Leo’s speech at Rome’s La Sapienza University marked the first time a pope has visited the campus since Pope Benedict XVI called off a planned speech there in 2008 in the face of protests from faculty and students.

The American pope was warmly welcomed on Thursday, including by some of Sapienza’s newest students: Young Palestinians who arrived in Italy this week on a “humanitarian corridor” from Gaza to continue their studies at the university. The Italian government, working with Catholic organizations, has brought hundreds of Palestinians to study and receive medical care in Italy since the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza began in 2023.

Leo met some of the Gaza students during a brief greeting at the campus chapel, and again after his speech in the main lecture hall of the university, which was founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303.

In his speech, Leo denounced how military spending had increased dramatically this year, especially in Europe, at the expense of education and healthcare, while “enriching elites who care nothing for the common good.”

He called for better monitoring of how AI was being developed and used in military and civilian contexts “so that it does not absolve humans of responsibility for their choices and does not exacerbate the tragedy of conflicts.”

“What is happening in Ukraine, in Gaza and the Palestinian territories, in Lebanon, and in Iran illustrates the inhuman evolution of the relationship between war and new technologies in a spiral of annihilation,” he said.

The pope said education and research must move instead in the opposite direction that values life “the lives of peoples who cry out for peace and justice!”

Leo has identified AI as one of the most critical matters facing humanity, especially its application in warfare and everyday life. They are themes he’s expected to explore more fully in his first encyclical, due to be released in the coming weeks.

___

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 White House and Chinese state media said the leaders concluded their meeting Thursday morning after about two hours. Trump is expected to leave just after midday Friday after a final private meeting with Xi. But few breakthroughs are expected on divisive issues ranging from the Iran war, trade, technology and Taiwan.

Trump hopes to focus the summit talks on trade and deals for China to buy more agricultural products and passenger planes, setting up a board to address their differences and avoid a repeat of the trade war ignited last year after Trump’s tariff hikes.

In their closed-door meeting, Xi told Trump that if Taiwan is handled well, U.S.-China relations “will enjoy overall stability.” If not, the two countries risk “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Xi said, according to China's official Xinhua News Agency.

Trump in December authorized an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its own territory. The U.S. has not yet moved forward with delivery.

Here is the Latest:

Wall Street heads for gains before the bell as Trump and Xi meet

Wall Street is poised to open with gains Thursday following another record-setting day and developments emerging from President Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.

S&P futures rose 0.3%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.7%. Nasdaq futures gained 0.2% early. The S&P and Nasdaq both hit record highs Wednesday.

Oil prices were effectively unchanged, with no clear ending to the Iran war after more than two months. Some were hoping the Trump-Xi meeting could bring results, after U.S. officials said Beijing could use its close economic ties with Tehran to press Iran to reopen the Strait or Hormuz.

On Thursday, the White House said Trump and Xi discussed enhancing U.S.-China economic cooperation. Both sides also agreed the Strait of Hormuz must be reopened.

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Trump peppers toast with historical references to illustrate US-China ties

During Donald Trump’s toast at the state banquet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the U.S. president said citizens of the United States and China have long shared a “deep sense of mutual respect” and used history to illustrate the point.

Benjamin Franklin published the sayings of the philosopher Confucius, Trump said.

Chinese admirers of President George Washington gifted a stone tablet honoring his memory to adorn the Washington Monument. The tablet was inscribed with the words of a Chinese official who called Washington a great general and statesman, Trump said.

Chinese workers helped lay the railroad tracks that connected the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States while American travelers to China helped spread literacy and modern medicine, he said.

Trump also noted President Theodore Roosevelt, acting on a request from China’s ambassador, provided money to establish Xi’s alma mater, Tsinghua University.

What’s for dinner at China’s state banquet

The menu, according to the White House, included some Chinese elements.

Lobster in Tomato Soup, Crispy Beef Ribs, Beijing Roast Duck, Stewed Seasonal Vegetables and Slow-Cooked Salmon in Mustard Sauce.

Guests also dined on Pan-Fried Pork Bun, Trumpet Shell-Shaped Pastry and Tiramisu, as well as fruits and ice cream.

Musk was a draw for selfies at the Trump-Xi banquet

Before the leaders entered the room, a steady stream of guests approached Elon Musk at his table, snapping selfies with the tech CEO.

Lei Jun, CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, was seen shaking hands with Musk and taking a selfie with him.

Trump and Xi could meet up to 4 times in 2026

U.S. and Chinese officials say Trump and Xi could potentially meet four times in 2026.

The meetings could include the Group of 20 meeting in Miami and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Guangzhou later this year.

Trump invites Xi to visit White House in September

Trump extended a Sept. 24 invitation to Xi and his wife, Madame Peng, during his reciprocal toast.

“And we look forward to it,” Trump said.

He also thanked Xi for his hospitality.

“This has been an amazing period of time,” Trump said.

Trump recounts ‘fantastic day’ in China to open banquet toast

“This is a great honor. It was a fantastic day,” Trump said. “It really was a magnificent welcome like none other.”

He described his talks with Xi as “extremely positive conversations” and said everything that they discussed was “all good for the United States and China.

“And it was a great honor to be with you,” the U.S. president said, referring to his Chinese counterpart.

Xi says U.S.-China relationship is most important in the world

Xi Jinping called for the China and the U.S. to work together as partners rather than rivals in an opening toast ahead of the state banquet that was largely positive though measured.

“We both believe that China and the U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. We must make it work and never mess it up,” Xi said.

Xi noted it was the 250th anniversary of American independence.

“Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America Great Again can go hand in hand,” he said. “Both China and U.S. stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation, should be partners rather than rivals.”

He then toasted Trump and the audience.

Taiwan calls China the ‘only risk’ to regional stability

“China is currently the only risk to regional peace and stability,” Taiwan’s Ministry of Affairs said in response to Xi’s warning Thursday for the U.S. to be careful.

“Even during the meeting between the leaders of the United States and China, the People’s Liberation Army continued to send military aircraft and ships to harass and threaten Taiwan in the region,” the ministry said.

Xi said “Taiwan independence” and cross-strait peace are as irreconcilable as fire and water, while noting the issue was the most important in the bilateral relationship.

Xi’s wording on Taiwan may indicate Trump didn’t budge

Xi’s stark warning to Trump over Taiwan may indicate the U.S. president did not make concessions Thursday over the island democracy China claims as its own, an analyst said.

Any meaningful concession would have been reflected in Beijing’s official readout of the meeting, said William Yang, a senior analyst for Northeast Asia for International Crisis Group.

“The lack of such mention and the relatively stern tone suggest Trump may not have budged on Taiwan in principle,” Yang said.

Wen-Ti Sung of the Atlantic Council said Xi’s warning of potential conflict signaled Taiwan remains the Chinese government’s biggest red line.

“Taiwan is the identity-defining issue in U.S.-China relations: get Taiwan right and we are friends; get Taiwan wrong and we might become foes before you know it,” Sung said.

What Trump and Xi discussed at the Temple of Heaven

U.S. reporters were mainly kept far away from the leaders when they toured the UNESCO heritage site.

But China’s official Xinhua News Agency cited Trump as being impressed to see the Temple of Heaven still standing tall and magnificent after over 600 years, showcasing exquisite Chinese classical architectural art.

Xi said ancient Chinese rulers held sacrificial ceremonies at the temple to pray for national peace and prosperity.

Xi said it showed the traditional Chinese thought that “the people are the foundation of the state, and when the foundation is solid, the state is stable,” according to Xinhua.

Trump said he vividly remembers his 2017 visit to the Forbidden City, Xinhua reported.

Trump attends Chinese state banquet in his honor

The affair brought Trump back to the Great Hall of the People, where he opened his first full day in Beijing in closed-door talks with Xi.

Inside the hall, round tables were draped with white tablecloths.

Key members of Trump’s Cabinet including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent milled about before Trump arrived.

Chinese premier stresses cooperation in talk with US executives

Chinese Premier Li Qiang stressed the need for friendship and cooperation in U.S.-China ties as he spoke with U.S. business leaders accompanying President Donald Trump in Beijing.

Li met executives including Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the sidelines of Trump’s summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“China and the United States have been able to maintain frank and smooth dialogue and communication and actively safeguard a stable and healthy bilateral relationship” despite international turbulence, Li said.

Collaboration is needed for “mutual success and shared prosperity,” Li added.

China’s language shows ‘core’ focus on Taiwan

China has ramped up its language around Taiwan by noting repeatedly in recent weeks that Taiwan is the “core” of its interests and a key to ensuring a stable relationship with the U.S.

Trump has demanded Taiwan increase defense spending and in December the White House announced an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan, the largest ever to the island democracy.

Ma Chun-wei, an expert in China-Taiwan relations at Taiwan’s Tamkang University, said the elevated defense relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan has caused China to increase its rhetoric over Taiwan.

“For Xi Jinping, he must show that the Taiwan issue is in China’s hands. He must demonstrate this image, or else he would be criticized,” Ma said.

Trump and Xi discussed Iran and reopening the Strait of Hormuz

The leaders were in agreement that the Strait of Hormuz needs to be opened to support global energy needs, according to a readout of their Thursday meeting by a White House official.

Xi also opposed any implementation of tolls on vessels crossing the strait, which effectively has closed since the start of the U.S. and Israel war against Iran.

Xi expressed interest in China purchasing more U.S. oil to reduce future Chinese dependence on Gulf oil, according to the official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The leaders also discussed further stemming the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the U.S. and increasing Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products.

China’s commerce ministry open to expanded US cooperation

China is willing to work with the U.S. to continuously expand its cooperation list, China’s Ministry of Commerce spokesperson He Yongqian said Thursday.

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent engaged in “candid, in-depth and constructive” exchanges in South Korea on Wednesday, He said.

For the next step, China is willing to work with the U.S. to expand their cooperation based on the principles of equality, respect and mutual benefit, He said.

They also would shorten the problem list while promoting healthy economic and trade ties between the sides, He said.

Chinese social media finds humor in Trump comment about executives

A comment by Donald Trump about the U.S. business executives chosen to accompany him to China has become a source of humor on Chinese social media.

“I didn’t want the second or the third in the company. I wanted only the top, and they’re here today to pay respects to you and to China,” Trump told Xi when the leaders met Thursday.

Trump’s comments was ranked second in trending topics on Weibo, a social media platform curated by censors.

The posts included jokes about how the corporate executives were grateful to be there and pictures of them flashing a thumbs-up sign while leaving the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Thursday.

Analyst says Xi is setting boundaries

George Chen, a partner at The Asia Group consultancy, said Xi wants to set clear boundaries on what the U.S. can and cannot do with China.

Politically it’s all about Taiwan, Chen said, noting Xi’s opposition to independence for the island democracy.

“He makes the ‘red line’ crystal clear,” he said.

Chen said Xi has sought to reassure U.S. businesspeople that China is a place they can make money, which could be seen as Xi’s response to Trump’s demand for China to provide a more favorable environment for U.S. firms.

Chen said Xi suggested the relationship’s “strategic stability” can continue at least for the rest of Trump’s term, which can be perceived as progress.

Ukraine ties a Russian attack on Kyiv to the Beijing summit

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha tied an overnight attack on Kyiv to the Xi-Trump summit, saying the assault proved Russia was a threat to international security.

“At the very time when leaders of the most powerful countries are meeting in Beijing, and the world hopes for peace, predictability and cooperation, Putin launched hundreds of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles at the capital of Ukraine,” Sybiha said on Telegram.

He said there should be “no illusions” about ending the Russian war on Ukraine.

“Only pressure on Moscow can make him stop,” Sybiha said of Putin, adding that U.S. and Chinese leaders had sufficient leverage to compel Russia to end the conflict.

Taiwan thanks US for support after China warning

Taiwan said it is grateful for the long-term support of the United States after Xi warned Trump on Thursday about potential “clashes and even conflicts” over the self-ruled island China claims as its own.

“The government views all actions that contribute to regional stability and the management of potential risks from authoritarian expansion positively and continues to work with the United States in various aspects of our relationship,” said Michelle Lee, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s premier.

Taiwan has stayed in close contact with the U.S. on national security and diplomacy, Lee said.

“The U.S. has also repeatedly reiterated its firm and clear position of support for Taiwan,” Lee said.

Trump and Xi exchange views on the Middle East, state media reports

Trump and Xi have exchanged views on the situation in the Middle East, the Ukraine crisis and the Korean Peninsula, the official Xinhua News Agency reported without providing additional details of the discussion.

The wars in Iran and Ukraine and relations with North Korea have been sources of tensions between Washington and Beijing.

Trump and Xi agreed to support each other this year by hosting the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and the G20 Summit in Florida, Xinhua reported.

Xi calls for stability in relationship with US

Xi said he and Trump agreed to establish a new orientation for U.S.-China relations that is “constructive, strategic and stable.”

Xi said the bilateral relationship should take this direction for the next three years and beyond, according to China’s official Xinhua News Agency.

Xi said this new strategic orientation should have “limits to competition” and “differences are managed.”

Xi said both sides should use political, diplomatic and military communication channels to ensure the goals.

Brett Ratner confirms he is in China for ‘Rush Hour 4’

The director got to China by flying with Trump aboard Air Force One.

He told the White House press pool he is in Beijing to prep for filming the fourth installment of the movie series, which Trump is said to be interested in.

Ratner directed first lady Melania Trump’s recent movie about her life in the weeks before her husband returned to office.

Xi says China-US economic ties are win-win, state media reports

Economic ties between China and the United States are mutually beneficial and win-win in nature, Chinese President Xi Jinping told U.S. President Donald Trump during their talks, according to the Chinese official news agency Xinhua.

“Yesterday, our economic and trade teams produced generally balanced and positive outcomes. This is good news for the people of the two countries and the world,” Xi said.

The Chinese president said facts have shown time and again there are no winners in trade wars, calling on both sides to jointly sustain the good momentum they have worked hard to build, Xinhua reported.

“Where disagreements and frictions exist, equal-footed consultation is the only right choice,” he said.

Trump concludes tour of Temple of Heaven

Trump was expected to return to his hotel before he returns to the Great Hall of the People to attend a state banquet in his honor.

Asian shares mixed and Chinese stocks trade lower

Asian shares were mixed Thursday as investors closely monitored takeaways from U.S. President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.

The Shanghai Composite index lost 1% to 4,199.19. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.3% to 26,478.99. Markets in Japan and South Korea were higher, with Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 up 0.2% and Seoul’s Kospi gaining 1%.

Investors are watching for progress on the Iran war and U.S.-China trade relations from the Xi-Trump summit, as well as possible trade deals on areas such as soybeans, airplanes and chips.

Trump declines to say if he and Xi discussed Taiwan

Trump said, “great,” when reporters asked how the talks with Xi went. But that’s about all he said.

Follow-up questions about whether they discussed Taiwan were asked.

Trump didn’t answer as he posed alongside Xi for photos after they arrived at the Temple of Heaven.

XI says door to American business opening wider

Xi said China’s door of opening to American business will only open wider and wider he told American CEOs on Thursday morning during his meeting with Trump, China's official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xi said American companies are deeply participating in China’s reform and opening, with both sides benefiting from this. He said China welcomes the U.S. to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with China and believes American businesses will have even broader prospects in China, according to Xinhua.

Trump said the business leaders he brought along all respect and value China and he encourages them to expand cooperation with China, the report said.

Trump introduced the business leaders to Xi one by one. The business people said they highly value China’s market, hope to deepen their operations in China and strengthen cooperation with China, the report added.

Traveling to China as part of the U.S. delegation are some 17 CEOs, including Tesla’s Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook and Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, the White House says.

— This item has been corrected to indicate the meeting took place Thursday.

Trump arrives at Temple of Heaven

The 15th century temple was Trump’s next stop after meeting with Xi at the Great Hall of the People.

A tour was planned.

Trump and Xi wrap up meeting after about two hours

The White House and Chinese state media said the leaders concluded their meeting after about two hours of talks.

The leaders discussed trade, Taiwan and other differences in the U.S.-China relationship

Xi warns Trump differences over Taiwan could bring US and China to clashes or conflict, state media reports

In a closed-door meeting Xi told Trump that if Taiwan is handled well, U.S.-China relations “will enjoy overall stability,” according to a readout of their bilateral talks published by the official Xinhua News Agency.

If not, however, the two countries risk “clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” Xi was reported to have said.

Xi says the US and China should be ‘partners rather than rivals’

The U.S. and China should be “partners rather than rivals,” Xi told Trump ahead of their bilateral talks.

“I always believed that the common interests between China and the U.S. outweigh their differences,” Xi said. “Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both.”

Xi added that he wanted 2026 to be a “landmark year” in the countries’

Xi congratulates US for coming 250th anniversary of independence

The Chinese leader took a moment to note the coming anniversary — something that is a big deal for Trump.

The massive monthslong celebration is to include a “Great American State Fair” in Washington and a UFC fight night on the South Lawn of the White House.

“This year marks the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. I extend my congratulations to you and to the American people,” Xi said. He added, “I firmly believe the common interests between China and the United States are bigger than our differences.”

Xi offers more cautionary tone at start of talks

The leaders offered warm words about each other and hope for the future of U.S-China relations as they opened their bilateral talks.

But Xi sounded more cautionary about what lies ahead for the world’s biggest economic powers.

“Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both,” Xi said. “The two countries should be partners rather than rivals, achieve success together and pursue common prosperity, and chart a correct path for major-country relations in the new era.”

Why Xi is asking Trump for US and China to avoid the ‘Thucydides Trap’

In remarks welcoming Trump, Xi name-checked an ancient Greek historian to express his hopes that the U.S. and China can avoid conflict, saying that history, the world and its people were asking “whether the two countries can transcend the “Thucydides Trap” and forge a new model for relations between major powers.

“He was using a term that’s popular in foreign policy studies, referring to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established power, the result is often war.

It comes from Thucydides’ account of the destructive Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, in which he remarked that “It was the rise of Athens, and the fear that rise engendered in Sparta, that made war inevitable.”

Xi says the world is at a crossroads, marked by turbulence and uncertainty

The Chinese leader in his opening remarks at the summit underscored the importance of the moment for the two world powers and said the question before China and the United States is “whether the two countries can work together to meet challenges and bring greater stability to the world.”

“Can we, in the interest of the well-being of our two peoples and the future of humanity, build a brighter future together for our bilateral relations?” Xi said.

Trump signals he wants to do business with Xi

In his opening comments before reporters to start the meeting, Trump only made glancing allusion to past difficulties in his yearslong relationship with Xi.

Those include two trade wars, tensions over U.S. support for Taiwan — and Trump's impatience with Beijing over the flow precursor chemicals used to make fentanyl.

He also made no mention of their differences over the Iran war.

“You’re a great leader, sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway, because it’s true,” Trump said.

A pomp-filled ceremony marks the start of the summit

Trump and Xi stood side by side for the playing of their countries’ national anthems on Thursday as their summit got underway.

The leaders than walked the red carpet, accompanied by a goose stepping Chinese service member, to inspect the military honor guard.

Trump and Xi also paused for a moment in front of dozens of flower-waiving children gathered for the ceremony.

Democratic lawmaker urges Trump not to be ‘driven by improvisation, personal flattery’ in talks

Trump has talked up his personal rapport with Xi despite deep differences on a slew of issues.

Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that Trump would be misguided to put too much stock in his personal dynamic with the Chinese leader.

“We cannot afford to trade lasting American strength for a short-term political win or to mistake a photo op for real strategic progress,” Warner said. “Any agreement reached with Beijing during this summit must deliver tangible results for American workers, our security, and our long-term competitiveness.”

Rubio says Trump will make the case to China to take a ‘more active role’ on Iran

The secretary of state, who is with Trump in Beijing, said administration officials will underscore that “economies are melting down because of this crisis” and that will result in consumers “buying less Chinese product.”

“So it’s in their interest to resolve this,” Rubio said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity. “We hope to convince them to play a more active role in getting Iran to walk away from what they’re doing now and trying to do now in the Persian Gulf.”

The message contrasts with comments by Trump, who downplayed differences with Xi over Iran before departing from Washington.

“We have a lot of things to discuss,” Trump told reporters. “I wouldn’t say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control.”

Health Secretary Wes Streeting became the first senior minister to quit Starmer ’s Cabinet on Thursday in what is expected to be a precursor to challenging his leadership.

Starmer is facing growing pressure to step down after his Labour Party’s disastrous results last week in local and regional elections.

“You have shown courage and statesmanship on the world stage — not least in keeping Britain out of the war in Iran," Streeting wrote in a letter. “But where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift.”

“It is now clear that you will not lead the Labour Party into the next general election," he added.

Streeting, whose political ambitions have long been known, is considered one of a handful of people who could try to unseat Starmer.

Another likely challenger, former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, said Thursday that she had reached an agreement with tax authorities to clear up questions about her taxes that forced her to leave the Cabinet last September. Rayner told the Guardian newspaper that Starmer should “reflect on” his position, adding that she was ready to “play my part” in any leadership election if Streeting were to trigger a contest.

Pressure for Starmer to step aside has intensified since Labour suffered disastrous losses in local and regional elections last week, underscoring voter frustration with a government that has failed to deliver on pledges to boost economic growth and improve living standards for working people.

A stagnant economy and stubbornly high consumer price inflation have made it difficult for Starmer’s government to deliver on its promises after winning a landslide election victory less than two years ago.

Starmer has vowed to remain in office, warning lawmakers that any leadership contest would plunge the government into “chaos” at a time it should be focused on issues like the cost of living crisis and war in the Middle East.

His effort to fight off a leadership challenge was bolstered Thursday morning by a rare bit of positive economic news.

Gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity, grew 0.6% in the first three months of the year, compared with 0.2% in the previous quarter, the Office for National Statistics said.

Treasury chief Rachel Reeves said the figures showed that her policies were working and that renewed economic growth would allow the government to put more money into public services and programs to support those hit by the high cost of living.

“But that is only possible because of the economic stability that we have brought back to our economy,” she told the BBC. “And we shouldn’t put that at risk by plunging the country in chaos at a time when there is conflict in the world.”

There was also positive news from the National Health Service. Waiting lines for NHS appointments — one of Streeting's signature priorities – had fallen for the fifth straight month, boosting any potential candidacy.

Streeting comes from the moderate wing of the left-leaning Labour Party, as does Starmer. Rayner is a favorite of many more left-wing voters, calling on the party to do more to boost the minimum wage and raise taxes on the rich.

Under Labour Party rules, any potential challenger to the prime minister would have to have the backing of 81 of the party’s 403 members in the House of Commons. More than that number have publicly called on Starmer to quit in recent days.

But other potential candidates may enter any race for the leadership.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has been widely discussed as a potential candidate, though he would have to find a way back into Parliament before he could run. Allies have suggested a sitting member of the House of Commons could resign to make way for Burnham to run in a special election.

Burnham canceled his regular Thursday appearance on a local BBC radio program this week to “prioritize discussions arising from last week’s elections.”

But some critics call the Rededicate 250 event an effort to “hijack” U.S. history with a false, Christian nationalist narrative — one they say fuses American and Christian identities and threatens a constitutional separation of church and state.

The daylong program is being organized by a nonprofit called Freedom 250. Its website describes it as a public-private partnership “leading the presidential programming for America's 250th anniversary,” which culminates with the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence on July 4.

Congressional Democrats have questioned the organization's structure and finances, which they see as a Trump-controlled end run around a separate commission charted by Congress a decade ago to prepare semiquincentennial events.

Top Republican officials promote event

Organizers expect thousands of people to attend Rededicate 250, which will include worship music, prayers and speeches from Cabinet heads and other Republican officials, along with religious leaders and others. Trump and several other speakers are addressing the crowd by video, while others will speak in person. The scheduled participants include Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

"Our founders knew two simple truths," Hegseth said in a promotional video for the event featuring a montage of Cabinet secretaries.

"Our rights don’t come from government, they come from God. And a nation is only as strong as its faith,” added Hegseth, whose use of Christian rhetoric to justify the U.S. and Israel's war against Iran and in other official settings has drawn scrutiny.

Another promotional video for Rededicate 250 blends various Christian and American imagery — scenes of a cross laid on an American flag, a robed choir, people raising their hands in worship — along with a brief scene of a man praying while wearing a Jewish skullcap. Voices of prominent preachers are heard, one proclaiming, “Faith in God is the value that most shaped America.”

Religious leaders on the Rededicate 250 program include several longtime Christian supporters of Trump, among them evangelist Franklin Graham and pastors Paula White-Cain, who heads the White House Faith Office; Robert Jeffress; and Samuel Rodriguez. Also scheduled are Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Bishop Robert Barron and Orthodox Jewish Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, the only faith leader on the program representing a non-Christian faith.

Musicians on the program include Grammy-winning contemporary Christian artist Chris Tomlin.

Some leading participants portray Rededicate 250 as a Christian gathering.

“I believe it’s a moment when the Body of Christ, the church, comes together and will boldly declare that America still needs God,” said Georgia pastor Jentezen Franklin in a social media video posted on X. “This is an opportunity for believers to stand together as one nation under God. ... I’m honored that they’ve asked me to speak and share the Gospel.”

Johnson noted that the event comes 250 years after Congress declared May 17, 1776, a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” on behalf of the Revolutionary cause.

Critics say event 'hijacked’ by Christian nationalism

Critics say Rededicate 250 is shaping up to promote Christian nationalism — whose adherents typically believe that the United States was founded as and should be a Christian nation.

“What should be a broadly unifying celebration has been politically hijacked and wrapped up in this MAGA narrative that tries to rewrite our history and promote the president’s agenda,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman, referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Huffman said the movement erases the diversity of America’s religious and nonreligious populations throughout its history and threatens the constitutional protections against government-established religion.

The event "would have the founders rolling in their graves,” said Huffman, a California Democrat. He co-chairs the Congressional Freethought Caucus, which emphasizes separation of church and state.

“They have narrowly defined what it means both to be American and to be Christian, and they are wrapping that in the official sanction of the U.S. government," Huffman said.

He said it's a movement that doesn't speak for all Christians, noting Trump's recent sparring with Pope Leo XIV.

Conservative Christians cheer multiple Trump initiatives

The Rededicate 250 event is occurring in tandem with other White House initiatives appealing to Trump’s loyal base of conservative Christians, particularly white evangelical Protestants.

Several participants — including Graham, White-Cain, Dolan, Barron and Soloveichik — also serve on the Religious Liberty Commission. That Trump-appointed panel is preparing a report on its findings after a year of hearings, many of which were focused on conservative Christian and right-leaning political grievances. Its chair, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, repeatedly denies that the Constitution establishes a separation of church and state.

Several participants in Rededicate 250 joined with Trump himself in a Bible-reading marathon.

And a separate Trump administration task force recently alleged discrimination against Christians under Democratic President Joe Biden — a report criticized by progressive groups as “advocacy dressed up as investigation.”

That report alleged that such a bias resulted in heavy fines imposed on two Christian colleges — Grand Canyon University for allegedly deceiving thousands of students over program costs, a decision later reversed, and Liberty University for its handling of crime statistics and sexual assault cases. Choirs from both colleges are performing at Rededicate 250.

Beliefs about Christian nationhood

Six in 10 U.S. adults, and eight in 10 white evangelical Christians, said they believed the founders originally intended America to be a Christian nation, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.

Historians generally agree that the founders’ religious beliefs varied, that the U.S. Constitution doesn’t establish an official religion and that it was significantly influenced by Enlightenment thinkers.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, which advocates a strict separation of church and state, hopes to stage a demonstration elsewhere in Washington on the day of the rally.

“This is the government putting on a Christian nationalist event,” said Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation's co-president. “Even if it is accepting private money for it, it’s still putting it on. It’s outrageous.”

Brian Kaylor, a Baptist pastor and president and editor-in-chief of Word&Way, a progressive site covering faith and politics, said that while the Continental Congress did call for a day of prayer, the founders crafted the Constitution to prevent the establishment of religion. Two early presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, thought such official events were harmful to religion, he wrote.

The event "simply doesn’t represent what type of nation the founders later decided to create,” Kaylor wrote.

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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.

Named Psyche like the asteroid it’s after, the robotic explorer will slingshot past the red planet at 12,333 mph (19,848 kph) on Friday.

It will be an especially close flyby, with Psyche passing within 2,800 miles (4,500 kilometers) of Mars, equivalent to the distance between the U.S. east and west coasts. Then it will barrel toward the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that is home to its enticing target.

All of the spacecraft’s science instruments will be on for the Mars pass. NASA’s two Mars rovers along with a small fleet of U.S. and European orbiters will make surface and atmospheric observations at the same time for comparison.

Psyche's cameras already are photographing Mars, appearing as a crescent on approach and a nearly full sphere once it’s in the rearview mirror. The different views will serve double duty, allowing operators to fine-tune their instruments while providing “just plain beautiful photos,” Arizona State University’s Jim Bell, the imaging team leader, said in a statement.

While the asteroid belt is swarming with millions of objects, most are made of rock or ice. Only a small percentage are thought to be metal-rich like Psyche, a potato-shaped asteroid roughly 173 miles long and 144 miles wide (278 kilometers by 232 kilometers).

Scientists suspect the asteroid may be the exposed nickel and iron core of a fledgling planet that was stripped down by cosmic collisions. Studying such an object up close can yield information about the dawn of our solar system 4.6 billion years ago, and why and how Earth spawned life.

Launched in 2023, the spacecraft is midway through its six-year roundabout journey to Psyche in the outer fringes of the asteroid belt, three times farther from the sun than Earth. It should arrive in 2029, slipping into orbit around the asteroid for two years of study. The van-sized spacecraft runs on solar electric propulsion, using xenon gas thrusters.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Celina, Princeton, Melissa and Anna — all part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex — were the Nos. 1, 3, 4 and 5 fastest-growing U.S. cities with populations of 20,000 residents or more from mid-2024 to mid-2025, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Fulshear, in metro Houston, was the second-fastest growing U.S. city. The five Texas cities' year-over-year growth rates ranged from almost 15% to almost 25%.

In pure numbers, Celina, with only 64,000 people, grew by more residents — 12,700 — than Seattle and Houston, cities that are 12 times and 37 times larger respectively.

Small- to medium-sized cities hit a sweet spot between the largest U.S. cities, which were most impacted by the loss of immigrants from the crackdown started last year during the second Trump administration, and anemic growth in small towns, according to Matt Erickson, a Census Bureau statistician.

Texas cities dominate

Nine out of 10 of the largest population gainers in pure numbers were cities in the South because of a healthy job market and its comparative affordability. The biggest numeric gainers were Charlotte, North Carolina; Fort Worth, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Celina.

Fort Worth leaped over Jacksonville last year as the 10th most populous U.S. city, putting four Texas cities in the nation's top 10 most populous, with the other cities being Houston, Dallas and San Antonio.

Austin skipped over San Jose for the 12th most populous spot, as Texas’ capital city surpassed 1 million residents for the first time. It is now one of a dozen U.S. cities with 1 million residents or more.

Seattle makes a comeback

Seattle was the only non-Southern city to crack the top 10 in numeric population gains last year, at the No. 5 spot.

Like many large cities, particularly on the coasts, Seattle lost population during the height of the pandemic a half-decade ago. But recent construction of new housing has helped ease the city's affordability, making it more attractive for residents to stay in the core city rather than move to farther out suburbs in the metro area, according to the Washington State Office of Financial Management.

The growth was driven by immigrants, particularly from China and India. International migration accounted for almost three-quarters of the area's population gains, according to county-level population estimates released in March.

Tight housing market and natural disasters drive population losses

The two cities with the greatest rates of population loss last year — Twentynine Palms, California, by Joshua Tree National Park and Key West at the southern tip of Florida — were in places with tight housing markets. Their losses ranged from -2.4% to -2.9%.

In Twentynine Palms, a large chunk of the housing stock has been converted into short-term rentals for tourists heading to the national park. Just under 40% of its housing is occupied by its owners, compared with the national average of 65%, according to Census Bureau figures.

Hemmed in on all sides by water, the limited housing stock in Key West, as well as some of the highest home insurance rates in the U.S., have driven up housing costs for the Conch Republic. The median price for a home in Key West was $1.3 million at the start of this year, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Other cities that had some of the biggest rates of population loss last year were hit by natural disasters.

Hurricanes Helene and Milton struck Florida’s Gulf Coast within weeks of each other in late 2024. Remnants of Helene blew through western North Carolina, leaving behind damaging tornadoes and flooding. Among the cities with the greatest rates of loss were Asheville, North Carolina, and several cities on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including Pinellas Park, Dunedin, Largo and Clearwater.

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Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

S&P futures rose 0.3%, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 0.7%. Nasdaq futures gained 0.2% early. The S&P and Nasdaq both hit record highs Wednesday.

Oil prices were effectively unchanged, with no clear ending to the Iran war after more than two months. Some were hoping the Trump-Xi meeting could bring results, after U.S. officials said Beijing could use its close economic ties with Tehran to press Iran to reopen the Strait or Hormuz.

On Thursday, the White House said Trump and Xi discussed enhancing U.S.-China economic cooperation. Both sides also agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must be reopened.

Brent crude, the international standard, was 19 cents lower at $105.44 per barrel. It was around $70 a barrel before the war in Iran started late February. That also came after the International Energy Agency said Wednesday that supply losses from the strait were “depleting global oil inventories at a record pace.”

Benchmark U.S. crude was down 16 cents to $100.86 per barrel.

Investors are also watching for updates on China’s imports of Nvidia’s advanced H200 chips, after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was confirmed to be a part of Trump’s China trip alongside other top executives including Tesla’s Elon Musk and Apple’s Tim Cook. The U.S. business leaders met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang Thursday afternoon.

Trump met with Xi at the Great Hall of the People and they talked about U.S.-China relations and Taiwan, but analysts did not expect major breakthroughs.

In equities trading, internet networking giant Cisco Systems jumped 15% after it reported double-digit sales and profit growth in the third quarter. The San Jose, California tech giant also raised its 2026 revenue guidance to $4 million from $3 million on the strength of AI infrastructure orders.

At midday in Europe, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.5% after the U.K. reported its economy expanded at a faster-than-expected pace at 0.3% for March despite impacts from the war in Iran. France's CAC 40 rose 0.8% and Germany's DAX gained 1.3%.

In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index was down 1% to 62,654.05, after briefly reaching another all-time intraday record at above 63,700, partly supported by robust corporate results. South Korea’s Kospi closed 1.8% higher at 7,981.41 at a fresh record helped by technology-related stocks on the artificial intelligence boom.

The Shanghai Composite index lost 1.5% to 4,177.92. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng flatlined at 26,389.04.

Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.1% to 8,640.70.

Taiwan’s Taiex was up 0.9%, and India’s Sensex climbed 1.1%.

As dawn broke on a clear day in Kyiv, a scene of devastation came into focus in the capital’s leafy Darnytsia neighborhood, located between a suburban forest and the Dnieper River. Wisps of smoke rose from the collapsed nine-story apartment block, where emergency workers dug under concrete slabs and took people away on stretchers. The building's entrance was smashed in the strike, preventing residents from escaping.

All 18 apartments in the building were destroyed, officials said. Among the dead was a 12-year-old girl, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. At least 20 people were believed to be missing.

Ukrainian officials noted that the attack coincided with U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to China. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have sufficient leverage to compel Russian President Vladimir Putin to end his 4-year-old invasion of Ukraine.

“At the very time when leaders of the most powerful countries are meeting in Beijing, and the world hopes for peace, predictability and cooperation, Putin launched hundreds of drones, ballistic and cruise missiles at the capital of Ukraine,” Sybiha wrote on X.

“Only pressure on Moscow can make him stop,” Sybiha said of Putin.

Massive aerial assaults on Ukraine this week

Russia fired ballistic and cruise missiles in the attack, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, adding that Moscow had launched more than 1,560 drones against Ukrainian population centers since Wednesday. In all, some 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings, he said.

British Defense Secretary John Healey called Thursday's attack “shocking” and said he had accelerated U.K. deliveries of air defenses.

Russia has hammered Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks following a May 9-11 ceasefire that Trump said he asked Zelenskyy and Putin to heed. Fighting continued over those 72 hours, although reportedly at a reduced intensity.

The attacks undercut recent suggestions from Trump and Putin that the war, which began with Moscow's all-out invasion of its neighbor in 2022, is nearing its end.

Residents describe '

a terrible night’

More than 30 people were injured in the apartment building collapse, while emergency workers rescued 28 residents, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said.

In neighboring blocks, windows had shattered from the blast wave.

Lyudmila Hlushko, 78, said she heard explosions and the sound of rockets about 3 a.m. “Then the house shook violently and there was a loud bang, breaking the glass in my house,” she told The Associated Press.

Another resident, Nadiia Lobanova, said “it was a terrible night.”

“We’re used to this. Well, it’s impossible to get used to this, but somehow we held on,” she added.

Damage was recorded across six districts of the capital, according to head of Kyiv’s Military Administration Tymur Tkachenko.

Russia's biggest attacks since its full-scale invasion

The Ukrainian cities of Kremenchuk, Bila Tserkva, Kharkiv, Sumy and Odesa also were bombarded, officials said.

“We are now experiencing the largest strikes since the start of the full-scale invasion,” air force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne.

Ukraine’s air defense forces are under severe strain, he said. Even so, the interception rate of drones and missiles was over 93%, Zelenskyy said.

Air defenses shot down or jammed 693 Russian targets overnight, including 41 missiles and 652 drones of various types nationwide, the air force said.

Fifteen missiles and 23 drones scored direct hits across 24 locations, it said. Debris from downed drones fell in another 18 locations.

Strikes on energy infrastructure left customers in Kyiv and 11 other regions temporarily without power, national grid operator Ukrenergo said.

On Wednesday, a rare daytime attack on Kyiv killed at least six people, Zelenskyy said. That assault, which involved 800 drones, struck about 20 regions and was among the longest such attacks of the war.

In other developments Thursday:

— The Hungarian government summoned the Russian ambassador over a drone attack near Hungary’s border with Ukraine. The step marked a stark shift in tone by new Prime Minister Péter Magyar toward Moscow after years of cozy relations with the Kremlin under former leader Viktor Orbán.

— Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina resigned after her government’s coalition partner withdrew its support and left her without a majority. The government has been under pressure over its handling of multiple incidents involving stray drones suspected to be from Ukraine crossing into Latvian territory.

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Associated Press journalists Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, contributed.

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

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the vessel was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 38 nautical miles (70 kilometers, 44 miles) northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, near the Strait of Hormuz.

Indian authorities also announced Thursday that an Indian-flagged cargo ship sank off the coast of Oman after an attack sparked a fire aboard the vessel while it was en route from Somalia to Sharjah on Wednesday, without identifying who attacked the ship.

Seizures and attacks in Hormuz ongoing

The situation in the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway through which a fifth of the world's oil used to pass through on a typical day, continues to capture the world's attention as Iran’s grip has jolted the world economy and caused a spike in fuel prices that has rippled through other sectors with effects far beyond the Middle East.

UKMTO did not name the ship seized Thursday and said it is investigating. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the seizure.

Fujairah is an important oil export terminal and the UAE’s main port outside of the Persian Gulf. It has been repeatedly attacked during the war with Iran.

The attack on the Indian-flagged cargo ship Haji Ali occurred Wednesday, according to Mukesh Mangal, a senior official in India’s shipping ministry. He said all 14 Indian crew members were rescued by Oman’s coast guard and were safe.

India’s foreign ministry called the incident “unacceptable” and condemned continued attacks on commercial shipping and civilian mariners. The ministry did not identify who carried out the attack.

Seizures come at tense diplomatic moment

The seizure comes as U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on a much-anticipated visit to Beijing. The leaders’ talks were expected to focus on the war with Iran.

Iranian semiofficial news agencies reported that Chinese ships began passing through the Strait of Hormuz Wednesday night under new Iranian protocols. According to the reports, Tehran agreed to facilitate the passage of several Chinese vessels after requests from China’s foreign minister and Beijing’s ambassador to Iran. The ships began their passage as Trump arrived in China on Wednesday evening.

The seizures also happened hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had quietly visited the UAE during the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran, though the UAE swiftly denied that any secret visit had occurred.

The Gulf nation normalized relations with Israel in 2020. Iran has criticized that agreement and has repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the UAE.

Israeli leaders have made occasional visits to the UAE in recent years after normalizing relations.

Netanyahu’s decision to go public with the sensitive meeting was likely an effort to drum up local support for his flagging party ahead of Israeli elections, said Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv defense think tank Institute of National Security Studies.

“It’s amazing, it’s the deepest cooperation we’ve ever had… that during a war, Israel is defending an Arab state against Iran, it shows how complicated the Middle East is,” said Guzansky.

The UAE is trying to highlight its cooperation with Israel but not with Netanyahu and his government, Guzansky said, because many in the UAE are against Israel’s policies in Gaza.

“They’re trying to differentiate between security cooperation and cooperating with this government,” said Guzansky, who previously worked for the national security council within the Israeli prime minister's office.

Iran defends right to seize ships

Iran’s judiciary spokesperson told the state-owned Iran Daily newspaper on Thursday Iran has the legal and judicial right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S. in the Strait of Hormuz because the U.S. has violated international maritime laws and committed piracy. The spokesperson, Asghar Jahangir, did not explicitly refer to the tanker seized on Thursday.

Iran seized a number of ships, including a tanker identified as the Ocean Koi, last week, saying it was attempting to disrupt oil exports and Iranian interests, according to the official IRNA news agency. It said the tanker was seized in the Gulf of Oman and was carrying Iranian oil when it was boarded and taken to Iran’s southern coast.

The U.S. sanctioned the Ocean Koi in February as part of a “shadow fleet” that has been transporting Iranian oil.

3 Israelis injured by a Hezbollah drone

A Hezbollah drone exploded inside Israel, injuring three civilians, two of them severely, according to the Israeli military and hospitals. Israel and Hezbollah have traded near-constant fire across the border despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on April 17. It was the first instance of civilians injured by Hezbollah projectiles since the ceasefire, according to reports from Israel’s rescue services, Magen David Adom.

Hezbollah has frequently used drones to attack Israeli forces in southern Lebanon and over the border in northern Israel. The Israeli air force has struck areas across southern Lebanon.

Lebanon and Israel are scheduled to hold another round of direct talks in Washington on Thursday, as the Trump administration pushes for a breakthrough between the two neighbors that have been in a state of war since Israel was created in 1948.

The United Nations has also accused Hezbollah of drone strikes near its peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon. Secretary-General António Guterres’ message to both sides is that they must observe the ceasefire and stop all attacks, U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said.

Lebanon's Health Ministry said Wednesday that since the war began on March 2, 2,896 people have been killed and 8,824 wounded. Eighteen Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in southern Lebanon.

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Lidman reported from Tel Aviv, Israel. Natalie Melzer in Nahariya, Israel, and Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi contributed to this report.

The proposal, which has been discussed during parent meetings and a school board retreat this week, would close Owen, Kennedy, and Alcott schools over the next few school years.

If the proposal goes through, two could close at the end of this school year.

The plan would also look at restructuring grade levels for elementary and middle schools.

During the board retreat on Monday (May 11), District officials displayed a slide that showed the changes are being driven by financial challenges tied to maintaining school buildings with fewer students.

It went on to explain that closing schools could reduce operational expenses and redirect more funds toward students and staff.

The issue drew concern from parents during a recent school meeting.

“They want to talk, they don’t want to answer any questions,” said Margo Walker-Daniels, a grandparent of two students in the district. “It’s always financial, it’s never about the kids.”

Walker-Daniels said she learned at the meeting that the proposal could close three schools and reorganize grade groupings for students.

The plan has also raised questions from some teachers and the president of the Pontiac Education Association.

“What’s the plan? How are you going to make sure our students are going to have everything they need?” said Candice Ridley, president of that association.

During Wednesday’s board retreat, one board member questioned how the district could implement the proposal if approved, if there are about 30 days left in the school year.

Superintendent Leverett responded to that and said, “We have behind the scenes, once it’s a go, we start executing the plan. But yes, those contingencies are aligned.”

The district previously told Local 4 that the Board of Education has tabled the consolidation matter for now and declined an interview earlier this week.

However, the district publicly discussed the matter several times after that.

Ridley said the issue is expected to come up again during the next school board meeting on Monday.

Michail Chkhikvishvili, a 22-year-old from the country of Georgia who goes by the nickname “Commander Butcher,” was sentenced by a federal judge in Brooklyn on Wednesday. He pleaded guilty in November to soliciting hate crimes and distributing information about making bombs and ricin.

“I acknowledge that my actions have brought harm by spreading hatred and violence and I’m truly sorry for that," Chkhikvishvili wrote in a letter to the judge last month.

His lawyer, Zachary Taylor, asked for a five-year sentence, citing Chkhikvishvili's mental health struggles since he was a teenager who “fell under the spell of the violent extremist content” on social media, but has since reformed. Taylor also mentioned harsh conditions during Chkhikvishvili's nearly yearlong confinement in Moldova, where he was arrested in 2024 on an international warrant, according to his letter to the judge.

Prosecutors described Chkhikvishvili as the leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, an international extremist group that adheres to a neo-Nazi ideology promoting violence intended to trigger a racial and religious war.

They said the group’s violent solicitations — promoted through Telegram channels and outlined in the “Hater’s Handbook” — appear to have inspired multiple real-life killings, including a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, last year that left a 16-year-old student dead.

Chkhikvishvili “repeatedly called for the murder of innocent civilians, including children, and schemed to attack and terrorize Jewish communities and racial minorities in the United States,” Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg said in a statement. “Chkhikvishvili, for example, tried to recruit a supposed associate to dress up as Santa Claus and pass out poisoned candy to minority children.”

Since 2021, prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili distributed the “Hater’s Handbook” to members and others.

“I’m very ashamed authoring Haters Handbook, hoping one day it will disappear, I wish I never wrote it,” Chkhikvishvili wrote to the judge.

Prosecutors said Chkhikvishvili traveled to Brooklyn in 2022 and began repeatedly encouraging others to commit hate crimes and other acts of violence. They said in 2023, he solicited an undercover FBI employee to commit bombings and arsons “for the purpose of harming racial minorities, Jewish individuals and others.”

In 2024, the undercover worker was directed “to target the Jewish community, Jewish schools, and Jewish children in Brooklyn with poison,” prosecutors said in a statement.

“Chkhikvishvili sent detailed manuals about creating and mixing lethal poisons and gases, including ricin.”

Shattuck, one of 20 club pros in the 156-man field and given the honor of the opening shot, pulled his drive toward the fence line and was unsure whether it stayed in bounds. He wound up hitting a provisional, only to learn his original shot landed just inside the fence.

Aronimink has not held a major since the 1962 PGA Championship, and a restoration project nearly 10 years ago added bunkers and removed trees. Overnight rain might soften the course. Drier weather was in the forecast, along with the possibility of wind that would change the dynamics.

That's what awaited Masters champion Rory McIlroy and Jordan Spieth in the morning, and world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler in the afternoon.

McIlroy and Spieth in the same group brought the Grand Slam into focus.

Spieth needs to win the PGA Championship to become the seventh player to have won all four majors, while McIlroy is the only player who can win the calendar slam. Not since Spieth in 2015 has anyone captured the first two majors of the season.

Shattuck is the PGA director of instruction at Rolling Green, about 10 miles away from Aronimink. He had to take a one-shot penalty for an unplayable lie next to the fence, hacked out of the rough and made double bogey.

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

The exchange at a highly anticipated summit in Beijing underscored just how far apart Trump and Xi remain on thorny issues, including the war in Iran, trade disputes and Washington's relations with Taiwan, which is self-ruled but which China claims as part of its territory.

It also suggested that Trump’s three-day visit to China is likely to be longer on pageantry and symbolism than substantive political or economic breakthroughs.

The pair met for about two hours behind closed doors at the Great Hall of the People after an elaborate welcome ceremony featuring booming cannons, a band playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” and China’s national anthem, and hundreds of schoolchildren jumping and waving flowers and American and Chinese flags.

According to a post on X by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning, Xi told Trump that “the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations.”

"If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy,” she wrote.

That came after a brief public exchange before the meeting began in which Trump told Xi: “You’re a great leader. Sometimes people don’t like me saying it, but I say it anyway, because it’s true.”

“It’s an honor to be your friend,” Trump said before promising that “the relationship between China and the USA is going to be better than ever before.”

Xi was far more stark in his opening remarks, expressing hope that the U.S. and China could avoid conflict and asking “whether the two countries can transcend the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and forge a new model for relations between major powers.”

That's a term, popular in foreign policy studies, referring to the idea that when a rising power threatens to displace an established one, the result is often war. Xi has used the term for years, but using it as Trump offered optimism was noteworthy and foreshadowed his closed-door comments on Taiwan.

Xi nonetheless struck a more conciliatory tone when describing the overall relationship. “Cooperation benefits both sides, while confrontation harms both,” he said. “The two countries should be partners rather than rivals.”

Both emphasized the importance of China-US relations

After their meeting, Xi took Trump on a tour of the Temple of Heaven, then hosted a state banquet for him. The Chinese leader used his evening toast to note that he and Trump had kept U.S.-China relations “generally stable” in a turbulent world.

“Achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,” Xi said, referring to Trump’s political movement. “We can help each other succeed and advance the well-being of the whole world.”

In his toast, Trump again called Xi “my friend” and said his visit had been “a great honor” punctuated by a “fantastic" day. He said matters “all good for the United States and China” were discussed Thursday.

Trump also announced that Xi would make a reciprocal visit to the White House on Sept. 24 — a date not previously announced.

The positive tone also was reflected in the White House assessment of the earlier meetings, which said both leaders had touched on ways to enhance economic cooperation, including expanding market access for American businesses in China and increasing Chinese investment into U.S. industries.

The White House readout didn't mention Taiwan directly, but, in relation to Iran, said both sides had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for oil and natural gas, must remain open. The strait's closure has stranded tankers and caused energy prices to spike, threatening global economic growth.

The war is dominating Trump's domestic agenda and stoking fears about the prospect of a weakening U.S. economy as November’s midterm elections — when Republicans hope to maintain control of Congress — approach.

China is the largest purchaser of Iranian oil, and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Trump would make the case for Beijing to exert its influence on Iran, noting that administration officials would underscore that “economies are melting down because of this crisis,” which means consumers are “buying less Chinese product.”

It's not clear if Trump persuaded Xi to wield his influence. The White House instead said Xi opposed any implementation of tolls on vessels crossing the strait — as Iran has proposed — and expressed interest in China potentially purchasing more U.S. oil to reduce Chinese dependence on Gulf oil in the future.

Taiwan issues remain contentious

Xi's warning about Taiwan reflects China's displeasure with a U.S. plan to sell weapons to the island. The Trump administration has approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan, but has yet to begin fulfilling it.

The U.S. has a longstanding commitment to help the island defend itself if attacked, but Trump has shown greater ambivalence toward Taiwan, fueling speculation about whether the president could be persuaded to dial back American support.

Taiwan said after the Xi-Trump meeting that it was grateful for Washington's “long-term support.”

“The government views all actions that contribute to regional stability and the management of potential risks from authoritarian expansion positively,” Michelle Lee, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s premier, told reporters. She added that the U.S. “has also repeatedly reiterated its firm and clear position of support for Taiwan.”

US still hopes to secure trade wins

The White House has insisted that Trump wouldn’t be making the trip without an eye toward securing concrete results, suggesting there could be coming announcements coming on trade.

That might include a Chinese commitment to buy U.S. soybeans, beef and aircraft. Trump administration officials also want to work toward establishing a Board of Trade with China to address commercial differences between the countries.

Trump and Xi discussed trade on Thursday, with Xi saying that China’s door of opportunity will open wider. Xi also met with a collection of U.S. business leaders who accompanied Trump.

George Chen, a partner at The Asia Group consultancy, said Xi has made his ”‘red line’ crystal clear” on Taiwan. But Chen said Xi also signaled a welcoming tone on the economic front and a desire to assure the U.S. business community that China is a place where profits can flow.

The U.S. and China reached a trade truce last year that calmed each side’s threats to impose steep tariffs on the other. The White House says there have been ongoing discussions and mutual interest in extending the agreement.

The leaders also discussed further stemming the flow of fentanyl precursor chemicals into the United States, and increasing Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural products, according to the White House.

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Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim and Darlene Superville in Washington, Simina Mistreanu in Bangkok and Kanis Leung in Hong Kong contributed to this report.

Some of the other ripples, though, aren't as obvious. They're the ones we carry inside us — grief over lost loved ones, chronic health conditions, the sense of lives interrupted. And in recent days, another one has made itself known in the wake of a rare hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship: the fear, despite official reassurances, that it might be happening again.

But the flourishing of fear, whether on a personal or societal level, can also be an indicator that something else is missing. Perhaps there's no post-pandemic reality more entrenched than the damage done, in the U.S. and globally, to the bonds that in the before times, many would have considered secure — science, government, information itself.

“COVID undermined our trust in what most of us used to trust,” said Elisa Jayne Bienenstock, a research professor and sociologist at Arizona State University. “When general trust goes down, when there’s a lot of cynicism, who are people looking to, to explain what to do and how the world works?”

What it used to be and what it is now

Before 2020, the outbreak of some illness somewhere didn't usually cause massive concern outside of the specific areas impacted, even as some epidemics caused significant numbers of deaths.

Some of that was complacency in the face of a world where widespread travel wasn't as accessible to the masses as it has become, which was a key part of COVID-19's spread.

In fact, there have been outbreaks of the current strain of hantavirus in some South American countries through the decades, like one in 1997 in Chile. Other countries have had epidemics of a range of illnesses from cholera to dengue to SARS, and the U.S. has seen West Nile, Legionnaire's and more.

But in a post-COVID-19 world, it didn't take long before questions and concerns surfaced about disease spread in the days immediately following the first reports that three people had died from hantavirus on the ship. A total of nine confirmed and two suspected cases have been identified, including the fatalities.

Health experts have repeatedly emphasized that even though the virus can cause serious illness in those infected, the risk of spread in the general public is low. Despite that, when ship passengers were taken to the Spanish island of Tenerife to disembark, residents like Samantha Aguero were concerned.

“We feel a bit unsafe. We don’t feel as there are 100% security measures in place to welcome it," she said. “This is a virus, after all, and we have lived this during the pandemic.”

Institutions are diminished for many

Bienenstock points to three institutions that have suffered from the public's loss of trust: government, media and science itself. But government officials and journalists were dealing with issues of public mistrust well before the pandemic.

The mistrust of science got ammunition not because scientists were making mistakes in their processes but because non-scientists didn't have the same understanding, she said.

“Most people don’t think of science as a process. In their mind, science is an answer, it’s a fact. And so when those facts showed that they weren’t 100% reliable and assured, it started undermining trust in the science,” she said.

“One of the problems with COVID is it undermined that confidence in science for people who don’t understand how science works. It showed the process. And it showed that scientists don’t always have the answer,” Bienenstock said. “A lot of people in crisis, when they fear things, don’t care what the answer is, as long as there’s a definitive answer. And science doesn’t provide that when it doesn’t know."

Now what?

It's not just about the issue at the forefront of people's attention at the moment. There are ripple effects as well.

“COVID ... didn’t just heighten people’s sensitivity to health threats. It did so unevenly, in ways often disconnected from actual risk,” said Michele Gelfand, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “As trust in institutions has weakened, people have lost a key way to navigate uncertainty together. Without trust, people rely more on rumor, fear, and emotion, which can lead them to overreact to small risks and underreact to serious ones.”

Karlynn Morgan, a 76-year-old retired nurse-anesthetist in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, has seen that heightened attention, with more people without a medical or science background talking about health issues than before the pandemic.

She has also been disturbed by the increase in what looks to her like a lack of trust in science, as seen in falling vaccination rates and rising instances of diseases like measles.

“I think people are far less trusting because people used to take their children and just get the vaccine," she said. "When I was a kid, there was no question you were going to go get your shot.”

If trust is going to be rebuilt, Gelfand said in an email, then leaders have to get involved.

“They set the threat signal. They determine whether people get accurate information about the level of danger or distorted information that serves a political agenda. When leaders send clear, honest signals, people can calibrate in the face of threat. When leaders manipulate threat for their own purposes, norms erode and and trust collapses,” Gelfand said.

“Strong, reliable institutions have historically been our superpower as a society. They’re what allow millions of people to coordinate under uncertainty without knowing each other personally," she said. "Without that institutional backbone, we lose the very capacity for collective action that has helped human groups survive for millennia.”

___

Follow the AP's coverage of the hantavirus outbreak at https://apnews.com/hub/hantavirus.

French authorities had initially ordered over 1,700 passengers and crew on The Ambition cruise ship to remain on board, but then decided late Wednesday to let those unaffected disembark. One passenger was spotted raising his arms in triumph while leaving the vessel.

It was not immediately clear how many left the ship.

French authorities said there is no link to a deadly hantavirus outbreak on a Dutch vessel that has put European health authorities on alert in recent weeks.

The Ambition was midway through a 14-night cruise from Belfast and Liverpool, with scheduled stops in northern Spain and along France’s Atlantic coast when it was struck by the outbreak. It reached Bordeaux on Tuesday evening, according to the operator, Ambassador Cruise Line. It was not immediately clear if or when it would resume its journey.

Samples analyzed at Bordeaux University Hospital confirmed an outbreak of norovirus. Local authorities said at this stage no serious cases have been reported and that sick passengers were cared for onboard by the ship’s medical team.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks outbreaks on voyages that call on U.S. and foreign ports, recorded 23 gastrointestinal outbreaks on cruise ships last year. Most were caused by norovirus, including a new strain.

Ambassador Cruise Line, a British operator catering to passengers over 50, was founded in 2021.

She was on a pilgrimage with other Black divers and community members, visiting sacred sites including one where a British slave ship — the Henrietta Marie — sank 326 years ago.

The vessel had delivered 200 enslaved people from West Africa to Jamaica and was heading back to Britain in 1700 — near the peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade — when it was swallowed up in the churning waters of New Ground Reef where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Gulf of Mexico.

A concrete marker at the site memorializes the people on that ship.

As Browning and her group prepared to dive in early May, the water was calm. The marker, 20 feet (6 meters) below, was visible from the glassy surface. “I thought I’d look at it, pay my respects and that’ll be that,” she said.

But something unexpected happened. Tears filled her eyes. She gently told herself: If you can be quiet, maybe they will speak.

Staring at the monument, which is now a small living reef covered in corals and sponges, she felt her ancestors’ words: “My daughter, we’re so glad you’re here.”

Overwhelmed, Browning lingered by the marker bearing the words: “Henrietta Marie. In memory and recognition of the courage, pain and suffering on enslaved African people. Speak her name and gently touch the souls of our ancestors.”

She felt submerged in gratitude.

“Without their stamina, their spirit and survival, I wouldn’t be here today. None of us would be here today,” she said.

Pilgrimages aren’t meant to be easy

For the pilgrims in Key West, the gathering was an act of devotion, a quest for connection with their roots and for spiritually nourishing generations to come. They had tried to dive to the marker last summer, but the water was too choppy.

“The ancestors were not smiling down on us then,” said Jay Haigler, master diving instructor with Underwater Adventure Seekers, the world's oldest Black scuba diving club. “This year was different.”

Such a pilgrimage was never meant to be easy, said Michael Cottman, who has written two books about the Henrietta Marie and was part of the National Association of Black Scuba Divers that installed the marker in 1992.

Cottman believes the site contains “spiritual turbulence.”

“Even if it wasn't carrying enslaved people, it embodies the oppression of our people,” he said.

The group organized an annual pilgrimage in the 1990s, but it didn't continue. The latest trip was spurred by an underwater interview project proposed by Stanford University anthropologist Ayana Omilade Flewellen, who serves on the board of Diving With a Purpose, a Black scuba diving nonprofit dedicated to documenting slave shipwrecks.

The submerged interviews also helped her connect as a pilgrim, Flewellen said. “I felt a kind of tenderness in my heart.”

The spiritual experience helped her process a traumatic history rooted in death and suffering.

“It’s hard to attach your life with this history,” she said. “The only way I could do that was turn toward what the divers were experiencing on this pilgrimage. That’s where it all bloomed and blossomed.”

Ancient ritual at African refugee cemetery

The pilgrims also gathered on land. At Higgs Beach on the south side of Key West, they visited a memorial and burial ground for 297 African refugees who died in 1860 after being rescued by the U.S. Navy from three slave ships — Wildfire, William and Bogota. Over 1,400 refugees were housed by the government in a compound and provided food and medical care, said Corey Malcom, the Florida Keys History Center’s lead historian.

While many were sent back to Africa, hundreds died due to the horrific conditions on the ships, he said.

Largely forgotten for decades, the grave site was discovered by historians and geologists using ground-penetrating radar. In 2010, a large pit containing 100 more bodies was located at a community dog park across the street. The area is now fenced off, Malcom said.

On Saturday, pilgrims met at the cemetery and held an emotional libation ceremony, a sacred, ancient ritual rooted in Afro-Caribbean spiritual tradition. One by one, group members tearfully thanked their ancestors and poured white rum on the beach. The clear spirit is believed to act as a messenger, inviting ancestral souls for their blessings.

“To honor your ancestors and the road they’ve traveled is very, very important because we’re all connected,” said Addeliar Guy, one of the elders and an avid diver.

Underwater monument represents a living history

Joel Johnson trained for weeks for his first open-water dive at the Henrietta Marie site. Johnson, the president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, said what surprised him as he approached the monument was the vibrancy surrounding it. Fish darted among the corals that swayed with the currents; shells rested on the sandy bottom.

Conservation and protecting these habitats also preserve the history below the waves, Johnson said.

“This was not a place of death, but a place of life,” he said. “I didn’t feel like I was grieving for my ancestors. I felt like I was in the stream of history, recognizing that I’m a part of that. It made me happy.”

While underwater, Michael Philip Davenport, president of Underwater Adventure Seekers, was inspired to create art showing ancestors emerging from the monument.

“Their spirituality is still in that space,” he said. “I was feeling their lives and their tragedy.”

Dr. Melody Garrett, an anesthesiologist, started training with Diving With a Purpose in 2011 and has gone on missions to find the Guerrero, a Spanish pirate ship that wrecked in 1827 while carrying 561 enslaved Africans.

“A pilgrimage like this is so important now more than ever because there is an effort to cover up, rewrite and change history,” she said. She cited the Trump administration’s moves to remove references to slavery and Black history at National Park Service sites and federal museums, labeling it as divisive “anti-American propaganda.”

For Garrett, seeing these pieces of history gives her a strong sense of identity as an American, as the nation prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday.

“Black people have been here since before this country’s inception, longer than many other people have,” she said. “This is our country.”

Exhibit displays shackles used in slave trade

Remnants of the Henrietta Marie’s wooden hull are embedded at the site under layers of sand. The shipwreck was discovered in 1972 by treasure hunter Mel Fisher, but it wasn’t until 1983 that hundreds of intact items were recovered. Only a few slave ships were found out of the 35,000 used to transport over 12 million enslaved Africans; most vessels were intentionally destroyed to hide the illicit trade.

The artifacts, which occupy an entire floor of the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, include over 80 sets of iron shackles, many of them child-size.

When Kory Lamberts first walked over wooden planks in the exhibit, they unexpectedly creaked.

“It was visceral,” he said. “It took me to a place. It also tells me that these were young people — children. These are baby shackles. There’s no sugarcoating it. The truth really hits you.”

While in Key West, Lamberts — who runs a nonprofit to make aquatics more equitable — said he brought back fish from the Henrietta Marie site, which he imagines would have absorbed the DNA of the ancestors. The group ate that fish for dinner the night after the dives — like a sacrament.

“I don’t practice a faith, but isn’t this what people are doing every Sunday at church?” he asked. “I wasn’t just bonded with this site through the experience of being there, but at this molecular level with a full circle moment of connection with myself and my history.”

___

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.

🍇 Grapevine

🌅 Good morning! On this day in 1607, some 100 English colonists arrived along the east bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Here are a few things to know about for Thursday, May 14, 2026:

⛅ 4Warn Weather: Morning conditions remain cool, with afternoon highs reaching only the low to mid-60s, which is about 5 to 10 degrees below normal. Check the 10-day forecast.

🔎 ‘He didn’t disappear’: A family is pleading for answers in the disappearance of a 35-year-old Detroit man. Read more.

🚨 Attempted Break-In: A Livonia woman says she fought off a masked man who appeared to be trying to break into her family’s home in the area of Newburgh Road and Six Mile Road early Wednesday. Read more.

🚓 Child Abuse Charge: Plymouth Township police said a disturbing series of investigations tied to the same household has led to disturbing charges, including child abuse, torture, unlawful imprisonment, and narcotics trafficking. Read more.

🚰 Water Restrictions Lifted: Water restrictions have been lifted for all communities affected by the major water main break in Oakland County. Read more.

🏊 Morning Dive

Good morning ☀️

A Boil Water Advisory was issued for parts of northern Oakland County this week, and it will likely last into the weekend.

Boil water advisories remain in effect for Orion Township, Rochester Hills, Auburn Hills and Oakland Township.

Even if you’re not in the northern Oakland County area right now, you probably have or will experience a boil water advisory.

Under a boil water advisory, residents should not drink, brush their teeth, wash dishes, make ice or prepare food with tap water without boiling it first.

Here are key things to know during a Boil Water Advisory:

• Drinking and consumption: Do not drink tap water directly. Use bottled water for drinking and preparing infant formula. Baby bottles should be sanitized.
• Food prep: Do not wash fruits or vegetables with tap water.
• Ice: Do not use ice from automatic ice makers. Toss it out.
• Beverages: Do not use tap water to make coffee, tea or juice without boiling it first.
• Pets: Do not give pets tap water. Give them boiled and cooled water or bottled water instead.
• Brushing teeth: Do not use tap water to brush your teeth.
• Hygiene: Do not use tap water for brushing teeth or cleaning open wounds.

What’s safe to do

Not everything is off-limits during a boil water advisory. It’s generally safe to wash clothes and water plants.

Bathing and showering: Tap water can be used for showering, baths and shaving. However, do not swallow water or allow it to get in your eyes, nose or mouth.

Supervise children and individuals with disabilities during bathing to make sure water is not swallowed, and try to minimize bathing time.

Those with recent surgical wounds, compromised immune systems or chronic illnesses may want to use bottled or boiled water for cleansing until the advisory is lifted.

Why can’t you consume tap water during the advisory?

When boil water advisories are issued, tap water may be contaminated with harmful germs, chemicals, or toxins.

For more information, head to Dane’s article --> What you can and can’t do under a boil water advisory, explained

🗞️ Other headlines to know today

• Pontiac School District closure proposal draws pushback from families
• Black bear spotted on security cameras in Downriver communities stuns residents
• FIFA announces Super Bowl-style World Cup final halftime show featuring Madonna, Shakira and BTS
• Man accused of harassing Oakland County official found guilty
• List of celebrities coming to Motor City Comic Con this year
• China’s Xi warns Trump that differences over Taiwan could lead to conflict
• Dearborn Heights police search for suspected dollar store robber
• $11.5 million sewer project set to begin in Macomb County
• Find more Local News headlines here
• Find more Entertainment headlines here
• Find more Health headlines here
• Check out the latest ClickOnDeals here
• Introducing the ClickOnDetroit Help Desk: How it works and how to use it

🌎 Meanwhile

News from around the world via the Associated Press:

An analysis of ancient teeth is giving scientists a rare peek into interactions between human relatives hundreds of thousands of years ago that have left a lasting imprint on our species.

A new study reveals genetic clues about a human ancestor called Homo erectus. H. erectus arose in Africa about 2 million years ago and spread to other parts of the globe, including Asia and possibly Europe.

Scientists have found remains from this early human in countries including Indonesia, Spain, China and Georgia. But genes and proteins don’t preserve well so information about the early humans’ internal makeup has proved elusive. (Read more)

----

Prosecutors said they plan to retry disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh on murder charges in the shooting deaths of his wife and younger son after the state Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned his conviction and life sentence.

State Attorney General Alan Wilson said his office respected the court’s decision, but no one is above the law.

In a unanimous ruling Wednesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court said the conduct by the court clerk “egregiously attacked Murdaugh’s credibility” by suggesting to jurors his testimony could not be trusted. They also said the trial judge went too far in allowing evidence of Murdaugh’s financial crimes into his murder trial. (Read more)

----

A Philippine senator wanted by the International Criminal Court for an alleged crime against humanity has fled from the Senate, where he sought refuge to evade arrest, officials said Thursday.

Sen. Ronald dela Rosa ’s exit from the heavily guarded Senate came after volleys of gunshots were fired Wednesday night by the building’s security personnel during an argument with a government agent, sparking chaos that apparently helped the senator to slip out.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made a late-night TV statement to ask the public to remain calm. A police investigation was underway, including into suspicions that the incident was instigated to provide dela Rosa a cover to escape. (Read more)

---> Find more headlines from around the world right here <---

📝 Word Up

Today’s Word Up is: Grufeling /ˈɡruːfəlɪŋ/ (adverb) -- defined as “To lie close wrapped up and in a comfortable-looking manner; used in ridicule.”

Example: “The rest of the family got up and began packing up the rest of the boxes while Jerry lay grufeling in bed, oblivious to their hard work.”

🧹 Housekeeping

Hey, if you like this newsletter, let us know. We’d love your feedback. We also offer several other newsletters, including Live in the D, All 4 Pets and more. Hopefully, we have one that caters to your interests -- unless you’re only interested in blueberries. We don’t have one for that, sorry.

✍🏽 Written and curated by: Samantha Sayles (Have something to say? Feel free to send an email here.)

A stray shower is possible Friday morning, but otherwise skies stay mostly cloudy with warmer temperatures nearing 70 degrees. This marks the day we are safe to plant! A much more noticeable warmup arrives this weekend. Highs will be on either side of 80 degrees Saturday and Sunday, with even warmer weather possible early next week. However, several rounds of showers and thunderstorms could develop from the weekend into early next week.

Vance, who chairs the administration’s anti-fraud task force, is scheduled to deliver remarks at Bangor International Airport, the White House and the Maine Republican Party announced.

The vice president, who is seen as a potential GOP candidate for president in 2028, has been promoting the work of the task force as he has campaigned for Republican candidates in recent months. But Thursday's visit is the first that has been expressly billed as a stop to talk about the fraud-fighting efforts rather than an economic-focused message he's delivered in other visits.

Vance's pitch on President Donald Trump's economic policies has become tougher in the wake of the Iran war, which has driven up costs of gas and other goods, including food.

The visit to Maine comes after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said earlier in the year that he was calling for corrective action on alleged fraud in government health programs in Maine, a request characterized by the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, as a “political attack.” It also comes as Maine residents begin voting ahead of the state’s primary elections on June 9, when they will be selecting candidates for governor, the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House.

Mills, who is prevented by term limit laws from running for a third term, recently dropped out of the Democratic primary race to challenge Republican Sen. Susan Collins, effectively ceding the nomination to progressive activist and oyster farmer Graham Platner. The seat is considered one of the most competitive in the nation and critical to Democratic hopes of reclaiming control of the chamber.

Republicans are bullish about their chances of taking back the 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses Bangor, after Democratic Rep. Jared Golden announced he wouldn’t be seeking reelection to the seat. Former Gov. Paul LePage, a Trump ally looking to make a political comeback, is the sole Republican vying for the nomination.

LePage is expected to speak at Thursday's event, but Collins is scheduled to be in Washington. LePage posted on social media channel X before the event that “every dollar of fraud is a dollar stolen from taxpayers and not used to help those who truly need assistance.”

In the governor's race, seven Republicans and five Democrats are vying to replace Mills, who has sparred with the Trump administration over the issue of transgender athletes in high school sports.

Some Maine Democrats have used Vance’s appearance as an opportunity to boost their campaign messages. Progressive groups were planning a demonstration in Bangor at the time of the appearance, and Maine Secretary of State and governor candidate Shenna Bellows said she planned to speak at it.

Nirav Shah, the former Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention director who is now running for governor, said in an email to supporters and media that Vance is visiting Maine when costs of necessities such as heating oil and gas are surging in the state.

“That is the record JD Vance is bringing to Maine on Thursday. That is the record the Maine Republicans hosting him are ‘honored’ to celebrate,” Shah said.

Maine is a largely Democratic state, but Trump has proven popular in rural areas, and he has won the 2nd District in three consecutive elections. Mills had made her opposition to Trump a focus of her Senate run against Collins until she suspended her campaign in late April, clearing a path for Platner to take the nomination.

Vance paid a visit to northern New England in March 2025, when he went to Vermont on a family vacation. The appearance attracted protests near a ski resort.

___

Associated Press reporter Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

Detroit held a nine-point lead late in regulation before Cleveland rallied to force overtime and eventually secured the win, taking a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“They played better than us,” Cunningham said. “They executed. They scored more points than us.”

The Pistons struggled to close the game after leading late in the fourth quarter, a stretch Cunningham said came down to execution on both ends of the floor.

“We just didn’t close the game,” Cunningham said. “Didn’t play at the level that it takes to win this game.”

Non-call looms large in final minutes

A key moment came in the final sequence of regulation when Detroit forward Ausar Thompson was involved in a loose-ball play with Cleveland center Jarrett Allen.

No foul was called, and the Cavaliers maintained possession during the critical stretch.

Cunningham said he believed the contact should have drawn a whistle.

“I think it’s pretty clear it was a foul,” Cunningham said. “He gets tripped up. That’s a foul. It’s been a foul the whole rest of the game.”

Cunningham added that in close-game situations, officials are often reluctant to make decisive calls.

“Nobody wants to make that call,” Cunningham said. “Everybody just wants to allow the game to sort itself out.”

Overtime turnover proves costly

Cleveland capitalized in the final minutes of regulation and carried that momentum into overtime, where Detroit again struggled to protect the ball.

Cunningham singled out a costly turnover in overtime as a moment he wished he could take back.

“Max Strus got a steal, got a layup,” Cunningham said. “If I could just single out one play, I wish I could have that back.”

Despite the disappointment, Cunningham acknowledged that Detroit had opportunities earlier to put the game away, including its late regulation lead.

“Giving up that lead, not executing down the stretch, is what really hurt,” Cunningham said.

Reed’s energy a bright spot for Detroit

Cunningham praised the impact of teammate Paul Reed, who provided energy and production during key minutes in the second half.

“He’s been great,” Cunningham said. “Rebounding, finishing around the basket, bringing a lot of energy.”

‘We’ve got to go win a game’

With the series shifting to Cleveland, where the Cavaliers have been dominant, Cunningham said the message heading into Game 6 is straightforward.

“We’ve had our back against the wall before,” Cunningham said. “At the end of the day, if we can’t win a game on the road, how far are we really going to get? We’ve got to go win a game.”

--> Detroit Pistons lose grip on series after crushing late-game collapse vs. Cleveland

The storms also injured more than 50 people as they swept across several districts late Wednesday in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state.

Officials said some deaths were caused by falling trees, collapsing structures and lightning. Police and disaster response teams used chainsaws and cranes to clear fallen trees from roads and railway tracks in several districts.

Storms are common in northern India during the hot season from March to June, before the annual monsoon rains arrive.

Narendra N. Srivastava, an administrative official, said emergency teams were deployed across the affected areas and that homes, crops and power infrastructure were widely damaged, particularly in rural districts.

In Prayagraj district, residents described panic as strong winds tore through neighborhoods.

“The storm came suddenly and the sky turned completely dark within minutes,” Ram Kishore said. “Tin roofs were flying and people ran indoors. We could hear trees falling throughout the evening.”

In neighboring Bhadohi district, Savitri Devi said her family narrowly escaped after strong winds damaged their mud house.

“We rushed outside when the walls started shaking because of the wind. Our roof collapsed moments later. We spent the night at a relative’s house," she said.

Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ordered officials to complete relief operations within 24 hours and directed authorities to provide compensation and emergency aid to affected families.

Imagine what that can do to a human body. Now, imagine that it’s almost completely exempt from gun regulations.

How can that be? Well, under federal and most state laws, many antique or replica guns aren’t technically considered firearms. In most places, even convicted felons can own them.

“I suspect the average judge would be surprised to find that out,” says Second Amendment scholar and gun-rights attorney Dave Hardy, himself the proud owner of two Civil War-era long guns.

During a National Rifle Association event back in 2000, the late actor Charlton Heston famously hoisted a flintlock — the single-shot weapon that won the Revolution and was still in wide use a half century after Congress debated the Second Amendment — into the air and said the Democrats would have to take it “from my cold, dead hands.”

He needn’t have worried.

A blast from the past

During debate over the Gun Control Act of 1968, Sen. John Goodwin Tower argued that flintlocks and many other antique or replica guns should be exempt from regulation.

The Texas Republican said it was needed “to relieve an unnecessarily burdensome problem for serious collectors of antique firearms and for historians and museums.” Treating all weapons the same, he argued, would unfairly target collector items “which have little, if any, practical use as a firearm in the modern connotation.”

The provision defines an antique as any weapon “with a matchlock, flintlock, percussion cap, or similar type of ignition system” manufactured “in or before 1898” — as long as it hasn't been modified to fire modern ammunition. This generally means muzzleloaders that use black powder or a black powder substitute, though some early cartridge guns are included.

You can even own and fire a cannon.

Don't go off half cocked

Most states have adopted that language either verbatim or by direct reference to the federal provision. But, as military historian Patrick Luther says, “it’s a patchwork.”

“I live in NY (New York) and bought a civil war musket,” Luther, a Marine veteran with the website milsurpia.com, said in an email. “It was very similar to buying a regular firearm. Buying the blackpowder for the rifle felt not much different than buying a T-shirt.”

At least three states — Hawaii, Ohio and North Dakota — treat a smoothbore musket the same as an AK-47 or AR-15. Reenactor Jason Monhollen, an officer in the U.S. Army, says that’s “comparing apples and oranges.”

“It seems silly to put restriction on something that would be such a terrible weapon if you wanted to, you know, kill people,” says Monhollen, who portrays a private and carries a French Charleville musket in the 2nd North Carolina Regiment. “There’s just much better things. You can kill more people quickly with a car than you can with a musket.”

But these weapons are still deadly.

Not just a toy

Maryland changed its law after a convicted sex offender killed his ex-girlfriend with a six-shot, .44-caliber cap and ball revolver purchased on the internet.

“It may have loaded like an 1851 weapon, but it fired like a 2017 manufactured modern handgun that was capable of lethal force,” Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy told reporters at the time.

Shadé's Law, passed in 2019, now prohibits people convicted of certain violent crimes from buying or possessing such weapons. But many states allow convicted felons to have these weapons; West Virginia makes an exception for people under an active protective order.

Some states’ laws are confusing or vague.

Montana law mentions “antique or replica arms” in a code regulating firearms and ammunition manufactured in the state. But nowhere in the code are those weapons defined.

Wisconsin uses the federal definition, but the only reference comes in a law regarding “look-alike” firearms.

And, of course, many local ordinances, like the one in Wake County, North Carolina, prohibit the firing of any “barreled weapon capable of discharging projectiles.” In many jurisdictions, it’s illegal to brandish even a toy gun at someone.

“Federal law does not exclude antique firearms from location-based restrictions,” Austin Gunderson, counsel for the North Dakota Legislative Council, said in an email.

Stray bullets

Sometimes, attempts to strengthen gun laws have had unintended consequences.

The attorney general of New Jersey, one of the 13 original states, recently had to offer guidance when a new law targeting ghost guns seemed to require all firearms — including antiques and even air guns — to have serial numbers.

When New York toughened its gun laws in 2022, it required background checks for transfers and purchases of antique guns, and barred firearms of any kind from certain “sensitive places” like parks and museum sites — just the kinds of places reenactors appear most.

An exemption was later carved out for people “lawfully engaged in historical reenactments, educational programming involving historical weapons of warfare, or motion picture or theatrical productions.” But that hasn’t stopped out-of-state reenactors from worrying their muskets will be confiscated at the George Washington Bridge, says Justin Costantino, adjutant of the Long Island Companies of the 3rd New York Regiment.

“If the New York State Police department wants to charge me with weapons possession while I’m wearing a cocked hat and carrying around a Charleville ’66,” says Costantino, a graduate student in history, “then please, don’t call my lawyer. Call the New York Post!”

Then again, Costantino hates to hear a mother at a reenactment tell her child, “Oh, no. Don’t worry, sweetie. It’s not real.”

“It’s not really loaded, but it is really a weapon,” he says. “It’s really gunpowder. And if you stand close to it, you’ll feel the kind of breath of hot air ... They’re still things that we have to take very seriously, and you have to be safe with.”

___

AP Writer Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, contributed to this report.

Sen. Ronald dela Rosa ’s exit from the heavily guarded Senate came after volleys of gunshots were fired Wednesday night by the building's security personnel during an argument with a government agent, sparking chaos that apparently helped the senator to slip out.

President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made a late-night TV statement to ask the public to remain calm. A police investigation was underway, including into suspicions that the incident was instigated to provide dela Rosa a cover to escape.

“There is no obstruction of justice,” Senate President Alan Cayetano said of dela Rosa’s escape while in the Senate’s protective custody.

He told a news briefing that he did not see any ICC warrant of arrest against dela Rosa and the senator was free to leave the premises.

Critics, however, said Cayetano and the Senate's security chief should be held responsible for dela Rosa's escape.

Dela Rosa, 64, served as the former national police chief of Rodrigo Duterte, who was president from 2016 to 2022. Duterte was arrested in March last year on a ICC warrant for alleged crimes against humanity in connection with deadly anti-drugs crackdowns he launched and for which he is now facing a trial in The Hague.

A warrant unsealed Monday by the ICC charges dela Rosa with the crime against humanity of murder of “no less than 32 persons” between July 2016 and the end of April 2018, when he led the national police force under Duterte and enforced his bloody crackdowns.

Dela Rosa and Duterte have separately denied authorizing extrajudicial killings although the former president has openly threatened drug suspects with death while he was in office.

Dela Rosa’s legal predicament came as political disputes escalated between the Duterte family and Marcos. Vice President Sara Duterte, the former president’s daughter, has blamed Marcos for what she said was the “kidnapping” of her father and handover to a foreign court.

The disputes reflect the deep divisions that have long plagued the rambunctious Asian democracy.

On Monday, Sara Duterte was impeached by the House of Representatives, which is dominated by Marcos’ allies, over alleged unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and a public threat to have Marcos, his wife and the House speaker assassinated if she herself was killed in their intensifying conflict.

She has denied any wrongdoing but has refused to answer specific allegations in detail.

The Senate will convene into an impeachment court on Monday at the earliest to prepare for the trial of the vice president, Cayetano said.

Cayetano, a key ally of Rodrigo Duterte, wrested the presidency of the Senate Monday after he got the support of 13 of 24 senators. He gained the majority after dela Rosa, who has been absent for months due to fears of his possible arrest, suddenly showed up in the Senate Monday, arriving in Cayetano’s car.

National Bureau of Investigation agents tried to serve the ICC arrest warrant, but dela Rosa darted toward a narrow stairway into the Senate plenary hall and sought the help of allied senators, who took him into protective custody.

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Associated Press journalist Joeal Calupitan contributed to this report.

The net tally of seats gained and lost was essentially a wash.

“F— around and find out,” said Jeffries after the election victory.

But in a matter of days, the race for control of the House — and the speaker’s gavel — was dramatically reset by back-to-back court rulings that wiped out the Democratic gains in Virginia and now threaten to erode Black representation by Democrats in the Deep South.

The shifting political prospects have been a wake-up call for Democrats, who have been favored to win back the House this November, riding the wave of President Donald Trump’s dipping approval ratings, and a test for Jeffries as the party faces an enlarging map of Republican-friendly seats.

The leader's aligned outside group has spent some $60 million, much of it on Virginia alone, a hit to the Democrats' resources as they confront Trump's Republicans.

“It sort of crystallizes the election is now a contest between one side that has the money and the maps, and the other that has the voters and the candidates,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist and former deputy director of the House Democrats' campaign arm.

Jeffries would make history as the first Black speaker of the House

Jeffries, who is in line to make history as America’s first Black speaker of the House, acknowledged the Democrats may need to flip twice as many Republican seats — a total gain of six rather than just three — to win the majority in the aftermath of the redistricting fights.

But he insisted that Democrats were on track to pick up seats, as they did in 2018 during Trump's first term, because Republicans are relying on redistricting — rather than policy solutions — to win elections.

Trump Republicans “don't give a damn” about Americans' financial struggles, Jeffries said, paraphrasing the president's own remarks.

During a closed-door meeting on Wednesday with House Democrats, Jeffries described the work ahead in almost existential terms for the country.

He said the court rulings against the Voting Rights Act and the Virginia measure were “disgusting.” And he warned his colleagues that Republicans would proceed with “diabolical intensity” in their campaigns to regain control of the House, which Democrats will not only have to match but “we have to exceed it with righteous intensity at all times.”

“Failure is not an option,” he told the Democrats, according to a person in the room granted anonymity to disclose the private remarks. “We have to win, and we are going to win.”

Path to power depends on a handful of House seats

Never easy, the race to the House majority was also not expected to be this complicated. Republicans hold a slim majority, among the most narrow in modern House history, and midterm elections tend to favor the party out of power, as a check on the White House.

But when Trump said last summer that Republicans were “entitled” to five more GOP seats from Texas, it sparked a redistricting crusade that led Jeffries to respond in kind.

Rather than take what they call the high road, Democrats said they decided to fight back, believing they could not fully count on the nation’s institutions — in this case, the courts — to provide a check on the GOP power play.

Jeffries flew to Austin to join the Texas Democrats fighting the redistricting plan in their state and stood with those same lawmakers in Chicago where they fled to deny statehouse Republicans a quorum. He joined the private meetings of California Democrats as they launched their counter attack, a voter initiative that put five more seats in the Democratic column. The Democrats picked up a seat in Utah.

And on it went.

“We had to very quickly make a decision, set a course and take a risk,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., recalling the closed-door talks last summer. “There was no guarantee this was going to work out.”

The Virginia measure became a turning point, Jeffries' biggest swing yet, putting Democrats essentially at parity, if not a potential upper hand in the number of seats gained, and shifting Old Dominion more securely into the party’s column.

He rallied some 1,000 churchgoers in Richmond ahead of Election Day as voters headed to the polls.

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday called the Democratic play for Virginia a “crazy overreach” that was rightly rejected by the state’s high court.

“Fortunately, the plan failed spectacularly,” Johnson said.

Redistricting battles push into 2028

While Democrats said they expected the Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act, the Virginia Supreme Court's decision to toss last month's election results blindsided many of them.

Jeffries joined a call with furious Virginia Democrats over the weekend who said they were more determined than ever to win the Republican seats outright, regardless of their loss over the map changes.

The overall tally after nearly a year of redistricting battles is still shifting as Republican legislatures in the South rush to redraw their maps in the aftermath of the ruling in the Voting Rights Act case, many of them preparing to eliminate districts held by some of the most senior Black lawmakers in Congress.

Rep. James Clyburn, the veteran Democratic legislator from South Carolina whose own seat is at risk, blamed the justices, not Jeffries, for the outcome in Virginia and elsewhere.

“What the hell, he can't control the courts,” Clyburn said, vowing to run for reelection regardless of where his district is drawn. “Don’t put that on Jeffries. We won the vote.”

Jeffries acknowledged that this year's maps are almost set, and pivoted to 2028 when he said Democrats will redouble their efforts to confront the GOP redistricting battle ahead of the next election.

“We know this unprecedented assault on Black political representation, the likes of which we have not seen since the Jim Crow era, the ghost of the Confederacy” will continue, he said. “The challenge that is in front of us is ensuring that there is a decisive and overwhelming response in advance of 2028.”

The new inductees into the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress include Swift’s blockbuster 2014 pop album “1989,” Beyoncé’s era-defining 2008 anthem “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” Khan’s genre-blending hit “I Feel for You,” Vince Gill’s emotional ballad “Go Rest High on That Mountain” and The Go-Go’s groundbreaking debut album “Beauty and the Beat.”

They were among the 25 recordings entering the archive in the class of 2026, acting Librarian of Congress Robert Newlen announced Thursday. The selections were chosen for their “cultural, historical or aesthetic importance in the nation’s recorded sound heritage.”

“Music and recorded sound are essential, wonderful parts of our daily lives and our national heritage,” Newlen said in a statement. “The National Recording Registry works to preserve our national playlist for generations to come.”

Other recordings entering the registry include Ray Charles’ groundbreaking country crossover album “Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music,” Reba McEntire’s “Rumor Has It,” Rosanne Cash’s “The Wheel” and Weezer’s self-titled debut known as “The Blue Album.”

Classic singles from Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Byrds, José Feliciano and Paul Anka also earned inclusion.

Among the more unconventional selections are the soundtrack to the influential 1993 video game "Doom" and the radio broadcast of “The Fight of the Century,” the legendary 1971 heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

The oldest recording in this year’s class is Spike Jones and His City Slickers’ 1944 single “Cocktails for Two.” The newest is Swift’s “1989.”

This year also marks the first recordings by Swift and Beyoncé selected for the registry. The Library of Congress said more than 3,000 public nominations were submitted for consideration this year.

235 eligible players have declared for the 2026 PWHL Draft presented by Upper Deck, featuring 128 forwards, 69 defenders and 38 goaltenders.

The 2026 PWHL Draft will take place at the Fox Theatre in Detroit on June 17 at 5 p.m.

Here are the eligible players in the 2026 draft with ties to Michigan:

Players with Michigan hometowns

• Elyssa Biederman - Franklin
• Allie Hubenschmidt - South Lyon
• *Riley Johnson - Farmington
• Kirsten Simms - Plymouth
• Clara Yuhn - Bloomfield Hills
• Casey Borgiel - Port Huron
• Abbey Marohn - Saint Joseph
• Maya Roy - Clarkston
• Haley Coolsaet - Grosse Ile

Played in a Michigan college in 2025-26 season

• Asher Printzen - Michigan State University
• Julia Turkey - Michigan State University
• Vanessa Ruban - Adrian College
• *Riley Johnson - Adrian College

See the full list of 235 players here.

Peter Nwoke, 50, was convicted on charges related to the operation of his medical practice, Divine Medical Care and Divine Medical Services.

The practice primarily worked with homebound Medicare patients in Detroit.

Authorities say to avoid paying taxes, Nwoke set up two other businesses, City Medical and Divine Medical Center, both of which he placed in others’ names.

Nwoke controlled the bank accounts and collected profits from both businesses.

These profits were not reported as income and were not subject to tax.

Nwoke was also said to have sold controlled substance prescriptions for highly addictive opioids.

The prescriptions were said to have been filled by purchasers and sold on the street market.

Income from these transactions was deposited into 20 different bank accounts and was neither declared nor taxed.

According to trial evidence, Nwoke underreported his taxable income in 2011, 2012, and 2013 by more than $2 million.

His underreported taxes totaled more than $725,000.

Nwoke is said to have paid $29,424 in taxes when he should have paid $849,088.

During that time, Nwoke prescribed over 2.8 million dosage units of prescription drug-controlled substances and deposited over $1.4 million from the sales into multiple accounts.

After one of his confederates was raided by the FBI, Nwoke told him, “They’ll never get me, because I keep my paperwork together.”

Nwoke is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 10.

Sentencing will be determined after consideration of the sentencing guidelines.

Nwoke has three pending counts of false statement/perjury.

The perjury charges are separate from the tax charges due to a mistrial and will be scheduled for trial at a later date.

The investigation was conducted by the Internal Revenue Service, with assistance from many other federal agencies.

FIFA has announced that, for the first time, the final at the Metlife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19 will include a Super Bowl-style concert.

The governing body said the show would support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, which is raising $100 million to help children access education and soccer.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino said it would bring together “music and football on the biggest stage in sport for a very special cause.”

“Every child should have the opportunity to dream, and together we can help make that possible,” he posted on Instagram.

The show will be curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin.

The Super Bowl is famed for its halftime show - attracting the world's biggest stars for spectacular performances. This year featured Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny.

Previous headliners included Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Rhianna.

But halftime shows are not so commonplace in soccer, with events such as the Champions League final featuring a pre-match concert. This year will see the Killers headline European club soccer's biggest game between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest.

FIFA describes its halftime show as “a singular moment at the intersection of sport, culture and purpose, broadcast live around the world.”

This year's World Cup is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico and runs through June and July.

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

The meeting brings together diplomats from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa along with newer member countries. It comes as the war in Iran has disrupted global energy supplies and driven up oil prices and coincides with U.S. President Donald Trump's meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Russia’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov are attending. China is represented by Ambassador Xu Feihong while Foreign Minister Wang Yi remains in the Chinese capital during Trump’s visit.

India Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the talks would focus on global and regional challenges and ways to deepen cooperation among member nations.

In opening remarks, Jaishankar said BRICS could help developing countries more effectively respond to the health and financing challenges they face as well as high prices for energy, food and fertilizer.

“We meet at a time of considerable flux in international relations,” he said, adding that emerging and developing countries increasingly expect BRICS to play a “constructive and stabilizing role.”

Iran urges BRICS to condemn U.S. and Israel

At the meeting, Araghchi urged BRICS nations to condemn the U.S. and Israel over what he called their “unlawful aggression” against Tehran. He called on the bloc members and other countries to “take practical steps to stop warmongering” and end what he described as impunity for violations of the U.N. Charter.

Araghchi also urged the bloc members to stop what he called the politicization of international institutions. He said Iran appreciated the support shown by BRICS countries but called for stronger action.

“It is necessary for all of us to intensify our efforts to end this sense of superiority and impunity on the part of the United States — a notion that has no place in today’s world,” he said.

BRICS has sought to expand its influence

Founded by Brazil, Russia, India and China, BRICS was formed as a grouping of major emerging economies seen as a counterbalance to Western-led institutions such as the G7. South Africa joined in 2010 and the bloc expanded further in 2024 with the addition of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Indonesia became a full member in 2025.

The group has sought to expand its influence by pushing for a bigger role in a global order long dominated by the United States and its Western allies. It has gained support across parts of the Global South, where many countries have criticized Western-led financial institutions.

But BRICS nations remain divided on key issues.

India and China continue to compete for regional influence, while member countries often differ in their ties with the West. Russia’s war in Ukraine has further exposed those differences.

New divisions test global ambitions

The bloc’s expansion also has added strains. Competing regional interests have increased the difficulty of presenting a unified position.

Divisions have sharpened further during the growing conflict in the Middle East. Iran and the UAE are BRICS members despite pursuing competing interests in the region.

Iran’s deputy foreign minister said Wednesday that disagreements within BRICS over the conflict had prevented the bloc from reaching a unified position.

Kazem Gharibabadi told news agency Press Trust of India that “one member country” had pushed for language condemning Iran, complicating efforts to build consensus within the grouping.

“We want India’s BRICS chairship to be successful. It is not a good approach to send a signal to the world that the BRICS is divided. One country is insisting on condemning Iran,” Gharibabadi said.

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Associated Press journalist Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran contributed to this report.

Previous statements doubting Venezuela’s sovereignty over the past 25 years have been met with immediate derision from senior government officials, including the president. The ruling party even organized demonstrations in the capital, Caracas, as recently as Jan. 3, hours after then-President Nicolás Maduro was captured by the U.S., that included chants of “Gringo go home.” This time around, however, the government has mostly kept quiet, save for a brief statement to reporters Monday from acting President Delcy Rodríguez.

The approach demonstrates the balance Rodríguez must strike between external and internal politics following the January U.S. military attack in Caracas. The Trump administration has since implemented a phased plan to try to turn around the crisis-wrecked country and has forced Rodríguez’s political movement, Chavismo, to abandon the anti-U.S. sentiment that long accompanied its teachings.

“This is probably the most public and sharp manifestation of the government’s transactional, self-survival approach above everything else right now, above even that sort of basic tenet of Chavismo,” said Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America at the London-based Chatham House think tank. “It’s better that they hold their tongue, not offend the U.S. right now. Why overreact to a ridiculous claim by Donald Trump?”

Rodríguez on Monday told journalists that Venezuela had no plans to become the 51st U.S. state, but her comments were much more reserved than past presidential addresses deriding these types of U.S remarks. They came after Trump said he was “seriously considering” the move. Trump has made similar comments about Canada.

“We will continue to defend our integrity, our sovereignty, our independence, our history,” Rodríguez said. Venezuela, she added, is “not a colony, but a free country.”

The Trump administration stunned Venezuelans by choosing to work with Rodríguez, instead of the country’s political opposition, following Maduro's ouster. She has since led cooperation with the administration’s phased plan, pitching her oil-rich nation to international investors and opening its energy sector to private capital and international arbitration. Rodríguez has also replaced senior officials, including Maduro’s faithful defense minister and attorney general.

Trump has praised her work, and his administration has lifted economic sanctions against her personally and eased sanctions against the country, though some still remain in place. The U.S. now also recognizes her as the “sole” head of state of Venezuela.

The U.S. stopped recognizing Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate leader in 2019, the year after he claimed reelection victory in a contest widely considered a sham as opposition parties and candidates were barred from participating.

Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges after their Jan. 3 capture. Both have pleaded not guilty and remain jailed at a Brooklyn detention center.

In Caracas, some residents on Wednesday viewed the government’s response as submitting to Trump, but they also acknowledged that Rodríguez is not in a position to unleash Chavismo’s characteristic anti-U.S. propaganda.

“She knows that it’s wise not to engage in direct confrontation because she knows she’s bound to lose,” college student Adonai Osoria said. “Now, are there some who disagree, who don’t like it? Well, yes, of course. But I consider her reaction right now to be a common, understandable reaction.”

Government supporters last showed their inflammatory attitude against the U.S. in the days after Maduro was captured, burning U.S. flags and carrying signs that read “Gringo go home.”

Among the government’s strongest supporters across the country are the armed groups known as colectivos. The groups are a staple of pro-ruling party demonstrations. Local leader Jorge Navas characterized Trump’s comments as “irresponsible acts of provocation” and praised Rodríguez for her diplomatic response.

“We are bending, strategically, but we will not break,” Navas said of Chavismo’s current approach to U.S. pressure. “We continue to resist, that is, realistically, given the country’s economic situation.”

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Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.

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

Jansen didn't have to after he delivered the walk-off hit that gave the Texas Rangers a 6-5 win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday night, when the closers for both teams gave up three runs in a frantic ninth inning.

“I feel like the game had everything. Like passed balls, a couple of wild pitches, I mean, stolen bases, threw somebody out,” said Jansen, who also blocked a few pitches with runners on base. “A bit of everything, it was kind of a wild one. ... Definitely a crazy finish.”

The Rangers had just tied the game and chased Paul Sewald (0-4), who had converted his first nine save chances, when No. 9 batter Jansen grounded a RBI single down the line into the left-field corner on the only pitch thrown by Juan Morillo.

That came after a frustrating top of the ninth for the Rangers, when Jacob Latz — their main closer since halfway through a stretch of 10 consecutive scoreless outings — failed to retire any of the four batters he faced. He was gone after Nolan Arenado had an RBI double and Ildemaro Vargas lined a two-run single into left for a 5-3 lead.

“Latz has been so good this year. He has given up next to no runs," manager Skip Schumaker said. “I pitched him two innings, day off, then back-to-back, and then running him out there, maybe not fair to him quite honestly.”

But when it was over, Latz was all smiles like every one else after the Rangers had clinched back-to-back-series wins for the first time since their first two series of the season.

“The boys picked him up in a big way,” Schumaker said. “And that’s what good teams do, and good teammates do, is they pick each other up.”

The Rangers (21-22) have won five of their last six games going into an off day Thursday.

Arizona (20-22) overcame a 3-0 deficit, finally getting even and then going ahead in the top of the ninth, handing their closer a two-run lead even after leaving 13 runners on base.

Sewald got out two of the first three batters in the ninth, starting with a strikeout of struggling shortstop Corey Seager. Josh Jung had a single in between those outs, and scored on Ezequiel Duran's double before Alejandro Osuna walked on five pitches and Jake Burger tied the game with an RBI single to chase the closer.

“I felt like they were just on every pitch,” Sewald said. “It just felt like when I threw good pitchers, it didn't matter.”

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

Netanyahu met with UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in a gathering that “resulted in a historic breakthrough in relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates,” according to the Israeli statement. The Gulf nation normalized relations with Israel in 2020.

The UAE’s official WAM news agency later posted an article denying “reports circulating” about a Netanyahu visit. According to WAM, the country’s relations with Israel “are public and conducted within the framework of the well-known and officially declared Abraham Accords, and are not based on non-transparent or unofficial arrangements.”

The Emirati report also denied any Israeli military delegation was received in the UAE.

Israel's announcement came a day after U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee revealed that Israel had sent Iron Dome air-defense weapons and personnel to operate them to the UAE.

The UAE has faced Iranian missile and drone fire even after the ceasefire was reached last month. It has been trying to signal to nervous investors that it remains open for business and safe.

Last week, WAM reported that Netanyahu was among the leaders who called the Emirati president to condemn Iranian attacks and express their solidarity with the Gulf federation.

It was rare public acknowledgment of direct talks between the countries that normalized relations in the 2020 Abraham Accords and have strengthened their ties during the Iran war.

Iran has criticized that agreement and has repeatedly suggested over the years that Israel maintained a military and intelligence presence in the Emirates.

Israeli leaders have made occasional visits to the UAE in recent years after normalizing relations.

Iran demands Kuwait release detainees

Iran’s foreign minister accused Kuwait of attempting to “sow discord” by detaining four Iranians that the Gulf Arab country accuses of being Revolutionary Guard operatives.

In a post Wednesday on X, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi demanded the Iranians’ immediate release and said Iran reserved the right to respond.

“This illegal act took place near an island used by the U.S. to attack Iran,” Araghchi wrote.

A day earlier, Kuwait said four men were detained and two escaped while trying to infiltrate Bubiyan Island in the northwest corner of the Persian Gulf on May 1.

Bubiyan Island is home to Mubarak Al Kabeer Port, which is under construction as part of a Chinese plan to build infrastructure across the world. It also came under Iranian attack during the war.

Iranian human rights lawyer released

Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has been released from prison more than a month after being detained, a rights group and her daughter said Wednesday.

Sotoudeh, who is known for defending activists, opposition politicians and women prosecuted for removing their headscarves, was detained by Iranian intelligence agents at her house in Tehran in April.

Her release comes as U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in China for a long-anticipated visit that is expected to touch on the war in Iran.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which closely tracks developments in Iran, said that Sotoudeh was released on bail from Tehran’s Evin Prison.

Her daughter, Mehraveh Khandan, posted on social media that Sotoudeh was released on temporary custody. Iran’s semiofficial ISNA news agency also reported Sotoudeh release.

Sotoudeh has been imprisoned multiple times. Her activist husband, Reza Khandan, has been imprisoned in the same prison as his wife.

Nobel Peace laureate needs long-term care

Doctors who examined Nobel Peace laureate and activist Narges Mohammadi more than a week after she collapsed at a prison in Iran said she needs months of treatment, according to her foundation.

Mohammadi, 53, was urgently transferred from prison to a hospital in northwestern Iran on May 1 after she fell unconscious. She was released on bail nearly 10 days later and transferred to a hospital in Tehran where her specialists examined her.

The doctors said her vascular disease has worsened since she was last checked in 2024 and recommended eight months of treatment.

She was awarded the Nobel in 2023 while in prison and has been jailed repeatedly throughout her career. Her latest imprisonment began in December when she was arrested in the northeastern Iranian city of Mashhad.

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Schreck reported from Dubai. Associated Press reporter John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

Kouri Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing her husband Eric Richins’ cocktail with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Valentine’s Day with a fentanyl-laced sandwich.

Judge Richard Mrazik said Richins is “simply too dangerous to ever be free” when handing down the sentence on the day that her husband would have turned 44.

Her attorneys said they will appeal the conviction and sentence. Richins has been adamant in maintaining she is innocent, saying Wednesday that the verdict was “an absolute lie.”

Richins stood at the podium in a lime-green jail uniform as she asked her sons, who were not present in court, “Please just don’t give up on me.” She encouraged them to always “be like your dad.”

Prosecutors said Richins, a 36-year-old real estate agent with a house-flipping business, was millions in debt and planning a future with another man. She had opened numerous life insurance policies on her husband without his knowledge and falsely believed she would inherit his estate worth more than $4 million after he died.

Eric Richins’ father, Eugene Richins, had urged the judge to impose a life sentence without parole to protect his grandsons, who were ages 9, 7 and 5 when their father died.

“This sentence is important so Eric’s three sons never have to live with the fear that the person responsible for taking their father could ever harm them again,” he said.

The case captivated true-crime enthusiasts when Richins was arrested in 2023 while promoting her children’s book about a boy coping with the death of his father.

Sons say they're afraid of their mother

Richins' sons “are not props for some twisted children’s book about grief and loss, and yet that is what they’ve been reduced to by Kouri,” said her sister-in-law Katie Richins-Benson, who now has the boys in her care.

Social workers read letters from the sons, who all said they would feel unsafe if their mother was ever released from prison. The children said Richins threatened to kill their animals and showed them videos of famished children in war zones when they refused to eat undercooked food.

“You took away my dad for no reason other than greed, and you only cared about yourself and your stupid boyfriends,” said the middle son, now 11. He described having to “be a parent” to his younger brother because his mother did not watch over them. Richins made the boy paranoid about sitting on his dad's side of the bed, saying he might die, too, he alleged.

The oldest son, now 13, said he also felt like he had to take care of his siblings and noted that his mother often would lock him inside his room while she drank.

“I will and have always prioritized your safety,” Richins said in court after hearing her sons’ statements.

Greg Hall, a friend and business associate of Richins, told reporters he was disappointed by the sentence and urged people to “have an open mind” about her.

Trial cut short by defense

The trial was scheduled for five weeks but ended early when Richins waived her right to testify, and her legal team rested its case without calling any witnesses. Her attorneys said they were confident that prosecutors had not produced enough evidence to convict her of murder.

The jury deliberated for just under three hours before finding her guilty of all counts.

During the trial, prosecutors showed the jury text messages between Richins and her lover in which she fantasized about leaving her husband and gaining millions in a divorce. Prosecutors also displayed the internet search history from Richins’ phone, which included queries about the lethal dose of fentanyl, luxury prisons and how poisoning is marked on a death certificate.

The defense argued that Eric Richins was addicted to painkillers. Prosecutors countered by showing police body camera footage from the night of his death in which Kouri Richins tells an officer that her husband had no history of illicit drug use.

Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Richins also faces more than two dozen money-related criminal charges in a separate case that has not yet gone to trial.

The Colorado defenseman scored 3:52 into overtime after Nathan MacKinnon tied it late in regulation and the Avalanche advanced to the Western Conference final with a 4-3 victory over the Minnesota Wild in Game 5 on Wednesday night.

Kulak capped a wild comeback for the Avalanche, who trailed 3-0 midway through the second period. Colorado moves on to the conference final for an eighth time since relocating to Denver in 1995-96.

“You always like to dream about it,” Kulak said. “The player I am, I’m not the guy everyone’s looking down the bench, like, ‘All right, get out there, go win it for us.’”

The Avalanche will face the Vegas-Anaheim winner. Vegas leads that series 3-2.

With Minnesota up 3-1, Jack Drury scored with 3:33 remaining to set the stage for MacKinnon’s goal with 1:23 left with the Colorado goal empty. The star forward sent a shot from the left side past Jesper Wallstedt and into a small space in the top left corner.

In overtime, Martin Necas took the puck, glided behind the net and back out front, where he found an open Kulak. Without missing a stride, Kulak lined it past Wallstedt.

Kulak was one of several late additions this season as he joined the Avalanche on Feb. 24 as part of a deal that sent Samuel Girard to Pittsburgh. Kulak became the 16th Avalanche player to score in the Minnesota series.

He also was an unlikely OT hero. This was his first goal since Jan. 19 when he was with the Penguins, which also was his only goal of the regular season.

“For us to play the way we did and get the job done, and just for me, a special goal in my career, for sure,” said Kulak, who started the season with Edmonton before being dealt to Pittsburgh in December. “We just clawed back into it and got the job done.”

It was a rare series-ending win at home for Colorado, too. The last time the Avalanche won a series on home ice was 2008 against the Wild, when the team had Hall of Famers Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg.

“That was fun,” MacKinnon said. “A lot of fun.”

Marcus Johansson scored 34 seconds into the game and Nick Foligno added two goals to give the Wild a 3-0 after the first period. It led Colorado to take out Mackenzie Blackwood after the first and insert Scott Wedgewood, who made seven saves.

Late in the game, Cale Makar collided with Mats Zuccarello and was grabbing his right arm. Makar went down the tunnel before returning to the ice.

The Avalanche overcame a three-goal deficit to win a playoff game for just the third time in 53 tries since moving to Denver. The Wild had been 21-0 when leading a playoff game by at least three goals before the elimination loss.

“Just anger and frustration,” Minnesota defenseman Brock Faber said. “You work all year for one thing, and just feels like it closes like that. It’s just done.”

Wallstedt stopped 30 shots for the Wild. Matt Boldy and Nico Sturm each had two assists for a banged-up Wild team that was missing center Joel Eriksson Ek and defenseman Jonas Brodin all series.

“When you go after something like this, there’s going to be two sides of the coin,” Wild coach John Hynes said. “One is you’re going to win, which is a great feeling. And when you lose, it’s an empty feeling.”

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

The Dodgers snapped their season-high skid at four games on a night when Ohtani only pitched and wasn't in the lineup as the designated hitter for the fourth time this season. The two-way superstar also won't be in the lineup Thursday to give him two days' rest from hitting.

Ohtani (3-2) struck out eight and walked two in his second consecutive seven-inning start — his first as a Dodger and first since May 2023 with the Los Angeles Angels. He lowered his ERA to 0.82 pitching with a picture of his beloved dog Decoy on the tongue of his right cleat.

The Dodgers have scored more than four runs in Ohtani's seven starts just once and the team is 3-4 in his starts overall. They had six hits or less in five of their previous seven games.

Leading 4-0, Ohtani gave up back-to-back singles to Willy Adames and Matt Chapman with one out in the seventh. Drew Gilbert flied into a double play to center. Adames was all the way around third base by the time he knew he was in trouble and got doubled off second to end the inning.

Santiago Espinal and Mookie Betts homered back-to-back in the third, giving the Dodgers a 2-0 lead. Espinal went deep for the first time as a Dodger and Betts' first since coming off the injured list earlier in the week.

The Dodgers extended their lead to 4-0 on Teoscar Hernández's RBI single and Alex Call's sacrifice fly in the fourth.

The Giants' three-game winning streak ended. Robbie Ray (3-5) gave up four runs and seven hits in 4 2/3 innings, struck out two and walked two.

Up next

Giants RHP Landen Roupp (5-3, 3.09 ERA) was scheduled to start Thursday against RHP Emmet Sheehan (2-1, 4.79) in the series finale.

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

Detroit led by nine points with just over three minutes remaining in the fourth quarter before Cleveland surged back to complete the comeback and push the Pistons to the brink of elimination in the series.

The late-game sequence that drew the most attention came when Thompson was tied up with Allen on a loose-ball play and went to the floor.

Bickerstaff said he believed Allen tripped Thompson on the play.

“I mean, that’s clear,” Bickerstaff said. “He trips him when he’s going for a loose ball in a game situation. That’s tough.”

No foul was called, and Cleveland maintained possession during the critical stretch as it completed the comeback.

Tempo shift, Cavaliers’ adjustments swing momentum

Bickerstaff also addressed the shift in Detroit’s offensive approach late in regulation, pushing back slightly on the idea that his team simply slowed down.

“I didn’t feel like we slowed our tempo down,” Bickerstaff said. “We started playing in the half-court. We had success when we got out in transition.”

Bickerstaff credited Cleveland’s defensive adjustments for helping swing the game, particularly its strategy of taking the ball out of Cade Cunningham‘s hands and forcing Detroit into secondary options.

“They started doubling and getting the ball out of Cade’s hands,” Bickerstaff said. “We know where to go when that happens. We’ve got to continue to get to those spots and play with pace.”

Reed provides spark off bench

Despite the collapse, Bickerstaff pointed to several positives, including Paul Reed’s play, who entered the game in the fourth quarter and remained on the floor for the remainder of regulation.

“I thought P. Reed gives us that spark,” Bickerstaff said. “He’s always ready when the moment calls for it. He’s a run stopper for us.”

Reed’s presence helped stabilize Detroit briefly during Cleveland’s run, but the Cavaliers continued to chip away at the deficit, aided by defensive pressure and timely scoring.

Bickerstaff also acknowledged the contributions of several players who were not part of the team’s earlier rotation.

“Our guys compete at a high level,” Bickerstaff said. “We’ve got guys who can contribute on any given night. Tonight we had to call on them, and I thought they responded.”

‘You’re going to have to choke the life out of this team’

With the loss leaving Detroit facing a 3-2 series deficit, Bickerstaff said the message to his team centers on resilience.

“You’re going to have to choke the life out of this team,” Bickerstaff said. “We’re not going down without a fight. We’re not going down without kicking, punching, clawing.”

Bickerstaff added that Detroit has faced adversity before and expects his group to respond.

“We’ve been in this position,” Bickerstaff said. “And I expect our guys to be ready mentally and go compete at a high level.”

The Pistons will travel to Cleveland for Game 6, needing a win to force a Game 7 in the best-of-seven series.

--> Detroit Pistons lose grip on series after crushing late-game collapse vs. Cleveland

The Pistons led by 15 points in the first half and 103-94 with two-plus minutes left. The Cavs rallied and pulled into a 103-all tie on Evan Mobley’s free throws with 45.2 seconds left.

“That stretch right there says a lot about our progress — mental performance progress and mental toughness progress,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said.

Just before the buzzer, Cleveland's Jarrett Allen and Detroit's Ausar Thompson got tangled up and no call was made.

“He fouled Ausar — clearly,” Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff said. “He tripped him when he was going for a loose ball.”

Cleveland went on a 13-0 run and held Detroit scoreless for five minutes from late in fourth quarter to midway through overtime. The Cavs went ahead by seven with 2:39 left in OT on Mitchell's 3-pointer.

Cade Cunningham, who had 39 points and nine assists, made a jumper to pull the Pistons within two points with 25 seconds left.

Harden made one free throw on the ensuing possession and rebounded his missed second attempt. He made another free throw to help seal the win.

Game 6 is Friday night in Cleveland, where the fourth-seeded Cavs will get the first of two chances to advance to face the New York Knicks in the East finals.

If the top-seeded Pistons win, they will host Game 7 on Sunday.

Cleveland won the first road game of the series — and its first as a visitor this postseason.

The Pistons had won four straight games at home since Orlando put them on the brink of elimination in Game 5 of the first round.

Harden had eight rebounds and six assists. Max Strus made six 3-pointers and scored 20 points for the Cavs, Mobley added 19 points and Jarrett Allen had 16 points and 10 rebounds.

“It wasn’t our best night offensively, but I think that’s what speaks volumes to getting this win was we found a way” Strus said.

Starting in place of the injured Duncan Robinson, Daniss Jenkins scored 19 points for the Pistons. Tobias Harris missed 13 of 19 shots and scored 13 points, and Jalen Duren was limited to nine points and five rebounds.

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Detroit led by nine points late in the fourth quarter before Cleveland rallied to force overtime and take a 3-2 lead in the best-of-seven series.

“We ain’t supposed to lose that lead like that, man,” Jenkins said. “We just got to be better. We got to execute better.”

Jenkins, stepping into a larger postseason role in the absence of guard Duncan Robinson, said the Pistons’ struggles down the stretch came on both ends of the floor, particularly on defense.

“Defensively, we gave up too many timely threes,” Jenkins said.

--> Detroit Pistons lose Duncan Robinson to injury ahead of pivotal Game 5 vs. Cleveland

Jenkins finished with 19 points, two rebounds, three assists, one steal, and two blocks while stepping in for the former Michigan Wolverines sharpshooter.

Jenkins said he focused on being aggressive early and letting the game come to him naturally.

“I was just trying to come in and do my job,” Jenkins said. “When I get going on defense, my energy is going, and then the ball finds me.”

He turned in a more active offensive performance and said playing alongside guard Marcus Sasser helped provide spacing and energy during key stretches.

“He helps space the floor, and I try to attack and get downhill,” Jenkins said. “Any spark he can give us is a win for us.”

Cleveland’s defensive adjustments shift momentum

Cleveland’s late-game surge came after repeatedly doubling Cade Cunningham and forcing the ball out of his hands, a strategy Jenkins said Detroit should have handled more effectively.

“That’s an advantage for us when they do that,” Jenkins said. “We just got to execute better.”

Asked what specifically changed in the final minutes, Jenkins pointed to perimeter defense as the deciding factor.

“It starts at the point of attack,” Jekins said. “We’ve got to do a better job of getting the ball into coverage and not giving up threes.”

Jenkins said no single play defined the loss; rather, it was a string of defensive breakdowns late in regulation.

“They only get open threes when we lose our guys and have to help,” Jenkins said. “If we execute better, we win that game.”

Detroit will travel to Cleveland needing a win to force a Game 7.

--> Detroit Pistons lose grip on series after crushing late-game collapse vs. Cleveland

When officials announced a list of “Eurofan Cafes" — Vienna coffee shops offering food and music from competing countries — Israel was initially left out.

MQ Kantine, a modern café in the city’s arty museums quarter, offered to step in. Now it has falafel, bagels with lox and kosher wine on the menu, a string of small Israeli flags hanging from the ceiling — and a police officer outside the door.

Security is tight across Vienna during the international music contest, whose “United by Music” slogan rings sightly hollow this year. Five countries are boycotting because Israel is taking part. Pro-Palestinian activists are planning a protest concert — one of several Eurovision alternatives across Europe — and an anti-Israel march before Saturday’s grand final.

At MQ Kantine, volunteers take turns to monitor for potential trouble. But so far the mood has been supportive, said Daniel Kapp, a PR consultant and pro-Israel campaigner.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, as people drank coffee and beer on the café terrace in the spring sunshine, though he noted that the police officer on duty showed that all is “not entirely normal.”

“My feeling is that Austria to a certain degree has learned from its history," Kapp said, referring to the deadly antisemitism under the Nazis before and during World War II. “Which is why the support for Israel is a lot more normal than it is in other countries.”

Israel has competed in Eurovision for more than 50 years, and won four times. But its participation has been contested since it launched a war in Gaza after 1,200 people were killed in a Hamas-led cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government and whose detailed records are viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Israel’s government has repeatedly defended its campaign as a response to the Oct. 7 attack. But a number of experts, including those commissioned by a United Nations body, have said that Israel’s offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, home to many Holocaust survivors and their relatives, has vigorously denied the claim.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have driven tensions still higher.

The 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, and last year’s event in Basel, Switzerland, saw pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel to be expelled. Five countries — Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain — pulled out of the 2026 contest after organizers allowed Israel to compete.

Partying amid tight security

The tensions have produced a Eurovision of two halves. An upbeat party atmosphere prevails inside the Wiener Stadthalle arena and in the separate Eurovision Village fan zone. But getting in means passing through a ring of steel, with searches, scanners and a ban on all bags inside the arena. Armed police are a very visible presence on the streets.

Awareness of risk from terror plots is high in the city after a 21-year-old Austrian man accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty to plotting to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024.

Israeli singer Noam Bettan told Israeli media that, like last year’s Israeli competitor Yuval Raphael, he practiced performing while being booed. There were scattered shouts amid the cheers when he performed in the first Eurovision semifinal on Tuesday. He secured a spot in Saturday’s final by being one of the top 10 finishers in voting by viewers and national juries.

Organizers said four people were removed from the 10,000-strong audience for disruptive behavior.

Austrian Eurovision fan Ivo Herzl, who attended the semifinal, said “the vibe was incredibly positive.” He is showing support for Israel by making and selling Mazel Lov T-shirts — a play on “mazel tov,” a Hebrew and Yiddish phrase of congratulations.

“Vienna has always been a city of tolerance,” Herzl said. “It’s the city of music and we’ll always do everything possible for everyone to enjoy a musical event.”

Some Israeli fans said they were reassured by the tight security. Oz Yona, attending his first Eurovision, said he had experienced “no hate” and felt Austria took antisemitism seriously.

He came with friends to cheer for Israel, though he was not optimistic about Bettan’s chances — for musical rather than political reasons.

“I don’t think he will win,” Yona said. “Finland is better this year. Greece is better this year. We have a good song, but not a winning song.”

Birgitta Peterson and Kristina Nilsson, who wear matching pink bomber jackets and call themselves The Swedish Ladies, love to explore new cities and meet up each year with their “Eurovision family” of fellow fans. They plan to wave Israeli flags at Saturday’s final, after Swedish contestant Felicia said earlier this year that she didn’t think Israel should be in the contest.

They say tensions over Israel have divided a fan community long known for its friendliness and embrace of diversity.

“The wounds are very deep at the moment,” Nilsson said.

“This event should really be about ‘united by music’ and happiness,” she added. “That’s what Eurovision is all about.”

The 41-year-old man slipped unnoticed past motion detectors in a remote corner of Denver International Airport, which sprawls across open plains and covers an area twice the size of Manhattan. He quickly scaled an 8-foot perimeter fence topped with barbed wire, then walked unobstructed onto the runway where he was fatally struck by a Frontier Airlines jet as it attempted to take off late Friday night.

Surveillance video showed the man getting pulled into an aircraft engine that instantly burst into flames, forcing the pilot to abort the takeoff and evacuate the 224 passengers and seven crewmembers. Twelve people had minor injuries.

Aviation and risk experts said the Denver runway collision represents a clear security failure. They noted it could've been far worse if the pilot didn't safely stop the aircraft that was traveling 150 miles per hour (241 kph).

“People ought to be concerned. This was really an unprecedented risk. But now there is precedent,” said Eric Chafee a law professor at Case Western Reserve University and an expert on risk, including in the aviation industry.

“The individual ended up with a bad result. But having somebody basically damage a plane is really quite concerning because of all those lives aboard any given aircraft,” Chafee added. “There ought to be new measures put into place to prevent this type of tragedy."

15 seconds to scale the fence

Some aviation experts disagreed new regulations were needed. They said installing blanket surveillance or impregnable defenses around airports was cost prohibitive, given the relative rarity of dangerous events like Friday's collision.

The Denver medical examiner ruled the intruder's death a suicide. Officials from the city-owned airport promised a review of their protocols but defended their perimeter security program and said it received “perfect scores” during federal inspections.

The Associated Press sent emails to the Transportation Security Administration seeking comment on Denver’s inspection results and documents detailing its security protocols.

“Safety is something we take very, very seriously,” Denver airport CEO Phillip Washington told reporters Tuesday.

Washington added that making the perimeter fence taller or topping it with razor wire wouldn't necessarily have made a difference, because someone who was motivated could still find a way in.

During Friday's breach, an alarm from a ground detection sensor was triggered shortly before the intruder entered the airport along its eastern boundary, about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the terminal. An airport worker watching video surveillance cameras attributed the alarm to a herd of deer — and missed the intruder.

It took the man about 15 seconds to scale the fence and two minutes more to reach the runway, Washington said. Airport officials didn't know he was on the runway until the pilot notified the control tower that the plane hit somebody.

Airport perimeter breaches are a regular problem, with perhaps dozens annually nationwide, said security expert Jeff Price, who managed security at the Denver airport in the 1990s. The airport is surrounded by about 36 miles (58 kilometers) of fence, which airport officials say is patrolled by security workers and continuously inspected.

The vast majority of airport trespassers don’t pose a real threat to others, Price said. A man died at the Austin airport in 2020 after a Southwest Airlines jet struck him on a runway. Police later ruled it was a suicide.

Worries about copycats

Two law firms notified Denver officials Tuesday that they intend to sue on behalf of the Frontier passengers, seeking in excess of $10 million in damages. The firms alleged “multiple failures” in the airport perimeter security system, but did not provide specifics.

Steven Wallace, former director of accidents investigations at the Federal Aviation Administration, described the Denver fatality as a “one-off event” that would not justify costly improvements to airport perimeter security programs nationwide.

Wallace acknowledged that some perimeter fences can easily be breached. There are no set rules for their construction, and their primary role is to keep out wildlife that could interfere with flight operations, he said.

“I just don’t see how you’re going to think of and deal with every possible way a human could get into an airport,” he said.

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, suggested there is now a higher likelihood for a repeat of Friday's collision given the potential for copycats. Hall said Denver should consider adding more personnel and surveillance to properly monitor its fence.

“With the amount of cameras and technology that is available, they need to address the problem,” he said. “They've had a failure and they don’t need to have another one."

Aliyah has ADHD, and finds it difficult to concentrate when she’s learning from a screen. She’ll watch Netflix in class on her school laptop, hiding her earbuds behind her long, curly hair.

“It’s very hard to get into the mindset of being in school,” Aliyah said.

Aliyah’s mother saw her grades were falling and asked the school to take away her laptop. But she was told that wasn’t possible.

Across the country, parents are voicing concerns about excessive screen time in schools and lobbying educators to go back to pencil and paper. In places like Lower Merion Township, where Aliyah goes to high school, some are taking it even further. Over 600 people in the affluent Philadelphia suburb have signed a petition asking to preserve parents' ability to opt their children out of using digital devices during the school day. The public school district has pushed back, saying it’s not feasible to let hundreds of students opt out of technology that is essential to the curriculum.

Disagreement over how tech is used in the classroom

At a meeting Monday night, school board members said they were considering many ways to respond to parental concerns about technology, but allowing opt-outs was not one of them.

“There is not an option for us to not have technology in schools,” said Lower Merion School Board member Anna Shurak.

The board was meeting to discuss updates to the district’s technology policies, including repealing a policy that allows opt outs. Over 100 people showed up to protest, many wearing buttons that said “Screens Down, Pencils Up.”

Many emphasized they’re not anti-tech — in fact, most parents agree that learning how to responsibly use computers is an essential life skill. They just don’t want tech to dominate the classroom.

“Teaching how to use technology is not the same thing as using technology to teach everything else,” said Sara Sullivan, a parent.

Technology has become inescapable at schools

The debate in Lower Merion raises the question of whether technology has become so intertwined with learning that it’s impossible to opt out. Kids use devices to play educational games, submit their homework, access online resources and write essays — but parents are questioning the value of gamified edtech software.

Subashini Subramanian said the software her second-grade daughter uses for math, DreamBox, incentivizes rushing through levels to gain points. When she encouraged her daughter to think through the problems methodically, the 8-year-old said, “If I go through all the steps, it’s slowing me down. I have to click, click, click.”

At the school board meeting, many parents said they were exhausted from battling their kids over screen time. Adam Washington says his son struggles with screen addiction, so sometimes he takes away his phone or TV — only to find him watching YouTube on the school laptop instead.

“The screen is killing him. It is killing me, and him, together with our relationship,” Washington said.

Another parent at the meeting questioned what students would do instead of using their computers.

“Opting out is not a solution. It’s avoiding the hard work of finding a solution,” Seth Ruderman said.

Parental pushback on edtech has led to change

The pushback on technology in the classroom has gained steam around the country. At least 14 states have proposed laws to limit screen time in schools, according to Ballotpedia, with four states — Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Iowa — passing such legislation.

In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest school district said it will ban screens until second grade, require daily caps for screen time per grade, ban YouTube and require an audit of all education technology contracts.

In Vermont, proposed legislation would allow not just parents but also teachers to decline to use classroom tech. Democratic State Rep. Angela Arsenault, a bill co-sponsor, said she’s responding to parents' worries about edtech.

“Parents in many districts and states just aren’t being listened to or not being heard when they ask that their students not be forced to use these products,” Arsenault said.

The Lower Merion school district said it’s listening to community concerns and has already made changes, including blocking some problematic websites flagged by parents.

“We have wonderful teachers who have continuously prioritized human interaction and relationships,” Superintendent Frank Ranelli wrote in a letter to parents. He declined to comment to the AP for this story.

The district said it is looking into possible changes, including stronger cellphone restrictions, not allowing the youngest students to take devices home and installing software to monitor students in class.

However, surveillance software can bring its own problems and poses risks to student privacy. In 2010, the Lower Merion School District paid $610,000 to settle lawsuits by two students who alleged the district had spied on them via the webcam on their school-issued laptops.

Kids want ways to hold themselves accountable

High school student Mia Tatar, 16, raised concerns at the board meeting that there’s been an unintended consequence to the anti-tech backlash. The internet filters on school computers are now so strict, she said she’s been blocked while doing research on appropriate topics for school, like breast cancer.

Mia said students need to learn how to responsibly use technology, and adding filters or getting rid of laptops won’t do that.

“It doesn’t teach kids how to hold themselves accountable and how to be responsible for regulating their own screen time once they’re in the world,” Mia said in an interview.

Her friend Elliot Campbell, 15, said there should be strict limits on screen use in the youngest grades, but students should get more freedom as they get older.

“If we lose our laptops or if we lose the partial freedom we have on them, it’s not going to prepare us for college,” Elliot told board members at the hearing.

Fellow high schooler Joaquin Imaizumi takes a different view. He said it’s “completely unfair” to expect children to regulate their usage of devices that even adults find addictive.

“This isn’t about learning to constrain yourself,” he said in an interview. “We don’t give someone drugs and say, ‘OK, now learn how to deal with this.’”

His biggest concern is that devices make it far too tempting to access AI tools like ChatGPT, which he sees eroding his classmates' ability to think for themselves.

“I’ve seen the atrophy of my peers’ thinking, which is existentially concerning,” Joaquin said.

The influence of AI starts early. A second-grader named Lillian Keshet, who got up to speak at the board meeting, said Google Docs will give her “suggestions” about what to write in class.

“I’m a pretty good writer by myself,” Lillian said. “I don’t need your suggestions, Google!”

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Associated Press writer Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report from San Francisco.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

New Mexico produces more oil than any other state besides Texas, and the state's revenue from taxes, royalties and lease sales helps cover the cost of college tuition, all school meals, health insurance and a new initiative for free universal child care.

Now that oil prices are surging from the conflict with Iran, money is flooding into the state treasury and creating an uncomfortable situation for Democrats who oppose the war and would rather reduce their reliance on fossil fuels.

“It’s hard for people to think about, ‘Oh great, we have this windfall,’ and children are getting killed on the other side of the world,” said Deb Haaland, the former U.S. Interior Department secretary running for governor.

Haaland is one of two Democrats running to succeed Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is wrapping up her second term in office. A former congresswoman and state party chair, Haaland worked to limit unfettered oil and gas exploration while serving in President Joe Biden's Cabinet.

Now she wants to use money amid the energy boom to increase New Mexico's child tax credit and boost the refundable working families tax credit, payouts that would most benefit people with low incomes.

“We have obligations to try to have a better world overall," said Haaland, a tribal member of Laguna Pueblo who could become the first female Native American governor in the U.S. “I think we can do that.”

Her rival for the Democratic nomination, Albuquerque-based District Attorney Sam Bregman, said he wants to offset inflation with one-time $500 checks from the state to residents making less than $200,00 a year. He also wants to waive personal income taxes on residents 65 and older.

“It is the resources of the people that’s generating that revenue,” he said. “We ought to give it back to the people."

For every $1 fluctuation in the average annual price of oil, New Mexico sees a roughly $59 million swing in state government income.

That means the state is likely to see a $850 million surge in annual state government income for the budget year ending in June alone based on war-time price changes — equivalent to 12% of annual general fund spending, according to the state Legislature’s budget and accountability office.

New Mexico sends much of its relatively heavy crude oil from its patch of the Permian Basin to Texas distribution hubs and refineries along the Gulf Coast. Prices could remain high with no end in sight for the war despite a fragile ceasefire.

A nest egg that moderates dependence on oil

In New Mexico, surges in oil income automatically flow into a series of trust accounts designed to gradually reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuels, helping the state generate investment income to underwrite Medicaid, early childhood education, infrastructure projects and an expansion of mental healthcare.

The strategy has tempered discomfort among many Democrats with dependence on oil income, in a state with entrenched swaths of extreme poverty and the nation’s highest enrollment rate in Medicaid.

“For New Mexico and New Mexicans and especially the progressive left — which sort of controls the state — it’s always something they really don’t want to admit or talk about or get angry about,” said Lonna Atkeson, a political science professor who has analyzed voting behavior in New Mexico and directs the LeRoy Collins Institute at Florida State University. “Like, ‘We should not be funding our stuff with that money.’ I’ve heard those arguments."

The winner of this year's governor's race will take the helm of a state investment council overseeing a roughly $68 billion state nest egg, including investments that defray costs for K-12 public education.

New Mexico is not alone in reaping the financial benefits of the war. In Alaska, the state forecast an additional $1.05 billion for the current fiscal year and the one beginning July 1.

“It really is this small group of energy-reliant states like North Dakota, Alaska, New Mexico and Wyoming that are going be affected most directly,” said Justin Theal, who researches state fiscal trends as a senior officer for The Pew Charitable Trusts. He described the situation as “a double-edged sword.”

“It raises costs for households and businesses which can potentially dampen consumer spending and reduce sales taxes that almost every state relies on as well,” Theal said.

Wartime oil prices hold silver lining for New Mexico

Three contenders for the Republican nomination are advocating for even more aggressive tax relief while oil prices are riding high.

“Republicans are using the ‘e-word' — eliminate income taxes,” said Albuquerque-based pollster Brian Sanderoff, president of Research and Polling Inc. A Republican last won election to statewide office in 2016.

At the same time, they're questioning whether universal childcare will be financially sustainable.

The program is coming under direct fire in a lawsuit from cannabis entrepreneur and Republican candidate for governor Duke Rodriguez. He previously served as human service secretary under former Gov. Gary Johnson, a crusader for limited government who unsuccessfully ran for president as a Libertarian.

The lawsuit alleges the childcare program was implemented in November by Lujan Grisham without required authorization from the Legislature — though supporting legislation was passed this year. A court has ordered the administration to respond within 30 days.

Reflecting on the state’s oil income, Rodriguez says, “We don’t have a resource problem, what we have is a real results problem. We just spend and spend and spend with no accountability.”

Republican businessman Doug Turner describes war-time oil prices as an opportunity to overhaul the state tax code and wants means testing for childcare benefits. He lost the 2010 Republican primary to then-district attorney Susana Martinez, who went on to serve two terms as governor.

Gregg Hull, a former three-term mayor of Rio Rancho on the outskirts of Albuquerque, wants New Mexico to join the ranks of states with no personal income tax like Texas and Wyoming. Personal income taxes account for about $2.2 billion in annual state government income, offsetting about a fifth of annual general fund obligations.

Hull said he wants to double down on the oil economy by funneling budget surpluses to infrastructure projects in the state's main oil-production zone.

“This morning, when I was looking at a price of a barrel of oil, I said, ‘Well, that’s not great for consumers, but it’s awesome for New Mexico,'” Hull said.

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Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska, contributed to this report.

Raymond Johnson, 52, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

He was condemned for the June 2007 death of 24-year-old Brooke Whitaker and her 7-month-old daughter, Kya.

Prosecutors said that after Johnson and Whitaker got into an early morning argument at her home in Tulsa, he repeatedly hit her over the head with a metal claw hammer.

Whitaker’s skull was fractured and she had more than 20 lacerations on her face and scalp. But she was still conscious and begged Johnson to spare her and Kya, who was sleeping in a bedroom, prosecutors said in documents prepared for Johnson’s clemency hearing in April.

“She begged him to call 911. She begged him to let her mom come get baby Kya. She begged him to think of her children,” the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office said. Whitaker had three other children.

Johnson retrieved a gas can from a tool shed in the backyard, doused Whitaker and the house with gasoline, lit a dishtowel on fire, threw it at Whitaker and left, the attorney general’s office said. Whitaker died from head injuries and smoke inhalation while her daughter died from severe burns.

“Raymond Johnson is a cruel murderer who inflicted unimaginable pain and suffering on his victims,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond said in a statement.

Johnson’s attorneys have not filed a last-minute appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court to try and stop his execution. His attorney did not reply to multiple calls and emails seeking comment.

His attorneys had unsuccessfully argued in prior appeals that Johnson’s arrest was illegal, his confession had been coerced by police and his trial lawyer had conceded without his permission his guilt in Whitaker’s death.

In April, Oklahoma’s five-member Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously to deny Johnson clemency.

At his clemency hearing, Johnson apologized to the victims’ family and asked for forgiveness, saying he was a changed person.

“I apologize. No excuses, no justifications, a sincere apology. And to know that it’s sincere, look at my actions. Look at my life. Look how I’ve changed. I’m living a remorseful life. I’m living it,” Johnson said in an interview with Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group.

At Johnson’s clemency hearing, Whitaker’s family members asked for the lethal injection to proceed.

“Executing him will not give me my mom or sister back, it will not take away almost 20 years of pain. What it will do is finally stop him from continuing to hurt us,” Logan Kleck, Whitaker’s oldest daughter, said in a letter to the board.

In addition to his first-degree murder conviction, Johnson has a 1996 conviction for manslaughter and served nine years of a 20-year prison sentence in that case.

If the execution is carried out, Johnson would be the second person put to death this year in Oklahoma and the 11th person in the country.

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Lozano reported from Houston. Follow Juan A. Lozano: https://x.com/juanlozano70

Dalton Eatherly, 28, and an unidentified man were involved in a confrontation that resulted in gunfire, District Attorney Robert J. Nash said in a statement. But Nash wouldn’t say why Eatherly was at that courthouse in Clarksville, what he was doing or what prompted the confrontation.

Police didn’t provide the race of the other man. However, a witness who said she saw him loaded into an ambulance described him as Black.

Both men were transported to hospitals for medical treatment and were stable, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said.

Eatherly was being held at the Montgomery County jail until bond can be set at an arraignment hearing, the county sheriff’s office said. Eatherly was also charged with employing a firearm during dangerous felony, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon, the sheriff's office said.

Jacob Fendley, an attorney listed in court records as representing Eatherly in a separate harassment case from November, did not immediately return a phone message.

Claire Martin, who works in an attorney’s office across the street from the courthouse, said Eatherly is “well known in Clarksville for antagonizing people to see what he can get them to do.” She said he “yells racial slurs” at people while filming them. “He’s not a contributing member of society,” she said.

Martin did not see the altercation but saw the aftermath. The other man “waved at us as he got in the ambulance,” she said.

‘Did I shoot myself ... ?’

In a video posted on the website Pump.fun on Wednesday, Eatherly said he shot a man in self-defense after the person starting hitting him. Eatherly speaks with paramedics in the clip, one of whom takes note of a wound's entry and exit point.

“Did I shoot myself or did it graze it?” Eatherly asked.

Eatherly had been scheduled to appear in court Wednesday morning in Clarksville, located about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northwest of Nashville, over a $3,300 debt allegedly owed to a credit company, according to Montgomery County court records. The civil case was filed in February on behalf of Midland Credit Management.

Court records didn’t indicate whether Eatherly showed up for the status hearing. Online records list the case as open.

Eatherly, a white man, livestreams confrontations to social media where he can be seen and heard making racially derogatory statements to Black people in public.

In one video taken in a market, he says to a passing Black man, “You chimpin’ out," a reference to chimpanzees. He then uses the N-word a number of times.

The Black man is seen using a cellphone to record the confrontation, telling Eatherly, “Don’t touch me.”

A clerk tells Eatherly he’s not allowed to say that word. He responds “America is free speech. Tell me I can’t say something again. This is (expletive) America."

Racists in the United States and other countries historically have compared Black people to monkeys or apes. In February, President Donald Trump posted a racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle. It was deleted after both Republicans and Democrats criticized the video as offensive.

Steakhouse theft and disorderly conduct charges

In addition to the credit debt case, Eatherly faces a separate criminal case in which he is accused of becoming unruly at a Nashville steakhouse on Saturday and refusing to pay the nearly $400 bill.

According to an affidavit in the case, the restaurant had asked him not to stream inside the business, but he did anyway. When they asked him to stop, he began yelling and screaming and “started making racial statements.”

He was arrested and charged on Sunday with theft of services, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest and released on $5,000 bond. His next appearance in this case was scheduled for July 17 in Davidson County criminal court.

Clarksville resident Larry Quillen said he's seen videos in which Eatherly carries a gun and mace “and goes around and starts things.”

“I was just kind of like it’s a matter of time. I mean, because what he’s doing is hate. It’s not even freedom of speech and that’s what he claims to do,” Quillen said.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office said one of the two men involved in Wednesday's shooting was taken to Vanderbilt of Clarksville Hospital for treatment. A message left with the hospital wasn’t immediately returned.

The other was transported by Lifeflight to Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, the sheriff's office said. A spokesperson for the hospital, Craig Boerner, said medical privacy laws prohibited the disclosure of information about victims of violence.

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This story has been updated to correct that Clarksville is northwest of Nashville, not northeast.

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Loller reported from Nashville, Tennessee, and McAvoy from Honolulu. Associated Press writers Corey Williams in Detroit and John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed.

Thursday will still feel cool and seasonable, with highs only reaching the lower 60s under a mix of sunshine and clouds. But after that, temperatures take off quickly.

By Friday, highs rebound to near 70 degrees before surging into the lower and mid-80s over the weekend and early next week. Highs could reach the mid to upper 80s on Monday.

The last time Detroit officially climbed warmer than 82 degrees was October 6, 2025, when temperatures reached 85 degrees.

Before that, highs reached 87 on Oct. 4 and 84 on Oct. 3.

This upcoming warm spell will exceed the warmest weather seen so far this year.

The warmest temperatures of 2026 to this point occurred in mid-April, when Detroit reached 82 degrees on April 12 and 13, and 81 degrees on April 14.

Since then, Southeast Michigan has spent much of May stuck in cooler-than-average patterns.

That changes quickly this weekend.

The warming trend begins Friday as sunshine increases and southwest winds help push temperatures well above the seasonal average high of around 70 degrees.

By Saturday, many neighborhoods across Metro Detroit could reach the mid-80s, delivering a true summerlike feel.

People across Southeast Michigan will likely notice the difference immediately.

Windows will finally open again. Lawnmowers will come back out. Grills and patios will fill up.

Parks, bike trails, and outdoor dining spots are expected to be much busier after the recent stretch of cool weather.

With stronger May sunshine and much warmer temperatures, sunscreen and hydration will once again become important for anyone spending extended time outdoors.

The warmup arrives just in time for a busy weekend around Metro Detroit.

The Detroit Tigers host the Toronto Blue Jays Friday through Sunday at Comerica Park, and overall weather conditions look favorable for baseball fans.

Friday evening appears dry and comfortable with temperatures settling through the 60s.

Saturday currently looks very warm, breezy, and mainly dry throughout much of the day, though a few showers could develop later in the afternoon or evening as the atmosphere becomes increasingly unstable.

Some forecast guidance suggests a complex of thunderstorms could weaken and approach Saturday night.

Sunday’s forecast remains a bit more uncertain, especially for Flower Day at Eastern Market.

There could be a few scattered showers developing later Sunday afternoon, but much of the morning, including a large portion of Flower Day activities, may end up mainly dry with warm temperatures in the 70s. The exact timing of any rain will depend on how quickly weekend storm chances develop and how nearby weather systems evolve.

Even with occasional rain chances, the overall message for the next several days is clear: Metro Detroit is transitioning from spring coolness to much more summerlike conditions.

After clouds, gusty winds, and high temperatures in the 40s and 50s to start this week, many people across Metro Detroit may finally feel like the warm weather season has officially arrived.

Share your weather photos with Local 4 at MIPics.

U.S.-based advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) and shipping industry observers say waters near Malaysia’s southern Johor state have become a key hub for ship-to-ship transfers involving Iran’s “shadow fleet” — aging tankers that often operate with disabled tracking systems, false identities and opaque ownership structures to conceal the origins of crude bound largely for China.

The area, known as the Eastern Outer Port Limits, or EOPL, in the South China Sea is about 70 kilometers (45 miles) off Johor. It lies along one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes and is about halfway between Iran and China, which buys about 90% of Iranian oil.

U.S. officials have previously said Iranian oil exports rely heavily on service providers and ship-to-ship transfers operating near Malaysian waters.

UANI says there have been 42 ship-to-ship transfers of Iranian oil conducted in the EOPL area since Feb. 28, when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, starting a war in the Middle East. UANI used satellite imagery to observe the operations.

“Because of Malaysia’s inaction, it is facilitating this business model by Iran and China and dark fleet actors,” senior UANI adviser Charlie Brown said, warning Malaysia is becoming “a facilitator rather than merely a transit point” for illicit activity.

Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Director-General Mohamad Rosli Abdullah said the transfers are often done outside the country's territorial waters and in remote areas beyond radar coverage, especially in locations near maritime boundaries or international shipping routes.

"The selection of such locations is intended to exploit jurisdictional gaps and limit direct enforcement action by local authorities,” he told The Associated Press.

The UANI allegations "do not align with the actual situation on the ground and do not reflect the operational realities of maritime enforcement conducted by the MMEA,” he said, adding that the lack of real-time intelligence-sharing among domestic and international agencies also hampers effective action.

Iranian oil flows despite a US blockade

Clandestine high-seas transfers from Iranian-linked tankers have persisted for years, allowing Tehran to sell its crude while offering buyers plausible deniability about the oil’s source.

While not illegal, Malaysia discourages unsanctioned transfers outside designated areas, where such operations can be supervised, as they greatly increase the likelihood of a spill, involve aging vessels and are carried out far from ports where mistakes could be more easily contained.

Despite a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports that started in mid-April, UANI said it has tracked Iranian-linked tankers still operating, though it is not clear how many are now getting through.

Neither the Iranian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur nor the Iranian mission to the U.N. answered requests for comment. The U.S. State Department declined to comment.

As of Tuesday, two dozen Iranian-linked tankers tracked by UANI were anchored or loitering near the EOPL area used for transfers off Johor, though it was not clear how many had sailed before the blockade began.

“It’s business as usual,” UANI's Brown told the AP.

UANI maintains that Malaysia could enforce environmental regulations for advance notification of ship-to-ship transfers, prevent Malaysian companies from providing support to ships involved and require all ships to carry adequate insurance against accidents and oil spills, among other things.

The MMEA director general said enforcement is conducted strictly under Malaysian law and relevant international conventions, and authorities have “never compromised nor provided any special treatment or privileges to any country.”

Indonesia reviews border oil transfers

Though the area where the oil transfers are taking place is widely regarded as part of Malaysia’s broader economic zone, it borders the Riau Archipelago, which is Indonesian territory.

Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said authorities were reviewing the situation to determine the legality of the activity. “Indonesia does not permit its territory or maritime zones to be used for unlawful activities,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Yvonne Mewengkang.

Indonesia upholds legitimate navigational rights under international law governing the seas including the right of innocent passage, transit passage and the right of passage through Indonesian maritime zones," she added.

The MMEA director general noted that Malaysia earlier this year seized two vessels, one stateless and the other flagged to Cameroon, involved in the transfer of 2 million barrels of crude oil in Malaysian territorial waters.

The vessels were later released on bond for conducting unauthorized oil transfers. UANI’s Brown said one of the vessels was spotted earlier this month conducting a ship-to-ship transfer of suspected Iranian oil in the waters off Johor.

Malaysian authorities “will continue to strengthen monitoring and enhance strategic cooperation with relevant agencies to ensure that the nation’s maritime domain’s safety and sovereignty are consistently safeguarded,” the MMEA director general said.

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AP journalists David Rising in Bangkok and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

Police are asking neighbors to report anything suspicious as investigators work to identify the suspect.

Victoria Williams said when she got home from work, she initially didn’t notice a notification from her family’s Ring camera facing their deck. As she prepared to let her dog out, she realized something was wrong.

“As soon as I unlocked the cage, he bolted to the door and started barking just like this mean bark, and I turn around from the cage, and I just see this blur of white go by the door,” Williams said.

Security video captured a man dressed in a coverall suit with boot covers, a mask, and gloves. In the video, the man is seen carrying a backpack and a screwdriver.

When Williams went outside to see what was going on, she ran into the man and asked what he was doing.

“He was like, ‘I’m just checking something for somebody.’ I said, ‘I don’t know who you are,’ and in the meantime I’m hitting the 911 on my phone,” Williams said.

While she was on the phone with 911, Williams said the man grabbed her by the neck as he tried to push through the family’s fence to get away.

After a struggle, Williams said the man broke through the fence and ran off. Security video captured the suspect running away from the house, and police later found some of his clothing in a nearby trash can.

Victoria’s parents, Bill and Kim Williams, said they received a call no parent wants to get.

“It’s a very scary thing for a parent to get a call that someone’s trying to break into our house and tussled with me on the side while I was talking to 911,” Bill Williams said.

Police have not identified the suspect and are urging residents in the area to report suspicious activity. The family said they are sharing their experience to warn others to trust their instincts and speak up.

“Speak up and if you’re wrong, you’re wrong, but who knows you might be right and preventing something for somebody else,” Williams said.

“A minute or two one way or the other, and it could have been a very, very different story,” Bill Williams said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Livonia Police Department at 734-466-2470.

But Detroit could not capitalize on that advantage, falling 117-113 to the Cleveland Cavaliers at home and seeing its five-game home winning streak snapped at Little Caesars Arena.

The Pistons led by as many as 15 points in the first half and carried a nine-point advantage with fewer than three minutes remaining in regulation before Cleveland closed on a 13-0 run to force overtime and seize a 3-2 series lead.

Home teams in Game 5 of a tied series have gone on to win the series 73.3% of the time, but Detroit failed to take control of the matchup and now faces elimination pressure heading into Game 6 in Cleveland, where the Pistons must win to force a Game 7 on Sunday.

Turnovers proved decisive, with Cade Cunningham finishing with 39 points, nine assists, and six rebounds but six turnovers, including a costly miscue in overtime that helped swing momentum to Cleveland.

The loss was their third consecutive after taking a 2-0 series lead to open the best-of-seven series.

Jalen Duren has been a no-show for much of the playoffs as he got benched down the stretch of the game for Paul Reed.

Duren finished with nine points, five rebounds, and four assists, while Reed came off the bench and finished with 10 points and eight rebounds in the loss, making hustle plays to keep the Pistons in the game.

It was a masterful game by James Harden, who turned back the hands of time, finishing with 30 points, eight rebounds, and six assists in Game 5.

1st quarter

Detroit won the opening tip and immediately capitalized, with Daniss Jenkins knocking down a corner 3-pointer for a 3-0 advantage.

The possession-heavy start continued as James Harden lost the ball out of bounds, leading to a missed jumper by Tobias Harris.

Evan Mobley then turned it over, setting up Harris to assist Jenkins on another corner jumper.

Cade Cunningham committed a turnover on the next possession, and Donovan Mitchell was stripped by Ausar Thompson shortly after.

Cunningham turned it over again, throwing the ball out of bounds and leading to a short dunk by Jarrett Allen.

Harris missed from three-point range, and Mitchell grabbed the defensive rebound but traveled, as both teams were credited with three turnovers apiece early.

Jenkins later hit a contested floater off an assist from Thompson, before Harden answered with a short jumper.

Jenkins missed on the next possession.

Thompson then stole the ball from Harden and finished a coast-to-coast dunk, giving Detroit a 9-4 lead.

Mobley responded with a dunk, and Mitchell drew a foul on Harris with 6:40 remaining in the opening stretch.

The Pistons called a timeout, leading 9-6.

Mitchell converted two free throws early in the stretch to pull Cleveland within one point as the Cavaliers continued to battle back against the Pistons.

Harris missed a contested jumper on the ensuing possession, though Detroit retained the ball after the rebound went out of bounds.

Kevin Huerter later checked into the game after missing time with an injury, but Harris missed again from the field.

Harden misfired on a deep three-pointer before former Michigan Wolverines standout Caris LeVert attacked the paint and drew a foul on Dean Wade. LeVert made both free throws to give Detroit a three-point edge with under six minutes remaining in the period.

Max Strus answered with a three-pointer to tie the game before Harris scored on a layup off an assist from Jalen Duren.

Allen then made a short jumper while drawing Harris’ second foul of the game.

Allen completed the three-point play to give Cleveland its first lead.

Thompson committed a turnover that led to a steal by Merrill, but Dennis Schroder gave the ball right back before Cunningham buried a three-pointer for Detroit.

Harden responded with a floater to tie the score, though Cunningham answered with another three-pointer.

Merrill matched him from beyond the arc on the next possession.

Schroder later converted a floater while drawing a foul on LeVert, prompting Cleveland to call a timeout with 2:55 remaining.

Schroder completed a three-point play out of a timeout as the Pistons continued to trade runs with Cleveland late in the quarter.

Marcus Sasser was then called for an offensive foul before Max Strus missed from well beyond the arc. Caris LeVert secured the rebound, which led to a jumper by Cunningham.

Schroder committed a turnover on the next possession, and Cunningham converted in transition on a rim run to extend Detroit’s advantage.

Strus answered with an open three-pointer, but Isaiah Stewart responded with consecutive three-pointers that energized the crowd and helped the Pistons maintain momentum.

Merrill missed from deep before Cunningham misfired on a jumper that was rebounded by Mobley.

Mitchell then scored on a contested layup but appeared to hurt his ankle with 16.8 seconds remaining in the quarter.

Cunningham missed a jumper in the closing seconds, and Mobley grabbed the rebound before finding Mitchell for a half-court attempt that missed at the buzzer.

Detroit carried a 29-27 lead into the next quarter.

2nd quarter

Mobley opened the quarter with a short jumper to tie the game before Cunningham answered with a 10-foot shot to put Detroit back in front.

Mobley was fouled at the rim by Isaiah Stewart on a dunk attempt and split a pair of free throws after Thompson grabbed the rebound.

Thompson then found Cunningham for a contested three-pointer as the Pistons began to build momentum.

On the defensive end, Stewart blocked a shot attempt by Jaylon Tyson, and the two exchanged words after getting tied up for a jump ball.

Tyson was assessed a technical foul on the play.

Cunningham converted the technical free throw to extend Detroit’s lead to 35-30.

Stewart won the ensuing jump ball, with Tobias Harris eventually finishing a driving layup off an assist from Cunningham.

Mitchell responded with a floater for his second field goal of the game.

Harris added another floater before Tyson committed a turnover, and Sasser followed with a jumper as Detroit stretched its advantage to 41-32.

Harden checked back into the game but missed a contested three-pointer under pressure from Cunningham.

After the ball went out of bounds on the next possession, Harris knocked down a contested baseline jumper to push Detroit’s lead to 43-32.

Cleveland coach Kenny Atkinson called a timeout with 8:33 remaining as the Cavaliers trailed by 11 points.

Detroit opened the quarter by making its first six shots from the field.

Mobley missed a running floater early in the stretch, though Harris secured the rebound before Detroit was whistled for a 24-second shot clock violation.

Mitchell then missed from three-point range before Harris answered with a contested jumper following a defensive rebound by Thompson.

Mobley committed a turnover on the next possession, and Jenkins capitalized by throwing an alley-oop to Thompson for a dunk as Detroit extended its lead.

Harden helped Cleveland respond after drawing a foul on Jenkins during a three-point attempt.

Harden converted all three free throws to spark the Cavaliers’ comeback effort.

Cunningham later missed Detroit’s first field-goal attempt of the quarter before Duren was called for a defensive three-second violation, leading to another free throw by Harden.

Harden missed a deep three-pointer on the next possession, and Cunningham also misfired from beyond the arc before Harden connected on a long two-point jumper.

Cunningham missed a floater before Jarrett Allen converted a finger-roll layup to cap an 8-0 Cleveland run.

Detroit called a timeout with 4:52 remaining while holding a 47-40 lead.

Schroder was called for a foul early in the closing stretch of the half before Cunningham missed a three-point attempt that was deflected out of bounds to keep possession with Detroit.

Jenkins then connected on a 12-foot jumper to extend the Pistons’ lead.

After a strong defensive sequence by Detroit, Allen was fouled by Cunningham and split a pair of free throws for Cleveland.

Jenkins missed on the next possession, leading to a defensive rebound by Max Strus. Evan Mobley later missed an 8-foot jumper before former Michigan standout Caris LeVert knocked down a 10-foot pull-up jumper for his first field goal of the game.

LeVert was then called for a foul on James Harden, who responded with a corner 3-pointer to give him 13 points.

Cleveland was assessed a defensive three-second violation shortly afterward, though Cunningham missed the technical free throw.

Detroit retained possession, and Duren found Cunningham cutting to the basket for a layup.

LeVert later stole the ball from Harden and pushed the break before Cunningham returned the pass to him for a driving basket and a foul against Strus.

LeVert completed the three-point play.

Strus answered with a 3-pointer before Jenkins missed a jumper on Detroit’s next possession.

Harden committed another turnover, and Cunningham capitalized by setting up Duren for a layup.

Mitchell scored on a nine-foot floater before Cunningham attacked the lane and drew a foul on Harden.

Cunningham made both free throws to give Detroit a 60-49 lead with 45.4 seconds remaining in the half.

Strus closed the gap with a corner three-pointer after Cunningham lost track of him defensively.

Harris missed a corner 3-pointer on Detroit’s final possession, and Thompson missed the putback attempt before Allen secured the rebound as the buzzer sounded.

Strus’s sharpshooting kept Cleveland in the game as he finished the half with 12 points, hitting four of six three pointers, while Harden finished with 13 points at the half.

Cunningham had 20 points and four assists while Harris chipped in with 10 points and three rebounds and Jenkins, who scored the teams first seven points, finished the half with nine and one assists.

Head coach J.B. Bickerstaff will need to find a way to get Duren going as he had two points, but added four rebounds and four assists as Detroit led 60-52 with 24 minutes to play.

3rd quarter

Allen missed a four-foot jumper but grabbed his own rebound and drew a foul on Thompson.

Harris secured the defensive rebound following a miss by Mobley.

Jenkins missed a layup, and Duren missed the putback attempt.

Wade grabbed the defensive rebound and found Mitchell, who missed a three-pointer.

Duren was called for a foul before Mobley found Allen for an easy basket.

Thompson missed an eight-foot floater before Wade collected another defensive rebound and found Mitchell, who was fouled by Duren.

Mitchell made both free throws to cut the lead to four before being called for a personal foul.

Cunningham found Duren for a powerful dunk before Allen was called for traveling.

Cunningham was then whistled for traveling, Detroit’s seventh turnover of the game, leading to a three-pointer by Harden off an assist from Allen.

With the deficit trimmed to three, Duren attacked the rim and drew a foul on Mobley.

He converted both free throws to give Detroit a 64-59 lead.

Harden had the ball deflected out of bounds while driving against Jenkins.

Mitchell’s airball resulted in a shot-clock violation.

Cunningham drew a foul on Mitchell, his second of the game, and made both free throws.

Mobley lobbed the ball to Allen for a dunk.

Cunningham committed another turnover before Jenkins fouled Harden, drawing boos from the crowd.

Harris blocked Mobley’s seven-foot layup attempt before Cunningham secured the defensive rebound.

Harden was called for a foul on Cunningham with 7:24 remaining.

LeVert missed a jumper before Stewart missed the putback attempt.

Harden then drilled another three-pointer to cut Detroit’s lead to 66-64.

Harden scored his 19th point of the game on the shot, prompting Bickerstaff to call a timeout with 6:55 remaining.

Out of the timeout, Cunningham found Stewart for a dunk, giving Stewart eight points in 10 minutes.

LeVert then fouled Max Strus, who made both free throws.

Harris missed a four-foot jumper before the ball found Harden.

After several empty possessions, Harris fouled Allen, who made two free throws to tie the game at 68.

Stewart missed a 3-pointer, but Detroit secured the offensive rebound.

Jenkins then missed from beyond the arc before Detroit grabbed another offensive rebound, leading to a contested three-pointer by Cunningham.

Schroder drew a foul and split a pair of free throws to give Detroit a two-point lead.

LeVert missed a 29-foot three-pointer before Jenkins answered with a 16-foot jumper.

Harden drew a foul on LeVert while converting a basket for a potential three-point play.

The sequence drew frustration from Bickerstaff, who challenged the call, arguing Harden pushed off before falling to the floor.

Officials upheld the ruling, and Harden completed the three-point play with 4:07 remaining.

Cunningham responded with a nine-foot jumper.

Schroder drew a foul on Ausar Thompson and split two free throws before Duren collected the defensive rebound.

Strus was called for a foul on Cunningham, who made both free throws to extend Detroit’s lead to four with 3:14 remaining.

Cunningham appeared to be pulled out of bounds, but the call was overturned on review. He then threw the ball away, leading to a corner three-pointer by Strus that cut the deficit to one.

Duren drew a foul on Mobley and split two free throws.

Mobley grabbed the rebound before Merrill connected on a wide-open three-pointer to give Cleveland a 79-78 lead.

LeVert missed a corner jumper that became lodged between the rim and backboard before Cleveland extended the lead to three on a dunk by Mobley.

Duren answered with a dunk, but Mobley followed with a 3-pointer to push Cleveland’s lead to four.

Cunningham missed a jumper in the closing seconds before Cleveland secured multiple offensive rebounds.

Sasser missed a buzzer-beating 3-pointer as Cleveland closed the quarter on a 32-20 run to take an 84-80 lead.

4th quarter

Cunningham opened the quarter with a three-pointer off an assist from Reed.

Reed hustled for a rebound but turned the ball over before Donovan Mitchell missed a three-point attempt.

Sasser secured the defensive rebound and found Cunningham for a contested jumper that helped Detroit regain the lead.

Cunningham was later called for a foul.

Mitchell drew a foul on Reed and made both free throws to put Cleveland back in front.

Mobley blocked Cunningham’s shot, forcing a shot-clock violation.

Harden drew a foul on a 3-point attempt and made all three free throws to give Cleveland a four-point lead with 9:40 remaining.

Reed answered with a left-handed floater over Mobley.

Harden missed a contested jumper before Detroit came up empty on the ensuing possession.

Merrill missed an uncontested three-pointer before Detroit grabbed the rebound, prompting J.B. Bickerstaff to call timeout with 8:18 to play.

Cleveland forced a shot-clock violation before Harden committed a turnover and picked up his third foul of the game.

Cunningham missed a jumper, but Reed grabbed the offensive rebound and finished with a dunk to tie the game at 89 with under seven minutes remaining.

Ausar Thompson forced a jump ball against Dean Wade at center court, but Cleveland won the tip. Merrill briefly controlled possession before Harden turned the ball over with 6:53 remaining.

Merrill then fouled Cunningham, his first foul and Cleveland’s second team foul of the quarter.

As Mitchell checked back into the game, Cunningham buried another 3-pointer. Harden answered with a missed 28-foot attempt from beyond the arc.

Detroit tipped the ball out of bounds, giving Cleveland possession, but Mobley committed a turnover.

Cunningham missed a driving layup before Harden collected the defensive rebound.

Reed blocked Harden’s seven-foot driving layup attempt, but Jarrett Allen grabbed the offensive rebound and found Mitchell for a 22-foot 3-point attempt that missed. Reed secured the defensive rebound.

Tobias Harris recorded an assist after finding Lindy Waters III Jenkins for a key 3-pointer.

Cleveland called timeout before Thompson blocked Allen’s 10-foot shot attempt. The ball nearly went out of bounds, but Jenkins hustled to save possession, leading to a fast-break finish by Thompson, who was fouled by Harden.

Cunningham was called for a loose-ball foul, leading to a jumper by Harden.

Harris missed a 22-foot 3-point attempt before Mitchell was blocked by Reed. Harris secured the rebound and quickly pushed the ball ahead to Jenkins, who finished through contact from Harden for a three-point play.

Harden responded by finding Max Strus for another 3-pointer, his sixth of the game. Bickerstaff called timeout with 3:29 remaining as Detroit held a 100-94 lead.

Thompson missed a shot before a scramble sequence led to Harris knocking down a corner three-pointer off an offensive rebound by Paul Reed.

Mobley answered with a floater, and Cleveland then forced another shot-clock violation, setting up Mobley for a three-pointer that pulled the Cavaliers closer.

Harris missed a three-point attempt and was later called for a foul on Mobley, sending him to the free-throw line to tie the game.

With 45.2 seconds remaining, Detroit called a timeout with the score tied at 103-103.

Cleveland closed the stretch on a 9-0 run to even the game.

Cunningham missed a shot, but Harris got the offensive rebound, but LeVert got called for a shot-clock violation with 20.9 to play.

With a chance to win the game at the buzzer, Thompson stripped Mitchell, and Allen tripped him, but the refs didn’t call the foul as they head into overtime.

Overtime

Cleveland won the tip, and Allen tipped in a dunk to give the Cavaliers the lead.

Cunningham missed a shot, and Reed got the offensive tip but could not convert.

Mitchell answered with an eight-foot floater.

Harden missed a 27-foot 3-pointer that went out of bounds, and Atkinson immediately called a timeout as Harden fell to the floor on the shooting motion.

The challenge was unsuccessful.

After the stoppage, Cunningham fed Reed, who was fouled by Allen.

Reed went to the line and made both free throws, snapping a 13-0 Cleveland run as Detroit trailed by two with three minutes remaining.

Mitchell drilled a three-pointer, and Cleveland forced another turnover.

Mitchell then converted again in transition off a Cunningham turnover to push the lead to seven.

Reed answered with a jumper, then helped secure a defensive stop that led to a Detroit fast-break dunk by Jenkins, cutting the deficit to three.

Harden drew a foul with 1:26 remaining and split the pair at the line.

LeVert missed a jumper, with Max Strus securing the defensive rebound.

Harden missed a shot on the next possession, and Cunningham was fouled by Strus with 28.7 seconds remaining.

Detroit called a timeout trailing by four.

Cunningham drilled a long 2-pointer with 25.9 seconds left, and Cleveland called timeout holding the ball and a 113-111 lead.

Harden drew a foul on Reed and went to the line, splitting the pair.

The ball went back to Harden, who again split a pair at the line before Tobias Harris missed a jumper.

Jenkins missed a 3-point attempt, and Mobley secured the defensive rebound and was fouled, making both free throws to push Cleveland’s lead to six.

Reed made a dunk as Cleveland wins their first road game of the playoffs.

It's all added up to being the first team in the big leagues to 30 victories.

The Braves improved MLB's top record to 30-13 with another thrilling win Wednesday night, scoring three runs in the eighth inning to beat the Chicago Cubs 4-1.

Mike Yastrzemski came the bench to contribute a pinch-hit double that drove in the tie-breaking run, and jack-of-all-trades Mauricio Dubón followed with a two-run homer into the Chicago bullpen that finished off the Cubs.

Throw in another stout performance by the bullpen, which got one scoreless inning apiece from four relievers, and this team is threatening to run away with the NL East before the calendar turns to summer.

The Braves are up by nine games on second-place Washington and have a double-figure margin over everyone else in the division.

“There's no egos here,” said Yastrzemski, who contributed his first homer of the season the previous night in a 5-2 victory over the Cubs. “Nobody feels like they own any piece of this team. We're all pulling on the same rope together, the same direction. Whatever opportunities come for you that day, that's good enough.”

While stars such as Matt Olson, Drake Baldwin, Chris Sale and Ozzie Albies are having big years, some lesser-known players are also having a significant impact.

That includes Dubón, who was acquired from Houston over the winter for journeyman Nick Allen and has filled in whenever needed.

Dubón started the season at shortstop while Ha-Seong Kim recovered from an injury but now is largely playing the outfield, even taking the leadoff role in the lineup while former NL MVP Ronald Acuña Jr. is on the injured list.

The clinching homer showed how much faith the Braves and their first-year manager, Walt Weiss, have in their utility ace.

“In years past for me, I would've gotten pinch-hit right there and they wouldn't let me hit,” Dubón said. “But I ended up putting up a two-run homer. I think it's that confidence he gives you when you're playing."

Dubón is still motivated by being picked in the 26th round — the 773rd choice overall — of the 2013 draft.

“I'm trying to prove people wrong,” he said, breaking into a satisfied smile. "I've been doing that for a while now.”

Weiss, who took over when long-time manager Brian Snitker retired after a disappointing 2025 campaign, has the Braves solidly on track for a return to the postseason.

He's not looking at the big picture by any stretch, but he can't help but be satisfied at the way his managerial tenure has started.

"I'm so engrossed with the day to day," Weiss said. “You want to attack each day the best you can, and these guys are doing that. They confront every challenge that comes our way.”

Yastrzemski, like everyone else on the roster, is eager to step up whenever needed.

“Some days your role is going to be a cheerleader. Keep everyone in a good mood, pull for the guys, bring somebody a water when they're thirsty," he said. "Those things, it’s real. When you see that happening with other guys, you can't help but do it yourself.”

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

The National Transportation Safety Board said the pilots who safely landed that plane back in New Orleans told investigators the situation was far more challenging than anything they had ever experienced in training.

“If such an event occurred at night or in instrument meteorological conditions, the consequences could be catastrophic,” the NTSB determined.

The Federal Aviation Administration receives reports of smoke in the cockpit almost daily, but the NTSB said the agency still doesn't require airlines to conduct realistic smoke-in-cockpit simulations. Instead, the training usually just consists of a discussion of what to do in that situation. The FAA didn't immediately respond to the new recommendation on Wednesday.

The Southwest pilots at the controls during this incident in December 2023 said they had trouble seeing their instruments and checklists. They quickly donned oxygen masks and followed emergency procedures to land. None of the 139 people aboard were hurt. In a separate incident nine months earlier involving another Southwest 737 Max, smoke filled the cabin after a bird strike after takeoff in Havana, Cuba.

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo, who was a pilot for United Airlines, said it is crucial that pilots are prepared to deal with smoke and quickly shut off the valve letting it into the cockpit, so he supports the recommendation. He said it would be good for pilots to experience dealing with smoke every time they go back for refresher training every nine months, so they’ll have the “muscle memory” to respond.

“Smoke in the cockpit is a very serious and time-critical emergency,” Arroyo said. “And I think creating the pilot awareness through real-life training is essential to reducing this potential safety threat.”

Southwest spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the airline is reviewing the new recommendation, but it is committed to ensuring its pilots can handle these kinds of emergencies and seeing that the underlying flaw in the engines on the 737 Max is fixed.

“Southwest routinely evaluates and enhances pilot training as part of its robust Safety Management System. As part of that effort, Southwest notified its Flight Crews about the effects of certain malfunctions following the two events in 2023 and reiterated the importance of following established safety procedures that are part of the company’s pilot training program,” Lunsford said in a statement.

The Airlines for America trade group said the airlines work closely with the NTSB and FAA “with a continual focus on maintaining safety as the highest priority.”

Last year, the NTSB urged Boeing and engine maker CFM International to quickly develop a software fix for the engines on the 737 Max to help prevent smoke from filling the cockpit or cabin after a safety feature is activated following a bird strike.

Spokesman for the engine and plane makers said the software fix for the engines is still being developed.

Air from the left engine on a 737 Max flows directly into the cockpit, while air from the right engine flows into the passenger cabin.

A safety device CFM added to these engines to help limit damage after a bird strike had the unintended consequence of contributing to smoke inside the plane. The device releases oil after a bird strike, which generates a significant amount of smoke.

Both Boeing and CFM have said they are committed to addressing the engine issue, and the FAA said last year that the repair will be required as soon as it is ready.

But the disgraced lawyer won’t be leaving prison anytime soon.

Prosecutors say they plan to retry Murdaugh, which likely means there will be another lengthy trial for the case that because of the combination of money, power, Southern accents and treachery has become a true crime sensation with several streaming miniseries, best selling books and dozens of true crime podcasts.

Murdaugh, 57, will remain in prison. He pleaded guilty to stealing around $12 million from his clients and currently is serving a 40-year federal sentence at the same time as a 27-year state sentence for his financial crimes.

Prosecutors promise a retrial that the court says will look different

Prosecutors haven't closed the door on appealing the ruling, but said Wednesday they are concentrating on aggressively seek to try Murdaugh again on the murder charges preferably sometime in 2026. State Attorney General Alan Wilson saying he respected the court's decision but no one is above the law.

Murdaugh's lawyers pointed out that trial will look a lot different, as the justices also ruled days of evidence at the murder trial about how Murdaugh stole from clients, many of them in dire straits, shouldn't be allowed next time.

Still, the ruling is a win for Murdaugh, who admits to being a thief, liar, insurance cheat and bad lawyer, but has adamantly denied killing his wife Maggie and younger son Paul since he found their bodies outside their home in 2021.

“Alex has said from day one that he did not kill his wife and son. We look forward to a new trial,” Murdaugh’s lawyers Dick Harpootlian and Jim Griffin said in a joint statement.

The defense has detailed the lack of physical evidence — no DNA or blood was found splattered on Murdaugh or any of his clothes, even though the killings were at close range with powerful weapons that were never found.

Prosecutors argued that the clerk’s comments were fleeting and the evidence against Murdaugh was overwhelming.

Murdaugh told investigators for months he hadn’t seen his wife and son for about an hour before they were killed. But investigators eventually cracked the passcode on Paul Murdaugh’s phone and found a video with a barking dog and Alex Murdaugh’s voice admonishing it five minutes before the young man stopped using his phone.

Investigators said Murdaugh was addicted to opioids and his complex schemes to steal money from clients and his family’s law firm were starting to unravel so he killed his wife and son to divert attention and buy time to find a way out of his problems.

Court said clerk attacked Murdaugh's credibility with jurors

In their unanimous ruling Wednesday, the South Carolina Supreme Court said the conduct by Colleton County Clerk of Court Becky Hill “egregiously attacked Murdaugh’s credibility” by suggesting to jurors his testimony could not be trusted.

A few jurors said Hill, assigned to oversee the evidence and the jury during the trial, told them to watch Murdaugh's body language when he testified in his own defense and to not be fooled, confused or thrown off by what he might say.

“By urging the jurors not to be fooled or convinced by Murdaugh’s defense, Hill essentially implored the jurors to find him guilty, the ultimate issue in the case,” the justices wrote, adding that the comments insinuated there was something unusual and suspicious about his decision to testify.

Hill “placed her fingers on the scales of justice, thereby denying Murdaugh his right to a fair trial by an impartial jury,” the justices wrote. “Our justice system provides — indeed demands — that every person is entitled to a fair trial."

Justices say Hill was looking for celebrity

The court said Hill's motivation was the “siren call of celebrity” and her goal was to increase sales of her book on the trial called “Behind the Doors of Justice: The Murdaugh Murders.” It was pulled from publication after plagiarism allegations were made.

“As her book’s title suggests, it turns out Hill was quite busy behind the doors of justice, thwarting the integrity of the justice system she was sworn to protect and uphold,” the justices wrote in an unsigned 27-page ruling.

Hill’s attorney in her criminal case didn’t return a phone call or email seeking comment.

Hill has pleaded guilty to lying about what she said and did during the Murdaugh trial, including showing graphic crime scene photos to several media members. The journalists were not named and the photos were not described at her December hearing.

“The court rightly described her conduct as "‘breathtaking,’ ‘disgraceful,’ and ‘unprecedented in South Carolina,' ” Murdaugh's lawyers said.

Justices say financial crime evidence also improperly used

The justices also had a warning for the next judge to try the murder case — be cautious on how much evidence of Murdaugh's thefts from his law firm and clients to allow those jurors to hear.

Some brief evidence of how Murdaugh stole is fine and how it might connect to him killing his wife and son. But the court said details like how some of the people Murdaugh stole from were disabled or vulnerable could unfairly turn against him jurors who should be focused just on whether he killed his family.

The chief prosecutor in the case said he doesn't regret piling on all the financial crime evidence he could in the initial trial because if the jury finds Murdaugh not guilty, they can't try him again,

“You don’t hit a home run if you’re afraid to strike out,” prosecutor Creighton Waters said at a Wednesday news conference.

Wilson is a Republican running for South Carolina's open governor's seat this year. He said politics won't play into any of his decisions on this case and it is the employees of the office, not its elected leader who will the backbone of the prosecution.

“The decision on whether to nor to purse this case is not going to be built on who the next occupant of my office” is, Wilson said. "It’s going to be built on should we seek justice or not.”

Warsh takes over a divided central bank wrestling with the economic fallout from the war started by the U.S. and Israel with Iran on Feb. 28. The conflict has driven up energy prices and made it even more difficult for the Fed to bring inflation down to its 2% target.

But Trump has demanded lower interest rates, not the higher ones that might be needed to keep inflation in check. Warsh, who had positioned himself as an inflation hawk earlier in his career, has more recently aligned himself with Trump's views, arguing that artificial intelligence and other technologies can boost productivity and economic growth without igniting inflation.

Trump had consistently attacked Powell for refusing the deep rate cuts the president believes will boost the economy. And his Justice Department had launched an investigation into the Fed that was widely seen as an attempt to oust Powell. The legal drama delayed Warsh's confirmation. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he would oppose Warsh until the Justice Department dropped the investigation, which it finally did last month.

In an unusual move, Powell said he would remain on the Fed's governing board indefinitely after Warsh came on as chair, citing Trump's "unprecedented'' attacks on the central bank's independence. Although Powell's term as chair is ending, his term as a Fed governor doesn't expire until 2028.

Powell's continued presence could make things awkward for Warsh, especially if he tries to convince other Fed officials to go along with rate cuts.

Trump has said that Warsh comes from “central casting,” revealing a lot about the president's own views of the 56 year-old's looks and conventional pedigree. Warsh has many of the trappings of a traditional pick to lead the world's most important central bank, yet he's doing so at a decidedly unconventional moment for the Fed as Trump has said the new chair needs to cut its benchmark rates to the White House's liking.

Rate cuts of the degree sought by Trump could temporarily boost growth, but they also pose the risk of overheating the economy at a time when inflation is already elevated and affordability is a top concern for much of the American public.

Warsh was previously a runner-up for the Senate-confirmed post of Fed Chair in 2017, when Trump selected Powell to lead the central bank. Trump has since said that he was given bad advice regarding Powell.

Warsh is credentialed with degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University Law School. He is also married to Jane Lauder, the daughter of billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, a major Republican donor.

Senate Democrats have condemned Warsh for not fully divulging the details of his own wealth, which amounts to at least $100 million. His investments include stakes in Polymarket and SpaceX, but he hasn’t revealed the size of those holdings. He promised to sell all such assets within 90 days of being sworn in.

At 35, Warsh became the youngest governor on the Fed's seven member board, serving in that post from 2006 to 2011. He was previously an economic aide in George W. Bush’s Republican administration and was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Warsh worked closely with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2008-09 during the central bank’s efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Bernanke later wrote in his memoirs that Warsh was “one of my closest advisers and confidants” and added that his “political and markets savvy and many contacts on Wall Street would prove invaluable.”

Still, Warsh appeared in key moments to be misguided about the depth of the challenges confronting the U.S. economy as mortgage defaults and layoffs mounted in the Great Recession. He wanted the Fed to keep its benchmark rates higher when the economy was at risk of deflation and possibly collapsing.

Warsh raised concerns in 2008 that further interest rate cuts by the Fed could spur inflation. Yet even after the Fed cut its rate to nearly zero, inflation stayed low.

And he objected in meetings in 2011 to the Fed’s decision to purchase $600 billion of Treasury bonds, an effort to lower long-term interest rates, though he ultimately voted in favor of the decision at Bernanke’s behest.

Warsh also behaved at times like a pre-Trump Republican, calling in a 2010 speech for ending “the creep of trade protectionism” that he declared to be the opposite of “pro-growth policies.” Trump has since largely overhauled GOP dogma by pushing for massive hikes in import taxes, having unilaterally imposed them last year by declaring an economic emergency.

Warsh has been working as a visiting economics fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located at Stanford University. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a partner at the Duquesne Family Office, which manages the wealth of billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller.

In what appeared to be an active campaign for the Fed post, Warsh criticized the Fed in interviews, calling for “regime change” and assailing Powell for engaging on issues like climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Warsh said are outside the Fed’s mandate.

In a interview last year on CNBC, Warsh said Fed policy “has been broken for quite a long time.”

“The central bank that sits there today is radically different than the central bank I joined in 2006,” he added. By allowing inflation to surge in 2021-22, the Fed “brought about the greatest mistake in macroeconomic policy in 45 years, that divided the country.”

It is the third time this season the Argentine superstar has had at least three goal contributions in a match. He is second in the league with 12 goals.

Mateo Silvetti evened it at 3-3 in the 79th minute after coming on as a substitute.

Kevin Denkey, Pavel Bucha and Evander scored for Cincinnati. It is the first time in 64 matches since Pat Noonan became coach in 2023 it lost when it had the lead after 75 minutes.

Messi gave Miami a 1-0 lead at the 24-minute mark after he deflected a shot that went off Cincinnati's Matt Miazga near the Cincinnati goal. Denkey evened it on a penalty kick in the 41st minute.

After Bucha put Cincinnati on top in the 49th minute, Messi made it 2-2 six minutes later on a cutback after getting the pass from Luis Suarez.

Evander's in the 64th minute with a right footer from the center just outside the box to give Cincinnati a 3-2 lead. Miami though would rally and score the next three goals.

After Silvetti's goal, Miami took the lead off a set piece when Cincinnati's Andrei Chirila collided with goalkeeper Roman Celentano, allowing Berterame to put it into the open net.

Messi appeared to have a hat trick in the 89th minute when his shot went off the post and deflected off Celentano, but it was corrected to an own goal shortly after the match. It would have been Messi's 61st hat trick in all competitions.

Messi has 61 goals and 42 assists in 65 regular-season matches.

Mami had a 16-10 edge in shots.

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AP MLS: https://apnews.com/hub/major-league-soccer

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity because the team had not announced the deal, said the contract includes $32 million guaranteed.

The extension was first reported by NFL insider Jordan Schultz.

Achane’s average annual value of $16 million is third among running backs behind Saquon Barkley ($20.6 million) and Christian McCaffrey ($19 million).

Achane rushed for a career-high 1,350 yards on 238 carries in 2025 and led the NFL with 5.7 yards per carry, earning his first Pro Bowl selection. He had eight rushing touchdowns and four receiving scores and ranked fourth among running backs with 488 yards receiving.

His 3,057 career rushing yards are the most by a Dolphins player in his first three NFL seasons, and his 1,277 career receiving yards rank second among Miami running backs in their first three seasons since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger.

“He’s dynamic,” new Dolphins coach Jeff Hafley said in March. “I mean there’s plays that you’re not even blocked right for and he gets 6 or 7 yards. His vision, his acceleration, the way he can catch the ball out of the backfield, he’s so hard to defend.”

Despite embarking on a rebuild that has included releasing or trading many of the Dolphins' established players — including quarterback Tua Tagovailoa and receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle — Miami general manager Jon-Eric Sullivan made it clear that Achane was not available.

A third-round pick out of Texas A&M, Achane is one of only seven running backs since 1970 with 20-plus rushing touchdowns and 10 receiving touchdowns in his first three seasons.

“He’s obviously very important to what we’re doing,” Sullivan said last month amid contract talks with Achane, “and it’s all part of it. It’s part of professional sports. We’ll get where we need to be one way or the other.”

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AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi in Tampa contributed to this report.

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

McCarthy charged in on a sinking line drive from Bryan Reynolds, catching the ball on a full sprint for the second out of the first inning.

Pittsburgh's Oneil Cruz — who started on second base — was near third when McCarthy made the catch, so the 28-year-old continued to jog toward the infield, stepping on second for the final out.

It was the first unassisted double play by a left fielder since Jonny Gomes on July 31, 2013, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

The Rockies won the game 10-4.

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

The Omaha-area district, where Republican U.S. Rep. Don Bacon is retiring, is one of Democrats' biggest targets this midterm season. It’s also a national focus every four years in presidential contests because Nebraska is one of just two states that splits its electoral votes. The 2nd District has gone to Democratic presidential candidates three out of five times since 2008 — a “blue dot” in an otherwise sea of red.

Powell, a political activist, defeated state Sen. John Cavanaugh and several other candidates in the Democratic primary. She and Cavanaugh were in a tight race that could not be called Tuesday.

Powell will face Brinker Harding, an Omaha City Council member endorsed by President Donald Trump. He ran unopposed in Tuesday’s GOP primary.

“This country and Nebraska are worth fighting for — and I’m ready to spend the next six months working for every vote and sharing my vision for Nebraska so we can finally have a representative in Congress who will serve us,” Powell said in a statement. “It’s time to be brave.”

Powell led Cavanaugh by 2.1 percentage points, or 1,080 votes, out of more than 51,000 votes counted.

AP called the race after Douglas County election officials said there were only 5,125 outstanding mail-in ballots in the Democratic primary, and a total of 830 provisional ballots from all political parties. Even if all those ballots are counted in the Democratic primary, Cavanaugh would have to win them by about 18 percentage points over Powell to close the gap, a margin he didn’t come close to achieving in any of the five vote updates provided by Douglas County so far. Cavanaugh trailed in all three counties in the district, though Douglas accounted for about 93% of the votes.

The matchup between Powell and Harding is expected to be among this fall’s most competitive House races, as Democrats try to win control of the chamber for the second half of Trump's term.

The 2nd District is one of just three districts in the country that supported Democrat Kamala Harris for president in 2024 while also electing a Republican representative. Trump won the district in 2016, and the retiring Bacon, who has clashed with Trump, has held the House seat for five terms.

The Nebraska GOP said in a statement Wednesday that Republicans are ready to fight back against a "radical left” that has poured money into the state.

“The left wants Nebraska, and we are going to make sure they don't get it,” said NEGOP Chairman Mary Jane Truemper.

Powell, who is Latina, co-founded Women Who Run Nebraska, a political action committee that supports progressive female candidates, and she has a decade of Democratic political activism. She had the backing of EMILY's List and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus' campaign operation.

Powell has never held office but said her deep connections have helped her with independents and third-party voters, who make up nearly 30% of the district’s electorate.

Some Democratic critics argued that a Cavanaugh primary victory would have jeopardized the district’s “blue dot” status because he’d be leaving his valuable state legislative seat, making it easier for Republicans in the Nebraska Legislature to change the law that allows the state to split its electoral votes.

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Peoples reported from New York.

Darderi wasted two match points in the second set but the Italian went on to prevail 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-0.

The match was delayed for nearly 20 minutes toward the end of the first set as smoke wafted in from fireworks that had been set off in the soccer stadium next door Wednesday after Inter Milan won the Italian Cup final.

Darderi was complaining that he couldn’t see anything and the smoke was also affecting the cameras for the electronic line-calling system, which had to be reset.

When play resumed, Darderi held serve to take the set to a tiebreaker, where he found himself 5-2 down before rallying.

The 24-year-old Darderi, who on at least a couple of occasions was drinking coffee during changeovers, broke immediately in the second set. Jodar managed to break back and then fend off two match points before leveling the match.

Darderi dominated the decider, and sealed the result when Jodar hit a forehand into the net.

“It was really a battle,” Darderi said. "After the second set, I never thought I’d win, but I just tried to take it game by game, ball by ball. I pushed a little bit more in the third set, and physically I won it there.

“We played really late, it was difficult at a certain point, but I’m happy. The crowd helped me a lot today. It’s really a dream to be in the semifinal.”

The 19-year-old Jodar was only the second teenager after Rafael Nadal (in 2005) to reach the Madrid and Rome quarterfinals in the same season.

Lengthy delay

Darderi reached his first Masters 1000 semifinal and will play Casper Ruud, who earlier overcame 13th-ranked Karen Khachanov 6-1, 1-6, 6-2.

The match was suspended for more than two hours at the start of the second set because of rain, and Khachanov seemed to have dealt better with the enforced break.

The 23rd-ranked Ruud broke Khachanov’s serve twice at the start of the third set and then again to take the match on the second of three match points.

Swiatek back to her best

In the women's tournament, three-time champion Iga Swiatek beat Jessica Pegula 6-1, 6-2 Wednesday to advance to the Italian Open semifinals.

The fourth-ranked Swiatek’s impressive form bodes well for the upcoming French Open, which she has won four times.

“I’m happy that I can spend some time on the court and play really solid matches against the best girls,” Swiatek said. “For sure it’s giving me confidence because you can practice as much as possible, but if you don’t test it out on the court, play matches and face pressure or something, you’re going to still feel the little bit rusty when it comes.

“Now I’m happy I played couple matches. I’ll play hopefully two more here.”

Swiatek next faces another former Rome champion in Elina Svitolina, who rallied to beat second-seeded Elena Rybakina 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.

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

The attack began in midmorning and lasted for hours in the capital of Kyiv, the western city of Lviv near Poland, and the port of Odesa on the Black Sea, among other population centers, Zelanskyy said on the Telegram messaging app.

“Our soldiers are defending Ukraine, but Russia’s obvious goal is to overload air defenses,” Zelenskyy said, as the bombardment stretched into the late afternoon. He cautioned that a cruise and ballistic missile attack could follow the drone barrage.

It was “one of the longest, massive Russian attacks against Ukraine,” he said on social media.

It also rattled neighbors. Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar said his new government has summoned the Russian ambassador over a drone attack near Hungary’s border, in a significant shift from his predecessor Viktor Orbán's friendly relations with Moscow.

“The Hungarian government strongly condemns the Russian attack on Transcarpathia,” Magyar told journalists, adding that Foreign Minister Anita Orbán will speak with the ambassador Thursday morning.

The foreign minister will ask “when Russia and Vladimir Putin plan to finally end this bloody war,” Magyar added.

“Thank you for your compassion and strong position!” Zelenskyy said on X after Magyar’s comments.

Three people are killed in a region near Kyiv

Drone debris fell in an open area in Kyiv’s Obolonskyi district with no casualties, city officials said, as air defense systems engaged Russian drones over the capital. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said emergency services responded to the scene. Explosions were heard across the city earlier Wednesday.

Three people were killed in a drone attack in the Rivne region west of Kyiv, according to Oleksandr Koval, head of the regional military administration.

Moscow’s attacks are unrelenting, even as Ukraine is emboldened by its recent military accomplishments and as U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin said — without providing evidence — that the war could be approaching an end.

On Tuesday, Zelenskyy said, 14 Ukrainian regions came under attack, followed by overnight strikes on Ukraine’s residential, energy and railway infrastructure.

“It is important to support Ukraine and not remain silent about Russia’s war. Every time the war disappears from the top of the news, it encourages Russia to become even more savage,” Zelenskyy said, apparently referring to the world's attention being focused on the Iran war.

Trump and Putin talk of a possible end to the war

Trump said Tuesday said he believes Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach a deal to end fighting.

“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” Trump said as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.”

Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion of Ukraine is possibly “coming to an end.”

Neither leader elaborated on what persuaded them about the possibility of peace in Europe’s longest conflict since World War II. U.S.-led diplomatic efforts over the past year to end the war have fizzled after making no progress on key issues, such as whether Russia gets to keep Ukrainian land it has seized and what can be done to deter Moscow from invading again.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov indicated Wednesday that Moscow’s fundamental terms are unchanged, with Putin insisting that Ukraine pull its troops from the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — that Russia illegally annexed in September 2022 but hasn't fully captured.

“At that point, a ceasefire will be established, and the parties can calmly engage in negotiations, which, incidentally, will inevitably be very complex and involve a lot of important details,” Peskov said.

Zelenskyy vowed to keep pressure on Moscow to make concessions in talks.

“We’re not giving up on diplomatic efforts, and we hope that pressure on Russia, together with negotiations in different formats, will help bring peace,” he said in a speech Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania, to representatives of countries on NATO's eastern flank.

“Sanctions are working, our long-range (drone and missile) capabilities are working, and every form of pressure is working,” he said.

Meanwhile, European governments are assessing the merits of opening talks with Putin. Europe has for years tried to isolate the Russian leader and punished his country with international sanctions.

Fighting appears to shift in Ukraine's favor

The correlation of forces in the war has shifted in recent months. Ukraine has gone from pleading for international help with its defense to offering foreign countries its expertise on how to counter attacks, thanks to its domestically developed drone technology.

Ukraine’s long-range drone and missile attacks have disrupted energy facilities and manufacturing deep inside Russia, with three regions reporting strikes Wednesday. The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces intercepted and destroyed 286 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions, the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula, the Azov Sea and the Black Sea.

On the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line, the advance of Russia’s bigger and better-equipped army has been slowing every month since October, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

Russia’s spring offensive has floundered, with Russian forces recording a net loss of territory last month for the first time since 2024, the Washington-based think tank said.

“Not only are Ukrainian defensive lines holding, but Ukrainian forces have managed to contest the tactical initiative in several areas of the front line even as Russia continues to lose disproportionate amounts of manpower to achieve minimal gains,” the ISW said Tuesday.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal. Sam McNeil in Brussels and Bela Szandelzsky in Budapest, Hungary, contributed,

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

Dr. Stephen Kornfeld of Bend, Oregon, was among more than 120 passengers and crew evacuated from the ship and flown to different countries to enter quarantine. Kornfeld was brought to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha with 15 other Americans, but he was the only one taken to an isolated biocontainment unit after a nasal swab he took on the ship produced inconclusive results about whether he had the virus.

On Wednesday, the hospital announced that Kornfeld will now join the 15 other Americans who were taken for monitoring at the National Quarantine Unit, instead of the biocontainment unit, according to hospital spokesperson Kayla Thomas.

Kornfeld appeared on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on a video call from his hospital room Tuesday, saying, “I feel wonderful, 100%."

He said there was a period on the ship when he came down with flu-like symptoms including night sweats, chills and fatigue but he said he has no symptoms now.

The World Health Organization said Wednesday that a total of 11 hantavirus cases linked to the cruise have been reported worldwide, including three deaths. Eight cases have been confirmed by laboratory tests.

Kornfeld said a nasal swab he took on the ship was later tested twice in the Netherlands. One result came back negative, the other positive. Earlier this week, he was awaiting results from a new test taken when he returned to the U.S.

“The initial test that we received was from abroad and it was inconclusive in its results,” Dr. David Fitter of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told reporters Wednesday.

In addition to the passengers taken to Nebraska, two other Americans are being monitored at the serious communicable disease unit at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

Health authorities say it is the first hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship. While there is no cure or vaccine for hantavirus, the WHO says early detection and treatment improves survival rates.

Public health officials say the risk to the general public from the cruise ship outbreak is low. Hantavirus usually spreads from rodent droppings and is not easily transmitted between people, though the Andes virus detected on the Hondius may be able to spread between people in rare cases.

The WHO is recommending that passengers and crew from the cruise ship stay in quarantine, either at home or other facilities, for 42 days.

Kornfeld described his quarters at the biocontainment unit in Nebraska as a hospital room with a comfortable bed.

“It’s a little weird being in here by myself,” he said before he was cleared to leave. “But the nurses come in, the doctors come in. I’m on WhatsApp all the time. It’s really amazing how quickly time flies.”

On a day when the British government's legislative plans were presented by no less than King Charles III himself, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was fighting to remain in power following rising discontent within his Labour Party.

The traditional pomp and pageantry associated with the state opening of Parliament was overshadowed by the political intrigue, specifically the mounting speculation that Health Secretary Wes Streeting was planning to quit Starmer's government and launch a leadership bid as soon as Thursday.

The embattled prime minister has been urged to set a timetable for his departure by more than a fifth of the Labour Party’s lawmakers in the House of Commons. Some junior ministers have quit the government in protest, but no one has yet challenged Starmer directly.

“It is absolutely preposterous that the government is here laying out a program as its ministers are resigning and a large proportion of the party is saying that the prime minister needs to go," Kemi Badenoch, leader of the main opposition Conservative Party, told lawmakers as they began a debate over the government's agenda.

On the ropes

Starmer's premiership has been imperiled by the huge losses Labour suffered in local and regional elections last week. If those results were repeated in a national election that has to be held by 2029, the party would be overwhelmingly ejected from power.

Labour was squeezed from the right and the left, losing votes to both anti-immigrant Reform UK and the Green Party, as well as nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales.

Labour secured a landslide election victory in 2024, driving the Conservatives from power after 14 years, but since then the party’s popularity has plunged and Starmer is getting much of the blame. The reasons include a series of policy missteps, a struggling British economy, a perceived lack of vision on the prime minister’s part and questions over his judgment. Starmer’s choice of Peter Mandelson as U.K. ambassador to Washington despite ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has continued to haunt him.

Streeting is expected to launch a leadership bid as early as Thursday, according to some media reports. Streeting, who has long been known to harbor ambitions to become prime minister, met with Starmer earlier Wednesday for less than 20 minutes. Neither have discussed what was said, but Starmer’s office insisted that the health secretary retains the prime minister’s full support.

Starmer, who says he has no intention to stand down, has his supporters within the party. More than 100 lawmakers have signed a letter saying it's “no time” for a leadership contest.

“We should let him get on with doing his job, because he is a serious politician and these are very, very serious times,” Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn told Sky News.

King offers Starmer some respite

In a speech to lawmakers outlining the government's legislative program for the coming year or so that was written by the government itself, the king said that the U.K.’s economic, energy and national security would be tested as it deals with the fallout from the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Planned measures include controlling the cost of living, strengthening ties with the European Union and making it easier to build new energy infrastructure.

And pledging action on antisemitism following a run of attacks on the Jewish community in recent months, Charles said that the government would “defend the British values” of decency and tolerance.

The monarch, who made the short journey from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament in a horse-drawn carriage, also said the government will “defend the British values of decency, tolerance and respect for difference under our common flag,” and said that urgent action would be taken to tackle antisemitism.

The real question is whether Starmer will be around to implement the measures in the speech and, even if he remains in office, whether he will have the authority to push his proposals through.

In his speech advocating his policy agenda, Starmer gave no indication that he wouldn't be around to push the planned bills through.

“This King’s Speech sets a different course, a more hopeful course, a course that sees the conflict in Iran, a war on two fronts, not as something to wring our hands about, but as an opportunity we must take to shape our country’s future, to end the status quo that has failed working people, to build a stronger, fairer Britain,” he said.

Historic power collides with modern reality

The King’s Speech merges the historic power and grandeur of Britain with the reality of the modern United Kingdom, a midsized country with an underfunded military, rising debt and waning international influence.

The speech is the focal point of a day of ceremony and tradition that has been followed since 1852, with elements of the program dating to the 16th century. The state opening of Parliament uses carefully choreographed pageantry to showcase Britain’s evolution from an absolute monarchy to a parliamentary democracy where real power is vested in the elected House of Commons.

The royal paraphernalia

During his speech, which he delivered seated next to Queen Camilla, the king donned the Imperial State Crown and robe of state.

Once they were seated, a Lords official called Black Rod, named for the ebony rod he or she carries, went to the House of Commons to summon the chamber’s members. The doors to the Commons chamber were slammed in Black Rod’s face to symbolize the chamber’s independence from the monarchy, and they aren’t opened until Black Rod strikes the doors three times.

Once members of the Commons crowded into the Lords’ chamber, the king delivered the speech.

After the speech was read, the royal couple left and the two houses of Parliament begin several days of debate on its contents.

The push by Senate Democrats on Wednesday was a maneuver to force vulnerable GOP senators to take politically difficult votes in an election year as Democrats try to hammer Republicans on the economy. The Senate rejected three Democratic resolutions, largely along party lines.

The votes were tied to rule or regulatory changes made by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau since the Trump administration took over the bureau in February 2025. The bureau has rescinded 67 policies under its acting director, Russell Vought, who is also President Donald Trump’s budget director. Vought has publicly said that his goal is to effectively dismantle the agency.

“The Trump Administration is hell-bent on destroying the agency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee and the top defender of the bureau in Congress.

Warren added that the changes at the bureau signal that “the Trump Administration has abandoned consumers and is making life more expensive for them.”

The Democrats offered more than a dozen other resolutions by voice vote to roll back the administration's CFPB policies, but Republicans blocked each one.

The votes could be used as ammunition against vulnerable GOP senators up for reelection this year, including Susan Collins of Maine, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and John Cornyn of Texas. Collins voted with Democrats on two of the three resolutions.

One vote Democrats sought was for the CFPB’s policy change on overdraft fees. The Biden Administration issued guidance in 2024 requiring banks to obtain their customers’ affirmative consent before charging an overdraft fee. That guidance was repealed under President Trump, which Democrats argue will lead to more Americans paying overdraft fees. The Senate voted down the resolution 47-53.

“When they got rid of this rule, it showed that (President Trump) didn’t care about Americans living paycheck to paycheck,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland.

Congress created the CFPB in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession, designed to operate as an independent financial regulator with broad enforcement authority over consumer financial products and services. The bureau estimated in 2024 that it had returned $17.5 billion to American consumers and had imposed $4 billion in fines and penalties against financial companies.

But since February 2025, the CFPB has largely been inoperable. The bulk of the bureau’s staff remains under orders not to work, and much of the CFPB’s business these days is to unwind previous work the bureau did under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, and in Trump’s first term. The bureau’s operating budget is expected to shrink as well after Trump’s big tax and spending cuts law reduced the amount of money the bureau receives from the Federal Reserve.

“Russell Vought is unilaterally defacing this agency and taking it apart,” said Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island.

Republicans have defended President Trump's changes at the bureau. Republicans largely see the CFPB as an agency with too much centralized power and unaccountable to Congress, and they have repeatedly attempted to diminish it since its creation.

“I can’t think of a worse way to govern than the Biden administration’s approach to the CFPB and the playbook that they used time and time again, putting onerous pressure on small businesses,” said Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.

Democrats used the Congressional Review Act, a law allows Congress an opportunity to overturn rules issued by federal agencies once those rules are finalized. The 1996 law was used sparingly in its first two decades, but its use increased during Trump’s first term, when a Republican-controlled Congress overturned more than a dozen rules finalized during President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration. Democrats, in turn, used the law in 2021 to overturn several Trump-era policies.

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Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report from Washington.

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An earlier version of this article included a reference to a March poll conducted by the Lake Research Partners and Chesapeake Beach Consulting. That reference has been removed.

The department imposed the bond requirement last year for countries that it said had high rates of people overstaying their visas and other security issues as part of the Republican administration’s broader crackdown on immigration.

Travelers to the United States from 50 countries are required to pay the new bond, and five of those countries have qualified for the World Cup — Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia.

Citizens from those five countries who have purchased tickets from FIFA are now exempt from the visa bond requirement. World Cup team players, coaches and some staff already had been exempt from the bond requirement as part of the administration’s orders to prioritize the processing of visas for the tournament.

“The United States is excited to organize the biggest and best FIFA World Cup in history," Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said. “We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets" and opted in to the FIFA Pass system that allows expedited visa appointments as of April 15.

In its own statement, FIFA said the announcement shows “our ongoing collaboration with the U.S. government and the White House task force for the FIFA World Cup to deliver a successful, record-breaking and unforgettable global event” and thanked the administration for the partnership.

The waiver is a rare loosening of immigration requirements under the administration and will ease travel burdens for at least some visitors to the U.S. for the World Cup, which begins June 11 and is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The administration has taken dramatic steps to restrict immigration in ways critics say are incongruous with the unifying message a global sporting event such as the World Cup is supposed to project.

For instance, the administration has barred travelers from Iran and Haiti, though World Cup players, coaches and other support personnel are exempt. Travelers from the Ivory Coast and Senegal face partial restrictions under an expanded version of that travel ban, even without the visa bond exemption.

Foreign travelers also had faced potential new requirements to submit their social media histories, although that policy from U.S. Customs and Border Protection had not gone into effect. Also, the administration had deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at airports recently when Transportation Security Administration personnel were not being paid during a partial federal shutdown.

Those measures prompted Amnesty International and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups to issue a “World Cup travel advisory" that warns travelers about the climate in the U.S.

In a report this month, the main advocacy group for U.S. hotels blamed visa barriers and other geopolitical issues for “significantly suppressing international demand,” leading to hotel bookings for the soccer tournament that are far below what had initially been anticipated.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association said travelers are concerned about potentially lengthy visa wait times and increased fees, along with uncertainty about how they're being processed to enter the U.S.

The bond requirements are part of the administration’s larger effort to clamp down on migrants who travel to the U.S. on temporary visas but then overstay them. Visa applicants from the affected countries are required to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 in bonds, which will be refunded if the traveler complies with the terms of the visa or if the visa application is denied.

As of early April, the number of World Cup fans affected by the bond requirement was believed to be relatively small, perhaps only about 250 people, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But they said that number was changing rapidly as more people buy tickets and some with tickets opt against traveling.

FIFA had requested the waiver, which had to be approved by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, and was the topic of discussion at multiple meetings at the White House and elsewhere in Washington for several months, the officials said.

According to NFL Insider, Jordan Schultz, the Lions will host the Chicago Bears on Thanksgiving Day during Week 12 of the NFL regular season.

Although the time of the game is not yet official, it will most likely be played in the early afternoon time window of Thursday, November 26th. Last Thanksgiving the Lions faced off with the Green Bay Packers at 1 PM ET after multiple years in a row of having played the annual holiday classic at an earlier and more unusual start time of 12:30 PM ET.

Regardless, it will be one of two meetings Detroit has with their divisional rival. The Bears are led by head coach, and former Lions offensive coordinator, Ben Johnson, who was unsuccessful at defeating his old team in the two games they played in 2025.

Dan Campbell has had his way with Chicago since becoming the leader of ‘One Pride,’ winning seven of ten matchups with the Bears in his five seasons at the helm, including the last four-in-a-row.

Air miles each team will travel this season, via @billsperos: pic.twitter.com/oxd4dja4tD

— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) May 13, 2026

This will be the third time in the last six seasons the Lions and Bears square off on the fall holiday, and the fourth consecutive season Detroit will play a squad from the NFC North.

It was also announced on Thursday that the Lions Week 10 opponent will be the defending AFC Champion, New England Patriots. The game will be played in Munich, Germany as part of the NFL’s international series on November 15th at 9:30 AM ET. For the first time in over ten years the Lions will play outside of the United States, the last time being in 2015 when they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in London, England.

The 81-year-old opened his conservative talk show, “The Rudy Giuliani Show,” with assurances to his audience that he was on the mend — though not yet fully recovered. In early May, Giuliani was in critical condition and placed on a ventilator at a hospital in Palm Beach, Florida.

Reports of his illness were met with an outpouring of support and well-wishes from a range of high profile politicians across the political spectrum.

“I have to thank everyone who sent me prayers and good will," he said. He specifically mentioned his gratitude to his family, the medical staff that tended to him and U.S. President Donald Trump, who Giuliani said called him after he became sick.

“It feels good to be back,” Giuliani said before cutting to his first break.

Giuliani was previously hospitalized last September after suffering a fractured vertebra and other injuries in a car crash in New Hampshire.

After Giuliani's eight-year tenure as mayor, which was punctuated by the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001, the longtime Republican politician ran unsuccessfully for president in 2008 and eventually became a personal attorney and adviser to Trump.

Giuliani was a vocal proponent of the president’s allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, which was won by Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and his backers lost dozens of lawsuits claiming fraud, and numerous recounts, reviews and audits of the election results turned up no signs of significant wrongdoing or error.

Two former Georgia election workers later won a $148 million defamation judgment against Giuliani. As they sought to collect the judgment, the former federal prosecutor was found in contempt of court and faced a trial this winter over the ownership of some of his assets.

Giuliani ultimately struck a deal that let him keep his homes and various belongings, including prized World Series rings, in exchange for unspecified compensation and a promise to stop speaking ill of the ex-election workers.

Last year, Trump said he was awarding Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Robinson, the former Michigan Wolverines standout, was officially ruled out on Wednesday (May 13) after being listed with a back injury on ESPN.

In his absence, the Pistons will start guard Daniss Jenkins, the team confirmed through its public relations department.

Starting lineups for tonight’s Game 5 between the @DetroitPistons and @cavs inside @LCArena_Detroit: pic.twitter.com/TlmCTg9a4g

— Pistons PR (@Pistons_PR) May 13, 2026

Robinson has been a key contributor for Detroit this postseason, averaging 13.8 points, 1.8 rebounds, and 2.5 assists while also adding 2.5 steals per game. He has shot 57.7% from 3-point range in 32.5 minutes per contest, providing significant perimeter spacing and defensive activity.

The Pistons enter Game 5 looking to bounce back after back-to-back losses in the series as they try to regain momentum on their home floor.

Las Vegas-based Allegiant said the transaction closed after receiving required regulatory and shareholder approvals. When the deal was first announced in January, Allegiant said it was valued at about $1.5 billion, including debt.

“Today marks a defining moment in Allegiant’s history as we officially join forces with Sun Country,” Allegiant CEO Gregory Anderson said in a statement, adding that the new combined airline is positioned to offer broader access to affordable travel.

The deal comes as both airlines and travelers are grappling with a sharp run-up in jet fuel costs driven by the war in the Middle East, a jump that is already showing up in higher fares and fees across the industry. That increase is hitting low-cost airlines especially hard, since they have less room to absorb rising costs.

The pressure was especially acute for Spirit Airlines. The ultra low-cost carrier shut down after 34 years May 2, its collapse accelerated by the sharp rise in fuel costs following years of financial strain, including heavy debt, repeated restructuring efforts and ongoing cash-flow problems.

Against that backdrop, Allegiant and Sun Country say their tie-up gives them more ways to generate revenue. Along with passenger flights, Sun Country brings into the fold cargo flying for Amazon, as well as charter trips for sports teams, casinos and the U.S. Department of Defense,.

Allegiant says the expanded network is also expected to give travelers more options, especially in smaller and mid-sized markets, with about 195 aircraft serving nearly 175 cities and more than 650 routes.

For now, travelers shouldn’t expect any changes. Both airlines will continue to operate separately, and customers can keep booking, checking in and managing trips just as they do today.

Allegiant said it will take time to bring the two airlines together. Over the long term, the combined company is expected to operate under the Allegiant name and remain headquartered in Las Vegas, while adding new options and connections across its broader network.

Minneapolis–St. Paul, where Sun Country is based, will remain an important hub for the airline.

After reviewing film from Games 3 and 4, Thompson said the Pistons identified lapses in concentration as a major factor in the skid.

“Just not being focused, not playing playoff-level basketball,” Thompson said. “I feel like today we’re going to bring that back.”

Home-court momentum

The Pistons had struggled to establish momentum at home earlier in the postseason before recently putting together a five-game winning streak inside Little Caesars Arena.

Thompson said the breakthrough started with a desire to reward Detroit fans.

“Just getting a win for our fans,” Thompson said. “We wanted to do that to start, but then we got a roll. So hopefully we continue tonight.”

Back to basics

Thompson also addressed his individual performance after a difficult outing in Game 4, saying his focus is not on proving himself but on helping the team.

“I’m excited to get back out there,” Thompson said. “Not necessarily to remind anyone, but just do what I do on a daily basis. That’s what I’m worried about. Just help my team.”

The third-year forward out of Overtime Elite said playoff basketball requires a heightened level of discipline because every possession carries more weight.

“We’re definitely learning how to understand playoff basketball still,” Thompson said. “Knowing each possession means so much. We can’t turn the ball over as much, and we can’t have defensive slippage as much.”

Defending Mitchell, ignoring the whistle

Asked about defending Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell, Thompson said Detroit must play more aggressively and limit his offensive opportunities.

“Be more aggressive, try not to let him get the ball as much,” Thompson said.

Thompson also downplayed concerns about officiating, saying the Pistons cannot allow referees to become a distraction.

“Not worrying about the whistle in general, just playing our brand of basketball,” Thompson said. “The refs can’t lose us a game at the end of the day. We can’t focus on the refs.”

Twin support

Off the court, Thompson said he has appreciated support from his twin brother, Amen Thompson, during Detroit’s playoff run.

“It’s been super cool,” Ausar said. “He supports me, gives me advice throughout things.”

Thompson added that his brother frequently encourages him to stay aggressive and avoid foul trouble.

“He really gets on me about fouling,” Ausar said. “That’s the most. So I’ve got to be better at that.”

Despite frustrations from recent performances, Ausar said he quickly moves on and focuses on improvement.

“I was over that game by that day,” Ausar said. “I watched the game back to learn what I could do better. It wasn’t emotional. It was, ‘How can I get better?’”

Then, search and rescue crews from the U.S. military appeared overhead, members of those crews recounted during a news conference Wednesday.

“You could tell just by looking at them that they were in distress — physically, mentally and emotionally,” said Air Force Capt. Rory Whipple, a combat rescue specialist who jumped into the water and swam to the survivors. “You have to imagine the emotional injuries that they sustained out there, not knowing if someone was going to rescue them.”

The plane, a Beechcraft 300 King Air turboprop, was on its way from Marsh Harbour, on the Bahamian island of Great Abaco, to Grand Bahama International Airport in Freeport when it suffered engine failure Tuesday, authorities said. The pilot ditched the plane in the water about 50 miles (80 km) off Vero Beach, Florida, and managed to get its 10 passengers, three with minor injuries, onto a yellow life raft.

Air Force Reserve Maj. Elizabeth Piowaty credited those efforts, saying the pilot would have been concerned about ocean swells and slowing the plane as much as safely possible before impact.

“I've not known anyone to survive a ditching in the ocean,” said Piowaty, who commanded a HC-130J Combat King II plane that assisted with the rescue. “From what I've seen, for all those people to survive is pretty miraculous.”

The downed plane's emergency beacon alerted the U.S. Coast Guard to its location. At the time, the Air Force Reserve's 920th Rescue Wing had a crew already airborne conducting a training mission in a HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopter. The crew was redirected to help with the search.

Piowaty said that after locating the survivors, her aircraft passed overhead and dropped a survival kit that included two additional rafts, food and water. The survivors were then able to spread out, and the crew of the HH-60W, including Whipple, was able to hoist them to safety amid 3- to 5-foot (1- to 1.5-m) swells, raising the last survivor just a few minutes before the helicopter would have been forced to refuel.

There was no sign of the downed aircraft, Piowaty said.

All 11 survivors were flown to awaiting emergency medical services at Melbourne Orlando International Airport, authorities said. All were reported to be in stable condition.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said it would investigate the crash.

Lutnick agreed to sit for an interview with the House Oversight Committee last week after the release of case files on Epstein contradicted his claim on a podcast last year that he had been determined to “never be in a room again” with Epstein after a 2005 tour of Epstein’s home that disturbed Lutnick and his wife.

The House Oversight Committee released the transcript of the interview Wednesday, as well as a transcript of an interview with Tedd Waitt, a former boyfriend of Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell.

Lutnick, who for years was neighbors with Epstein in New York City, had claimed in that podcast interview that Epstein engaged in blackmail. But under scrutiny from lawmakers, Lutnick said he was only “speculating.”

“I had no personal information. I was just speculating for a podcast,” Lutnick told lawmakers, adding that his two other personal interactions with Epstein years later were “meaningless and inconsequential.”

Lutnick is the highest-ranked current administration official, besides President Donald Trump, to be named in the Epstein case files. The Republican president has consistently denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes and has said he ended their relationship years ago.

How Lutnick described interactions with Epstein

Lutnick repeatedly downplayed his previous interactions with Epstein. He said that after Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, showed a massage table and made a sexual innuendo during a tour of his townhouse in 2005, Lutnick and his wife decided he would “just avoid him.”

Yet Lutnick, who was previously the head of brokerage and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald, had a pair of interactions and exchanged several emails with Epstein over the years.

They also both invested in the same business venture in 2013, according to the Epstein case files. Lutnick told lawmakers that he was unaware that Epstein was also an investor until the case files were released months ago.

The commerce secretary also described his two other meetings with Epstein. During a family vacation in the Caribbean, Epstein's staff invited them to have lunch on his private island. Describing the 2012 visit, he told the committee: “We sat outside, had lunch. It was boring. We left.”

Lutnick also said he made a brief visit to Epstein's home in 2011 to discuss scaffolding that would be installed at Epstein's townhouse. Lutnick called that meeting “meaningless and inconsequential.”

Democrats pressed Lutnick to answer for his decision to meet up with Epstein after initially determining that he would avoid him. Lutnick responded that he couldn't remember why his family made the visit to Epstein's island.

As they emerged from the interview last week, Democrats criticized Lutnick as evasive and dishonest. Several called on him to resign.

“If a Cabinet Secretary lies to the American public, they should no longer serve in that position. Mr. Lutnick should resign or be fired,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on social media shortly after Lutnick's interview.

The White House has stood behind Lutnick, who for years has been a part of Trump's circle.

Maxwell's former boyfriend also interviewed

Lawmakers also last month interviewed Waitt, the cofounder of Gateway computers who dated Maxwell in the early 2000s. Maxwell, who is serving a lengthy prison sentence for helping Epstein traffic girls, had also dated Epstein and was his longtime confidant.

Waitt told lawmakers that he was unaware at the time that either Epstein or Maxwell was committing sexual abuse. He also described meeting Epstein only a handful of times.

“Each of those were very brief and unintentional,” he said, adding that he had never visited Epstein's home, flown on his planes or visited his private island.

Waitt said he found Epstein “somewhat arrogant” and added that he was “off-putting.”

Update: Police find human remains inside home during missing persons search on Detroit’s east side

“God answered my prayers today,” Brewer’s cousin, Alexis Thompkins, told Local 4. “I needed this.”

More than 100 law enforcement officials from 13 agencies, including the FBI, Detroit police, and Michigan State Police, began searching vacant homes and lots near Pingree Park as part of Operation United Block, a joint initiative involving local, state, and federal law enforcement.

Local 4 cameras captured crews beginning around 9 a.m. Tuesday (May 12) near Forest Avenue and Iroquois Street.

Fire trucks, emergency vehicles, tracking dogs, and a backhoe were stationed near a command center at the site.

“The search area is extending eight blocks by four blocks, so it’s a vast area,” Detroit police Commander Rebecca McKay said.

Detroit police said they will be searching inside and around 25 vacant homes and surrounding vacant lots for signs connected to Brewer and other missing persons cases.

Police said the operation is not focused solely on one missing person, but part of a broader effort tied to unresolved disappearances across the city.

Brewer’s family said she has been missing for just over three years, and told Local 4 they wished the effort to find her back in April of 2023 was greater.

“When I first brought the case up, it’s like nobody wanted to help,” Thompkins said. “I’ve been wanting this. I’ve been advocating for her. I’ve been trying so hard. And to finally get this far, it made me so happy.”

Detroit police said Brewer was last seen visiting a friend’s house on Sheridan Street near Forest Avenue, about a half-mile from Tuesday’s search area.

Her family said the people she was last seen with have not been helpful in the investigation.

“After that, she just disappeared,” Thompkins said. “She vanished. No phone records. Everything just stopped from that day. So you know something happened. She doesn’t just disappear. The phone got cut off. Everything just stopped. And we got nowhere. This is the first time we actually got somewhere.”

“Somebody knows something,” Thompkins added. “They know something. I know they do.”

Detroit police said investigators plan to remain near Pingree Park for at least two days and will continue searching as long as necessary.

“This is just a way for us to try and bring those loved ones back to their families. If it goes where we don’t find anybody in this particular instance, then we tried,” MSP First Lieutenant Mike Shaw said.

Operation United Block has included previous searches, and officials said additional digs are expected into October.

Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Shanika Brewer should contact the Detroit Police Department or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-Speak Up.

All tips to Crime Stoppers are anonymous.

The incident occurred on Wednesday (May 13) while following up on a tip related to their ongoing missing-persons search.

In a statement, Detroit police Media Director Jasmin Barmore said investigators received information from a community member about an individual who may be missing.

While pursuing that lead on Tuesday with assistance from local, state, and federal partners, officers discovered the remains inside the residence.

Police said the person found was not connected to the active missing persons investigation that prompted the search operation.

“At this time, the individual located was not connected to the current missing persons operation, and the investigation surrounding the deceased remains ongoing,” said Barmore.

Jordan Lawrence was last seen around Northwestern Hwy and West 12 Mile Road in February.

Lawrence is 23 years old, 5”10, 137 pounds, and has short black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information should contact the Southfield Police Department at 248-795-5500.

And in now growing to 11 teams, there’s one more addition still to come to make it an even dozen for a league preparing to double in size since launching with six franchises in 2024.

The Las Vegas team was formally introduced at a news conference at the Vegas Golden Knights’ home arena Wednesday. Hamilton was to follow on Thursday, the PWHL said.

“There’s a lot of excitement and adrenaline and a lot of 'Let’s go,'” league executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer told The Associated Press about an expansion process that began with the addition of Detroit last week.

“We’re stoked and we’re proud of how far we’ve come in a short time,” she added. “But, the work starts now, right? It’s wonderful to make announcements. But that’s really when the real work comes, and the proof is in the pudding.”

Las Vegas forges new ground by introducing the PWHL to America's Southwest, a year after the league expanded into the Pacific Northwest by adding Seattle and Vancouver.

“We do need to geographically expand past the northeast and the north in general,” Scheer said. “So that’s part of the plan as we start to branch out: What are the right markets that make sense to obviously become a little bit more geographically diverse?”

With San Jose, California, and Denver in the running to become the next expansion market, the PWHL would be in position to break off into either two six-team conferences or three four-team divisions based on geographical proximity. The league’s original six franchises are New York, Boston, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Minnesota.

Hamilton becomes Ontario's third franchise, and further expands the PWHL’s reach across the province's densely populated "Golden Horseshoe" region, without drawing fans away from Toronto, located 42 miles (68 kilometers) to the east. A league neutral site outing in Hamilton in January drew 16,012 fans, with Scheer saying 70% of the turnout had never previously attended a PWHL game.

The Hamilton-Burlington region has a population of more than 785,000, and is within an hour’s drive of other major centers such as London, Kitchener-Waterloo and the Niagara Region.

Though separated by roughly 2,200 miles (3,547 kilometers) and an international border, the two newest markets meet various league expansion criteria, including being hotbeds for female hockey development.

Since the Golden Knights began play in the NHL in 2017, girls' and women's hockey participation in Las Vegas has grown by 600%, the PWHL said.

“Now our job is to grow it to 6,000%,” Scheer said at the official announcement from a stage set up on the ice at T-Mobile Arena. She represented the PWHL, and Golden Knights and Las Vegas-area officials also spoke to a crowd of fans that included about 200 girls hockey players.

And the PWHL brings another franchise to a growing sports market that includes the WNBA's Las Vegas Aces, who relocated to the city in 2018. The Aces have won three of the past four league titles and averaged more than 11,000 per outing over the past two seasons.

As for the Hamilton region, 15% of PWHL players are from there, including Vancouver’s Sarah Nurse, and Toronto teammates Renata Fast and Emma Maltais.

The markets feature arena partners eager to work with the league on availability to ensure there are open dates to fit games into the facilities schedules. Arena availability factored into the PWHL’s decision-making with several markets ruled out because of scheduling conflicts.

The yet-to-be-named Las Vegas team will play out of the Golden Knights' home T-Mobile Arena, and feature a color scheme of green and gold. John Penhollow, Golden Knights business operations president, said some games could be played at the 4-year-old, 5,567-seat Lee's Family Forum in the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson if there are scheduling conflicts at T-Mobile.

That arena also is home to the Golden Knights' American Hockey League-affiliate Henderson Silver Knights. The Silver Knights and the PWHL will share the same nearly 6-year-old training facility in Henderson.

“The beauty is what their requests are is exactly what we had to do for the Silver Knights,” Penhollow said. “Dedicated locker rooms, dedicated laundry, dedicated gym, where they're going to eat. The way that building was constructed, it sets up well for these types of renovations, and the hope is we get it all done before the start of the regular season.”

Hamilton’s team colors will be gold, maroon and cream. The team will play out of the city’s newly renovated downtown TD Coliseum, where it will share the ice with the New York Islanders' minor-league affiliate, which is relocating from Bridgeport, Connecticut, this year.

The arena has a 16,400-seat capacity for hockey. It was formerly called the Copps Coliseum, which in 1987 hosted eight Canada Cup tournament games, including Canada’s two wins over the Soviet Union in the best-of-three final.

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AP Sports Writer Mark Anderson in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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AP women’s hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey

Update: Black bear spotted on security cameras in Downriver communities stuns residents

According to authorities, the video was captured near Woodruff Road between I-75 and Olmstead Road. It shows the bear moving through a yard before continuing north.

Police did not say when this occurred.

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has been notified and is monitoring the situation.

Residents are urged to secure garbage cans and keep pets inside or under close supervision. Anyone who spots the bear is asked to stay indoors and contact the DNR at 800-292-7800.

About black bears in Michigan

The black bear is the only bear species found in Michigan. They are solitary animals mostly found in the Upper Peninsula and are generally not aggressive, tending to leave an area when food is not available.

The DNR says the best action when encountering a black bear is to slowly walk backward while speaking to it in a stern voice.

The DNR suggests people be SMART when encountering bears.

S -- Stand your ground. Do not run or play dead.

M -- Make loud noises and back away slowly.

A -- Always provide a clear, unobstructed escape route for the bear.

R -- Rarely do bears attack. If they do, fight back.

T -- Treat bears with respect and observe them from a distance.

“This is the only bear we’ve seen in Flat Rock, at least in my lifetime,” Flat Rock Mayor Steve Beller said. “I received an email from our city administrator. So, we looked at the videos and, wow.”

The bear was first spotted in Carleton just after 1 a.m. on Monday (May 11).

It was caught on surveillance camera before wandering into the Flat Rock-Rockwood area, where it was spotted again a few hours later.

“At first, you think it’s A.I.,” Nick Hill, Rockwood’s Police Chief, said. “But after reviewing the video, it was pretty clear that it wasn’t.”

“This is the first time, and that I know of, that I talked to the officers here that we’ve ever been called about a bear,” he said. “It’s all anyone is talking about down here.”

The DNR says it could be the southernmost bear sighting ever in Southeast Michigan.

This is quite a welcome for Rockwood’s new police chief, Nick Hill.

“This is the first time, and that I know of, that I talked to the officers here that we’ve ever been called about a bear that’s been seen in the neighborhoods.”

We went out and about in Rockwood and Flat Rock, hoping the drone might catch a glimpse of the bear. But we had no luck.

For those of you wondering, the black bear is the only bear species found in Michigan, mostly in the Upper Peninsula.

They tend to be solitary animals who often wander in search of food and run at the first sign of trouble.

“It’s nice having the bears around,” Monte Oswald, who runs Oswald’s Bear Ranch in Newberry, said.

The ranch was started by his father, Dean Oswald, back in 1984, and it allows people to feed the bears in a safe environment and even take pictures with cubs.

“We have 240 acres at Oswald’s Bear Ranch,” Dean said. “The bears are able to roam around in their habitats, and people can see them where they have swim locations, and they climb the trees.”

Dean said that if people were to come across a bear, either in the wild or in their backyard, they have to remain calm.

Often, the bear is more afraid of you.

“The main thing to remember is don’t run away, because that would kick in the bears’ instinct to chase,” Dean said. “Raise your arms and look large, but be as calm as you can be, let them know that you know that you’re not afraid.”

While the bear sighting is serious business, downriver residents are also having a lot of fun with it.

“We have our local heating and cooling company that has a bear mascot,” Beller said. “I saw where they had a picture of him in the woods, saying they found the bear.”

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has been notified and is monitoring the situation.

Residents are urged to secure garbage cans and keep pets inside or under close supervision.

Anyone who spots the bear is asked to stay indoors and contact the DNR at 800-292-7800.

The soldier was identified as Spc. Mariyah Symone Collington of Taveres, Fla., the U.S. military Europe and Africa said in a statement. She was 19 years old.

“Royal Moroccan Armed Forces transported the Soldier’s remains by a Moroccan helicopter to the morgue of Moulay El Hassan Military Hospital in Guelmim, Morocco,” the statement said.

Collington served as an air and missile defense crewmember and was assigned to Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, 10th Army Air and Missile Defense Command, U.S. Army Europe and Africa said.

Collington entered the Regular Army’s Delayed Entry Program in 2023 before beginning active-duty service in 2024. She completed Basic Combat Training and Advanced Individual Training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, as a 14P air and missile defense crewmember. She reported to Charlie Battery, 5th Battalion, 4th Air Defense Artillery Regiment, in Ansbach, Germany, in February 2025 and was promoted to specialist on May 1, 2026.

Her awards and decorations include the Army Service Ribbon.

The announcement came days after the military said the remains of another soldier, 1st Lt. Kendrick Lamont Key Jr., a 14A Air Defense Artillery officer, had been recovered. The two soldiers fell off a cliff during an off-duty recreational hike in Morocco. Their remains are en route to the United States.

A spokesperson for U.S. Army Southern European Task Force, Africa told The Associated Press that the circumstances surrounding the incident remain under investigation.

The two soldiers were reported missing May 2 after participating in African Lion, an annual multinational military exercise held in Morocco. Their disappearance triggered a search operation involving more than 1,000 U.S. and Moroccan military and civilian personnel, the SETAF-AF spokesperson added.

Assets deployed during the operation included a U.S. Navy P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, thermal and ISR sensors, an unmanned underwater vehicle, side-scan sonar, a Moroccan multibeam echosounder and U.S. Coast Guard drift modeling capabilities, according to the spokesperson.

African Lion 26, is a U.S.-led exercise launched in April across four countries – Morocco, Tunisia, Ghana and Senegal – with more than 7,000 personnel from over 30 nations.

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

The legislation seeks to cement U.S. assistance for Ukraine by approving more than $1 billion in security aid and making another $8 billion available in the form of loans. Supporters have been calling on President Donald Trump to act more forcefully to deter Russia and boost Ukraine.

Lawmaking gained 218 signatures on a petition from Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York that will force a House vote. While the measure is unlikely to become law, the vote will put lawmakers on record concerning their support for Ukraine.

The petition was signed by 215 Democrats and two Republicans — Reps. Don Bacon of Nebraska and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Rep. Kevin Kiley, an Independent from California, became the final signature required to force the vote. Kiley said the bill would help strengthen Ukraine's leverage to advance a durable peace.

“We must also send a strong message that Russian support for Iran’s targeting of U.S. military assets will not be tolerated,” Kiley said in a statement explaining his support for the petition.

But Speaker Mike Johnson voiced concerns about the timing of the vote.

“I’m talking with some of the sponsors of that right now,” Johnson said. “… The latest news out of Russia is that it looks like the war is scaling back, scaling down, coming to a conclusion. I think Vladimir Putin said that himself in the last few days, and so this would be a good time for Congress to see how that pans out. So I’m going to be talking to my colleagues about that.”

The fighting continues

Trump said Tuesday he believes Moscow and Kyiv will soon reach a deal to end fighting.

“The end of the war in Ukraine I really think is getting very close,” Trump said as he left the White House for a summit in Beijing. “Believe it or not, it’s getting closer.”

Putin said in a speech last weekend that his invasion of Ukraine is possibly “coming to an end.”

But on Wednesday, Russia fired at least 800 drones in a massive daytime barrage across Ukraine, killing at least six people and wounding dozens, including children, in one of the longest attacks by Moscow in the 4-year-old war, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.

Fitzpatrick said he did not agree that the war is near a conclusion and the only way he would not vote for the Meeks measure would be if Russia withdrew its forces from Ukraine.

"There’s people dying as we speak, so no, the war is not winding down,” Fitzpatrick said.

Meeks said that it was time for lawmakers to go on the record about where they stand.

“Members of Congress, some tell me that they are supportive of Ukraine. Well, we’re going to finally get a vote on the floor to make that determination,” Meeks said.

He said he believes the House vote will "put pressure on the Senate and I think it should tell the president that America is looking and we want to stand by our allies and not Vladimir Putin.”

Prospects in the Senate

Lawmakers have for months discussed various proposals to sanction Russia, but much of that talk disappeared when Trump launched an attack on Iran in late February.

While Senate Republicans have mostly been supportive of Ukraine, they have hesitated to act without Trump’s support. On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune expressed skepticism that the Senate could move to Russia sanctions, saying “we have such a pileup” of other legislation.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who has pushed for a Russia sanctions bill in the Senate, said Wednesday, “There are parts of the House bill I like, parts of it that I don’t.”

Republicans and Democrats alike have also been frustrated that the Department of Defense has not spent $400 million in military aid for Ukraine that lawmakers allotted last year. During a hearing earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the Pentagon was working on a plan to spend those funds.

Support for Ukraine has been a major point of tension between Congress and Trump, who pledged to quickly settle the war once he was president. Instead, he has struggled to show progress toward a peace deal even as his administration has often moved to withdraw support for both Ukraine and the rest of Europe.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said late Tuesday that Venturella would succeed Todd Lyons, who led the agency through much of the administration's tumultuous crackdown on immigration. ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information Wednesday.

Venturella left the Geo Group in early 2023 and has been working at ICE leading the division that oversees detention contracts, members of Congress wrote in a public letter earlier this year.

At the Geo Group, which houses around one-third of ICE detainees, Venturella served in a number of posts, including executive vice president overseeing corporate development, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. He also oversaw removal operations for ICE in 2011 and 2012 after working for federal contractors, including one that specializes in security clearances and background checks.

Geo has benefited from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, garnering big contracts to open three shuttered facilities. Among them was a $1 billion, 15-year deal for a detention center in New Jersey’s largest city.

“Last year was the most successful period for new business wins in our company’s history,” Geo’s CEO George Zoley said during an earnings call last week.

Geo owns and operates 23 ICE detention facilities, with about 26,000 available beds. Zoley also said that ICE’s air transportation subcontract had continued to steadily increase and that it secured a new contract last year for electronic monitoring.

To Silky Shah, executive director of the Detention Watch Network, the hire is a “classic example of the revolving door phenomena.” In a statement, she expressed concern that “Venturella’s intimate knowledge of ICE will likely yield another spike of ICE detention facility openings.”

Venturella will lead ICE at a time when the public mood has soured on Trump’s immigration crackdown, which sent surges of federal immigration officers into American cities to round up immigrants. Those raids sent tensions soaring and prompted clashes between protesters and law enforcement, leading to the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Trump returned to the White House on a promise of mass deportations, and ICE has been a central executor of that vision. Under Lyons’ leadership, the agency used a massive infusion of cash to expand hiring and detention capabilities, and it ramped up arrests to meet demand from the Republican administration.

Federal officials announced Lyons’ departure last month from ICE, which had gotten $75 billion from Congress to fulfill Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Venturella's appointment comes as DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin settles into his role atop the Cabinet agency overseeing ICE. Mullin has promised to keep his department out of the headlines and has indicated a softer tone on immigration, although he is expected to align with the president's priorities on mass deportations.

One contentious issue confronting DHS now is a plan for converting warehouses into immigrant detention. Conceived while Kristi Noem led the department, the effort has encountered multiple lawsuits and intense community blowback, including in Republican-led states.

The $38.3 billion plan would increase detention capacity to 92,000 beds and mean acquiring eight large-scale facilities, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers.

Those, and other sites, were supposed to be running by the end of November. But after Noem’s departure, DHS paused the purchase of new warehouses as it scrutinizes all contracts signed during her tenure.

Last month a judge extended a stoppage on transforming a massive Maryland warehouse into a processing facility for immigrants, and there are signs that federal officials are scaling back the plans or agreeing to conduct more thorough environmental reviews.

On Wednesday, DHS’s Office of Inspector General confirmed in an email that it is conducting an audit of the warehouse purchases, although it said it wouldn’t provide details on the scale or scope.

“We are committed to full transparency and will not interfere with the ongoing investigation,” DHS said in a statement.

If the warehouse conversions falter, that could be good news for Geo. The Florida-based company has about 6,000 idle beds at six company-owned facilities, Zoley said last week.

Zoley had offered a note of skepticism about the warehouse plan during an earlier earnings call in February, noting that renovating a warehouse is “more complicated than you may think.” At that point, he said the company was “cautiously” looking at whether to bid to help operate some of them.

The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah infrastructure in several areas in southern Lebanon, hours after telling residents of six southern villages to evacuate.

Lebanon and Israel are scheduled to hold another round of direct talks in Washington on Thursday as the Trump administration pushes for a breakthrough between the two neighbors that have been in a state of war since Israel was created in 1948.

The United Nations has also accused Hezbollah of drone strikes near its peacekeeping forces in southern Lebanon, and Secretary-General António Guterres' message to both sides is that they must observe the ceasefire and stop all attacks, U.N. deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said.

The Health Ministry confirmed the seven airstrikes on vehicles, but didn't provide full details of the number of people in each vehicle.

Two of Wednesday’s drone attacks hit a highway linking Beirut with the southern port city of Sidon, while a third struck the town of Saadiyat near the busy freeway, the state-run National news agency said. The Health Ministry said those strikes killed eight people in total, including the mother and children.

A fourth strike took place in the early afternoon near the northern entrance of Sidon, leaving one person dead and another wounded, the ministry said. It added that three other drone strikes on cars deeper in southern Lebanon killed three people.

An Associated Press photographer saw the bodies of three people killed in two of the strikes near the coastal towns of Barja and Jiyeh.

In southern Lebanon, Israeli airstrikes were reported in various towns and villages while Hezbollah claimed that it launched additional attacks on Israel as both sides keep exchanging fire despite a U.S.-brokered ceasefire on April 17.

Hezbollah also has been using drones in its attacks on Israeli forces.

The U.N. peacekeeping force deployed in southern Lebanon known as UNIFIL said Wednesday it is increasingly concerned about fighting between Hezbollah and Israeli soldiers near its positions, putting peacekeepers at risk, including with explosions of drones in and around U.N. bases.

UNIFIL said that a presumed Hezbollah drone detonated inside its headquarters in the coastal town of Naqoura on Tuesday, following earlier presumed Hezbollah drone detonations on Monday and Tuesday. No one was injured, but some buildings were damaged.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war started on March 2, when the Lebanese militant group fired rockets into northern Israel two days after the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

The Health Ministry said Wednesday that since the war began, 2,896 have been killed and 8,824 wounded.

Edward Harold King, who left the bench at the end of last year, and Yechiel “Sam” Sprei, a politically connected real estate developer, were arrested by the FBI on wire fraud conspiracy charges after federal prosecutors say they duped a pair of investors into forking over $6.5 million for a bogus property bid and then failed to return all but a fraction of the money.

The allegations are similar to claims made against King in civil lawsuits and in complaints to the state Commission on Judicial Conduct, whose investigation precipitated his resignation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Wang told a judge at the men’s initial court appearance on Wednesday that the transaction described in the criminal case was “one of several schemes that the government has been investigating." Discussing Sprei's finances, the prosecutor said “it’s safe to say many, many millions of dollars” have moved through his bank accounts in the last few years.

King, 72, and Sprei, 37, were released on bail and are scheduled to return to Brooklyn federal court on Monday to finalize their bond arrangements. King and his lawyer, Michael Vitaliano, declined to comment as they left the courthouse. The former judge cut through trees in a nearby park to avoid reporters and photographers. Sprei's lawyer, Ezra Lent, declined to comment.

In court, Wang said that during Sprei's arrest, the developer lied to FBI agents that he had no electronic devices on him other than his cellphone. Agents executing a search warrant seized the phone and then found a second phone while patting Sprei down, Wang said.

If convicted, King and Sprei could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

“As alleged, the defendants stole millions of dollars from investors by cynically leveraging King’s position as a sitting judge to lend false legitimacy to supposed investment opportunities,” U.S. Attorney Joseph Nocella Jr. said in a statement.

King resigned on Dec. 31, 2025, just three years after becoming a judge, after the Commission on Judicial Conduct informed him that it was investigating complaints mirrored in his criminal case.

Among the complaints, the commission said, were that King was involved in a scheme to defraud real estate investors and that he continued to act as a lawyer — including by accepting funds into his own attorney escrow accounts — despite rules barring full-time judges from practicing law, acting as fiduciaries or engaging in business activities. King denied the allegations.

According to federal prosecutors, King and Sprei pitched investors on fictitious investment opportunities with false promises that their money would be kept safe in attorney escrow accounts and returned on demand if the investors decided to end their involvement.

In November 2024, prosecutors said, Sprei and King offered two investors an opportunity to buy commercial real estate in Freehold, New Jersey, through a bankruptcy auction. In order to proceed, Sprei told them, all bidders first needed to show “proof of liquidity” and that they could do so by depositing $6.5 million in King’s escrow account, prosecutors said. Sprei told the investors that King was both an independent escrow agent and a judge, according to prosecutors.

The investors wired the money to King's account, where they were told it would be left untouched and not spent or transferred without their permission, prosecutors said. Within days, prosecutors said, King and Sprei transferred several million dollars to a bank account in Sprei’s name.

Later, when the investors exercised their right to have the money back, King offered up excuses and alternatives, at one point saying he would have his lawyer deposit the funds with an unspecified court, prosecutors said. King and Sprei eventually returned $1.5 million to the investors, but have yet to cough up the rest, prosecutors said.

King became a judge in 2023. He won a seat on the New York City Civil Court in Brooklyn and was appointed to the state’s main trial court in June 2024.

Prior to that he was in private practice and, according to news articles about his campaign, was appointed by courts to manage assets in real estate disputes. He also served as an administrative law judge for the city's Parking Violations Bureau and as legal counsel to the state assembly.

When the state commission accepted King's resignation, its administrator Robert Tembeckjian called the allegations "so egregious as to warrant his permanent departure from the bench.”

Uthmeier, who threatened possible enforcement actions against the league in March if it didn’t suspend the 23-year-old rule, sent the subpoena along with a letter to NFL executive vice president and attorney Ted Ullyot on Wednesday.

The subpoena commands the league to appear at the attorney general’s office in Tallahassee, Florida, on June 12. It asks the league to produce extensive documents, including “all diversity reports, coaching census data, or demographic surveys that reflect the race and sex of coaching staffs of the teams from 2017 to the present.”

"All in all, the Rooney Rule and the NFL’s related ‘inclusive hiring’ policies — and the NFL’s representations about these policies — continue to raise significant concerns under Florida law,” Uthmeier wrote in the letter.

The Rooney Rule requires teams to interview at least two external minority candidates for head coach, general manager and coordinator positions. At least one minority candidate must be interviewed for the quarterbacks coach position.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, speaking at the league meetings in Phoenix in March, acknowledged the changing political landscape for diversity initiatives in the U.S., but added that he didn’t believe there should be any legal issues with the league’s policy. “The Rooney Rule has been around a long time,” Goodell said then. “We’ve evolved it, changed it. We’ll continue to do that.”

The NFL didn't comment Wednesday on the subpoena.

But in a letter to Uthmeier on May 1, the league said: “The NFL’s pursuit of top-tier talent led to the adoption of the Rooney Rule in 2003. Importantly, the Rooney Rule does not impose any hiring quotas or mandates, and it does not license clubs to consider race or sex in making hiring decisions. Hiring decisions for NFL teams are made by the individual clubs — not the League — and those decisions are based on merit. The Rooney Rule neither requires, nor permits, any team to make a hiring decision on the basis of race, sex, or any other protected characteristic. To do so would be an express violation of League policy.”

Uthmeier commended the league for altering the Rooney Rule language on its website after receiving his initial warning letter in March but added the revisions raise more questions.

The updated terminology on the NFL site says: “The Rooney Rule establishes best practices designed to expand opportunity and strengthen the NFL’s talent pipeline across leadership roles. It is part of a broader effort to develop a deep and sustainable talent pipeline across all levels of the NFL. The policy is intended to ensure that qualified candidates from a wide range of backgrounds are identified and considered for leadership roles.”

The website previously stated the Rooney Rule aims to “increase the number of minorities hired” in leadership positions and said that diversity “enriches the game and creates a more effective, quality organization.”

“We appreciate how quickly the NFL changed its website in response to our letter and capitulated on some of their discriminatory hiring quotas,” Uthmeier said. “But their response raises more questions about the Rooney Rule, and we look forward to their cooperation with the investigative subpoena we issued them today.”

In the May 1 letter, the league had told Uthmeier: “We appreciate that your letter has brought to our attention some outdated information on the NFL’s website regarding these programs. This information is in the process of being updated to accurately reflect the NFL’s current programs and policies.”

Uthmeier sent his first letter to Goodell in March, saying the Rooney Rule amounts to “blatant race and sex discrimination.”

The subpoena expands the focus beyond the Rooney Rule and includes other NFL diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, including a discontinued mandate that required teams to hire a minority offensive assistant; the diversity accelerator program; the Mackie development program for college officials; and the resolution that awards teams draft picks if one of its minority assistant coaches or executives is hired to be the coach or general manager of another team.

The NFL's front office and coach accelerator program will be held next week in Orlando after it was paused in 2025. The program was created as an extension of the Rooney Rule in 2022 to increase diversity among coaches and front office executives. It will now include nonminority participants.

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

The visit occurs at a delicate moment for Trump’s presidency, as his popularity at home has been weighed down by the U.S. and Israel’s war with Iran and rising inflation as a consequence of that conflict. The president is seeking a win by signing deals with China to buy more American food and aircraft, saying he’ll be talking with Xi about trade “more than anything else.”

Here's the latest:

Judge blocks US sanctions against independent UN investigator over criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon has temporarily barred the Trump administration from imposing sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, after her family had filed a lawsuit earlier this year.

Leon said the penalties the administration is pushing could be a violation of Albanese and her family members’ First Amendment amendment rights. In a lawsuit filed in February in the U.S. District Court in Washington, Albanese’s husband and minor child outlined the serious impact those sanctions have had on the family’s life and work, including the ability to access their home in the nation’s capital. The State Department had said that Albanese had engaged in a “campaign of political and economic warfare” against the U.S. and Israel by urging other countries to sanction Israel over its alleged war crimes in Gaza and several U.S. companies for being “complicit” in those actions.

US military says some humanitarian aid gets to Iran

It has allowed 15 merchant vessels “supporting humanitarian aid” through a blockade of Iranian ports, U.S. Central Command said in a social media post.

They include both merchant ships allowed to dock in Iranian ports as well as ships that were allowed to sail out of Iranian ports and into open waters, said Capt. Tim Hawkins, a spokesperson for the command.

The social media post noted that since the blockade began on April 13, U.S. forces have redirected 67 commercial vessels and disabled four more “to ensure compliance” with the restrictions.

Immigration authorities detain former Kansas mayor who fears deportation over voting controversy

The former mayor of a conservative Kansas town is in the custody of federal immigration authorities, a possible step toward deportation.

It comes months after Joe Ceballos acknowledged he voted in elections despite not being a U.S. citizen. Ceballos was 4 when his family brought him from Mexico. The 55-year-old is now a legal permanent resident.

His lawyer says that while seeking citizenship, Ceballos admitted that he had voted — apparently not knowing his status doesn’t allow it. Immigration officials didn’t return a message seeking comment. Ceballos’ supporters were outside the immigration building in Wichita, Kansas.

“I’m extraordinarily disappointed in my government,” Jess Hoeme, his attorney, told The Associated Press.

Ceballos was twice elected mayor of Coldwater, population 700, and also served on the city council. He won a new term in November but resigned after state Attorney General Kris Kobach charged him with voting without being qualified and election perjury.

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Vance says US has made headway in Iran talks

Vice President JD Vance says he thinks the U.S. is making progress in its talks with Iran over the war, but that it’s too soon to tell if it’s enough to ensure that Iran will never be able to have a nuclear weapon.

Vance was asked about the status of negotiations while taking reporters’ questions at a press conference Wednesday for his anti-fraud task force.

He said he spent “a good amount of time” on the phone with U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff on Wednesday morning, as well as “a number of our friends in the Arab world.”

“I think that we are making progress,” Vance said. “The fundamental question is, do we make enough progress that we satisfy the president’s red line?”

Vance brushes off Trump’s 2028 successor comments as president joking around

The vice president says it’s “natural” for Trump to “joke around with us a little bit” over who should be his Republican successor in the 2028 election.

During a press conference for his anti-fraud task force on Wednesday, JD Vance was asked about Trump’s comments at a Monday night Rose Garden dinner where the president polled the crowd about his possible successor. Trump asked them whether Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio should be at the top of the GOP ticket.

The VP joked that it didn’t sound like Trump wanted “to have a televised competition for who would succeed him as his apprentice,” a nod to the president’s reality TV background.

He says Trump has long been fascinated by politics and it’s typical for him to “play around with the idea.”

Vance pushes back on question about Trump’s comment playing down economy as a factor in Iran negotiations

Speaking to reporters Wednesday at an event on healthcare fraud, the vice president was asked whether he agrees with Trump’s comments from a day earlier that said Americans’ financial situations are not a factor in negotiations with Iran.

“Well, I don’t think the president said that,” Vance told a reporter who paraphrased Trump’s remark. “I think that’s a misrepresentation of what the president said. But look, I agree with the president that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon.”

Trump commented on Tuesday as he departed the White House for a summit in Beijing. He said economic issues were not a factor in negotiations, “not even a little bit.”

“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation,” Trump said. “I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.”

Senate confirms Trump pick Warsh as chairman of the Federal Reserve, following Powell

The Senate has confirmed Kevin Warsh as chairman of the Federal Reserve.

The vote to confirm Warsh on Wednesday brings new leadership to the world’s most powerful central bank at a fraught moment for the global economy.

Warsh’s nomination faced uncertainty after Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina threatened to block it while the Justice Department investigated Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

The Powell probe was dropped in April, allowing the Warsh confirmation to move forward.

Warsh, 56, a former top Fed official, will become chair at an unusually difficult time for the independent agency. The Fed confronts stubborn inflation, deep divisions over interest rates and renewed scrutiny from Trump over its independence.

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Louisiana advances plan to eliminate majority-Black US House district after court ruling

Republican senators in Louisiana have advanced a plan to eliminate one of two majority-Black, Democratic-held congressional seats. The Senate committee vote early Wednesday follows a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down the state’s House map as an illegal racial gerrymander.

Committee members heard hours of testimony from Black residents and Democrats opposed to the move. Republicans chose not to target both Democratic seats.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling weakening Voting Rights Act protections has prompted similar redistricting efforts in Southern states like Tennessee and Alabama. Those efforts are part of a broader national redistricting battle that has involved about one-third of the states. A similar attempt fizzled Tuesday in the South Carolina Senate.

Efforts to undo minority districts mark the latest phase in a 10-month national redistricting battle. It grew after Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw House districts to win more seats in the midterm elections.

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US and China seek to repair damage from tariff war that sent trade into a freefall

Trump’s trade war with Beijing has sent U.S.-China trade into a freefall and forced companies on both sides of the Pacific to regroup. U.S. firms are looking for suppliers outside of China. And Chinese firms have pursued business in Europe and Southeast Asia.

The sparring goes beyond tariffs.

China has cut off purchases of U.S. soybeans and deprived U.S. manufacturers of crucial minerals and metals. The U.S. has blocked China from getting advanced computer chips.

The world’s two biggest economies have shown they can hurt each other. Now, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are trying to stabilize the relationship during their meeting in Beijing.

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Republican resistance to Iran war is growing

Senate Republicans succeeded again in blocking Democratic legislation that would halt Trump’s war with Iran, but the number of GOP senators voting against the war grew.

Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the war for the first time since it began at the end of February. Two other Republicans, Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky, also voted against the war, as they had done previously.

The war powers legislation ultimately failed to advance 49-50, with Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania the only Democrat to oppose it, yet the close tally reflected growing unease with Trump’s war.

Memphis residents claim harassment, arrest and abuse by Trump-ordered Memphis Safe Task Force

Four Memphis residents say they have been harassed, arrested and physically mistreated for engaging in First Amendment protected activities by observing and recording the actions of law enforcement in their city.

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday in federal court in Tennessee targets the Memphis Safe Task Force. The task force comprises agents from 13 federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered to the city to fight crime alongside Tennessee State Troopers and the Tennessee National Guard.

The suit asks the court to declare retaliation against the plaintiffs for observing and recording law enforcement activity unconstitutional and prohibit agents from further retaliation.

Since late September, hundreds of law enforcement personnel tied to the task force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the majority Black city of about 610,000 people. The lawsuit says the task force has conducted over 120,000 traffic stops.

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Foreigners with World Cup tickets won’t have to pay bonds to enter US, Trump administration tells AP

The Trump administration is suspending a requirement that foreign visitors from certain countries pay as much as $15,000 in bonds if they are confirmed World Cup ticket holders, the State Department told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The department imposed the bond requirement for countries that it said had high rates of people overstaying their visas and other security issues as part of the administration’s broader crackdown on immigration.

The bond move is a rare easing of immigration requirements under the administration.

World Cup team players, coaches and some staff were already exempt from the bond requirement. But that didn’t apply to ordinary fans until Wednesday.

“We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets” and opted in to the FIFA Pass system that allows expedited visa appointments as of April 15, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said.

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A former private prison executive will become ICE’s acting leader

David Venturella will serve as the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Trump administration says, after the agency’s current leader steps down at the end of the month.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said late Tuesday that Venturella would succeed Todd Lyons, who led the agency through much of the administration’s tumultuous crackdown on immigration. ICE did not immediately respond to an email seeking additional information Wednesday.

Venturella left the Geo Group in early 2023 and has been working at ICE leading the division that oversees detention contracts, members of Congress wrote in a public letter earlier this year.

At the Geo Group, Venturella served in a number of posts, including executive vice president overseeing corporate development, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. It said he also has worked for federal contractors, including one that specializes in security clearances and background checks.

Geo has benefited from Trump’s mass deportation push, garnering big contracts to open shuttered facilities.

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US House Speaker Mike Johnson says his prayers are with Trump on China visit

“The president has laid down a marker that was overdue and very important: The American people are not going to be taken advantage of any more by adversaries or allies,” Johnson, a Republican, said at a news conference in Washington.

The House speaker said his prayers are with Trump that he has a “good visit” with Xi. He said he hoped “they come forward with some favorable policies, things that will help us out, and I believe he will.”

House Democrats ask Trump to proceed with arms sales to Taiwan

Ranking members of four House committees urged President Trump in a letter Wednesday morning to proceed with the $14 billion arms sales to Taiwan and resist any effort by Beijing to “dictate” the U.S. policy toward the self-governed island.

The letter, signed by the top Democrats on House committees on foreign affairs, armed services, intelligence and the Chinese Communist Party, was released as Trump arrived in Beijing for a high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Beijing strongly opposes any arms sales to Taiwan, which it sees as part of Chinese territory, while the U.S. is obliged by a domestic law to supply the island with sufficient hardware for self defense.

On Monday, Trump said he and Xi would discuss Taiwan in Beijing, raising worries that any slip by the U.S. president could undermine the U.S. commitment to the island.

Trump administration freezes new Medicare enrollments for hospice and home health agencies

The Trump administration said Wednesday it’s expanding its sweeping fraud-busting initiative in federal health programs with a nationwide six-month freeze on any new Medicare enrollments by hospice and home health agencies.

The moratorium will temporarily stop all new providers in these categories from signing up for reimbursement from Medicare, the federal insurance program for older adults across the country, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a news release.

“We’ve seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement. “Today we’re shutting the door on fraud-preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them.”

The move is related to efforts by Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force, set up by Republican President Donald Trump to crack down on potential misuse of public funds.

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Residents in Beijing held up their phones to wait for Trump’s motorcade

As President Trump’s motorcade moved toward the Four Seasons Hotel, located near the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, residents held up their smartphones trying to capture his arrival. Security was heightened around the hotel.

On the Chinese social media platform Weibo, some users posted about his arrival. A video post by the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showing Trump walking out of the plane had more than 66,600 likes and nearly 4,000 comments in less than two hours. Under the post, a comment that read “China and the U.S. join hands to advance together and create a bright future!” drew more than 2,300 likes.

Wall Street is mixed following another discouraging inflation report and a recovery for tech stocks

The S&P 500 slipped 0.1% in early trading, still near its all-time high set at the start of the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 235 points, or 0.5%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.2% higher.

Gains for tech stocks helped support the market, like Micron Technology’s 4.3%. They had stumbled the day before after momentum suddenly halted for stocks riding excitement around artificial-intelligence technology.

Nvidia, the chip company that became one of the first faces of the AI boom, rose 2.4% and was the strongest force pushing upward on the S&P 500. Its CEO, Jensen Huang, got an invitation to join President Trump on his trip to China, where they could discuss allowing shipments of Nvidia AI chips to the world’s second-largest economy.

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Trump had personally invited Nvidia’s Huang on the China trip

A surprise appearance on the Anchorage tarmac as Air Force One refueled en route to Beijing was Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who wasn’t initially included on the manifest of corporate executives accompanying Trump to China.

The president had realized through news reports that Huang, with whom he is close, wasn’t on the trip. So he personally called the CEO on Tuesday and invited him to join, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion. The person was granted anonymity to discuss a private conversation.

“CNBC incorrectly reported that the Great Jensen Huang, of Nvidia, was not invited to the incredible gathering of the World’s Greatest Businessmen/women proudly going to China,” Trump said on social media as the presidential plane traveled from Anchorage to Beijing. “In actuality, Jensen is currently on Air Force One and, unless I ask him to leave, which is highly unlikely, CNBC’s reporting is incorrect or, as they say in politics, FAKE NEWS!”

— Seung Min Kim

Trump is also expected to visit the Temple of Heaven on Thursday

That’s where Chinese emperors once prayed for bumper crops.

And Trump will take part in a formal banquet Thursday.

Trump’s arrival is trending on Chinese social media platform Weibo

A video posted by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV showing Trump stepping out of the plane and walking down the stairs had more than 18,000 likes in less than 30 minutes.

More than 1,300 comments were made in response to the post. Some welcomed Trump to China and others wrote: “peaceful coexistence, win-win cooperation.”

The status of Taiwan will be a major topic

China is displeased with U.S. plans to sell weapons to the self-governing island the Chinese government claims as part of its own territory.

Trump told reporters Monday he’d be discussing with Xi an $11 billion weapons package for Taiwan the U.S. administration authorized in December but hasn’t yet begun fulfilling. The arms package is the largest ever approved for Taiwan.

But the U.S. leader has demonstrated greater ambivalence toward Taiwan, an approach that’s raising questions about whether Trump could be open to dialing back support for the island democracy.

At the same time, Taiwan — as the world’s leading chipmaker — has become essential for the development of AI, with the U.S. importing more goods so far this year from Taiwan than China. Trump has sought to use Biden-era programs and his own deals to bring more chipmaking to America.

Trump pauses to take in the elaborate welcome scene in Beijing

Three hundred youngsters waved miniature American and Chinese flags in front of themselves and then over their head in unison.

“Welcome, welcome! Warm welcome!” the children chanted in Chinese.

Trump greeted dignitaries after deplaning, then stopped and grinned, taking in the scene.

He didn’t answer questions, instead climbing in a limo on the way to his hotel.

The president has nothing more on his public schedule until Thursday.

Following him off the plane were Trump’s son, Eric, and Lara Trump, his daughter-in-law, as well as assorted travelers, including SpaceX chief Elon Musk.

The Chinese offered Trump a pomp-filled welcome

A red carpet was rolled out for him after Air Force One landed.

The president was to be greeted by Chinese Vice President Han Zheng; Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to Washington; Ma Zhaoxu, executive vice minister of foreign affairs; as well as the U.S. envoy to Beijing, David Perdue, according to the White House.

The welcoming ceremony includes some 300 Chinese youths, a military honor guard and a military band.

The meat of Trump’s summit in China won’t happen until Thursday

That’s when the leaders will hold bilateral talks and a formal banquet.

The Trump administration hopes to begin the process of establishing a Board of Trade with China to address differences between the countries. The board could help prevent the trade war ignited last year after Trump’s tariff hikes, an action China countered through its control of rare earth minerals. That led to a one-year truce last October.

Trump arrives in Beijing ahead of meetings with Xi

Trump has touched down in Beijing for his summit with Xi Jinping.

Trump has no public events beyond his arrival on Wednesday’s schedule, but is set to meet with Xi a series of times on Thursday and Friday.

U.S. and China have “candid” exchanges in South Korea’s trade talks, CCTV says

Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent engaged in “candid, in-depth and constructive” exchanges on resolving economic and trade issues of mutual concern and further expanding practical cooperation, according to Chinese state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday.

The officials led the trade talks between the world’s two biggest economies in South Korea, hours before Trump’s arrival in Beijing.

CCTV said they were guided by the important consensus reached by the heads of state of both countries, and upheld the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.

Nvidia CEO is late-announced addition to Trump’s trip

The White House said Huang’s schedule hadn’t permitted his coming, but then changed, clearing the way for him to make the trip.

The last-minute addition inspired online commentary and memes on the Chinese internet.

Those including on Xiaohongshu and Weibo, where people shared manipulated images of Huang clinging to Air Force One with his bare hands.

Musk, Cook and other prominent US executives invited to join Trump on trip to China

These prominent U.S. executives from Big Tech to agriculture have been invited to join Trump on his trip to China, according to a White House official:

1. Elon Musk - CEO of Tesla and SpaceX

2. Tim Cook - CEO of Apple

3. Kelly Ortberg - Boeing CEO

4. Jensen Huang - Nvidia President and CEO

5. Larry Fink - BlackRock Chairman and CEO

6. Stephen Schwarzman - Blackstone Chairman, CEO and co-founder

7. Brian Sikes - Cargill Chairman and CEO

8. Jane Fraser - Citi Chairman and CEO

9. Jim Anderson - Coherent CEO

10. H. Lawrence Culp - GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO

11. David Solomon - Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO

12. Jacob Thaysen - Illumina CEO

13. Michael Miebach - Mastercard CEO

14. Dina Powell McCormick - Meta President and Vice Chairman

15. Sanjay Mehrotra - Micron Chairman, President and CEO

16. Cristiano Amon - Qualcomm President and CEO

17. Ryan McInerney - Visa CEO

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Soaring inflation and plummeting economy test Iran’s ability to withstand war and US blockade

Iran’s grip on the Strait of Hormuz is throttling the world’s energy supplies and inflicting global economic pain, but the struggles of the Islamic Republic’s own economy are testing its ability to withstand the war and defy Washington’s demands.

Iranians have been hit by spiraling prices for food, medicine and other goods. At the same time, the country has seen mass job losses and business closures caused by strike damage to key industries and the government’s monthslong shutdown of the internet.

The economic cost of the war and the U.S. naval blockade “has been very substantial and unprecedented for Iran,” said Hadi Kahalzadeh, an Iranian economist and research fellow at Brandeis University.

But Iran has withstood decades of economic pressure and sanctions and its capacity to adapt has not been dismantled, Kahalzadeh said.

The International Monetary Fund has predicted the Iranian economy will shrink by about 6 percentage points in the next year.

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“To have someone mauled, and then to uncover all of these other allegations afterward, it’s very concerning,” Plymouth Township Police Chief James H. Knittel Jr told Local 4.

The Investigators on Local 4 obtained reports surrounding the cases against Kelita Yolanda Jackson-Holland, 56, and her boyfriend, Edward Alan Turner, 56, who are now facing multiple felony charges, including first-degree child abuse, torture, drug charges, and felony firearm.

“This neighborhood has really been jarred by this situation,” Knittel said. “It’s a very quiet neighborhood, and all of a sudden you have all these negative issues developing.”

The violent dog mauling

The investigation into the couple began after a brutal dog mauling on March 28, then escalated into two separate cases, police said.

Dispatchers received multiple 911 calls around 6:30 a.m. reporting that a jogger was being attacked by three dogs, two Cane Corsos and a Pitbull.

Police said this was the second time the dogs had gotten loose from the home on Beacon Hill Circle.

“The callers said the man was lifeless, not protecting himself,” Knittel said.

Police said one dog was shot after allegedly lunging at officers.

A second dog was captured safely.

A third dog escaped and was later shot after police said it charged at an officer.

Investigators later determined the dogs had escaped from the same Beacon Hill Circle home the previous day, had been returned by their owners, and had gotten loose again the next morning.

The victim, a man in his mid-60s, suffered severe injuries and remained hospitalized for an extended period.

Knittel said he personally visited the victim in the hospital and has continued checking in on him throughout his recovery.

“[His injuries were] mostly to the arm region, but also injuries from being knocked to the ground,” Knittel told Local 4.

Following the investigation, prosecutors charged Jackson-Holland with three counts tied to dangerous animals causing serious injury and Turner with one count related to ownership of one of the dogs.

Knittel said the pair had been cooperative during the dog-attack investigation, only for an entirely different situation to unfold weeks later.

Child abuse investigation

Police told Local 4 the child abuse investigation began around 6:45 a.m. May 7, after dispatchers received a slew of 911 calls. Some had been from inside the home, and others had been reporting a disturbance and fighting outside.

According to police reports obtained by The Investigators at Local 4, the initial dispatch was a 911 hang-up call.

The verified offenses later included felonious assault on a family member, domestic violence, weapons offenses, and narcotics violations.

Officers arriving at the scene found two brothers physically fighting in the driveway area while family members yelled nearby.

One officer said a teen was “extremely emotional and crying” while holding dreadlocks in his hand.

Police also noted visible injuries, including a bloody mouth.

According to the report, Jackson-Holland yelled toward officers that the teen had stolen her 9mm handgun and “needs to go to jail.”

At first, police believed the incident centered around a missing firearm and a fight between siblings.

But investigators said the story changed dramatically once the teenage victim was interviewed.

‘She cut it:’ Teen describes alleged torture

According to the report, the teen later told officers he had been asleep in a bunk bed when his grandmother, identified as Jackson-Holland, whom he referred to as “Nana,” woke him up. He said she was holding a machete.

The victim told police Jackson-Holland scraped and hit the bed frame repeatedly with the knife while yelling, “Where is the gun?”

“He said Kalita was trying to poke his face with the knife but was unable to reach due to the position of the blanket,” the report said.

Investigators said the teen described Jackson-Holland as “slashing” at the bed frame hard enough to leave marks in the wood. Police later documented large slash marks and knife impressions on the bed railing that they said were consistent with the teen’s story.

The victim also said Jackson-Holland slapped him repeatedly, and at one point threatened, “I’m gonna cut off the hand you took it with!” She then allegedly ordered Turner and another child to get her some zip ties.

According to police, Turner returned with black and white zip ties, which Jackson-Holland then used to restrain the teen to a chair.

The victim told officers he had a rope wrapped around his waist at one point during the encounter.

Police said they later found broken white zip ties from a blue chair in one of the bedrooms, along with “red climbing-style rope” found underneath a vanity in the primary bedroom.

Investigators also said the teen described Jackson-Holland trying to cut off his braids with the machete.

“He said Kelita became visibly frustrated, likely due to the machete having difficulty cutting his braids,” the report said, because it was “likely too dull.”

The teen said Jackson-Holland then returned with another knife and continued cutting his hair while threatening him. Police later recovered four severed braids as evidence.

“She cut it. She cut it,” the teen allegedly said while crying uncontrollably.

When officers asked who cut it, the victim allegedly responded: “Nana.”

According to the report, the teen then pulled braids from his pocket and told officers, “She cut these off too.”

Police documented injuries including cuts to the lip and face, bruising, scratches near the eye, marks on the wrists and arms, and hair that had been cut off.

“When we spoke with the teens, it was very concerning,” Knittel said. “We were able to substantiate not only through statements, but through physical evidence, child abuse, to include torture and false imprisonment.”

Because dispatchers received reports of multiple weapons and firearms, Plymouth Township Police called in the Western Wayne Special Operations Team, a SWAT-style unit, to assist in their search of the home.

“Yeah, I put a zip tie on him”

According to the report, Jackson-Holland later admitted to threatening the teen.

“She stated, ‘Yes, I threatened him a little bit. Look, I shook him up,’” the report said.

Police said Jackson-Holland also admitted to putting zip ties on the teen but claimed they were loose.

Jackson-Holland: “Guess what? If it was tight, he couldn’t have got it off, right?”

The questioning ended after that, however, because police said Jackson-Holland requested an attorney.

Police said several teenagers were staying at the home at the time and are now safe with other relatives.

In the child abuse case, Jackson-Holland and Turner are both charged with First-degree child abuse, Torture, Unlawful imprisonment, Assault with a dangerous weapon, and Domestic violence.

They were both given $25,000 cash bonds with conditions prohibiting contact with minors and possession of firearms.

Guns, cocaine and another search warrant

There’s still a third case against the couple.

While searching the home regarding the abuse allegations, investigators said they discovered evidence of narcotics trafficking in plain view, leading detectives to obtain a second warrant for the home, also last week.

According to police reports, investigators found suspected cocaine stashed throughout the primary bedroom, along with digital scales, packaging materials, and dozens of unused dime bags.

Police said they seized approximately 9.2 grams of suspected cocaine from a dresser drawer, along with a kitchen sifter containing narcotics residue, multiple small containers with white residue, and “more than 100” unused small Ziploc-style bags.

Investigators also found psychedelic mushrooms, additional hallucinogens, including suspected DMT, mescaline, and peyote, as well as glass vials containing residue and a digital scale.

During the search, police said they also found multiple firearms, including an AR-15-style rifle and a Maverick Arms shotgun with a defaced serial number that investigators said were stuffed under a mattress in the primary bedroom.

Police said they also found ammunition, seized multiple cell phones, and more narcotics paraphernalia.

“We observed evidence in plain view of narcotics trafficking,” Knittel said.

In this narcotics and weapons case, Jackson-Holland and Turner are charged with Delivery/manufacture of a controlled substance involving cocaine under 50 grams, two counts of felony firearm, and Safe firearm storage violations involving minors.

Both received $25,000 personal recognizance bonds in this case, with the same restrictions.

What happens next?

Knittel said investigators worked day and night gathering evidence and interviewing witnesses as the case rapidly expanded into three cases.

“These are difficult cases because they involve family members,” he said. “Our investigators did a phenomenal job. We worked pretty much straight for four days pulling everything together.”

Jackson-Holland and Turner are scheduled to appear for preliminary examinations at 11 a.m. on May 29 in 35th District Court in Plymouth.

Warsh takes over a divided central bank wrestling with the economic fallout from the war started by the U.S. and Israel with Iran on Feb. 28. The conflict has driven up energy prices and made it even more difficult for the Fed to bring inflation down to its 2% target.

But Trump has demanded lower interest rates, not the higher ones that might be needed to keep inflation in check. Warsh, who had positioned himself as an inflation hawk earlier in his career, has more recently aligned himself with Trump's views, arguing that artificial intelligence and other technologies can boost productivity and economic growth without igniting inflation.

Trump had consistently attacked Powell for refusing the deep rate cuts the president believes will boost the economy. And his Justice Department had launched an investigation into the Fed that was widely seen as an attempt to oust Powell. The legal drama delayed Warsh's confirmation. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, said he would oppose Warsh until the Justice Department dropped the investigation, which it finally did last month.

In an unusual move, Powell said he would remain on the Fed's governing board indefinitely after Warsh came on as chair, citing Trump's "unprecedented'' attacks on the central bank's independence. Although Powell's term as chair is ending, his term as a Fed governor doesn't expire until 2028.

Powell's continued presence could make things awkward for Warsh, especially if he tries to convince other Fed officials to go along with rate cuts.

Trump has said that Warsh comes from “central casting,” revealing a lot about the president's own views of the 56 year-old's looks and conventional pedigree. Warsh has many of the trappings of a traditional pick to lead the world's most important central bank, yet he's doing so at a decidedly unconventional moment for the Fed as Trump has said the new chair needs to cut its benchmark rates to the White House's liking.

Rate cuts of the degree sought by Trump could temporarily boost growth, but they also pose the risk of overheating the economy at a time when inflation is already elevated and affordability is a top concern for much of the American public.

Warsh was previously a runner-up for the Senate-confirmed post of Fed Chair in 2017, when Trump selected Powell to lead the central bank. Trump has since said that he was given bad advice regarding Powell.

Warsh is credentialed with degrees from Stanford University and Harvard University Law School. He is also married to Jane Lauder, the daughter of billionaire cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, a major Republican donor.

Senate Democrats have condemned Warsh for not fully divulging the details of his own wealth, which amounts to at least $100 million. His investments include stakes in Polymarket and SpaceX, but he hasn’t revealed the size of those holdings. He promised to sell all such assets within 90 days of being sworn in.

At 35, Warsh became the youngest governor on the Fed's seven member board, serving in that post from 2006 to 2011. He was previously an economic aide in George W. Bush’s Republican administration and was an investment banker at Morgan Stanley.

Warsh worked closely with then-Chair Ben Bernanke in 2008-09 during the central bank’s efforts to combat the financial crisis and the Great Recession. Bernanke later wrote in his memoirs that Warsh was “one of my closest advisers and confidants” and added that his “political and markets savvy and many contacts on Wall Street would prove invaluable.”

Still, Warsh appeared in key moments to be misguided about the depth of the challenges confronting the U.S. economy as mortgage defaults and layoffs mounted in the Great Recession. He wanted the Fed to keep its benchmark rates higher when the economy was at risk of deflation and possibly collapsing.

Warsh raised concerns in 2008 that further interest rate cuts by the Fed could spur inflation. Yet even after the Fed cut its rate to nearly zero, inflation stayed low.

And he objected in meetings in 2011 to the Fed’s decision to purchase $600 billion of Treasury bonds, an effort to lower long-term interest rates, though he ultimately voted in favor of the decision at Bernanke’s behest.

Warsh also behaved at times like a pre-Trump Republican, calling in a 2010 speech for ending “the creep of trade protectionism” that he declared to be the opposite of “pro-growth policies.” Trump has since largely overhauled GOP dogma by pushing for massive hikes in import taxes, having unilaterally imposed them last year by declaring an economic emergency.

Warsh has been working as a visiting economics fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank located at Stanford University. He is also a lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a partner at the Duquesne Family Office, which manages the wealth of billionaire investor Stanley Druckenmiller.

In what appeared to be an active campaign for the Fed post, Warsh criticized the Fed in interviews, calling for “regime change” and assailing Powell for engaging on issues like climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion, which Warsh said are outside the Fed’s mandate.

In a interview last year on CNBC, Warsh said Fed policy “has been broken for quite a long time.”

“The central bank that sits there today is radically different than the central bank I joined in 2006,” he added. By allowing inflation to surge in 2021-22, the Fed “brought about the greatest mistake in macroeconomic policy in 45 years, that divided the country.”

Weinstein, 74, has myriad health problems, including cancer and a history of heart trouble, and he uses a wheelchair. He has been behind bars since 2020 and told a court in January that his “health is deteriorating” in New York's infamously troubled Rikers Island jail.

The ex-producer wasn’t in the courtroom, but rather was waiting elsewhere in the courthouse, when defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo said around 3 p.m. that court officers had told him that Weinstein was having chest pains.

Jurors weren't in the room at the time. They were about four hours into their closed-door discussions, and they had just sent a note asking to rehear part of accuser Jessica Mann ’s testimony — a brief portion in which she said she was “spacing out” during cross-examination — and to review a lengthy prosecution timeline of emails and other evidence.

Judge Curtis Farber ultimately told jurors only that there were “unforeseen reasons” for sending them home a bit earlier than planned. Prosecutors and Weinstein’s lawyers had left the courtroom so jurors would be less likely to speculate about Weinstein’s absence.

“He wants to be here, but he’s having chest pains,” Agnifilo told the judge before ducking out of the courtroom.

Jurors are due to get the requested information and resume deliberations Thursday.

Weinstein has had health problems at court before. When he was sent to jail for the first time in 2020, he was taken from the courthouse in an ambulance to be checked out at a hospital for heart palpitations and high blood pressure. In 2024, he was rushed from Rikers to a hospital and had emergency surgery to remove fluid on his heart and lungs.

Mann, 40, has testified that she and Weinstein had a consensual relationship, but that he subjected her to unwanted sex in a Manhattan hotel room in March 2013 after she repeatedly said no. Lawyers for Weinstein have maintained that the encounter was consensual, and they have emphasized that Mann continued seeing Weinstein afterward and expressing warmth toward him. Mann has said she was mired in complicated feelings about him, herself and what had happened, and was “normalizing everything.”

Her viewpoint changed in 2017, when a series of sexual misconduct allegations against the Oscar-winning Weinstein propelled the #MeToo campaign to hold people — especially powerful men — accountable for sexual misbehavior. Weinstein has said he “acted wrongly” but never assaulted anyone.

Some of those accusations later generated criminal convictions against Weinstein in New York and California.

An appeals court overturned his 2020 New York conviction on charges that involved Mann and another accuser. At a retrial last year, jurors failed to reach a verdict on Mann's portion of the case, leading to a second retrial this year. He is charged with one count of rape in the third degree.

The current jury heard nearly three weeks of testimony, five days of it from Mann. Weinstein decided not to testify.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. Mann, however, has agreed to be named.

___

An earlier version of this story erroneously suggested that Weinstein left the courtroom after experiencing chest pains. Weinstein was not in court at the time.

Update: Teen says he was zip-tied, tortured in couples Plymouth Township home linked to dog mauling

The attack happened on Thursday, March 19, near Rosemont Avenue and Trojan Street on the city’s west side.

Some of the details described by family members are disturbing.

“It’s an attack that will forever change a 6-year-old boy’s life,” said the child’s grandmother, Marlene Jones, who described the last several days as emotionally exhausting for the family.

Jones said her grandson, Romel Frazier Jr., is heavily sedated at Children’s Hospital, where he has been treated for extensive injuries to both arms and his leg.

“They basically damaged his right arm. His fingers were mangled. His right thumb was completely gone,” Jones said, adding that the child’s left arm and heel were also badly injured.

According to Detroit Animal Care and Control, the agency received a report of the attack from a local hospital on the 19th.

Investigators say the child’s father told the boy to go outside to clean the yard while the family’s two dogs were in the backyard.

Investigators say the father later returned to find the child unresponsive and the dogs biting him.

Detroit Animal Care and Control says the two dogs were surrendered by the child’s father.

Family questions whether another animal was involved

Some relatives have questioned whether a different animal could have entered the yard.

“A neighbor a block away, a friend of the family, he informed us that he’s been seeing coyotes around,” Jones said.

Police say they have not found evidence supporting that.

Detroit police said their investigators’ report has been submitted to the Wayne County Prosecutor for review.

In a statement, Maria Miller, a spokesperson for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, said no charges will be issued, citing insufficient evidence that a crime occurred. The statement said prosecutors considered that:

1. The parents were unaware that the dogs were aggressive toward humans.
2. The father has owned the dogs since they were puppies, and the child had been around them for years without problems.
3. Letting the child outside for 15–20 minutes with family dogs not known to be dangerous was not considered a reckless act.

The statement also noted the dogs were surrendered to authorities without incident.

The child’s family is asking anyone near Rosemont and Trojan who may have video from Thursday or information about what happened to come forward, saying they still want clarity on the circumstances surrounding the attack.

“We want to know what happened,” Jones said. “He’s going to wake up and look, and he won’t have his limbs, his arms, and his hands.”

For those who wish to help, a GoFundMe page has been posted for Romel.

All four are considered potential stars and a clear cut above the rest in a loaded draft class. What remains to be seen is the order they will be taken.

The Washington Wizards hold the No. 1 pick for the first time since they drafted John Wall in 2010. Utah, Memphis and Chicago round out the top four.

“It would mean a lot,” Dybantsa said Wednesday at the NBA draft combine of being picked first. “It would just mean that all my hard work is paying off. All the countless hours and all the sacrifices I made have paid off.”

Dybantsa, who led the country in scoring last season, thinks he would be a good fit in Washington. The Wizards went 17-65 and finished with the league's worst record for the first time since 1967. But after eight straight losing seasons, they could be poised for bigger things.

Then again, it's no sure thing Dybantsa goes first. There's a case for Peterson, not to mention Boozer and Wilson.

“For me, it's just about going to the right fit, the right situation for me,” said Boozer, the AP national player of the year. “An organization that really believes in me, and understands what I bring to the team. I understand where you go really matters for your career and how your trajectory goes, so that’s the biggest thing for me for sure.”

Boozer, the son of former Duke and NBA star Carlos Boozer, tied for the national lead with 22 double-doubles while averaging 22.5 points and 10.2 rebounds. His dad played for the Jazz and Bulls, and now, there's a chance he winds up on one of those teams.

“He loves it here,” Cameron Boozer said. “I think he has a very strong fan base here as well. I think he'd be very happy if I was sent to Chicago.”

Wilson averaged 19.8 points and 9.4 rebounds in a dominant season cut short by injuries. He broke a bone in his left hand days after a thrilling win against rival Duke. Then, when he was about to come back, he broke his right thumb in a non-contact drill in practice to end his season on the eve of another meeting with the Blue Devils.

He said his hand is “perfectly fine” and the team that drafts him will get a “winner.”

“They're gonna get somebody who's dedicated to their franchise, somebody who will change their city for the better,” he said.

Peterson was hospitalized because of full-body cramping before the season and dealt with other injuries and illnesses that caused him to miss 11 games. But he was terrific when he played, averaging 20.2 points and 4.2 rebounds while shooting 38.2% from beyond the arc in 24 games.

Peterson and Dybantsa were considered the top two prep basketball players for years. They put on a memorable show during a Grind Session game on the winter AAU circuit, when Peterson went off for 58 points for Prolific Prep and nailed the winning 3 in the final seconds. Dybantsa scored 49 for Utah Prep.

“I just remember me and AJ going back and forth,” Peterson said. “It was a great game and I was blessed to come out on top. I'm getting back to that now.”

Dybantsa described it as an unforgettable experience for anyone who witnessed it.

“If you were at that game, that’s probably a core memory in your whole basketball-watching as a fan,” he said. “That was probably a core moment. I think there was a time in the game where we went 15 for 15 straight. It was crazy. He ended up winning, so he got the best me.”

Peterson did it again when Kansas beat BYU in late January, scoring 18 points while Dybantsa finished with 17.

Now, Peterson is trying to show that the physical issues that slowed him last season are a thing of the past. They also might have helped him develop into a more well-rounded player.

“I didn't have the same step that I had before,” he said. “If one thing's bad, something else improves. My shooting improved because of that.”

___

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

Barcelona clinched its second straight league title on Sunday with a 2-0 win over rival Real Madrid at home and needed three wins in its last three matches to reach 100 points.

The loss ended an 11-game winning streak for the Catalan club.

“A little bit disappointed about the result, we all wanted to win today,” Barcelona coach Hansi Flick said. “But at the end I saw good things, I'm happy with the performance of the team.”

Alaves' players provided a guard of honor for Barcelona's team before the match, lining up and applauding their rivals as they entered the field.

It was a big win for Alaves, which moved out of the relegation zone with the result. It reached 15th place with 40 points, one point clear of the bottom three with two rounds left.

“We are not clear yet, but it was a big step,” Alaves forward Toni Martínez said.

Ibrahim Diabate scored the winner from inside the area in first-half stoppage time.

Alaves hadn't earned a clean sheet in 20 straight league matches. Barcelona had scored at least once in 56 straight league matches.

Espanyol wins again

Espanyol beat Athletic Bilbao 2-0 at home to end an 18-game winless streak and move further away from the relegation zone.

Pere Milla scored in the 69th and Kike García in stoppage time to give Espanyol its first win of the year. Its last victory had been in December at Athletic.

The result moved Espanyol to 14th place, while Athletic stayed ninth.

Sevilla moves up

Sevilla also gained some breathing room after it rallied from two goals down to win 3-2 at Villarreal.

It was the third victory in a row for Sevilla, which moved to 10th place, four points from the relegation zone.

Villarreal stayed in third place, but only three points ahead of fourth-placed Atletico Madrid, which won 2-1 at Osasuna on Tuesday.

Mallorca in danger

Mallorca lost 3-1 to Getafe at home to stay in 17th place, just outside the relegation zone. Mallorca has only one win in its last five games.

Getafe was seventh, in position to qualify for European competitions.

Oviedo has already been demoted, but 10 teams are within four points of each other near the bottom of the table going into the last two rounds.

___

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

PSG needed only a draw to seal a fifth consecutive Ligue 1 crown and is now nine points ahead of Lens with one game left.

Khvicha Kvaratskhelia scored in the 29th minute and Ibrahim Mbaye added the second goal in stoppage time after Lens missed several chances to score at Stade Bollaert-Delelis.

“Without a doubt this was difficult, Lens did so well this season,” PSG coach Luis Enrique said. “I think they deserved more tonight but (goalkeeper Matvei) Safonov was incredible tonight.”

The match was rescheduled from April 11 by the French league to help titleholder PSG’s ambitions in the Champions League. PSG takes on Premier League leader Arsenal in the Champions League final on May 30 in Budapest.

Although the postponement was strongly contested by Lens, coach Pierre Sage’s side had no say in the matter.

Lens also has a final to prepare for — against Nice in the French Cup on May 22 — and Sage left his two best forwards — wingers Florian Thauvin and Allan Saint-Maximin — on the bench against PSG until the hour mark.

Clinical versus wasteful

PSG punished a Lens error when Dembélé intercepted a sloppy pass from defender Malang Sarr and fed Kvaratskhelia, who scored with a clinical finish.

PSG scored in stoppage time through Mbaye, the 18-year-old forward who thumped a pass from Désiré Doué in off the crossbar moments after Lens had fluffed yet another chance.

Lens should already have been level — or even ahead — at the break but striker Wesley Saïd misjudged a close-range header and then shot straight at Safonov in first-half stoppage time.

Safonov kept out another effort from Abdallah Sima early in the second half when the striker went clean through. Sima then hit the post after collecting a superb pass from Thauvin in the 74th.

“I had some luck today," Safonov acknowledged. “If my opponents had put their shots a bit more either side of me it would have been different.”

Saint-Maximin was dangerous when he came on in the second half but wasted several good situations when excessively trying to put himself in the perfect shooting position.

“We created a lot of chances and stopped them playing. My players deserved at least a draw tonight,” Sage said. “Their goalkeeper had a great game but we missed a lot of chances. They had two chances and scored.”

The last team to stop PSG winning the title was Lille in 2021. This season was closer than the last, however, when PSG sealed the title without losing and with six games left.

Strasbourg wins

In the other match, Strasbourg won 2-1 at Brest in a game also rescheduled because of Strasbourg’s involvement in the UEFA Conference League, where it lost to Rayo Vallecano in the semifinals.

Defender Valentin Barco and midfielder Sebastian Nanasi scored for Strasbourg either side of a goal from Brest striker Ludovic Ajorque in a lively opening.

Strasbourg will finish the season in eighth and Brest was 12th heading into the final round of Ligue 1 games on Sunday. ___

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

Disasters -- both natural and human-caused -- can happen suddenly, at any time, and anywhere. When they do, everyday routines change fast -- power can go out, roads can close, and emergency responders might be delayed.

The American Red Cross says there are three practical steps everyone can take now to be safer later: get a kit, make a plan, and be informed.

Get a kit (and make it easy to grab)

Think of your emergency supplies in two ways: what you need to shelter at home and what you need if you must leave quickly.

The Red Cross recommends keeping supplies in an easy-to-carry emergency preparedness kit you can use at home or take with you if you evacuate.

Start with the basics. At minimum, include:

• Water -- one gallon per person, per day
• 3-day supply for evacuation
• 2-week supply for home
• Food: non-perishable, easy-to-prepare items
• 3-day supply for evacuation
• 2-week supply for home
• Flashlight
• Battery-powered or hand-crank radio (NOAA Weather Radio if possible)
• Extra batteries
• First aid kit
• Medications: 7-day supply plus essential medical items
• Multi-purpose tool
• Sanitation and personal hygiene items
• Copies of personal documents (medication list and key medical info, proof of address, lease/deed, passports, birth certificates, insurance policies)
• Current digital photos of loved ones (update every six months -- especially for children)
• Cellphone with chargers
• Family and emergency contact information
• Extra cash
• Emergency blanket
• Maps of the area

Add what your household needs. A kit works best when it matches real life.

Consider adding:

• Medical supplies (glasses/contacts, hearing aids + extra batteries, syringes, cane)
• Baby supplies (bottles, formula, baby food, diapers)
• Games/activities for children
• Pet supplies (collar, leash, ID, food, carrier, bowl)
• Two-way radios
• Extra car and house keys
• Manual can opener

Depending on the disasters that could happen in your area, the Red Cross suggests items like a whistle, N95/surgical masks, rain gear, work gloves, plastic sheeting, duct tape, scissors, household liquid bleach, blankets, sleeping bags, sunscreen, and insect repellent.

Make a plan (then practice it)

An emergency plan is basically a set of decisions you don’t want to make under stress. The Red Cross recommends meeting with your family or household members to talk through the emergencies that are most likely to happen where you live, learn, and work, then assign responsibilities so everyone knows how you’ll work as a team.

Plan for being separated:

One of the simplest, most important parts of planning is deciding how you’ll reconnect if you’re not together when something happens.

Choose two meeting places:

1. Right outside your home for a sudden emergency (like a fire).
2. Outside your neighborhood in case you can’t return home or are asked to evacuate.

Also, choose an out-of-area emergency contact. In major events, local phone lines can be overloaded or out of service -- sometimes it’s easier to reach someone long-distance.

Make sure everyone:

• Memorizes key numbers
• Has contacts written down
• Has them saved in their phone

Plan for communication when systems fail. Talk through backup options: text, email, calling, mail, or contacting through a third party. The key is agreeing ahead of time what you’ll try first, second, and third.

Plan evacuation routes -- then test them.

If you might need to evacuate:

• Decide where you’d go (hotel, friends/relatives, or an evacuation shelter, if necessary)
• Decide which route you’d take
• Identify alternate routes in case roads are impassable
• Make sure everyone knows the primary and backup plan

The Red Cross suggests practicing evacuating your home twice a year, driving your planned evacuation route, and plotting alternate routes on your map.

Plan for pets and household needs:

If you have pets, plan ahead by keeping a list of pet-friendly motels/hotels and animal shelters along evacuation routes.

If anyone in your household has access or functional needs, including a disability, the Red Cross recommends creating a comprehensive evacuation plan in advance with family and care providers, doing a personal assessment of needs during/after an emergency, and building a support network to help.

If a family member is in the military or travels frequently for work, discuss how your plan works if they’re away.

Be informed (so you know what to do when alerts come)

Preparedness isn’t only supplies -- it’s understanding what’s most likely in your area and how you’ll get reliable information fast.

The Red Cross recommends:

• Learning which disasters/emergencies can happen locally (from home fires and medical emergencies to community-wide events like floods or earthquakes)
• Knowing how authorities will notify you (local radio/TV, NOAA Weather Radio)
• Understanding the difference between weather “watches” and “warnings” and what actions you’ll take for each

Also: If you travel or have recently moved, learn what to do in disasters that might be common in those places (for example, what to do during an earthquake if you’re not used to them).

Extra steps that can save lives

When a major disaster happens, loved ones could be hurt and help might be delayed. The Red Cross encourages households to ensure at least one person is trained in first aid and CPR and knows how to use an AED.

They also recommend the Red Cross Emergency App, which provides expert advice on how to prepare and respond, plus a map of open Red Cross shelters.

Finally, consider printing emergency contact cards for each household member and carrying them -- especially for kids.

Are you already prepared?

Are you prepared for an emergency if you have to evacuate or shelter-in-place? We want to see your set up! Reach out to us at news@wdiv.com.

The princess, commonly known as Kate, was received by huge cheering crowds as she arrived in Reggio Emilia in northern Italy to learn about its eponymous child-centered approach to early education. The trip is part of what her office called an international “fact-finding mission” to explore different approaches to supporting young children and their carers.

The princess, who spent a gap year in Florence when she was younger, spoke a few words of Italian to a group of preschool children, introducing herself as Caterina.

“Parlo un po’ d’italiano,” she said, explaining that she spoke a little Italian. She then asked their names in Italian and added: “Io sono Catarina” (I am Catherine.)

The Reggio Emilia approach is based on the idea that young children have many different ways of thinking, understanding and expressing themselves, and that teachers need to work with their students to help them learn.

“It is extraordinary and that is why I wanted to come and visit Reggio Emilia because your history is so rich and I have always been fascinated by the philosophy,” the princess said as she began her program.

The choice of destination for Kate’s first trip abroad since her 2024 cancer diagnosis is no coincidence as early years development is the signature cause of the mother of three who will one day be queen.

“She wants to make a point that she is going to keep making this her cause,” said Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine.

Her visit will highlight the idea that the environment and human relationships that surround children are crucial to laying the foundations for a resilient and healthy future, Kensington Palace said in a statement.

“The Reggio Emilia approach clearly suits the narrative at the start of international operations,’’ Little said.

The visit is part of her work with the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, which she founded in 2021 to increase public understanding of the importance of supporting children in the first five years of life.

One of Britain’s most popular royals, the Princess of Wales has proved to be adept at focusing attention on matters she cares about.

When Kate announced that she had completed chemotherapy treatment in a soft-focus, Insta-ready video, she ventured into realms not previously inhabited by the royal family, whose members traditionally shied away from talking about their health.

And she did it in a new way, using social media to share the fact that for all her wealth and privilege, her life had been upended by cancer, like so many others.

Then, later, when she announced she was in remission, she spent the day supporting other cancer patients at the hospital where she received treatment.

In a statement on social media, she offered her thanks to everyone who helped her and her husband, Prince William, as they navigated the ups and downs of treatment and recovery. She hugged patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London and described her own treatment as “exceptional.”

“It is a relief to now be in remission and I remain focused on recovery,” the princess, now 44, wrote in a note signed with her initial, C. “As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal.”

Her new normal involves becoming the go-to advocate for early years education, which refers to the learning and development of children from birth to five years of age.

There’s lots to do in Britain, where advocates say there aren’t enough spaces to go around and many teachers don’t have the training they need.

Edoardo Masset, associate research director at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said Kate’s focus on early childhood development is important because it brings attention to an issue that really matters to children.

“This relationship between early years education and success later in life is supported not only by strong theoretical arguments, but also by a large body of evidence on the effectiveness of programs for preschool children,’’ Masset said in a blog post.

Residents of Reggio Emilia said Wednesday they were honored the princess had chosen their city and its public preschools for her first visit since her remission. Francesca Valli, a teacher of the Reggio Emilia approach, was waiting for her.

“I also feel very honored to be here, almost as a representative of my school,” she said. “For her first visit — and, among other things, her first solo visit after a long illness — the princess has made a very judicious, appropriate and well-considered choice, and this certainly does her honor.”

—-

Kirka reported from London.

Manchester City cut Arsenal's lead at the top of the standings back to two points after beating Crystal Palace 3-0 at the Etihad Stadium on Tuesday.

With two rounds of the season to go it means Arsenal will have to wait another week at least to be confirmed champion.

Mikel Arteta's team plays relegated Burnley on Monday and a victory would leave City needing to beat Bournemouth 24 hours later to take the title race into the final day of the season.

“We’ve seen a lot of things can happen on the final day," City forward Phil Foden told Sky Sports. “I’ve experienced it many times when the game doesn’t go your way, so we just have to keep pushing and doing our part.”

City plays Chelsea in the FA Cup final before all that and Pep Guardiola appeared to have Saturday's Wembley showdown in mind by making six changes to his team. But even without Erling Haaland, Rayan Cherki and Jeremy Doku in his starting lineup, City won comfortably.

Foden — making a rare start in recent months — provided assists for both of City's first half goals.

His backheel created an opening for Antoine Semenyo to open the scoring after 32 minutes and he set up Omar Marmoush for City's second eight minutes later.

Savinho added a third in the 84th.

The size of City's win could yet be significant as it moved one ahead of Arsenal on goal difference.

Guardiola is targeting his seventh league title at City. He has never gone back-to-back seasons without winning a league title in his entire coaching career at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City.

“Unfortunately it’s not in our hands," Guardiola said. “It’s not easy, but it’s important that we are there. This group of players are all extraordinary.”

___

James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

Covering eight stadiums, seven cities and four continents, this year will feature nine games outside of the U.S. for the most the league has ever staged. Sixteen teams, half of the NFL, will play internationally in 2026.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has declared the goal of 16 games annually outside of the U.S. After this season, the league will have played 71 games in 12 international cities. Melbourne, Paris and Rio de Janeiro are first-time hosts in 2026.

The league had months ago announced the Melbourne matchup as its first game in Australia in addition to several of the participating teams for the nine-game slate, which was fully unveiled Wednesday. The complete 17-game schedules for all 32 teams will be released Thursday.

Netflix also announced, as part of a new deal with the NFL, a Thanksgiving Eve broadcast as part of an expanding package of regular-season games. The Green Bay Packers will play at the Los Angeles Rams on Wednesday, Nov. 25.

The 49ers have long been one of the NFL's most prominent brands, and they'll be the road team for the Thursday night opener on Sept. 10 against the Rams on Netflix. That game will kick off on Friday morning at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which is 17 hours ahead of California time.

San Francisco will be the home team at Estadio Banorte in Mexico City, where they have marketing rights as part of the league's global markets program along with the Rams and eight other teams. The Rams also have rights in Australia.

The 49ers will then play the showcase Sunday night game on NBC on Nov. 22 against the Vikings, who last year played the NFL's first international multicity road trip with a game in Dublin in Week 4 followed by a game in London in Week 5. The Vikings were the road team in both of those games last year, too.

San Francisco last played in Mexico City in 2022. The league has also committed to playing there in 2027 and 2028.

Broadening the footprint in Brazil

The Dallas Cowboys will be the home team in Rio de Janeiro at Maracana Stadium against the Baltimore Ravens on Sept. 27, a late afternoon Week 3 game that CBS will broadcast. Neither team has marketing rights in Brazil, where the league has staged games in Sao Paulo in each of the last two years. The NFL has committed at least three games in five years to Rio.

More football for the breakfast table

All six games in Europe will kick off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time, an exclusive broadcast window before the traditional afternoon start times that cover the majority of the schedule each week.

There are three games in London, the league's most common international site with 45 regular-season games since 2007. The Jacksonville Jaguars for the first time are moving consecutive home games abroad as a renovation begins on their home stadium. They're one of 10 teams with rights in Britain.

The Jaguars will play the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 5 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Oct. 11 and then face the AFC South rival Houston Texans in Week 6 at Wembley Stadium on Oct. 18. The Washington Commanders will be the home team at Tottenham on Oct. 4 when they face the Indianapolis Colts.

The New Orleans Saints will be the home team for the first game in Paris in Week 7, facing the Pittsburgh Steelers on Oct. 25 at Stade de France. The Saints are the only team with marketing rights in France. The Detroit Lions will be the home team for the league's third game in Munich, facing the New England Patriots on Nov. 15 in Week 10 at the home of German soccer club Bayern Munich. The Lions are one of 11 teams with rights in Germany.

As previously announced by the NFL, the Atlanta Falcons will be the home team in Madrid in Week 9 against the Cincinnati Bengals on Nov. 8 at Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. This will be the second game in Madrid, where neither team has marketing rights.

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

Armoni McArn has been missing since May 1, 2026. He was last seen in the 14900 block of Joy Road in Detroit wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black Jeans.

His family describes Armoni as intelligent, loving, and kind. They said it is not like him to just disappear like this.

“He’s a good person, with a big heart. He’s trusting, loyal, to a fault sometimes,” his mother Janetta McArn said. “He has six children that are missing him so, so much. Four boys and two daughters. He talks to his children regularly. This is something he never does. He doesn’t just up and disappear.”

His family said the night Armoni was last seen he had returned home from the restaurant he worked at in Southfield. They said his keys, phone, money, and car were all at his apartment.

“He has bipolar disorder, but you don’t have to be scared to approach him, you know. If you approach him, you could just say, ‘You’re family’s looking for you. They just want to know if you’re OK,’” Armoni’s sister, Serenity Sawyer, said. “If you know anything about his disappearance, anywhere he may be, please, just let us know. We just want to know if he’s safe.”

Anyone with information is asked to contact Commander Ryan Conner at the Detroit Police Department’s 2nd Precinct at 313-596-5240.

Anonymous tips can be made to Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SPEAKUP. There is a $2,500 cash reward being offered for information that leads to locating Armoni McArn.

---> Find more Missing in Michigan coverage here.

The “Ocean Dream,” the standout offer at the auction house's Geneva sale of jewelry, was found in Central Africa in the 1990s. The price easily topped the presale estimate to fetch 7-10 million francs (around $9-13 million).

Rahul Kadakia, president of Christie's Asia Pacific, said that an unspecified private client was the buyer, and the stone took about 20 minutes to sell — an indication that interest was high.

The price was more than double that of the roughly $8.5 million that the gem, which was featured among rare colored diamonds at the Smithsonian Splendour of Diamonds Exhibition in 2003, sold for at Christie's in 2014.

“A stellar result worthy of the world’s rarest blue-green diamond,” Tobias Kormind, managing director of online jeweler 77 Diamonds, said in a statement.

On Tuesday, a 6-carat fancy vivid blue diamond at a Geneva auction at Sotheby's didn't sell.

The auction house said that the rare stone unearthed from South Africa’s famed Cullinan mine had come in with a presale estimate of 7.2 million to 9.6 million francs ($9.2 million to $12.3 million).

“Although the diamond didn’t find a buyer during the auction, we are now in conversations with several interested parties and are confident that it will find a new home soon,” Sotheby’s said in a statement.

Both houses say collectors are increasingly drawn to rare, colored diamonds, which make up only a fraction of all the diamonds mined around the world.

Romell was attacked by two pit bulls, suffering severe trauma.

His mother, Preshauna Jones, said the dogs also badly injured his legs, including damage to his right calf and part of his left foot.

She has spent the past two months at his side as he underwent multiple surgeries and began the long process of rehabilitation.

“I thought it was over,” Jones said. “But my baby stayed in there. He never left.”

The family shared a video of Romell taking steps again at the hospital as he relearned how to walk.

Now that he’s home, Jones said daily life looks completely different.

“Now, I have to feed him,” Jones said. “He was just able to do all of that on his own. I have to be his hands and arms. And it’s just a constant reminder, every day, of the day that this happened.”

--> ‘Forever change a 6-year-old boy’s life’: Detroit grandma describes injuries after animal attack

Despite the trauma, Jones said her son’s determination has been inspiring.

“It’s like, my baby went through something so tragic, and he is still happy, still, you know, on the go,” Jones said.

Romell was released from the hospital this week.

Jones said the return home is a relief, but the family is now facing ongoing medical needs and growing expenses, including out-of-pocket costs even with insurance.

Jones also said she was recently laid off.

“Everything was ok, and in the blink of an eye, everything is just different now,” she said.

Doctors say Romell will require additional procedures and will soon need prosthetics to help with day-to-day activities. Jones said the situation can feel overwhelming, but she tries not to show that stress around her son.

During his interview with Local 4, Romell smiled and said he’s feeling “good,” and he wanted people who have been asking about him to know he’s OK.

He also had a special request: the 6-year-old said his favorite rapper is Kendrick Lamar, and he hopes the message reaches him.

“Can you come to my birthday?” Romell asked.

Romell turns seven on July 31.

Supporters have set up a GoFundMe to help Romell and his family as they navigate his recovery.

Click here to learn more.

At a federal court in Los Angeles, Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 56-year-old Erik Fleming for his role in the death of the “Friends” star.

“It’s truly a nightmare I can’t wake up from,” Fleming said in a deep, somber voice from the podium before his sentencing. “I’m haunted by the mistakes I made.”

The judge ordered Fleming, who has been free on bond, to turn himself in to serve his term in 45 days. He was also sentenced to three years of probation.

Fleming was the fourth defendant sentenced of the five who have pleaded guilty in prosecutions over the actor’s 2023 death in the Jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home. Fleming connected Perry to Jasveen Sangha, the convicted drug who prosecutors called “The Ketamine Queen.” He delivered drugs from her house to Perry's, and marked them up to make a profit.

Fleming gave up Sangha to investigators the same day they first found him at his sister's house, where he was sleeping on the couch several months after Perry's death. Sangha was sentenced last month to 15 years in prison.

Fleming's attorney Robert Dugdale told the judge he “handed over the Ketamine Queen on a silver platter.”

“They didn't have a clue who she was before that day,” Dugdale said.

He would likely have gotten about four years in prison if it weren’t for his cooperation.

The prosecution said he deserved credit for doing the right thing, but argued that he did so only when confronted and cornered by authorities.

“Mr. Fleming didn’t cooperate because he had a benevolent motive, or because he wanted justice for Mr. Perry,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello said. “He wanted to save himself.”

The judge also pointed out that Fleming didn't come forward in the months after Perry's death, that he didn't create new evidence by making phone calls to co-conspirators or anything similar, and that investigators might have gotten the same information he gave them simply through the seizure of his phone.

But all agreed that his cooperation sped up and smoothed the investigation.

Prosecutors also said Fleming's job as a drug counselor made him especially morally culpable for selling street drugs to a victim who had a public, well-documented battle with addiction, even if he wasn't acting as counselor to Perry.

Fleming became the first defendant to plead guilty in August 2024, admitting to distribution of ketamine resulting in death. That was before arrests in the case were even announced, and Wednesday was his first court appearance since his role became public knowledge.

Defense lawyers emphasized that he had no criminal record and said he spent only 11 days as a drug dealer, with a single customer. Fleming told the judge it was an act of desperation “in the midst of the worst time of my life.”

Fleming told the judge his great remorse “can’t compare to the agony I’ve caused.”

Outside the courthouse, he said “my chest and heart hurt every day for the pain I caused not only his family but the millions of people who adore him.”

He and his lawyers also highlighted what they called his extraordinary moves toward rehabilitation, spending 20 months sober and helping to establish a sober living home.

Perry had been receiving ketamine treatments for depression — an increasingly common off-label use.

Perry was seeking more of the drug than he could get through doctors and asked a friend to help him get more. She introduced him to Fleming, a former film and television producer whose career had been ravaged by addiction but had since become a drug counselor.

Fleming said he was in the midst of a major relapse brought on by life struggles. He got ketamine from Sangha and took it to Perry's house where he sold it to the actor's live-in personal assistant Kenneth Iwamasa.

His deliveries included 25 vials for $6,000 four days before Perry’s death.

Iwamasa would inject Perry from that batch on Oct. 28, 2023, and hours later, he found the actor dead. A medical examiner’s report found that Perry died from the acute effects of ketamine, a surgical anesthetic, and drowning was a secondary cause.

The 2 1/2-year investigation and prosecution that resulted should come to a close in two weeks with the sentencing of Iwamasa.

Perry, who died at 54, became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” NBC’s culture-changing sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

The shooting happened Wednesday afternoon, May 13, 2026, outside the 313 Community Barbershop in the 10300 block of West McNichols.

Detroit police confirmed to Local 4 that a man was killed. They said the circumstances surrounding the shooting remain unknown.

Witnesses told Local 4 that someone pulled up and shot the man multiple times.

While police were at the scene, the investigation appeared to center around a white car parked on the side of the barbershop.

A community activist expressed frustration about this kind of violence in the middle of his neighborhood.

“You’ve got the mayor trying to build up the blocks, then this is our thanks,” he said. “There’s something wrong with that. Something’s really wrong with that. So we’ve just got to put our boots on the ground and get out here and stay out here more often so that this won’t happen.”

There are cameras at some of the businesses in the area, so surveillance footage could be part of the investigation.

Police have not yet released any information about the person they’re looking for.

The May 13 trip, organized by the Detroit Area Agency on Aging, brought seniors to the State Capitol for Older Michiganians Day, an annual event focused on aging-related policy and advocacy.

“There are a lot of things happening that seniors need advocacy and support for,” attendee Tamara Parrin said.

Advocates said several issues were top priorities this year, including caregiver support and expanding home care services for seniors.

“This means a lot to me, to go speak to somebody and let them know how we feel,” attendee Andella White said. “We are seniors, and we don’t get the respect we need.”

Attendees also heard directly from lawmakers, including State Senator Ruth Johnson, a Republican from Holly who represents Michigan’s 24th Senate District. Johnson spoke about concerns surrounding Michigan’s guardianship system.

“Right now, we have a broken guardianship system in Michigan, and I have bills we’ve been trying to get through,” Johnson said.

Michigan is home to nearly 1.9 million seniors, and their share of the state’s population continues to grow.

White wore a shirt that read, “Activists Never Retire,” a message she said reflects her commitment to continuing the fight for seniors.

“I’ll be back next year and the year after that one,” she said.

The festival will feature two days of stand-up, improv, workshops, and more at Planet Ant in Hamtramck on May 15th and 16th.

Watch the video above for details about the event, including how it’s all for a good cause.