Shares in SpaceX jumped 24% after opening for trading at noon 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 at $150 a share, then jumped to around $168 around 2:.20 p.m. ET. That price gave the company a market value of $2.2 trillion. Musk, who also is a major shareholder and the CEO of Tesla, is now worth an estimated $1.2 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 despite SpaceX losing billions of dollars a year.

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.

The company trades under the symbol “SPCX.”

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

Wall Street bankers that helped take SpaceX public are 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" because of SpaceX's unproven technology and massive capital needs.

They estimate 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.

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AP reporters Stan Choe and Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed from New York and reporter Matt O'Brien contributed from Providence.

The S&P 500 added 0.4% and was heading toward the finish of its third winning week in the last four. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 382 points, or 0.8%, as of 2:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher.

Stocks got a lift from a 3.4% drop for the price of Brent crude oil to $87.29 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 soared 24.3% in its first day of trading. That gave Elon Musk's rocket company a total value of $1.9 trillion, making it bigger than such behemoths as Broadcom, Tesla or Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook.

AI-related stocks otherwise were mixed following their roller-coaster moves over the last week. Broadcom's drop of 1.3% was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500, but CoreWeave jumped 8.1% after learning it will join the Nasdaq 100 index later this month.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Adobe dropped 7.5% despite reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

Its stock has lost 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.

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 4.47% 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.

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.

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.

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:

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 onto 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 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Ahead of G7, Carney softens tone toward Trump with trade talks at stake

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney became a symbol of middle power resistance after a celebrated speech earlier this year, but he is expected to be more muted in his criticism of Trump at an upcoming summit in Europe.

Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, helped make him an international political star in January, when he declared the global rules-based order over and condemned coercion by great powers on smaller countries. The prime minister received widespread praise and attention for his remarks and upstaged Trump at the gathering.

But 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, the latest iteration of the North American free-trade pact that has intertwined the economies of the United States, Mexico and Canada since the early 1990s. It is a crucial moment in trade talks, and Trump said this week that he may not renew the deal.

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Kennedy Center board seeks pause of ruling ordering removal of Trump’s name by Friday deadline

Trump’s handpicked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the iconic performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.

The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper’s May 29 ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal request was filed late Thursday.

Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center’s name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He 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.

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Where Trump has lost support with independents, according to AP-NORC polling

Independents have grown increasingly unhappy with Trump during his second term, a new AP-NORC polling analysis finds, particularly those without a college degree.

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.

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Trump is raising expectations that this time he really will close deal with Iran to wind down war

Trump has long been looking for this weekend to be a big one for his presidency.

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.

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The city of Midland has confirmed that two people are dead, including the suspected shooter, after a Friday morning shooting left 10 others wounded on the city’s south side.

The shooting 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 of the shooter has not been confirmed. 

Mayor Lori Blong said in a Friday news conference that officials had no further details on the suspect or on the dead victim. 

Blong said the suspected shooter had been in a standoff with police for several hours. The mayor said drones and a robot confirmed the shooter was dead but 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 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 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,” his office 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.”

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta's ruling allows organizers to use 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.

• Man arrested, charged in death of transgender woman whose body was found in Brays Bayou in May

“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?”

• Executive director of Harris County Flood Control District resigns, officials confirm

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.

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.

There was no immediate comment from U.S. or Iranian leaders on Sharif’s statement.

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

None of the leaders gave details about the emerging agreement.

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.

Official says emerging deal would reopen strait, remove nuclear material

The U.S. and Iran were making progress Friday toward completing a deal that could effectively end the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and begin the process of destroying or removing Tehran’s highly enriched uranium, 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 a deal was 80% to 85% done and that the U.S. side believes “most of the people who have authority” in the Iranian government want to sign onto the deal “but not everybody.”

The official said technical details on how to remove Iran’s enriched uranium, according to the emerging agreement, would be worked out over 60 days after both sides sign it. 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.

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.

Underscoring the fragility of the negotiations, Trump on Friday lashed out at Iranian officials on social media and said: “They better get their act together, and FAST!” That was before he shared Araghchi's post.

Officials say a deal could be signed in the coming days

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.

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. has responded since mid-April with a naval blockade of Iranian ports to choke off Iran’s own oil exports.

The regional officials 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. Esmail Baghaei, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said on state television that mediators were active and the text of a deal was “mostly finalized.”

There was no immediate comment Friday from Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, which has been leading efforts to mediate a deal between the U.S. and Iran. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi had said Thursday that Pakistan remained involved in negotiations.

Israel expects Trump to advocate for its interests

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.

Iran has insisted that any deal to end the war must also end fighting in Lebanon between its ally militia Hezbollah and Israel. Netanyahu appears intent on pursuing his goal of destroying the militant group, complicating negotiations between Iran and the U.S.

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 Julia Frankel in Jerusalem, and Collin Binkley and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed.

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.

___

Lauer reported from Philadelphia, and Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed from Washington.

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.

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.

The prime minister 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.

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 as of midday Friday, after SpaceX soared in its first moments on the market. Still, here’s some ways to think about how far $1 trillion of that money 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's far ahead 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 $295 billion as of midday Friday. That's $705 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 ($272 billion), Amazon's Jeff Bezos ($247 billion) and Oracle’s Larry Ellison ($228 billion) — amounted to just over $1.04 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.

• As our feels-like temps are expected to hit 105-109 today (if not hotter in some spots) and with everyone talking about the World Cup — it’s only fair that a lot of folks have a lot of questions about the weather.
• Plus, we’re tracking an area of low pressure that’s formed over the far southern Bay of Campeche that will increase tropical moisture driving up our risk for rain and thunderstorms as we head into Sunday. Putting us at a flash flood risk to marginal and slight. So it’s on the lower end, but something your weather team will track.

Today’s Forecast: We are watching some areas getting right this afternoon - for a select few but not all.

You can track radar here:

By the afternoon, the heat and humidity make it feel like the triple digits. There is a chance for isolated to spotty showers, mainly west of Harris County.

• Check out how to stay cool at FIFA World Cup 2026: Heat to tropical downpours: Houston weather outlook for FIFA World Cup 2026

ANSWERING WEATHER QUESTIONS:

It’s all about the feels-like heat ahead of our next stormy pattern that looks to be Sunday through Tuesday.

As our feels-like temps are expected to hit 105-109 today (if not hotter in some spots) and with everyone talking about the World Cup — it’s only fair that a lot of folks have a lot of questions about the weather.

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.

However, 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!

And heads up for Fan Fest in EaDo: The free FIFA Fan Festival is happening outdoors right now — giant screens, live vibes, food, and that 7v7 synthetic turf field for pickup games. But was we continue to track triple-digit feels like temps its important to stay hydrated, take breaks, and pace yourself out there!

Three-Day Forecast

We are back in a typical June pattern! We’re hot and humid with afternoon highs feeling like 100 degrees. Every day, there will be a chance for a quick afternoon downpour, but by Sunday, rain chances become widespread as tropical moisture marches into southeast Texas.

Tracking The Tropics:

The National Hurricane Center has marked an area in the Bay of Campeche for a 10% chance of development over the next week or so. A broad area of low pressure could form. Still, conditions are not expected to be favorable for significant development as it’ll move inland over eastern Mexico late this weekend, totally squashing any chance of formation.

This means impacts on Texas will be indirect. Instead of a named storm, we’ll likely see increased tropical moisture, which could boost our rain chances starting Sunday and lasting into early next week.

This won’t lead to a washout, but it could mean periods of heavy downpours around the Houston area, including during some of the World Cup festivities this weekend.

There is a risk of flooding on Sunday, which is when Houston hosts its first World Cup game. This does not mean it will be a washout, but it does mean any shower or storm that we see before, during, or after the game can lead to street flooding. Stay weather aware on Sunday!

Your extended forecast:

We are back to a more typical weather pattern, but there is an increasing chance for rainfall into the end of the weekend and into next week. Some of the rain Monday and Tuesday will be heavy and could lead to some areas of minor street flooding.

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.

Several Texas EquuSearch volunteers are also scouring the area 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 victim.

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.

Laura Miller, Heide Fye Villareal, Audrey Cook and Donna Prudhomme were all found in the same field between 1984 and 1991.

This is a developing story, check back later for updates.

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.

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.

During Wednesday's storms, a 54-year-old man died at a homeless encampment in a park in Des Moines, Iowa, after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms,” police said in a statement. There were no immediate reports of other deaths or injuries from those storms.

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

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.

Unless the Kennedy Center decides to appeal the decision from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, the decision raises the prospect that Trump's name will be removed from the building. In his ruling last month, Cooper said only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center's name and ordered that references to Trump be removed by Friday.

A Kennedy Center spokesperson didn't immediately comment on the ruling. Workers were seen building scaffolding around a section of the building that includes Trump's name.

Last month, Cooper ruled Trump’s name was illegally added to the iconic Washington performing arts facility. Late Thursday, Trump’s handpicked board at the center mounted a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the iconic performing arts facility but Cooper refused to stay his order.

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.

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.

In his earlier ruling, 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 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.

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.”

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

Tyler Robinson's attorneys accused prosecutors of going on a “media tour” to discuss expert reports about the bullet. The defense claims those statements violated restrictions imposed by Judge Tony Graf against speaking about the case outside of court.

But prosecutors said they had a right to correct misinformation from Robinson's attorneys about an inconclusive, preliminary finding by ballistics experts, who could not immediately match the bullet fragments with a gun that investigators believe was used to kill Kirk. Details about the preliminary finding spurred stories speculating about Robinson’s possible exoneration.

“The rules expressly allow lawyers to set the record straight,” Deputy Utah County Attorney Christopher Ballard wrote.

Robinson’s lawyers have tried to guard against media coverage that they say sometimes misrepresents their client, as his case has drawn tremendous public attention. The 23-year-old from southwestern Utah is charged with aggravated murder in the Sept. 10 assassination of Kirk, who co-founded the conservative Turning Point USA organization, on the Utah Valley University campus.

Prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if Robinson is convicted. He has not yet entered a plea.

Graf began Friday by declining 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.

Robinson’s attorneys did not specify what sanctions should be levied against prosecutors if Graf agrees they violated his orders and holds them in contempt. But in court filings, the defense team pointed to another criminal case where prosecutors were accused of contempt and said one potential remedy was 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.”

Graf has said he will issue his decision about the contempt allegation at a later date.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.

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.”

___

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.

___

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.

——

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.

Rankins, 32, is an elder statesman on a relatively young top-ranked defense.

It’s Rankins who provides invaluable mentoring and leadership to younger players with his perspective and wisdom.

Rankins, a former New Orleans Saints first-round draft pick is heading into his 11th NFL season. The information and encouragement he passes on to All-Pro defensive end Will Anderson Jr. helped him emerge as one of the elite defensive players across the league.

Now, Rankins is helping to bring along rookie defensive tackle Kayden McDonald, a second-round draft pick from Ohio State.

“Sheldon brings a calming presence to the defense,” Ryans said. “We do a lot of communication, we put a lot on those guys from a standpoint of talking to each other, linebackers talking to the defensive line, so when you have a guy of Sheldon’s caliber who’s seen it all, done it all, very smart guy, very aware of formations, he can ID things that a lot of young guys can’t do and we don’t ask them to do.

“We can put more on Sheldon’s plate because of his experience. Having him there with Kayden is going to be significant for Kayden and his development. Kayden should grab a hold of Sheldon and not let him leave without gaining some type of insight, some type of knowledge every day on what it’s like to play in one of the toughest positions in football: interior defensive line. He needs to learn that from a guy who’s done it for over 10 years.”

Rankins stayed in Houston on a two-year, $17 million contract that includes $12 million total guaranteed.

Rankins, 31, had a resurgent year in his return to the Texans last year after dealing with meningitis during his one season with the Cincinnati Bengals.

He played in every game during a healthy season, recording 35 tackles, 44 pressures, three sacks, five tackles for losses and scored two touchdowns.

For Rankins, being back with the Texans on a football field, shedding blocks and enjoying his health aren’t things he takes for granted.

Not after the extremely difficult medical ordeal the veteran defensive tackle endured in Cincinnati.

Rankins was sidelined for the final seven games while dealing with two serious illnesses: a simultaneous bout with viral meningitis and a shingles outbreak. He lost nearly 50 pounds, down from his usual 305 pounds. It was a tough thing to deal with, spending time at home in the dark for nearly six weeks.

Rankins discussed after a training camp practice with the Texans last August.

“So, I dealt with some health stuff last year, I won’t dive too deep into it,” Rankins said. “The biggest one that kind of took me out of playing, which was that I ended up having a shingles outbreak and viral meningitis at the same time. That knocked me out for a while. A lot of people don’t know and a lot of people thought:

“What type of illness or what type of thing could have someone out this long?’ A lot of people don’t know, I was literally laying horizontal in my house, in a dark house, for probably about a month and a half before I could really even sit up without feeling kind of crazy. So, I went through all that.”

For a defensive lineman to not have his power source, weight, bulk and strength and to be that light in the trenches, it’s nearly impossible to overcome.

Rankins is regarded as an extremely effective defensive lineman who has the talent and skills.

He also provides a wise presence in the locker room and on the field, mentoring younger players like standout defensive end Will Anderson Jr.

To be back with the Texans two seasons after recording a career-high six sacks playing for Ryans on an AFC South division champion is significant for Rankins.

Rankins has the perspective of seeing where the organization has grown since Ryans’ debut season to being a more established football team after he turned around the franchise.

“The culture is set now,” Rankins said. “Obviously, when a new coach comes in he’s working overtime to find his identity imprinted within the framework of the team. Getting the team to function without him having to say every little thing over and over again.

“So, obviously coming back, same quarterback leading the team and then defense, a lot of continuity. His culture is set. So, I think it’s easy to get back in here and honestly feel my role like I did last time and then just get ready to play a ball.”

The Texans negotiated with Rankins last year during free agency and made a substantial offer, but were ultimately outbid by a few million dollars by the Bengals as they reached a two-year, $26 million contract with the former Louisville standout.

Now, they’re back in business with Rankins.

For Rankins, being back with Anderson and watching the growth of a player who was named NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year in their lone season playing together is a lot of fun.

“Oh, that’s great,” Rankins said. “When I was here last time, I gladly took him under my wing and helped him with all facets of the game. Obviously, his talent speaks for itself, but helping him with a lot of the film study and the emotions of the game. Helping him understand, it’s a long season and how to prepare to go through your progress, your process and see progress through ways other than sack totals and different things like that.

“So, getting back here and seeing his maturation and picking right back up where we left off, whether it’s a look here, look there, a glance here, glance there. We’ve always kind of spoke the same language on the football field. So, getting back and playing next to him again, it’s like waking up in the morning. It’s like breathing. It’s something we’ve done really easily. So, looking for big things for us both this year.”

Rankins has played in the NFL for 10 seasons, recording 281 career tackles, 33 1/2 sacks, 49 tackles for losses and 78 quarterback hits.

His presence, in many ways, is pivotal for the Texans.

“Sheldon poured a lot into Will and you see Will now benefiting from that, but Will is also taking and he’s pouring into the younger guys himself, and that’s what the NFL has always been built on,” Ryans said. “I had veteran guys, Morlon Greenwood, Shawn Barber, Danny Clark, guys who poured into me and that’s the only way I knew how it should be done.

“When I went through my career, it was my chance to pour into guys like Zach Diles, Brian Cushing, Jordan Hicks, Mychal Kendricks. That’s what the league is built on.”

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

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.

Macron invited the Republican president to join him for Bastille Day celebrations in July 2017, including an Eiffel Tower dinner date with their wives. Trump reciprocated by making Macron the guest of honor the following year at his first White House state dinner, the highest diplomatic honor the United States can extend to an ally.

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. That dynamic will be scrutinized next week when Trump and the leaders of Britain, Canada, Germany, Italy and Japan join Macron in the French lakeside resort of Evian-les-Bains for the G7 summit.

Trump's long-simmering frustrations with US allies could be on display

There could be awkward moments between Trump and Macron, as well as among Trump and the other G7 leaders he's criticized for not joining him in Iran.

“But I also think European leaders are quite professionals when it comes to politics, and in some ways diplomacy at this point, and will maybe see it as an opportunity as well,” Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in an interview.

Kurt Volker, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said the Trump-Macron relationship has been further complicated by the Iran war and Trump's complaints “that Europeans weren't helping, when they hadn't been consulted, and their interests are very much affected by this.”

“I think that was a negative for Macron,” Volker said.

Trump joined Israel in a war against Iran over its nuclear program back in February without consulting other U.S. allies. He then complained publicly when European countries spurned his requests for their help.

Waning support for Ukraine in its war against Russia from the Trump administration “has really irritated the French,” Volker said. “They feel this is important and we're not paying attention to it.” Macron invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to join the leaders’ discussions on Tuesday.

Macron is the G7 member who has dealt with Trump the longest

In Trump's first term, Macron appeared confident that he could persuade and influence the U.S. leader, but the relationship increasingly has come to be defined by their disagreements.

Macron now says he is “careful” about Trump's statements, suggesting he no longer takes them at face value. Their relationship remains cordial as each calls the other “my friend.” But the relationship has also experienced some ups and downs.

As president-elect, Trump attended the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in late 2024 at Macron's invitation. After Trump began his second term in 2025, Macron was an early Oval Office visitor. The president wrote on social media that he was “delighted” to welcome Macron back to the White House and said the relationship with France has been “very special.”

But at one point during the meeting, the French president publicly corrected Trump after he wrongly suggested that Europe would recover the money it had provided to support Ukraine. With a smile, Macron touched Trump's forearm and replied, “We provided real money.”

Macron also condemned as “brutal and unfounded” new tariffs that Trump slapped on steel, aluminum and a broader range of European imports in early 2025.

But there have also been some lighter moments mixed with the tensions.

A documentary aired last year on French television showed Macron telling Trump during a phone call that Zelenskyy had agreed to a U.S.-backed ceasefire proposal. Trump replied, “You’re the greatest.”

Macron has often said he can reach Trump directly whenever he needs to — and proved his point during last year’s U.N. General Assembly session in New York. After police officers blocked the French leader from crossing a street because traffic had been halted for Trump’s motorcade, Macron whipped out his cellphone and dialed the U.S. president.

“How are you?” Macron said. “Guess what? I’m waiting in the street because everything is frozen for you!”

‘This is not a show,’ Macron has said about Trump's NATO ambiguity

Macron has argued that Trump’s “America first” policies bolstered his case for a stronger European defense capability that would lessen reliance on the United States.

In April of this year, as Trump sent mixed signals about Washington's commitment to NATO after the start of the war in Iran, Macron delivered some of his sharpest criticism of the U.S. president.

“There is too much talk, and it's going in all directions,” Macron said. “We all need stability, calm and a return to peace. This is not a show.”

“You have to be serious, and when you want to be serious, you don't say the opposite every day of what you said the day before,” he said.

Trump, while mimicking a French accent, recently has taken to reenacting a conversation he says he had with Macron over drug prices and tariffs. Trump also poked Macron by telling a private luncheon in April that his wife, Brigitte Macron, treats her husband badly. The comments were in a video the White House had posted on its YouTube channel before blocking access.

Macron didn't see any humor in Trump's comments. “The remarks I heard were neither elegant nor appropriate,” he said. “They do not deserve a response.”

Still, Macron has tried to accommodate Trump's schedule to ensure his presence at the summit in Evian-les-Bains, knowing that he has a record of leaving such gatherings early.

Macron originally had set Sunday, which is Trump's 80th birthday, as the opening day of the summit, but he pushed the start back a day because Trump is celebrating the occasion with a UFC show staged on the White House grounds.

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Corbet reported from Paris.

On the eve of Friday's match between Bosnia and Canada, members of the genre-bending rock group met The Associated Press in the Sarajevo neighborhood where they filmed the new music video for the accordion-heavy earworm, now titled “I Am From Bosnia, Take Me to America.” In less than three weeks, the video celebrating soccer's working-class roots has notched nearly 2 million views on YouTube — on top of the 26 million views the original “USA,” released in 2011, has amassed over the years.

“It’s an interesting story how this song got its second and third and fourth incarnation in these 15 years,” muses Vedran Mujagić, bassist for the band that has woven political and social causes into its identity. “It evolved from this satirical take on immigration and (the) American Dream and it was translated into (an) American football dream for the entire nation.”

Bosnia-Herzegovina is making only its second appearance at a World Cup, a goal that once seemed improbable as more traditional soccer powers stood in the way of qualification. At the end of April, though, Bosnia's late goal against Wales propelled the team to a victorious penalty shootout, a feat it would replicate days later against Italy. The band members were surprised when fans unfurled a banner emblazoned with their lyrics, singing them as a rallying cry.

“First, it was working as a joke, but what I like the most is the supporters kind of loaded completely new meaning to the old song, and this is the best thing for the band or for the song: when people take over and load new meaning and then it becomes theirs,” keyboardist Brano Jakubović says. “It’s not ours anymore.”

An own goal lament turns joyous

The original “USA” is as up-tempo and catchy — it's hard not to wander around muttering, “I can no longer wait, take me to United States / Take me to Golden Gate, I will assimilate” — but its protagonist's eagerness to flee slides quickly to disenchantment with life outside the Balkans.

The band decided to deliver an updated version of what Jakubović describes as a “typical immigrant song,” writing new lyrics befitting a soccer anthem. While “USA” is in English, this version is mostly in Bosnian — “so people will understand,” he says — and mostly about the sport. The language switch has done nothing to lessen its global appeal, as a quick perusal of the YouTube comments suggests, though there are some jokes Jakubović acknowledges would be inscrutable outside Bosnia. (See: burek without cheese.)

Jakubović’s favorite new line is a chance to excise something that has haunted the country since the 2014 World Cup: “And that goal against Nigeria, that was never offside.”

“So this is like a big national trauma in Bosnia, so I used the song and lyrics to kind of release this trauma,” he says.

He's being wry there, but trauma has been a mainstay since Bosnia's independence amid the dissolution of Yugoslavia in 1992. Interethnic war almost immediately broke out, leading to genocide. More than 30 years after the Srebrenica massacre, deep division between Bosnian Serbs and Bosniak Muslims persist.

“Football in this moment is much more than just a game, it's a hope and it’s very basically (a) political thing because it brought all the people from Bosnia together, which is usually not the case,” Jakubović says.

I am from Bosnia, take me to ... Canada?

Bosnia's first match is in Canada, but the team will indeed be taken to America. Their base camp is in Sandy, Utah, and the other group stage matches — against Switzerland and Qatar — are in the States. And, as Mujagić points out, many of the players were born in the U.S. or elsewhere in the diaspora.

“They are children of those people who went outside in search of a better life or as refugees or whatever their story was. And they kind of see and hear these lyrics and this song entirely differently from us,” he says.

Mujagić thinks the original message of “USA” endures as Bosnians still emigrate. Once they leave, he finds, “they encounter this hostility of the locals, right-wingers, and they just don’t want them there.”

“So it’s this schizophrenic situation in which you want to go there, but you somehow know that you won’t have it good on the other side as well,” he concludes. “So in that sense, this song still works perfectly well as it worked before.”

In St. Louis, home to a thriving Bosnian community, Admir Hodzic is one of the founders of the supporter group BH Loyals. The 40-year-old business owner was born in Bosnia and has moved back and forth between his homeland and the U.S., not unlike the protagonist of “USA.”

“I think every Bosnian that lives here and understands how the system works and everything else, I think they will find the truth in that song, and that song is honestly nothing but the truth,” he says. There are more opportunities in the U.S. than elsewhere, he says, but “it's a matter of biting your teeth and pulling through the worst times possible.”

He and his fellow supporters are big fans of Dubioza Kolektiv and sing their anthem at matches and watch parties. More often than not, though, it's the original “USA.”

“It’s engraved in their brain and their hearts,” he says, “and no matter what, they just go back to the old lyrics, you know?”

___

Sen reported from New York.

___

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

Although the Texans have limited the former University of Houston star in drills at the minicamp they wrapped up Thursday with plans for him to increase his practice activity at training camp, the outlook is becoming more positive.

Dell has been running and cutting without any setbacks. He isn’t as dynamic as he was before dislocating his knee and tearing his anterior cruciate, medial collateral and lateral collateral ligament two years ago while catching a touchdown pass against the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.

Dell has even caught passes in team drills. There is still a lot of work to be done, but significant progress has been accomplished.

Just ask his position coach: Texans receivers coach and passing game coordinator Ben McDaniels.

“Looking for him to be Tank,” McDaniels said. “He’s been working really hard to get back to what he knows he is and can be. It’s been a long process and he’s still at it.

“The process isn’t over. It doesn’t need to be over. He’s working all summer and he’ll be working hard to get himself as healthy as he can as he can be and we’re excited for him to be ready.”

He is not a full participant yet. Nonetheless, Dell looked pretty good.

It was an encouraging sign for Dell, who has endured hard luck and tough breaks while flashing a lot of skill and impactful playmaking in his first few NFL seasons.

“Just excited for him to continue really through the summertime, too,” McDaniels said. “This has been a long build. He’s fought like crazy. He’s extremely determined to get back healthy and run around and impact the game like he knows he can. We’ll be excited for training camp to start.”

#Texans Ben McDaniels on Tank Dell ongoing comeback: 'Looking for him to be Tank. He's been working really hard to get back to what he knows he is and can be. It's been a long process and he's still at it. The process isn't over. It doesn't need to be over. He's working all… pic.twitter.com/0ZpKFNnko8

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) June 11, 2026

After missing an entire full season and undergoing two surgeries to repair the damage suffered in December of 2024, Dell is making strides.

And his teammates appreciate and respect his powerful motivation to work his way back from a devastating injury.

“I love when I see Tank on the field,” Texans veteran tight end Dalton Schultz said. “It’s been two long years for him. I know he’s gone through a lot. He’s had a crazy road to recovery, but every time he’s out there, he’s a dude that just brings juice, brings good energy.

“At the end of the day, the kid’s a hell of a receiver. I know when he lines it up, when he’s on the field, we’re going to have a good matchup. To just to see him back out there is motivating for guys, especially considering what he’s gone through.”

👀 pic.twitter.com/luDLJlGCh0

— Houston Texans (@HoustonTexans) June 4, 2026

First, Dell broke his leg as a rookie. Then, he got shot as an innocent bystander that offseason in his leg. Two seasons ago, Dell tore up his knee in Kansas City.

The Texans are taking a patient, big-picture approach with Dell. The hope is that he can ramp up his participation by training camp and regain his old form.

“Tank is still working off on the side,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said during the first organized team activity. “When that time is set for him to be back, he’ll be back out there.”

And that time is approaching, gradually.

“Tank has been around, working out all throughout the offseason while no one else was here,” Ryans said. “Tank has been here working, grinding in the background. I’m excited to see Tank when it is his time to get back out and play football, as is everybody here. We all love Tank. We’ve seen the ability that he has, the big playmaking ability.

“Nobody loves Tank more than me. I’m hopeful that we can get him back to playing, back to the level that he was playing. But I think it’s also, we know how devastating of an injury that was for Tank. So, I’m proud of the young man. For him just working in the background, working in silence to be back here working out with the guys and having that opportunity to go play again.”

#Texans wide receiver Tank Dell comeback continues, step by step @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/XFbt2CRzH2

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) June 4, 2026

Texans general manager Nick Caserio said previously that the team will evaluate where Dell stands after spring workouts to determine his activity level at training camp. He was noncommittal on a timeline.

“With Tank, honestly, it’s probably a day-to-day, we’ll kind of see where he is,” Caserio said. “Probably have a better idea as we get through the spring of what his availability is going to be in training camp. He’s been here pretty religiously, since he’s been able to do more once he’s gotten out of the rehab stage.”

Dell has fought through all of the doubt and frustration of an injury that interrupted the dynamic start to his NFL career, leaning on faith, hard work, family, friends and coaches like Ryans to remain positive and optimistic.

Dell called it the hardest year of his life.

Dell is looking forward to making a healthy return and get back to playing the game he loves.

“What I’ve been through is something that taught me to be humble and just keep working, I’m back, I’m feeling good right now,” Dell said earlier this offseason. “Once the season comes, I’m gonna cook up.”

#Texans coach DeMeco Ryans update on Brevin Jordan and Tank Dell. Jordan is practicing, Dell is working out on the side @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/LgfBCABACj

— Aaron Wilson (@AaronWilson_NFL) May 28, 2026

Running free, catching touchdown passes, bolting past coverage.

That’s the vision for Dell. The comeback trail is being paved month by month for Dell as he continues to strengthen his surgically repaired knee.

Dell tried to make a return for the end of the season as the Texans made another playoff run that ended in the divisional round, but it was regarded as too soon for him to get back out there.

“I was making a push, I wanted to be out there with the guys,” Dell said. “Last year, that football season alone, was the hardest year of my life. Just sitting out of football for a year straight.

“Been playing football since I was five and that was my first year I ever had to sit out of football so that was hard. I tried to make a push back, it didn’t go as planned. I got time now and I’ll be ready.”

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

Scottie Scheffler will try to take his place in history when the No. 1 player goes after the final leg of the career Grand Slam. Should he win, he would be the seventh player to win all four majors and join Tiger Woods as the only players since 1960 — the modern era of the slam — to get it done on his first try.

That ordinarily would be the sole focus of the 126th U.S. Open, to be played June 18-21, except for the recent history at Shinnecock Hills.

It has not been smooth sailing off the Great Peconic Bay on Long Island.

“It's hard when you run one tournament a year — and you run it on a different golf course every year — to get it just right,” Scheffler said. “And you're trying to make it hard. I think in the U.S. Open, they push the boundaries. If they're going to continue to push the boundaries, eventually they'll screw up and then they'll dial it back.”

The 2004 U.S. Open already was brutally tough when the USGA failed to account for the strength of the warm wind. The par-3 seventh, with its Redan green, became so impossible to hold that officials had to douse it with water between groups on the final day. No one broke par, and the average score was 78.73.

Among the blistering comments came this from Jerry Kelly: “I think they’re ruining the game. They’re ruining the tournament. This isn’t golf.”

When the U.S. Open returned to this New York gem in 2018, the greens were so glassy from sun and wind the last 45 players on the tee sheet Saturday failed to break par. Phil Mickelson staged a bizarre protest by swatting a moving ball on the 13th green. Brooks Koepka saved the week by becoming the first repeat champion in 29 years.

So a return to the fabled course evokes one thought: What will go wrong this time?

“Hopefully, they get the balance right of all the different challenges, and it’s not contrived,” Adam Scott said. “These great tracks, they’ve gotten into trouble when they’ve been manipulated.”

Wider fairways planned for this year

John Bodenhamer, the USGA's chief competitions officer, was asked to take a hard look after 2018 to see what went wrong and why. The short answer was greens not properly hydrated.

The real answer comes over four days at Shinnecock Hills, the sixth time for it to host the U.S. Open, never under this much scrutiny. The early scouting report from Scheffler and Rory McIlroy was wider fairways than they are used to seeing at a U.S. Open. That wasn't a mirage.

Bodenhamer said the USGA wanted to present a course the way William Flynn designed it in 1931 when he was brought into reshape a course that first opened in 1891, the oldest golf club in America still in the same location.

That means an average fairway width of 48 yards, compared with 42 yards in 2018 and 32 yards wide last year at Oakmont. He anticipates slower green speeds to account for so many putting surfaces perched on a hill and exposed to the wind.

“The way we're thinking about this year is to let Shinnecock be Shinnecock,” Bodenhamer said.

That should be enough. In the five U.S. Opens at Shinnecock Hills, three players have finished the tournament under par — Raymond Floyd in 1986, Retief Goosen and runner-up Mickelson in 2004.

McIlroy said the green speeds were just over 11 on the Stimpmeter — slightly under the target speed the USGA has in mind — and the Masters champion doesn't thing they need to be much fasters.

“If they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens,” McIlroy said. “If it's set up the right way, I think it's one of the best championship tests in the country. It's an amazing golf course.”

Scheffler goes for the career Grand Slam

McIlroy became the most recent player with the career Grand Slam by winning the Masters in 2025. At the time, Scheffler had two green jackets but only one leg of the career slam. And then he steamrolled the competition at the PGA Championship and British Open.

“Fixed that,” Scheffler said with a laugh at the start of the year.

Now he's on the cusp of the most elite club in golf. McIlroy had to wait 11 years to get the final leg. Jack Nicklaus (1966 British Open) and Gary Player (1965 U.S. Open) each waited three years for their final pieces. Scheffler is the betting favorite, even though he hasn't won in five months.

He was runner-up in 2022 at The Country Club, his best chance. He was in the mix at Los Angeles in 2023 and on the fringe of contention at Torrey Pines.

“I like the challenge of playing a really hard golf course against a really good field,” he said.

Adam Scott playing his 100th straight major

Scott is among three players — potentially four depending on alternates — who is playing a third time at Shinnecock Hills, though he has yet to make the cut there.

He still has cause of celebration. Scott is playing in his 100th consecutive major, dating to the 2001 British Open, the second-longest streak behind Nicklaus and his incomparable run of 146 in a row.

“It's crazy," said Jordan Spieth, next in line at 52 in a row. “It's not only playing at a high level, it's take care of yourself the right way. Almost every single person you think of that could have reached 100 missed it because of injury.”

The toughest test

Players were due to start arriving around the weekend to prepare a major with a reputation as being the toughest test in golf. For Shinnecock, the test starts with wind on a course that more closely resembles a Scottish links than any other in America.

Flynn created a series of triangles — holes that run in that shape so players are forced to cope with different wind direction no matter which way it's blowing.

And for the players, the test can be what goes on between the ears. Nicklaus once said he could rule out most players having a chance when he hears them complain. And there's been a lot of complaining the last two times at Shinnecock Hills.

“Your acceptance meter, you've got to add some at the top end,” Xander Schauffele said. “If it's 100, you need to make it 150 because 100 is not enough. It might be the second or third hole of the day and you might have already had four bad breaks. It's really penalized. It's the most tired I am of the four majors.”

___

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

"It was instinctual. No one taught me how to do it," she said of songwriting through a raspy voice she attributed to screaming along to the night's performances and Wednesday night's historic NBA game between the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs.

She told the room about her family uprooting their lives to move her from Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, as a tween.

“I will never be able to express my gratitude,” the singer-songwriter said while holding back tears — crediting their sacrifice for her career.

She offered young songwriters advice: “You really have to prioritize what you love, down to your very core. Because you'll need that."

Steven Spielberg introduced Swift with a surprise speech about the power of songwriting. “There is something undeniable about how songs imprint on our souls,” he said, before changing his focus to Swift. “Somehow Taylor knows us all too well.”

Swift started her speech by acknowledging Spielberg. “Because of examples like Steven's, I trusted my imagination," she said.

The Gen Z singer Sombr launched Swift's segment by performing “Cardigan” and “Dear John" in front of her.

Swift has brought new eyes to this year’s ceremony and undeniably shaped contemporary pop music trends with her songwriting. Swift is the youngest woman inducted, but Stevie Wonder, who started his recording career at 13, was the youngest ever inducted, it was announced on stage.

It was a notable moment in an evening full of them, where Swift, Kiss’ Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, Christopher “Tricky” Stewart, Alanis Morissette, Kenny Loggins and more were honored.

A night of celebrating songwriters

Tamar Braxton opened the gala at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City with a spirted tribute to a new inductee — the game-changing R&B songwriter, producer and rapper Christopher “Tricky” Stewart — with one of the biggest songs he's known for: Beyoncé's “Single Ladies.”

He's also responsible for singer-songwriter Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Mariah Carey's “Touch My Body” and Justin Bieber's “Baby.”

Dallas Austin, a songwriter and producer known for work with Boyz ll Men and Madonna, introduced Stewart. “Think about that catalog,” he said, listing off those zeitgeist-shifting records. “Those are cultural moments."

Stewart thanked God, his family, artists he's worked with and mentors — giving a special shout out to Grammy award-winning music producer Antonio “L.A.” Reid and the iconic singer-songwriter Babyface. “I wanted to be like L.A. and Baby,” he reflected.

Kiss founders Simmons and Stanley — two and a half years after the band’s farewell — were also recognized for their glam rock classics “Rock and Roll All Nite” and “I Love It Loud.” The Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan covered the former, a fittingly fiery introduction for the band. He was joined by Goo Goo Dolls’ frontman John Rzeznik for the latter.

Simmons wasn't present; Stanley said that he had a family emergency.

“Songs are the messenger,” he said — the foundation of “every show.”

Soft rock legend Kenny Loggins (“Footloose,” “Danny’s Song”) and the alt-rock icon Morissette were also inducted.

For the latter, Brandi Carlile performed “Uninvited” alongside SistaStrings, before introducing Morissette.

“Writing to me is not a hobby,” Morissette said, it’s critical. “It’s write or die.” Then she performed “Mary Jane” and "You Oughta Know" from her 1995 album “Jagged Little Pill.”

For Loggins, Gavin DeGraw performed “Danny’s Song,” before Loggins told the story behind the tune in his acceptance speech.

Acknowledging writers and their hits

Taylor Dayne and Madison Cunningham performed Tina Turner classics written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle in honor of their induction; John Fogerty was honored with the Johnny Mercer Award.

“I got my songs back!” Fogerty said, ending a nearly 30-minute speech, referencing the fact that he won the rights back to his catalog at age 80. Then he ran through a medley of his hits: “Proud Mary,” “Fortunate Son,” and “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” among them.

The songwriter Walter Afanasieff (Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”) was also recognized, a segment that began with an introduction by actor Jeremy Renner and included a monster medley of his biggest songs by R&B singer Sheléa, kicking off with his Christmas classic six months early.

“I wanted to be The Beatles,” he said of falling in love with songwriting in his speech. “Sixty years later, I got to produce Paul McCartney.”

An established tradition

British singer-songwriter RAYE received the prestigious Hal David Starlight Award. She ended her speech by stating that songwriters deserve a cut of master royalties.

Last year's inductees included George Clinton, The Doobie Brothers, Ashley Gorley, Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins, The Beach Boys’ Mike Love and Tony Macaulay.

The Songwriters Hall of Fame was established in 1969 to honor those creating popular music. A songwriter with a notable catalog of songs qualifies for induction 20 years after the first commercial release of a song.

Some already in the hall include Gloria Estefan, Carole King, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Brian Wilson, James Taylor, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Lionel Richie, Bill Withers, Neil Diamond and Phil Collins.

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

It starts with a few simple questions:

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

Those questions guide the work behind ENOUGH.

How accountability reporting works

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

Our reporting often begins with:

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

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

The kinds of questions we’re asking

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

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

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

What questions should be answered?

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

Is there a decision you think deserves a closer look?

Our team is always listening.

You can message the ENOUGH team here.

And if you want to join the team, here are some open roles:

Digital and Social Producer

Segment Producer

Investigative Executive Reporter

Reporter

The recall involves Farm Rich Pizza Cheese Crunchers, a frozen snack product distributed in 21 states, including Texas. The affected items were shipped to retailers such as Walmart, Dollar General and Lidl, according to federal officials.

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The FDA says approximately 160,200 pounds of Farm Rich Pizza Cheese Crunchers have been recalled after the manufacturer, Rich Products Corp., identified the potential for foreign material contamination — specifically metal pieces.

The recall was voluntarily initiated by the company on May 19, 2026, and later classified by the FDA as a Class II recall, meaning exposure to the product may cause temporary or medically reversible health effects.

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The recalled items were distributed across 21 states, including:

• Texas
• Alabama
• Florida
• Georgia
• Illinois
• New York
• Pennsylvania
• And others

While specific store locations were not listed in the FDA notice, the product is commonly sold in major grocery chains.

Health officials are urging consumers not to eat the affected product. Instead, they should:

• Check their freezer for Farm Rich Pizza Cheese Crunchers
• Look for matching lot or packaging information (as listed in the FDA recall notice)
• Dispose of the product or return it to the place of purchase for a refund
• Recall issued for ready-to-eat sliced prosciutto in Texas, among other US states

Food safety experts warn that consuming metal fragments can potentially lead to:

• Dental damage
• Mouth or throat injury
• Internal lacerations if swallowed

No injuries have been publicly reported in connection with the recall as of now.

Rich Products Corp. has not reported widespread illness linked to the product but issued the recall out of an abundance of caution after identifying the potential contamination risk.

The FDA continues to monitor the recall and advises consumers to stay updated through its official recall database.

Texas shoppers who recently purchased frozen Farm Rich pizza snacks should check their freezers and follow recall instructions to avoid possible injury.

Mexico’s players understood the intense pressure and high expectations they were facing on Thursday in the opening match of the first 48-team World Cup tournament. But they embraced their role and got off to a winning start by beating South Africa 2-0 in a match that also produced three red cards.

“I made an effort to explain to them what a World Cup and an opening match on home soil meant, but they are young and had to experience it for themselves,” said Mexico coach Javier Aguirre, who played for his team the last time Mexico hosted the tournament in 1986. ”I can no longer talk about having played in a home World Cup, because they already know what it’s like.”

Julián Quiñones and Raúl Jiménez scored the goals for Mexico, which is co-hosting the 2026 tournament with Canada and the United States.

The Mexicans rebounded from the massive disappointment of being eliminated after the group stage four years ago in Qatar. That followed seven straight trips to the round the 16 — an achievement that became more of a curse for failing to reach the quarterfinals.

But there is hope this year. Mexico has reached the quarterfinals twice in its history, and both times it was the host country — in 1970 and 1986. Aguirre was on that team in 1986.

In front of a capacity crowd of 80,824, Mexico got working fast and took the lead in the ninth minute when Quiñones scored. Jiménez added the second goal on a header in 66th — his 46th for Mexico but first in three World Cup tournaments.

“We didn’t play well in the first half, but we could have gone into the break leading 3–0 and no one would have complained — we were far superior,” Aguirre said. “In the second half, it felt like we relaxed a bit, but starting with a win is good, and we can certainly improve.”

With his goal, Jiménez moved into a tie with Jared Borgetti for second place in scoring for Mexico’s national team. He is six goals shy of leader Javier “Chicharito” Hernández.

Jiménez wears a protective headguard because he was seriously injured in November 2020 while playing for Wolverhampton Wanderers in a Premier League match against Arsenal. He fractured his skull and had to have surgery. He was out for eight months and returned in July 2021.

South Africa players Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were both given red cards, forcing the team to finish the match with only nine players. Mexico defender César Montes was then given a red card in injury time.

It was the first time there were three red cards given in the opening match of a World Cup tournament. And it’s the most in a World Cup game since four were handed out when Portugal played the Netherlands at the 2006 tournament in Germany.

“This level is much higher than whatever level we played before. We played a good team, and we played a good game. I saw a desperate Mexico,” South Africa coach Hugo Broos said. “We must improve in the next days. We’ll get over the disappointment.”

Quiñones, a 29-year-old forward who was born in Colombia, was the top scorer in the Saudi league this season. He was one of six starting players who made their World Cup debut for El Tri.

Mexico now has three points in Group A and will next play South Korea next Thursday in Guadalajara. South Africa will play the Czech Republic on the same day in Atlanta.

“It would be important (to win the group), but right now the only thing we’re thinking about is the match against Korea — being better than them and trying to win,” Aguirre said. “We’re going to take it step by step and see what the future holds.”

___

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

Total household debt in the United States has climbed to a record $18.8 trillion, raising concerns as many families continue to grapple with higher costs for housing, groceries, insurance and other essentials.

The problem is especially pronounced in Houston.

According to a recent LendingTree analysis of the 50 largest U.S. metropolitan areas, Houston ranks as the third most debt-ridden major metro in America, with residents carrying an average of $44,640 in non-mortgage debt. Only Austin ($45,920) and San Antonio ($44,812) ranked higher.

The average non-mortgage debt across the nation’s 50 largest metros is $37,827, meaning Houston residents carry nearly $7,000 more debt than the average resident of a major metro.

What’s driving Houston’s debt?

LendingTree found that auto loans account for the largest share of non-mortgage debt among many Americans, and Houston is no exception.

The average Houston resident carries:

• $16,357 in auto loan debt
• $12,556 in student loan debt
• $8,583 in credit card debt
• $4,473 in personal loan debt

Nearly 98% of Houston-area residents have some form of non-mortgage debt, according to the study.

Researchers noted that Texas cities consistently rank among the nation’s most debt-burdened metros, in part because residents often rely heavily on vehicles and frequently take on larger auto loans.

What families can do if they’re struggling

Consumer advocates say people feeling overwhelmed by debt should act quickly rather than wait until payments become unmanageable.

Financial experts recommend:

1. Creating a detailed budget to identify where money is being spent.
2. Contacting lenders and credit card companies about hardship programs or lower interest rates.
3. Working with a nonprofit credit counseling agency to develop a debt repayment plan.

“These firms will create a budget for you, put you on a path to recovery and help lower interest rates for you,” KPRC 2 consumer reporter Bill Spencer said.

Nonprofit credit counseling organizations can often help consumers consolidate payments, negotiate with creditors and develop long-term financial plans at little or no cost.

• American Consumer Credit Counseling
• Money Management International
• Greenpath Financial Wellness

Inflation continues to strain budgets

The growing debt burden comes as Americans continue to feel the effects of inflation.

Although inflation has cooled from its pandemic-era highs, many households are still paying significantly more for everyday necessities than they were just a few years ago. Experts say rising costs have forced some families to rely more heavily on credit cards and loans to cover expenses.

Financial counselors say the earlier consumers seek help, the easier it is to regain control of their finances before debt spirals further out of reach.

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, which struck Monday off Sarangani province, injured at least 688 people and displaced more than 45,000 people, about half them still in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses across farming towns and cities.

The numbers of dead and missing were considerably lowered after multiple verifications, the Office of Civil Defense said in a statement.

Many of the displaced were still too traumatized to return home because of strong aftershocks, officials said.

Days after the earthquake hit, more videos of the chaotic moments have been posted on social media showing horrified crowds witnessing the collapse of small buildings, and flag-raising ceremonies turning chaotic when the ground started to shake on the first day of school after a long summer break.

Students are seen on videos screaming in panic, but staying seated or standing still outside school buildings, with some covering their heads with their hands as teachers admonished them to calm down.

One video, which has gone viral on Facebook with millions of views, showed dozens of grade-schoolers screaming and breaking into tears as they sat on a tree-ringed school ground, which visibly swayed them from side to side. A tin roof shed nearby later collapsed with a loud thud, prompting many to dash away, but were asked by teachers to return and stay seated.

The grade school in the coastal town of Malita in Davao Occidental province reported no injuries from the quake.

“This incident serves as a reminder of the importance of earthquake preparedness and the value of regular disaster response drills,” the Mahayahay elementary school said in a statement.

Teresito Bacolcol, director of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, said years of disaster-preparedness drills helped people anticipate and brace for extreme events like Monday’s quake, one of the strongest to hit the archipelago in a half-century.

He said that it was also fortunate that the quake hit at 7:37 a.m., a few minutes before work and classes were to start indoors.

“It’s good that our efforts to educate people on what to do when earthquakes hit somehow paid off,” Bacolcol told The Associated Press.

He expressed concern, however, over the collapse of some buildings that he said should have withstood the powerful quake, if construction standards based on the country’s building code were followed.

Ednar Dayanghirang, director of the Office of Civil Defense in a quake-hit region of about 5 million people, said that regular disaster-preparedness drills helped reduce casualties in many ways, including by preventing deadly stampedes.

“We required all school principals to take one-day courses on incident management, then they appointed disaster-response teams among teachers to deal with earthquakes, tsunamis,” Dayanghirang said. “They listened and they learned.”

The Philippines, one of the world’s most disaster-prone countries, is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

Officers with the Houston Police Department responded around 1:50 a.m. to reports of a shooting at an apartment complex in the 7300 block of North Wayside Drive.

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When officers arrived, they found a man in his 30s suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to his arm. Houston Fire Department paramedics transported him to a hospital, where he was reported to be in stable condition.

Investigators said the shooting stemmed from an ongoing dispute between two families. According to police, the argument involved allegations regarding relationships between the families’ spouses.

During the confrontation, members of both families allegedly pulled out firearms and exchanged gunfire.

Police said an earlier 911 call had been made involving the same two families, who were reportedly threatening to fight one another, but no violence occurred at that time.

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Authorities detained three people, a woman and two juveniles, who were being questioned Friday morning. Investigators have not yet determined who fired the shots, and no charges have been announced.

Detectives with HPD’s Major Assaults Division are leading the investigation.

Police said search warrants were executed on both apartments involved in the dispute, and investigators recovered one firearm.

The investigation remains ongoing.

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.”

___

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 sport is so popular it has surpassed hockey and all other sports in youth participation, according to a recent report by Jumpstart, a Canadian charity that helps low-income youth play organized sports. It said half the nation’s youth participate in organized soccer.

Reece was one of many locals sporting Canada soccer gear on Thursday ahead of their nation’s World Cup opener Friday against Bosnia-Herzegovina.

“Wish I had tickets to the game tomorrow, but I don’t,” Reece said. “I’m going to a game in Vancouver. It was cheaper to get a ticket out there.”

Is Canada about to have a soccer moment?

“It already has a good hold in this country in terms of participation. I think we all expect that to grow. These tournaments inspire so many next-generation people to find their heroes, play the game,” said Christina Linz, president of the women's Northern Super League. “I think (it) will really draw those emotional connections.”

Thursday in Toronto looked a bit like wear-your-favorite-soccer-jersey day as the tournament opened in Mexico. Canada’s red tops, like the one worn by Reece, were among the most popular.

Mexico (No. 13) and the United States (No. 17), the other co-hosts for the World Cup, each sit higher in FIFA’s rankings than Canada, which is 30th, but that means there’s more to gain for the Canadians. Especially when it comes to generating passion for the sport.

Canada coach Jesse Marsch said Thursday he has “felt a real momentum behind this team and behind this moment” as Canada Soccer, the sport’s national governing body, looks to capitalize on hosting the World Cup for the first time.

“Canada has become more and more multicultural, and I think the excitement for so many different nations to be here in North America and in Canada, and to be playing with all of the greatest players in the world and some of the greatest coaches, I think that there’s real excitement behind what this will be,” Marsch said.

Potentially stalling the potential of Marsch’s squad is the absence of star defender Alphonso Davies, who was ruled out for Friday’s match as he continues to nurse a hamstring injury sustained during Bayern Munich's Champions League semifinal against Paris Saint-Germain on May 6.

Marsch is hopeful that Davies will be able to return at some point in the group stage. He said Davies had an MRI on Wednesday.

“We’re getting ready to ramp things up,” Marsch said Thursday.

Davies is one of many Canada players fighting injuries. Defender Moise Bombito is recovering from a broken leg, but Marsch said Bombito is “ready to contribute.”

Regardless of who’s on the pitch for Canada, it’s ready to make a statement, and players are eager to prove their country is a soccer nation.

“Every one of these boys is incredibly Canadian, and the pride they have in putting on the jersey, representing the country, hearing the national anthem,” Marsch said. “These guys sing the national anthem, belt it out to the top of their lungs, because they want to show the country how proud they are to be here, to be Canadians, and to represent what Canada is.”

___

Lexie Linderman is a student in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

___

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

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently clarified that pet dog travel to Mexico will continue under previously established procedures, despite earlier guidance that temporarily included pet dogs on a list of animals restricted from export.

• What to know about screwworm in Texas

The policy confusion came as officials in both countries work to prevent the spread of the New World screwworm, a parasitic fly whose larvae can infest and feed on the living tissue of warm-blooded animals.

While dogs can still travel into Mexico, strict requirements remain in place for dogs returning to the United States from countries affected by screwworm, including Mexico.

According to APHIS, dogs entering the U.S. from a screwworm-affected country must have a screwworm freedom certification completed by an authorized veterinarian. The certification confirms the animal was inspected and found free of the parasite before travel.

The USDA says these requirements have been in effect since November 2024.

• Political blame game follows as screwworm parasite threatens cattle in Texas

The issue has raised concerns among pet owners in border communities, where some residents routinely travel to Mexico for veterinary care.

One of those pet owners is Gloria Gonzalez, who crosses into Mexico several times a week to have stray animals spayed and neutered.

“The prices over there are more accessible, and that’s the only way we can afford to do so many spay and neuters,” Gonzalez told Channel 5 News in the Rio Grande Valley.

Veterinarians are also encouraging pet owners to closely monitor their animals for wounds that could attract screwworm flies.

Dr. Esteban Perez Villarreal, a veterinarian in Camargo, Tamaulipas, said exposed injuries should be treated as quickly as possible.

“We ask all of our clients to treat any exposed wounds as soon as possible,” Perez said.

• Can your dog or cat get screwworm? Here’s what experts say about the risk to pets and people

The veterinarian said some confusion remains regarding what documentation may be required for pets crossing the border and hopes authorities provide additional guidance for veterinarians and pet owners.

Meanwhile, Mexican animal health officials have announced increased inspections of cats, dogs and pet birds at ports of entry as the country continues efforts to contain the parasite.

Pet owners planning to travel with their animals are encouraged to review the latest requirements from USDA APHIS before crossing the border.

A study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found the spread of the iPhone could explain between 33% and 52% of the decline in fertility rates among women ages 15 to 44 between 2007 and 2011. Researchers said the strongest effects were seen among people under 24.

The research examined Apple’s exclusive partnership with AT&T from 2007 through early 2011, which allowed economists to compare birth rates in areas with greater access to the iPhone against areas with less access. The study found birth rates fell more sharply in places where residents gained earlier access to smartphones.

• FIFA World Cup turned NRG Stadium into ‘Houston Stadium’: Here’s a sneak peek inside

Researchers believe smartphones may have changed social behaviors in ways that affected fertility, including reducing face-to-face interactions, decreasing sexual activity and increasing access to online pornography and information about contraception.

The study found access to the iPhone reduced births by an estimated 4.5% to 8% among teens ages 15 to 19 and 3.2% to 6.6% among adults ages 20 to 24.

However, experts caution that smartphones are likely only one piece of a much larger puzzle. Financial pressures, rising childcare costs, delayed marriage, changing attitudes toward parenthood and broader demographic trends have also been linked to declining birth rates in the United States and around the world.

• Houston-area World Cup 2026 watch parties, events across the city

The U.S. fertility rate has fallen steadily for years. According to federal data, births in the United States have declined significantly since peaking in 2007, and the nation remains below the population replacement level of 2.1 children per woman.

Researchers behind the study said their findings do not suggest smartphones are solely responsible for the decline, but argue they should be considered an important factor in understanding changing social behaviors and family formation trends.

Soccer fans, are you with me? Thursday marked the first day of the FIFA World Cup games and the opening of the Houston Fan Fest. Although Houston doesn’t have its first game until Sunday, fans still gathered at the fan fest to watch the first match, Mexico v. South Africa.

If you would like to catch some games this weekend, you can check out our full FIFA Fan Fest guide.

To read more, click here.

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YOUR MORNING FORECAST ☀️

TODAY:94° TONIGHT: 78°

KPRC 2 Meteorologist says:

“Another warm, humid start on Friday. Waking up to temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s. By the afternoon, the heat and humidity make it feel like the triple digits. We are back in a typical June pattern! We’re hot and humid with afternoon highs feeling like 100 degrees. Every day, there will be a chance for a quick afternoon downpour, but by Sunday, rain chances become widespread as tropical moisture marches into southeast Texas.”

Get your forecast details here.

TOP STORIES

FIFA World Cup turned NRG Stadium into ‘Houston Stadium’: Here’s a sneak peek inside

The countdown is on for the FIFA World Cup 2026, and Houston Stadium is nearly ready to welcome fans from around the world.

Media members were given a first look inside the venue this week, offering a glimpse of the transformation underway as Houston prepares to host seven World Cup matches over the next month. The stadium has undergone several changes to meet FIFA’s standards, including the installation of a natural grass playing surface, replacing the artificial turf typically used at the venue.

Houston-area World Cup 2026 watch parties, events across the city

Houston is gearing up for the FIFA World Cup 2026 with a slate of watch parties and fan events across the city, offering free screenings, family activities, food vendors and themed entertainment.

FIFA World Cup 2026 in Houston: Complete guide to matches, parking, Fan Fest, transportation and more

For one month this summer, Houston will be among the cities hosting the FIFA World Cup 2026 with seven matches at Houston Stadium (also known as NRG Stadium) and welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe.

Whether you’re planning to attend a match, visit the FIFA Fan Festival, host out-of-town guests or simply navigate the city during the tournament, here’s what Houstonians need to know.

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

Houston survival guide for FIFA Fan Festival

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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.

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.

Soccer fans, good news! If you’re in town for the FIFA World Cup or if you just happen to live here, today will begin some of the many festivities that will be taking place in the city this month.

Yep, starting today, you can visit the FIFA Fan Fest in East Downtown. It’s a free gathering place for soccer fans to watch matches, grab food and enjoy live entertainment and games.

Thousands of fans are expected to visit the festival each day. Although entry is free, it will be on a first-come, first-served basis, accommodating 7,500 people at a time.

To read more, click here.

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YOUR MORNING FORECAST ☀️

TODAY:91° TONIGHT: 78°

KPRC 2 Meteorologist says:

“Expect a mix of sunshine and cloud cover, with temperatures climbing into the upper 80s and lower 90s. Factor in the humidity, and we’ll feel closer to the triple digits. There is a 20% chance of showers and storms in the afternoon. If you do see a downpour, it can bring a quick inch or so of rain and frequent lightning strikes.”

Get your forecast details here.

TOP STORIES

Will Houston’s power grid hold up during the 2026 FIFA World Cup?

With the FIFA World Cup 2026 set to bring hundreds of thousands of visitors to Houston this summer, CenterPoint Energy says it has spent more than a year preparing the region’s electric and natural gas infrastructure for the global event.

Houston will host seven World Cup matches between June 14 and July 4, prompting concerns from some residents about whether the electric grid can handle the increased demand during one of the hottest times of the year.

Houston man says $22K FIFA ticket purchase didn’t match seats he was shown

As excitement builds ahead of the FIFA World Cup in Houston, one local soccer fan says the premium seats he believed he purchased for $22,000 ended up being different from what he was shown during the sales process.

Saad Qureshi, a Houston resident and longtime soccer fan, says he purchased five FIFA hospitality packages through FIFA’s official hospitality provider, On Location, after months of discussions with a sales representative about seating options.

FIFA World Cup 2026 in Houston: Complete guide to matches, parking, Fan Fest, transportation and more

For one month this summer, Houston will be among the cities hosting the FIFA World Cup 2026 with seven matches at Houston Stadium (also known as NRG Stadium) and welcoming hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe.

Whether you’re planning to attend a match, visit the FIFA Fan Festival, host out-of-town guests or simply navigate the city during the tournament, here’s what Houstonians need to know.

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

Get 2 know Bombón: The music collective behind the Houston remix for FIFA World Cup 2026™ 🎵🎵⚽

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The crash happened around 10:32 p.m. at the intersection of Highway 249 and Old Bammel North Houston Road.

• Executive director of Harris County Flood Control District resigns, officials confirm

Investigators said a Cadillac sedan was traveling southbound on Highway 249 when the driver passed through the intersection and hit a woman who was running eastbound across the roadway.

According to deputies, the woman was not in a marked crosswalk when she was hit. Emergency crews transported her to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Authorities said the driver initially left the scene but later returned. Investigators determined the driver had a green light at the time of the crash and that the traffic signals were functioning properly.

The driver showed no signs of intoxication and was released. No charges have been filed.

• Man arrested, charged in death of transgender woman whose body was found in Brays Bayou in May

The identity of the woman has not been released. Investigators said it is unclear whether she was unhoused.

While deputies were investigating the fatal crash, a separate incident occurred at the scene involving a Harris County deputy.

According to the sheriff’s office, a Nissan sedan was making a right turn at the intersection when it hit the deputy. The deputy was transported to a hospital in stable condition.

The driver of the Nissan was arrested on a charge of possession of a controlled substance. Authorities said the driver was not intoxicated at the time of the incident.

A region that has often been considered minor league in comparison to bigger California markets like the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego is relishing its role as a way station for the vagabond A’s and hopes one day to have a Major League Baseball team to call its own to go along with the NBA’s Kings.

“It would mean everything,” McCarty said. “I think we’ve always fancied ourselves as a big league city. Having a team here in Sacramento would mean a lot to our city, bring a lot of economic groups to both sides of the river.”

The region is making what it has dubbed the “Sacramento Pitch” to be considered for expansion, announcing late last month a commitment of $1 billion in public funding and nearly $800 million more in private investment to the effort.

There are still major parts missing in the plan. Most notably, the search for a lead investor to own the team has just started with several candidates expressing interest. There's also uncertainty about if and when MLB plans to expand, and where Sacramento stands on the list of possible candidates.

“What we have is just only one major league team here. So we have definitely room for having another team," West Sacramento Mayor Martha Guerrero said. ”We have a strong media market, the population is growing. We have a good economic growth here as well. We have the potential to develop a strong market for a Major League Baseball team here."

Sacramento has one major team in US's 20th biggest market

Sacramento is the 20th biggest television market in the country and is the largest with only one team in either MLB, the NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS and WNBA. There are about 2.7 million people in the metropolitan area that is still viewed by some as an offshoot of the more glamorous San Francisco Bay area.

The region is getting a trial run as a major league city as the temporary home of the A’s, who are playing their second of three planned seasons in West Sacramento after leaving Oakland and waiting for their new stadium to be built in Las Vegas. The A's are set to play one more season here before the move, and the team is already playing two series this week in the Las Vegas area.

Attendance has risen from 9,487 fans per game last season to 10,820 through 28 home dates this season, with 12 announced sellouts in a ballpark that can fit a little more than 12,000 fans a game. But local officials are confident a full-time team would have even more support at a new stadium built right next door to the existing Triple-A park.

“From our perspective, landing Major League Baseball is really a market demonstration statement about who we are,” said Barry Broome, the President and CEO of Greater Sacramento Economic Council. “We do love baseball. Everybody deep down inside prays we’ll get a phone call from (A's owner) John Fisher and he says, ’Psych, I’m staying.' No one wants to admit they pray for that every day. But we love the Athletics. It’d be awesome, but we didn’t. They’re going to Vegas, so we have to bring in our own team which is fine with us.”

Sacramento has $1.8 billion in commitments for a new stadium

The group in Sacramento has raised $800 million in land near the current minor league ballpark and private investment and has access to $1 billion in public funding that comes mostly from property taxes in the area.

While economists have expressed doubts about the value of public investment into stadiums and McCarty himself voted against funding Sacramento's NBA arena when he was on the city council, he believes this plan makes more sense.

“That was more of an impact on the general fund,” he said of the plan that led to building Golden 1 Center that opened in downtown Sacramento in 2016. “This one I think is the fairest deal for taxpayers and partners to do big projects that we have on the books.”

There's no timeline yet for MLB expansion

MLB's first priority is negotiating a new collective bargaining agreement with the union. Commissioner Rob Manfred said last week that MLB has told interested cities that a decision on whether to expand won't come until the CBA is complete.

Among the other cities vying for a team if it does happen are Charlotte, North Carolina; Montreal; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; and Salt Lake City. Sacramento's biggest competition would likely be the other cities out West.

“I think the size and scope of the market is really our key advantage,” Broome said. “We’ve also demonstrated we have a turnkey stadium deal now. That can happen under the mayor and the city manager’s signature. We don’t have to pass a bond or anything like that. It took us four months to raise $800 million. I think people underestimate Sacramento. There’s a lot of money in this town. There is a lot economic power in this town. We can do this.”

___

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

Cy Young Award winners Tarik Skubal and Blake Snell let doctors use the instrument on their prized elbows. Connor Hellebuyck, the 2025 Hart Trophy winner as NHL MVP, trusted it to address issues in his knee. Several NFL players have turned to it, too.

It’s called the NanoNeedle scope 2.0, a miniaturized, flexible version of the traditional arthroscope. It's very early — there is little published research on the model — but it is accumulating an impressive list of proponents.

“Every time I’ve used it, including when I started using it in the lab, different types of procedures occur to me that we could do,” said Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the head team physician for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Rams.

An arthroscope is a pencil-like tube with a camera that goes into joints, expands the area with salt water or saline, and projects an image onto a screen. Then doctors insert secondary instruments in the same area to perform the surgical procedure.

With the diminished size — 1.9 millimeters in diameter, compared to 4 millimeters for a traditional scope — the NanoNeedle is designed to cause less pain, inflammation and tissue damage, leading to a faster recovery. It uses much less fluid than a traditional scope, and it also is proving to be a valuable tool when it comes to diagnosing the extent of certain injuries.

“Basically, we’re able to accomplish anatomic type of work and repair with far less surgical trauma,” ElAttrache said.

Star athletes have returned ahead of schedule after NanoNeedle procedures

The NanoNeedle was used when Skubal had a loose body removed from his left elbow by ElAttrache on May 6, and again when Snell had a similar elbow surgery on May 19.

When Skubal — a two-time AL Cy Young Award winner who is eligible for free agency after this season — was placed on the injured list, the Detroit Tigers said the ace would be sidelined for two to three months. But he is expected to return on Saturday after pitching five scoreless innings in a rehab start on Sunday — a turnaround of about 5 1/2 weeks.

ElAttrache said he has used the NanoNeedle scope with four patients, but he declined to identify the other two cases. Snell had a bigger operation that also involved the sculpting of a spur, but ElAttrache is optimistic about the timeline for the left-hander's return to the Dodgers.

“The percentage of time out, I think, is going to be about half the time for Snell,” ElAttrache said.

Hellebuyck, a three-time Vezina Trophy winner as the NHL’s top goalie, had arthroscopic surgery on his right knee on Nov. 22. He was expected to be sidelined for four to six weeks, but he was back in net for the Winnipeg Jets after three weeks.

Dr. James Voos, the head team physician for the Cleveland Browns, said he has used the NanoNeedle during procedures on five Browns players, including center Luke Wypler's ankle fracture surgery.

“Ankles and elbows I think are areas where it has had very great utility and then rapidly adopted,” said Voos, who also serves as the president of the NFL Physicians Society. “And we’re finding more and more uses in the knee and shoulder.”

In addition to his duties with the Browns, Voos is the chair of the orthopedics departments at University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. He already has seen benefits when it comes to the treatment of younger athletes.

“There are some very challenging elbow injuries in gymnasts and baseball players that the previous cameras were too large for the joint,” Voos said. “They’re designed for adult joints. So the smaller camera allows us to see and work in these smaller spaces. In pediatrics and adolescence, that was more challenging and potentially caused more damage before, some more soft tissue damage.”

NanoNeedle has been in the works for a few years, and it's still evolving

The NanoNeedle was developed by Arthrex, a Florida-based company that makes medical supplies. Voos is an educational consultant for Arthrex, and ElAttrache has worked with the company for more than 30 years.

The initial version was created in 2019, according to Ryan Kellar, a senior product manager at Arthrex. There was another version that came out in 2023 before the current model — with upgraded visualization, processing and imaging — was released in August.

“This is our third iteration,” Kellar said. “We already have the fourth iteration coming in the fall. That fourth iteration is going to be everything that this conventional scope is at all the less invasive benefits of nano arthroscopy. So we really believe that nano is the next foundation of less invasive orthopedic care for general population, as well as kind of a gold standard for athletes.”

Dr. Kyle Hammond, the head team physician for the Atlanta Falcons and head orthopedic surgeon for the Atlanta Hawks, has used the NanoNeedle in a teaching setting as an orthopedic surgeon at Emory Healthcare and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine. But he hasn't used it on a patient yet.

Hammond said other companies have made similar devices for needle arthroscopy, but he praised the quality of the camera and the video feed with the NanoNeedle, along with its ease of use.

“It really has basically become very similar to what our standard arthroscopy equipment is,” he said. “It’s just on a smaller scale.”

The current version of the NanoNeedle is disposable, raising questions about cost versus the expense of sterilization for the reusable traditional arthroscope. Like anything in science, Hammond said, more usage and research are needed to assess the benefits of the new design versus the standard version of the scope.

“To kind of determine if they have true efficacy over the standard of care, they have to be used for a long period of time and you have to collect data and you kind of have to prove that from a statistical model,” Hammond said.

Dr. Brian Cole, the head team physician for the Chicago Bulls, said the level of adoption will depend in large part on the willingness of clinicians to incorporate the scope into their workflow.

“There’s a sort of econometric analysis on top of a healthcare analysis at the same time,” said Cole, who also is a consultant for Arthrex. “But I would say directionally, this is where we’re going. Less invasive, cost-effective, predictable, eliminating problems that we might or could have with existing technology. So, in that regard, this is very innovative, you know, in my opinion, and it’s consistent with the direction we’re going in.”

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

But on Saturday?

“We got to watch the Knicks,” he said.

In most nations hosting the World Cup, soccer is a fixation. But with the New York Knicks holding a 3-1 lead in the best-of-seven NBA Finals against San Antonio and one win from their first title since 1973, attention is surely going to be split this weekend. The Knicks can clinch with a victory in Game 5 on Saturday night. Tipoff will come shortly after Brazil and Morocco wrap a World Cup match in New Jersey, and it will directly overlap with a showdown between Scotland and Haiti.

“I want to watch all the World Cup games, but for us, the Knicks is still a priority,” the 38-year-old Carson said while he and a friend viewed the World Cup opening ceremony at The Football Factory at Legends, a soccer bar near Madison Square Garden. “I’ll probably catch the (soccer) recap after.”

The Knicks have gripped New York, but even some diehard fans already have divided attention. Hours before sitting courtside for the Knicks' historic Game 4 rally at MSG, film director Spike Lee was clad in green and gold for a visit to Brazil's training facility in New Jersey on Wednesday.

Brazil plays Morocco in its opener at East Rutherford, New Jersey, at 6 p.m., a match slated to end about 30 minutes before the NBA game starts in Texas. Scotland-Haiti in Massachusetts starts at 9 p.m.

The Football Factory has 20 screens, enough to satisfy all fandoms.

“I hope they put it to bed Saturday night, so we can just say, well done, Knicks. Have your parade, and that’s it. Now we can concentrate on the soccer," said Jack Keane, the Irishman who owns The Football Factory.

Keane's bar hosts supporters groups from Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Leeds and AC Milan. He estimated more than 2,000 people come through his bar on Wednesday night, when the Knicks won Game 4.

“The Knicks crowd was the same as the Champions League final crowd," he said.

Keane's bar was charging a $20 cover, with one drink included, for the Mexico-South Africa opener.

A 10-minute walk south and east, fans also were lined up to enter Smithfield Hall, which hosts the supporters clubs of Manchester United, West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Roma and Marseille.

“Usually for American sports, because they’re longer, people don’t like to stand,” said Kieron Slattery, an Irishman who is Smithfield's co-owner. “For the Knicks right now, they’re standing. It’s like a soccer game atmosphere.”

Most of the fans watching Thursday were New Yorkers, many of them originally from elsewhere.

Ryan Cole, a 44-year-old from Britain's Southampton who has lived in New York for a dozen years, wore an England jersey and hopes to come up with a ticket for The Three Lions' group-stage game against Panama on June 27. His grandfather, William Cole, was an English League linesman — he has a program with the grandpa's name from a Manchester-Chelsea match in 1952.

“You just see a wave of jerseys everywhere, which is amazing,” he said of the soccer kits and Knicks gear. “It’s just amazing to be in New York all the time, but now in particular with the Knicks, with the World Cup, with summer, couldn't be happier.”

One of his friends, 46-year-old Joel Ramirez, is a New York transplant from Dallas with Mexican parents. During the 2022 World Cup, he watched games at different ethnic restaurants that had ties to a team involved in the match, such as Brooklyn's Sunset Park for Mexico. He thinks the soccer supporters will have greater numbers in the bars Saturday than Knicks fans.

“There's going to be pound for pound a lot more football fans in the city,” he said. “I'll be watching both."

New York City soccer bars open early on weekends for fans to watch lunchtime matches in England and Europe. The World Cup is different.

"When you look at the Premier League, it’s a niche market, still. There’s people who watch it, people who don’t,” Keane said. “The World Cup is the big one. It’s the big party. Everyone’s got a shirt in the closet. Everyone’s going to claim either their own identity or a parent or a grandparent, get on the bandwagon.”

___

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

As the state faces an impending water supply crisis and state leaders explore different ways to expand the supply, they are looking at the billions of gallons of toxic wastewater produced every year from oil and gas operations.

Lawmakers have invested millions of dollars in studying the wastewater generated during oil and gas extraction and learning how to clean it. They’ve directed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the state’s environmental regulator, to lead the charge in setting water quality guidelines to make reusing produced water possible.

The agency has written proposed rules for how produced water will be regulated. Critics say those rules are not specific enough to make water containing a highly toxic mix of chemicals safe to spray on farmland.

Julie Range, a policy manager with the watchdog organization Commission Shift, said the idea of finding other uses for the wastewater is appealing in principle, particularly in a drought-prone state facing growing water demands, “but the devil’s in the details.”

“There’s just a huge soup of things in this water that makes it tricky to clean, to get rid of all of this messy stuff,” Range said. “You have to go through a lot of different treatment steps, and how clean you get this water will be determined by this rule.”

“TCEQ staff are currently developing a regulatory framework for treated produced water” land application permits, said Laura Lopez, a TCEQ spokesperson.

Each site where the water is to be used will require its own permit with its own evaluations, which may include limits on pollutants before water is released and monitoring and reporting requirements “as necessary to ensure protection of human health and the environment,” she said.

The TCEQ is scheduled to hold a virtual and in-person public hearing on June 15 at 10 a.m., where Texans can comment on the plan. TCEQ staff members will be available to discuss the proposal 30 minutes prior to the hearing. Texans can submit comments online until 11:59 p.m. on June 16.

Here’s what you need to know:

What is produced water and why is it a problem?

Produced water returns to the surface during oil and gas extraction and hydraulic fracturing. It contains a complex mix of contaminants that can include salts, heavy metals, naturally occurring radioactive materials and chemicals added during drilling. Scientists say the exact composition can vary dramatically from one well to another depending on geology and the chemicals used in production.

Because of those contaminants, produced water requires extensive treatment before it can safely be reused.

The oil and gas industry generates enormous quantities of produced water. Researchers estimate that operators produce roughly 20 million barrels of wastewater every day in Texas. Managing that waste stream has become one of the industry’s most persistent environmental and economic challenges.

For decades, the primary solution was underground injection. Operators pumped wastewater into disposal wells, often into geological formations above producing zones. But as wastewater volumes increased, scientists linked large-scale injection to earthquakes in parts of Texas.

In response, operators increasingly shifted disposal practices, including injecting wastewater into deeper formations. But new challenges emerged. In some areas, abandoned or improperly plugged wells began leaking produced water back to the surface or triggering blowouts, which have been linked to wastewater injection.

Why is the state trying to reuse produced water?

Industry groups say that Texas cannot afford to ignore a potential new water source as prolonged and severe drought, population growth and industrial demand strain existing supplies.

Texas communities face severe water shortages “that threaten families, jobs and economic growth” and should evaluate every available source of supply, said Tulsi Oberbeck, Texas Oil & Gas Association’s vice president of government and regulatory affairs.

“The science supporting beneficial reuse of produced water is well-established,” Oberbeck said.

That effort gained momentum during the last legislative session, when lawmakers approved legislation transferring authority over land application permits for treated produced water from the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates oil and gas development, to the TCEQ. Experts say the agency now has the responsibility to implement it wisely.

“We’re working toward a solution,” said Dan Mueller, an engineer and produced water consultant who represents the Environmental Defense Fund on the Texas Produced Water Consortium. “Just don’t get ahead of the science and move it too quickly to where you end up creating more problems than you solve.”

What’s the proposed rule?

The proposed rules would determine how clean this water will need to be before it can be applied to agricultural land, used for industrial cooling or other uses.

Under the proposal, facilities that apply produced water would be regulated through an existing wastewater permitting framework and need to follow the same standards as traditionally used for municipal and industrial wastewater facilities. The rules require testing — the kind used for municipal sewage — for salts, nitrate, E. coli, and other bacteria. Applicants would also have to demonstrate through a self-reported technical report that their projects protect groundwater resources and drinking water supplies.

The rules do not prescribe specific treatment technologies and testing for radionuclides, PFAS or “forever chemicals,” heavy metals or other contaminants commonly found in oilfield wastewater.

The agency is proposing that treated produced water cannot be used within 100 feet of streams, rivers and lakes, 150 feet of private water wells and 500 feet of public water wells, potable water storage tanks and surface water treatment plants.

Environmentalists argue the proposed requirements should set up water quality standards specifically for produced water rather than relying largely on existing rules designed for municipal sewage and other industrial wastewater streams.

“That’s probably the biggest red flag… TCEQ took a shortcut,” said Evgenia Spears, a water program coordinator at the environmental organization Sierra Club. “It just cannot fall under the existing program. It has to have specific water quality standards for produced water.”

Michael Lozano, who leads government affairs for the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, said opponents are overlooking advances in treatment technology and the expertise of regulators and scientists studying produced water.

“Produced water is treated to the purpose of its use and is tested for a significant number of constituents to ensure safety and that it is appropriate for its final purpose,” Lozano said.

Oberbeck with TXOGA said TCEQ’s rulemaking process, combined with the agency’s long history of “safe” wastewater regulation, provides a “science-backed permitting framework” for evaluating projects while protecting public health and the environment.

Mueller, the produced water expert, said that questions about how clean the water must be before it is applied to land will likely not be addressed until permits are requested.

Who is studying whether produced water is safe for land application?

The state is supporting research into produced water treatment. The Texas Produced Water Consortium at Texas Tech University and its partners are operating three pilot projects in West Texas to test treatment technologies and evaluate how treated produced water performs under real-world conditions.

One project is testing desalinated produced water on cotton, sorghum, native grasses and guayule, a desert shrub used to produce natural rubber. Researchers are comparing plots irrigated with treated produced water against plots irrigated with local groundwater and plots receiving only rainfall.

Shane Walker, the consortium’s director, said in the first year, plants irrigated with treated produced water grew as well as those irrigated with local groundwater. Results from a water quality analysis showed that the treatment system used to clean the produced water removed more than 99% of salts, organic pollutants and radioactive contaminants from the water.

Researchers are repeating testing this year and monitoring for contamination in soils and plant tissues.

Two additional pilot projects, starting this summer, are examining its use for agricultural irrigation and rangeland restoration while monitoring wildlife impacts, particularly on quail. Results are still months and potentially years away.

But whether treatment technology can reliably remove all the harmful contaminants in produced water remains a subject of intense debate.

Zacariah Hildenbrand, a chemist and a partner at Medusa Analytical, said the state is suffering from paralysis by over-analysis.

“We have the data to support this can be done safely,” he said. “Why it hasn’t happened is just because you have people that are hesitant to change, and I think nobody wants to be associated with a massive mistake.”

Disclosure: The Environmental Defense Fund, Permian Basin Petroleum Association, Texas Oil & Gas Association and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This coverage is made possible through Votebeat, a nonpartisan news organization covering local election administration and voting access. Sign up for Votebeat Texas’ free newsletters here.

Three years ago, Texas Republicans approved a state law that was designed to allow unprecedented state oversight of elections in Harris County, a Democratic stronghold that is also the state’s most populous county and includes most of Houston.

State Republican lawmakers said at the time they were responding to problems and irregularities with Harris County’s elections, while some election and policy experts decried the partisan overtones of the new law and said it amounted to an intrusion on local control of elections.

But the law also said the state could take control of elections in smaller counties, if it found problems there when conducting state-required random audits. Now, the state is using the law for the first time — but not to take over in Harris County.

Instead, the state has assumed administrative oversight of voter registration in Val Verde County, which sits along the Rio Grande west of San Antonio and has around 30,000 registered voters. The county voted Republican in the past two presidential elections.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration officials, who are responsible for voter registration duties, have repeatedly failed to maintain accurate voter registration records despite on-site training and help from officials with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, according to the agency’s preliminary audit of the county, released last year.

“A recurring pattern of problems with election administration and voter registration exists and the problems impede the free exercise of citizens’ voting rights,” the preliminary audit report from the state said.

The findings prompted the state to take control, the first time it has used that provision of the 2023 law. The agency did not answer questions about how long the county will remain under administrative oversight but in an emailed statement, said a full report with details on the parameters of the state’s oversight is expected in July.

The law’s author, state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Republican from Houston, said the bill’s application beyond Harris aims to address lingering voter registration and election administration issues that some election officials may be failing to resolve.

“This is an example of how we’re just trying to make sure that we’re following the law and it’s not specific to just one county,” Bettencourt said. “We need to make sure that if there are problems, that they’re followed up on, and that they stay fixed.”

A state audit finds problems

In 2022, Harris County, under the leadership of newly appointed election officials, had to extend voting for an hour after various polling places had malfunctioning voting machines, paper ballot shortages, and long waiting periods. Losing Republican candidates filed more than 20 lawsuits against the county, citing those problems and seeking a redo of the election. All but one of those lawsuits was dismissed. A judge ordered a new election in one race, though it never happened because the previously elected candidate resigned before it could be held.

During the 2023 legislative session, Bettencourt said the county’s election woes inspired him to craft a bill granting the Texas secretary of state the authority to investigate election “irregularities” after complaints are filed specifically in counties with more than 4 million people, a category that includes only Harris County.

The bill was later amended before passage to also apply to any counties that are selected at random for a state-required biennial audit of elections. In 2024, Val Verde was among the counties selected from a drawing to be audited.

This law gives state officials the ability to follow through and help county officials resolve ongoing problems uncovered by the audits when necessary, Bettencourt said.

The secretary of state’s office, until now, has had less rule-making authority over counties’ election procedures than nearly any other state’s chief election authority. But under this law, secretary of state officials can remove a county election administrator or file a petition to remove an elected county officer overseeing elections — such as a county clerk or a tax assessor-collector overseeing voter registration duties — if “a recurring pattern of problems” isn’t resolved.

That’s what ultimately happened in Val Verde. According to the preliminary audit report, the state found that Val Verde’s tax assessor-collector and voter registration office had no written voter registration policies. It found that staff created new voter registration records instead of updating existing ones, which resulted in duplicates. The staff could not explain how voter registration accuracy was verified, and provisional ballots were not processed promptly.

According to the preliminary audit report, state officials said the voter registrar’s failures led to some voters being assigned to the wrong jurisdiction and receiving the wrong ballot style, as well as voters often having to cast provisional ballots, which are at more risk of not ultimately counting. Due to these consistent issues coming up at polling locations across the county, the county clerk requested additional help from the secretary of state during the audit process.

In 2023 and 2024, the secretary of state sent teams to Val Verde County to provide “in-depth training” on voter registration and redistricting processes. “The state team worked with all offices to ensure that the jurisdictional boundaries were accurately reflected in the statewide system. However, the audit revealed that Val Verde County has not consistently updated this information since the Secretary of State provided assistance last year,” the preliminary audit report says.

The county’s tax assessor-collector and voter registrar, Elodia Garcia, said in an email that her staff has since reviewed its list of registered voters to merge duplicates, though some are still pending, and that they have resolved the issues with jurisdiction boundaries by visiting the addresses of affected voters and double-checking street numbers. She also noted that her office has now implemented a policy manual for voter registration, that voter registration data is entered in a timely manner, and that they now use time stamps to have proof of dates on records.

When Bettencourt’s bill was first proposed, election policy experts raised concerns about how punitive it would be and the unprecedented authority it gave the state over local elections.

But the state’s implementation of the law in Val Verde indicates the state is so far using the law to resolve ongoing issues, not to punish local officials or make sweeping changes to local policies. Daniel Griffith, senior policy director for Secure Democracy Foundation, one of the experts who initially voiced concern, said that he’s interested to see whether the state oversight could lead to improvements in Val Verde and set guardrails for all 254 counties.

“If that is something that is enhanced by this or is a benefit that can be realized, then that’s definitely a good thing, and something that I think most election observers would certainly be in favor of,” Griffith said.

‘We gotta fix it’

Val Varde County Judge Lewis Owens, a Democrat, said the county welcomed the audit and findings from the state.

“You can’t fix what you don’t know is broke. So, with them coming in and giving us the detailed report like they did and pointing out exactly what needs to be fixed, we gotta do it,” Owens said, adding, “We gotta fix it.”

Owens said he expects another report from the state in August detailing the county’s progress. If the issues aren’t fixed by then, he said, the Val Verde County Commissioners Court will decide whether it needs to create a county elections administration position and appoint an official whose sole responsibility will be election administration and voter registration.

“It’s good that they’re holding our feet to the fire. We gotta do a better job,” Owens said. “We can’t afford for a person to go in to go vote, and they’re having to vote provisional because we screwed up.”

Natalia Contreras covers election administration and voting access for Votebeat in partnership with the Texas Tribune. Natalia is based in Corpus Christi. Contact her at ncontreras@votebeat.org.

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

The candlelight vigil came just two days after Brazoria County Sheriff Bo Stallman announced the firing of Tippit.

Stallman made the announcement via social media, not taking any questions from reporters. The comments section on the video has been turned off.

KPRC 2 has reached out to the sheriff’s office to speak with the sheriff about Tippit but was told he will not make any further comment.

Mendoza, a Texas State University freshman, was remembered as a beloved son, teammate and friend whose loss has left a lasting impact on the community.

• Armed man shot by police after harassing customers at W. Houston restaurant, pointing gun at responding officers

“He was sweetest person ever,” said friend Lily Tobias, who attended high school with Mendoza. “We loved him so much.”

Among those speaking at the vigil was Brazoswood High School head football coach Eric Luster, who announced Mendoza’s jersey number, 78, will never be worn again.

“Number 78 will never be worn again by anyone except for John,” said Luster.

The shooting happened shortly after midnight on June 1 when a brief pursuit ended at the Mendoza family’s home in Lake Jackson.

The family has said Mendoza was unarmed when he was shot. Radio traffic released after the shooting captured Tippit telling dispatchers the shooting was an accidental discharge.

“We are demanding transparency, accountability and ultimately justice,” said former Brazoria County NAACP President Eugene Howard. “We will not let the Texas Rangers and the D.A. drop the ball.”

• Turkey Leg Hut owner Lynn Price pleads guilty to federal conspiracy charge in Bar 5015 arson case

KPRC 2 has confirmed both the Texas Rangers and the Brazoria County District Attorney’s Office are investigating the shooting. District Attorney Tom Selleck has previously said the process could take months.

As the sun set, attendees lit candles and repeatedly chanted “Justice for John.”

For many gathered at MacLean Park, Thursday night’s vigil was not only about remembering the young man they lost, but also about ensuring his name is not forgotten as the investigation continues.

Trump has said multiple times in recent weeks that the warring parties have been on the cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition. A spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry said in a live phone call on state television that mediators were active and nothing had been finalized to end the conflict that began Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel jointly attacked Iran.

Trump opened an Oval Office event Thursday afternoon saying: “We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran.” He offered scant details, other than to say he expects an agreement to extend a fragile ceasefire that started in April to be finalized “over the next few days.”

Extending the terms of the ceasefire gives U.S. leaders more time to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear program, the main reason Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used to justify launching the war. Netanyahu’s office said Thursday that Israel is not a party to the emerging agreement between the U.S. and Iran.

The announcement came after two days of back-and-forth attacks between the U.S. and Iran had pushed the Middle East closer to the resumption of a full-scale war.

Trump had threatened further escalation earlier Thursday, posting on social media that the U.S. would hit Iran “VERY HARD TONIGHT” and take “total control” of its oil and gas industries. A few hours later, Trump posted on social media that significant points in the negotiations “have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Esmail Baghaei, the spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said in his phone call on state television that the text of a deal is “mostly finalized.”

"The problem is that the contradictions in America’s position have caused turbulence to this process,” he said Thursday night.

A major sticking point in negotiations has been Iran's nuclear program, which the U.S. and Israel fear could lead to an atomic weapon, but which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes. Another key issue is Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a critical shipping lane for transporting oil and natural gas.

Trump again moves quickly from threats to negotiating

Trump's rapid shift Thursday from dire threats to promoting peace negotiations again underscored his whipsaw approach to the war. He suggested on Monday that a deal to end the conflict could be reached in a matter of days.

Then back-and-forth strikes rattled the Middle East this week. The first involved attacks between Iran and Israel, followed by the two rounds of fire between the U.S. and Iran, which targeted countries where U.S. troops are based. The U.S. strikes began after Trump blamed Iran for downing an American attack helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. Both pilots were rescued safely.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the U.S. attacks had “effectively rendered the ceasefire ... meaningless,” without saying it was abandoning it.

After Trump threatened more attacks were to come on Thursday, Iran’s parliamentary speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, responded on social media that “wrong strategies and impulsive decisions” would wreak havoc on energy markets and “create an endless quagmire that you will be stuck in for years.”

It wasn't the first time Trump threatened escalation before giving negotiations another chance. In April, he warned Iran that “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” if it didn’t agree to his terms, before extending a ceasefire.

Trump threatened to seize Iran's main oil terminal

Iran’s monthslong disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has crimped global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics more expensive well beyond the region.

Trump had threatened Thursday to seize Kharg Island, the heart of Iran’s oil industry, through which 90% of its exports pass.

But Trump himself soon voiced doubts about taking over the oil terminal, saying in an interview with Fox News: “I don’t know that America has the stomach for it, to be honest.”

“I don’t want to have boots on the ground," Trump said. "But if I wanted to, we could put a small group of soldiers and take over the place.”

Tensions persist over Iran's nuclear program, Strait of Hormuz

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post that the U.S. would extract funds from frozen Iranian accounts to offset the costs of damage to American allies and any tolls Iran imposes for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz.

Beyond the deadlock over the strait, the two sides also remain at odds over Iran's nuclear program. Tehran insists its nuclear efforts are peaceful. The U.S. and Israel fear Tehran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium could be used to build an atomic weapon.

Iran has insisted that any deal to end the war must also end fighting in Lebanon between its ally militia Hezbollah and Israel. But Netanyahu appears intent on pursuing his goal of destroying the militant group.

Iranian student says hope dwindles as attacks escalate

A 25-year-old student in northern Iran says Iranians are fearing “chaos” amid the war with the U.S. and Israel and multiplying crises at home.

The student, who lives in the city of Babol, said many Iranians are struggling to afford groceries in the face of mass job losses and triple-digit food inflation. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security fears.

“Everything is going wrong and there is no hope among the people,” the student added.

The student first spoke to The Associated Press before the war when he participated in widespread anti-government protests. He now says his chief concern is that Iran “maintain territorial integrity and deterrence” in the face of attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

US fires on another merchant ship to enforce blockade

The U.S. military's Central Command said Thursday that it struck a Guinea-Bissau-flagged tanker attempting to evade the American blockade on Iranian ports. It said the M/T Jalveer was transporting Iranian oil when it was disabled late Wednesday after its crew failed to obey U.S. orders.

It's the ninth merchant vessel the U.S. military says it disabled to enforce the blockade.

Three Indian sailors were killed when American forces struck the Palau-flagged M/T Settebello on Tuesday, India's minister overseeing ports and shipping said Thursday on X.

U.S. Central Command said American forces issued warnings before firing on the ship, which it accused of trying to evade the blockade.

The leader of the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations agency, condemned the attack.

___

Madhani reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Will Weissert, Collin Binkley, Michelle L. Price and Konstantin Toropin in Washington; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Victoria Eastwood and Amir-Hussein Radjy in Cairo; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City contributed to this report.

The Seoul Central District Court found Yoon and his ex-defense minister, Kim Yong Hyun, guilty of aiding an adversary and abusing their power, saying they sought to provoke North Korea into launching armed attacks or other serious retaliation against South Korea to manufacture a national emergency. It said the moves harmed South Korea’s military interests by exposing its capabilities, undermining its ability to conduct future operations and prompting North Korea to strengthen its defense posture. Yoon’s lawyers appealed the ruling.

The same court earlier sentenced Yoon to life in prison for a rebellion conviction over his short-lived imposition of martial law in December 2024.

North Korea accused Seoul of flying drones over Pyongyang to drop propaganda leaflets three times in October 2024. Kim, who was South Korea’s defense minister at the time, issued a vague denial before the Defense Ministry said it could neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Tensions rose sharply but did not lead to any military clashes.

Yoon’s lawyers criticized the latest ruling, saying the drone flights were a response to North Korea flying thousands of trash-carrying balloons into the South earlier in 2024. They argued that a guilty verdict would undermine South Korea’s security interests.

Investigators led by special prosecutor Cho Eun-suk had sought a 30-year prison term for Yoon, accusing him of trying to create a warlike situation between the Koreas while plotting an authoritarian push to remove his political opponents and “monopolize” power. They had sought a 25-year prison term for Kim, a key confidant of Yoon who helped plan and mobilize forces for Yoon’s martial law declaration.

Yoon proceeded with the declaration late in the night of Dec. 3, 2024, delivering a televised address in which he accused liberal lawmakers of being North Korea-sympathizing “anti-state” forces. He cited a range of grievances, but particularly the opposition’s impeachments of senior officials and cuts to his government’s budget bill.

Martial law lasted about six hours until lawmakers broke through a blockade of soldiers and police at the National Assembly and voted to overturn it, forcing Yoon’s Cabinet to lift the measure.

Yoon was quickly impeached, suspended from office, and formally removed by the Constitutional Court. He was arrested in July 2025 and several criminal trials are ongoing.

The verdict in the most serious case, of rebellion, has been appealed both by Yoon and prosecutors, who had sought a death sentence.

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 Wednesday after being hit by a tree that “broke apart and fell during strong storms,” police said in a statement. 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.

___

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

Under the leadership of Head Coach Kelvin Sampson, Houston will compete in an 18-game schedule during the upcoming season.

Opponents were selected based to best balance the schedule in terms of travel and competitiveness. A full Big 12 schedule with game dates, times and broadcasting networks will be released at a later date.

FORMAT

All Big 12 schools will play three schools in home-and-away series, six opponents at home only and six schools on the road only.

In 2026-27, Houston meets Arizona, Colorado and Texas Tech in home-and-away series.

BYU, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, TCU and Utah will visit Fertitta Center while the Cougars hit the road to meet Arizona State, Baylor, Cincinnati, Kansas State, UCF and West Virginia.

2026-27 BIG 12 SCHEDULE MATRIX

HOUSTON

Home & Away: Arizona, Colorado, Texas Tech

Home Only: BYU, Iowa State, Kansas, Oklahoma State, TCU, Utah

Away Only: Arizona State, Baylor, Cincinnati, Kansas State, UCF, West Virginia

ARIZONA

Home & Away: Houston, Arizona State, BYU

Home Only: Baylor, Colorado, Kansas, TCU, UCF, Utah

Away Only: Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, West Virginia

ARIZONA STATE

Home & Away: Arizona, Kansas State, TCU

Home Only: Houston, Baylor, BYU, Iowa State, UCF, Utah

Away Only: Cincinnati, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, West Virginia

BAYLOR

Home & Away: Colorado, Kansas, UCF

Home Only: Houston, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, West Virginia

Away Only: Arizona, Arizona State, BYU, TCU, Texas Tech, Utah

BYU

Home & Away: Arizona, TCU, Utah

Home Only: Baylor, Cincinnati, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, West Virginia

Away Only: Houston, Arizona State, Colorado, Iowa State, Texas Tech, UCF

CINCINNATI

Home & Away: Kansas State, Texas Tech, West Virginia

Home Only: Houston, Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas, TCU, UCF

Away Only: Baylor, BYU, Colorado, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, Utah

COLORADO

Home & Away: Houston, Baylor, Utah

Home Only: Arizona State, BYU, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Texas Tech, West Virginia

Away Only: Arizona, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, UCF

IOWA STATE

Home & Away: Kansas, Oklahoma State, West Virginia

Home Only: Arizona, BYU, Cincinnati, Kansas State, TCU, Utah

Away Only: Houston, Arizona State, Baylor, Colorado, Texas Tech, UCF

KANSAS

Home & Away: Baylor, Iowa State, Kansas State

Home Only: Arizona State, Colorado, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, UCF, West Virginia

Away Only: Houston, Arizona, BYU, Cincinnati, TCU, Utah

KANSAS STATE

Home & Away: Arizona State, Cincinnati, Kansas

Home Only: Houston, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma State, TCU, Texas Tech

Away Only: Baylor, BYU, Iowa State, UCF, Utah, West Virginia

OKLAHOMA STATE

Home & Away: Iowa State, TCU, Utah

Home Only: Arizona, Arizona State, Cincinnati, Colorado, Texas Tech, UCF

Away Only: Houston, Baylor, BYU, Kansas, Kansas State, West Virginia

TCU

Home & Away: Arizona State, BYU, Oklahoma State

Home Only: Baylor, Colorado, Kansas, Texas Tech, UCF, Utah

Away Only: Houston, Arizona, Cincinnati, Iowa State, Kansas State, West Virginia

TEXAS TECH

Home & Away: Houston, Cincinnati, UCF

Home Only: Arizona, Arizona State, Baylor, BYU, Iowa State, West Virginia

Away Only: Colorado, Kansas, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU, Utah

UCF

Home & Away: Baylor, Texas Tech, West Virginia

Home Only: Houston, BYU, Colorado, Iowa State, Kansas State, Utah

Away Only: Arizona, Arizona State, Cincinnati, Kansas, Oklahoma State, TCU

UTAH

Home & Away: BYU, Colorado, Oklahoma State

Home Only: Baylor, Cincinnati, Kansas, Kansas State, Texas Tech, West Virginia

Away Only: Houston, Arizona, Arizona State, Iowa State, TCU, UCF

WEST VIRGINIA

Home & Away: Cincinnati, Iowa State, UCF

Home Only: Houston, Arizona, Arizona State, Kansas State, Oklahoma State, TCU

Away Only: Baylor, BYU, Colorado, Kansas, Texas Tech, Utah

After a lackluster first half in which both teams were jeered as they left the field, the Czech Republic took the lead in the 59th minute on a header by captain Ladislav Krejci after a long throw-in into the penalty area.

South Korea equalized in the 67th, when Hwang scored after faking a shot with a nifty move to clear two Czech players. The midfielder who plays for Dutch club Feyenoord then made the cross from the right flank for Oh Hyeon-gyu's decisive strike in the 80th in a match played in front of hundreds of empty seats at Guadalajara Stadium.

The South Korean squad celebrated with its fans behind one of the goals after the final whistle. Players later posed for a photo with the fans behind them.

“It was our first game and a very difficult one,” South Korea coach Hong Myung-bo said. “The win itself makes me happy, but what’s even more positive is that our boys won by not giving up. I knew that we were more than capable of winning, so at 1-1, I told the boys to keep playing the way we’ve been playing.”

It was South Korea's first opening World Cup win since it beat Greece in 2010 in South Africa. South Korea beat European opponent in the tournament for a third straight time, following wins over Portugal in 2022 and Germany in 2018.

Let by star forward Son Heung-min, South Korea controlled possession and outshot the Czechs, who were making their first World Cup appearance since 2006. The Koreans, ranked 25th by FIFA, had most of the significant scoring chances against the 38th-ranked Czechs but failed to capitalize early.

Son was looking to become South Korea’s top goal scorer at the World Cup and the Asian player with the most goals in the tournament. The 33-year-old former Tottenham star, who now plays for Los Angeles FC of Major League Soccer, entered Thursday having scored three goals over three prior World Cups.

Appearing in his fourth World Cup, Son had a couple of good opportunities to add to his tally but missed wide in the first half and had a close-range shot saved in the second.

The Czechs thought they had retaken the lead with another set piece in the 77th, but Tomas Soucek was ruled offside on his header.

Czech Republic coach Miroslav Koubek said “probably the better team won.” But he said his team could have had a better outcome if it weren’t for “some mistakes.”

“We played very well, it could have been a draw and we could have won as well,” Koubek said.

The announced attendance was 44,985 at the 45,664-capacity Guadalajara Stadium, a crowd that included FIFA President Gianni Infantino. Sections in the middle of the stands had many unoccupied seats and there were other empty seats scattered across the stadium.

South Korea is making its 11th straight World Cup appearance and 12th overall, the most of any Asian country. Its best result was a fourth-place finish at the tournament it co-hosted with Japan in 2002. Since then, the South Koreans have never gone beyond the round of 16.

In the other Group A match on Thursday, co-host Mexico defeated South Africa 2-0 in the tournament opener in Mexico City.

___

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

She died Thursday evening at a Bangkok hospital where she had been cared for since falling unconscious due to illness three years ago, according to the statement issued Friday.

“This loss is not merely bad news announced to the people, but an immeasurable grief in the hearts of the entire nation,” Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said in a televised speech. He said the princess was “a pride of Thailand,” and that “her commitment to building a society of kindness, justice, and equality, will forever remain as a moral legacy for the nation, a guiding light for generations of Thais.”

A small group of mourners gathered in an atrium at King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital, where the princess had been treated. Most held framed or laminated photos of her throughout the years.

Pattamaporn Kaewkityakorn said she had arrived Thursday and spent the night there to show her support for the princess, unaware that the announcement of her passing would come the following morning.

“I know she was sick, but I wished there were a miracle,” she said, her voice trembling. “I was saddened and shocked.”

Bajrakitiyabha was active in justice reform efforts and best known for her Kamlangjai, or “Inspire,” project to help rehabilitate incarcerated Thai women ahead of their release.

Bajrakitiyabha was hospitalized in December 2022 after falling unconscious while training dogs for an army exhibition. The palace said she had a mycoplasma infection, a bacterial infection usually associated with pneumonia.

Her father's New Year’s greeting card for 2023 showed King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida garbed in somber black, which many Thais saw as confirmation of the gravity of her condition.

The princess was born on Dec. 7, 1978, to Vajiralongkorn, who was the crown prince at the time, and his then-wife, Princess Soamsawali. Vajiralongkorn has seven children by three of his four successive wives. Bajrakitiyabha was also known by the royal name Bajrakitiyabha Narendira Debyavati, used in formal state settings.

Prince Dipangkorn Rasmijoti, the youngest of the king’s children, is the presumptive heir because sons take precedence in Thailand's line of succession. But Bajrakitiyabha's experience in public service raised speculation she was set to hold an important role in any future succession, perhaps as regent to a youthful monarch.

Bajrakitiyabha studied law at Thammasat University then went to Cornell University in New York state, where she earned a master’s degree in law in 2002. She earned a doctorate at Cornell in 2005 with a dissertation concerning the protection of the rights of the accused. Scholarships to Cornell Law School and a program for the exchange of legal scholars between Thailand and Cornell were later established in her name.

After working briefly at the Thai Mission to the U.N. in New York City, she returned home and worked as a public prosecutor. She renewed her diplomatic career with an appointment as Thailand’s ambassador to Austria from 2012 to 2014 before returning to her homeland to concentrate on criminal justice issues. In 2017 she was appointed a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

In addition to working for the rehabilitation of female convicts, she was involved in other projects including a campaign to enhance the living conditions of women prisoners and promoting efforts to stem violence against women as an honorary U.N. goodwill ambassador for women. Her efforts led to the U.N. General Assembly adopting the “Bangkok Rules” on care and conditions for female prisoners.

“Society cannot grow if there is instability and injustice,” Bajrakitiyabha said in a 2013 interview with The Associated Press.

“Without the rule of law, without a good justice system, it’s always chaos,” she said. “I think the rule of law is a very important pillar to development, to economic growth, and of course to human rights.”

Bajrakitiyabha is survived by her parents and siblings.

——

Associated Press journalist Anton L. Delgado contributed to this report.

And they had spent the first four games of the Stanley Cup Final being outplayed in critical second-period sequences.

On Thursday night, it all came together, aligning to bring the Hurricanes within a victory of winning the Cup.

Svechnikov scored twice and Aho added a second-period goal in a breakout offensive game for both, helping the Hurricanes beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 for a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“I liked our effort for sure, and I hope we're getting better,” coach Rod Brind'Amour said. “I think there's certain areas of our game that are starting to look a lot like we need it to look. But I do think there's still another level that we're going to need to get to find that next one.”

Captain Jordan Staal found the net again for the fifth straight game in this series after Vegas had taken a 1-0 first-period lead, while Brandon Bussi finished with 23 saves in his second career postseason start.

Game 6 is Sunday night in Las Vegas, with the Hurricanes playing for the chance to hoist the Stanley Cup for the first time since Brind’Amour captained them to the title in 2006.

Aho's goal in the second period marked his first of the series, coming when Sean Walker found him cutting to the left side after Jordan Martinook — swapped with Seth Jarvis to work alongside Aho and Svechnikov on the top line — won a puck battle behind the net on the forecheck.

Then there was Svechnikov, who entered Thursday with four postseason goals before striking twice on the power play. On the first, he whipped the puck past Carter Hart on the right side for a 2-1 lead in the second period. On the second, he had a short putaway at the post off a sharp feed from Nikolaj Ehlers for a 4-1 lead, one of three assist for Ehlers on the night that included him having two delay-of-game penalties for putting a puck over the glass.

Before those second-period scores, Vegas had outscored Carolina 9-1 in the second period during the series.

And unlike most multi-goal leads in what has been a wild and thrilling series, this one held up with Bussi doing enough to stave off Vegas' late push to climb back in it.

“It required everything we have,” Staal said on the ESPN broadcast.

Pavel Dorofeyev scored twice for Vegas, finding the net for the first time since Game 1 of the Western Conference Final sweep of Presidents’ Trophy winner Colorado.

“I thought we were still doing some good things,” Vegas’ Jack Eichel said. “We had chances.”

Hart entered this one as the first goaltender in Stanley Cup Final history to give up at least four goals in each of the first four games, then did it again to continue a difficult series while finishing with 20 saves.

Asked if he considered swapping to backup Adin Hill, coach John Tortorella responded: “That could be the stupidest question I've heard.”

Vegas had twice before been in a 2-2 series in these playoffs, in the first round against Utah and the second round against Anaheim. Both times, the Golden Knights won Game 5 and closed out the series in Game 6.

This time, they’ll have to win on home ice to force the series back to Carolina for a Game 7 on Wednesday night. And they'll have to take two in a row against a Hurricanes team that hasn't suffered consecutive losses since mid-January.

Not that Tortorella was fazed.

“We'll be back here,” he said confidently, saying he would leave his clothes behind at the team's hotel in expectation of returning to North Carolina.

Vegas played much of the night without center William Karlsson, who was being checked out on the bench for an apparent upper-body injury. Karlsson skated to the tunnel midway through the second period and didn’t return. Tortorella said the center was “not going to be with us, probably" in the coming games.

___

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

With Karlsson knocked out of Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final because of injury, the Golden Knights took four penalties that turned into two power-play goals against. Carter Hart allowed four goals for a fifth consecutive game in the series, and now his team is on the brink of elimination after losing 4-2 to Carolina on Thursday night.

“When we lose Bill, it kind of screws things up," coach John Tortorella said. “We lost momentum when we went back to back in penalties. It was about the same time that we lost Bill. We’ve got to find a way.”

Karlsson appeared to injure his left arm or shoulder after getting knocked into the boards by Hurricanes defenseman Sean Walker a little over eight minutes into the second period. He got medical attention on the bench briefly, skated off and never returned and Tortorella foreshadowed that being the end of Karlsson's series.

“He’s not going to be with us, probably,” Tortorella said. "We’ve got to find a way to fill that void, not with just one guy but as a team.”

Karlsson making his playoff debut at the start of the second round changed everything for Vegas, shifting Mitch Marner to the wing and providing the kind of strong, reliable center depth needed to win this time of year. Karlsson had nine points in 14 games after missing the previous six months because of an undisclosed injury.

But the void left by Karlsson’s departure was all too clear, especially on the penalty kill. Carolina’s Andrei Svechnikov scored the first of his two power-play goals less than four minutes after Karlsson left, then added another in the third.

“He’s an important piece to us: up the middle of the ice, a penalty killer, power play guy," Tortorella said. “He’s a winner."

Fourth-liner Nick Dowd called Karlsson one of the team's best players. Defenseman Brayden McNabb, who along with Karlsson and Shea Theodore are the only players who have been around for Vegas’ entire nine-year existence, said Karlsson was a big leader in the locker room.

Karlsson is also nearly impossible to replace.

“He means so much," fellow center Jack Eichel said. "He’s a world class player. He plays in all situations. He’s extremely reliable in our own zone, and he creates a lot of offense. ... It's tough. You lose someone like Karl who’s so valuable to our team and playing so well. But it just means everyone else has to step up.”

Tortorella expects that to happen, promising there will be a Game 7 in Raleigh on Wednesday night.

“We’ll be back here. We’re just going to do it in a different order," Tortorella said. "I’m going to leave my clothes here, that’s for sure. They’ll be in the hotel.”

To do that, they'll have to win Game 6 back home in Las Vegas on Sunday. Hart is expected to be in net again despite a save percentage of .856 in the final.

Asked if he considered going to backup Adin Hill — who backstopped Vegas to the Cup in 2023 — in the third period, Tortorella scoffed and said, "That could be the stupidest question I’ve heard.”

___

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

The board voted Thursday to seek a stay of U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper's May 29 ruling that said Trump's name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The formal request was filed late Thursday.

Cooper ruled that only Congress could institute a change to the Kennedy Center's name and ordered references to Trump be removed by Friday. He 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 board move marks a shift from a June 4 memo to staff from the Kennedy Center’s Office of General Counsel saying 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 the president'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.

“The Trump administration’s 11th hour gambit after waiting nearly two weeks evinces desperation," Norm Eisen, a board member at Democracy Defenders Action, and Nathaniel Zelinsky, senior counsel at the Washington Litigation Group, said in a statement. "That is what they should be feeling because they don’t have a legal leg to stand on. We will be vigorously contesting this latest ploy as we have throughout the case on behalf of Congresswoman Beatty and the American people.”

They represent Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, an ex-officio member of the Kennedy Center's board who filed the lawsuit seeking to remove Trump's name from the institution.

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 hand-picked board of trustees that named him chairman. He brought in Richard Grenell to serve as president, a position he held until March when Matt Floca assumed the role.

The center’s lineup has included more Trump-friendly programming, serving as the venue for events such as the premiere of first lady Melania Trump’s documentary, “Melania.”

The board also announced it had renamed the facility the Trump Kennedy Center, a change scholars and lawmakers say must be initiated by Congress, and physically added the president’s name to the building’s facade.

The fallout from the arts community was swift and intense. Actor Issa Rae, musician Bela Fleck and author Louise Penny were among the numerous artists who withdrew from appearances, while consultants such as musician Ben Folds and singer Renée Fleming resigned. Earlier this month, the executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra, Jean Davidson, left to head the Los Angeles-based Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts.

In addition to voting on the stay on Thursday, the board backed a resolution recognizing Trump's “commitment to uphold this cherished American institution.”

Constantino, a political newcomer and candidate in the June 23 Republican primary to succeed Rep. Elise Stefanik, boasts a giant “Vote for Trump” sign atop his successful sticker business in the city of Amsterdam. He recorded a hip-hop album titled “Thank you President Trump." He even gifted Trump a big bronze statue of Trump himself last year at his West Palm Beach golf course.

Constantino's antics have not earned him fans among local party officials, who overwhelmingly support his opponent, state Assembly Member Robert Smullen, in the 21st Congressional District race. But Constantino has won over one powerful Republican who still has the power to sway primaries: Trump.

“Anthony is strongly supported by many of the most Highly Respected MAGA Warriors in our Movement, including Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Roger Stone!” Trump wrote in an endorsement of Constantino.

The president added: “The sign is still there!”

Constantino's battle against Smullen, a former U.S. Marine Corps colonel, is shaping up to be another test of Trump's pull at the ballot box, pitting the brash MAGA disciple against a more traditional conservative in the solid-red district.

Constantino has relentlessly attacked Smullen, calling him a “Trump hater” and giving him a derisive nickname out of the Trump playbook — “Slimebob.” He also doesn't miss a chance to feud with the state's Republican leadership.

“The New York GOP is a failing establishment, it’s a losing establishment,” Constantino said in an interview. “They reject outsiders. This happened with Donald Trump. The Republican Party tried to keep Donald Trump out, as well, because they knew he was going to reform things.”

Smullen has cast himself as the adult in the room, stressing his experience in the state Legislature, his military service, and his own ties to Trump.

“I think I directly represent the vast majority of the people in this district, their values, what they think about issues,” he said.

The district is 'not your country club Republican party’

The largely rural district sprawls across most of New York’s northern tip and includes the Adirondack Mountains, the U.S. Army's Fort Drum, dairy farms and dozens of small cities, towns and villages.

It's solid GOP territory — Stefanik won her last race by 24 points — with registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats 215,000 to 134,000. Voters there skew older and white, with many prison guards, police officers, farmers and devoutly religious people, according to Jack McGuire, an associate professor of politics at the State University of New York at Potsdam.

“It’s not your country club Republican party,” he said.

Stefanik shocked the New York political world when she announced late last year that she was suspending her campaign for governor and would not seek reelection to the House.

Her decision came after she didn't get full-throated support from Trump in the governor's race, and it followed an episode where Trump withdrew her nomination to be his ambassador to the United Nations over concerns about Republicans' threadbare majority in the House.

Local Republicans first began angling for the seat after she was tapped to head to the United Nations, only to begin circling again when she launched her run for governor.

A clash of candidates and styles

Smullen, who represents parts of the district in the state Assembly, is running a traditional campaign, chatting up voters at volunteer firehouses and community events.

He highlights a 24-year military career that included three tours of Afghanistan and combat experience, along with his more than seven years in the state Legislature. His 2018 appointment by Trump to serve in the White House Fellows program, along with attending both of Trump's inaugurations, was a go-to line when Constantino moved to cast himself as the Trump candidate during a recent debate.

“The idea that I have never been a supporter of President Donald Trump is a lie, it really is,” Smullen said during the debate. “And what's happening here is that if you say it long enough and if you say it hard enough then it's going to be true. But it's not true.”

Local GOP officials and committees are backing Smullen, as is the chair of the state Republicans. He also has the support of the state Conservative Party, which guarantees him a line in the general election even if he loses the GOP primary.

Matt Capano, who owns a hardware store in Gloversville, a small city in the district, said he knew Smullen as his local state lawmaker and had to “give him a lot of credit” because of his experience.

Constantino — who found success with his company Sticker Mule — is more of a showman. His style has forced his buttoned-up opponent to let loose. Smullen's campaign launched an anti-Constantino website that excoriates him for, among many other things, his past registration as a Democrat.

“I am the conservative Republican in this race,” Smullen said at the debate.

Constantino responded that he registered as a Democrat to vote for a childhood friend who was running for political office while calling himself a “lifelong conservative."

It didn't take long for him to steer the conversation back toward the president.

“I've always had his back through the whole thing,” he said of Trump. “In fact, in 2020, when he nicely exited the White House and a terrible person named Joe Biden entered, I went and I supported the president quietly by buying a Mar-a-Lago membership."

Both qualities have been on display for the rookie offensive lineman.

Not only has Rutledge lined up with the starters at center as he competes with Jake Andrews for the job, the former All-American selection has also cross-trained at offensive guard.

Rutledge lined up with the first-team offense at left guard Wednesday during a full-team minicamp one day after playing center and having a few rough snaps. The Texans are preparing Rutledge to line up as soon as possible and are confident in his transition to the NFL.

“Keylan has done a great job,” Texans coach DeMeco Ryans said. “Keylan’s moved around from guard to center. He’s done a great job with both. Really great communicator as a young player, aggressive, intense, just like the tape you saw at Georgia Tech, so it’s looked great so far.

“I’m excited to see him as another guy, with all the rookies, I’m just excited to see the guys put the pads on in training camp and truly compete, get the opportunity to play in some preseason games.”

The Texans’ offensive line Wednesday included returning left offensive tackle Aireontae Ersery, Rutledge, reserve center Evan Brown, returning right guard Ed Ingram and former Pro Bowl selection Trent Brown at right tackle with projected starter Braden Smith working his way back from a neck injury from last season with the Indianapolis Colts. Wyatt Teller, a Pro Bowl selection with the Cleveland Browns previously, has been the first-team left guard for the majority of the offseason workouts.

Nicknamed ‘Big Red,’ Rutledge signed a four-year, $19.276 million fully guaranteed contract last week that includes a $10.479 million signing bonus.

Rutledge is known for his nasty streak.

He has already made a lasting first impression on hard-hitting Pro Bowl middle linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair

“The best offensive linemen I know are like gnats,” Al-Shaair said. “You blow them away, you get off the block, and then by the end of the play, you just feel somebody breathing on you like, ‘Man, get the hell away from me.’ That’s how it’s been for him specifically.

“There are times when I’m over there thinking about punching him, because he’s just right there, just on you and I love that. I think those are the best players at that position that I’ve played against just won’t stop. The mindset, the attitude, is stuff that is hard to coach. It’s hard to coach somebody to be physical. It’s just either you got it or you don’t.”

Why did the Texans draft Rutledge and have such a strong conviction about the third-team All-American and first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection? A hard-nosed mentality, and a pile of bodies he left on the ground with a series of punishing blocks.

“The things that stand out about him, toughness, violence, physicality, his playing style, his intelligence,” Texans general manager Nick Caserio said. “Basically, the guy wants to step on your throat on every play, which I would say sort of embodies what our football team is about, the way we play.

“Intense, violent, physical. We’re going to run the football this year. It was an area that we felt like we wanted to and needed to improve on during the offseason. Hopefully, we’ve done that.”

Georgia Tech coach Brent Key called him the best offensive lineman he’s ever coached and the toughest player he’s worked with.

Key told KPRC 2 he believes that Rutledge can be an All-Pro center one day.

Rutledge tries to embody that serious approach to the game every snap he takes.

“It’s just who I want to be as a football player,” Rutledge said. “You want to be tough. You want to be relentless. You want to punch somebody in the face. You want to set the tone, and I think that’s what I do.

“That’s what I’m gonna bring every day. I control what I can control and that’s how hard I play, how I finish, how I strain, how detailed I am. I think that comes with toughness, how you push through things when you don’t feel right. That’s what I bring to Houston.”

Rutledge worked out privately in Georgia for Texans offensive line coach and run game coordinator Cole Popovich shortly before the draft, per a league source.

The Texans were intrigued by the physicality and serious approach of Rutledge throughout the draft process. The recent private workout conducted shortly before the draft reinforced their strong feelings about him as a player and person, per a league source.

“Him getting down here to Georgia Tech and just working me out, obviously you go out there and try to put your best foot forward,” Rutledge said. “Show him who you are. Obviously, he’s watched so much tape, so he already knows, right? But just put me through some movement stuff, seeing how I move.

“He’s just honestly coaching me up, man, you know, telling me like, ‘Hey, this is how, if you came to Houston, this is how we would do things, how we’re gonna throw punches. I’m just just soaking it up, trying to be a sponge, trying to learn from that guy. Man, obviously he knows what he’s doing, and I really had good feedback. I knew he liked me.”

A Middle Tennessee State transfer, Rutledge is 6-foot-4, 316 pounds and has run the 40-yard dash in 5.05 seconds. He tested consistently in training in 4.9 seconds.

He was a first-team All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection at right guard two seasons ago and a third-team All-American last season and all-conference again.

He is known for his power, strength, technique and go-for-the-throat style.

Rutledge won the Atlantic Coast Conference Brian Piccolo Award as the conference’s most courageous player, in recognition of overcoming serious injuries sustained in a automobile accident in December 2023.

Rutledge nearly had to have his foot amputated, but overcame the injury and got back to playing football again at a high level.

“It’s just a blessing, obviously, going through that car wreck when it could have been a lot, lot worse,” Rutledge said. “God had his hand with me. What happened to the foot that wasn’t a good deal, and then obviously, getting infected. When you get a bone infection, it’s a chance that they’re gonna cut it off. And that’s not good. God was just with me the whole time.

“Obviously, I battled back and found a way to get out there, and once, I found a way out there, two years of film and now we’re here. Just so blessed to be able to have this opportunity, and God’s been so gracious to me. I’m ready to get after it.”

He started all 13 games at right guard and did not allow a sack and surrendered just six quarterback hurries in 872 snaps in 2025.

Where Rutledge winds up playing is still being determined, but Wyatt Teller, signed to a two-year, $23 million deal, and Ingram, signed to a three-year, $37.5 million deal are expected to start at left guard and right guard, respectively.

“I’m comfortable at all three,” Rutledge said. “Honestly, obviously you’re most comfortable at right guard, because that’s what I played, kind of as a freshman, started there and just stuck there through all the years, but right side to left side. Obviously, it’s an adjustment.

“At center, man, I’m so comfortable with it, because coach Key always told me: ‘Hey, you have to play all three at the next level. You never know where they’re gonna put you at. I was kind of the emergency guy senior year. Senior Bowl, taking snaps, 100% confident that I can do that point out the Mike, have everybody on the same page. I can play all three.”

Right guard is where Rutledge has played the most, though, at the collegiate level.

“We’ll see,” Caserio said. “He’ll probably play wherever he needs to play. I’d say all three inside guys, you’ve got some guys that are center only, some guys that are guard only, some guys that can play all three spots.

“We’ll see how it goes. Where is he going to play? We’ll see. Nobody knows. We’ll figure that out as we go.”

NOTES: Veteran defensive lineman Logan Hall, a former University of Houston standout and Tampa Bay Buccaneers starter signed to a two-year, $13.75 million deal that includes $9 million guaranteed, has been sidelined at minicamp.

Hall is attending the workouts, but not practicing. He is expected to recover from a groin injury and knee tendonitis and be ready for training camp, per a league source.

Rookie tight end Marlin Klein, a second-round draft pick from Michigan, is recovering from a strained hamstring, per a league source. Klein hasn’t been practicing, running on the side with trainers.

The Texans have limited Pro Bowl wide receiver Nico Collins in drills.

Wide receiver Tank Dell, on a comeback path for training camp, has participated on a limited basis. He is recovering from a devastating knee injury suffered in December 2024 while catching a touchdown pass against the Kansas City Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium.

Dell has made significant progress after undergoing two surgeries to repair a dislocated knee along with torn anterior cruciate, medial collateral and lateral collateral ligaments. He is expected to increase his activity next month at training camp.

Several other players aren’t practicing, including safety M.J. Stewart as he continues to rehab from a torn quadriceps tendon last season, linebacker E.J. Speed, who sustained a season-ending torn quadriceps tendon and partially torn quadriceps muscle, per sources, while performing a single-legged squat in the weight room.

Nickel Jalen Pitre intercepted quarterback C.J. Stroud and returned the interception for a touchdown.

Al-Shaair delivered an acrobatic interception of a Stroud pass.

Stroud had some sharp throws, too, including passes to tight end Dalton Schultz and wide receiver Xavier Hutchinson. Backup quarterback Davis Mills threw a touchdown pass to Jaylin Noel, who has been the primary slot throughout the offseason after catching two touchdowns as a rookie last season. Mills’ timing and accuracy showed up on a slick, toe-tapping sideline catch from rookie wide receiver Lewis Bond.

“It’s that time of the year where you can show up and kind of just get by or you can actually try to push yourself to be better,” said Al-Shaair, who signed a three-year, $54 million extension this spring. “For me, coming into the NFL every single day, you have got to show up and work, and that’s all I know.

“That’s how I got to where I’m at in the first place, so I think that’s just the mentality of our team, and, obviously, as a leader, if you’re not doing it, you know, nobody else is going to really want to follow you.”

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

It means everything to Hunter to be able to play and be valued so highly by his hometown football team.

At Morton Ranch in Katy, Hunter emerged as a blue-chip LSU football recruit who doubled as an extremely fast 400-meter runner who also excelled in the high jump.

The Texans hammered out a one-year, $40.1 million contract extension for the five-time Pro Bowl defensive end Danielle Hunter that includes a $30.7 million signing bonus this spring.

Hunter has a $30.2 million base salary in 2027 that is fully guaranteed for skill, injury and salary cap and annual $500,000 per game active roster bonus totals.

Hunter previously signed a two-year, $55.1 million extension through the 2026 season with $54.1 million of that fully guaranteed. Now, Hunter is under contract through the 2027 season.

“It means a lot to be able to come back for another year, playing for the hometown, being able to play in front of people I love, people I grew up with in the city that I really care for,” Hunter said during the Texans’ minicamp. “It shows that this organization really values me as a person and as a player. It just leaves me to do my part, go out there and keep handling business.”

Hunter looks like he’s built out of granite. His chiseled muscles pop out of his uniform. His biceps are softball-sized. Hunter finished third in the NFL as he recorded 15 sacks last season at the primary measuring stick statistical category for defensive ends. He tends to be quiet and understated most of the time.

Hunter chooses his words carefully and is the opposite of a self-promoter. He doesn’t talk himself up at all and consistently deflects praise to his teammates and coaches and discusses team goals and accomplishments. He’s a Quiet Storm type. They call him Cyborg.

And Hunter works tirelessly to achieve a goal that’s been unreached by him when he was with the Minnesota Vikings and for a Texans franchise that has lost three consecutive AFC divisional round playoffs games: reaching and winning a Super Bowl.

“Each year I just start over,” Hunter said. “I start from the fundamentals and just work my way back up. The biggest thing in my career is that, I really want to go to the final game.

“That can only happen if I pass the knowledge that I have along to the team, my teammates, defensive line room and everybody else, so that we can all play together and have that confidence to make it to the final game.”

For that to happen, the Texans’ offense needs to approach the gold standard of the Texans’ absolutely loaded defense.

Hunter is seeing signs of progress, including quarterback C.J. Stroud.

“The few days I’ve been here, I’ve noticed a lot from the offensive line and the quarterback play, how they work together in sync,” Hunter said. “It’s definitely better across the offensive line and C.J. just having his pocket awareness, he’s able to step up and make plays.

“I just got finished talking to C.J., telling him he’s doing a good job of stepping up and having awareness of the edge rushers. He was complimenting us back and how we play together as a string, but definitely across the offensive line and C.J. just making his reads.”

Hunter’s skills leave teammates wowed.

With a low-key personality and a humble approach to football and life, Hunter doesn’t beat his chest with pride.

Hunter has run the 40-yard dash in 4.57 seconds with a 36 1/2 inch vertical leap, a 10-10 broad jump and has bench pressed 225 pounds 25 times. He has every physical trait an NFL team could cover in a pass rusher.

Whether it’s the Euro step, spin move, cross-chop, bull-rush, swim move or just a pure speed rush, Hunter, 30, is a dominant force whatever move he chooses to employ on any given snap or Sunday. He’s at the peak of his game and physical ability.

One of the smartest investments that Texans general manager Nick Caserio has made was signing Hunter and extending him.

Lots of pass rushers are long-armed, tall and fast like Hunter.

Few can match his imagination and intellect. His vision for creative moves and his passion for the game, relentlessly chasing down quarterbacks are rare traits.

Figuring out how to generate explosiveness off the football and time up the snap count without jumping offsides is another plus for Hunter.

“The biggest thing is I just go by getting off the ball,” Hunter said. “Me being a vet, I know how to dissect my guy. The biggest thing I do out there is dissect my guy.

Spoken like a true surgeon at his craft.

Does he have a favorite move? Not really. Whatever gets him into the backfield and reaching his destination, zeroing in to apply heat on the quarterback, at the top of his rush.

“Not really,” Hunter said. “My best thing is to just go. Find a way. Whatever your God gives you, adapt and find a way to the quarterback. Just doing what I can do to get better.”

Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud is simply glad that he doesn’t have to compete against Hunter.

And he marvels at how Hunter engulfs quarterbacks. He rarely draws holding calls, too. That reminds Stroud of how NBA superstar LeBron James doesn’t always get the calls in his favor.

“That dude is special, man,” Stroud said. “I think, honestly, like who he is at practice too helps us as a team. He don’t take no plays off. I think that is just iron sharpening iron, Proverbs 20:17 is one of DeMeco’s mottos: ‘Iron sharpens iron, and so does another man sharpening another.’ In the world. You can do it in football as well. Who he is on Sundays, is who he is during the week. No surprise, but I got to watch little more this week, which was amazing.

“I even feel like against a couple other teams, he is getting held a lot. There is no calls. His presence is felt. Now, I understand why LeBron got so many foul calls until he became a Laker. Now, I see why he gets so many fouls is that he is so dominant, and you have to hold him or you have to do something to stop a fast break. Same thing with Danielle. He is so dominant that you have to do something to chip him or do something to knock him off his game. I’m not saying he’s LeBron, but he’s up there though, for sure.”

Hunter has posted 14 or more sacks four times in his career, becoming the 13th player in NFL history to accomplish the feat.

The tandem with All-Pro defensive end Will Anderson Jr. is arguably the best in the league.

“Cyborg, man, he’s also physical and relentless, but a little bit more methodical, a little bit more unorthodox,” Texans defensive line coach Rod Wright told KPRC 2 last season. “Hard to guess what he’s going to do from play to play when it comes to rushing. Both are very disciplined when it comes to the run game. And both guys obviously present a challenge to any opposing lineman they’re going against.

“With D-Hunt, he’s been there, done that. Seen it all, doesn’t overreact to anything. Very calm demeanor, kind of the Yin and Yang type of deal. Both have a presence about them, but it’s very different. Don’t sleep on Danielle’s personality. Really funny guy, likes to have fun as well. Got to behind closed doors, though. If you don’t really know him, he’s kind of a more reserved type of guy.”

Hunter, profiled last season by KPRC 2 for his passion for fashion and wardrobe of custom suits designed by the Gentleman’s Playbook, is a sharp dressed man who chooses his game fits carefully with his personal stylist.

“He’s put together,” Wright said. “He had a leather jacket this past weekend, I told him: ‘Make sure I get one in my size.’ He doesn’t need it. He probably has about 10 of them.

Hunter, 31, has 114 1/2 sacks in the regular season.

Hunter earned AFC Defensive Player of the Week last season as he posted a career-high-tying 3.5 sacks, four tackles for loss, four quarterback hits and one forced fumble.

With a rare and incredible blend of speed, power and precision, Hunter displayed in one fluid motion why he’s one of the most dominant pass rushers in the game.

Hunter has emerged as the master of the Euro step pass rushing move and many other strategies that have befuddled opposing linemen and the quarterbacks they’re paid handsomely to protect.

Although he’s a defensive lineman who represents the prototype for an NFL pass rusher, Hunter has a smooth, loose way of getting after the quarterback. His body-fat percentage is lower than most cornerbacks and wide receivers.

With a super humble approach to football and life, Hunter doesn’t beat his chest with pride.

At 6-foot-5, 263 pounds, Hunter has run the 40-yard dash in 4.58 seconds with a 36 1/2 inch vertical leap, a 10-10 broad jump and has bench pressed 225 pounds 25 times. He has every physical trait an NFL team could cover in a pass rusher.

Whether it’s the Euro step, spin move, cross-chop, bull-rush, swim move or just a pure speed rush, Hunter is a dominant force whatever move he chooses to employ on any given snap. He’s at the peak of his game and physical ability.

“I feel like he’s a unique, unique athlete,” Wright said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a guy like him. He’s one of a kind. There’s nothing that man can not do.

“I love that a lot of people don’t talk about him. He doesn’t want the attention. He wants the respect and he wants to win. I love that about him. There’s a humbleness about him that speaks loudly to our group, to our team. So he’s exactly who he needs to be and who we need him to be.”

For the Texans to take the next step after going 0-7 all-time in the AFC divisional round will take a concerted team effort.

Hunter likes the vibe he’s seeing across the roster and throughout the building.

“We definitely have the team,” Hunter said. “We have a group of great men, we are able to have a great coach, a great front office, that’s able to lead us the right way and a lot of guys that are just young and just buying into the program. I feel like that’s the first step to going in the right direction.”

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

The officer-involved shooting happened in the 2400 block of Briarview Drive.

HPD Command Staff and PIO are en route to an officer involved shooting in the 14300 block of Westheimer Road.

Prelim info is an officer discharged at a suspect, striking him. The suspect was transported. No officers were injured. More info at the scene.#HouNews pic.twitter.com/LPbmxlw92z

— Houston Police (@houstonpolice) June 12, 2026

Police say the original call came from the 14300 block of Westheimer Road after a man reported the suspect had pointed a gun at him and his child. The man ran into a nearby restaurant to get away from the suspect.

Two officers responded to the scene and saw the suspect. Commanding him to drop the weapon, police say the suspect refused and started running. Officers chased after him.

The foot chase went into a nearby neighborhood where the suspect reportedly pointed the gun at officers multiple times.

“If you look at the time, around 6:45 p.m., this is a community back here that we have a lot of citizens that are walking at night getting exercise, so you can imagine what the officers had to do,” said Assistant Chief James Skelton.

Skelton said officers ushered nearby citizens away from the scene as they continued to order the man to drop his weapon.

The man refused all commands, at which point, Skelton says an officer with five years on the force fired his weapon at the suspect, hitting him.

The suspect was taken to a local hospital where he is expected to survive.

The shooting remains under investigation by HPD and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office.

Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark said the notice came shortly before the start of the league's executive board meeting to discuss its options in the Sorsby situation.

The temporary injunction issued Monday by a Texas district court prevents the NCAA from enforcing its permanent ban of Sorsby, a decision that sent shock waves across college sports. The transfer QB had been ruled ineligible after he acknowledged years of gambling that included at least 40 bets on his own team while he was a freshman at Indiana. Texas Tech said he has completed a month-long inpatient treatment program and will continue to receive treatment and support while being monitored.

What was the AG's warning to the Big 12?

The letter from the Texas AG's office was addressed to Yormark and Kansas Chancellor Douglas Girod, the chairman of the Big 12 board of directors. It specifically references a conference bylaw that, with a supermajority vote, could result in sanctioning a school that has "engaged in any action or a course of conduct materially adverse to the best interests of the conference taken as a whole.”

The AG's office said any sanctions against Texas Tech for “acting consistent" with the district court injunction “would be a per se violation of federal and state antitrust laws — a naked horizontal agreement among competitors to disadvantage Texas Tech by cutting off access to the resources it needs to compete.”

Beyond any antitrust exposure, the letter said, the Big 12 would also face liability for “breach of contract and tortious interference" for any sanction that results in the alteration of Texas Tech's scheduled games.

The letter was signed by Thomas York, chief of the antitrust division, and Kimberly Gdula, chief of the litigation division. The attorney general, Ken Paxton, is the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate race in Texas this fall.

Yormark said the conference is taking time with its legal counsel to understand the concerns of the state.

Jeffrey Kessler, the attorney who represents Sorsby in his case against the NCAA, sent a separate and similar letter Thursday to the Big 12, according to multiple reports. That letter reportedly referenced the same Big 12 bylaw and warned the league that it is bound by the court's ruling this week.

The NCAA has said it will appeal to the Court of Appeals for the Seventh District of Texas, seeking an accelerated decision to overturn the injunction and again make Sorsby ineligible.

Big 12 is still considering all options

Since NCAA rules call for a permanent loss of eligibility for any player who wagered on his own team, the judge’s decision brought sharp criticism from college sports leadership, including in Texas Tech’s own league. The executive board met as planned Thursday in preparation for a meeting Monday of the Big 12's full board of directors, which is made up of presidents and chancellors from the league's 16 schools.

“We had a good and informative discussion. Sentiment among the executive board was no different from what we heard from the ADs earlier this week,” Yormark said. "Our discussion with the full board will determine our course of action, and all options remain on the table.”

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 ADs even suggested maybe not playing Texas Tech if he does.

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 at Indiana.

The warning from a big booster

The threat of legal action came one day after Texas Tech billionaire booster and regents chair Cody Campbell mentioned that possibility during a podcast appearance with Dan Dakich. Campbell was addressing reports of schools talking about boycotting the Red Raiders.

“I love when the Big Ten or the K-State AD comes out and says we’ve all gotten together and we’ve talked about how we’re not going to play Tech, because guess what? That’s collusion,” Campbell said. “That’s an antitrust violation. So have fun with that one, guys. You can’t do that.”

Campbell, a former offensive lineman at the school, has been a key figure in helping Texas Tech land top players over the past two years.

The Red Raiders, with one of college football's most expensive rosters, won their first Big 12 title last season, setting a school record with 12 wins and making the 12-team College Football Playoff. Sorsby was brought in to be the starting QB after hometown favorite Behren Morton exhausted his eligibility.

A message from Texas Tech leadership

The school posted a 21-minute video message Thursday night to Red Raiders fans that included school president Lawrence Schovanec, athletic director Kirby Hocutt and coach Joey McGuire talking about how the university is addressing the situation.

“I believe that every person at this table is looking at the student first. And that student is a football player. And that student is where he, I think, feels the safest and also feels to where he can deal with this the most is in this building at Texas Tech,” McGuire said. “And I think that’s where he should be and I’m glad he’s back. I know his teammates are glad he's back.”

Hocutt spoke about the NCAA twice denying Texas Tech's petition to have Sorsby reinstated. The AD also reiterated that the school wasn't a party in the quarterback's separate legal case and didn't pay any of his legal fees.

___

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

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts downplayed the significance of the injury.

Roberts said the move was precautionary because the Dodgers did not want to risk Ohtani being injured further.

Roberts also said he is optimistic that Ohtani will be ready to play Friday night when the Dodgers meet the White Sox in Chicago to open a three-game series between division leaders.

“We tried to be smart about it and get him out of the game,” Roberts said. “He told the trainer that he felt a little something behind his knee and I just didn’t see any sense in risking it.”

The reigning NL MVP hit his 13th homer of the season, a solo shot, in the third inning. He also had a single and walked twice, reaching base in all four of his plate appearances.

Ohtani was not made available to the media following the game. He is hitting .305 with 40 RBIs. As a pitcher, he is 6-2 with a 1.06 ERA and 73 strikeouts in 67 2/3 innings.

Starting pitcher Justin Wrobleski left the game in the fifth inning with a left hamstring contusion. The left-hander was hit by a line drive off the bat of Bryan Reynolds. The ball ricocheted off Wrobleski to first baseman Freddie Freeman. Wrobleski collided with Reynolds while taking Freeman’s toss at first base.

“I’ll get some treatment on it and I’ll be fine,” Wrobleski said. “I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just a little frustrating.” ___

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

Jurors found Alvin Campbell, 45, guilty of 21 out of 22 counts for sex assaults from 2017 to 2019, the Suffolk County district attorney's office said. He was found guilty of charges including aggravated rape, kidnapping and photographing an unsuspecting nude person.

The jury was deadlocked on one of the rape charges.

“We will determine our action, if any, at a future date on that charge,” the district attorney's office said in a statement.

Campbell faces up to life in prison for aggravated rape when he is sentenced on June 29.

Campbell posed as a rideshare driver to target women outside bars or other locations, prosecutors said.

His younger sister became the first woman of color to win statewide office in Massachusetts when she was sworn in as attorney general in 2023. A spokesperson for the attorney general's office didn't immediately return an email from The Associated Press late Thursday seeking comment on the verdict.

Andrea Campbell has spoken previously about her family's troubled history in the criminal justice system, including her brother's rape charges.

“One thing I do frequently is share my story because I think there are so many who carry their story with a sense of shame and don’t want to talk about it, including the criminal aspects of my family,” she said in a previous interview with the AP. “But there is no shame in one sharing their story. There is power in it.”

The attorney general is the chief lawyer and law enforcement officer in the state.

After the verdict, Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden told reporters he hadn't spoken with the attorney general.

Alvin Campbell “deceivingly and calculatedly” preyed upon women in their most vulnerable moments, Hayden said. “I can't imagine what that horror must have been like for them.”

Campbell's defense attorney didn't immediately respond to a phone message and email from the AP.

Hayden expressed gratitude to the women who testified: “We’re happy that we were able to secure justice and accountability for them and so we thank them.”

Trump announced the nomination on social media amid pressure from Congress to name a permanent replacement for Tulsi Gabbard, who announced her resignation last month. Trump faced intense pushback over his decision to name Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director. The job oversees the coordination of 18 intelligence agencies.

The resulting uproar led to a standoff in Congress after Democrats said they would refuse to renew foreign intelligence powers unless Trump pulled Pulte’s nomination and named a permanent nominee.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

Speaking later Thursday in the Oval Office, Trump said he still plans to keep Pulte in the role “for a little while” after earlier saying he wants Pulte to downsize the office. He called Clayton an “incredible talent” and said, “Nobody has better credentials.”

As the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, Clayton oversees the most prestigious of the Justice Department’s prosecution offices, with a vast portfolio ranging from terrorism and espionage cases to security fraud and public corruption.

He took over from interim U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon, who resigned in February after refusing to carry out orders from the Justice Department to drop corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams. The case was eventually dropped after prosecutors from Washington submitted a request to a judge.

Republicans hope to move quickly on nomination

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold a confirmation hearing for Clayton on Wednesday, according to a person who requested anonymity to discuss it ahead of an official notice.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters that the Senate hopes to receive Clayton’s nomination paperwork from the White House as soon as Thursday. “We will move quickly,” he said.

Democrats are holding up the renewal of a key surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in protest of Trump’s decision to temporarily tap Pulte. They say they won’t support an extension of the law, which expires at midnight Friday, until Trump withdraws Pulte’s appointment.

Trump previously said Pulte would take over on June 19. It is unclear whether the Senate could move quickly enough to confirm Clayton before that date.

“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re gonna probe the limits of it,” Thune said.

Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that he has “known and respected” Clayton for decades and that if Trump had named him as the DNI nominee last week, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”

“His intelligence, temperament and deep commitment to public service will make him a terrific DNI,” Himes said.

Asked about Clayton’s nomination, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Pulte has to go.”

“He cannot be in the DNI role,” Schumer said. “It’s too important.”

Trump's pick has led SDNY during a tumultuous period

Clayton navigated his way through a 14-month tenure in the Southern District of New York without clashing with the federal judges in the busiest court in the nation, unlike his counterparts in upstate New York and New Jersey. After his interim term expired after 120 days, the judges of the Southern District appointed him as U.S. attorney.

Clayton was sworn in April 2025 on the same day three prosecutors resigned, saying they felt pressured to admit wrongdoing or regret about prosecuting the case against Adams.

Then, weeks later, the office had to withstand controversy over the Trump administration’s firing of one of its most respected and successful prosecutors, Maurene Comey. She claims she was fired because of Trump’s dislike of her father, former FBI Director James Comey.

Under Clayton, the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office facilitated the unsealing of thousands of pages of court records from the prosecutions of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell — documents that were made public as part of the Justice Department’s release of records related to the late sex offender and his longtime confidant.

Clayton filed documents with the court explaining the process the government followed in releasing the materials.

Clayton has also overseen the prosecution of former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, on drug trafficking charges.

Clayton has overseen cases involving national security threats

Several recent terrorism cases brought by Clayton’s office touch on the global threats and influences that he’ll be navigating if confirmed as director of national intelligence.

They include the May arrest of Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood al-Saadi, an Iraqi and Iranian citizen accused of plotting 20 attacks in Europe and Canada and planning to attack a Manhattan synagogue and Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, in retaliation for the U.S. war on Iran.

“There are foreign nations and terrorist organizations that see our success as a threat. A threat that they want eliminated,” Clayton said at a recent press briefing. “That is a stark truth.”

“And don’t take my word for it,” he added. “Take their words and their actions. When your enemies tell you something, and when they act, you should know that they mean it.”

The first Trump administration tried in June 2020 to install Clayton, then the chairman of the SEC, as U.S. attorney in Manhattan, but backed down and instead allowed Deputy U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss to serve in the post. The reversal came after then-U. S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman agreed to step down, following assurances that probes into Trump allies would not be disrupted and that Strauss could lead the office.

At the time, the office was looking into dealings by Rudy Giuliani, who was serving as Trump’s personal attorney, and was also investigating the actions of a state-owned Turkish bank.

___

Neumeister and Sisak reported from New York. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker, Mary Clare Jalonick and Seung Min Kim in Washington contributed to this report.

No World Cup match has had that many players ejected since a 2006 game between Portugal and the Netherlands, when four players received red cards — a World Cup record.

The last World Cup in Qatar in 2022 had only four red cards in the entire tournament.

On Thursday at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, Sphephelo Sithole and Themba Zwane were sent off for South Africa while César Montes was shown a red card for the tournament co-host.

It’s the first time three players have been sent off in the opening match of a World Cup – and all three were straight red cards, meaning none of the ejected players were given two yellows.

Mexico won the match 2-0.

Sithole was red-carded after taking down Mexico’s Brian Gutierrez on the edge of the box at the start of the second half.

Things got worse for South Africa when Zwane was sent off following a video review for striking Roberto Alvarado in the face in the 84th minute. Finally, in stoppage time, Montes saw red for bringing down Khuliso Mudau.

The red cards mean the three players will be suspended for at least one more match. South Africa’s next match is against the Czech Republic and Mexico next faces South Korea in Guadalajara.

The match between Portugal and the Netherlands at the 2006 World Cup in Germany stands out with its four red cards – two for each team. That game in Nuremberg also had 16 yellow cards.

___

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

Italian prosecutors are investigating Montgomery, Alabama-based Caddell Construction, a major builder of U.S. diplomatic missions. Two of its managers in Italy were arrested this month on suspicion of labor exploitation, one while boarding a flight to leave the country and another planning to flee, prosecutors said.

The investigation is led by prosecutor Paolo Storari, who also has spearheaded probes into sweatshops supplying luxury brands. So far only Caddell has been named as a target, not any of its subcontractors.

The consulate probe was launched about six months ago and involves some 70 workers, mostly from India. Prosecutors allege Caddell illegally deducted room and board from wages and forced them to work 10-hour days, six days a week. Some were paid as little as 500 euros (less than $580) monthly after room and board were deducted, prosecutors said. Minimum wage for construction workers in Milan starts at 13.39 euros (over $15) an hour, according to the Cassa Edile benefits fund.

Caddell and the U.S. State Department said they are investigating the allegations and cooperating with Italian authorities.

The consulate project is part of a construction boom in Milan over the past two decades that has modernized the skyline and raised the international profile of Italy’s fashion and finance capital.

Workers describe unpaid wages and threats

The AP spoke to four workers from Kenya and one from India at a trade union center where officials were organizing assistance, including legal help and housing. The workers provided documentation and spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation and to protect the ongoing investigation.

The Kenyan workers said they had been hired by Caddell after working on a multi-million-dollar extension of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi.

Two showed employment letters on Caddell stationery signed by a company representative promising annual salaries topping 25,000 euros (nearly $29,000).

They said they were not paid anything close to that and were threatened by human resources personnel at the job site after they questioned management.

“When you go to the office to ask any question, you are being told, ‘Either you work or you will be returned to your country. That’s the amount you are supposed to be paid,’’’ one Kenyan electrician said. He added that he was paid just 800 euros ($925) a month after being promised 2,300 euros ($2,660).

Another Kenyan electrician said he was threatened with defamation after presenting an AI summary of Italian labor law and was told the 25,000 euros in the employment letter was “for visa purposes,” not a promise of payment.

US government and Caddell say they are investigating

The State Department said it is investigating the allegations made by prosecutors and that U.S. law enforcement is working with Italian authorities.

“The U.S. government does not tolerate labor exploitation,” the department said in a statement.

Caddell said it was “fully cooperating” with Italian authorities and conducting its own “comprehensive inquiry into this matter to ensure all our global subcontractors and consultancies are in compliance with all labor standards and legal requirements.”

“Caddell is committed (to) treating and paying workers fairly. We will continue to work with authorities in good faith to ensure the welfare of those who work on this important project,” the company said in a statement.

More than a decade ago, Caddell paid millions to the U.S. government to settle allegations it made false claims to gain access to government incentives. Caddell did not reply to a request for comment on that case.

Fired workers seek help

All five of the workers who spoke to the AP, ranging in age from their late 20s to early 50s, said they were fired without cause this year. One of them said he returned from visiting family in Kenya to find that he no longer had a job or place to stay.

Four of the workers were trained electricians, including the Indian worker whose resume showed he had more than a decade of experience working for other companies in Persian Gulf countries.

The Indian worker said he was promised a monthly salary of 2,500 euros (nearly $3,000). Instead, he had a pay slip showing his actual pay amounted to around 500 euros (less than $580) per month. It listed an hourly wage of 1.55 euros ($1.80).

The Kenyans said they reached out to authorities after learning of the investigation.

“I believe in justice,” one said. “Also the workers there should not be afraid. They should come and speak up.”

Two said they are currently sleeping in parks, while one is staying with a friend. One said he had been offered a job at a Caddell site in another country but declined after his treatment in Milan.

Caddell is a major diplomatic contractor

Caddell became a leader in building U.S. diplomatic missions when the State Department launched a major security upgrade after the 1998 bombings of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya killed more than 250 people.

“Very few contractors can meet the strict requirements to even bid on secure work necessary for diplomatic facility projects,” Caddell said on its website marking its 40th anniversary in 2023. At that point, the firm counted 39 projects in its embassy portfolio valued at $7.4 billion. It has added four projects since then.

The Milan consulate campus is being built on a 10-acre (40,000-square meter) site at a former shooting range. The current U.S. Consulate is in a high-rise building designed by acclaimed Italian architect Gio Ponti.

Plans for the campus called for about 500 “locally employed workers,” according to the U.S. State Department. The project includes restoration of a century-old building, along with a five-story consulate building, restored gardens, a reflecting pool and a large outdoor gathering area.

Work is continuing under court supervision. Workers no longer have their room and board deducted. They are limited to 45 hours and guaranteed two days off a week.

Pay records appear to bolster allegations

The pay stubs presented by the workers listed apparent charges of 510 euros (around $590) a month for housing and more than 300 euros (around $350) monthly for food. But those deductions only account for a portion of the difference between the promised wages and actual pay.

Unions intend to seek damages for the workers to recover at least what they earned “through hard work and commitment,” said Laura Malguzzi, a labor representative at the Fillea Cgil union federation representing construction workers.

Malguzzi said she was surprised that the pay stubs presented by the workers appeared to document the alleged exploitation. Union experts are still studying the documents, which do not conform to Italian standards, and could not verify their origins.

“They probably had in their minds the absolute certainty that they were untouchable,’’ Malguzzi said.

The Kenyan workers said they begrudgingly accepted a $200 monthly salary in Nairobi, where unemployment is rampant. But they expected better from a U.S. company operating in Europe.

“They can just hire you, and you just go running,” one worker said of the company. “Because you are poor you have nothing. And you have nothing you can do.”

The 7.8 magnitude offshore quake, one of the strongest to hit the Philippine archipelago in a half century, struck Monday off the southern province of Sarangani and has left at least 47 people dead and injured 688 with 31 still missing.

More than 45,000 people remained displaced, about half in emergency shelters, after the quake damaged more than 12,600 houses in farming towns and cities. Many were still too traumatized to return home due to aftershocks, provincial officials said.

Sarangani reported 20 dead from the quake, the highest toll from the affected provinces, mostly due to a landslide that buried houses in the coastal town of Glan, according to the government's Office of Civil Defense, which deals with major disasters.

Glan Mayor Victor James Yap said power has not been restored to his province and 10 of 31 villages in his town of more than 100,000 people remained inaccessible mostly due to landslides. He asked the government to immediately deploy air force helicopters to deliver food and other aid to the stricken areas.

“We need food and water but it’s difficult to transport them to some of our villages which remain isolated,” Yap told DZMM radio network. “Choppers are needed to transport food because people there are already very hungry.”

A key access road to the town has been reopened and will allow the delivery of fuel as early as Thursday, but the town remained without power and cellphone services were still spotty, according to Yap.

The Office of Civil Defense said more than 26 million pesos ($426,000) worth of food packs, cash and other aid have been provided so far and 180 government and military planes, helicopters, ships and trucks have been deployed to respond to the disaster.

About 3,400 government and military personnel were involved in search efforts for the missing, debris-clearing in roads, damage assessment and other disaster-mitigation work, it said.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Wednesday visited the hard-hit city of General Santos city, where he inspected damaged hospitals and schools and discussed recovery efforts. He ordered the release of 100 million pesos ($1.6 million) for the repair of the partly collapsed city hall and 50,000 pesos ($820) for the families of each of the victims who died in the quake.

Most of the deaths from the quake were caused by falling debris from collapsed buildings and landslides in Sarangani, the coastal city of General Santos, and the outlying provinces of South Cotabato and Davao Occidental.

Two swimmers drowned and one remained missing off General Santos after being swept out to sea shortly after the quake hit. Waves of up to 1.4 meters (4.6 feet) above tide level were measured in the country’s south and smaller waves washed ashore in Indonesia and Palau and as far away as southern Japan.

The earthquake was one of the strongest to hit the country since an 8.1 magnitude quake and tsunami on Aug. 17, 1976, that killed about 8,000 people.

The Philippines is often hit by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions due to its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” an arc of seismic faults around the ocean.

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Associated Press journalist Jim Gomez contributed to this report from Manila, Philippines.

Canadian journalist Lyse Doucet won the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction with “The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan.”

Both prizes come with a 30,000 pound ($40,000) purse and are open to female English-language writers from any country.

Evans wrote fiction for two decades before writing “The Correspondent" during the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was released quietly in 2025. A story told through years’ worth of letters from retired lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp to friends, family and famous writers, it gradually climbed bestseller lists and became a book club favorite. A film adaptation starring Jane Fonda is in the works.

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who chaired the fiction judging panel, said the novel “captured our hearts” by “elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt of ways.”

Evans said she “developed a very thick skin for rejection and failure” during the years of writing without getting published.

“Why did I keep going? I didn’t know how not to, I guess,” she told The Associated Press.

“I was writing the book that I wanted to read,” she added. “I guess the book that I was wanting to read was the book a lot of people were wanting to read.”

She said “The Correspondent” is in part a cry against the loss of handwritten letters — “the real tale of history” — in our digital age.

“If you want to know what happened somewhere, you need to read somebody saying to their mom, ‘This is what happened to me today,'" she said. "And so I feel a grief about that. There’s something I probably was reaching for when I was writing the book, which was the preservation of the memory of that.”

Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent, profiles staff and guests of Kabul’s once-glamorous Inter-Continental Hotel — scarred but still standing — to provide a microcosm of Afghanistan’s turbulent recent history.

Labour Party politician Thangam Debbonaire, head of the nonfiction jury, called it “a perfect work of narrative non-fiction” that is “informed by decades of excellent reporting.”

Doucet, who has been visiting Afghanistan as a journalist since the 1980s, said she wrote the book to provide a fuller picture than the “snapshot” of news coverage allows.

“My experience from decades of covering countries and people in the hardest of times is that people still have to get up every day and find an everyday courage to get through the day,” she said. "And even in the darkest of places … people find humor to bring light, they try to live with hope to bring some kind of relief and they try to live with humanity.”

Previous winners of the fiction prize, founded in 1996, include Zadie Smith, Tayari Jones and Barbara Kingsolver.

The sister prize for nonfiction was founded in 2024 to help redress a gender imbalance in publishing. In 2022, only 26.5% of nonfiction books reviewed in Britain’s newspapers were by women, and male writers dominated established nonfiction writing prizes.

Last year’s nonfiction winner was British physician Rachel Clarke’s account of an organ transplant, “The Story of a Heart.”

Ruggs, a former first-round draft pick and Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver, drove his sports car at speeds up to 156 mph (251 kph) in the city on Nov. 2, 2021, slamming into a vehicle that killed driver Tina Tintor and her dog, Max. Tintor was 23.

Prosecutors at the time said his blood-alcohol level taken within the required two hours after the crash was 0.16%, which is twice the legal limit for drivers in Nevada. Before the crash, he was at TopGolf, a sports entertainment venue in Las Vegas, according to prosecutors.

Ruggs pleaded guilty in May 2023 to felony DUI causing death and misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter. He was sentenced in August 2023 to a three- to 10-year prison sentence. The earliest he was eligible for parole was August 2026.

Ruggs will go before the parole board again three months before Aug. 24, 2027, his mandatory parole release date, according to Kathi Baker, executive director of the Nevada Board of Parole Commissioners.

“Mr. Ruggs, and our office, continue to feel the grief and loss suffered by Ms. Tintor’s family,” Ruggs’ attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a Thursday statement, adding that they were disappointed by the parole board’s decision to deny parole.

The attorneys said there is “overwhelming evidence” of Ruggs’ accepting responsibility for his conduct and engaging in community outreach efforts related to DUI prevention, including completing educational programs while in custody.

Tintor's family could not be reached for comment.

During the May parole hearing, Ruggs said he took full responsibility for the actions that led to Tintor and her dog's death.

“Not a minute goes by where I don't think of the pain I caused her family, her friends and the Las Vegas community,” he said during the hearing, of which the AP obtained a copy.

He said he used his time in custody to educate young people and others about decision-making and the dangers of drinking and driving. He also said he met with Tintor's family to apologize.

“I know I can never alleviate the pain that I caused, but if released I plan to continue to do my work to educate young people on the dangers of reckless behavior and hopefully avoid future tragedies,” he said.

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This story has been updated to correct the day that Henry Ruggs' parole was denied. It was on Thursday, not Friday.

Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher in a letter to challenger Dan Sullivan said her office had received two complaints regarding his eligibility and determined “that the preponderance of evidence does not support your eligibility for the office of United States Senator.”

She gave him a Thursday deadline to submit “any additional information and evidence" in response.

Sullivan, the challenger, did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment about the letter from Beecher, a registered Republican who in the past has donated to Republican groups and campaigns. Her letter, dated Wednesday and published by the Anchorage Daily News, did not specify the evidence it found to potentially remove him from the primary ballot, and her office did not respond to requests for comment.

Sullivan's candidacy has caused a stir in one of the most prominent U.S. Senate races in the country. It's a seat Democrats have targeted as they try to regain the majority in the chamber in this year's midterm elections.

Sen. Sullivan has accused his namesake challenger of working with Democrats to try to trick voters and boost the chances of his top opponent, former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, a claim both deny. The challenger, who lives in the small fishing community of Petersburg south of Juneau, told The Associated Press earlier this week that the decision to run was “my choice." He said he had no contact with the Peltola campaign — “zero, none, zilch.”

This week, the challenger also pushed back in response to Republican Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom's announcement that she was opening an investigation into his candidacy.

“The law forbids your office from denying me access to the ballot just because Senator Sullivan and the NRSC would prefer I not be allowed to run,” he wrote, referring to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

He called the investigation “an unprecedented affront to my rights as a candidate and the rights of Alaska voters to select their own representation in the U.S. Senate.”

It was not immediately clear whether he had retained an attorney to help him remain on the ballot.

Some attorneys also have raised questions about Dahlstrom's investigation, which among other things demanded that Sullivan explain his party affiliation, how long he had been going by the name Dan Sullivan, his affiliation with a consultant and any interactions he might have had with other candidates in the race or the Democratic Party.

Dahlstrom, who oversees elections, said in her letter to the challenger that the investigation pertained to “credible allegations” that he did not declare his candidacy “with a good faith purpose to seek office but rather with a purpose to confuse voters and have them mistakenly vote for you rather than the incumbent with the same name and same political party affiliation.”

The questions are in line with claims outlined in a letter to her and Beecher earlier this month from an attorney with the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The ACLU of Alaska, in a statement, said it is “unaware of any other instance where the Lieutenant Governor has investigated a specific candidate for reasons other than determining whether a candidate meets federal, state and local eligibility requirements.” The group said it was monitoring the situation.

Jahna Lindemuth, who was an Alaska attorney general under an independent governor, said investigating why someone would run for office “starts infringing on free speech concerns and other protections under the Constitution.” She said Dahlstrom could label the senator as the incumbent on the ballot if she were concerned about voter confusion.

The Constitution requires senators to be at least 30 years old, a U.S. citizen for at least nine years and live in the state they've chosen to represent at the time of election. Sullivan, who will turn 69 this weekend, told the AP he moved to Alaska in 1980 and worked for the U.S. Forest Service before switching careers and becoming a teacher. He's now retired.

The declaration that the elections division requires candidates to fill out asks for their name, the party affiliation they want on the ballot, their address and how they want their name to appear. In signing the declaration, candidates are asked to affirm they meet citizenship, age and residency requirements.

The division previously certified challenger Sullivan's candidacy, noting him on the candidate list as Dan J. Sullivan. The senator is listed as Dan S. Sullivan and as the incumbent.

At least one group running ads in support of the senator, One Nation, has begun referring to him as Sen. Dan S. Sullivan.

In a statement released before a scheduled Friday ribbon-cutting ceremony at the bridge, the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority said that “Canada and the United States have agreed to delay the opening of the bridge, taking the necessary time to resolve any outstanding issues.” It didn't elaborate on what those issues are or how long the delay would last.

The 1.5-mile-long (2.4-kilometer-long) Gordie Howe International Bridge spans the Detroit River and connects the Motor City with Windsor, Ontario. The bridge is jointly owned by Canada and Michigan and was expected to open to traffic later this month.

But the opening had been thrown into question after Trump in February demanded in a social media post that Canada turn over at least half of the bridge’s ownership to the U.S. federal government and agree to other unspecified demands in one of the Republican president's many salvos over cross-border trade issues.

Michigan officials and the White House had been in contact for months about the bridge following Trump's post, with the understanding that the opening would move forward Friday. Invitations for the bridge’s opening went out this week following a conversation between Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles.

“This project is a powerful example of bipartisan and international cooperation, and the governor looks forward to attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony when it happens,” a statement from Whitmer spokesperson Bobby Leddy said.

New bridge a “long-term play”

Internal disagreements within the Trump administration threw those plans into question, as Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick pushed back on the opening, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss the private talks.

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday evening, “At the request of the United States we agreed to delay the opening and take the necessary time to resolve outstanding issues.”

He added, "There are some things that have been raised, a series of technical aspects, which we will work through with the United States.”

Even with the delay, officials remained optimistic that the bridge — a roughly $4.4 billion project — is still expected to open.

“We need to keep this very much in perspective,” said Sandy Baruah, president of the Detroit Regional Chamber and former U.S. assistant secretary of commerce. “Our organization, the state of Michigan and others have been working on this bridge for 20 years. If it opens July 1, Aug. 1 or Sept. 1, I’m not going to get overly agitated about it. This is a long-term play.”

Named after the late Canadian Hockey great Gordie Howe, who spent 25 seasons leading the Detroit Red Wings, the bridge is expected to be another vital economic artery between Canada and the United States.

The construction project was negotiated by Rick Snyder, the former Republican governor of Michigan, and paid for by Canada to help ease congestion at the existing Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor tunnel. Work has been underway since 2018.

U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Michigan Democrat, said she’s taking people at their word that the holdup is “a minor hiccup.”

“This is probably the most bipartisan issue in the state of Michigan, so it’s ridiculous that we can’t just seal the deal,” Slotkin said.

Commerce and border crossings

Detroit and Windsor have been neighborly for generations, with residents in both countries frequently crossing the shared river border for entertainment and shopping. Windsor's population in 2021 was about 230,000. Like Detroit, the Canadian city's economy has a strong focus on manufacturing and the auto industry.

Commercial trade between the two cities primarily has been across the nearly century-old and privately-owned Ambassador Bridge, which is closer to downtown Detroit than the Gordie Howe Bridge.

The Ambassador Bridge had been the busiest commercial border crossing between the United States and Canada until last year, when truck traffic along the Blue Water Bridge connecting Port Huron, Michigan, to Sarnia, Ontario, surpassed the Ambassador Bridge's numbers, according to the Bridge and Tunnel Operators Association.

In 2025, about 2.1 million trucks crossed the Blue Water Bridge compared to just over 1.8 million that used the Ambassador Bridge. About 3.5 million passenger vehicles used the Ambassador Bridge last year, while 1.6 million crossed via the Blue Water Bridge.

Combined, more than 9.2 million vehicles crossed the border on those two bridges in 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

More than 3.7 million cars and SUVs also traveled between the United States and Canada last year via the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.

Both bridges and the tunnel are working at full capacity, and the new bridge will help improve the efficiency of commercial and personal traffic between the two countries, Baruah said.

“This is what government is supposed to do, make it easier for business to conduct commerce,” he said.

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Cappelletti reported from Washington.

Attorneys for former Republican gubernatorial candidate Duke Rodriguez and other plaintiffs had questioned the process used by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration to eliminate an income cap and co-pays for childcare assistance before the Legislature had a chance to weigh in or approve funding.

Attorneys representing Lujan Grisham and the state’s childcare agency argued that lawmakers have since authorized and funded the program’s expansion, rendering the legal challenge moot.

District Judge Elaine Lujan agreed, tossing the lawsuit and allowing the state to continue footing the daycare bill for families regardless of income. She also found that Rodriguez and his co-plaintiffs lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.

Rodriquez's attorneys indicated they will appeal the judge's decision.

"Just because (Lujan Grisham) thinks she has a great idea doesn’t mean she gets to write the law and enforce the law,” plaintiffs attorney Jacob Candelaria said after Thursday’s hearing.

Thursday’s ruling prevented a financial headache for many childcare businesses and for families who have rebalanced household budgets around free childcare.

Lujan Grisham applauded the ruling.

“Today, Second Judicial District Judge Elaine Lujan dismissed a frivolous challenge to New Mexico’s universal child care program. This program is lawful, and it will continue to serve New Mexico families,” she said in a statement on Facebook. “New Mexicans deserved better than a lawsuit that put them through weeks of unnecessary anxiety over a program they count on. The judge’s ruling makes it clear: New Mexicans can plan their families, finances and careers with the confidence that universal child care is here to stay.”

The challenge came as New Mexico looks to cement its place as the first U.S. state to cover daycare bills for all families regardless of income, provided parents or legal guardians are working, in school or qualify for an exemption. The stakes extend nationwide as policymakers from New York to California look for models to reduce costs for families and expand public investment in childcare.

During the hearing, Candelaria told the judge that the governor's move to establish the program without the Legislature weighing in was "a fundamental perversion of the separation of powers” and that New Mexicans' constitutional interests needed to be protected.

Holly Agajanian, the governor's chief general counsel, suggested that the plaintiffs were asking the court to referee a policy disagreement on the merits of universal child care.

“We are not in a constitutional crisis,” Agajanian said.

Lujan Grisham signed legislation in February enshrining the program into law, provided state finances remain healthy.

New Mexico’s program, which is financed in large part with revenue from oil and gas production in the state, was among the nation's most generous before November’s expansion, waiving costs for families making up to 400% of the federal poverty rate or roughly $132,000 per year for a family of four.

Legislative analysts have raised questions about the sustainability of New Mexico's expanded program, noting earlier this year that the state’s Early Childhood Education and Care Department started overspending just weeks into the November launch.

This week, the state agency proposed new regulations aimed at shoring up the program’s sustainability. Potential guardrails include copayments for higher-income families in the event of a significant drop in oil prices or enrollment in free childcare surging beyond state projections.

The league announced the news Thursday prior to Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.

Kucherov led all players with 1.71 points a game on 44 goals and 86 assists. With 130 points, he ranked second to only Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, who had 138.

McDavid was a close second by 10 points in voting by members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon was third and San Jose’s Macklin Celebrini fourth.

Kucherov had 42 more points than his next-closest teammate, Jake Guentzel. He was third in Hart Trophy voting a year ago and second in 2023-24.

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

Shakira performed “Dai Dai,” the tournament's official song, with Burna Boy. The Colombian star had a hit with “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)” from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and now seeks to score again.

A good World Cup song, Shakira earlier told The Associated Press, “needs to definitely have rhythm. It has to be rhythmic. It has to make people want to dance. And it has to be an anthem as well. It has to make people want to sing along in unison, sing out loud at the top of their lungs.”

Shakira has performed at previous World Cups, too: 2006 in Germany, 2010 in South Africa, and 2014 in Brazil.

In addition, she will perform at the first halftime show of a World Cup final on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey with Madonna and BTS. Mexico, the United States and Canada are co-hosting the 48-team tournament.

A welcome for all

Lila Downs welcomed fans and players in Spanish, English, and the indigenous languages Mixtec and Nahuatl.

“People of the world, welcome to Mexico,” said Downs, who wore a white indigenous huipil with a lilac edge. “Mexico welcomes you with smiles from our heart, we are a nation of diversity, heritage and pride in ancestral lands where movement and ritual spirit endure.”

Downs, who is a singer-songwriter, was born in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. Her mother is Mixtec, and her father was American of Scottish descent. But her heart is green, white and red when it comes to the ball.

“It’s a great honor for me to represent my beautiful and diverse country,” Downs said in an interview with The AP. “Of course I’m going to root for Mexico’s team, Viva Mexico!”

Maná thrills fans

Maná electrified the stadium with “Oye Mi Amor” surrounded by pre-Hispanic dancers who moved their head plumes to the rhythm of rock while tens of thousands of fans chanted.

The band, founded in 1986, has sold more than 40 million records.

Shortly before their performance, they announced that they will be touring in Latin America, including stops in Bogotá, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City.

From Iztapalapa to the World Cup

The Mexican cumbia group Los Ángeles Azules performed “Por Ella” with Belinda, one of the most danceable songs of FIFA's official World Cup album.

The band, founded in the mid-70s by the Mejía Avante brothers, is originally from the district of Iztapalapa, a working-class area of Mexico City, so their battle cry is “From Iztapalapa to the world!”

J Balvin had a dynamic performance — he started driving a cardboard car with “Que Calor” and then he was accompanied by Ryan Castro for “Una A La Vez” before ending with “I Like It,” a hit he originally released with Cardi B and Bad Bunny.

The Colombian star has experience on world stages. In 2020, he participated in the Super Bowl halftime as a guest of Shakira and Jennifer Lopez.

Danny Ocean performed “Partidazo” — his collaboration for the FIFA album. Ocean was surrounded by dancers wearing a modern take on the traditional dresses of the Mexican state of Jalisco, modified to have hoodies on top.

Two Labubus could be seen wearing soccer jerseys after the presentation of Los Ángeles Azules and Belinda. One brown Labubu wore a jersey with the number 10 and the legend “The Monsters” and the other wore a shirt with the logo of the 2026 World Cup.

Hollywood power at the ceremony

Actress and producer Salma Hayek, a big soccer fan, gave a brief welcome speech during the first protocol parade of a World Cup in which the 48 flags of the participating countries could be seen.

“Mexicans are very honored that this is where the first match of this wonderful soccer tradition that unites us all begins,” Hayek, who is originally from the Mexican state of Veracruz, said in Spanish. “Long live Mexico and long live soccer!”

Hayek has been appointed an ambassador for the 2026 World Cup.

Opera and K-pop united

Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and South Korean star EJAE performed “DNA,” the tournament's official anthem, with French DJ and producer David Guetta at the flag parade.

Bocelli has just performed for more than 130,000 fans in April at Mexico City’s Zócalo. EJAE is famous for being the voice of the character Rumi in the film “KPop Demon Hunters” and for being one of the composers of the Oscar-winning song “Golden” from the animated film.

South Africa and Mexico national anthems

Tyla and Alejandro Fernandez were the designated performers for the national anthems of South Africa and Mexico, respectively, before kickoff.

In 2024, Tyla won the first Grammy for best African music performance and, in doing so, became the youngest African artist to win a Grammy.

Fernández’s life has been dedicated to regional Mexican music. The so-called “Potrillo” is the son of the late star Vicente Fernandez. On FIFA's album” Fernández performs “Mi México Lindo."

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Associated Press writers Maria Sherman and Mallika Sen contributed to this report from New York

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

Trump had threatened major strikes on Iran and to seize control of its oil and gas industries as escalating attacks between the countries pushed the Middle East closer to full-scale war.

The threats to seize Iran’s Kharg Island oil terminal came after the U.S and Iran traded strikes for a second straight day, pushing the Middle East closer to the resumption of a full-scale war. It was the third time this week that back-and-forth strikes have rattled the Middle East.

Here's the latest:

Trump touts Burt Jones, one of his 2020 alternate electors, for Georgia governor

President Donald Trump offered a last-minute boost for Georgia Lt. Gov. Burt Jones’ bid for the GOP nomination for governor.

Trump spoke for about 10 minutes during a tele-rally with Jones’ supporters Thursday evening, much of it filled with recitations of his false claims of widespread voter fraud in U.S. elections.

Jones faces billionaire businessman Rick Jackson in a Tuesday runoff.

The president alluded to Jones being one of his alternate electors in the effort to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat in Georgia and nationally.

He said U.S. there are a “lot of rigged” results because of “corrupt” elections, and he said Jones was “fantastic when it came to election fraud.”

Jones, for his part, did not tout his role in the 2020 election fallout, though he praised Trump as “the greatest president this country has ever had.”

The runoff winner faces Democratic nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms in November.

Trump says US representatives made a ‘great deal’ with Iran

During a telephone rally on Thursday for Rep. Barry Moore, his chosen candidate in Tuesday’s Senate runoff in Alabama, Trump talked about Iran, about which he said U.S. representatives had “made a great deal.”

“Today we settled up with Iran,” Trump said. “People will start coming home very soon. ... We got everything we wanted.”

That mirrored some of Trump’s comments earlier Thursday during an Oval Office event, when he said a “great settlement.” Iran has not yet confirmed that it’s agreed to settlement terms with the U.S.

Trump started the day by again threatening to hit Iran “very hard” with new strikes, hours later returning to to social media to say he canceled escalation plans due to progress in the talks.

Trump has claimed multiple times recently that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Trump calls on Alabama voters to back ‘terrific guy’ Rep. Barry Moore in Senate runoff

The president made those remarks during a telephone rally on Thursday afternoon.

Moore, a three-term congressman, is a member of the House’s conservative Freedom Caucus. He advanced to a runoff for the Republican nomination last month, set to face off with former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson on Tuesday.

Trump’s initial endorsement gave Moore a boost in a crowded GOP field. As he has with other candidates this primary season, Trump went on to talk about how his own electoral success in Alabama.

Of outgoing Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor, Trump said he was “a little disappointed he left the Senate, but you can have a replacement that’s going to be phenomenal.”

Trump again threatens federal takeover of DC

The president’s comments came in response to a question about the possibility of Janeese Lewis George winning the District of Columbia’s mayoral primary next week.

“I wouldn’t like it,” Trump said. “And maybe we’d take back Washington, run it on the federal basis. We won’t put up with it. We’re not going to lose our businesses.”

George is one of the front-runners vying to replace Mayor Muriel Bowser and identifies as a democratic socialist.

Trump has claimed the US has essentially reached a deal with Iran before, so why is this different?

“Because they’ve taken a pounding,” Trump explained Thursday when asked why he was confident.

But his answer was vague as he described it as a “very strong memorandum of understanding,” that he described as “a little conceptual.”

He said of Iran, “They want to make the deal a lot more than I do.”

Trump believes Iran Supreme Leader has signed off on emerging deal

“I understand the answer is yes” Trump said when asked if Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has agreed to the deal.

Khamenei was wounded in the opening salvos of the U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran and has been in hiding since.

Iran has not yet confirmed that it’s agreed to terms with the U.S. on a settlement to end the war

Trump says Pulte will continue to be acting director of national intelligence

Trump is insisting that Pulte will stay in the temporary role despite the president’s announcement earlier Thursday that he’s chosen Clayton as the permanent nominee.

“He’s only there for a little while,” Trump said of Pulte. Pressed on Pulte’s lack of national security credentials, the president responded “but he’s intelligent, unlike a lot of other people.”

Trump was also vague on whether he’ll take any executive actions to address the potential lapse in surveillance authorities after midnight Friday.

“Congress wants me to do it, and let’s see what happens,” he said.

Trump opens up more protected ocean areas to fishing

Trump opened three marine protected areas in the Pacific Ocean to commercial fishing with a proclamation Thursday that he said will boost the U.S. seafood industry.

Trump has targeted marine protections created in the era of Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush that he said stifle the country’s ability to compete in the global seafood marketplace. He moved to reestablish fishing in Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument off New England in February.

Thursday’s move focused on portions of Mariana Trench Marine National Monument, Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and Rose Atoll Marine National Monument. The monuments are protected zones in remote areas of the Pacific.

Environmental groups have criticized Trump’s moves to allow fishing in protected zones, which they said provide vital habitat for rare sea life.

US stocks jump and oil prices ease

U.S. stocks have rallied to their best day in two months and oil prices have fallen after Trump said he had called off new military strikes on Iran.

Trump’s comments raised hopes Thursday for a potential deal to get the global flow of oil going again.

The S&P 500 jumped 1.8%, coming off a back-to-back drop that had yanked it back to where it was in early May.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average leaped 1.9%, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 2.5%. Strong gains for chip stocks helped offset a slide for Oracle. Treasury yields eased sharply in the bond market.

Rubio says UFC fights are a great uniter for a polarized America as White House prepares for cage match

“There are only a handful of things that bring people together in one place at one time, united by their interest in one thing. We need more of those,” Rubio said.

He lauded the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship and the diversity of fight audiences as he signed a sports diplomacy agreement with UFC president Dana White.

He said the White House event on Sunday could have been a concert or a “Shakespeare in the Park” production, “but this one will have people watching probably … a billion people over the world will be watching America celebrate its 250th birthday with the White House in the background.”

National Mall vandalism investigated

The U.S. Park Police is investigating after someone marked the numbers “86 47” on the grass of the lawn west of the Washington Monument.

“The cause of the discoloration has not yet been determined. Grass samples have been collected for testing,” Park Police said in an email.

The same numbers got attention after former FBI Director James Comey was indicted in April over a photograph he posted on social media of seashells arranged to say “86 47.” The Justice Department contends the numbers amounted to a threat against Trump, the 47th president. Comey has said he assumed the numbers reflected a political message, not a call to violence.

According to Merriam-Webster, 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.”

“The deranged vandalism on our National Mall will not be tolerated,” the Department of Interior said in an email. “Any threat against the President is taken very seriously by the Department.”

Trump claims he’s close to making a deal with Iran aimed at winding down conflict

“We just made a great settlement of the war with Iran,” Trump said at the start of an Oval Office event. “And we’re going to be, subject to finalization of documents, which should get done over the next few days, probably have a signing, maybe in Europe.”

Trump started the day by again threatening to hit Iran “very hard” with new strikes. Hours later, he returned to social media to say that he decided to cancel plans to escalate the fighting because progress had been made in the talks with Iran and suggested anew that a deal is within view.

But Trump on multiple occasions over the last several weeks has claimed that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Taiwan’s opposition leader met US lawmakers

The leader of Taiwan’s opposition party met five U.S. lawmakers at a time when Washington is seeking to stabilize ties with Beijing despite their differences over the self-governed island, including U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

Cheng Li-wun, chairperson of Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party, is on a two-week trip to the U.S. to promote her party’s approach to peace in the Taiwan Strait through dialogue and to explain its stance on Taiwan’s defense budget and purchase of U.S. weapons. Her party opposes the formal independence of Taiwan.

Taiwan’s media reported that Cheng on Wednesday met with Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., Rep. John Rose, R-Tenn., Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., Rep. Tom Suozzi, D-N.Y., and Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla. Mast chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Fleischmann’s office confirmed the meeting.

Thune says Senate could move ‘fairly quickly’ to confirm Clayton

“I don’t know what realistic is, but we’re gonna probe the limits of it,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said after Trump announced on social media that he would nominate Jay Clayton for director of national intelligence.

Democrats are holding up the renewal of a key surveillance law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in protest of Trump’s temporary pick for the job, federal housing regulator Bill Pulte. The law expires Friday at midnight.

Trump has previously said that Pulte will take over from the outgoing director, Tulsi Gabbard, on June 19. It is unclear whether the Senate could move quickly enough to confirm Clayton before that date.

Rubio signs sports diplomacy agreement with UFC ahead of cage fight at the White House

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has signed a cooperation agreement with the president of the Ultimate Fight Championship that will pair the two institutions in providing fight training, health and diet regimes and promote teamwork and leadership for youths around the world.

Rubio signed the agreement with UFC chief Dana White at the State Department on Thursday, just three days before the UFC will stage a cage match at the White House. Sunday’s match will be held in conjunction with Trump’s 80th birthday and the celebration of America’s 250th independence anniversary.

The partnership will be part of a broader sports diplomacy initiative that has been operating for decades. It has involved golf, tennis, figure skating, American football, soccer and other athletes. Under the program, program, UFC athletes and coaches will serve as U.S. sports ambassadors, leading training clinics for young international athletes.

Trump picks Jay Clayton, ex-SEC head and current US attorney, as director of national intelligence

Trump says he plans to nominate Jay Clayton, the former head of the Securities and Exchange Commission and current U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, as director of national intelligence.

Trump announced the nomination on social media on Thursday amid pressure from Congress to name Tulsi Gabbard’s permanent replacement. Trump faced intense pushback over his decision to name Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, as acting director after Gabbard announced last month that she was stepping down because of her husband’s cancer diagnosis.

The situation led to a standoff in Congress as Democrats said they would refuse to renew a foreign intelligence powers unless Trump pulled Pulte’s nomination and named a permanent nominee.

“Few people anywhere in the Legal Community are respected at the level of Jay,” Trump wrote. “I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible.”

Pentagon ends lockdown over ‘air quality’ issue

The Pentagon has stood down from a lockdown over what officials described as an “air quality issue.”

“Subsequent testing confirmed no hazard exists, and normal operations have resumed,” the Pentagon’s top spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

The lockdown lasted for about two hours and prompted a response from hazmat teams of the Pentagon’s internal police force as well as the team from nearby Arlington, Virginia.

Trump calls off threatened strikes against Iran after indicating progress in talks

Trump says he’s called off new military strikes on Iran hours after threatening to escalate the 3-month-old war.

The president said in a social media post Thursday that he made the move “based on the fact that discussions with the Islamic Republic of Iran have been brought to the highest level of Iranian leadership and approved.”

Trump also suggested that progress has been made in talks to extend the fragile ceasefire, writing that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail,” approved by United States, Israel, and other regional allies. He did not offer details.

Trump on multiple occasions over the last several weeks has claimed that the warring parties have been on a cusp of a deal without anything coming to fruition.

Targeting Iran’s Kharg Island carries major risks

Kharg Island has emerged as a focus of the war launched by the United States and Israel. The Persian Gulf island is home to a terminal through which Iran exports most of its oil.

Strikes on oil infrastructure on Kharg — or a ground invasion — would severely curb Iran’s oil exports, a key source of revenue for the Islamic Republic.

An assault would also mark a major escalation that could provoke even heavier retaliatory attacks on Gulf infrastructure. That would further drive up oil prices that already threaten the world economy.

▶ Read more

A look at the scene on the White House South Lawn for Sunday’s UFC event

It looks from afar more UFO than UFC.

Maybe it’s the kind of contraption that has carried space aliens to the White House to force a meeting with America’s leader.

But come closer and you’ll see the contours of the eight-sided cage, 30 feet in diameter and shaped like the MMA league’s signature Octagon.

Overhead looms The Claw, a four-sided mass that arcs more than 90 feet into the air and features lights, speakers, thick snakes of wiring and four large screens so fans not seated right next to the Octagon can follow the fighting in the cage below.

And surrounding all that are risers filled with gray folding chairs forming a temporary arena expected to seat 4,000-plus for the seven UFC fights being staged on Sunday to celebrate the 80th birthday of President Donald Trump and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.

▶ Read more

Iran’s parliamentary speaker responds

Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf warned in a social media post Thursday that “wrong strategies and impulsive decisions” would wreak havoc on energy markets and “create an endless quagmire that you will be stuck in for years.”

Iran’s monthslong stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted global energy supplies, driven up fuel prices and made food and other basics more expensive well beyond the region.

Hazardous materials units respond to the Pentagon

The Pentagon Force Protection Agency’s hazardous materials team was responding to an unknown issue and parts of the Pentagon were under a shelter-in-place order while officials investigate.

“The Pentagon has sophisticated systems to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants. Those systems have detected an air quality issue necessitating precautionary measures until we determine its significance,” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said Thursday. “The Department is executing standard protection protocols, including a shelter-in-place order for the affected area.”

The Arlington County Fire Department also sent units, including its hazardous materials team, according to a posting on its X account. Questions to the media office were referred to the Pentagon.

Iranian student says hope dwindles as attacks escalate

A 25-year-old student in northern Iran says Iranians are fearing “chaos” amid the war with the U.S. and Israel and multiplying crises at home.

The student, who lives in the city of Babol, said many Iranians are struggling to afford groceries in the face of mass job losses and triple-digit food inflation. He spoke on the condition of anonymity out of security fears.

“Everything is going wrong and there is no hope among the people,” the student added.

The student first spoke to The Associated Press before the war when he participated in widespread anti-government protests. He now says his chief concern is that Iran “maintain territorial integrity and deterrence” in the face of attacks by the U.S. and Israel.

— Amir-Hussein Radjy

Tensions persist over Iran’s nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a social media post that the U.S. would extract funds from frozen Iranian accounts to offset the costs of damage to American allies as well as any tolls Iran imposes on ships seeking passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

Beyond the deadlock over the strait, the two sides also remain at odds over Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran insists its nuclear efforts are peaceful. The U.S. and Israel fear Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium could be used to build an atomic weapon. That was a main reason they cited for going to war Feb. 28.

Trump doesn’t back down on Bill Pulte

After bipartisan pushback to Pulte’s temporary appointment as director of national intelligence, Trump said last week that he would not permanently nominate him to the position. But Democrats, and some Republicans, want his appointment pulled immediately and for Trump to nominate a replacement that can be confirmed by the Senate.

On Tuesday, though, Trump announced that Pulte would not only take over as acting director — he’d also start earlier than expected, on June 19.

One of several possible replacements could be Pete Hoekstra, Trump’s ambassador to Canada and a former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The White House has reached out to Hoekstra about the job and conversations are ongoing, according to a person familiar with the outreach who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

— Mary Clare Jalonick, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim

GOP leaders lobbied the White House, to no avail

Congressional Republicans have lobbied Trump all week to quickly nominate a permanent replacement for director of national intelligence. But he said he needs more time to do so.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Republican leaders have “made our views known” to the White House.

Trump has said he’s interviewing five candidates for his pick to lead the agency permanently, after the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said the president has made it very clear that Pulte will serve a “very short term — a sort of renovation role” to help the Office of the Director of National Intelligence be “renovated and downsized.”

But Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee led by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut said in a letter to the president that Pulte is a “uniquely poor choice” to serve even in the acting capacity.

House vote to extend FISA spy tool fails and it could lapse as Friday deadline looms

A rare lapse in a law that allows the United States to gather intelligence abroad appears likely after the House failed Thursday to temporarily extend the program, in a protest of President Trump ’s refusal to name a permanent head of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Trump has doubled down on his temporary pick for director of national intelligence, federal housing finance regulator Bill Pulte, even though Pulte has little experience for the job. Democrats say they won’t support the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, unless the Republican president withdraws Pulte’s appointment and nominates a permanent replacement.

The House vote collapsed in bipartisan fashion, with some Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure. The Senate may try its own vote later Thursday, but hopes are dimming to prevent what could be an unprecedented lapse in the surveillance tool. The law expires Friday at midnight.

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State leaders say the effort is designed to improve coordination between law enforcement agencies and keep dangerous offenders from continuing to threaten Texas communities.

Governor Greg Abbott has defended the aggressive approach, saying violent repeat offenders will not be allowed to cycle through the justice system and return to the streets unchecked.

The expansion comes as policymakers continue searching for ways to reduce recidivism — the tendency of some offenders to reoffend after serving time.

• RELATED: Gov. Abbott expands Texas Repeat Offender Task Force to Dallas, Austin, San Antonio

According to national criminal justice data, about 44 percent of former inmates are arrested again within their first year of release. Texas recidivism data shows roughly one in five people return to prison within three years.

Supporters of the task force say those numbers underscore the need for stronger coordination between local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to identify and arrest repeat violent offenders.

But community advocates argue that enforcement alone will not solve the problem.

Organizations such as Collective Action for Youth work with young people who may be at risk long before they ever encounter the criminal justice system.

“We try to meet those kids or those young people in those areas where, by the fact that they live where they live, they’re more likely to come into contact with criminal activity,” said Edgar Arturo-Sazo, a Credible Messenger with Collective Action for Youth.

Arturo-Sazo said many of the young people his organization works with face significant challenges, including housing instability, food insecurity, and a lack of positive support systems.

“They don’t really always know where they’re gonna sleep that night. They don’t know if they’re gonna have enough food for the day or for tomorrow,” Arturo-Sazo said. “So when those things happen, we recognize that any opportunity that seems like it would give them those things is easy to grasp.”

He said warning signs often appear long before a young person becomes involved with law enforcement.

Many youths who later become involved in criminal activity struggle with unmet basic needs and lack trusted adults they can turn to for guidance and support.

Criminal justice experts say both approaches have a role to play.

While task forces can help address immediate public safety concerns by removing dangerous offenders from the streets, experts say long-term reductions in crime often depend on prevention efforts, including mental health services, educational support, job training programs, and strong family connections.

Advocates say the challenge for policymakers is finding the right balance between accountability and prevention.

As Texas expands its repeat offender task force, the broader debate continues: whether lasting public safety is best achieved through tougher enforcement, greater investment in prevention programs, or a combination of both.

Price, 44, appeared in court Thursday wearing an olive-green prison jumpsuit with front-facing handcuffs and shackles around his ankles. KPRC 2’s Bryce Newberry was in the courtroom for the hearing.

Price pleaded guilty to Count One of the second superseding federal indictment, conspiracy to commit arson — a felony.

His remaining counts will be dismissed at the time of sentencing under the plea agreement, federal officials confirmed.

MORE INFO: Video shows 4 men dousing Houston bar with fluid before massive explosion that caused $750K in damage

As part of the plea hearing, Price admitted under oath that he directed a Turkey Leg Hut employee who is also charged in the case to assemble a crew to set fire to Bar 5015.

Price acknowledged that the crew transported gasoline to the nightclub and intentionally started the fire.

He also admitted receiving a phone call from co-defendant John Lee Price at approximately 4:47 a.m. on June 12, 2020, informing him that the arson had been carried out. Price told the court he handed the phone to his wife after receiving the call.

He's now facing 5-20 years in federal prison and a fine of up to $250,000. He's back in federal custody now with sentencing scheduled for September 25.

— KPRC 2 Bryce Newberry (@KPRC2Bryce) June 11, 2026

Judge Sim Lake questioned Price after he initially indicated he was surprised by the call despite having directed the arson plot.

“You said that you directed John Lee Price to put together a crew to set fire to Bar 5015. When John Lee Price called you at 4:47 a.m. to report that they’d set fire to Bar 5015, why were you surprised by his call?” Lake asked.

Price responded that he was surprised because the call came during the “wee hours” of the morning and that he had not yet been awake.

Price then confirmed it was a true statement that he directed John Lee Price to arrange the arson.

However, Price denied allegations that he paid John Lee Price for participating in the scheme.

“I didn’t pay him,” Price told the court.

The denial came despite prosecutors indicating that John Lee Price was expected to testify if the case had gone to trial. He reportedly would have said Lyndell Price paid him for his role in the arson.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Lake asked Price how he pleaded to the charge.

“Guilty, sir,” Price replied.

Chuck Egbuonu, Price’s attorney, said there had been various discussions with government officials regarding plea agreements for his client, with multiple terms negotiated throughout the process.

During the hearing, Price told the court he graduated from high school and completed two years of college while pursuing a business management degree. He said his most recent employment was as a chef at Turkey Leg Hut.

Price also told the court he has never been diagnosed with or treated for a mental health condition and has never suffered from an addiction to drugs or alcohol. He said he had not taken any medication within the previous 24 hours.

When questioned by the judge, Price confirmed he had discussed the case with his attorney more than five times and was satisfied with his legal representation.

The new plea marks a significant development in the long-running federal prosecution surrounding the June 2020 fire and explosion at Bar 5015, a popular Houston nightclub along Almeda Road near the Museum District.

Price had previously pleaded not guilty to all charges after being indicted on federal allegations that he orchestrated the arson attack.

Federal prosecutors accused him of recruiting and paying others to set fire to the bar, which was owned by a former Turkey Leg Hut business partner.

Following the guilty plea, Price is expected to remain in federal custody pending sentencing. He faces between five and 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Price’s sentencing hearing has been scheduled for Sept. 25, 2026, at 2 p.m. before Judge Lake.

RELATED: Former Turkey Leg Hut co-owner asks for case to be dismissed, claims right to fair trial violated in arson case

Third defendant to plead guilty

Price is now the third defendant charged in the case to enter a guilty plea.

Court records show co-defendant Miziah Shepherd pleaded guilty on Nov. 18, 2025. More recently, Armani Williams entered a guilty plea on June 1, 2026.

READ MORE: Former Turkey Leg Hut co-owner Nakia Holmes cleared after grand jury declines charges

Two other defendants named in the federal indictment have not entered guilty pleas.

However, Javon Harris, another co-defendant, is scheduled to be re-arraigned next week, records show. Federal prosecutors confirmed he’s also expected to plead guilty.

Federal allegations

Federal prosecutors alleged that Price conspired with several men to carry out an arson attack against Bar 5015 during the early morning hours of June 12, 2020.

According to the indictment, Williams and another co-conspirator purchased gasoline, gas cans and face coverings before driving to the nightclub. Prosecutors said gasoline was poured throughout portions of the property and along an entrance ramp before the fire was ignited.

Investigators alleged Price financed the operation and received a phone call shortly after the arson was completed.

The indictment also accused Price and others of involvement in a separate scheme involving the burning of a stolen 1975 Chevrolet Nova weeks before the nightclub explosion.

• Federal prosecutors reject conflict of interest claim from Turkey Leg Hut co-owner in arson case

The fire quickly escalated into a massive explosion that damaged Bar 5015, destroyed a nearby food truck and sent debris flying across the surrounding neighborhood.

Houston firefighters responded shortly before 5 a.m. on June 12, 2020, finding multiple small fires and a widespread debris field.

Surveillance video later released by investigators appeared to show several individuals carrying containers of ignitable liquid into the business before the explosion occurred.

Authorities estimated the blast caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the bar and nearby properties.

Broader legal troubles

The guilty plea adds to a growing list of legal challenges for Price, whose restaurant empire became the subject of numerous lawsuits, investigations and criminal cases in recent years.

In addition to the arson case, Price has faced separate federal weapons and drug-related allegations.

• ‘The turkeys have come home to roost’: FBI says former Turkey Leg Hut owner sold drugs out of restaurant

Prosecutors previously charged him with possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and multiple counts of being a felon in possession of firearms.

Thursday’s plea represents one of the most significant developments yet in the federal government’s case surrounding the Bar 5015 explosion, which remained unsolved for years before a sweeping indictment was unsealed in 2025.

RELATED: FIFA World Cup 2026 in Houston: Complete guide to matches, parking, Fan Fest, Transportation and more

A Global soccer celebration in Houston

The festival will transform several city blocks into a World Cup watch party featuring giant video screens, food vendors, interactive activities and entertainment designed to showcase Houston to visitors from around the globe.

“It’s something for everyone. It’s something for families to come down to,” said Patti Smith, the festival’s director. “We really tried to design this to show the world who we are as a city.”

Organizers expect thousands of fans to visit the festival each day, particularly during Team USA, Mexico and Houston-hosted matches. Admission is free, but entry will be granted on a first-come, first-served basis. The festival can accommodate approximately 7,500 people at a time.

Be ready for the heat

With Houston’s summer heat expected to be a factor, organizers are encouraging attendees to plan ahead and stay hydrated.

“Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate,” Smith said. “That’s why we want you to bring your own water bottles.”

Fans are allowed to bring clear refillable water bottles and can use hydration stations located throughout the festival grounds. Organizers have also added misting stations, shaded viewing areas and multiple air-conditioned spaces where visitors can cool off.

Transportation and parking tips

Officials are also urging attendees to consider alternative transportation options. Parking closest to the festival site will be limited, and organizers recommend using METRO, rideshare services or bicycles whenever possible.

What to do in an emergency

Medical personnel, security officers and volunteers will be stationed throughout the venue to assist guests. Organizers say anyone experiencing signs of heat-related illness should seek help immediately.

“If you’re not feeling right, flag anybody down and say, ‘I’m not feeling right,’” Smith said. “We’ll take you right to the medical trailer and have them take care of you immediately.”

Organizers’ message to fans

As Houston prepares to welcome soccer fans from around the world, organizers say the goal is simple: come prepared, stay hydrated and enjoy a once-in-a-lifetime World Cup experience in the heart of the city.

Only a handful of prominent players in the past few decades have faced this confluence of talent and timing. They include a selection of generational greats: Zinedine Zidane for France in 1998, Michael Ballack for Germany in 2006, Neymar for Brazil in 2014.

Pulisic's U.S. teammates recognize the extraordinary burden he is carrying while the Americans prepare for their World Cup opener Friday night against Paraguay. From the field to the back row of the stands, everyone is looking to Pulisic for leadership and goals, hoping his full decade of international success with club and country will propel a middling soccer nation to new heights on home soil.

“I can't even imagine the weight that's on his shoulders,” teammate Tyler Adams said. “From such a young age, he was the hope of American soccer.”

Pulisic does not shy from the spotlight that will glare more brightly than ever in the next few weeks. In fact, he repeated Thursday that this challenge is “what I've always wanted.”

Now 27 years old, Pulisic has enough achievement and enough faith in his teammates to focus on how far the Americans can go, not how far they might fall.

“I don’t feel a difference in weight,” Pulisic said at the U.S. training base in Orange County. “I’m not sure. Maybe less. I just feel like there’s so many good players around me. I genuinely don’t feel like I have to do anything on my own. I’m going to give it the best I can. I want to help the team, and they expect a lot out of me, but with the guys I have around me, it makes it a lot easier for me.”

Pulisic was already the center of the U.S. hopes and aspirations when this World Cup was awarded to North America eight years ago, and his status hasn't changed. A nation that had struggled to produce elite players finally created a star in this slick, creative midfielder from Hershey, Pennsylvania, who has gone on to a decade of European club success.

National team progress has been more difficult to come by during Pulisic's first decade, but he is still considered the most consistently dynamic player in the American program — despite his 18-month goal drought in a U.S. shirt that only ended May 31.

“Of course he needs to be an important player for us in the competition,” said coach Mauricio Pochettino, who took over the U.S. team in late 2024. “(But) I think what we’ve learned after a year and a half is that the badge of the national team and the culture with this country is more important than any name, any player or any coach. That is a principal thing that we (believe), and from there, if you have talent and quality, you can perform on that platform.”

Adams, the 27-year-old Bournemouth midfielder, has been right alongside Pulisic for most of this ride.

He watched in awe as the 17-year-old Pulisic made his senior U.S. debut in late 2016. Those Americans failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, but Pulisic quickly became a vital component of the group.

“(Pulisic was) the best player on the field at 17 years old, and the person that they rely on, (and) it’s been since then that they’ve relied on him,” Adams said. “Now, we have weapons around him to kind of relieve that, but he’s a star. Not just for the U.S. national team, but in world football. He’s that good. We rely on him in big moments, but that being said, I hope he doesn’t feel the pressure to carry it all. Just to be himself and grow into each game.”

Pulisic became known across the world when he moved from Dortmund to Chelsea in 2019. He was part of the Blues’ Champions League winners in 2021, becoming only the second American to claim the ultimate club trophy, before moving in 2023 to AC Milan, where he remains a vital player for another major club.

Pulisic finally made his World Cup debut four years ago in Qatar, contributing a big goal and an assist — but the U.S. scored just three goals in its four games before going home in the knockout round.

“It feels similar, but with a bit of that comfort of being in America,” Pulisic said of his World Cup return. “It feels great having the people you love around you. It makes it that much more special.”

Pochettino has strived to build an aggressive, attacking team around Pulisic’s talents, thereby minimizing its reliance on its best player. Prolific Europe-based strikers Folarin Balogun and Ricardo Pepi will make their World Cup debuts this month for the U.S., hopefully spreading out the scoring responsibility.

But with his past World Cup experience in mind, Pulisic knows the Americans must step up quickly at home — and their opening matchup against a solid Paraguay team will put him right in the spotlight again.

“It has that big-game feel, for sure,” Pulisic said. “But in some ways, I feel a little bit more relaxed because I've been there before. We've played in a match like this. I think the experience has calmed me down a little bit.”

___

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

The Minneapolis-area attacks last summer by Vance Boelter, 58, sparked the largest police search in state history and reverberated across the country, with elected officials fearing that escalating threats and polarization could lead to more violence. Boelter pleaded guilty so that federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty; instead, he agreed to serve two consecutive life sentences, plus 40 years.

Boelter, disguised in a tactical uniform and realistic mask, parked his police-style SUV with emergency flashing lights in the driveway of House Speaker Melissa Hortman's home at around 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 2025. He rang the doorbell, shouting: “Police, welfare check,” according to a plea agreement made public Thursday. Mark Hortman, her husband, answered the door.

Mark Hortman told Boelter that his wife was also in the home, and Boelter said he'd need to see her before he could leave, according to the plea agreement. When Mark Hortman asked, Boelter gave him a fake name and badge number and, when Hortman followed up for his jurisdiction, Boelter hesitated before naming a different Minneapolis suburb, the agreement states. Boelter then immediately took out his gun to shoot Hortman multiple times, according to the agreement.

Boelter then “rushed forward through the front door into the home” and shot Melissa Hortman repeatedly “as she attempted to flee upstairs,” according to the plea agreement. Both Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed.

Boelter had already been to the home of state Sen. John Hoffman that night, shooting and critically injuring him and his wife, Yvette, while their daughter was nearby.

There were brief sobs from the courtroom gallery Thursday where family members of the Hortmans sat alongside John and Yvette Hoffman as the attacks were described in detail. Again and again Boelter simply said “yes,” as his attorney questioned him about his actions, including whether he pressed a pistol to Melissa Hortman’s head and fired.

U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen told reporters after the hearing that the death penalty was only taken off the table after Boelter agreed to the longest possible prison sentence for the six federal charges.

“Political violence is a scourge plaguing America,” Rosen said. “Those that would commit political violence at any level should take heed: the Justice Department will seek and obtain the longest prison terms available for your crimes.”

A statement posted on John Hoffman's Facebook page said there is no justice for the Hortmans, and “there is not justice when our family and our state will never truly heal. While the legal process may provide accountability, true healing requires something more from all of us."

The statement called on Minnesotans and Americans to “treat people with respect, to stop de-humanizing each other, and to stop dividing our country with hate and rhetoric.”

Boelter also faces state charges, including two counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder as well as charges of impersonating a police officer and animal cruelty. The Hortman family’s golden retriever was gravely injured in the shootings and had to be euthanized. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office said Thursday that the federal plea agreement does not affect the state's case, which had been on hold pending the resolution of the federal case.

Boelter also stopped outside the homes of two other lawmakers in the Minneapolis suburbs that night. At one, he knocked but no one answered. At the other, he was apparently frightened away when a police officer, believing he was a fellow officer, approached him as he sat in his vehicle.

Boelter, wearing his orange jail sweatshirt and sweatpants as he sat in the courtroom between two of his attorneys, listened closely as U.S. District Judge John Tunheim talked through each of the six charges and their maximum sentences. Tunheim accepted the guilty pleas and said he would set a date soon for sentencing.

Boelter was captured near his home in rural Green Isle, about an hour's drive from Minneapolis, the day after the shootings, which prosecutors have said were politically motivated but which remain in many ways unexplained.

“Dad went to war last night,” Boelter messaged his family that morning. “Words are not going to explain how sorry I am.”

Boelter, an evangelical Christian with politically conservative views who had traveled to Congo as a preacher and missionary, spent much of his life in the food service industry. He had been struggling to earn a living before the shootings, after the failure of a security company he'd founded.

John Hoffman said in a lawsuit filed against Boelter in April that his left arm and hand likely would never fully recover and that he also had permanent injuries to his digestive and urinary systems.

Yvette Hoffman was left with permanent physical weakness, the lawsuit said, while their adult daughter, Hope Hoffman, who was there and called 911 but was not shot, suffered severe psychological trauma.

___

Fingerhut reported from Des Moines, Iowa.

Trump had doubled down on his choice of Bill Pulte for acting director of national intelligence, even though the federal housing finance regulator has little experience for the job. Democrats said they would not support the renewal of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, unless the Republican president withdrew Pulte's appointment and nominated a permanent replacement as director of national intelligence.

The House vote collapsed in bipartisan fashion, with 19 Republicans and nearly all Democrats rejecting the temporary measure, 198-218. The Senate tried to approve its own versions, but also failed, dimming the chances to prevent what could be rare lapse of spy powers. The law expires Friday at midnight.

After those votes, Trump announced he was tapping Jay Clayton, a U.S. attorney who previously served as chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, as his permanent pick as intelligence director. But the president’s move did not seem able to break the standoff over Pulte before the deadline.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when asked about Clayton, said, “Pulte has to go.”

“He cannot be in the DNI role,” said Schumer, D-N.Y. “It’s too important.”

The impasse could soon result in limitations on what intelligence the U.S. government can collect abroad just as World Cup games begin in cities around the country and ahead of celebrations for the nation’s 250th anniversary. While the provision has expired briefly before, this would be the first lengthy lapse, at a time when the U.S. and Iran have been engaged in missile strikes that are testing a fragile ceasefire in the war.

A lapse would not automatically deprive the government’s authority to conduct surveillance, but could open the door to court challenges of the program. That could lead to stale intelligence, lawmakers said, including the type of information included in the president’s daily briefing.

“We have done everything we possibly can,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson, who blamed Democrats for the breakdown and said he would not be recalling lawmakers back to Washington as they left for a weeklong recess. “It is detestable, it is dangerous, it is going to jeopardize the security of the American people.”

Democrats said Trump and the Republicans are the ones putting national security at risk by installing Pulte to the job. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Pulte has “weaponized” his position in the federal government to go after Trump's critics.

Jeffries said it was a window into the White House's thinking that Trump “could put Bill Pulte forward and the country wouldn’t react adversely to it.” He said the president must ”come to the table and demonstrate leadership so we can reopen good faith negotiations about how best to extend surveillance authority.”

Trump has said he wants Pulte to begin downsizing intelligence agencies.

GOP leaders lobby the White House, to no avail

Congressional Republicans have lobbied Trump all week to quickly nominate a permanent replacement.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Republican leaders had “made our views known” to the White House. But on Thursday he blamed Democrats for the FISA impasse. "This critical tool is set to go dark on Friday, and what the consequences of that will be, we cannot predict,” he said.

Thune praised Trump's choice of Clayton and said the Senate could move “fairly quickly” to confirm him.

Trump had said he was interviewing five candidates for intelligence director after the resignation of Tulsi Gabbard but he wouldn’t let Democrats “extort us” over the pick.

The president wants Pulte to serve in a "sort of renovation role,” Johnson said, to help the Office of the Director of National Intelligence be “renovated and downsized.”

But Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, led by Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, said in a letter to the president that Pulte is a “uniquely poor choice” to serve even in the acting capacity.

Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers skeptical of Pulte have pointed to his lack of intelligence experience and his record at the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In that position, he has been linked with criminal referrals over allegations of mortgage fraud by public officials Trump sought to punish, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat; Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.; and Lisa Cook, a board member of the Federal Reserve.

Himes also welcomed Trump's pick of Clayton as a “terrific DNI,” saying had he been nominated earlier, “lots of pain might have been avoided.”

FISA will lapse at midnight Friday

Section 702 of FISA allows agencies such as the CIA, National Security Agency and FBI to collect communications from foreign targets overseas without a warrant.

While members of both parties who cite privacy issues have long wanted to limit the authority, there was broad bipartisan support to renew it, especially after Republicans and Democrats recently worked out a compromise bill.

Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has worked with Republicans on the compromise legislation to renew the authority. But he called Pulte’s appointment to replace Gabbard “a live hand grenade” disrupting the process.

“Let me be clear -– while I am glad to see the president finally come to his senses, before the Senate can take up a FISA extension there needs to be a clear guarantee that Mr. Pulte will not serve as acting DNI,” Warner said in a statement.

Warner said either Gabbard must remain in place or the administration must designate her Senate-confirmed principal deputy, Aaron Lukas, as the acting head through any transition.

Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, have warned the administration to prepare “for a potential significant gap in foreign intelligence collection.”

___

Associated Press reporters Joey Cappelletti, Kevin Freking and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Another warm, humid start on Friday. Waking up to temperatures in the upper 70s and low 80s. By the afternoon, the heat and humidity make it feel like the triple digits.

Check out how to stay cool at FIFA World Cup 2026: Heat to tropical downpours: Houston weather outlook for FIFA World Cup 2026

Three-Day Forecast

We are back in a typical June pattern! We’re hot and humid with afternoon highs feeling like 100 degrees. Every day, there will be a chance for a quick afternoon downpour, but by Sunday, rain chances become widespread as tropical moisture marches into southeast Texas.

Tracking The Tropics:

The National Hurricane Center has marked an area in the Bay of Campeche for a 10% chance of development over the next week or so. A broad area of low pressure could form. Still, conditions are not expected to be favorable for significant development as it’ll move inland over eastern Mexico late this weekend, totally squashing any chance of formation.

This means impacts on Texas will be indirect. Instead of a named storm, we’ll likely see increased tropical moisture, which could boost our rain chances starting Sunday and lasting into early next week.

This won’t lead to a washout, but it could mean periods of heavy downpours around the Houston area, including during some of the World Cup festivities this weekend.

There is a risk of flooding on Sunday, which is when Houston hosts its first World Cup game. This does not mean it will be a washout, but it does mean any shower or storm that we see before, during, or after the game can lead to street flooding. Stay weather aware on Sunday!

Your extended forecast:

We are back to a more typical weather pattern, but there is an increasing chance for rainfall into the end of the weekend and into next week. Some of the rain Monday and Tuesday will be heavy and could lead to some areas of minor street flooding.

The work comes less than a year after transportation officials began a large-scale effort to repave Interstate 69, one of Houston’s busiest corridors, while also completing separate beautification projects ahead of Houston’s role as a host city for the FIFA World Cup.

For many drivers, the most noticeable part of the freeway remains the uneven transitions between roadway sections and bridge approaches.

“There’s a lot of bumps,” said Melanie Workman of Baytown. “There’s always traffic due to the construction. It’s very frustrating.”

Amber Workman, who frequently drives the freeway through the Montrose area, described the ride as rough.

“It almost feels like you’re going over moguls or holes in the road,” she said.

Fadi Tatari, a Montrose resident, said the conditions have been a problem for years.

“It’s horrible,” Tatari said. “Especially when you get across the transition between the bridges and the actual highway.”

He says the rough pavement has damaged tires on his vehicle.

According to the Texas Department of Transportation, crews are repaving the Southwest Freeway between the Interstate 610 Loop and Beltway 8. The project began before Houston was selected to host World Cup matches and is separate from FIFA-related improvements, transportation officials have said.

TxDOT expects paving work to continue through the end of the year.

At the same time, drivers have also noticed changes near the Montrose bridges, where crews removed ivy, repainted retaining walls and completed landscaping improvements.

TxDOT has described that effort as part of a beautification project intended to improve the appearance of key corridors ahead of the World Cup. A spokesperson also said thousands of trees have been planted at locations across the city.

Some residents questioned whether the money could have been better spent on transportation needs.

“I don’t think it’s a good spend of money, personally,” Amber Workman said. “They could be fixing the roads or something a little bit more simple that could help the community more.”

Melanie Workman expressed a similar view.

“I think they should’ve already fixed the freeways,” she said. “Why didn’t they do it for our citizens that pay the taxes?”

Tatari said he supports improvements that benefit the city long term but questioned whether the beautification work would have occurred without the World Cup.

Traffic remains a concern as Houston prepares to host seven World Cup matches at Houston Stadium.

TxDOT officials said they do not plan to close freeway lanes on match days, a move intended to reduce congestion for fans traveling to and from games.

While construction activity is expected to continue in the coming months, transportation officials say keeping lanes open during match days should help ease traffic during one of the city’s busiest international events in years.

Debbie Cohran, who lives about 500 feet (152 meters) from the aerospace facility in Garden Grove, wasn’t told to evacuate until several hours after the leak started, according to her complaint. Her suit said she experienced nausea and headaches for several days afterward.

Melanie Rose Burciaga of nearby Westminster had just given birth to her first child and had to leave the hospital when the evacuation orders came in, her lawyer said in a lawsuit.

And Juan Diego Orozco was part of a street repair crew working in Garden Grove on the day the overheating started. He said he suffered a headache and went to the hospital due to difficulty breathing and vomiting, his lawyer said.

More than 100 individuals — including some families with pets — as well as local businesses are suing GKN Aerospace, saying the U.K.-based company was negligent in maintaining a safe facility, especially since it’s located in a large population center.

Ten of the cases were filed as class actions in federal court, while 21 are in state court and cover one to 31 plaintiffs. The suits seek compensatory and punitive damages.

A spokesperson for GKN Aerospace told the AP in an email Thursday: “GKN respects the legal process and will respond to these lawsuits in due course.”

Adam Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law who is not involved in the litigation, said the federal cases will likely be consolidated and the state cases will likely be moved under one judge, to ensure they are handled efficiently. Some of those state lawsuits may be moved to federal court, he said.

Pressure on the company increased on Wednesday when FBI agents served a search warrant at the facility to collect documents and records related to the “storage, use, or disposal” of methyl methacrylate, the chemical inside the affected tank.

The Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday that it had joined the FBI to “search for and seize evidence of potential federal environmental crimes." The agency declined to provide more information, saying it doesn't comment on criminal investigations.

GKN Aerospace makes cockpit windows, canopies and windshields. The tank that overheated starting on May 21 contained 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 to 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate, which is highly flammable. The liquid is used in the manufacturing of plastics and coatings, such as Plexiglas.

Health officials said no contamination or fumes were released, and they plan to monitor the air for several months. Exposure to the chemical can cause serious respiratory problems, neurological issues and irritation to the skin, eyes and throat, according to the EPA.

Although the tank did not explode, tens of thousands of residents were evacuated from the area for three to five days until crews were able to stabilize the tank.

Blodgett said that the company was cooperating with federal authorities.

GKN Aerospace senior vice president Steve Carlin spoke at a community meeting Tuesday, saying he was sorry that the event occurred, and that it was especially unsettling because the company has a long history with the community.

Many of the lawsuits say the company had a duty to maintain the tank, cooling system, valves and monitoring systems to keep the community safe.

The complaints say the residents were forced to leave their homes and had to pay for hotels, food and other daily needs, which created a financial burden. They also said they experienced anxiety during the evacuation process and continue to be concerned about exposure to chemicals.

Businesses in the area also suffered. The emergency happened over Memorial Day weekend -– a time when many restaurants and food service companies bring in some of their best revenue of the year.

“Our data shows approximately 3,000 businesses were forced to shut down because of the evacuation, and at least another 3,000 businesses right outside the evacuation zone while not forced to close, but had their revenue dropped considerably because of the tank failure and evacuation,” said lawyer Richard McCune, who has filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of Big Rob’s Pizzeria and Fruit Caboose Concessions.

Lawyers say the FBI investigation will help their legal cases.

“We trust that the search will uncover important information and materials related to this crisis,” said lawyer Sean Litteral, who represents Jonathan Sanchez, a father of two children, including an infant born just days before the incident.

Later, she repeated her assertion that former President Joe Biden’s administration is responsible for the parasite’s return to the U.S. six decades after it was eradicated. Democratic leaders say cuts to the nation’s agriculture agency under President Donald Trump are to blame.

Screwworms are on their way to becoming a billion-dollar international problem, but can be contained if ranchers are vigilant, watch their herds and other wildlife, and quickly treat any infestations, Rollins said. She pointed to the calf where screwworms were found six days earlier in a wound where its umbilical cord had been attached.

“He couldn’t be happier. He’s bouncing around the pasture," Rollins said.

Screwworms are flies that lay their eggs in the wounds of warm-blooded animals and feed on living flesh rather than dead tissues. Scientists say releasing sterile flies to mate with females is the most effective way to control the population, a strategy that has worked for decades. A warming planet is complicating efforts by giving screwworms, which thrive in hot, humid weather, more places to spread.

Billion-dollar response planned to fight screwworms

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is preparing an all-out assault on the screwworm, which had been contained in the narrow isthmus of Panama for decades.

No matter the cause, driving screwworms back south and keeping them out of the U.S. will be expensive. The USDA estimated it would spend over $1 billion on efforts to save cattle herds and other livestock.

About $750 million will go toward building and operating a plant capable of producing up to 300 million sterile flies a week. The technique has been used for decades, as female screwworms mate just once, and if they choose a sterile mate, their eggs don’t hatch, and the fly population dwindles.

The goal is to protect the U.S. cattle industry. Experts think the parasite shouldn't cause an immediate increase in near-record-high beef prices as long as it doesn't turn into an outbreak and large groups of cattle die. Screwworms don't affect food safety.

The parasite has already disrupted the Mexican beef industry. The U.S. closed its southern ports to Mexican livestock last summer.

Mexico has had more than 28,000 cases of screwworms since the flies returned two years ago, mostly confined to its southern states. The Mexican government stopped the importation of almost all live animals from the U.S. after screwworms were discovered here.

Scientists aren’t sure how screwworms emerged again

The U.S. had been almost entirely rid of screwworms for 60 years, with scientists in North and Central America eventually driving it down to the containment zone in Panama. But in 2023, the flies emerged and began heading back north.

Experts say screwworms are here to stay at least for this summer. Seven cases have already been detected in Texas and New Mexico. A 12-mile (20-kilometer) quarantine zone goes up around every place a case is found.

As they work toward a solution, scientists say they aren't sure exactly what led to screwworms leaving the area in Panama where they were boxed in.

“I don't have the answer to that one, and I don’t know if anyone does. It doesn’t help us to speculate,” said Jonathan Cammack, a professor of livestock entomology and parasitology at Oklahoma State University.

The key now is to ramp up the sterile fly program and get international cooperation to get the pests back down to Panama, he said.

Climate change is also helping drive the spread of screwworms, said Lee Haines, an associate research professor of biological sciences at the University of Notre Dame.

"The fly is a creature of warmth as its entire life cycle, from egg to adult, can complete in as little as three weeks under tropical conditions," Haines said.

Even Canada has temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas. The parasites prefer humid areas where temperatures are at least 77 F (25 C), and those days are increasing further north.

Democrats question cuts; Republicans blame immigration

As Rollins moves quickly to implement a billion-dollar response to the screwworm outbreak, she has also blamed the Biden administration, noting that it was in office as the parasite began moving north again.

She said without showing any evidence the flies were with animals that followed immigrants north as well as hitching rides with cattle and other animals being sold by Mexican cartels outside of regular markets.

“People moving north to America, bringing their livestock with them, the Mexican cartels with the illicit cattle traffic, we knew it was coming,” Rollins told the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee on Wednesday.

Nearly a dozen Democratic U.S. senators sent a letter to Rollins this week questioning whether job losses at the USDA have hurt food inspections and livestock safety programs.

Nearly 20% of the counties in the U.S. that started 2025 with at least one employee from the federal Animal Plant and Health Inspection Service ended the year with none, the letter said.

Rollins said she has moved over 100 USDA employees into the screwworm response. She said it has been one of her top priorities since Trump picked her to lead the USDA.

But Democratic U.S. Rep. Ted Lieu of California said blaming Biden is shortsighted and again shows the Trump administration creates problems through reckless spending cuts.

“The life cycle of a screwworm is about 14 to 54 days, depending on temperature and humidity. The Trump administration has been in office for over 500 days,” Lieu said earlier this week. “This is on the Trump administration. They need to own up to it, and they need to apologize.”