The S&P 500 slipped 0.3% and is on track for a fourth loss in the five days since setting its all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 344 points, or 0.6%, as of 11:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.8% lower.

The bond market remains the center of action after yields charged higher through the summer on worries about high inflation, gargantuan government debts and other factors. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a move Wednesday that jolted financial markets to at least double the size of his department’s planned purchases of longer-term Treasurys from Sept. 9 through Nov. 4.

That helped push yields down after the 10-year Treasury’s yield had hit its highest level in more than a year and the 30-year yield got back to where it was in 2007, before the Great Recession sent yields toward zero worldwide. It’s a big deal because high yields slow the economy by raising interest payments for people, companies and the government, and they can undercut prices for stocks and other investments.

But analysts had cautioned the effect may be short lived, given how small the purchases are relative to the overall size of the Treasury market and how they don't fix the fundamental concerns of investors that had driven up yields. Plus, more signals arrived quickly to push worries higher.

The U.S. government’s debt topped $40 trillion on Wednesday, a staggering record that arrived just months after the national debt first blew past the $39 trillion mark in April, because Washington continues to spend far more money than it brings in.

And on Thursday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude climbed 1.9% to $93.35 as uncertainty continues about when the war with Iran will allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again. President Donald Trump threatened Iran with “the MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER TAKEN AGAINST ANY COUNTRY” late Wednesday but provided few details.

That helped push the 10-year Treasury yield up to 4.70% from 4.65% late Wednesday. It’s almost back to its 4.71% level from late Tuesday, before the Treasury Department made its announcement.

A couple encouraging reports on the U.S. economy also helped push up longer-term Treasury yields, which move with expectations for the economy and inflation in coming years. One said fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week than economists expected, while another said manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region appears to be much stronger than expected.

On Wall Street, Walmart was one of the heaviest weights on the S&P 500 and fell 9.4% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Investors focused instead on how an important underlying measure of revenue growth at its stores slowed again. Its forecast for profit in the current quarter also fell short of analysts’ expectations.

Given its massive size, Walmart offers a look at how shoppers are doing across the United States. A surprisingly weak update on sales at U.S. retailers overall last month had raised worries that shoppers may be succumbing to pressure from high inflation and a job market that may be looking less solid.

Advance Auto Parts tumbled 23.1% after the retailer reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter, even though its profit topped expectations. CEO Shane O’Kelly said that “tighter household budgets constrained spending more than we anticipated, especially during the last four weeks of the quarter.”

Spending by U.S. consumers is the main engine of the economy, and a pullback by them could exacerbate what's already a slowdown in growth for the economy.

A pullback could also mean a double-whammy for travel companies, which would see fewer bookings when they have to pay higher prices for fuel. Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings fell 4.9%, while United Airlines sank 2.4% and American Airlines lost 2.5%.

Helping to keep Wall Street’s losses in check was Deere, which reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It rose 8.7% as the company said order trends indicate the agriculture equipment business looks set to accelerate after this year.

Oil companies also rose with the gains for crude prices. Exxon Mobil added 2.1%, and ConocoPhillips climbed 3.6%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe following a stronger finish in Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi soared 5.9% for one of the world’s biggest moves after the two tech titans that dominate its market, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, jumped. Such swings have become more common for Seoul's market, which has borne the brunt of rising and falling worries that winning stocks in the artificial-intelligence boom may have shot too high.

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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.

Omaha Public Schools Superintendent Matthew Ray requested Tuesday that police assigned to the schools, known as school resource officers, no longer use the gloves. Ray said in a letter to the public schools community that he’d only learned about the gloves the previous week. The first day of school was Wednesday.

The Omaha Police Department held a news conference last week in which it demonstrated the glove, saying it quickly achieved compliance and control with little to no force. The gloves were used twice during the 2025-2026 school year, police said.

The decision to stop using the gloves in middle and high schools came after an Associated Press investigation revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers these gloves, which are known as G.L.O.V.E. or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter. The devices have also been used in recent years by some jails.

It was not immediately known if other school districts have used the gloves.

Residents and school board members speak out against the gloves

At a school board meeting Monday night, about 30 people spoke out against police using the gloves. Residents and board members alike said they were appalled at the practice. No one spoke in favor of it.

“I can't even imagine walking down the hallway and seeing a peer of mine being electrocuted in a place that is supposed to be a safe space for students,” said Nora Wessel, a senior at Omaha Central High School. “Yet, this is now a very real possibility. These are adults we are supposed to be able to trust, but these weapons create a barrier for our students to turn to resource officers when needed.”

Ray said the district recognized long-standing relationships with law enforcement partners and the important role school resource officers have in promoting school safety. Continued use of the gloves “would be counterproductive to our work together,” Ray said.

Mayor John Ewing Jr. said police have honored the school district's decision to “opt out.” The Omaha Police Department said officers will continue to carry tasers, batons, OC spray and firearms.

Most school resource officers were trained to use the gloves

Most of the Omaha Police Department's 34 school resource officers had been trained and were allowed to use the gloves, the mayor and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said in a statement.

“We believe it is the safest use-of-force option in the rare times when it is used,” the statement said.

In 2025, the city's police department agreed to pay Compliant Technologies LLC, which manufactures the gloves, about $66,000 for 40 gloves, according to the contract.

Officers were expected to give warning before using the gloves and then touch the person for up to 15 seconds while the electric shock was delivered, the statement said.

The devices activate when an officer presses a button. The gloves must touch someone’s skin directly to produce voltage that causes pain, which is intended to make people compliant if they are resisting. Unlike Tasers, they do not leave burn or contact marks.

In the 2025-2026 school year, an officer used the glove in one case to stop a high school student from another school from trying to escape after fighting with a security guard, according to the statement.

Omaha Public Schools is the largest district in Nebraska and serves more than 50,000 students, according to its website.

Swalwell’s devices were seized at the San Francisco airport on Saturday and federal agents searched his home a day later, said the person, who was not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

A message seeking comment was left Thursday with an attorney for Swalwell.

Swalwell announced his resignation from Congress in April following sexual assault and misconduct allegations, which he has denied. The seven-term lawmaker had been seen as one of the leading candidates in California’s gubernatorial race before dropping out after the allegations surfaced.

The San Francisco Chronicle, followed by CNN, first reported allegations that Swalwell had sexually assaulted a woman twice, including when she worked for him. CNN also reported that three other women alleged various kinds of sexual misconduct by Swalwell, including sending them unsolicited explicit messages or nude photos.

Several of the 300 women, and a few men, said Clancy’s story resonated with them and that they wanted to raise awareness about how the mental health system treats women. Clancy's lawyer does not dispute that she killed the children, but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she was mentally ill.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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The livestreamed trial has sparked massive discussions online and has brought attention to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness Clancy's attorney Kevin Reddington says she had that is linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. Reddington said she also has bipolar disorder. After strangling her children, Clancy jumped from a second-story window and remains paralyzed from the waist down.

Reddington says Clancy repeatedly sought help: She turned to multiple outpatient providers, tried various drugs they prescribed, called a suicide hotline, went to an emergency room, and even checked herself into a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors say the former labor and delivery nurse planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to pick up medicine for one of their children and dinner for the family. They have also questioned the seriousness of her suicide attempt, and witnesses have testified that Clancy wouldn’t always take prescribed medications.

Thursday's rally was the first time during the nearly monthlong trial that supporters have come out in such large numbers.

“Women are being dismissed, neglected and ignored when we speak up,” said April Vincent, a 52-year-old paralegal from Providence, Rhode Island. “We’re scared because nobody takes us seriously.”

The women stood silently for more than an hour ahead of Thursday's proceedings, where a chaplain called by the defense testified about visiting Clancy in the hospital after the killings.

At the sight of Reddington outside the courthouse, the crowd broke into applause.

Rally organizer Renee Kimball implored the crowd to trust that Reddington “has Lindsay’s fight.”

Toward the end of their rally, supporters formed a circle, said the Lord's Prayer, held up their arms and formed hearts with their hands. Some held flags from different countries to show that the support for Clancy was global.

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old. Researchers estimate that postpartum psychosis — which is more serious and less common than postpartum depression — afflicts 1 to 2 per 1,000 women after delivery.

Jeanne Zaborski, a 72-year-old retired nurse from Rockland, Massachusetts, said she hopes the case raises awareness about postpartum health. She and many others at the rally said they had been following the trial almost daily.

“It's very sad,” Zaborski said. “I am a mother. I am a grandmother. I have a sister who had problems after birth and it's just very sad. I hope Lindsay gets the care she needs and deserves and other women will come together like we did today.”

In court, Sheila Cavanaugh, a chaplain at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, testified that when she first visited and prayed for Clancy, she was unconscious. By Jan. 31, 2023, Clancy was conscious and no longer connected to a ventilator, Cavanaugh said, but “her emotional state was very neutral – a flat affect.”

Cavanaugh said she “vividly remembers” one of the first things Clancy said to her.

“She said to me, as I held her hand to comfort her, ‘I’m so glad my children are safe,’” Cavanaugh said. “I replied theologically to Lindsay. I said, ‘Lindsay, your children are safe. They’re safe in heaven with God.’”

“We prayed for them,” said Cavanaugh, who saw Clancy more than 200 times and still visits her at the state mental hospital where she resides.

Cavanaugh said Clancy “alluded to hearing a voice, and the voice, according to Lindsay, told her that if she did not follow the command, neither she nor her children would be safe.”

Anthony’s attorney told a newly appointed judge that prosecutors also did not follow through with an off-the-record agreement. Defense attorney Russell Wilson said the case’s original judge allowed a “shadow docket” that kept information out of the trial.

“Everything was done off the record, at an astonishing clip,” said Wilson, who didn't represent Anthony at the criminal trial.

Anthony already won a legal victory on Wednesday when the judge who presided over his trial was removed from the case. Judge Michael Chitty was then assigned to consider the motion from Anthony's attorneys asking for a retrial in the killing of Austin Metcalf.

Anthony, now 19, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in the case.

Prosecutor Bill Wirskye argued Thursday that Anthony had received a fair trial and said that his attorneys had agreed to everything that was done during the trial.

Anthony's attorneys had asked for state District Judge John Roach to be removed in part because of a TV interview in which Roach said jurors “got it right” when they delivered a guilty verdict.

In seeking a new trial, Anthony’s attorneys have argued that the June proceedings were marred by strict courtroom rules and improper jury instructions. They have also said Anthony’s decision to not testify came after a dispute with prosecutors over an agreement to focus the trial on the events leading up to the stabbing.

Jurors in the trial had rejected Anthony’s claims he acted in self-defense during a confrontation with Metcalf in the stadium bleachers last year. Students who took the stand described a heated exchange over Anthony’s refusal on a rainy spring day to leave a tent that belonged to Metcalf’s team.

The case attracted national attention in part because of a flood of social media posts that amplified the killing in racial terms. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white. Lawyers on both sides, however, told jurors the tragedy had nothing to do with race.

During the recusal hearing Wednesday, Anthony's legal team focused on comments Roach made to a Dallas TV station after the trial had ended. In the interview, which was played as the hearing began, Roach was asked if the jury got “it right.”

“Yeah, they did,” Roach said, adding: “Whatever they say, they got it right.”

During the interview, Roach also defended his courtroom rules and spoke about the onslaught of online postings about the case.

As national attention on the killing intensified last year, the families of both Metcalf and Anthony said they had been targets of harassment.

Several schools were competing at the track event when Anthony sat under the Memorial High School tent that was perched in the bleachers. Metcalf and others had repeatedly told Anthony to leave, witnesses testified, leading to an escalating confrontation.

Prosecutors said Anthony provoked Metcalf, and witnesses testified that Anthony was the aggressor.

Anthony at one point reached inside a bag and replied: “Touch me and see what happens,” according to a police report.

Metcalf pushed Anthony, according to witnesses, who said Anthony then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.

Hurricane Lala tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees, covered roads in mud and rock and left many households without electricity. With nearly 15,000 homes and businesses still dark Thursday, forecasters warned of the likelihood of another tropical cyclone forming southeast of the islands.

A depression moving west and northwest could become a tropical storm Thursday and is expected to pass near or south of Hawaii's Big Island this weekend, according to the National Weather Service’s Central Pacific Hurricane Center. That could mean up to 15 inches of rain across the Big Island and life-threatening flooding, mudslides and rip currents, the hurricane center said.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and other state officials planned a news conference Thursday afternoon to discuss the potential cyclone as well as the ongoing recovery efforts related to the hurricane, which has been blamed for two deaths in the state.

The body of a man in his 60s was located by residents in a pasture Tuesday, a day after police were asked to conduct a welfare check, police said. That followed the discovery Monday of May Doi, 93, whom neighbors said was escaping floodwaters in her home and trying to get to a nearby shelter.

Doi was a beloved former kindergarten teacher who taught generations of residents in a small town on Hawaii’s Big Island.

“She taught grandkids of her students,” said ʻĀina Akamu, a former student of Doi’s who is now a vice principal at a local school. “She was a fixture in this community."

Now well west of Hawaii’s main islands, Lala reached major Category 3 strength with top sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) on Wednesday in what the National Hurricane Center called the first major hurricane of 2026 in the Central Pacific Ocean.

The heaviest recorded rainfall, 43.54 inches (1.1 meters), occurred in Laupahoehoe on the northeast coast of the Big Island, the National Weather Service said. Dozens of homes were washed from foundations, bridges were damaged and a collapsed section of a two-lane road had cut off access to the community of Pahala.

About 13,200 customers on the Big Island remained without power Thursday, the Hawaiian Electric utility said. Repairs in the heavily damaged areas of the Big Island, including the southern end, could take at least two weeks, the utility said.

Meanwhile, Lala was moving to the northwest at 9 mph (15 kph) Thursday and was expected to turn toward the north later in the day. It was bearing down on a remote area at the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago. Hurricane warnings were posted for portions of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument from Lisianski Island to Maro Reef.

Despite the remote area, there were humans in harm’s way. A charter boat with a crew of 16 people dedicated to removing marine plastics and abandoned fishing nets from the shores of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands got out of Lala’s projected path earlier this week.

Kevin O’Brien, president of the nonprofit Papahanaumokuakea Marine Debris Project, departed Lisianski Island on Monday and headed 350 miles (563 kilometers) out to sea.

“We were ready for it,” O’Brien said. “We keep on our toes out here during hurricane season.”

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer John Raby in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.

“This is the concertmaster,” Honeck said, “and also my brother.”

Among nine siblings, Manfred and Rainer are making a rare joint appearance in the Salzburg Festival's new production of Richard Strauss' “Ariadne auf Naxos,” which runs through Aug. 28. Director Ersan Mondtag's unconventional staging shifts the setting from Vienna to Mars and is available to stream on Medici.

Otto, the Honecks' father, was a postman in Nenzing, Austria, who played the flugelhorn and zither in his spare time.

“He wanted us to all play an instrument. I’m not sure whether the Trapp family was somehow in his head," Manfred said, referencing the musical clan in Rodgers and Hammerstein's “The Sound of Music.”

Manfred, who turns 68 next month, became the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra's music director in 2008-09 and in June agreed to a contract extension through 2032-33 that will move him past William Steinberg (1952-76) as the orchestra's longest-serving head.

Rainer, 65, joined the Vienna State Opera Orchestra in 1981 and was admitted to the Vienna Philharmonic three years later. He has been a concertmaster — the lead violin — since 1992.

A sister, Sibylle, plays cello for the Vienna Volksoper and an older brother, Otto, was a pianist and coach for the Frankfurt Opera. Manfred's son Matthias is a principal second violin in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

Family didn't have much money

Manfred, the seventh sibling, and Rainer, the eighth, both played violin as kids.

“Our father was very consistent. He wanted us to practice every day, and he practiced with us,” Rainer said. “So he played on the piano and that was very important for us to get this routine, to have every day only one hour, but every day a practice.”

A teacher, Grete Urbanek, gave them fruit yogurt at lessons.

“We could not afford to buy yogurt at home. And we had only meat on Sunday. The other seven days we were eating local food, which is called ribel,” Manfred said of a local cornmeal.

Their mother, Frieda, died in 1965 after giving birth to her ninth child. A few years later, their father moved the family to Vienna so the children could access better music teachers.

“If he would not have done this, I think we would not have this profession,” Manfred said during a joint interview with Rainer. “It always reminds me: One human makes a decision and it changes your whole life."

Seven Honeck siblings lived with their father in a 2 1/2-room apartment, while the two oldest sisters worked to help support the family.

Rainer studied with Alfred Staar, a Vienna Philharmonic violinist, and at age 15 he decided to become a professional musician.

“I was not good in Latin. I was behind and there was the decision: Do I repeat the class one more year or do I want to be a violin player?" he said. “That was a decision which many of my family members didn’t agree with but my father did.”

Rainer plays a Stradivarius from 1725 known as “Chaconne.” He joined Manfred and the Pittsburgh orchestra for concerts at their home hall in 2015 and the Aspen Music Festival the following year, for Beethoven’s “Fidelio” with the Vienna Symphony at the Theater an der Wien in 2020.

“He is great in terms of style, of articulation, phrasing," Vienna Philharmonic General Manager Michael Bladerer said. "When he says something to the section it will sound different after.”

Unplanned instrument shift

Manfred made a sudden switch from violin to viola in December 1982 when he learned the Vienna Philharmonic had an upcoming opening.

“The audition was in April and so I thought, OK, I want to do it,” he said, recalling he practiced every day, from morning to midnight.

Manfred won the audition but shifted his focus to conducting in 1987, becoming an assistant to Claudio Abbado at the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester. He conducted regularly at the Zurich Opera from 1991-96, was part of a trio of principal conductors at the MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1996-99.

He later served as music director of the Norwegian National Opera, the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Staatsoper Stuttgart.

Manfred’s Pittsburgh Symphony is the only American orchestra appearing at this summer’s Salzburg Festival, part of a 13-concert European tour through Sept. 10. He’s become the Pittsburgh orchestra’s face.

“We joke sometimes that he probably spends more weeks in Pittsburgh than he does in Altach, his home,” Pittsburgh Symphony CEO Melia Tourangeau said.

Nilsson, the soprano, had never worked with Manfred before “Ariadne.”

“I have learned from him to really trust the colors and to experiment how far can we go in the pianissimi and the softness,” she said.

Kindness from usher to child

Manfred credits an usher at Vienna's Musikverein for sparking his interest in conducting when he was a child in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Manfred wanted to see Willi Boskovsky lead the famous New Year's Day concert and lined up with his father for standing room tickets.

“We could not afford any seat places,” Manfred recalled. “There were 200 people around me and I had no chance to see. He saw me and he picked me out and put me in front of all the people who were standing in line for a whole day to get the best standing places. Hearing and seeing Willi Boskovsky, it seems to me that this was one of the occasions where I felt I really wanted to do this.”

The shooting happened at the North Hill Farms Apartments near Dixie Highway and Telegraph Road at around 10 p.m. on Aug. 4.

Previous coverage --> Sheriff’s Office investigating fatal shooting in Pontiac

When deputies arrived after receiving reports of multiple shots being fired in the area, they found a 39-year-old Pontiac man outside of the apartment with a gunshot wound to his hand.

The Oakland County Sheriff’s Office said multiple bullet holes were seen around the apartment’s front entrance and the storm door had been shattered. Several spent shell casings were also found on the ground.

Inside the apartment, deputies found Jethro Jackson Jr., 53, with a gunshot wound to the upper torso. He was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

On Aug. 20, the sheriff’s office announced that three Pontiac men were arrested after further investigation.

Charles Andrew Black, 32, was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to murder, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and three counts of felony firearm.

Eric Dangelo Matthews, 26, was charged with first-degree premeditated murder, assault with intent to murder, possession of a firearm by a prohibited person and three counts of felony firearm.

Felix Lavell Washington, 35, was charged with first-degree premeditated murder and assault with intent to murder.

Black and Matthews were previously arrested in an unrelated investigation in 2025 and were arraigned on felony firearm charges. On Aug. 13, they were given $5,000 bonds. That case remains ongoing, the sheriff’s office said. However, their bonds were revoked due to the new charges against them.

All three were arraigned in court on Aug. 19 and their bond was denied. They are scheduled to return to court on Sept. 1.

To compete in the increasingly commercialized world of college sports, programs of its size might spend more than $40 million a year on talent acquisition, revenue sharing and other costs, according to experts. But just five of Louisville's 23 sports generate any revenue, according to the athletic department. Only football and men’s basketball turn profits.

Louisville, like a growing number of major conferences ′ public universities, is trying to narrow that spending gap and its supporters are trying to help by creating a new organization to oversee everything from third-party multimedia deals to hospitality packages.

This spring, Louisville launched Cardinal Ventures, a nonprofit designed to help the athletic department leverage its brand to generate new revenue streams, all to keep pace with the multibillion-dollar market around compensating athletes for the use of their name, image and likeness.

“We live in a highly, highly competitive environment and industry,” Heird said. “And if there’s anything that anybody can do to try to create even the smallest sort of competitive advantage, then they’re gonna look to do that.”

The University of Kentucky also has a revenue-raising nonprofit. The University of North Carolina is actively discussing a limited liability company. So, too, is Louisiana State University.

There’s “feverish” interest from higher education in these offshoots, according to Clay Grayson, whose South Carolina law firm designed Clemson University’s in-house venture. There’s also scrutiny from Congress. Widespread privatization could further transform universities into profit-driven businesses resembling professional sports franchises, weaning them off fatigued donors and opening the door to private capital.

“Governmental universities don’t do commercial very well,” Grayson said. “Those nonprofits are the ones that kind of can get out into that space.”

Record high gifts underscore the spending spree. Virginia Tech touted an “unprecedented” $75 million commitment intended to “ensure a strong start” for its nonprofit Hokie Ventures. Michigan State bolstered its athletic department with a $401 million contribution that included an investment in its own Spartan Ventures.

Louisville’s Heird said he frequently finds himself discussing these new organizations with peers as they all look to boost their bottom lines.

At his school, he has found some “low-hanging fruit” with concerts. Louisville’s 60,000-seat football stadium largely sits dark outside of home games.

Country music star Zach Bryan recently lit up the field. The rapper Ludacris headlines an upcoming hip-hop billing. Planning is already underway for next year’s shows — each of which could bring seven-figure profits for the hosts.

Athletic directors seek flexibility, control and a ‘commercial engine’

These new efforts may not provide a “silver bullet,” but they do offer new revenue and something many athletic directors may value even more — more control.

The nonprofits and LLCs offer greater flexibility to crack the financing puzzle than the previous system. Bureaucracy can drag decision-making out for months. Key components of the fan experience — tickets, parking, merchandise, concessions— are often outsourced to vendors they don’t fully run.

“There is an unstoppable train that is college sports," said Jason Belzer, a Sequence Equity partner who advises schools on NIL deals. "The reality is that you need to create new platforms and paradigms to be able to successfully operate a business that no longer really sits with the original mission of college athletics -- at least at the higher levels.”

Everything is on the table for Syracuse University. Athletic director Bryan Blair sees an opportunity to corner New York's college sports market. It's the state's only Power Four conference school. And all five ticketed sports play under a 50,000-seat dome that brings what he called a “big state school feel."

The question is how to build a “commercial engine,” Blair said, whether it exists within his department or outside it.

“We’re trying to educate young people, give them a great experience. We’re trying win on whatever day of the week it is for whatever competition it is. We’re trying to be great stewards and ambassadors for our university,” Blair said. “But to do a lot of those things requires more revenue than ever before.”

Nonprofits join growing number of affiliates

Commercial affiliates aren't new to higher education. Some universities use them to monetize drug patents or manage copyright.

Take the University of Kentucky, believed to be the first school to convert its athletic department into a limited-liability holding company. Trustees already managed separate health systems through a not-for-profit that was primed to take ownership of its athletics offshoot.

Athletic director J Batt, who recently joined the Wildcats from Michigan State, expects these formations will become the norm rather than an exception. “And everybody will do the one that’s right for your campus,” he added.

Grayson, the legal architect behind many such models, said he mostly hears from members of the Power Four. Those 67 schools tend to be the only ones with large, competitive enough programs to spend beyond the revenue-sharing cap of $21.3 million this year. His firm has helped create affiliated entities at an estimated one in seven schools competing in the Southeastern Conference, the Big Ten, the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Big 12.

His model strays from the traditional nonprofit. He proposes smaller, seven-person boards in order to expedite decision-making. Some of the athletic ancillaries even own for-profits that handle taxable activities such as stadium concerts.

Another big difference: they’re not registered to fundraise because their focus is programmatic revenue. He recommends aligning these new ventures with existing fundraising organizations — like “two pedals of a bicycle.”

“If you get them moving in sync, you’ve got a powerful, powerful motor," he said.

Questions about charitable purpose and donor fatigue

It remains to be seen whether these new entities will alleviate donor pressure to bankroll costly football programs. Moreover, they raise the same question that murky NIL collectives did: what is the charitable purpose of an institution whose main goal is to generate more revenue for athletics?

The Internal Revenue Service decided many nonprofit NIL collectives were erroneously given charitable status. They served players, not the public good, so their activities were likely not exempt from taxes.

These affiliates are similar, in the view of an NIL tax consultant who previously worked at the IRS. Thad Madden, who studied NIL compliance issues for the agency, said he doesn't see any “charitable connotation."

“It's to serve the financial interest of the athletes so that they make the most possible money with the goal of putting the best team on the field,” Madden said.

That financial interest has fatigued donors, according to consultants who advise schools on issues of NIL. They're fielding more athletics solicitations even as universities continue fundraising for student scholarships, research projects and other functions.

It used to be that development officers could leverage donor interest in athletics to direct some funds towards academics. That's not so nowadays, according to University of Pennsylvania professor Karen Weaver, a former athletic administrator who studies the evolving college sports landscape.

“Athletics doesn’t have a revenue problem. It has a spending problem," Weaver said. "So, whatever dollar they bring in is gonna be spent on trying to get an advantage in athletics.”

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

Syria’s interior ministry launched an investigation earlier this week into the death of Mohammad Ghamira, and on Thursday announced initial results of the inquiry.

Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, was a former volunteer with the White Helmets civil defense organization, which operated in opposition-held areas before the ouster of former President Bashar Assad in December 2024.

Ghamira died in a hospital in Latakia on Sunday after being released from jail. He had been detained days earlier following a theft allegation, according to Latakia’s internal security command.

Family members said they had told police that Ghamira had hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot, and warned against hitting him.

Ghamira's death sparked widespread outrage in Syria, where it stirred up dark memories of torture and other abuse in detention centers under the Assad dynasty’s decadeslong rule.

Maj. Gen. Ahmed Latouf, head of the committee formed to investigate Ghamira's death, said Thursday that medical experts found that he had died of complications from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Investigators found that a police interrogator had slapped Ghamira in the neck during interrogation, despite Ghamira having told police personnel about his medical condition, Latouf said.

The interrogator was referred to the public prosecution division, and disciplinary investigations into other police personnel are ongoing, he said.

Syrian Interior Minister Anas Khattab said in a statement that the investigation results showed the ministry’s “commitment to reaching the truth and holding accountable those proven to have overstepped.”

“We rose up against the former tyrant’s regime in rejection of injustice and impunity, and therefore, building a state of law begins with our ability to hold the wrongdoer accountable, to give restitution to the victim, and not to do injustice to anyone who has not been proven responsible” for wrongdoing, he said.

Rights groups have said that abuses in detention centers have persisted under the country’s new authorities. However, one of the groups, Syrians for Truth and Justice, said that it didn't find evidence of a “single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”

Manuel Ernesto Hernandez-Umana, who has a pending federal criminal case in connection with the Aug. 8 crash, lied to a border officer and falsely claimed he was a U.S. citizen when he entered the country in Texas in 2007, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday.

Hernandez-Umana, 46, a citizen of El Salvador, is being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, according to online records. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said he will eventually be deported.

Immigration authorities arrested him after he was released on bail in his criminal case, where he is charged with causing the deaths of 5-month old Antonella Garcia and 27-year-old Sara Sanchez through misconduct or neglect.

According to prosecutors, Hernandez-Umana wasn’t licensed by the U.S. Coast Guard, wasn’t aware of basic safety rules and told investigators he’d borrowed his friend’s personal vessel for the New York Harbor excursion. The boat was illegally chartered and overcrowded, prosecutors said.

“Once he faces justice for his crimes, we will make sure that he is swiftly removed from our country,” Mullin said in a statement.

Hernandez-Umana's lawyer, Amy Gallicchio, declined comment.

Hernandez, who had been living in Manville, New Jersey, was not required to enter a plea at his initial court appearance in the criminal case on Aug. 10. He wiped his eyes as he arrived to the courtroom, still wearing the T-shirt, swim trunks and water shoes he’d had on during the voyage. He is due back in court on Sept. 9.

According to Coast Guard investigators, Hernandez was piloting a 21-foot Yamaha AR210 with 14 people aboard — well over its 10 person capacity — when it swamped and sank as it made a U-turn in choppy waters. The tour began around 7 p.m. and the vessel capsized more than three hours into its journey.

The infant wasn’t wearing a life preserver because the boat didn’t have any for small children, prosecutors said. Instead, Hernandez told Sanchez she needed to wear a life vest and hold the infant throughout the hourslong tour, a violation of federal regulations, prosecutors said.

The tour was organized through Zeus Luxury Rental Inc., which advertises its services on social media platforms including Instagram and TikTok. A boat chartered by the company caught fire last year during a birthday cruise on Long Island Sound.

According to his criminal complaint, Hernandez told investigators he had worked for Zeus Luxury on a freelance or contract basis since last year, starting as a limousine driver. He said that twice recently he used his personal boat, a slightly larger Yamaha AR250, but used a friend’s boat on Aug. 8 because his needed repairs, the complaint said.

Messages seeking comment were sent to a phone number and email address listed on Zeus Luxury’s website. The phone number’s voicemail was full, according to an automated recording.

The deportees arrived at the Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia. The Liberia-U.S. agreement is expected to see some of the largest numbers of third-country deportations driven by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

The 1,200 deportees will include African nationals as well as nationals from North America, South America and the Caribbean, according to Liberian Information Minister Jerolinmek Piah.

The U.S. State Department declined to answer questions about the Liberia agreement, but said that implementing the Trump administration’s immigration policies was a “top priority.” It said it was “unwavering in our commitment to end illegal and mass immigration and bolster America’s border security.”

During a briefing on Tuesday, Liberian Justice Minister Natu Oswald Tweh said that the majority of the deportees had committed migration-related violations and offenses, and that they could seek asylum in the West African country if they wished.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that aren't their own, advocates say, with about 10 of them in Africa.

Immigration lawyers have said the Trump administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

In many cases, migrants are deported to countries they’ve never been to or where they face safety risks and are left with little choice other than to return to the home countries they were fleeing from.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, said on social media that the carrier arrived in the region Wednesday. It was not clear when the USS Abraham Lincoln would arrive back in the U.S. or whether it would make a port stop along the way, but the journey takes just over a month.

The Washington arrived as concerns have grown about the Lincoln's lengthy deployment, which has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 250 days, and about reports of crew stress and poor mental health, as well as supply shortages, including food and hygiene products.

Several Democratic lawmakers have pressed the Department of Defense for accountability over conditions aboard the Lincoln, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said were “completely misrepresented.”

Hegseth spoke with the Lincoln’s crew last week, and Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command, visited this past weekend. In an editorial published Sunday by The Wall Street Journal, Cooper said the crew “delivered a performance for the ages, and now you are going home.”

Extended deployments of carriers wear on service members who are away from home for long periods and increase strain on the ship and its equipment. While renewed hostilities between the U.S. and Iran calmed in recent weeks, the Navy is enforcing a reimposed blockade on Iranian ports in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Trump administration has offered no clarity on how it intends to wind down the war.

Hegseth has said the U.S. can maintain the blockade “indefinitely.”

President Donald Trump this week downplayed reports about conditions on the Lincoln, which left its homeport in San Diego in November and arrived in the Middle East in January. Trump called the nearly nine months at sea that the sailors endured a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

Trump told reporters Monday that he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.” Trump did not name the admiral.

In a statement Sunday after visiting the Lincoln, Cooper praised the carrier's leaders for prioritizing mental health and resilience.

“History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era,” Cooper said.

The Washington joins the USS George H.W. Bush in the Middle East, leaving Asia without an American carrier strike group at a time when China has shown more signs of aggression.

The lack of a U.S. carrier in the Pacific may be short-lived if the Navy deploys another in the next couple of months. But it shows how the open-ended operations with Iran are running some American sailors ragged, analysts say, while the Trump administration further retreats from the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the Western Hemisphere.

Surveillance video captured the four men entering the victim’s apartment in the 11600 block of Morang on Aug. 2, and exiting moments later.

The victim, described as a man in his 30s, was later found with serious injuries, according to police. He was transported to a local hospital for treatment.

Anyone who recognizes any of the four individuals are asked to call the Detroit Police Department’s 9th Precinct Detective Unit at 313-596-5940, or submit an anonymous tip through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-SpeakUp.

There is also a $2,000 reward for any information that moves the case forward through DetroitRewards.TV, using report number 2608020339.

The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

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Melania Trump is set to announce new scholarships for foster children

The first lady is partnering with IndyCar, the sanctioning body for U.S. auto racing, and Indiana and Purdue universities to fund the scholarships, her office says.

Both Indiana-based schools are joining about two dozen other institutions of higher learning to offer scholarships through Melania Trump’s “Fostering the Future” initiative benefiting young people in foster care.

A formal announcement is set for Thursday afternoon in the White House Rose Garden. The first lady will be joined by her husband and representatives from IndyCar and the universities.

The announcement comes just before Sunday’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix race in downtown Washington, which was organized by the president to help celebrate America’s 250th birthday.

US approves $4.5 billion sale of military aerial refueling planes to Qatar as Iran conflict lingers

The State Department said Thursday that it had given the green light for Qatar, a key U.S. partner in the Gulf, to buy four KC-46A aircraft along with assorted equipment, including turbofan engines, radar warning devices and countermeasure systems. The sale will also include trucks, training and assorted logistics services.

The sale “will increase Qatar’s capability to meet current and future threats by enhancing its defense capabilities and interoperability with U.S. and allied forces and reinforcing Qatar’s strategic role in regional security,” the department said.

Qatar, which hosts a major U.S. military base, has been a critical part of the war with Iran, including by trying to mediate an end to the conflict.

North Korea fires missile barrage toward the sea after dismissing overture from Trump

The launches come a day after North Korea shrugged off a U.S. decision to scale back military drills with South Korea in an apparent bid to resume diplomacy.

South Korea’s military said the launches of about 10 short-range ballistic missiles happened from North Korea’s capital region Thursday evening. The military said the missiles flew about 300 kilometers each toward North Korea’s eastern waters.

Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises just before they began Monday. The president cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

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White House legislative affairs director James Braid is leaving his post

Braid was in charge of helping to shepherd Trump’s legislative agenda through a Congress where his Republican Party controlled both chambers.

Vice President JD Vance wrote on X that Braid “played a critical role in all of the administration’s achievements in Congress,” including the sweeping tax and spending legislation approved last summer.

Vance described Braid as “brilliant” and “one of the hardest workers you will ever meet.”

The vice president didn’t provide details of Braid’s next job, saying only that he was “very excited to see what he does next.”

Fresh US aircraft carrier arrives in Middle East

The Asia-based USS George Washington aircraft carrier is now operating in the Middle East, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The Washington is relieving the long-deployed USS Abraham Lincoln after reports that sailors were facing mental health challenges and supply shortages while supporting the Iran war.

The Lincoln’s deployment has included a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea. Democratic lawmakers are pressing for accountability from the Pentagon over conditions aboard the carrier, which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said were “completely misrepresented.”

The deployment of the Washington to the Middle East has left Asia without an American carrier strike group at a time when China shows more signs of aggression.

Rubio designates US citizen jailed in China as ‘wrongfully detained’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has designated a U.S. citizen scholar jailed in China as “wrongfully detained” as Trump prepares to welcome Chinese President Xi Jinping to the White House next month.

The State Department said Thursday that Rubio had decided that Min Zin, who was arrested by Chinese authorities in June, is being unjustly held.

“We call on Beijing to release all U.S. citizens arbitrarily detained or exit-banned in China,” the department said.

The designation raises the profile of his case within the U.S. government and in the past has led to additional attention and resources being devoted to securing the release of wrongful detainees.

Min Zin, who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy, was arrested on suspicion of spying. He was a student activist in Myanmar’s 1988 uprising, a student-led movement that the government at the time reacted to with military force. He eventually sought asylum in the U.S.

House Democrats add five new candidates to ‘red to blue’ program

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said the expansion showcases the depth of its candidate bench as they try to wrest majority control of the House.

Chair Suzan DelBene said the candidates are “proven fighters” at a time when voters are “eager for leaders who will always put the well-being of their communities first, not rubber stamp Trump’s failed agenda.”

The candidates include retired Army Brigadier General Leela Gray in Florida, former federal prosecutor Zach Dembo in Kentucky, Maine state auditor Matt Dunlap, former Navy helicopter pilot Nancy Lacore in South Carolina and former Rep. Tom Perriello in Virginia. The “red to blue” program invests in promising candidates with funding and other support.

Democrats narrow their list of 2028 presidential convention sites

Democrats on Thursday narrowed the list of potential host cities for their 2028 presidential convention to Boston, Denver and Philadelphia as their party looks ahead to a wide-open primary to succeed President Trump.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement the cities put forward “incredibly strong bids,” and he promised the convention would be an “inspiring celebration of our party’s future nominee.”

A final decision is expected to be made later this year by party leaders. Republicans have already chosen Houston for the site of their 2028 convention.

The Democratic convention, scheduled for Aug. 7-10, 2028, traditionally gives the party a chance to formally introduce its nominee to the country, rally the base and kick-start the most intense period of campaigning ahead of the general election.

The party didn’t specify why Atlanta and Chicago, which was the site of the 2024 convention, were eliminated. Officials visited all five cities in April and May, considering logistical and fundraising capacity among other factors.

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Trump plays White House tour guide to show off work on his helipad and ballroom

Trump played White House tour guide on Wednesday, showing off the helipad he is building on the lawn before leaning over to autograph a piece of it and bragging about the ballroom he’s rushing to complete despite legal challenges.

Trump gushed for several uninterrupted minutes about granite being laid and said the chopper landing area would leave visiting foreign leaders “very impressed” — including Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is coming next month.

At times, he sounded almost like a construction manager, singing the praises of granite over asphalt in painstaking detail and noting for reporters he brought out for the show that the stone could withstand 35,000 pounds per square inch of pressure.

The president also revealed for the first time that he has replaced the walkway from the White House’s diplomatic entrance along with a portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn with white granite.

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The US national debt now stands at $40 trillion

The national debt surpassed a record $40 trillion Wednesday, a staggering milestone as defense costs, social programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest on the burgeoning deficit make up an enormous share of federal spending.

The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

The unprecedented $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities, from boosting defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump’s almost 6-month-old war in Iran to lowering the cost of gas and groceries.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the Trump administration “has been focused on slashing waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending while accelerating economic growth to get America’s debt-to-GDP ratio trending in the right direction.”

However, experts say the exploding debt and the latest record milestone are already affecting Americans’ pocketbooks by raising borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lowering wages from businesses that have less money available to invest, and creating more expensive goods and services.

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The Hong Kong- and U.S.-listed company, which started out in e-commerce and online retail but is increasingly focused on AI technologies, said that its profit for April-June was at 10.5 billion yuan ($1.6 billion), down from 43.1 billion yuan ($6.4 billion) the same quarter last year.

Quarterly revenue grew 9% to almost 269 billion yuan (nearly $40 billion), with revenue from its AI cloud and compute services up 45% to 48.4 billion yuan ($7.2 billion).

But capital expenditures, including investments in AI infrastructure to meet customer demand, jumped 75% to 67.7 billion yuan (about $10 billion) during the quarter, weighing on profits.

Alibaba attributed the significant increase in spendings to factors including “fluctuations” in procurement cycles, increase in CPU, or central processing unit, compute capacity in anticipation of growing customer adoption of AI “agents” and higher pricing of chip components.

“As we continue to ramp up our supply, our AI and Cloud revenue growth will accelerate further in the coming quarters, alongside continued improvement in profitability,” said Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu in prepared remarks during an earnings conference.

Alibaba’s U.S.-traded shares fell more than 3% Thursday.

Alibaba, one of China’s biggest companies, said last year it planned to invest at least 380 billion yuan (about $56 billion) over three years in cloud computing and AI infrastructure.

It has been making advances with its flagship Qwen AI and has launched “agentic” AI services for commercial customers. In July, it previewed its Qwen3.8-Max AI model which the company said was “second only” to Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.

It has also pledged an ambitious goal of surpassing $100 billion in terms of annual AI and cloud revenue within the next five years.

The announcement of his contract extension ahead of Verstappen’s home Dutch Grand Prix this weekend ends speculation that he could seek a blockbuster move to another team or quit the sport.

It comes despite Red Bull struggling to match the pace of leading team Mercedes this season, and Verstappen's own frustration with how much the 2026 cars rely on electrical power.

“After the first few races (this year), I said to Laurent (Mekies, Red Bull team principal): ‘Don’t come to me with any kind of questions about the future because I don’t even know if I want to stay.’ Honestly, we always kept it very open,” Verstappen said.

He added that talks with F1 and governing body the FIA had persuaded him that “we are slowly working towards something that becomes better and better” with the current cars, while the new contract until 2030 could cover a potential — but not confirmed — return to simpler V8 engines.

“Even if I’m not entirely happy with how the package is, I still love racing, this is still the pinnacle of motorsport, so I still want to be here,” he added.

Asked whether he’d spoken with other teams, he said: “I think I was closer to retiring than changing team.”

The Verstappen-Red Bull pairing could set an F1 record

Seeing out the contract in full would take Verstappen to 15 seasons with Red Bull. It would be the longest-running driver-team pairing in F1 history. It comes with strong support for team principal Mekies after he replaced the team's founding boss Christian Horner last year.

In return, Mekies laid out how the team is built around Verstappen.

“He’s a lot more than the fastest driver in the world for us,” Mekies said. “He’s the central point of the team. He’s one we always refer to for all the strategic decisions we are making, and to know that he’s going to be with us in order to build that next winning cycle is phenomenal.”

Verstappen, already considered one of F1’s all-time greats at the age of 28, has yet to win a race this season. The 71-time race winner hasn’t had a winless season since his rookie year in 2015.

Why there was speculation Verstappen might move

Verstappen’s previous contract ran through 2028 but reportedly included performance-related clauses which could have potentially allowed him to leave earlier and which fueled speculation he might seek to move.

Red Bull backed Verstappen’s career from childhood and brought him into F1 at the age of 17 in 2015 at its second team, then called Toro Rosso. That made him the youngest driver in series history, a record he still holds.

Still, there had been signs of tension in recent years amid the departures of a series of key staff including Horner last year and car design great Adrian Newey.

Verstappen also raised safety concerns this season after two separate faults with the Red Bull car’s rear wing hurled him into high-speed crashes.

Verstappen had been linked with a move to McLaren after reports of a meeting in June between his representatives and McLaren management. McLaren chief executive Zak Brown said at the time the team didn't have an opening for him and would stick with defending champion Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, who said Thursday he hadn't been worried for his seat.

Mercedes had also signaled interest in the past.

“Drivers talk with different teams, teams talk with different drivers. Everyone has to just see what their cards are," Mercedes' George Russell said Thursday. "My seat never felt under threat, and I felt 100% security with Toto (Wolff, team principal) and the team. That obviously now continues.”

One driver who had been considered a potential replacement for Verstappen at Red Bull, Carlos Sainz Jr., signed a new contract on Wednesday with Williams.

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

Ronald Saville, 49, of Honolulu, Hawaii, pleaded guilty on Aug. 18 to one count of sending interstate communications containing threats.

Federal officials said Saville emailed the Michigan State Police on May 9, identifying himself, referencing Michigan’s Capitol Building in Lansing, and said he was “going to walk in with a gun at A.R. 15 and open fire and kill as many people as possible. I mean what I say I’m not a joke.”

Later, he allegedly sent a second email to Whitmer, saying, “Just to let you know on Tuesday second, Lancy, Michigan [sic] is never gonna be the same again going to walk into the state capital shoot it up and kill as many people as possible than that I’m coming for you[.]”

Saville also allegedly called the FBI on May 12, telling an FBI agent that he wanted to kill Whitmer because of her political affiliation, and he was looking to travel to Michigan to carry out his threat.

On May 26, investigators found Saville in Kailua, where he allegedly admitted to sending the emails, saying he wanted to be taken seriously and be noticed. Federal officials said he intended to scare and threaten Whitmer.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Hawaii, he was previously convicted twice in federal court in Hawaii and was sentenced in 2008 for making threats toward former President George W. Bush and in 2013 for making threats toward former United States District Judge Susan Oki Mollway.

Saville faces up to five years in prison, a fine of up to $250,000, and a term of supervised release. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 19, 2027.

Bodeen died Monday after a struggle with cancer and complications from a stroke, his daughter, Ingrid, said Thursday by telephone from Taiwan.

Bodeen, who spoke fluent Mandarin with a proud Taiwan accent, spent much of his career detailing China's rise to an economic, political and military superpower — and the accompanying friction from what critics have long called Beijing’s heavy-handed efforts to establish dominance in Asia and beyond.

“Chris was a reporter who would go anywhere and do anything for the story,” said Charles Hutzler, AP's former bureau chief in Beijing. After a huge quake flattened a swath of Sichuan province in 2008, Bodeen composed his account from one devastated town sentence by sentence over text messages because of damaged telecommunications networks. "It was one of the first eyewitness reports the AP and the world received about one of the worst earthquakes in decades,” Hutzler recalled.

He was an expert on politics and Chinese military issues

From AP bureaus in Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei, Bodeen was for years the news agency's go-to person on Chinese politics and military issues, able to quickly determine the newsworthiness of the government's often abstruse statements.

“A chat with Chris would inevitably turn into a remarkable history lesson," said Emily Wang Fujiyama, former Greater China news director. “He had astounding knowledge of the region and would be writing about China’s military presence in the South China Sea, pivot to Taiwan’s intricate politics, and just as deftly write about the political sensitivities of Tibet, Mongolia and China.”

Bodeen was born in Missouri on Sept. 9, 1970, but he spent parts of his childhood in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. His father was a foreign service officer and his mother a former diplomat, his daughter, Ingrid, said. Friends and colleagues remembered his love of the Boston Red Sox, esoteric punk rock -- and his contagious enthusiasm for the job of journalism.

"He was the blondest, palest person you’ll ever meet” yet also spoke pitch-perfect Chinese, said Ted Anthony, AP’s former China news editor and news director for Asia. “So when the earthquake in Sichuan happened in 2008, he went out there, put on one of his ever-present ballcaps to cover his hair, and slouched down. He passed as Chinese, started interviewing people and sailed under the scrutiny of the authorities.”

He was 'always ready for adventure’

Bodeen joined the AP in 1996, in Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island China claims as its own, before working as an editor on the agency’s international desk in New York and then joining the AP bureau in Beijing as a correspondent, in 2000. He majored in history and Asian studies at Tufts University, graduating in 1993.

“Chris Bodeen was always ready for adventure. Hiding in the hills of Hainan Island, China, to try to report on the return of an American Air Force plane forced down in 2001, he was the best colleague to be with,” said Raf Wober, a video journalist in the AP's Hong Kong bureau.

In a 2017 story on efforts to burnish the image of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Bodeen described state broadcaster China Central Television leading its evening national news bulletin “with more than four minutes of uninterrupted clapping for Xi as he met with adoring citizens,” and a Russian translator who “was so engrossed with reading a recent speech by Xi, Xinhua (the official news agency) said, that he skipped lunch and dinner just to finish studying it.”

While much of this might have seemed amusing to outsiders, Bodeen was careful to note that “the domination of (Xi’s) image in official propaganda evokes, for some, the painful memories of the upheaval of the 1960s and ’70s, when Mao (Zedong) was accorded the status of a near deity.”

Julie Pace, AP's executive editor, remembered Bodeen as not only an effective China correspondent but as a fellow journalist whose knowledge elevated those around him.

“Chris cared deeply about his work and the value of on-the-ground reporting in such an important region of the world," she said. "His expertise informed AP’s audiences for so many years, but also helped lift up so many colleagues.”

Passion for family and work was his hallmark

Bodeen was deeply proud of his two daughters and loved showing off their artwork and achievements — and creative Halloween costumes — to colleagues. “Every parent thinks their kids are the best, but, hand to God, these girls are both adorable and seriously tough cookies,” he wrote of his children.

“He truly, passionately loved what he did, as much as he loved being a dad," Ingrid Bodeen said. She recalled that when her father spent long stints reporting from Afghanistan during her childhood, “he would always have my mom fax over my spelling lists and homework so we could work on them together. He never missed a spelling test week.”

Bodeen was also beloved by colleagues for his sharp sense of humor, his knowledge of good local food and an encyclopedic knowledge of movie and TV comedies from the ’70s and ’80s.

Kanis Leung, an AP reporter in Hong Kong, said that Bodeen once told her about an old correspondent's description of news reporting as “the art of shoving 50 pounds of oatmeal into a 10-pound sack."

“Except,” Bodeen told Leung, "he didn’t say oatmeal.”

Bodeen is survived by his wife, Yen Ling, daughters Ingrid, 26, and Naomi, 22, his parents and a sister.

Walmart’s second quarter fanned anxiety about the financial well-being of low-income shoppers who are spending cautiously as prices rise at the gas pump and everywhere else.

Company shares tumbled more than 8% Thursday and helped drag the U.S. stock market lower as well.

Walmart’s comparable sales in the U.S., which measure sales at stores open at least a year along with online sales tied to those locations, rose 2.6% in the second quarter. That is down from 4.1% in the first quarter.

Excluding the wellness category that includes Walmart’s pharmacies, comparable sales increased 3.4% in the second quarter. Sales were hit by federal legislation that requires pharmacies to dispense some high-cost Medicare drugs at capped prices, the retailer said. That was still below Wall Street projections of a 3.8% increase, according to FactSet.

Still, Walmart’s quarterly profit, boosted by a $2.9 billion tariff refund, topped expectations, and so did revenue. Walmart says it continues to take market share.

Walmart is using the U.S. tariff refunds to temporarily lower prices on 11,000 items, it said Thursday, particularly on groceries and general merchandise.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled this year that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority when he imposed double-digit import taxes, meaning U.S. companies were owed refunds from the government.

Yet Walmart is trying to contain prices as it is squeezed by the same pressures hammering the American consumer, namely rising energy costs due to fighting in Iran. The company expects to book an additional $2 billion in incremental fuel costs this year.

Slowing comparable sales, particularly in Walmart stores, also reflect a strategic shift toward e-commerce, Walmart+ memberships and advertising. Walmart’s domestic e-commerce business, which has become a growth engine for the retailer, rose 24%.

U.S. e-commerce now represents 23% in the overall U.S business., Walmart said, double the share five years ago.

“As these businesses scale, they become a more meaningful part of our mix, and they’re changing the shape of our business,” CEO John Furner said Thursday.

Walmart is considered a barometer of consumer spending given its vast customer base. More than 150 million customers are on its website or in its stores every week, according to Walmart.

Walmart’s trajectory may draw even more attention after U.S. data released Friday showed retail sales were surprisingly weak in July. On the same day, a new read on consumers from the University of Michigan revealed growing pessimism about the economy.

Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey said Friday that when gasoline prices rise above $4, the company can feel it.

“There’s a psychological impact to that ... that there are choices that consumers are making,” Rainey said. “June was a little more obvious as we look at the quarter in terms of customers making trade-offs. And it’s why we have leaned so heavily into lower prices.”

The price of a gallon of gasoline ticked higher again overnight, according to AAA, reaching $4.10.

With prices higher, Walmart continues to capture a larger share of wealthier consumers. The biggest gains in market share for Walmart are coming from households with annual incomes over $100,000, the retailer has said.

Walmart’s quarterly net income was $6.37 billion, or 80 cents per share, in the three-month period ended July 31. Adjusted per-share results were 81 cents, easily topping the 74 cents Wall Street had expected, according to FactSet.

Sales rose 5.9% to $187.94 billion. Analysts were predicting $186.62 billion, according to FactSet.

For the third quarter, Walmart expects earnings per share of 62 cents to 64 cents. It projects sales to be up 3% to 3.75%, putting sales in a range of $184.9 billion to $186.23 billion.

For the full year, Walmart now expects earnings per share to be in the range of $2.80 to $2.87, while sales should be up anywhere from 4% to 5%. That would mean a forecast for sales in the range of $741.7 billion to $748.8 billion, according to FactSet.

Analysts expected $2.90 per share and sales of $752.06 billion for the year, according to FactSet.

Moscow's forces have in recent months intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine's chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.

Large-scale Russian missile strikes have become a regular occurrence this summer. Just over two weeks ago, a Russian attack on Kyiv and its surrounding region killed 17 people, and nine were killed in the city two days before that. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured.

At the same time, Ukraine has shifted the war onto Russian soil through long-range drone strikes on oil facilities that have caused fuel shortages across the country. It has also unsettled the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, the country’s biggest online retailer.

Zelenskyy repeats his appeals for more air defense

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pleaded for countries to send more Patriot interceptors for defense, but international stockpiles are low amid the Iran war and Kyiv's more than four-year fight against Russia's all-out invasion.

Russia's overnight barrage also included cruise missiles and jet-powered drones that further strain air defenses, Ukraine's air force said.

Explosions boomed across Kyiv in the dark, but the air force said hits were recorded at 28 locations across the country. Emergency services said 15 people were killed in the capital, with another death in the wider Kyiv region. About 40 people were wounded, Zelenskyy said, as air raid warnings lasted until after dawn.

More than 38,000 people, including over 2,000 children, sheltered in Kyiv’s subway stations overnight, the system's operator said.

“It was a massive attack,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russia “had been preparing (it) for a long time, combining different types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones, aiming to cause as much damage as possible to civilian infrastructure."

The Russian Defense Ministry said it struck a Kyiv industrial site manufacturing components for Flamingo cruise missiles. Sites involved in the production and storage of drones, an ammunition depot and a logistics center were also hit, it said.

Russia is able to produce more than 200 cruise and ballistic missiles per month, Ukraine’s intelligence agency told news outlet Ukrainska Pravda in comments published Thursday. It has stockpiled more than 1,100 cruise missiles and about 130 Iskander-M ballistic missiles, as well as hundreds of missiles of other types, the agency was quoted as saying.

It was not possible to independently verify the report, and Russian officials do not routinely answer questions about the country's arsenal.

Ukraine says it struck more Russian oil facilities

Russia and Ukraine have battered each other with drones and missiles as their armies struggle to gain the upper hand on the 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line.

Ukraine’s General Staff said its forces struck an oil refinery in Nizhnekamsk, in Russia’s Tatarstan region, starting a fire, and the Tamanneftegaz oil terminal in Volna, in Russia’s Krasnodar region, where there was also a blaze. Ukraine has hit both facilities in recent months as part of its campaign to disrupt Russia’s vital oil industry.

Tatarstan leader Rustam Minnikhanov confirmed there had been a “massive attack” in the region, state news agency Tass reported, citing his press service. Many of the drones targeted Nizhnekamsk’s Zakamsk economic area, disrupting production at industrial sites and damaging residential buildings, Tass quoted him as saying.

The Russian Defense Ministry said air defenses shot down 726 drones overnight over a number of Russian regions, annexed Crimea and the Black and Azov seas, in one of Ukraine's biggest aerial attacks of the war.

Ukraine's neighbors are on alert

Russia’s relentless onslaught has spooked other European countries, especially those bordering Ukraine, which fear spreading attacks from Moscow.

Amid the attack on Kyiv, the Polish Armed Forces Operational Command activated its military aviation operations, ground-based air defense systems and radar reconnaissance. Polish and other NATO military aircraft were deployed to monitor its airspace, Polish news agency PAP reported.

Romania’s Defense Ministry said an unidentified drone crashed and burned in an uninhabited area near the Ukrainian border. Two Spanish F-18 jets, deployed on a policing mission in Romania, were scrambled overnight to monitor a group of “air targets” near the border, the ministry said.

In addition, two Romanian F-16 fighter jets were deployed to destroy a naval drone seen near a major Black Sea gas project, Romania’s acting Defense Minister Radu Miruta said.

Moldova’s Defense Ministry also said its airspace was breached by at least one drone.

Russia “is increasingly testing the resolve of NATO and its partners, violating the sovereignty of neighboring states and deliberately expanding the risks posed by its war far beyond Ukraine," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on social media.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saw a broad threat to the European Union. “An escalating campaign of threats is underway, unsettling our citizens and seeking to divide our Union,” she said on X.

Explosions shatter windows and screams fill the air

Russia's overnight strikes hit 12 locations across Kyiv’s Darnytskyi, Sviatoshynskyi and Solomianskyi districts, damaging 30 apartment blocks, a school, a children’s hospital and a kindergarten, Zelenskyy said.

Larysa Bondaruk, 60, sat on the ground, holding her cat, Chanel, which had been rescued by firefighters. With tears in her eyes, she said her neighbor’s grandson had been trapped by the rubble and died. Her apartment was badly damaged.

“A rocket hit the roof. It was incredibly loud. Immediately, debris and doors were blown out. There were columns of smoke, columns of fire, screams, crying and despair,” she said. “Two people were killed in our building, but the rescuers responded quickly and professionally. I am grateful to them for that.”

In Solomianskyi district, the top two floors of a nine-story residential building were destroyed and fires broke out on other floors. People were also trapped in two residential buildings and a school shelter.

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AP reporters Vasilisa Stepanenko and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed.

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

An analysis by The Associated Press and Reporter Brasil of all National Mining Agency records through June shows that rare earth exploration applications have surged, with more than 86% filed in the past three years, including 268 in the first half of 2026.

The interest is already raising environmental concerns for the Amazon and other areas.

Here are takeaways from the story:

The US and others are seeking alternatives to China

Rare earth minerals are a group of chemicals essential in digital and defense technologies, used in electronics, magnets and batteries. They are also used in wind turbines and electric vehicle motors, critical to the transition away from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal that cause global warming. The International Energy Agency estimated in 2022 that demand for rare earths could increase at least threefold by 2040.

China has nearly half of the world’s reserves and dominates global processing. Brazil has the second-largest reserves and is becoming increasingly attractive to investors seeking alternatives to China after Beijing restricted exports last year.

By reviewing all National Mining Agency records in Brazil through June, the AP-Reporter Brasil analysis found that foreign investors are driving the growing interest in rare earth exploration, accounting for more than four in 10 applications.

Australian and U.S. firms dominate the interest. Among recent deals was the acquisition of Serra Verde, Brazil’s only commercial rare earth producer, by a U.S.-backed company.

Chinese firms had not filed any rare earth exploration applications in Brazil as of June, but they are positioning themselves in the sector. Last year, state-owned China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group acquired tin producer Mineracao Taboca and announced plans to assess rare earth potential at its Amazon mine. Separately, Shenghe Resources signed an agreement with Brazilian partners WEG Mineracao and Fenrir do Brasil to pursue rare earth projects, including one in Minas Gerais.

New mining push could impact communities and ecosystems

At least a quarter of the applications overlap with or are within 10 kilometers (6 miles) of protected areas and Indigenous territories, including in the Amazon, according to the Energy Transition Observatory, a collaboration among researchers and Reporter Brasil. Experts say mining projects within this buffer zone can cause environmental damage.

Depending on what is mined, toxic chemicals can be released and radioactive waste generated. Other potential impacts include deforestation and polluted water seeping into rivers and lakes, which can poison fish populations, as well as air pollution and noise.

In Goias state, in central Brazil, a small Afro-Brazilian community overlaps with mining claims by the Canadian firm Aclara Resources, which last year secured $5 million in project development financing from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation.

Aclara in a statement said its project initially overlapped with the community’s territory, but “no mining activities will take place there.” Still, residents fear operations that could start as early as 2028 could affect local springs and wildlife.

Brazil is considering safeguards around foreign influence

“The challenge today is that China dominates processing and refining,” said Brazilian lawmaker Zé Silva, author of pending legislation that would establish a federal policy on critical minerals and rare earths, set investment priorities and create a national council to monitor significant foreign influence in the sector. “Under our proposal, companies are welcome to invest, but they must transfer technology to Brazil, including processing capacity.”

On Monday, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the Senate would move forward with the proposed law, to defend national interests.

“We will not allow anyone from outside to come here and exploit our mineral resources, because we want their processing and transformation to happen here,” Lula said.

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental 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.

In a plea agreement signed and filed on Tuesday, Brandon John Cifani, 29, of Oxford, agreed to plead guilty to one count of sexual exploitation of children — a minimum 15-year felony — in exchange for the dismissal of his two other charges, coercion and enticement of a minor and possession of child pornography.

Background --> From babysitter scams to child exploitation: Nannies unite after alleged predator appears in court

Cifani was arrested on Sept. 16, 2025, following a months-long investigation that began when a border patrol agent found child sexually explicit content in his phone during a search at Detroit Metro Airport.

However, victim complaints against him span several years and include allegations of fraud and sexual assault.

Among them was Shelby Clark, of Almont, Mich., who filed a report after hearing other allegations against Cifani.

“I thank God every day,” Clark told Local 4 at the time of his arrest, adding that she encountered Cifani when he was posing as a father looking for a babysitter for his son. “My family thanks God every day. My parents tell me I had an angel on my shoulder that day.”

Clark, who worked in childcare at the time, met Cifani through Care.com.

When he came to her home without a child, she said he asked inappropriate questions like if she would be willing to “go outside” of her relationship, and requested to go upstairs with her.

Clark then asked him if he was there for childcare, and he claimed he was there for “companionship,” prompting Clark to tell him to leave immediately.

As she closed the door, Clark said Cifani continued to act like he was invited over to hang out.

Read more -- ‘He could’ve attacked me’: How woman says instincts helped her out of ‘babysitter interview’

Investigators say Cifani also posed as a teen boy named “Brody” online, asked a 12-year-old girl to perform sexual acts, and secretly recorded other girls.

Cifani is scheduled to be sentenced at 10 a.m. on Dec. 7. Sexual exploitation of children carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison and at least five years of supervised release, as well as a fine of up to $250,000.

Reporters Without Borders said that filmmakers Gaël Mocaër and Sebastian Perez Pezzani and fixer Fred Vedomey were placed in pretrial detention Monday and charged with making “false declarations” in immigration procedures.

The Paris-based media freedom group, known by its French acronym RSF, called for their immediate release.

Mocaër and Perez Pezzani were filming an episode of a documentary series for a French public television network when police arrested the three on July 27 in Kara, northern Togo, RSF said.

Northern Togo has been plagued in recent years by attacks from armed groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

The detentions come as Togo has moved closer to Russia and to Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, three military-led countries that have expelled or sidelined French forces and strengthened relations with Moscow.

Russia and Togo signed a military cooperation agreement last year providing for joint exercises and military training.

Togo has also restricted French media. In June 2025, authorities suspended broadcasts by French international outlets Radio France Internationale and France 24 for three months, accusing them of inaccurate and biased reporting during their coverage of protests against leader Faure Gnassingbé.

RSF said that the filmmakers charged on Monday had applied for work visas and received authorization from Togo’s Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Arts.

Culture Minister Isaac Tchiakpé rejected RSF’s assertion that the filmmakers had received authorization from his ministry to carry out the documentary shoot.

“They would not have been detained if they had had the proper authorizations and followed the required procedures,” Tchiakpé told The Associated Press.

Togo’s media regulator, the HARC, said it had received no accreditation request from the filmmakers or France Télévisions, and hadn't been informed of their filming in northern Togo.

RSF said that police seized the crew’s equipment and detained the three, briefly releasing them July 30 before rearresting them and transferring them to the capital, Lomé.

RSF called the proceedings “unjustified” and “disproportionate,” and said that Perez Pezzani has serious health problems requiring immediate medical attention.

The Grand Slam Player Advisory Council was announced Thursday by the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the U.S. Open. It will begin following the final major of the year, which begins next week in New York.

Players have been seeking a larger share of revenues from the Grand Slams, along with better representation, health options and pensions. Some limited their media appearances at the French Open and Wimbledon as a protest, with top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka and Coco Gauff among the stars who even threatened a potential boycott of the Slams before play began in Paris if they didn’t start receiving more compensation.

“The Grand Slams are the biggest events of the year and the events that the players prioritize and focus on throughout the season," American Jessica Pegula, the No. 3-ranked woman, said in a statement. "Their impact on a player’s career cannot be overstated, and that is why it is so important that we have a voice in matters at these tournaments."

The Grand Slams said the goal of the council will be to strengthen the partnership between the tournaments and the players, with a focus on player input into sporting matters at the events.

The tournaments and players are currently developing the composition and structure of the council. Interested players will be invited to apply for positions.

Along with matters that affect the Grand Slams collectively, the council will provide a forum for players to discuss things such as prize money and player welfare with each of the tournaments individually.

The Australian Open, French Open and U.S. Open are operated by non-profit governing bodies. Wimbledon is run by the private All England Club.

“We have listened to the players’ desire for a greater voice and this advisory council is an important step toward a stronger relationship between the Grand Slams and the players," said Deborah Jevans, chair of the All England Club. "We look forward to working together to elevate the player experience, further enhance the Grand Slam tournaments and ensure the sport continues to thrive.”

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See AP’s full tennis coverage here

In the latest such instance, the social media giant is fighting allegations in a California federal court that it contributes to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately and stealthily designing features to get children hooked on its platforms Instagram and Facebook. Four states are seeking billions of dollars in damages as well as fundamental changes to how Meta runs those apps.

Children’s mental health, and what they do and see on social media, are all issues “Meta takes seriously and tries to act on,” Paul Schmidt, a lawyer for the tech giant, said in opening statements this week.

Critics say the company's safety record falls short and that many of its protections simply don’t work.

They include Marc Berkman, executive director at the Organization for Social Media Safety, who said Meta introduced safeguards promising to protect children in response to public pressure rather than out of concern.

There’s been a “lack of real institutional willingness to act here,” Berkman said.

Here’s a look at some of the changes Meta has introduced, along with the work advocates say could still be done.

Access to users and content-focused protections

Most of the changes Meta has introduced focus on addressing harassment and offensive content.

Instagram users have always been able to block others — and, along with Meta’s oldest crown jewel, Facebook — the app has gradually added features for reporting problematic accounts and inappropriate content.

In 2016, Instagram users were given the option to delete or filter comments they found offensive, and later added warnings that prompted users to reconsider posting potentially harmful content, as well as options to limit comments and tags on their posts.

Meta also says it prevents adults from starting private chats with teens if they are not already connected, and has increased checks to make sure users under 13 — the minimum age for holding a Facebook or Instagram account — aren't online. Schmidt said in his opening remarks that Meta recognizes some users still sign up using incorrect birthdays but that the company takes enforcement of age limits seriously.

The company says it also posts warnings and resources at the top of Instagram search results related to suicide, self-harm and eating disorders, and touts its “Teen Accounts,” launched in 2024, as a safe space for teenagers online. It aligns photo and video restrictions for teen accounts with those for a PG-13 movie, unless there’s parental permission otherwise.

Critics complain these changes amount to little more than corporate posturing.

A September 2025 report from former employee and whistleblower Arturo Béjar and four online safety advocacy nonprofits accused Meta of not taking “real steps” to address youth safety, instead opting for “splashy headlines about new tools for parents and Instagram Teen Accounts for underage users.”

“We really found that overall what Meta was marketing under Teen Accounts was very lacking in actual protections,” said Haley Hinkle, policy counsel at Fairplay, which co-authored the report. They evaluated 47 of Meta’s 53 safety features for teens on Instagram and found 60% of them were either not available or didn't work as advertised, Hinkle said.

Meta called the report's findings “misleading” and “dangerously speculative.”

Scrolling and core design

Researchers say Meta's efforts to reduce the risk of children becoming addicted to the scrolling features of social media platforms have been largely unsuccessful.

Ashley Shea, a Ph.D. candidate specializing in social media and online spaces at Cornell University, points to what academics call “attention-capture deceptive designs” that are not exclusive to Meta's platforms. They include infinite scrolling, “casino style” pulls to refresh content, push notifications and algorithmic recommendations. Those features “prey on the cognitive vulnerabilities” of young people with developing brains, in particular the need to feel rewarded.

Meta has taken important steps to address problematic content, cyberbullies and sexual predators, Shea said, but she has not seen the same level of effort to offset the addictive impact of attention-capture deceptive designs.

Nudges and time management controls

“There’s no question that some teens struggle to manage their time with social media,” Schmidt said Tuesday, adding that Meta’s time management tools prove its evolution on the issue. Those tools include parental supervision controls and in-app “nudges” for teen users who repeatedly look at the same type of content or spend too long on Instagram or Facebook late at night.

Hinkle notes the “entirely voluntary” time management tools are not easy to set up, and amount to “far too little too late.”

Béjar, the former Meta employee and whistleblower, agrees. In testimony Wednesday, he said a tool called “Take a Break” is “designed to fail.” Users have to turn the feature on themselves and, he said, very few do.

Across the board, tech companies exist to maximize revenue, said Berkman, and for almost every social media platform today, that means “maximizing children using their features for as long as they can.”

Legal challenges focused on “the fact that these are defective products by design because of their features, not the content per se” is something new, Shea added. And beyond the courtroom, mounting pressure on lawmakers could bring more industrywide changes.

“The momentum only continues to grow,” she said. “Ultimately, these are for-profit companies that respond to economic pressures. And so I think that the more economic pressure they’re confronted with through these litigations, the quicker they will have to adapt.”

In 2022, the federal agency had imposed a ban on imports of sugar and other products made by Central Romana Corporation, Ltd., accusing the company of isolating workers, withholding wages and fostering abusive working and living conditions.

The ban, however, was lifted last year under the Trump administration, sparking an outcry that was revived when the nonprofit Corporate Accountability Lab published a report Tuesday noting that forced labor persists. The report was published following more than three years’ worth of investigations.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, sent a letter Thursday to Customs and Border Protection requesting information behind the reversal of the ban. He accused the agency of appearing “to have abruptly abandoned its own established administrative procedures.”

“Circumventing standard trade enforcement processes for politically connected, billionaire-owned corporations undermines the integrity of U.S. trade policy,” Wyden wrote.

He requested administrative records, final recommendations and other documents related to the case.

The Associated Press sought comment from the agency, which acknowledged the emailed request but had not yet commented.

“Ensuring that U.S. trade enforcement mechanisms are immune from political interference and adhere to statutory requirements is critical to ensuring that forced labor does not illegally enter the supply chain of goods unwittingly bought by American businesses and consumers,” Wyden wrote.

“We can only do the bare minimum,” WFP executive director Carl Skau said Wednesday during a visit to a nutrition center on the outskirts of the capital, Mogadishu. “We’re only providing these nutrition supplies to the children that are really the worst hit.”

The reduced funds, because of cuts in international aid by donors and the redirection of resources to other humanitarian crises, meant that the WFP is unable to expand its assistance in Somalia, Skau said.

Millions of people at risk but far less aid

The WFP projects that 1.9 million children under age 5 in the country will suffer acute malnutrition this year, including nearly 500,000 who will require urgent treatment for severe acute malnutrition. Overall, around 30% of the population faces critical levels of food insecurity, the U.N. has said.

“We had 10 times more resources than now,” Skau said of the 2022 hunger emergency that was caused by a prolonged drought. “We were able to step in, and we prevented a famine here in Somalia."

“We know what’s going on, we have the capacity, we have the experience of dealing with this. We just need the resources now to do it.”

The consequences of the current food shortage, which is also a result of drought, conflict and the displacement of people, are seen at the Feynuus Health Center in Mogadishu’s Kahda district. Dozens of women carrying babies waited beneath a large tree or crowded along the veranda of the corrugated-metal facility seeking help.

Inside, health workers placed children in a blue weighing sling, screened them for malnutrition, and distributed therapeutic food.

One desperate mother tells her story

Halima Mohamed Hassan, a mother of six, had walked nearly 3 kilometers (2 miles) carrying her malnourished 4-year-old child. She is pregnant, but said she hadn't eaten for two days. Her last meal was plain rice.

Health workers treated the child she brought with a special nutrient-dense food, while Hassan said that her other children were also malnourished, but she wasn't able to bring them to the center.

“I could not carry all of them,” she said.

Hassan fled the Lower Shabelle region four months ago after her husband died of malnutrition, she said. Food and water became scarce, and conflict made it increasingly dangerous for the family to stay.

She and her children walked for four nights before reaching a camp for internally displaced people on Mogadishu’s outskirts.

Hassan now shares a makeshift shelter with her widowed mother and her mother's four other children. The two women look for occasional work washing clothes in nearby neighborhoods to feed their household of 12.

A health center tries its best to help

The Feynuus center receives between 250 and 350 patients daily, mainly displaced women and children from regions outside Mogadishu, said Abdirahman Barkhad, program director of Youth Link Somalia, which operates the center.

Barkhad said that about 10 nearby health and nutrition centers had closed because of a reduction in humanitarian funding, increasing pressure on those that remain.

“We have witnessed children collapsing, because their families do not have enough food,” he said.

Mohamud Moallim Abdulle, commissioner of the Somali Disaster Management Agency, described the country’s food situation as “extremely alarming.”

He said that an estimated 1.85 million children are malnourished, while around 6 million people are affected by drought, and 2 million urgently need assistance.

They don’t know where their next meal is

Skau said that mothers he met this week in the town of Burhakaba described drought, insecurity, and also rising food prices as the main drivers of the crisis. Some had lost their crops and fled their homes. Others walked for three or four hours to reach health facilities, because aid workers couldn't reach them.

“I spoke to women with eight to 10 children,” Skau said. “They don’t know where the next meal is going to come from.”

Insecurity, with Somalia battling a 20-year-long insurgency by the al-Shabab militant group, also makes humanitarian operations more expensive. WFP must use aircraft in areas where staff and supplies can't travel safely by road, and some communities are inaccessible, Skau said.

He said that conflict in the Middle East was adding to the pressure by driving up fuel and food prices, limiting agricultural supplies, and drawing funding toward other emergencies.

After her child received some food at the center, Hassan began the walk back to the camp they live in. Her five other children were still waiting and hungry, she said, and she would have to return with them one at a time.

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For more on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The 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.

Invasive species are organisms that are not native to Michigan, which can cause harm to the environment, wildlife, local economy and infrastructure.

Working with the Oakland County Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (CISMA) — a coalition of 44 townships, park services, nonprofit organizations and other partners — the Road Commission for Oakland County will treat right-of-way areas along main roads and other high-traffic areas overrun with invasive knotweed and Phragmites.

County officials say the work is needed to manage the spread of invasive plant species, while also preventing infrastructure damage and maintaining safe roadways.

“Phragmites grows in wet areas and can reach heights of 15 feet, leading to safety and environmental challenges,” said Patrick Canniff, Oakland County Parks Natural Resources Outreach and CISMA Coordinator. “It forms dense stands blocking views at intersections, impeding water access, disrupting drainage, damaging infrastructure, crowding out natural habitat and creating the potential for destructive fires if ignited.”

Knotweed can also damage infrastructure, Canniff said, “such as buildings and roads since it spreads easily once cut.”

While crews will use treatment methods in accordance with Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) procedures, officials are asking residents and motorists not to enter treated areas until the spray has completely dried. Property owners are also asked not to plant or dispose of invasive species in any right-of-way areas along roadways and to report any that they observe causing driving hazards to the RCOC.

The remediation efforts will continue through October in the following communities: Addison, Bloomfield, Brandon, Commerce, Groveland, Highland, Holly, Independence, Lyon, Milford, Oakland, Orion, Oxford, Rose, Springfield, Waterford, West Bloomfield and White Lake townships; and Auburn Hills, Beverly Hills, Bingham Farms, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Clarkston, Farmington, Farmington Hills, Franklin, Holly, Lake Angelus, Lake Orion, Lathrup Village, Leonard, Madison Heights, Novi, Novi Township, Orchard Lake Village, Ortonville, Pontiac, Rochester, Rochester Hills, South Lyon, Southfield, Troy, Walled Lake, Wixom and Wolverine Lake.

Last year’s efforts saw the removal of around 172 acres of Phragmites and invasive knotweed in Oakland County.

For more information about invasive species in the county, visit oaklandinvasivespecies.org.

In Gaza City, a mass funeral was held for 50 people killed in Israeli airstrikes nearly three years ago but whose remains were just recovered. Meanwhile, Syria’s foreign minister visited Pakistan, which is seeking to defuse tensions between the United States and Iran.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East on Thursday. Full coverage can be found here.

Iran denounces Trump's economic threat

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has rejected the economic threats made against his country, saying that such “failed policies” will stir more hostility among Iranians and “bring more failures.”

Araghchi's comments came a few hours after President Donald Trump threatened “crushing economic measures” against Iran. Trump promised “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale,” but provided few details.

In a social media post, Araghchi maintained the threats aim to divert the attention of the U.S. public from domestic financial problems, adding that U.S. “economic terrorism threatens the global economy and the national sovereignty of countries around the world.”

UK and others rebuke planned West Bank settlement project

Several countries condemned the latest development in a contentious Israeli settlement project near Jerusalem that would effectively cut the occupied West Bank in two.

Israel’s Ministry of Construction and Housing issued a tender for constructing several compounds with more than 1,200 homes in total in an open tract of land east of Jerusalem. It’s the latest step in a project under consideration for more than two decades, which critics say would prevent the establishment of a contiguous Palestinian state in the territory.

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the publication of the tender “an unacceptable and destructive act” and denounced “settler violence and terrorism.” In a statement released on Wednesday, he added that the British government “demanded an immediate reversal” and had summoned the Israeli chargé d’affaires.

Egypt and Jordan also condemned Israel’s move, which Cairo said would isolate east Jerusalem from its Palestinian surroundings.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar responded on Thursday by defending “the historic right of the Jewish people to reestablish their national home in the Land of Israel — including in the area in question.” Saar criticized Britain’s government for “blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism.”

Gaza funeral remembers 50 killed in opening strikes of Israel-Hamas war

A mass funeral Thursday in Gaza City remembered 50 Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in the opening months of the Israel-Hamas war but whose remains were only recently recovered from under rubble.

Dozens of mourners carried the remains, draped in Palestinian flags, through debris-strewn streets before lowering them into graves. Some held portraits and posters with photos of the deceased.

“We were able to recover them after three years of war, after three years of anguish, pain and torture. We were able to recover them, and dignify them in their final resting place. We were able to pray over them and bury them,” said Lina Karam, who lost her father and other members of her family.

The 50 bodies were from three families who were killed in airstrikes in November and December 2023.

The nearly three-year war has killed more than 73,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry, which was part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and international organizations. It doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants, but says women and children make up around half of the toll.

Turkey denies delegation had visited air base in Syria that was hit by Israel

Turkey has denied that a Turkish military delegation had visited an air base in northern Syria that was hit by Israeli airstrikes, and vowed to continue supporting Syria in its efforts to rebuild its military.

The Israeli strikes targeted the Abu Duhur base early on Tuesday, causing damage but no casualties. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had attacked the base because Syria was “on the verge of breaching” an agreed-upon “status quo in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.

Syrian officials have said that a Turkish delegation visited the base before the Israeli strike to review rehabilitation work underway there.

Syria's top diplomat discusses Middle East in Pakistan

Syria's Foreign Minister Assad al-Shibani arrived in Islamabad for talks expected to focus on regional issues, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.

The visit comes days after Israeli airstrikes targeted an air base in northern Syria, causing damage but no casualties.

Pakistani officials say the country's political and military leadership remains in contact with both Iran and United States over efforts to de-escalate tensions and push for the resumption of talks after a 60-day deadline under a June memorandum of understanding expired. The agreement was brokered by Pakistan with help from regional countries.

Bodies of Pakistani sailors returned after Houthi attack

The bodies of two Pakistanis killed in last week’s Houthi attack on a Tanzanian-flagged commercial vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have been repatriated to Pakistan.

Six Pakistani sailors who were injured in the attack have also safely returned to the country, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said in a post on X.

Premier Christine Fréchette also pushed back against quickly restoring U.S. alcohol to provincial stores, saying Quebec alone would decide whether American products return to shelves at the SAQ, the Quebec government corporation that controls most retail sales of wine and spirits in the province.

“Information is missing before I can make the right decisions to ensure Quebecers are protected. I am awaiting clarifications from Mr. Carney,” she said in a social media post late Wednesday.

Canada and the United States moved closer Wednesday to finalizing a trade agreement that would avert threatened 50% U.S. tariffs. Trump has said the agreement was “very fair” to both sides and predicted U.S. farmers and manufacturers would benefit. Tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports have been postponed until 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Quebec does not have a veto over a Canada-U.S. trade agreement, but it controls provincial measures such as whether U.S. alcohol is sold through the SAQ.

Carney asked provincial premiers during a briefing Wednesday to return U.S. alcohol to store shelves, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said, a step aimed at addressing one of the Trump administration’s key trade complaints.

The White House says the emerging deal includes a Canadian commitment to address restrictions on U.S. alcohol. But Carney cannot order provinces to restore sales.

Fréchette’s Coalition Avenir Québec faces voters in an October provincial election, adding political pressure as she weighs concessions affecting dairy, forestry and U.S. alcohol sales.

Houston and two other premiers voiced support for the direction of the talks, though Houston said whether Canadians would actually buy U.S. alcohol again “is a whole other discussion.”

Eight of Canada’s 10 provinces restrict or ban U.S. alcohol — measures imposed in retaliation for Trump’s previous tariffs on Canadian goods and amid anger over his repeated talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state.

Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, is especially important. Its government-run LCBO, one of the world’s largest alcohol purchasers, sold nearly C$1 billion ($723 million) in U.S. products annually before pulling them from shelves last year.

While details of the emerging agreement remain vague, Trump has claimed Canada agreed to end tariffs on U.S. agricultural products.

Canada currently allows a set amount of dairy imports at low tariffs. Once imports exceed that limit, much higher tariffs apply. The U.S. says Canada’s supply-management system makes it harder for American dairy producers to gain full access to the Canadian market.

Dominic LeBlanc, the Canadian minister responsible for trade with the U.S., said Canada’s “agriculture sector will be well protected and we have maintained our tough line.”

The Ervebo vaccine is licensed for use against Ebola virus, one of the viruses that cause Ebola disease, but not for Bundibugyo virus, which is responsible for the current outbreak which has so far killed 2,476 people out of the 5,208 confirmed cases

WHO said in a statement that while it’s not known whether Ervebo may protect against the Bundibugyo virus, “early laboratory and animal data suggest it may provide some protection.”

The allocation includes 20,000 doses for a Phase 3 clinical trial to understand the impact of the vaccine on the Bundibugyo virus, the agency said. The remaining 50,000 doses will be used for front-line and health workers as recommended by WHO experts.

The outbreak raging in six provinces in eastern Congo has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other Ebola outbreak in history, and is spreading about three times faster compared to the 2014-2016 outbreak across West Africa — the deadliest Ebola outbreak on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

The International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision, which includes WHO and other partners, said the doses will be released immediately following a request from Congo’s government.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called the approval “an important example of global solidarity in action.” He said the agency and its partners remain committed to supporting strengthened surveillance, rapid detection, quality care, community engagement and vaccination efforts to bring the outbreak under control.

The lack of approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus has been a major issue for responders. Most new cases have been reported outside of the people being monitored, showing the virus continues to spread faster than efforts to track it. That has been a key contributor to the recorded deaths.

The case fatality rate so far is 47.5% although it is far worse in some places where response efforts are more challenging, such as in North Kivu province where the fatality rate is up to 70%.

Experts believe the virus began spreading from the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February, months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that jobless claims dropped to 206,000 last week from a revised 212,000 the week before. The four-week average of claims, which smooths out week-to-week ups and downs, ticked up to 204,000 last week from 199,750.

Claims for jobless benefits are a proxy for layoffs, and economists watch them because they can be a harbinger for where the job market is headed. For the past year, claims have been at a historically low range of around 200,000 to 230,000 a week.

“The labor market has yet to show any sign of wear and tear from the surge in oil prices since the start of the war with Iran and the global energy supply shock,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a commentary.

The number of people collecting unemployment benefits the week that ended Aug. 8 rose to 1.8 million from 1.78 million the week before.

The U.S. unemployment rate is low at 4.1%, partly because the economy has proved resilient in the face of higher energy prices. But it’s also because President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and the ongoing retirement of baby boomers mean that fewer people are competing for jobs: More than 1.3 million people have dropped out of the U.S. labor force over the past year.

The job market is tough for those looking for their first job and for those who lost their jobs and are looking for new work. At the same time, companies, remembering the worker shortages that followed the end of COVID-19 lockups, are still reluctant to let go of staff; but they aren’t eager to take on new workers. Economists regularly refer to a “no hire, no fire″ job market.

In July, companies, government agencies and nonprofits together cut 23,000 jobs. So far this year, employers are adding 61,000 jobs a month. That is an improvement on the 9,700 they averaged last year — the weakest hiring outside a recession since 2002. The lingering effects of high interest rates and Trump’s erratic trade policies discouraged companies from hiring in 2025.

Hiring this year remains well below the 166,00 monthly jobs created, on average, in 2023 and 2024, let alone the 491,000 a month recorded during the 2021-2022 hiring boom that followed pandemic lockdowns.

The couple's children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, have already enrolled at British schools and will start classes in September, according to a person close to the Sussexes who was not authorized to speak publicly. The family plans to live at a private, non-royal residence outside of London, but plans to maintain their home in Montecito, California, and their vacation property in Portugal.

The Daily Telegraph first reported the story. When asked to discuss the reports by the AP at a roundtable event with U.S. veterans in Washington Wednesday night, Harry replied, "Nothing to say.”

Harry and Meghan gave up their royal duties and moved to California more than six years ago to earn their living through lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify. Although relations with the rest of the royal family have soured since then, Harry has recently expressed an interest in reconciliation so he could spend more time with his father, King Charles III, who is being treated for an undisclosed form of cancer.

Charles was informed of the couple's plans on Sunday. Harry and Meghan visited the U.K. last month.

Buckingham Palace has a policy of not commenting on speculation about non-working members of the royal family. A representative for Harry and Meghan declined to comment.

According to a source close to the Sussexes, Meghan will continue heading her As Ever company from the U.K., while Harry can spend more time working with his U.K.-based charities.

Harry and Meghan have had a stormy relationship with the royal family ever since they decamped to a mansion in the exclusive Southern California enclave of Montecito.

In a series of interviews and Harry's memoir “Spare,” the couple said they left Britain to escape the restrictions of royal life and criticized palace officials for being insensitive to Meghan's mental health while alleging that at least one member of the royal family had expressed racist views when she was pregnant with their first child. Meghan describes herself as biracial.

Those tensions were exacerbated by Harry's long-running legal battle with Britain's tabloid newspapers, which he alleges illegally hacked his phones and invaded his privacy when he was younger.

The prince recently lost a lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail, though he won a 2023 judgment that condemned the publisher of the Daily Mirror for phone hacking. He also reached a settlement with the publisher of the Sun, which apologized for intruding on his life and agreed to pay substantial damages.

The latest trial has left Harry facing a potential bill for millions of pounds after the court ruled he and other plaintiffs in the case were liable for the publisher's legal fees. Associated Newspapers has filed documents showing that its legal costs amounted to 34.5 million pounds ($47 million).

Harry has also been embroiled in a legal wrangle with the British government after a government committee refused to authorize police protection for the prince and his family when they are in the U.K. The prince says he and his family need armed police protection because they are at risk simply because they are members of the royal family, regardless of whether they are working royals.

After losing a court battle over the security issue last year, Harry said he hoped to rebuild relations with his family.

“I would love reconciliation with my family. There’s no point in continuing to fight anymore,” Harry told the BBC. “I don’t know how much longer my father has.”

Last month, Harry returned to the U.K. for a series of charity engagements. Meghan and the children joined Harry for part of the visit and they spent time with the king at his Highgrove estate in western England. It was the first time Archie and Lilibet had seen their grandfather since the late Queen Elizabeth II's platinum jubilee in 2022.

While Harry has recently met with his father, there are no signs of a warming of relations with his brother, Prince William, the heir to the throne.

Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent, said the surprise announcement would make William “apoplectic.”

“In the short term, Harry will be able to deepen his rapprochement with his father," Hunt told Britain's Press Association. “And his presence back home will make it harder for his brother to duck a reconciliation."

___

Pollard reported from Washington.

Fletcher spoke to The Associated Press in an interview after a visit to the southern city of Kherson, where he witnessed how communities there are coping while living under the constant threat of Russian drones. Fletcher described the visit to Kherson, split by the Dnipro River, which acts as an active front line, as “quite chilling."

Russian forces occupy the eastern bank, while Ukrainian forces hold the western bank. From across the water, surveillance and exploding drones routinely hunt and attack civilians, vehicles and public transit.

“It really gives us an insight into the dangers ahead of us,” he said.

The threat is also making it harder for humanitarian organizations to reach people who need assistance.

Fletcher spoke after attending a commemoration for two humanitarian workers who had died while doing their jobs.

“Drones are a real threat to not just civilians but the humanitarians who are here to protect them,” Fletcher said.

He said that aid workers are protected under international humanitarian law and yet marked humanitarian vehicles have still been hit. “So that does restrict what we can do," he said.

Local organizations are particularly exposed. More than two-thirds of operations funded through Ukraine's humanitarian fund are carried out by local organizations, according to Fletcher.

“They’re the ones who are saying most loudly to us, we’re not protected,” he said.

Fletcher said the U.N. needs more than $2 billion for its prioritized humanitarian response in Ukraine this year, with winter among his biggest concerns. Damage to civilian infrastructure, including electricity, water and gas systems, could once again leave millions vulnerable during the harsh winter months, raising fears of a repeat of last winter’s severe conditions.

The U.N. has sharply narrowed its humanitarian priorities all over the world as donor funding has fallen. Fletcher said the organization initially identified 87 million people facing the most severe humanitarian needs, but that figure has since risen to about 92 million with the onslaught of Ebola in Africa, the earthquake in Venezuela and other conflicts.

The U.N. is seeking $23 billion to provide life-saving assistance to those people and had raised about $11 billion, said Fletcher.

Ukraine is relatively well funded compared with many other crises, he added, with roughly 70%–75% of its hyper-prioritized funding requirement covered. But even full funding of the humanitarian plan would address only part of Ukraine’s needs.

Fletcher also admitted that raising money for humanitarian operations has become more difficult as governments have increasingly redirected spending toward defense and domestic priorities.

“We’re in a more transactional world, I would say a more selfish world,” he said.

Fletcher said the U.N. now has to demonstrate that it is using limited taxpayer money efficiently and strategically.

“We have to show governments that we are spending their taxpayers’ money sensibly, wisely, in a prioritized way,” he said.

In a stark new assessment released on Wednesday, the U.N. warned that 907 aid workers were victims of violence last year and over 1,000 have been killed in three years. Fletcher said he could not reassure colleagues that those responsible would be held accountable based on how the international community has reacted.

He said accountability should extend beyond identifying the person who physically carried out an attack.

“I want to see investigations into the people who fired the weapon or flew the drone,” he said.

More than 163,000 votes were cast this year during the finalist portion of Vote 4 The Best.

Voting was open for nearly a month, and now it’s time to reveal the winners for our 80 categories.

Eight winners will be revealed each weekday from Aug. 10 through Aug. 21. Here’s a list of the winners we’ve announced so far, as well as the schedule for the future announcements:

NOTE: If you click the link for each winner, you can see how the top five finalists finished for the category.

Aug. 10

• Best Burger: Miller’s Bar in Dearborn
• Best Detroit-style Pizza: Jet’s Pizza
• Best Bakery: Lil Daddy’s Cheesecakes Co. in Mount Clemens
• Best Dance Studio: Rhythm N Jump Dance Academy in St. Clair Shores
• Best Movie Theatre: MJR
• Best Mexican: Mojave Cantina in Clawson
• Best Ice Cream: Holy Cow! Creamery in Wyandotte
• Best Gourmet Market: Nino Salvaggio

Aug. 11

• Best Coney Dog: Lafayette Coney Island
• Best Pizza (all types): Green Lantern
• Best Sandwich/deli: Ventimiglia Italian Foods in Sterling Heights
• Best Coney Island: Leo’s Coney Island
• Best Sports Venue: Comerica Park
• Best Italian: Antonio’s Cucina Italiana
• Best Museum: Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village
• Best Polish: Polish Village Cafe in Hamtramck 

Aug. 12

• Best BBQ: Bad Brad’s BBQ
• Best Fine Dining: Mr. Paul’s Chop House in Roseville
• Best Breakfast: The Original Pancake House
• Best Steakhouse: Mr. Paul’s Chop House in Roseville
• Best Tacos: El Charro
• Best Farmer’s Market: Eastern Market
• Best Cider Mill: Blake’s Orchard & Cider Mill in Armada
• Best Concert Venue: Pine Knob

Aug. 13

• Best Fried Chicken: Detroit’s Original Chicken Shack
• Best Shawarma: Bucharest Grill
• Best Brunch: The Jagged Fork
• Best Soup/Salad: Red Olive
• Best Festival: Michigan Renaissance Festival
• Best Wings: Detroit Wing Company
• Best Donuts: Dutch Girl Donuts
• Best Middle Eastern: Malek Al-Kabob

Aug. 14

• Florist: VIVIANO Flower Shop
• Real Estate Agent: The Perna Team
• Fries: Vinsetta Garage in Berkley
• Bowling Alley: Imperial Lanes in Clinton Township
• Bagels: Eastside Bagel in St. Clair Shores
• Photographer: Ruff Life Photography
• Sushi: Noble Fish in Clawson
• Food truck: Uncle Honeys BBQ

Aug. 17

• Gyro: Pegasus Taverna in St. Clair Shores
• Tattoo parlor: Thistle and Thorn Ink in Chesterfield Township
• Haunted House: Erebus Haunted Attraction in Pontiac
• Chinese: Mon Jin Lau in Troy
• Thai: Bangkok 96 in Dearborn
• Boutique clothing store: AnnMarie & Co. Boutique in Garden City
• Roofing: Schoenherr Roofing
• Book store: John K. King Used & Rare Books in Detroit

Aug. 18

• Coffee: Deer Camp Coffee Roasting & Outfitters in Sterling Heights
• Hotel: Shinola Hotel in Detroit
• Sports bar: Art & Jakes Sports Bar & Grill
• Brewery: Eastern Market Brewing Company in Detroit
• Hair salon: Jenna’s Chair in West Bloomfield Township
• Law firm: Mike Morse Law Firm
• Irish pub: Three Blind Mice Irish Pub in Mt. Clemens
• Dog groomer: Peticured

Aug. 19

• Best Comedy Club: Mark Ridley’s Comedy Castle
• Best Dive Bar: The Well in Detroit
• Best Margarita: Mezcal Mexican Restaurant in Detroit
• Best Rooftop Bar: Tin Roof Detroit
• Best Live Music Bar: Freddy’s Bar & Grill in Clinton Twp
• Best Soul Food: Motor City Soul Food
• Best Indian: Star of India
• Best Distillery: Detroit City Distillery

Aug. 20

• Best Wine Bar: Tennerra Winery in Sterling Heights
• Best Nail Salon: Lab+Co. Nail Lounge in Southgate
• Best Auto Dealership: Bowman Chevrolet in Clarkston
• Best Vegan/Vegetarian: The Fly Trap in Ferndale
• Best Golf Course: Fox Hills Golf & Banquet Center
• Best Karaoke Bar: Adam’s Apple Bar in Detroit
• Best Pho: Pho Lucky Detroit
• Best Escape Room: Erebus Escape in Pontiac

Aug. 21

• Cannabis dispensary
• Cocktail bar
• Funeral home
• Barbershop
• HVAC Company
• Day spa
• Beauty Salon
• CBD Store

Click here to read the official Vote 4 The Best rules.

Thanks to our Vote 4 The Best sponsor, Wallside Windows!

Have a question? Email us at clickondetroit@wdiv.com, and we’ll get you an answer.

Erebus Escape in Pontiac is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best escape room in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Erebus Escape in Pontiac
2. Escapology Escape Rooms in Mount Clemens
3. Escape Room Novi
4. Escape Room Zone
5. Decode in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Pho Lucky Detroit is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best pho in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Pho Lucky Detroit
2. Ima
3. Pho Tai in Madison Heights
4. The Pho Pot in Waterford Township
5. Little Saigon in Madison Heights

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Adam’s Apple Bar in Detroit is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best karaoke bar in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Adam’s Apple Bar in Detroit
2. My Place Bar & Grill in Wyandotte
3. Sprader’s On the Lake in White Lake
4. Brewligans Public House in Trenton
5. Eastern Palace Club in Hazel Park

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Fox Hills is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best golf course in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Fox Hills Golf & Banquet Center
2. Solitude Links Golf Course
3. Shepherd’s Hollow Golf Club
4. Eagle Crest Golf Club
5. Boulder Pointe Golf Club

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

The Bruins are to play two games in Munich, while the Oilers will play two matches in Leon Draisaitl’s native city of Cologne during the 2027-28 NHL season. The opponents have yet to be determined.

“These events represent an important step in our commitment to grow the game in Germany. By bringing more NHL games to one of Europe’s most dynamic hockey markets, we hope to continue to deepen engagement amongst our fans, partners and local communities, while at the same time creating a significant opportunity to grow the game throughout the country,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said.

The Chicago Blackhawks and Ottawa Senators were already slated to play two games in Düsseldorf in December. Those Global Series games are the second and third regular-season games the league has staged in Germany after the Buffalo Sabres and Los Angeles Kings played in Berlin in 2011.

More are to follow with the NHL and NHLPA committed to bringing regular-season games to Germany for at least the next three seasons.

___

See AP’s full NHL coverage here

The decision marks a milestone in Evergrande's saga after it defaulted on more than $300 billion in liabilities when Chinese authorities cracked down on excessive borrowing in the real estate industry in 2020. That triggered a crunch among many developers and brought on a downturn in the property market that has weighed on the broader economy ever since.

The Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court said Thursday it convicted 67-year-old Hui, who founded Evergrande, of engaging in large-scale financial fraud in inflating the group’s assets and concealing its liabilities.

In a statement, the court said Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin, abused his position in orchestrating fraud and misappropriating company assets.

Evergrande group was fined 8.82 billion yuan ($1.31 billion) and Evergrande Real Estate Group was fined 7 billion yuan ($1.04 billion), the court said.

“The amount involved is exceptionally large, the circumstances are particularly egregious, and extraordinarily heavy economic losses have been caused,” the statement said. “The harm to society is extremely serious. Therefore, severe punishment should be given in accordance with the law.”

Hui’s sons, Xu Tenghe and Xu Zhijian, were also sentenced alongside senior Evergrande executives and others linked to the group on charges including illegally taking public deposits, fundraising fraud and the illegal use of funds, China's official Xinhua News Agency said. A total of more than 50 individuals got prison terms of between 22 months and 18 years, it said without providing a breakdown of sentencing details.

A photo of Hui's courtroom appearance released by the Shenzhen court on Thursday showed an aged Hui, who used to be a high-profile figure but had long been out of public view, wearing a navy blue shirt standing between two uniformed officers behind a sign that read “defendant” in Chinese.

Hui pleaded guilty in April to various charges including illegal absorption of public deposits, fraud and bribery after he was detained in China.

China Evergrande was founded in 1996 as China's housing boom was taking off. It defaulted on its debts in 2021 and was ordered to liquidate its assets. The broader downturn in China's massive property sector that ensued has pulled home prices down 20% or more since 2021.

Authorities in Hong Kong and mainland China earlier said their investigations found Evergrande had manipulated its financial data using tactics such as prematurely booking revenue from property sales before completion and delivery of the apartments to buyers. Revenues were overstated by roughly $80 billion over 2019 and 2020, they said.

Hui was fined 47 million yuan ($6.5 million) in 2024 and banned from China's securities markets for life by the China Securities Regulatory Commission over inflating company financial results, among other issues.

Once reported to be China’s richest man, Hui used to own the football club Guangzhou Evergrande. At one point, he and his companies were involved in investing in and building theme parks and electric vehicles.

His story was one of rags-to-riches. Born in 1958 into a rural family in central China's Henan province, he worked in the steel industry in the 1980s before establishing Evergrande, which then prospered during China's housing market boom. He was one of many businessmen who have also gained political influence by joining a major advisory organization, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

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Associated Press writer Huizhong Wu in Bangkok contributed to this report.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff said the launches of about 10 short-range ballistic missiles happened from North Korea’s capital region around 5 p.m. (0800 GMT) on Thursday. The military said the missiles flew about 300 kilometers (185 miles) each toward North Korea’s eastern waters.

The military said South Korea has bolstered its surveillance posture and was closely coordinating information on the launches with the U.S. and Japan. South Korea’s presidential national security council issued a statement urging North Korea to halt ballistic missile launches.

The Japanese prime minister's office had earlier said that it detected a suspected missile launch.

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, just before they began Monday. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with Kim and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

On Wednesday, the South Korean and U.S. militaries confirmed they shortened the 11-day drills by shortening their duration by about half and canceling some field training exercises. The reduction of the exercises raised worries about the allies’ joint defense posture.

Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, dismissed Trump’s overture later Wednesday, saying “the provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won’t change even though their duration and size were reduced.”

“If the U.S. calculates that it can propagate its recent measure as the one of so-called good faith, they will not get the desired answer,” she said in a statement.

She denied Trump’s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation.

Kim Yo Jong still refrained from the typical North Korean reaction of fiery rhetoric and said personal relations between her brother and Trump are “still excellent.” That signals North Korea would want to wait for Trump to make bigger concessions before returning to talks.

When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that “Yeah, I will be.” He wouldn’t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.

The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Washington and Seoul say their drills are defensive in nature, but North Korea calls them an invasion rehearsal and often reacts with weapons tests.

Before this month's drills started, North Korea accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative exercises this summer and vowed to respond with "a new level of a deterrent.” Days before the drills' start, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in its first such launches since late June.

Trump's earlier diplomacy with Kim Jong Un collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over how much sanctions relief North Korea should be given in return for dismantling its main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step. Kim has since shunned any talks with the U.S., pushed to modernize weapons arsenals and expanded cooperation with Russia.

Kim has said he won’t place his nuclear program back on the negotiating table. Experts say Kim has more leverage than when he first held talks with Trump in 2018 and 2019. They say Kim likely hopes to eventually win international recognition as a nuclear state and extensive sanctions relief in exchange for only limited steps toward denuclearization.

__

Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

Leigh Kirkpatrick went into cardiac arrest inside the One Campus Martius building during his visit.

A good Samaritan who knew CPR began performing chest compressions before an emergency medical technician and a security officer joined the effort.

The rescuers used an automated external defibrillator, or AED, to restore Kirkpatrick’s pulse.

Kirkpatrick needed additional CPR and another shock in the ambulance before doctors were able to continue treating him at the hospital.

He said the quick actions of those who helped him were critical.

“Thanks to the miraculous appearance of an angel, if you will, who knew CPR and was trained in it, he got me oxygen to my brain very quickly,” Kirkpatrick said.

He also credited the AED at the building with playing a major role in his survival.

“Thank God there was one in the building,” Kilpatrick said. “There should be one in every building.”

Kirkpatrick returned to Detroit for his 80th birthday and spent the day with several of the first responders and others who helped save his life.

As a way of giving back, Kirkpatrick and his wife announced they have purchased and will donate five AED units to the city of Detroit.

The city will determine where the devices are needed most.

Kirkpatrick said the people who stepped in to help him last Christmas Eve each played an important role in getting him safely to the hospital.

“To thank each and every one of these people here played a huge role in me getting safely to the hospital,” Kirkpatrick said.

In Waldorf, in the southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate, a woman was struck by a falling tree and fatally injured, the German news agency dpa reported Thursday. Another woman suffered serious injuries in the accident, police said.

The women, 58 and 47, were walking together when a storm rolled in and they sought shelter under a covered seating area. Both women were struck when a tree was uprooted and fell onto the seating area. The 58-year-old died at the scene, a police spokesperson said. The 47-year-old was taken to a hospital.

A tornado struck the town of Fürstenwalde, 78 kilometers (49 miles) southeast of Berlin. Roofs were torn off and several cars were damaged by falling trees, and one person was injured, according to dpa.

In Höhr-Grenzhausen in the Westerwald district in western Germany, a storm tore walls from buildings. At least two homes were affected, according to dpa. Falling pieces of building facades and flying debris caused additional damage, and several trees were uprooted. A widespread power outage also hit the area, while strong gusts of wind overturned a truck on the A61 highway.

There were also numerous weather-related emergency calls overnight in Hesse, Thuringia and Bavaria.

A village festival in Kronach, Bavaria, was partially evacuated due to severe storms. About 3,500 guests had to leave the outdoor area of the festival grounds late Wednesday evening, local police said. They were able to continue celebrating inside the beer halls.

In Wetzlar, in Hesse, the storm damaged about 60 houses, according to the fire department. In some cases, pieces of roofing were blown as far as 100 meters (110 yards) away, dpa reported.

The German Weather Service warned that further severe storms could occur later in the day, particularly in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in southern Germany.

While the storms in Germany were accompanied by cooler temperatures, high temperatures continued to be recorded in southeastern Europe, and fires raged in some parts of the region.

Firefighters are battling wildfires in the Balkans

In Serbia, a Russian firefighting plane joined efforts in Serbia on Thursday to fight wildfires that devastated a nature reserve in the northeast as the Balkan country faces a fresh heat wave in the coming days.

The Il-76 plane landed in Serbia on Wednesday evening, also illustrating continued friendly relations between the two countries despite Belgrade’s proclaimed intention to join the European Union.

The fire in Deliblatska Pescara, or Deliblato Sands, first erupted a month ago, but was under control until early August when it started spreading swiftly, engulfing thousands of acres of pine forests and shrubbery.

Several other big fires also have been raging in other parts of the country, as well as throughout the region in the past weeks. An extremely hot and dry summer this year has fueled wildfires throughout Europe, from Belgium to Greece.

Croatian firefighters from the popular tourism hot spot of Dubrovnik on Thursday joined a struggle to contain a fire across the border in Bosnia to prevent it from spreading toward the medieval walled city that is a UNESCO protected heritage site.

“It was a hard night,” regional firefighting unit commander Stjepan Simović told the Hina news agency. "The fire is huge and in an inaccessible terrain, so we have to be vigilant.”

___

Gec reported from Belgrade, Serbia.

“Pulitzer on the Road: Prize — Winning Works That Inform, Empower & Inspire” will launch in October at the Chicago Public Library and the Dallas Public Library and continue through May 2028, with stops at public libraries everywhere from Reading, Pennsylvania, to San Jose, California.

The exhibit will highlight more than a century of Pulitzer winners, whether such groundbreaking news reporting as the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal, iconic photographs such as the AP's “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima,” poems by Sylvia Plath and Robert Frost, plays by Arthur Miller and Lin-Manuel Miranda or fiction by Toni Morrison and John Steinbeck.

Kingsolver, Everett and Kraus, all Pulitzer-winning novelists, will be making appearances, along with composer Gabriela Frank and photojournalist Jon Cherry among others.

“Pulitzer on the Road was created to bring Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and storytelling to communities across the country, showcasing the exceptional work that has been honored since the prizes were first awarded in 1917,” Marjorie Miller, administrator of the Pulitzers, said in a statement Thursday.

Maria McCauley, president of the American Library Association, said in a statement that the exhibit would create "opportunities for visitors to connect with the excellent prize-winning works that drive curiosity, conversation and civic engagement.”

🍇 Grapevine

🌅 Good morning! On this day in 1920, WWJ 950 AM, “Newsradio 950” first went on the air with the call sign 8MK — widely considered the first radio station to broadcast daily news reports as the “Detroit News Radiophone.”

Here are a few things to know for Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026:

☀️ 4Warn Weather: A beautiful day is on tap across Southeast Michigan today, with sunshine, low humidity and temperatures near 80 degrees. Check out the 10-day forecast.

🚫 Moratorium Fight: A data center developer is suing the city of Gibraltar, alleging officials illegally blocked a proposed facility by enacting a targeted moratorium. Read more about the project here.

🏘️ Wolverine Village: The University of Michigan will open a new residential community on Central Campus this month, adding thousands of beds to its undergraduate housing capacity. View photos here.

🐿️ Wildlife Warning: An iconic bookstore in Downtown Detroit is sounding the alarm after three squirrels were found dead on its property. Read more here.

👯‍♀️ Locked In: Michigan gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson announced her running mate on Wednesday, naming Michigan Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks. Read more here.

🏊 Morning Dive

Good morning ☀️

Headlines about the cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce processed at a Taylor Farms facility in central Mexico are driving demand for locally grown alternatives – with some markets even selling out.

Thousands of people nationwide have gotten sick, and the outbreak has also been linked to two deaths in Michigan, leading many people to avoid lettuce entirely.

However, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) says data suggests that new cyclosporiasis case reports are slowing, including a downward trend in diarrhea-related emergency room visits.

But here’s what may put shoppers a little more at ease: Most exposures happened in late June to early July, according to state health officials, and the majority of the contaminated produce is likely off of store shelves.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the recalled products are now past their best-by dates and should no longer be available in stores or restaurants. And Consumer Reports says there’s no evidence people need to avoid lettuce or salad greens in general.

Still, Consumer Reports food-safety expert James Rogers says you should always follow good food safety practices.

Here’s why.

🗞️ Other headlines to know today

• ‘Go 4 It’: Metro Detroit community assembles more than 1,075 hygiene kits for Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries
• Mixed reactions as Rochester approves downtown social district
• Ex-Southfield music teacher found guilty of multiple sexual assault charges
• DEA Detroit seizes 8.5 million potentially deadly doses of fentanyl, 142 guns seized, 176 arrests
• Health officials urge precautions against mosquitoes following state’s first human EEE case in 5 years
• Warren Schools teacher arraigned on felony charges after videos of minors allegedly found on his phone
• 22 arrested during planned ‘Christian Crusader March’ in Dearborn
• This was just voted the best margarita in Metro Detroit
• ‘Kaboomistry’ and More! Michigan Science Center brings hands-on science directly to kids
• Ypsilanti library closes temporarily due to bedbug sighting
• Man killed, teen girl arrested following stabbing on Detroit’s east side
• Man convicted for exposing himself to teen in Bloomfield Township to serve 1 year in jail
• Highland Township man drowns after falling from dock while cleaning his boat
• 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:

The national debt surpassed a record $40 trillion on Wednesday, a staggering milestone as defense costs, social programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest on the burgeoning deficit make up an enormous share of federal spending.

The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

The unprecedented $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities, from boosting defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump’s almost-6-month-old war in Iran to lowering the cost of gas and groceries. (Read more)

----

Companies that secretly vary prices based on how much they think individual customers will pay could face federal charges under a proposed policy released Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission.

“When consumers see a listed price, they expect it to be (the) same price that everyone else sees, not the retailer’s estimate of how much they are willing to pay based on their personal data,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.

In a preliminary report filed in January 2025, the agency found that grocers, clothing companies and others were using third-party companies to help them individualize online prices based on shoppers’ locations, browsing histories and other factors. (Read more)

----

Millions more people may be able to get smaller, lightweight Amazon packages delivered by drones by the end of the year under a plan the company announced Wednesday to expand the airborne shipping to suburban areas in nearly 500 U.S. cities.

Customers could receive the drone deliveries in as fast as 30 minutes, Amazon said in a news release. The drones can carry packages up to 5 pounds.

The plan will intensify the battle between Amazon and Walmart to provide consumers with the fastest delivery times. Both giants rely on a mix of drones and drivers to deliver everything consumers have ordered. (Read more)

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

📝 Word Up

Today’s Word Up is: Praecipe /ˈpre-sə-ˌpē/ (noun) -- defined as “A writ or order directing a person to do something, often used to compel a party to take action.”

Example: “The judge received a praecipe demanding a judgment on the case.”

🧹 Housekeeping

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

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

The weather turns wetter Friday night as isolated showers and scattered thunderstorms spread across Southeast Michigan. Rain will become more widespread into Saturday, bringing a good soaking to much of the region by the afternoon hours. If you have outdoor plans in the afternoon, start thinking about backup plans. Widespread severe weather is not expected, although a Marginal Risk for strong to severe thunderstorms exists across the far eastern portion of Southeast Michigan. Any stronger storms could produce gusty winds and locally heavy rainfall.

The weather pattern changes significantly Sunday. Cooler and breezier conditions arrive behind the system, with isolated shower chances and wind gusts reaching 25 to 30 mph. Temperatures will remain in the upper 70s.

Overall, enjoy the sunshine and low humidity today and Friday before a wetter, cooler and windier pattern develops for the weekend.

Looking ahead to next week, a deep partial lunar eclipse will be visible in Detroit on the night of Thursday, August 27, into early Friday, August 28, 2026. The event peaks at roughly 93% to 96% coverage of the Moon by Earth’s umbral shadow, giving the full Sturgeon Moon a reddish glow.

Timeline for Detroit (EDT):

• Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 9:25 PM (Thu, Aug 27)
• Partial Eclipse Begins (Umbra): 10:34 PM (Thu, Aug 27)
• Maximum Eclipse: 12:12 AM / 12:13 AM (Fri, Aug 28)
• Partial Eclipse Ends: 1:51 AM (Fri, Aug 28)
• Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 3:00 AM (Fri, Aug 28)

The petition with the hashtag InfantinOut also calls for “FIFA to be rebuilt so that the current debacle can never happen again.”

“The shameful attempt by one individual — the FIFA President himself — to sell off the World Cup to private investors exposed a betrayal football will never forget,” the petition said about Infantino's plan for a commercial spinoff, which he dropped amid a furious backlash.

The fan groups include Football Supporters Europe, Football Supporters Africa and, in North America, the Independent Supporters Council, plus about 40 national fan groups worldwide.

Infantino has resisted calls to leave office despite European soccer body UEFA saying it has no confidence in him. He has also been criticized by the leadership of North America’s CONCACAF and the Asian Football Confederation.

“Gianni Infantino has demonstrated a profound failure of leadership, incompatible with democratic governance,” the fan petition states. “The concentration of power around the FIFA Presidency, combined with opaque decision-making, personality cult clientelism, and zero accountability has destroyed any remaining trust in the world governing body."

“For the credibility of FIFA — and for the future of the game — he must resign,” the petition adds.

It also cites Infantino’s past support for projects that angered fans, including the failed European Super League project and pushing to hold World Cups every two years.

___

See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Nguyen Thi Quynh Tam, 24, said she was raped on July 5 and pressured by the man’s family to accept money and not go to police. She said the police also initially urged her to settle the matter privately.

The AP does not usually identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted. Her candor is unusual for Vietnam, where sexual violence is rarely discussed publicly, but she said she wanted to speak out to help protect other women.

“I’m doing this not just for me. But for everybody else that has been harmed,” said Tam.

Tam’s account was documented in interviews, her police complaint and communications with U.S. and Vietnamese officials. After she sought help from U.S. officials and a U.S. lawmaker, officials confirmed Thursday that they had charged the 23-year-old man.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said authorities had initiated legal proceedings “in accordance with Vietnamese law.” She did not respond to questions about alleged police pressure to settle the case.

The man charged in the case did not respond to AP queries sent via social media.

Tam, whose family moved to the United States when she was 5 years old, returned to Vietnam in May for a banking internship, hoping to reconnect with her family’s homeland. She joined a group of acquaintances on a July 4 trip to a resort in Phu Tho, near Hanoi.

The group stayed up late and when she went to bed, Tam found herself locked out of the room where she expected to sleep. She found another bedroom and fell asleep with the door unlocked, then awoke to the 23-year-old man kissing her neck.

Her complaint says Tam told him not to touch her, but he persisted and climbed on top of her. She pushed and punched him and shouted, “No!” But he pinned both her arms above her head and raped her.

Later that night, she messaged her boyfriend in the U.S. that she had been raped. The AP has seen the messages.

Afterward, she said she blamed herself and struggled mentally. Others in the group they traveled with told her the man was from a wealthy, politically-connected family and she was unsure what to do.

Tam said the man apologized twice on July 9, in a note and during a phone call. The AP has heard a recording of the call and seen the note.

On July 11, Tam and friends of her family met with the man's father in an encounter suggested by members of the group she traveled with. She said he asked how much money she wanted for not involving the police. He called five days later, again offering compensation, she said.

In an email to the The Associated Press, the father said the two had been “intimate,” but he declined to comment further. He said his family had “no intention” of pressuring Tam to drop the case.

Tam said that after she reported the incident to police on July 21, they took her back to the room where she said she was raped and asked her to reenact the assault, leaving her distraught.

“A part of me is gone. And it’s in that room,” she said.

The next day, she said, police urged her to meet with the 23-year-old and to sign a statement saying she had refused a rape kit and a lawyer. She refused. The police again asked her to settle while she was getting mental health care at a Hanoi hospital, she said.

Tam, who is from Houston, Texas, said she got little help at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, where she was told she could report the matter to Vietnamese police, or return home. She said she was discouraged when they cited a previous sexual assault case that dragged on for over a year before being dropped.

After Tam's father contacted their senator, Ted Cruz, the embassy called her to apologize. It told Cruz’s office it had supported Tam and helped her contact authorities. Her father called that “inaccurate,” according to a July 29 email exchange.

The State Department said it was aware of her case, but couldn't comment further because of legal and privacy reasons. It said American “safety and security” was its top priority.

With universities competing to pay athletes millions of dollars, some states now are propping up their strained sports budgets in ways not previously seen. The state dollars aren’t going directly to star athletes. But by funding facilities and administrative costs normally borne by the schools, states are freeing universities to use their own dollars for other purposes.

The athletics program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for the first time, is receiving $3 million earmarked from state sports betting taxes. Wisconsin lawmakers approved $15 million for athletic costs at the University of Wisconsin. And Connecticut and Louisiana also are using tax dollars to support college athletics. Even more states have considered it.

Sports business analysts see an emerging trend.

“Once one state provides that kind of assistance, schools in competing states can argue that they are being placed at a competitive disadvantage, which could create additional pressure on legislatures to respond,” said Daniel McIntosh, faculty director of the sports business program at Arizona State University.

Legal cases have accelerated spending on college athletes

NCAA rules long barred college athletes from getting paid by schools and boosters. But under pressure from lawsuits and states, the NCAA cleared the way in 2021 for athletes to receive money from private entities for the use of their name, image or likeness (NIL). Then a legal settlement last year allowed higher education institutions to directly pay athletes a total of about $20.5 million annually — on top of any scholarships and other NIL deals they receive.

That cap rose to $21.3 million for this school year, and is set to rise again the following year.

Many mid-level programs cannot afford that much. But almost all NCAA Division I athletic programs are trying to generate more money to pay athletes in a bid to remain competitive with their peers. At the same time, schools have been incurring greater costs for facilities, coaches’ salaries and travel amid conference realignments that discarded old geographic-based rivalries.

Over the past four years, athletic operating expenses at public Division I institutions shot up by nearly a third — notably outpacing revenue and running up deficits, according to an Associated Press analysis using the Knight-Newhouse College Athletics Database.

Federal legislation could drive athletic costs even higher

The Protect College Sports Act, pending in the U.S. Senate, has been promoted as a way to put guardrails on college sports spending. But it could potentially allow even greater spending by schools.

The latest version would allow institutions to pay up to an additional $27.5 million annually to retain players on their rosters, pushing the overall athlete payment cap close to $50 million. The higher ceiling could reduce the demand for third-party NIL deals.

But the legislation contains no provision restraining increases in state and institutional funding for athletics, said Amy Privette Perko, CEO of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.

“Without some restraint on the underlying spending competition, additional public funding could simply finance the next stage of the arms race,” McIntosh said.

States are routing money to schools in creative ways

When North Carolina launched online sports wagering in 2024, it earmarked part of the tax revenue for athletic departments at 13 public universities. But the two largest institutions — the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University — were excluded.

That changed in July under a new state budget that raises the sports betting tax. Those two schools now are projected to receive $3 million each this year and $5.8 million next year.

In the meantime, Louisiana also hiked its sports wagering tax and earmarked about $2.2 million to each of its 11 public universities in conferences with Division I football programs.

Seeking to drum up athletic revenue, Connecticut lawmakers authorized the University of Connecticut to issue vouchers for state tax credits equal to half the amount of donations, sponsorships and licensing endorsements. The program generated $1.7 million in its first four months, according to a university report.

New Jersey’s new budget allots $5 million for “events attraction and marketing” at Rutgers’ flagship campus. A university spokesperson declined to say if the money would be used for athletic programs.

Though not providing new state money, the governing board for Florida’s universities last year authorized institutions to transfer up to $22.5 million to athletics. Florida State University did so almost immediately, and other schools have since followed.

Lawmaker says a bad football team is bad for the state

The Wisconsin budget provides $14.6 million for athletic facility debt payments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and $200,000 each for the Milwaukee and Green Bay campuses.

“None of that state funds technically would go toward student athletes,” said Republican state Rep. Alex Dallman, who sponsored the legislation.

But with the state covering facility debt, the university could use its own funds “for other things, such as NIL, or just trying to compete,” said Dallman, who typically attends a couple Wisconsin football games each year.

“Having a bad football team, having uncompetitive college sports in general, would not be beneficial to our state, both culturally or economically,” Dallman said. “So we decided as a state we’d help out.”

Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin said in a statement the cities put forward “incredibly strong bids," and he promised the convention would be an “inspiring celebration of our party's future nominee.”

A final decision is expected to be made later this year by party leaders. Republicans have already chosen Houston for the site of their 2028 convention.

The Democratic convention, scheduled for Aug. 7-10, 2028, traditionally gives the party a chance to formally introduce its nominee to the country, rally the base and kick-start the most intense period of campaigning ahead of the general election.

The party didn't specify why Atlanta and Chicago, which was the site of the 2024 convention, were eliminated. Officials visited all five cities in April and May, considering logistical and fundraising capacity among other factors.

The three finalists are liberal strongholds surrounded by the type of suburban areas that have become increasingly important to the party in recent elections. They also provide access to fundraising and key demographic and interest groups, like labor unions.

While Colorado and Massachusetts have gone Democratic in recent presidential elections, Pennsylvania has been among the biggest battlegrounds. Trump, a Republican, won Pennsylvania in 2024.

Philadelphia last hosted the convention in 2016, Denver in 2008 and Boston in 2004.

Before the presidential primary gets into gear, Democrats are looking at this year's midterm elections as an opportunity to flip the narrowly divided Republican-led House and maybe take back control of the Senate.

Democrats face fundraising disadvantages compared with Republicans, along with financial debt, and Martin has confronted criticism over his stewardship of the party.

During a recent DNC meeting in Texas, Martin downplayed the critics and called for the party to unite as it tries to win the midterms and look ahead to 2028 and the end of Trump's second term.

The Detroit-based pizza chain said its 2026 campaign will include Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson and San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle.

The company is also bringing back its Pizza! Pizza! promotion ahead of the NFL season.

From Aug. 17 through Sept. 13, customers at participating locations can purchase two large, one-topping pizzas for $4.99 each when they order both online using the promo code PIZZAPIZZA.

The offer is available for a limited time and is subject to additional restrictions, including participating locations and market-specific pricing.

Jefferson will appear in the first national commercial of the campaign, while Goff and Kittle will appear in additional national marketing throughout the season.

Little Caesars is also bringing back its Pizza! Pizza! Pregame promotion.

Beginning Sept. 9, fans using the Little Caesars app can complete challenges on NFL game days for a chance to earn rewards.

Little Caesars said its local NFL partnership roster has expanded to 21 teams for the 2026 season.

Returning partnerships include the Lions, Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, Miami Dolphins, New Orleans Saints, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, 49ers and Tennessee Titans.

New partnerships include the Arizona Cardinals, Baltimore Ravens, Cleveland Browns, Green Bay Packers, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Jacksonville Jaguars, Los Angeles Chargers, Vikings and Seattle Seahawks.

Little Caesars is also expanding its in-stadium presence, adding concession offerings at the home venues of the Ravens, Texans and Jaguars.

The company will also bring its Love Kitchen to Seattle on Sept. 8 in partnership with the NFL and Seahawks.

The program will serve pizza to the community at Byrd Barr Place.

Little Caesars said the event is part of its broader effort to support local communities.

The NFL partnership will continue throughout the 2026 season with team-specific promotions, digital content, in-game activations, and other fan experiences.

For information about Little Caesars and its promotions, visit LittleCaesars.com.

The Leaders and Best Champion Partners Program will initially feature Coca-Cola, Meijer and Google Gemini as Michigan Athletics’ inaugural partners.

Officials at Michigan Athletics said the program is designed to create new revenue opportunities to support student-athletes while limiting the visual impact of in-stadium advertising.

The partnerships will include tailored activations intended to engage fans while maintaining The Big House’s traditional aesthetic, the university said.

Potential advertising elements include on-field and stadium branding, scoreboard integrations, end zone placements and digital and in-game sponsorships.

Michigan also said it is exploring jersey patches and other premium advertising opportunities.

Signage will use a uniform color palette of maize, blue, or white, the university said.

Michigan Stadium has historically had limited commercial branding compared with many other college football venues.

The new program expands on that approach as college athletics faces a changing financial landscape.

Michigan Athletics developed the program in collaboration with Learfield’s Michigan Sports Properties, the exclusive multimedia rights holder for Michigan Athletics and the department’s sponsorship and brand partnership representative.

The Michigan Wolverines selected the inaugural partners based on what it described as their alignment with the university’s values, including excellence, innovation, and community impact.

The program aims to balance new commercial opportunities with the traditions and game-day experience associated with Michigan Stadium, also known as the Big House.

Agents also seized 142 guns and recovered about $2.6 million in cash and other assets, according to the DEA.

The operation comes ahead of National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day, as federal officials continue efforts to combat fentanyl trafficking in Detroit and across the region.

DEA Special Agent in Charge Joseph Dixon said agents are working around the clock to keep fentanyl out of local neighborhoods.

“For anyone out there who’s peddling poison in our communities, we will find you, we will arrest you, we will ensure that you will be brought into a court of justice,” Dixon said.

Dixon said the DEA will continue pursuing people involved in fentanyl trafficking through the criminal justice system.

Federal officials also urged residents to play a role in combating the illegal drug trade.

Officials said one of the best ways residents can help is to report suspicious activity to law enforcement.

“If you see something, say something,” officials said.

The DEA has warned that fentanyl is extremely potent and that illegally manufactured fentanyl can be mixed into other drugs, increasing the risk of a fatal overdose.

The enforcement effort highlights the ongoing federal focus on fentanyl trafficking ahead of National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day.

William Brown, 33, was charged with one count of assault with intent to murder, two counts of felony firearm and one count of discharging a weapon from a vehicle.

The shooting happened in the area of eastbound Hall Road west of Schoenherr at around 5:30 a.m. on Aug. 14.

Previous coverage --> 18-year-old injured in shooting in Sterling Heights

Sterling Heights police said an 18-year-old man was shot and taken to a local hospital. The extent of his injuries was not released.

After three hours of searching, police said they found the suspect, later identified as Brown, at a Kroger parking lot on Highland Avenue in Milford. According to Milford police, guns, body armor and other possible evidence were found.

Brown was arraigned in court on Aug. 17 and was given a $500,000 bond. He is expected to return to court on Aug. 24 for a probable cause conference.

Lab+Co. Nail Lounge in Southgate is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best nail salon in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Lab+Co. Nail Lounge in Southgate.
2. Nail Addicts in Clinton Township.
3. Greek Goddess Nail Spa in Trenton.
4. GLOSS in Sterling Heights.
5. 734 Beauty Lounge in Van Buren Township.

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Bowman Chevrolet in Clarkston is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best auto dealership in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Bowman Chevrolet in Clarkston.
2. Roy O’Brien Ford in St. Clair Shores.
3. Village Ford in Dearborn.
4. Taylor Ford.
5. LaFontaine Buick GMC Dearborn.

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Tennerra Winery in Sterling Heights is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best wine bar in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. Tennerra Winery in Sterling Heights.
2. Ladder 4 Wine Bar in Detroit.
3. Cellar 59 Wine Bar in Clinton Township.
4. Michigan By The Bottle Tasting Room in Royal Oak.
5. Balam Coffee & Wine in Ferndale.

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

The Fly Trap in Ferndale is the winner of this year’s Vote 4 The Best category for best vegan/vegetarian in Metro Detroit.

Here are the results for the top five:

1. The Fly Trap in Ferndale.
2. Street Beet in Detroit.
3. Spacecat V-stro in Ferndale.
4. BESOS in Birmingham.
5. Jacq n Diane’s Juice Box in Holly.

Congrats to all of our finalists.

This year’s Vote 4 The Best received more than 163,000 votes during the finalist phase, with Metro Detroiters supporting their favorite restaurants, venues, and local businesses in 80 different categories.

Our winner reveal begins Monday, Aug. 10.

Click here to view a full list of this year’s Vote 4 The Best winners as they are announced.

Using a pair of hand tools, Shijin carefully inspected the sheet made from the papyrus plant, proceeding with the utmost care. After all, it most likely hadn’t been handled in a century — nor read for thousands of years.

The Papyrus Conservation Summer Seminar at the University of Michigan is the only one of its kind in the Americas, according to the university. And it's one of the few in the world designed to convey the best practices for conserving papyrus manuscripts, ancient texts written on rolls or sheets made from the papyrus plant.

“If you touch this papyrus, you can feel the history,” said Shijin, a native of China who was among nine scholars from across the globe, including Ireland, Italy and the U.S., who took the 10-day course.

Michigan’s Papyrology Collection covers texts and documents from 1000 B.C.E. to 1000 C.E. No institution on this side of the world has more of them, the Ann Arbor school said, giving the researchers access to a vast collection of ancient papyri. There are portions of the Homer epics, “The Odyssey” and “The Iliad,” writings by the philosopher Epicurus and the oldest-known copy of the Epistles of Paul.

“Carrying on this tradition is an incredible responsibility, but it also is incredibly fun and rewarding, because there’s nothing I love more than getting people together from all over the world, sharing ideas, learning from each other,” said Marieka Kaye, who manages library preservation services for physical collections at the University of Michigan Library.

Kaye said she tried to make “things comfortable and not scary, because a lot of people just feel terrified working on these ancient things.”

The seminar introduced the papyrologists and conservators to techniques in the treatment, storage and care of the ancient texts, as well as documentation practices. Papyrus and its ink can crumble, smear or break, so Kaye encouraged the students to carefully remove dirt, sand, salt and debris; use controlled moisture to soften folds and realign fibers; and dry the papyrus slowly under light weight to prevent curling.

The first seminar was held in 2012, and they have been held every two years since, except for the 2020 pandemic year. About 50 students total have taken part.

“If we don’t train the next generations of conservators, this is a craft that is going to be lost,” said Giuliano Sidro, curator of Michigan's Papyrology Collection.

Michigan has so many papyrus manuscripts on hand that its researchers haven’t gone through them all. Some of the items were acquired, while others were excavated, during university expeditions to the ancient site of Karanis, Egypt, from 1924-35. Francis Willey Kelsey, a Latin professor who died in 1927, was the driving force behind the establishment of the Papyrology Collection. He believed Michigan students studying the ancient world needed access not only to books, but to the tangible remains of antiquity. Today, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology is a fixture on the Michigan campus. Its collection represents one of the finest compilations of daily-life objects from Greco-Roman Egypt located outside of Cairo.

“This is a place where you make discoveries, potentially every day, if you just go into the vault, pick out a box and open something up, and you start reading,” Sidro said.

Of course, to make sense of it, one needs to be able to decipher Arabic, ancient Greek or Latin, and even Egyptian, one of the earliest known written languages that is now extinct. A few of the seminar participants were able to read the papyri, including Arzak Mohamed, who reads Arabic, and Mauro Castiello, a papyrology doctoral student in Milan, who can translate ancient Greek and Latin.

Kaye said she always tries to include a student from Egypt among the seminar participants.

Mohamed, a postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, had heard about the papyrus seminar for years and always wanted to attend. The 42-year-old mother of three is from Fayoum, Egypt, not far from Karanis.

“Now, I can transfer this information from Michigan to Egypt and even in Australia,” she said. “I will be like the chain, connecting between the three countries.”

“By saving this information, we can transfer the knowledge to the next generation,” she added.

The military said it would not probe three other attacks that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders. It said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct in Gaza and made decisions on the five cases.

Chef José Andrés, founder of U.S.-based World Central Kitchen, condemned the decision on X as “wrong and painful.”

The investigations involve killings that drew a heavy international outcry. Hind was trapped in a vehicle with her slain relatives, pleading for help by phone before she too was killed in February 2024. After the shooting of the 15 medics in March 2025, troops bulldozed their bodies into a mass grave.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 73,000 people, including tens of thousands of women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Rights groups and U.N. commissions have said the campaign amounts to genocide and that Israeli forces have committed a litany of war crimes, including indiscriminate use of force and deliberate killings of civilians.

Israel denies accusations of genocide and war crimes and says it is targeting Hamas after its October 2023 attack on southern Israel. It blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militant group operates in populated areas in the tiny, overcrowded strip.

Israeli officials contend the country's justice system can address any violations by its troops, but rights groups say soldiers are almost never held accountable.

Wednesday's statement did not mention many other high-profile killings that Israel has pledged to investigate, such as its strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza that killed five journalists in August 2025, including Mariam Dagga, a visual journalist who freelanced for The Associated Press and other news organizations.

The 5-year-old was the last alive in a stranded car

Hind's grandmother, also named Hind Rajab, told the AP by phone that the Israeli investigation into her killing is not enough.

“An international investigation is required to uncover the truth and hold all those responsible accountable,” she said. “We call for justice, not only for Hind, but for all Gaza children.”

The military in Wednesday's statement admitted to firing at the car carrying the 5-year-old, four of her cousins and her aunt and uncle as they fled an Israeli invasion of Gaza City.

As gunfire sprayed around them, the girl's cousin, 15-year-old Layan Hamada, called the Palestinian Red Crescent paramedic center, telling staff there her family had been killed. Seconds later, more gunshots were heard, and Layan’s screaming stopped, according to the Red Crescent recording of the call.

Palestinian paramedics dispatched an ambulance to rescue Hind and stayed on the line with her until contact was lost. Hind, her five relatives and two medics from the ambulance were found dead 12 days later.

The military admitted Wednesday that troops had fired toward that ambulance, killing the two medics.

Dyab Abou Jahjah, director of the Belgium-based Hind Rajab foundation, told Al-Jazeera he considered the military investigations a “charade meant to whitewash the culprits instead of convicting them.”

The Palestinian Red Crescent also insists on an international investigation, according to Raed al-Nims, a spokesman for the organization in Gaza. “Israeli measures are not enough,” he told the AP.

A movie docudrama about Hind's death, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” won international awards and was nominated for an Oscar.

The 15 medics had been trying to reach casualties

In the killing of the paramedics, Israeli troops fired on an ambulance driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive in the southern city of Rafah, then fired on other emergency vehicles that came looking for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor of the shootings. Fifteen medics and emergency responders from the Red Crescent and Gaza's Civil Defense were killed.

Troops then bulldozed over the bodies and vehicles, burying them in a mass grave. U.N. and rescue workers were only able to reach the site a week later to dig out the bodies.

The Israeli military initially said it opened fire because the vehicles were “advancing suspiciously” on troops without headlights or emergency signals. But it backtracked after the footage emerged, showing the teams driving slowly with their emergency lights flashing and logos visible. A deputy commander was directed to step down over the killings.

“We are not obligated to prove the truth because it is already proven to the whole world,” Eid Azizi, a Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson, told the AP in a phone call. “We shouldn’t have reached this point if they respected and followed international humanitarian law.”

Israel will not criminally probe World Central Kitchen strike

The military said it had decided against a criminal investigation into April 2024 airstrikes that hit a convoy of World Central Kitchen vehicles, killing seven staffers.

The aid group, which distributes food in Gaza, said at the time it had coordinated with the military over the convoy's movement. The vehicles, which had the group’s logo on their roofs visible from the air, were left incinerated and mangled.

Wednesday's military statement said individuals in the vehicles were mistakenly identified as armed Hamas operatives. But it concluded that the commanders' decisions "did not raise reasonable suspicion of criminal misconduct.” At the time, two officers were removed from their positions and three others reprimanded.

World Central Kitchen responded in a statement saying the military’s account of the strike was untrue, “conflates different timelines and events, muddies the story and shifts the blame.” It called for an independent investigation.

Australia's foreign minister Penny Wong expressed “outrage” at the outcome Thursday, saying the removals and reprimands of officers weren't sufficient accountability for the killing of Australian aid worker Zomi Frankcom. Wong said unanswered questions remained and her government would continue to pursue the matter.

The military also decided not to take criminal action over the killings of four staffers from Doctors Without Borders in two separate instances in November 2023 and February 2024.

What happens next?

Military investigators will now take up the probes and present their findings to military prosecutors. The military advocate general can then decide to keep investigating, indict any soldiers involved or decline to charge them.

Any action will take a long time, if it comes at all, said Tal Steiner, head of the Israeli rights group HaMoked.

Indictments are very uncommon and convictions even more so, she said, recalling only one soldier who had spent time behind bars since Oct. 7, 2023, for alleged abuse of Palestinian prisoners. That soldier was imprisoned for seven months under a June 2025 plea bargain.

“It’s very rare that soldiers accused of harming Palestinians even go to court ... and even rarer that they get a severe punishment,” Steiner said.

Just 0.17% of all military investigations launched during three Gaza operations from 2014 to 2022 led to prosecution, according to an analysis by Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

The war's toll keeps growing

The war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and abducted 251 others.

Israeli strikes have continued in Gaza since a ceasefire deal came into effect in October, killing at least 1,270 people, according to the Health Ministry.

The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts. It does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children constitute about half of the dead. ___

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Erin Cunningham in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Meanwhile, France announced it will expel two Iranian diplomats in response to the expulsion of French diplomats from the Islamic Republic this week. And the Iranian parliament speaker and chief negotiator landed in neighboring Iraq for a three-day visit.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East on Wednesday. Full coverage can be found here.

Israel's military plans criminal investigation into Gaza attacks

The Israeli military said it would investigate the killings of 5-year-old Hind Rajab and her family members in February 2024, and the killing of 15 Palestinian medics in March 2025. Both drew international attention.

The announcement followed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct during the war in Gaza. The military said it would not launch criminal investigations into three other attacks that killed aid workers from World Central Kitchen and Doctors Without Borders.

Rajab was killed when Israeli troops opened fire on a vehicle that also was carrying her aunt, uncle and four cousins as they tried to flee Gaza City amid an Israeli offensive.

The 15 paramedics were killed when Israeli troops opened fire on their vehicles in the southern city of Rafah, then bulldozed over the bodies and buried them in a mass grave. Troops first shot at an ambulance that was driving to retrieve casualties from an Israeli offensive, then fired on several other emergency vehicles that went out to look for the first one, according to phone footage and the sole survivor.

Australian official angered by move not to probe aid worker’s death

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong expressed “outrage” on Thursday at Israel’s decision not to pursue criminal charges over strikes that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers, including Australian woman Zomi Frankcom.

Wong said her government was informed of the decision moments before it was announced, leaving officials no time to inform Frankcom’s family before it became public.

“There are still many unanswered questions,” Wong said.

They included why the convoy was struck three times in a humanitarian fire control zone and why a senior brigade officer involved in the strikes was a signatory to a letter urging the restriction of aid to Gaza, Wong added. Australia had yet to receive drone recordings from the attack, despite seeking them multiple times, she said.

“The Australian government does not believe that the removal of two officers from their positions and three officers being reprimanded is sufficient accountability for the deaths of seven people, including an Australian citizen,” Wong said.

The minister hours earlier summoned Israel’s envoy to Canberra Hillel Newman for a meeting. However, she wouldn’t expel the ambassador, she said, citing a need to continue engaging diplomatically with Israel.

Newman told reporters after the meeting that he was “very sorry” for Frankcom’s family, but did not apologize for her killing.

“One cannot attack findings of a court if the findings are not suitable to one’s political agenda,” Newman said. He added that the finding of no criminal liability came “after two years of independent research.”

Israeli airstrikes in Gaza kill 10 as ceasefire is in doubt

At least 10 people were killed Wednesday in two airstrikes in Gaza, according to local hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent.

The attacks cast further doubt on whether new U.S. efforts can advance a tenuous ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

Just two days after U.S. negotiators reportedly asked Israel to draw down attacks in Gaza, Israeli troops also crossed the ceasefire line in southern Gaza and detained a Hamas police colonel at dawn, two witnesses and a Hamas official said. They spoke on condition of anonymity for their safety.

— Samy Magdy and Wafaa Shurafa

Iran's parliament speaker and top negotiator visits Iraq

Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf arrived in Iraq for a three-day visit where he will meet with Iraqi officials and leaders of an Iran-backed political coalition.

Iran-backed Iraqi militias have launched drone attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic targets both within Iraq and abroad, piling pressure on Baghdad, which for years has delicately tried to maintain strong ties with both Washington and Tehran.

Qalibaf praised the country’s Tehran-backed militias, which he called the “resistance in Iraq," describing them as a “key component of the country’s national power.”

His comments came even as the Iraqi government has been trying to disarm the militias that have long operated on their own even though they were nominally under state command.

Iraq is asking Iran to grant special status to Iraqi oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz because the country has been affected greatly by Iran's war with the U.S. and needs to guard its economic interests, according to a statement from Iraqi Parliament Speaker Haibet al-Halbousi.

Iraq relies on oil revenues for roughly 90% of its budget, and most of its oil is exported through the strait. Since the war erupted and Iran asserted control over the strait, halting most shipping traffic, Iraq has turned to alternate routes, including sending oil over land to Syria, which is less efficient and more expensive.

France and Iran expel diplomats

France announced it will expel two staff members of the Iranian Embassy in France, in response to what the French Foreign Ministry described as an assault by Iranian security forces against two French diplomatic staff in the Islamic Republic last month.

Iran accused the French pair of taking part in a secret meeting with “suspects in a major case involving foreign infiltration and interference,” Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The French diplomats were expelled on Monday.

Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot slammed the Iranian authorities for not investigating what he called a “premeditated and deliberate attack.” He called the allegations fabricated and said the two Iranians will leave Paris in the coming days.

___

Associated Press writers Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut, Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

On the hillsides of Hautvillers, teams of grape pickers start work at 6:30 a.m. among rows of vines that were recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015.

For Alexandre Gobillard, production director at the Gobillard & Fils Champagne house, beginning the harvest in mid-August was once almost unthinkable.

“It’s historic in Champagne,” he said. “I’ve been working at the estate for 30 years, and when I started, my father used to tell me: ‘On Aug. 15, go on vacation.’ Today, it’s Aug. 18 and we’re in full harvest. We’ve never seen anything like it.”

At 50, Gobillard represents the fourth generation to work the family vineyards. Gobillard & Fils grows 40 hectares (about 100 acres) of vines and produces about 1.5 million bottles a year.

A changing climate brings an earlier harvest

Champagne’s official harvest opened between Aug. 12 and Aug. 17 this year, depending on the area and grape variety — roughly a month earlier than what was once common in the region.

A late-March frost hit vines after mild temperatures triggered early budburst, reducing the potential crop. It was followed by four heat waves, which never happened before, Gobillard said.

Sun-scorched grapes turned partially brown, something Gobillard said he had rarely seen. He explained that losing roughly 10% of the grapes would mean a loss in volume rather than affect the quality of the wine.

Earlier harvests have become increasingly common in Champagne and other French wine regions as temperatures rise. In neighboring Italy, extreme heat has also prompted sparkling-wine producers to harvest sooner and pick grapes at night.

David Chatillon, president of the Union of Champagne Houses, acknowledged weather conditions this year will lead to a clear decrease in yields.

“But it’s not just because of the drought,” he said. “We lost 43% of the potential production to the spring frosts, and the drought has clearly made the problem of lower yields even worse.”

Chatillon said climate change has been a focus of the industry for the past 25 years, prompting investment in research and innovation to adapt to evolving conditions, including developing grape varieties that are more disease-resistant and ripen later.

Heat speeds grape ripening

Gobillard has seen the shift unfold across generations of his family.

“My grandfather’s generation harvested 100 days after flowering, my father’s 90 days, and today we’re down to 80,” he said. “We’re going to have to change our habits.”

This summer’s record temperatures compressed the ripening period even further. In June, temperatures reached 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in parts of Champagne.

“The vine needs water to live,” Gobillard said. “The water was drawn out of the grapes to keep the vine alive, and as a result we had a much higher concentration of sugar. That’s why it happened so much faster.”

As his daughter operated the wine press, Gobillard watched the year's first juice flow with a mix of excitement and anxiety.

He quickly took a sample to measure its sugar level — a key indicator of potential alcohol content and of whether the grapes have been picked at the right moment. “Champagne shouldn’t be too alcoholic. ... We’re looking for delicacy," he said.

An early harvest tests Champagne’s traditions

The early harvest also poses logistical challenges in a region where grapes are traditionally picked by hand, with some workers still on summer vacation and others facing transportation delays.

Gobillard hopes to complete the harvest at the estate in about nine days, a job requiring around 120 workers recruited mostly from across France and Poland.

“It really changes how we look at Champagne’s traditional methods,” said Geoffrey Bonnet-Gobillard, 30, commercial director of the family Champagne house. “Hand harvesting comes with a lot of constraints — housing people, feeding them, recruiting them. It’s very difficult, especially with early harvests in August.”

Those pressures could eventually force producers to reconsider some long-established practices as agricultural machinery becomes more sophisticated, he said.

The house sells most of its Champagne in European markets, including Britain, Belgium, Italy and Spain, as well as in West Africa, with smaller volumes going to the United States and Asia, Bonnet-Gobillard said.

High stakes for a global industry

According to Comité Champagne’s 2026 industry report, 266.1 million bottles of Champagne were shipped in France and abroad last year, generating 5.7 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in sales. Exports accounted for 56.5% of shipments. Champagne represented about 8% of global sparkling wine consumption by volume but 31% by value.

The sector supports around 30,000 direct jobs and requires roughly 100,000 seasonal workers for the harvest, according to Comité Champagne.

Despite this year’s difficult conditions, Gobillard said the grapes he inspected were encouraging.

“I’m very happy with what I’m seeing,” he said. “We were worried that the drought would leave us with very light bunches, but in these plots we’re really pleased. The quantity should be sufficient and the quality will be there.”

But there is little time to spare. “It’s time to cut them. We’re going to have to move quickly,” he said.

Hundreds of emails exchanged between U.S. immigration officials, which were obtained by the National Iranian American Council and made public Tuesday, offer the most transparent play by play yet of how the two countries worked together to arrange for more than 100 Iranians to be flown back to Iran on three separate immigration flights in September and December 2025 and January 2026.

The emails show that Iranian officials had some influence over which Iranian immigrants in the U.S. were sent back to their home country, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials apparently heeded some last-minute changes to deportation lists at the request of Iran.

“Per request from the Iran Embassy I added a few cases," one unnamed ICE official wrote in late August, a month before the first deportation flight in September. Just over a week later, someone with the same job title moved to make another, unspecified change to the deportation list after they said they met with the “Director at the Iranian Embassy.”

“Iran has requested that I amend the previous manifest and expedite the removal process,” the official wrote.

In a Sept. 26 email, just three days before the deportation flight left U.S. soil, an ICE official said in an email that the Iranian Embassy was still making requests for three additional Iranians on the flight. It's not clear who ended up on the flight, which ended up being much smaller than initially planned. Iranian officials were still making requests the day the flight departed, although one official wrote that those requests were denied.

Coordination of the flights remained a high priority even as ICE officials acknowledged internally that Iranians were fleeing Iran amid the deadly 12-day war with the U.S. and Israel in June 2025, emails show. The flights departed just months after the U.S. and Israel agreed to a ceasefire with Iran.

The new emails highlight a clear departure from a decades-long practice by the U.S. of welcoming Iranian dissidents, exiles and others since the 1979 Islamic Revolution forced a large number of Iranians to flee.

The deportation of Iranians to a country whose government has a pattern of violent persecution against women, religious minorities and political dissidents has drawn significant criticism from human rights activists.

The Department of Homeland Security did not offer comment in response to an emailed request sent Tuesday afternoon.

Some deportees were handpicked by Iranian officials, emails show

Iranian officials acknowledged in September 2025 that as many as 400 Iranians could be returned under an agreement with the Trump administration. They said most of the Iranians had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico illegally, while some faced other immigration issues.

It is not clear from the emails how frequently U.S. immigration officials had direct contact with the Iranian government. Sometimes messages were conveyed through Qatari officials, who helped charter the deportation flights through Doha, but other times officials reference regular meetings with the “Iranian delegation," the “Director at the Iranian Embassy” and other unnamed Iranian officials.

It is not clear whether the people Iran put on the list had volunteered to repatriate or if they were forced. Previous reporting from The New York Times revealed that asylum-seekers were among those deported to Iran, while others said they were deported against their will.

At least one person was deported who wasn't supposed to be, emails showed.

“An Iranian not included on the final manifest we sent to the Qatari MOI was boarded on the flight,” an unnamed U.S. official wrote.

In response, another unnamed U.S. official wrote, “I have no idea how the case/person got through on the plane.”

US prioritized deportation efforts during war

Emails suggest that pressure to carry out the Iranian deportations came from the highest levels of the Trump administration, even when U.S. and Israel were exchanging strikes with Iran in a 12-day conflict between June 13 and June 24, 2025.

Just days after Trump's June 16 warning on social media that “Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” the former acting director of ICE, Todd Lyons, called the repatriation of Iranian immigrants a “priority" in an email sent to the agency’s head of removal operations Marcos Charles and a number of unnamed staff.

Shortly after Lyon's email, Charles forwarded the message to a group of officials whose names are redacted. An unnamed ICE official responded, warning that “removal will prove difficult” amid the ongoing conflict because Iran wasn't issuing the travel documents for Iranians eligible for deportation. On top of that, the Iranian airspace was closed to all flights during the bombings and Iranians were fleeing the country.

Charles was unfazed, telling staff in a subsequent email to make a plan to deport 58 Iranians with final removal orders in ICE custody at the time.

“We need a plan forward ASAP,” Charles wrote. Another official, who name was redacted, urged colleagues to “identify a solution for this White House priority.”

Jamal Abdi, the president of the National Iranian American Council, said the emails undermine Trump’s assertions that the U.S. is at war with Iran to save ordinary Iranians from a repressive regime.

“It demonstrates that the top priority here was to kick out as many people as possible by whatever means necessary,” Abdi said.

Iranian officials had access to immigration detainees

On several occasions, the emails show ICE officials arranging for Iranian officials to meet for unspecified reasons with people detained in the U.S., echoing testimony from Iranian asylum-seekers in an unrelated lawsuit filed by an unaffiliated Iranian interest group in July.

Eleven Iranians in immigration detention said they were forced to meet with Iranian government officials while in ICE detention. Those Iranian authorities knew intimate details about their asylum claims, according to the sworn declarations filed in a Washington, D.C., court in July.

The lawsuit alleges that U.S. immigration agencies have been illegally sharing confidential information about Iranian asylum-seekers with the Iranian government.

The U.S. government is allowed to work with government officials of foreign countries to coordinate deportation logistics. However, federal regulations passed in the late 1990s prohibit the government from sharing information that could reveal that the person getting deported applied for asylum.

DHS vehemently disputed the lawsuit's allegations.

“These allegations that ICE shared asylum application records with the Iranian government are FALSE,” DHS said in a statement in July.

CK Hutchison said in the statement that it had begun new arbitration proceedings against Panama and alleged that the Central American country had breached an investment protection treaty through “sovereign acts that targeted a decades-old ports concession” in a “state attack campaign” on the company’s assets in the Central American country.

Panama’s government in February seized the Balboa and Cristobal ports, located on each end of the Panama Canal, after its Supreme Court that a concession held by CK Hutchison’s subsidiary to run the two ports was unconstitutional.

The two ports at each end of the Panama Canal became part of U.S.-China tensions since Donald Trump’s return to the White House last year after he alleged China of “running” the canal.

The Panama Canal is managed and owned by Panama. But CK Hutchison’s subsidiary Panama Ports Company had run the two ports on the canal from 1997 and had renewed its concession for 25 years in 2021.

Beijing and Hong Kong had hit back at Panama over its takeover of the ports.

CK Hutchison, controlled by the family of Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-shing, last year announced an initial $23 billion deal to sell its global ports business, including the two Panama ports, to a consortium involving U.S. investment firm BlackRock. But the deal had made little progress under geopolitical tensions and legal challenges among China, the U.S. and Panama.

In March, Panama Ports Company had separately sought at least $2 billion in compensation from Panama over its takeover of the ports which it said was unlawful under international arbitration proceedings. CK Hutchison said the actions were making progress.

CK Hutchison added that Thursday's new proceedings were focused on its treaty rights, which were distinct from Panama Ports Company’s contract rights in the earlier arbitration proceedings.

In April, the subsidiary also launched arbitration proceedings against Danish shipping and logistics group Maersk after it took over some of its port operations in Panama. Maersk said at the time that it did not believe it was liable for the claims.

“I don’t think we’ve played great,” the two-time reigning NL manager of the year said Wednesday. “We haven’t really jelled. We haven’t really come together."

The Brewers’ results tell a different story.

Milwaukee appears well on its way to earning its eighth playoff berth in the last nine seasons as it chases a fourth consecutive NL Central title. The Brewers won three of four from the two-time defending World Series champion Dodgers last weekend and trounced Seattle 22-0 on Tuesday before their four-game winning streak ended with a 7-5 loss to the Mariners on Wednesday.

“There’s so much that I see that needs to improve, yet you look up and everybody’s saying, ‘Wow, I love the way you play,’ “ Murphy said before Wednesday's game. “And I look funny and I look behind me, and I see if they’re talking to someone else. Really? Maybe I’m too critical. Maybe I’m missing something. I don’t know. I do trust the team.”

They’ve been rewarding that trust.

Surviving a 17-day grind

The Brewers just completed a 17-day run that included no days off, one complete West Coast trip and part of another. They went 10-7 during that stretch.

After losing three straight games at San Diego last week, the Brewers responded by winning a series with the Dodgers, who swept them out of the NL Championship Series last year. After finally getting a day off Monday, the Brewers delivered their 22-0 blowout of Seattle that matched the most one-sided shutout in modern MLB history.

“I think it says we’re a good baseball team,” first baseman Jake Bauers said. “I think in tough times it can be easy to lose sight of that, but we have the right people around to bounce back when things get tough, and we have the right people around to continue to play winning baseball.”

Milwaukee has needed to stay hot to remain ahead of the Chicago Cubs, who have won 11 of their last 16 games and are 4 1/2 behind Milwaukee in the NL Central standings. The Brewers and Cubs face off in a four-game series Aug. 31-Sept. 3 at Wrigley Field before meeting again for three games in Milwaukee from Sept. 7-9.

During that grueling 17-day run, the Brewers encountered some criticism for their inability to acquire two-time AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal. The Brewers made a strong push to land Skubal, only to see the Detroit Tigers send him to the Dodgers instead.

Having NL Cy Young Award front-runner Jacob Misiorowski and Skubal fronting a starting rotation in a playoff series would have given the Brewers perhaps their best shot at making the postseason breakthrough that has eluded them during the franchise’s longest run of sustained success. The Brewers haven’t reached a World Series since 1982 and have never won it all.

Continuing to win without adding Skubal

Logan Henderson, an outstanding rookie pitcher the Brewers chose to keep rather than including in a trade last month, outdueled Skubal in Sunday’s series finale at Los Angeles. The 6-2 victory improved Henderson’s record to 7-2 with a 2.70 ERA.

The Brewers pivoted after the Skubal trade by acquiring former St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Dustin May, who is seeking to become the latest in a growing list of starting pitchers to improve after joining the Brewers. Left-hander Kyle Harrison, who also is thriving in his first year in Milwaukee, attributes that trend to Milwaukee’s pitching coaching staff of Chris Hook, Jim Henderson and Juan Sandoval.

“They’re so good at just knowing who you are as an individual and knowing what you need,” Harrison said. “Shoot, yeah, they’ve been doing it for a while now, too, so it’s pretty cool to have those guys you can trust and rely on.”

The Brewers believe they have the makings of a quality playoff rotation with Misiorowski, Henderson, Harrison and May. Milwaukee has withstood injuries that knocked two-time All-Star Brandon Woodruff out for the season and prevented Quinn Priester from pitching at all this year.

Milwaukee’s lineup has produced the fewest homers in the big leagues, yet the Brewers remain among the top five teams in scoring. Bauers’ breakthrough season has helped the Brewers overcome down years from 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich and three-time All-Star William Contreras.

Without naming names, Murphy said: “I watch some of our leaders that might not be getting the results, but the way they handle everybody else is pretty impressive.” Murphy added that might be one of the keys to this team’s success.

Another is simply the ability to continue competing even when things aren’t going smoothly.

“Maybe that’s the secret,” Murphy said. “Maybe this team still plays well enough to be close when they’re not at their best.”

___

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

Mostly cloudy skies are expected Wednesday night as temperatures fall into the lower 60s around Metro Detroit.

Some outlying communities could dip into the upper 50s. Any shower activity near the Ohio border should fade, leaving most of Southeast Michigan dry overnight.

Thursday

Thursday will deliver some of the nicest weather of the week. Expect plenty of sunshine, relatively low humidity, and highs around the lower 80s.

A light northeast breeze will help keep conditions comfortable.

The quiet weather continues Thursday night with mostly clear skies and lows around 60 degrees.

Most of Friday looks dry

Friday is shaping up to be another good day for outdoor plans. Sunshine should dominate much of the day with highs in the lower to middle 80s.

The atmosphere will begin changing as we head toward the weekend. Winds will turn more southerly as the next weather system approaches, gradually bringing more moisture back into Southeast Michigan.

The good news for Friday plans is that the latest data favors most, if not all, of the daylight hours remaining dry.

A shower or thunderstorm could approach later Friday night, but the better opportunity for rain comes Saturday.

Saturday brings the weekend rain chance

Saturday is the day to watch.

A low-pressure system tracking across Northern Michigan will drag a cold front through the region.

Showers and thunderstorms are expected to become increasingly likely, particularly Saturday afternoon into the early evening.

This does not necessarily mean Saturday will be rainy from sunrise to sunset.

There could be a substantial period of dry weather, especially earlier in the day, before showers and thunderstorms become more numerous.

For festivals, cookouts, sporting events or other outdoor activities, Saturday morning currently offers the better opportunity, while plans during the afternoon and early evening have a greater chance of being interrupted by rain.

Highs should reach the lower 80s before the front moves through.

Sunday brings quick improvement

Behind the front, cooler and drier air settles into Southeast Michigan.

Sunday looks considerably better for outdoor plans with sunshine and a high near 80 degrees.

Sunday night could turn refreshingly cool, with temperatures falling into the mid- to upper 50s in many locations.

Monday

Monday also looks dry and comfortable with sunshine and highs near 80 degrees.

Temperatures begin climbing again toward the middle of next week, with highs returning to the lower 80s Tuesday.

What to know

Thursday and Friday are the pick days for outdoor plans with sunshine, comfortable humidity, and highs in the lower 80s. Most of Friday should remain dry.

Saturday carries the weekend’s highest rain chance, particularly during the afternoon and early evening, when showers and thunderstorms could disrupt outdoor activities.

If your weekend plans are flexible, Sunday is currently the safer bet.

Share your weather photos with Local 4 at MIPics.

Benson made the announcement at a news conference in Grand Rapids, where she said she wanted a partner committed to representing voters across Michigan.

“My friends, the choice facing Michigan voters this fall is going to be: who do your leaders work for?” Benson said. “I wanted a running mate who will ensure, along with me, that we will work for the people.”

Brinks, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, said she wants to build on the party’s priorities of making Michigan more affordable.

“As your next lieutenant governor, I want to build on the progress that we’ve made by supporting Jocelyn’s vision of lowering costs, raising wages, and making Michigan a place where everyone can afford to live and thrive,” Brinks said.

The announcement came less than a week after Republican gubernatorial nominee John James announced state Rep. Jay DeBoyer as his running mate.

James’ campaign and the Michigan Republican Party both issued statements reacting to Benson’s announcement Wednesday (Aug. 19).

James, a Republican congressman from Shelby Township, described DeBoyer as a partner who can help address what he called waste and abuse in state government.

“This is a man who’s gone after fraud, waste, and abuse of the powerful in Lansing to hold them accountable to you,” James said.

DeBoyer, a Republican from Clay Township, chairs the Michigan House Oversight Committee. He was first elected to the House in 2022 and previously served as St. Clair County clerk for 12 years.

He also has owned a lumber business since 1994, according to the Michigan House Republicans’ website.

As oversight chair, DeBoyer has been a frequent critic of Benson, including during disputes over election-related records and state campaign law.

Republican strategists have said his legislative experience and conservative credentials could help James rally the party’s base after a divisive primary.

“What we have going on is a choice,” DeBoyer said after being selected. “It’s a choice between freedom and prosperity or big government socialism.”

Two tickets, different goals

Brinks has served in the Michigan Senate since 2019 and became the chamber’s Democratic leader. She previously served three terms in the Michigan House after winning election in 2012.

Her selection gives Benson a running mate with legislative experience and strong ties to West Michigan.

Brinks also was part of the Democratic legislative majority during the 2023-24 session, when Democrats controlled the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature.

“Basically Democrats have been growing in West Michigan, so someone from West Michigan, someone who’s not a MAGA Republican, not a socialist, not anything but basically a traditional voter — that will help put Jocelyn Benson in the future,” said Ed Sarpolus, executive director of the Lansing-based polling firm Target-Insyght.

Sarpolus said both tickets bring qualities their respective nominees will need to win over voters.

Brinks offers geographic reach and experience in Lansing, while DeBoyer can help James appeal to conservative voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2024.

“What John James is trying to do is to show that he meets the conservative wing,” Sarpolus said. “You have to remember the fact that he needs the voters that came out in 2024, the conservative voters that helped Donald Trump win.”

Benson and Brinks would become Michigan’s first all-female governor and lieutenant governor ticket if elected.

If James were elected, he would also make history as Michigan’s first Black governor.

The university says early move-in for Wolverine Village is scheduled for Saturday (Aug. 22) and Sunday (Aug. 23), following uncertainty earlier this week over whether construction would be completed in time for the start of the semester.

The complex includes five residence halls and a dining hall, adding about 2,300 beds to U-M’s undergraduate housing capacity.

Wolverine Village features single rooms, double rooms, and suites, along with study areas and laundry facilities in each residence hall.

The complex also includes 24-hour package lockers.

University officials say more than 2,600 students provided input that helped shape the design of the new residential community.

The opening comes as students prepare to return to campus for the new academic year.

The university has not indicated whether all areas of the complex will be fully operational at move-in, but officials say early move-in is scheduled to begin this weekend.

“The world needs more heroes,” he told the roundtable. “And it’s not about creating more heroes because they already live among us. It’s about being able to really value their expertise, their experiences.”

The Duke of Sussex, who served 10 years in the British Army, hinted that he’d soon launch a “commercial” solution that “really values those who served rather than expect them to volunteer.”

He held the discussion with veterans, defense officials, military spouses and nonprofit leaders at a hotel ballroom in Washington, D.C. The conversation — which was organized by The Independence Fund, a nonprofit that helps critically wounded service members — lasted more than 80 minutes.

Veterans’ services and mental health have become cornerstones of Harry and his wife Meghan’s philanthropy through their Archewell Foundation. The Duke of Sussex founded the Invictus Games, a Paralympic-style international competition for wounded service members, in 2014. His advocacy also includes visits with wounded military personnel, like last year’s stop at a Ukrainian clinic that rehabilitates victims of war.

Harry’s British military service included two tours in Afghanistan. He has credited his experience witnessing fellow soldiers’ battlefield injuries with inspiring him to help injured veterans lead healthy lives. In a 2023 Netflix series, he spoke openly about lacking the necessary emotional support upon his return from combat.

Harry told the roundtable that it has been refreshing to hear the latest generation of veterans express an interest in “purpose" and “service after service” —- no matter their branch or country of service. He extolled their communication skills, moral leadership and ability to work in high stress environments.

But, he said in an interview with The Associated Press, that those skills are “not being transitioned over within the civilian world."

In between jokes about each other’s hair and their alma maters, wounded veterans emphasized the importance of exercise in their rehabilitation. Garrett J. Carnes, a retired marine corporal who lost both legs, said inactivity is difficult when they’ve spent so long priding themselves on their physical fitness. “I give all glory to Jesus Christ,” he said, “but man I am so thankful that he invented Jiu-Jitsu.”

Others highlighted the need to improve the quality of veterans’ health centers in smaller towns and bolster mental health services at overworked Veterans Affairs offices.

Jason Wheeler, a U.S. Navy and Army veteran, said it's “not right” that he was unable to get his military benefits to cover a recent surgery. Sitting in a wheelchair, he teared up as he recalled the “humiliating” time he had to crawl off a commercial airplane with his service dog.

He was told he would never walk again, he said, but has since walked over 1,000 feet.

“I will not stop the fight. I will not quit,” he said. “We don’t have it in us.”

Harry’s earlier stops Wednesday included Arlington National Cemetery, where he laid a wreath, and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He did not mention reports of his decision to return to the United Kingdom for an extended stay with Meghan and their children. He declined to comment when asked to discuss the move.

Sarah Verardo, the CEO of The Independence Fund, noted Harry’s impact on the patients at Walter Reed. A few veterans who told Harry they were too injured to participate in his Invictus Games left their interactions standing “taller and stronger” after he told them there’s “no such thing,” according to Verardo.

Jane Horton, a senior defense adviser in the Trump administration and Gold Star wife, appreciated that Harry is using his platform to unite veterans.

“To see someone that has turned pain into purpose in such a beautiful way such as Prince Harry — not only turn pain into purpose, but pain into service — resonated with the whole community and means a lot to us all,” she told AP.

In an interview with AP, Harry spoke more broadly about the need to elevate “moral leadership.” He expressed concern that a “very, very small group of people are making decisions that are impacting the entire world” around politics and technology.

“What we need,” he said, “is the younger generation coming into leadership who perhaps see the world slightly differently. And I think a little less testosterone might do as well.”

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

Macomb County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido said Sharrow, of Warren, was arrested Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2026, on a third-degree criminal sexual conduct charge out of Houghton Lake, Michigan.

Officials said Sharrow’s home and cellphone were searched under warrants following his arrest. Prosecutors allege that sexually explicit videos of minors were found on his cellphone. Methamphetamine and LSD also allegedly were discovered at his home.

Sharrow was arraigned Wednesday (Aug. 19) in 37th District Court in Warren.

He faces five counts of child sexually abusive material — aggravated possession, each a 10-year felony; five counts of using a computer to commit a crime, each carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years; one count of possession of methamphetamine, a 10-year felony; and one count of possession of a Schedule 5 controlled substance and LSD, a one-year misdemeanor.

Prosecutors said the charges reflect the maximum offenses available under state law based on evidence presented so far.

A judge set Sharrow’s bond at $1 million cash or surety, with no 10% option.

If released, Sharrow must wear a GPS tether and is prohibited from using the internet or any device that can access it.

He is also barred from contact with minors and from entering locations where minors commonly congregate.

Sharrow is a teacher at the Warren Consolidated School of Performing Arts.

He is scheduled to appear for a probable cause conference at 37th District Court at 8:45 a.m. Sept. 1, 2026.

Warren Schools teacher arraigned on felony charges after videos of minors allegedly found on his phone by brandon carr

Is it time for something similar around the foul poles?

The Baltimore Orioles certainly felt aggrieved Wednesday night against the New York Yankees after Pete Alonso's deep fly to left field in the seventh inning was ruled foul — and the call was upheld on a review.

The play occurred with the game tied at 3. New York then scored twice in top of the eighth and went on to win 5-3.

“I think a simple fix is like football, you have the pylon camera with the plane, where it shoots right across the goal line,” Alonso said. “And I feel like, for us, we could easily have a laser or a camera that shoots straight up.”

Manager Craig Albernaz shared Alonso's frustration.

“On the dugout iPads there’s ball-tracking data with the field that the players see, so it’s really tough to have that (call) come back as ‘stands’ and have that visual in the dugout as well. It’s 2026,” Albernaz said. “There are teams using AI on the iPads and other sports use ball-tracking data for challengeable calls. Don’t understand why we don’t do it.”

At least one replay seemed to show the ball on the fair side of the pole, but it wasn’t clear what angle that shot was from.

“What I was told is in order to overturn a call, you need to have two camera angles to confirm it,” Alonso said. “But the best view, the only view that shows the ball fair or foul is the one down the line, but no other camera angle is available. So video room rules it foul, umpire obviously called it foul initially. It is what it is.”

It might have been easier for the umpire — and the replay room — to make the call if Alonso's hit hadn't been so high. It appeared to tower above the foul pole at one point.

“That we don’t have the technology in place to actually say, ‘Hey, this was fair or foul,’ is literally crazy in 2026. It’s crazy,” said Chris Bassitt, Baltimore's starting pitcher Wednesday.

Bassitt then blamed financial considerations for why such technology isn't used.

“Because it would cost money,” he said. “That’s it. I mean, that’s literally it.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

May Doi, 93, was found dead Monday after she was reported missing, police said. Neighbors think she was escaping floodwaters in her home and trying to get to a nearby shelter, said ʻĀina Akamu, a former student of Doi's who is now a vice principal at a local school.

She taught for so long at Naalehu Elementary on the island's southern tip that “Mrs. Doi was my dad's kindergarten teacher,” Akamu said Wednesday.

“She taught grandkids of her students,” he said. “She was a fixture in this community.”

Akamu often saw her taking walks around the small, rural, sugar plantation-era town: “She was so strong.”

He recalled how everyone looked forward to having Mrs. Doi as a teacher because she sometimes allowed students to have sleepovers in her classroom. Her deceased husband was a math teacher, Akamu said.

The body of a man in his 60s was located by residents in a pasture on Tuesday, a day after police were asked to conduct a welfare check, police said. Authorities said it was the second death attributed to the storm and have not yet released his identity.

Residents were struggling to clean up after Hurricane Lala tore roofs off houses, uprooted trees, covered roads in mud and rock and left many households without electricity for days. On top of all that, forecasters warned of the likelihood of another tropical cyclone forming southeast of the islands.

‘We just ask the ancestors to protect us’

Akamu also lamented the destruction of two cemeteries, including one where Akamu’s ancestors have been buried since 1850. Caskets were sticking out of the ground through the town, home to about 800 people, and headstones littered the roadway, he said.

“Our graveyard is now scattered all over the community and how do we heal from that?” he said.

He worries crews working to clear roads could inadvertently run over remains.

“Don't clear the road, my grandma could be in there,” he said. "That's what makes me most emotional, it's like you lost them again."

Akamu was trying to focus on helping his community recover by setting up a hub where residents can get donated items. They are in most need of generators, gasoline and propane, he said.

“We just ask the ancestors to protect us,” Akamu said of the threat of an another storm.

Now well west of Hawaii's main islands, Lala has reached major Category 3 strength with top sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) on Wednesday in what the National Hurricane Center called the first major hurricane of 2026 in the Central Pacific Ocean. But Hawaii residents were put on notice for another storm system, located far to the east-southeast.

The hurricane center said conditions appeared conducive for a tropical depression to form within days.

It's too early to tell the exact location or potential wind, rain and storm surge impacts. However, “interests in the Hawaiian Islands should closely monitor the progress of this system,” the hurricane center said, adding it could be a hurricane when it moves near or over the islands by the weekend.

Power repairs could take weeks

Work continued to clear away tons of mud and debris left behind by a torrent of water that inundated buildings, some of whose roofs were sheared off by the winds. Dozens of homes were washed from foundations, bridges were damaged and a collapsed section of a two-lane road had cut off access to the community of Pahala.

The U.S. Department of Transportation approved an initial $6 million in emergency relief to help repair transportation infrastructure damaged by Lala, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said.

The heaviest recorded rainfall, 43.54 inches (1.1 meters), occurred in Laupahoehoe on the northeast coast of the Big Island, the National Weather Service said.

About 17,000 customers on the Big Island remained without power on Wednesday, the Hawaiian Electric utility said. Some customers on the islands of Oahu and Maui were still in the dark. Repairs in the heavily damaged areas of the Big Island, including the southern end, could take at least two weeks, the utility said.

Lala was moving to the northwest at 10 mph (17 kph) and was expected to turn toward the north early Thursday. It was bearing down on a remote area at the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago. Hurricane warnings were posted for portions of the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument from Lisianski Island to Maro Reef.

The weather service said the storm was forecast to veer east of the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. The population in one of the most remote places on Earth consists entirely of a few dozen U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service staff, volunteers and contractors. Forecasters said there were no tropical-related advisories for the Midway Atoll and any impact might include some elevated surf with a limited amount of rain.

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Raby reported from Charleston, West Virginia.

Bettison said that a fatal stabbing on the city’s east side stemmed from a domestic dispute and that a 17-year-old girl is in custody.

Bettison said during his Walk-A-Mile Wednesday, the girl was arguing with her boyfriend when the confrontation escalated.

“It was domestic in nature,” Bettison said. “I have a 17-year-old woman who got into an argument with her boyfriend and couldn’t regulate.”

The boyfriend, a man in his 20s, died in the stabbing, Bettison said.

The teenage suspect is in custody and does not pose a danger to the community, the chief said.

Bettison said police continue to work on addressing intimate partner violence by connecting people with counseling and other resources.

The fatal stabbing occurred on Wednesday (Aug. 19) around 9:30 a.m. at a home on Marx Street.

Bettison was attending a Detroit Police Department community event that drew hundreds of people, including local elected officials and law enforcement leaders.

He said the gathering reflected his department’s focus on building relationships between police and residents.

He also emphasized cooperation among law enforcement agencies throughout the region.

“When we talk about One Detroit, it really is One Detroit,” Bettison said, noting that people who live in surrounding communities have family, friends, and connections in Detroit.

Bettison said crime in Detroit is declining and credited police, residents, elected officials and the Board of Police Commissioners for working together.

“Police cannot do it alone,” Bettison said. “Community helps. It’s everybody.”

Bettison also addressed the police response to a protest in Dearborn on Tuesday.

He said Detroit police monitored the situation closely and provided resources to Dearborn police under existing mutual-aid agreements.

“I won’t say what that was, but if Chief (Issa) Shahin needs any assistance, DPD is there to assist,” Bettison said. “And if DPD needs assistance, Chief Shahin is there to assist us as well.”

Bettison said the regional cooperation is part of what he described as a broader “One Detroit” approach to public safety.

Watch the full presser below:

A person familiar with the trade said Wednesday night that Watson, a restricted free agent who spent his first four NBA seasons with the Nuggets, will sign a four-year contract with the Cavaliers worth $88 million that includes a player option and trade kicker.

The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the trade had not been announced.

Cleveland will send to Denver an unprotected 2031 first-round pick and a 2032 second-round selection from the Sacramento Kings that it got after making a trade in June’s NBA draft. The Nuggets will also acquire Julian Reese from Washington.

The Cavaliers are getting a 2027 second-round pick from the Clippers, but that will be sent to the Wizards.

The 23-year-old Watson started a career-high 40 games last season and averaged career bests in points (14.6), rebounds (4.9) and assists (2.1). He gives the Cavaliers the wing player they were looking for after LeBron James signed with Philadelphia instead of returning to Cleveland for a third stint.

Besides Watson, the Cavaliers were also looking at free agents DeMar DeRozan and Jonathan Kuminga.

Strus and Dean Wade were the primary starters at small forward last season. Wade signed with Philadelphia during free agency.

Strus missed the first 67 games last season due to a broken left foot, but had some big baskets and steals during the playoffs as Cleveland reached the Eastern Conference finals for the first time since 2018. The Cavaliers were swept in that series by the New York Knicks.

Cleveland laid the groundwork for a move last week when it traded Dennis Schroder to Charlotte for Tre Mann to gain salary cap space. Mann's time in Cleveland won't last long; he's headed to Washington for Cam Whitmore.

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See AP’s full NBA coverage here

Update: Detroit police Chief Todd Bettison gives update on fatal stabbing involving teen, talks Dearborn protest

Police said the two got into an argument on Wednesday (Aug. 19) around 9:30 a.m. at a home on Marx Street.

Officials have not said what led to the argument, but police believe the girl stabbed the man.

Neighbors told Local 4 the scene was difficult to watch, but several rushed to help.

Joe King said he was alerted after hearing an argument and then hearing the man yell for someone to call police because he had been stabbed.

King said he looked out his window and saw the man leave the house, walk down the steps, and collapse on the grass.

He and several neighbors went outside to help before emergency responders arrived.

“We tried to do what we could do,” King said.

King said one neighbor with health care experience applied pressure to the wound while others looked for something they could use as a makeshift tourniquet.

He said the incident was especially difficult because of the close relationship among neighbors on the block.

“This was kind of a block we own,” King said. “We try to look out for each other. It’s a family block.”

King said violence like this is unusual in the neighborhood, where residents have known one another for years.

“It hits different when it’s this close,” King said. “We read about it all day, every day. Something happens, something happens, something happens. But until you’re right there, and it happens right there in front of you, you got a different, it hits different.”

King said he knew the victim well enough to greet him regularly.

He said his thoughts are with the victim’s family and urged neighbors to continue looking out for one another.

“We’re just gonna pray for the family and then pray that the Lord works things out according to his will,” King said. “That’s all we can do.”

The investigation remains ongoing. Police have not released additional details about the circumstances surrounding the stabbing or announced any charges against the teenager.

The stunning developments came a day after Ukraine’s recently fired defense minister demanded national elections, despite Russia’s more than 4-year-old invasion.

Although Zelenskyy was not implicated in the graft investigation, it threatened to pull him into another political crisis and provide another test of his resilience.

Investigators gave few details of the probe. It has identified a group of people alleged to have laundered 150 million hryvnias ($3.4 million) to pay bail for a defendant in a major graft case last year, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau said.

That case, involving the state-owned nuclear power company, brought the resignations of Ukraine’s justice and energy ministers.

The latest suspects include a former lawmaker, the chairperson of a state bank’s board and the head of the bank’s supervisory board, as well as a deputy head of the presidential office, the agency said.

Zelenskyy made no public comment on the investigation but issued a decree dismissing Iryna Mudra as deputy head of the Office of the President. Investigators have not named her as a suspect.

Investigators searched Mudra’s office Wednesday, said lawmaker Oleksii Honcharenko.

Zelenskyy remains dogged by high-level graft investigations, although he has never been named as a suspect even as the probes have engulfed officials close to him. Last year, his chief of staff Andriy Yermak resigned and later was named as a suspect in a major graft probe involving a luxury construction project in the biggest threat to Zelenskyy’s government since Russia’s 2022 invasion.

The European Union has identified deep-seated corruption as one of the major hurdles to Ukraine's desired membership in the bloc.

Zelenskyy's former aide wants a wartime election

Zelenskyy is already under pressure over his firing last month of Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, one of the longest-standing members of his team and a close ally since helping him win the 2019 presidential election.

Zelenskyy, seeking to reconcile tensions between the Defense Ministry's young and tech-savvy innovators and Ukraine's seasoned, Soviet-trained battlefield leaders, risked angering both sides by reshuffling his wartime leadership. He ousted both Fedorov, whose changes to military procurement aimed to stamp out corruption, and commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.

That sparked sustained street protests supporting Fedorov. For Zelenskyy, it was the second time in a year that a move triggered a strong public backlash, after he tried to curb the powers of anti-corruption agencies in 2025.

Fedorov, in an address posted to YouTube late Tuesday, called for elections — appearing to directly confront Zelenskyy, whose term expired in 2024. Ukraine's constitution prohibits such a vote under martial law.

“We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to restore a full democratic process even amid a prolonged war,” Fedorov said.

He said Ukraine faces a crisis in how it is governed, arguing the current system is oriented toward protecting itself and resisting change. He also condemned corruption among officials without naming anyone, saying it had weakened Ukraine’s ability to fight.

Zelenskyy’s office did not immediately comment on Fedorov’s address. It was not immediately clear whether Fedorov's appeal would resonate with Ukrainians.

Also on Wednesday, lawmakers approved Zelenskyy's candidate, Maj. Gen. Yevhenii Khmara, as the new defense minister, a move that effectively closes the door to Fedorov’s return to the post, which he has sought, anytime soon.

Lawmakers also gave their consent for Andrii Sybiha to stay on as foreign minister after serving in an interim role.

Political disarray follows Ukrainian wartime successes

The political disarray follows recent successes for Ukraine in the war. Using innovative drone technology, it has repeatedly hit Russian oil facilities, causing fuel shortages. It has also shocked the Russian public by striking warehouses of Wildberries, the country's biggest online retailer, and stalled front-line advances by Moscow's bigger army.

But Zelenskyy has been unable to get traction in U.S.-led peace efforts, and Ukraine is at the mercy of Russia's ballistic missiles because more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors aren't available due to low international stockpiles.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has balked at negotiating a peace deal directly with Zelenskyy.

In its latest attack, a Ukrainian drone hit an oil refinery in Ufa in Russia's Bashkortostan, its Gov. Radiy Khabirov was quoted as saying by Russian state news agency RIA Novosti. There are three oil refineries in Ufa, and all have been attacked.

The Russian Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted 453 Ukrainian drones over multiple regions, as well as Russian-held Crimea and the Black Sea.

It said Russian forces on Tuesday hit a bulk carrier in the Black Sea, southeast of Odesa, that was carrying military equipment. On Wednesday, the Russian military struck what it said were fuel and lubricant storage tanks for the Ukrainian armed forces in the southern port of Chornomorsk.

A Russian drone struck a minibus in Kherson in southern Ukraine on Wednesday, killing four people, said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the regional military administration, adding that four women were wounded. Another Russian drone struck a civilian car in the regional capital, killing a woman, he said.

Amid the fighting, Russia and Ukraine swapped 103 prisoners of war, according to Zelenskyy and the Russian Defense Ministry.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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

Graham, a political novice, was asked whether the U.S. has a national security interest in Taiwan and the South China Sea — a longstanding contention of both Democratic and Republican administrations. She struggled to answer before admitting, “National security is not my thing.”

“I’m not that informed on national security,” she added.

Her rival in next week's runoff for the GOP nomination, Rep. Ralph Norman, suggested the answer showed Graham was unqualified for the role.

“By her choice, she’s running for the United States Senate. It’s a six-year term,” Norman said. “You need to get fully versed in what issues you’re going to be dealing with. This isn’t a get training on the job, you can’t do that.”

It was a moment that drew a stark contrast to Graham’s brother, Lindsey, who died unexpectedly on July 11. It also gave Norman, an established conservative politician, a fresh avenue of attack as he tries to overcome President Donald Trump’s endorsement of Graham in her first campaign. The Republican president is set to visit South Carolina on Friday to campaign for her.

During his decades in the Senate, Lindsey Graham was known for his foreign policy involvement, making countless foreign trips, sometimes as part of a group of U.S. lawmakers meeting with international leaders and observing contentious areas firsthand.

There were multiple trips to Taiwan, including in 2022, when he led a delegation for a two-day visit that included meetings with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and the island’s defense minister.

Darline Graham had been asked, “Are Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States and if so, why or how?”

Graham avoided a direct response and instead mentioned her brother's wealth of experience and her desire to lead differently.

“My brother was in the Air Force for 33 years, so I will do everything I can to support the military,” said Graham, who often read from a legal pad on which she had notes, its pages draped over the front of her lectern. “My dad was in the Army. I’m not a polished politician up here; national security is not my thing, not my area of expertise, but I do support the military.”

Candidates were not allowed to bring notes into the debate, but Graham spent several minutes before the broadcast began copiously writing on her legal pad. Norman wrote down a few things but not as extensively.

As interim senator, Graham is surrounded by many of her brother's Capitol Hill staff, many of whom worked with him for years on issues foreign and domestic. She's repeatedly thanked them for getting her up to speed on legislative issues and has pointed to her several weeks on the job as a productive time in which she's gotten legislation passed, including a Russia sanctions bill named for her brother.

In the wake of her brother’s death, Graham has been asked multiple times about how she would either further or shift away from his intense focus on national security, an attitude that was at the essence of his Senate portfolio.

Asked after the debate by reporters if she wanted another crack at her answer to moderators' question, she doubled down, saying she was more focused on South Carolinians' everyday concerns.

“They’re worried about their pocketbooks more than they’re worried about the South China Sea, quite honestly,” Graham said. “So that’s going to be my biggest focus.”

Graham added that she had spoken multiple times during the debate about the overall national security threat posed by China.

“I realize national security is very important,” Graham said. “I probably said 10 times up there tonight how bad China is, how they’re a national threat to us.”

Speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday night, Graham acknowledged her flub but said that she had spoken with voters since the debate who said they appreciated her honesty in expressing her lack of foreign policy expertise.

“I tripped up on one question last night regarding Taiwan, but you know, I’ve said many times, I’m not a politician, certainly not a career politician. I don’t speak politician,” Graham said. “You know, I was just honest, and I think that’s kind of a foreign concept.”

Taiwan has often been a flashpoint for aggression from China and international efforts to support its right to self-rule. The U.S. maintains a policy of strategic ambiguity over whether it would defend Taiwan militarily if the mainland invaded, but has committed to bolstering the island's defense for generations.

Claimed by China as part of its territory, Taiwan sits along a South China Sea global trade route, virtually all of which China claims despite a 2016 arbitration ruling based on the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea that invalidated Beijing’s expansive claims.

During a visit to Manila this week, Adm. Frank Bradley, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, said that American special operations forces are ready to step up warfighting-readiness exercises with counterparts in the Philippines and other countries in Asia to further strengthen a security alliance and help deter a major conflict in the region.

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP.

Just two days after U.S. negotiators reportedly asked Israel to draw down attacks in the Gaza Strip, at least 10 people were killed Wednesday in two strikes, according to local hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent. Israeli troops also crossed the ceasefire line in southern Gaza and detained a Hamas police colonel at dawn Wednesday, two witnesses and a Hamas official said.

Israel's military said one of the strikes on Wednesday, in the area of Nuseirat refugee camp, struck a Hamas commander who had participated in the Hamas-led attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 251 abducted. A second strike in the Tuffah area of Gaza City struck four Hamas militants gathering in a police station, the military said, claiming they were planning to carry out attacks against Israeli troops.

Israel's military said a strike the day before targeted a meeting of four Hamas commanders and additional militants.

The commanders killed included Muhammad Hamdi Ahmad Al-Masri, Muhammad Attar and Muhammad Fathi Hussein Nasser, all accused of carrying out terrorist attacks against Israeli troops, and Samed Samir Harb Abu Habal, who infiltrated Israeli territory during the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, according to a statement from Israel's military.

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said the Wednesday Gaza City strike on the police station killed eight police officers and a 13-year-old girl. Two officers were women, it said. One person was killed in Nuseirat. On Tuesday evening, an Israeli strike on a busy seaside cafe killed seven Palestinians, including a child, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Jared Kushner, a U.S. negotiator and President Donald Trump's son-in-law, held a marathon meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, in which he asked Israel's leader to draw down attacks on Gaza, a person familiar with the meeting said. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to brief journalists.

Also on Wednesday, Israel's military said it had completed reviews of 150 incidents of troop conduct during the war in Gaza and would launch criminal investigations into the 2024 killings of a 5-year-old girl and her family, as well as of 15 Palestinian paramedics in 2025.

At least 17 killed in Israeli strikes

The deadly strikes in Gaza on Tuesday and Wednesday exacted more casualties even as a ceasefire that’s been in place since October has significantly diminished the fighting in the tiny enclave where more than 2 million Palestinians live. Since the ceasefire, Israeli strikes have killed at least 1,273 people, according to health officials in Gaza.

The nearly three-year Israel-Hamas war has killed more than 73,400 Palestinians, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. The ministry, which was part of the recently dissolved Hamas-run government, maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and international organizations. It doesn't distinguish between civilians and militants, but says women and children make up around half of the toll.

In the early hours of Wednesday, at least 15 Israeli troops entered the Muwasi coastal area, west of the city of Khan Younis, two residents and a Hamas official said.

Accompanied by armed men, the troops stormed the tent of Sabri Abdel-All, a colonel for the Hamas-led Blue Police in Khan Younis. They also detained another resident identified as Nashat Ezzat Zaarab, they said.

The two residents and the Hamas official spoke on condition of anonymity for their safety.

Latest ceasefire negotiations offer few concrete commitments

On the diplomatic front, the ceasefire also appears stalled. Trump's initial ceasefire plan laid out a broad vision for ending Hamas’ rule in Gaza and rebuilding the territory, much of which was reduced to rubble during the war.

But since last fall, major sticking points have emerged on the conditions of Hamas' disarmament and Israel's withdrawal — and which should come first.

Earlier this month, Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to disarm. But Hamas said it would begin to disarm if Israel halts strikes and withdraws, adding that laying down its heavy weapons would come later and be contingent on the creation of a Palestinian state — something Israel’s government rejects.

Netanyahu also pushed back on the deal, saying Israel won't withdraw from its current lines in Gaza until Hamas has completely disarmed.

After Wednesday's strikes, Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem lashed out at the Board of Peace — the body Trump established to oversee the ceasefire — saying it has provided a "cover” for Israel to escalate its attacks in Gaza instead of pressuring it to abide by the ceasefire agreement.

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Associated Press journalists Julia Frankel and Giovanna Dell'Orto in Jerusalem; Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel; and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed.

The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made the comments Wednesday night in her country’s first reaction to Trump’s moves to drastically cut back the annual U.S.-South Korean military drills.

“We think it’s not worth making comments on that and we have no interest in it at all,” Kim Yo Jong said in a statement carried by state media. “The provocative, aggressive nature of the drills won’t change even though their duration and size were reduced.”

She also cited a series of other military drills carried out by the U.S. and South Korea earlier this year and South Korea’s push to introduce nuclear-powered submarines.

Kim Yo Jong denied that there are any communications between Trump and Kim. Earlier this week, pressed by reporters on whether he had a conversation with Kim Jong Un, Trump said that Kim had responded to his request for a conversation.

Kim Yo Jong's statement did not contain North Korea’s typically harsh rhetoric. She briefly said relations between her brother and Trump are “still excellent," mentioning her brother’s past comments that he still has “good memories” of Trump. This suggests North Korea may be trying to manage relations with Trump, while seeking bigger concessions to restart talks.

When asked by reporters Wednesday if he will meet with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that “Yeah, I will be.” He wouldn’t answer a question about whether he is exchanging letters with Kim but said he gets along with him.

US and South Korea confirm drastic slashing of drills

Kim Yo Jong's statement came hours after the South Korean and U.S. militaries confirmed they were scaling back their 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises. Trump earlier ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the exercises, citing what he said was a good relationship with Kim and South Korea’s refusal to support him over Iran.

South Korean officials said Trump’s announcement came without prior notice, baffling many people in the Asian country and raising concerns about joint defense readiness.

South Korea’s military said the allies agreed to adjust the duration and scale of the exercises at the request of the U.S. It said the ongoing drills would end Friday, not Aug. 27 as initially planned. It added that the allies also agreed to downsize some joint field training exercises.

The Pentagon said that it was “continuing training that enhances tactical capability” but certain events have been canceled or converted to simulations. “These adjustments preserve essential readiness and training objectives. There will be no degradation to U.S. training objectives,” a Pentagon statement said.

Ulchi Freedom Shield is largely a computer-simulated command post exercise meant to hone the allies’ ability to deal with potential North Korean aggression. The two countries usually hold a set of field training exercises during the command post exercise period.

The drills are a central pillar of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, which dates to the 1950-53 Korean War. But they also are a long-running source of animosities with North Korea, which has denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for an invasion and responded with provocative missile tests. Days before this month's drills began, North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the sea.

This month's drills were initially supposed to be held in two phases in simulation of North Korean attacks — the first part until this Friday on defensive operations and the second part until Aug. 27 on counteroffensive operations. North Korea is extremely sensitive to counteroffensive drills, according to South Korean media.

Prospects for Trump-Kim summit unclear

Earlier Wednesday, North Korea's state news agency, KCNA, published a commentary slamming the U.S.-South Korean military drills as “frantic” and “extremely dangerous” and vowing to completely frustrate its rivals’ hostilities.

Many experts said Kim, now emboldened by his advancing nuclear program and expanding military cooperation with Russia, won't likely embrace Trump's overture and return to talks anytime soon unless he's promised bigger concessions. Kim suggested last year that he could only return to talks if the U.S. drops its demand for North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for diplomacy.

Trump claimed Wednesday that North Korea has 57 nuclear weapons. Some experts put the size of the North’s arsenal at more than 100 warheads.

South Korea’s intelligence service estimated last year that North Korea sent about 15,000 troops to support Russia's war against Ukraine. Earlier this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said North Korea was preparing to send more troops to Russia. But in her Wednesday statement, Kim Yo Jong flatly denied that, calling it “an ungrounded farce."

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung hailed Trump's decision, saying in his X message Wednesday that he hopes it would lead to reopening dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang and promoting peace on the Korean Peninsula. Lee is a liberal who wants better ties with North Korea.

South Korea's main opposition conservative party earlier accused Lee's government of prioritizing the resumption of Kim-Trump diplomacy over security concerns caused by Trump's move.

Trump and Kim met three times from 2018-2019 but their high-stakes diplomacy eventually fell apart over wrangling over a North Korean demand for extensive sanctions relief in return for limited denuclearization steps.

Trump's move may focus on South Korea over Iran

In his social media post, Trump said the drills are not only costly but “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his time in the White House. Trump said he asked Lee if South Korea would join the U.S. in the “denuclearization” of Iran, “and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

At separate parliamentary hearings Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said neither South Korean nor U.S. officials were informed of Trump's move before his social media post. Cho said the alliance remains strong, while Ahn said South Korean and U.S. defense officials were maintaining close consultations.

Some experts say Trump's cut of the drills was more likely designed to apply pressure on South Korea to give him substantial support over the Iran war than to reach out to North Korea.

“Trump's message is that if you don’t cooperate with us on Iran, we’re not cooperating with you” on the drills either, said Yang Uk, an analyst at Seoul’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “It's like he's asking South Korea to show it's helping him over Iran” by taking steps like sending warships or reinforcing missile defenses in some areas.

South Korean officials said South Korea and the U.S. are closely discussing practical and military contributions that South Korea can make to help restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

It wasn't the first time that the U.S. and South Korea have scaled back or canceled their drills.

In 2018, Trump abruptly announced the cancellation of a major war game with South Korea, after his first summit with Kim. The U.S. and South Korea have since canceled or reduced other joint drills to support diplomacy with North Korea and cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.

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

Northern Indiana Public Service Co. said crews were working nonstop to fix the outages, but 75,000 customers still lacked electricity by late afternoon, mostly in Lake County next to the Illinois border.

They included more than 20,000 customers in Gary, where residents lined up again at community centers for hot meals and a place to charge phones.

The latest news for Gary wasn't good: Full restoration is not expected there until Aug. 25, NIPSCO said.

Roughly 300 poles and 44 power transmission poles need to be repaired or replaced in Gary as a result of the storm, which carried winds of 99 mph (159 kilometers per hour), said Melody Birmingham, an executive at NIPSCO's parent company.

Birmingham acknowledged the “real burden” of losing perishable food and people living for days without air conditioning after a “historic storm” that initially left 300,000 customers in the dark.

“These aren't simple repairs,” Birmingham said at a news conference. “These are systems that are being rebuilt.”

Utility says low-income residents are not ignored

Jeremy Spurrier, 51, said he's fortunate to have a generator at his Portage home, about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. But the generator is expensive — it goes through about $75 of gas a day — and Spurrier said his family is relying on nonperishable food like soup. He drives to Illinois to get ice to chill his insulin.

"If I run out of ice, that’s several hundred dollars of insulin just ruined,” he said.

Gary, a majority-Black city, has been especially hit hard, with some residents voicing frustration that they're being ignored. Birmingham denied that low-income residents were being overlooked and blamed posts on social media.

“We have areas that are probably affluent where we still have customers out as well. ... This has nothing to do with race or any type of division,” said Birmingham, who is Black. “It's really a matter of where the storm hit.”

Gary Mayor Eddie Melton acknowledged that locals were “frustrated and exhausted” but said more than 600 linemen were working to restore power in the city.

"I want to reiterate this is clearly not just a Gary situation. It is a northwest Indiana situation,” Melton said.

No storm damage — but no power

A 4-year-old boy, three men and three women were among those who had died since the storms began Aug. 11, said Liz Woods, a spokesperson for the state Department of Homeland Security.

In Whiting, Myra Carden, 74, said her home wasn’t damaged by the storm — “not even a chair was blown over in the yard.” But she was in her second blackout Wednesday.

Carden, her son and three dogs lost power for more than two days last week. Then the electricity went out again Tuesday.

“More than once I have put in an outage report,” she said. ”All I get back is, ‘You already put in a report.’ Well, what do you want me to do? ... This doesn’t make sense. Of course I’m not a lineman; I’m a paralegal.”

Carden uses a generator to keep the refrigerator humming but only when someone’s home to monitor it.

“We have a deep freeze in the garage packed full with beef and chicken. I’m sure everything will be thrown away,” she said.

The State Department announced Tuesday that it had hit ICC president Tomoko Akane, a Japanese national, and ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye, who is from Senegal, with sanctions that freeze any assets they have in U.S. jurisdictions or come into contact with the U.S. financial system.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called the move “very unfortunate” when asked about the sanctions by a reporter. “Japan will respond as we continue to maintain communication with related countries including the United States,” she added.

The Trump administration has now slapped sanctions on nine of the ICC's 18 judges, both of its deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor and one other prosecution office staffer, the court said. The U.S. accuses the court of overstepping its mandate by investigating and seeking to prosecute senior military and political officials from countries, such as Israel and the United States, that are not members of the court.

In a statement, the court said that when “judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.” It said the court “will continue to fully discharge its mandate with independence and impartiality.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday branded the ICC “a corrupt and fatally politicized supranational court that has maliciously abused its authority and exceeded its mandate.”

The move came weeks after Rubio announced that the U.S. was launching a “sweeping campaign to dismantle the threat posed by the International Criminal Court to U.S. sovereignty.”

Rubio said he will pressure the court’s 125 member states to withdraw from the institution, sanction organizations that work with the court and ban staff from traveling to the United States.

Since then, Venezuela and Chad have announced they plan to leave the court, bringing the number of countries to pull out of the court in the past year to five. It takes a year for a country's decision to quit the court to be formalized.

The sanctions can impact the daily lives of court officials. They prevent the ICC officials and their families from entering the United States, block their access to even basic financial services making even going to a grocery store difficult.

Canadian judge Kimberly Prost, who was sanctioned last year, lost access to her credit cards, and Amazon’s Alexa stopped responding to her. “Your whole world is restricted,” she told The Associated Press after she was targeted.

The court's oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties, called the sanctions an “escalation” that “risks undermining ongoing investigations and impeding global efforts” to ensure justice reaches victims of global atrocities.

While Japan calls its alliance with the United States the cornerstone of its postwar foreign and security policies, Tokyo has had difficulty managing the relationship under Trump’s trade and security policies. Takaichi has been portrayed as weak for avoiding any criticism of Trump as her administration navigates weakened U.S. commitment in the region and deteriorating ties with China.

Yuichiro Tamaki, leader of the Japanese opposition Democratic Party for the People, wrote on X that Trump’s sanctions were “outrageous and intolerable.” He urged Takaichi’s government to show its support for the ICC and reach out to the U.S. government to “have it retract this unjust sanction.”

ICC host nation the Netherlands and European powerhouse Germany both threw their weight behind the court.

German foreign office spokesman Martin Giese told reporters in Berlin that the ICC is “fulfilling its mission exactly as intended,” by holding to account perpetrators of grave crimes. Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen said he had invited Akane for talks “to discuss our continued support.”

Balkees Jarrah, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, called the sanctions “the latest example of the Trump administration’s utter contempt for international law and a naked attempt to shield American and Israeli officials implicated in serious crimes from justice.”

Human Rights Watch and three other advocacy groups sued the Trump administration in a New York court last week to challenge its campaign against the ICC.

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Associated Press journalists Matthew Lee in Washington, Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

Maj. Gen. Adel Issa is the first military officer to be turned over by Lebanon since Assad’s fall in late 2024.

Lebanon’s judicial authorities decided on Tuesday to deliver Issa to Syria, after questioning him over crimes he allegedly committed during the country’s conflict.

Syria’s Interior Ministry said it had asked authorities in Lebanon to hand over Issa to Syria over alleged crimes including intentional killing of more than two persons, the crime of torture resulting in death, and acts of aggression aimed at inciting civil war and sectarian strife.

The ministry added that Issa was the commander of the Syrian army’s 17th Division and the commander of ground forces in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour until 2016. The ministry posted a photo of Issa wearing a prison uniform.

Officials in Beirut said on Tuesday that Issa was turned over to Syria in accordance with a 1951 agreement between the countries that calls for delivering suspected criminals to face justice.

After Syrian fighters opposed to Assad marched into Damascus to end the Assad family’s five-decade rule in December 2024, a number of military and security officers fled to Lebanon, where some remain.

Dozens of other former members of his security agencies accused of atrocities have been arrested and put on trial in Syria.

Last week, a Syrian court sentenced Assad and his younger brother Maher to death in absentia while their maternal cousin, Brig. Gen. Atef Najib, became the most senior security official to be sentenced to death while in custody. The Assad brothers fled to Russia during the ouster.

Issa was detained on Aug. 8 when he went to the Syrian Embassy in Beirut for some paperwork. Embassy officials contacted Lebanon’s prosecutor’s office to tell them that Issa was wanted in Syria.

Issa had fled to Lebanon by crossing illegally after Assad’s fall, the officials said.

Syria’s conflict, which began with anti-government protests in March 2011 before turning into a civil war, left 500,000 people dead and over 1 million wounded.

Prosecutors also called into question Comey's account that he had found the seashells in the numerical arrangement of “86 47” while walking on a beach in North Carolina and suggested that his May 2025 post on Instagram was an effort to generate attention for a forthcoming novel about a social media personality whose words inspire his fans to attack his foes.

The arguments in motions late Tuesday represent the government's most detailed explanation of its indictment and were filed in response to wide-ranging defense efforts to dismiss the case on grounds including that it constitutes a vindictive prosecution and that Comey's post did not amount to a true threat. Comey's lawyers contend that investigators in the case misled judges, submitted documents containing false statements, withheld key facts and repeatedly came up empty in their efforts to prove that Comey intended a physical threat or knew that the number 86 could suggest violence.

The entry for “86” from Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says its meaning is “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” Trump, a Republican, is the 47th president.

The Justice Department maintains that the post constituted a real threat

Federal prosecutors maintain that the photo of the seashells, which Comey said he found on the beach, constituted a threat against Trump. Comey deleted the post shortly after he put it up, saying he did not know that anyone interpreted the numbers as a call to violence. His lawyers have said that the slogan has long meant to “get rid of” or “eject” and has been featured on thousands of items sold online and regularly displayed at protests.

But the department sought in its filings to place the post against the backdrop of assassination plots or attempts against Trump in the months before and after Comey's post. Prosecutors say that two minutes before the post was made, Comey's wife texted him a screenshot of a definition of “86” that said "to get rid of or refuse service.”

"There is no serious dispute that an objective viewer of Comey’s post could read it to mean ‘Kill President Trump,’” prosecutors wrote.

The photo was posted days before Comey was set to release a novel he wrote titled “FDR Drive,” in which a prosecutor pursues a far-right social media personality who has called out his adversaries by name and inspired violence against them by his fans, the department said.

After the Instagram post provoked an outcry, according to the government's filings, Comey's publishing agent observed in a text message to him that he had “gone viral.” Comey responded that that was “not my intention, but I’ll be OK if it sells books.” The agent replied, ”Music to an agent's ears."

Prosecutors also asserted there was “reason to doubt” Comey’s account of having come upon the seashells while on a walk, saying they were located 4 miles (6 kilometers) “down from the beach from beachfront property where Comey was staying, in an area separated from the ocean by a sand dune.” They said there was "no evidence that anyone else arranged, photographed, or even saw the shells.”

Comey has called the case vindictive, but prosecutors deny that

Comey's lawyers have called the indictment, which was filed months after an earlier and unrelated case against him was dismissed, part of a Trump retribution campaign targeting one of the president’s vocal critics. Trump fired Comey as head of the FBI in 2017 as Comey was overseeing an investigation into potential ties between Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and Russia. Trump since then has called for him and other perceived adversaries to be jailed.

But the Justice Department denied allegations of vindictiveness, saying the decision to indict Comey was made by the U.S. attorney in the area and did not stem from a directive from the president or the attorney general.

To bolster their claims that Comey was unjustly targeted, the defense team argued that investigators struggled to develop compelling evidence from witnesses that Comey had intended the post as a threat, but they concealed that from federal magistrates as they applied for warrants to search digital accounts associated with Comey and his wife

For instance, defense lawyers have said that the FBI searched an internal database of information about open and closed investigations for any indication of an association between Comey and the term “86” but found inconclusive results. An FBI agent also requested a review of the FBI file for the case against reputed mobster John Gambino, which Comey worked on as a young prosecutor, but found no references to the term “86.”

Investigators also interviewed a key government cooperator in the case, Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano, who said he did not recall ever discussing the term “86” with Comey or hearing it in connection with the trial.

The latest filings made clear that the administration was standing behind the premise of the case.

“No Government theory was disproved at that time, or now. No intentionally false omission exists, much less one made with reckless disregard for the truth,” prosecutors wrote.

“The evidence still supports that Defendant acted at least recklessly by consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his coded message of ‘8647’ that he sent to his 200,000 or so Instagram followers, and the millions of secondary social media users who would view this as threatening violence against the President of the United States," they added.

Milligan University, a private Christian school with just over 1,200 students, said 11 of its cyclists were out together on a morning training ride when they were struck by a driver in Hampton, about 11 miles (18 kilometers) from the campus in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

The county’s district attorney, Steve Finney, said a 69-year-old man from North Carolina had been arrested and faced two counts of reckless vehicular homicide and five counts of aggravated assault by vehicle with recklessness.

Milligan sophomores Haylan Engdahl, of Winthrop Harbor, Illinois, and Brayden Rogers, of Huntsville, Alabama, were killed in the crash, university President Stephen Waers said. The other student-athletes were transported to the nearby Johnson City Medical Center, he said.

“We need to help our brothers and sisters bear burdens that are too great for any one person to carry alone,” Waers said in an emotional video message shared with the school community. He urged students to come together in prayer for their injured peers.

As of Wednesday evening, four students were in critical condition, two others were stable but remained in the hospital, and one student had been discharged, said the hospital's trauma medical director, Dr. Bracken Burns.

Earlier this year, the Milligan University men's cycling team won a team time trial national championship at the USA Cycling Collegiate Road Nationals in Wisconsin.

The Tennessee Highway Patrol was still investigating the circumstances of the crash, said Maj. Roy Brown. The speed limit on the section of Highway 19 where the the crash occurred is 50 miles per hour (about 80 kilometers per hour), officials said.

Local 4 and STATE CHAMPS! will celebrate the Michigan high school football season by live streaming some of the top matchups in the state every week.

It starts with the Prep Kickoff Classic on Aug. 27-28 and then continues with one game every Friday night through the end of the season.

Here’s the full schedule:

• Week 1 – Thursday, August 27 – 7:00 p.m.
• • DeWitt vs. Grand Rapids Kenowa Hills
• Week 1 – Friday, August 27 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Detroit Cass Tech vs. Michigan City Indiana
• Week 2 – Thursday, September 3 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Rochester Adams at Rochester
• Week 3 – Friday, September 11 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Macomb Dakota at Sterling Heights Stevenson
• Week 4 – Friday, September 18 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Trenton at Gibraltar Carlson
• Week 5 – Friday, September 25 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Harper Woods at Birmingham Groves
• Week 6 – Friday, October 2 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Chippewa Valley at Romeo
• Week 7 – Friday, October 9 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Brighton at Howell
• Week 8 – Friday, October 16 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Jackson Lumen Christi at Detroit Country Day 
• Week 9 – Saturday, October 24 – 7:00 p.m.
• • Detroit Catholic Central vs. Brother RiceFord Field

The ruling Wednesday by Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green is a victory for Republicans seeking to hold onto their slim majority in the U.S. House. But the case is likely to end up in the state Supreme Court.

Missouri’s new districts already were used in the August primaries. On that same day, Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected a petition with thousands of signatures seeking to force a November referendum on the map. Hoskins asserted that Missouri’s Constitution doesn’t allow a referendum on congressional redistricting.

The judge agreed with Hoskins and other Republicans, who joined in defense of the new map.

“The Missouri Constitution does not supply any statement — let alone a clear one — reallocating authority over congressional redistricting away from the General Assembly to a referendum process,” Green wrote in the ruling.

Opponents of the redistricting plan quickly announced an appeal.

“Everyone knows that Cole County is not the final decision here,” said Richard von Glahn, executive director of People Not Politicians, who sued to try to place the new map on the ballot. “After months of delay, we are pleased to be moving forward to the Missouri Supreme Court to enforce our constitutional rights.”

Missouri’s redistricting targeted Democratic congressman

Missouri's current U.S. House delegation is made up of six Republicans and two Democrats who were elected from districts with boundaries drawn after the 2020 census.

But Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe called the Legislature into a special session on redistricting last year after Trump urged Republican-led states to redraw congressional boundaries to their advantage ahead of the midterms.

Missouri's revised map is designed to help Republicans defeat Democratic U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City. It reassigns portions of Kansas City to two neighboring districts represented by Republicans and stretches the remainder of Cleaver’s 5th Congressional District far eastward into Republican-heavy rural areas. About 59% of its voters are new to the 5th District, according to an Associated Press estimate.

State Sen. Rick Brattin won a Republican primary in the reshaped district in early August. Cleaver was unopposed for the Democratic nomination.

Republicans had argued that the new districts should be used in the November elections even if a voter referendum on the map was allowed to occur at the same time.

Lawsuit highlights dispute about referendum rights

The Missouri Constitution does not specifically say that a referendum can be used to decide congressional redistricting, nor does it forbid it, which is why the issue ended up in court.

Republican Attorney General Catherine Hanaway’s office, which represented the secretary of state in court, argued that congressional redistricting is a legislative duty not subject to referendum without specific constitutional permission.

The attorney general and the Republican Party also argued it was too late to switch district boundaries before the November election. Changing districts after the primary would cause “widespread voter confusion” and an “erosion in confidence in the integrity of the state’s elections,” said John Gore, an attorney for national, congressional and state Republican committees.

The judge agreed, ruling that a district swap after the primary would violate federal law.

It’s been more than 100 years since a Missouri redistricting plan faced a referendum. In 1922, voters rejected a new congressional map passed by the Republican-led Legislature. The legitimacy of that referendum petition was not challenged in court.

Redistricting battle spread to numerous states

Missouri’s mid-decade redistricting effort has been among the most litigated nationally, triggering about a dozen lawsuits over the past year.

The Republican-led state was the second, after Texas, to respond to Trump’s call to redraw congressional districts. Several other states followed. All told, Republicans hope to win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states: Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks, think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.

It remains to be seen whether the redistricting works as intended for Republicans. The president’s party historically has lost congressional seats in the midterms, and Trump’s poor approval ratings could provide an extra hurdle for Republican candidates.

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Associated Press journalist Hannah Recht contributed from Washington.

If confirmed by the Senate, Overton will have to balance a raft of competing priorities, including Trump’s fixations, the anti-regulatory interests of traditional Republicans and the anti-corporate posture of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Those challenges dogged the tenure of the previous FDA head, Dr. Marty Makary, who resigned in May.

Trump said he’s delaying the 50% U.S. tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian imports. The countries reached a deal less than two hours before the sanctions were to go into effect on Tuesday, buying time for more negotiations and avoiding, for now, another strain in already tense relations.

The Latest:

International Criminal Court criticizes US sanctions on senior staffers

The ICC called the latest sanctions a “flagrant attack” on its independence and vowed to continue seeking justice for atrocities around the world.

The ICC said in a statement that when “judicial actors are threatened for applying the law, it is the international legal order itself that is placed at risk.” It said it “will continue to fully discharge its mandate with independence and impartiality.”

The State Department announced Tuesday that it hit ICC president Tomoko Akane and ICC senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye with sanctions that freeze any assets that they have in U.S. jurisdictions or come into contact with the U.S. financial system.

The Trump administration has now sanctioned nine of the ICC’s 18 judges, both its deputy prosecutors, its former chief prosecutor and one other staffer, the court said. The U.S. accuses it of overstepping its mandate by investigating and seeking to prosecute military and political officials from countries, such as Israel and the United States, that are not members.

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FTC proposal would require retailers to be transparent about personalized pricing

Companies that secretly vary prices based on how much they think individual customers will pay could face federal charges under a proposed policy released Wednesday by the Federal Trade Commission.

“When consumers see a listed price, they expect it to be (the) same price that everyone else sees, not the retailer’s estimate of how much they are willing to pay based on their personal data,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.

The FTC has had its eye on personalized pricing for several years. In a preliminary report filed in January 2025, the agency found that grocers, clothing companies and others were using third-party companies to help them individualize online prices based on shoppers’ locations, browsing histories and other factors, including how long they left items in their virtual shopping carts.

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Trump announces ‘MOST CRUSHING ECONOMIC OPERATION EVER’ on Iran

On his social media site, the president promised “Economic Warfare and Isolation on an unprecedented scale” but provided few details.

He said other countries that allow their “financial institutions, businesses, airports, or government entities to provide any type of lifeline to Iran will itself face TREMENDOUS Economic Consequences.”

It was not immediately clear what that meant for major economies with close ties to Iran, including China.

But Trump said his prohibitions would include things like oil smuggling, cash transfers and cooperation through exchange houses and ship registries and front companies.

“It all needs to stop NOW. You know who you are,” Trump said, imploring U.S. allies “to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat.”

Canada and the US move closer to finalizing a trade agreement

The agreement would avert threatened 50% U.S. tariffs, and a senior Canadian official called the emerging terms “a very good deal for Canada” while cautioning that negotiations were not complete.

The official said it would provide greater certainty, protect Canada’s dairy sector and jobs threatened by the new tariffs, and preserve what Ottawa considers favorable trade terms with the United States.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly before an agreement is finalized.

Prime Minister Mark Carney has asked provincial premiers to return U.S. alcohol to store shelves, Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said, a step aimed at addressing one of the Trump administration’s key trade complaints.

Houston and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, both conservatives, voiced support for the direction of the talks, though Houston said whether Canadians would actually buy U.S. alcohol again “is a whole other discussion.”

▶ Read more

— Rob Gillies, Paul Wiseman and Seung Min Kim

Longtime publisher of Stars and Stripes to retire, citing differences with Pentagon leadership

Max D. Lederer Jr. is ending a decades-long career with the military newspaper as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon moves to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”

Lederer made the announcement in a memo to staff and an interview with Stars and Stripes. In the memo, seen by AP, he said it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

The announcement comes less than four months after the Pentagon fired the paper’s ombudsman, whose job was to safeguard editorial independence. The news outlet is partly funded by the Defense Department but has a legacy of independence from military and government leadership.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Stars and Stripes has recently been at the forefront of some reporting on conditions for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln and concerns for their mental health during its long deployment — concerns that Trump has downplayed.

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Missouri court allows new Trump-backed US House districts be used in November election

A Missouri judge has allowed new U.S. House districts backed by the president to be used in the November elections, rejecting a bid to put the Republican-friendly districts to a statewide vote.

Wednesday’s ruling by Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green is a victory for Republicans seeking to hold on to their slim majority in the House, but the court decision is likely to be appealed.

Missouri’s new districts already were used in the August primaries. That same day Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins rejected a petition with thousands of signatures seeking to force a November referendum on the map. Hoskins asserted that Missouri’s Constitution does not allow a referendum on congressional redistricting.

The judge agreed with Hoskins.

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Trump says he will attend GOP’s national midterm convention

In a social media post, the president said he plans to attend the Republicans’ first-ever national convention ahead of the midterm elections, an unusual event aimed at boosting turnout in races.

“I will be with you both nights, and rarin’ to go,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

Trump used his characteristic hyperbole to build hype around the event, which will be hosted in Dallas on Sept. 9 and 10. He teased it as “THE GREATEST RALLY OF THEM ALL.”

“It will be like nothing else,” he said. “The Music, Excitement, and Importance of this Evening will be at levels never seen at a Convention or Political Event.”

US national debt hits $40 trillion

The national debt surpassed a record $40 trillion on Wednesday, a staggering milestone as defense costs, social programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest on the burgeoning deficit make up an enormous share of federal spending.

The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

The unprecedented $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities, from boosting the defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out Trump’s almost-6-month-old Iran war to lowering the cost of gas and groceries.

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New CDC director acknowledges agency troubles, including ‘zombie’ programs

Dr. Erica Schwartz, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is promising to advocate for the agency while addressing staff burnout and understaffing issues.

In her remarks to staff, Schwartz referenced an AP story this week about CDC programs that have congressional appropriations but functionally are dead or nearly dead because the CDC staffers who did the work were laid off by Trump’s administration or remain on leave.

She did not say exactly what she will do about these dead, or “zombie,” programs and about staffers who feel exhausted and overloaded but said she will meet with CDC staffers to learn more about the situation and what can be done.

Trump tells Congress to pass pro-crypto law — but isn’t waiting to act

At a White House crypto conference Wednesday, Trump urged passage of the Clarity Act before yielding the floor to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Mike Selig, who vowed to “use every tool available” to advance Trump’s agenda.

Selig’s comments came ahead of a CFTC meeting Thursday examining ways the agency can use its existing authority to ease crypto rules. A day earlier, other securities regulators proposed rules, making it easier for crypto to raise money from the public.

Since the self-styled “crypto president” was reelected last year, his administration has also disbanded a Justice Department crypto enforcement unit and pulled back from prosecutions.

The shift comes as Trump’s latest financial disclosure reported he took in more than $1.4 billion in crypto-related income last year.

Trump said he’d welcome a data center. Many Americans aren’t so sure

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center,” the president told reporters in the White House. “I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous.”

Trump’s review is more optimistic than many Americans, who have pushed back against data centers in their backyard over concerns with the buildings’ use of water, electricity or hefty tax breaks for tech companies. The large edifices — often used for artificial intelligence and cloud computing — have stirred a bipartisan resentment, which Trump nodded toward Wednesday.

“Maybe it can use a little public relations help,” he said, adding that a solution is for companies to produce their own electricity.

US to spend more than $19M to counter Chinese seabed mining, fishing in international waters

The Trump administration has notified Congress of its plans to spend more than $19 million to assist Pacific Island and other countries in countering Chinese attempts to dominate seabed mineral mining as well as crack down on unregulated Chinese fishing in waters far from China.

The State Department told lawmakers this week in separate notices that $14 million would fund ocean mapping and seabed exploration to push back against “aggressive and corrupt practices” by China in 12 Pacific island nations. Another $5.2 million will assist seven countries in boosting inspections of Chinese-flagged fishing vessels that frequently use their ports.

The notices, dated Monday, were obtained by The Associated Press.

The programs are part of a broader effort by the administration to counter China’s growing global influence and power projection.

Trump complains rates are ‘artificially high’

The president criticized a recent spike in borrowing costs and said the U.S. should have lower rates because the economy is doing well, contradicting financial analysts who say steady growth is a reason rates are rising.

“We have interest rates that are artificial — they’re actually artificially high,” Trump said. “When our country is strong, interest rates should go down. When our country is weak, frankly, they should go up.”

Interest rates on long-term Treasury debt have risen steadily for weeks to multiyear highs, lifting mortgage rates and other borrowing costs. The Treasury Department announced steps Wednesday to push rates lower.

Wall Street analysts say borrowing costs have advanced because of expectations that steady economic growth will keep inflation elevated. Most economists also blame ongoing large budget deficits and heavy borrowing by leading tech companies to build AI infrastructure.

Trump reduced joint US-South Korea military exercises

Trump also said he gave the order because he wasn’t happy with South Korea’s refusal to support him over Iran and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

“I didn’t like the fact that we were doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea,” Trump said. He added that “I’m friendly with him,” meaning North Korean leader Kim.

Trump said he hadn’t seen anything happening from North Korea “for certainly two and a half years.” The country appears to have slowed its pace of test firing rockets and ballistic missiles in the region in recent years.

“So, I felt that to do a massive, we were doing a massive war exercise, I thought that was very insulting to somebody that, frankly, has been, during my term at least, very well behaved,” Trump said.

Trump says ‘we have things we could sanction’ on Iran

“We have very draconian sanctions and we’ll see what happens,” the president said, without providing details.

Trump also said, “A lot of boats are coming through” the Strait of Hormuz while also acknowledging, “That may slow down a little bit at some point.”

Attempting to shrug off oil prices that have remained high, the president said they’d not reached $350 a barrel. He didn’t say who had suggested they might reach such a catastrophically high price.

Instead, Trump said that ongoing disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz had left the world looking for alternatives. He even offered, “I think the Hormuz Strait’s not going to be as important as it was in the past.”

Before the war, a fifth of the world’s traded oil typically flowed through the strait every day.

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer-turned-enemy, says the president will appear on his radio show

Cohen and 77 WABC, the radio network where he hosts a new talk show, confirmed Wednesday that Trump will appear as a guest on the program this week after MS NOW first reported it.

Cohen, Trump’s longtime attorney who later testified against him in a hush money case, seems to have mended fences with the president recently.

Cohen has since criticized prosecutors in the case and said the two have begun to reconcile.

He said in a post on the social platform X that the interview would air during the evening on Thursday and Sunday.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump hosts crypto leaders

The president is holding court on Wednesday with several cryptocurrency and finance leaders for an event on digital assets.

The meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House coincides with one held by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s Innovation Advisory Committee, which focuses on matters of technology and finance.

The president kicked off the meeting by listing his administration’s accomplishments on the issue.

“We’re ensuring that America remains the undisputed leader, not only in Bitcoin and crypto but also technologies like prediction markets, artificial intelligence, and much more,” Trump said.

An alarmed bond market gets the Trump administration to act again

Normally quiet, the bond market can occasionally send warning signals loud enough to hit stock markets worldwide and even grab the attention of U.S. presidents and other world leaders.

After the bond market’s alarm bells rose in volume throughout the summer in the form of higher yields, the Trump administration announced on Wednesday a move that could help calm it down.

The U.S. Treasury Department said it will more than double the amount of U.S. government bonds it will buy back. And the move worked to lower longer-term yields, for now at least.

The stakes are high because high yields drag on economies and bring downward pressure on stock markets.

▶ Read more

Trump’s White House renovations don’t stop at driveway’s edge

Trump’s construction tour also revealed that he has replaced the walkway from the diplomatic entrance to the White House and a connecting portion of the asphalt driveway around the South Lawn with white granite.

He asserted that asphalt is “not appropriate for a great house, or a great place like the White House.”

“One thing I know how to do is build,” Trump said.

Clinton’s birthday expands the octogenarian president’s club

Clinton was the last of three baby boomer presidents born within 66 days of each other in 1946. But he was the first to reach the Oval Office, elected in 1992 at the age of 46.

Trump turned 80 on June 14, followed by George W. Bush on July 6. Joe Biden, the only president from the Silent Generation, is 83.

It’s the oldest group of living U.S. presidents ever, with Barack Obama as the only one under 80 — and even the 44th president has reached Medicare eligibility age. He turned 65 earlier this month.

Clinton has slowed down in recent years, more than a decade after major heart surgery that led him to adopt a mostly vegan diet.

At the 2024 Democratic convention, he told delegates, “I have no idea how many more of these I’ll be able to come to.”

Bill Clinton gets birthday wishes as he turns 80

The 42nd president is celebrating a milestone birthday Wednesday.

Hillary Clinton, the former presidential nominee, secretary of state and first lady, led birthday greetings for her husband.

“Happy birthday, dear Bill. Eighty years in to your extraordinary life, I feel very lucky to have spent over 50 of them with you,” she posted on social media. “Here’s to more dancing, talking, and laughing together in the years to come.”

The George and Barbara Bush Foundation noted Clinton and former President George H.W. Bush’s “meaningful friendship … built after their time in office — a friendship grounded in mutual respect, service and a shared commitment to helping others.”

Clinton defeated the elder Bush in 1992 but came to see him as a mentor and sort of father figure. Bush died in 2018.

‘No serious dispute’ that Comey’s seashell post could be read as a Trump threat, prosecutors say

The Justice Department is defending its prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey and says there’s “no serious dispute” that a social media post of seashells he made could be understood as a threat against Trump.

Prosecutors also called into question late Tuesday Comey’s account that he found the seashells in the numerical arrangement “86 47” while walking on a North Carolina beach. Trump is the 47th president.

Prosecutors say Comey intended a physical threat or knew that the number 86 could suggest violence. Comey’s legal team calls it a vindictive prosecution and says Comey’s post didn’t amount to a true threat.

▶ Read more

Trump picks Dr. Heidi Overton, a top White House aide, to lead FDA

Overton is a deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council and a trusted figure in the administration. She has worked on several of Trump’s health initiatives.

But the new Food and Drug Administration commissioner will face challenges balancing Trump’s priorities, traditional Republican interests, and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-corporate stance. Overton will need Senate confirmation and face questions from the Senate health committee.

The previous FDA head, Dr. Marty Makary, resigned in May, leaving unfinished projects like work on ultra-processed foods, antidepressants, and COVID-19 shots.

Referring to a “Dr. Heidi” in a Truth Social post, Trump called Overton a smart and respected “rockstar” who would deliver on his priorities of faster cures, innovation, lower drug prices and more wins for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again movement.

▶ Read more

Trump walks and waxes on white granite and grass

It was planned as a private event, but the president decided otherwise. He wanted the reporters to see him sign a massive stone, which would become part of the new helipad under construction.

So, a gaggle of reporters tailed Trump outside the White House as he noted the prior state of disrepair and now, “look at the columns, how perfect they are.” As for the grass, which he said, “has life like humans have life,” it will now “look so beautiful.” And the white granite, which is a “powerful stone” that “you’ll never see a crack in.”

Trump came to a stop, flanked by construction workers in hi-vis vests, hard hats, and sunglasses, who stood silently as the president complimented them and answered a few questions from reporters about the day’s news. The president signed the stone in sweeping strokes.

“I hope you liked it,” he told the assembled reporters.

Trump says underground portion of ballroom will be 5 stories deep

Trump complained that the lawsuit against his White House ballroom was “very unfortunate” because the filings in the case have made public details that might have been kept secret.

But Trump has also been talking about components of the portion of the ballroom that will be underground. And he has taken to referring to the structure as a “military complex” instead of a ballroom.

Trump said during the press tour that the part of the ballroom will be five stories deep underground. The precise depth of some structures, like the ballroom, is usually treated as a closely guarded secret.

Trump said he may reopen negotiations with Iran ‘at some point’

When asked by a reporter at the White House on Wednesday when he would plan to resume talks with Iran, Trump said, “Right now, I think the situation is so good, but maybe at some point.”

He reiterated that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon but didn’t offer any other details on his thinking.

The removal was a legal victory for Anthony, now 19, whose attorneys wanted the judge off the case following the June trial, in part because of a TV interview in which the judge said jurors “got it right” when they delivered a guilty verdict in the killing of Austin Metcalf.

Anthony, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison, wore a green prison jumpsuit in a suburban Dallas courtroom when a visiting judge ordered state District Judge John Roach's recusal. Judge Michael Chitty was later assigned to the case.

Outside the courtroom in McKinney, cheers erupted in the hallway while some Anthony supporters chanted “Free Karmelo!” in the parking lot.

“Today’s ruling answers a fundamental question: whether a reasonable fully informed observer would see Judge Roach’s conduct and believe that he could fairly and impartially consider a motion for new trial,” Anthony’s lawyers said in a statement.

On Thursday, Anthony was expected back in court for a hearing that will determine whether a retrial is warranted.

Jurors this summer had rejected Anthony's claims of self-defense during a confrontation with Metcalf in the stadium bleachers last year. Anthony did not testify during the trial. Other students who took the stand described a heated exchange over Anthony’s refusal on a rainy spring day to leave a tent that belonged to Metcalf’s team.

The case attracted national attention in part because of a flood of social media posts that amplified the killing in racial terms. Anthony is Black; Metcalf was white. Lawyers on both sides, however, told jurors the tragedy had nothing to do with race.

Anthony’s legal team has argued that a retrial is needed, in part, because Roach enforced strict courtroom rules that they said limited the public's access to the proceedings. They also zeroed in Wednesday on comments Roach made to a Dallas TV station after the trial ended.

In the interview, which was played as the hearing began, Roach was asked if the jury got “it right.”

“Yeah, they did,” Roach said, adding: “Whatever they say, they got it right.”

During the interview, Roach also defended his courtroom rules and spoke about the onslaught of online postings about the case.

Visiting Judge Sid Harle said he did not know Roach and he believed Roach would be fair in a hearing for a retrial, but was granting the defense's request for a recusal because of how it might look to others. In his written order, Harle said the evidence was such that the judge's “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” and ordered another judge to “preside over all further proceedings.”

Roach did not immediately respond to a request for comment following the ruling.

Prosecutor Bill Wirskye had urged the court to keep Roach. He said the judge “didn’t do anything wrong” and that his courtroom rules were meant to protect the integrity of the trial, which brought demonstrators outside the courthouse. Wirskye did not immediately respond to a request for comment following the ruling.

As national attention on the killing intensified last year, the families of both Metcalf and Anthony said they had been targets of harassment.

“We were all getting death threats,” Wirskye said.

Several schools were competing when Anthony sat under the Memorial High School tent that was perched in the bleachers. Metcalf and others had repeatedly told Anthony to leave, witnesses testified, leading to an escalating confrontation.

Prosecutors said Anthony provoked Metcalf, and witnesses testified that Anthony was the aggressor.

Anthony at one point reached inside a bag and replied: “Touch me and see what happens,” according to a police report.

Metcalf pushed Anthony, according to witnesses, who said Anthony then pulled out a knife and stabbed him in the chest.

___

Associated Press writer Jim Vertuno contributed to this report from Austin.

Raeden Acquisitions, along with Cal Realty, filed a lengthy complaint against the city, arguing Gibraltar’s one-year temporary moratorium on data center consideration was passed after they presented their site plan.

The proposed project is a 100-megawatt data center on the site of a former steel plant.

The companies contend their proposed data center is allowed under existing city zoning ordinances and that the moratorium was designed specifically to stop their project.

They are asking the court for several things, including approving their site plan and application to develop the property, issuing a judgment in their favor, and awarding damages.

City officials declined to discuss the case, stating they cannot comment on ongoing litigation.

Some residents, who have already opposed bringing a data center to Gibraltar, see the lawsuit as another effort to push through a project they don’t want.

“They’ll probably beat us for the simple fact they have all the bucks,” resident John Venier said. “I don’t like it.”

The law firm representing Raeden Acquisitions acknowledged receiving a request for comment from Local 4 and said it would pass the message along.

They have not yet provided a statement.

The campaign raised more than $5,848 in online donations, surpassing its $5,000 goal.

By late Wednesday (Aug. 19), volunteers had assembled more than 1,075 hygiene kits, with donations still coming in.

People donated items including deodorant, hairspray, shaving cream, towels, washcloths, water shoes, children’s socks and men’s socks.

Local organizations also contributed, including shoes from Lace Up Detroit, thousands of socks from the Motown Sole Foundation, and pillows, towels and sheets from Wayne County Commissioner Jonathan Kinloch.

Todd Catchpole drove from Macomb Township to donate personal care items.

“I picked up deodorant, hairspray, hair and shave cream, mostly toward the men,” Catchpole said.

Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries serves about 2,400 people each day through its men’s, women’s and family shelters and programs.

Patricia Johnson, a DRMM resident and mother of four, said the hygiene kits are essential for her family.

“We have to use those every day,” Johnson said. “Whatever you need, they have it.”

DRMM CEO Dr. Chad Audi said the donations are going directly to Detroiters experiencing difficult circumstances.

“Imagine when you wake up in the morning, and you can’t brush your teeth, or you’re unable to bathe or change your undergarments,” Audi said. “This is how important those items are for the families who come to us.”

Audi said the kits help restore dignity for people working through challenging times.

Those who still want to help can donate directly to Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries at drmm.org.

Previous report:

The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

The unprecedented $40 trillion figure highlights competing administration priorities, from boosting defense spending that the U.S. relies on to carry out President Donald Trump's almost-6-month-old war in Iran to lowering the cost of gas and groceries.

Kush Desai, a White House spokesman, said the Trump administration “has been focused on slashing waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending while accelerating economic growth to get America’s debt-to-GDP ratio trending in the right direction.”

However, experts say the exploding debt and the latest record milestone are already affecting Americans' pocketbooks by raising borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lowering wages from businesses that have less money available to invest, and creating more expensive goods and services.

“If we want to improve our living standards, today and for the next generation, now is the time for lawmakers to put our nation on a more affordable and sustainable path," says Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a think tank focused on U.S. fiscal challenges.

The debt has exploded over several presidential administrations, as the nation's leaders spend more money than it collects in taxes. In recent memory, the multi-year COVID-19 pandemic shut down much of the U.S. economy, where the federal government borrowed heavily during President Trump's first term and under former President Joe Biden to stabilize the economy and support a recovery.

More government spending was approved after Trump signed Republicans’ tax cut and spending legislation into law last year.

Advocates for a balanced budget also warn that the long-term trend of borrowing more and paying more in interest will force Americans to face tougher fiscal tradeoffs ahead.

"The federal debt is already raising the cost of living and choking out other spending and investment, threatening our economy and Americans’ long-term prosperity,” said Margaret Spellings, president and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“Our current fiscal trajectory is plainly unsustainable, and that’s the best-case scenario. AI disruption, a recession, global war, or any number of other events could quickly push us over the edge from a challenge into a full-blown crisis," Spellings said in a statement.

The U.S. is subject to a statutory debt limit, or a limit to federal borrowing, which Congress has the authority to set, adjust or abolish. The Bipartisan Policy Center estimates that the U.S. will most likely reach the $41.1 trillion debt limit sometime between late winter and mid-summer of 2027, requiring Congress to again vote on whether to raise or suspend it.

The U.S.' fiscal position stands as the worst among other developed countries, according to recent data analysis from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development

Max D. Lederer Jr. announced his retirement, effective at the end of September, in a memo to staff on Tuesday, as well as in an interview with Stars and Stripes. In the memo, seen by The Associated Press, Lederer, the second full-time civilian in the position, wrote that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

The announcement comes less than four months after the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job was to safeguard editorial independence. The news outlet is partly funded by the Defense Department, but has a legacy of independence from military and government leadership. “No one should be surprised that they’re kicking out the one person charged by Congress with protecting Stars and Stripes’ editorial independence," Smith wrote in a column.

Stars and Stripes has recently been at the forefront of some of the reporting on conditions for sailors on the USS Abraham Lincoln and concerns for their mental health during the aircraft carrier’s long deployment — concerns that President Donald Trump has downplayed.

It's part of larger, government-driven changes to the military publication

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lederer’s retirement, which comes seven months after the department announced in a social media post that it would essentially overhaul the newspaper to align with its current messaging.

Hegseth's spokesman, Sean Parnell, wrote on on X in January that the Pentagon “is returning Stars and Stripes to its original mission: reporting for our warfighters.” He said the department will “refocus its content away from woke distractions.”

“Stars and Stripes will be custom tailored to our warfighters,” Parnell wrote. “It will focus on warfighting, weapons systems, fitness, lethality, survivability and ALL THINGS MILITARY. No more repurposed DC gossip columns; no more Associated Press reprints.”

More broadly, the developments at Stars and Stripes come against a backdrop of increased efforts by Hegseth to control media coverage of the department.

Last year, officials attempted to impose restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon, which, in turn, led most news outlets to turn in their access badges and walk out.

Then this summer, the Pentagon took another step and declared its press office a classified space — instituting a policy that journalists must be accompanied by an escort on Pentagon grounds. That policy is being challenged in court. In mid-July, a panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said the policy could stand, overturning a lower court decision.

In her April column titled “The Pentagon is trying to silence me,” Smith, the former ombudsman, expressed concern over increasing restrictions on the media.

“For nearly a year, Pentagon leadership has placed more and more restrictions on the mainstream media,” she wrote. “The New York Times sued and when the Defense/War Department lost in court, instead of following the judge’s ruling Secretary Hegseth and company pivoted, finding another way to restrict journalists.”

Of Stars and Stripes, Smith wrote: “This newspaper has a long history of commitment to the military community and to journalistic values. Please don’t let it be controlled by Pentagon brass.”

The departing publisher objected to certain changes

Lederer was not made available for an interview with the AP. In the interview with Stars and Stripes, he said he did not feel the modernization efforts the Pentagon announced in March were appropriate, in particular a transitioning of print products to digital — a move he feared would limit accessibility for troops.

“I don’t feel that there’s a full recognition of the value of multiple platforms versus only a digital platform,” Lederer was quoted as saying.

In another development, Stars and Stripes said it could not confirm an account that, in recent weeks, a new deputy had been installed by the Pentagon under Lederer without the publisher’s prior knowledge.

In a letter seen by the AP, Rufus Friday, the chair of Stars and Stripes’ advisory board of publishers, wrote to congressional leaders about the arrival of the new deputy, a development he said “threatens Stripes’s editorial independence.”

Roughly half of Stars and Stripes' budget comes from the Pentagon, and its staff members are considered Defense Department employees.

The outlet’s mission statement emphasizes that it is “editorially independent of interference from outside its own editorial chain-of-command” and that it is unique among news organizations tied to the Defense Department in being “governed by the principles of the First Amendment.”

The newspaper has been reporting about the military steadily since World War II, to an audience mainly of service members stationed overseas.

Lederer told Stars and Stripes that while his retirement is effective Sept. 30, he does not know whether the Pentagon will keep him as publisher until then or name an acting publisher.

___

Jocelyn Noveck writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP.

The cause of the Aug. 12 crash near Fort Hood remains under investigation by the Combat Readiness Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama.

Military officials temporarily halted Apache training flights on Aug. 14. The decision to resume the training came “after a thorough review of safety procedures and flight operations,” the Army said in a statement.

“We remain deeply saddened by the loss of our service members. Our thoughts are with their families, loved ones, and fellow Soldiers as we honor their service and the lasting impact they had on the Army community,” the statement said.

Chief Warrant Officer 2 Deontre T. Huey, 34, of Killeen, Texas, and Warrant Officer Seth L. Olmstead, 25, of Belton, Texas, were killed in the Texas crash, the Army said last week. They were the only two people on board when the helicopter crashed in a grassy field near Salado, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) from Fort Hood.

Huey entered the Army in 2014 and Olmstead entered in 2023. They were assigned to Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 227th Aviation Regiment, 1st Air Cavalry Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division.

The military had paused similar missions after past crashes. Three years ago, after 12 soldiers died in separate crashes in Alaska and Kentucky, the Army grounded all aviation units until they completed some additional training.

Fort Hood is a massive base with 214,968 acres (86,995 hectares) that is used to train and deploy heavy forces. In November 2015, four soldiers were killed when a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise. And nine Fort Hood soldiers died in 2016 when a rain-swollen creek swept their vehicle into rushing waters.

The Apache attack helicopter has been a core part of Army aviation since the first one was delivered in 1984. More than 5,000 Apaches have been deployed by the U.S. military and its allies over the decades.

In announcing the pause, the Army made no mention of stopping the combat missions that Apache helicopters are regularly flying in the war in Iran. The helicopters have been employed around the Strait of Hormuz as part of the measures to maintain open navigation channels. One Apache crashed after running into an Iranian drone.

Months into a cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce, thousands of people nationwide have gotten sick, and the outbreak has also been linked to two deaths.

Despite that, Consumer Reports says salad doesn’t have to come off the menu.

Carefully preparing salad greens and other produce can help protect you and your family.

Headlines about the cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce processed at a Taylor Farms facility in central Mexico are driving demand for locally grown alternatives – with some markets even selling out.

But here’s what may put shoppers a little more at ease. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the recalled products are now past their best-by dates and should no longer be available in stores or restaurants. And Consumer Reports says there’s no evidence people need to avoid lettuce or salad greens in general.

But Consumer Reports food-safety expert James Rogers says you should follow good food safety practices, and here’s why.

“Growth of produce is international. What we get in our supermarkets and grocery stores comes from these big producers and big distributors.” If one batch becomes contaminated during processing, it can affect a larger mix before it reaches store shelves.

So, it’s important to handle produce carefully once you bring it home from the store.

James says, “You can’t remove this parasite 100 percent from washing, but you can reduce the numbers by washing in cold running water, washing your hands before and after, and cleaning your cutting boards.

When produce can be cooked, heating it to at least 158 degrees Fahrenheit is the best way to kill the parasite, along with any other foodborne bacteria.

Simple steps that can protect you and your family.

Consumer Reports says if you’re planning to eat produce raw, especially firmer foods like melons and cucumbers, scrub or peel them before slicing.

That helps keep outside contaminants from transferring onto the part you’re about to eat.

Overton is a medical doctor and deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council who has worked on several of Trump’s second-term health initiatives. She has become a trusted administration figure and a champion of the Republican president’s goals.

If confirmed by the Senate, she would have to balance a raft of competing priorities, including Trump’s fixations, the anti-regulatory interests of traditional Republicans and the anti-corporate posture of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Those challenges dogged the tenure of the previous FDA head, Dr. Marty Makary. He resigned in May, leaving behind unfinished projects such as work on ultraprocessed foods, antidepressants and COVID-19 shots.

Referring to her as “Dr. Heidi” in a Truth Social post, Trump said Overton was a smart and respected “rockstar” who would deliver on his priorities of faster cures, innovation, lower drug prices and more wins for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement.

Kennedy posted on X that Overton has “exceptional judgment, professionalism, discipline and an unwavering commitment to the American people.”

Overton has promoted Trump’s health priorities

Overton attended medical school at the University of New Mexico and has a doctoral degree in clinical investigation from Johns Hopkins University, according to her LinkedIn profile. Before joining Trump’s second administration, she was the chief policy officer at the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

In recent months, she has appeared with the president to announce major projects, including some of his “most favored nation” deals with drug companies to lower prices to those of other developed countries and his recent vaccine order that sought to split the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine into three separate immunizations — against the advice of medical groups.

At an Oval Office event to promote that order, she stood by Trump as he falsely suggested the number or timing of vaccines could play a role in rising rates of autism spectrum disorder. Scientific consensus and decades of studies have firmly concluded there is no link.

Overton has been critical of abortion pills and, if confirmed, would be positioned to roll back FDA rules that made them more accessible. U.S. abortion opponents have expressed frustration that the administration has not acted to stem the flow of such pills prescribed online, a situation they view as undermining state abortion bans.

Mifepristone is typically used with misoprostol in medication abortions that make up close to two-thirds of abortions in the U.S. Medical professionals call it “among the safest medications” ever approved by the FDA.

To be confirmed, Overton must seek approval from a narrowly Republican-led Senate and face questions from the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. Its chair, Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician from Louisiana, has been a vocal critic of some of Trump’s actions to sow doubt in vaccinations, including the MMR order.

Cassidy posted Wednesday that while he respects Overton's medical background, he has “strong concerns” about the nomination, mentioning her lack of managerial experience and her participation in the recent vaccine order, which he called “almost disqualifying.”

Democratic senators slammed the nomination.

“Heidi Overton is a far-right, anti-abortion extremist who has no business leading the FDA,” posted Washington Sen. Patty Murray, a committee member.

Makary’s replacement will face challenges he left behind

Before he left the FDA, Makary had drawn complaints from health industry executives and anti-abortion activists. The frustration with him came to a head over the agency’s lack of movement on flavored e-cigarettes. Companies such as R.J. Reynolds are seeking to market to adult smokers, but sweet-flavored vapes have long been blamed for the trend of teenage vaping. FDA scientists have hesitated to endorse those products to curb adult smoking.

Days before Makary's departure, the agency opened the door to allowing more unauthorized electronic cigarettes and nicotine pouches onto the U.S. market, in a policy change that essentially bypassed FDA experts.

Pharmaceutical companies will be looking for changes at the agency, too, after rejections or reversals of biotech drugs intended for rare diseases. Complaints from biotech companies, investors and patient groups have grown and been taken up by conservative lawmakers.

Makary tried to assuage industry grievances, in part by announcing new programs designed to streamline or accelerate drug approvals. Some of those initiatives, however, have meant new headaches for the agency.

Several of Makary’s deputies also exited the agency.

Dr. Vinay Prasad, the vaccine and biotech chief, stepped down in April following intense criticism from drugmakers, patients and investors. Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, who was involved in scrutinizing the safety of antidepressants, COVID-19 vaccines and other widely used therapies, was replaced as FDA’s acting drug center director.

MAHA has high expectations of FDA's next head

Overton would also need to tend to the priorities of Kennedy’s health movement, some members of which are already skeptical of her.

Kelly Ryerson, an activist critical of pesticides who is known to her supporters as “Glyphosate Girl,” told The Associated Press that Overton parroted pesticide manufacturer Bayer's talking points in a MAHA roundtable at the White House in April.

“I was stunned by the blatant, undisguised corruption,” Ryerson said.

One major decision for the next commissioner is what to do about peptide regulation. A panel of federal health advisers selected by Kennedy recently recommended easing access to several peptides that are popular with wellness influencers and celebrities, despite warnings from FDA scientists that the chemicals have not been shown to be safe or effective.

The agency recently proposed a rule change that would require food manufacturers to notify regulators before introducing new ingredients or additives into processed or packaged foods. But it is still working with the White House to finalize a first-of-its-kind definition of ultraprocessed foods, which Kennedy blames for elevated rates of diabetes, obesity and other chronic conditions.

Under Kennedy, the FDA has set up extra hurdles for vaccine testing and blocked the publication of research into the effectiveness of COVID-19 shots. Kennedy stood by Trump recently as the president signed the executive order aimed at upending childhood vaccinations in the U.S. despite unprecedented financial and logistical challenges.

The FDA also has an ongoing review of widely used antidepressants, including whether they may increase the risk of autism and other disorders when used during pregnancy. The medicines have long been a target of Kennedy, who was a leader in the anti-vaccine movement before joining the government.

In recent weeks, the agency has been investigating two summertime foodborne illness outbreaks: a cyclospora outbreak linked to tainted iceberg lettuce that has sickened thousands of people and a multistate salmonella outbreak linked to jalapeño peppers.

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Swenson reported from New York. Associated Press journalist Laura Ungar contributed from Louisville, Kentucky.

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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.

Democrats have hoped to mount a comeback in the diverse, populous and economically dynamic state but have struggled to craft a message that resonates in the Sunshine State's political climate. Nixon's upset sets up a long-shot challenge to U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, a former state attorney general selected by Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill the seat after Marco Rubio vacated it when Trump chose him as secretary of state.

The race has already inflamed tensions within the Democratic Party over how to energize liberal voters eager for unapologetic, combative candidates without alienating independents and moderates who have been key to winning in battleground states.

“If you’re surprised by tonight’s election results, you haven’t been paying enough attention to what’s happening in the South,” said Britney Whaley, the southeast regional director of the Working Families Party, which backs populist candidates. “Tonight’s election results must be a wake-up call to a political establishment that believes a populist message can’t win in the South. Angie’s campaign proves voters will respond to a bold economic vision that meets their basic needs.”

A proud progressive who campaigned with new tactics

A spirited progressive who had the backing of Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Nixon is a longtime labor organizer who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America. She championed policies like universal healthcare and childcare and has been an outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy and the war in Gaza.

In May, Nixon protested the Republican-controlled Florida legislature’s redistricting of the state’s congressional maps by shouting through a megaphone on the state House floor. She was later reprimanded by an ethics committee but earned plaudits from Democratic allies and voting rights groups for her demonstration.

Vindman raised about $16 million in his race and had spent more than $9 million by the end of July. Nixon, by contrast, had raised just shy of $1 million. Nixon eschewed broadcast television advertising, instead focusing on targeting voters on social media. She was backed by prominent online figures like children’s education influencer Ms. Rachel.

In contrast to other high-profile statewide democratic socialist bids this year, Nixon received little opposition from national Democratic figures or major political action committees. That didn't stop progressives from immediately touting her win as a sign of greater momentum for the region.

Florida's Senate race was widely considered out of reach for Democrats and not central to the party's efforts to retake the upper chamber. Nevertheless, Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin issued a statement praising Nixon as a “proven leader,” adding that the DNC “is ready to help elect Angie and work together to flip this seat.”

A defeat for ‘resistance’ Democratic politics

Vindman served on the White House's National Security Council during Trump's first term. His testimony was central to Trump's first impeachment over a phone call in which the president pressured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden and his family. Vindman became a national Democratic star and target of Trump's ire for his actions, a dynamic that garnered him millions in small-dollar donations.

His twin brother Eugene, who also served on the council, is a Democratic congressman from Virginia.

“Rep. Nixon ran a strong campaign. I will be standing by her side in the fight against Ashley Moody. I hope you’ll join me,” Vindman said in a statement after he conceded the race.

Trump gleefully hailed Vindman's defeat to Nixon.

“The most gratifying loss last night was that of a real treasonous creep, Alexander Vindman, to a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly, and who will go down to certain defeat at the hands of Ashley Moody, a truly Fantastic Senator, from the Great State Florida,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social. Trump added that Vindman “should be prosecuted for what he’d did!”

Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had hoped Vindman's reputation and campaign war chest would turn what election analysts considered a solidly Republican seat into a more competitive race. Nixon’s upset victory has now buoyed already high Republican confidence in the state and raised progressive confidence about the strength of their message.

Vindman's defeat mirrors that of others who rose to prominence opposing Trump during his first administration, when Democrats embraced “resistance” as a moniker for that opposition and for standing up for the rule of law. Their defeats may show how rank-and-file voters have shifted toward more strident and affirmative visions of politics.

In May, Rep. Al Green of Texas, a longtime Trump opponent and civil rights icon, lost a runoff race to Rep. Christian Menefee, a freshman progressive representative less than half Green's age.

Rep. Dan Goldman, who served as counsel for House Democrats during Trump's first impeachment, lost his primary in June to progressive challenger Brad Lander, who had the backing of New York City's democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani. George Conway, a liberal lawyer who has garnered Trump's ire, came in fifth place in another New York Democratic primary for U.S. House.

And earlier this month, Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan, who last year introduced articles of impeachment against Trump, lost his primary to a democratic socialist in a Detroit-area congressional race.

Nixon's win headlined mixed results for progressives

In multiple southern Florida congressional primaries Tuesday, left-flank candidates lost to more moderate ones. While the state has shifted rightward in recent election cycles, Florida has long been a refuge for Latino communities who had fled left-wing authoritarian regimes in Latin America. Many of those Floridians have consequently reacted negatively to anything or anyone labeled as socialist.

Elijah Manley, who finished third in a Broward County U.S. House primary won by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, acknowledged the tightrope. He got about 14% of the vote in a five-way race. In neighboring districts, Rep. Jared Moskowitz and political newcomer Pia Dandiya ran as moderates and won 64% and 69% of the vote, respectively, over more progressive opponents.

“I’m a proud moderate. We need more moderates,” Dandiya said in an interview.

The Senate returns showed similar trends. Nixon carried most of the state but was weakest in southern Florida, which includes some of the state's largest Latino communities.

Still, Manley insisted the broader electorate wants a more aggressive, left-leaning party.

“They have looked at the Democratic establishment for the past four years, even 10 years, and it’s something that just isn’t working for them,” he said.

“Say what you will about the DSA. They’re organizing. They’re bringing people into the party. They’re exciting people, and they’re getting people. We should be happy that that’s happening,” Manley added.

Nixon's allies view her voter base, which includes some of the most working-class and majority-Black counties in the state, as another path to power when coupled with the broader Democratic coalition. But they caution intraparty divisions and an inauthentic message could hamper a candidate from any wing of the party.

“I think people are looking for change. They’re looking for leadership who they can trust and who listens,” said Moné Holder, a liberal activist and urban planning committee chair who defeated a Republican for an at-large seat on Jacksonville’s city council.

“They’re looking for people to serve who aren’t wrapped up in political drama, but are about people. And I think voters came out to show that, and it proved itself in my election, and Angie’s, and a few others,” Holder said.

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Associated Press writer Bill Barrow contributed to this report.

“When consumers see a listed price, they expect it to be (the) same price that everyone else sees, not the retailer’s estimate of how much they are willing to pay based on their personal data,” FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson said in a statement.

The FTC has had its eye on personalized pricing for several years. In a preliminary report filed in January 2025, the agency found that grocers, clothing companies and others were using third-party companies to help them individualize online prices based on shoppers' locations, browsing histories and other factors, including how long they left items in their virtual shopping carts.

In one hypothetical example, the FTC said a consumer profiled as a new parent might be shown higher-priced baby thermometers on the first page of their search results.

Ferguson said the FTC doesn't have the legal authority to ban personalized pricing in all circumstances. But under the proposed policy, businesses would have to “clearly and conspicuously disclose” if they are engaging in personalized pricing and share the types of data they're using to set those prices.

The proposed policy states that companies engaged in personalized pricing without revealing the practice and the data behind it could violate the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices in the marketplace.

The FTC is seeking comment on the policy for 30 days.

Several retail trade groups didn't comment directly on the FTC's proposal Wednesday.

The National Retail Federation, which represents big companies like Walmart, Target and Macy's as well as smaller stores, said retailers want to continue to offer incentives like loyalty and rewards programs, which collect personal data and provide offers tailored to individuals.

“NRF has and will continue to aggressively advocate to protect these programs that deliver timely savings and personalized offers that are relevant to each shopper's interests,” said David French, NRF's executive vice president of government relations.

FMI, a trade group for the U.S. grocery industry, said Wednesday it was reviewing the proposal and didn’t have immediate comment. But in a letter FMI sent to U.S. senators this month after a subcommittee hearing on personalized pricing, FMI also said it hoped to preserve shopper loyalty programs.

In the letter, FMI also noted that electronic shelf labels, which are becoming increasingly common at grocers and retailers like Walmart, don't automatically change prices based on individual shoppers.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association, a trade group that represents Best Buy, Home Depot, Dollar General and 200 other retailers, didn't comment on the new proposal Wednesday but cited its own letter sent to U.S. senators earlier this month.

In the letter, the association said retailers don't use consumers' personal data to increase prices because that would jeopardize customer loyalty.

“As shoppers demonstrate an increased willingness to seek out lower prices, competition among retailers intensifies to meet customers' needs, creating a strong and continuous incentive for retailers to offer attractive prices, discounts and value,” the letter said.

The FTC's action comes amid consumer unease about pricing tactics. Wendy's faced a backlash in 2024 after it said it was considering charging more for its menu items during peak times. Uber and Lyft have also been in lawmakers' crosshairs for their surge-pricing practices.

Several states, including Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey, have already passed laws prohibiting personalized pricing at grocery stores. California and New York are also considering legislation that would ban personalized pricing.

New Jersey also placed a one-year moratorium on new electronic shelf labels despite retailers' assurances that the labels aren't used for personalized pricing and can actually help consumers by, say, automatically lowering prices for foods that are about to expire.

The consumer advocacy organization Consumer Reports said Wednesday that the FTC's proposal was encouraging but might still require consumers to read detailed disclosures on pricing while shopping online.

The group said the FTC and Congress should instead follow the states' lead and ban companies from using customer data to personalize prices in the first place.

John King Used & Rare Books, located on Lafayette Boulevard, posted a “Wanted for Murder” message on social media Tuesday, Aug. 18, following the discovery, calling on neighboring businesses and residents to reconsider how they manage pests.

The concern is that if rat poison is accessible to wildlife and killing squirrels, it may also be accessible to pets or other animals that feed around the Lodge Freeway.

Wildlife experts back up the bookstore’s concern, warning that rodenticide -- specifically anticoagulant poisons -- can cause far more harm than intended.

According to the National Park Service, anticoagulant rodenticides work their way up the food chain, posing a danger to predators, pets and wildlife long after the original rodent has consumed the bait.

Rodents that eat rodenticide don’t die immediately. Instead, the poison blocks the vitamin K cycle, which is critical to blood clotting, leading to a slow death that can take days to weeks. As the rodent weakens, it moves more slowly -- making it easy prey for cats, dogs, hawks, owls, coyotes and other predators.

That’s where the danger compounds. When a predator eats a poisoned rodent, it ingests the toxin secondarily. If another predator then eats that animal, a third level of poisoning occurs.

What you can do

John King’s Used Books is urging businesses and residents to use enclosed bait stations and snap traps rather than open poison that wildlife, pets or other animals could access.

If you spot a squirrel or another animal behaving strangely, wildlife experts say do not touch it.

Instead, contact a wildlife rehabilitator or an animal control agency. You can also notify John King’s Used Books directly, as the store is actively tracking reports of affected animals in the area.