are now navigating the dispute over FISA, even after lawmakers reached a bipartisan compromise.

Republicans are also trying to work with Trump, who derailed the intelligence legislation when he announced Pulte’s appointment as senators were on the verge of passing that deal.

Trump has weakened Republicans' position — and his own support in the Senate — by backing primary challenges to incumbent senators. Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana both lost in primaries to Trump-backed opponents last month and have joined Democrats in criticizing Pulte.

Senate Democrats say hope their strategy gives them enough leverage to win more Republican allies.

Being in the minority is “a difficult dynamic for us,” said Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “But I’m seeing the Republicans start to move a little bit.”

Drone debris sparked a fire at a sea terminal, local Gov. Veniamin Kondratyev said. He did not give details, but Russian news outlets reported that a Black Sea export terminal transporting terminal crude oil, petroleum products and liquefied gas in the village of Volna was damaged.

Ukraine’s General Staff did not comment on the Krasnodar strike Saturday, but said that its forces had hit an oil preparation and pumping station overnight in Russia’s Volgograd region, as well as Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine's Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

The attack comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s forces had struck several military and energy infrastructure sites deep inside Russia, including a military factory that he said supplied components for Russian drones and missiles.

He said Wednesday that Ukrainian FP-5 Flamingo long-range missiles had hit the facility in Cheboksary, in the Chuvashiya region, more than 900 kilometers (560 miles) from the front line.

More than four years since the start of Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine, the more than 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line has remained largely static as swarms of drones hinder advances. As a result, both sides have increasingly relied on long-range strikes.

Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to strengthen air defenses after Ukrainian attacks set ablaze an oil terminal in St. Petersburg and also hit a nearby naval base, casting a cloud over a showcase economic forum in his hometown.

Elsewhere, Russian attacks injured nine people in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk region, setting fire to a local marketplace, regional authorities said.

Russia attacked three districts of the region more than 20 times with drones and aerial bombs, according to regional head Oleksandr Hanzha in a Telegram post on Saturday. Six were hospitalized including a man in critical condition, he added.

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

The new requirement, also under consideration in California, attempts to thwart the latest technique for producing untraceable “ghost guns” that have turned up in crimes. But there are questions about whether the technology can work and concerns about its affect on personal privacy and constitutional rights.

About one-third of U.S. states already have taken steps to ban or regulate build-it-yourself firearms that lack serial numbers and evade the background checks required to purchase guns from federally licensed dealers. What makes the new effort unique is that it targets the equipment used to produce the firearms, not the people who make them.

The blocking technology being pushed in two of the nation's most populous states has the potential to set industry standards for 3D printers. It also could serve as a model for other Democratic-led states wanting to add to their gun regulations, which often already ban certain semiautomatic weapons and allow firearms to be temporarily confiscated from people deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others.

More privately made guns are being used in crimes

Three-dimensional printers have become increasingly common over the past couple of decades.

Since 2012, the number of 3D printers worldwide has grown from an estimated 30,000 to over 3 million while the industry's value has multiplied from around $2 billion to $26 billion annually, said Bill Decker, executive chairman of the Association of 3D Printing. Though high-end printers cost thousands of dollars, some 3D printers now can be bought for as little as several hundred dollars.

The devices can make toys, prosthetic limbs and even airplane parts. They also can make firearms — or the pieces necessary to assemble them — using digital designs available online. Homemade guns that lack serial numbers often are called “ghost guns," because they are hard for law enforcement officers to trace.

Firearms made with 3D printers are increasingly being used in crimes, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report released last year. The number of privately made guns recovered in crimes and submitted to federal authorities rose from about 1,600 in 2017 to nearly 27,500 in 2023, though the report didn't specify how many came from 3D printers.

In a high-profile New York case, police say a 3D-printed gun likely was used to kill UnitedHealthcare’s CEO in 2024.

How 3D printers could refuse to make gun parts

A New York law signed last month and a bill in the California Legislature both would direct panels of experts to come up with standards for firearm blueprint detection algorithms. The technology would analyze every design submitted for 3D printing, compare it to a digital library of firearm parts, and reject those that are similar.

Though the study process would start now, the mandate that 3D printers come equipped with firearm blocking technology wouldn't begin until 2029 — or later, in New York's case, if the study group determines it's not yet feasible.

The concept is a bit like a smartphone app that identifies trees or flowers from an uploaded photo, said Solomon Diamond, an associate engineering professor at Dartmouth College who was among several experts at a recent online seminar about the legislation.

For 3D printers, one possible method could use a geometric analysis of shapes, dimensions and other structural features to reject print projects that closely resemble firearm parts.

"Geometric search is mature, it’s deployed, it is ready to be applied to this problem,” said Julian Chultarsky, a technical account manager at Physna, a Columbus, Ohio-based company that develops such technology.

Could 3D printers block both too little and too much?

The Association of 3D Printing supports the legislation in New York and California, but “it's not going to work,” Decker said. "It’s more of a political statement than anything else.”

Criminals still will come up with ways to make guns from 3D printers, either by altering their designs or taking their printing projects elsewhere, Decker said.

The more aggressive the technology becomes, the more likely that it also blocks unintended items, said Rory Mir, director of open access and technology community engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. Some harmless pipes might look like gun parts, or an S-shaped wall hanger might resemble an auto sear trigger used to modify a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun.

“These sort of censorship algorithms don’t work, and they wind up capturing and blocking a lot of lawful speech," Mir said.

If print instructions are submitted for a cloud-based artificial intelligence search, it also risks the privacy of people's artistic and proprietary creations, Mir said.

Does the right to bear arms extend to making them?

Gun safety advocates say 3D printers have created a new pathway for people who cannot legally purchase firearms — like children or convicted felons — to nonetheless obtain them. Eleven states already generally prohibit 3D-printed guns, and six additional states require them to receive serial numbers, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Blocking the actual 3D printing of firearms could make it harder for people to ignore such laws.

“3D printing really is the new frontier of the fight against ghost guns,” said Samuel Levy, director of policy advocacy at Everytown for Gun Safety.

The National Rifle Association might partly agree with that assertion, though it disagrees with the policy.

“Despite desperate fear-mongering campaigns, homemade firearms are nothing new — they are a proud, time-honored American tradition dating back to the founding of our Republic," John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. He added that "these measures only restrict responsible Americans — who do follow the law — from participating in constitutionally protected activities.”

The 35-year-old suffered serious leg and arm injuries in the attack at 11:15 a.m. off Coogee Beach, a police statement said.

“I saw the shark come out of the water and just the size of it shocked me,” lifeguard Charlie Verco told Sydney’s The Sunday Telegraph newspaper. He was in the area on his 5.5-meter (18-foot) paddleboard and was the first rescuer to the scene.

“I kept paddling towards her and the shark took her underwater and I was going, ‘What do I do now?’ A couple of seconds later, she popped up again,” Verco said.

He said the woman was too weak to climb onto the board, but he managed to grab her by an arm and they headed toward the beach. Other bystanders reached the pair and helped them back to shore.

An off-duty hospital doctor Ian Ferguson was spending the morning at the beach with his young family when he said he heard screaming and saw a “big cloud of blood in the water.”

Ferguson and others applied tourniquets to her wounds after she reached the beach. She had a 30-centimeter (12-inch) wide bite on her thigh, the flesh had been removed and bone was exposed, Ferguson told the newspaper. She had a similar wound to her arm, he said.

The victim was taken to a rugby field near the beach, from where she was flown by helicopter to a hospital. Police described her condition as critical.

The woman, who was not identified, was swimming with two friends 30 meters (100 feet) from the beach when she was attacked, ambulance official Michael Corlis said.

She was attacked by a 3.5-meter (11-foot) white shark, lifeguard Tony Waller said.

Three spearfishing divers have been killed by sharks off the Australian coast since May 16, bringing the total of fatalities in the nation this year to four. In January, a 12-year-old boy died in a hospital days after he was mauled by a bull shark in Sydney Harbor.

Australia has averaged between two and three fatal shark attacks a year since 2000, according to the Australian Shark Incident Database, a partnership of the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, Flinders University and the New South Wales state government.

Last year, Australia recorded five fatal shark attacks. Attacks in Australia have become more common over the decades as the population has grown and activities such as surfing and scuba diving have gained in popularity.

Including on a hot summer day — what’s the heat difference between grass and astroturf?

According to epturf.com, artificial turf lacks the living plants’ natural cooling mechanism (transpiration and evaporation). Newer AstroTurf systems now have reflective coatings, and cooling infills that can drop the temperature somewhat, but it’s still going to run hotter than grass — often 10-30°F or more on a blazing day, and sometimes up to 35-55°F hotter depending on the setup and sun exposure.

Good news for the players and fans — Houston Stadium for the World Cup has switched over to real natural grass for all the matches. No worries about that extra turf bake in the building!

Houston prepares for 2026 FIFA World Cup with massive NRG Stadium turf transformation

And heads up for Fan Fest in EaDo: The free FIFA Fan Festival is happening outdoors right — giant screens, live vibes, food and long lines. As our heat index is already climbing over 100 at times, and they’ve already reported some heat-related incidents. Stay hydrated, take breaks, and pace yourself out there!

It’s important to know the signs of Heat Exhaustion:

That also means traffic delays - so how can you try to save some time, stress and money?

All the details are here:

2026 FIFA World Cup: Houston Traffic Guide

The remains of the girls, who were students at Utumishi Girls Academy, were placed in white coffins adorned with flowers and topped with their portraits. The coffins were lined up in front of their families, schoolmates, community members and local leaders, who called for justice.

The nine accused girls, who were students at the school, remain in police custody, with interrogations revealing that the May 28 blaze was started by lighting a mattress at the dormitory’s exit using a matchstick and paraffin. No motive has been revealed so far.

During the memorial service, hundreds of students from Utumishi Girls Academy sang a somber hymn declaring that all shall be well. One of the presiding officials reminisced about being a victim of Kenya’s deadliest school fire in 2001, when 67 boys died in a dormitory blaze in Machakos County in eastern Kenya.

Mourners called for accountability and justice as dozens of schools have closed in recent days because of student unrest. The Kenya Red Cross said that it had responded to 37 school fires since the beginning of the year.

School fires are common in Kenya, with some linked to arson attacks by students protesting disciplinary measures or scheduled examinations, while others are caused by electrical faults.

Congested dormitories, a lack of emergency exits and insufficient firefighting equipment have often contributed to loss of life and extensive damage.

Last month, Kenya's Education Ministry suspended the principal of Utumishi Girls Academy for failing to comply with school fire safety regulations. The ministry also said that it had closed more than 300 schools following a 2024 fire tragedy that killed 21 boys in central Kenya.

During the Friday memorial service attended by Kenyan first lady Rachel Ruto, the presiding bishop questioned how much longer Kenyan children and families would continue to suffer from school fires.

The school captain, Abigael Wanjiku, eulogized the girls as “friends, study partners, teammates and companions.”

“The pain of losing them is one that we will carry for a long time,” she said.

A mother representing the parents broke down in tears during her speech as she called for accountability and justice, while reassuring the surviving students that ensuring their safety remained a priority.

The world’s biggest soccer tournament finally returned to the U.S. on Friday night after a generation of anticipation.

With this phenomenal match, the Americans also look like they've arrived.

Balogun scored twice in the Americans' three-goal barrage before halftime, and the U.S. opened its first home World Cup in 32 years with its biggest win in the tournament, a dynamic 4-1 victory over Paraguay.

Christian Pulisic had an assist in a stellar first-half playmaking performance for the Americans, who enthralled their Southern California fans with an aggressive attack while streaking to a 3-0 lead — the team's largest in any World Cup game.

“It meant everything for us,” Pulisic said. “A half like that, for it to go as it did, and have the fans excited about our performance, it felt amazing.”

Gio Reyna ripped another goal in the dying moments of second-half injury time, giving the Americans four goals in a World Cup match for the first time in their tournament history dating to 1930.

This production, this confidence, this dominance — it was nothing like the vast majority of the Americans' previous performances on the international stage over the years and decades.

They've won exactly one knockout-round game in the World Cup. They've almost always struggled to score in the biggest events, most recently managing only three goals combined in their four matches at the Qatar World Cup in 2022.

In this pressure-packed home opener, the Americans were a team transformed while playing in coach Mauricio Pochettino’s more creative system in front of a passionate, star-studded Los Angeles crowd of 70,492. Led by the elite talent and coach-inspired fearlessness of Balogun, Pulisic and Weston McKennie up front, the U.S. finally had its breakthrough performance at SoFi Stadium.

“It’s difficult to compare with the past,” said Pochettino, who took over in late 2024. “I don’t know what happened in the past. I think we need to talk about today, because it was a great match. It was amazing for our fans to see, to watch this type of game, and today, I am so proud and we are so proud. I think we are winning a lot of fans, adding fans for the sport here in America.”

Not everything went perfectly: Pulisic was replaced by Sebastian Berhalter at halftime for precautionary reasons. Pochettino said Pulisic was kicked in the back of his left calf during a training session this week, and felt some subsequent tightness during the match.

“Staying positive,” Pulisic said. “I don’t think it’s anything.”

Maurício scored in the second half for Paraguay, but La Albirroja fell too far behind early in their first World Cup match in 16 years.

“The U.S. won this match very clearly and fairly,” Paraguay coach Gustavo Alfaro said through an interpreter. “They dominated tactically, technically and physically as well. ... This team is a complex challenge because they have answers to everything you throw at them.”

After the U.S. went ahead on an early own-goal created by Pulisic's playmaking, Balogun scored in the 31st minute and again in the fifth minute of first-half injury time.

The New York-born, London-raised striker made his World Cup debut with the first multigoal performance from a U.S. player in the tournament since 1930. Balogun chose to represent the U.S. three years ago instead of staying in the English system, where he likely would have struggled to make the Three Lions' roster — and the 24-year-old Monaco professional has swiftly provided the top-level striker play historically lacking on U.S. rosters.

“Poch has said many times, ‘Why not us?’” Balogun said. “We have to believe. You can’t do anything if you don’t believe in yourself.”

Pulisic created the first two U.S. goals with exceptional runs down the left side. In the seventh minute, the AC Milan standout cleverly split two defenders and passed to McKennie, whose centering touch hit Paraguay midfielder Damián Bobadilla’s outstretched foot and went in, setting off pandemonium in the stands.

The Americans gradually amplified their attack centered around Pulisic’s runs — and three minutes after an apparent goal from Balogun was erased by an offside call, Pulisic again drove the left side and got a deflected pass to the trailing Balogun, who banged it home.

Malik Tillman then made a perfectly weighted pass in injury time to Balogun, who sidled through the Paraguay defense and beautifully found the top shelf.

The Americans were less cohesive without Pulisic in the second half, but Reyna still added the finishing touch by gliding into the box and toe-flicking home his first World Cup goal. The moment was sweet for Reyna, who barely played at the Qatar World Cup amid a messy family dispute with former U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter.

Dozens of American celebrities and cultural icons turned out for the match 10 miles south of Hollywood, including Tom Cruise, George Lucas, Bill Gates, Halle Berry, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

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

A judge earlier in the afternoon rejected a request to pause a court-ordered deadline of Friday to remove references to Trump from the building and other aspects of the Kennedy Center's operations. The institution appealed that ruling, an effort that was also rebuffed Friday evening.

Scaffolding was erected around a section of the building that includes Trump's name but the Kennedy Center sought a short extension to complete the work. Shortly after midnight, the Kennedy Center asked a judge to extend the deadline until noon Eastern Time on Saturday because of storms that had swept through the Washington area Friday, causing a delay. Some of the thunderstorms included lightning.

In the filing, the Kennedy Center offered assurance that the “removal work is presently ongoing” and would “conclude in the early hours of the morning.”

Dozens of people spent hours on the plaza in front of the Kennedy Center taking pictures and cheering occasionally as they broke into chants of “take it down.” Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio board member who sued to have Trump's name removed from the building, was spotted at one point on the plaza as well.

After ignoring the Kennedy Center for much of his first term, Trump has wielded tremendous influence over the venue during his return to office. Just a month into his second term, he ousted the center’s previous leadership and replaced it with a board of trustees that named him chairman. Trump's name was quickly added to the building.

In his ruling that only Congress could make changes to the Kennedy Center's name, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper also blocked the administration from closing the cultural and arts venue for major renovations that had been planned to start in July and last for two years.

The Kennedy Center's leadership argued in its appeal Friday that the renovation was badly needed and accused the lower court, in terms that seemed similar to Trump's speech patterns, of interfering in the effort.

“The District Court is not allowing us to close in order to properly fix up and repair the Building, including potentially life threatening structural damage like beams and parking garage ceilings that are rusted, and in serious danger of falling onto people below,” according to the appeal. “Indeed, total collapse!”

Even as the Kennedy Center has fought efforts to remove Trump's name from the building, it has taken steps to comply with Cooper's initial ruling.

A June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel said email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”

The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped Trump's name. And an earlier email sent to members offering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.

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Associated Press journalists Anna Johnson, Mark Sherman and Emily Wang in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.

The 24-year-old striker scored two goals as the Americans opened with a 4-1 victory over Paraguay on Friday night in front of a rabid and star-studded red, white and blue-clad sold-out crowd of 70,492 at SoFi Stadium.

“I visualized my debut in the World Cup scoring, but the reality did surpass that,” Balogun said. “A very dreamy night.”

With retired England captain David Beckham looking on, Balogun became the first U.S. player to score multiple goals in a World Cup game since 1930. Back then, Bert Patenaude scored all three goals in a 3-0 U.S. win over Paraguay, the first hat trick in World Cup history.

“The kid’s insane,” teammate Christian Pulisic said. “He’s lethal right now. We’re really lucky to have him.”

Balogun was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn to Nigerian parents. A month later, he moved to England, where he grew up in London. He joined Arsenal's academy at age 8. He represented England at the youth level and also played for the U.S. under-18 team.

England's roster is traditionally filled with stars. Nigeria failed to qualify for this World Cup. So Balogun is making himself an American household name during this summer of soccer.

“Everyone will look at the goals,” Pulisic said, “but the way he’s fighting against these center backs, holding up the ball, getting fouls, I really like it.”

Balogun committed to play for the U.S. three years ago.

“I've always said the fans gave me so much motivation and showed me so much support. The most important thing has always been to be able to repay that,” he said. “I just want to continue to show the fans I made the right decision.”

Among the crowd were Balogun's relatives, with extended family watching around the U.S. and in London.

“I was able to spot them out in the crowd, but it was tough because so many fans were wearing red and white,” he said. “I had to sort a lot of tickets, but I’m happy to do it because this is a once in a lifetime occasion and I want everyone to experience it.”

The U.S. took a 1-0 lead on an own goal by Damian Bobadilla.

Balogun extended the lead to 2-0 when Christian Pulisic played the ball into the box to set up Balogun with his 21st career assist. That tied Pulisic for fourth most in U.S. history.

Minutes earlier, Balogun nearly had another goal, but it was called back when the U.S. was offside.

Undeterred, Balogun scored again just before halftime, putting the ball in the upper left corner for a 3-0 lead.

“I’ve not been able to take it all in,” he said.

Balogun was heading back to the team hotel to rest.

“To be honest, I think I’ll just watch some Netflix,” he said, smiling.

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

Only this time, the sport was soccer.

The U.S. team's home opener in the World Cup on Friday brought more than 70,000 passionate soccer enthusiasts to the massive stadium near Los Angeles, where they saw the U.S. beat Paraguay 4-1. They had, in many cases, paid thousands of dollars to see their team play on the biggest global stage for a sport that has long been eclipsed in the United States — a sport many say is finally having its moment.

Many fans said they grew up playing soccer in recreational leagues as young children, and well into high school and college. Nakisha Gutierrez, a 37-year-old occupational therapist from Los Angeles, and her sister both played the sport. Their Argentine father raised them on soccer, and the next generation is now taking it up, too, she said.

“It's in the family blood,” said Gutierrez, her cheeks painted with sparkling red-and-blue stars. “It is the American culture — it's starting to be.”

The World Cup is played every four years, and fans around the world track their national teams, hoping they'll have a strong enough showing to qualify for it. In many countries — like Friday's opponent, Paraguay — just making it to the tournament can prompt street parties, fireworks and national holidays. In the United States, though, the response is often a bit more muted. Soccer has long been overshadowed by football, basketball and “America's pastime” of baseball.

But soccer's popularity has risen in the United States since the country last hosted the World Cup in 1994. Major League Soccer was launched two years later, and soccer has become especially popular among young athletes.

There was palpable joy in the air for U.S. fans watching the match as Folarin Balogun scored an electric two goals in the first half of the game, and star player Christian Pulisic made a shot that led to a Paraguay own goal. But the stadium was aroar when Gio Reyna sealed Paraguay’s fate with a late fourth goal during added time.

Samuel Esquivel, 9, said he was screaming when the match ended.

“That was probably, like, the second best goal,” he said of Reyna's shot. He started playing soccer last year and said he already wants to win a World Cup.

His father Roman Esquivel said they came from a family that played football, basketball, and baseball. But Esquivel's daughter and son both fell in love with soccer, and their enthusiasm for the game has spread to him as well.

“It's the most beautiful sport in the world,” he said. “There's a reason why the whole world plays soccer.”

Interest has also been buoyed by immigrants from countries where, as Gutierrez puts it, “soccer is life.”

Ava Cupit, 14, traveled with her family from Franklin, Tennessee, to cheer on the U.S. team, dressed up as the Statue of Liberty. Her great-grandfather was from Spain and helped bring soccer to their small town, where he built fields and promoted the sport.

“He made us all fall in love with it, and our whole family loves soccer,” Ava’s mother Rachel Cupit said. “The people who’ve married in, they’ve just become a part of it too.”

In the massive stadium in Inglewood, California, usually home to football games, seats were a sea of red and white. Fans wore glitter, Stars-and-Stripes high-tops, overalls, robes and the team's hallmark jerseys. Some dressed as that ultimate symbol of American patriotism, Uncle Sam, with long white beards and top hats. A few wore George Washington costumes.

They came to show their support for their team, and to show that Americans, like the rest of the world, can be passionate about soccer, too. Many were trying to attend all of the U.S. team's group round matches. One spectator said he came from Texas after seeing the U.S. team previously face off in international matches before large crowds backing their opponents.

Self-proclaimed soccer “addict” Jose Contreras said he grew up playing the sport with his uncle in Mexico because it was cheap and accessible. He flew from Georgia to support the U.S. in its opening match, even though there are games he could attend in Atlanta, closer to home.

“This is one of the happiest days of my life,” Contreras said.

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

After entering the ring, Apollo switches into an Uncle Sam costume. “I want YOU!” he roars as he points to Rocky Balboa, the far less flamboyant palooka he's chosen for this bicentennial bout in Philadelphia.

Then the two boxers pound the daylights out of each other.

It's as accurate a representation of the American bicentennial vibe as has ever been put on film — plenty of fireworks, but not much thought about how 200 years of independence led to this.

I was 13 years old in 1976. Kids my age — the tail end of the Baby Boom, or the vanguard of Generation X — grew up skeptical of the government. We had outlasted the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, with the occasional moment of joy — the moon landing, say — to break the gloom. The state of the union was intact, even if many Americans were still on edge.

My family lived in Newport News, Virginia, not far from the Historic Triangle of Jamestown, Yorktown and Williamsburg. So there was plenty of buzz surrounding the bicentennial. President Gerald Ford and his wife, Betty, took a carriage ride through Colonial Williamsburg, foreign leaders came to visit, and the living museum regularly staged reenactments of the events leading up to the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Ford and plenty of other dignitaries went to New York for what the president called “the greatest Fourth of July any of us will ever see.” Operation Sail was a floating parade of 16 tall ships and more than 100 smaller vessels from around the world — including, even, the Soviet Union. It was a boon for the beleaguered Big Apple, proving that “New Yorkers could get along, even during difficult times,” according to the Gotham Center for New York History.

All aboard the Freedom Train

For history buffs who couldn't make the trip east, there was the American Freedom Train, a 26-car behemoth that toured all 48 contiguous states. It displayed two centuries of artifacts like George Washington's copy of the Constitution, the original Louisiana Purchase, Judy Garland's dress from “The Wizard of Oz” and a moon rock. Merle Haggard even released a song about it.

I had a nifty 3D poster of the Freedom Train on my bedroom wall. A different poster captured everyone's eye later in 1976 — one featuring “Charlie's Angels” star Farrah Fawcett-Majors.

It's patriotic in its own way. There's Farrah, sporting big hair, a blinding white smile and a red swimsuit, posed in front of a red, white and blue blanket. The color scheme may not have been intentional, but it might as well be titled “All-American Girl" for its presentation of what much of society saw as one.

There were plenty of more deliberate anniversary collectibles out there. A quick search of eBay in 2026 digs up hundreds of collectible plates, glasses, beer mugs and bumper stickers. The government unleashed special quarters, stamps and license plates. And of course Madison Avenue jumped in, selling bicentennial cereal, candy, beer and soda. You could get a different 7-Up can for each of the 50 states.

Even the creator of the Pet Rock — the preposterous 1975 phenomenon that was, yes, a rock in a box — tried to get in on the act. That fad, alas, had run its course, and the Bicentennial Pet Rock flopped. You'd have been better off buying a Pez dispenser with the head of Paul Revere or Betsy Ross.

Broadcast television — remember, we only had three networks — was more subdued. For kids, ABC's beloved “Schoolhouse Rock!” spun off “America Rock.” But while that cartoon did include some history, it's best remembered for the mournful civics lesson “I'm Just a Bill.”

More prominent was CBS News' "Bicentennial Minute." Starting July 4, 1974, barely a month before President Richard Nixon resigned, it ran every night in prime time, presenting the news from 200 years earlier. It was so unavoidable that sitcoms like “All in the Family” referred to it; “Saturday Night Live,” which debuted in 1975, paid tribute with a “Bisexual Minute.”

Still, all three networks pulled out the stops on July 4, 1976. Walter Cronkite led the pack with 16 hours of coverage on CBS, while “Bob Hope's Bicentennial Star-Spangled Spectacular” ("the show that took 200 years to produce") on NBC celebrated with Sammy Davis Jr., Captain & Tennille and Donny and Marie Osmond.

The bad news bearers

Certainly, not everyone was in the mood to celebrate. Richard Pryor released an influential album whose title was “Bicentennial,” followed by an ethnic slur. The title track is a monologue from a 200-year-old slave; it ends with “I ain’t gonna never forget it.” In the same album's ”Bicentennial Prayer," Pryor proclaims, "We are celebrating 200 years of white folks kickin' ass.”

Popular music wasn't in a particularly patriotic mood either. Elton John's 1975 hit “Philadelphia Freedom” became a de facto anthem of sorts, even though it's barely about Philadelphia and is more about individual independence.

Indeed, the prevailing pop attitude was: Let's forget about this mess we've left behind and go to the disco. So the Billboard singles charts were topped by the likes of Johnnie Taylor's “Disco Lady,” The Sylvers' “Boogie Fever,” The Bee Gees' “You Should Be Dancing” and KC and the Sunshine Band's “(Shake Shake Shake) Shake Your Booty.”

On the album charts, California's hippie culture was shaking off its hangover with haunted LPs like the Eagles' “Hotel California” and Jackson Browne's “The Pretender.” Something else was breaking loose in New York, though, with aggressive debuts from the Ramones and Blondie. The Ramones' logo included an eagle holding an olive branch and a baseball bat, and their repertoire included the future stadium anthem “Blitzkrieg Bop.” What could be more American?

Speaking of America's pastime, I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up the year's funniest movie, “The Bad News Bears.” It's baseball the way it was meant to be played — by a bunch of foul-mouthed juvenile delinquents coached by a surly, alcoholic has-been embodied by Walter Matthau. Double 50-year-old spoiler alert: Like Rocky, the Bears don't win in the end. But they do have fun.

The same can't be said for the characters in most of 1976's dramatic films. Hollywood did its best to get a patriotic movie — the World War II epic “Midway” — in theaters in June, but it quickly fizzled. The top box office draw on July 4th was “The Omen,” about an angelic-looking boy who turns out to be the Antichrist.

More prestigious films continued to wrestle with the paranoia of the Nixon era. “All the President's Men” dramatized The Washington Post's investigation of the Watergate scandal. In “Taxi Driver,” a Vietnam War veteran plots to assassinate a presidential contender. In “Network,” a TV anchorman urges his viewers to open their windows and scream, “I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!”

All three are undisputed classics. All three were nominated for the Best Picture Oscar. All three lost to “Rocky.”

Tren de Aragua has been labeled by the United States as a terrorist organization. Guerrero Flores was charged in a New York federal court with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including lending support to terrorists in crimes that stretched more than a decade, authorities announced in December.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X that the strike occurred earlier in the week on a Tren de Aragua compound in Venezuela.

U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said at the time that the gang is responsible for countless acts of violence, extortion and drug trafficking in North America, South America and Europe. Trump nominated Clayton on Thursday to be director of national intelligence.

The U.S. State Department had offered rewards of up to $5 million for information leading to Guerrero Flores’ arrest.

In a post on his social media site, Trump wrote, “Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.” Trump's post referred to Guerrero Flores by his alias, “Niño Guerrero.”

The post also included unclassified video, shot from above, of a small building with a green roof exploding.

Hegseth said, “The operation underscores the shared U.S. and Venezuelan commitment to take the fight to narco-terrorists and deny them any safe haven in our hemisphere.”

Venezuela's government released a statement confirmed its participation in the operation and revealed it took place in the southeastern state of Bolivar.

“During the operation, clashes occurred with members of criminal groups, resulting in the death of Héctor Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, alias ‘Niño Guerrero,’ the leader of one of these criminal organizations,” according to the statement.

The mineral-rich state, which borders Brazil and Guyana, is home to large illegal mining operations long controlled by gangs and other actors who mine with the consent — and to the benefit — of officials and the military.

Trump has taken a series of extraordinary actions against the gang, including a series of strikes on small boats his administration has accused of smuggling drugs to America. At least 207 people have been killed in boat strikes by the U.S. military in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea since the Trump administration began targeting those it calls “narcoterrorists” in early September.

Trump and administration officials have consistently blamed Tren de Aragua for being at the root of the violence and illicit drug dealing that plague some U.S. cities. The president spent months repeating the claim — contradicted by a declassified U.S. intelligence assessment — that Tren de Aragua had operated under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s control. The U.S. whisked Maduro out of Venezuela to face U.S. drug charges in January.

Tren de Aragua originated more than a decade ago at an infamously lawless prison with hardened criminals in Venezuela’s central state of Aragua. The gang has expanded in recent years as millions of Venezuelans migrated to other Latin American countries or the U.S. in search of better living conditions.

Guerrero Flores returned to the prison in Aragua for murder and other convictions in 2013, when Venezuela’s crisis began as corruption, mismanagement and a drop in crude prices wrecked the oil-dependent economy. Guerrero Flores and a few other inmates saw a profitable opportunity as the government neglected prisons.

They assumed control and administration of the prison, establishing a system that controlled the entire inmate population through force and extortion. Over time, they transformed the facility into a sort of city that included a zoo, baseball field, casino and restaurants. Guerrero Flores had his own lavish suite.

The size of the gang is unclear. Countries with large populations of Venezuelan migrants, including Peru and Colombia, have accused the group of being behind a spree of violence in the region. Still, unlike other criminal organizations from Colombia, Central America and Brazil, Tren de Aragua has no large-scale involvement in smuggling cocaine across international borders, according to InSight Crime, a think tank that tracks crime across Latin America.

In Venezuela, gang leaders have long been known to participate in various illegal activities, including gold mining and drug trafficking.

The legal mining of gold and other minerals is a component of the Trump administration's phased plan to turn the crisis-wrecked country around. In March, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum told reporters during a visit to Venezuela that the government of acting President Delcy Rodríguez was giving security assurances to mining companies interested in investing in the South American country.

Trump campaigned for a second term promising to crack down on immigration and crime. While polls show his favorability ratings have sagged on his handling of the economy, immigration remains Trump’s strongest issue, according to the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

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Associated Press writer Regina Garcia Cano in Mexico City contributed.

A slow start and an early deficit turned into a rousing celebration once late substitute Cyle Larin scored in the 78th minute for a 1-1 draw against Bosnia-Herzegovina on Friday in Canada’s tournament debut on home soil.

Playing in the shadow of Toronto’s iconic CN Tower, and with hockey star Connor McDavid and actors Ryan Reynolds and Mike Myers in the stands, Larin converted Promise David’s pass a mere two minutes after entering the game.

“The crowd, I think, willed us into the game as (the players) could feel that energy in the second half tilting more and more,” said Marsch, who took particular delight upon learning Myers, who portrayed international man of mystery Austin Powers in the movies, was on among those on hand.

“Oh, sweet,” Marsch said.

It was an even better feeling for Larin, who normally starts but had to bide his time watching on the bench until late in the second half.

“It was amazing feeling, just to score a goal on home soil, where I’m from, and just to celebrate with the fans, amazing atmosphere,” said Larin, who plays for second-division English club Southampton and is from Toronto’s suburb of Brampton.

The goal was only the second in World Cup play scored by Canada after the team lost all three of its games at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and again four years ago at Qatar.

Injury fill-in Jovo Lukic headed in a corner kick in the 21st minute for Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is making its second World Cup appearance. The team previous played at the 2014 tournament in Brazil but failed to advance out of group play.

Starting in place of Edin Dzeko (shoulder) and Haris Tabakovic (undisclosed), Lukic was in an ideal position to cap a set piece with captain Sead Kolasinac flicking along a header off Ivan Basic’s corner kick. The goal was Lukic’s first in international play and coming in the 27-year-old attacker’s fourth international appearance.

Despite giving up the lead, the small Balkan nation of about 3 million people keeps coming up big on the international stage — including eliminating four-time champion Italy in the European playoffs.

Bosnia coach Sergej Barbarez couldn’t help but feel relief in how his team persevered amid such a tough environment.

“This is huge pressure and it’s a huge compliment for my team to have not succumbed to that pressure and I’m very satisfied with that aspect of the game, too,” Barbarez said through a translator.

Though a large majority of the 43,000 fans filling the temporarily expanded Toronto Stadium along the shores of Lake Ontario were Canadians, a small but vibrant group of Bosnian fans in blue also stood out in the upper deck of the stands.

The Bosnians now head west, with games against Switzerland on June 18 in Los Angeles and Qatar on June 24 in Seattle.

Canada also heads west, to Vancouver, for its final two group games, against Qatar on June 18 and Switzerland on June 24.

Marsch’s challenge is to get his team off to a better start.

“I told them after the match that if we play like that second half the whole match, we win, right?” he said.

“We’ve got to find a way to have a bit more confidence and a bit self-belief,” he added. “The good part was is in a difficult moment we responded.”

Before Larin’s goal, Canada’s best scoring chance came in the 54th minute when captain Stephen Eustaquio fed the ball to Richie Laryea in front of a wide-open net. The ball deflected off Kolasinac’s foot and hit the crossbar.

Canada was playing without Alphonso Davies (hamstring), who scored the nation’s first World Cup goal four years ago in Qatar.

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

The suspect, 45-year-old Victor Mata Villarreal, already was being sought by authorities when he began firing at police and bystanders in Midland on Friday before barricading himself in an abandoned veterinary clinic, where he was eventually found dead, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Police have provided limited details about how the shooting unfolded. Police arrived in the area after receiving reports of an active shooter, and Mata Villarreal started firing at officers, said Midland Police Chief Greg Snow. Several officers were pinned down behind their patrol cars and had to be rescued by an armored vehicle, Snow said, but no officers were shot.

Police then got everyone out of the area. “We moved to deny more targets for this active shooter,” Snow said.

A few hours after the shooting began, authorities used robot and drone footage from inside the building to confirm the shooter was dead, Midland Mayor Lori Blong. Police did not say how he died.

A spokesperson for the city identified a man killed in the shooting as Ed Scott, a father and husband who worked in solid waste for Midland. He also did a lot of work with local and regional softball organizations, according to the city.

Friends mourning his death described him in social media posts as a softball umpire and volleyball official who was known for his kindness and jokes.

Mata Villarreal, of nearby Odessa, was wanted for attempted capital murder of a peace officer after firing multiple times at a Midland police officer on Wednesday, the state’s public safety agency said.

The officer, who wasn't injured, fired back after initially trying to pull over Mata Villarreal, who drove away, investigators said. His vehicle was found empty a short distance away, they said. Police have not said why the officer tried to stop Mata Villarreal.

Friday’s standoff happened about a half-mile (1 kilometer) from where the shots were fired at the police officer Wednesday.

Police have not said why Mata Villarreal began shooting on Friday or provided any details about the victims, including who they were, how they were shot or the conditions of those still hospitalized.

Midland Memorial Hospital said four people who were brought there underwent surgery and that five had been treated and released.

Calls to numbers listed for some relatives of Mata Villarreal in Texas went unanswered Friday or appeared to be lines that had been disconnected.

Mata Villarreal had several previous encounters with law enforcement, including some arrests, records show.

He was convicted on a 2009 charge of unlawfully carrying a firearm in San Angelo, according to Texas criminal history records.

He was charged in 2003 and 2004 for unlawfully carrying a weapon and unlawful possession of a prohibited weapon, but both cases appear to have been dismissed as part of a plea. He also pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge in 2008 that was later dismissed.

As police responded to Friday's shooting, dozens of squad cars and law enforcement vehicles descended along what’s normally a busy roadway lined with hotels and auto businesses a few miles west of Midland’s downtown.

Andrea Mendias said she heard what sounded like a small explosion at the closed veterinary clinic next to the auto body shop where she works and saw a number of heavily armed police officers rush into the parking lot. Some appeared to go inside the building.

Mendias said she earlier heard what sounded like at least 40 gunshots.

Video from Mendias showed officers pouring out of the back of an armored police vehicle and police deploying robots into the area.

The city with about 140,000 residents sits in the heart of the state’s oil and gas region and was near the site of a deadly shooting rampage in 2019.

In that shooting, a gunman who had been fired from his oil services job killed seven people and wounded two dozen others while firing at random as he drove around the Odessa and Midland areas. The two cities are more than 300 miles (482 kilometers) west of Dallas.

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Associated Press reporters Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia and Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, contributed.

He became the eighth player to hit a grand slam and a multi-run homer in an inning and the first since Angels slugger Kendrys Morales did it against Texas in 2012, according to Sportradar.

The left-handed Alvarez drove in two runs with an opposite-field homer early in the inning and cleared the bases with a two-out shot to center, giving him six RBIs in Houston's nine-run inning.

With his two-homer inning, Alvarez moved into a tie with Philadelphia's Kyle Schwarber for the MLB lead at 24.

The 28-year-old designated hitter, who is from Cuba, was the AL rookie of the year in 2019 with Houston. The three-time All-Star was the AL Championship Series MVP in 2021 and led the Astros with six RBIs the next year when they won the World Series.

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

Ohtani was sidelined for Friday night's 8-2 loss to the Chicago White Sox. But manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani could play this weekend and remains in line to make his next scheduled start on the mound on Wednesday.

Ohtani was lifted for a pinch hitter in the seventh inning of Thursday night’s 8-6 win at Pittsburgh.

“He’s doing fine today,” Roberts said before the series opener against the White Sox. “I think that we got some pictures. There was no findings. It’s just the normal wear and tear. I thought initially it was a hamstring, it was the knee. So it just kind of got upset, swelled up a little bit.”

Ohtani, 31, is batting .305 with 13 homers and 40 RBIs in 67 games for the NL West leaders. On the mound, the reigning NL MVP is 6-2 with a 1.06 ERA in 11 starts.

Ohtani had surgery on his left knee in September 2019. Roberts said the swelling is in the back of the knee.

“That’s where a lot of the swelling with the knee kind of like builds,” Roberts said. “But again his range of motion today is good and so if it was another time in the season he’d be in there tonight.”

Ohtani did not speak with the media before the game.

Alex Call was in the leadoff spot for Los Angeles and Santiago Espinal stepped in as the designated hitter. Espinal contributed an early two-run single, but the Dodgers finished with just four hits — all in the first three innings.

Roberts also said utilityman Tommy Edman is on track to be activated from the 60-day injured list on Tuesday. Edman, who is coming back from offseason ankle surgery, is on a minor league rehab assignment with Triple-A Oklahoma City.

Right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who is on the 60-day IL because of a back issue, could start playing catch soon.

“(Glasnow) feels great, so he’s going to start kind of ramping things up,” Roberts said.

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

Police said the shooting happened around 1 p.m. on Cinnabar Drive near High Star Drive.

A witness shared cellphone video from the scene showing what appears to be two brothers near a vehicle, with one of them holding a gun, moments after police said the pair chased down the suspects.

Rambelto Medrano, the father of the two men, said he recognized his sons’ vehicle in the footage but was not home when the incident unfolded. Medrano said he received a call while everything was happening, but couldn’t reach his sons afterward.

• Man shot multiple times after family dispute escalates into shooting in northeast Houston

“He called me when everything was going on with the two people,” Medrano said. “I tried to call them and nobody answers.”

The incident began off Bandlon Dr, where police said the two brothers went after two burglary suspects accused of breaking into their neighbor’s home.

Houston police said the suspects attempted to break into the home earlier in the morning, but left the area before officers arrived.

Hours later, investigators said the homeowner saw the suspects return on surveillance. 

“He called his neighbor and said, ‘Hey, there’s somebody breaking into his house,’” Lt. Larry Crowson said. “The neighbor got his brother, they went outside, confronted the burglary suspects, actually started following them in a vehicle.”

Police said the brothers followed the suspects to the end of Cinnabar Drive.

Crowson said a confrontation happened there, and one of the suspects was shot.

“There was a confrontation between the two brothers and the suspects,” Crowson said. “During that confrontation, one of the suspects was shot… [He] jumped over the fence and is deceased… on the other side of the fence.”

The second suspect escaped, police said. Investigators have not said what the suspects were trying to steal.

HPD said the brothers have not been charged, but the case will likely be presented to a grand jury.

Shalit's family announced the death Friday to NBC News, saying in a statement that he “passed away peacefully today after 100 years of an amazing life.”

Shalit joined “Today” as a contributor in 1970 and became arts editor in 1973, later settling in for his segment, “Critic’s Corner.” When he left the show in 2010, he was one of the last high-profile film critics on a major network.

“What resonated above his unusual appearance was his incredible wit, his remarkable intelligence. But he didn’t pound you over the head with it. He amused you. He enlightened and amused whatever subject he was on,” Guy Ludwig, Shalit’s producer for more than 20 years, wrote in an essay at the time of Shalit's retirement.

It was no coincidence that Chicago critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel’s local “thumbs-up, thumbs-down” movie-review program, “Sneak Previews,” went national on PBS in the late 1970s and that “Today” show's ABC rival, “Good Morning America,” hired Joel Siegel to be its movie critic in 1981.

“Shalit was instrumental in changing the balance of critical power in America. When he began his ‘Today’ tenure, newspapers and magazines were the primary sources for movie reviews. That’s where cinematic opinion was sparked and shaped,” The Plain Dealer wrote in 2010, calling Shalit “Daniel Boone in a bow tie and Groucho glasses.”

Magazine work led to NBC offer

Shalit started as an entertainment columnist for McCall’s magazine, eventually becoming senior film critic for Look magazine in 1968 and writing for Ladies’ Home Journal. His popularity in magazines led to an offer from NBC.

“No one at NBC had seen him. They’d only read his stuff. So he walked into this executive’s office and the executive took one look at him and said, ‘Mr. Shalit, have you ever thought of radio?’” wrote Ludwig. “They didn’t know how the public would react to someone who looked so different from people who were typically on TV in 1967.”

On the air, Shalit was a middle-of-the-road critic. Of 1986’s classic “Stand By Me,” he said it was different from other movies about youth “because of instead of grossing you out, ‘Stand by You’ is engrossing.”

“Many critics will give so much of the plot of a movie away that they destroy the movie for the viewer. ... I just don’t give away the story,” he told The Associated Press in 1993.

Highlights in words

He liked “Enemy at the Gates,” starring Jude Law, calling it “a vivid dramatization of one of history’s titanic turning points.” But he called “Brokeback Mountain “wildly overpraised, but not by me” and drew condemnation from GLAAD for calling Jake Gyllenhaal’s character, Jack, a “sexual predator.” Shalit apologized.

He called “Frozen” “very cool.” He said the oddball title of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” was “heard to bleat,” and his review of “The Lovely Bones” read in part: “There’s no bones about it.”

He began reviewing on air the year of “Patton” and “Love Story” and ended his run with a critique of “Shrek Forever After,” of which he noted that the “bellow fellow is now a mellow fellow.” One highlight of this tenure was his descent into a fit of giggles while interviewing Carol Channing.

He called a remake of “King Kong” so “gargantuan that I must create new words to describe it: fabularious … a brilliantological humongousness of marvelosity.” His take on Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”: “It should be against the law not to see it.”

In a 1981 interview with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, Belushi said Shalit’s hair looked like “an ant farm on fire.” Nevertheless, he peppered his guest with so many questions about their daily life that it felt like therapy. He asked both comedians what their last meals would be. “What do you want to be doing 10 years from now, John Belushi?” Shalit asked. “Fiddler on the Roof” Belushi replied.

During his tenure, he traded quips with anchors ranging from Edwin Newman, Barbara Walters and Jane Pauley to Tom Brokaw, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Al Roker and Meredith Vieira.

Gumbel was not always a fan, once saying Shalit’s reviews “are often late and his interviews aren’t very good.” The critique came in what was supposed to be a confidential memo to Marty Ryan, the show’s executive producer at the time.

In 1994, while in St. Pete Beach, Florida, to cover Major League Baseball spring training, a car hit Shalit as he was crossing a street and broke his leg. After that, “Today” began recording his movie reviews in his home studio.

Early life

He was born in New York and grew up in Morristown, New Jersey, starting his grammar school’s first newspaper before writing a humor column for the newspaper while a student at Morristown High School. He graduated from the University of Illinois in 1949.

Shalit played the bassoon, but he said he started out on the clarinet.

“I didn’t practice for a few weeks and the teacher got furious,” he recalled in 1988, before playing bassoon in a New York City fundraiser. “He took away my clarinet and as punishment he said, ‘From now on, you’re gonna play THIS.’”

In 1987, he edited a book called “Laughing Matters: A Celebration of American Humor,” saying he wanted to introduce and reintroduce such old and new masters of American humor as Mark Twain, James Thurber and Russell Baker.

Shalit was regularly mocked on “Saturday Night Live” by cast member Horatio Sanz, who would appear on the “Weekend Update” desk dressed as Shalit and go on extended, barely coherent rants that punned the title of every movie he reviewed. Shalit also made cameos on “Sesame Street,” “Family Guy” and “SpongeBob SquarePants.”

Shalit was predeceased in 1978 by his wife, Nancy Lewis, and had six children.

___

This story has been corrected to show that a movie Shalit liked was “Enemy at the Gates,” not “Defiance.” It also removes a reference to Daniel Craig, who was in “Defiance” but not “Enemy at the Gates.”

The export controls mark the U.S. government’s most significant step to date to restrict access to the most advanced AI models. Anthropic released Fable widely this week. That model is a limited version of the even more advanced Mythos, to which the company has tightly limited access due to cybersecurity fears.

In a statement, Anthropic said it disagrees with the government’s handling of the matter, saying it received the directive from the U.S. government Friday afternoon and it did not specify the national security concerns. “We believe the government should have the ability to block unsafe deployments, as part of a statutory process that is transparent, fair, clear, and grounded in technical facts,” the company said. “This action does not adhere to those principles.”

Anthropic called it a “misunderstanding” and said it hopes to restore access to the models “as soon as possible.”

The Commerce Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The action comes 10 days after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to establish a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order said.

The Alabama Attorney General’s office filed a motion asking the Alabama Supreme Court to authorize a death warrant for Jeffery Lee, this time using lethal injection. The request came less than 24 hours after the state was thwarted in plans to use nitrogen to execute Lee, who was convicted of killing two people during a 1998 robbery.

“In sum, ADOC has not been barred from executing Lee, only from executing him by nitrogen hypoxia,” state lawyers wrote.

A spokesperson for Lee’s legal team said they did not have an immediate comment on the action. The next step is for his attorneys to respond to the request at the Alabama Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday night refused to lift an injunction blocking the state from executing Lee with nitrogen gas. A district judge issued the injunction after finding the state’s nitrogen protocol violated the ban on cruel and unusual punishments established in the Constitution's Eighth Amendment. The injunction, however, did not block the state from using one of its other authorized methods, lethal injection or the electric chair, to put Lee to death.

A spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall declined to comment Friday, citing the pending litigation. Marshall on Thursday said he would “never stop seeking justice” for Lee’s victims.

“The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee’s lawful sentence carried out,” Marshall said Thursday.

Rulings raise questions about nitrogen executions

The development came after a week of legal rulings that cast doubt on the future of nitrogen executions, a method the state began using in 2024. It involves strapping a respirator to a person’s face and replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from lack of oxygen.

Lee filed a lawsuit in 2025 challenging the constitutionality of the state’s nitrogen protocol. U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks, after holding a three-day bench trial, initially ruled the method constitutional. However, a three-judge appellate panel on Monday reversed part of her conclusions and sent the case back. Marks issued a new finding Tuesday that the state’s execution protocol violates the Eighth Amendment and permanently enjoined the state from using it to execute Lee.

The state asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the injunction so Lee’s execution could go forward Thursday night. The court on Thursday declined to do so. The high court voted 6-3 and did not explain its reasoning. Three of the conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — said they would grant Alabama’s request to lift the injunction and let the execution go forward.

The Supreme Court decision was only a ruling on Alabama’s emergency request to stay or lift the injunction. The court has not made a merits decision on the constitutionality of using nitrogen gas, said Robin Maher executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. However, Maher said there is now a very significant ruling by a district judge that “this method, as Alabama has chosen to use it, is unconstitutional.”

“Anyone else who’s facing a potential execution in Alabama, in which the state intends to use nitrogen gas, will argue that the very same equities that resulted in Alabama being prohibited from using it in Mr. Lee’s case should also prohibit the state from using it in their case,” Maher said.

Lee was convicted of two counts of capital murder for killing Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson while robbing a pawnshop on Dec. 12, 1998. Prosecutors said Lee entered Jimmy’s Pawnshop with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, the owner of the store, and Thompson, a store employee.

Future of nitrogen executions remain uncertain

Nitrogen has been used in eight executions in the United States — seven times in Alabama and once in Louisiana. Lee was scheduled to be the ninth.

Alabama could appeal the case back to the Supreme Court, which so far has never ruled a state’s execution method unconstitutional.

Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School, said it’s difficult to predict what will happen.

“What seems pretty clear to me is that Alabama is going to have a very hard time carrying out a nitrogen hypoxia execution. It’s basically three courts telling you they can’t do that,” Denno said.

The Alabama Supreme Court recently authorized a nitrogen execution for another Alabama inmate, Michael Taylor. His lawyers asked the court to recall the warrant in the wake of what happened with Lee’s case. His lawyers wrote they don’t suggest the Supreme Court's “denial of emergency relief constitutes a ruling on the merits of the State’s appeal” but said the state shouldn't move ahead for now.

The Kentucky General Assembly in April enacted a 14.25% tax on prediction market operators' transaction fees, a levy the lawsuit says is discriminatory, unconstitutional and preempted by federal law.

Prediction markets are platforms where customers can buy, sell or trade event contracts — a form of derivative that allow placing trades based on whether real-world events, such as election results or economic indicators, will or won't happen.

The new tax is higher than for Kentucky's “favored incumbent industry,” the lawsuit filed in state court by the Coalition for Fair Markets says, noting a 9.75% tax on wagers at horse tracks.

In a statement using gambling terminology, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman vowed to fight the legal challenge.

“You can bet our Office will defend these statutes and the people of our Commonwealth from out-of-state companies that seek to cancel Kentucky’s sports betting laws," he said. “In any courtroom, the attorneys with the AG’s Office are the odds-on favorite to win.”

The tax disincentivizes the operation of prediction markets in Kentucky, the lawsuit says.

“No State currently levies a State-specific excise tax of any kind on derivatives transactions that take place on a federally designated exchange, let alone the sort of specifically targeted and discriminatory tax that Kentucky has imposed here," it says.

Taxing federally regulated markets “just pushes people toward illegal platforms with no oversight and no protections,” Kalshi said in a statement. "Kalshi is an American company, regulated here at home, and we’re joining the fight for Kentuckians’ access to safe, legal markets.”

Prediction markets have been pushing hard to gain legitimacy among the public and policymakers as a legitimate platform where users can bet on everything from sports to the weather to geopolitical events.

There have been several incidents where traders have used inside information to profit on prediction market platforms. It was recently disclosed that former former Congressman George Santos was under investigation for allegedly illegally betting he wouldn’t attend President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address after initially saying he would. In April, a U.S. Army soldier was charged with using classified information to make a $400,000 profit trading on Polymarket on the timing of the U.S. military operations in Venezuela earlier this year.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said the U.S. and Iran have reached a “final, agreed upon text.” He said Pakistan, which has taken the lead in mediation efforts, was working with the warring countries on next steps.

“Peace has never been this close as it is now,” Sharif said in a post on X.

The apparent breakthrough in negotiations comes after Iran exchanged fire with the U.S. and Israel over three days this week, threatening to return the Middle East to full-scale war.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday an agreement “has never been closer” in a post on X. U.S. President Donald Trump, who has said multiple times in recent weeks the countries are on the cusp of a deal, shared Araghchi's post on his own social media.

The war launched by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28 has rattled the Middle East and virtually shut down oil and natural gas shipments from the Persian Gulf. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since April 7.

Iranian official says nuclear details will follow an agreement to end the war

Araghchi told Iranian state TV on Friday that both sides were working toward signing an initial agreement declaring an end to the war “on all fronts, including Lebanon.”

Israel has been fighting the Iranian-allied militia Hezbollah in Lebanon since early March. Israel is not a party to the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran, and its leaders have said they don’t plan to withdraw from Lebanon.

Araghchi said terms dealing with Iran’s nuclear program would be finalized in the 60 days after the initial agreement is signed. He said the parties could agree to extend that period.

Iran’s nuclear program has been a key point of division. The U.S. and Israel fear it could lead to an atomic weapon — a main reason their leaders cited for going to war. Tehran has insisted its nuclear efforts are for peaceful purposes.

A senior U.S. administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said Friday that the emerging agreement would begin the process of destroying or removing Tehran’s highly enriched uranium.

The official said the 60-day period after both sides sign the deal would be used to work out technical details for removing Iran’s enriched uranium. The official did not detail who the U.S. envisions taking charge of removing the uranium, which is believed to entombed under three nuclear sites that were battered by U.S. strikes last year.

Also critical is Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping lane for oil and natural gas. Disruption of transit through the strait has crimped global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics more expensive well beyond the region.

The U.S. official said the emerging agreement includes provisions for reopening the strait.

Araghchi said Iran wants a deal that allows Tehran to charge ships “for services rendered” when they transit the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has imposed a toll system during the war, which the U.S. and other nations say violates international law.

“There will be costs involved,” Araghchi said, “and those costs must be paid.”

U.S. Central Command late Friday said in a social media post that it intercepted several Iranian attack drones that were targeting commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Officials say a deal could be signed in the coming days

Three regional officials said the emerging deal is also expected to include the phased lifting of sanctions on Iran and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

They said they expect a signing ceremony for the agreement in the coming days after officials in Washington and Tehran approve it.

Trump on Thursday claimed significant progress in the negotiations, just hours after he threatened to escalate attacks and seize Iran’s oil industry.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel is not a party to the deal being negotiated. He said in a statement Friday that he and Trump were in “full agreement” that Iran must not have nuclear weapons.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a separate statement that Israel also expects Trump to uphold key Israeli interests, including weakening Iran's missile program and proxy network.

Katz warned that Israel could still act independently toward Iran and that the country would not pull out of the zones it is occupying in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza, nor would it withdraw from the northern refugee camps of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The deal was largely being brokered by Pakistan, led by its army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir, the regional officials said, with backing from Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar.

___

Price reported from Washington and Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press journalists Sahar Ameri in Berlin, Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, and Collin Binkley and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.

The NCAA banned Sorsby from participating in football after court filings showed the student athlete placed at least $90,000 in sports bets while attending Texas Tech and playing football at two other universities. He placed bets on his own team while playing at Indiana, and when in Texas, where sports betting is illegal, sent money to people in other states to bet on his behalf, according to court filings.

Sorsby sued to regain his eligibility, and on Monday a state district judge in Lubbock blocked the NCAA from prohibiting Sorsby from playing most of the upcoming season. The judge’s order also stipulates Sorsby must continue treatment for his gambling disorder and sit out the first two games of the season. The NCAA is appealing.

The judge set a Feb. 8 trial on the matter, after the football season concludes.

The ruling sparked criticism from officials at other universities and threats to cancel sporting events that include Texas Tech.

In a letter sent Thursday on behalf of Texas Tech, Paxton’s office warned the Big 12 that any effort to “disadvantage” the university would be illegal, prompting a swift reprisal from the attorney general’s office.

“The total exposure — for both the Big 12 and its members, jointly and severally — will be substantially more than $200 million,” said the letter signed by Thomas York, chief of the agency’s antitrust division.

The letter, first reported by The Athletic, came a day after Texas Tech Board of Regents Chair Cody Campbell said there would be a legal fight if teams or conferences boycott the university, calling it “an antitrust violation” on the Don’t @ Me with Dan Dakich show.

The Big 12 Conference and Texas Tech didn’t immediately respond to comment requests.

In late April, Texas Tech announced 22-year-old Sorsby was diagnosed with gambling disorder and would be admitted into a rehabilitation center in Arizona.

In a statement posted on the Texas Tech website, university athletic director Kirby Hocutt defended Sorsby’s eligibility and asked for critics to understand the nuance of Sorsby’s addiction.

“A young man in treatment for a clinically diagnosed addiction exercised his legal right to seek a remedy in court, and a judge agreed with him,” Hocutt said. “Our role has been to support his recovery, not to engineer his eligibility.”

In a statement, Paxton said state antitrust laws protect the university from a “coordinated effort to harm a competitor.”

“Texas Tech acted consistent with a lawful court order and no athletic conference has the right to punish a member institution for respecting the judicial process,” he said.

On Friday, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond sent his own letter to the Big 12 calling Paxton’s antirust claims “facially absurd,” and encouraged the conference to sanction Texas Tech. 

“Its actions in obtaining eligibility for Brendan Sorsby … have constituted a shameful chapter in the story of college football,” Drummond wrote. “Texas Tech has acted in a manner adverse to the Big 12 and the integrity of college football as a whole.”

Sorsby transferred to Texas Tech from the University of Cincinnati in January and has not yet played a game on the team.

Sorsby’s legal team for the lawsuit includes Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, R-Lubbock. A spokesperson for the speaker’s office referred questions about Sorsby’s case to Burrows’ private law practice.

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

The wounded man, identified as Benjamin Del Real, underwent surgery and is recovering from his injuries, his lawyer, Joseph Murphy, said in a press release.

Pam Menaker, communications partner at Clifford Law Offices, said Del Real is 25 and has been in the Army for three years. His rank is private first class. Menaker said via email that Del Real has been receiving therapy at an undisclosed location.

Maj. George Wasickanin, spokesperson for the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, said Del Real is stationed there and was undergoing training to become an enlisted member of the special forces at the time of the incident. “Our focus is on the continued support for Pfc. Del Real and taking care of his family,” he said.

Del Real was near the White House May 23 when he was seriously wounded during an exchange of gunfire when a man approached Secret Service officers at a security checkpoint near the White House and began shooting. The gunman, identified as Nasire Best, 21, was killed.

According to District of Columbia court records, Best was arrested in July 2025 after he attempted to enter a different White House checkpoint without authorization, didn’t heed officers’ commands to stop, “claimed he was Jesus Christ” and said he wanted to be arrested.

Washington television station NBC4 quoted several sources in reporting that Del Real was wounded by Secret Service officers. The Metropolitan Police Department and the Secret Service both declined commenting on that report.

At a briefing on public safety in Washington, D.C., this summer, interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll said the ballistics were not back to determine who had shot the bystander. He said Del Real was visiting the city as a tourist at the time of the shooting.

Metropolitan Police Internal Affairs is investigating the shooting and will turn its findings over to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Murphy, a former Army officer, said in the press release that the law firm was investigating the circumstances as well “and gathering all available facts. We will continue to work with the appropriate authorities to determine exactly what occurred and to ensure a full and accurate understanding of the events that led to our client’s severe injuries.”

_____

AP reporter Konstantin Toropin contributed to this story.

The agency said Friday that it closed its probe into the deal, with regulators at its antitrust division concluding that the impact of the merger “will be to increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem, with benefits for American consumers and workers.”

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in late February. Paramount’s victory came after months of negotiations and a rival bid by Netflix that ultimately fell short. Paramount was bought by Skydance last year.

The companies contend that merging will be good for growth in the industry and give consumers access to more content, particularly if the HBO Max and Paramount+ libraries are combined. But critics have decried what further consolidation could mean in an industry already controlled by just a few major players.

Among the potential market impacts from the merger, regulators weighed whether the deal would hurt competition in video streaming. They concluded that the merger would likely increase competition by giving customers a more “robust competitive alternative” to larger video streaming alternatives.

The agency also determined that YouTube, TikTok and other social media portals that also offer video streaming content “do not appear to be competitive substitutes here under well-established antitrust legal precedents, although they compete broadly for consumer attention.”

Regulators also concluded that the merger is not likely to harm competition for so-called linear television, citing a strong competition for live programming.

On the question of competition in Hollywood, regulators found that the combination of two major film studio operators is not likely to harm competition in studio development, production or distribution of films for theatrical release.

“Instead, evidence shows extensive competition within the industry, which has generated greater output and diversity of film offerings, and is likely to continue unabated,” regulators concluded.

Thousands of actors, directors, writers and other industry professionals have voiced “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount deal, arguing that further consolidation will lead to job losses and fewer choices for filmmakers and moviegoers. Many lawmakers have similarly sounded the alarm.

Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance, has pledged to keep Paramount and Warner Bros. as standalone movie studio operations, and vowed to release a combined 30 movies a year in theaters. Paramount has acknowledged the merger will also lead to significant cuts due to duplication.

While the Trump administration’s Justice Department has now confirmed it won’t be challenging Paramount’s $81 billion purchase of Warner, the mega merger is still being reviewed by other regulators both in the U.S. and abroad.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has been particularly vocal about the transaction, and he said his state is investigating it.

Beyond the U.S., European regulators are also looking into the deal. The European Commission has listed July 7 as a tentative deadline for its review. And the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is aiming to make an initial decision about its probe by early August.

Paramount and Warner previously said that they hoped to close their deal sometime in the third quarter of this year. And that clock is ticking. Paramount pledged to give shareholders some compensation if the acquisition doesn’t close by Sept. 30 — in the form of a 25-cent per share “ticking fee” for every quarter past that date. It has also agreed to a regulatory termination fee of $7 billion.

Speaking at the Republican Party of Texas’ convention in Houston, Patrick accused Talarico, an Austin state representative, of introducing faith into the contentious Senate race, expected to be expensive and brutal as Democrats seek to capitalize on anti-Trump sentiment to claim the minority party’s first statewide victory in more than three decades.

“It’s James Talarico who decided to bring the Bible into this election. And let me tell you, that’s not a Bible I’ve ever read. I’ve never seen so much blasphemy from anyone running for office,” Patrick said to an uproar of applause. “Let me tell you what, I’m going to pray for that guy, because when he loses the Senate race, if he campaigns against God as he’s been doing, he’s going to Hell, for sure. That’s what we’re up against. That’s the darkness. That’s the light. That’s why we must be one.”

In a statement Friday evening, Talarico responded saying that Patrick had “sold out the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable to enrich his donors” for decades.

“Love feels like blasphemy when you worship power,” Talarico wrote in a social media post.

Attorney General Ken Paxton, Talarico’s general election opponent, also spoke at the convention.

A GOP leader, Patrick has also been a staunch advocate for Christian values — often championing proposed legislation as the presiding officer of the Texas Senate that historically failed in the Texas House until recent victories, like requiring the display of Ten Commandments in public schools.

President Trump also tapped Patrick, a close ally, to lead the Presidential Religious Liberty Commission tasked with drafting policy proposals regarding religious freedom.

“If Texas Tech will not do the right thing, the Big 12 should,” Drummond wrote Friday in a letter to the conference. “Texas Tech should be sanctioned. I also note that the injunction granted to Sorsby applies only to the NCAA. It does not impede the Big 12 from suspending Sorsby.”

The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton warned the Big 12 on Thursday of potential legal action from Texas Tech as the conference considers its options. Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said the notice came shortly before the start of the league’s executive board meeting to discuss Sorsby's situation.

Drummond said claims that sanctions against Texas Tech would violate antitrust laws are meritless.

“By adopting and enforcing its bylaws, the Big 12 Conference is simply upholding integrity and fair play among membership," he said.

A Texas district court's temporary injunction that was issued Monday prevents the NCAA from enforcing its permanent ban of Sorsby, a decision that sent shock waves across college sports.

The transfer quarterback had been ruled ineligible after he acknowledged years of gambling that included more than $90,000 in wagers and at least 40 bets on his own team while he was a freshman at Indiana.

NCAA rules call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team.

Drummond weighed in because Oklahoma State is a member of the Big 12. He suggested the conference could act under a bylaw that says a supermajority of the league’s athletic directors can sanction a member school if that school has “engaged in any action or a course of conduct materially adverse to the best interests of the conference as a whole.”

“Sadly, that fits Texas Tech to a ‘T’,” Drummond wrote. “Its actions in obtaining eligibility for Brendan Sorsby ... have constituted a shameful chapter in the story of college football. Texas Tech has acted in a manner adverse to the Big 12 and the integrity of college football as a whole."

Texas Tech says Sorsby has completed a month-long inpatient treatment program and will have to meet stipulations laid out in the court ruling if he is going to play this fall.

The school posted a 21-minute video Thursday night in which school president Lawrence Schovanec, athletic director Kirby Hocutt and coach Joey McGuire defended Texas Tech's approach with Sorsby. Hocutt said the school wasn't party to Sorsby's lawsuit against the NCAA and hasn't helped him with legal fees.

“There’s no reason whatsoever to question the integrity of our athletics department, or the competitive product that we put on the fields or on the courts each and every time that we go out,” Hocutt said. “Integrity of the game is sacred, and that’s why we’ve gone to such great lengths to ensure the monitoring and the compliance measures are in place for Brendan’s return.”

Big 12 athletic directors in a conference call Tuesday expressed strong opposition to Sorsby playing for the Red Raiders in what will be his final college season. Some of those athletic directors suggested not playing Texas Tech if he does.

The Big 12's board of directors, which is made up of presidents and chancellors from the league’s 16 schools, is set to meet Monday.

Sorsby transferred to Texas Tech in January for a reported multimillion-dollar deal after playing the past two seasons at Cincinnati, another Big 12 school. The 22-year-old Texas native first spent two seasons with the Hoosiers.

The Red Raiders, with one of college football’s most expensive rosters, won their first Big 12 title last season, set a school record with 12 wins and made the 12-team College Football Playoff.

___

AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

The FDA announced Thursday that it issued an Emergency Use Authorization for generic Nitenpyram Tablets, allowing the drug to be used to treat New World screwworm infestations, known as myiasis, in dogs, puppies, cats and kittens that are at least 4 weeks old and weigh at least 2 pounds. The authorization marks the first generic animal drug approved for use against the parasite.

Federal officials said most dogs and cats in the United States remain at low risk for infection, though the risk is higher for animals that have recently been in areas with confirmed screwworm cases.

New World screwworm flies lay eggs in open wounds or mucous membranes. The larvae hatch within hours and burrow into living tissue, feeding on flesh and causing potentially severe injuries.

If left untreated, infestations can be fatal.

According to the FDA, nitenpyram works quickly and can kill most screwworm larvae within hours of the first dose. Pet owners are advised to administer a second dose six hours later. The agency said veterinarians may still need to remove remaining larvae and provide wound care because the medication does not prevent reinfestation.

The tablets are available over the counter in two dosage strengths, 11.4 milligrams and 57 milligrams, with dosage based on an animal’s weight. The FDA said the medication should not be given to pets weighing less than 2 pounds.

“Preventatives that they take already can help prevent those flies from causing the issue,” said Dr. Elizabeth Topliff at Southside Place Animal Hospital.

They include:

• Credelio (lotilaner chewable tablets) for dogs
• Credelio CAR (lotilaner chewable tablets for cats and kittens
• NexGard (afoxolaner chewable tablets) for dogs
• NexGard COMBO (afoxolaner chewable tablets) for cats

The authorization comes as states take additional steps to prevent the parasite from spreading.

In Florida, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson announced this week that the state is expanding emergency restrictions following additional screwworm detections in Texas and New Mexico. Under the updated emergency rule, rescue dogs, rescue cats, shelter dogs and shelter cats originating from states with confirmed New World screwworm detections are prohibited from entering Florida until further notice.

Florida also extended a temporary moratorium on imports of warm-blooded animals from counties with confirmed detections and surrounding counties while requiring additional inspections and treatment documentation for some animal movements.

The parasite was eradicated from the United States decades ago, but recent detections in Texas and New Mexico have triggered a large federal and state response. The FDA said it has issued multiple emergency authorizations and approvals for animal drugs intended to prevent or treat screwworm infestations as agencies work to contain the outbreak.

Officials continue to urge pet owners, veterinarians, livestock producers and animal shelters to monitor animals closely for wounds that are slow to heal or show signs of larvae infestation and to report suspected cases promptly. However, the risk for pets in Harris County remains low.

“I think here in Houston, right now, we shouldn’t be too worried about it,” said Dr. Topliff.

“While we have shared information internally with staff and discussed potential public messaging should things escalate, with less than 10 cases confirmed in the entire state, and none close to Harris County, we don’t want to cause any unnecessary panic at this time,” added BARC Animal Shelter Manager Jarred Mears.

The Central African Republic, a deeply impoverished country plagued by conflict, is one of at least nine African nations with this type of agreement.

Under a series of often-secret agreements that are part of a broad U.S. crackdown on immigration, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say.

The Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries, immigration lawyers said.

It was unclear exactly how many migrants were on the deportation flight that left Louisiana late Thursday on the way to the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui.

Some of the migrants are temporarily staying at a firefighters’ base near the U.S. Embassy compound under construction in Bangui, while others will be housed at other locations, according to a source close to the embassy. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not allowed to speak publicly on the matter, also said women and men were separated upon arrival.

Among those set to be deported Thursday were people from Iran, Jordan, Armenia, Turkey, Georgia and Afghanistan, according to Ali Rahnama, interim executive director of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund, who has been in touch with some of the migrants.

Three Iranian women in the U.S. were originally scheduled to be sent to the Central African Republic, according to Sahar Jalili Pawelski, one of their immigration lawyers, who said two of them received emergency court orders temporarily stopping their deportation while judges reviewed whether the government was acting legally.

All had been granted court protection against deportation to Iran after judges ruled they faced credible fears of persecution on the basis of politics or religion, Rahnama said.

“Despite being granted withholding of removal, these individuals are being removed from the United States and abandoned in a country where they have no status, no connection and no support network. We fear they will ultimately be forced to return to the countries they originally fled,” Emily Trostle, an attorney representing two of the women, said Friday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday would not comment on the case, saying it would not confirm future removal operations for security reasons. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Central African Republic has been plagued by years of conflict between pro-government forces and armed groups and is one of the poorest countries in the world. Despite vast reserves of gold, one in three people live on less than $2 a day.

It also is one of the countries where Wagner, a Russian mercenary group, was first active in Africa. The group has been responsible for President Faustin-Archange Touadéra’s security and fighting rebel groups.

The country remains one of Russia’s closest allies in Africa, despite recent tensions between Touadéra and Moscow over Russia’s push to replace Wagner with the state-controlled Africa Corps.

Rahnama of the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund expressed concerns about an Iranian asylum seeker being sent to the Central African Republic, noting Russia’s influence in the country and Moscow’s close security ties with Iran.

The International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated agency, will “provide post-arrival humanitarian assistance” to the migrants at the request of the Central African authorities, a spokesperson said.

The U.S. earlier this year awarded $85 million to ⁠the IOM for ​operations in the Central African Republic to provide “assistance to migrants” and promote “community stabilization.”

___

Banchereau reported from Dakar, Senegal. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington and Akram Oubachir in Casablanca, Morocco contributed to this report.

Thursday's storms ripped roofs off of buildings, flattened homes, brought down scores of trees and power lines and caused hundreds of thousands of power outages and major air traffic disruptions. Officials said there were no reports of deaths or life-threatening injuries, though there were several people treated for minor injuries.

Tornado damage was reported in several towns including Merrillville and Hebron in Indiana and Streator, Illinois. Authorities were surveying the damage Friday and preparing to issue emergency declarations needed to get recovery funding.

Marsha Smith was in her apartment building in Merrillville, about 33 miles (53 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, when the tornado struck the complex, tearing roofs off three buildings, knocking down trees and breaking car windshields before heavy rain caused more damage to the homes. She and some neighbors huddled under an indoor stairwell holding hands and praying.

“The louder the tornado got, the louder I started praying,” said Smith, 54, a CPR instructor. “I said, ’Oh God it’s here.′ I said, ’Lord Jesus make it pass, let it pass, let it pass over. I said, ’God give us the strength to make it through this.’ And it just started wrecking.”

Smith said there was an eerie calm just before the tornado struck. Then it sounded like a freight train smashing into her building, she said. She thanked God no one was hurt. Friday morning, she surveyed her neighborhood and described it as a catastrophe.

Officials in Merrillville said more than 200 buildings were damaged, including some that were destroyed. Downed trees and power lines blocked streets, and part of a high school's roof was ripped off. Cleanup crews were out working Friday.

Multiple agencies from the region helped local first responders search and assessed damaged areas, town officials said on social media. Crews worked into the night clearing roads. The American Red Cross set up a 700-bed shelter.

In and around Streator and Hebron, photos and videos posted on social media showed damage in those areas similar to that in Merrillville. The National Weather Service said tornadoes hit those areas as well, and it was surveying the damage to determined exactly how many tornadoes touched down.

In Streator, a manufacturing and farm city about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, emergency crews were inspecting the damage. Officials said nearly a dozen homes were damaged, including some that were destroyed. A reunification center for displaced residents was set up in its city hall and the Red Cross opened a shelter.

Streator Mayor Tara Bedei said there were no reported deaths. “We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel,” she said in a statement. Officials said four people were treated at a hospital for minor injuries.

First responders also worked through the night in Hebron, a small town about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, officials said in a Facebook post. Damage assessments were underway.

Jennifer Hall was in her garage in Elkhart, Indiana, as the winds and rain picked up Thursday evening. Suddenly, she said, she heard a loud crash and discovered a tree limb had gone through the roof of her rental home. She used buckets to catch the rain coming in from the hole.

“I’m just nervous because it’s just been one thing after another,” said Hall, explaining she just had surgery and her husband is out of town.

The tornadoes came after severe storms swept through the Midwest on Wednesday, knocking out power, damaging buildings and canceling flights.

There were nearly 180,000 power outages in Illinois on Friday afternoon, down from more than 200,000 earlier in the day. Nearly 115,000 homes and businesses in Indiana were in the dark, down a few thousand from earlier Friday, according to poweroutage.us.

Commonwealth Edison, a major electricity provider in Illinois, said it expected to restore 80% of the power outages from Wednesday's storms by Saturday night, and 80% of outages from Thursday's storms by Sunday night. In Indiana, NIPSCO said it was working to restore power as fast as possible but did not provide a timeline.

The storms delayed or halted flights at airports in some cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and New York on Thursday. Parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic also strained under high heat and humidity. Dozens of flights were canceled or delayed Friday at Chicago’s O’Hare International and Midway International airports, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.

Police in Des Moines, Iowa, said a 54-year-old man was found critically injured Thursday morning at a homeless encampment in a park after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms." He died at the scene.

___

This story was updated to correct that police said a man in Des Moines hit by a fallen tree was found Thursday, not Wednesday.

___

Associated Press writers Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

Three regional officials say the emerging deal is expected to pave the way for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, the phased lifting of sanctions on Iran, and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

A senior U.S. administration official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said that technical details on how to remove Iran’s enriched uranium, according to the emerging memorandum of understanding, would be worked out during a 60-day period following the two sides signing off on the agreement.

Here's the latest:

Court denies Kennedy Center request to pause removal of Trump’s name

An appeals court has rejected a last-ditch effort by the Kennedy Center’s leadership to keep Trump’s name on the building, leaving the institution with few options other than removing the name in the coming hours.

With storms dancing around Washington before a court-ordered deadline to remove references to Trump, workers were seen Friday building scaffolding around a section of the building that includes the president’s name.

A crowd gathered nearby and cheered their work as Trump’s name moved closer to being taken down.

▶ Read more

Migrants deported from US arrive in Central African Republic

An Iranian woman is among around two dozen migrants who arrived Friday in the Central African Republic on a deportation flight from the United States, lawyers said. It’s the latest example of the Trump administration’s widely criticized deals with African and Latin American nations to take third-country deportees.

It was unclear exactly how many migrants were on the deportation flight that left Louisiana late Thursday on the way to the Central African Republic’s capital, Bangui.

The Central African Republic is one of at least nine African nations accepting third-country deportees under widely criticized deals with the Trump administration. Immigration lawyers argue the administration uses deportations to third countries as a loophole to force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

The Central African Republic is impoverished and has strong Russian ties, raising concerns for the Iranian deportee.

▶ Read more

Treasury expands bank data-sharing rules tied to Trump immigration crackdown

The Treasury Department has moved to involve banks more deeply in the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The department issued new guidance Friday allowing banks to share information about suspected customers more freely.

The changes are framed as a crackdown on fraud and crime. In May, Trump signed an executive order requiring banks to scrutinize customer citizenship. The new guidance expands banks’ ability to share information, including flags tied to immigration status.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told bankers that the new guidance is part of what the banking system needs to do as part of their routine operations.

“The advisory does not ask banks to become immigration officers,” Bessent said. “It asks banks to do what they do best: know their customers, identify risk, recognize suspicious patterns, and report illicit activity when they see it.”

▶ Read more

Platner’s nomination reflects Democrats’ desire for a bigger tent to gain seats

Support for Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner despite a growing list of controversies reflects a Democratic Party increasingly willing to overlook behavior it might once have deemed disqualifying.

For some Democrats, the shift reflects lessons learned during the Trump era. Republicans stood by Trump through scandals, impeachments and criminal convictions, often without paying a lasting political price at the ballot box.

“I think what the people of this country and the people of Maine are interested in is how we’re going to have a government that represents all of us and addresses the many crises we face. Not the marriage problems of a campaign,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Among the controversies concerning Platner are a tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, sexting with other women shortly after he married and allegations, which Platner denies, that he locked an ex-girlfriend in a room and forcefully twisted her arm.

▶ Read more

Take a peek inside more new UFO files

One was a rotating disc that sent out beams of light. Another was a shining red orb of a hue the observer had never seen before. Then there was the one compared to a potato, and also a bean, but with a coat of shimmering, fish-like scales.

Those were some of the UFOs described in documents released Friday by the Pentagon, the third release since Trump directed his administration to give the public full disclosure around what it knows about alien life and mysterious objects in the sky.

The 72 files released on Friday don’t include the kind of blockbuster revelation that Trump has teased. There’s no conclusive evidence of alien life or government cover-ups. But the files reveal new details about some recent sightings, along with the government’s efforts to explain what many find inexplicable.

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As Trump again says the Iran war could soon end, some objectives are unfulfilled

The Trump administration has said its war aims are clear and unchanging. However, the list has expanded and shifted as the president and his administration have spoken about the conflict, now in its fourth month.

All the while, the war has battered the global economy, tested alliances and raised unanswered questions about the planning for the conflict, its justification and its aftermath.

By most accounts, the strikes by the U.S. and Israel have significantly degraded Iran’s military capabilities and killed scores of senior leaders. But those tactical successes don’t necessarily translate into achieving all the president’s strategic aims, even as the administration said Friday that it was meeting the goals it had laid out.

Here’s a look at the objectives laid out by Trump at various points during the war, and what we know about where they stand:

▶ Read more

The rise of UFC: Dana White’s path from ‘human cockfighting’ to the White House starts with Trump

Dana White and the UFC’s journey to the White House began 25 years ago with a modest event in Atlantic City called “Battle on the Boardwalk.”

At the time, White was a new UFC president who said his goal was to make the fledging promotion “the Super Bowl of mixed martial arts.”

The site of this seemingly absurd proclamation: Trump Taj Mahal.

After larger fights outside the cage for legitimacy and legalization, UFC is back at Trump’s home this weekend, though both the promotion and the businessman have long since leveled up in status and stature.

▶ Read more

White House is trying to assure Netanyahu about emerging deal

Trump spoke on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the latest efforts to reach an agreement with Iran, according to a senior U.S. administration official.

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said that the U.S. administration is stressing to Israeli officials that any deal will require Iran to begin delivering on concessions in the deal before Tehran receives any potential benefits from the settlement.

— By Aamer Madhani in Washington

Cuban president announces economic reforms amid tensions

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Friday announced a package of economic reforms aimed at attracting investment, expanding participation by Cubans living abroad in the economy and decentralizing parts of the country’s administration.

The president did not provide details during remarks to state media.

“Every opportunity in the midst of a crisis must be seized as a moment for takeoff, as a moment for growth,” Díaz-Canel said, according to a statement from the presidency that was republished by state-run media.

The reforms come amid heightened tensions in U.S.-Cuba relations. The U.S. has pressed for economic reforms since launching a blockade that has deprived Cuba of fuel since February.

Technical details are still in flux for emerging Iran deal, US official says

A senior U.S. administration official said that a deal with Iran was 80% to 85% done, and the U.S. side believes “most of the people who have authority” in the Iranian government want to sign on to the deal “but not everybody.”

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said that technical details on how to go about removing Iran’s enriched uranium, according to the emerging memorandum of understanding, would be worked out during a 60-day period following the two sides signing off on the agreement.

The official did not detail who the U.S. envisions taking charge of removing the uranium, which is believed to be entombed under three nuclear sites that were battered by U.S. strikes last year.

— By Aamer Madhani in Washington

Judge rules Trump can stage UFC fights at the White House this weekend

A federal judge has refused to stop the White House from staging a UFC mixed martial arts event this weekend in an elaborate ring already built on the South Lawn to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary — on Trump’s 80th birthday.

The nonprofit Public Integrity Project sued to challenge Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event.

The White House calls the lawsuit baseless, saying it’s no different from many other events hosted at public forums in the capital.

▶ Read more

Judge denies Kennedy Center request for pause in ruling ordering Trump’s name removed from building

That denial came Friday. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ruled last month Trump’s name was illegally added to the iconic Washington performing arts facility. Cooper ruled only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center’s name and ordered references to Trump to be removed by Friday.

A June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel said email signatures, letterhead and other documents must reflect the name as “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts” or “Kennedy Center.”

The Kennedy Center’s website has dropped Trump’s name. And an email earlier this week sent to members offering ticket packages for the June 28 Mark Twain Award for American Humor ceremony came from the Kennedy Center without including Trump’s name.

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Pakistan says US and Iran agree on ‘final’ text of a peace deal

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday that a “final, agreed upon text of the peace deal” between the United States and Iran has been reached and that Pakistan is now working with both sides to finalize the next steps.

“Peace has never been this close as it is now,” he added.

In a post on X, Sharif said Pakistan was engaged in “ongoing intense mediation efforts” and accused unnamed actors of spreading “incessant misinformation” aimed at undermining the process.

The U.S. and Iran did not immediately comment on Sharif’s statement.

Thunderbirds and Blue Angels fly over White House before Sunday’s UFC matches

Dana White, president and CEO of UFC, was on hand to watch as the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds and U.S. Navy Blue Angels did a practice run over the White House, where the lawn is set up for Sunday’s matches.

White is a big Trump supporter. Sunday is also Trump’s 80th birthday.

Trump’s name remains on Kennedy Center as removal deadline approaches

Yet there were signs of activity on this steamy summer afternoon, as workers put up scaffolding around a section of the performing arts venue that includes Trump’s name.

Workers have appeared in the area before so it’s unclear whether they were preparing to immediately take down his name.

Much of the attention is on U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who must decide whether to grant a last-minute pause for his earlier ruling to remove Trump’s name. The judge ruled in May that only Congress could make such changes.

U.S. Rep. Joyce Beatty, a Democrat from Ohio, made a filing earlier Friday opposing the request. An ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board, she filed the lawsuit seeking to remove Trump’s name from the institution.

▶ Read more

Iran’s top diplomat says a deal with the US is close

Striking an unusually optimistic tone, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Friday that a Pakistan-brokered agreement between the U.S. and Iran to end their war “has never been closer.”

He added that the media should not speculate about the deal’s content, apparently in reference to reports circulating with lists of points purportedly included in the agreement.

“All details will be shared with the public in due course,” Araghchi said in a post on X.

Trump shared Araghchi’s post on his own social media account.

Official details US reductions to NATO resources in Europe

The U.S. notified NATO in early June that it’s reducing the American military assets that would be available to Europe in case of attack, according to a NATO official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The reduction included an aircraft carrier strike group as well as a number of submarines, fighter jets, maritime patrol aircraft, air refueling planes and drones, the official said. However, U.S. space capabilities that help with targeting are not being drawn down.

The official said details are still being worked out on exactly when those assets are being reduced and when other NATO countries will step in to fill gaps left by the U.S. The timeline will be discussed further at the NATO summit in Turkey in July.

German news outlet Die Welt earlier reported some details of the cuts.

— Ben Finley

Vice President JD Vance pushes back on critics of in-the-works Iran deal

Vance in a social media post appeared to be chiding some of the president’s supporters who “said Donald Trump was a historic president a month ago” were now “criticizing a deal based on unconfirmed media reports.”

“The president is going to get us a good outcome, one way or the other,” Vance said.

The vice president in his post said the Iranians “are not receiving any cash,” but that Iran would receive “economic benefits” if it meets obligations.

“This deal has the potential to remake the region and lead to lasting peace,” he said, without releasing details.

Judge extends block on Trump’s $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund

The federal judge agreed Friday to extend a court-ordered block on the Trump administration’s creation and operation of a $1.8 billion settlement fund for compensating people who claim to be victims of a weaponized government.

Earlier this month, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash. Government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot, but plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t satisfied by Blanche’s assurances that the fund won’t move forward.

President Trump, meanwhile, has not publicly and unequivocally endorsed its cancellation.

▶ Read more

US official says Iran deal has five key terms that include destroying and removing nuclear material

A senior U.S. official said there are five key terms in the agreement: Iran’s nuclear material will be destroyed and removed, its nuclear program will be dismantled, none of its frozen money will be released until it meets certain demands, the Strait of Hormuz will be open, and Iran must not fund terrorist groups.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide details about the sensitive talks.

Trump on Friday lashed out at Iranian officials on social media and said, “They better get their act together, and FAST!”

— Collin Binkley

NATO weighs options to defend Europe as the US plans for conflict elsewhere

NATO’s top military officer is weighing alternative plans to defend Europe should it come under attack from Russia, after the United States announced it’s cutting the number of aircraft and warships it would provide in a security crisis.

The so-called NATO Force Model is Plan A for making forces from the 32 member nations available in times of peace, crisis or war. It sets out the military assets commanders can call on in phases over the first six months of any conflict.

But last month, the Pentagon warned its NATO allies it would be scaling down its commitment to focus on potential threats elsewhere, notably from China in the Indo-Pacific region.

European countries and Canada had waited impatiently for over a year for the Trump administration to detail its plans after it warned that Europe is no longer a top U.S. security priority. They knew cuts were coming, but not how big, fast or what kind.

▶ Read more

Tensions between Trump and Macron could be on full display at next week’s G7 summit in France

The relationship between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron started simply enough, with a handshake, nearly a decade ago.

But even then, there were signs of strain in their relationship — tensions that could be on full display during next week’s G7 summit in France.

Back in 2017, Trump was a brash businessman just elected to America’s most powerful office, and Macron was an upstart politician who had won his race in a landslide. At a NATO summit in Brussels, they clinched hands far longer than most people do when they meet for the first time. Neither seemed to want to be the first to break a grip so tight that it exposed white knuckles.

Nevertheless, a friendship was born. And early on, Macron seemed to be the one European leader with a knack for managing his mercurial, three-decades-older counterpart.

But by the end of Trump’s first term, the bromance had faded. And in his second term, the leaders now openly trade barbs, disagreeing over tariffs, Ukraine and the Iran war.

▶ Read more

A key US government surveillance program is set to expire

The surveillance tool seen as vital in preventing terror attacks and catching foreign spies is set to expire Friday after congressional efforts to temporarily extend it failed in bipartisan fashion.

It’s a significant lapse for the program known as Section 702, and even as President Donald Trump nominates a new national intelligence director more palatable to both Republicans and Democrats than his initial pick, it’s unclear how soon lawmakers — set for recess — would be able to revive the spy program.

Still, there may not be an immediate drop-off given that a court order from March authorized these government surveillance powers to remain in effect for another year.

▶ Read more

Ravi Maini contacted 2 Helps You to share the story of his son, Jaanav Maini, who has become one of the youngest Eagle Scouts in Texas history.

At just 12-years-old, Jaanav has already earned Scouting’s highest rank.

“It was a huge shocker,” Jaanav said. “I’m like 12-years-old. Not many people are 12-years-old and an Eagle Scout.”

Earning the rank requires completing a significant community service project. Jaanav’s project focused on conservation, beginning with a solar-powered birdhouse designed to support local wildlife.

According to his father, the project quickly showed results.

“It was an Eastern Bluebird that made the nest in there,” Ravi Maini said.

• 2 Helps You: Brookshire woman waits 3 years for $75 commemorative brick that doesn’t exist

Jaanav later expanded the effort by building additional birdhouses as part of a larger initiative to track bird activity and migration patterns. He plans to share the data with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Houston Audubon Society to support conservation efforts.

For Jaanav, the project was about leaving a lasting impact.

“I wanted to leave this as a mark for my community,” he said. “It’s something significant for my temple, and it’s something that they will always remember.”

His achievements extend far beyond a single project. Jaanav has already earned 86 merit badges and hopes to eventually earn all 143 available in Scouting.

• Broken sidewalk creating dangerous hazard for elderly Galveston residents; Fix underway after 2 Helps You gets involved

“It means a lot,” he said of becoming an Eagle Scout. “It just shows dedication, the work I put in, the work I put into helping the community.”

At an age when most Scouts are just beginning their journey, Jaanav is already leaving a legacy of service, leadership, and conservation.

This 2 Helps You: Community Helping Community came to us the through the help desk. If you have someone you would like put on our radar, contact us.

Midland officials have confirmed that a city employee was killed and 10 people were injured in a Friday morning shooting on the south side that also left the suspected gunman dead.

Midland Police Department confirmed the suspected shooter was 45-year-old Victor Mata Villarreal, who had been wanted for attempted capital murder since Wednesday. That evening, he shot at a police officer with a rifle after being detained at a traffic stop, police said. Mata Villarreal fled the scene, abandoning his car, and after exchanging gunfire, local police were unable to find him afterwards. Police have not disclosed why Villarreal was stopped. The officer was not injured, but has been placed on administrative leave.

The shooting Friday began around 8 a.m., and residents received a stay-in-place notification as police surrounded the barricaded suspect. The city confirmed that the suspected shooter was dead around 11:30 a.m. A motive for the shooting has not been confirmed. 

Mata Villarreal, who was an Odessa resident, had been convicted in 2009 for unlawfully carrying a firearm in San Angelo, according to state records. In 2003 he was charged for the same reason and a year later, was charged for unlawfully possessing a prohibited weapon. Both times, the case was dismissed. 

Mayor Lori Blong said in a Friday news conference that officials had no further details on the dead or wounded victims. The city later announced Ed Scott, one of their employees, was the victim who was fatally shot.

Blong said the suspected shooter had been in a standoff with police for several hours before drones and a robot confirmed he was dead. The mayor did not say how the suspect had been killed. Hotels and a convention center are near where the shooting happened, along with Beal Park.  

Midland Memorial Hospital said four people underwent surgery and three others had been treated and released, according to The Associated Press. Two others were in stable condition, the hospital said.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone impacted by this tragic incident,” said Mayor Pro-tem Amy Stretcher Burkes. “We’re also praying for law enforcement officers, first responders, and the surgical teams working tirelessly to protect lives and provide care during this difficult time.” 

Midland Community Organizations Active in Disaster, a coalition of local nonprofits and businesses, is coordinating multiple efforts to support victims, Blong said on Facebook. The West Texas Food Bank has vehicles on the way to support law enforcement, and mental health experts are headed to Midland Memorial, where a family reunification center has been set up. 

The city is also coordinating a food and donation drive, along with a blood bank.

“Our community is already responding with love and action,” Blong said. “Thank you for taking care of the people who are taking care of us today.”

Midland and nearby Odessa was the scene of a 2019 shooting rampage when a lone gunman killed seven civilians and injured 25, including three law enforcement officers, from his vehicle before he was shot to death. An 11-foot-tall monument was erected five years later to commemorate the victims and survivors.

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office shared condolences for the city and urged the community to cooperate with local police. 

“The Governor commends the swift and professional response of the Midland Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Texas Rangers, and all assisting law enforcement agencies working to protect the public,” Abbott Press Secretary Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. “Texas stands ready to provide any additional state resources or support.”

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick echoed the sentiment in a post on X.

“Texans are heartbroken over the news of a shooting in Midland. Please join Jan and me in prayer for the victims, their families, and the city of Midland,” he wrote. “Please also pray for our brave first responders who put themselves in harm’s way to keep the Midland community safe.”

Disclosure: Facebook 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.

Before heading inside, one fan estimated the day could get expensive.

“Maybe $100 for me,” the fan said. “And with the kids? I would say $200.”

The first expense: Parking

While admission to Fan Fest is free, some visitors told us they started spending money before they even entered.

One group of six — a family of four plus a friend and her daughter — paid $25 to park.

“We spent $25 on the parking lot which is across the street,” one mother said.

Snacks add up quickly

After parking, the family grabbed snacks.

“My chips were $6 and we’re gonna share,” she said.

She also bought popsicles for the children.

“One popsicle and each one for each one of them. I spent $35. I think they were $9 each.”

The group found one way to keep costs down.

“The water is free,” she said. “There’s refillable stations there. We’re not spending on drinks.”

The family also planned to skip a full meal inside the event.

“After we leave here, we’re going to go out like to a little restaurant,” she said.

Food and merchandise push totals higher

A second family of five told KPRC 2 they had already spent around $80 on food and drinks.

“$80 bucks so far... Just food and drinks,” one family member said.

Then, they added tacos for the children.

“Three sets of tacos. For three kids,” another family member said.

When asked how much the tacos cost, the family said they spent $40.

Merchandise was another major expense.

“We got a few shirts for $110. It’s a little pricey, but...” one family member said.

When asked how much a family of five should expect to spend for a full day at Fan Fest, they estimated the total could climb significantly.

“We’re at probably 200 right now,” one family member said.

“So, probably four hundred.”

What one reporter spent

KPRC 2’s Joy Addison also tracked her own spending as a solo visitor.

“As far as myself, I got pizza for $15 and a bottle of water for $6. That’s not including tax”

The takeaway

While Fan Fest does not charge admission, families told KPRC 2 expenses can add up quickly depending on parking, food choices and whether fans purchase merchandise.

For budget-conscious visitors, bringing a refillable water bottle and limiting purchases inside the venue may help keep costs down. But for families planning to eat, shop and spend the day at the event, costs can easily reach into the hundreds of dollars.

Shares in SpaceX jumped more than 19% after opening for trading Friday, a sign that investors are looking past the billions the company is losing and instead betting that its massive investments in satellites, orbital data centers and artificial intelligence will pay off in the future.

SpaceX opened around midday at $150 a share, then rose to around $168, before finishing the day just below $161. That price gave the company a market value of $2.1 trillion, making it the sixth largest public U.S. company — larger even than its founder and CEO's other big business, the electric vehicle maker Tesla.

Between his holdings in SpaceX and Tesla, where he is also CEO, Musk is now worth an estimated $1.1 trillion, according to Forbes.

Why SpaceX is going public now

Musk says SpaceX, founded in 2002, is going public now because it needs money to fund its ambitions of putting satellites and data centers in space and eventually establishing a colony of people on Mars.

He marked the opening of trading on Nasdaq by joining a ceremonial bell ringing from Starbase, the South Texas home of SpaceX.

He reiterated his lofty goals “to make life multiplanetary.”

“Not just a few astronauts, I mean literally you,” Musk said. “Whoever you are watching this, SpaceX wants to be able to take you to the moon, take you to Mars and ultimately beyond.”

Known for his technological breakthroughs, as well as wild claims and missed deadlines, Musk was able to whip up enthusiasm for the IPO. The typical company going public has seen a 7% jump in its first day of trading, from 1980 through 2025, according to Jay Ritter, a professor at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business.

Institutional and retail investors alike jumped at the opportunity to buy a piece of the company at $135 per share before trading began. The $75 billion in proceeds SpaceX raised easily topped the previous record IPO from oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019.

In addition to establishing a one-million person Martian colony, the company has promised to save humanity by establishing other outposts in space, launch data centers the size of football fields into orbit and outdo rivals Anthropic and OpenAI in the race to make money from artificial intelligence.

To reach its goals, SpaceX needs billions more than it currently takes in from its rocket and satellite business. Between the start of 2025 and March 31, 2026, the company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., lost $8.7 billion.

Pros and cons for investors

Betting on SpaceX is in many ways a bet on Musk himself. In an unusual arrangement that has drawn criticism from shareholder watchdogs, he holds 82% interest in a special B class of shares, giving him sweeping power to control the company even though his ownership stake is about half that.

“There’s a lot of hype, but I see the faith that investors have in Musk,” said Yordys Coro, an IT support contractor in Miami as he watched his $14,000 investment in SpaceX shoot up to $17,000 in just a few hours. “I’m going to hold on.”

Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are also enthusiastic about the company — and the big fees they will earn — but not everyone thinks the stock price is justified.

Analysts at research firm Morningstar, which doesn't earn any investment banking fees, wrote that the IPO is “significantly overvalued."

Citing SpaceX’s technology challenges, including shielding its orbiting datacenters from radiation damage and catching up to leaders in AI such as Anthropic and OpenAI, they estimated the company is only worth $780 billion — less than half its IPO value.

SpaceX itself has hinted at the challenges, conceding in regulatory documents that some of its business plans rest on “unproven technologies.” It also indicated that another part of the company, its artificial intelligence business called xAI, has no clear path to profitability and is burning cash to catch up with rivals.

On a livestreamed conference Thursday with the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, one of the investment banks making big money off the IPO, Musk offered few details.

He entertained the crowd with talk of “moon hotels,” a future Martian colony and a network of Earth-orbiting data centers powered by the sun. But when asked about plans for his flagship chatbot offering Grok, he pivoted to talking about his satellites.

How Elon made his fortune

Still, Musk has pulled off the seemingly impossible before.

The now-trillionaire — on paper at least — made his initial fortune by creating two companies, Zip2 and PayPal, that netted him about $200 million at sale. He used that money to start SpaceX and invest in Tesla, and defied the odds by creating a space company that figured out how to reuse rockets and a car company that made electric vehicles cool.

Musk has realized vast sums of wealth for himself, much of it in stock he has yet to cash in or grants for shares he’ll only receive if Tesla or SpaceX hit ambitious performance targets.

His recent pay package from Tesla was so large it even drew criticism from the Vatican. At Tesla, he’s worried shareholders by fighting with regulators or dividing his attention between multiple companies and last year by taking a role in the Trump administration.

But a rising stock price has cured all ills: Since it went public in 2010, Tesla has returned 20,000% for shareholders, or more than $1.2 trillion in investor wealth.

SpaceX is the first of three “megacap” companies expected to go public this year, with Anthropic and OpenAI to follow. Nasdaq even revised its rules to allow SpaceX to gain entry into funds tied to its indexes in 15 days, which means investors will end up buying the rocket maker's shares much earlier.

Not all investors are thrilled about SpaceX potentially showing up in their holdings of index funds.

Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims and how much power Musk will hold over the company.

__

AP reporters Stan Choe and Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed from New York and reporter Matt O'Brien contributed from Providence.

The scholar, Min Zin, was suspected of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security,” said China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lin Jian.

It is uncommon for Beijing to arrest a U.S. citizen on national security allegations. The case comes just a month after U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing as the two countries aim to reset a tumultuous relationship.

A Burmese activist who knows Min Zin said he disappeared June 3 after going to Kunming, in China’s Yunnan province, for a conference. The activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of government retribution and arrest, said Min Zin had visited China multiple times before.

The U.S. State Department confirmed Min Zin, a U.S. citizen, was detained during a trip to Yunnan province in China.

“U.S. consular officers have visited him, and the Department of State is providing all appropriate consular assistance,” the State Department said. “We are engaged with Chinese officials on this case.”

Min Zin was a student activist in Myanmar’s 1988 uprising, a student-led movement that the government at the time reacted to with military force. He eventually sought asylum in the U.S. He was not engaged in any direct activism work currently, said the activist.

Min Zin is the founder of a think tank called ISP Myanmar, which in recent years has written about Chinese foreign policy and trade with Myanmar, located on China's southwest border. The think tank was involved in regular exchanges with Chinese think tanks, and had published on issues such as Myanmar's rare earth exports to China.

Min Zin is also a Ph.D candidate at the University of California, Berkeley.

Amnesty International, the human rights organization, called for Min Zin’s immediate release.

“The circumstances around Min Zin’s mysterious arrest are extremely concerning, as is the apparent charge of espionage,” said Joe Freeman, a Myanmar researcher for the group.

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Associated Press writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

The president did not provide details about the measures or a timetable for their implementation but said during remarks to state media that it is now “time to change” and that the country “simply cannot continue on its current course.”

“Every opportunity in the midst of a crisis must be seized as a moment for takeoff, as a moment for growth,” Díaz-Canel said, according to a statement from the presidency that was republished by state-run media. “We have established a group of priorities to confront this situation,” he added without offering specifics.

The announcement comes as Cubans have struggled with fuel shortages as a result of the U.S. oil blockade and food insecurity. In January, the United States tightened restrictions on Cuba’s oil supplies in an effort to pressure the island’s government to change its political and economic model, exacerbating challenges that have persisted for about five years.

The U.S. State Department had no comment on the Díaz-Canel remarks and referred to the statement released Thursday on the latest sanctions.

Díaz-Canel said officials are evaluating measures related to foreign trade, exports, supply chains and logistics. Without elaborating, he suggested the government could eliminate mandatory state intermediaries in import and export operations and grant tariff benefits to those who bring raw materials into the country for production.

“The numbers don’t add up, and the government wants to make this look like a matter of will rather than a math problem,” Cuban economist Pedro Monreal wrote on X, in response to Díaz-Canel’s proposals.

The Spain-based former UNESCO official went on to criticize the collapse of a centralized planning model, for which he said “there are two respectable alternatives: assume the political price of failure, or self-critically rectify and drastically transform the model.”

For decades, Cuba maintained a centralized, vertical system under strict state control. This structure began to shift gradually over the last decade when the government introduced permits for independent workers. More recently, the state authorized the operation of the country’s first small- and medium-sized private enterprises.

Earlier Friday, a ship carrying nearly 100 tons of food and essential goods arrived from Colombia as part of the humanitarian aid that several countries have sent to Cuba in recent months as a U.S. energy embargo persists.

The ship, which departed Cartagena in early June, crossed the Havana Bay channel early in the morning flying the Colombian flag and escorted by a small Cuban auxiliary vessel, The Associated Press confirmed.

The Colombian Presidential Agency for International Cooperation said that, on orders of President Gustavo Petro, the shipment included nonperishable food, medicine, hospital supplies, electrical materials, solar panels and other items.

The ship also carried seven tons of goods collected by solidarity groups.

Last weekend, another ship carrying 1,700 tons of essential goods from Mexico and Belize arrived in Havana.

In late January, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to Cuba. The move has deepened a preexisting crisis caused by U.S. sanctions. Washington is pressing the Cuban government to release political prisoners and move toward political and economic liberalization in return for a lifting of sanctions.

Cuba produces only 40% of its oil, leaving the island semiparalyzed and subjected to severe power outages.

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AP Diplomatic Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report from Washington.

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

As a large column of air descended on Merrillville, Indiana, a town about 33 miles (53 kilometers) southeast of Chicago, the city’s police warned residents to take cover. By the evening, downed trees and power lines blocked the streets, homes were torn up and part of a high school's roof was ripped off.

Meanwhile, emergency crews were in the nearby manufacturing and farm city of Streator, Illinois, as the community reeled from tornado damage. A reunification center for displaced residents was set up in its city hall and the Red Cross opened a shelter.

Streator Mayor Tara Bedei said there were no reported deaths. “We are incredibly grateful for the safety of our residents and the quick action of emergency personnel,” she said in a statement.

Strong storms delayed or halted flights at airports in some cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia and New York on Thursday. Parts of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic also strained under high heat and humidity.

The tornadoes came after severe storms swept through the Midwest Wednesday, knocking out power, damaging buildings and canceling flights.

In Des Moines, Iowa, a 54-year-old man died at a homeless encampment in a park after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms,” police said in a statement. The man was found critically injured Thursday morning and died at the scene, authorities said. There were no immediate reports of other deaths or injuries from the storms.

Tree limb breaks through roof

Tornado warnings were also in place in Chicago and in parts of Indiana and Michigan Thursday, according to the National Weather Service. In Chicago, a series finale between the White Sox and the Atlanta Braves was postponed due to rain.

Jennifer Hall was in her garage in Elkhart, Indiana, as the winds and rain picked up Thursday evening. Suddenly, she said, she heard a loud crash and discovered a tree limb had gone through the roof of her rental home. She used buckets to catch the rain coming in from the hole.

“I’m just nervous because it’s just been one thing after another,” said Hall, explaining she just had surgery and her husband is out of town.

A home vanishes before residents' eyes

Shane Tipton stepped out of his truck in Unionville, Missouri, Wednesday afternoon to find a twister bearing down, said his daughter, Kylie Rouse. He rushed to get his 87-year-old dad out of his mobile home.

They made it back to the truck, drove just far enough away and watched as the tornado obliterated the home. Shattered cabinets, furniture and appliances littered the ground. Clothes hung in trees. They believe they lost one of their hunting dogs, who has been missing since it struck.

“Everything's destroyed,” Rouse told The Associated Press in a phone interview Thursday. “It was scattered clear for miles. If my grandpa would have been in there, there's no way that he would be alive.”

Storm damages animal shelter in Illinois

Residents of Springfield, Illinois, believe a tornado touched down in their area late Wednesday. Two buildings at the Animal Protective League shelter in Springfield were heavily damaged, but none of the nearly 150 cats and 28 dogs housed there were injured, said Deana Corbin, the group's executive director.

“It pretty much wiped out our shelter facility, took the roofs off both of our buildings,” Corbin said. “It’s a miracle. We were so blessed to not have any injuries of either people or animals.”

The community pitched in to take in all the cats and dogs temporarily, including a local animal control center, veterinarians and residents, she said.

Damage also was reported at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield.

Weather service meteorologist Frank Pereira said the system that produced the storms, including high winds and hail, was moving eastward Thursday, fueled by cool air from Canada clashing with warm, humid air from the South.

Record high temperatures expected along East Coast

Potentially dangerous heat and high humidity arrived Thursday and was expected to continue Friday for a swath of the East Coast from the mid-Atlantic to the Northeast, where daily high record temperatures could be broken in numerous places, the weather service said. Temperatures in the mid-90s Fahrenheit (mid-30s Celsius) were expected, but with the humidity it could feel like 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) or more, the service said.

Philadelphia declared a heat health emergency for Thursday and Friday, activating cooling centers, home visits by field teams, outreach to people experiencing homelessness and other services. New York City officials were also urging residents to take precautions, including drinking plenty of water and finding a cool place to stay if they do not have air conditioning.

Severe weather wreaks havoc on air travel and power

At various points Wednesday and Thursday, ground stops were issued at Chicago's O’Hare International and Midway International airports, and at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York.

The Pittsburgh International Airport experienced a temporary power outage after a storm produced an “extraordinary” power surge, the airport said.

More than 1,000 flights going into and out of Chicago had been delayed or canceled, according to FlightAware, a flight tracking website.

Commonwealth Edison Company, which provides electric service across northern Illinois, said the storms had downed poles and wires. On X, it wrote that it expected “80% restoration” by late Saturday.

___

This story was first published June 11. It was updated on June 12 to correct that police said a man in Des Moines hit by a fallen tree was found Thursday, not Wednesday.

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Associated Press reporters Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa, and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

A small fly has the potential to impart a big impact on Texas’ beef and agricultural industry.

On June 3, the New World screwworm was detected in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since then, the agency reported more screwworm infestations in Texas.

The fly poses a multibillion-dollar crisis for the state’s cattle industry, which generates $41 billion a year. It could also increase already record-high beef prices nationwide.

It’s unclear how many cases could hit Texas. Nearly 28,000 cases have been detected in Mexico since November 2024, according to Mexican officials.

State and federal officials are working together to stop the northern migration, which they have tracked since 2023. In response to the cases, USDA and the Texas Animal Health Commission have ramped up animal surveillance of animals near the confirmed detections by setting up zones around each infestation. Animals are not allowed to leave infested areas without being properly inspected.

Officials are also increasing fly traps, surveillance of wildlife and releasing sterile flies, which are used to break the reproduction cycle of the parasitic screwworm fly.

What is New World Screwworm?

New World Screwworm is a parasitic fly that is attracted to living tissue, burrowing their larvae into open wounds. After they hatch, the maggots then feed off that living flesh, causing damage to the animal. If untreated, the damage can even cause the animal to die.

Screwworm can also burrow through openings in the skin, such as the corner of an eye or through the nose.

From a biological standpoint, all mammals are vulnerable to screwworm, including pets and humans. However, livestock and wildlife tend to be the most susceptible because they spend their entire lives outdoors.

Dogs and cats are vulnerable through small wounds or scratches that break the skin. Health officials recommend pets be medicated for fleas and ticks year-round, said Casey Locklear, veterinarian and parasiticides lead for Elanco Animal Health.

“As a pet owner, if you were to notice that your dog or cat had a wound, especially if it’s foul smelling, it’s enlarging, you may actually see the maggots,” Locklear said. “If you see a wound, get treatment early. Whether that’s for yourself or your pet, early treatment is key.”

Read more about the screwworm here.

Rigoberto Argueta-Sontay was convicted Thursday in connection with the July 2025 killing of Alberto Guzman Brito at a home in the 2800 block of Brookmist Lane, according to the Galveston County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.

League City police officers responded to reports of a stabbing and found Guzman Brito suffering from multiple stab wounds to his torso and face, a severe neck wound and a large abdominal injury. Emergency medical personnel pronounced him dead at the scene.

Authorities said Argueta-Sontay was standing near the victim when officers arrived and was immediately detained.

Investigators interviewed eight men who lived in the home. According to prosecutors, several reported hearing screams coming from the bedroom shared by Argueta-Sontay and Guzman Brito. Two witnesses told police they saw Argueta-Sontay stabbing the victim.

Police said Argueta-Sontay later admitted to cutting Guzman Brito’s throat during an interview with investigators.

During the trial, jurors heard testimony from first responders who described the scene and the victim’s final moments. Prosecutors also presented crime scene photographs and autopsy evidence.

Dr. Erin Barnhart with the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office testified that Guzman Brito suffered multiple life-threatening injuries, including a punctured lung, a severe abdominal wound and a neck injury that severed his trachea and major blood vessels.

Jurors also viewed a recorded interview in which prosecutors said Argueta-Sontay gave multiple conflicting accounts of what happened.

Taking the stand in his own defense, Argueta-Sontay claimed he acted in self-defense after Guzman Brito allegedly attacked him with a knife. However, the jury rejected that argument and returned a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberations.

Following the conviction, defense attorneys asked jurors to consider a “sudden passion” finding that could have reduced the punishment range. Prosecutors argued the nature of the killing and Argueta-Sontay’s inconsistent statements warranted a lengthy prison sentence.

Jurors ultimately sentenced Argueta-Sontay to 35 years in prison.

The Galveston County Criminal District Attorney’s Office thanked the jury, the League City Police Department and the Galveston County Medical Examiner’s Office for their work on the case.

Dominique Dawes, a three-time Olympian and Olympic gold medalist, is opening the first Texas location of her Dominique Dawes Academy in Jersey Village on May 30, 2026. The new facility will offer gymnastics and ninja-style training programs for children as young as 18 months through high school age.

A milestone for Texas families

The Jersey Village opening marks a significant expansion for Dawes. A second Houston-area location in Spring, Texas, is slated to open in late summer 2026.

• Flood Zone Maps

“Jersey Village is a very family-centered community,” said Dawes, founder of Dominique Dawes Academy. “We are so excited to open our doors here and create a space where kids feel encouraged, supported, and inspired to grow.”

• 8 riders rescued from stuck roller coaster at Galveston’s Pleasure Pier

Early registration perks

Early registration is now open at a limited-time fee of $10. Normally, it’s a $75 registration fee.

Early registrants receive:

• Priority access to class schedules and enrollment
• Invitations to private pre-opening classes
• Opportunity to meet Dominique Dawes in person
• An opportunity to join a live virtual meet-and-greet with Dawes

These changes are part of the administration’s push to remove undocumented workers from the nation’s banking system without explicitly mandating that banks do so. In order to get banks to participate, the administration has framed these actions as a crackdown on fraud and crime, not explicitly about immigration.

“The information in your purview can help stop a cartel financier, disrupt a money laundering network, uncover labor exploitation, or protect taxpayers from fraud,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in prepared remarks at a banking conference in Houston.

Bessent's remarks and the Treasury Department's new guidelines come from an executive order signed in May by Trump that requires banks to take a closer look at the citizenship of their customers as well as directs bank regulators and government departments to look for signs that people without legal status are opening accounts or obtaining loans or credit cards. But that executive order did not include an explicit mandate that banks collect citizenship information, which the industry for months lobbied against.

Banks have long been able to share information about their customers with other banks under the Patriot Act program when they suspect money laundering or fraud, part of the post-9/11 effort to combat terrorism and other crimes.

Friday’s actions widened that system on two fronts. Banks can now share such information with one another in real time and more freely, the Treasury Department said.

Secondly, the Trump Administration is giving banks a wider variety of reasons to share information, which now include flags historically tied to immigration status. One example is a customer having an individual taxpayer identification number (ITIN), which are disproportionally used by undocumented immigrants when applying for work.

Bessent told bankers that the new guidance is simply part of what the banking system needs to do as part of their routine operations.

“The advisory does not ask banks to become immigration officers,” Bessent said. “It asks banks to do what they do best: know their customers, identify risk, recognize suspicious patterns, and report illicit activity when they see it.”

Bankers have been wary about sharing customer information with the federal government as part of immigration enforcement. Bankers never collected citizenship information on their customers, so any effort to do so would require a massive effort by banks and significant amounts of paperwork. There's also the fact that banks send millions of what are known as Suspicious Activity Reports to the federal bank regulators under the Bank Secrecy Act. Last week, the Treasury Department expanded the reasons why a bank might file a SAR to include potential undocumented workers.

“The administration is saying they don't want banks to be immigration officials, but they are trying to get as close to the line as possible,” said Nicholas Anthony, who focuses on bank regulation issues at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.

At the time Trump signed the order, the White House framed the effort on the premise of combating fraud, but also it said undocumented workers introduce risk to the overall financial system by taking out loans that could potentially never be repaid because the borrowers could be deported. Since banks haven't historically collected citizenship data on their customers, it's hard to quantify how much of a risk undocumented workers are to banks. One study by the left-leaning Urban Institute estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 mortgages were issued to customers with ITINs, which would be a tiny fraction of the millions of mortgages written each year.

Immigration advocates have previously said any order that would order banks to collect citizenship information would likely result in undocumented immigrants moving out of the financial system, increasing the number of “unbanked” individuals.

The White House has taken other measures to discourage undocumented workers from using the financial system. The Treasury last November announced that it would reclassify certain refundable tax credits as “federal public benefits,” which bars some immigrant taxpayers from receiving them, even if they file and pay taxes and would otherwise qualify.

A co-ed flag football game vs. Texans cornerback Tremon Smith is set for Edward Mercer Stadium in Sugar Land: the Must See Classic.

Among those scheduled to attend: Texans wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson and Texans running back British Brooks along with Chicago Bears defensive end Montez Sweat.

The event benefits the Must See Foundation at mustseefoundation.org .

"A couple of my NFL friends are coming out some community influencers, maybe some special guest celebrities, it’s going to be a great community event for the kids," Sims told KPRC 2. “This is going to be a great time.”

The proceeds benefit players’ youth football camps, including Sims’ annual youth football camp July 25 at Travis High School.

“It’s been great to be a blessing to the kids and pass on my knowledge of the game,” Sims said. “This should be fun. Me vs. Tremon, it’s gonna be a showdown.”

Sims played for the Texans in 2023 and 2024, returning a punt 67 yards for a touchdown against the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC divisional round playoff game.

A free agent, Sims has also played for the Ravens, Seattle Seahawks, Arizona Cardinals, Washington Commanders and Pittsburgh Steelers.

Sims has drawn interest from NFL teams and is planning his next move.

“I don’t really care about the noise,” Sims said. “I take it one day at a time, go to work, put my hard hat on and everything else will handle itself. I haven’t hung up the cleats yet.”

At Travis, Sims was a standout who earned a scholarship to Kansas. He played wide receiver and returned kicks and had 214 career reception for 2,582 yards and 19 touchdowns.

In the NFL, Sims has 78 career catches for 704 yards and five touchdowns.

His most satisfying moments in football: playing high school football.

“It was just for the love of the game,” Sims said. “Those are really the glory days I think back all the time on those moments.

“Playing for the Texans, it was just a blessing. Playing for my hometown team and being here, it meant a lot to me. I feel like it was cut short, bu you never know what’s next.”

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

The organization is recruiting volunteers of all ages to sort, process and box food and other necessities into Disaster Boxes that can be deployed immediately when disaster hits. Individuals, families, church groups, company teams and networking groups are all welcome to sign up.

What goes inside a Disaster Box

Each Disaster Box is packed with nonperishable, ready-to-eat items designed to sustain families in the immediate aftermath of a storm. Contents include three canned vegetables, two canned fruits, three protein items — such as tuna, canned chicken, beef stew, chili or peanut butter — two snack items like granola bars or breakfast bars and two waters.

Boxes also include critical cleaning supplies such as mop buckets, mops, brooms, Clorox wipes, bleach, garbage bags and bug spray — essentials for families returning home after flooding or storm damage.

Volunteers are also encouraged to bring nonperishable food donations when they come in for their shift. Pull-top cans are especially needed for the convenience of recipients.

When, where and how to sign up

Volunteer shifts are available at Houston Food Bank’s main warehouse facility at 535 Portwall St. in Houston. Shifts run seven days a week, with three options to fit nearly any schedule:

Morning: Monday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to noon

Afternoon: Monday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m.

Evening: Tuesday through Friday, 6 to 9 p.m.

Registration is quick and easy online at HoustonFoodBank.org/volunteer.

More volunteer locations available

Volunteers can also sign up at two additional Houston Food Bank facilities:

• Trinity River Community Resource Center, located at 1768 County Road 3558 in Cleveland, Texas, offers shifts Tuesday through Saturday.
• The North Branch location at 146 Knobcrest welcomes individuals and small groups of up to 10 people.

• More storms firing up in the Houston area leading to flood advisories

As of 4:30 p.m., a cluster of storms was located on Houston’s west side. Heavy rain is currently falling in the area of the intersection of Beltway 8 and the Katy Freeway. Rain could cause some slow traffic in areas where it is falling.

Track it all on our live radar:

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Throughout the tournament, fans visiting Houston Hall at FIFA Fan Festival™ Houston will have the opportunity to meet former U.S. Men’s National Team stars and FIFA World Cup veterans who helped shape the growth of soccer in the United States.

“FIFA Fan Festival™ Houston is about celebrating the world’s game and creating meaningful connections between fans and the sport they love,” said Chris Canetti, president of the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Houston Host Committee. “These legends have inspired generations of players and supporters, and we’re proud to provide opportunities for fans to meet them, hear their stories and celebrate their contributions to soccer.”

The legends lineup

DaMarcus Beasley holds a distinction no other American man can claim he is the only American man to appear in four FIFA World Cup™ tournaments (2002, 2006, 2010, 2014). A National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee, Beasley earned 126 caps and collected multiple domestic and international championships throughout his career.

Clint Dempsey, widely regarded as one of the greatest American players of all time, scored 57 goals for the U.S. Men’s National Team — tied for the program’s all-time record. A three-time World Cup participant, Dempsey’s creativity, competitiveness and clutch performances made him a defining figure in modern U.S. Soccer history.

Cobi Jones is the all-time leader in appearances for the U.S. Men’s National Team with 164 caps, representing the United States at three FIFA World Cup™ tournaments. A National Soccer Hall of Fame inductee, Jones remains one of the sport’s most beloved ambassadors.

Jozy Altidore ranks among the top scorers in U.S. Men’s National Team history with more than 40 international goals. A veteran of the 2010 and 2014 FIFA World Cups™, Altidore helped lead the United States to multiple CONCACAF titles and became one of the country’s most successful forwards.

Brian McBride scored 30 goals for the U.S. Men’s National Team and represented the country at the 1998, 2002 and 2006 FIFA World Cups™. Known for his leadership and physical style, McBride was a fan favorite both internationally and in Major League Soccer.

Tony Meola earned 100 caps with the U.S. Men’s National Team and represented the United States at three FIFA World Cup™ tournaments (1990, 1994, 2002). A National Soccer Hall of Fame member, Meola played a key role in growing the sport during a transformative era for American soccer.

Geoff Cameron represented the United States at the 2014 FIFA World Cup™ and earned more than 50 caps for the national team. Known for his versatility and consistency, Cameron built a successful career in both Major League Soccer and the English Premier League.

Brek Shea, a Texas native, earned more than 30 appearances for the U.S. Men’s National Team and was part of the squad that won the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup. The dynamic winger and defender enjoyed a lengthy professional career in MLS and abroad.

When to meet them

Appearances are scheduled throughout the tournament at FIFA Fan Festival™ Houston. Here’s when each legend will be available:

Monday, June 15 | 1–2:30 p.m. — Brian McBride

Friday, June 19 | 6:30–8 p.m. — Geoff Cameron, Brek Shea

Monday, June 22 | 3:30–5 p.m. — Clint Dempsey

Friday, June 26 | 1–2:30 p.m. — Jozy Altidore

Tuesday, June 30 | 1:30–3 p.m. — Cobi Jones

Sunday, July 5 | 2–4 p.m. — Tony Meola

What to expect

The legend appearances are just one part of what FIFA Fan Festival™ Houston has to offer. Located in East Downtown Houston, the event will run throughout the length of the tournament and feature live match broadcasts, interactive activations, entertainment, and food and beverage offerings.

The FIFA World Cup 2026™ Houston Host Committee — operating under the Sports Authority Foundation — is collaborating with FIFA, the City of Houston, Harris County, and community stakeholders to deliver a world-class experience. Houston is set to host seven FIFA World Cup 2026™ matches at Houston Stadium.

For more information, visit the FIFA World Cup 2026™ Houston Host Committee website.

The S&P 500 added 0.5% to close out its 10th winning week in the last 11. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 353 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3%.

Stocks got a lift from a 3.4% drop for the price of Brent crude oil to $87.33 per barrel, deepening its loss for the week. Oil prices have come down since President Donald Trump on Thursday called off his threat to launch strikes on Iran and said a potential deal with Iran may be imminent.

A deal to end the war could reopen the Strait of Hormuz and allow oil tankers to once again deliver crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. Its near closure since the war began has sent the price of Brent up from roughly $70 per barrel and caused a wave of painful inflation for the world.

Of course, financial markets have rallied in the past on hopes that an end to the war with Iran was near, only to get disappointed each time.

The bigger factor for Wall Street over the last week has actually been artificial-intelligence stocks, and how they have gone from roaring to records to suddenly turning lower. The concern is whether such stocks shot too high, too fast because of AI mania, and their careening moves have sometimes reversed direction by the hour.

SpaceX suggested plenty of demand still exists among investors for AI after its stock leaped 19.2% in its first day of trading. That gave Elon Musk’s rocket company a total value of $2.1 trillion, making it bigger than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined. In addition to building rockets, SpaceX also owns the artificial intelligence company xAI.

AI-related stocks were otherwise mixed following their roller-coaster moves over the last week. Micron Technology’s drop of 1.4% was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, but CoreWeave jumped 5% after learning it will join the Nasdaq 100 index later this month.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Adobe dropped 6.8% despite reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Its stock has lost nearly 42% so far this year, and it announced its chief financial officer is leaving the company on Monday. Adobe is already looking for a CEO to replace Shantanu Narayen, who announced in March that he is stepping aside after 18 years as Adobe’s leader.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 37.16 points to 7,431.46. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 353.51 to 51,202.26, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 79.18 to 25,888.84.

In the bond market, Treasury yields rose to regain some of their sharp slide from the day before, when oil prices dropped following Trump’s announcement. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.48% from 4.45% late Thursday.

High yields can slow entire economies and undercut prices for all kinds of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. They hit investments seen as the most expensive in particular, and some critics are calling the AI industry a bubble where investment inflated too far.

Yields got a boost after a report suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is not as bad as economists feared. The preliminary survey from the University of Michigan said sentiment improved by more than expected. U.S. consumers said they were feeling some relief after gasoline prices eased a bit early in the month.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rallied as they caught up to Thursday’s big gains on Wall Street.

South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.6% and trimmed its losses from earlier this month taken because of sell-offs for AI-related stocks. The Kospi has nearly doubled since the start of the year.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.8%, and France’s CAC 40 climbed 1.8% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

___

AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Matt Ott contributed to this report.

Several Texas EquuSearch volunteers are heading up the search off Calder Drive.

This search is connected to April’s arrest of James Elmore, Jr. Elmore has been charged in connection of two of the so-called “Killing Fields” cases; Laura Miller and Audrey Cook.

EquuSearch founder and Laura Miller’s father, Tim Miller, said Elmore approached him four years ago and said he had information about the bodies buried off what was then Calder Road. Miller said Elmore stated there was another body buried in the area, but he didn’t have a name of a victim and couldn’t remember the exact spot where the person may have been buried.

“Four years ago, when Elmore got a hold of me, I can’t tell you how many times I brought him out here; he wanted to come out here and he kept saying, ‘there’s another body out here,’” said Tim Miller. “He’d come out and look around and everything and he said, ‘man, you to realize we were stoned so much and it was 38 years ago.”

Investigators said Elmore was friends with Clyde Hedrick, the man considered the prime suspect in all four “Killing Fields” murders. Hedrick committed suicide in March.

Investigators said Elmore implicated himself in helping Hedrick dispose of Laura Miller and Cook’s bodies. Elmore is in the Galveston County jail awaiting trial on manslaughter and evidence tampering charges.

Tim Miller concedes there is a slim chance anything will be found after 4-decades, but said they have to follow every lead. Nothing was found during Friday’s search.

Laura Miller, Heide Fye Villareal, Audrey Cook and Donna Prudhomme were all found in the same field between 1984 and 1991. The so-called ‘Texas Killing Fields’ are now on the property of the Magnolia Creek Baptist Church.

The pastor, Brett Dutton, told 2 Investigates when he purchased the property he promised Tim Miller he would never touch the field where memorials stand, honoring the four lives lost.

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The comments were made in response to speculation that the bullet fragment could exonerate defendant Tyler Robinson. Conjecture over the evidence in Kirk’s killing has fueled unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that there might have been a second shooter or that his death was staged.

Prosecutors have said they intend to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted. The 23-year-old from southwestern Utah is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 killing of Kirk, a conservative activist who was shot in the neck while addressing a crowd of thousands at Utah Valley University. Robinson has not yet entered a plea.

Robinson’s attorneys accused prosecutors of going on a “media tour” to discuss expert reports about the bullet fragment, violating the judge's restrictions against speaking about the case outside court.

Prosecutors countered that they had a right to speak to the press to correct misinformation about a preliminary finding by ballistics experts. Those experts' initial tests did not match the bullet fragment with a gun that investigators believe was used to kill Kirk.

In court filings, defense attorneys made public a federal agency's failure to conclusively link the bullet fragment with the rifle. They said it appeared to be “exculpatory evidence” — information that tends to absolve a defendant of guilt — without noting that the finding was preliminary and that further testing was planned.

That spurred stories by some publications raising questions about the prosecution's case: A March 30 headline in the U.K.-based Daily Mail reported that the bullet that killed Kirk “did NOT match” the rifle investigators say was used to kill Kirk.

Authorities have said DNA consistent with Robinson’s was found on the trigger of the rifle, the fired cartridge casing, two unfired cartridges and a towel used to wrap the rifle.

“The rules expressly allow lawyers to set the record straight,” Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard wrote in a court filing.

Ballard argued Friday that he didn't speak to the media about case specifics and only spoke generally about how ballistics testing can be inconclusive. He said his goal “was to respond to the substantial undue prejudicial effect of the media stories.”

Defense attorney Richard Novak disagreed, saying Ballard did not speak to the media using general terms and tried to “influence public perception” of the case.

“What was going on here was an attempt to influence the jury pool,” Novak argued.

State District Judge Tony Graf said he will issue his decision about the contempt allegation on June 22.

Earlier Friday, Graf declined a defense request to halt the proceedings while they appeal a June 1 order in which the judge declined to bar cameras from the courtroom.

The ruling comes ahead of a key hearing scheduled to begin July 6, when prosecutors must show they have enough evidence to warrant a trial. That would mark the most significant presentation of evidence to date in the case, which has so far focused on matters of media access.

Before Friday's hearing, the defense team pointed to another criminal case in which prosecutors were accused of contempt and suggested that one potential remedy would be to bar the state from seeking the death penalty.

While the judge in that earlier case disagreed that an order barring the death penalty was merited, Robinson’s attorneys noted that “the court did not conclude that such a remedy was beyond its authority where the facts support it.”

___

Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

That level of wealth, all owned by just one person, was once unfathomable. Before Friday, the trillion-dollar mark was reserved for measures like the GDP (or staggering debt ) of a handful of major economies — and, in the last decade alone, the value of some of the biggest companies to ever trade on the stock market.

Musk's new title arrives amid a wider acceleration for the richest of the rich. Year after year, his former (although now very distant) billionaires club has reaped a growing number of members — from tech titans to celebrities. All the while, more and more people worldwide are struggling to pay their everyday bills. Many have decried the arrival of the first trillionaire as the latest and most alarming example of that wealth gap.

The number “one trillion” is hard in itself for the human mind to comprehend. One trillion dollars is a thousand times greater than $1 billion. And a million times more than $1 million.

According to Forbes, Musk’s net worth actually hit $1.1 trillion on Friday, after SpaceX soared in its market debut. Most of that money is in stock. Still, here are some ways to think about how far one trillion could go.

To the moon and back, over 200 times

Thinking about what $1 trillion looks like is almost as astronomical as the interplanetary — and at this point, still far from realized — goals SpaceX has laid out for itself.

In terms of physical cash, one trillion U.S. dollar bills laid end to end would stretch nearly 97 million miles (or almost 156 million kilometers). That would account for the distance of more than 200 round-trip journeys to the moon — which NASA says sits an average of 238,855 miles (nearly 384,400 kilometers) away from Earth. It would also surpass the roughly 93 million miles (about 150 million kilometers) between Earth and the sun.

$122 for every person on Earth

There are nearly 8.2 billion people living on Earth today, per the latest numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau. If $1 trillion was divided among the entire population, each person would receive almost $122.

Double the GDP of South Africa

One trillion dollars is more than double the annual GDP of South Africa, the country where Musk was born. According 2026 numbers from International Monetary Fund, the nation’s output of goods and services stands at nearly $480 billion.

Only about 21 countries in the world have a GDP over the trillion-dollar mark today. The U.S. and China lead the pack at more than $32.38 trillion and $20.85 trillion, respectively, but that is far ahead of most other economies.

2.5 million homes in the US

Houses sold in the U.S. have a median sales price of about $403,200, per the latest numbers from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. With $1 trillion, you could buy nearly 2.5 million homes at that cost.

243 billion gallons of gas

At current U.S. gas prices — which averaged at nearly $4.11 a gallon Friday per AAA — $1 trillion could buy more than 243 billion gallons of regular fuel.

To help put that in context, that far surpasses the nearly 137 billion gallons Americans used on finished motor gasoline all last year. And prices at the pump were much less expensive in 2025. Steep oil prices, spanning from the U.S. and Israel's ongoing war against Iran, propelled the national average above $4 a gallon for the first time in four years.

Over $700 billion ahead the world's second richest person

According to Forbes, the second-richest person in the world today is Google co-founder Larry Page — who carried a net worth of nearly $294 billion as of midday Friday. That's $706 billion under the trillion dollar mark.

In fact, the combined net worth, as of Friday, of the four men following Musk on Forbes' richest list — which, beyond Page, includes fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin ($271 billion), Amazon's Jeff Bezos ($249 billion) and Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($232 billion) — amounted to about $1.05 trillion.

Those fortunes can oscillate by tens of billions of dollars by the day, or even a matter of hours. Musk's own net worth has rapidly ballooned in value. Just last year, his net worth sat at $342 billion per Forbes — up from $195 billion in 2024.

The words from Walwyn, a Houston native and former long jumper at Rice University known as Pastor Von Won, deeply resonated with Stroud. The former NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year attended a chapel service led by Walwyn the night before a victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars. And Stroud credited the pastor’s words in helping him remain poised as he delivered the game-winning touchdown pass in the final minute of the fourth quarter.

“He was talking about, ‘You gotta get through the mud before you can get to the miracle,’” Stroud said. “That resonated with me. Not only in ball, but just in life. It’s not always perfect, but you know the mud makes you who you are. The mud we have is self-inflicted mud. I feel like that kind of motivates us in a sense. It motivates me.”

And the bond between Stroud and the church continues to this day.

The C.J. Stroud Foundation, run by Stroud’s mother, Kimberly, sponsored 10 kids from Space City Church to attend a church camp in Huntsville this week.

“Authentic, it’s not fake, it’s a real heart for people,” Walwyn told KPRC 2. “Kim, she’s a very kind lady, just a sweet human being. Some people, it’s intimidating to ask for help, but they’re kind, approachable people It’s a beautiful thing.”

#Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud and his charitable foundation, run by his mother, Kimberly, have sponsored 10 kids from Space City Church to attend a church camp this week in Huntsville. Pastor Von Won told @KPRC2 'C.J. and his mom are authentic, kind people with a real heart… pic.twitter.com/NOTcueRL3Q

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) June 12, 2026

Deeply spiritual and open about discussing his faith, Stroud often cites Biblical verses in interviews. That includes Proverbs 3:5-6: ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight."

A year ago, Stroud provided financial resources for seven youth -- the same number as his No. 7 jersey -- to attend a church camp in Waxachachie.

“It means the world,” Walwyn told KPRC 2. “For C.J. and his foundation to pay those fees and help us in any capacity, it’s a blessing. It can be a big pressure sometimes and the last thing we want is a parent stressing out. Church camp impacted my life in a huge way.

“Ultimately, it’s a blessing to see the C.J. Stroud Foundation help us. We seek God to work through them and give us the fuel we need for ministry. It’s incredible for people looking at Space City Church for us to be recognized by C.J. and the Texans and to be affiliated with them.”

Walwyn called Stroud a ‘powerful ambassador of Christian faith and values, noting: ‘We’re always looking for a champion. It’s rare that you have an athlete on fire talking about Jesus."

The children posted a video on social saying in unison: ‘Thank you C.J. Stroud Foundation!"

“We wanted to send C.J. and his mom, Kimberly, a big thank you,” Walwyn said. “For them to acknowledge us, we thank them a million times. Hopefully, this gives them some gratitude.”

A musician who has collaborated with Paul Wall and Scar Face on an album “Grace Still Abides,” Walwyn was invited to preach to the team by Hinson.

During his sermon, Walwyn related difficult times he faced in the past.

On social media after his sermon, Hinson wrote to Walwyn: “My brother, thank you for pouring the Truth into our guys.”

To be at NRG Stadium and speak to the team and meet the coaching staff was a significant moment for Walwyn.

“It was very humbling,” Walwyn said. “Just me being a sports guy growing up, to see DeMeco Ryans, it meant so much. C.J. sat close to the front of the room with pen and paper out taking notes. It was great to see. When I was done, they gave me high-fives and told me I did a great job.

“I was just hoping they got the win the next day. Mikado said C.J. just gave you a shoutout. For me as a pastor in the city, I appreciate the recognition. There is no better co-sign as a Christian and most men honor football, especially in Texas, than to hear that from the star quarterback.”

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

Marco’s Pizza has launched their New York Style Pizza, bringing huge foldable slices, a thin crust, and deli-style pepperoni nationwide.

Regional Director Zac Sherron joined Houston Life to share what sets the new pizza apart and the work that went into creating an authentic New York-style experience.

One of the defining features of New York pizza is its large, foldable slices. Unlike traditional hand-tossed pizzas, the New York Style Pizza is stretched into a larger pie, creating a thinner crust that still delivers the right balance of crispness and chew.

Marco’s also developed a special crushed tomato sauce for the pizza, different than their signature sauce. The sauce features a simpler flavor profile designed to let the tomatoes shine.

Another standout ingredient is the deli-style pepperoni. Larger than traditional pepperoni slices, it delivers a bolder flavor and a more authentic deli-inspired appearance.

Creating the pizza wasn’t as simple as making a thinner crust. Sherron said the company spent considerable time researching New York pizza traditions and refining the recipe to capture the flavors and textures fans expect from a true New York slice.

The launch comes at a time when many families and friends are gathering for summer celebrations, sporting events, and watch parties. The large slices and shareable format make the pizza an easy option for feeding a crowd.

Founded in 1978 by Pasquale “Pat” Giammarco in Toledo, Ohio, Marco’s Pizza has grown to more than 1,200 locations across the United States, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Mexico. The company continues to expand while introducing new menu offerings inspired by regional pizza traditions.

For a limited time, customers can order the new New York Style Pizza through the Marco’s Pizza app or online and use the code ‘GETNY’ to take advantage of a special promotional offer for just $13.99 for an extra large!

For more information, visit marcos.com.

Speaking to thousands of delegates at the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, Abbott suggested the party will close its primaries to only Republicans, a priority of GOP activists that would require primary voters to register with the party. The governor also renewed his call to ban local governments from sending lobbyists to Austin — known among critics as taxpayer-funded lobbying — and encouraged the Legislature to adopt his plans for regulating data centers, slashing property taxes and taking a hard line on immigration.

Abbott’s remarks offered a fresh look at how he plans to confront Democrats in a midterm where President Donald Trump’s policies, and the state of the economy, is creating political headwinds for Republicans. The governor cast the minority party, and its nominee for U.S. Senate, Rep. James Talarico of Austin, as radical socialists who are trying to rebrand from their lenient approach to the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration. The spike in illegal border crossings in part helped Trump and the Texas GOP make massive gains along the border with Latino voters.

The governor, who has nearly $100 million in his campaign coffers, did not once mention his own November opponent: Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin. He did, however, knock the top of the Democratic ticket for being from the capital city, which he called the “People’s Republic of Austin.”

“Unity is going to drive victory this November, and no one does a better job than you all” at turning out voters, Abbott said to uproars of cheers. “Together, we will demolish the Democrats. Together, we are going to win in November. Together, we are going to keep Texas, Texas.”

Abbott’s suggestion that the state will require voters to register with a party occurred two weeks after Secretary of State Jane Nelson — the state’s chief elections officer — announced she would step down in July.

The Republican Party of Texas had sued Nelson, an Abbott appointee, to close the state’s primaries, motivated by concerns that Democrats are infiltrating GOP contests to boost more moderate candidates. Abbott has not yet named a replacement secretary of state, but party activists are hoping Nelson’s successor will drop the agency’s legal opposition and allow the primaries to be closed via the courts.

Elsewhere in his speech, the governor, who is seeking an unprecedented fourth term, underscored a variety of urgent tasks he has identified for the Texas GOP, from its elected lawmakers to the party activists who are set to instruct them with a new slate of legislative priorities Saturday.

He professed Harris County will be red once again, as he plans to invest $25 million in that effort and campaign “block by block, door to door.”

Abbott also called for the Legislature to codify his executive order that froze new H-1B visa applications from state agencies and public universities. That new law should extend the freeze to “all state and local governments,” the governor said, adding, “Texas jobs should only go to Texans.”

Beyond clamping down on local government lobbying, Abbott also made a pitch for reining in city and county spending, touting his proposed property tax package that seeks to require two-thirds voter approval of property tax increases.

He also accused Democrats of supporting Sharia law and prompted thunderous applause when he called for completely outlawing it and giving the attorney general’s office more authority to tackle the issue.

“The contrast between what Republicans have passed and how Democrats have voted is shocking,” Abbott said. “It should be a five-alarm warning to anybody thinking about voting for Democrats.”

Some of his proposals received immediate praise from some of the GOP’s grassroots leaders, like Luke Macias, a longtime conservative political consultant who thanked the governor for “standing alongside the grassroots and leading” on the push to close the state’s primary elections.

Yassine Cheuko has become a social media sensation thanks to his role as Messi’s personal bodyguard. Known for his intense focus, quick reactions, and constant presence near the soccer superstar, Cheuko has attracted millions of views online as fans marvel at the unique job of protecting one of the most recognizable athletes in the world.

While many know him as “Messi’s bodyguard,” there’s much more to Cheuko’s story.

Before becoming a viral figure, Cheuko built a career in security and protection. His combination of physical fitness, discipline, and situational awareness helped prepare him for one of the most high-profile security roles in sports. Today, his work requires constant attention and the ability to anticipate potential issues before they happen.

In recent years, videos have spread across social media with many viewers joking that he’s become almost as recognizable as some of the players on the field. His speed and awareness during matches have earned praise from soccer fans around the world.

So what’s one thing he adds into his physical fitness routine? He swears by Yerba Madre’s Yerba Mate, a traditional South American herbal tea brewed from the naturally caffeinated, nutrient-rich leaves of the holly tree.

Watch as Lauren Kelly chats with Yassine all about his unique career, viral fame, and life protecting one of the most recognizable people on the planet.

Fresh off scheduled drydock maintenance — which included a new jibboom, a new sail for the fore topmast, and a new John Deere PowerTech™ 6135SFM85 diesel engine — ELISSA is now underway on an approximately 2,500-mile voyage, her longest extended journey in decades.

“ELISSA is not simply traveling to commemorate a milestone, she is doing what she was built to do — connect communities through maritime history,” said Will Wright, chief creative officer for the Galveston Historical Foundation. “This project reflects decades of stewardship and investment, and it reinforces our commitment to ensuring that Galveston’s history continues to be told on a national stage.”

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Leading the fleet into New York Harbor

ELISSA, a National Historic Landmark, will be in New York July 3–7 and lead fellow Class A tall ships into New York Harbor on July 4. It’s billed as one of the largest flotillas of historic vessels and sailing ships assembled from around the world. She is among the oldest vessels expected at the New York tall ship gathering.

Built in 1877 by Alexander Hall & Co. in Aberdeen, Scotland, ELISSA is a three-masted, iron-hulled barque — square sails on the fore and main masts, fore-and-aft sails on the mizzen — and one of the few authentic 19th-century tall ships still actively sailing today. She measures 205 feet from stern to jibboom, stands 99 feet, 9 inches at the main mast, and carries 19 sails covering approximately 11,500 square feet — more than one-quarter of an acre.

Unlike many vessels seen at waterfront festivals, ELISSA is not a replica. She is a surviving merchant ship whose nearly 90-year commercial career took her to ports around the world before Galveston preservationists rescued her from a scrapyard in Piraeus Harbor, Greece.

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A revised voyage across America’s coastline

Following updated routing, ELISSA’s itinerary has been adjusted to reflect strategic port calls along the East Coast and Gulf Coast. ELISSA will join a fleet of international tall ships for a massive peacetime gathering in Boston Harbor. Stops in Yorktown, Virginia and Portsmouth, Virginia have been removed from the schedule. In their place, Savannah, Georgia and Pensacola, Florida have been added as key ports as the ship begins her return journey to Galveston.

The current confirmed public route includes:

• New York, New York | July 3–7
• Boston, Massachusetts | July 11–15
• Savannah, Georgia | July 23-26
• Pensacola, Florida | August 6–9

After completing her participation in Sail250 events in the Northeast, ELISSA will begin her return voyage south, with port calls in Savannah and Pensacola before she completes her journey back to Galveston.

At each stop, the Galveston Historical Foundation will activate ELISSA as a traveling classroom and cultural ambassador through public deck tours,

“For Galveston, the America250 voyage is both a national showcase and a statement of identity,” said Dwayne Jones, executive director and chief executive officer for GHF. “As a historic port city whose story is deeply tied to maritime commerce, immigration, and coastal life, Galveston will be represented on a global stage by a vessel that has become one of its most visible and meaningful ambassadors.”

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A living ambassador, not a museum piece

Today, ELISSA is a fully functional sailing vessel operated by the Galveston Historical Foundation at the Galveston Historic Seaport. For nearly 50 years, GHF has led the ship’s rescue, restoration, and ongoing management, investing in the preservation, maintenance, and crew training required to keep the vessel seaworthy and under sail.

ELISSA continues to sail annually during Gulf Coast sea trials and welcomes thousands of visitors each year for tours, education programs, and special events interpreting Galveston’s role in maritime trade, immigration, and U.S. history.

But Spielberg is hardly the only one making headlines of late about UFOs and the possibility of life on other planets.

What was once considered fringe or conspiratorial has in recent months popped up everywhere from the White House to the Catholic Church, as public fascination with unidentified anomalous phenomena — or UAPs, as the government calls them — becomes more mainstream.

The Pentagon in May made public large swaths of UFO files with very little context, leaving curious sleuths to piece together their own interpretations. The dump came just weeks after former President Barack Obama set off a media frenzy for stating unambiguously in an interview that aliens are real, though he later tempered that take.

“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there,” the former president, who made a surprise visit to the “Disclosure Day” set, posted on social media. “I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”

Some religious adherents, as well as some nonbelievers, maintain that the existence of life on other planets might undermine many faiths because it would complicate assertions that humans are unique. But others argue the opposite.

“Belief in UFOs is really one of the best things that’s happened to religion in a long time,” said Diana Walsh Pasulka, a religion scholar at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. “It’s a blow to the secular, materialist worldview.”

An intersection of aliens, demons and Catholics

Even if broad interest in UAPs bolsters the case for an enchanted universe, some believers in religions such as Christianity think they are something to be wary of.

“I don’t think they’re aliens. I think they’re demons,” Vice President JD Vance, a Catholic convert, said in a recent podcast interview.

That sentiment was echoed by Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, formerly an exorcist with the Archdiocese of Washington. He was removed last week by the archbishop, who said statements by Rossetti “gravely undermine” Catholic teaching on demons and the devil.

“It’s my personal belief that probably many, if not most, of these UFO sightings are in fact demons,” Rossetti said in a May 29 video posted on his Facebook page. “Aliens, if there are aliens, don’t possess people.”

Christopher Baglow, who heads a science and religion initiative at the University of Notre Dame, was surprised by the firing given that Rosetti made clear in the video he was expressing his own opinion. Baglow speculated that there may be other factors behind the decision.

“I ask forgiveness for any ways that I have not been faithful to the teachings of the Church’s Magisterium,” Rosetti said in a statement online.

Despite the assertions by Vance and Rossetti about demons, Baglow maintains the Catholic Church has long been open to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. “Theologians have been speculating about this for centuries and the church has never ever taught one way or the other,” he said.

While meeting with astronomy students last year at the Vatican, Pope Leo XIV spoke about the “ancient light of distant galaxies” and the “mysterious joy” provoked by the study of outer space. Some interpreted these remarks as tacit speculation about the possibility of life on other planets.

Extraterrestrials, old and new

In one sense, the idea of otherworldly beings coming to Earth can be traced back millennia.

“People would call it the plurality of worlds. So even back in the time of Socrates and Aristotle, there were Greek philosophers who talked about beings on other planets and other stars,” Walsh Pasulka said.

But it wasn’t until after 1945 that modern conceptions of UFOs began to develop, according to Jeffrey Kripal, a historian of religions at Rice University. “The flying saucer and the alien and the UFO — it’s definitely a Cold War invasion narrative,” he said.

That narrative explains why UAPs are often perceived as hostile to humans. But it’s also evolved over time and led to the formation of some religions — like Scientology, which counts many a Hollywood celebrity among its adherents — that see extraterrestrials as good or even part of a divine plan. Some adherents to the Nation of Islam, for example, believe that its founder will inaugurate an apocalyptic return to Earth on a spaceship.

The International Raëlian Movement, also know as Raëlism, is a UFO religion that was founded in France in the 1970s. It is still practiced today, with its strongest followings in parts of Asia, Africa and Canada, according to Susan Palmer, a sociologist who studies new religious movements at Concordia University in Montreal.

Its founder, Raël, claims he is a direct descendant of Yahweh, whom Raël visited on the planet of Elohim in 1975. Raëlism claims the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad are all hybrids of humans and extraterrestrials, as well as Raël’s half brothers.

Of the groups she has studied, Palmer argued Raëlism is the most sympathetic toward UFOs. “They’re not interested in extraterrestrial wars,” she said.

But some think that sentiment might be growing.

Kripal, who heads Rice’s archival collection of reported paranormal experiences called the Center for the Impossible, perceives an increasing openness to these kinds of conversations about the existence of UFOs — and the possibility that they are not hostile.

“People are reporting these experiences or these encounters with entities and they’re religious through and through,” he said. “My colleagues in the academy, they’re really starting to listen in a different way.”

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

Carney's speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, became a symbol of middle-power resistance in January, when he declared the global rules-based order over and condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries. But this summit comes as tensions have been ramping up between Trump and Canada.

Carney met Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, a few days before the summit in Evian-les-Bains, France.

He didn’t mention the U.S. directly but referenced artificial intelligence and said both Canada and France “are determined to act in this way to strengthen our strategic autonomy in a world dominated by hegemonic powers and hyperscalers.”

Macron said the two countries “share the same view of the world.”

The Group of Seven summit of industrialized democracies that begins Monday in France comes ahead of the scheduled July 1 review of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. It is a crucial moment in trade talks for the latest iteration of the North American free-trade pact that has intertwined the economies of the three countries since the early 1990s. Trump said this week that he may not renew the deal.

Preserving the accord is critical for Canada, where 70% of exports go to the U.S.

Canadian historian Robert Bothwell said Trump is more of a problem for Carney “than anybody else because we are more exposed to the United States.”

Trump leaves for the G7 summit right after he hosts UFC fights at the White House on Sunday for his 80th birthday.

Carney downplayed the notion that it could be six countries against one at the summit, saying there will be some issues where each country has more extreme views compared to others.

The summit comes amid strain in the Canada-U.S. relationship — one of the most durable and amicable alliances.

Trump’s actions, including launching a trade war and suggesting Canada become the 51st U.S. state, have infuriated Canadians and created the political environment for Carney to win the job of prime minister in 2025 after promising to confront Trump.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, the leader of Canada's most populous province, had a reception with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington canceled Monday at the last minute, although one of his ministers called it "a badge of honor.”

Trump said again this week that the U.S. doesn't need anything that Canada has. Carney has set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying Trump’s trade war is causing a chill in investment.

On Thursday, the opening of a major Canadian bridge across the Detroit River that Trump previously threatened to block was delayed due to unresolved issues.

Trump administration officials keep noting that only two countries, China and Canada, retaliated against America in the trade war. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer says Canada’s retaliatory measures are a major issue in talks.

Daniel Béland, a political science professor at McGill University in Montreal, said Carney seems to have moderated his tone toward the Trump administration to avoid worsening relations.

“There is a clear tension between what Prime Minister Carney said in his Davos speech about middle powers standing up to hegemons and his attempt to nudge the U.S. administration ‘in the right direction’ with regard to the USMCA review and trade policy more generally,” Béland said.

Carney has downplayed Trump’s most recent comments about Canada becoming the 51st state.

Canada and Mexico want the USMCA to be renewed for another 16 years. More likely it will be subject to annual reviews for the next 10 years.

Carney will also travel to Ireland this weekend to meet with the Irish prime minister in a bid to diversify trade away from the U.S.

This is Carney's ninth trip to Europe in the 15 months since he became prime minister in March 2025.

Judge Lewis J. Liman said in a written decision that Lively can recover legal fees and costs related to her defense against a countersuit Baldoni brought against her after she sued him in December 2024.

In his written ruling Friday, Liman cited a California law designed to protect survivors of sexual harassment and discrimination from retaliatory lawsuits meant to intimidate and silence victims.

The judge said the law requires that the plaintiff must pay the defendant’s legal fees and costs if a defamation claim made in response to a lawsuit is dismissed, even if the facts of the case have not been developed through the gathering of evidence.

Liman said an exception would be if Baldoni and his production company, Wayfarer Studios LLC, could prove malice fueled Lively's claims, but that Baldoni and Wayfarer had produced no evidence to show that.

The judge rejected her claims to triple any damages and pursue punitive damages as well under the California law, saying that they did not fall within “carefully crafted federal procedural rules designed to protect the rights of the parties.”

Lively and Baldoni settled the bulk of their dispute last month just as a trial was about to start on Lively’s retaliation claims. She received no money from the deal but was permitted to pursue legal fees.

In their statements, both sides cast Liman's ruling as a victory.

Lively lawyers Michael Gottlieb and Esra Hudson said the award of legal fees “makes it clear that Ms. Lively brought her claims in good faith, that there was no evidence she acted with malice, and that she is the prevailing defendant.”

Bryan Freedman, Baldoni's lawyer, said Lively failed to get her demands for $300 million in fees and damages, with 10 or her 13 claims tossed out by the judge before the settlement was reached, and then “pivoted to exploit a California law” to get damages.

“Once again, she failed,” he said, noting that she was entitled now to limited attorney fees for a single claim in a portion of the litigation that existed for only a few months.

The lawyer said his clients were “threatened by one of the most famous movie stars, who tried to rip away their life’s work and pristine reputations.”

“Throughout this process, innocent people had their reputations unfairly tarnished. There was no sexual harassment. There was no retaliation. There was no smear campaign. The court recognized it, the record reflects it, and we have maintained it from the very beginning,” Freedman said.

Lively accused Baldoni of sexual harassment and retaliation, along with his production company, in late 2024. She said the actor engineered an effort to damage her public reputation and credibility.

Baldoni, who directed the dark romantic drama and starred in it with Lively, denied harassing her or orchestrating a smear campaign. He claimed the complaints about his behavior were made up by Lively as part of an effort to seize creative control of the movie. He countersued, accusing Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, of defamation and extortion.

Liman threw out Baldoni's countersuit last year and then dismissed Lively's sexual harassment claims weeks ago, saying she could not bring them because she was an independent contractor rather than an employee on the movie set.

“It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 novel about a relationship devolving into domestic violence, was released in August 2024 and exceeded box office expectations.

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

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

But some of the key objectives Trump laid out for the conflict seem to remain unfulfilled. And while the Trump administration has said its objectives are clear and unchanging, the list has expanded and shifted as the president and his administration have spoken about the war since it started Feb. 28. All the while, the conflict has battered the global economy, tested alliances and raised unanswered questions about the planning for the conflict, its justification and its aftermath.

By most accounts, the strikes by the U.S. and Israel have significantly degraded Iran's military capabilities and killed scores of senior leaders. But those tactical successes don’t necessarily translate into achieving all the president’s strategic aims, even as the administration said Friday that it was meeting the goals it had laid out.

Here’s a look at the objectives laid out by Trump at various points since the outset of the war and what we know about where they stand:

1. Destroy Iran's ability to fire missiles

One of the prime objectives laid out by the administration was to “destroy their missiles and raze their missile industry to the ground."

Trump said in late March that Iran's missiles “are mostly decimated" and that 90% of their missiles and launchers were knocked out.

By mid-May, that shifted to a more conservative estimate, with the president saying that 82% of Iran's missiles were gone.

Adm. Brad Cooper, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, told lawmakers in mid-May that Iran maintains a “very moderate if not small capability to continue strikes” in the region.

Iran proved as recently as this week that it still had the ability to launch missiles when it attacked three Gulf allies of the U.S.

2. Destroy Iran's defense industrial base

Early in the war, the president and his administration sometimes listed this as a standalone objective. Other times, it has fallen off their list.

U.S. Central Command has said its targets for strikes in Iran have included weapons production and missile and drone manufacturing facilities.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers in early June that Iran has had “massive destruction” of its defense industrial base and “80 to 90% of attrition. It will take years for them to rebuild it.”

Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday: “Most of the drone factories have been knocked out, most of the launching pads have been knocked out and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out. But they still have capacity.”

3. Eliminate Iran's navy and air force

The U.S. and Israel quickly established air superiority in the skies above Iran, where they flew largely unchallenged.

Rubio told lawmakers that Iran still has drone capabilities, but it lacks the ability to use swarms of drones to attack targets, as it did at the start of the war.

He also said Iran does not have a navy but small crafts outfitted with machine guns that harass ships and sometimes drop mines in the water.

Iran has shown its ability to still launch attacks in the region, such as a deadly June 3 attack of drones and missiles at Kuwait that led to the brief closure of its main airport. The U.S. and Bahrain also said they intercepted missiles and drones fired at the Gulf kingdom by Iran.

And on Tuesday, Trump blamed Tehran for the downing of a U.S. Army helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz after it collided with an Iranian drone.

4. Obliterate Iran's nuclear program for good

Trump made a marked shift over the last year after declaring that the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in June, only for his aides to warn that Iran was just weeks away from a bomb to justify the current operations.

One of the most pressing questions is what will be done with about 970 pounds of enriched uranium that Tehran has that could potentially be used for a weapon. The material is believed to be buried under three nuclear sites bombed by the U.S. and Israel last year. Trump said in a May 29 social media post that it will be retrieved by the U.S. “in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED.”

Iran has not said whether it would consent. Without permission from Iran, seizing it would be a dangerous mission, experts say, and would require a sizable deployment of U.S. troops into the country.

Trump told reporters on Thursday that there was an agreement “conceptually” on the uranium, but he did not offer details and Iran has not yet confirmed it.

A senior administration official, who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity on Friday to provide an update on negotiations, said that Iran has agreed that the uranium will be destroyed and removed, but details of what that looks like have not yet been hammered out.

5. Protect America's Middle Eastern allies

Trump, in a March social media post, added a fifth objective for the U.S: “Protecting, at the highest level, our Middle Eastern Allies, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and others."

The U.S. maintains thousands of troops on bases and other installations in the region, but Trump has been unclear on how far he'd be willing to go to protect Middle East allies from threats.

As Trump said the U.S. was nearing a deal with Iran in recent weeks, he's said that any agreement should somehow bind many of the Gulf allies to join the Abraham Accords, agreements from Trump’s first term that seek to normalize relations with Israel. But that seems exceedingly unlikely as Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip have created a bigger distance from Gulf Arab states and the wider Muslim world.

As the U.S. and Iran traded back-and-forth strikes this week, Tehran’s targets included attacks on Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, prompting the U.S. to respond with a fresh round of strikes.

The Trump administration has begun exploring whether to let Gulf allies use Iran's frozen assets to pay for damages sustained in the war, but officials have not said whether they are moving forward with that plan.

The senior administration official said Friday that the memorandum of understanding would guarantee a long-term peace in the region, but did not offer details on what that would look like or how it would be achieved.

6. Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Keeping shipping traffic flowing through the vital waterway was not one of the reasons for launching the war, but after Iran leveraged its ability to effectively shut traffic through the strait, it has become a key problem to tackle in the conflict.

The Strait of Hormuz is a chokepoint for 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas and its effective closure since the war has spiked global energy prices, along with the costs of other goods. Iran had allowed ships seen as friendly to pass through, while charging considerable fees.

Trump has said that a proposed deal with Iran would include the reopening of the strait and the U.S. ending its blockade of Tehran's ports.

7. Cut off

support for Iranian proxy groups

In March, Trump and his administration repeatedly included degrading Iran's proxy terror networks as a key goal of the operation.

As time has gone on, administration officials have offered fewer updates about this objective, which the president described as ensuring that “the region’s terrorist proxies can no longer destabilize the region or the world and attack our forces” and “ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund, and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders.”

The U.S., early on, struck Iranian-aligned militia groups in Iraq. But the biggest question has been Israel's deepening war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, which Iran backs. Iran has insisted that the fighting in Lebanon must be stopped as part of any deal with the U.S., but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears intent on pursuing his goal of destroying the militant group.

Israel said Thursday that it was not a party to the agreement that the U.S. had reached with Iran.

The administration official said Friday that the U.S. was confident that broad regional peace terms in the memorandum of understanding would include both Hezbollah and Israel. If the Iranians hold up their end as it pertains to constraining Hezbollah, the Israelis would not feel a need to respond, the official said.

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Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin contributed to this report.

The races set up significant tests of whether Democrats' redraw of California's House maps will pay off for the party.

Several other major U.S. House races also were set Tuesday as California's protracted vote count from the state's June 2 primary ground on. Two Republicans will face each other in a Southern California House district drawn to end one of their careers. And a Sacramento seat will become a high-profile generational clash between two Democrats.

But the most attention was on two districts in the vast midsection of the state that will help determine whether Democrats can claim victory in California's role in the mid-decade redistricting wars. Both will be crucial to determine which party controls the U.S. House in this year's midterm elections.

Democrats hope to pick off a perennial GOP target in the Central Valley

Progressive Randy Villegas, a political science professor and school board member, on Tuesday beat the favored pick of establishment Democrats, moderate Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, to advance to the November election against Valadao, a perennial target whose district Democrats redrew to shift further to the left.

Democrats narrowly beat Valadao in their 2018 wave, only to see him win back the seat in 2020. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee threw its weight behind Bains, but Villegas won the primary and will test whether progressives or moderates are best positioned to face the resilient Republican.

"Voters in the Central Valley have spoken and they have declared that the Valley is not for sale,” Villegas said in a statement.

Republicans had hoped to face Villegas.

“Socialist Randy Villegas clawed his way out of a bruising Democrat primary by sprinting to the far left and embracing the same failed policies that made California unaffordable for working families,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, in a statement.

An independent hopes to keep Democrats from winning redrawn district

For a few days after last week's primary, California's 6th District near Sacramento was a possible warning sign for Democrats, as Kiley and a long-shot Republican who ran on peace in the Mideast held the top two slots in the nonpartisan primary. But the state's slow but regular tally of late Democratic mail ballots catapulted Pan onto the November ballot.

Democrats broke up Kiley's conservative Northern California district, so the congressman opted to run in the new, Democratic-leaning district, left the GOP and became a vocal opponent of partisan redistricting.

“This race will be a choice between the extreme partisan politics that have made California the most unaffordable state in the country, and the independent leadership that allows our local communities to thrive,” Kiley said in a statement.

California Democrats scrambled their map to counter gains Republicans made in Texas and elsewhere after President Donald Trump called for the GOP to create as many conservative seats as possible in its bid to hold onto the House of Representatives in November.

California’s 52 House races provided a miniature of national trends. That included the fallout from redistricting ahead of this year’s midterm elections, this time with Democrats redrawing the map, the generational battle among Democrats and questions of whether moderates or liberals are better positioned to win in swing districts.

New districts set up clashes between members of the same party

In more fallout from redistricting, Republican Rep. Young Kim on Tuesday advanced to the November election. She will face fellow Republican Rep. Ken Calvert after Democrats drew them both into a single district, guaranteeing that one would not return to Congress next year.

“Throughout this campaign, we made the case that after more than three decades in Washington, it is time for fresh conservative leadership, and I look forward to continuing that conversation with voters in the months ahead,” Kim said in a statement.

Calvert replied in his own statement: “Voters throughout the district recognize I'm an effective member of Congress with a history of delivering results, cutting taxes and making life more affordable.”

Also on Tuesday, a major generational Democratic clash was set up as Sacramento City Councilwoman Mai Vang advanced to face longtime incumbent Rep. Doris Matsui on the November ballot.

The 81-year-old congresswoman has held the Sacramento-based seat since the death of her husband, former Rep. Bob Matsui, in 2005. Bob Matsui had represented the district since the 1970s.

Vang, 41, is one of a slew of Democrats across the nation mounting an explicitly generational challenge in the wake of Joe Biden’s presidency.

“People are tired of leaders who answer to their biggest donors instead of the families they represent,” Vang said in a statement after the race was called. “The squeeze on working families doesn’t check your party registration — and neither will I.”

Matsui released her first ad of the general election Tuesday night, focusing on a local mother whose son had muscular dystrophy and who praised Matsui for legislation funding therapies for the disease.

Veteran Democrats survive challengers as others vie to replace Pelosi

Two other veteran House Democrats in California also made it past younger challengers to the November ballot. Rep. Brad Sherman, 71, a 15-term congressman representing part of Los Angeles, will face a Republican in the fall. Mike Thompson, 75, is seeking his 13th term in a Northern California district.

In San Francisco, a wealthy progressive challenger was unable to crack the top two slots to fill retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s seat. Instead, state Sen. Scott Wiener and city Supervisor Connie Chan will face off to replace the former House speaker.

The 7th District seat held by Matsui is considered a safe one for Democrats, but was redrawn as part of the party’s bid to add five more U.S. House seats elsewhere. Voters signed off on the changes with a constitutional amendment last year.

Democrats initially were concerned about getting locked out of the general election in a San Diego-area seat under the state’s primary system, which sends the top two vote-getters to the November ballot regardless of party. But San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert managed to emerge from a large field of other Democrats and will face Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor.

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In this story first published June 9, 2026, The Associated Press erroneously reported Rep. Brad Sherman’s age as 72. Sherman is 71.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta rejected a legal advocacy group's request to block organizers from using the White House lawn as the venue for Sunday’s planned UFC mixed martial arts event.

Mehta concluded that the plaintiffs likely don’t have legal standing to challenge the event and have failed to prove that they would suffer irreparable harm by the event going forward as planned. The judge also cited the plaintiffs’ “unreasonable delay” in suing to challenge an event that’s been in the works for months.

“In the context of an emergency application — and coupled with the fact that the UFC fight date was long ago known — it is fair to say Plaintiffs unreasonably delayed bringing suit, undercutting their claims of irreparable harm,” Mehta wrote.

Attorneys from the nonprofit Public Integrity Project sued to challenge Trump’s “UFC Freedom 250” event on behalf of an activist and a Vietnam War veteran. The two plaintiffs also asked the court to block organizers from building anything for the event on White House grounds, including a 92-foot-tall, 600-ton steel structure called The Claw.

The plaintiffs’ alleged “aesthetic harms,” the judge noted, are temporary since The Claw will be disassembled starting Monday morning and staging equipment at the Lincoln Memorial must be removed before then. “The President’s musings about permanency of the Claw does not move the dial in the face of a White House official’s clear representation,” the judge wrote.

The White House called the lawsuit a baseless attempt to prevent Trump from hosting an event that’s no different from many others routinely hosted at public forums in the nation’s capital.

Trump's administration can’t issue permits for sporting events on the South Lawn or at the Lincoln Memorial, where UFC fighters planned to hold a press conference in front of fans on Friday, according to plaintiffs’ attorneys. They noted that the event is a privately organized, for-profit business venture, with VIP packages costing millions of dollars.

“The President’s administration is granting the UFC an extraordinary business opportunity it may not lawfully grant, and in exchange the UFC is throwing an event at which its leadership, fighters, advertisers, and various celebrities will all pay tribute to the President on his birthday,” plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.

Public Integrity Project attorney Brendan Ballou said the plaintiffs were disappointed in the judge's decision but respect it and intend to "keep bringing cases to raise the cost of corruption in America.”

“This isn’t a case about a sporting event, it’s about corruption, as a handful of people and companies stand to profit from our public monuments," Ballou said in a statement.

The National Park Service and the Interior Department are named as defendants in the lawsuit.

In 2019, during his first term in office, Trump became the first sitting president to attend a UFC show. Trump, a Republican, is a friend of UFC president and CEO Dana White.

Mehta was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Mehta has presided over other Trump-related cases, including civil litigation accusing Trump of inciting a mob of his supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, a Democrat.

“By the time we had gotten the kids ready to get on to the roof, because we knew we had to get to the roof, and opened the back door, the water flooded in,” said Kerr County resident, Corey Jones.

Jones and her family live in the Bumble Bee Hills subdivision between Hunt and Ingram in Kerr County. During last year’s flood Jones and her family had to climb on to the roof of their home to escape the rising water.

“We took well over four feet of water in here,” said Spencer Offenbacker. “Water came in from the (Guadalupe) river and from what’s called Bumble Bee creek on the backside.”

Jones said the family didn’t receive weather alerts on their phones until after the water rushed in to their home.

“I had been looking through my weather app and there was like 4 weather statements and by the time I got to the fourth one, that was the one that said in all caps, ‘seek higher ground,’” said Jones.

“Would a flood siren make you move any faster,” asked 2 Investigates’ Robert Arnold.

“I think it would make me move faster, absolutely, it would have been nice to have a little bit more of a heads up,” said Jones.

Experiences like Jones and Offenbacker’s are why lawmakers passed Senate Bill 3 during a special session of the legislature in 2025. The new law makes $50 million available for counties to install outdoor flood warning sirens.

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“Whenever you lose over a hundred citizens, you can either ignore the problem or recognize the obvious and let’s fix the problem,” said State Sen. Paul Bettencourt/(R) Dist. 7.

Bettencourt authored SB 3 and believes sirens will help overcome alert fatigue and fill-in the gaps in areas of the state where cell and internet service is spotty. In short, Bettencourt said people are apt to react a lot faster to the sound of a siren than an alert on their phone.

“The reality is that you don’t have to have them evacuate the county, you just have to get them up the hill and out of harm’s way,” said Bettencourt.

The 30 counties eligible for these funds include those that were part of Governor Greg Abbott’s disaster declaration in July 2025. The Texas Water Development Board is tasked with implementing SB 3.

Counties are eligible to receive up $1 million to install outdoor sirens. Additional funding is available based on approved plans and need.

To qualify for the $1 million, counties have until Dec. 31 to submit final plans as to where sirens will be installed and what type of sirens will be used. Counties then have until Aug. 1, 2027 to submit final invoices for work.

Real and Uvalde counties are among the first to submit initial plans to the TWDB.

“I think we have identified possibly 12 potential locations in Real County,” said county judge Bella Rubio. “There’s just a lot of parameters that once the locations are solidified, then phase two will be, okay, what’s it going to take to get them operable?”

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Interim Uvalde County judge Jerry Bates said he is also looking at 12 locations for siren installation. Bates and Rubio drove KPRC 2 through “hotspots” in their counties where they are considering installing sirens.

Many of the areas include those with youth camps, vacation lodges, campgrounds and subdivisions near rivers, creeks and tributaries. Rubio added many of the areas have experienced flooding at some point.

“Some people don’t take the warning that when the manager goes down to tell them, ‘hey, you need to get packed up and get ready to get out of here,’” said Bates.

Rubio said her concern is on-going maintenance of sirens and the accompanying equipment. She said her county likely can’t afford the annual expense.

Bettencourt addressed that concern by saying the legislature will consider alternative funding for counties, but until all the systems are in place they won’t be able to estimate annual costs.

The Upper Guadalupe River Authority already moved ahead with installing six sirens in Kerr County, which experienced the greatest loss of life during the 2025 flood, including the deaths at Camp Mystic.

Officials with the UGRA said sirens were installed to support youth camps along the north and south forks of the Guadalupe River in the western part of the county. UGRA officials said more sirens will also be installed in other areas of the county prone to flash floods.

The UGRA said it will seek a reimbursement of funds for this work through SB 3.

This works is also reversal from a decision by Kerr County officials in 2017 not to install sirens. KPRC 2 reported minutes from commissioner’s court meetings showed cost and pushback from the public as the reasons not to install sirens.

Officials in the neighboring Kendall County town of Comfort refurbished their flood siren prior to the 2025 flood. The siren was activated during the floods and county officials believe it helped save lives.

“The long-term benefits of this, it could help save lives,” said Offenbacker.

The official state proclamation names these counties:

NOW, THEREFORE, in accordance with the authority vested in me by Section 418.014 of the Texas Government Code, I do hereby amend and renew the aforementioned proclamation and declare a disaster in Bandera, Bexar, Burnet, Caldwell, Coke, Comal, Concho, Edwards, Gillespie, Guadalupe, Hamilton, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Kinney, Lampasas, Llano, Mason, Maverick, McCulloch, Menard, Real, Reeves, San Saba, Schleicher, Sutton, Tom Green, Travis, Uvalde, and Williamson Counties;

Pursuant to Section 418.017 of the Texas Government Code, I authorize the use of all available resources of state government and of political subdivisions that are reasonably necessary to cope with this disaster.

It's the latest action by the Trump administration connected to voting or election operations in the states, and it comes in a state that is expected to have hotly contested races this fall for governor and U.S. Senate.

Federal agents showed up at the Cleveland office of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative on Thursday and spent hours questioning staff, said Prentiss Haney, a board member of the grassroots organization. The organization was founded in 2007 and describes its mission as fighting for criminal justice reform, racial justice and an expansion of voting rights.

Federal agents also went to the homes of people who have worked with the organization, seeking interviews and information about alleged voter fraud, Haney said. He accused the agents of “intimidation tactics and harassment" and expressed concern that the investigation was designed to sow doubt in the coming elections.

The focus of the probe was unclear, but a person familiar with the matter said Friday that investigators were examining potential fraud violations. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The Justice Department declined to comment on Friday, and a spokesperson for the FBI in Cleveland did not respond to messages seeking comment.

To obtain a search warrant, federal authorities must convince a judge that probable cause of criminal activity exists. Though the information authorities presented was not immediately released, Democrats expressed skepticism about the basis of a search that unfolded against persistent concerns of a politicized FBI and Justice Department.

The party's nominees for the state's top races issued statements Friday saying they were troubled by the FBI raid.

“Any attempts by federal law enforcement to intimidate eligible Ohioans from registering to vote are unacceptable,” said Dr. Amy Acton, the state’s former public health director, who won the state’s Democratic primary for governor and is challenging Republican Vivek Ramaswamy.

Democrat Sherrod Brown, who is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted in the fall, called on the FBI to make public “any and all activities around these raids.”

He added, “Any attempt to intimidate Ohio voters is wrong, and will not work.”

Republicans have held the state's top elected seat for 20 years and hold both U.S. Senate seats but are concerned that Democratic momentum in this year's midterms could make them vulnerable.

The Justice Department during President Donald Trump's second term has launched several legal actions or investigations related to voting or state election operations.

The FBI has seized ballots and other records from the 2020 election for Georgia’s Fulton County and Arizona’s Maricopa County and from the 2024 election in Michigan’s Wayne County. It also has been questioning election workers in Wisconsin’s Milwaukee County. All four are in presidential battleground states.

The Justice Department has sued at least 30 states and the District of Columbia after they refused to hand over detailed voter data that includes dates of birth and partial Social Security numbers. It has said in court filings that it wants the information so it can run it through a Department of Homeland Security program that checks U.S. citizenship, although the program's accuracy has been questioned. The Justice Department has so far been on a losing streak in its lawsuits seeking to extract the data from the holdout states.

Early in his second term, Trump, a Republican, also ordered the Justice Department to investigate ActBlue, the top fundraising platform for the Democratic Party.

Allegations of fraud in voter registration efforts are typically investigated by states and usually involve people working for groups that pay for sign-ups. Earlier this year, California officials opened an investigation into whether signature-gatherers were offering to pay people for signing a ballot petition. In 2025, Pennsylvania officials brought criminal charges against seven people for submitting fraudulent voter registration forms.

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Lauer reported from Philadelphia, and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.

It's a significant lapse for the program known as Section 702, and even as President Donald Trump nominates a new national intelligence director more palatable to both Republicans and Democrats than his initial pick, it’s unclear how soon lawmakers — set for recess — would be able to revive the spy program.

Still, there is not expected to be an immediate drop-off in intelligence collection given that a court order from March certified that government surveillance powers under the law could remain in effect for another year.

Section 702 allows for sweeping powers to sift through foreign communications

The provision is a part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, and grants American spy agencies sweeping powers to collect and examine the communications of foreigners located outside the United States without first getting a warrant.

U.S. officials see the law as an invaluable national security tool that has helped disrupt potential acts of terrorism, yielded valuable insight into ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure and contributed to the killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri in a 2022 drone strike.

The law was passed in 2008 as an effort to codify key aspects of a predecessor spy program created by President George W. Bush's Republican administration.

Since then, officials across administrations of both major political parties have warned that without the law the government won't be able to collect crucial intelligence overseas.

The program's renewal historically has been contentious

The periodic need to reauthorize the law has prompted protracted debate in Congress well before this year, including discussion over whether additional guardrails are needed to protect the privacy of Americans and their personal data.

That's because when the government eavesdrops on foreigners abroad, it also sweeps up the communications of American citizens and others in the U.S. who are in contact with those surveillance targets.

Civil liberties advocates have raised concerns over revelations that FBI analysts over the years have improperly queried the vast repository of intelligence collected through the program for information about Americans, including related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters and the racial justice protests of 2020, as well as about state and federal political figures.

Some of those advocates have said the government should be required to have a warrant before examining communications collected from Americans. U.S. officials have said that a warrant would be legally unnecessary and overly cumbersome and that corrective measures have been implemented to reduce the number of improper queries.

Complicating the debate is the unlikely political alliances it has produced, uniting a coalition of lawmakers skeptical of government surveillance that includes both privacy-minded liberal Democrats and Republicans who still regard the intelligence community with suspicion over the investigation of ties between Russia and Trump's 2016 Republican presidential campaign.

The holdup this time is tied to pushback over acting intelligence pick Bill Pulte

Democrats balked when Trump picked Bill Pulte to serve as acting national intelligence director and refused to support a FISA extension until the selection was withdrawn. Pulte, a Trump loyalist with no known national security experience, has set off alarms by using his perch as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency to facilitate dubious mortgage fraud investigations of perceived Trump adversaries.

A House vote this week that would have temporarily extended the program collapsed, with 19 Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure, 198-218. A Senate effort to approve its own versions also failed.

After those votes, Trump announced he was tapping Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as his permanent pick for director of national intelligence, or DNI. The pick was warmly received on Capitol Hill, but it was not enough to break the impasse before Friday's scheduled expiration.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected” Clayton for decades and that had he been tapped a week ago, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”

“His intelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI,” Himes said.

The next steps for the spy powers provision

Before the congressional votes, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had warned the Trump administration to prepare “for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection." Other lawmakers since then have voiced similarly dire concerns.

The expiration is likely to be the first meaningful lapse of Section 702 since the law was created more than 15 years ago. In 2024, the Senate barely missed its midnight deadline before voting to approve a bill that was then signed by President Joe Biden, a Democrat, creating a brief lapse.

Despite this year's sunset of the statute, there's no expectation of any immediate halt to intelligence collection as the U.S. hosts a series of events this summer with potential national security concerns, including the World Cup and festivities surrounding the 250th birthday of the United States.

A March opinion from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court certified the program's renewal for another 12 months, meaning that Section 702's authority is expected to remain intact through then. Even so, it's conceivable that without congressional reauthorization, communications companies forced to provide data to the government under the law could try to cease that compliance and argue that they cannot be compelled to cooperate.

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Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

Earlier this month, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the government is scrapping its plans for the fund in the face of a fierce bipartisan backlash, and government attorneys have argued that lawsuits challenging the fund are now moot. But plaintiffs’ attorneys aren’t satisfied by Blanche’s assurances that the fund won’t move forward.

Neither was U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who ruled that the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” will remain blocked until further notice from the court.

“The (government's) mootness argument, in my view, doesn't go anywhere,” the judge said.

President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has not publicly and unequivocally endorsed the fund's cancellation. He has continued to express support for it in remarks to reporters.

Brinkema gave the parties a week to negotiate an agreement for Trump administration officials, including Blanche, to submit a sworn declaration that the administration won't revive the fund.

Brinkema previously agreed to temporarily block the administration from proceeding with the fund for at least two weeks. Her May 29 order was due to expire on Friday.

Trump's Republican administration created the fund to resolve his lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.

Plaintiffs who sued to block fund payouts argue that the government can’t legally divert taxpayer money into what they argue is a slush fund for compensating Trump’s allies.

In a separate case on Wednesday, a different judge in Washington, D.C., rejected a government watchdog’s parallel request for a court order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from forging ahead with the fund. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said he accepts Blanche’s representation that the fund is now moot.

Leon had asked Justice Department attorney Andrew Block why Blanche doesn’t formally rescind his May 18 order establishing the fund. Block said he didn’t know. He still didn’t have an answer to that question when Brinkema posed it two days later.

“It’s a huge gap in the record that we don’t have an answer to that question,” said Brinkema, who was nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat.

Block said he couldn't provide her with a “concrete answer” because he doesn't have direct access to Blanche.

“All I would be doing is speculating,” he told the judge.

In the Virginia case, attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward asked for an order to temporarily suspend the fund’s implementation and stop the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts from it.

The plaintiffs include a fired prosecutor and a college professor acquitted of assaulting federal agents at a protest. Also named as plaintiffs are the government watchdog Common Cause; the city of New Haven, Connecticut; and the National Abortion Federation, an association of abortion providers.

Even before the Trump administration said it was dropping the fund, the Justice Department did not form the five-member commission that would decide on payout criteria, so no money was paid out nor claims accepted.

Many of the Republican president’s allies are opposed to compensating rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. In May, however, Blanche wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Capitol rioters who engaged in violence could be eligible to apply for payments from the fund.

Trump issued mass pardons to Capitol rioters on his first day back in the White House last year. More than 1,500 people were charged in the Jan. 6 attack before Trump erased every case with his sweeping act of clemency.

Democracy Forward attorney Pooja Boisture said reviving the fund would irreparably harm the lawsuit's plaintiffs. A court order to block it wouldn't harm the government if the administration is truly abandoning it, as Blanche testified, Boisture told the judge, who agreed with that argument.

Over a seven-decade career, Hockney explored and reimagined classical portraiture, landscape painting and pop art, working in painting, collage, photography and digital drawing.

Hockney was born in the north of England but lived much of his life in Southern California, making its sun-drenched suburban views a major motif.

Later in life he returned to Europe, finding renewed inspiration in the wooded hills of his native county of Yorkshire and the fields and trees of France’s Normandy region. One of the most popular and critically lauded British artists of his generation, his works sold for record prices at auction.

Historian Simon Schama said it's no mystery why the appeal of his work endures.

“His work is admired — loved is not too strong a word — by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure,” Schama wrote in an essay accompanying a 2025 Hockney exhibition in Paris.

Hockney’s publicist, Erica Bolton, said he died at his home in London on Thursday, less than a month short of his 89th birthday. She did not give a cause of death.

He is survived by his longtime partner, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima; his great-nephew and studio assistant, Richard Hockney; his brothers Philip and John; and numerous nieces, nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews.

Hockney was an icon of the swinging 60s

With his trademark round glasses and bleached-blond hair, Hockney was a well-known figure in the swinging British and American art scenes of the 1960s, even before he reached the age of 30. His paintings were just as distinctive, many of them creating a dreamlike world of patterned light bouncing off water and windows, and human forms rendered in flattened, simplified shapes in matte acrylic paint.

“I’m excited every day,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1979. “London has lots of dreary parts, but I never find anything dreary in Los Angeles.”

Hockney was born July 9, 1937, in Bradford, a large industrial city whose chief export was woolen textiles. He spent his first two decades there before going to London’s Royal College of Art. He made an impact even before his graduation, and art dealer John Kasmin took him into his stable of artists in 1961.

His artistic influences ranged widely, including Renaissance portraits, 18th-century English artist William Hogarth's satirical drawings, 19th-century English painter J.M.W. Turner’s landscapes, Pablo Picasso’s experiments in Cubism and 20th-century American pop art.

He shared with other pop artists an interest in the polished surface of modern life. And, like Andy Warhol with his Brillo boxes and Campbell’s soup cans, Hockney occasionally incorporated advertising labels, such as a British Typhoo Tea box used in his 1961 “Tea Painting in an Illusionistic Style.”

He saw success early in his career

He told The New York Times in 1964 that he enjoyed the burgeoning pop art scene in New York but wasn’t sure he was part of it.

“I’m just an ordinary artist,” he said. “I do admire American pop — in fact it seems that everything fresh-looking and vital in England these days has been coming from the U.S.”

Nonetheless, he said in 1995 that he still considered himself “very much an artist in the English tradition.”

Hockney, who was out as a gay man long before it was common, explored erotic themes, giving youthful male bodies the same tender scrutiny that artists had been giving the female nude for centuries.

Early works like “We Two Boys Together Clinging” and “Two Men in a Shower” celebrated gay relationships when homosexuality was still illegal in Britain.

Early in his career, two of his drawings were bought for the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“The moment I first sold pictures to earn a living, I felt rich. I’ve been rich ever since,” he told The Associated Press in 1995. “I didn’t have much money, but I did what I wanted. ... You are a rich man if you do the things you want to do.”

In 2018, his 1972 painting “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” sold at a Christie’s auction for $90.3 million, at the time a record for a living artist.

While many of his best-known paintings had American scenes, he also tackled British subjects. He immortalized his parents in several portraits and his friends Ossie Clark and Celia Birtwell in “Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy,” a 1971 portrait voted one of Britain’s greatest paintings in a 2005 BBC poll.

Hockney's work went beyond drawing and painting

Like many traditional artists, he considering drawing a fundamental skill and lamented that it wasn’t taught as rigorously as it used to be.

“Human beings are the most interesting things we see, so they’re the hardest to draw,” he said in a 1996 AP interview.

Hockney also embraced other media, including printmaking, photo collage and video. He contributed costume and set designs for the theater and opera, including a celebrated production of “Tristan und Isolde” first staged in 1987 at the Los Angeles Opera.

When he took up photography, he fused genres, assembling individual photos into elaborate collages like “Pearblossom Highway, 11-18th April, 1986,” built up of individual views of a desert highway intersection.

“My photographer friends said it was a painting,” Hockney told the AP in 2001. “I said it’s a photograph; I used a camera.”

Later he began to draw on iPads, which became his favorite tool.

In the early 2000s, he looked afresh at the fields and forests of Yorkshire in a series of landscape paintings that combined bold color with minute attention to the texture of snow on a hillside or a blossom on a hawthorn hedge. They featured in a 2017 exhibition at Tate Britain in London that was visited by half a million people and moved to the Pompidou Center in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Hockney used the English landscape for inspiration in his design for a stained-glass window installed at Westminster Abbey in 2018 to celebrate the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II.

King Charles III paid tribute to “one of life’s true originals” as he mourned "a man whose irrepressible charm, talent and constant innovation will be most sorely missed, but whose dazzling creativity lives on in galleries and museums around the world.”

He worked right up until his death

In 2019, he moved to Normandy, where during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown he produced joyous iPad drawings of springtime for his friends. His message — “Do remember they can’t cancel the spring” — was emblazoned in neon across the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris when it hosted a huge Hockney exhibition that opened in April 2025.

Art critic Estelle Lovatt said Hockney “changed how we see the world.”

“He was one of the first artists to use a fax machine,” she told the AP. “He was one of the first artists to use the Polaroid camera to make collages. He was one of the first artists to use really, really vibrant colors.”

An unrepentant cigarette smoker who railed against government anti-smoking rules, Hockney complained when a poster for the 2025 exhibition was banned from the Paris Metro because it showed him holding a cigarette.

The announcement of his death from his publicist noted that Hockney was “a committed life-long and defiant smoker, expressing the pleasure in life it brought him. ... He smoked up to the end.”

Hockney had a minor stroke in 2012 and was increasingly deaf in later years — something he said improved his visual perception.

“If you lose one sense, you gain other senses, and I feel I could see space clearer,” he told the AP in 2017.

He never stopped working.

“It’s my work that keeps me young,” Hockney told the Sun newspaper in 2017. “I’ve been a professional painter for 60 years. Sixty years of getting up every day and doing exactly what I want to do.”

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Associated Press journalist Mustakim Hasnath contributed to this report.

For the second day in a row in the Canary Islands, the American pope insisted on the inherent dignity and rights of migrants and demanded they be welcomed and integrated into society, in some of his strongest comments on the politically divisive issue.

“Break those chains and free those you hold in bondage,” Leo said in a message to human traffickers that he delivered during a meeting with humanitarian aid organizations that help migrants on the island of Tenerife.

Leo was wrapping up his weeklong trip to Spain in the Spanish archipelago, which is closer to Africa than the Iberian Peninsula and is a key point of entry for migrants who make the perilous Atlantic crossing from West Africa.

His return to Rome was delayed when his Iberia charter flight developed a technical problem. King Felipe VI offered his private plane instead, and Leo accepted. The problem couldn't be fixed, so Iberia said it was sending a separate aircraft from Madrid to fetch the journalists and Vatican officials left behind in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

It was the first time in decades that a papal flight had experienced a problem so serious that it required the pope to deplane and change his travel plans.

The pope had been fulfilling a wish of Pope Francis to visit the islands to commemorate the thousands of lives lost at sea. He is also drawing attention to the Catholic Church’s biblically-mandated mantra to “welcome the stranger,” amid anti-migrant sentiment in Europe and the Trump administration's mass deportation program in his native United States.

During the encounter with aid groups in Tenerife, Leo implored receiving communities to integrate people fleeing war, poverty and climate change and spare them from the “silent shipwreck” of abandonment when they are left on the streets with nothing after surviving perilous crossings.

“A human conscience, and even more so a Christian conscience, cannot remain indifferent in the face of these graveyards of the sea, to the victims of shipwrecks and the lack of aid,” Leo said. “Every life lost on these routes is a failure for the human family.”

A deadly passage and a warning to traffickers

The Canary Islands have long been a stepping stone for migrants trying to reach Europe from West Africa and Morocco.

While people smugglers and human traffickers operate the Atlantic route, there are also many self-organized boats of migrants, including many former fishermen from Senegal who were left without income due to overfishing in recent years.

Migrant arrivals in the Canary Islands peaked in 2024 at nearly 47,000. They have fallen dramatically, with over 3,000 people landing there in the first five months of 2026.

Because of the vastness of the ocean and scarcity of rescue ships or monitoring, some experts consider the Atlantic route more deadly than the more well-known central Mediterranean smuggling route from Libya and Tunisia to Italy. Since 2020, several West African boats have been found in the Caribbean and Latin America with only dead bodies on board after drifting across the Atlantic, pushed by trade winds and currents.

Leo directed his remarks Friday to the criminal organizations and individual smugglers who organize these “death routes” to Europe. Such smugglers charge thousands of euros a person and often force their passengers into prostitution or other forms of black market labor by withholding their documents to pay off the debt.

“Stop. Repent,” Leo said in his message to traffickers, emphasizing each word in Spanish and drawing a sustained applause from the crowd. “For every life lost, every family deceived, every body subjugated, every woman threatened, every worker exploited, you will have to appear before divine justice.”

“Repent while there is still time, for God’s mercy can reach even the most hardened sinner, but it enters only through the narrow gate of truth, justice and conversion,” he said.

With his two-day visit to the Canary Islands, Leo has confirmed himself as the heir of Francis’ migration preaching, which was a priority of Francis' 12-year pontificate and often caused friction with U.S. and European powers.

History’s first U.S.-born pope has not only echoed Francis’ message and gestures, he has expanded and amplified them during a deeply symbolic visit. Upon arrival on Thursday, Leo threw a bouquet of flowers into the sea from a port nicknamed the “Dock of Shame” in 2020, when migrants were forced to live in squalor during a spike in their arrivals.

Leo’s gesture mimicked the one Francis made in 2013 when he visited Lampedusa, Sicily, another flashpoint in Europe’s migration drama, and denounced the “globalization of indifference” that the world showed asylum seekers.

But in a sign Leo is making the papacy his own, the 70-year-old pope has added a new gesture to his repertoire: After a onetime migrant offered his testimony during Leo's encounter Friday, the pope did the viral “6-7” hand gesture that's popular with young people as he joked alongside him. That earned the pope cheers and applause from the crowd.

Leo meets with migrants at reception center

In the Canary Islands and in remarks on the Spanish mainland, Leo reaffirmed the right of migrants to flee but also to stay home, demanding their countries of origin provide the necessary economic and security conditions. He shamed European countries that turn their back on migrants' plights, and said Christian cannot remain indifferent.

On Friday, he noted that for the Catholic Church, the process of integrating migrants into a community can become a chance at spreading the faith, “without imposing” it and in respect of the migrants’ own beliefs.

Leo opened the final day of his trip by visiting the Las Raíces migrant camp. Leo drew a round of applause when he went off-script to tell migrants that he would speak in French and English, the language spoken by many of the people living in the camp.

One woman told him of the desperation that drove her to leave her homeland and family, the trauma of the crossings, and her gratitude at finding safety and a new life.

“We aren't asking for privileges. We aren't asking for compassion. We just want respect, humanity and the chance to live with dignity,” said the woman, identified as Bousso Diouf.

Next month, on July 4, the American pope will spend U.S. Independence Day on the island of Lampedusa, where Francis in 2013 first denounced the “globalization of indifference” the world shows migrants.

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

As perfectly-timed as Morenatti's photo was, what happened after made it even more captivating. Its publication and a post by Morenatti on the social platform X set off a search by internet sleuths for the boy's parents, who believed they had witnessed a miracle and likewise were trying to find Morenatti.

A photo transcends a moment

The pope shares moments with individuals all the time, especially on trips abroad, but there was something about this particular instance that stirred emotion. Here's what Morenatti, a two-time Pulitzer-winning photographer, had to say about this extraordinary photo:

“In photojournalism, a photograph should do more than document an event. It should convey a feeling, evoke an emotion and hold the viewer’s attention long enough to spark a thought, even if only for a brief moment.”

“I have always believed that if a photograph moves me while I am making it, there is a good chance it will move others as well,” he added. “When that happens, the image transcends the simple recording of a moment and gains a deeper power.”

A family prays to Gaudí

When Montse Martínez, 36, and her husband first heard of Leo’s upcoming visit to the Sagrada Familia basilica, it felt like stars aligning. Such is their devotion to the Catalan architect who designed the church, Antoni Gaudí, that they named their newborn after him. For nine straight days they prayed before an image of Gaudí, who’s on the path to possible sainthood, asking him to grant them tickets to see the pope.

Their wish came true, and they were among the 40,000 faithful gathered for Leo’s prayer vigil on Tuesday. A security guard noticed their baby and handed him to the pope, who gave the crying infant a blessing. The guard came back for 7-year-old Joaquim.

“He was so moved that he could only smile, he couldn’t speak,” Martínez said of Joaquim’s few seconds with the pope in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday.

And it was at that precise moment that Morenatti snapped his photo.

How this photo was made

This photo was only possible because Morenatti felt compelled to seek out a unique angle.

“Covering a papal visit is often frustrating for photographers. We are usually confined to positions assigned by the organizers, with little freedom to move in search of better angles," he said. On this occasion, however, he managed to get past the security cordon and join a crowd gathered along one section of the route to watch the Popemobile pass by.

“Standing on a chair among the crowd, I could see the Popemobile approaching through a sea of waving hands and flags. Then I noticed a small gap in front of me — a narrow opening through which a photograph might be possible."

“My 50–150 mm f/2 lens was already zoomed to its maximum focal length and opened to its widest aperture. I quickly checked that both faces were sharp and that the frame was clean, with everything positioned neatly beneath the windshield of the Popemobile. I pressed the shutter for a few seconds and immediately sensed that I had the photograph I had been searching for,” he said. “A wave of emotion washed over me, followed by relief. The image I had imagined was finally there, safely stored on my memory card.”

The search for a family, and a photographer

Morenatti didn't just publish the photo for AP clients. He also posted the image to X, asking for help finding the boy's family so he could give them a printed copy.

“They had to see this photo. And I needed to tell them how moved I was by their son,” Morenatti said.

His post went viral, racking up more than half a million views and hundreds of comments. Even the Catholic Church in Barcelona chimed in, asking — in the local Catalan language — for people to assist. And one of the region's most-read newspapers wrote a story about the search.

Joaquim's parents were unaware of this campaign. But they had seen Morenatti's photo on the website of top local newspaper La Vanguardia and started working to track him down. They found his name with the help of ChatGPT and messaged him directly on Instagram. Morenatti responded and they spoke by phone, touched by the speed with which they found each other.

The family is thrilled they will soon obtain the printed image, which they will hang in their home in a village outside Barcelona.

“We haven’t figured out yet where to place it, but it will be in a very special place,” Martínez said, adding that she hopes it will help plant the seed of faith in her five children. Perhaps, she said, her son's short private audience with the pope could even be included in Gaudí's canonization dossier.

“For us, it’s a miracle of Antoni Gaudí. It’s a gift of God, who has these tender gestures of love for his children.”

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

The World Cup returns to the U.S. on Friday for the first time in 32 years after Trump threw himself into winning the bid to co-host the soccer tourney during his first term. He’ll be feted Sunday, his 80th birthday, during a UFC fight night that’s expected to draw thousands to the White House grounds. Hours after the final bout, he’s scheduled to jet off to the G7 summit in the French Alps for talks with several world leaders he’s been beefing with over war and tariffs.

But Trump set expectations even higher for the coming days when he announced Thursday that the U.S. and Iran could come to terms this weekend on an agreement that would set the pathway to end the three-month-old war that's been broadly unpopular with Americans and has rattled global oil markets. He said he plans to dispatch Vice President JD Vance to the signing of the agreement.

Trump has said on several occasions in recent weeks that he's on the cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted Friday on X that an agreement “has never been closer.” He gave no details, saying a final deal was still pending.

Still, Trump is claiming this time might be different.

The breakthrough comes after he threatened to escalate the conflict with more intense bombardment of Iran and by seizing control of Iran’s oil industry, including capturing Iran's vital Kharg Island oil facility. The president's threats followed back-and-forth strikes this week that had rendered a temporary ceasefire agreed to in early April all but meaningless.

“They’ve taken a pounding like very few people could take," Trump said in an Oval Office exchange with reporters as he explained why he was confident that, this time, a deal would come through. "And they want to make the deal a lot more than I do.”

Trump offered scant details about the settlement he says is taking shape, but told reporters that he believed the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was thought to have been wounded on the first day of the war and has not been seen in public since, is ready to sign off on the deal.

Underscoring the fragility of the talks, Trump on Friday lashed out at Iranian officials on social media and said: “They better get their act together, and FAST!”

The White House on Friday signaled that efforts on landing the deal continued. The contours of the emerging agreement call for Iran’s nuclear material to be destroyed and removed and its nuclear program to be dismantled, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Iran is expected to receive sanctions relief if a deal is reached, but Vance stressed its government would only receive “economic benefits” if it meets obligations.

“The president is going to get us a good outcome, one way or the other,” Vance said in a posting on X.

Trump's heightened threats are aimed at creating an off-ramp

With the conflict intensifying over the past week, Trump’s threat to escalate U.S. military action seemed in part aimed at demonstrating to the hawkish flank of his political base that he was willing to play “hardball” with the Iranians if they didn't come to a deal soon, said Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group.

Trump in March warned he would target Iran’s infrastructure and put American troops on Kharg Island before he ultimately backed down, and the two countries agreed to the temporary ceasefire.

Almost immediately after raising the idea again on social media Thursday, Trump appeared to back away. He called into a morning show on Fox News Channel and questioned whether Americans had the “stomach" for an option that would require putting U.S. troops in harm's way.

Hours later, Trump announced he had decided to cancel orders for “very hard” strikes on Iran and said a deal was close.

Vaez said even as Trump was posting on social media Thursday about escalating strikes, mediators from Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar had been making progress in their talks with Iran.

At the same time, Iran also may have reset the equation for Trump with its decision last weekend to attack Israel directly for the first time since the ceasefire after Israeli forces carried out military strikes on Iranian-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

With the move, Iran signaled that Israel could no longer bomb Lebanon without facing a meaningful reaction and in the process also raised the cost for the U.S. to follow through on its commitment to help safeguard Israel.

“It really does appear to me that Trump wants to bring this to an end, but his real challenge is that he’s looking for a victory lap and an exit ramp and those two things are not necessarily compatible,” Vaez said.

Trump expresses frustration with war narrative

Trump has been boasting since the early weeks of the conflict that he'd already won the war — much of the Islamic Republic's leadership has been killed in the bombings and the Iranian navy and air force have been severely degraded.

But Iran continues to effectively keep the Strait of Hormuz closed, choking a waterway through which about 20% of the world's oil supply passed before the war, and has yet to agree to restart negotiations with the U.S. over its concerns about Iran's nuclear program, the main reason Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave to justify launching the war.

But the real problem, Trump grumbled Thursday, was largely a public relations issue.

"They could wave the white flag of surrender. They could say: ‘We surrender, we surrender, we’re finished, we’ve had it. The United States is the greatest power, praise be to Allah,’" Trump said on Fox News. “They could say it loud and clear. And the fake news would say it was a great victory for Iran.”

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said Trump has grown impatient with Iran and the renewed strikes and threats on Kharg Island and Iran's energy sector were intended to get the negotiations back to the “right place.”

Polls show that the conflict is largely unpopular with Americans. McCaul said he believes the Iranians want to “try to drag this out as long as they can,” closer to the midterm elections in November, because they see that as being to their benefit.

War will be high on agenda at next week's G7

Deal or no deal, the war will loom large during next week's talks at the Group of Seven summit in bucolic Évian-les-Bains, France.

Trump has frequently criticized some of the group leaders — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — for resisting his calls to aid the U.S. and Israeli war effort.

The four leaders have also angered Trump by criticizing how he's gone about executing the war and his lack of consultation with allies before jumping into a conflict that's hurt the global economy as oil prices have surged.

But Trump said he is optimistic he could have an agreement before his talks with leaders in France.

“The strait will officially open as soon as we sign, which could be soon, very soon — maybe over the weekend in Europe,” Trump said.

___

Amiri reported from New York. AP writer Collin Binkley contributed reporting.

The suspect, Daniel Arnulfo Ceron, 22, is charged with murder for the death of Persia Amarra Conway, 33.

• FIRST REPORT: HPD homicide detectives investigating after body found in Brays Bayou

According to Houston police, people walking along 8950 Country Creek Drive, found Conway’s body in a stormwater catch basin adjacent to the bayou at 8:15 a.m. on May 25. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Further investigation identified Ceron as a person of interest in this case.

The Burglary/Theft Unit of the Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office subsequently arrested Ceron in connection with multiple burglaries in Fort Bend County.

Upon learning he was a person of interest in the HPD Homicide case, FBCSO Investigators contacted HPD, which in turn lead to a confession. He subsequently confessed to his role in Conway’s death during an interview.

• RELATED: Vigil planned for transgender woman whose body was found in Brays Bayou

On Wednesday, Ceron was arrested by the HPD Westside Division Gang Unit.

The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has classified the manner of death as a homicide. The HPD homicide investigation remains ongoing.

The 19-year-old Mboko, who is ranked No. 9, slipped and appeared to strain her knee during a match against Karolina Pliskova at the HSBC Championships. She retired from the match and later pulled out of the doubles event.

“Unfortunately, my fall on Wednesday caused an injury to the MCL on my left knee, which sadly means I will miss the remainder of the grass season. This unfortunately means Wimbledon too, a tournament I had been so looking forward to playing this year,” Mboko wrote on Instagram.

Williams and Mboko had won their opening doubles match Tuesday — in the 44-year-old Williams’ first professional match since the 2022 U.S. Open.

While trying to return a shot in the second set against Pliskova, Mboko slipped behind the baseline and immediately grabbed her left knee. She told a physiotherapist there was “no stability" in it.

In her Wimbledon debut last year, Mboko reached the second round where she lost to Hailey Baptiste.

Mboko gave a special thanks Friday to Williams “for giving me this incredible opportunity to play alongside you. I learnt so much from you and am so sorry our tournament came to an end prematurely, but I hope we can play together again soon and finish what we started.”

___

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

In a new blow to the Kremlin's narrative that Moscow is winning the 4-year-old war in Ukraine, Kyiv's forces have targeted supplies to Crimea, triggering the worst fuel crisis on the Black Sea peninsula since it was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

The persistent attacks reflect the growing intensity and efficiency of Ukraine’s drone strikes and have caught Russia off guard and struggling for a response.

As the country marks the Russia Day national holiday on Friday, signaling the start of summer vacations, the gas shortages are threatening to cause further disruptions to the tourism-dependent region with its beaches and resorts.

In a rare public acknowledgment, the Kremlin has recognized the scope of the problem and promised to address the issue quickly.

Ukraine's successes have highlighted its ability to inflict painful damage on Russia and change the course of the conflict while Moscow’s advances recently have ground to a near halt. On Thursday, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine reached its 1,569th day, surpassing the duration of World War I.

Crimea has special importance to Russia

Crimea has been a jewel in Russia’s imperial crown since it was seized from Turkic-speaking Tatars in the 18th century after Moscow defeated the Ottoman Empire.

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 when both republics were part of the USSR. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the diamond-shaped peninsula became part of newly independent Ukraine.

Russia kept a naval base in Sevastopol, and when a Moscow-friendly Ukrainian president was ousted by a popular uprising in February 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent in troops to overtake Crimea. Weeks later, Moscow annexed the peninsula following a referendum that most of the world refuses to recognize.

Soon afterward, a Moscow-backed separatist insurgency erupted in eastern Ukraine, and fighting there raged with varying intensity until the February 2022 invasion. Russian troops concentrated in Crimea quickly seized large parts of southern Ukraine early in the war and secured the land route to the peninsula.

Since early in the war, Ukraine has fired missiles and drones to try to dislodge Moscow’s hold on the territory. The Ukrainian military sank several Russian warships in the Black Sea and at their Crimean bases, crippling Moscow’s naval capability and forcing it to redeploy its fleet to Novorossiysk.

Ukraine also methodically targeted munitions depots, airfields and Putin’s prized asset, the Kerch Bridge linking Crimea to Russia. The span was struck by a truck bomb in October 2022 that killed five people, blew up two sections of the bridge and required months of repairs. More attacks on the bridge followed in 2023 and 2025.

Ukraine has attacked the land corridor to Crimea

Since the Kerch Bridge attacks, Russia has channeled most fuel and other supplies along the highway and railroad via the occupied territories along the Sea of Azov coast. Those shipments were interrupted last month, when Ukrainian drones hit fuel trucks on the highway that Moscow once deemed safe, leaving behind dozens of burning vehicles.

Other relentless Ukrainian strikes hit refineries, oil depots and pipelines deep inside Russia, hurting its oil exports and causing domestic fuel shortages.

The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War noted the synergy between the longer-range attacks and those disrupting supplies to Crimea and other occupied regions.

“The long-range strike campaign is therefore reducing Russia’s production capacity, while the midrange strike campaign is hurting Russia’s ability to transport the gasoline Russia is still able to produce,” it said in an analysis.

Making matters worse, Ukrainian drones this week repeatedly hit the Chonhar Bridge, which links mainland Ukraine and Crimea over a shallow strait. Authorities deployed pontoon bridges, but they have a limited capacity.

Oleksandr Nastenko, commander of the 475th Separate Assault Regiment, which hit the bridge, said the attacks on the crossings will continue to disrupt supplies to Russian forces operating in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region.

Natia Seskuria, of the Royal United Services Institute in London, observed that the latest attacks on Crimea’s supply lines have exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities and inflicted significant damage, allowing Ukraine to reclaim momentum.

Seskuria said Ukraine's attacks have both a political message and a strategic aim. They underscore that it has “the capabilities and intent to contest Russian control in Crimea," while also depriving Russia of an important logistics hub.

Crimea is seeing lines for fuel and gas rationing after Ukrainian strikes

It's not immediately clear how the fuel disruptions will affect Russian military operations, but residents of Crimea and other occupied territories are keenly feeling the blow.

The peninsula has had periodic fuel shortages from Ukrainian strikes before, but this crisis is the worst since its 2014 annexation.

At the end of May, authorities restricted the sale of gasoline to 20 liters (5 1/3 gallons) per vehicle owner per week using prepaid coupons. Those were snapped up immediately following their release on an official messaging app channel, and motorists lined up for hours, waiting to refuel.

Social networks have been abuzz with requests and advice on where to find fuel, and authorities launched a hotline for tourists who have found themselves trapped.

While fuel shipments over the Kerch Bridge long have been suspended for security reasons since the Ukrainian attacks, fuel also has been carried by ferries. Those shipments are expected to increase.

Some motorists bring their own gas over the bridge from the mainland, but they are restricted to carrying 100 liters (about 26 1/2 gallons) per vehicle. Some speculators are selling gas at double the market price.

Crimea attracted nearly 7 million tourists last year, and it had hoped to top that number this year. The business daily Kommersant reported that nearly 80% of hotel bookings were canceled in late May and early June.

Some hotels offered gasoline as a bonus for new bookings, offers that were quickly snapped up.

Some travelers were unsettled by a Ukrainian drone attack earlier this week on a passenger train traveling from Moscow to Crimea, injuring its driver and killing his assistant. That led to a brief suspension of service, with passengers taken by buses. An earlier attack on a commuter train in Crimea killed one person and injured three others.

The Kremlin pledges action

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov acknowledged the Crimean fuel shortages earlier this week and promised that “measures were being taken” to deal with them.

The Russian Defense Ministry has been silent about the Ukrainian attacks on the land corridor, while some war bloggers have harshly criticized the military for failing to anticipate the strikes and its slow response.

Some suggested military escorts for fuel trucks while others urged stepping up strikes on Ukrainian bridges, fuel storage sites and other infrastructure.

Amid the fuel crisis and the finger-pointing, Ukraine dealt another symbolic blow to Russia, striking a historic Sevastopol building that houses a huge panoramic painting that depicts the defense of the city during the 19th century Crimean War. The painting was effectively destroyed by fire during the attack, according to Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Kremlin-appointed head of Crimea's largest city.

Given Putin’s focus on Crimea, military blogger Valery Shiryayev said the attack would certainly anger the Russian leader.

“It’s hard to find another work of art, another part of national heritage, whose destruction would be as painful for Putin,” he said.

After hearing the horrendous way it affects livestock, many were left asking: What about my fur baby?

The parasitic fly targets animals with wounds and lays its eggs in any openings, leaving the eggs to hatch into maggots and burrow into the animal to feed on living flesh. It is notorious for devastating the cattle and livestock industry and, so far, cases have been caught in young calves and a goat in South Texas. However, a dog from New Mexico that visited Andrews County in West Texas also has a confirmed case of the screwworm.

“It’s not a time to panic,” said Guy Loneragan, dean and professor for the Texas Tech University School of Veterinary Medicine. “We have been preparing for this for almost 18 months or longer in many cases, and there is a plan to address it.”

Local, state and federal officials are working to track screwworm cases and containment efforts, including the release of sterile flies to mate with the screwworm so she will lay unfertilized eggs. Experts, including U.S. Agriculture Sec. Brooke Rollins, say the screwworm outbreak may continue for a few months at least.

Since the New World screwworm targets any warm-blooded mammal, including humans, pets are at risk of screwworm infestation.

Here are some things pet owners need to be aware of:

Can screwworms affect my cat or dog?

Short answer: yes. The screwworm can affect all warm-blooded animals and in different ways. For example, the screwworm tends to infect any open wound on an animal. For pet owners, this could be any regular, everyday wound, such as tick bites, small scrapes and cuts from being outside, or if their cat or dog gets into a fight with another animal.

It can also invade any openings on the body — the mouth, eyes, nose, even the reproductive areas. The screwworm will lay eggs on the edge of the wound or opening, which hatch quickly and become maggots. One female can lay 200-300 eggs at a time, and may lay up to 3,000 eggs during her 10- to 30-day lifespan.

“There are lots of areas that can become infested,” said Loneragan.

According to Texas A&M AgriLife, the maggots have sharp mouth hooks that can tear at the tissue of the animal it’s in. The wound becomes larger and deeper as more eggs hatch and larvae continue to feed on the animal. The infestation could be fatal for dogs and cats, depending on the location of the infestation and the severity, along with the timing of the diagnosis.

Loneragan said birds can also become infested, but it’s not very common.

“That’s beneficial to us because it means that migrating birds aren’t moving this around to the best of our knowledge,” Loneragan said.

What symptoms should I look for?

If an animal becomes infected, owners will know based on how the animal acts. The maggots feeding into their flesh causes discomfort and intense pain in some cases. There may be some discharge coming from the infected area that can help pet owners identify the infection.

“The animals will demonstrate they are uncomfortable or a wound is causing a lot of pain,” Loneragan said. “Discharge coming from the area is described as having a foul, putrid smell.”

Other signs include seeing animals bite or lick at their wounds, and unusual restlessness. In some cases, according to A&M AgriLife, the animal may become aggressive or lethargic from irritability.

When should I take my pet to see a veterinarian?

Pet owners who suspect a case in their cats or dogs should contact their local veterinarian and the Texas Animal Health Commission right away.

Loneragan said the Food and Drug Administration has made certain medicines available, including antiparasitic chewable tablets or topical solutions, to veterinarians to treat both dogs and cats. In the rare case that either a wild bird or a pet bird does get infected by the screwworm, there are FDA-approved antiseptic products to treat them too.

Is screwworm treatable?

Yes, as long as the infection is caught and treated early. Loneragan said that pet owners need to report any suspicions or concerns they have to their veterinarian. The veterinarian can come up with a treatment plan that best fits the animal, the type of wound they have, and where it is.

“Treatment generally will involve removing the larvae, then using a product that would kill any remaining larvae that is too small to see or can’t be seen,” Loneragan said.

Larvicides and insecticides are two products that help veterinarians treat the infections after the maggots are removed. Screwworm may seem scary, especially given its prominence in the media, but Loneragan said the parasite is treatable. Moreover, veterinarians have tools available to treat a wide variety of animals, he said.

“Ultimately, the sooner you can get to the veterinarian, there are excellent treatment options they can prescribe and implement,” Loneragan said.

How can I keep my pets safe?

The most vital thing pet owners can do during this screwworm outbreak is to be extra vigilant and check their animals every day. Owners should inspect their pets for any wounds or openings that could be vulnerable to the screwworm. Keep pets clean and make sure there aren’t any insects, flies or maggots laying on them.

Loneragan said this is also an important time to establish a good relationship with your local veterinarian, if you don’t have one already. Veterinarians will help diagnose and report cases, which will also help officials track where the screwworm is. Many of the treatments also have to be prescribed by a veterinarian.

Texas A&M AgriLife recommends that if a pet is near the U.S.-Mexico border, or traveling to or from Latin America, then that pet should be monitored more regularly. It’s also recommended to use flea, tick and mite medications as needed for parasite management.

There are some scenarios, such as the screwworm flying inside a home, that can only be avoided through fly control techniques.

“They’re a fly. They’re going to move around and can fly between spaces or in spaces,” Loneragan said. “Implement the usual fly control in the house you would normally do, whether it’s a fly swatter or whatever. At that stage, you would be going after all flies.”

Is it contagious?

The infection from a New World screwworm is not contagious like the common cold. Loneragan said just because one pet has it does not necessarily mean another in the house might get it.

However, owners should be extra vigilant if they have multiple pets. For example, a household with more than one dog might have a situation where the dogs fight and scratch each other.

“Now you’ve got two dogs that you really ought to pay close attention to while those wounds are healing,” Loneragan said.

What about stray animals and wildlife?

Stray animals are more susceptible to open wounds and are vulnerable because they live outside, so it’s important that caretakers of stray cats or dogs are also checking for signs of an infection. Similar to inside pets, stray animals will show pain or may have discharge around the wound. If any symptoms are found, Loneragan says to call the local animal control to report it.

“Those things ought to be brought to the attention of animal control very quickly,” Loneragan said. “They can work with the veterinarians they usually do to address it and can implement the same sort of treatment plans if appropriate.”

If you suspect a case of the screwworm in wildlife, don’t approach the animal any closer than 25 yards and report the sighting to the local Texas Parks and Wildlife Department or to the Texas Animal Health Commission. According to A&M AgriLife, commonly infested areas of wildlife include the head and neck, along with the umbilical region for newborn animals. Deer are also susceptible to infestation where their antlers shed from their skull or if their antlers are damaged while they grow.

Birthing season for wildlife can also put female animals and their young at risk for infection, causing high mortality for both. Screwworm also has the potential to severely reduce the population of large mammals, such as the white-tailed deer, mule deer and bighorn sheep.

Randall, who first became involved in GOP politics nearly two decades ago, campaigned on her accomplishments as the party’s second-in-command during the last two years, touting financial wins like the return of certain convention corporate sponsors and her support for grassroots members, pointing to volunteer training she led. 

George conceded in a social media post shortly before Friday’s general session at the convention began.

“While this race has come to an end, our mission continues,” he said. “Now is the time to come together, unite behind our Republican nominees, support the entire Republican ticket in November, advance our legislative priorities in the next session, and continue standing firmly for the conservative principles outlined in our platform.”

George’s tenure came to an end after a memorable two-year run that saw the party claim long-sought legislative victories in Austin, including private school vouchers and a variety of socially conservative new laws. That productivity, driven by a hard-right turn in the Texas House, reduced the infighting that has plagued the Texas GOP in recent years. Attorney General Ken Paxton led a long list of elected officials and activists lining up behind George, while Randall touted a much narrower stable of backers.

Yet as the convention kicked off in earnest Thursday, the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston remained sparsely populated, with many of the over 7,000 registered delegates appearing to skip the event despite Gov. Greg Abbott’s incentive program for county parties to fill their allotted delegate seats. The convention also fell just before FIFA World Cup games kicked off in Houston, driving up the cost of lodging in a city that was hundreds of miles from many would-be delegates’ home towns.

Amid the grassroots apathy, George also faced criticism earlier this week from a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, the party’s governing board, who claimed the party was taking a $651,000 loss to run the convention. In a response, George said the deficit was closer to $100,000 and would end up in the black “when you factor in the registrations that will be paid over the next couple of days.” But that did not appear to allay concerns about the state of the party’s finances heading into the fall midterms.

Randall’s victory arrives at a crucial juncture for the party, as it tries to write its next chapter and unite voters behind Paxton, the Senate nominee who defeated incumbent John Cornyn after a bruising primary that has left behind scars within the GOP. 

Trey Trainor, a longtime GOP operative who was tapped to lead the convention’s platform committee, which drafts the party’s planks, said George’s ousting stemmed from financial woes and a struggle to engage members. 

“Look, I think everybody’s incredibly nervous about what happened during the primaries,” Trainor said. “They see that the Democrat Party is incredibly engaged. I think the low turnout that you see here shows some apathy of Republican voters, and they really look to the party leadership to create that enthusiasm and drive people to the polls.”

The removal of George, the Texas GOP’s first Indian American chair, also arrived at a time when the party is experiencing a wave of anti-Indian sentiment, particularly in George’s backyard of North Texas. Much of the same faction that has targeted Muslims for what they see as the proliferation of Sharia law is also raising alarm about the state’s fast-growing Indian community, urging a halt to legal immigration to combat alleged H-1B visa exploitation and labor competition. 

George regularly draws racist replies to his social media posts, even when pushing for conservative priorities such as abolishing the H-1B visa program; yet, delegates at the convention did not indicate that topic surfaced in deliberations about the chair election.

The mix of headwinds facing George created the opening for Randall and her running mate, David Covey, a hard-right activist who previously served on the state party’s governing board and unsuccessfully ran against former House Speaker Dade Phelan of Beaumont in 2024.

Some of Randall’s supporters also charged that the incumbent chair has been too welcoming to establishment Republicans, after he warmed up to Phelan’s successor, House Speaker Dustin Burrows, following initial reservations over his election aided by Democrats. Burrows was set to address the convention — the first sitting speaker ever to do so — Friday afternoon.

Musk, already the world's richest man, could become its first trillionaire. Ahead of the first trade, Forbes puts Musk's net worth at $981 billion.

SpaceX is likely to become the biggest IPO ever, with proceeds of around $75 billion. SpaceX hopes to become the first company to send people to Mars. In fact, part of Musk’s future compensation depends on SpaceX eventually establishing a colony of at least 1 million people on the red planet.

Why SpaceX is going public now

In a video conference on Musk's social media platform X, he told JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon that people have suggested for the last 10 years that he take SpaceX public. He's doing it now because the company plans to put 100,000 next-generation Starlink satellites into orbit. Deploying AI data centers in space is a “massive new growth base and you need capital for that,” he said.

Going public provides access to the capital that SpaceX needs. But it also exposes it to more scrutiny from shareholders and more regulatory oversight. That includes filing quarterly financial reports, which critics say incentivizes short-term thinking over longer-term planning and creates unnecessary costs for a company. Securities regulators are currently soliciting public comment on a proposal to require public companies to file the financial reports only twice every year.

How the IPO impacts the company

Musk will hold the majority of a special class of shares, giving him control over decisions related to company strategy, finances and personnel. On the latter, because of his ownership of most of these Class B shares, the only person who can fire Musk as CEO ... is Musk.

The company credits Musk with being the “driving force” behind its growth, innovation and success. But what happens if Musk is no longer in the picture? SpaceX warns that the loss of Musk could disrupt its ability to execute its strategy as well as hurt its “reputation and relationships with customers, partners and other stakeholders.”

The company also warns that finding a replacement with the same skills and experience as Musk would be time-consuming, if not nearly impossible. As Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote Wednesday, “At the end of the day Musk is SpaceX and SpaceX is Musk.”

Some big investors are unhappy. Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying some of the provisions in its IPO, including the “super voting shares,” mandatory arbitration of shareholder claims instead of the possibility of lawsuits and how much power Musk will hold over the company.

They said they could become owners of SpaceX stock because they hold index funds, which automatically buy stocks after they get included in certain indexes.

What could make or break SpaceX

Currently in the test phase, the gigantic reusable Starship rocket is key to SpaceX realizing Musk's ambitions. Much of the commercial space business hinges on SpaceX developing Starship’s capability to be fully reusable and hearty enough for a quick turnaround between flights. If that doesn't happen, SpaceX warns that putting data centers and satellites in space will take longer and cost more money, meaning it risks customers bailing on the company.

Analysts say that by pioneering reusable rockets, SpaceX has established a clear lead on competitors such as Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The Starlink satellite business competes with, among others, AST SpaceMobile – which is relying on a SpaceX rocket to send its latest generation of satellites into orbit next week.

The prospectus filed last week says SpaceX’s biggest potential market is the sale of business-oriented artificial intelligence products designed to transform how people get work done. It’s an opportunity SpaceX predicts would be worth $22.7 trillion if it could somehow dominate rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI and Microsoft in a highly competitive industry. But the prospectus shows no clear path to profitability for the xAI business, which merged with SpaceX earlier this year.

Why Wall Street is paying attention

If the SpaceX IPO is as successful, the stock could quickly join the Nasdaq 100, a widely followed index that tracks the 100 largest non-financial companies in the composite. That's important because some popular funds, such as the $460 billion QQQ exchange-traded fund, mimic the index and will automatically buy whatever is listed in the index.

Nasdaq recently changed its rules to allow select companies to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, on the other hand, is sticking to established and more traditional thresholds that will not allow SpaceX or other companies with gargantuan IPOs faster entry into its S&P 500 index. That means even high-profile companies will still need to wait for their stocks to trade a full 12 months before they can enter the index.

Companies want to be in the S&P 500 in particular because it's arguably the most important index on Wall Street, with trillions of dollars either mimicking it exactly or benchmarked against it. Vanguard's VOO fund that tracks the S&P 500 has roughly $950 billion invested in it, for example.

The justices decided not to lift an injunction blocking Alabama from carrying out what would have been the nation’s ninth execution by nitrogen gas, rejecting a last-minute legal battle by the state as it sought to carry out the sentence in the evening. A spokesperson for the Alabama Department of Corrections said the execution was off for the evening and the state would not try another method.

The high court voted 6-3 and did not explain its reasoning. Three of the conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch — said they would grant Alabama’s request to lift the injunction and let the execution go forward.

In a statement the legal team for Lee, 49, hailed the decision and noted that his jury had voted for a sentence of life, which a judge overruled.

“His jury voted for life. Two courts ruled the method unconstitutional. Today, the Constitution prevailed,” the statement said. “Now Governor Ivey can finish what the jury started: restore the jury’s verdict of life without parole.”

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall promised the families of the victims that authorities will continue to seek justice, saying in a statement: “The State is prepared to do whatever is necessary to see Mr. Lee’s lawful sentence carried out.”

“Tonight’s ruling is a miscarriage of justice, not for us, but for Jimmy Ellis and Elaine Thompson, who Jeffery Lee brutally and senselessly murdered and left on the floor of their place of business,” Marshall said. “Tonight I am also keeping their families in mind, many of whom were prepared to witness the final act of justice be served.”

Prison officials said Lee did not request a final meal Thursday but had potato chips, Skittles, water and a Sprite in the hours ahead of his possible execution.

The ruling was at least a temporary, rare victory for opponents of capital punishment in a state that has had one of the busiest death chambers in the country. And it capped an extraordinary legal back-and-forth over the humaneness of nitrogen gas as an execution method.

Legal challenge wended its way through the courts

Lee filed a lawsuit challenging Alabama’s protocol as a violation of the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and U.S. District Judge Emily Marks ruled the method constitutional in May.

But a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed her decision Monday, saying the three minutes it could take for an inmate to lose awareness is an “intolerable” time frame “given the suffering that would likely take place under Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol.”

Marks reevaluated the case and ruled again Tuesday saying Lee had shown “that the protocol constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment.” The state appealed to the Supreme Court.

“If that ruling stands, it would be unprecedented in American history. Not only does it portend the first-ever permanent ban on a legislatively enacted method, but it would expand the concept of cruelty well beyond the bounds of the Eighth Amendment,” lawyers with the Alabama Attorney General’s Office wrote.

Lee’s lawyers asked the high court to keep the execution on hold, saying in a response that Alabama was asking it to intervene at the eleventh hour “to allow an execution that has been found unconstitutional to proceed.”

The decision blocks Lee’s execution in the immediate future, but it is unclear how long the reprieve will last. The state maintains that the nitrogen method is constitutional.

Marks did not block the state from executing Lee with one of Alabama’s other approved methods, the electric chair or lethal injection.

Nitrogen executions introduced in the state 2 years ago

Alabama began using nitrogen gas to carry out some executions in 2024. The method involves strapping a respirator to a person’s face and replacing breathable air with pure nitrogen gas, causing death from lack of oxygen.

Nitrogen has been used in eight executions in the United States — seven times in Alabama and once in Louisiana. Lee was scheduled to be the ninth.

During the previous Alabama nitrogen executions, the inmates shook, pulled at the restraints and exhibited labored breathing. During the state’s last execution by nitrogen gas, 30 minutes elapsed between Anthony Boyd exhibiting signs of being impacted by the gas and state officials closing the curtain to the viewing room to signal the execution was complete.

The state has maintained that the method is constitutional and causes no more suffering than other execution methods.

Lee, who is currently housed at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, was convicted of two counts of capital murder for killing Ellis and Thompson while robbing a pawnshop on Dec. 12, 1998.

Prosecutors said Lee entered Jimmy’s Pawnshop with a sawed-off shotgun and shot Ellis, the owner, and Thompson, an employee.

Alabama no longer allows judicial overrides in capital cases

A jury voted 7-5 to give Lee a sentence of life imprisonment. However a judge overrode that and sentenced him to death.

Alabama ended the practice of judicial override in 2017 and no longer allows a judge to disregard a jury’s sentencing decision in death penalty cases.

Bestselling author John Grisham called on Gov. Kay Ivey to honor the jury's decision and commute Lee's sentence to life without parole.

“The practice of a judge overriding a jury was declared unconstitutional and so indefensible that Alabama itself abolished it in 2017,” Grisham said in a statement. “Jeffery Lee’s jury made its decision, the Alabama Legislature later agreed that juries, not judges, should decide life or death sentences.”

Ivey, for her part, said Thursday night: “While I am disappointed the Supreme Court did not allow the state to proceed with Lee’s chosen method of execution, I remain committed to ensuring that justice is ultimately served for his victims.”

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This story was first published June 11, 2026. It was updated June 12, 2026, to correct the judge's ruling on execution methods. The judge did not block the use of the electric chair or lethal injection.

Elotes Bravos, which got its start selling the popular Mexican street corn in Hempstead and Houston, landed a coveted vendor spot at FIFA Fan Fest in EaDo — Houston’s East Downtown neighborhood — during the FIFA World Cup 2026.

• Houston survival guide for FIFA Fan Festival

Mexican fans at FIFA Fan Fest on Thursday during the Mexico–South Africa match loved the nostalgic snack.

“I’ve been craving this for a week — it’s amazing to be able to try this here,” said one soccer fan at the Elotes Bravos truck at Fan Fest.

For the family behind it, the moment is almost too big to believe.

“This is all new to us,” said William Mandujano, operations manager and family member at Elotes Bravos. “We’re stepping into a new world we never thought of being part of, which we’re grateful that we’re in it.”

‘Still not hitting us straight’

For Mandujano of Elotes Bravos, the milestone is still sinking in. “So being at this stage where we’re at with our family business, it’s still not hitting us straight,” Mandujano said.

His mother, Rosalia Bravo, co-founded Elotes Bravos in 2017. Bravo said that being part of FIFA, in some shape or form, was not on her bucket list.

“Es una emocion que no se puede explicar, pero es recordar todos los desvelos, todos los sacrificios, andar mucho en la calle, y ver esto te comforta que tu trabajo no a sido en vano,” Bravo said.

It’s a feeling Rosalia told KPRC 2 she can’t explain, but it brings her back to the long nights and sacrifices.

Journey to FIFA

The business really hit its stride during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the family began expanding into Houston markets, festivals and catering events. By 2023, Elotes Bravos had secured a vendor contract at Shell Energy Stadium. The following year, the City of Houston honored the business with a proclamation declaring Dia del Elote.

• Mexico gets off to roaring World Cup start with a 2-0 win over South Africa in the opening match

In 2025, the family landed a vendor contract at Texas A&M’s Kyle Field — one of the largest stadiums in the country.

In 2026, Elotes Bravos secured its spot as one of the vendors at FIFA Fan Fest in Houston. Still, Rosalia never imagined it would come to this. Her initial reaction said it all: “No, never … no idea.”

Landing a vendor spot at Fan Fest not easy

Landing a vendor spot at Fan Fest did not happen overnight. The process took Elotes Bravos more than a year, and the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce helped guide the family every step of the way.

“We’ve coached along the way, they did their due diligence, and they are here. It’s living proof of the American dream,” said Laura Murillo, president of the Houston Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Mandujano said meeting the event’s standards was no small feat.

“There’s a lot of requirements, a lot of strict rules that they have that we have to follow,” he said.

Rosalia also reflected on what the opportunity means going forward, saying in Spanish that it is a chance to continue growing with the community once more.

The protest was held after the prices of some fuel jumped 32% this week for the first time since the United States launched its war against Iran more than three months ago.

About 1,500 protesters attempted to march toward the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, a key Jakarta landmark, after Friday prayers. Anti-riot police blocked many of them from reaching the site, which has long been off-limits for rallies because of its location at the heart of the city's main business and commercial district.

More than 6,000 police and soldiers were deployed to secure key sites, including the presidential palace, and directed the protesters toward areas near the parliament building and the National Monument park. But many demonstrators resisted, saying they wanted to hold their protest in the business district due to their concerns about economic conditions.

“People will not be silent, they will speak out when they cannot eat, cannot work, cannot have a decent life. That is the simple reason why we are taking to the streets today,” said Jordan, a student protester who goes by a single name.

Some protesters forcefully kicked a line of large black metal police shields in an attempt to break through a strong barricade of anti-riot officers, others chanting “Revolution!”

Amid the signs of economic pressure, Indonesia’s rupiah currency has also come under pressure recently, hitting a historic low of 18,000 rupiah to the U.S. dollar earlier this month.

Demonstrators demanded cuts to what they called wasteful state spending, lower prices for fuel and staple goods, and a halt to major government programs such as a free meals program and a plan to revitalize rural areas.

The food program, costing about 268 trillion rupiah ($15 billion) for this year alone, is aimed at alleviating poverty and malnutrition. Prabowo recently fired the head of the program amid a massive graft probe.

They also called for an end to what they described as the growing role of the military in civilian affairs, something they view as a threat to the young democracy.

“The government is in denial about the current situation," said Yatalathof Ma’shum Imawan, who chairs the student organization that organized the rally. “We urge Prabowo to have the courage to acknowledge his mistake and stop denying it."

Friday’s demonstration marks one of the largest student mobilizations since nationwide protests erupted last August, when thousands took to the streets and clashes with security forces left at least 13 people dead.

The noisy demonstrators dispersed peacefully as night fell.

Similar protests were also held in other cities, including West Java's Bandung city and in Pontianak, a city on Borneo island.

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Associated Press journalists Edna Tarigan and Dita Alangkara in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

According to Downdetector, reports of problems with Facebook and Instagram began spiking around 9:30 a.m. ET, with tens of thousands of users reporting issues ranging from login failures to blank screens and error messages.

Many users reported being unexpectedly logged out of their accounts and receiving “query error” or “unexpected error” messages when attempting to log back in. Others said their feeds would not load or that Messenger was not functioning properly.

The outage appeared to affect multiple Meta-owned platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Users also took to Reddit and X, formerly Twitter, to confirm they were experiencing similar problems.

Meta acknowledged the issue Friday morning.

“We’re aware people are currently having trouble accessing our services. We’re working on it,” Meta communications executive Andy Stone said in a post on X.

The cause of the outage was not immediately known.

Downdetector, which tracks service disruptions through user-submitted reports and other data sources, showed complaints coming from users across the United States and several other countries.

This is a developing story and will be updated as more information becomes available.

Pino defeated attorney Tiffany Burress in the northern New Jersey district, where Pou is seeking a second term. The Associated Press called the race for Pino on Friday.

The district is being watched closely in this year's hotly contested midterm elections, with Republicans in particular drawing a target on the longtime Democratic-held seat.

The GOP saw an opportunity there after the 2024 election was closer than expected and Donald Trump won in places where his party hadn’t been victorious for decades.

Pino, a former Democrat, said she left the party for the GOP and criticized Democrats in the campaign for their longtime control in the region.

In a statement, Pino emphasized that she would work for those who disagree with her sometimes.

“I extend a hand to everyone across our district — Republicans, Independents, and Democrats, as well as those who have never voted before,” she said.

Pino had been critical of the slow pace of vote counting in her district, where the election ended June 2, and across the country.

“In Congress, I will help lead the fight to secure our elections,” Pino said in a statement this week. “We need mandatory Voter ID nationwide and strict limits on late mail-in voting."

In a statement Friday, Burress said she was grateful to her supporters but stopped short of backing Pino.

Pou is in her first term in the House, where she was elected after years in the state Legislature, succeeding longtime Democrat Bill Pascrell Jr., who died in 2024.

Each one of the 49 people killed, now known as the 49 angels, on June 12, 2016, left behind a legacy.

To honor their memories, News 6 journalists compiled stories about every victim through interviews, news articles and social media. All 49 articles can be found at ClickOrlando.com/Pulse49.

[WATCH: News 6 special on Pulse]

Before they were victims, the 49 were mothers, fathers, recent graduates, veterans, breast cancer survivors, dreamers, artists, and so much more. Here are some of the stories.

Those stories include 33-year-old Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala’s who was known as “Rody” by friends. Ayala served as the platelet supervisor at OneBlood, the center that collected blood donations for many Pulse shooting survivors.

“He was the sweetest, most genuine person. (He) cared for everyone and would do anything for you, and he’ll be sorely missed here,” Kelly Gollert, the director of manufacturing for OneBlood, said after his death.

Brenda Marquez McCool, 49, was a mother to 11 children, beat cancer twice and often went dancing at the Pulse nightclub with her son. She was at the nightclub with her son, Isaiah Henderson, on June 12, 2016.

More than anything, Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19, dreamed of traveling the world after he finished a degree in accounting.

“He would just look at you and laugh,” his mother, Myrlande Bébé, said. “He loves to smile. He was just fun.”

Two days after the shooting, Luis S. Vielma’s co-workers and friends at Universal Studios Orlando raised their wands near the Hogwarts castle in the 22-year-old’s honor. He was studying to be a physical therapy assistant at Seminole State College.

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano-Rosado, 35, was at home on stage. A video on YouTube viewed thousands of times shows Rosado gracefully gliding across the stage of Orlando’s Parliament House in a leather cape and top hat, to the delight of the audience.

Amanda Lizzette Alvear Benabe dreamed of becoming a nurse and helping to deliver babies. She inspired thousands on Instagram by documenting her weight loss journey.

Antonio Brown, 29, was a captain in the U.S. Army Reserve who spent a year serving in Kuwait and won several awards. He was two months away from getting his doctorate when he was killed.

To read about all 49 angels click here.

The analysis from researchers at The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows that while about half of independents without a college education had a positive view of Trump around the 2024 election, his approval with that group fell to about one-quarter this spring. That shift has erased the large education gap that existed among independents in the months before Trump took office for his second term, with independents now holding similarly negative views of the president regardless of their level of education.

The analysis was conducted by aggregating nearly two dozen AP-NORC polls conducted between July 2024 and April 2026, allowing for a deeper look at how support for Trump changed during several distinct periods, including the last six months of 2024, the first 100 days of Trump's presidency, the summer of 2025 when the Big Beautiful Bill passed, last fall's government shutdown and the beginning of the Iran war.

The compiled polling shows a steady decline among independents throughout Trump’s second term. His standing has also dropped among several small but important groups that moved toward him in the 2024 presidential election, including Black and Hispanic independents.

More Americans than ever consider themselves independents, and they are among the groups that shifted toward Trump in the 2024 presidential election. Any erosion in that support could signal trouble for Trump and Republicans headed into the midterm elections, which are often seen as reflection of how voters feel about their governing party.

Tafari Torres, a senior research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis, noted that while Democrats' and Republicans' views of Trump have held largely steady in his second term, independents' opinions are still moving. “Independents are, broadly, the people who are reacting to the events and dropping in their support,” he said.

Dramatic declines during Trump's first 100 days

Trump's return to the White House was fueled, in part, by independent voters who saw him as the stronger candidate on key issues like the economy. The new analysis, which looks at Trump's favorability and presidential approval ratings, shows that once he took the helm, their views soured quickly.

Independents without a college degree had a much more positive view of Trump than college-educated independents did during and just after the 2024 election, but that shifted in the first few months of his term. Positive views of Trump among independents without a college degree fell from 48% in the months before he returned to office to 31% in polling conducted during Trump’s first 100 days back in office. Those warm views declined even further, to about one-quarter, during the government shutdown and the early months of 2026.

Only about 3 in 10 college-educated independents, by contrast, had a positive view of Trump before he returned to office, making their drop to about one-quarter much less dramatic.

“The decline among no-college independents was steeper and it was greater than the slight decline in college independents," said Sean Collins, a research associate at NORC who co-authored the analysis. "That was surprising, especially given, when you think of Trump's coalitions, those without college degrees is usually one of the ones that that stands out.”

Hispanic, younger independents grow disenchanted

Americans without a college degree have long been a key part of Trump's coalition. But Trump also won in 2024 by making gains among groups that tend to support Democrats, including Hispanic adults.

About 4 in 10 independent voters — 42% — voted for Trump in 2024, up from 37% in the 2020 presidential election. Independent voters without a college degree were a little more likely to back Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris in the last election, according to AP VoteCast, and Hispanic independents were about evenly split between the two.

The picture looks much bleaker for the president now.

Nearly half of Hispanic independents — 46% — saw Trump favorably in the polling conducted around the presidential election. His approval among these adults dropped quickly in his second term, falling as low as 15% during last fall's government shutdown before landing around one-quarter in the spring.

Younger independents also became less supportive of the president, while independents age 60 and older remained mostly stable. Other AP-NORC polling has pointed to Trump losing ground among younger Republicans over inflation concerns and Hispanic Americans growing increasingly discontented.

“The gains Trump appeared to make during the election, I don’t know if they’re sticking around. He’s experienced some significant shifts among those people,” Torres said. “From our research, they don’t appear to be permanent gains.”

The economy is frustrating many independents

Polling suggests that the economy is at the root of many Americans' frustrations with Trump, including independents.

About half of independents who supported Trump in 2024 said inflation was the single most important factor for their vote, AP VoteCast found, and most expressed high levels of concern about the cost of food and gas.

More than a year into Trump's second term, inflation remains high, fueled by gas prices that remain elevated as the Iran war continues. An AP-NORC poll conducted in April found that about 3 in 10 independents were “extremely” or “very” concerned about being able to afford groceries in the last few months, and a similar share were worried about being able to afford gas.

The analysis found that Americans' views of the U.S. economy tend to align with their view of the president. Those with negative views of the country's economy tended to have negative views of Trump, and about 8 in 10 independents described the U.S. economy this spring as poor.

The latest AP-NORC polling from May found that only about 3 in 10 independents approve of how Trump is handling the economy, in line with the roughly 3 in 10 who said that at the beginning of his second term. The April poll found only about 1 in 10 independents — 12% — approved of how Trump was handling the cost of living.

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This AP-NORC analysis of 4,836 independents was conducted over 21 AP-NORC surveys, blocked into five time periods before and during President Donald Trump's second term. Independents are classified as panelists who do not select that they identify with or lean toward either the Democratic or Republican Party.