• MORNING CLOUDS, PM SUN: Today through Sunday, highs near 90
• STRAY STORM: Along Rio Grande this evening, stays west of SA
• NEXT WEEK: Occasional storms, some strong

FORECAST

TODAY

If you’re heading out for a Spurs Watch party tonight, the weather looks cooperative. We’ll stay humid & warm in the 80s through the evening, but cooling off a bit after the sun sets. Go Spurs Go!

WEEKEND

Morning cloud cover will last longer both Saturday and Sunday. Drizzle or a few sprinkles are possible Sunday morning. Otherwise, the afternoons will be warm and humid.

ACTIVE NEXT WEEK

The pattern becomes more active by Monday. Isolated storms are expected Monday evening. It’s impossible to know where a storm will pop up, but any storm that does will be capable of severe weather. By Tuesday, a weak front moving into North Texas will raise rain chances.

Again, timing and placement of any storm is impossible to know at this point, but severe weather is a possibility. Beyond that, rain chances stay with us, potentially through Memorial Day weekend.

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While the former Hollywood mogul has been convicted of other sex crimes on two U.S. coasts and remains behind bars, the mistrial leaves the New York rape charge in limbo. Prosecutors were pondering whether to try the case a fourth time, after some jurors said outside court that nine out of 12 wanted to acquit Weinstein.

Weinstein, 74, showed little reaction as he was ushered from court, but his attorneys said later that he was pleased with the outcome.

“Maybe it’s not the win that he wanted, but it’s a win, and we’re going to keep fighting,” attorney Marc Agnifilo said, adding that the defense believed it has "outstanding” prospects if the case is retried.

The majority-male Manhattan jury weighed whether Weinstein raped Jessica Mann, a hairstylist and actor. Weinstein’s lawyers argued that the encounter was consensual. It happened in 2013 during a fraught relationship between the then-married Weinstein and the decades-younger Mann.

Deliberations began Wednesday. On Friday, after the jury sent two notes in 90 minutes saying it was stuck, Judge Curtis Farber declared a mistrial.

What stood out to jurors

Some jurors said they were struck by gaps in what Mann recalled, particularly when defense lawyers were questioning her.

“The prevailing thought was that the witness had a lot of inconsistencies in her story,” said juror Josh Hadar, 57. He favored acquittal: “I don't come to that easily, but it just seemed that there was enough reasonable doubt.”

Another juror, Sarae Perez, 25, noted that she studied feminism and is well versed in #MeToo, but she also couldn't overcome uncertainties about Mann's account.

“There were places where we couldn’t trust her word for it,” she said.

Accuser's reaction: 'I deserve justice'

Mann said in a statement that the mistrial “doesn’t in any way detract from the truth I told.”

“I deserve justice, which is why I stand up and face unbearable public scrutiny in the name of a greater good,” she said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg hailed Mann's “perseverance and bravery” and said in a statement that prosecutors will consult her about next steps. They're due to say next month whether they will retry the case.

How the case returned for a third trial

As an Oscar-winning movie producer and studio boss, Weinstein was one of Hollywood’s most powerful figures and a significant Democratic donor before the long-suppressed sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations against him cascaded into public view in 2017. The revelations galvanized the #MeToo movement ’s demands for accountability for sexual misconduct, made Weinstein a pariah, bankrupted the studio and ultimately led to criminal charges against him in New York and Los Angeles.

He was convicted of some and acquitted of others. Yet Mann’s allegation lingered. Weinstein was convicted of the charge in 2020. Then an appeals court overturned that verdict, and jury deliberations broke down at a 2025 retrial. That paved the way for this year’s retrial.

Weinstein has said he was unfaithful to his then-wife and “acted wrongly, but I never assaulted anyone.”

The accuser's account

Mann, now 40, met Weinstein at a Los Angeles party in early 2013, when she hoped to build a handful of acting credits into a big career. She said his pushy intimate overtures discomfited her at first, but she acceded to them and decided to develop a relationship with him.

However, she said she made it clear she didn’t want sex on March 18, 2013, when he unexpectedly got a room at a Manhattan hotel where she was staying with a friend.

“I said ‘no,’ over and over, and I tried to leave,” she told jurors during five days of intense testimony. She said Weinstein slammed the door, grabbed her arms and ordered her to undress. Scared, she gave up protesting, she said and alleged that he ultimately raped her.

Weinstein’s lawyers highlighted an introspective, private note that Mann wrote herself two days later. While saying nothing about the alleged rape, the note discussed her conflicted feelings about becoming “emotionally attached” in a nonexclusive relationship with a man she didn’t name. She testified that she hadn't needed to write down the alleged rape.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted, unless they choose to make their names public, as Mann has done.

Weinstein's defense

Weinstein didn’t testify. In his lawyers’ telling, Mann was a willing partner in a close, supportive relationship with a show-business insider who opened doors for her, but she turned on him once he became an outcast.

In the months and years after the New York encounter, Mann kept seeing and communicating with Weinstein, emails and testimony showed. At times, she pulled away to pursue another relationship; at others, she turned back to Weinstein, who validated her acting dreams and comforted her when her father was terminally ill.

“I love u. Anything u need,” Weinstein wrote.

He helped Mann land a movie audition — it went nowhere — and a hairstyling job. She asked him for help with such things as a car problem, though she declined cash that he tried to send when she couldn’t make rent.

In one of her last emails to Weinstein, in February 2017, she wrote: “I love you, always do. But I hate feeling like a booty call.” When he responded by suggesting she was “joking” and should stop using his company email, she said it was a joke and apologized.

Eight months later, news reports about other women's allegations prompted her to go to the police.

Mann never sued Weinstein, but after his 2020 conviction, she filed for and got about $500,000 from a sexual misconduct settlement fund set up during his company’s bankruptcy. His lawyers didn't mention the payout at this trial.

___

Associated Press journalists Ed White in Detroit and Joseph B. Frederick in New York contributed.

Contract negotiations were taking place Friday aimed at reaching a deal that would avert a walkout by locomotive engineers, machinists, signalmen and other train workers.

A strike would force the roughly 250,000 people who ride the system each weekday to either work from home or find alternative routes into New York City from its Long Island suburbs. That means more cars on traffic-choked highways and longer work commutes.

“It’s gonna be such a nightmare trying to get in,” said Rob Udle, an electrician who takes the LIRR at least five days a week into Manhattan. “The traffic is bad enough with the railroad running, and now you’re taking all the 100,000 people that come from Long Island and put them on the road?”

A train shutdown would even make it challenging for some sports fans to get into Manhattan to watch the NBA’s New York Knicks playoff run or see the baseball rivals the New York Yankees battle the crosstown Mets this weekend at Citi Field in Queens, which has a dedicated LIRR stop.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which oversees the LIRR and other area transit systems, said Friday that in the event of a strike, any trains departing before midnight will finish their route, as was done when workers on another regional commuter rail system, New Jersey Transit, went on a strike that lasted three days last year.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, has urged LIRR riders to work from home in case of a walkout as the MTA plans to provide free but limited shuttle buses during the work day rush hours geared toward essential workers.

But while remote work options greatly expanded during the COVID-19 pandemic, many workers simply need to show up in person, said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA, a commuter advocacy group.

“You work in construction, you work in the healthcare industry, you work at a school or you’re about to graduate from school, that’s not always possible,” she said of telecommuting. “People need to get where they need to go.”

Dispute over wages

The union has demanded a total raise of 16% over four years, saying it is needed to help workers keep up with inflation and rising living costs. The MTA argued that the union’s initial demands would lead to fare increases. The authority has agreed to a pay raise of at least 9.5% over the next three years, plus what would effectively amount to a 4.5% raise in year four.

“The difference between those two positions is not unbridgeable,” Gary Dellaverson, the MTA’s chief negotiator, suggested during a news conference Wednesday.

“The key question is: Will MTA and Gov. Hochul create frustration and gridlock for commuters, spend millions on buses during a strike and lose millions in revenue over what amounts to roughly a one percent difference in wages?” Nick Peluso, national vice president for the Transportation Communications Union, said in a statement.

Commuters brace for the worst

Susanne Alberto, a personal trainer from Long Island, said she has already made plans with her Manhattan clients to hold virtual sessions in the event of a shutdown.

She said the union likely has the upper hand, even if she believes raises should be based on job responsibilities and not made across the board.

“The MTA is going to cave, and they know that,” Alberto said. “Why don’t they just do it now instead of waiting until virtually millions of people get inconvenienced?”

Udle, the electrician, said he will likely use his vacation days rather than navigate the “nightmare” of commuting into Manhattan if the rail service shuts down.

A union member, he sympathized with the unions’ affordability concerns, but he said he didn’t agree with their strong-arm tactics.

“I get it, the cost of living is going up and stuff like that,” Udle said while waiting at Penn Station for a train home. “But they shouldn’t hold everybody hostage to do it. There’s a better way. You’re affecting a lot of other people."

A strike was temporarily averted in September when President Donald Trump’s administration agreed to help with negotiations. Those efforts ended without a deal, giving both sides 60 days — ending 12:01 a.m. Saturday — to again try to resolve their differences before the union is legally allowed to go on strike or the agency could lock out workers.

LIRR workers last went on strike in 1994, for about two days.

___

The first reference to the rail system has been updated to correct to Long Island Rail Road, from Long Island Railroad.

___

Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

The bodies were located just before 5 a.m. behind a warehouse in the 500 block of Richland Hills Drive, which is located near Potranco Road.

Officers said they later detained a 34-year-old woman at the scene, who was determined to be the children’s mother.

The woman, identified as Marlene Vidal of Edinburg, was arrested and charged with capital murder, SAPD said. She has “family connections” in the San Antonio area, authorities stated.

SAPD Assistant Chief Jesse Salame said the children are believed to be 5 and 7 years old. The Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office will determined their identities.

During a news conference just after 7 a.m., Salame told reporters that first responders initially found “three young children” inside the car.

However, in the most recent news conference held just before 10 a.m., Salame confirmed there were only two children inside the burned vehicle.

Police said crews were called to the scene after a passerby saw the vehicle on fire and called 911.

Salame said police obtained surveillance video and evidence at the scene, along with “statements” made by Vidal, that indicate that “she was solely responsible for the death of these two children.”

While a motive remains unclear, Salame said “mental health issues may have played a role.”

KSAT spoke to a family member who confirmed Vidal is from Edinburg, Texas in the Rio Grande Valley but was temporarily living in San Antonio.

As the investigation continues to unfold, Salame struggled to find the words to capture the impact that the discovery could have on the community.

“It’s difficult for our entire community to have to deal with this,” Salame said. “It’s tragic on so many angles; it’s hard for us to really put into words how this impacts all of our community.”

Salame said arson investigators are looking into the cause of the fire.

“Now the focus will shift on the extensive investigative work that is needed to ensure that we provide the strongest possible case to the district attorney’s office,” Salame said.

KSAT searched Bexar County and Hidalgo County databases and found no previous criminal record for Vidal.

The local office of Child Protective Services confirmed it is investigating this case since the crime happened in Bexar County.

Anyone struggling with mental health can reach out to the National Alliance on Mental Illness HelpLine by calling 800-950-NAMI (6264), texting NAMI to 62640, emailing helpline@nami.org, or chatting online.

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Taiwan remained the most important issue for China in the talks. Xi privately warned Trump that differences over the self-governed island, which Beijing claims as its own territory, could bring the U.S. and China into clashes or conflict.

Trump told reporters that he had not yet made a determination on whether a major U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan can move forward.

On Iran, Trump said Xi told him that China wants to help negotiate an end to the war and a reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Trump has previously expressed hope that China would use its leverage as Iran’s biggest trading partner to prod Tehran into a deal on U.S. terms. Trump also said Xi assured him that China wouldn’t provide Iran with military equipment.

Here's the latest:

Colorado governor commutes sentence of former elections clerk

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has commuted the sentence of election conspiracy theorist Tina Peters following pressure from Trump, the latest instance of the president using his powers to reward those who echoed his baseless claims of mass fraud as the cause of his 2020 loss.

Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system. She gets released June 1.

In April, a Colorado appeals court ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision praised by Polis. The court upheld her convictions, though.

Peters has been serving her sentence at a prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.

Hegseth will attend USS Gerald R. Ford homecoming

The defense secretary will meet the world’s largest aircraft carrier as it returns from an 11-month deployment on Saturday, the Pentagon said.

The Ford’s 326 days at sea will make its deployment the longest for an aircraft carrier in the last 50 years and third longest since the Vietnam War, according to data compiled by USNI News, a news outlet run by the U.S. Naval Institute, a nonprofit organization.

The only longer ones were the 1973 deployment of USS Midway at 332 days and the 1965 deployment of USS Coral Sea at 329 days.

The Ford took part in the military operation to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Then it saw more battle, heading toward the Middle East as tensions with Iran escalated. While in the Red Sea it also experienced a fire that sidelined it for weeks in the Mediterranean Sea.

Washington activists question escalating surge

Free DC, one of the primary organizations that has opposed the surge of federal law enforcement and military personnel into Washington, said plans to expand the surge are wrongheaded.

“The people of D.C. don’t want anything from this corrupt and lawless regime. We want them to stay the hell away from our children, stay out of our communities, and quit their jobs,” the activist group said in a statement.

The organization’s stance came in response to U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s press conference Friday announcing the additional surge of more law enforcement officers. That announcement said there would be more prosecutions, including holding some parents responsible for the juvenile curfew violations of their children.

U.S. Marshals Director Gadyaces Serralta said the number of military troops in the city would increase to 5,000 from 3,500. There were about 2,500 National Guard members in the city a month ago.

US says Israel and Lebanon agree to 45-day extension of ceasefire

It comes after two “productive” days of talks in Washington and will be followed by more negotiations June 2-3, State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said.

A shaky truce between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon had been due to end on Sunday.

“We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border,” Pigott said on social media.

U.S. eyes indictment against Raul Castro amid pressure by Trump administration, sources tell AP

The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter tell The Associated Press.

The indictment would require approval by a grand jury. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. One of the people said the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of planes operated by the Miami exile group.

Prosecutors in Miami have been building cases against senior Cuban officials amid renewed pressure from south Florida Republicans and a pledge earlier this year by President Donald Trump to orchestrate a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.

Second day of Israel-Lebanon talks underway in Washington as ceasefire end looms

The State Department says the second and final of two days of talks between Israel and Lebanon are underway in Washington ahead of the weekend expiration of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah.

US halts Army deployment to Poland as part of troop reduction in Europe, AP sources say

The Pentagon is drawing down thousands of troops in Europe by stopping units from deploying to Poland and Germany as opposed to yanking those already stationed there.

Several U.S. officials confirmed that 4,000 troops from an Army brigade are no longer en route to Poland this week. The Trump administration had previously said it was cutting U.S. forces only in Germany.

The canceled deployment came after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing a brigade combat team to be moved out of Europe, according to two U.S. officials who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

One of them said the choice of which unit was left to military leaders. The memo also led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles, the two officials said.

Some congressional Republicans watch with worry Trump’s deliberations on Taiwan arms sale

Lawmakers who have supported Taiwan’s efforts to build up its military defenses say that the decision to follow through with the sale of $11 billion in arms for the island should be an easy one for the president.

“We have to support Taiwan, just like we have to support Ukraine,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican. “These are the fortresses of democracy and they’re on the front lines and we have to protect and defend them.”

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas said he was not surprised that Chinese President Xi Jinping had come out with an aggressive posture on Taiwan.

“We’ve got to arm Taiwan so they can defend themselves for deterrence,” McCaul said.

Vance honors fallen officers during police week

The vice president was speaking at the National Peace Officers’ Memorial Service at the U.S. Capitol.

During his remarks, Vance praised the sacrifices of police officers who were killed in the line of duty, along with their families and loved ones.

“We love you, we’re thankful for you,” Vance said. “We’re sorry for what you sacrificed but we will never forget what your officer laid down.”

Vance underscored the law-and-order policies of the Trump administration and said society’s attitude toward law enforcement has now changed.

“We shifted attitudes across our society when it comes to dealing with and most importantly, honoring our law enforcement community,” he said. “We stopped handcuffing the police and started handcuffing more violent criminals.”

The vice president spoke while Trump was returning to Washington from Beijing.

Federal officials announce summertime ’law enforcement surge in Washington, DC

The Justice Department has announced a surge of law enforcement in the nation’s capital this summer timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

Officials made the announcement at a news conference at the Justice Department headquarters on Friday, saying there would be extra personnel on city streets and additional resources such as drones.

Congressman says Poland was ‘blindsided’ by cancelled troop deployment

“It’s an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland,” Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said during Friday’s House Armed Services Committee hearing.

“They called me yesterday. They did not know. They were blindsided. These are some of our best allies, and they had no idea,” Bacon said. “They still don’t know what the plan is.”

Bacon said the committee needs to hold Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accountable for the decision.

“It’s wrong,” Bacon said.

Congressman criticizes abruptness of decision to cancel troop deployment to Poland

Speaking Friday during the House Armed Services Committee hearing, Republican Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia noted how advanced elements of an Army brigade were already overseas and equipment was in transit.

Scott pressed Army leaders on when the cancellation was made. Army Secretery Dan Driscoll and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s chief of staff, said discussions occurred over the last two weeks while the decision was made in the last couple days.

Scott questioned the truth behind a Pentagon statement that it was not a last-minute, unexpected decision. Driscoll said the decision was not unusual because discussions over troop deployments are happening throughout the year.

“These are major decisions that appear to many of the members of this committee to be last-minute decisions,” Scott said.

Justice Department to seek death penalty for man charged with killing 2 Israeli Embassy staffers

Elias Rodriguez faces federal hate crime and murder charges in the killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim as they left an event at a Jewish museum last May, prosecutors said in a court filing Friday.

Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” during the shooting and later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza.”

The charges against Rodriguez include a hate crime resulting in death. His indictment also includes notice of special findings, which allows prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

The hate crimes charges mean prosecutors will have to prove that Rodriguez was motivated by antisemitism when he opened fire on Lischinsky and Milgrim, a young couple who were about to become engaged. Milgrim was a U.S. citizen. Lischinsky was an Israeli citizen working in the U.S.

Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen ending reelection campaign after redraw of his Memphis district

His career was upended by the redistricting battles that are sweeping the country after last month’s Supreme Court decision.

Earlier this month, Republicans in Tennessee enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen’s majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C. office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

▶ Read more

Texas high court rejects removal of Democratic lawmakers who led quorum break over redistricting

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers who briefly fled the state in 2025 to block a vote on new congressional voting maps pushed by President Trump had vacated their office.

The all-Republican court dealt a blow to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republicans in their efforts to severely punish the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for New York, Illinois and Massachusetts in a bid to stop a vote on the maps during a special session. State Republicans had sought their arrest and threatened fines to bring them back to the state Capitol.

Abbott had argued in a lawsuit filed directly to the state’s highest civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, and others had effectively abandoned their office.

▶ Read more

China says two sides to set up trade and investment boards to address ag goods trade and tariffs

The two countries agreed to establish boards on trade and on investments to address each other’s concerns on agricultural goods’ market access and to promote expanded trade under a framework of reciprocal tariff reductions, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said.

The two sides have yet to announce any concrete trade deals, but the boards are expected to serve as a channel of communications to address economic and trade issues.

Wang said the economic and trade teams from the two sides have reached results that are “overall balanced and positive.”

Xi will have a state visit to the US this fall, Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi says

President Trump extended a Sept. 24 invitation to Xi and his wife during his reciprocal toast at a banquet Thursday.

According to a readout about Wang’s briefing to media outlets on the summit, Wang said Trump and Xi agreed to keep close contact through meetings, phone calls and letters, the Chinese official news agency Xinhua reported.

Wang said both sides should work together to make thorough preparations for the leaders’ interactions and create an appropriate atmosphere to accumulate more results.

Merz says he and Trump agree that Iran must open Strait of Hormuz

Merz on Friday said he spoke to Trump on the phone as the U.S. president traveled home from China.

“We agree: Iran must come to the negotiating table now. It must open the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons,” Merz wrote on X. “We also discussed a peaceful solution for Ukraine and coordinated our positions ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara. The U.S. and Germany are strong partners in a strong NATO.”

Germany’s Merz worries about America’s ‘social climate’

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Friday said he wouldn’t recommend that his children work in the U.S. because of its “social climate.”

“I am a great admirer of America. My admiration isn’t growing at the moment,” he said during a panel discussion at the Catholic Congress in Wuerzburg, Germany. “So, I wouldn’t recommend to my children today that they go to the U.S., get an education there, and work there. Simply because of a social climate that has suddenly developed there.”

He added: “by the way, the question of what well-educated young people can achieve used to be answered very differently in America up until a year ago than it is today. Today, the best-educated in America have great difficulty finding a job.”

Trump says summit yielded a new Boeing deal for hundreds of planes

Trump told reporters on Air Force One that China would buy 200 planes from Boeing with the possibility of expanding the deal to 750 “if they do a good job with the 200, which I’m sure they will.”

The order would represent Boeing’s first major sale to China in nearly a decade, and it would mark a significant breakthrough for the plane maker in a market that was once central to its long-term growth.

China has high demand for new aircraft as they expand and modernize fleets, while giving Trump a high-profile win for his trade agenda.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg joined Trump on his trip to Beijing.

Trump also said China would purchase 400 to 450 engines from General Electric. He did not offer a more precise number.

Daughter of imprisoned pastor asked Trump to help free her father

Trump said Xi would consider the case of Ezra Jin Mingri of the Zion Church, who has been detained since October.

On Monday, Grace Jin Drexel, the pastor’s daughter, asked Trump to help bring back her father and other jailed activists on his trip to Beijing.

“We really plead the president will continue to raise the political prisoners, like my father, and like many of the family members here today, and bring them home,” she said. “We just would love for him to just be part of the family and, like, eat nice food with us and watch movies with us, and just, like, have a have, just live normal lives again.”

Putin set to visit Beijing ‘very soon,’ Kremlin says

The Kremlin said Thursday that President Vladimir Putin is set to visit China shortly.

Asked about a report that Putin is coming to China next Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the visit indeed will take place “very soon,” adding that Moscow and Beijing will announce its date.

Asked to comment on President Donald Trump’s visit to China, Peskov emphasized the importance of contacts between the world’s two biggest economies, adding that Russia expects to get firsthand information from China about its talks with the U.S. when Putin visits Beijing.

Trump still mulling US arms sale to Taiwan

President Donald Trump says he’s not yet made a determination on whether a major U.S. sale of arms to Taiwan can move forward, following his three-day visit to China.

Speaking to reporters as he flew back on Air Force One on Friday, Trump said he’d not decided on the sale, but added, “I will make a determination.”

The Trump administration has authorized the sale but it has yet to move forward. China opposes the deal and has suggested that Washington’s relationship with the self-governing island is the key factor in China-U.S. relations.

Trump brought up Jimmy Lai to Xi, but says it’s ‘a tough one’

Activist Jimmy Lai, a prominent critic of Beijing, was sentenced to 20 years in prison under a national security law in February in Hong Kong. His family and supporters hope Trump could help free the 78-year-old, who has spent over five years in custody.

“He told me that would be a tough one,” Trump said, referring to Xi.

Lai’s daughter Claire told The Associated Press that she was so grateful to Trump for the commitment shown to his father’s release.

“He has earned his reputation as liberating the unjustly detained and I am confident he and his administration will be the ones to free my father,” she said.

She said this is an opportunity for Xi to do “the only just and honorable thing” for a man who has given so much to Hong Kong and show a gesture of goodwill to the rest of the world.

The Gulfstream long-range business jet carrying them from the Netherlands landed at RAAF Base Pearce outside the Western Australia state capital, Perth. The passengers, crew and a doctor who accompanied them were taken by bus to the nearby Bullsbrook quarantine facility.

Australian Health Minister Mark Butler said the government would implement one of world's strongest quarantine responses to the outbreak.

He said passengers of the cruise ship MV Hondius who returned to the United States and most European countries would spend a few days in a quarantine center before they were sent home.

"We have taken the decision to take a stronger approach to quarantine arrangements than that because we are determined to ensure there is no risk at all of any transmission of this virus into the Australian community,” Butler told reporters in his hometown of Adelaide.

The five Australians and one New Zealand citizen will spend the three-week quarantine period in the facility that had remained largely unused since it was built in 2022 is response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A decision had yet to be made on what precautions should be taken for the remainder of the 42-day period of potential incubation that the World Health Organization had identified, Butler said.

The six passengers all tested negative for the virus before they left the Netherlands, had been assessed by a doctor during the flight and would undergo more detailed health assessments at Bullsbrook, Butler said.

In America, health officials transferred the two passengers who were originally sent to Atlanta to the National Quarantine Center in Omaha on Thursday. Nebraska Medicine spokeswoman Kayla Thomas said those two were medically cleared to move to the facility here at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, but she wouldn't say whether they tested negative.

Thomas said that health officials were comfortable bringing all the passengers here to Omaha now that no one is being treated in the hospital’s biocontainment unit. Initially one of the passengers had been placed there after he tested positive on the ship, but he has since tested negative for hantavirus.

The MV Hondius ship was on a cruise from Argentina to the Antarctic and then to several isolated islands in the South Atlantic Ocean when the hantavirus outbreak was identified. Three people among the 11 cases from the ship have died.

With the evacuation of all passengers and many crew members completed, the MV Hondius is now sailing back to the Netherlands, where it will be cleaned and disinfected.

According to a complaint unsealed Friday in federal court in Manhattan, Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi sought to attack a New York City synagogue last month and provided an undercover law enforcement officer with photos and maps of Jewish centers in Los Angeles and Scottsdale, Arizona, that he planned to target.

Al-Saadi is also accused of involvement in two recent attacks in Canada: an attack on a synagogue and a shooting at the U.S. consulate in Toronto in March. U.S. prosecutors said he directed and urged other people to attack U.S. and Israeli interests, including by killing Americans and Jews.

Al-Saadi posted about the attacks on Snapchat and Telegram and spoke about them in phone calls recorded by an FBI informant whose help he solicited in planning attacks in the U.S., the complaint said. Al-Saadi told the informant he was willing to kill people in any such attacks, the complaint said.

Al-Saadi, 32, is charged with conspiracy to provide material support to Kata’ib Hizballah, an Iran-backed Iraqi Shia militant group, and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, both of which have been designated by the U.S. government as foreign terrorist organizations. U.S. prosecutors said Al-Saadi was a Kata’ib Hizballah commander.

He is also charged with conspiring and providing material support for acts of terrorism and conspiring to bomb a place of public use.

FBI Director Kash Patel described Al-Saadi as a "high-value target responsible for mass global terrorism" and said his arrest was the product of "a righteous mission executed brilliantly” by the agency's agents, investigators, tactical units and law enforcement partners.

New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, whose officers investigated Al-Saadi as part of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, said the case “puts into stark relief the global threats posed by the Iranian regime and its proxies like Kata’ib Hizballah.”

Al-Saadi smiled throughout his initial court appearance but did not speak.

Through his lawyer, he called himself a political prisoner and a prisoner of war and said he is being persecuted by U.S. authorities for his relationship with Qasem Soleimani, the Revolutionary Guard leader who was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

Al-Saadi was not required to enter a plea. He will remain jailed but could request bail.

His lawyer, Andrew Dalack, said Al-Saadi was arrested in Turkey and turned over to U.S. authorities. In his statement, Patel thanked U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, calling him "instrumental in bringing this successful mission home to the United States.”

Al-Saadi has been kept in solitary confinement since he arrived at a federal jail in Brooklyn on Thursday night, Dalack said, adding that such treatment was “unusual given the nature of charges in the complaint."

According to the criminal complaint, Al-Saadi and unnamed associates planned, coordinated, and claimed responsibility for a barrage of attacks in the name of Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, a component of Kata’ib Hizballah, since the war started on Feb. 28.

They include the bombing of a Bank of New York Mellon building in Amsterdam in mid-March and a thwarted bomb attack on a Bank of America office in Paris on March 28, the complaint said. Teenage suspects were previously arrested in both cases.

The Amsterdam attack caused a fire and significant damage to the building, but no injuries, according to local media reports. It followed an explosion outside a Jewish school in Amsterdam, which Al-Saadi celebrated on Snapchat with an Ashab al-Yamin-branded video showing the blast and the assailants fleeing on a motorcycle, the criminal complaint said.

In Paris, police found a homemade bomb consisting of a gasoline-filled container taped to a powerful firework. Forensic experts said the device contained 650 grams (about 23 ounces) of explosives and that it could have produced a large fireball and ignited a significant blaze.

Last month, Al-Saadi set his sights on bombing Jewish sites in the U.S. and offered the undercover law enforcement officer $10,000 in cryptocurrency for what he envisioned as simultaneous attacks on the New York synagogue and the Jewish centers in Arizona and California, the criminal complaint said.

After paying the officer an initial installment of $3,000 for the synagogue attack, Al-Saadi encouraged him to strike as soon as possible, telling him in an April 6 text message: “I wanna see good news tonight . . . not tomorrow bro,” the complaint said.

The Texas Attorney General’s office ruled the City of San Antonio does not have to release the results of an investigation into the confrontation between Jones and District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur.

Assistant Attorney General James Coggeshall said Tuesday that the report was covered by attorney-client privilege and may be withheld.

“The city states the submitted information consists of a report authored by legal counsel for the city pertaining to an investigation that was conducted by that same legal counsel.

“The city also states the report was provided to the city to facilitate the rendition of professional legal services and advice to the city. The city asserts the information at issue was intended to be and has remained confidential.

“Based on these representations and our review, we find the city has demonstrated the applicability of the attorney-client privilege to the information at issue.”

Assistant Attorney General James Coggeshall, Open Records Division

The Attorney General’s Office review was triggered after the city asked to block KSAT’s open records request for the investigation’s findings.

The investigation occurred after a Feb. 5 encounter between the mayor and councilmember, where Jones acknowledged swearing and raising her voice in a discussion about fire sprinkler regulations and Bonham Exchange. Specifics of what happened in the city council break room have not been made public.

Kaur filed a complaint under the City Council’s Code of Conduct on Feb. 9, accusing Jones of profanity, abusive language, and intimidating behavior.

That same day, five councilmembers requested a meeting to consider censuring Jones following an investigation into the complaint.

The city brought in an outside attorney to investigate, who determined Jones violated the code of conduct as well as administrative directives on Equal Employment Opportunity and Anti-harassment as well as Violence in the Workplace.

The council voted 8-1 to censure Jones on Feb. 27, a few days after being briefed behind closed doors on the outside attorney’s report.

The resolution accused Jones of being “verbally abusive” during the Feb. 5 incident and cited unspecified “prior inappropriate interactions with councilmembers, city staff and constituents.”

Neither Kaur nor Jones was present for the vote, though Jones made a short statement at the beginning of the meeting before recusing herself.

While avoiding specifics, some councilmembers have indicated the incident may have been more severe than what was made public.

Before voting in favor of censuring Jones, District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said, “the independent investigation found repeated, directed, and aggressive language” as well as intimidation.

“I do not clutch my pearls at profanity,” McKee-Rodriguez said. “(The investigation) found proximity, posture, and threats that crossed a line.”

After the vote, Kaur said the mayor attempted to diminish the confrontation “by saying it was a single F-bomb that was thrown.” She was joined by many of her fellow councilmembers.

“It is very different to use the curse word as an adjective,” Kaur said, “versus to use it to continuously berate someone and intimidate them.”

District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears, the lone vote against the censure, said she did not believe Jones’ “unprofessional” conduct rose to the level of censure. She also said she had concerns about the investigative process.

A censure vote is largely symbolic, on its own, publicly rebuking an elected official for their actions without actually removing any of their power.

The resolution also called for the mayor to take leadership training, however, and step aside as chair of the Governance Committee until she had completed it or three months had passed, whichever was longer.

The three months should be up later this month, and a city spokeswoman confirmed the mayor had completed the training.

Read the ruling from the Attorney General’s office below:

San Antonio can withhold report on Mayor’s ‘verbally abusive’ confrontation, AG’s office rules by criley

Read also:

• Licensed handgun carry now allowed at San Antonio City Council meetings
• KSAT Q&A: Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones discusses North Side home explosions, staff departures

At 8 p.m. Friday, the excitement will be livestreamed in this article, on KSAT.com and KSAT Plus. Delays are possible; if no livestream is available, check back at a later time.

The Spurs and Timberwolves are facing off Friday at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

San Antonio is leading the series 3-2 and could secure a spot in the Western Conference finals with a win on Friday.

The winner of the series will face the Oklahoma City Thunder.

KSAT’s Ernie Zuniga also joined fans before Game 5. Watch the full livestream from Tuesday below:

More Spurs coverage on KSAT:

• ‘My horn just gave out’: Spurs fans breaking car horns amid playoff celebrations, resulting in costly repairs
• Meet the DJ behind the turntables at Spurs games, watch parties
• As Spurs keep winning, SW Military celebrations grow bigger and rowdier

One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro was defense minister at the time.

All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was reported earlier by CBS.

Any criminal charge against Castro, which would need to be approved by a grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana. Following the U.S. military’s brazen capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the Trump administration quickly turned its attention to its ally Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts across the island, increasing food insecurity, and heightening ongoing economic woes across the island.

But the U.S. war in Iran gave Cuban leaders something of a reprieve from U.S. talk of regime change.

Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will play well with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade members of the U.S. military to pursue a second war of choice — this time just 90 miles from Florida.

“There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” said Feinberg. “There's no clear line of succession and it's hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”

Trump calls Cuba ‘a declining country’

The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to reopen its investigation into Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown.

As Trump seeks to wind down the war in Iran, speculation has been growing that he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba after pledging earlier this year a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership didn’t open up its economy to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

Trump declined to discuss a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the Justice Department.

“But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country — they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”

CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.

Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 2011, and then handed power to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019.

While he largely has avoided the spotlight since retiring in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who previously met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Aircraft shootdown a watershed moment for US-Cuba ties

Cuba's shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna aircraft operated by the Brothers to the Rescue was a watershed moment in decades of hostilities between the two countries.

At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to reduce tensions with a Cold War adversary but faced stiff opposition from exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing economic deprivation and single-party rule.

The Cubans had warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to defend against what it considered deliberate provocations. But those calls went unheeded and on Feb. 26, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba's airspace, according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization’s leader, narrowly escaped.

“With hindsight, it appears the Castros' motive was to slow down the Clinton outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their national security posture,” said Richard Fienberg, who worked on Cuban issues at the National Security Council at the time.

They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, said Feinberg.

Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed what became known as the Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and made it far more complicated for successive U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba.

To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single person of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo Hernández, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but was released by President Barack Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as part of an attempt to normalize relations with Cuba.

Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted but are outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba.

___

Tucker and Durkin Richer reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Collin Binkley contributed.

The Texas Legislature last year passed a law requiring sheriffs who run a jail or contract out jail operations to take part in the federal 287(g) program, which gives local law enforcement certain immigration enforcement authority. Since the law took effect Jan. 1, Paxton said sheriffs in El Paso, Bexar and Harris counties have started negotiating or finalized an agreement with ICE — but that has not been the case for Dallas County. 

He also criticized a comment that Sheriff Marian Brown made in October about putting “no additional efforts” into entering the 287(g) program. 

“The decision of whether to seek such an agreement is not yours to make,” Paxton said in a Wednesday letter to the sheriff. 

Brown said Paxton jumped the gun, noting in a statement that the law gives her until Dec. 1 to comply.  

Responding to the criticism of her “no additional efforts” statement, the sheriff said her office already cooperates with federal immigration authorities similar to what would be required under the 287(g) agreement’s jail enforcement model.

“My comments reflected my position that Dallas County already engages in cooperation with federal authorities and does not view duplicative administrative measures as necessary to achieve the same public safety objectives,” Brown said in her statement.

Fourteen Democratic state lawmakers from the Dallas area signed a letter Friday calling on Paxton to “immediately desist from this clear political use of [his] office and the partisan harassment of a duly elected sheriff who has violated no law.” The attorney general’s office didn’t immediately respond to a comment request.

The jail enforcement model — one of two types of jail-related partnerships under the 287(g) program — allows local law enforcement to identify people for immigration enforcement when they are already in custody with pending or active criminal charges. The warrant service model lets officers “serve and execute administrative warrants” on people in their jails and hold them for ICE.

But even without a partnership, the Dallas County Jail was among the nation’s top 10 jails for ICE detainers, which are requests from immigration agents to hold a person for deportation. The North Texas lockup accounted for more than 4,000 detainers between September 2023 and late July 2025 — surpassing Bexar County during the same period — according to figures from the Deportation Data Project. Meanwhile, Harris County Jail led the country with more than 9,500 detainers. 

A 2017 state law also requires sheriff’s offices, which operate county jails, to honor these detainer requests. 

The Bexar County sheriff entered into a 287(g) warrant service agreement in October, according to ICE data last updated on May 12.

Information for El Paso and Harris counties was not yet available, though the El Paso agency told the Tribune that it intends to also pursue the same model.

ICE data show Texas sheriffs have signed more than 270 agreements under the cooperative program as of May 12, including some counties registering for multiple models.

The 287(g) program also has the task force model that allows local law enforcement agencies to question individuals about their immigration status during routine policing work.

Republicans in Tennessee this month enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up a Cohen's majority-Black district, reshaping it to the GOP’s advantage as part of President Donald Trump’s strategy to hold on to a slim majority in the November midterm elections.

“I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me,” Cohen told reporters in his Washington, D.C., office.

Cohen is challenging the state’s redistricting effort in court and said he would reenter the race if that lawsuit succeeded in restoring his old congressional district.

He lamented that Tennessee would likely shift to an entirely Republican congressional delegation after the next election, warning that it could also leave the state out of the loop once Democrats are able to regain the White House.

Redistricting targeted Cohen's district

Tennessee was the first state to pass new congressional districts after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities. But more Southern states could follow. Republicans in Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina also have taken steps toward redistricting.

Cohen has represented his Memphis-based district for about two decades, among the last of the white Democrats representing the South. He has been a longtime member of the House Judiciary Committee and has focused on strengthening voting access and civil rights.

“It’s unique in America that an African-American majority district has elected a white guy, and that we’ve got a great relationship, great amount of support,” said Cohen, who is also the first Jewish person to represent Tennessee in Congress.

He was facing a primary challenge from state lawmaker Justin Pearson, a Black progressive who represents much of Memphis in the state's General Assembly.

"The status quo is failing us,” Pearson told The Associated Press Friday. “It’s time for new energy, new voices, and new ideas to meet this present moment, and that’s why I started to run in the first place.”

Pearson said he still intends to run in Tennessee’s redrawn 9th Congressional District, which now includes multiple rural counties that backed Trump by double-digit margins.

“We’re going to win. It’s going to be harder, but as an ancestor once said, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn’t climb it,” said Pearson. He said his message would not change, but argued his agenda had some appeal to rural, working-class, white conservatives.

But Cohen predicted it would be nearly impossible for Tennessee Democrats to win a seat in Congress with the new districts. He added there was a chance the redistricting effort could “backfire on the Republicans” but that would require an “unbelievable registration effort among Democrats” and a massive vote turnout.

Cohen vows to oppose Trump

Sitting in his congressional office with staff looking on, Cohen pointed to photos of Memphis and local projects that he had championed during his career and expressed worry that Memphis voters would no longer have a voice in Washington. He also recounted how he had worked with the state's Republican leaders to win funding during the Biden administration for a larger bridge to cross the Mississippi River into Memphis.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement that Cohen was “a powerful champion for civil rights” and that “the City of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference.”

Cohen said the Republican's redistricting effort was being done “for Donald Trump to get one more vote, he thinks, to stop him from being impeached.”

Still, he vowed to use his remaining time in Congress to try to mount opposition to Trump, calling the president “the greatest threat to democracy and to decorum and grace that we’ve ever seen.”

Like many lawmakers, Cohen has often attracted attention with colorful outbursts during congressional debates and hearings. During Trump’s first term, in 2019, Cohen brought a bucket of fried chicken to a House Judiciary Committee hearing at which then-Attorney General William P. Barr was a no-show.

“The message is Attorney General Bill Barr is not brave enough to answer questions from a staff attorney and members of the Judiciary Committee,” he said in a statement at the time.

While Trump's supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as Congress tried to certify the results of the presidential election, Cohen screamed angrily at his Republican colleagues to “Call Trump. Call your friend. Tell him to do something.”

Cohen was among the first Democrats to join impeachment efforts for Trump in his first term, and he has signed on to articles of impeachment against Trump this year as well.

Memphis activists respond to new map

Meanwhile, Memphis activists grappled with the new political realities after the Republican-led legislature’s decision to divide the city’s longtime congressional district into three neighboring districts.

Advocates said they believed they could work with — and pressure — any lawmaker who will represent the city.

“Things are going to change. We’re aware of that,” said Tierney Macon, an activist with The Equity Alliance, a local civil rights group.

Macon, who protested at the Tennessee statehouse for days following the unveiling of the redrawn maps, said activists aimed to hold the city’s new representatives in Congress accountable no matter their party.

“We just have to be engaged,” Macon said.

Demonstrations in the statehouse included chants accusing lawmakers of resurrecting Jim Crow, a system of state and local laws that for decades enforced racial segregation and disenfranchisement across the South.

___

Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

Several U.S. officials confirmed that 4,000 troops from the Army's 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division were no longer en route to Poland this week. The Trump administration had previously said it was cutting U.S. forces only in Germany, and the decision spurred questions and criticism in both Warsaw and Washington.

Two officials told The Associated Press the Poland deployment was canceled after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth signed a memo directing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to move a brigade combat team out of Europe. One of them said the choice of which unit was left to military leaders.

Besides the Army combat team based in Fort Hood, Texas, the memo also led to the cancellation of an upcoming deployment to Germany of a battalion trained in firing long-range rockets and missiles, according to the two officials, who like the others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.

Three U.S. officials said the canceled deployments were part of an effort to comply with a presidential order issued at the beginning of May to reduce the number of troops in Europe by about 5,000. The reasoning does not appear to have been well communicated because others based in Europe said they did not know if the halted deployment to Poland was part of the previously announced reduction in troops.

Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.

The drawdown reflects a growing rift between the administration and traditional European allies, with the U.S. leader repeatedly criticizing fellow NATO members for a lack of support for the Iran conflict.

Polish officials on Friday insisted that the canceled U.S. deployment to Poland, which was reported earlier by The Military Times and other outlets, was not targeted directly at their country but was a consequence of Trump’s decision to reduce the number of troops in Germany.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he “received assurances” that the decision was of a logistical nature and said it does not directly impact deterrence capabilities and Poland’s security.

Military says the decision to cancel a unit heading to Poland was made recently

Joel Valdez, a Pentagon spokesman, said “the decision to withdraw troops follows a comprehensive, multilayered process” and he argued that it was “not an unexpected, last-minute decision.”

Speaking to Congress in a hearing Friday, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the Army’s chief of staff, said discussions around the halted deployment to Poland occurred over the past two weeks but that the decision itself was made in the past couple days.

Republican Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said he spoke with Polish officials Thursday and they were “blindsided.”

The move also left some U.S. military personnel in Europe in the dark about how the Trump administration was reducing forces. A U.S. official based in Europe said a meeting was called with 20 minutes' notice on Monday to discuss the cancellation of the deployment to Poland.

At that time, troops had already been sent to Poland and some still in the U.S. were told shortly before departure not to travel to the airport, that official said. Another official said most of the Army unit’s equipment had already made it to Europe and was sitting in ports.

The change to troop deployment to Poland draws bipartisan criticism

Democratic and Republican lawmakers criticized the reductions as sending the wrong signal both to allies and Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose forces this week have launched one of the deadliest attacks on the Ukrainian capital in the 4-year-old war.

At the House Armed Services Committee hearing Friday, LaNeve said he worked with U.S. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, commander in Europe of both American and NATO forces, after Grynkewich received the instructions for the force reduction.

“I’ve worked with him in close consultation of what that force unit would be, and it made the most sense for that brigade to not do its deployment in theater,” LaNeve said.

Bacon called the decision “reprehensible” and said it was “an embarrassment to our country what we just did to Poland.”

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the committee, said the military is required to consult with lawmakers and that did not happen.

“So we don’t know what’s going on here,” Rogers said. "But I can just tell you we’re not happy with what’s being talked about.”

A State Department official said Friday at a security conference in Tallinn, Estonia, that the U.S. reductions in Europe were “right there in black and white” but also noted that “the U.S. isn’t going anywhere.”

“We’ll continue to work with the Pentagon and work with our partners to make sure we get the right fit and right mix of what’s happening here on the ground,” said Thomas G. DiNanno, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security.

NATO says the change in Poland won't affect defense

With the halted deployments, the U.S. military presence in Europe will now be at pre-2022 levels, before Russia commenced its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, one U.S. official said.

Europe has been bracing for a reduction since Trump returned to the White House, with the administration warning that Europe would have to look after its own security, including Ukraine's, in the future.

A NATO official said the U.S. decision to cancel its rotational deployment to Poland would not impact NATO's deterrence and defense plans. Canada and Germany have increased their presence on the alliance's eastern flank, which contributes to NATO's overall strength, the official said, insisting on anonymity in line with NATO regulations.

Ben Hodges, former commanding general of U.S. Army Europe, said the move “reinforces the perception that the United States just does things without consultation with allies,” which ultimately “damages cohesion inside the alliance.” The decision would in the long run harm the U.S. defense industry as it reduces the trust of partners, he said.

Around 10,000 U.S. troops are typically stationed in Poland, the majority of them present in the country on a rotational basis. Only about 300 troops are permanently stationed in the country, according to the U.S. Congressional Research Service.

Polish officials had hoped they would be spared from any cuts as Poland spends the most in NATO on defense as a proportion of its economy — around 4.7% in 2025. Hegseth has called it a “model ally” in NATO for spending so much on defense.

When Poland’s conservative president, Karol Nawrocki, visited the White House in September, Trump said he didn't intend to pull U.S. troops out of Poland. “We’ll put more there if they want,” Trump said at the time.

___

Burrows reported from Tallinn, Estonia, and Ciobanu from Warsaw, Poland.

The Tejano Conjunto Festival, described on its website as the longest-running conjunto festival in the United States, announced that its 44th annual event takes place from May 14-17.

Thursday’s event was held at the Royal Palace Ballroom, located at 3506 SW Military Drive, and is free for seniors, according to the website.

Friday through Sunday events are held at Rosedale Park and feature over 30 bands, including local high school conjunto performances.

Sunday night will end with a tribute to Jiménez starting at 8 p.m. Fans can expect performances from Los Texmaniacs, Flaco’s brother Santiago Jiménez Jr., and international guests representing Mexico, Spain, Japan and the Netherlands, a festival spokesperson said.

Jiménez was a Tejano music pioneer who was known as an accordionist for the Texas Tornados, Los Texmaniacs, Los Super Seven and Sir Douglas Quintet.

He died on July 31 at the age of 86. Jiménez’s accordion solos are remembered through the “San Antonio National Anthem” — "(Hey Baby) Que Paso.“

“I think this is one of the best and most diverse, nationally and internationally, musical line-ups we’ve had at the TCF in a long time. I’m excited,” said festival founder Juan Tejeda in a news release. “No other tribute to Flaco has brought together as many international artists to honor him.”

Day pass wristbands for the festival range from $15 to $25 for Friday through Sunday.

A whole weekend wristband pass costs $50, and an additional $10 for a replacement.

More Things To Do stories on KSAT:

• Journey to perform at Frost Bank Center in October on farewell tour
• Karol G announces world tour, plans Alamodome return in September
• Free outdoor films under the moon are back at South Side theater
• Free, discounted movies return to San Antonio theaters this summer

Researchers in China used satellites and artificial intelligence to track and analyze oxygen levels in more than 21,000 rivers across the globe since 1985. They found oxygen levels have dropped an average of 2.1% since 1985, according to a study published Friday in Science Advances. That doesn't seem like much but it adds up and if it continues or accelerates, rivers in the Eastern United States, India and across the tropics could lose enough oxygen by the end of the century to suffocate some fish and create dead zones, the study said.

Basic chemistry and physics dictate that warmer water holds less oxygen, scientists said. Warmer water, which happens with human-caused climate change, releases more oxygen into the atmosphere.

If the oxygen loss rate continues at the current pace, the world's rivers on average will lose an additional 4% of their oxygen by the end of the century, and in some cases close to 5%, the study found. That's when oxygen loss — called deoxygenation — becomes problematic for fish and people who rely on rivers, according to the study's lead author Qi Guan, an environmental scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Nanjing.

More dead zones appear

Scientists worry that oxygen levels in rivers could fall so low that dead zones appear, as they have in the Gulf of Mexico, Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie. Those are areas where fish struggle to breathe and die.

“Deoxygenation is a very slow process. If we have a long period, the negative impact will attack the river ecosystems,” Guan said. “The low level of oxygen can cause a series of ecological crises such as biodiversity decline, water quality degradation and maybe some fish will die.”

University of Arizona geoscientist Karl Flessa, who wasn't part of the study, said in an email that losing oxygen in rivers means “a future of more stinky dead zones (hypoxia), especially during heat waves.”

Some rivers are in such bad shape that “a small change can tip them into the danger zone,” Flessa said. “if your favorite fishing hole gets too warm, oxygen levels will go down and there won't be any fish to catch.”

India, Eastern US and the Amazon are hot spots

Earlier this century, India's heavily polluted Ganges River was losing oxygen more than 20 times faster than the global average, the study said. Even with moderate-to-high increases in global carbon dioxide emission rates — not the implausible worst-case scenario — rivers in the Eastern United States, the Arctic, India and much of South America are projected to lose about 10% of their oxygen by the end of the century, the analysis showed.

Guan said he worries about tropical rivers especially, such as the Amazon in Brazil. Since 1980, the number of days with dead zone spots in the Amazon rose by nearly 16 days per decade, a study last year found.

Hydrology professor Marc Bierkens of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said a study he and colleagues did last year showed oxygen stress in the world's rivers increased by 13 days every decade and dead zone occurrences increased by nearly three days a decade since 1980. As the world continues to warm, those numbers should jump even higher, said Bierkens, who didn't participate in the Chinese study.

Guan's study found several reasons for oxygen loss in the world's rivers, including nutrient pollution from fertilizer and urban runoff, along with dam construction, flow and wind issues. But nearly 63% of the problem is from warmer water, the study found.

Duke University ecologist and biogeochemist Emily Bernhardt, who wasn't part of the study, said “as rivers warm it becomes easier and easier for the same pollution problems as before to cause more severe, more long lasting or more widespread hypoxia and anoxia.” Anoxia is the total loss of oxygen.

“Water pollution reduction is more important than ever and will be harder as rivers warm,” she said.

___

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.

From free parking and new exhibits to interactive animal experiences and family attractions, the zoo continues to expand what visitors can see and do.

One of the biggest perks for guests is that parking is completely free. Visitors have multiple options, including lots near the train station and Starbucks, as well as the parking garage on Tuleta Drive.

General admission prices range from about $23 to $35, depending on the day and type of ticket. Children’s admission is slightly less expensive. Kids ages 3 and younger get in free.

For guests planning multiple visits throughout the year, the zoo staff recommends its “Pay for a Day Membership.” That will cost $44.99 for the whole year.

Animal encounters remain one of the zoo’s biggest draws. Guests can take part in the popular giraffe feeding experience where visitors can hand-feed them lettuce for $5.

One of the newest additions at the zoo is Congo Falls, which opened in December. The exhibit brought gorillas back to the San Antonio Zoo for the first time in more than 35 years.

The large exhibit allows guests to walk through immersive viewing areas. Guests looking for a break can also find several snack stands throughout the zoo.

Snack prices can vary. Regular popcorn costs $6.99, and fountain drinks are priced at $4.99. Souvenir popcorn buckets are available for $10, while souvenir drink cups in the Congo Falls area cost $19.

For the souvenir cup and bucket, refills cost a $1.99.

The zoo also features several gift shops, which feature items from Project Selva — a program that supports artisans in local villages.

According to zoo employees, 100% of the proceeds from Project Selva items go directly back to the communities where the products are made.

The San Antonio Zoo is home to more than 750 species from around the world, including giraffes, flamingos, rhinos and crocodiles. Families can also enjoy the zoo’s carousel, which features 60 hand-painted and custom-designed animal figures. Carousel rides cost $3 per person.

The miniature train and tracks are located just outside of the zoo for a quick trip around Brackenridge Park at $6 per ride.

The San Antonio Zoo also offers Locals Days when admission is reduced to just $8. The next three Locals Day dates will be:

• Tuesday, May 19
• Sunday, June 14
• Wednesday, July 15

More recent Things To Do coverage on KSAT:

• Tejano Conjunto Festival to pay tribute to Flaco Jiménez’s legacy this weekend
• Free, discounted movies return to San Antonio theaters this summer
• Journey to perform at Frost Bank Center in October on farewell tour

The National Transportation Safety Board was leading the review in Akron, alongside the Federal Aviation Administration and Ohio State Highway Patrol, officials said.

The white and blue Piper PA-28-180, commonly known as the Cherokee, took off from Akron Fulton Airport for a training flight at around 2 p.m. on Thursday, according to Aaron McCarter, an NTSB aviation accident investigator.

The two people on board — a certified flight instructor and the aircraft's pilot-owner — completed a number of standard training maneuvers in the area before making what appeared to be two different attempts to land at the airport. On the second approach, McCarter said, “something upset the aircraft” and it spiraled out of the sky from about 1,000 feet (305 meters), striking a road and then crashing into the house and catching fire.

Dark black smoke could be seen towering into the air near the crash, which was first reported by witnesses at the nearby Firestone Country Club, according to 911 calls provided by Akron police.

McCarter said that witness testimony and doorbell camera footage of the descent and crash will be used as evidence as investigators try to determine what happened. Thursday's high winds also will be considered. He said that Piper Aircraft is assisting with the review.

Three people were in the house at the time of impact — a father and two children, he said, and all managed to escape unharmed.

“It is incredible," McCarter said. "And they are blessed to have made it out of that house, considering the catastrophic nature of the accident.”

That family's home is still not habitable, as the aircraft was being removed from the site Friday to be taken back to the airport for evaluation. A second house also had to be evacuated due to the fire, according to the Akron Fire Department.

The Summit County Medical Examiner’s office said Friday that authorities had yet to identify the bodies of the two people who were killed or to notify their families.

The nearby American Winds College of Aeronautics alerted staff, students and families on Facebook late Wednesday that all of its airplanes were safe. Denise Hobart, of the North East Ohio Pilots Association, said on behalf of the school that they were praying for the pilot, anyone on board and their families.

They are ridiculous. They are addictively great. Comic books, of the superhero variety, are 100% American.

Compare the thin comic book to Europe’s graphic novels, and they come off looking flimsy, infantile. Compare the American comic to Japanese Manga and they appear innocent in their fixation with heroism; they hark back to a departed American age.

Once a nickel, a dime, a quarter, now the price of a latte, they are objects of American consumer capitalism. The comic is literature in junk-food version. Candy for the eyes, candy for the mind.

Yet what truly makes them American objects is what plays out in their 32 pages month after month, decade upon decade.

When the Fantastic Four took their fateful space journey in 1961 and “cosmic rays” transformed the quartet into unwilling superheroes, comics entered a weird realm where the all-powerful were also the unwilling, decidedly modern victims of science and circumstance.

Spider-Man, the Hulk, Wolverine (the list goes on) were given supernatural abilities that made them outcasts, obliging them to be flawed messiahs.

They were, by some quirk of the American character, bound to Peter Parker’s moral imperative: “With great power comes great responsibility." They are versions of an American Sisyphus, bound to saving us over and over again.

What could be more American — that might, when lashed to a sense of justice, eventually, makes right? So honorable, so naïve.

To this day, though the tone is darker, Marvel and DC, the two mammoths of comics, continue to reimagine the American character.

Once side attractions in a world of leading white men, Gwen Stacy, Jean Grey and Susan Storm have in recent years emerged as leaders to reinvigorate the Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four sagas. Absolute Wonder Woman has broken ground with beautiful art. Miles Morales is Spidey for a new generation.

Yet the central fissures remain.

Bruce Wayne can't connect with anyone other than his butler; he is the lonely individual in an atomized America. Steve Rogers bears the burden of representing the “Greatest Generation” from World War II. He is a Captain America forever out of place, even in his own land.

And could there be a more iconic tech magnate toying with humanity's fate than Superman's nemesis Lex Luthor and his delusions of grandeur? If only our world had a bespectacled Clark Kent keeping an eye on things. Just in case.

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

More than a century after a U.S. Army chaplain pushed for “dog tags” to become standard issue for troops, they remain one of the most powerful links for grieving military families to their lost loved ones.

“What they’re searching for is connection,” said Air Force Chaplain and Maj. Benjamin Quintanilla Jr. at Dover Air Force Base, where U.S. casualties from the wars in Afghanistan and now Iran have been repatriated. “So these dog tags become just a sacred symbol.”

From the World Wars to Vietnam and conflicts in the Middle East, military identification tags have also been a symbol of Americans’ sacrifice in global conflicts.

It’s unclear why the small metal rounded rectangles — hanging on ball chains and listing name, rank, company and other information, depending on the era — are called dog tags, according to the Pentagon.

The need to identify those fallen in battle had been spotlighted by the American Civil War, when staggering numbers of soldiers were buried as “unknown” — such as 75% of the 17,000 Union troops at Vicksburg National Cemetery, according to the National Park Service.

At the end of the Spanish-American War, the 1898 conflict that propelled the United States into global power, Chaplain Charles C. Pierce, then in charge of the morgue in the Philippines, first requested that Army soldiers be issued tags.

By the U.S. entry into World War I, all combat soldiers were required to wear them. They were an official part of the uniform by World War II.

Today, advances in forensics make tags less crucial for identification. But the religious affiliation on them is still useful for chaplains in the battlefield to provide appropriate prayers to dying or fallen troops, Quintanilla said.

And it’s the symbolism of connection that makes them irreplaceable. Surviving families treasure the dog tags their loved ones wore — and the new ones placed in honor on the casket at dignified transfer ceremonies — so much that some keep wearing them or even have them tattooed.

For troops, they’re the simplest sign of belonging.

“I can trust somebody who is wearing the same identification as me,” said Quintanilla, who first joined the Air Force as a dental technician. “It means that I was a part of something greater than myself.”

___

Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said China reserved the right to buy as many as 750 Boeing aircraft as part of a deal reached during the summit. The White House did not specify the types of planes or provide any other details.

Neither the Chinese government nor Boeing issued statements confirming the purchase agreement. A Boeing spokesperson on Friday referred questions to the White House. The deal, if finalized, would mark a significant breakthrough in a market that was once central to the U.S. aerospace company’s long-term growth.

Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg was among a large group of American CEOs who joined Trump during the president's trip to Beijing, seeking to sell products and services to China.

Trump said the potential aircraft deal also would benefit General Electric, which he said would supply 400 to 450 engines to China. GE Aerospace Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp also joined the president on his trip. The company did not immediately comment on the agreement.

While there were some hopes that the summit would result in concrete announcements of deals, the trip ended with a lot of uncertainty about what the two sides agreed on, said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund.

“I think we really have to wait until we hear numbers from Boeing or from the Chinese,” Glaser told a media briefing Friday, saying there had been little concrete information about any trade agreements from the summit, including on Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as soybeans, liquefied natural gas and beef. “All that we have is really what the president has told the world that China has agreed to.”

Last month, Ortberg expressed confidence that any broad U.S.-China trade agreement to emerge when Trump and Xi met would be a “meaningful opportunity” for Boeing.

“President Trump has been very focused on supporting us in international campaigns, and he’s been very successful in doing that,” Ortberg told investors.

Since Trump's return to the White House for his second term, his administration has made Boeing a focus of its plans to revive U.S. manufacturing. A visit to the Middle East a year ago culminated in major aircraft agreements, including a Qatar Airways order for up to 210 Boeing jets in what the planemaker described at the time as its largest-ever widebody aircraft order. Saudi Arabia also placed commercial jetliner orders during the trip.

Other major Boeing agreements have followed meetings between Trump and foreign leaders. In August, Korean Air formalized a roughly $50 billion deal to buy more than 100 Boeing aircraft, spare engines and long-term maintenance services during South Korean President Lee Jae Myung’s visit to Washington. The following month, a day after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with Trump in Washington, Turkish Airlines said it planned to add 225 Boeing aircraft to its fleet.

In another win for Boeing, the biennial Dubai Air Show opened in November with hometown airline Emirates ordering 65 of Boeing’s upcoming 777-9 aircraft. Days later, FlyDubai, the lower-cost sister carrier of Emirates, announced it had ordered 75 additional Boeing 737 MAX aircraft.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly a third of the narrowbody airliners Boeing delivered went to China. But the company's business there plummeted as U.S.-China relations soured.

China also was the first country to ground the 737 Max in 2019 after two of the then-new models crashed less than five months apart in Indonesia and Ethiopia, killing 346 people. Chinese airlines did not resume Max flights until January 2023, much later than carriers in many other countries.

Ortberg took over as Boeing's CEO in 2024, a calamitous year for the company. In January of that year, a panel known as a door plug blew off a 737 Max shortly after takeoff from Portland, Oregon. Boeing faced mounting financial pressure as it came under intensifying scrutiny over alleged production and quality failures.

Months later, the U.S. Justice Department revived a criminal case against Boeing tied to the two fatal Max crashes, although prosecutors later reached an agreement with Boeing to dismiss the case, committing the company to an additional $1.1 billion in fines, compensation for victims’ families and internal safety and quality improvements.

Then an eight-week strike stretching through the fall by machinists who assemble the 737 Max in Washington state disrupted production and added to the company’s financial strain.

___

Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Kelvin Chan in London contributed to this story.

The S&P 500 fell 1.2% from its all-time high set the day before. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 537 points, or 1.1%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.5% from its own record.

Technology stocks tumbled in a sharp turnaround from their meteoric rises for much of the year, which had carried markets worldwide to records but also raised criticism that they had gone too far.

Nvidia, the stock that quickly became the face of the AI revolution, dropped 4.4% and was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500. It had come into the day with a gain of more than 26% for the year so far.

Micron Technology was another one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 6.6%. It’s nevertheless still up nearly 154% for the year so far.

“To us, it looks like markets have pushed into overbought territory,” according to Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management. He said the strong corporate profits and durable U.S. economy that launched U.S. stocks to records remain intact, but “the path is unlikely to be smooth. Periods like this call for discipline more than hope.”

In the meantime, rising oil prices are raising the pressure after already worsening inflation by more than economists had feared. The war with Iran is continuing, and the Strait of Hormuz remains shut to oil tankers, which is preventing them from delivering crude to customers worldwide and driving up oil’s price.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, rose 3.3% to settle at $109.26 and is well above its level of roughly $70 from before the war.

Many big U.S. companies have been saying their customers have been able to keep spending on their products and services despite having to pay higher prices for gasoline. But U.S. households have also been telling surveys they’re feeling discouraged about the economy and the pressures building on them because of the war and tariffs.

The worries were most clear Friday in the bond market, where Treasury yields climbed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.59% from 4.47% late Thursday. That’s a notable move for the bond market, and it’s well above its 3.97% level from before the war.

The yield on the 30-year Treasury reached 5.13% and is back to where it was in 2007, before the financial crisis sent yields crashing toward zero in the ensuing year.

Higher yields can make mortgages and other kinds of loans going to U.S. households and businesses more expensive, which slows the economy. They also tend to push downward on prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments.

Stocks of smaller companies had some of Friday’s sharpest drops. Many of them need to borrow cash to grow, which means higher borrowing costs can hurt them more than their big rivals. The Russell 2000 index of the smallest U.S. stocks fell 2.4%, double the S&P 500’s loss.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 92.74 points to 7,408.50. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 537.29 to 49,526.17, and the Nasdaq composite sank 410.08 to 26,225.14.

Yields have been climbing since the war on worries about higher inflation and how it may tie the Federal Reserve’s hands when it comes to short-term interest rates. Not only have traders abandoned virtually all expectations that the Fed will resume its cuts to interest rates this year, they’ve been building some bets that it may even hike rates in 2026, according to data from CME Group.

A couple of reports on the U.S. economy that came in better than expected also helped to lift yields. One said U.S. industrial production improved by more last month than economists expected, while another said manufacturing in New York state is expanding at a faster rate.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell by more than 1.5% across much of Europe and Asia.

South Korea’s Kospi dropped 6.1% for one of the biggest moves. It’s set records this year because of the influence of AI beneficiaries like SK Hynix. But it quickly reversed momentum Friday after briefly topping the 8,000 level for the first time.

Some on Wall Street have been warning about a possible break in momentum for tech stocks in general and AI winners in particular.

“If nothing else this should be a ‘shot across the bow’ for how volatility works both ways,” according to Jonathan Krinsky, chief market technician at BTIG.

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AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him contributed.

Neighboring Uganda later confirmed one death in an Ebola case it said was imported from Congo.

The deaths and suspected cases have been recorded mainly in the Mongwalu and Rwampara health zones, the Africa Centres for Disease Control ​and Prevention said in a statement. The agency said 65 deaths have been attributed to the outbreak and that four of those have so far been confirmed in a laboratory.

Ebola is highly contagious and can be contracted through bodily fluids such as vomit, blood or semen. The disease it causes is rare, but severe and often fatal.

Scientists were trying to determine exactly what virus was driving the current outbreak in Congo. The Ebola virus — also known as the Ebola Zaire strain — has been prominent in Congo’s past outbreaks. Results so far suggest some variant other than the Ebola Zaire strain, with sequencing continuing to give more clarity, the Africa CDC said.

The World Health Organization says the Ebola disease is caused by a group of viruses, and that three of them are known to cause large outbreaks: Ebola virus, Sudan virus and Bundibugyo virus.

Uganda on Friday reported one Ebola case involving a Congolese man admitted to a hospital in Kampala three days before he died. Officials said the case was “imported” from Congo, and that Uganda has not yet confirmed any local cases.

Uganda’s Health Ministry said the patient was tested posthumously on Friday after neighboring Congo confirmed its Ebola outbreak. All contacts linked to the man have been quarantined, the agency said. The deceased’s body has been taken back to Congo.

The ministry said the person was infected with the Bundibugyo virus, a variant of the illness that has been endemic in Uganda.

The WHO said last year that Congo has a stockpile of treatments and some 2,000 doses of the Ervebo Ebola vaccine. The Ervedo vaccine is effective against the Ebola Zaire strain — considered the most severe one — but not against the Sudan virus or Bundibugyo virus, according to health authorities.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization director-general, told reporters Friday that the WHO last week sent a team to help Congo investigate the outbreak and collect samples. While initial results did not confirm Ebola, a new analysis on Thursday did, he said.

Congo has “a strong track record in Ebola response and control,” Tedros said, adding that the WHO is releasing $500,000 to aid Congo’s response.

Affected areas are close to Uganda, South Sudan borders

The latest outbreak comes around five months after Congo’s last Ebola outbreak was declared over after 43 deaths.

Ituri is in a remote eastern part of Congo characterized by poor road networks, more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the nation’s capital of Kinshasa.

Africa CDC said it is concerned about the risk of further spread due to intense population movement, mining-related mobility in Mongwalu, insecurity in affected areas, gaps in contact listing and control challenges.

The proximity of affected areas to Uganda and South Sudan also raises concerns, it said.

The agency said it was convening an urgent coordination meeting Friday with health authorities from Congo, Uganda and South Sudan, together with key partners including U.N. agencies and other countries.

The acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Jay Bhattacharya, said Friday that U.S. health officials are in contact with officials in Congo and Uganda and are “going to provide whatever they need and that we are capable of providing them.”

Congo has seen more than a dozen Ebola outbreaks

This is the 17th outbreak in Congo since the disease first emerged in the country in 1976. An Ebola outbreak from 2018 to 2020 in eastern Congo killed more than 1,000 people. The WHO said that outbreak was characterized by the main Ebola Zaire strain.

An earlier outbreak that swept across West Africa from 2014 to 2016 also killed more than 11,000 people.

The new outbreak creates more worry for the Central African country, which has been battling various armed groups in the east. The second-largest African country in land mass, Congo also faces logistical challenges. During last year's outbreak, which lasted three months, the WHO initially faced significant challenges in delivering vaccines due to limited access.

Dr. Gabriel Nsakala, a professor of public health who has been involved in past Ebola outbreak responses in Congo, said the country and health workers on the ground have a high level of experience, in addition to existing infrastructure such as laboratories.

“In terms of training, people already know what they can do. Now, the expertise and equipment need to be delivered quickly,” Nsakala added.

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Associated Press writers Chinedu Asadu in Abuja, Nigeria; Saleh Mwanamilongo in Bonn, Germany; Mark Banchereau in Dakar, Senegal; Mike Stobbe in New York City and Evelyne Musambi in Nairobi, Kenya contributed.

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

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 the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

The great horned owl somehow made his way into the truck-mounted mixer in late October and was discovered by workers pouring concrete at a resort construction site. Lucky for him, a series of people gave a hoot about his predicament.

Workers hosed the bird down before it was wrapped in a towel. It took days for employees at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab to pick the concrete from the bird's face, chest and right wing, using forceps to carefully crack the dried debris and cleaning the feathers with toothbrushes and dish soap.

The owl started its long recovery at an aviary run by the organization, and employees anxiously waited for it to grow new feathers. But the bird didn't molt as predicted. In early May, he underwent a procedure called imping, which uses adhesive to graft donor feathers onto existing shafts.

“The first few feathers were extremely nerve-wracking, but as we got into the groove, the imping became more comfortable, and everything went smoothly,” said Bart Richwalski, a supervisor at the sanctuary.

Great horned owls typically have tufting on the edges of some of their feathers that allows them to fly quietly as they hunt. But the concrete frayed the rescued owl’s feathers and caused it to make a whooshing sound while flying.

To prepare for the imping procedure, sanctuary staff examined the owl's feather patterns every few weeks and snipped damaged shafts in advance. The owl was anesthetized and the donor feathers from a similarly sized owl that had died were laid out nearby to replicate each wing. The staff then cut the feathers to the necessary length, lined them up and adhered them to the bird.

By the end of the 90-minute procedure, the owl had 10 new primary feathers and a secondary feather on his right wing. But then came the real test: could he fly silently?

The bird was placed in a large aviary to recover from the anesthesia and quickly took flight after awakening. Richwalski used a decibel meter to measure the sound of the owl's wingbeat and determined its flight was quiet enough for it to safely be released. The owl hovered for a moment while the aviary roof was retracted, gained speed and then flew out into the wild.

“It feels so, so good. I think my heart finally started beating again. The nervousness was starting to overtake the excitement, but once I saw him fly out that opening in the roof, it just was, it was a sight to see. It was so fun,” said Richwalski, who has cared for the owl since picking him up at the construction site.

Karla Bloem, executive director of the Minnesota-based International Owl Center, said imping has been practiced by falconers “for eons” and is a very effective treatment.

“I've never heard of it not lasting, because you use some pretty good stuff when you're doing imping,” said Bloem, who has studied great horned owls for nearly three decades.

She added that it would be OK if a couple of the grafted feathers fell out. The bulk of them just need to stay put until the owl can grow new ones in the coming summer months.

“And now it just needs to figure out, ‘whoa, I’m back in the big world again, hunting,’" she said. “Find a territory ... you know, find one of the opposite sex and settle down and have kids.”

Civil rights groups brought a lawsuit earlier this month to stop four key sections of Senate Bill 4: the creation of a crime for re-entering the country without authorization, even if a person has since gained legal status; the establishment of magistrates’ authority to order a person’s deportation; the creation of a crime for not complying with a magistrate’s order; and the requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even if a person has an asylum claim or other pending immigration cases. 

The groups argued that the sections involving the state’s judicial system are unconstitutional because they encroach on the federal government’s sole authority over immigration laws. It also challenged the re-entry provision, saying that the law provides no defense for people who had federal permission to enter the country or those who might have pending immigration status.   

U.S. District Judge David Alan Ezra granted the preliminary injunction against these sections of the law on Thursday. The Reagan appointee had signaled during a Wednesday hearing that he considered them unconstitutional.

“Indeed, it is implausible to imagine each of the fifty United States having their own state immigration policy superseding the powers inherent in the United States as a Nation,” Ezra reiterated in his written ruling. 

The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project said his decision reaffirmed that immigration laws are not up to the states, while adding that SB 4 would cause widespread racial profiling. 

“Texas cannot override the U.S. Constitution and should stop wasting time attempting to do so,” the groups said in a joint statement to The Texas Tribune. 

Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office didn’t immediately respond to a comment request. 

This lawsuit came after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals tossed a previous legal challenge against SB 4, which was brought by immigrants and organizations that work with migrants. But instead of ruling on the constitutionality of the law, the appeals court dismissed that case last month after finding that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue. 

Texas leaders, which cheered the appeals court’s dismissal as a win for public safety, have insisted that SB 4 is valid because it mirrors federal immigration law. 

In addition, they have argued that Texas has a sovereign right to defend its borders. In 2023 when the law was being proposed, there were record-high illegal border crossings, which officials said amounted to an invasion. Those figures have since dropped drastically. 

During the Wednesday hearing, David Bryant with the attorney general’s office didn’t say the state was abandoning the invasion argument despite acknowledging the slower pace of illegal border crossings. Bryant did argue that the case should be dismissed because SB 4 had not taken effect and that Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin, the only named defendant in the lawsuit, had not decided how state police would enforce the law. 

In the meantime, DPS and many law enforcement agencies across Texas have already partnered with federal immigration agents through the 287(g) program, including under the task force model that allows officers to question individuals about their immigration status during routine policing work.

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

The explosions happened on April 21 in the 15000 block of Preston Hollow Drive, which is located near Thousand Oaks Drive.

San Antonio Fire Department officials said the blasts were likely caused by natural gas buildup.

In all, five people were hospitalized. The victims were identified as Mayte Reeves, Jose Ochoa, Kimberly Nowell, Tim Nowell and the Nowells’ teenage daughter.

Fighting back in court

For Reeves, Ochoa and the Nowell family, their recovery extends into the courtroom. All five victims have filed lawsuits against CPS Energy, accusing the utility of negligence.

The Nowell family, whose home was the first to explode, filed their own lawsuit on May 8 and are represented by Dallas-based law firm Lyons & Simmons, LLP.

Reeves and Ochoa, also represented Lyons & Simmons, LLP, allege that they were told it was safe to return home after the first explosion — only for their own home to explode shortly after.

“Though Plaintiffs (Reeves and Ochoa) survived, the Explosion and resulting fire left them catastrophically injured and permanently scarred,” their lawsuit alleges. “They face a long, painful road ahead and their lives have been irreparably altered.”

Both suits describe the explosions as “entirely preventable” and accuse CPS Energy of operating a “poorly maintained, leaking, and deteriorating natural gas system.”

All victims are requesting jury trials and seeking more than $1 million each in damages.

A CPS Energy spokesperson told KSAT the utility does not comment on active litigation.

The utility is also seeking to withhold internal incident reports and root cause investigations from public records requests filed by KSAT.

Long recovery ahead

As of May 14, a Brooke Army Medical Center spokesperson confirmed that Kimberly Nowell is in serious condition, while Timothy Nowell and Reeves are in fair condition.

Ochoa has since been released from the hospital, the spokesperson told KSAT.

The teen injured in the first explosion was originally hospitalized at a separate hospital in critical condition, but has since been upgraded to fair condition.

Waiting for answers

Beyond their personal recoveries, the victims — like their neighbors — are still waiting to understand what caused the explosions in the first place.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading the federal investigation into the blasts.

A preliminary report is expected approximately 30 days from the April 21 incident.

A final report with a probable cause determination could take between 12 to 24 months.

More Preston Hollow Explosions coverage on KSAT:

• What we know about the North Side home explosions that hospitalized 5
• San Antonio council members call for special session following North Side home explosions
• CPS Energy wants to withhold information regarding North Side home explosions
• Neighbors growing frustrated with lack of answers about North Side gas explosions
• What the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation into the SA home explosions involves

Attorneys representing voters asked a state judge to block the new districts from being used in the midterm elections and instead reinstate districts used for previous elections. Such a move would create a significant wrinkle in President Donald Trump's attempt to hold on to a narrow House majority by redrawing voting districts to the GOP's advantage. The judge gave no timetable for when he will rule.

Florida's new House map is part of a national redistricting battle that gained steam last year when Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw the state's congressional districts. On Friday, the Texas Supreme Court refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers had vacated their offices when they briefly fled the state to block a redistricting vote.

The Florida Legislature approved a new House map on April 29 — the same day the U.S. Supreme Court weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities while striking down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. Since then, several Southern states have taken steps to try to eliminate minority districts that have elected Democrats.

On Friday, Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Tennessee announced that he is ending his reelection bid. His decision came a week after Tennessee Republicans enacted a new U.S. House map that carves up Cohen’s majority-Black district in Memphis. The new map gives Republicans a shot at winning all nine of Tennessee's U.S. House seats.

Republicans already hold 20 of Florida’s 28 U.S. House seats. New voting districts signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis after a swift two-day special legislative session could improve the GOP’s chances to win four additional seats in the November elections.

Congressional districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census, to rebalance populations. But since Trump urged mid-decade redistricting last year, Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from new House maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain six seats from new maps in California and Utah.

Democrats had counted on winning up to four additional seats in Virginia. But the Virginia Supreme Court last week struck down a Democratic redistricting plan approved by voters, ruling the legislature violated procedural requirements when placing it on the ballot.

Florida bans partisan map-making

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that it has no authority to decide whether partisan gerrymandering goes too far. But it said partisan gerrymandering claims could continue to be decided in state courts under their own constitutions and laws.

Florida voters approved a state constitutional amendment in 2010 that prohibits U.S. House districts from being drawn with the intent to favor or disfavor a political party or incumbent. The amendment bars districts from diminishing the ability of racial or language minorities to elect the representatives of their choice. It also requires districts to be compact and, where feasible, use existing political and geographic boundaries.

Lawsuits filed on behalf of voters seek a temporary injunction against the new House map for violating that amendment. Their arguments focus heavily on political favoritism.

Under the new House map, 82% of voters in districts represented by Republicans remain in the same districts as under the previous map, said attorney Chris Shenton, who represented Common Cause and other groups challenging it. Just 41% of voters in districts represented by Democrats are kept in their same districts, he said.

“It shows that Democratic districts are being targeted for reconfiguration. And why? To favor Republicans and disfavor Democrats. That is unconstitutional,” Shenton said.

Fair Districts Amendment called into question

Attorneys representing Florida's state lawmakers and executive officials argued that partisan intent had not been proven and that a temporary injunction against the new districts is not appropriate in advance of a fully developed trial.

Though DeSantis called lawmakers into session before the Supreme Court's ruling in the Louisiana case, he anticipated an eventual outcome weakening Voting Rights Act protections for minority districts. Among other changes, Florida's new map reshapes a southeastern district that DeSantis’ office said was created to help elect a Black representative in an attempt to comply with federal law.

DeSantis' office said no racial data was used to prepare the new map he presented to the Legislature. In a memo to lawmakers, DeSantis’ General Counsel David Axelman asserted that Florida's constitutional provision about racial redistricting violates the U.S. Constitution. If one element is invalid, Axelman wrote, then the entire 2010 amendment is void.

Attorney Mohammad Jazil, representing Florida's executive officials, emphasized a similar argument in court. He said the provision against partisan gerrymandering in Florida's Fair Districts Amendment cannot stand if the section protecting racial minorities is now invalid.

“It is intertwined, it is interlocked, it is interwoven,” Jazil said.

South Carolina meets in special session for redistricting

The South Carolina House began debate Friday on a bill that would reshape U.S. House districts to try to help Republicans to gain a seat and sweep all seven of the state's congressional districts. The proposal, pushed by Trump, would pull the congressional primaries out of the June 9 statewide primary and move them to August. Debate is expected to continue into next week.

Several Democrats gave speeches against the bill Friday, including state Rep. Justin Bamberg, who denounced Trump's influence in the matter.

“How did we get here? One man made the call. He didn’t call every state in this country. He didn’t make calls across the North,” Bamberg said, later adding: “Where’d he go? The place that since the beginning of this country, you go to take this country backwards. He went to the South.”

Republican Gov. Henry McMaster, who called lawmakers into a special session for redistricting, said it's important for South Carolina to send as many Republicans to Washington as possible to try to prevent Democrats from taking control of the House and attempting to impeach Trump.

“We have to have a functioning Congress,” McMaster said.

___

Lieb reported from Jefferson City, Missouri, and Collins from Columbia, South Carolina.

The Canadian Olympian goaltender, and first woman to appear in an exhibition game of any of North America’s four major sports, has spent the past four years working in the NHL's Los Angeles Kings hockey operations department. And Rheaume’s hiring represents a homecoming for the 54-year-old, who spent 11 years in a developmental role for the Detroit-based Little Caesars youth hockey girls’ program.

“She brings an unmatched resume, a championship mindset and a lifelong commitment to growing the women’s game,” said Jayna Hefford, PWHL executive vice president of hockey operations, who oversees the hiring process.

“Her experience at every level of hockey, combined with her leadership and vision, makes her the perfect person to lead PWHL Detroit into its inaugural season,” Hefford added.

In a separate announcement, the PWHL also hired women's player agent, Dominique DiDia, as GM of the league's expansion franchise in Las Vegas.

Rheaume’s hiring comes a little more than a week after the league announced Detroit as an expansion team. The PWHL has since added two more franchises in Las Vegas and Hamilton, Ontario, and is planning make one more addition in growing to a 12-team league for next season.

Of the PWHL’s 10 GMs now in place, eight are women.

“I’m incredibly honored to join the PWHL and help build something special in Detroit,” Rheaume said. “The city has such a deep hockey tradition, and the passion for hockey here is truly special.”

Among her first duties is preparing for an expansion free-agent signing process tentatively scheduled to begin on May 28, followed by the league’s draft, which will be held in Detroit on June 17.

Rheaume is from Beauport, Quebec, and began making her international mark in the early 1990s by signing with Trois-Rivieres of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. In 1992, she tried out for the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning, and allowed two goals on nine shots in one period of a preseason game against St. Louis. A year later, she made a second preseason game appearance against Boston.

Rheaume went on to win a silver medal representing Canada at the 1998 Nagano Games, the first to feature a women’s tournament. She also won gold medals at the 1992 and ’94 world championships.

DiDia takes over in Las Vegas

DiDia joins the PWHL after representing a number of league players including Boston goalie Aerin Frankel, Toronto forward Blayre Turnbull and Seattle teammates Cayla Barnes and Hannah Bilka. She worked for CAA Sports since 2022 and eventually launched the agency's women's hockey department.

“She understands the evolving landscape of women’s hockey and has a strong vision for building a team and culture that reflects both the ambition of the PWHL and the energy of the Las Vegas market," Hefford said.

From Los Angeles, DiDia grew up playing hockey and spent nine years working for the L.A. Kings in eventually becoming the team's director of marketing and content publicity.

“Las Vegas has embraced hockey with a rare intensity, and you can feel that the game has become part of this city’s heartbeat,” DiDia said. “Growing up as a player in Los Angeles, I witnessed the sport’s expansion across the Southwest, making this opportunity at the forefront of women’s hockey in Nevada deeply meaningful to me."

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AP women’s hockey: https://apnews.com/hub/womens-hockey

“Paul McCartney and Wings,” which opened Friday in Cleveland, explores the musician's reinvention after leaving the iconic British rock band through displays of instruments, handwritten songwriting notes and photographs taken by his wife, Linda McCartney, who was keyboardist and harmony vocalist for Wings during its decade-long run from 1971 to 1981, when the band produced hits including “Band on the Run,” “Silly Love Songs” and “Live and Let Die.”

After the breakup of The Beatles, Paul McCartney was no longer just the musician who had been known around the world since his teenage years, but a husband and father of a young family. What he built with Wings reflected that new stage of life, said Andy Leach, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s senior director of museum and archival collections.

Leach said the band’s embrace of domestic life — bringing children on tour, having a married couple perform together and writing songs inspired by his wife, who was also a member of the group — was “remarkable and unusual” for the era, when rock music remained overwhelmingly male-dominated and family life was rarely incorporated so visibly into a band’s public identity.

“What’s interesting about Wings is that they were formed around the idea of reinvention, renewal, risk-taking, experimentation, but collaboration,” Leach said. “And family was at the center of it, too.”

Leach traveled to London to work with McCartney and his team to prepare and transport guitars along with clothing worn during performances to Cleveland. The vast majority of the artifacts are from McCartney’s personal collection.

Leach said Wings helped pioneer the large-scale production that came to define 1970s arena rock, using increasingly elaborate lighting and stage design on tours such as Wings Over the World and Wings Over America.

Leach said it was amazing to see and handle guitars that “I’ve heard on record my whole life.”

Visitors will also be able to step into a recreation of the farmhouse that McCartney still owns in Scotland, where Paul and Linda retreated after The Beatles' breakup in 1970 and set up a recording studio.

In the home, photos of Paul and Linda McCartney and their children line the walls. Linda’s camera sits inside a case on the makeshift kitchen table.

The photographs taken by Linda, an acclaimed artist in her own right and the first female photographer to have a photo featured on the cover of Rolling Stone, in 1968, showcase her role “at the center of the family, and in some ways, at the center of the band," Leach said.

Linda McCartney was married for three decades to Paul, who taught her to play the keyboard after The Beatles' breakup. She died in 1998 of breast cancer.

Another of Leach's favorite artifacts is the handwritten scores by famed Beatles producer George Martin for the songs “Uncle Albert” and the James Bond theme “Live and Let Die,” which became one of Wings' most enduring songs.

Other items were lent by longtime Wings roadie John Hamill, former band members and the widow of Denny Laine, the co-founder of Wings and The Moody Blues, who played guitar, bass and keyboards and contributed both lead and backing vocals.

The Hall of Fame said the exhibit will be open for at least a year with the hope of keeping it open through the summer of 2027.

Leach said the exhibit is “perfect timing” because of what he described as “a nice kind of renaissance or at least a new appreciation for them among fans and a new understanding about how remarkable and important” Wings’ musicians were.

He pointed to the release of the Amazon Prime documentary Man on the Run, a new box set and the 2025 book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, co-written by Paul McCartney and historian Ted Widmer.

__ Willingham reported from Boston.

Pat Concannon and his friends — two who made the trip from Europe just to watch the golf major — positioned their ladder and the bed of their Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck just a short putt away from the temporary fence that lined the first hole at Aronimink Golf Club.

“This is the best seat in the house,” Concannon said. “Everyone can watch it from over there. Not everyone can watch it from over here.”

The friends were getting thirsty early Friday and time for a beer run was getting tight before the world's No. 1 golfer was about to traipse through their backyard.

“Make it quick,” one reveler yelled, “because I think Scottie Scheffler is coming next.”

Cold beers were delivered and Concannon and his friends toasted the day and the unobstructed — and absolutely free — view as they peered like Wilson from “Home Improvement” over the fence to watch the second round where the best golfers in the world touched down a short walk from his uncle's garage.

No old man cries here of, get off my lawn!

Enterprising home owners in the tony neighborhood that lined Aronimink set up ladders, rented platforms and turned their streets into the sites of the block party of the weekend — just respect the quiet please sign — just off the cart-worn path of the 130-year-old course.

The volume could get cranked to 11 later in the night.

Once play was concluded, a Bruce Springsteen cover band — the E Street Shuffle Band — was set to take the stage. Or is it a lawn?

The home owners decided to think outside the tee box when it came to affordable golf, though some of them are Aronimink members and had purchased tickets that stretched well over $1,000 each, depending on the day.

Jim Hageney moved into his home outside the first hole two years ago and is in the midst of renovations that essentially gutted the inside. Up near the chimney, construction workers paused on their lunch break for a birds-eye view some 50 feet above the chip shots and booming drives below.

Hageney and his guests mingled about 10 feet up on one of three platforms — for about $2,000 total — rented by his family and two neighbors.

They are about the most popular people at Aronimink not named Rory or Rickie or Scottie. Golf fans shout — well, it's golf, so mildly raise their voice — at Hageney and friends asking how they can snag a spot outside the course and inside the fence at the property.

If they could find the opening along the fence near the fourth hole and turn left, they might have some luck at getting close to the neighborhood.

Or, they can empty their pockets and buy a house where one on the market advertised it was at Aronimink's fourth tee.

Party crashers have been kept in check.

Roads were mostly closed — no parking by temporary police order signs dotted the street — and the Hageney family put up a “Private By Invite Only” sign in their driveway.

Hageney said nine trees were removed around their property line ahead of the PGA.

“It’s great for me,” Hageney said. “Great view. Unobstructed view.”

And no long line at the concession stand!

The Hageneys had their platform delivered last week and there were no issues with the viewing risers or other towering platforms like it — one without railings went up near the 14th green — and the occasional golfer even politely waved back to their well wishes.

“We had checked with the PGA, and the people were very, very polite,” the 63-year-old Hageney said. “They said be respectful.”

One local family hired a company to build a raised platform dubbed the “sky deck" and invited their new best friends for drinks and nibbles and hanging out in genteel surroundings.

The Bellew family even created a website where fans could RSVP for an American Evening on the Fairway.

“Experience golf, atmosphere, and an unforgettable weekend,” the website read. “In celebration of the 2026 PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, join us at our home for a memorable weekend of gathering, championship viewing, and celebration.”

Headed into the weekend, there were no reports of inebriated patrons falling over the fence or course marshals trying to keep the noise down — just the ladders up.

“It's pretty safe, right," Concannon asked.

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

Scottie Scheffler took a while to get settled down after not hitting a fairway until his ninth hole. He salvaged a 1-over 71 and was two behind Alex Smalley (69) among early finishers.

Hideki Matsuyama shot 67 in his quest for a second major. Aldrich Potgieter, a 21-year-old from South Africa, had a strong front nine and was looking to become the youngest golfer with a 36-hole lead at a major since Tiger Woods' historic win at the 1997 Masters.

Aronimink is plenty difficult without dealing with blustery conditions that made it feel colder than the low 50s (10s Celsius) for so much of the morning.

“Today would definitely be one of those days where I would be on the couch and I would be like, ‘How did he hit it there?’ and ‘How did he do this?’ And then you’re out there, and it just feels like it’s impossible,” Gotterup said.

Gotterup has three PGA Tour titles since July, two of them this year to reach No. 10 in the world. He had his best stuff on a stage that is the closest course to a home major. He grew up 100 miles away and played college golf at Rutgers, just up the New Jersey Turnpike.

Gotterup had a pair of birdies on the back nine to hang around the lead and then finished the front nine with three short putts.

“I really battled all day,” Gotterup said. “It was very hard. There were some pins that didn't even look like they were on the green.”

Smalley set the early target at 4-under 136.

Scheffler, who had a share of the 18-hole lead for the first time in a major, couldn't quite keep up. One day after hitting 13 of 14 fairways, Scheffler didn't find the short grass until the 18th hole. He started on No. 10 and already had three bogeys — all from the rough — through four holes.

He might have saved his round on the par-3 14th when he hit a beautiful lag putt from 80 feet for a two-putt par. That settled him, and he closed with an up-and-down birdie on the par-5 ninth to finish at 2-under 138.

Two-time PGA champion Justin Thomas had another remarkable bogey that could have been much worse early in his round and was on the ropes until he steadied himself with a pair of birdies and salvaged another 69.

Thomas was playing with Cameron Young, who worked for pars and finished with an 8-foot eagle putt that gave him a 67.

Still to come in the afternoon were Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau, whose first order of business was to make the cut. McIlroy bogeyed his final four holes on Thursday for a 74, while DeChambeau didn't make a birdie until his final hole for a 76.

But the worst of the weather looked like it might be in the morning. Dustin Johnson, with perhaps his final invitation to the PGA Championship, ground out an even-par 70. Heading to the parking lot, he looked at a clearing sky and slightly calming wind and shook his head.

“It was blowing 100 for us,” Johnson said with a grin.

The former world No. 1 and two-time major winner is not typically prone to exaggeration. But it was hard work out there.

Shane Lowry went from one shot out of the lead to having to sweat out making it to the weekend after a 76, which included him topping a tee shot on the par-3 17th into the water. Justin Rose had two double bogeys through his opening five holes. He finished by chopping out of thick rough and into the hole for eagle at the end for a 73 that might just keep him around.

___

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

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said contradictory messages have “made us reluctant about the real intentions of Americans.”

“We are in doubt about their seriousness,” he told reporters in New Delhi, adding that negotiations would move forward if Washington was ready for a “fair and balanced deal.”

U.S. President Donald Trump earlier this week dismissed Iran's latest formal proposal as “garbage.” While Iran was said to include some nuclear concessions, Trump has said he wants to remove highly enriched uranium from the country and prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

In separate negotiations in Washington between Israel and Lebanon, both sides agreed Friday to extend their ceasefire until early June, U.S. officials said.

With talks between Iran and the U.S. at a standstill during the shaky ceasefire, tensions remain high and threaten to tip the Middle East back into open warfare and prolong the worldwide energy crisis sparked by the conflict.

Iran still has a chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway where a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, and America is blockading Iranian ports.

Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who finished talks on Friday, agreed the strait needs to be reopened.

China could play a diplomatic role, Iran says

Araghchi said Friday that Iran would welcome diplomatic support from other countries, particularly from China, citing Beijing’s previous role in facilitating the restoration of ties between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. requests to get more involved, even though Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help.

Pakistan said Thursday it was continuing diplomatic efforts to help ease regional tensions. But it declined to disclose details of the discussions or say whether the U.S. had formally responded.

“The clock on diplomacy has not stopped. The peace process is working,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told reporters in Islamabad.

Iran says uranium is a sticking point

Trump has demanded a major rollback of Iran’s nuclear activities while Iran says it has a right to enrich uranium.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who launched the war with Trump on Feb. 28, also wants Iran’s highly enriched uranium removed from the country.

Iran’s foreign minister said Friday that the issue of its enriched uranium stockpile is one of the most difficult subjects in negotiations with the U.S.

Russia has previously offered to take the stockpile if Iran is willing to give it up. Araghchi said Russia’s proposal was not currently under active discussion, but could be revisited.

“When we come to that stage, obviously we will have more consultations with Russia and see if the Russian offer can help or not,” he said.

Israel and Lebanon extend ceasefire as strikes continue

Israel and Lebanon agreed to extend the expiring Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire for another 45 days to allow for negotiations on a broader peace agreement, the U.S. State Department said.

After two days of meetings, the department said it would reconvene the two sides for discussions on June 2 and 3, while a military track — between the Israeli and Lebanese armies — by the Pentagon will begin on May 29. Hezbollah opposes Lebanon’s direct negotiations with Israel and has not been part of the talks.

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said the talks were frank and constructive. “There will be ups and downs, but the potential for success is great,” he said in a social media post. “What will be paramount throughout negotiations is the security of our citizens and our soldiers.”

The ongoing ceasefire hasn’t stopped Israel and Hezbollah from trading strikes.

The Israeli military said Friday it hit Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon after reporting hostile aircraft alerts and launches from across the border. Lebanon’s health ministry said three paramedics were killed in a strike near the city of Harouf. Other strikes around the coastal city of Tyre wounded nearly 40 people, destroyed a health center and damaged the neighboring Hiram Hospital, wounding six medical workers, the ministry said.

Chinese company says its ship was taken into Iranian waters

A Chinese private security company said it lost communication Thursday with a ship it was operating as an offshore work platform — the same day the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center reported that a ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates coast had been seized.

Sinoguards said it had “been informed through relevant channels" that the vessel Hui Chuan was taken into Iranian waters for documentation and compliance inspection by the authorities.

The company's emailed statement said there was no indication of any injuries on the ship and that it was cooperating.

The security company and the U.K. maritime center did not say who was behind the seizure. It happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the Strait of Hormuz and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

The U.S. seized vessels in the Gulf of Oman last month and on Friday the foreign minister of Pakistan said it had secured the return of 11 Pakistani nationals and 20 Iranian citizens who were aboard those vessels. “All individuals are in good health and high spirits,” said the foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said.

UAE speeds up construction of oil pipeline

The United Arab Emirates is speeding up the completion of a new pipeline that will allow the Gulf federation to export more oil without routing it through the Strait of Hormuz.

Sheikh Khaled bin Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, directed state oil company ADNOC to accelerate work on the pipeline, the Abu Dhabi Media Office said Friday.

The oil company already runs a pipeline designed to carry 1.5 million barrels a day from its oil fields to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.

The new pipeline, expected to double the company’s export capacity through that port, will become operational next year, the media office said.

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Schreck reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press reporters Munir Ahmed in Islamabad; Koral Saeed in Abu Snan, Israel; Matthew Lee in Washington; and Mae Anderson in New York contributed.

Those contests in which no candidate received 50% plus one of the vote will be on the Tuesday, May 26 runoff election ballot.

The marquee matchup on that ballot is the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate between incumbent John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Cornyn received 42% of the vote to Paxton’s 41%. The two were the top vote-getters in a field of nine candidates seeking the seat on the November ballot.

Cornyn and Paxton were both hoping to get the endorsement of President Donald Trump, but that didn’t happen before the March vote and hasn’t happened since.

One day after the primary, the president said that he would endorse one of them but expected the other to drop out of the race. Neither candidate was inclined to do that. There still hasn’t been an endorsement.

Whoever wins will face Democratic nominee James Talarico, an Austin-area state representative and former San Antonio teacher who won his primary bid against U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

Another seat both parties have their eyes on in the newly-drawn Congressional District 35. Republicans and Democrats both want this seat formerly held by Greg Casar, who was drawn out of the district in last year’s redistricting. Casar will seek re-election in District 37.

Both the red and blue parties have runoff contests for voters to settle. On the Republican side, Carlos De La Cruz and John Lujan are the two candidates who came out with the most votes from a field of 11 candidates. Lujan, who had 33% of the vote, is giving up his seat in the Texas House to run for the job in Washington. De La Cruz, an Air Force Veteran and brother to U.S. Rep. Monica De La Cruz (District 15), received 27% of the vote. Trump endorsed De La Cruz early in the campaign.

On the Democratic side, the race was close between Maureen Galindo with 29% of the vote and Johnny Garcia (27%). The pair outlasted two other candidates to qualify for the runoff. Garcia is a now-former spokesperson with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. Galindo is a housing advocate who also works as a marriage and family therapist.

In Bexar County, the race for the Democratic spot on the ballot for District Attorney is down from eight to two: Luz Elena Chapa and Jane Davis. Chapa, a former appellate judge, received 27% of the vote. Davis, the chief of the juvenile section of the Bexar County DA’s Office, earned 18%.

The winner of this runoff will face Republican Ashley Foster in November, along with any independent candidate who makes it onto the ballot. The winner of that contest will take over from outgoing District Attorney Joe Gonzales, who is not seeking re-election after two tumultuous terms in office. Gonzales has endorsed Jane Davis as his successor.

Voters, depending on their party and address, will also be deciding the lieutenant governor, attorney general, state representative, state senator, county clerk and district clerk races.

The Bexar County Democratic sample ballot can be seen below:

The Bexar County Republican sample ballot can be seen below:

Early voting begins on Monday, May 18, and runs through Friday, May 22.

Election day is Tuesday, May 26.

Read also:

• These Bexar County and Texas races are headed to primary runoff elections
• What happened in the March 2026 Texas primary election
• How Texas and Bexar County voted in the March 2026 primary election

In October 2022, Shavano Park police arrested Daniella Zuniga Vasquez, who was 49 at the time, and accused her of stealing more than $185,000 from a homebuilder while she worked as a bookkeeper.

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), Vasquez worked for two companies between May 2021 and September 2022.

Vasquez was booked into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center on the following two state charges:

• money laundering between $150,000 and $300,000, a second-degree felony
• misapplication of fiduciary property/property of a financial institution between $150,000 and $300,000

Court records show Vasquez is still “awaiting indictment” on both state charges.

Nine months after her arrest by Shavano Park police, the DOJ said FBI agents interviewed Vasquez regarding embezzlement accusations at the second company.

Vasquez was indicted on four federal counts of wire fraud. Officials said she pleaded guilty to one of those counts on August 2025.

Investigators said Vasquez embezzled more than $750,000 ($759,235.74) from both companies combined.

In the news release, law enforcement shared social media posts from Vasquez where she used some of those embezzled funds to attend NFL games, concerts and vehicles.

“Had a blast with my familia!!!” Vasquez wrote in one Facebook post where she tagged her husband, Thomas Vasquez, along with more than 20 photos taken from a 2022 Dallas Cowboys home game.

Investigators said she spent “thousands of dollars on tickets and hotel rooms” using those embezzled funds.

In another social media post, Vasquez shared a photo of a pickup truck she purchased from a San Antonio-area car dealership.

“Got tired of asking people with trucks to pick up something ... help us move something or whatever involves a truck,” Vasquez wrote. “So we got a truck.”

Bank statements obtained by the DOJ showed Vasquez made an “$8,000 down payment” for the truck during the same week she spent thousands on jewelry and at an “upscale spa.”

“The FBI worked closely with the Shavano Park Police Department to hold Vasquez accountable as she abused a position of trust by misusing corporate funds for self-enrichment and greed,” Alex Doran, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the FBI San Antonio Field Office, said in the news release. “She used stolen funds to support a lavish lifestyle while flaunting the proceeds of her fraud on social media. The FBI has zero tolerance for fraud and the abuse of trust for personal gain. These crimes cause significant financial harm to businesses and erode public trust.”

More coverage of this story on KSAT:

• Ex-bookkeeper arrested for stealing more than $185,000 from San Antonio homebuilder, records show

The existence of the secret Israeli military facility was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, which described it as a base housing special forces and serving as a logistical hub for the Israeli air force.

The reports of a secret base stirred up a furor in Iraq. Officials there have said that Iraqi army forces investigated reports of an unauthorized military force in the Nukhaib desert — a barren area to the southwest of the cities of Karbala and Najaf — in early March and came under fire while en route to the location.

Iraqi officials have confirmed the presence of a small, short-term unauthorized force in the desert, but have not said that it was Israeli. However, two Iraqi security and intelligence officials and a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, said that it was.

The U.S. official said of the Israeli outpost that “base is a strong word to describe it” and described it rather as a “temporary staging area or camp to support operations in Iran.”

The Iraqi intelligence official said the Israeli force had set up tents in the area and "its objective was to monitor rocket launches and drone activity conducted by some Iraqi militias.” Iraqi authorities believe the force arrived via an airdrop operation but do not know when, he said. They also disputed the description of the military presence as a “base.”

A shepherd noticed the presence of the force and reported it to authorities, officials said.

Representatives of the Israeli military declined to comment. Acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez declined to comment.

The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, triggering a regional war in which Iraq found itself caught in the crossfire. Iraq hosts a network of Iran-linked militias, which launched attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and elsewhere in the region and on Israel. U.S. and Israeli forces also struck militia sites in Iraq.

The Iraqi government, meanwhile, called on both sides to leave the country out of the conflict. The idea that an Israeli force could have been conducting military operations under their noses put Iraqi authorities in an embarrassing position.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi military sent forces into the desert, to the site of the alleged Israeli outpost, to show journalists that there was no indication of a long-term military presence there.

“We believe it was a small force that came and stayed for no longer than 48 hours,” said Gen. Abdul-Amir Yarallah, chief of the general staff of the Iraqi army during the visit.

Maj. Gen. Tahseen al Khafaji, a spokesperson for the Iraqi defense ministry, told the AP that on March 3, the military received information about “a small enemy force in a specific area in the Najaf desert,” and Iraqi forces went to check the site the next day.

“Within 25 kilometers, the force which went there faced an aerial attack, which led to the martyrdom of one of our fighters and injured two other fighters,” he said.

Al Khafaji said the Iraqi force pulled out after coming under attack but returned the next day and found no signs of a base and no forces present.

“It is believed that the force was there for a very short time and it was a very small force,” he said, adding that search operations “did not show anything that indicates that the force was stationed there for a long time in that area.”

Satellite images from Airbus DS taken March 8 and analyzed by the AP appear to show a human-made track dug out at the site, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) southwest of the capital, Baghdad. The track runs in a straight line in a dried-out lake bed from northwest to southeast and measures about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile). That’s long enough for takeoffs and landing for warplanes.

The nearest town, al-Nukhaib, sits about 45 kilometers (27 miles) to the northwest along a road running to the border with Saudi Arabia. That distance is far enough to likely have not drawn too much attention, though Iraq’s skies were filled with fighter jets from both the U.S. and Israel during the weeks of active war with Iran.

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Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed.

The limits on “ assault firearms,” as they are described by the legislation, are among two dozen new restrictions and regulations on guns enacted by the Democratic governor in her first few months in office. That marks a sharp policy reversal from her Republican predecessor, who had vetoed many similar measures.

“Firearms designed to inflict maximum casualties do not belong on our streets," Spanberger said in a statement Friday. "We are taking this step to protect families and support the law enforcement officers who work every day to keep our communities safe.”

The new gun restrictions move Virginia closer to the likes of California, Illinois and New York, which similarly have full Democratic control of their legislatures and governors' offices. They also highlight a continued national divide on gun policy, as various Republican-led states have taken steps to relax firearm restrictions that they describe as an infringement on Second Amendment rights.

A dozen states now target semi-automatic firearms

The new Virginia law, which takes effect July 1, will make it a misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine, for people to buy, sell, transfer, import or manufacture an “assault firearm.”

The measure defines that term to include semi-automatic rifles or pistols with a magazine capacity of more than 15 rounds. It also includes firearms with other characteristics, such as rifles capable of accepting a detachable magazine that have a second handgrip or a collapsible stock. The prohibition also applies to magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds. For most people, there’s no penalty for merely possessing such weapons.

Eleven other states and Washington, D.C., already have laws prohibiting the sale an manufacture of certain semi-automatic firearms, though the details vary. Hawaii, for example, prohibits certain semi-automatic pistols and high-capacity magazines, but not semi-automatic rifles.

Gun-rights groups challenge the Virginia law

Legal challenges came swiftly after Spanberger signed the legislation Thursday. The National Rifle Association, joined by other groups, sued in both federal and state court, asserting violations of the right to bear arms.

“The firearms and magazines banned in this law aren’t bizarre and unusual outliers, they’re among the most commonly owned guns and magazines in the country," said Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, which joined the NRA in the federal lawsuit. “They’re owned in the tens of millions by peaceable Americans who use them overwhelmingly lawfully.”

The U.S. Department of Justice also vowed to sue to block the Virginia law from being enforced.

The Virginia measure would “infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens to enjoy and use AR-15 rifles for lawful purposes by making it a crime to purchase and sell them,” Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, wrote in an April letter to Spanberger.

Courts have upheld other bans on semi-automatic weapons

So far, laws restricting certain semi-automatic firearms generally have been upheld, including by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Virginia, Maryland and several additional states.

That appellate court twice upheld a Maryland law banning dozens of types of semi-automatic weapons, describing them a 2024 ruling as “military-style weapons" that are ill-suited for self-defense. It concluded that “the Maryland law fits comfortably within our nation’s tradition of firearms regulation.”

The U.S. Supreme Court last year declined to hear a challenge in that Maryland case. But gun-rights advocates remain hopeful of a different outcome in future cases, noting that three conservative justices on the nine-member court disagreed with the decision and a fourth expressed skepticism that such firearm bans are constitutional.

A change in governor leads to a change in laws

Former Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin vetoed legislation each of the past two years that would have prohibited the sale of certain semi-automatic firearms.

But Youngkin's term ended in January, and he was succeeded by Spanberger. The transition presented a huge opportunity for advocates of gun restrictions, who already had support within the Democratic-led Legislature.

Spanberger, a former CIA officer and U.S. House member, had previously been a volunteer with Moms Demand Action, a group founded after a shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut claimed the lives of 26 people in 2012. The group lists 20% of the Democrats in the Virginia House as its past volunteers.

"The fact that a former Moms Demand Action volunteer just signed an assault weapons ban in the home state of the NRA speaks volumes about how dramatically the political calculus around gun safety has shifted,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, the umbrella organization for Moms Demand Action..

Republican states act to expand gun rights

While Virginia tightens gun regulations, many Republican-led states have been expanding gun rights.

On the same day Spanberger signed the semi-automatic firearm restrictions, Missouri's Republican-led Legislature gave final approval to legislation creating a school ranger program that could let trained volunteers carry firearms in schools.

A law signed by Spanberger last month raised the age to purchase a handgun in Virginia from 18 to 21. By contrast, Republican West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey signed a law last month lowering the age from 21 to 18 for carrying concealed guns without a state permit.

Yet another law signed by Spanberger last month opens new grounds for lawsuits against the firearms industry. That came shortly after Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a law limiting liability lawsuits against the firearms industry.

Texas Children's Hospital, based in Houston, said in a statement that it had agreed to the settlement “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” The hospital, which serves more than 1 million patients annually, said Paxton's office and the U.S. Department of Justice has investigated its care for three years, forcing it to “navigate an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations.”

The hospital announced in 2022 that it would stop gender-affirming hormone treatments for minors after Paxton issued a legal opinion calling such care “child abuse” and Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state's child welfare agency to investigate reports of care as abuse. In 2023, Texas became the most populous state to ban gender-affirming care for minors — at least 27 ban or restrict it — and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that states can do so.

Paxton said the settlement will require Texas Children's to set up a “detransition clinic” to provide free care to transgender patients for five years to “reverse the damage” from gender-affirming care. He described it as the first “detransition clinic” of its kind in the nation, although that could not immediately be confirmed.

“This historic settlement reflects an institutional and fundamental shift away from radical ‘gender’ ideology,” Paxton said in announcing the settlement.

Paxton’s office did not release a copy of the agreement, and the statement from Texas Children’s did not discuss its specific terms.

The leader of the LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas said Texas Children's “has lost its integrity and put politics over patients” and called the settlement “embarrassing.”

“Paxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for," CEO Brad Pritchett said in a statement. “It ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.”

Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has moved to use its regulatory power to block gender-affirming care for minors, and the DOJ has demanded access to providers' records. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Friday that the DOJ would “use every weapon at its disposal” to stop gender-affirming care for children.

Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate, and he announced the settlement less than two weeks before a May 26 runoff with him locked in a tight race to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. President Donald Trump — who has aggressively sought to roll back transgender rights — has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the race.

Most major medical groups see access to gender-affirming care as important for people with gender dysphoria. Transgender youth, parents and providers have described it as life-saving for youth who are depressed or suicidal because their gender identities do not match the sex assigned them at birth.

Gender-affirming care may include counseling, medications that block puberty, hormone therapy to produce physical changes or surgeries to transform chests and genitals, although those are rare for minors.

The hospital said it fully cooperated with Paxton's office and the DOJ, produced more than 5 million documents and did its own internal investigations. All of them showed that it never violated the law, the hospital said.

“These efforts have required significant staff time and financial resources to defend ourselves,” its statement said. “This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”

Paxton said the agreement also requires Texas Children's to fire — “and never again hire” — five doctors who provided gender-affirming care, agree never to provide such care and to change its bylaws so that any doctor violating the state law automatically loses any privileges at the hospital.

The $10 million payment will go to the state's Medicaid program. Paxton had accused the hospital of submitting false billings, an allegation it rejected.

The Republican Senate contest between Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, as it turns out, is almost as expensive. 

Years later, Perot is part of a constellation of donors who have powered a GOP primary with a record-setting price tag. Over $120 million has been spent on advertising across the two rounds of the contest, including $21 million in the runoff, according to media tracking firm AdImpact. A network of campaigns, PACs and dark money groups have been spending for nearly a year to ensure their preferred candidate wins.

The Cornyn-Paxton race, set to conclude in a May 26 runoff election, has been shaped not only by intense vitriol between the two candidates, but also the eye-popping amounts of money that have put that acrimony on display to voters via millions worth of attack ads. Even before the runoff, the contest set a record for the most expensive primary in the country’s history.

Donors range from Wall Street billionaires to Texas CEOs to Washington insiders to small-dollar grassroots funders. Taken together, they have enabled both sides — particularly Cornyn — to inundate Texans’ television screens, social media feeds, radio stations and mailboxes with ads both promoting their preferred candidate and savaging the other.

Cornyn, who has an extensive donor network and relationships throughout Texas and Washington, has maintained a dominant financial position over Paxton. Last summer, pro-Cornyn groups spent mightily to reintroduce the senior senator to voters, boasting of his 99% voting record in line with President Donald Trump and his endorsements from law enforcement. 

The primary also has featured an onslaught of dark money — funds spent by tax-exempt nonprofits that are not required to disclose their donors. And even some PACs, which do need to share who’s funding them, were funded exclusively or largely by dark money groups, making the source of millions of dollars’ worth of spending untraceable. 

In the runoff, which has seen spending ramp up in the final weeks, the Cornyn faction has continued to outspend Paxton’s camp — though both have gone up with ample negative ads bashing their opponent. 

Amid the spending barrage, The Texas Tribune has laid out the nexus of outside groups and key donors powering both sides’ efforts to tilt the election in their favor. The topline fundraising and spending numbers come from Federal Election Commission records, most of which cover activity through May 6. To provide a nearly up-to-the-minute view of the spending, including future ad reservations, we included data from AdImpact, a media tracking firm that tallies political spending on TV, radio and digital advertising. 

The pro-Cornyn groups

Cornyn’s campaign

• Texans for Senator John Cornyn Inc. (main campaign account)
• Cornyn Lonestar Victory Fund (joint fundraising committee)
• Cornyn Victory Committee (joint fundraising committee)

Campaign finance:

• Amount r aised this cycle, per FEC records: $26.5M
• Amount spent this cycle , per FEC records : $23.4M
• Total ad spending, per AdImpact: $24.1M
• Runoff-only ad spending, per AdImpact: $6.4M

Most of Cornyn’s spending has come from his joint fundraising committees, a relatively novel strategy that seizes on new rules allowing JFCs to buy ad time at the cheaper rates reserved for candidates. Through three vehicles — his campaign account, and two committees that raise jointly with groups including the National Republican Senatorial Committee — he has far outraised Paxton in hard dollars.

Donors are capped at giving up to $3,500 per election, per candidate, to these accounts. Dozens of donors have maxed out at the same amount, so we’re highlighting some notable ones here.

Notable donors

Former President George W. Bush
Cornyn served as Texas attorney general during the tailend of Bush’s tenure as governor, with each having flipped the offices from Democratic control. Cornyn was then elected to the Senate in 2002, during Bush’s presidency. The former president has been relatively mum about Republican politics, in Texas or otherwise, since leaving office, though he notably left his ballot blank in the 2016 presidential race. His $5,000 donation to Cornyn was his first political donation to a federal candidate in Texas since the 2022 cycle. That year, he also donated $125,000 to his nephew, George P. Bush, who challenged Paxton in the attorney general primary and lost in a runoff.

Rupert Murdoch
A right-wing media mogul and longtime chairman of the News Corp and Fox Corp empires, Murdoch gave Cornyn $200,000 on New Year’s Eve. Murdoch is a frequent donor to Republican candidates. Cornyn has appeared regularly on Fox News programming over the course of his career.

Ross Jr. and Sarah Perot
The Perots have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Cornyn’s various campaign committees. Perot Jr., the son of billionaire and third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot, chairs the Perot Companies and is an active donor in Dallas and national Republican circles. He initially supported Nikki Haley in the 2024 presidential primary, but pivoted to Trump, ultimately giving pro-Trump PACs hundreds of thousands in donations. Perot was named board chair of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year.

Texans for a Conservative Majority

Super PAC

Campaign finance:

• Raised, per FEC: $35.6M
• Spent, per FEC: $32.8M
• Ad spending, per AdImpact: $32.9M
• Runoff-only ad spending, per AdImpact: $9.5M

The top pro-Cornyn super PAC has been the biggest spender in the Republican contest this cycle. Texans for a Conservative Majority has close ties to Trump’s inner circle through Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser who was a top aide on Trump’s 2024 campaign. The PAC has made multiple seven-figure ad buys and hammered Paxton in recent ads over his ethical baggage and tenure as attorney general.

Top donors

Ohio Works Inc. + America Works Fund Inc.: $8.6M
Ohio Works is a 501(c)(4) group — better known as a dark money group — which does not have to disclose its donors. It is also one of the biggest mysteries of the cycle. The group spent millions in the 2024 cycle opposing an Ohio ballot measure that would have had a citizen commission draw the state’s redistricting maps. It also spent in the presidential race on behalf of Trump and against Democrat Kamala Harris. The group had to disclose donors in 2024 under Ohio law, revealing that it was funded at the time by oil and gas-linked groups, Republican leaders in Washington and one Texan — Dallas billionaire Kenneth Fisher. In late 2025, Ohio Works amended its name to America Works Fund. Registered at the same address, America Works made a $3 million donation to the pro-Cornyn super PAC in May.

John Nau III: $7.9M
The Houstonian Nau was the longtime chairman and CEO of Silver Eagle Beverages, a beer distributor. A prolific donor to Texas Republicans, Nau has served as the treasurer of Gov. Greg Abbott’s gubernatorial campaigns. He has tended to bankroll establishment Texas Republicans over the years in primaries against hardline primary opponents.

Stephen Schwarzman: $1.5M
Schwarzman is the billionaire CEO of Blackstone, a private equity firm that is the world’s biggest asset manager. He has been a megadonor to Republican candidates for decades, including in 2024, when he was one of the largest donors in Republican politics. He provided strategic economic advice to Trump as part of a business council during his first term.

Other notable donors

Jim and Robson Walton: $1M
The Walton brothers, Arkansas billionaire heirs to the Walmart fortune, each gave $500,000 to the PAC. This donation is Rob Walton’s largest of the cycle so far.

Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Nebraska: $300,000
Ricketts is facing his own reelection bid, likely against independent Dan Osborne, in Nebraska. But the self-funded senator, whose father founded TD Ameritrade and whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, has helped his colleague out with six-figure donations. Ricketts’ father, Joe, kicked in another $100,000.

Harlan Crow: $100,000
A Dallas real estate developer, Crow is a cofounder of the conservative Club for Growth and major donor to Republicans. He’s come under scrutiny in recent years for the pricey gifts he’s given Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. In 2023, Cornyn walked out of a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting in which Democrats sought to subpoena Crow for records related to his relationship with Thomas, calling it an “outrageous attempt to target private citizens.”

The Pro-Paxton groups

Paxton’s campaign

• Ken Paxton for Senate (main campaign account)
• Ken Paxton Victory Fund (joint fundraising committee )

Campaign finance:

• Raised, per FEC: $8.1M
• Spent, per FEC: $5.3M
• Ad spending, per AdImpact: $4.8M
• Runoff-only ad spending, per AdImpact: $2.5M

In the lead-up to his Senate campaign launch last year, Paxton said he thought he could beat Cornyn if he raised $20 million. The attorney general is well short of that goal, even after opening a joint fundraising committee to raise funds concurrently with the PAC that supports him. Paxton’s fundraising highlights the challenge of transitioning from state elections in Texas, where there are no campaign contribution limits, to federal ones where there are hard limits.

Notable donors

Michael Rydin
The retired Houston software developer, a major funder for right-wing movements, gave Paxton $17,000. Rydin helped seed the Conservative Partnership Institute, a hub for right-wing organizing that regularly hosts the House Freedom Caucus at its headquarters. He has given over $1 million to the Freedom Caucus Fund, the caucus’ political arm, this cycle.

Darwin and Doug Deason
Darwin, the late information technology billionaire, and his son, Doug, have been massive Republican donors and contributors to Paxton over the years. Darwin, who died in December 2025, gave the maximum of $7,000 to Paxton’s campaign earlier in the year, as did Doug. The pair have a long history of donating to Texas Republicans, including Perry and Sen. Ted Cruz. Both have given to the pro-Paxton super PAC this cycle too.

Phillip Huffines
Huffines, a Dallas developer and brother of GOP comptroller nominee Don Huffines, gave Paxton $7,000. Phillip Huffines previously lost his 2018 bid for a state Senate seat against Paxton’s wife, Angela Paxton, who continues to serve in the upper chamber.

Lone Star Liberty PAC

Super PAC

Campaign finance:

• Raised, per FEC: $8.2M
• Spent, per FEC: $6.2M
• Ad spending, per AdImpact: $4.2M
• Runoff-only ad spending, per AdImpact: $2.1M

Lone Star Liberty PAC is the main super PAC supporting Paxton. The group has spent on ads in both Texas and in South Florida to attempt to target Trump. And it hosted rallies and events that Paxton spoke at shortly before the March primary.

Top donors

Jonathan Knutz: $1.1M
Knutz is the CEO of a medical device company in Houston. This election cycle, he has also donated to Aaron Reitz, Paxton’s former top aide who he unsuccessfully endorsed to replace him as attorney general, and Senate District 9 Republican candidate Leigh Wambsganss, who lost a special election in January. Knutz has donated to more MAGA-aligned members of Congress, including Texas GOP Reps. Lance Gooden, Brandon Gill and Ronny Jackson.

Preserve Texas Inc.: $950,000
This Virginia-based dark money group was formed shortly after Paxton launched his Senate bid.

Douglas Scharbauer: $750,000
Scharbauer, a Midland oilman, comes from a prominent horse breeding and racing family in North Texas. He’s a longtime supporter of Paxton, having previously donated six-figure sums to the attorney general on multiple occasions. This cycle, Scharbauer has also given small sums to Hellfire PAC — Hunt’s leadership PAC — and maxed out to Cornyn’s campaign account with a $7,000 donation.

Other notable donors

Gary Heavin: $500,000
Heavin is a Waco area-based businessman and founder of the Curves fitness chain. An anti-abortion advocate, Heavin is a significant donor to conservative and Christian causes. Heavin was Paxton’s top donor in his first fundraising report after his 2023 impeachment, giving the attorney general $500,000 at the time.

Chelsey Milton: $500,000
Milton, an Arizona homemaker, is a Trump donor whose husband was pardoned last year by the president. Trevor Milton, who gave Paxton an additional $100,000, was previously the CEO of an electric vehicle manufacturing company. In 2022, he was found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in federal court and sentenced to four years in prison. The couple donated more than $1.8 million to a pro-Trump group; Trump pardoned Trevor Milton in early 2025.

Two Toads LLC / SSC Inc. / Baloney Feathers LTD: $300,000
These mysterious groups each gave $100,000 to the PAC on March 17. Each is registered to the same PO Box address in Lubbock, and none have made any political contributions beyond Lone Star Liberty PAC. SSC Inc. has registered oil and gas leases. The PO Box is also the address of a company owned by Johnny McDonald, who has donated $13,500 to Paxton’s campaign and $100,000 to Lone Star Liberty PAC.

Robert Marling: $225,000
Marling, a banking CEO in Montgomery County, has already had success ousting a Republican incumbent this cycle after he seeded a super PAC backing state Rep. Steve Toth’s victorious primary campaign against U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw. Marling is a longtime Cruz donor as well.

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

In a Friday morning social media post, Trump said the National Garden of American Heroes would be built in West Potomac Park, a space near the National Mall that includes the Korean War Veterans Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. The area is also home to several fields and volleyball courts regularly used by local sports groups.

Trump described the area in his post as a “totally BARREN field of Prime Waterfront Real Estate along our Mighty Potomac River.”

The president has said the garden would commemorate America's 250th anniversary with sculptures recognizing 250 prominent Americans who have made significant cultural, political and other historical contributions to the country. He first raised the idea during Fourth of July celebrations in 2020 and has framed it as a response to protests that resulted in the removal of controversial monuments, including those that commemorated slave owners and Confederate leaders.

In the final days of his first term, Trump, a Republican, signed an executive order naming 244 people including Ronald Reagan and Jackie Robinson who should be honored with statues in the garden. The idea languished under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, but Congress provided $40 million under Trump's big tax and spending cuts law last year to procure the statues included in his executive orders.

That may not be enough, however, to constitute the type of approval typically needed for major projects on or near the National Mall. Federal law requires projects and memorials to get a sign-off from multiple design and planning groups.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said the garden will “ be built to reflect the awesome splendor of our country’s timeless exceptionalism.”

“President Trump continues to beautify and honor our Nation’s Capital during America’s historic semiquincentennial celebration,” he said.

He didn't comment on whether the administration was seeking the relevant approvals or had already awarded contracts for the statues.

Washington's monumental core is one of the nation's most closely regulated spaces, with the goal of protecting sightlines and preventing new construction that would undermine the area’s historic character. Between the approvals process, design disputes and funding challenges, changes in the area can take years — or even decades — to reach completion. One of the newest additions near the National Mall, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, took 21 years to finish after Congress initially approved it in 1999.

Trump and his supporters have shown little interest in following such procedures. He moved quickly this month to drain and repaint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. He suddenly demolished the East Wing of the White House last year to build a ballroom. Trump's name has been added to the facade of the Kennedy Center, which he plans to close later this summer for a two-year renovation.

Just this week, workers began preliminary surveys and testing of the proposed site of a triumphal arch that Trump is seeking between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Part of the site was fenced off, and pink flags typically used as survey markings were planted in the grass.

And the Trump administration is moving forward with plans to transform East Potomac Park from an accessible public golf course into what Trump has described as a “U.S. Open-caliber course.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Thursday released a design plan for the new course that he said would provide “championship-quality golf at affordable, highly discounted rates.”

The plan provided few details on how the park, which is frequently used by local runners and bikers, would remain open to the general public.

Virtually all of the projects have become subject to litigation.

Of the 272 regular-season games next season, 22 will on a streaming service as the primary network (one more than announced last season), and 14 will be primarily on cable.

That leaves 236 games that will be on CBS, Fox, NBC or ABC, meaning 87% of the schedule will be on broadcast television, the same percentage as last year. All games in a team’s home market air on a broadcast network.

President Donald Trump recently weighed in with his dissatisfaction with the costs for fans who want access to all the games while investigations by the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice proceed.

“You have people that live for Sunday. They can’t think about anything else, and then all of a sudden, they’re gonna have to pay $1,000 a game? It’s crazy,” Trump said while being interviewed on “Full Measure” last weekend.

While fans are not paying $1,000 per game to watch at home, trying to view everything with the "NFL Sunday Ticket,” a cable or satellite package, and streaming subscriptions could total nearly $1,000 for the season.

Even with greater scrutiny of its distribution models, the league stuck to the same plan, according to Hans Schroeder, the NFL’s executive vice president of media distribution.

“Our focus is on getting the best games into the best windows," Schroeder said. "And even with the additional games that went to Netflix, we think we’re expanding the reach of those games.

“We love our model. Broadcast has been an incredible home to deliver our focus of reach. We also want to be on these platforms with a limited amount of our games where we know our fans are already.”

More broadcast windows, more problems?

The league was able to create new standalone windows after getting back four games that had been part of Monday night doubleheaders in previous seasons. Two went to Netflix (Thanksgiving Eve and the Saturday early game in Week 18), one to Fox (one of the international games ) and one to NBC (a Saturday game in Week 17).

CBS and Fox were able to add Saturday games in Week 15 that were Sunday regional games in past seasons. Fox also has a Christmas Day game for the first time since 2023.

While the league and ESPN thought having two Monday night games some weeks would benefit viewers, it often divided them because one game started at 7 p.m. and the other at 8:15 p.m.

“It wasn’t working as we intended. We could take these games and find a better home and broader distribution for them,” Schroeder said.

The games on Netflix should also draw a large audience, given its reach. The streamer has 81.4 million U.S. subscribers compared to 60 million for ESPN. Netflix will also be able to distribute its five-game package globally.

There will be 10 Monday night games simulcast on ABC this season. ESPN will also air the Super Bowl for the first time, while ABC will air it for the first time since 2006.

Tim Reed, ESPN’s vice president of programming and acquisitions, said he thought moving away from the doubleheaders helped “Monday Night Football” have a more complete schedule.

“The ability to streamline and simplify the schedule just helps. I assume it helped the league and makes it easier to land all the games,” he said.

With 10 broadcast windows to fill Thanksgiving week, there will be only six 1 p.m. games on Sunday, with three each on CBS and Fox. Seattle at San Francisco gets the late afternoon spotlight on Fox.

Christmas week will have 11 windows — Christmas Eve, three on Christmas Day, two on Dec. 26 on NFL Network, the CBS Sunday doubleheader plus an early game on Fox, NBC Sunday night, and ESPN Monday night. There likely will be six 1 p.m. Sunday games. San Francisco at Kansas City is the featured late-afternoon game on CBS.

“We’re probably stretched, arguably as thin as we can be, for Sunday afternoon," said Mike North, the NFL's vice president of broadcast planning. "One of the things we liked about this schedule was the fact that I think we’re still OK for CBS and Fox on Sunday afternoon. We’re still going to be able to make a half-decent map out of the 1 p.m. window.”

CBS, Fox happy with results

Despite all games being available to all networks, Fox still leans heavily into the NFC and CBS to the AFC to build their brands.

“There’s still some pride of ownership for Fox with the NFC. They still have more appearances of the Cowboys, Packers and Eagles than anybody else," North said. "And certainly for CBS with all those young quarterbacks, They’re not eager to see all the Baltimore, Buffalo and Kansas City games elsewhere.”

CBS, which had its best regular season in 2025, has the Chiefs four times and the Cowboys twice in its Sunday 4:25 p.m. doubleheader window.

Its best lineup looks to be Week 15, with Bears-Bills on Saturday, Dec. 19, at 8:20 p.m., followed by Steelers-Ravens on Sunday at 1 p.m., and Cowboys-Rams at 4:25 p.m.

“That will be a great scene in Buffalo for us, and then you go from that game to Sunday and a monster doubleheader with Ravens-Steelers early, a legendary black-and-blue game, and then having the Cowboys in LA against the Rams,” said Dan Weinberg, CBS Sports EVP of programming.

CBS also has the Cowboys in Week 3 against the Ravens, which will be played in Brazil.

By carrying the Patriots-Lions game in Munich on Week 10, Fox will have its first tripleheader since Week 8 in 2016. After the Sunday morning game, it will also feature Vikings-Packers as a showcase game at 1 p.m., followed by 49ers-Cowboys in the late afternoon slot.

Tom Brady makes his first return to Foxborough, Massachusetts, as a broadcaster when the Patriots face the Packers in Week 9.

“Sunday is still the core of the football experience and always will be. I think the league is mindful of not undermining the brand and power of Sunday football," said Mike Mulvihill, Fox Sports president, insight and analytics.

___

AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl

Thierry Frémaux, the festival's artistic director, brought out the award for Travolta just before the screening of his “Propeller One-Way Night Coach.” A visibly moved Travolta clutched his chest while Frémaux presented the trophy.

“You said this would be a special night, but I didn’t know it would mean this," Travolta said to Frémaux.

“This is beyond the Oscar!” exclaimed Travolta.

Clad in a white beret, Travolta walked the Cannes red carpet with his 26-year-old daughter Ella Bleu Travolta. The actor wrote, directed and co-produced “Propeller One-Way Night Coach,” based on his own 1997 children's novel.

Cannes has sometimes previously surprised guests with an honorary Palme d'Or. It unexpectedly gave one to Tom Cruise in 2022. At this year's festival, the “Lord of the Rings” filmmaker Peter Jackson was given one in the opening ceremony. Barbara Streisand is to receive one later during the festival.

Since arriving in the Alamo City, Scott says she’s been struck by the community’s warmth, culture and pride—especially getting here just in time for Fiesta.

A lifelong storyteller and self-described daredevil, she’s excited to dig into San Antonio’s history, neighborhoods and hidden gems as she begins reporting for KSAT.

Get to know her below!

Welcome to San Antonio! What do you like so far about living in the Alamo City?

Since moving to the Alamo City, one of the first things I noticed was how welcoming everyone has been. There’s such a strong sense of community and pride here. The city is full of culture, good energy and arriving right before Fiesta was the perfect introduction to all of it.

What are you excited to explore now that you’re in San Antonio?

I am excited to explore more of San Antonio’s history, hidden gems and food scene. I’m especially looking forward to visiting more historic sites and discovering stories that make each neighborhood unique.

What made you interested in journalism?

Growing up, the news was always on in my home. I became fascinated by storytelling and the impact journalists can have on people’s lives. I wanted a career where I could make a difference, and I knew journalism would allow me to do that.

Do you have an interesting story that you reported on, or one that’s changed your life?

One of the most interesting stories I’ve covered was about genetic testing that revealed more than half of the local restaurants in a South Texas city were not serving genuine wild-caught Gulf shrimp, despite advertising it on their menus.

While you’re not working, how do you enjoy spending your time?

Outside of the newsroom, I love to travel and try new adventures. My most recent trip was to El Salvador, where I hiked volcanoes and zip-lined through the rainforest. I’m also a bit of a daredevil and enjoy skydiving. When I’m not traveling, I enjoy cooking, volunteering with local churches and nonprofits, and spending time with family.

Read also:

• KSAT meteorologist Shelby Ebertowski is engaged
• KSAT team shares photos from their high school sports days

Trump's comments on Taiwan — a self-ruled island that China claims as its own territory — came as he flew back to Washington after wrapping up critical talks in which both leaders said important progress was made in stabilizing U.S.-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran and Taiwan.

“I’ll be making decisions," Trump said. "But, you know, I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.”

Trump’s Republican administration in December authorized a record-setting $11 billion weapons package for Taipei, but it has yet to move forward. Lawmakers also approved a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan in January, but the sale cannot advance until Trump formally sends it to Congress. China opposes such sales and has suggested that Washington’s relationship with the self-governing island is the key factor in U.S.-China relations.

Trump said Xi also reiterated China's strong opposition to Taiwan’s independence. “I heard him out,” Trump said. “I didn’t make a comment.”

Trump's consultation with Xi about arms sales to Taiwan may violate the so-called Six Assurances, a set of nonbinding U.S. policy principles formulated in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan that have helped guide the U.S. relationship with Taipei, according to analysts.

The second of the Six Assurances states that the U.S. “did not agree to consult with the People’s Republic of China on arms sales to Taiwan.”

Trump said the issue of the 1982 assurances came up in the talks with Xi.

Trump says Xi is ‘very positive’ about a potential nuclear deal

Trump also said he raised a potential three-way nuclear deal that would involve the U.S., Russia and China. He wants each of the three countries to sign a pact that would cap the number of nuclear warheads in their arsenals. China has previously been cool to entering such a pact.

Beijing’s arsenal, according to Pentagon estimates, exceeds 600 warheads and is far from parity with the U.S. and Russia, which are each estimated to have more than 5,000 warheads. But Trump suggested Xi was receptive to the idea.

“I got a very a positive response,” Trump said. “This is the beginning.”

The last nuclear arms pact, known as the New START treaty, between Russia and the United States expired in February, removing any caps on the two largest atomic arsenals for the first time in more than a half-century. As the treaty was set to expire, Trump rejected a call by Russia to extend the two-country deal for another year and called for “a new, improved and modernized” deal that includes China.

The Pentagon estimates China will have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.

Trump was impressed by Chinese presidential residence

Xi welcomed Trump at his official residence, Zhongnanhai, on Friday for their final engagement of the summit before the U.S. leader’s return to Washington. The leaders took a short walk through the grounds that feature ancient trees and Chinese roses, and they strolled through a covered passageway with green columns and archways painted with birds and traditional Chinese mountain scenes.

Over tea and lunch, Trump and Xi — with top aides and translators in tow — huddled for nearly three hours of talks before the U.S. leader completed his three-day visit to China.

Trump appeared impressed by the bucolic grounds, remarking that the roses were the most beautiful he had ever seen. Xi promised to send him some rose seeds.

“It’s been really a great couple of days,” Trump told reporters.

Xi, for his part, called it a “milestone” visit. “We have established a new bilateral relationship, or rather a constructive, strategic, stable relationship,” he said.

But the optimistic outlook collides with some difficult truths about the thorniest issues between the two superpowers.

Beijing has shown little public interest in U.S. entreaties to get more involved in solving the conflict in Iran, even though Trump said in an interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity that Xi had in their conversations offered to help.

In recent weeks, the U.S. State Department has accused Chinese firms of providing satellite imagery to the Iranian government, and the Treasury Department has moved to target Chinese oil refineries accused of buying oil from Tehran, as well as shippers of the oil.

Xi on Thursday warned Trump during private talks that their differences on Taiwan, if handled poorly, could hurtle the world's dominant powers toward “clashes and even conflicts,” according to Chinese government officials.

But Trump, as he made his way home, said he was not concerned that the U.S.-China relationship was in danger. “I think we will be fine," he said.

Taiwan remains the most important issue for China

Xi's sharp language on Taiwan loomed large over the visit, with Chinese government officials amplifying his view that differences on the island pose the biggest risk to U.S.-Chinese relations.

But Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News that U.S. policy toward Taiwan was “unchanged” and cautioned that it would be “a terrible mistake” for China to try to take Taiwan by force. He also framed Xi's comments as standard practice.

“They always raise it on their side. We always make clear our position, and we move on to the other topics,” said Rubio, who was among senior aides to join Trump for the talks.

Some Republicans in Congress expressed displeasure at Trump's pronouncement that he has not decided whether to move forward with the arms package for Taiwan.

“We have to support Taiwan, just like we have to support Ukraine,” said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican. “These are the fortresses of democracy, and they’re on the front lines, and we have to protect and defend them.”

Republican Rep. Michael McCaul said he was not surprised that Xi came out with an aggressive posture on Taiwan.

“We’ve got to arm Taiwan so they can defend themselves for deterrence,” McCaul said.

China wants the Strait of Hormuz opened

Trump said he and Xi also spoke at length about Iran.

The leaders agreed that the critical Strait of Hormuz — effectively closed since the start of the Iran conflict — needs to be reopened to support global energy demands. About 20% of the world’s oil flowed through the strait before the war started on Feb. 28.

“We feel very similar about (how) we want it to end,” the president said. “We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon.”

White House officials said Xi was also opposed to any implementation of tolls on vessels crossing the strait and expressed interest in China potentially purchasing U.S. oil to reduce Chinese dependence on Gulf oil in the future.

Trump earlier this week downplayed the importance of talks with Xi on the 11-week-old Iran war that has led to surging energy prices and threatens to plunge the global economy into recession if the conflict does not conclude soon.

___

Mistreanu reported from Bangkok. Associated Press writers Huizhong Wu in Bangkok and Darlene Superville, Stephen Groves and Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

Speaking a day after the body of a fifth member of the dive group was recovered on Thursday, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said despite the poor weather conditions everything possible would be done to bring the victims home.

The cause of the deaths remained under investigation. The recovery operation is expected to resume on Saturday.

“Unfortunately, the searches are suspended due to bad weather, but we will do everything possible to recover the bodies of our compatriots," Tajani told a political event in Italy.

Italy’s Foreign Ministry said the dive group had “apparently died while attempting to explore caves at a depth of 50 meters (164 feet)” in the Vaavu Atoll on Thursday.

The victims were identified as Monica Montefalcone, an associate ecology professor at the University of Genoa, her daughter Giorgia Sommacal, marine biologist Federico Gualtieri, researcher Muriel Oddenino and diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti, according to the Maldivian government.

Benedetti’s body was recovered on Thursday.

Montefalcone’s husband, Carlo Sommacal, said he believed something unexpected must have occurred and ruled out recklessness on her part.

“Something must have happened,” he told Italian TV channel Rete 4. He said his wife was a disciplined diver who carefully weighed risks before each descent. He recalled her telling him at times: “This one I can do, you can’t.”

Cave diving is a highly technical and dangerous activity that requires specialized training, equipment and strict safety protocols. Risks increase sharply in overhead environments and at depth, particularly when conditions deteriorate. Experts say it’s easy to become disoriented or lost inside caves, particularly as sediment clouds can sharply reduce visibility.

Diving at 50 meters also exceeds the maximum depth recommended for recreational divers by most major established scuba certifying agencies, with depths beyond 40 meters considered technical diving, which requires specialized training and equipment. The recreational diving limit in the Maldives is 30 meters.

Sommacal said his wife survived the 2004 tsunami while diving off Kenya, resurfacing with other experienced divers despite the danger, and later returned to diving after a lengthy recovery from serious health complications. “She had two lives — one on land and one in her environment, the water,” he said.

Maldivian presidential spokesperson Mohamed Hussain Shareef said eight divers took part in Friday’s search and, working in pairs, explored the depths and drew up a map to continue the mission on Saturday.

He said Benedetti’s body was found near the mouth of the cave and authorities believed the remaining four had entered the cave.

Two Italians — a deep-sea rescue expert and a cave diving expert — are expected to join the recovery effort, Shareef said.

Italian officials said around 20 other Italians who were on the same expedition aboard a vessel named the “Duke of York” were safe. Italy’s embassy in Colombo was providing assistance to those onboard and had contacted the Red Crescent, which offered to deploy volunteers to help provide psychological aid.

The vessel was searching for safe harbor from poor weather conditions, and was waiting for conditions to improve before returning to Male, the Italian ministry said.

Greenpeace Italia, the environmental organization, paid tribute to Montefalcone as a passionate advocate for marine protection, saying it would miss “her professionalism and her advice immensely” and “that special light she had in her eyes when she spoke about the wonders of the sea and the importance of protecting them.”

The National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology offered condolences for all the victims. It said Montefalcone had been widely recognized for her work studying and protecting the marine environment.

The Italian ministry said it was coordinating with Divers Alert Network, a specialist diving organization, to support recovery operations and the repatriation of the bodies.

It said the cave entered by the five divers is divided into three large chambers connected by narrow passages. Recovery teams explored two of the three chambers, but the search was limited due to considerations over oxygen and decompression.

On Saturday, they will explore the third chamber, the ministry added.

Italian officials and the honorary consul are in contact with the victims’ families to provide assistance.

___

Zampano reported from Rome. Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Krishan Francis in Colombo contributed to this report.

Students from San Antonio-area school districts are set to compete in the Forge Scholastic eSports Championship at the Boeing Center at Tech Port.

The event, run by the San Antonio Museum of Science and Technology (SAMSAT) through the R-20 Premier eSports League, kicked off Friday morning and runs through 7 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free to the public.

The tournament has grown dramatically since its early days. Josh Martinez, director of esports at SAMSAT and R-20 Premier League organizer, said the high interest speaks for itself.

“In year one, we had 80 students in our grand final. Now, we serve about 650 students from 35 high schools and 17 ISDs,” Martinez said. “Our monthly average is about 300 competitors per month, so it’s grown significantly and it shows no sign of slowing down.”

For many students, the league is opening eyes to career possibilities they hadn’t previously considered.

Alexander Raimondi, a student participating in the event, said the experience has taught him lessons that go far beyond the screen.

“I got to go in there and learn what it means to be in like a high-stress team, right? Where, like, everything matters,” Raimondi said. “You have to communicate effectively. Your personal performance is as important as your team cooperation.”

This fall, Raimondi is heading to the University of Houston to study electrical engineering. He wants parents to know gaming can be the start of something bigger for their kids.

“They’re not just trying to waste time,” Raimondi said. “So, like, especially the younger kids, if they’re first getting into something, like, nurture that.”

The connection between gaming and real-world skills is gaining attention at the national level, as well.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively recruiting gamers to become air traffic controllers, citing a nationwide shortage of qualified candidates. The spatial reasoning, quick decision-making and team communication skills sharpened in esports are translating directly into high-demand professions.

Organizers are encouraging students and parents to attend the free event Friday-Sunday to learn how the programs can help shape students’ futures.

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Although Starmer vowed to fight on after a bruising week in which one Cabinet member resigned, dozens of lawmakers called for the prime minister to quit and his new policy proposals were largely ignored, some observers believe it’s only a matter of time before he steps aside.

The message of the past week “is that Labour seems to have made up its mind that Keir Starmer is going to have to go,” said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “And he’s going to have to go reasonably quickly, and he’s going to have to be replaced by someone who can, unlike him, connect with the public.”

Cabinet resignation adds pressure on Starmer

Weeks of speculation about Starmer's future broke into open rebellion Thursday when Health Secretary Wes Streeting resigned in preparation for a possible leadership bid and the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, declared his intention to return to Parliament. Former Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner announced she had cleared up a tax issue that forced her to resign from the Cabinet last year, thus freeing her up as well.

Starmer is under growing pressure to step down after Labour performed dismally in local and regional elections last week, hemorrhaging votes to both the anti-immigrant Reform UK party on the right and the Green Party on the left. The electoral drubbing cemented doubts among many party members about Starmer’s judgment, vision and leadership less than two years after he led Labour to a landslide victory.

But the potential contest to unseat him is on hold for now as the party waits to see if Burnham can win a special election for a seat in Parliament that would allow him to enter the race. If he returns to the House of Commons, Burnham is widely expected to challenge Starmer.

On Friday, Labour's executive body approved Burnham to run for the seat that became available when a Labour lawmaker resigned to make way for the Greater Manchester mayor. That election is expected to be in the next five or so weeks.

As and when a challenge to Starmer emerges, Labour’s National Executive Committee will set the timetable for any leadership election. The most recent contest lasted three months.

The government’s borrowing costs rose Friday and the pound weakened on investor concern about continued disarray in Westminster. The pound has dropped 1.3% against the U.S dollar this week.

Starmer's supporters urge rivals to think again

Housing Secretary Steve Reed on Friday appealed to party members to step back from the brink of a divisive leadership contest that he said would prevent the government from tackling issues like the cost of living crisis and bolster the prospects of Reform UK.

“This weekend people just need to take a breath, look at what’s gone wrong this week, and come back next week ready to do what we said we’d do — country first, party second — and focus on delivering the change we were elected to deliver,” he told the BBC.

That plea came after a week of political jockeying that overshadowed everything else in Westminster.

The infighting reached a crescendo on Thursday morning when Streeting resigned. While praising Starmer’s “courage and statesmanship” in international affairs, Streeting said he had lost confidence in the prime minister’s leadership because of missteps on domestic issues.

“Where we need vision, we have a vacuum. Where we need direction, we have drift,” Streeting wrote in a stinging resignation letter.

“Leaders take responsibility, but too often that has meant other people falling on their swords,” he added. “You also need to listen to your colleagues, including backbenchers, and the heavy-handed approach to dissenting voices diminishes our politics.”

Opportunity knocks for the popular mayor of Greater Manchester

Streeting stopped short of putting himself forward as the best candidate to lead the party at the next general election, suggesting Starmer should step aside to allow a “broad” field of candidates to debate the future of the party.

That seemed to be a nod to Burnham, a former Cabinet minister who left Parliament in 2017 to run for mayor of Greater Manchester. Burnham has been looking for a way to return to the House of Commons so he can challenge Starmer for the top job.

Josh Simons, a Labour lawmaker from Northern England, provided that opening on Thursday by resigning his seat explicitly to make way for Burnham. But that was only the first step for Burnham. Before he can return to Westminster, Burnham must win a special election to represent Makerfield, a community where Reform UK posted strong results in last week’s local elections.

Burnham acknowledged those challenges on Thursday when he announced his candidacy for the seat.

“I truly do not take a single vote for granted and will work hard to regain the trust of people in the Makerfield constituency, many of whom have long supported our party but lost faith in recent times,” he said in a statement.

Elias Rodriguez faces federal hate crime and murder charges in the killings of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim as they left an event at the museum last May. Rodriguez shouted “Free Palestine” during the shooting and later told police, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza,” according to his indictment.

The charges against Rodriguez include a hate crime resulting in death. The indictment also includes notice of special findings, which allows prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.

“My message to anyone who seeks to commit political violence in this district -- D.C. is not the place. You will be held accountable and you will face the full wrath of the law,” Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, said at an unrelated news conference Friday in which she revealed the Justice Department’s death penalty decision.

The hate crimes charges mean prosecutors will have to prove that Rodriguez was motivated by antisemitism when he opened fire on Lischinsky and Milgrim, a young couple who were about to become engaged. Milgrim, 26, was a U.S. citizen and Lischinsky, 30, was an Israeli citizen working in the U.S.

Prosecutors have described the killing as calculated and planned, saying Rodriguez flew to the Washington region from Chicago ahead of the May 21 event at the Capital Jewish Museum with a handgun in his checked luggage.

Witnesses described him pacing outside before approaching a group of four people and opening fire. Surveillance video showed Rodriguez advancing closer to Lischinsky and Milgrim as they fell to the ground, leaning over them and firing additional shots. He appeared to reload before jogging off, officials have said.

After the shooting, authorities say Rodriguez went inside the museum and said, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza, I am unarmed,” according to court documents. He also told detectives that he admired an active-duty Air Force member who set himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in February 2024, describing the man as “courageous” and a “martyr.”

In Friday's court filing, prosecutors said Rodriguez's actions were “motivated by political, ideological, national, and religious bias, contempt, and hatred.” He “targeted individuals whom he perceived to have attended an event for young Jewish professionals ... to amplify the effect of his crimes,” they wrote.

Attorneys for Rodriguez didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. Several weeks before Friday's announcement, defense attorneys had a meeting with Justice Department officials where they could present evidence that they believe would weigh against seeking the death penalty in the case.

The next court appearance for Rodriguez is set for June 30. A trial date hasn't been scheduled yet.

___

Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

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Now, as Powell steps down from the post after eight tumultuous years, the U.S. economy is transformed: Inflation soared after the pandemic and has remained above the Fed's 2% target for more than five years, angering voters and making rents, cars, and groceries harder to afford. The Fed's key short-term rate rose to a two-decade high in 2023, even as unemployment fell to a half-century low.

Along the way, Powell shrugged off relentless personal attacks from President Donald Trump that began just months after his appointment. But in January, he pushed back against an unprecedented legal investigation by the Justice Department, becoming one of the few top officials in Washington to stand up to the Trump White House.

Powell said he will continue serving on the governing board until he is confident the Fed’s independence is truly restored. His success at protecting the central bank from day-to-day politics will be a key part of his legacy.

“It is not an unblemished record, but in an extremely challenging context, he’s performed exceedingly well," said David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and director of research at Bloomberg Economics. “And my overall assessment is that the country has been lucky indeed to have him as chair.”

Unlike many of his predecessors, Powell, 73, is not a trained economist, but a lawyer who also worked in finance before joining the Fed's board of governors in 2012. Unassuming in public and private, Powell often introduces himself as “Jay” and would display his guitar-playing skills, honed as a student busking through Europe, at the Fed's holiday parties.

‘Transitory’ inflation proved persistent

An inescapable part of Powell's legacy will be the post-pandemic inflation surge, when consumer prices rose by a four-decade high of 9.1% in June 2022.

Overall prices are now 27% higher than just before the pandemic six years ago, a staggering change for a country that had experienced little inflation for generations. Prices rose just 10% in the six years before the pandemic. Groceries are 30% more expensive than six years ago, after they rose just 3.6% in the six years preceding COVID.

Powell and other Fed officials — and indeed most economists — initially said the inflationary surge was “transitory,” a result of supply chain snarls brought about by the pandemic, as COVID shut down factories and slowed ports around the world.

Their immediate priority was supporting the economy in a crisis.

In two moves in March 2020, they slashed their benchmark interest rate by 1.5 percentage points to near zero. The Fed also bought large amounts of Treasury debt and government-backed mortgage securities to reduce longer-term interest rates and took other steps to pour money into the financial system to keep credit markets functioning during pandemic chaos.

In April 2020, Powell said that the Fed would "continue to use these powers forcefully, proactively, and aggressively until we are confident that we are solidly on the road to recovery.''

Even as inflation zoomed past the Fed's 2% target in 2021, the central bank kept its key interest rate near zero until March 2022, when inflation hit 6.9%, according to the Fed's preferred measure.

The Fed's delay in raising rates was largely informed by a traditional economic view that inflation, stemming from a supply shock, would be temporary and if a central bank cranked up borrowing costs to fight it, the higher rates would just harm the economy and lift unemployment even as the supply crunch faded.

Misreading tea leaves

Meanwhile, the Trump and Biden administrations pumped about $5 trillion in government spending into the economy, in the form of multiple stimulus checks, support for small businesses, and other aid. The flow of dollars fueled a spending spike just as supply chains were unable to deliver on the demand.

By keeping its key rate near zero for so long, Powell's critics charge, the Fed contributed to that excess spending and worsened inflation.

“Even though there was all the evidence there in the data that aggregate demand was going through the roof, they still said it was a transitory supply shock,” said Mickey Levy, a former top economist at Bank of America and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. “The Fed contributed to that inflation and completely misread the tea leaves.”

As inflation began to spread into items such as apartment rents and surveys showed Americans increasingly worried it would last, Powell pivoted and oversaw the sharpest increase in interest rates since the early 1980s to combat the price spike.

Still, many leading economists, including former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, worried that defeating inflation would require a recession and a sharp increase in unemployment. Instead, inflation dropped to 2.3% by September 2024, according to the Fed's preferred measure, nearly reaching its 2% target.

By reducing inflation without a sharp economic downturn, Powell largely achieved an elusive “soft landing." Inflation then moved higher after Trump imposed sweeping tariffs last April.

Focusing on unemployment

Fighting inflation was a sharp shift for a Fed chair that began his term more focused on the Fed's mandate to pursue maximum employment. Before the pandemic, Powell often lauded the benefits of a strong job market for disadvantaged workers, winning plaudits from many progressive economists.

Yet some economists argue the Fed's focus on employment contributed to its delayed response to post-COVID inflation. In an August 2021 speech, Powell said the then-elevated unemployment rate of 5.4% was a reason to avoid hiking rates too early.

Still, many analysts defend Powell's support for the maximum employment mandate. Julia Coronado, president of MacroPolicy Perspectives and a former Fed economist, said Powell was right to keep rates low before the pandemic, even as unemployment steadily declined, because there were no signs inflation was worsening.

“If you can actually push a little harder for a little longer with no consequences for inflation, then you should damn well do it,” she said. “He was absolutely right about that. He’s still right about that.”

For his part, Powell said in late April that “overweighting the employment market” had nothing to do with the inflation spike.

“It was a global shock that happened essentially very, very similarly all over the world,” he said.

Fighting for Fed independence

Last July, in an image that will likely prove the most enduring of his time as Fed chair, Powell and Trump stood before cameras in hard hats at the site of the Fed's extensive $2.5 billion building renovation, which Trump had criticized as excessive.

Trump claimed the project would cost even more -- $3.1 billion — and showed Powell a paper listing the costs. Powell took out his reading glasses and corrected the president, on camera, by noting that he had included a third building that had already been renovated.

It was emblematic of Powell's willingness to push back against Trump's unprecedented attacks. Economists have long supported an independent Fed because it allows the central bank to take difficult steps — such as sharply raising interest rates to combat inflation — that politicians often oppose because they can be painful.

Powell benefited from strong relationship-building with Congress. Research by University of Maryland economist Thomas Drechsel has found that Powell met with senators more than twice as often as his two predecessors, with the meetings evenly split between both parties.

During one visit, Powell even endeared himself to North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis' dog, a move that paid huge dividends. Tillis essentially blocked Senate approval of Kevin Warsh, Trump's pick to replace Powell, until the investigation of the building project was dropped. The Justice Department eventually gave up on its probe.

Even those who fault Powell on some policy decisions credit him for defending the Fed.

“The big plus is the way he has protected central bank independence,” said Don Kohn, a former vice chair of the Fed. “That is the most important thing for the future of the Federal Reserve and for protecting the public interest in having an independent central bank.”

Powell hasn't said when he may leave the Fed, though he could remain on the governing board until January 2028.

“You want people to ... set interest rates to benefit the general public," Powell said at his last news conference, "and focus only on that and ignore political considerations. This isn’t bipartisan, this is nonpartisan.”

____

AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington contributed to this story.

James Hunter Townsend, 39, was taken into custody Tuesday on third-degree felony charges of theft between $30,000 and $150,000 and theft from the elderly between $2,500 and $30,000.

The arrest comes two months after Townsend was indicted by a Bexar County grand jury while he was already on probation in a separate 2023 felony theft case, records show.

Townsend also faces a repeat offender enhancement allegation, which could increase his potential sentence in this case.

KSAT Investigates first exposed Townsend in 2022. More than 20 customers in San Antonio and surrounding communities told KSAT he took payments from them for window replacement jobs and then abruptly closed down his business.

Townsend told KSAT via text message that summer he left town due to threats made against him and his family following his decision to close down the Republic of Texas Window Company.

A flurry of criminal complaints were filed by customers against Townsend with law enforcement agencies and the Texas Attorney General’s Office beginning in May 2022, records show.

Townsend was indicted for felony theft in November 2023. Court records show he pleaded no contest in May 2024.

As part of a plea agreement with prosecutors, Townsend was sentenced to three years probation and ordered to make more than $11,000 in restitution payments.

Townsend is scheduled to make a court appearance in his new case June 8 in Bexar County’s 437th Criminal District Court.

Townsend’s defense attorney did not respond to a phone call seeking comment Friday.

KSAT Investigates has also previously reported on Townsend’s criminal history in Texas, including felony convictions for forgery, property theft and family violence.

Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.

More related coverage of this story on KSAT:

• San Antonio window company owner gets probation in felony theft case
• Window company owner accused of stealing deposits says he skipped town to avoid disgruntled customers

According to the filing made Thursday, Toyota is planning on spending $2 billion on a new assembly line at the San Antonio plant.

The proposed project, named “Project Orca,” would bring 2,000 new jobs to the plant. The project would also average more than 600 construction jobs per year from 2026 to 2030.

The construction jobs would be for the plant directly and the surrounding infrastructure connected to the plant.

In the filing, Texas Workforce Solutions submitted a wage requirement for the jobs at the plant to be $88,583 annually.

The wage requirement was part of House Bill 5 that the Texas Legislature passed in 2023. It provides certain requirements for companies to abide by if they are seeking a tax abatement from a school district.

The Toyota Motor Manufacturing Plant opened in 2006 with production of the Tundra. The plant currently assembles the Tundra and the Sequoia.

More than 197,000 vehicles were produced at the plant in 2025. The plant currently employs more than 3,700 workers.

Construction on the new assembly line is slated for completion in 2029, with vehicle production beginning in 2030.

More recent news coverage on KSAT:

• San Antonio-based Whataburger unveils new restaurant designs
• Softening housing market sends San Antonio and Bexar County scrambling

The team-hosted event at The Rock at La Cantera begins at 7:30 p.m., with tipoff scheduled for 8:30 p.m. Admission is first-come, first-served for those who RSVP’d.

Fans can expect playoff T-shirt giveaways while supplies last, along with appearances by DJ Quake and Zay Zay and other live entertainment leading to tipoff.

Parking is limited, but there are many Park & Ride options available from The Shops at La Cantera near Six Flags Fiesta Texas.

Other free watch party options include City Base Cinema on the Southeast Side, which is showing the game in theater rooms between regular movie showings.

Multiple theaters may be available depending on fan demand. Concession stand items such as popcorn, nachos, hot dogs and drinks will be sold.

Sideliners Grill on Thousand Oaks Drive is also hosting a family-friendly watch party. The restaurant will have several food and drink specials available for fans.

At Pearl, organizers are hosting a free, no-RSVP watch party at Pearl Park that is open to families and pets.

Attendees are encouraged to arrive early for seating near the screen. Drinks will be available from Park Bar inside the Food Hall at the Bottling Department.

El Camino is also a family-friendly dog location on Avenue B. Many other bars and restaurants across San Antonio are also expected to host Spurs watch parties Friday night.

More Spurs coverage on KSAT:

• ‘A breath of fresh air’: San Antonio businesses cash in on Spurs’ playoff run
• Spurs spirit runs deep at Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word convent
• As Spurs keep winning, SW Military celebrations grow bigger and rowdier

There are 25 languages, from Albanian to Ukrainian, sung onstage this year at the sequin-drenched international music competition, which reaches its finale in Vienna on Saturday. Eurovision performers increasingly want to share their mother tongues with the world.

“It’s easier to talk about your feelings in your native language,” said singer Pete Parkkonen, half of the Finnish duo who are oddsmakers’ favorite to win with scorching voice-violin duet “Liekinheitin,” or “Flamethrower.”

“And the main language is love, obviously," he said.

Eurovision once mandated that acts perform in an official language of their country, but since 1999 they have been able to choose any language. For many in the years that followed, English was an obvious choice for artists seeking an international audience.

Cultural anthropologist Andrew J. Green of King’s College London found that 20 of the 26 Eurovision winners between 1999 and 2024 were in English, but that the number of non-English songs has been growing in the past decade.

In 2016 there were only three songs with no English, and four in 2017. This year, contest organizer the European Broadcasting Union says there are 12 songs with no English, 16 entirely in English and seven that are multilingual.

The 35 acts competing at this year’s contest — 25 of whom made it through to the final — sing in languages including Spanish, German, Croatian, Azerbaijani, Latvian, Lithuanian and Romanian.

Eurovision fans around the world are learning, and singing, words like “Jalla” — a Cypriot term meaning “more,” and the name of the song by Cyprus’ contestant Antigoni — and “ferto,” or “bring it,” the title of Greek contestant Akylas’ infectiously catchy party rap song about overconsumption.

“It’s so important, because we’re all here to communicate our cultures, our languages, who we are," Akylas said.

“Bella,” by singer Aidan from Malta, mixes English and Maltese lyrics, to the delight of fans from the Mediterranean island nation.

Joseph Pace, who traveled to Vienna to cheer for Malta, said it’s “amazing” to hear fans from other countries try to sing along in Maltese.

“That we will listen to our language on an international stage, on a huge competition like this, it’s amazing,” he said.

Then there are the songs that mix multiple languages.

“Michelle,” the ballad by Israel’s Noam Bettan, has lyrics in Hebrew, French and English. Rapper Satoshi includes shout-outs in Romanian, English, Italian, French and more on raucous crowd-pleaser “Viva, Moldova.” Italian crooner Sal da Vinci sings in both Italian and the dialect of his native Naples on “Per Sempre,” his smooth-as-silk Eurovision entry.

Even the infamously monolingual U.K. is getting in on the act, showing Brits can count to three in German with “Eins, Zwei, Drei” by techno enthusiast Look Mum No Computer.

“People want Eurovision to be different from other song contests,” said Dean Vuletic, an academic expert on the contest's history. “They look for meaning in Eurovision because it is a showcase of cultural diversity.

“It’s countries competing against each other. And we want to see meaning in their entries. We want to see them say something about the countries and the cultures that they are representing.”

Some performers say it’s still useful to use English. Ukrainian singer Leléka usually performs only in her native language, but wanted her song “Ridnym” and its message of hope and renewal to reach the widest possible audience.

“It really has a very deep message that means the world to me, and I really want people to understand it,” she said.

___

Hilary Fox and Philipp Jenne in Vienna contributed to this story.

But Global Citizen is preparing for its most ambitious production yet: the first-ever FIFA World Cup halftime show on July 19, curated with help from Coldplay vocalist Chris Martin. Super Bowl-style performances — uncommon in soccer — will feature Madonna, Shakira and BTS. Also Thursday, Shakira released the official World Cup song “Dai Dai” featuring Afrobeats giant Burna Boy.

Organizers plan to direct the tournament's billions of projected viewers worldwide toward a humanitarian initiative launched alongside soccer's international governing body. Leveraging what Global Citizen founder Hugh Evans called the “complementary” unifying powers of soccer and music, the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund aims to raise $100 million for grassroots groups providing underserved children with access to education and sports.

“I hope that on the world’s biggest stage, finally, the importance of investing in education steals the show,” Shakira told the Global Citizen NOW summit in New York on Thursday. Later, she told The Associated Press in an interview that she wanted to help the “many children who are being left behind.”

"That should be our first concern,” Shakira said. “I’m so excited that finally we’re gonna use a global event like this one as a platform to discuss what’s most important: kids’ education.”

That push could be complicated, however, by the staggering cost of match attendance. A dollar from every World Cup ticket sale will go toward the education fund. But with tickets selling for four- to five-figures, not to mention the high price of travel and lodging, some host cities are lowering their attendance expectations.

Further complicating that humanitarian image are FIFA's agreements with countries such as Saudi Arabia, whose sovereign wealth fund became an official World Cup supporter on Thursday. Critics say the kingdom uses sports to distract from its human rights record.

And the message of unity could be hindered by FIFA President Gianni Infantino's connection to President Donald Trump, whose restrictive immigration policies and recent military pursuits amount to what critics consider an unwelcoming environment atypical of an international sporting event.

Infantino awarded FIFA’s new peace prize to Trump in December. Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter, was also appointed to the education fund's board.

Evans is not focused on politics, though. “I’m a pragmatist," he told the AP. “I’ve always believed that if we can do something so unbelievably positive, it has the potential to unite people at a time when the world needs it most.”

The summit's speakers emphasized their ability to build cross-sector support for causes like the education fund. The annual spring gathering draws entertainers, business executives and world leaders to discuss shared solutions to ending extreme poverty, oftentimes aligned with the United Nations’ ambitious list of “sustainable development goals” ranging from eliminating hunger to achieving gender equality.

They've raised $47 million so far for the education fund, according to a Thursday announcement. Corporate sponsors Bank of America, MetLife and Cisco put in $15 million between them, according to Evans. MetLife is donating an additional $5 for every video that fans post online of themselves juggling a soccer ball with the hashtag #FootworkForFutures.

Indian education entrepreneur Sunny Varkey and his Varkey Foundation contributed $3 million. Also being donated are ticket proceeds from The Weeknd’s high-grossing world tour as well as the joint tour recently announced by Usher and Chris Brown. Shakira announced Thursday she will donate 100% of her “Dai Dai” proceeds plus $1 from every ticket to her newly expanded tour in the United States.

Evans is now turning to heads of state for more financial support. He invited existing or future World Cup host countries to supplement funding.

“It has the potential to say to the whole world: We are global citizens... We’re all on this amazing planet together. Let’s solve the world’s biggest problems together," Evans said, adding that the move can foster a human approach rather than a “nationalistic” one.

Evans cited the 27 inaugural FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund grantees, released earlier this week, as inspiration. Among the recipients was Hit the Books, a Harlem-based nonprofit that uses mixed martial arts as the hook to provide students with additional educational resources.

The grants range from $50,000 to $250,000. Jhae Thompson, executive director of Hit the Books, said the support is meaningful because many nonprofits support hundreds of children on incredibly small budgets.

“What we are really leveraging is the foundation of what a young person needs in order to build character, to build discipline, to build confidence,” Thompson told the Global Citizen NOW audience.

Global Citizen has pursued partnerships in new regions as traditional actors including the U.S. cut their international aid budgets. That expansion includes the Middle East, represented by the addition of 2PointZero Group Vice Chair and Managing Director Mariam AlMheiri to their board.

AlMheiri, who heads the International Affairs Office at the Presidential Court of the United Arab Emirates, emphasized that “when you look at a football, everyone's happy" — a positive association she hopes will translate into support for the education fund.

Marcus Samuelsson, a multiple James Beard Award-winning chef and avid soccer fan, noted that this World Cup is spread across three different countries: the United States, Mexico and Canada. The tournament, he added, has expanded from its origins as a competition largely between South American and European nations to represent countries in Africa and Asia, too.

He hopes that wide geographic spread inspires curiosity about global issues.

“You start thinking about these countries. You maybe want to go there on vacation, maybe you want to go there, volunteer and help out. Whatever gets you going,” Samuelsson told AP. "And it can start by falling in love while watching them.”

___

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.

Marc Balditt, 24, was taken into custody on Wednesday and officially booked into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center just after 5 p.m. Thursday, jail records show.

In the report, SAPD officers were dispatched on an assault in progress call just after 10 p.m. Wednesday to The Park at Sutton Oaks Apartments, which is located in the 1000 block of Locke Street.

The 911 caller, who police said was Balditt, allegedly told dispatchers that the victim “was not responding” after he put her in a headlock.

Upon arrival, officers found the unidentified woman in a bedroom with “redness on her neck” and what appeared to be vomit on her face. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Balditt told investigators he was talking to the woman about their child. Their talk evolved into a verbal argument and later became physical, the report said.

According to police, Balditt put the woman in a “chokehold” between “1 to 2 minutes” until he put the victim “to sleep.”

Following his arrest, Balditt faces a $250,000 bond, according to Bexar County records.

Balditt is expected to make his next court appearance on Aug. 12.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic violence, there is so much help for you. KSAT has a list of resources on its Domestic Violence webpage, which also explains how to identify different types of abuse.

If it’s an emergency, text or call 911. For wrap-around services, including the Battered Women and Children’s Shelter, call Family Violence Prevention Services at (210) 733-8810.

You can also contact the Bexar County Family Justice Center, which also provides wrap-around services at (210) 631-0100.

More recent news coverage on KSAT:

• 2 children found dead in burned vehicle; mother charged with capital murder, San Antonio police say
• Live Oak PD: 5 arrested in connection with identity theft, mail theft investigation
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More than 300 first and second-graders in the Alamo Heights Independent School District officially completed a full marathon this week — totaling 26.2 miles — after spending months pushing toward their goal in physical education (P.E.) classes.

The challenge was inspired by the theme of the San Antonio Marathon: “Where Every Step Tells a Story.”

Students began tracking their progress in August using a marathon map and gradually added miles throughout the school year. This week, the students completed their final two laps and celebrated by crossing the finish line.

Representatives from San Antonio Sports, the organization behind the San Antonio Marathon, visited the campus to award students official marathon medals.

“All year in P.E. at Woodridge, we’ve run every time they come to the gym to build up to 26.2 miles, which is a full marathon,” said Woodridge Elementary Coach Brooks Kirk. “Today we’re just celebrating our kids and all their hard work to finish their marathon journey.”

Kirk said the program is about more than fitness. He hopes that students leave with confidence that they can accomplish difficult goals.

“I think now that they’re done, they realize that they can do hard things, they can accomplish big things,” Kirk said. “I think they’re really proud of themselves, too.”

Elena Wells, chief operating officer of San Antonio Sports, said the organization was excited to support the students’ accomplishment.

“Our mission at San Antonio Sports is to transform the community through the power of sport,” Wells said. “We’re really excited when we heard they were doing this, to come out and support them with the actual medal that all the marathoners got when they finished, so the kids could feel really proud.”

Coach Kirk says the school’s next goal is even bigger: getting every student at Woodridge Elementary to complete a marathon over the course of the school year.

The second annual San Antonio Marathon is scheduled for the first weekend in December.

The cruise missile hit the nine-story corner apartment block Thursday during what the Ukrainian air force said was Russia’s biggest barrage on the country of the full-scale invasion. Emergency workers finished digging through the rubble searching for victims after more than a day, Zelenskyy said on X.

Crowds of grieving people — many of them children — streamed toward a makeshift memorial beneath a tree near the destroyed building.

Teenagers clutching bouquets arrived in groups and broke into tears as they approached the growing mound of flowers and stuffed toys beside photographs of the dead. A portrait of a girl in a school uniform, posed against a bright yellow backdrop, was among the photos.

Zelenskyy and other top government officials visited the site to pay tribute to the dead, as did Kyiv-based foreign diplomats.

Russia has hammered Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks in the days since a May 9-11 ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump said he asked Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to observe. Fighting continued over those 72 hours, although reportedly on a lesser scale.

This week’s attacks ran counter to recent suggestions from Trump and Putin that the war is close to ending.

The assault mostly targeted the Ukrainian capital, where 48 people were wounded, including two children, Zelenskyy said.

He said Moscow had launched more than 1,560 drones against Ukrainian population centers since Wednesday, adding that about 180 sites across the country were damaged, including more than 50 residential buildings.

Previously, the biggest Russian drone attack was on March 23-24 when Moscow’s forces fired nearly 1,000 drones and missiles at Ukraine. Thursday's death toll in Kyiv approached one from July 2024 that killed 32 civilians and injured another 85.

Russia reports a Ukrainian attack on Ryazan

Ukraine has also built up significant long-range capabilities, and Russia’s Defense Ministry said Friday that its air defenses downed 355 Ukrainian drones overnight in one of the largest barrages of the war. Several airports suspended flights overnight because of the attacks.

A Ukrainian drone struck Ryazan, a city about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southeast of Moscow, killed four people, including a child, regional Gov. Pavel Malkov said. Massive plumes of black smoke rose from a fire at an oil refinery. Ukraine has targeted Russian oil facilities to try to deny vital revenue for Moscow and rattle the Kremlin.

Ukrainian officials made no immediate comment on the Ryazan strike.

The cruise missile that hit the Kyiv apartment building was built in the second quarter of this year, Zelenskyy said, apparently after Ukrainian experts analyzed the wreckage.

“This means Russia is still importing the components, resources and equipment necessary for missile production in circumvention of global sanctions,” he said in another post on X late Thursday. “Stopping Russia’s sanctions evasion schemes must be a genuine priority for all our partners.”

Also on Friday, Russia and Ukraine swapped 205 prisoners of war, one of an occasional exchange.

Zelenskyy said it was the first phase of a planned swap of 1,000 POWs from each side. Some of the Ukrainians have been held by Russia since 2022 and fought in some of the war’s fiercest battles, he added.

Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed the exchange and thanked the United Arab Emirates for helping to broker it.

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Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

___

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

According to Attorney General Ken Paxton, the multidisciplinary clinic would offer medical care to patients “who were subjected to ‘gender-transition’ procedures.” The care would be free of charge to patients for the first years of the clinic’s operation. The move follows an investigation that began in 2023 by the attorney general’s office into Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. That same year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that bars transgender children from receiving puberty blockers and hormone therapies.

Gender-affirming care is an umbrella term for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or the discomfort that comes when someone’s gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Gender-affirming care ranges from “socially transitioning” — using different pronouns or dressing differently — to puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions.

“Today is a monumental day in the fight to stop the radical transgender movement,” Paxton said in a statement issued Friday. “I applaud Texas Children’s Hospital for changing course and committing to being a part of the solution by agreeing to form a first-of-its kind Detransition Clinic that will help provide free care to those who have been victimized by twisted, morally bankrupt transgender ideology.”

For the first five years, all services provided through the Detransition Clinic will be funded by Texas Children’s and be free of charge to patients.

The settlement also requires the hospital to pay $10 million for billing Texas Medicaid after the state accused the hospital of illegal ‘gender-transition’ interventions, including by using false diagnosis codes, and compels Texas Children’s to terminate and revoke the medical privileges of five physicians. 

Texas Children’s said in a statement that it made the “difficult decision” to settle with the attorney general’s office to close a legal chapter that has been, “wrought with falsehoods and distractions.” 

The hospital said it spent three three years producing more than 5 million documents to both the state and the U.S. Department of Justice. 

“All reviews and investigations continue to support the facts – we have been compliant with all laws,” the hospital statement said. “To be clear – we are settling to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation … We stand proud knowing we will always put our purpose over politics and that we have and will continue to follow the law.”

Texas Children’s, one of the world’s leading pediatric hospitals, did not say in its statement how it will roll out its clinic or what services it will include.

Andrea Segovia with the Transgender Education Network of Texas said she’s worried that other states will follow Texas’ lead in forcing more of these clinics to open. 

“It’s terrifying what other states will take from this,” Segovia said, the organization’s senior field and policy director.

Transgender people make up about 1% of the population, Segovia said, and it is “infuriating” that the state is creating the detransition clinic as access to other healthcare services are struggling — such as rural hospitals and reproductive care. 

She is also concerned that access to mental healthcare will not be woven into the clinic’s services.

“When trans people decide to detransition, it is because of social pressures from their job, from their friends, from their family, from their government,” Segovia said. “It is not normally because of healthcare complications.”

In March, Paxton released an opinion saying that mental health providers licensed by the state cannot provide gender-transitioning care to minors under state law. It’s not clear if Paxton believes state law bars detransitioning mental healthcare as well.

Brad Pritchett, CEO of Equality Texas, a nonprofit that advocates for the LGBTQ community, said in a statement that the attorney general is “blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for.” 

Pritchett said a detransition clinic “ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care,” and that it is “embarrassing that a hospital once revered for its care has lost its integrity and put politics over patients.”

Several medical associations including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and American Psychiatric Association, have supported evidence-based gender-transitioning care as appropriate and medically necessary for children.

Dallas State Rep. Jessica González who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement that the settlement is “shameful, and is the furthering of an agenda to eradicate transgender people from the eyes of society.” 

González, one of the few openly queer representatives, said “detransitioners already have access to care. There is no evidence that people who detransition lack access to medical care.” 

She added that because Texas Children’s has to fully fund the clinic for five years, that will take away attention and limited resources from the hospital’s other departments, such as care for children with cancer and infants with heart conditions. 

“Using a settlement to compel a hospital to build an ideologically framed clinic opens the door to more state interference in medical practice, more dangerous stigmatization that truly harms

young Texans, and, sadly, more lives lost in our nation’s suicide epidemic,” González said.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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

The all-Republican court dealt a blow to Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republicans in their efforts to severely punish the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for New York, Illinois and Massachusetts in a bid to stop a vote on the maps during a special session.

The Texas redistricting effort kick-started cascading efforts by both parties across the country to redraw voting maps ahead of this year's midterm elections: Republicans, pushed by Trump, seek to hold their slim majority in Congress as Democrats try to counter them.

Those efforts have gained new intensity after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.

In Texas, Abbott had argued in a lawsuit filed directly to the state’s highest civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, and others had effectively abandoned their office.

If successful, they hoped to wield a new hammer to threaten lawmakers considering any future quorum breaks.

Wu had argued that he was not abandoning his office, but was exercising a right to dissent.

In denying Abbott’s request, the court opinion written by Justice James Blacklock noted that the Republican-majority Legislature had adequately resolved the problem itself through measures such as fines against the missing lawmakers, and it noted they eventually returned on their own within a few weeks.

“In the end, a quorum was restored in two weeks’ time, without judicial intervention, by the interplay of political and practical forces,” Blacklock wrote.

“Courts have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves,” the opinion said.

If the issue rises again and the Legislature cannot effectively compel lawmakers to return, the court may someday consider whether the courts should step in, the opinion said.

“When Greg Abbott threatened to arrest and expel us for denying him a quorum, we told him he should ‘come and take it.’ He tried!” Wu said in a statement Friday. “Abbott was wrong, weak, and after all his bluster, he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”

Wu and the other lawmakers eventually returned to Texas, and the new map was passed and signed into law by Abbott.

Wu had argued that because he had returned to the Capitol and the map was eventually signed into law, there was no longer any reason for the court to weigh in.

If lawmakers leave again, the governor will bring the same issue back to the court, Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said Friday.

“No elected official has the right to abandon their duties, flee the state and shut down the people’s business,” Mahaleris said. “Governor Abbott’s legal action is what brought derelict Democrats back to Texas to do their jobs and pass the Big Beautiful Map.”

The state constitution requires that at least 100 of the 150 House members be present to conduct business, and the quorum break effectively shut down a special legislative session Abbott had called to address redistricting and other issues.

And Texas has a history of walkouts.

In 2021, the court ruled that the Texas Constitution enables the possibility of a quorum break but also allows for consequences to bring members back.

Last year's Democratic walkout was the third since 2003, when lawmakers bolted to stop a vote on a redistricting bill. They did it again in 2021 over an elections bill. In both cases, they were temporary victories as Democrats eventually returned and the Republican majority in the Legislature ultimately passed both measures into law.

The northbound I-35 entrance ramp at North New Braunfels Avenue will close from 9 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Sunday, TxDOT said in a news release.

Drivers who need to access northbound I-35 should follow the posted detour signs, the release said.

According to TxDOT, drivers should continue on the northbound I-35 access road, then use the next entrance ramp past North Walters Street to enter the northbound main lanes of the interstate.

For more information on traffic, you can click here to view our traffic page on KSAT.com.

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Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock — a Republican and former Abbott aide — cited legal precedent that the courts “have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves.”

“The courts’ institutional ‘reluctance … to involve themselves in contests of factional political power,’ a reluctance we reiterate and reinforce today, is a check on the judicial power ‘of ancient standing,’ not an optional preference we are at liberty to discard,” Blacklock wrote.

Friday’s ruling from the all-Republican Supreme Court is a setback for Abbott, who vowed to expel any members who refused to return to Texas to pass the GOP’s new congressional map. The unusual mid-decade redistricting arose under pressure from President Donald Trump, who sought to shore up the GOP’s narrow majority in the U.S. House by having Texas lawmakers draw new districts designed to give Republicans five additional seats in Texas.

More than 50 Democrats, including Wu — the House Democratic leader — left the state in August to shut down the Legislature and stall passage of the GOP’s map.

Democrats condemned the unusual mid-decade redraw as a partisan power grab that will reduce the power of Black and Hispanic voters. The Legislature adopted the map shortly after Democrats returned, and the U.S. Supreme Court approved its usage for the midterm elections, overruling a lower court’s finding that the map was racially gerrymandered.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday left open the possibility of getting involved in any future quorum breaks, or when lawmakers purposely deny the Legislature the headcount needed to take up business.

“Whatever wrong may have been committed by the absent House members, the Texas Constitution’s internal political remedies, none of which involve the judicial branch, were sufficient to the task of restoring the House’s ability to do business,” Blacklock wrote. “Should those remedies unexpectedly prove inadequate in a future case, we might have occasion to consider whether any judicial remedy could ever be available in circumstances such as these.”

In a concurring opinion, Justice James Sullivan indicated a greater appetite for addressing future quorum breaks and potentially finding that lawmakers had vacated their offices.

“Were it to happen yet again, I believe the next set of quorumbreakers had better be ready to pay us a visit,” he wrote. “Our original jurisdiction to issue writs of quo warranto will empower us to inquire whether they’ve abandoned their legislative offices and, if we so find, to throw them out.”

Quorum breaking has a long history in Texas politics. The state’s founding fathers intentionally set the bar for quorum high, requiring two-thirds of both chambers to show up, compared to a simple majority in most states. Most recently, Democrats fled in 2003 and 2021 to delay redistricting and voting restrictions, respectively.

No Texas lawmaker has ever been removed from office solely for breaking quorum. Never in U.S. history has a governor gotten the courts to remove a member of a legislature for breaking quorum.

In the emergency petition he filed with the state Supreme Court in August, Abbott argued that Wu had abandoned his office by decamping to Illinois and declaring “this corrupt special session is over” — a signal that Wu and the absentee Democrats planned to stay on the lam long enough to run out the last two weeks of the overtime session, Abbott said.

“What is at stake here? Nothing less than the future of Texas,” Abbott wrote. “If a small fraction of recalcitrant lawmakers choose to run out the clock today, they can do so for any, and every, Regular or Special Session, potentially bankrupting the State in an attempt to get their way.”

In his response, Wu said he had not abandoned his office, and in fact was representing his constituents more fully by refusing to allow the House to pass legislation they opposed.

Wu “has not died and has not been expelled from the House by the constitutionally prescribed means: a 2/3 vote of the House,” his lawyers said in a response. “His presence in another state is not a voluntary resignation — as his opposition to this petition makes evident. Respondent is entitled to serve through the entire term to which he was elected.”

Within weeks, the neighborhood was a ghost town and the playground was empty.

What prompted the mass exodus was a bungled message from the housing authority in Port Isabel, a South Texas community of 5,000 people, many of whom are immigrants working at hotels and restaurants on the beaches of nearby South Padre Island. The Port Isabel Housing Authority indicated a Trump administration proposal was about to take effect that would end housing assistance to families with at least one member in the country illegally. The events that followed provided a glimpse of what could happen in communities across the U.S. if the proposed rule is actually finalized.

“The impact was not limited to undocumented immigrants, but really to immigrants who are here legally as well as people within their families who are citizens,” Marie Claire Tran-Leung, senior staff attorney at National Housing Law Project, said.

For decades, families with at least one legal or eligible resident have been allowed to live in public housing provided those who are here illegally or are otherwise ineligible due to their immigration status pay a full, unsubsidized share of rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to reverse that.

Advocates estimate up to 80,000 people would be kicked out of their homes nationwide under the measure that is part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They include U.S. citizens, many of them children born in this country but whose parents were not.

A message from the Port Isabel Housing Authority

On Feb. 3, the Port Isabel Housing Authority sent residents a letter saying that the Trump administration wanted every household member to prove legal status within 30 days or face eviction. Three weeks later, the agency sent a note of “clarification” that no such proof was required.

It was already too late.

Half of residents living in Port Isabel public housing left within a month of receiving the first letter. The occupancy rate plunged from 91% in January to 43% in May, far below the national average of 94%.

The proposed rule from HUD still has not taken effect.

The housing authority gave no explanation for the initial misunderstanding and officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press.

Rumors and panic

Fears about eviction and rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might get involved prompted panic among some residents.

“My kids and I spoke and wondered what we were going to do, but then we said it’s better to leave and avoid any retaliation,” a single mother from Mexico raising two teenagers who are U.S. citizens told The Associated Press. She, like other former residents, spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of being deported.

She turned to legal service organizations that told her and others they could stay in public housing. But she and her children decided it was too risky and left their home of nearly a decade, finding an apartment within the same school district that costs about $500 more per month.

The move also added about 10 minutes to the commute to the island, where both the mother and her daughter work. The 18-year-old gets home from school at 4:30 p.m. and grabs a quick dinner before her mom drives her to a job that starts at 5 p.m. The daughter is a top student in her senior class and plans to go to college in the fall with help from scholarship offers, but she worries how her family will make ends meet. Her brother was laid off, and their mom underwent cancer treatment last year, depleting her energy and straining their finances.

Other families face even greater challenges.

A mother of three said she moved her family into a one-bedroom trailer home illegally parked between two other trailer homes. Her oldest son sleeps in the living room.

Another family of three sold beds and other furniture so they could squeeze into a small trailer home, only to find out the landlord wouldn't let them use the mailing address, affecting her children’s school and health insurance.

“Since we got the letter, everything changed from one day to the next. It wasn’t the same anymore. Before the letter, the kids were happy, playing outside,” the mother of two said.

A preview of a Trump administration proposal

The Trump administration proposed in February that any household with one ineligible resident would disqualify an entire family, estimating that 24,000 recipients were ineligible in 20,000 households.

“We have zero tolerance for pushing aside hardworking U.S. citizens while enabling others to exploit decades-old loopholes,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said at the time.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income families, estimates that 79,600 people could be forced to leave their homes, with a disproportionate impact on children and Latinos.

The rule drew more than 16,000 public comments, many of them critical, including from city leaders across the U.S.

For example, the New York City Council told HUD that an estimated 12% of city of households have at least one member who lacks legal status. Some 240,000 children are in those homes.

“This proposed rule will unequivocally lead to increased displacement, homelessness, poverty, and decreased educational and health outcomes,” the council wrote.

HUD is expected to publish a final version of the rule after considering public comments.

It is almost certain to face legal challenges.

___

This story has been updated to correct the name of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

___

Associated Press writers Michael Casey in Boston and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this story.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said widowhood often results in a steep decline in economic stability. On average, the average widow’s household income drops nearly $30,000.

Sixteen percent of newly widowed seniors fall below the federal poverty line.

These statistics are just a part of the secondary losses a widow can experiences.

“Whenever I ask the question, ‘What do you need?’ I am also told, ‘To be seen, and understood and a place to for them to get support from others,’” Beauty From Ashes Ministries founder and president Lori Bohning told KSAT.

Bohning founded the organization nearly 10 years ago. Since then, she said she has helped with supporting more than 1,000 widows.

“We have funds to help, for example, if there is a lady who is in need of car repair or help with rent or childcare,” Bohning said. “We also have a list of resources in community if we cannot answer or help with a specific need.”

Bohning described the ministry as a relational connecting ministry filled with Christian-centered talks and life-rebuilding workshops.

“We have the talks about widow topics that move the ladies with different perspectives,” she said. “Just giving them hope when they leave. We have share circles, workshops like home maintenance and cyber security and then social events.”

The widows come together to bond — working through emotional, behavioral, cognitive and other pains that go beyond the grief itself.

“It is called ‘widow brain,’” Bohning said. “They say in scans it looks like you have a brain trauma or injury.”

Bohning is all too familiar with this kind of grief. She lost her husband to cancer in 2015.

“It took me about a year to accept he is not walking through those doors ever again,” she said. “Being a Christian, I know he’s in heaven, and that brings me so much peace.”

Bohning lives in the sweet memories of her husband before his passing.

“Rob was a Marine, so he was protective, and I really liked that,” Bohning said. “Very thoughtful and kind and down to Earth. Super funny. He would make these faces at church or something and I would be the one getting in trouble from laughing. What I miss the most is his honesty and integrity. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he loved me every day.”

Though it was painful seeing his condition worsen during the final days, Bohning knew he was strong.

“He survived a lot,” Bohning said. “Surgeries, and even treatment in Japan. He wanted to live for us. He fought to the very end for us.”

Bohning said she will never stop mourning the loss, but she believes that God is in control.

“I had to have gone through this to start this ministry,” Bohning said. “I understand widows and was able to create this program through the pain of my loss. There is beauty in some of this journey where God comes in and shows you (that) you are not alone.”

She learned that with the average American church having at least 40 widows, her goal is to connect with as many church leaders as she can to help train congregations with the BFA program, serving as a lifestyle changing resource for widows.

Anyone who would like to support Bohning’s mission or participate in the nonprofit’s upcoming 5K fundraiser, click here.

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Longet's nephew, Bryan Longet, announced her death in a social media post on Thursday. “You have been a true inspiration in my life and you will always be," he wrote. "Another star in the sky. Thank you for everything, my aunt.”

Reached by phone by The Associated Press, he confirmed Longet had died but did not reveal the cause of her death.

Longet was a native Parisian who had been acting since childhood. She appeared in numerous TV shows, recorded such hit albums as “Claudine” and was widely known for the bossa nova-style ballad “Nothing to Lose,” a highlight of the 1968 movie “The Party” that starred Longet and Peter Sellers.

At the time, she was married to singer Andy Williams, whom she had met in the early '60s while dancing in a Las Vegas revue. But by the mid-1970s, she and Williams were divorced and she was living near Aspen, Colorado, with Sabich, who had competed for the United States in the 1968 Olympics.

On March 21, 1976, a day that would long be scrutinized, she shot him at their home with a Luger pistol that she would contend he had been showing her and fired accidentally. Sabich, 31, died of a single shot to his abdomen; Longet had accompanied him in the ambulance to the hospital.

Her trial in Aspen attracted worldwide attention. Williams was among those present, escorting her to and from the courthouse, paying for her legal fees and otherwise supporting his former wife and the mother of their three children.

“I thought it was unfair, I thought she was innocent, I thought it was an accident,” Williams told “CBS This Morning” in 2009.

Longet had been charged with reckless manslaughter, but law enforcement officials made such critical errors as taking a blood sample from Longet without a warrant. After four days of deliberation in January 1977, the jury found her guilty of negligent homicide. She was given two years’ probation, fined $250 and sentenced to 30 days in jail, eventually served on dates of her choosing.

Longet's career in entertainment was effectively over, though, and for a time she was the subject of mockery in popular culture, from a skit on “Saturday Night Live” to the Rolling Stones rocker “Claudine,” which featured a taunting refrain, “Claudine's back in jail again.” (The song was unreleased for decades).

Longet later married her defense attorney, Ron Austin, and lived with him in Aspen. After Sabich's family filed a $1.3 million lawsuit in 1977 against her, the two sides reached a settlement that barred Longet from ever discussing Sabich or the trial.

___

Associated Press writer Samuel Petrequin in London contributed to this report.

In New Delhi, gasoline prices rose to 97.77 rupees ($1.17) a liter, while diesel climbed to 90.67 rupees ($1.09) a liter.

India imports about 90% of its oil and has been hit hard by rising energy prices and supply disruptions linked to the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. It had until now avoided raising retail fuel prices despite sharp increases in energy costs, making it one of the last major economies to pass higher crude prices on to consumers.

The price increases came days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged Indians to adopt voluntary austerity measures.

Modi on Sunday called on people to work from home where possible, limit foreign travel and reduce purchases of gold. He described fuel conservation and saving foreign exchange as an act of “patriotism,” and encouraged greater use of public transportation, carpooling and lower fertilizer consumption.

Opposition leaders said Modi’s appeal came only after a key round of state elections had concluded, noting that fuel prices were kept unchanged during the campaign.

Manoj Kumar, a 48-year-old taxi driver in New Delhi, said the rise in fuel prices was adding to the strain on working-class people.

“For common people like us, even one rupee has great value. People work so hard from morning till evening just to make ends meet. The government is not seeing this," he said.

Earlier this week, India also raised import duties on gold and silver to 15% in an effort to curb demand for imports that drain foreign exchange reserves.

The Indian rupee has fallen to record lows in recent weeks as higher oil prices increased pressure on imports and foreign exchange reserves.

Meanwhile, India’s capital has become the first state to roll out austerity measures.

Authorities in New Delhi on Thursday announced fuel-saving measures, including mandatory work-from-home days for some government employees. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta said the 90-day campaign aims to reduce official fuel use and encourage people in the capital to rely more on public transportation instead of private vehicles.

Under the plan, employees whose work can be done remotely will work from home two days a week, while private companies are being encouraged to adopt similar measures voluntarily.

India has also accelerated ethanol blending in gasoline as part of its push to cut crude oil imports.

Most fuel stations across the country now sell gasoline blended with 20% ethanol, and the government has proposed expanding the use of fuels containing 85% — or even 100% — ethanol in compatible vehicles.

Energy experts said blending biofuel can help shield from global energy shocks but can lead to further stressing already depleting groundwater resources, encroach on land meant for food crops and impact older vehicles’ engines.

___

AP journalists Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India and Shonal Ganguly in New Delhi contributed to this report.

The incident happened around 2:30 a.m. along Interstate 35 northbound near Binz-Engleman Road.

According to a preliminary report, the man was traveling northbound when he lost control of the vehicle and hit a guardrail. After he exited his vehicle, police said the man was struck by a separate vehicle.

The driver of the second vehicle fled the scene, SAPD said.

Following the crash, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) said all northbound lanes of Interstate 35 were closed. Those lanes have since reopened.

SAPD said its investigation is ongoing.

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The crash happened just before 2 a.m. Friday at the intersection of the Loop 410 access road and Perrin Beitel.

According to an SAPD preliminary report, the driver of a BMW traveling southbound on Perrin Beitel sped through a red light at the intersection and crashed into a Dodge Ram.

Officers said the sedan then rolled over in front of a nearby restaurant.

A passenger in the BMW, who police believe to be in his 20s, was pronounced dead at the scene, the report said.

Two others at the scene told SAPD that the BMW driver and another passenger fled the scene on foot.

The driver of the Dodge Ram remained on scene and is cooperating with SAPD’s investigation, authorities said.

When located, a police spokesperson said the driver of the BMW will be charged in connection with the passenger’s death.

This is a developing story. Please check back for more details.

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At a Seattle sports bar on a recent Saturday night, hundreds of very tall people got to experience something rare: blending in. Women in their highest heels craned their necks to look at someone taller. Men who usually duck under doorways looked ordinary. For once, nobody had to explain why they don’t play basketball.

Welcome to Tall Tour, a traveling meetup drawing thousands across the United States to celebrate the one physical trait that has made them stand out — for good and ill. Since launching last summer, the tour has visited 19 cities, with crowds swelling from an initial 30 people in Tampa, Florida, to some 4,000 in Orlando, according to organizers. Seattle drew around 750, they said.

“You’re walking around and there’s people your height and people taller than you when you thought you were just this giant freak,” said Tyler Bergantino, the tour’s 6-foot-9 founder who wears a size-16 shoe. “That’s something that I think is very healing for tall people.”

The concept emerged almost accidentally. Bergantino, 32, a former software salesman turned TikTok creator, posted a casual invitation on social media while traveling through Texas. He wanted content. Instead, he sparked a movement.

“It created itself,” he said. “I can’t really take credit for it.”

Each stop follows a similar format: Tall people gather, take photos, share recommendations for shoe shopping and swap stories about hitting their heads on door frames and cramming into airplanes.

For many women, the night’s biggest draw is the speed dating component and the hope of meeting someone comfortable dating a taller woman — whether that means matching their height, exceeding it or simply being open to it. Many bonded over the shared challenge of navigating a dating culture that still favors petite women.

“Dating as a tall woman, you feel like you’re intimidating to people,” said 25-year-old Ksenia Protasenko, who's 6 feet tall. “There’s this association with you being a warrior type, but it’s not true. It’s tough to have your height as the first thing people notice about you because it feels like people are not really seeing any vulnerable parts of you.”

Protasenko said men often ask whether she plays basketball. She usually has a reply ready.

“I tell them, ‘Yeah, sure,’ even though I don’t,” she said. “Then I ask them if they play mini golf. That seems to straighten them right up.”

Crowning the royalty of the tall

The highlight comes when organizers crown the tallest man and woman in attendance. In Seattle, those titles went to a mother and son. Susan Mullendore, 44 and 6-foot-5, stood beside her son Grayson, 19 and 7 feet tall, as the crowd erupted.

“As a mom, just seeing Grayson having this experience meant the world to me,” Susan said. “To be able to be crowned with him was really special. It was nice to have our height celebrated.”

For Grayson, a college freshman, the evening offered something rare: a feeling of normalcy. When in public, he said, strangers make comments and photograph him without asking. “People think that because we’re tall they can say whatever they want or do whatever they want, like we’re zoo animals almost,” he said.

At Tall Tour, the dynamic flipped.

“It was insane to feel small for once,” he said, noting the event's 7-foot-3 and 7-foot-4 co-hosts known as the Tall Boys. “It was so surreal to be able to have a conversation and look people in the eyes.”

That commonality runs deeper than shoe size. Attendees describe a lifetime of social hyper vigilance — raising their voices a few pitches to sound less intimidating, slowing down around corners so they do not startle strangers, slouching to fit in.

“You’re hyper-fixated on making sure that people don’t see you as a threat,” Bergantino said.

Tall people often feel isolated and out of place, particularly around puberty, he said, noting he reached 6-foot-9 at age 16. But at Tall Tour, people can finally feel what it’s like to fit in.

“It heals a portion of your inner child,” he said. “Everyone’s walls come down, and it’s like we’re all one family.”

Susan knows the feeling.

“Sometimes you just want to go through the airport and be left alone. And that doesn’t happen for us. We usually get a lot of whispers,” she said. “We get it. It’s shocking to see tall people. But sometimes it does get old.”

The challenges extend beyond social awkwardness. Finding clothes and shoes that fit can be a mission. Susan, who wears a size-14 shoe, orders clothes from a specialty brand in the United Kingdom. To fit in his dorm bed, Grayson added a mattress extender and three sheets of plywood for support. He still hangs off the edge.

What began as a meetup has become a fast-growing business

Bergantino quit his sales job two years ago and now runs Tall Tour full time with a small team that includes his brother, who handles video and social media, a chief executive officer and a chief operating officer.

Even celebrities have taken notice. Seven-foot-6 basketball player Mamadou Ndiaye attended the Los Angeles event and the team has been in contact with 7-foot-1 NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal.

Future plans include expanding speed dating, launching a fashion show featuring height-inclusive brands and models, and adding spinoffs such as Tall Tour at Sea. International stops in Canada, Dubai, London, Australia, the Netherlands and Japan are also on the wish list. Bergantino says he wants to build “the tall-person ecosystem” — advocacy for exit row seating, better clothing options and even a phone app.

For now, the reward comes in smaller moments, like watching women in heels celebrate the height that once caused shame.

“The most joy of the day comes from the Tall Queen when she gets her crown and everyone’s going crazy,” he said. “It gets me every time.”

___

Tall Tour will run through May with two more stops in Houston and Dallas, Texas. Follow Annika Hammerschlag on Instagram.

Georgia's current secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, became a household name when he defended the state's election results against Trump's false claims about widespread voter fraud and resisted the president's urging to help “find” enough ballots to win the race.

Now that Raffensperger is stepping down to run for governor, election oversight is a key issue in the race to replace him. Some Republican candidates are endorsing the same distortions that Trump did six years ago. The president has stocked the federal government with people who echo his conspiracy theories, and election denial has spread through state offices as well.

A looming deadline over vote counting

The race comes at a time when lawmakers have made a contradictory mess of state law governing how votes are counted. Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday called lawmakers into special session on June 17 for redistricting but also to address a looming deadline on voting.

Georgia’s touch-screen voting machines print a paper ballot that includes a human-readable list of voters’ selections and a QR code that a scanner reads to count votes. Lawmakers two years ago passed a law saying QR codes could not be used for the official vote count after July 1 of this year.

However, they've failed to agree on an alternative method since then, causing uncertainty and the potential for lawsuits over Georgia elections until that's sorted out.

While the special session may resolve the question temporarily, the next secretary of state will likely be involved in implementing a new voting system by 2028.

The shadow of the 2020 election

Gabriel Sterling, who was one of Raffensperger’s top aides, is the only Republican secretary of state candidate actively defending the state’s 2020 election results.

He rose to prominence by imploring Trump to help discourage threats of violence against election workers, and he said in a recent Atlanta Press Club debate that the state has “the best and safest elections in America.”

But others continue to echo Trump’s claims.

Vernon Jones, who was elected as a state representative and DeKalb County CEO as a Democrat and then switched parties to become a Republican and fervent Trump supporter, is maybe the harshest critic.

“I believe there were many irregularities. I believe violations have taken place,” Jones said, adding, “I stand with those who believe there was election fraud.”

Kelvin King, a general contractor who previously ran for U.S. Senate and is married to State Election Board member and conservative commentator Janelle King, is only a little more reserved.

“I think 2020 is still in question to be frank with you,” King said.

State Rep. Tim Fleming said he believes there were some “irregularities" in 2020 and that “great strides” have been made to address the issues. He said he's “not running on conspiracy theories” and is focused on the future.

What they're saying

Fleming said he believes he and his fellow lawmakers need to find a “temporary fix” during the special session to remove the QR code from the ballot in a way that is “least disruptive for the county elections officials.” But ultimately, he said, he also wants to see the state move to hand-marked paper ballots, a position supported by many other Republicans.

Fleming previously worked for the secretary of state's office while Brian Kemp, now the outgoing Republican governor, held the position. He led a study committee on Georgia's election system last summer, but the committee produced only the briefest of reports.

Jones and King and Ted Metz, who has previously run for governor and secretary of state as a Libertarian, have criticized Raffensperger's record as secretary of state. They have decried what they say is incompetence, which he denies, and a lack of transparency and are calling for a switch from touch-screen voting machines to hand-marked paper ballots. They have extended that criticism to Sterling, who oversaw the implementation of the state's current voting system and continues to defend it.

Sterling, for his part, has insisted he is best positioned to beat a Democrat in the fall. He endlessly repeats the refrain that he has defended Georgia's election laws and policies against attacks from “Stacey Abrams, Joe Biden's Justice Department and the woke world.”

Cole Muzio, president of Frontline Policy, a Christian conservative group, said he believes Jones has “traction” in the closing days of the race, but said he believes that in any runoff, rank-and-file Republicans are likely to rally behind anyone who is opposing Jones. Muzio said despite Jones’ outspoken pro-MAGA position, questions about his party switch could intensify in a runoff, particularly over Jones’ switch from vociferously defending legal abortion to opposing it.

The Democrats

On the Democratic side, the candidates have stressed protecting the right to vote and fighting attacks on the state's elections.

The Democrats running for secretary of state include certified financial planner and political organizer Cam Ashling; Fulton County Commissioner Dana Barrett; nonprofit founder Adrian Consonery Jr; and former Fulton County State Court Judge Penny Brown Reynolds.

From packed downtown restaurants to boutiques on the South Side, owners say jerseys, merchandise and game-day shopping are adding up. Workers are picking up extra hours, and customers are coming back through the door.

The Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce says more playoff games can mean more money flowing into local businesses, from bars and restaurants hosting watch parties to small shops seeing increased foot traffic.

“I just love seeing the enthusiasm in our business owners who are like, ‘This is a breath of fresh air,’ said Jeff Webster, Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce president and CEO. ”It’s been some tough times. This brings a whole level of energy and, more importantly, some revenue to help them survive right now in some tough economic times."

The owner of Pink Berry Boutique told KSAT that the playoffs brought crowds and out-of-town shoppers to her business.

Greater:SATX, which serves as the region’s economic partnership, is calling the boosts in sales the “Spurs effect.”

“Our team travels the globe building relationships with businesses to ultimately bring them here to grow jobs in our San Antonio community,” said Jamie Bloodsworth Lutrell, a spokesperson for greater:SATX. “The topic of the Spurs frequently helps to open the door with international companies to start conversations about San Antonio as a destination for business investment.”

The Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce expects to release data within the next month detailing the full economic impact the city has seen during the playoff run.

Two weeks after Cherie DeVaux became the first woman to train a Kentucky Derby winner with Golden Tempo and after Jenna Antonucci won the 2023 Belmont with Arcangelo, Russell has the chance to complete the Triple Crown sweep of female trainers when she saddles Taj Mahal in the 151st running of the Preakness Stakes on Saturday.

“It would sort of feel probably a little fairytale-like," Russell said. "Jena opened the door just a couple years ago with Arcangelo, and Cherie got it done in the Kentucky Derby. The fact that I feel like I have a live one in the Preakness here, look, there’s some pressure and I certainly hope we can do it, but it would mean an awful lot.”

Where the race is taking place and who will be aboard could make it mean even more. The Preakness is being run at Russell's home track, Laurel Park, for the first time, and husband Sheldon is the jockey. They would be the first married couple, at least as trainer and jockey, to win a Triple Crown race.

“The dream, the goal was always to get one that would take us to one of the big races, and he’s sort of taken us there,” Sheldon Russell told The Associated Press. “Just like a normal day, really.”

Most weekends, the Russells take their children to Laurel Park, which is just off I-95 between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and 6-year-old daughter Edy and 4-year-old son Rye are expected to be in attendance.

They were a little younger when they went to the Breeders' Cup at Del Mar in Southern California, in the fall of 2024 when Post Time, trained by their mother and ridden by their father, finished second in a world championship mile-long dirt race. It was a cross-country introduction to the sport.

“That was a big event for them,” Sheldon Russell said. “They didn’t really understand what we were doing there until we sort of got there. (This time) it’s not like we have to travel.”

And, unlike the usual Maryland-based horses who go into the Preakness as long shots, Taj Mahal is right in the mix of contenders in the wide-open field of 14 that does not include Golden Tempo. He opened at odds of 5-1, just behind morning line favorite Iron Honor.

Taj Mahal is unbeaten in three races, all at Laurel Park, including going wire to wire to win the Federico Tesio Stakes on April 18 by more then eight lengths.

“Immediately everybody started talking, just the way that horse won it,” Maryland Jockey Club president and CEO Bill Knauf said. “To have Brittany as our leading trainer for many years now here, she’s obviously one of the best in the country, and Sheldon has done an unbelievable job.”

Brittany Russell called it a dominant effort, and she hopes the home track advantage could be a major one. Her husband rides most of her horses, and that's another relationship edge they have over everyone else as they watch replays together and discuss strategy.

“Most of the time, it’s great,” Brittany said. "Now, look, does everything go to plan? Is everything always perfect? No, and it can be a little tricky. But at the end of the day, it’s horse racing and some things are out of our control. In this particular instance, I think it’s great. He knows the horse. He’s won on it three times. He knows the racetrack better than anybody. I think it’s a good thing.”

This is Brittany Russell's first Preakness horse in her eighth year of training. It's her husband's fourth chance to ride in the middle leg of the Triple Crown after finishing fifth aboard Chase the Chaos in 2023, sixth aboard Excession in 2020 and 10th aboard Concealed Identity in 2011.

This is different, though Sheldon Russell said he has not pondered the big-picture ramifications. His thoughts keep coming back to the little things, like, “We have a chance.”

“I guess if it happened, it’s going to be something,” he said. "We both know that he has a decent chance of showing up on the big day.”

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

The Colombian superstar Shakira and Afrobeats icon Burna Boy have teamed up for “Dai Dai,” the official song for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

It's a mesh of their musical landscapes: Afrobeats and Latin rhythms, an undeniably global, multilingual pop track. In one verse, they name a number of the world's most famous soccer players and countries competing in this year's World Cup: “Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia,” Shakira cheers. “Mexico, Japan, Korea, Netherlands.”

After the first chorus, Shakira and Burna Boy take turns tackling their own verses, singing back and forth, before joining in a duet.

The song arrived shortly after it was announced that Shakira, Madonna and K-pop group BTS will co-headline the FIFA tournament's first-ever final halftime show on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, just outside New York City. The lineup was curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin.

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

Shakira first teased “Dai Dai” last week, sharing a minute-long teaser clip of her dancing in the center of the field of Maracaná Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. She included a snippet of the opening verse: “Here in this place / You belong,” she sang in English, a male voice harmonizing with her now identifiable as Burna Boy. “What broke you once / Made you strong.”

She is no stranger to World Cup anthems. Her song “Waka Waka (This Time For Africa)” was the official song of the 2010 World Cup held in South Africa and is widely regarded as one of the best.

It's also not uncommon for sponsors of the FIFA World Cup to release their own singles for the tournament. In March, Coca-Cola shared its own official anthem for the World Cup, a reimagination of Van Halen’s “Jump” that features Colombian singer J Balvin, drummer Travis Barker, pop/R&B singer Amber Mark and guitarist Steve Vai.

It is similarly multilingual: Balvin wrote a new verse in Spanish for the anthem, bringing in Brazilian funk and hip-hop to the classic rock staple. “‘Jump’ is not a fútbol song,” he told The Associated Press about the original track, using the Spanish word for soccer. “So that’s why I had to put the Latin love and passion for fútbol (in the lyrics).”

The World Cup is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico and runs through June and July.

___

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

No coffeehouse employees are affected, the company said. The cuts will impact employees in support functions like marketing, human resources and supply chain management. No international employees are affected for now, but Starbucks said it is also reviewing its corporate structure outside the U.S.

Starbucks said it’s also closing underused offices in Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and other cities. The Seattle-based company recently announced that it's opening a corporate office in Nashville, Tennessee, that will employ up to 2,000 people within five years.

Starbucks expects to the moves to result in $400 million in restructuring charges, including $120 million in employee separation benefits.

Starbucks has been trying to reduce costs and complexity under Chairman and CEO Brian Niccol, who joined the company in 2024. Last year, the company laid off 2,000 corporate employees and closed hundreds of stores in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Niccol said last month that the simplified structure is helping the company innovate more quickly. Starbucks is also investing in its remaining stores to improve customers' experience. It plans to redesign 1,000 U.S. stores this year to give them a cozier, more comfortable feel, and it's also hiring baristas to ensure faster service during busy times.

The efforts appear to be paying off. In the January-March period, Starbucks said its U.S. same-store sales, or sales at locations open at least a year, jumped 7%. Niccol called the quarter “the turn in our turnaround.”

“Our focus now is on sustaining our momentum and making our results repeatable and durable, all while delivering a healthy cost structure that supports profitable growth,” Niccol said during a conference call with investors. “It’s how we turn progress into consistent results.”

Monica Elfriede Witt, 47, was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran. She remains at large.

Witt “allegedly betrayed her oath to the Constitution more than a decade ago by defecting to Iran and providing the Iranian regime National Defense Information and likely continues to support their nefarious activities,” Daniel Wierzbicki, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, said in a news release Wednesday.

“The FBI has not forgotten and believes that during this critical moment in Iran’s history, there is someone who knows something about her whereabouts.”

It wasn't immediately known why the FBI was bringing attention to Witt's case. The United States and Iran have been at war since Feb. 28.

Witt served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in the Farsi language and was deployed overseas on classified counterintelligence missions, including to the Middle East. She later found work as a Defense Department contractor.

The Texas native defected to Iran in 2013 after being invited to two all-expense-paid conferences in the country that the Justice Department says promoted anti-Western propaganda and condemned American moral standards.

Before that, Witt had been warned by the FBI about her activities, but told agents that she would not provide sensitive information about her work if she returned to Iran, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Witt placed at risk "sensitive and classified U.S. national defense information and programs,” the news release said.

“Witt allegedly intentionally provided information endangering U.S personnel and their families stationed abroad. She also allegedly conducted research on behalf of the Iranian regime to allow them to target her former colleagues in the U.S. government,” it said.

No games were scheduled for Thursday — the league's first day with no games in a month — meaning the playoffs will resume Friday with two games.

Detroit, trying to keep its season alive, will play in Cleveland. And Minnesota, trying to keep its season alive, will play host to San Antonio.

The Cavaliers and Spurs hold 3-2 leads in those series. If Game 7s are needed, they would be Sunday in Detroit and San Antonio.

Saturday is another day with no games on the schedule.

Friday's schedule

— Game 6, Detroit at Cleveland, 7 p.m. EDT (Prime)

Series: Cleveland leads 3-2.

Odds: Cleveland by 4.5.

The Pistons are already 3-0 when facing elimination in these playoffs, with one of those wins coming on the road — the one where they rallied from 24 points down in the second half to beat Orlando in Game 6 of Round 1. If the line holds at Cleveland -4.5, it would mark just the fifth time this season that the Pistons are such a big underdog.

— Game 6, San Antonio at Minnesota, 9:30 p.m. EDT (Prime)

Series: San Antonio leads 3-2.

Odds: San Antonio by 5.5.

Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs are one game away from a showdown with Oklahoma City. Minnesota let Game 5 get away in a hurry in the second half but remains alive in the chase for what would be its third consecutive appearance in the Western Conference finals.

Saturday's schedule

— No games scheduled

Wednesday's recap

— Cavaliers 117, Pistons 113, OT for a 3-2 series lead. The Pistons are in trouble.

Conference finals schedule

The NBA Finals will start on June 3. And there is a chance that we won't know where Game 1 of that series is going to be until June 1.

Conference finals schedules are out, with start dates contingent on Friday's results. Here are the scenarios:

— If Detroit-Cleveland ends in six games, then the Cleveland-New York series (with the Knicks having home-court) would be played May 17, 19, 23, 25, 27, 29 and 31.

— If Detroit-Cleveland ends in seven games, then the Cavs/Pistons winner-New York series (with either the Pistons or the Knicks having home-court) would be played May 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29 and 31.

— If San Antonio-Minnesota ends in six games, then the San Antonio-Oklahoma City series (with the Thunder having home-court) would be played May 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, and 30.

— If San Antonio-Minnesota ends in seven games, then the Timberwolves/Spurs winner-Oklahoma City series (with the Thunder having home-court) would be played May 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, and June 1.

Awards watch

A breakdown of this season's NBA awards:

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

— Hustle Award: Moussa Diabaté, Charlotte.

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

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

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

— Sportsmanship Award: Derrick White, Boston.

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

— Rookie of the Year: Cooper Flagg, Dallas.

— Executive of the Year: Brad Stevens, Boston.

Among the announcements still to come:

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

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

Betting odds

Defending champion Oklahoma City (-170) is favored to win the NBA title, according to oddsmakers.

The Thunder are followed by San Antonio (+325), New York (+600), Cleveland (+3500), Detroit (+5000) and Minnesota (+12500).

Key dates

— Sunday or Tuesday: Eastern Conference finals begin on ESPN and ABC.

— Monday or Wednesday: Western Conference finals begin on NBC and Peacock.

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

— June 23: Round 1, NBA draft.

— June 24: Round 2, NBA draft.

Quote of the day

“It was preparing for moments like this. I knew that I was going to come back this season. I knew that this team was good enough to make a run and I was just preparing myself, preparing my body, preparing my mind for these moments, to be the best player that I can be to help us win.” — Cleveland's Max Strus, on how he handled missing 70 regular-season games but was ready for the playoffs.

Stats of the day

— Cleveland's James Harden is up to 4,144 career playoff points, three away from tying Golden State's Stephen Curry for 10th on the all-time playoff list. Harden would move into third among active players if he passes Curry, behind only LeBron James (8,521) and Kevin Durant (5,008).

— San Antonio's Victor Wembanyama is up to 14 3-pointers and 38 blocks so far in these playoffs. Every other player with that many 3s and blocks in a single postseason — Rasheed Wallace in 2004 and 2005, Draymond Green in 2016 and Myles Turner and Chet Holmgren last year — saw their teams reach the NBA Finals. (Wembanyama is the first player to have that many 3s and blocks in just the first two rounds of the playoffs.)

___

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

Sen. Bill Cassidy is running for a third term but first must overcome a Republican primary field that includes state Treasurer John Fleming and U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, who was endorsed by Trump in January.

The primary is the president’s latest opportunity to exact retribution from his perceived political enemies, including fellow Republicans he considers disloyal. Cassidy has been near the top of that list since his vote more than five years ago to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial following the insurrection by his supporters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump was acquitted.

Louisiana is not among the states Democrats are targeting in their effort to retake the U.S. Senate. A Cassidy defeat in the primary would likely result in a Senate GOP caucus even more unified behind Trump and further demonstrate the strength of the president’s grip on the party.

Voters will also decide primary contests for state Supreme Court, Public Service Commission and state school board, along with five proposed state constitutional amendments.

Louisiana’s primaries for U.S. House were postponed after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current congressional map, which includes a majority Black district that favors Democrats. U.S. House races will still appear on ballots, but any votes cast in those contests will not be counted.

In another key departure from previous Louisiana primaries, contenders in Saturday’s contests will run in separate party primaries, rather than in one jungle primary in which all candidates appear on the same ballot. State lawmakers adopted the new system for certain offices in 2024, but the law didn’t go into effect until 2026.

U.S. House races were originally slated to use the new primary system under the 2024 law, but state Republicans on Thursday adopted legislation to reinstate the jungle primary for U.S. House races, citing a compressed schedule after the Supreme Court decision. Just as in previous cycles, the jungle primary will be held on Nov. 3 alongside the general election.

East Baton Rouge Parish, home to Baton Rouge, and Jefferson and Orleans Parishes in the New Orleans area are the most populous in the state, but St. Tammany Parish, north of New Orleans along the Mississippi border, contributed the most votes in the 2016 and 2024 Republican presidential primaries.

Caddo Parish in the northwest, home to Shreveport, and Lafayette Parish also tend to play a bigger role in Republican primaries than in Democratic ones.

Trump narrowly won a four-way primary in 2016, powered in part by a large margin in Jefferson Parish and overcoming losses in East Baton Rouge and Caddo Parishes to Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz. He swept the state eight years later in the 2024 primary against former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had dropped out of the race by the time of the primary but was still posting stronger-than-expected showings in other states.

Cassidy’s previous victories in 2014 and 2020 were under the old primary system, in which his main opposition on the ballot came from Democrats.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

When do polls close?

Polls close at 8 p.m. local time (CT), which is 9 p.m. ET.

What’s on the ballot?

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Senate, state Supreme Court, state Public Service Commission and state school board, as well as five statewide ballot measures.

Who gets to vote?

Registered party members may vote only in their own party’s primary. In other words, Democrats can’t vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may participate in either primary. Voters registered with other parties may only vote on nonpartisan contests.

How many voters are there?

As of May 1, there were about 3 million registered voters in Louisiana. Registered Democrats and Republicans numbered about 1.1 million each, with registered Democrats at a slight advantage. About 813,000 voters were not registered with any party. The remainder were registered with other parties.

How many people actually vote?

Louisiana’s new primary system is closer in format to the 2024 presidential primaries than to previous state primaries. About 192,000 votes were cast in the Republican primary and about 167,000 in the Democratic contest. Each primary represented about 6% of registered voters.

How much of the vote is cast early or by absentee ballot?

About 41% of the Republican primary vote and about 45% of the Democratic primary vote in 2024 was cast before primary day.

As of Thursday, about 255,000 ballots had already been cast in Saturday’s election, about 44% from Democrats and about 41% from Republicans.

When are early and absentee votes released?

Results from early and absentee voting are usually released by each parish in the first vote update, as separate totals from in-person Election Day vote results.

How long does vote-counting usually take?

In the 2024 general election, the AP first reported results at 9:32 p.m. ET, or 32 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 11:56 p.m. ET, with more than 99% of total votes counted.

When will the AP declare a winner?

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

How do recounts work?

There are no automatic recounts in Louisiana, but a candidate may request and pay for a recount of absentee and early votes. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

Are we there yet?

As of Saturday, there will be 42 days until the June 27 primary runoff if needed, 171 days until Nov. 3 general election and the rescheduled U.S. House jungle primaries and 210 days until the Dec. 12 runoff.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

Floresville jumped out to an early lead in the first inning. With the Tigers already ahead 2-0, Nolan Westbrook reached on a fielder’s choice that allowed Austin Beyer to score and extend the lead to 3-0.

Robstown answered in the second inning when Paxton Salinas blasted a solo home run over the left-field wall to cut the deficit to 3-1.

The Tigers responded in the bottom half of the inning as Jacob Guevara doubled on a fly ball to left field, bringing home Isaiah Jimenez to make it 4-1.

Floresville continued to pull away and secured the run-rule victory, taking Game 1 of the best-of-three series, 11-1.

Game 2 is scheduled for 5 p.m. on Saturday in Beeville.

More Big Game Coverage on KSAT:

• Boerne Champion blanks Southwest in Game 3, advances to regional semifinal
• Reagan rolls past Brennan 10-1 in Game 3, advances to area round of HS baseball playoffs

The auction on eBay was intended to revive an event that Buffett hosted for more than two decades that raised $53 million for the GLIDE Foundation homeless charity in San Francisco. This year's auction that wrapped up Thursday night also raised month for Curry's Eat.Learn.Play. Foundation that he established with his wife, Ayesha.

The anonymous winner paid $9,000,100 to win a private lunch with Buffett and the Currys in the 95-year-old investor's hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, next month.

"We’re overwhelmed with gratitude for this opportunity, which reflects a shared belief that when different generations and institutions come together with purpose, we can create deeper and more lasting impact for the people who need it most,” the Currys said in a statement.

The Buffett auctions started in 2000 and continued every year until the pandemic prompted a couple years off. Starting in 2008, every winning bid for lunch with the investing giant topped $1 million. He discontinued the event after someone paid $19 million for a lunch in 2022.

A follow-up auction in 2024 raised $1.5 million for a lunch with software titan Marc Benioff, but that version of the event didn't last.

Buffett reached out to the Currys earlier this year to ask them to join the lunch auction this year. Curry missed 27 games this year before returning to help the Golden State Warriors down the stretch.

Buffett stepped down as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway in January after six decades of leading the conglomerate. He remains chairman, but just sat through his first annual shareholder meeting — sitting in the audience instead of leading the event from stage.

San Antonio-based Whataburger plans to roll out two new restaurant designs by early 2027, with construction expected to start later this year.

The new designs — dubbed The Legacy and The Essential — draw on Whataburger’s 75-year history, reviving past architectural elements.

The prototypes will debut first in Texas and will be followed by openings in several other markets, including North Carolina, Florida, Arizona, South Carolina and Georgia. A typical prototype takes 150 to 175 days to build.

Read more of this story at the San Antonio Business Journal website.

Editor’s note: This story was published through a partnership between KSAT and the San Antonio Business Journal.

More SABJ coverage on KSAT:

• Soluna Cocina Mexicana to take over shuttered Barn Door location
• Houston seafood chain exits San Antonio after shuttering final two locations
• Pearl plans massive retail expansion in push for more daytime traffic

The village, al-Joura, was demolished by the Israeli military at the time. It has since vanished under neighborhoods of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and the grounds of a national park.

The neighborhood where Abu Hamam’s family ended up — and where he spent most of his life — now lies also largely in ruins. Buildings in the Shati Camp in the northern Gaza Strip have been razed and wrecked by Israeli bombardment and demolitions during the past 2½ years of war.

On Friday, Abu Hamam and millions of Palestinians mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It’s the third commemoration of the Nakba since the war in Gaza began.

The 78-year-old Abu Hamam, one of a dwindling number of Nakba survivors, says the current war is an even greater catastrophe.

Israel’s military has pushed deep into Gaza, now controlling 60% of the territory, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, during a Jerusalem Day celebration.

"Today it is 60%, tomorrow we will see, tomorrow we will see,” he told a cheering crowd in Jerusalem.

More than six months after an October ceasefire, Gaza’s more than 2 million people are now crammed into less than half of the 25-mile-long strip along the Mediterranean coast, surrounded by the Israeli-controlled zone.

“There is no country left,” Abu Hamam said, speaking next to his home, which was heavily damaged by Israeli shelling earlier in the war. “A square kilometer and a half extending from the sea, this is what we are living in … It’s indescribable, unbearable.”

What was the Nakba?

For Palestinians, the Nakba meant the loss of most of their homeland. Some 80% of the Palestinians who lived in the area that became Israel were driven from their homes by forces of the nascent state before and during the war. The fighting began when Arab armies attacked following Israel’s establishment as a home for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust. Palestinians who remained behind hold Israeli citizenship.

After the war, Israel refused to allow Palestinian refugees to return to ensure a Jewish majority within its borders. Palestinians became a seemingly permanent refugee community that now numbers some 6 million, with most living in refugee camps in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Gaza.

Around 530 Palestinian villages in what became Israel were destroyed, according to the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics.

Abu Hamam’s birth village was one of them. Al-Joura was seized by the Israeli military as it advanced against Egyptian forces in November 1948. Soldiers were ordered to destroy every home in al-Joura and neighboring villages to ensure their Palestinian populations couldn’t come back, according to military archives cited by Israeli historian Benny Morris.

Refugees swelled the population of the tiny patch of territory along the southern coast that became the Gaza Strip. They stayed in tent camps, run by a newly created U.N. agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, which provided aid and schooling. Those camps, like Abu Hamam’s Shati Camp, grew into dense urban neighborhoods over the decades, before many were flattened during the latest Gaza war by Israeli bombardment.

In Gaza, Palestinians live a new Nakba

The ancestors of Ne’man Abu Jarad and his wife, Majida, were already living in what would become the Gaza Strip in 1948. They both recall stories from their families about refugees streaming in by foot from areas further north, like the village Abu Hamam came from.

Though they avoided the original Nakba, there was no escaping from what Majida now calls “our Nakba.”

Their hometown has been wiped off the map. Over the past year, Israeli bulldozers and controlled detonations have razed nearly every building in the northern Gaza towns of Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun. A new Israeli military base stands about 700 meters (765 yards) from where the Abu Jarads’ house once stood, according to satellite photos.

Also gone is the southern Gaza city of Rafah, once home to a quarter million people, and other villages and neighborhoods located in the Israeli-held half of the Gaza Strip. The military says it is destroying positions used by Hamas and preparing the area for reconstruction. Satellite photos show nearly every structure reduced to rubble.

Over the last 31 months of war, the Abu Jarads and their six daughters have been displaced more than a dozen times as they fled Israeli bombardment and offensives. They currently live in a camp in the southern city of Khan Younis. Their tent offers little shelter from biting winter winds or summer heat, Majida said.

Their daughters have been out of school for over two years now.

“The Nakba of ’48, I don’t think it can be compared to our Nakba,” Majida said. “In ’48, they say people were displaced once and settled in one place, and they are still there until now. But our Nakba, honestly, is more severe because our displacement has happened multiple times. There is no stability.”

Around 90% of Gaza’s more than 2 million people have lost their homes, according to U.N. estimates, with most of them now sheltering in huge tent camps with rat infestations and pools of sewage. They are dependent on aid to survive.

Israel’s offensive has killed over 72,700 Palestinians, according to local health officials. It was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 251 hostages.

In the northern West Bank, tens of thousands of Palestinians are entering their 15th month of displacement, after the Israeli military ordered them out of their refugee camps as it launched an operation it said was targeting militant groups.

Since then, troops have demolished or heavily damaged at least 850 structures across the refugee camps of Nur Shams, Jenin and Tulkarem, according to an analysis of satellite imagery by Human Rights Watch released in December.

Saving what was lost, again and again

The 1948 Nakba also brought the loss of Palestinians’ history, as those fleeing struggled to keep hold of the documents and possessions tying them to their homes.

One of the largest archives of Palestinian documents dating back to the Nakba belongs to UNRWA.

UNRWA staff members, who fled their offices in Gaza after Israel ordered the north evacuated, had to leave behind the agency’s extensive archive.

The staff then launched a mission to rescue the most crucial documents — birth, death and marriage certificates and refugee registration cards, according to Juliette Touma, a former senior UNRWA official.

Without those documents, Palestinians could lose their rights and refugee status. Staffers crammed their personal suitcases full of papers and carried them through checkpoints and out of the territory, Touma said.

The current war has cost Palestinians in Gaza what little remained of their personal histories. Majida’s parents’ home in Beit Hanoun was destroyed, and with it family photos.

“There is nothing left,” she said.

Abu Hamam, too, says everything has been lost.

“When this war came, it devoured trees, stones and people,” he said. “Entire families were erased from the civil registry. Hundreds of families are still buried under the rubble.”

___

Associated Press writer Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Friday, May 15

All the northbound lanes of Interstate 35 at Binz Engleman Road are closed after a crash early Friday morning, according to the Texas Department of Transportation.

Drivers are asked to use alternate routes.

Additional information was not immediately available.

For more information on traffic, you can click here to view our traffic page on KSAT.com. To view more on the current weather conditions, click here.

Click the links below for current road closures.

• San Antonio road closures
• Bexar County road closures
• TxDOT highway conditions

By Friday, the items were back on the store shelves, and are flying off them once again as customers rush to stock up while they still can, said Leroy Sims, a cashier at the East Austin smoke shop.

“My boss is really big on keeping us all informed because he’s aware of the fact that Texas can’t really make its mind up,” Sims said. “We just put stuff in a box until they can make a decision because we can’t send it anywhere else to sell.”

Some of the most profitable products at smoke shops around Texas have been forced off store shelves, then allowed back on, then forced off again, then allowed to return — all within a 45-day span — amid a dizzying slew of court actions centered on the state’s ban on smokeable hemp products. This ping-ponging regulatory landscape in recent months has injected economic uncertainty into and bled revenue for an industry that employs more than 30,000 people around the state.

“This is what we call the ‘Texas whiplash,’” said David Sergi, an attorney for the hemp industry. “These poor guys don’t know what is going to happen one day to the next. All they want is certainty and to sell their products.”

While the percentage varied at each shop that spoke to The Texas Tribune, managers and cashiers said smokeable hemp products make up a sizable portion of their total profits. The uncertainty surrounding a potential ban on their sales is already leading to employees losing their jobs, hours being cut back and plans being made to close store locations. The ultimate fear is that customers will soon start losing access to some of their favorite products even before the courts permanently rule on the ban.

Robin Scoville demonstrates how hemp flower is measured at Austin Vape & Smoke in Austin on May 13, 2026. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune

Austin Vape & Smoke is eyeing closing its less popular location near the University of Texas at Austin campus, leaving a handful of employees out of work, and cutting back on hours at their South Austin location, said Zaquiri Hensen, a manager at the South Austin store. About 43% of the company’s sales are smokeable hemp products.

“It … sucks,” Hensen said, using an expletive to emphasize his frustration with the recent uncertainty. “We’re lucky that we don’t really have any turnover, so a lot of our guys have been working here for a long, long time. I’m very close with them.”

Texas smoke shops have had the opportunity to plan for a ban because it has already happened twice in recent months as the Texas Department of State Health Services’ efforts to further regulate the consumable hemp industry is challenged in state courts.

A statewide ban on the sale of smokeable hemp went into effect on March 31 under rules imposed by the public health agency. Smoke shops briefly pulled the products from their shelves until a Travis County district judge on April 10 temporarily lifted the ban until May 1 as a lawsuit by the hemp industry challenged the ban played out in court.

Earlier this month, a judge ruled to extend the ban until the next hearing in the district courts, scheduled for July 27, but because the 15th Court of Appeals agreed to considering the state’s appeal, the ban was back in effect last Thursday. That ban only lasted for some hours — briefly forcing the products off store shelves again — until the appeals court last Thursday allowed the sale of the smokeable flower.

The next ruling on whether or not the injunction will stand is expected in the coming weeks. If the appeals court blocks the injunction, the ban will remain in effect at least until the district court’s July 27 hearing.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick shows off various hemp-derived THC and CBD products during a press conference in the Texas Capitol on May 28, 2025. Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune

The regulatory effort to ban smokeable hemp began last fall after an effort to completely ban consumable hemp products failed in the Legislature. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other conservative legislators leading the effort argued the products are dangerous to Texans and must be banned.

Rather than keep the Legislature in Austin for a special session on the topic, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered DSHS and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission to create stricter regulations on the products, which culminated with the state health agency’s ban of smokeable hemp.

Abbott referred a request to comment to DSHS, which referred a request for comment to Abbott’s fall executive order. Patrick did not respond to a request for comment.

Businesses are working to comply with changing state laws and regulations, all while enforcement raids of smoke shops have picked up in recent years. But following the recent flurry of court actions has proved challenging.

“I wasn’t even aware it was illegal because the last I had heard we were good to sell it until July 27,” Anthony Vazquez, owner of Dooby’s Smoking Depot in south-central Austin, said of last week’s hours-long ban. “I didn’t get any messages saying that it was gone. It wasn’t brought to my attention until Friday when I went to my distribution company and they were pulling the stuff back out on roller carts again.”

Other smoke shops have been following the court proceedings in group chats with thousands of members created by the state’s largest trade association for the industry and one of the plaintiffs in the case, the Texas Hemp Business Council. Others said they are closely following updates in the news and pass the updates on to their customers.

Individual packages of pre-rolled joints in a display case at an Austin smoke shop on May 13, 2026. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune

More than half of the sales at Dream Planet are smokeable hemp, Sims said, and the company’s three locations may work to transition away from the products regardless of the court rulings because of the ongoing uncertainty.

Sam Mafza, a cashier at La Casa Smoke Shop in East Austin, said 50% of the sales at his store are smokeable hemp, and they have already cut back on hours. Mafza said he has a friend at a different smoke shop who recently lost his job due to the uncertainty.

“Everybody is watching this,” Mafza said. “You can’t just abandon a product everybody uses.”

The Texas Hemp Business Council, Hemp Industry & Farmers of America, and several Texas-based dispensaries and manufacturers have been fighting the state’s new testing requirements that create a 0.3% total THC threshold that would effectively bar the sale of natural smokeable hemp products. The state also created a 3,000% increase in licensing fees for hemp retailers.

During a three-day hearing before the district court on the injunction, attorneys for the state argued that Texas law requires the health agency to prioritize Texans’ well-being in rulemaking, allowing them to implement new hemp regulations.

Lawyers for the hemp industry argued that the state’s public health agency overstepped its constitutional authority by rewriting the legal definitions of hemp to make it different from what lawmakers passed in 2019, and the ban would put stores out of business.

Cynthia Cabrera, president of the Texas Hemp Business Council, said the effects of a ban go far beyond smoke shops, harming farmers that grow hemp, suppliers that manufacture the products, packaging companies, transportation and consumers.

Beau Whitney, the founder and chief economist at Whitney Economics, a cannabis economic research firm, told the district court that the new rules and regulations will have a $7.2 billion negative impact on the Texas economy due to job losses and reduced tax revenue from hemp retail closures.

“The ripple effects are far, wide and deep,” Cabrera said.

In the meantime, the business council is simply trying to keep its members informed of the fast-moving legal landscape, Cabrera said. While smoke shops await clarity from the courts, many stores are trying to diversify their merchandise, such as hemp edibles and drinks, that will not be banned under the new rules, she said.

A customer browses products at Austin Vape & Smoke in Austin. Kaylee Greenlee for The Texas Tribune

Many are also trying to move their products through their stores as quickly as possible, offering promotions like buy two get one free for joints and other discounts on smokeable flower buds.

If a full ban goes into effect, “I just have to take a loss on everything,” Vazquez said. “I’d rather have cash than be stuck with a bunch of weed.”

The land the federal government wants to take sits at the bottom of Mount Cristo Rey, a 720-foot-tall mountain with a 29-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ at its summit, that overlooks Ciudad Juárez, El Paso and Sunland Park, N.M.

Last week, lawyers for the Trump administration filed a lawsuit in a federal court in New Mexico against the diocese of Las Cruces, which is resisting the government’s attempt to take the land. The lawsuit argues that the federal government needs the land to install barriers and other technology “designed to help secure the United States-Mexico border.”

The administration said in court documents that it has offered the church $183,000 for the land.

The church said in court documents the Trump administration’s efforts violate its First Amendment right to religious expression.

“The erection of a border wall through or along this holy site could irreparably damage its religious and cultural sanctity, obstruct pilgrimage routes, and transfer sacred space into a symbol of division,” the diocese said. “Any federal action to seize this land, construct physical barriers, or impede access to Mount Cristo Rey would constitute a significant infringement on religious freedom and the rights of worship.”

Every fall, up to 40,000 people make a pilgrimage to the top of the mountain, where the Diocese of Las Cruces and El Paso host a mass. Traditionally, the event is held on the last Sunday of October, but in recent years the pilgrimage has moved to the feast day of Christ the King in November.

Some do the five-mile journey barefoot, others have crawled to the summit on their knees.

“Mt. Cristo Rey’s cultural and religious significance is central to our region. Seizing this community asset in order to build a border wall is consistent with the Trump administration’s blatant disregard for what communities like ours value,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said in a statement. “There are a number of other ways to provide border security. Instead, the Trump administration prefers to destroy this sacred site.”

The Trump administration has said the area is a high-traffic route for human smuggling and it wants to close the gap to stop illegal immigration. The area has also been the site of a record number of migrant deaths since the state and federal government has increased military surveillance in this part of Texas, even as the number of immigrants crossing has plummeted.

Ruben Escandon, Jr., a spokesperson for the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee, a volunteer group not affiliated with the church that maintains the site, said he supports adding additional barriers in the area because he wants to make sure the public is safe from any illegal activity. He said that barrier construction will not prevent visitors from accessing the top of the mountain.

“Finishing that wall, for us, will help maintain the religious, cultural and artistic aspect,” he said.

Ray Aguilar, a conservationist in Ciudad Juárez, said efforts to construct more barriers in the area not only negatively affect the local biodiversity but hurt cultural ties on both sides of the border. Cristo Rey serves as a corridor for animals that cross between La Sierra de Juárez in Mexico and El Paso’s Franklin Mountains.

“Plants and animals don’t recognize boundaries, so when factors of this magnitude occur it only puts at risk biodiversity that is already at risk of going extinct,” he said.

Last summer, the Trump administration announced that it was erecting border barriers in the area and started construction for 1.32 miles of border barrier south of the mountain in Sunland Park.

SLSCO, a Galveston-based company, won a $95 million contract to erect the 30-foot-tall steel barriers with concrete reinforcement. Crews started the work earlier this year.

It’s the latest effort by the Trump administration to use eminent domain laws to take land, including religious and cultural sites, for border barriers.

The administration had revealed plans for border barriers in Big Bend National Park, but both Republican and Democratic state and local leaders, along with residents, environmentalists and advocates, publicly condemned the efforts.

Recently, the commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the government won’t build barriers in the national park, but has continued with plans to install surveillance technology, which many in the area oppose because of the damage construction crews inflict on the desert landscape. The government also continues to seize private property in areas near the park to erect a border wall.

In Arizona, construction crews damaged a rare Native American archaeological site that is believed to be at least 1,000 years old.

A rocky start that wasn’t entirely Dobes’ fault, led to the goalie regaining his form and confidence. He stopped Buffalo's final 32 shots in a 6-3 win on Thursday night that gave Montreal a 3-2 lead in its second-round playoff series.

“I told him thank you for leaving me and trying to prove myself," Dobes said, referring to St. Louis. "That’s a big part, to have (the) trust of your coach, and I will never disrespect it. I appreciate it and the only thing I was trying to do just give some momentum back to the team and try to keep it tight, and it worked out.”

Game 6 is at Montreal on Saturday night.

Whatever struggles Dobes had to open a game in which the Sabres led 3-2 by the 10:15 mark of the first period, the 24-year-old from Czechia reassured his team he had rediscovered his groove.

That was particularly evident some four minutes into the second period in stopping Tage Thompson on a breakaway after the Sabres caught Montreal on a line change. Buffalo’s regular-season scoring leader drove in from the left wing, cut across the crease only to have Dobes stay with him and stop Thompson’s shot with his left pad.

Montreal responded with three goals over the final 12 minutes of the period in building a 5-3 lead.

“It was a huge save,” Canadiens captain Nick Suzuki said. “We never lost confidence in him. Everyone was struggling in that first period. And I just thought that was a big moment for us.”

For Dobes, who went 29-10-4 in his first full NHL regular season, the down-then-up outing was a lesson in not giving in to frustration. The goalie acknowledged he sagged after rookie Konsta Helenius beat him through the legs on Buffalo’s third goal.

“The one lesson I learned from today was just got to have a better body language for the boys — don’t let them know that I’m not feeling maybe my best,” Dobes said, noting he was reminded of that during a first-intermission discussion. Dobes has been Montreal's starter since the playoffs opened, and is now 7-5 in which he's allowed 28 goals.

St. Louis said it was goalie coach Marco Marciano’s decision to not pull Dobes.

“Ultimately, it’s probably my decision right? But I feel like the goalie position is probably the one position that I can help much,” said St. Louis, a former NHL forward. “So I try to stay out of it and not be emotionally driven, and being upset that we’re down.”

St. Louis described the conversation over the radio with Marciano, who was watching from the press box, as being brief.

“He said, 'No, keep him in.’ OK, let’s move on,” St. Louis said.

Forward Juraj Slafkovsky defended Dobes by saying Buffalo’s first goal pinballed in by deflecting off Sabres forward Jason Zucker and then a Montreal defender. And Dobes was screened when Josh Doan beat him to put Buffalo up 2-1.

“We didn’t help him there, but then he came back and he was in a game, and he was once again really good,” said Slafkovsky, who had three assists. “It’s just Marty trusting him. I think it’s huge for confidence of (Dobes). And we all trust him as well.”

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

It wasn't immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

The turmoil in the strait, which a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the U.S. and Iran to end the conflict. Iran's grip on the vital waterway has jolted the world economy and spiked fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.

The ongoing instability in the region came as U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The White House said both sides had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.

Just last week, tensions flared in the strait when U.S. forces fired on and disabled Iranian oil tankers that they said were trying to breach its blockade of Iran’s ports.

Seizures and attacks in Hormuz ongoing

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations center said it received reports that the ship seized Thursday was taken by unauthorized personnel while anchored 38 nautical miles (70 kilometers, 44 miles) northeast of the UAE port of Fujairah, an important oil export terminal that has been repeatedly attacked during the war with Iran.

The U.K. maritime center did not name the ship seized Thursday and said it is investigating. The British military said the vessel is heading toward Iranian waters.

Indian authorities said Thursday that an Indian-flagged cargo ship sank off the coast of Oman after an attack sparked a fire aboard the vessel while it was en route from Somalia to Sharjah, another UAE port. They did not say who attacked the ship.

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

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

Seizures come at tense diplomatic moment

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

The seizure of a ship off the coast of the UAE happened hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had quietly visited the country during the Israeli-U.S. war with Iran, though the UAE swiftly denied it.

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

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

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

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

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

Iran sets demands for new talks

Iran said it will not enter more talks with the United States unless five conditions are met, including paying reparations for the war and accepting Iran’s sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency reported, citing an informed source.

The White House is again unlikely to accept those demands, which would essentially formalize Iran's control over a waterway that was open to international traffic before the war.

Iran’s senior vice president, Mohammadreza Aref, said Thursday that the strait belongs to Iran and that Tehran would not give it up “at any price,” state TV reported. “It has always been our property,” Aref said.

Iran defends right to seize ships

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

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

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

Top US military leader says Iran's threats impact shipping

The top U.S. commander in the Middle East said Thursday he believes Iran’s military capabilities have been “dramatically degraded,” but its leaders are impacting shipping in the strait with rhetoric alone.

“Their voice is very loud, and the threats are clearly heard by the merchant industry and the insurance industry,” Adm. Brad Cooper told lawmakers in Congress.

He said the U.S. has the military power to permanently reopen the strait and escort ships. But he deferred to policymakers about the best path forward amid a “time of sensitive negotiations.”

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

Brett Howden scored his third short-handed goal of the playoffs and Shea Theodore got a power-play goal during a 3-0 first period for the Golden Knights, who reached the third round of the NHL postseason for the first time since they won their lone Stanley Cup championship in 2023 — and for the fifth time in this charmed expansion franchise’s nine seasons of existence.

“You go into it and you want to score first, especially being on the road,” said Theodore, an original member of the Knights after Anaheim traded him to Vegas in 2017. “I thought we responded well. We played great the first 15 minutes, and that's what we had to do. ... Just a veteran group. We had the right mindset coming in, and it was good to see the results.”

Marner played a role in all three of Vegas' first-period goals while raising his NHL-leading playoff point total to 18, and Game 5 overtime goal-scorer Dorofeyev put the game away with a huge third period. Carter Hart made 31 saves as the veteran-laden Golden Knights ended the upstart Ducks' first playoff appearance since 2018.

“It obviously feels great,” said Marner, who got labeled a playoff underachiever while his Toronto Maple Leafs never reached a conference final. “We worked extremely hard for all these little goals that we set throughout the year, and another one (is) achieved. But obviously the work just keeps getting harder and harder.”

Vegas will face an exponentially bigger challenge in the Colorado Avalanche, who won the Presidents' Trophy and then improved to 8-1 in the postseason on Wednesday by ousting Minnesota in five games.

Mikael Granlund scored a power-play goal for the Ducks, whose return from a seven-year playoff drought ended when their young roster was unable to match the veteran Knights’ playoff poise in three losses over the final four games.

Lukas Dostal stopped 16 shots for Anaheim, which couldn't overcome another poor first period in Game 6, ending their encouraging first season under coach Joel Quenneville.

“Vegas got better every single game,” Quenneville said. “They played well. They checked well. They deserved to win. Tonight was kind of what happened too many times this year, where we give up a couple of quick ones early, and it's a tough comeback against a team that knows how to play hockey.”

The Knights are 15-4-1 since John Tortorella replaced Cup-winning coach Bruce Cassidy on March 29, surging past the Ducks to claim the Pacific Division title before beating Utah and Anaheim in the first two playoff rounds.

The 67-year-old Tortorella refused to speak to the media after the game.

Marner set the tone for Game 6 very early: The Anaheim crowd hadn’t calmed down from the pregame festivities before William Karlsson found Marner behind the defense at the blue line. Marner fought off Jackson LaCombe while driving the net and somehow got turned around, only to flip a shot between his legs and past Dostal for his seventh goal of the postseason and fifth of the series.

“I just tried to make a move," Marner said. “Dostal had me covered, I thought, on the backhand, so I tried to do that move, and luckily it worked out.”

Eight minutes after Marner's opening goal, he found an unmarked Howden for his eighth goal and the Knights' NHL-best fourth short-handed goal of the postseason.

Theodore then got a long shot through Marner's screen and over Dostal's shoulder just 5 seconds into a power play, silencing Honda Center.

Troy Terry found Granlund for the Finn's fifth goal of the playoffs, in the second period, but Dorofeyev got his eighth goal of the postseason early in the third after John Carlson's giveaway. Dorofeyev added another with 6:28 to play, fooling Dostal with a sneaky shot and giving him five goals in the past four games.

Vegas played without suspended defenseman Brayden McNabb, whose illegal hit on Ryan Poehling in Game 5 injured and sidelined the Ducks’ penalty-killing forward indefinitely.

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

“That one was,” the coach said, “something.”

Something, indeed.

The Avalanche advanced to the Western Conference final for the eighth time since relocating to Denver courtesy of a Brett Kulak goal in a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Wild in Game 5. It's just the second time in the last nine playoff appearances the Avalanche have made it past the second round.

On the other occasion, in 2022, the team went on to capture the Stanley Cup championship.

With a team led by Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar, it's always a Cup-or-bust scenario. This team especially, given a regular season with captain Gabriel Landeskog on the ice, their depth — the Avalanche had 16 different players score in the Wild series — and the play of their stars.

Stanley Cup favorite

Among the preseason favorites, they led the NHL most of the regular season in capturing their fourth Presidents’ Trophy, which goes to the team with the best record.

Like Carolina, the Avalanche are rolling into the conference finals. The Hurricanes advanced with a pair of sweeps while the Avalanche required nine games, including a first-round sweep of the Los Angeles Kings. As of Thursday, Colorado is a slight favorite over the Hurricanes to win the Cup.

Next up for Colorado is Vegas, with Game 1 on Wednesday night in Denver. Colorado was 2-0-1 against the Golden Knights in the regular season.

Bednar understands the lofty expectations year in and out, given his talented roster. Criticism comes with the territory.

“It's hard to win,” Bednar said. "But I wouldn't want it any other way. I don't think our players would want it any other way.

“People are going to get on you because you didn't win the Cup. I'd still rather be fighting for that, having earned that type of reputation because of the way you play through the regular season and the group that you put together as an organization and the high expectations, rather than, “Let’s just try and make the playoffs.'”

Not much rattles the Avalanche these days. Not even a three-goal hole, which set up a frantic finish and the overtime winner from Kulak, who took a pinpoint pass from Martin Necas and lined it into the net to send the capacity crowd into a frenzy.

It was Kulak's first goal since Jan. 19 when he was with Pittsburgh before being traded to Colorado the following month. It was also the first time the Avalanche won a series on home ice since 2008, when they beat the Wild in Game 6 of the conference quarterfinals.

“In an environment like this, where the building felt like it was going to start shaking at any moment, it was exciting," said Landeskog, who played in his first regular season since 2022 after being sidelined with a knee injury. “Now, it’s kind of a sigh of relief.”

Banged-up Avalanche have chance to heal

The Avalanche have a few days to heal. They were without forward Artturi Lehkonen and defenseman Sam Malinski the last two games of the Wild series due to upper-body injuries. Makar momentarily left Wednesday's game after a collision, but returned.

“The playoffs are a long grind and you want to keep your focus narrow," said Kulak, who made the Stanley Cup Final with Edmonton last season. “We can get some rest.”

Colorado is 3-4 in the conference finals since arriving in town before the 1995-96 season. All three times the team has advanced, though, a banner has followed — 1996, 2001 and 2022.

“They’re a really good team,” Wild defenseman Quinn Hughes said.

Depth on display

A strength of Colorado has been its depth. The 16 different players to score in the second round is tied for the most in a singles series, according to NHL Stats.

“The depth is what's going to win, coming down the stretch here in the playoffs,” Landeskog said. “Guys are stepping up all over the place.”

In net, too, even if a goalie dilemma may now be a storyline.

Scott Wedgewood took over in the second period after Mackenzie Blackwood surrendered three first-period goals. Wedgewood stopped all seven shots he faced in the second and third periods (he saw none in OT).

“Just proud,” Wedgewood said of making the conference final. "Proud of our group ending it and finding a way to do that because we knew going into the series, it wasn’t going to be an easy out. There’s a long road ahead, a lot of stories to write and just preparing for that.”

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

Just six months earlier, thousands of miles away, this same young man was pulling all-nighters to play Madden NFL on his Xbox at his home near Minneapolis. Sometimes he'd pause to snack on pizza rolls and Diet Coke, or check his texts for the next hangout at TopGolf or Buffalo Wild Wings.

Two separate worlds. Both are home to Jalue Dorje.

A typical American teen, he grew up loving rap music, video games and football. He is also an aspiring spiritual leader who, from an early age, was recognized by the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan Buddhist leaders as a reincarnated lama.

Now he’s 19. He graduated from high school last year and moved to northern India to join the Mindrolling Monastery, about 7,200 miles (11,500 kilometers) from his home in Columbia Heights. Recently, he came to Nepal to meet his parents, who flew from Minneapolis, and attended sacred rituals and teachings conducted by the abbot of Shechen Monastery.

Maroon and golden monastic robes had replaced his usual hoodies and sweatpants. But he still quoted from Drake (the rapper) and Shantideva (the 8th-century Indian monastic). And beneath his robes, he wore white Crocs decorated with Jibbitz charms of “The Simpsons.” He wore them often at Shechen Monastery, near the 1,500-year-old Boudhanath stupa, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most sacred sites.

Each morning, he’d awake at dawn. After prayers, he walked from his hotel through crowded Kathmandu streets lined with fruits, incense and spices, dodging mopeds near the soaring white dome and spire of Boudhanath with its colorful Tibetan prayer flags and the painted, ever-watching eyes of the Buddha.

On a recent day, he strode to the monastery and took off his Crocs before entering a prayer hall reserved for monks with doctorates and lamas like himself. Incense wafted. The sound of ancient instruments — cymbals, bells and drums — punctuated the monastic chants.

Standing before three huge gold statues of the Buddha, Dorje bowed to Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, the monastery’s spiritual head, and presented him with a golden plate that symbolizes the entire universe, and a “khata” — a white Tibetan ceremonial scarf.

It was the first mandala, or offering, Dorje had made since his long journey to follow his predestined spiritual path. It was a moment, he says, when he realized how far he’d come.

“This is the real one, you know? We’re here and this is really happening,” he says. “I’m doing what the prophecy fulfilled.”

A reincarnation cycle dating to 1655

Since the Dalai Lama recognized him at age 2, Dorje had spent much of his life training to become a monk, memorizing sacred scriptures, practicing calligraphy, learning the Buddha’s teachings.

The process of identifying a lama is based on spiritual signs and visions. Dorje was four months old when he was identified by Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, a venerated master of Tibetan Buddhism. He was later confirmed by several lamas as the eighth Terchen Taksham Rinpoche — the first was born in 1655.

Jalue Dorje’s parents took him to meet the Dalai Lama in 2010 when Tibetan Buddhism's spiritual leader visited Wisconsin. The Dalai Lama cut a lock of Dorje’s hair in a ceremony. He advised the parents to let their son stay in the U.S. to perfect his English and then send him to a monastery.

“From my parents’ end, educating me was a really big one,” Dorje says. “They followed the words of his holiness; he laid the foundation, and they took that gamble.”

As a child, he often wondered why he couldn’t sleep later on weekends and watch cartoons like other kids. One day, it would pay off, his dad would tell him, “like planting a seed that one day would sprout.”

He remembered the early mornings of recitation and memorization. He recalled people who posted messages online doubting that he was a reincarnated lama, and how that troubled his parents. And how they both worked hard cleaning hotel rooms and doing laundry at hospitals while raising him.

“It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns every day,” Dorje says. “We overcame a lot.”

Fluent in English and Tibetan, Dorje excelled in public school. Although he was officially enthroned as a lama in a 2019 ceremony in India, his parents let him stay in the U.S. until graduation.

Growing up, he kept a photo of the Dalai Lama in his room above DVD collections of “The Simpsons,” “South Park,” and “Family Guy,” next to the manga graphic novel series ″Buddha.”

On his bedside table, he kept a journal where he diagramed plays he’d like to try as a left guard with his school football team. On a wall in his living room he hung a poster with his senior year photo wearing sunglasses and his football uniform, touching thumb tips to index fingers in a meditation gesture.

He had a deal with his father, who would give him Pokémon cards in return for memorizing Buddhist scriptures. He collected hundreds, sometimes sneaking them in his robes at ceremonies. “I remember,” he says, “when I first learned my Tibetan ABCs, when I was able to recite it all by memory, my dad was so happy.”

A love of sports

The days were long. Every morning he awoke to recite sacred texts. Then school, followed by football practice. He returned home for tutoring on Tibetan history and Buddhism. At night, he practiced calligraphy or listened to rappers. When he got his license, he drove around listening to Taylor Swift.

What would he have been if not a spiritual leader? “Sports journalist would have been cool,” he says. He loves to write. An avid fan, he roots for the Atlanta Hawks in basketball, Real Madrid in soccer, and the Atlanta Falcons in football.

His favorite athlete is U.S. figure skater Alysa Liu: “She brings so much swagger, but it doesn’t overshadow the sports.” In high school, he wrote an award-winning story about Tibet for the student newspaper.

On the football field, his teammates praised his positivity; he reminded them to have fun and keep losses in perspective. But in the final game of his senior season, he shed tears, realizing it would likely be his last game ever.

He often helped with events representing the local Tibetan community. For his 18th birthday, more than 1,000 people gathered at the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota for the last party before joining the monastery in India.

Finding his groove

On the long plane ride, his mind wandered.

“I was like, ‘Dang! I’m missing the first week of NFL!’” He packed light: headphones, laptop, a fantasy football magazine and a book on Guru Rinpoche, the Indian Buddhist master who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet.

His parents flew with him to New Delhi and then drove north to Dehradun, near the Himalayan foothills, in the equivalent of a college dropoff. They bought him a larger bed. They painted his monastic room and erected a shrine where he could pray at dawn and dusk.

He is an only child, and his parents cried when saying goodbye. The farthest and longest that he'd gone from home on his own previously was a three-day camping trip in northern Minnesota.

“Everything leading up to this point in the history of all your lifetimes — the billions and billions of lifetimes you accumulated — leads to your family,” Dorje says. “To have such great parents is a result of a great past life’s merit. But not only past life merit, but the connection of karma — and love.”

Early on, his mother, Dechen Wangmo, worried about her then-toddler son during long prayer sessions.

“Would he be hungry? What if he fell asleep?” she recalled thinking. She kept worrying about him as a teenager: “He’s a tulku,” she says, using the Tibetan term for a reincarnated lama, “but he’s my son.”

To her relief, he thrived. While his friends attended history, science and literature classes in U.S. colleges, he took lessons on Buddhist philosophy, and practiced his calligraphy and chanting in India.

“He’s kind of found his groove at the monastery,” says Kate Thomas, one of his tutors in Minneapolis.

Becoming a ‘leader of peace’

Despite the 10-hour time difference, he kept in contact with friends back home through texts and WhatsApp. On time off, he built Legos, walked to an arcade to play the FIFA soccer video game and watched Marvel superhero films and NBA and NFL games on his laptop. He was especially psyched about the halftime Super Bowl show: “That was an incredible performance by Bad Bunny — I can ’t lie!”

It was his first time experiencing a life of asceticism, eating a daily ration of rice and lentils and washing his own clothes by hand. But he adjusted, getting along with monks from all over Asia, discussing spirituality, popular culture and sports.

“Dudes are dudes!” he says.

It was the first time that he was hanging out with other “tulkus' — reincarnated spiritual masters around his own age. Among them was Trulshik Yangsi Rinpoche, 13. He's believed to be the reincarnation of Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche — the Tibetan Buddhist master who first recognized Dorje as a tulku at four months old.

At the monastery, they bonded over their love of Tintin comics. Dorje became his English teacher.

“I think of him as my spiritual teacher,” Dorje said after sharing a meal with the younger lama. “I’m profoundly grateful that I get to repay my debt to the one who found me and improving his English.”

Yangsi Rinpoche smiled, then reflected: “He’s my best friend.”

Just hours after Dorje blessed thousands — including his parents — on the last day of the 12-day rituals, the family awoke before dawn to visit the ancient Maratika or Halesi Mahadev Caves, 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Mount Everest. They drove for eight hours on dirt roads, crossing mountains and valleys, for a pilgrimage to caves sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists.

After exploring the caves in awe, Dorje sat cross-legged on the rocky ground next to his father, Dorje Tsegyal. They prayed together, as they had done almost daily since his childhood.

Following several years of contemplation and asceticism, Dorje hopes to return to the United States to teach in Minnesota’s Buddhist community at the Nyingmapa Taksham Buddhist Center. His goal: become “a leader of peace,” following the example of the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and Gandhi.

It’s a long path that began soon after his birth. He feels ready. “This,” he says, “is just the beginning.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

That’s the mantra of a multiracial group of civil rights leaders and activists organizing opposition to a mostly white conservative alliance dismantling the Voting Rights Act and political districts that allowed Black and other nonwhite voters to choose more of their elected leaders for the last half-century.

“We have to respond as quickly as possible,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “The real question,” Johnson told The Associated Press, “is how do we as a country really address the effort to shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality?”

Johnson’s 117-year-old association, which was at the forefront of legal and legislative fights for Black political rights in the 20th century, is among scores of groups coming together Saturday in Alabama for a rally and tribute to the Civil Rights Movement that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They plan events in Selma, where voting rights advocates were attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, and Montgomery, where a rescheduled march concluded two weeks later.

Unlike 61 years ago, the Alabama events are not the pinnacle of a protracted movement. Instead, civil rights activists hope they serve as a catalyst for a renewed crusade after the U.S. Supreme Court, two weeks ago, further weakened the VRA by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.

They acknowledge difficulty in countering a white-dominated conservative network entrenched in the White House, Capitol Hill, federal courts and many state legislatures of the Old Confederacy, where a majority of Black Americans still live.

The VRA “was the foundational nucleus of the Civil Rights Movement,” said Jared Evans of the Louisiana-based Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. “They’ve taken that from us,” he said, with the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision on congressional districts and the earlier Shelby v. Holder decision in 2013 that rolled back federal oversight of election procedures in states and localities with a history of discrimination.

Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, who is senior pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, said from his pulpit that the result is “Jim Crow in new clothes.”

Warnock pointed to King and the last voting rights movement. “We need political power. We need economic power. We need personal power,” he said, assuring parishioners that “your adversaries know that your voice matters” because they're “bending over backwards” to diminish it.

Evans reached further back into history to say what must happen next.

“Our response must be and will be a second Reconstruction period,” Evans said.

Some Democrats want an answer from Congress

The ultimate goal, organizers said, is to win more elections, sway policy fights and protect diverse political representation at all levels.

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, a Black lawmaker who represents Selma, Alabama, said an immediate priority is to “reform and reintroduce” Democrats' flagship voting bill, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act.

Sewell, whose seat ultimately could be threatened under redistricting, said Democrats want to “completely” eliminate partisan gerrymandering.

She also said the legislation would “bring back pre-clearance,” the requirement for certain federal approvals that the court struck down in Shelby.

“We need to come up with a modern-day formula for showing just how egregious the behavior of these state actors is,” Sewell said.

The Supreme Court ruled in Callais that states do not have to draw majority nonwhite districts under the Voting Rights Act and, in fact, should not consider race at all when drawing boundaries. By arguing that the law's remedies to combat discrimination had themselves become racist, the decision allows states to redraw heavily Black districts that have historically elected Democrats while arguing that the designs are based on party interests, not race.

President Donald Trump praised the decision as “a BIG WIN for Equal Protection under the Law, as it returns the Voting Rights Act to its Original Intent, which was to protect against intentional Racial Discrimination.”

Groups mobilized for redistricting sessions

Many of the same groups who’ll be in Alabama on Saturday have already gone to Southern statehouses, where white Republican lawmakers moved swiftly to redraw congressional districts after Callais.

Alabama and Louisiana lawmakers reverted to a single majority-Black district, each scrapping a second district that had been ordered by lower federal courts under now-reversed VRA interpretations. Tennessee lawmakers gutted a majority Black district by splitting greater Memphis into three different sprawling districts — itself an obvious racial gerrymander the court had previously forbidden, Evans said.

Anticipating the Callais outcome, Florida and Texas proceeded with redistricting before it came down. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a term-limited Republican, has called a June session to redraw congressional lines for the 2028 cycle. Mississippi and South Carolina have delayed the matter for now.

South Carolina state Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey was among the few white Republicans who pushed back against GOP redistricting plans. He said that not even pressure from Trump could sell him on disenfranchising Black South Carolinians instead of doing what's best for his state.

Other white conservatives are still talking openly about ousting Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bennie Thompson, the only Black U.S. House members from South Carolina and Mississippi, respectively.

Evans, the Louisiana activist, predicted the fight ahead won't just be about congressional representation.

“Look for them to go after state house and state senate seats — and then it will be the local level,” he said, adding that “it’s going to be an entire erasure of Black representation.”

The issue is more than a partisan Washington fight

Heavily minority districts drawn under the VRA before Callais nearly always elect Democrats. Black Americans have overwhelmingly aligned with the party since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, sparking a decades-long migration of most white Southern politicians to the Republicans. Latino and Hispanic voters still lean Democratic in most places as well.

The immediate fight shapes the midterm campaign scramble for control of the U.S. House during the final years of Trump’s presidency. Trump initially pushed Republican-run states to redistrict to protect the party's fragile House majority.

But Johnson, the NAACP leader, said all voters should see more than partisan warfare or a regional battle over race.

Beyond party allegiance, Johnson argued, white conservatives want to curtail a range of rights “depending on how you pray, depending on who you love,” while also pushing economic policies that punish workers across racial and ethnic lines. From legislation to the confirmation of federal judges who decide constitutional questions, those policy outcomes start with election results.

“It’s not a Black problem,” Johnson said. “That’s an American problem.”

There is no singular movement or leader yet

Evans, Johnson and others acknowledged the complexity in harnessing disparate organizations and galvanizing voters on issues like redistricting and gerrymandering. But they insist the brazen nature of Republicans' course has spurred engagement.

Johnson said he was on an organizing call in Mississippi this week that had 8,000 participants. Evans pointed to packed hallways in the state Capitols in Baton Rouge and Nashville, respectively.

The NAACP and allies have challenged new maps in multiple states, despite Callais. Many groups want to spur midterm turnout among Black voters, and others are disenchanted with white conservatives’ maneuvers in racially diverse places.

Johnson stressed the need for perseverance.

The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was seismic, with a unanimous court declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional and reversing 19th-century precedents denying Black Americans' fundamental rights.

But it took 17 years — and many more court battles — for it to be implemented in most Southern school districts. Fights over mandated student busing continued beyond the South. It was a decade after Brown before Congress and Johnson enacted the movement’s seminal laws.

There's no clear leader of a modern movement.

Johnson said it’s worth remembering that even with King at the helm before his assassination, “there was tension around strategy” in the 1950s and 1960s.

But even “through that tension, through many episodes, we were able to get directly in the right place.”

Grabbing viewers’ attention as one of 25 acts competing in quick succession in Saturday’s grand final in Vienna means pulling out all the stops, both musically and visually.

In the case of this year’s favorites to win, the Finnish duo of pop singer Pete Parkkonen and classical violinist Linda Lampenius, that involves jets of flame, a valuable 18th-century violin and a team of “ninjas” working to avert disaster.

The pair’s song “Liekinheitin,” or “Flamethrower,” is a favorite with both fans and betting markets with its melding of pop and classical influences — and its spectacular staging.

Here’s what it takes to create the eye-catching performance.

Permission to play

Parkkonen and Lampenius dub their sound “new pop with a classical touch." Their song of burning love is an explosion of energy in which Parkkonen’s passionate vocals act as counterpoint to Lampenius’ frenetic fiddling.

The Finnish delegation had to secure special permission for Lampenius to play live. Eurovision rules state that lead vocals must be performed live, but instruments are prerecorded, to help speed changeovers between songs.

Lampenius says “Flamethrower” was “written as a duet,” and both performers need to be live for it to work.

“It’s a woman and a man, it’s a female voice and a male voice. So I do all my lyrics through my violin, by playing, and you (Parkkonen) are singing it with words. But we are talking. We are (equally) as important, both of us.”

The pair were not certain when they arrived in Vienna that Eurovision organizers would allow the request. They were only given final approval after performing in front of an audience in a live rehearsal.

The European Broadcasting Union, which runs Eurovision, said contest rules allow that “live audio capture of instruments may exceptionally be permitted where artistically justified.”

Lampenius had brought two violins just in case – a treasured Gagliano made in 1781 so live performance would “sound perfect,” and a cheaper instrument to use if she had to rely on playback. That would remove any risk to the Gagliano from the slightly hazardous staging.

Practice makes perfect

Lampenius and Parkkonen say they have been rehearsing for this moment since November. They won Finland’s national selection contest for Eurovision in February and say by now they have performed the song hundreds of times.

It is crucial to get it right. The performance builds to a climax that sees jets of flame spurt from a stage on which Lampenius, fanned by a leaf blower and wearing a flowing dress, is playing her precious violin.

Lampenius concedes it's “a bit scary when you think of it."

But she says she is secure in the knowledge she has black-clad stagehands who call themselves “ninjas” on hand to keep her dress away from the flames – an essential piece of the performance that goes unseen by viewers watching at home.

“They’re running with me – first one guy carrying my dress when I’m running, then the other one catching me during my run,” she said. “And he helps me also when I jump up on the stage and do the pirouette.”

For the striking final pose in which Lampenius perches atop chairs in high heels, violin aloft, Parkkonen combines singing with his role as a security spotter, there to catch her if she topples over.

“That’s my work,” the singer said.

Nathan is a member of the varsity football and basketball teams where he made academic all-district and all-state. He’s also a member of varsity track.

He’s a member of the National Honor Society and the National FFA Organization. Nathan maintains a 4.0 grade point average and is ranked sixteenth in his class.

He performs community service by volunteering to sing at retirement homes and cutting down trees.

Nathan plans to attend West Texas A&M University, major in animal science and become a veterinarian.

Suzuki and Jake Evans capped a three-goal second period surge by scoring 68 seconds apart in a 6-3 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday night, giving the Canadiens a 3-2 lead in their second-round playoff series.

Montreal didn't lead until Evans swept a loose puck over the goal line behind Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen to put the Canadiens up 4-3 with 3:45 remaining in the second period. Ivan Demidov set up the goal when his shot glanced off Luukkonen’s glove and then dribbled behind him.

Suzuki then scored 10 seconds into a power-play opportunity by converting Juraj Slafkovsky’s one-handed pass from the end boards and beating Luukkonen through the legs with a shot from the lower right circle.

“The power-play goal was huge, felt like it gave us a little bit of breathing room,” Suzuki said. “Just kept trying to put the foot on the gas a little bit, too.”

Demidov, Cole Caufield, Josh Anderson and Alexandre Texier also scored for Montreal, which will host Game 6 on Saturday night.

Dobes allowed three goals on the first four shots he faced before stopping the final 32. The rookie goalie was pleased with coach Martin St. Louis' decision to keep him in the game, especially after Dobes acknowledged he sagged after rookie Konsta Helenius beat him through the legs to put Buffalo up 3-2.

“I told him thank you for leaving me and trying to prove myself,” Dobes said. “I’m really proud of myself too for not giving up and keep making saves.”

Josh Doan and Jason Zucker also scored for the Atlantic Division champions, who are facing elimination for the first time this postseason.

Luukkonen allowed five goals on 23 shots, and was pulled after two periods -- the second time he’s been yanked this postseason. Alex Lyon mopped up, allowing a goal on three shots. Lyon is potentially in line to regain the starting duties after losing the job following a 6-2 loss in Game 3.

“It’s not good enough. Not good enough,” Sabres forward Alex Tuch said. “I thought we had a pretty good start actually, too. We should have locked it down better and played better defensively. It’s frustrating.”

The Sabres have dropped two of three at home in the series, and are 2-4 overall in the playoffs. On the bright side, they’re 4-1 on the road, including a 3-2 win at Montreal on Tuesday.

Montreal finally got much-needed production from its top line, with Suzuki (goal, two assists), Slafkovsky (three assists) and Caufield getting on the scoresheet. The trio had combined for four goals and five assists in the first four games of the series.

Most encouraging was Caufield’s goal being the line’s first in a five-on-five situation in the series.

“Very good for the confidence,” said Slafkovsky. “We stuck with it, and it’s good for confidence. But it doesn’t matter. In two days, we got to do it again and play our best game of the season.”

Montreal is one win from advancing to the semifinal round of the playoffs for the first time since the Covid pandemic altered 2021 playoffs. The Canadiens eventually reached the Stanley Cup Final and lost to Tampa Bay in five games.

Buffalo and Montreal combined for five goals in the first 10:15, including Doan and Texier scoring nine seconds apart.

The five goals were scored in a span of 8:15, which ranks 11th on the playoff list of fastest between two teams.

Buffalo’s deficiencies continue being exposed. After allowing 12 goals in six games of their first-round series against Boston, the Sabres have allowed 21 already to Montreal — and 19 in the past four.

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

The NFL released its 2026 season schedule on Thursday, which will see the Cowboys play at least six games in primetime and the Texans play at least four.

See their full schedules below:

Dallas Cowboys’ 2026 Season Schedule

• Week 1: Sun. Sept. 13 at New York Giants, 7:20 p.m. (NBC)
• Week 2: Sun. Sept. 20 at Washington Commanders, 3:25 p.m. (FOX)
• Week 3: Sun. Sept. 27 vs. Baltimore Ravens in Rio de Janeiro, 3:25 p.m. (CBS)
• Week 4: Sun. Oct. 4 at Houston Texans, Noon (FOX)
• Week 5: Thu. Oct. 8 vs. Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 7:15 p.m. (Prime Video)
• Week 6: Sun. Oct. 18 at Green Bay Packers, 7:20 p.m. (NBC)
• Week 7: Mon. Oct. 26 at Philadelphia Eagles, 7:15 p.m. (KSAT 12)
• Week 8: Sun. Nov. 1 vs. Arizona Cardinals, Noon (FOX)
• Week 9: Sun. Nov. 8 at Indianapolis Colts, Noon (FOX)
• Week 10: Sun. Nov. 15 vs. San Francisco 49ers, 3:25 p.m. (FOX)
• Week 11: Sun. Nov. 22 vs. Tennessee Titans, Noon (FOX)
• Week 12: Thu. Nov. 26 vs. Philadelphia Eagles, 3:30 p.m. (FOX)
• Week 13: Mon. Dec. 7 at Seattle Seahawks, 7:15 p.m. (KSAT 12)
• Week 14: BYE WEEK
• Week 15: Sun. Dec. 20 at Los Angeles Rams, 3:25 p.m. (CBS)
• Week 16: Sun. Dec. 27 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, 7:20 p.m. (NBC)
• Week 17: Sun. Jan. 3 vs. New York Giants, Noon (FOX)
• Week 18: TBD at Washington Commanders, TBD

Houston Texans’ 2026 Season Schedule

• Week 1: Sun. Sept. 13 vs. Buffalo Bills, Noon (CBS)
• Week 2: Sun. Sept. 20 vs. Cincinnati Bengals, Noon (CBS)
• Week 3: Sun. Sept. 27 at Indianapolis Colts, Noon (CBS)
• Week 4: Sun. Oct. 4 vs. Dallas Cowboys, Noon (FOX)
• Week 5: Sun. Oct. 11 at Tennessee Titans, Noon (CBS)
• Week 6: Sun. Oct. 18 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars in London, 8:30 a.m. (NFL Network)
• Week 7: Sun. Oct. 25 vs. New York Giants, Noon (FOX)
• Week 8: BYE WEEK
• Week 9: Sun. Nov. 8 at Los Angeles Chargers, 3:05 p.m. (CBS)
• Week 10: Sun. Nov. 15 at Cleveland Browns, Noon (FOX)
• Week 11: Thu. Nov. 19 vs. Indianapolis Colts, 7:15 p.m. (Prime Video)
• Week 12: Sun. Nov. 29 vs. Baltimore Ravens, Noon (CBS)
• Week 13: Sun. Dec. 6 at Pittsburgh Steelers, 7:20 p.m. (NBC)
• Week 14: Sun. Dec. 13 at Washington Commanders, Noon (CBS)
• Week 15: Sun. Dec. 20 vs. Jacksonville Jaguars, Noon (CBS)
• Week 16: Thu. Dec. 24 at Philadelphia Eagles, 7:15 p.m. (Prime Video)
• Week 17: Mon. Jan. 4 at Green Bay Packers, 7:15 p.m. (ESPN)
• Week 18: TBD vs. Tennessee Titans, TBD

See details about the full 2026 NFL schedule release below:

The 2026 NFL season will kick off with a Super Bowl rematch.

Mike Macdonald, Sam Darnold and the Seattle Seahawks will face off against Mike Vrabel, Drake Maye and the New England Patriots after raising their championship banner on Sept. 9 in the first of the NFL’s 272 games.

The Seahawks dominated the Patriots in a 29-13 victory in February that secured the franchise’s second NFL title.

The game will mark just the third time that the teams that played in the Super Bowl face off again in Week 1. The last time came in 2016, when the Broncos beat the Panthers. Overall, the Super Bowl opponents have met 11 times the following season, including each of the last three years. The defending champions are 8-3 in those games.

The Eagles followed up a Super Bowl victory with another win over the Chiefs in Week 2 last year.

“Yes, it was definitely a key data point for us,” NFL executive Hans Schroeder said. “We saw what a big draw that was and so we just thought it was really fun. I think it’s been a decade since we did Denver and Carolina in Super Bowl 50 and came back in Week 1 the next year. We thought it was a fun way to start the season again with New England in Seattle, coming off that Super Bowl, certainly a ton to play for. Let our fans see if they play again.”

The NFL season will be opening on a Wednesday for just the second time in league history — the Giants hosted the Cowboys on Sept. 5, 2012.

The opener will be Vrabel’s first game since the reigning AP Coach of the Year missed Day 3 of the NFL draft to seek counseling following the publication of photos of him and longtime football reporter Dianna Russini at an Arizona resort. The photos led to Russini’s resignation from The Athletic less than a week later.

The Seahawks will play at least six other stand-alone games, including Christmas night at home against the Los Angeles Rams. The Patriots have five other stand-alone games.

Week 1

Other opening week highlights were announced before the full schedule release on Thursday night.

The San Francisco 49ers will face the Rams in Melbourne on Sept. 10 in the first of a record nine international games. The Cowboys and Giants meet in the first Sunday night game of the season while the Broncos and Chiefs go head to head in the first Monday night game.

Raiders fans get to see No. 1-overall pick Fernando Mendoza — probably on the sideline watching Kirk Cousins start — in Week 1 when Las Vegas hosts Miami.

Thanksgiving weekend

Josh Allen and the Bills host Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs on Thanksgiving night to complete a tripleheader. The Bears-Lions and Eagles-Cowboys matchups were previously released.

Aaron Rodgers — maybe — and the Steelers host the Broncos on Black Friday.

The Packers and Rams are playing on Thanksgiving Eve.

Christmas week

Santa Claus has to go through Philadelphia on Christmas Eve when the Eagles host the Texans on “Thursday Night Football.”

The Christmas Day tripleheader features the Packers-Bears, Bills-Broncos and Rams-Seahawks.

The two games on Saturday, Dec. 26, haven’t been determined.

International games

The league will play across four continents, starting with the Week 1 game in Australia. Sixteen of the league’s 32 teams will play at least one of their 17 regular-season games outside the United States.

The 49ers and Jacksonville each have two international games. San Francisco also faces Minnesota in Mexico City in Week 11. The Jaguars have consecutive games in London in Weeks 5 and 6 against the Eagles and Texans. The Colts and Commanders also face off in London in Week 4.

The Steelers play the New Orleans Saints on Oct. 25 in Paris in the NFL’s first regular-season matchup in France.

The Cowboys and Baltimore Ravens go head to head in Rio de Janeiro in Week 3. The Bengals and Falcons are in Madrid in Week 8 and the Patriots and Lions play in Munich in Week 9.

Spotlight teams

Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and the Eagles lead the way with eight stand-alone games. The Cowboys, Bills, Packers and Rams are tied with the Seahawks with seven. Teams could add or lose prime-time games depending on flex scheduling.

Familiar foes

Micah Parsons and the Packers will host the Cowboys this time around on Sunday night, Oct. 18. The two teams played to a 40-40 tie in Dallas in Week 4 last season, a month after Parsons was traded from Dallas to Green Bay.

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The Associated Press’ Rob Maadi, Josh Dubow and Joseph Reedy contributed.

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

“This is not normal,” Bexar County Manager David Smith told county commissioners in an April briefing on the county’s financial forecast.

“This is a very different budget environment we’re about to walk into, and it’s going to require very different measures to stabilize the budget.”

The city and county both depend on property taxes to fund services like law enforcement, libraries, parks, or courts.

For the city, the revenue makes up about 28% of the money poured into the general fund, while the county’s general fund budget is even more property tax-dependent at approximately 80%.

And though neither projects a deficit in the upcoming year, both the city and county are preparing for shortfalls in the near future.

PROPERTY APPRAISALS

Property tax revenues are based on the value of property within the taxing district, which are set by the local appraisal district.

Rogelio Sandoval, the chief appraiser at the Bexar Central Appraisal District, said BCAD’s job is to reflect the market, and “this has been one of the years where it has been noticed that it has significantly softened from the prior years.”

Average home sale prices in Bexar County peaked in 2022 at roughly $345,200, according to the Texas A&M University Texas Real Estate Research Center, and have since fallen to $338,800 in 2025.

The total market value for all single-family residential homes has dropped by more than $203 million compared to 2025, according to BCAD, even when taking into account newly-built homes.

“I haven’t seen a market like this since maybe 2008, 2009, when the housing bubble,” Sandoval told KSAT.

In a recent presentation to the city council, San Antonio Interim Budget Director Alfredo Martinez blamed the “worsening housing market” for projected property tax revenue declines, as well as a new, $125,000 exemption for businesses on their income-producing personal property.

This and other exemptions, like the general homestead exemption Texans can get for their primary residence, give owners a discount on how much of their property value is actually taxed.

Neither the city nor the county knows exactly how much taxable value it will have yet, as property owners are still contesting their values. The deadline for most people to file a protest is Friday, May 15.

>> READ MORE: How to protest your property appraisal in Bexar County

BCAD will certify the appraisal roll to each taxing unit by late July.

CITY OF SAN ANTONIO

The City of San Antonio already expects that — after protests, appeals, and exemptions — it will see a 2.13% decrease in its taxable value.

Without raising its tax rate, that would mean a drop in the revenue the city collects, too.

The city’s general fund is also heavily supported through sales taxes and a portion of CPS Energy revenues. An assortment of other funding sources fills out the rest.

In a five-year forecast of the general fund, city staff anticipates the city could face a nearly $131 million deficit in the general fund in FY 2027. That could balloon to $264 million by FY 2031, if the current property tax rate of $0.54159 per $100 of value stays the same.

The city could raise its tax rate to collect more property taxes. However, that’s capped by state law, which generally only allows cities to collect up to 3.5% more tax revenue from existing properties without voter approval.

Without the certified appraisal values, staff told KSAT there’s not enough information yet to estimate what such a tax rate would be.

The city hasn’t raised its tax rate since FY 1993. Since then, it has either cut or maintained it.

Even if the city maxes out its property tax rate, it wouldn’t be enough to close the deficit, according to staff projections. The city would still need to cut $70 million in spending over the next two years.

City staff also laid out an alternate scenario in a May 6 presentation in which the city would close the entire $130.7 million deficit through spending reductions.

Where such cuts would fall in either scenario isn’t clear yet, but the presentation listed “non-core, non-mandated services” and emphasized minimizing “impact to vulnerable populations.”

BEXAR COUNTY

By Bexar County’s projections, it won’t face a deficit in its general fund until FY 2029, when it would be a sizable $145 million.

Bexar County Budget and Finance Director Tanya Gaitan told KSAT the county has a “pretty hefty fund balance” that acts as the reserve for its general fund.

While Gaitan said the county isn’t considering cuts or a tax increase yet, it will need to pump the brakes on new spending.

“So in the last couple of years, we’ve seen some significant property tax growth, in value specifically. So we were able to grow pretty significantly with brand new positions, new programs for the community,” she told KSAT.

“But this year it’s starting to level out, where we’re not going to be able to grow. So the county is used to adding a pretty significant amount. This year, we’re looking to actually slow that down significantly."

Gaitan told commissioners that previous belt-tightening efforts have included:

• No cost-of-living adjustments
• Freeze vacant civilian positions
• No new program changes
• No new capital projects
• Adjust health insurance plans for employees

Both Bexar County and the City of San Antonio’s budget years run from October 1 through September 30.

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

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

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

“When you have a position of responsibility, you want to do everything you can to have a real impact,” Infantino said at the Global Citizen NOW conference in New York on Thursday. “Not everyone can become a world champion, but everyone can become a little bit better by having the right education. So we embrace that.”

The show will be curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin, who came up with the idea four years ago while watching the previous World Cup, said Hugh Evans, CEO of the nonprofit Global Citizen, which has partnered with FIFA on the halftime show and the education fund.

Shakira said at the conference that she’s spent her entire adult life “making songs and building schools,” referring to the work of her nonprofit, Barefoot Foundation.

“Finally, during this World Cup, those two paths meet,” said the “Hips Don't Lie” superstar, who added she is hoping for her homeland of Colombia to make it to the World Cup final.

The Super Bowl is famed for its halftime show, attracting the world's biggest stars for spectacular performances. This year featured Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny. Previous headliners included Michael Jackson, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, Prince, Bruce Springsteen and Rihanna.

But halftime shows are not commonplace in soccer, with events such as the Champions League final featuring a prematch concert. On May 30, the Killers will headline a concert before European club soccer's biggest game between Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in Budapest.

Evans told The Associated Press in an interview that everyone involved in the halftime show are huge soccer fans who wanted to ensure the performances would be “significantly shorter than the 15-minute mark,” which is the traditional interval in a match. “Soccer fans around the world can be rest assured knowing that we’re very respectful of the game," Evans said.

Hamish Hamilton, who directed the London 2012 Olympic opening ceremony and most Super Bowl halftime shows in recent memory, will direct the World Cup halftime show, said Evans.

The World Cup is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico and runs through June and July.

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

Police searched a home Wednesday in the 6900 block of Elmwood Crest, near Toepperwein Road. Officers arrested five people, including three for alleged identity theft, mail theft and fraud, LOPD said in a news release.

Octabio Ascencio, 50, Melanie Reyna, 34, and Richard Whitney, 39, were arrested for allegedly stealing people’s identity, authorities said.

Police suspect Ascencio stole less than five identifying items, while both Reyna and Whitney stole more than 100 items combined.

According to Texas law, identifying items include:

• Name and date of birth
• Biometric data, including the person’s fingerprint, voice print, or retina or iris image
• Electronic identification number, address, routing code or bank account number
• Electronic serial number or access device
• Social security number or other government-issued identification number

Giovanni Devora, 25, was arrested for allegedly being in possession of a controlled substance. Authorities also arrested Brittainy Herlong, 35, who had a prior Pasco County, Florida, full extradition warrant for larceny.

Multiple Flock license plate reader reports alerted LOPD about stolen vehicles that “resulted in recoveries at or near the home,” police said.

Live Oak police and the Alamo Region SWAT team entered the home and recovered suspected fraudulent identification documents, credit cards, checks, stolen mail, electronic devices, narcotics and other items.

The investigation remains ongoing, and additional charges may be filed, according to LOPD.

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• Authorities seek tips in connection with 19-year-old’s shooting death on North Side
• Mother searching for answers after daughter’s windshield smashed at West Side apartment complex
• DPS trooper among victims of NE Side man’s credit card skimmer scheme, affidavit says

According to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, Krystle Janay Proctor, 37, was reported missing by a relative on May 7.

The relative told the sheriff’s office that Proctor had been missing since around April 27.

On Thursday, the sheriff’s office said Proctor was found dead in the back of a van in the 8800 block of Cinnamon Creek Drive, near Fredericksburg Road.

The sheriff’s office is looking for a person “seen to be possibly associated” with Proctor wearing a green long-sleeve shirt, blue pants and a red head covering.

The agency is also asking the public for information related to a white Ford E250 van with Texas license plate TXR4158.

Anyone with information or who believes they may have seen anything suspicious between April 27 and May 5 is urged to contact the sheriff’s office at 210-335-6000 or email bcsotips@bexar.org.

Read also:

• Man who died of gunshot wound to head identified by Bexar County ME’s Office

The San Antonio native said performing has always been part of who she is.

“I suspect in the delivery room on the day you were born, you came out performing,” KSAT anchor Ernie Zuniga joked during the latest episode of Pickup Lines.

“Definitely singing and dancing,” Blanchard replied. “Maybe a little acting — jazz hands.”

Blanchard, who attended Keystone School from first through 12th grade, said some of her earliest performing memories came as part of a children’s group called “Showstoppers,” where she once served as a backup singer for Elvis impersonators.

After high school, Blanchard moved to New York to attend NYU and later worked in theater, modeling and voice acting. One of her most unusual jobs involved recording audiobooks for the BBC in Rhode Island, often voicing teenage girls with Southern accents.

Blanchard also spoke candidly about the rejection that often comes with acting and how it shaped her resilience.

“I think it was hard for me to separate out my own self-worth from not getting an acting job,” she said. “Learning how to bounce back and keep your confidence was important.”

Today, Blanchard is back in San Antonio and serves as the executive director of the Majestic Empire Foundation, helping preserve the Majestic and Empire theatres while also expanding access to arts education for local students.

The foundation offers free performing arts-based education programs that teach skills such as confidence, collaboration and resilience.

“It’s also just to make better human beings,” Blanchard said.

Blanchard also shared her thoughts on artificial intelligence and its impact on entertainment, saying she worries more about film and television jobs than live theater.

“It’s hard to replace a showman in a room,” she said.

Watch the full Pickup Lines with Jaselyn Blanchard in the video player above.

More Pickup Lines episodes:

• Pickup Lines: Radio legend Elizabeth Ruiz reflects on decades in San Antonio media, music and resilience
• Pickup Lines: ‘Mr. Fiesta’ reflects on South Side roots, passion for writing and his nickname
• Pickup Lines: Tony Plana reflects on childhood performance, Cuban exile and 50 years in acting

Ernie Zuniga started Pickup Lines, a digital talk show, straight from his vehicle. The segments feature a diverse range of guests, including executives, small business owners, and everyday individuals, as they share personal journeys, news, and stories.

Original Story: The Live Oak Police Department is seeking the public’s help locating the parents of a 3-year-old boy.

The child was found around 1:20 p.m. Thursday near the Franz Leadership Academy in the 12300 block of Welcome Drive.

Police said they have not been able to find the child’s parents and have not received a report for a missing child.

The department said the child is being cared for while officers attempt to locate his parents.

The Live Oak Police Department asks anyone who recognizes the child or knows the family to contact the non-emergency dispatch at 210-653-0033.

Kaidon Mattison went honking last Friday night after the San Antonio Spurs’ win against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 3 of the Western Conference Semifinals.

“It was my first time going honking,” he said. “(I) got about halfway through (Commerce Street), and my horn just gave out on me.”

The only way I can describe it to you without you actually hearing it is a low, slow boat honk. Or, the deepened sound of a clown horn.

He’s not the only Spurs fan who has broken their car horn.

Erik Garcia Jr., the owner of Erik’s Automotive, said his crew has been answering calls about similar damage all week.

“What people are doing after the games while celebrating,” Garcia said, “is they’re really mashing (into the steering wheel) and breaking all the components in there.”

Garcia said car horns aren’t meant for constant use, so there’s a risk of overheating the circuit.

Repairs can take as little as an hour, but prices can range from hundreds of dollars to thousands, depending on the damage.

The best advice to those looking to protect their car while honking?

“I would just palm it,” Garcia said.

If the horn doesn’t sound right, Garcia said to take your car to a professional. He said trying to fix it yourself might cause more damage.

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• Spurs spirit runs deep at Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word convent
• As Spurs keep winning, SW Military celebrations grow bigger and rowdier
• Meet the DJ behind the turntables at Spurs games, watch parties