The outbreak unfolding in one of Congo’s most vulnerable regions is the fastest-growing Ebola outbreak ever, with 4,945 cases including 2,325 deaths, according to government data released overnight into Monday.

It's Congo’s 17th outbreak, with a toll that has eclipsed that of the country's 2018-2020 outbreak when 2,299 deaths out of 3,481 cases were recorded.

The latest data shows 101 new cases and 33 deaths reported in the previous 24 hours. Over 1,000 people have recovered, while 730 remain in hospitals or isolation.

The outbreak has infected and killed more people at a greater speed than any other outbreak in history. The World Health Organization has said it is on track to surpass the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the deadliest on record with more than 11,000 deaths.

Trish Newport, emergency coordinator with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said the limited community engagement in the outbreak remains a key challenge.

“The community needs to be aware about the outbreak," she told The Associated Press, adding that people "need to be involved in the response, and they need to know what the signs and symptoms are and what to do if they get sick. And this today is not happening in every single place where there are Ebola cases.”

Starting from the first confirmed case, the outbreak reached the 2,000 death toll almost three times faster than in the 2014-16 outbreak.

Some families have lost up to 15 of their relatives in the epicenter, the Ituri province, said Newport.

“We rapidly need to scale up to be able to prevent more deaths from happening, more families and communities from being impacted,” she added.

There are no approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for the current outbreak across six provinces in Congo's east. Trials for those are ongoing in Ituri.

Most new cases and deaths are being reported outside of the people being monitored. Challenges facing medical teams dealing with the outbreak also include strikes by some unpaid health workers, threats by rebel groups, anger from long-traumatized communities, bad roads making it difficult to reach all the affected territories, and misinformation claiming that Ebola isn’t real.

WHO warned over the weekend that the outbreak is still moving at an “exceptional pace” ahead of efforts to track it, noting that it reached a weekly record of 579 cases and 304 deaths in the previous week.

“A substantial scaling up of response activities is underway to get ahead of the outbreak,” the U.N. health agency said.

Experts believe the virus was spreading in the mining town of Mongbwalu as early as February — months before authorities declared the outbreak on May 15.

On Friday, U.N. humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher announced the allocation of an additional $30.5 million and the deployment of 20 more staff to aid the response on the frontlines.

“This is a wake-up call,” Fletcher said. “We need speed, scale and solidarity before this virus gets even further ahead of us.”

“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal told jurors at the start of Davis' Las Vegas trial. “Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

Davis, 63, could get life in prison if he's convicted of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer in the defense opening called the prosecution's narrative “fiction.”

Palal showed jurors video of Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson outside the boxing match at the MGM Grand hours before the shooting on Sept. 7, 1996.

Davis spent the next two hours planning how to get even, said Palal, and Shakur was gunned down “in an act of revenge.”

Shakur remains a cultural icon and is considered one of the most influential and versatile rappers of all time, despite dying at 25.

What he told the FBI and investigators

In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur's rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the backseat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.

As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, stared ahead and listened intently from the audience.

Palal told jurors Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.

He said the defendant talked to the FBI in 1998 and again in 1999, admitting he had been in Las Vegas at the time of the shooting.

In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.

“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” Palal said.

He also showed jurors the 2019 memoir that Davis co-authored, “Compton Street Legend,” that the prosecution will use and that the defense fought to keep out of the trial, along with several of the defendant's interviews.

How Davis' legal team is defending him

Davis, wearing a blue suit and tie, sat quietly with his hands folded on the table in front of him, occasionally nodding along as his attorney gave his opening, and often scanned the room during testimony to see who was in the gallery.

“What they are telling you, they are representing as fact, when it’s really fiction,” Michael Sanft said. “There’s no facts."

He said Davis wasn't previously charged because law enforcement knew that he was “full of crap.”

The defense attorney also pointed to missing documents in the original investigation and distrust between police departments.

He called one detective’s work “biased,” “sloppy” and “incomplete.”

Sanft said outside court at the end of the day that he thought the 30 years that had elapsed would help Davis.

“The length of time is going to be a huge problem for people trying to recall things, to remember things,” the lawyer said. “That’s just not how it works.”

Asked about the oddity of calling his client “full of crap" and similar things, he said, “We all have a family member who's like that.”

Briefly a suspect in Notorious B.I.G.'s death

Former Los Angeles Police Department detective Fred Miller — assigned to the investigation of the 1997 shooting death of the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace — testified remotely and said that Davis had briefly been suspected in that shooting.

Davis admitted to being present at a party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles where Wallace and Sean “Diddy” Combs were guests. Wallace was shot as he was leaving.

Sanft objected to the inclusion of the testimony. The judge, with prosecutors’ agreement, told jurors that police do not believe Davis was involved.

Most eyewitnesses are no longer alive

The story of the drive-by shooting has long gripped the hip-hop community, partly because no one was charged until Davis was indicted in 2023.

The other three men riding in the Cadillac have all died in the years since.

Retired Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale was the first of the 35 to 45 witnesses the prosecution plans to call at the trial expected to last about a month.

He testified that he and another officer stopped Knight and Shakur's car for missing a license plate, warned them and let them go.

About 10 minutes later the officers responded to a shooting call and found EMTs pulling Shakur from the car. Dale said Knight had been grazed by bullets, but told the officers to take care of Shakur.

Dale jumped in the ambulance and asked Shakur who shot him. The retired officer said that Shakur said something like “no, we’ll take care of it.”

Brent Becker, a former Las Vegas homicide detective, testified that Knight showed up to a police interview with attorneys, which he thought was odd because Knight was a victim. Knight was timid, his interview was practiced and he told investigators he knew nothing, Becker said.

“I thought he lied to us,” Becker said in video testimony.

Becker said it was difficult to get other witnesses to talk and they “were leaning on” Davis, Anderson, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith and Terry “Bubble Up” Brown as the men in the Cadillac, but had no living witnesses who could identify them.

Witnesses describe the night Tupac was shot

Ingrid Stokes testified that she and her friends were heading home from Las Vegas when they encountered Shakur and Knight, who were friends with a woman in Stokes’ group.

Knight invited them to a nightclub, she said, and they decided to meet them there.

The car Stokes was riding in was one lane over and a car length ahead of Knight's vehicle, when they heard gunshots.

Stokes said they drove off in fear and almost hit a white four-door vehicle in the process.

When they returned to the scene, police made them sit on the sidewalk and treated them like suspects, she said. Stokes was scared to be seen in public talking about the case, worried about poor treatment from law enforcement and the potential for retribution.

“Snitches get stitches,” she said.

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Associated Press journalists Ty ONeil in Las Vegas, Becky Boone in Boise, Idaho, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Andrew Dalton in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

William Frances Silvia, 61, would be the 13th prisoner put to death this year in Florida, which has two more executions scheduled in September and has carried out more than half of the nation's 22 executions so far in 2026.

Silvia is scheduled to receive a three-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke starting at 6 p.m. local time.

A final appeal was still pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Courts twice sentenced Silvia to death

Silvia was sentenced to death after being convicted of first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder for the deadly 2006 attack on Patricia Silvia, along with her mother, Betty Woodard.

According to court records, Silvia purchased a shotgun that year and then went to Woodard’s Orlando-area home, where his wife had been living since their separation two months earlier. The family was in the middle of a cookout when Silvia arrived, and after an unsuccessful attempt to reconcile, authorities said Silvia retrieved the shotgun from his truck and shot the two women.

William Silvia was first sentenced to death following his 2008 trial. A court later vacated that sentence following an appeal related to Florida's death penalty sentencing procedures, but after being granted a new death penalty phase in 2018, he was again sentenced to death.

A Florida state agency, the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel, provides legal representation to death row inmates. Silvia's attorneys have argued that the agency couldn't provide adequate legal assistance because it was already helping another death row inmate. The Florida Supreme Court rejected the appeal.

Florida leads the way in executions

A total of 47 people were executed in the U.S. in 2025. Florida led the way with 19, a record in the state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

In July, Florida executed two prisoners in one day, the first state in nearly a decade to do so.

Two more executions are planned in Florida next month. Harold Gene Lucas, 74, is scheduled to die on Sept. 1, followed by Daniel Owen Conahan Jr., 72, on Sept. 10.

Lucas was convicted of fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl who rejected his romantic advances and wounding two of her friends.

Conahan was convicted of kidnapping and strangling a man that he had paid to pose for nude photos, and authorities suspect him of similar homicides committed in the 1990s in southwest Florida.

All Florida executions are carried out via lethal injection of a sedative, a paralytic and a drug that stops the heart, according to the Department of Corrections.

But it is the scathing online reviews that seem to have prompted interest in “Niulai,” an animated film about a calf who had a dream about himself growing up with the help of his family, driving a surprising surge at the box office.

The film earned only about 10,000 yuan ($1,480) at the box office in the first 10 days after its Aug. 5 release. On some days, the film took in as little as 200 yuan ($30) at the box office, according to Maoyan, a movie-tracking platform. The figure was exceptionally low, particularly during the competitive summer movie season.

But its box office surged to 8.2 million yuan ($1.2 million) Monday, with nearly 300,000 admissions, according to Maoyan. Its total box office has reached 17.1 million yuan ($2.5 million).

Red Star News, a local news website in Chengdu, reported that the film was made over five years by just two people — director Xin Yumeng and his mother, Sun Lifan. The Associated Press was unable to reach Xin and could not independently verify this.

Posters seen at movie theaters featured a calf, hand-drawn in pen without color, alongside handwritten slogans: “Come on over if you’re into the bizarre” and “No refunds.”

A 'terrible' movie viewers recommend as a prank

On Douban, a popular Chinese movie-review platform, viewers piled on with mocking and bewildered comments.

Among the most popular: “unbelievably terrible and eye-opening,” “a symbol of the new internet troll culture,” and “a must-watch for Chinese stock market investors.” The last is a play on the film’s name, “Niulai,” which literally means “the bull is coming” in Chinese — a wish for a bull market.

Comments such as “over nine out of ten,” and “awesome and highly recommended” are also among the sarcastic reactions.

“My initial intention has always been to play pranks on my friends,” said Du Mingxi, a 19-year-old college student in Shanghai.

“If a friend asks me what I think about the movie, I’d say good and recommend them to watch,” he said, adding that he successfully tricked two friends to watch the movie with him. Both found it fun, but one fell asleep during the viewing.

Du compared young people going to the movies to see this kind of film to the mysterious “six-seven” craze in the U.S., saying that some are just drawn to things they find weird or funny, with many jumping on a trend whether they get it or not.

“They are just the same, it is funny but hard to describe what's funny about it, and young people just love spreading these memes virally,” said Du.

Despite the flood of criticism and memes, some viewers didn't mind the rudimentary production.

Zhong Jiaming, a vocational schoolteacher in Guangzhou, called it a rare find in an era when movies are often “visually exquisite and polished, but their stories can fail to engage.”

“This is a movie for the young at heart," said Zhong. "It is simple and honest, like a bedtime story for children.”

Zamboanga city Mayor Khymer Adan Olaso said the suspect apparently wore a body camera to livestream the attack at the high school on the Ateneo de Zamboanga university campus in his city. Two other people were injured, he said.

The suspect initially fired at a teacher but it was not clear if the teacher was hit. He then shot a fellow student, who died, before shooting himself, Olaso told DZBB radio network.

Hundreds of students were evacuated to safety after the gunshots rang out in the high school building, which is in a secured campus, separate from a larger campus of the Catholic university, where its colleges and professional schools are located in the port city of Zamboanga.

A few hours after the shooting, police said the situation was under control. They asked parents and guardians of students to remain calm and follow the high school's advice and arrangements to pick up their children.

“Authorities are currently establishing the circumstances surrounding the incident,” national police chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said. The police “will provide verified information as appropriate and appeals to the public to refrain from sharing unconfirmed reports, photos, or videos that may cause unnecessary concern.”

The national police “assure the public that the safety and well-being of the school community remain a priority. We thank the school administration, parents, guardians, and the community for their patience, cooperation and understanding as authorities continue to manage the situation,” Nartatez said.

The shooting happened despite police assurances that security in schools across the country would be strengthened after a shooting in June in which three high school students were killed and at least 20 others were wounded in central Tacloban city. Police arrested two students, ages 14 and 15, accused of carrying out that shooting.

Crimes involving the use of firearms are prevalent in the Philippines, partly due to the proliferation of unlicensed firearms, but school shootings are relatively rare.

The shooting in the Philippines also occurred less than two weeks after a school shooting in Thailand.

Thailand’s Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul took steps to restrict guns in the Southeast Asian country after a 14-year-old boy killed his grandparents, five school staff members and a 12-year-old girl in Nonthaburi province outside Bangkok.

Thailand’s high rate of gun ownership is second only to Pakistan in Asia, and far surpasses its Southeast Asian neighbors.

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Associated Press journalist Jintamas Sasornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Vikings coach Kevin O'Connell told reporters before practice that Adams will have surgery and stay in Minnesota for his rehabilitation so he can serve as a mentor to the younger players.

Adams, the sixth overall pick in the 2017 draft, made three Pro Bowls and was an All-Pro in 2019 with the New York Jets. He has been an excellent blitzer who set the NFL season record for sacks by a defensive back (9½) in 2020 after being traded to the Seattle Seahawks. Injuries have derailed him since then, with Minnesota becoming his fifth team in four years. Adams tore his left quadriceps in the 2022 season opener.

Adams, who transitioned to linebacker in a part-time role last year with the Las Vegas Raiders, has 55 tackles for loss, 22½ sacks, eight forced fumbles, four fumble recoveries and four interceptions in his career. He'd made a strong impact on the Vikings in the two-plus weeks he'd been with the team. The 30-year-old Adams was injured in his first exhibition game after signing just before the start of training camp.

“He’s a Minnesota Viking now, and we want to make sure that he knows how important he’ll be to our players and team,” O'Connell said.

The Vikings signed cornerback Bryce Phillips, who originally entered the NFL as an undrafted free agent with Kansas City following this year's draft. His brother, Clark Phillips III, plays cornerback for Atlanta after starring collegiately at Utah.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

The South San Independent School District board approved placing the proposal on the November ballot during a meeting Monday night.

The district is asking voters to keep the tax rate at $1.19 per $100 of taxable property value. However, the proposal would change how that money is divided between the district’s maintenance and operations budget and its budget for bond projects.

If approved, a larger share of the district’s tax revenue would go toward day-to-day costs, such as regular operations and district services.

The measure does not ask voters to approve a higher tax rate. The proposal now heads to voters in November.

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Deputies responded to the crash Monday night in the 8000 block of FM 78.

BCSO said the man was walking across the street when a driver didn’t see him and struck him. The man was taken to a local hospital.

The driver remained at the scene and showed no signs of impairment, the sheriff’s office said.

Additional information was not immediately available. The investigation is ongoing.

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The All-Star center fielder and MVP contender hit his fifth leadoff homer of the season to start the game. Then he ended it when he led off the 10th by driving a 2-1 slider from Hagen Smith (2-1) deep into the right-field patio area. It was the 30th homer of the season for Crow-Armstrong, one short of his career best from last year. With 31 stolen bases this year, he also has back-to-back 30-30 seasons.

Crow-Amstrong took his left hand off the bat after he connected and pointed it skyward as he began walking down the first-base line. He turned toward the dugout and celebrated before starting his slow, exuberant home run trot.

Seiya Suzuki also homered for the Cubs and Jacob Webb (5-2) left the bases loaded in the top of the 10th to set the stage for Crow-Armstrong, who drove in automatic runner Carson Kelly. The Cubs' leadoff batter finished 4 for 5 with a walk.

The Cubs snapped a two-game skid and ended the White Sox's three-game winning streak. Randal Grichuk and Andrew Benintendi homered for the White Sox, who had won six of eight and took two of three from the Cubs on the South side earlier this season.

Nico Hoerner’s RBI single tied the game in the bottom of the ninth. In the eighth, pinch-hitter Benintendi sent Ryan Zeferjahn’s first offering into the right-field basket for a two-run homer to give the White Sox a 5-4 lead.

Crow-Armstrong drove Luis Castillo’s first pitch down the right-field line and out. Suzuki belted one to deep left center four pitches later. Grichuk's three-run homer, his 10th, put the White Sox ahead 3-2 in the fourth.

Cubs starter Shota Imanaga allowed three runs on two hits and struck out 10 — one off his season high — in six innings.

Up next

RHP Kevin Gausman (6-11, 4.53 ERA) goes for the Cubs on Tuesday. The White Sox had not named a starter.

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

The sisters nearly recovered from a 6-0 deficit in the match tiebreaker before a double-fault by Venus Williams ended their first doubles appearance in a non-Grand Slam event since the Italian Open in 2016.

“I thought it was fun,” Serena said. “I thought it was special. We kicked off a little rust in the middle of the match and just, you know (were) starting to feel it. I didn’t come out here to win this tournament. Winning is obviously great. But in this position just, you know, having fun. It was really cool to be able to do this again.”

Serena had been off the tour since 2022 before returning this summer at age 44. The sisters planned to play together at Wimbledon but had to withdraw after Serena injured her knee while losing her singles match. They entered Cincinnati as a wild card.

“Eventually we would find our way to each other,” the 46-year-old Venus said about the decision to play doubles again. “It's our first time playing together in forever. It was great for us to get out there and do it.”

Kostyuk and Stearns, both 24, are playing in their first tournament together. Kostyuk is from Ukraine. Stearns grew up in the Cincinnati suburb of Mason, where the tournament is played every year.

“I kind of expected it but it stung a little bit that this is my hometown,” Stearns said about the pro-Williams sisters crowd. “I won't hold it against anyone. The crowd was going for them but we used it to our advantage and flipped the script.”

After dropping the first set, the Williams sisters rolled in the second to force a match tiebreak.

Kostyuk and Stearns went ahead 6-0, but consecutive double-faults by Kostyuk helped the Williamses get within 8-7. It was 9-8 after Serena powerfully put away an overhead before Venus double-faulted.

“The crowd got the show,” Kostyuk said. “They probably couldn’t ask for anything better. At the end a tiebreak is a lottery. You never know which way it’s going to go.”

Venus and Serena have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and 22 total. Serena won one with Alexandra Stevenson in 2002 at Leipzig. All of Venus' doubles titles have been with her sister. They also have won three Olympic gold medals together.

Serena has won 23 singles Grand Slam titles. Venus has won seven.

Swiatek rallies for 3-set win and other results

In other results Monday, defending Cincinnati champion Iga Swiatek rallied from a set down to win her eighth consecutive match, beating Maria Sakkari, 4-6, 6-1, 6-1.

No. 2 seed Elena Rybakina beat Magdalena Frech, 6-4, 7-6. Third-ranked Jessica Pegula beat fellow American Emma Navarro, 7-5, 6-2.

World No. 3 and top seed Alexander Zverev won his ATP-tour leading 46th match this season, outlasting Terence Atmane, 7-6 (4), 7-6 (6).

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See AP’s full tennis coverage here

“You got to know about ‘The Creek’,” said Long Creek senior cornerback Dante Garcia. “You’re going to see some dogs and some heart out there. You’re going to see some ball.”

The Dragons will compete in District 13-5A Division II, where they will face established programs to the likes of Boerne and Alamo Heights.

The season marks the next step for a football program that has spent the past two years building toward full varsity competition.

“Man, the excitement is definitely through the roof,” said Long Creek football head coach Adam Harvey. “We’re ready to go. I couldn’t tell you exactly what it’s going to look like. There’s a lot of unknowns. But, as far as being ready to snap the ball, we’re ready to do it.”

Harvey said Long Creek plans to build its offense around a strong running game as the Dragons work to establish an identity in their first varsity campaign.

“It’s a long awaited, we were looking forward to the season for a good three years,” said Dragons senior running back Michael Martinez. “We’re pretty confident in our team right now.”

“We’re going to go out and play our hearts out for real. We know what we’re going against. It’s nothing new,” added Garcia. “We got to be ready. Come out there and do what we do best.”

Long Creek opens the season at 7 p.m. on the first Friday of the UIL football season, traveling to face the Davenport Wolves.

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Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 dipped 1.6% to 68,098.54. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 9,088.60. South Korea's Kospi reversed course after surging earlier to drop 0.6% to 6,933.60. Hong Kong's Hang Seng lost 0.6% to 25,289.88, while the Shanghai Composite shed 0.5% to 3,963.53.

Analysts said robust earnings reports in Asia, following those from the U.S., are helping counter worries about what the war in Iran will do to the global flow of crude and its impact on energy prices. Japan, for one, imports almost all its oil.

“First, the beneficiary base from AI investment has broadened. Demand spread across a wide range of industries, including semiconductor production equipment, power equipment, machinery, electronic components, and materials. AI demand effectively helped rediscover globally competitive companies across these sectors,” Masashi Akutsu and Tetsuhiro Tokuyama said in a recent report for BofA Securities.

They noted the recent strong earnings reports out of Japanese companies for the April-June quarter, adding that, just as with the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of Japan will likely start moving to raise interest rates in the next few months.

On Wall Street, stocks edged further away from their record heights on Monday. The S&P 500 fell 0.5% but remains near its all-time high set Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.3%.

Wall Street’s losses solidified in the afternoon when oil prices accelerated upward. Benchmark U.S. crude added 34 cents to $84.84 a barrel in Asian trading early Tuesday.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 21 cents in Tuesday trading to $91.08 a barrel. It gained 2.7% to $90.87 on Monday.

Last month alone, the Brent zigzagged between $72 and $102 as hopes rose and fell that the United States and Iran could reach a deal that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again.

The rally in oil prices sent Treasury yields in the bond market higher, which in turn raised the pressure on the economy and prices for all kinds of investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.72% from 4.68% late Friday. It has shot up from just 3.97% before the war with Iran, largely because higher oil prices are worsening inflation and upping the probability that the U.S. Federal Reserve will have to hike interest rates.

Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they do so by intentionally slowing the economy. The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate has already jumped near its highest level in a year because of the rise in the 10-year Treasury yield, though reports last week said that inflation in July was not as bad as earlier in the summer.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 40.70 points to 7,745.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272.63 to 53,459.78, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 84.25 to 26,644.91.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar rose to 159.43 Japanese yen from 159.37 yen. The euro cost $1.1585, inching up from $1.1581.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report.

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

Bennett Forrest, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s San Antonio field office, said investigators do not initially distinguish between a credible threat and one that may ultimately turn out to be a hoax.

“Whether it’s a hoax or it’s real, we’re going to have the same amount of seriousness to attack that problem set and make sure that nothing happens,” Forrest told KSAT in an interview Monday.

How investigations work

Forrest said tips can come in a variety of ways, including phone calls, emails, written communications and social media posts. Once investigators receive information about a potential threat, they work to determine who made it, whether it’s credible, and what action may be necessary.

That process can involve internal FBI databases, open-source checks and other analytical research. Investigators may also look at a person’s history and patterns of behavior while working with other law enforcement agencies.

Forrest said the goal is to mitigate the threat and determine what action is necessary — whether that means talking with a juvenile or adult or pursuing a case through the judicial system.

The FBI said its National Threat Operations Center also receives thousands of tips involving threats of violence against schools each year, including threats posted on social media.

A network of partners

The response does not fall solely on the FBI.

Forrest described a network of city, county, state and federal law enforcement partners working together to investigate and mitigate threats. That includes the San Antonio Police Department, Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, among other agencies.

“We have built out teams of people between task force officers, which are supplied by different agencies,” Forrest said.

He said San Antonio-area law enforcement agencies have formed ad hoc working groups and task forces focused on threats and lessons learned from past school shootings. Those groups work together regularly, and schools communicate with law enforcement about response tactics and how agencies would respond if an incident occurred.

One of the biggest improvements in recent years, Forrest said, has been communication among law enforcement partners. But he emphasized that not every threat investigated is shared with the public. Forrest said it’s intentional.

He said publicly discussing every threat could create unnecessary alarm.

“I think it would be alarming to the general public if they heard the amount, you know, of threats that are actually out there,” Forrest said. “We don’t want to put that burden on the, you know, the general American public and the citizens of San Antonio.”

The cost of hoaxes

Even when a threat turns out to be false, investigators cannot know that when the initial tip arrives. Forrest said a suspected hoax can require hundreds of personnel to stop other work and focus on determining whether there is an actual danger.

“You have to think about all the analytical research that we do, all the people that are taken off the street to go try to mitigate this threat,” Forrest said. “At the end of the day, you might have 100 people working on this.”

He also said there is a financial cost associated with responding to hoax threats.

The FBI said threatening violence against schools is not a joke, even when someone later claims they did not intend to follow through. The agency’s public awareness campaign warns that threats made through social media, text messages or email can result in federal or state charges.

Social media changing the landscape

Forrest said social media has changed the way threats are communicated.

The FBI and local fusion centers are seeing an increase in threats made through social media against schools, public gatherings and other locations.

Because people can quickly post a message, send a direct message or otherwise communicate online, Forrest said law enforcement must take those communications seriously regardless of whether they initially appear credible.

He also said the beginning of the school year can bring an increase in threats toward schools and public gatherings.

Those threats can have different motivations, he said, ranging from a student wanting to avoid returning to school to bullying or other problems — and, in some cases, a genuine intent to commit violence.

What parents can do

Forrest said parents have an important role in preventing violence and encouraged them to report information they believe could indicate a potential threat.

“If you hear of anything, any kind of violence, you know, please try to say something and try to get ahead of it,” Forrest said.

He also urged gun owners to make sure firearms are not readily accessible to children. Forrest, who is a parent himself, said children are still children even when they have been taught about firearm safety.

“You have to just make sure that you do everything you can to keep guns out of their hands,” he said.

Forrest said investigators can pursue state or federal charges depending on the circumstances of a threat.

Threats sent through social media, text messages or email can constitute federal threatening interstate communications, while state and local charges may also apply.

Forrest said investigators’ ultimate goal is to identify the person responsible, determine the threat’s credibility, and take whatever lawful action is necessary to protect the public.

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Syrians have taken to social media and the streets in recent days to demand answers about the death of Mohammad Ghamira, who was buried Monday in his hometown of al-Haffah in coastal Latakia province.

When insurgents unseated former President Bashar Assad in December 2024 after a nearly 14-year civil war, they opened the country's notorious prisons. During Assad's rule, rights groups say, thousands of prisoners were killed in mass executions or died from injuries and disease. Detainees were subjected to torture, beatings and rape.

Officials with the government of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa have promised accountability in Ghamira’s case, but rights groups say it is not an isolated incident and that abuses persist in detention centers.

The detainee had hemophilia, which affects blood clotting

Ghamira, a 29-year-old father of two, was a former volunteer with the White Helmets civil defense organization, which operated in opposition-held areas before Assad's fall.

He died in a hospital in Latakia on Sunday after being released from jail. He had been detained days earlier following an "allegation of theft involving a sum of money,” Latakia’s internal security command said in a statement, without giving more details.

Syria’s Minister of Emergency and Disaster Management Raed al-Saleh, who was previously head of the White Helmets, said on X that Ghamira had died of “complications from cerebral and gastrointestinal hemorrhaging” that “resulted from a beating he sustained after being detained at the al-Haffah police station.”

Al-Saleh and Ghamira’s relatives said he had hemophilia, a condition affecting the blood’s ability to clot.

Ghamira’s uncle, Issam Ghamira, said in a video interview with state news agency SANA that the family had told the police chief in al-Haffah that his nephew had hemophilia and warned against hitting him. Despite that, he said, his nephew was hit while in custody.

Syria’s interior ministry announced an investigation into Ghamira’s death and said seven interior ministry personnel were detained for questioning.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Noureddine al-Baba, speaking to journalists, acknowledged “shortcomings and deficiencies” in some of the country's police departments but said others were doing “exceptional” work.

“God willing, this painful incident will serve as a catalyst for positive change in the operations of the ministry of interior," he said.

Watchdogs call Ghamira’s death part of a wider problem

In a report released in March, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic said it had documented “torture and ill-treatment” in 18 official detention facilities and 12 “makeshift facilities” in different areas of Syria between January and October 2025, in the months following Assad's ouster as the new government asserted control.

The practices it documented included beating prisoners with rifle butts, sticks, pipes, bars and cables; the use of electric shocks and other forms of torture; mock executions; and sexual violence.

Syrians for Truth and Justice, a human rights organization that tracks abuses, in a report published earlier this month said that “severe beatings, electric shocks, humiliation, threats, deprivation of basic necessities, and deaths in custody continue to be common practices at the hands of multiple security and military actors.”

The group concluded that the incidents were too widespread to treat as isolated incidents but that there was no evidence of a “single centralized system equivalent in structure and direction to the torture apparatus entrenched by the Assad regime.”

“It is somehow widespread, but it’s not structured,” Bassam Alahmad, the group’s executive director, told The Associated Press. “For us, there is no evidence that these orders came from the commanders to torture people, but still (the authorities) have a responsibility to stop this behavior."

Syrians whose loved ones disappeared or died in detention centers during Assad’s rule said they were disturbed to see the patterns being repeated under the new government.

Families for Freedom, a group representing relatives of detainees, said in a statement, “What happened to Mohammed reopens the wounds of torture and death in detention for thousands of Syrian families — practices Syrians have struggled for years to end, and the recurrence of which cannot be accepted today.”

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Sewell reported from Beirut.

The globally recognized “Hips Don't Lie” musician made the pledge during a surprise visit to Quibdó, the capital of the Colombian province of Chocó, where she toured damaged schools, hugging students and taking photos with them.

"What worries me the most is that schools are not rebuilt once this emergency is over,” Shakira told journalists. “Every day that children don’t go to school is a day they miss out on their future.”

She was accompanied by Howard Buffett, son of billionaire philanthropist Warren Buffett and longtime donor to Colombia who has helped Shakira set up schools there before. The Howard G. Buffett foundation will collaborate with Shakira's Fundación Pies Descalzos, or Barefoot Foundation, on reconstructing the 10 schools.

“When she calls, I come,” Buffett said during the visit.

The singer also told reporters she planned to dedicate her “personal efforts” to rebuilding a local technological university in Chocó and announced pledges of $500,000 each from the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund and Live Nation and $250,000 from CAF Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean toward rebuilding schools and getting children back into classrooms.

The 7.4 magnitude quake on Aug. 10 struck a vast swath of western Colombia, killing at least 287 people and destroying more than 26,000 dwellings, authorities said. The government has said 194 people are missing, while other civilian-run databases put the number at more than 4,100.

The epicenter was in Chocó, one of Colombia's poorest regions and where at least 3,100 homes were destroyed and over 265 educational sites affected, according to the regional government latest report Monday.

“It’s a place I love, a place where I’ve seen our students grow in our classrooms,” Shakira said in a video posted on X by the Colombian news outlet La FM. Her foundation, which focuses on educational access for youths in Colombia, has been in Chocó for 22 years, running two schools from which hundreds of students have graduated, she said. “I really want to see it rebuild again.”

Aid groups have struggled to assess the damage so far in Chocó, an area the size of Switzerland where communication is difficult. The province has few roads linking it to the rest of the country, and its towns and villages are connected mostly by rivers and unpaved roads.

Most of Chocó's 600,000 inhabitants live in poverty, according to figures published last year by Colombia’s national government, and it is largely inhabited by Indigenous tribes and Afro Colombian communities.

“There is not a way to alleviate the pain of so many, there are no magic solutions," Shakira, 49, said during her visit to a large high school in Quibdó. “But what there is, is commitment to be here alongside those from Chocó, to not abandon El Chocó like it historically has been abandoned, until every Colombian and every person from Chocó can return to their normal lives like they deserve and all the children can return to their schools and dream of the futures they deserve."

The Grammy award winner known for hits like “Whenever, Wherever,” “La Tortura,” and the 2026 FIFA World Cup anthem “Dai Dai” is a longtime supporter of educational access and advancement. She recently headlined the halftime show of the World Cup final match in July and performed in May on Brazil’s Copacabana Beach to a crowd of 2 million.

After Venezuela’s twin earthquakes in June, Shakira announced the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund would commit $500,000 to education recovery there.

Her announcement Monday is the latest of many commitments from prominent Colombians and other Latin American artists to help Colombia and Venezuela. On Sunday, Marc Anthony and Chayanne joined dozens of other artists at a Miami benefit concert and live fundraiser for both countries' earthquake relief.

Colombian singer Karol G pledged to match fan donations to her Con Cora Foundation during her three-night run at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles last weekend. She will also join Maluma, Sebastián Yatra and others at a benefit concert in Bogotá this Sunday.

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An earlier correction stated Shakira committed to building 10 new schools, not rebuilding 10 schools. She and Buffett are helping reconstruct the schools, not building new ones.

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Gabriela Aoun Angueira reported from San Diego.

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

Guests staying at the Homewood Suites by Hilton San Antonio North, near Loop 1604 and Stone Oak Parkway, say dozens of vehicles have been targeted, leaving windows shattered and guests dealing with the aftermath.

Jake Knies, who is staying at the hotel, said he has repeatedly seen broken glass in the parking lot and guests dealing with the aftermath of vehicle break-ins.

“I always come out the next morning with glass on the ground, windows shattered,” Knies said.

Knies said the problem appeared to escalate over the weekend, when he estimated about 18 vehicles had their windows broken.

Another guest, Brenda Drgac, said she is in town for a doctor’s appointment and fell victim to the burglars.

The San Antonio Police Department said officers have been called to the hotel 13 times since Aug. 8 for criminal mischief and/or vehicle burglaries. Multiple calls were made over the weekend.

For some guests, the break-ins have added significant unexpected expenses to their stays.

Drgac said she was in San Antonio for a doctor’s appointment and ended up spending the afternoon having her vehicle window replaced.

“You spend $500 to stay here for three nights and $700 to get your windows replaced, so it becomes an expensive place to visit,” she said.

The general manager of Homewood Suites by Hilton San Antonio North provided a statement saying vehicle burglaries and thefts have become increasingly common in the area.

“We are working to provide restitution to Guests for the inconvenience they experienced,” the statement said. “We are cooperating with the SAPD to ensure those responsible are apprehended and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

Guests said the repeated incidents have left them concerned about their vehicles and looking for somewhere else to stay.

Drgac said her husband wants to leave the hotel, but she has a doctor’s appointment and plans to leave after.

She said she is concerned her vehicle could be targeted again.

Drgac said an officer told her the burglars may have been looking for guns inside vehicles.

For now, she has left her police report on the dashboard of her vehicle, hoping it will signal to potential thieves that the vehicle has already been targeted.

Police have not publicly identified any suspects in connection with the reported vehicle burglaries at the hotel.

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The standoff, in the village of Qusra, has seen groups of settlers surround several Palestinian houses and prevent residents from leaving. The United States has condemned the siege and the Israeli military has deployed troops it says are there to maintain order.

The siege of Palestinian homes by Israeli settlers comes as violence in the West Bank has soared in recent months. The settlers, emboldened by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government, have ramped up attacks on Palestinian towns and villages, harassing residents and setting homes, mosques and fields ablaze.

Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed 87 Palestinians so far this year, according to Palestinian health officials. Palestinians have killed three Israelis, including two who were killed during clashes in the West Bank village of Tell last month.

As Loui Ridi, an Ohio-based owner of one of the houses, landed in Israel, settlers were still roaming near Qusra, according to video footage taken by his brother. It showed settlers driving ATVs and speaking with soldiers.

Ridi had also watched the scenes unfold from afar through his home security cameras.

“I've been watching this live for many days and now this is the second week. I can't sleep,” he told reporters at Israel’s main international airport. “I can’t let the settlers steal my house while I was watching."

He finally arrived in Qusra on Monday evening, where he first reunited with his mother and sister before moving on to his house. Ridi's brother, Qusai Abu Rida, and his teenage son had stayed inside the home to protect the property.

As Ridi waited for Israel’s military to escort him to the house, he said he believed little had changed since early last week, when the siege began.

Israel has since declared the neighborhood where Ridi’s home is located a closed military zone. But on Monday, his brother’s footage still showed soldiers interacting amicably with settlers.

“I should be able to go to my house freely, anytime I want,” he said. “It is a frustration and a nightmare for the entire family.”

__ Metz reported from Tel Aviv, Israel.

Led by head coach Stephen Basore, the Bears are predicted to win District 29-6A, per Dave Campbell’s Texas Football.

The Bears went 7-1 in district last season and 10-2 overall, reaching the area round of the playoffs where they dropped a close game to Lake Travis, 13-7.

Brennan has a total of 10 starters returning from last season — five on each side of the ball.

The standard is high for the Brennan Bears football program, and it’s set by the coaching staff and the student-athletes.

Brennan will scrimmage with East Central on Thursday night and then kick off its regular season Friday, Aug. 28, with Vandegrift at Farris Stadium at 7:30 p.m.

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The ruling is the latest development in a yearslong battle over where to house the main office for the nation's premier law enforcement agency. A site in Greenbelt, Maryland, was picked during former President Joe Biden's administration, but Trump appointees sought to reverse that decision last year in favor of repurposing the Ronald Reagan Building, a federal office complex a few blocks from the FBI's existing headquarters.

U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, an appointee of President Barack Obama, ruled that the move was “ not in accordance with law,” and blocked the Trump administration from moving the FBI to the Reagan building, renovating it for the FBI or repurposing funds.

“This is not the first time courts have tried to undermine the administration in its goal to make government more cost-effective for American taxpayers,” the FBI said in a statement. “The court has chosen to impermissibly intervene for political reasons. This FBI is mission focused and will continue the best course of action to meet the needs of law enforcement.”

The suit was brought by the state of Maryland and Prince George's County.

“Maryland and Prince George’s County committed more than a decade of work to earn the FBI headquarters and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars," Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, said in a statement. “By blocking the Trump Administration’s unlawful attempt to move the FBI to the Reagan Building and divert the funds Congress set aside for this project, the Court has cleared the path back to Greenbelt.”

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, also a Democrat, said, "Now it is time to stop the games and get to work building the world-class FBI headquarters that our public servants deserve, where it belongs: in Prince George’s County, Maryland.”

The FBI's current Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, was dedicated in 1975. Proponents of moving the headquarters have said the brutalist-style building, where nets surround the facility to protect pedestrians from falling debris, has fallen into disrepair.

The Maryland location was selected over nearby Virginia following an intense competition between the two states.

EDINBURG — At 50 years old, Abel Gonzalez says he’s happy to be involved in his eight-year dream career of filmmaking, something he sees as fostering the budding film industry in the Rio Grande Valley. But, he still has some anxieties.

He’s worried that a family member — who’s a U.S. citizen — will be targeted by immigration officials because he speaks minimal English. He’s concerned that rural parts of the Valley are not adequately represented politically, and that environmental concerns over pesticides and chemicals in those areas receive little attention.

He’s also frustrated over stagnant wages. He said businesses often don’t want to pay competitive wages for services because they believe they can find someone just a few miles south in Mexico to provide the service for a cheaper price.

Gonzalez believes in voting as an important way for communities to make their voices heard about their concerns, but said underrepresentation continues to be a problem. He doesn’t see that changing anytime soon.

“We’ve been under Republican governorship for so long,” he said. “It’s like a big tanker truck that you can’t just turn around. You just have to move slowly.”

His outlook reflects that of the average Valley resident. While on average, South Texans have a positive view on their lives; their overall life evaluation has fallen near to where it was in 2009 and are experiencing higher levels of negative emotions than historical trends, according to new survey data.

Between 2009 and 2018, life evaluation in the Rio Grande Valley peaked in 2014 before declining overall, according to an analysis by Blue Zones, a think tank that studies longevity and quality of life. That decline was concentrated among Hispanic residents, while life evaluation increased among non-Hispanics.

While the survey does not list reasons for declines in life evaluation, health status is listed as one of the biggest factors in determining life satisfaction. So are people and community.

It’s possible the downturn could be driven by concerns like those expressed by Gonzalez — heightened immigration enforcement and wages — according to one political scientist in the Rio Grande Valley.

That dissatisfaction is bad news for both major political parties, which are heavily focused on winning voters in South Texas. The valley is home to three of the most contested congressional elections. Voters are less likely to engage in the political process if they have a low quality of life, said Álvaro Corral, a political scientist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Feeling blue

Mollie Wallace, 31, says she’s happy overall, but she overcame many challenges to get here.

She’s been diagnosed with depression, ADHD and, at 19 years old, developed Bell’s palsy, a sudden weakness in the muscles on one side of the face. She’s also lost loved ones to suicide, and her mother to complications related to alcoholism.

Wallace uses her Instagram page to advocate for the importance of destigmatizing mental health and other issues in the RGV. She believes openly talking about and bringing awareness to these topics is the first step to having a healthier community both inside and out.

It’s been quite the journey, but Wallace, an occupational therapist, is in a stable place now thanks to the support she receives from her dad and sister as well as the help she receives from her therapist and being on antidepressants.

“I feel lucky to be here,” she said.

But not everyone in the Valley is able to get the help they need.

About 30% of Valley residents don’t have health insurance, one of the highest uninsured rates in the country, and about 24% of people live below the poverty line, which is more than double the national rate.

Because of the need in the Valley, Blue Zones was invited to look into how it could help communities in the region by Methodist Healthcare Ministries, a faith-based nonprofit based in San Antonio.

Blue Zones helps communities establish programs to help residents live happier and longer lives. Coined by journalist Dan Buettner, the term “blue zone” became the name of the research firm, which aims to equip communities across the world.

As part of that process in the Valley, Blue Zone researchers met with people and organizations in the region to understand whether the area had the ability and willingness to implement Blue Zone strategies for improvement.

“We know that our model doesn’t work if we come and do the work to a community,” said Dan Buettner Jr., chief development officer for Blue Zones and Buettner’s son. “It’s got to be a continuation of what they’re doing.”

Part of the initial assessment is data collected via a survey by Gallup, one of the oldest and most respected public opinion polling firms in the U.S., and analyzed by Oxford University.

The data measured how people feel about their lives and what contributed to their happiness.

An analysis of the survey drew on Gallup survey data from 2009 to 2018 collected from Valley residents aged 18 and older. That was then compared to new data that Gallup collected for 2026 — 1,921 old surveys and 588 new surveys — to examine how views about their lives have changed.

Valley residents were asked to rate their life satisfaction on a scale from zero to 10. Based on responses, average well-being in the Valley between 2009 to 2018 was 7.3, above the average well-being in Texas which was 7.18.

In 2026, that dipped for Valley residents to 7.09. There was no 2026 rating for Texas overall.

The decrease in life evaluation wasn’t universal in the region. For the Hispanic population, which makes up about 92% of the population in the Valley, life satisfaction went from 7.3 between 2009 and 2018 to 6.9 in 2026.

Non-Hispanic people experienced the opposite. Their life satisfaction increased from 7.27 to 7.48.

Life evaluation differed across income levels, as well. People who earned higher incomes reported a higher life satisfaction.

Average life satisfaction in the Valley was at its lowest in 2009, with a rating of 7.0. That rose gradually over time before peaking in 2014 with a rating of 7.6. Life evaluation went down until 2016 when it reached an average rating of 7.2 and slightly increased in 2017 with a 7.35 rating.

The survey also asked how often people experienced positive and negative emotions.

Overall, fewer people reported experiencing positive emotions on a daily basis in 2026 compared to the time period between 2009 and 2018, while people experiencing daily negative emotions increased. That was the case among Hispanic and non-Hispanic people alike, though Hispanic people had a bigger jump in the percentage of people experiencing negative emotions daily — 38% to 54% — compared to non-Hispanics — 28% to 33%.

Wallace, the occupational therapist, is not Hispanic, but immigration policies and how they are affecting the community has become a stress point for her too.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection have been pushing forward on plans to erect border barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. In the Valley, CBP is building a 30-foot wall along the river levee inside the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, separating the visitor’s center from the trail. Environmental groups also worry the wall would restrict the movement of wildlife.

Considered to be the jewel of the national wildlife refuge system, Santa Ana was also a refuge for Wallace — a safe place where she felt she could hide when she was dealing with Bell’s palsy.

She’s also anxious about how patients are impacted by ICE raids. Colleagues told her their patients are sometimes scared to open their doors, worried that an ICE agent is on the other side.

“How could you be happy if you’re worried about where you or your child’s next meal is coming from, or if someone’s gonna come and take you from your home, or your children from your home?” Wallace said.

Potential disengagement

Corral, the UTRGV political scientist, believes economic factors like inflation as well as the immigration crackdown, were likely factors in the decline in life evaluation among Hispanic people in the Valley.

“I think it could very well be how severe folks have felt things have turned against them,” Corral said.

That downturn could have consequences in how people engage in government and elections, he said.

The Valley has historically had low voter turnout, which Corral said could be because voting is low on their list of priorities.

“People are really busy just surviving,” he said. “Thorough engagement in politics, at a midterm elections level, is almost like a luxury good.”

Republicans hope to maintain the strong gains among Hispanic voters that helped win all four Valley counties for Trump in 2024. The GOP is particularly focused on flipping the 28th and 34th Congressional Districts, which are currently held by U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, and Vicente Gonzalez, a Democrat from McAllen.

Meanwhile, Democrats are attempting to win back the 15th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Monica De La Cruz, a Republican from Edinburg. De La Cruz won the seat for the GOP in 2022 after the district was redrawn in 2021 to favor Republicans.

If candidates want to spur voter turnout despite general discontent, Corral cautioned against any instinct to play on people’s negative emotions. That could lead to a general disaffection with politics.

“I would be most concerned that the rise in negative emotions would probably dampen political engagement rather than benefiting any one particular party per se,” Corral said.

What is happiness?

To understand what drives well-being in the Valley, Oxford University analyzed answers to survey questions relating to workplace, health status, personal safety, community and people, and health behaviors.

Among Valley residents, the biggest driver of well-being is health status, which makes up 57% of importance. This includes whether health problems prevent people from doing things people their age would normally do, whether poor health kept them from doing their usual activities during the last 30 days, their Body Mass Index, whether they’ve been told by a medical professional that they have depression, and how they would rate their own health in general.

Second was community and people, which made up 21.5% of importance. The third most important factor is the workplace, which made up 11%, followed by health behaviors and personal safety with 6% and 5%, respectively.

The importance of each factor was shown to vary across age groups. For example, among residents 18 to 30 years old, health status made up 15% of importance while community and people was the biggest factor, making up 62.3% of importance.

But health took up a larger piece of the pie across older generations — for people between 31 and 59 years old, health made up 62% of importance and 51% for people 60 and older.

By identifying drivers of well-being in the Valley, Blue Zones aims to identify ways to improve well-being and quality of life by working with civic organizations, schools, restaurants, grocery stores, as well as local governments to encourage healthier practices.

With the initial assessment completed, Blue Zones will need to secure funding to begin putting into place improvement plans across the various communities in the Valley, including Edinburg, McAllen, Weslaco, Harlingen and Brownsville.

The group will develop custom blueprints for each community that will include looking at Gallup’s well-being measurements and tracking risk factors for disease.

They will track how many grocery stores, schools and employers are becoming Blue Zone-approved and how many policies are put in place related to trails, parks and food systems.

Among the biggest challenges in the Valley is that the area has among the highest rates of diabetes in the country and healthcare costs are a huge economic drag, said Buettner, the Blue Zone leader.

The strength of the Valley is its family identity, which Buettner said was part of the building blocks for what they hope to accomplish.

“There’s these really strong, trusted nodes and networks that, if we can tap into that, we can tap into the actual culture and start normalizing a culture of healthy behaviors,” he said.

The end goal is more good years for people based on addressing economic development, workforce, population health and reducing chronic disease.

“It’s a full story of community self-determination, led by well-being as the north star metric,” he said.

Reporting in the Rio Grande Valley is supported in part by the Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc.

Daniel Faith, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio Division, said people age 60 and older are the largest demographic being targeted.

“Just last year alone, we had over 200,000 complaints to our Internet Crime Complaint Center — resulting in about $7.5 billion in loss,” Faith said.

Faith said older adults are often targeted because they may have accumulated more wealth and are more likely to answer phone calls and engage with strangers. Scammers may also target victims repeatedly.

“If you fall for it once, you’re now gonna be targeted multiple times,” Faith said.

Common scams include criminals impersonating law enforcement, the IRS, banks or other government agencies. Faith said jury duty scams are also prevalent, with callers claiming a victim missed jury duty or owes money.

His recommendation is to hang up and independently verify the claim by contacting the agency directly.

Requests involving cryptocurrency or gift cards should also be considered red flags. Faith said victims should overcome any embarrassment and quickly report fraud.

“You’re not the only person being targeted,” Faith said. “There’s literally hundreds of thousands of people who are being targeted and falling for it.”

Faith knows firsthand that anyone can become a victim. He said Fidelity once contacted him about a fraudulent $50,000 loan application made in his name.

“I’m very cyber-technically savvy, and they got me,” Faith said. “So, anybody can be a target of this.”

Victims should immediately contact their bank, local law enforcement or the FBI and secure their accounts.

Internet crimes can be reported here.

In central and east central Indiana, emergency operations were still ongoing after days of punishing storms, Gov. Mike Braun said at afternoon news conference, while other areas were shifting to recovery. He said the state had launched a disaster relief fund to provide $5,000 to individuals needing to buy basics such as clothing and food.

“We're tracking your needs, and we will get you resources,” he said. “We want displaced Hoosiers to have a hot meal, comfortable bed and get into air-conditioning.”

The National Weather Service said heavy rain would continue one more day before a cold front sweeps the weather pattern off the East Coast on Tuesday. Meanwhile, flash flood warnings were issued over parts of waterlogged West Virginia, where residents were cleaning up Monday after more than 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain fell over the weekend, causing mudslides, tearing up roads, prompting water rescues and contributing to at least one death.

Elsewhere, hot weather posed more of a problem, particularly across the South and Southwest. The weather service issued extreme heat warnings for portions of Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, South Carolina, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Indiana is seeking recovery after days of deadly storms

In Indiana, where days of storms and flooding left at least seven people dead, floodwaters receded in Indianapolis’ White River and rains eased around the state Sunday. But a flood warning remained in effect Monday night for several rivers, including part of Randolph County in east central Indiana, where thunderstorms had dropped between 1 and 2 inches (2.5 to 5 centimeters) of rain. Residents of half a dozen counties were urged to stay off the roads except for essential travel.

“While we have seen encouraging trends, the work is far from over,” said Jacob Spence, director of the Metropolitan Emergency Services Agency in Indianapolis, where city officials launched a website to support affected residents.

Oliver Riggle, 33, said he had just moved into a camping trailer in Indianapolis a few months ago after living in his car.

“Just having privacy again was a huge deal. I mean, I had a door that locked. I had a roof that was mine,” he said. “No one was gonna take it from me, except for apparently Mother Nature.”

A neighbor told Riggle the trailer nearly tipped over as it floated in the flood waters. It was still full of water Sunday, but by Monday, the water had receded and he was busy throwing away waterlogged belongings.

A handyman whose trailer flooded wants to help others salvage their homes

A handyman who works for a general contractor, Riggle said he hopes to help others salvage their own homes.

"I’ve got tools that I can use to help be a part of the community,” he said. “We’re just gonna have to have faith that we’re going to be able to pull through because it’s not like we’ve got a safety net.”

Michael Daily, 23, said he won’t be moving back into his rental home after it flooded and instead has moved in with his parents about half an hour away.

“It’s not helpful that you see everything you’ve worked for get destroyed. I’m definitely out a good chunk of change,” he said. “You can already see mold growing in spots in there, just like little white fluff balls everywhere. It’s pretty gross.”

South of Indianapolis, officials in Madison Township said firefighters and others rescued 10 people from their homes Sunday night. Others had to be rescued from cars after attempting to drive through flooded roadways.

A 4-year-old boy, three men and three women were among those who had died since the storms that began Aug. 11, said spokesperson Liz Woods with the state Department of Homeland Security.

A cyclist is found dead on a washed-out road after the flooding

Also among the seven victims was a 31-year-old cyclist found dead early Sunday in a hole that opened up on a washed-out road east of Indianapolis. Henry County Coroner Brian Clark said the man, James Briar, appears to have gone around a barricade and fallen into the collapsed road.

Heavy rains hammered Indiana over the past week, causing rivers to crest and setting records as roads and bridges were seriously damaged or washed out entirely.

More than 94,000 utility customers statewide remained without power as of Monday night, down from a peak of around 300,000, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

The drenching rains and destructive flooding were among the impacts of severe storms that have wreaked havoc across the Midwest and beyond in recent days. Tornadoes, heavy rains and flash flooding brought serious damage to communities from Illinois to western Pennsylvania.

In southern West Virginia, authorities on Monday found the body of a woman whose vehicle was swept away in floodwaters. Witnesses told police that the vehicle made a wrong turn and entered a flooded area Sunday. A tree branch broke the vehicle’s glass and the woman tried to escape but she fell into the floodwaters and was carried away by the current, according to a statement by Fayette County Sheriff Jess McMullen.

The National Weather Service forecasts heavy rain and thunderstorms across the upper Ohio Valley to the central Appalachians, with the possibility of severe storms late Monday across eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.

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

A Miami attorney was disciplined after citing four cases in a court filing that appeared to have been fabricated by artificial intelligence.

The case involved a student who was sent to a disciplinary alternative education program after bringing a small knife to school. The student’s mother sued SAISD, and her attorney later filed an appeal citing eight different cases.

Four of those cases caught the attention of the 4th Court of Appeals.

In its opinion, Justice Lori Valenzuela wrote that the four cases “appeared to be hallucinations created by AI.”

Mason Clark, an assistant professor of law at St. Mary’s University School of Law, said attorneys are increasingly using AI, but mistakes remain common.

“Unfortunately, most of the time when I’m asked this question, what are we seeing in the legal field, we’re seeing mistakes,” Clark said.

A recent State Bar of Texas survey found AI use among Texas attorneys more than doubled, increasing from 30% in 2024 to 62% this year.

The risks were apparent in the SAISD case.

Clark said AI can make false information sound convincing.

“It can easily fool someone to making it sound legal, making it sounds good, and it’s really completely worthless,” he said.

The 4th Court of Appeals ultimately did not dismiss the case, but it issued a warning to the attorney and the law firm about using AI in future court filings.

The issue could become increasingly important as AI use continues to grow in the legal profession.

This summer, the Texas Supreme Court issued new rules addressing the use of AI. The rules are set to take effect Oct. 1.

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Unlike the county’s $311 million share of funding, which roughly 52% of voters approved last November, the city’s $489 million proposed financing does not require a similar vote. It is an option, though, and Jones made a last-minute push to get it onto the ballot.

Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), Edward Mungia (D4), Teri Castillo (D5), and Ric Galvan (D6) joined the mayor in favor of putting it onto the ballot.

Sukh Kaur (D1), Phyllis Viagran (D3), Marina Alderete Gavito (D7), Ivalis Meza Gonzalez (D8), Misty Spears (D9) and Marc Whyte (D10) voted against it.

Though Jones and her supporters on the issue — many with their own misgivings about the project — think city voters deserve a separate vote for the city funding, a majority of the council want the project to push ahead and argued last year’s election on the county portion was sufficient to show voters’ wider approval for the project.

“I’m having a little bit of déjà vu because I feel like this room was built exactly the same way — two sides, Aug. 21 last year — and we were litigating this exact same discussion, and nothing has changed, actually, about this deal,” said Kaur, referring to the council’s vote on the proposed arena funding deal.

Monday was the deadline to get the issue onto the November ballot.

The failure to do so appears to leave the path clear for the city to negotiate a final deal with Spurs Sports and Entertainment (SS&E), which is expected to happen later this year. The team is expected to pay the remaining $500 million of the estimated $1.3 billion arena cost.

The city’s $489 million share of the funding would come from bonds backed by four sources of revenue: the Spurs’ lease of the publicly owned arena, private developers’ lease of nearby city-owned land, property tax from that development within a specific area known as the Hemisfair Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone (TIRZ), and hotel-related state taxes from a “Project Finance Zone” (PFZ).

Opponents of another vote argued that the money is either restricted in how it can be used or relies on the project moving ahead in the first place.

The vote’s outcome was not a surprise; a majority of council members publicly voiced their opposition shortly after Jones floated her idea in a July 31 memo.

Still, Jones held a series of public “listening sessions,” and pushed ahead with bringing the issue up in Monday’s special council meeting.

Jones didn’t speak much from the dais ahead of the vote, but KSAT pressed her afterward on whether she ever thought she’d win the vote or if she was trying to force her colleagues to take a public position against putting it on the ballot.

“I have always said that this was about giving our community more of a say in how their money is spent and not less,” Jones replied, adding that people appreciate the “economic picture has changed” and pointing to the city’s budget deficit and planned tax increases.

People from both sides filled council chambers for more than two hours of public comment. Members of the business community and the Spurs organization generally spoke in large groups against holding another vote, while many of those in favor spoke on their own.

“This is not anti-Spurs. This is not anti-downtown. This is not anti-development. This is responsible citizenship,” said Graciela Sanchez, the head of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.

Speaking alongside SS&E CEO R.C. Buford, former Spurs player Sean Elliott said the team’s postseason run had strangers high-fiving each other and everyone wanting to talk about “our” team.

“So now is not the time for complacency. Now is the time to build on that energy,” Elliott said. “Thriving downtown. Real opportunity to revitalize the Eastside. Hotels, restaurants, small businesses filled with people coming together not just for Spurs games, but for concerts, conventions, big-time sporting events, college football and cultural games. That’s right there within our reach.”

McKee-Rodriguez, however, said the East Side is getting the “horrible end” of the deal, with residents being sold “competing visions” for the Spurs’ current home, the Frost Bank Center, “without the opportunity to meaningfully engage.”

He, Castillo, and Galvan all voiced concerns about the arena project before voting in favor of putting the city funding on the ballot.

“From the inception of Project Marvel, my position has been and will always be public money or public good,” Castillo said.

Mungia noted that while he had voted in favor of the term sheet last year, but he “just simply cannot explain to my folks, in my own way, that I would be against a public participation vote for this.”

The city still needs to negotiate final agreements with the Spurs, which council will also have a chance to vote on.

“I hope my colleagues are not as closed off to the idea of amending the nonbinding, non-executed term sheet,” McKee-Rodriguez said after the meeting, “and that ultimately what happens when a contract is signed is going to be something much more of a compromise than what exists before us today.”

In a memo to council members on Friday, City Manager Erik Walsh said a council discussion on their priorities ahead of negotiations is scheduled for Oct. 8.

Staff has previously said they hope to bring back a final deal by the end of the year.

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Hector Nava, a San Antonio native and father of five, died on July 31, 2021, after being tased 14 times during a traffic stop in Jal, New Mexico. He was working an oil field safety job at the time.

Two officers — Ceasar Enrique Mendoza and Robert Edward Embly — were convicted by a federal jury in February 2025 on criminal civil rights charges. A third officer, Corey Patrick Saffell, pleaded guilty and testified against the other two. Sentencing was scheduled for June 2025 but was never completed.

On Aug. 5, 2026, the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed an unopposed motion to dismiss all charges against Mendoza and Embly after a jury had already found them guilty.

In their own court filing, prosecutors wrote that “the government has concluded that defendants Embly and Mendoza received an unfair trial,” adding that the government “erroneously induced” the court to exclude evidence of the victim’s drug use and cause of death during trial.

Nava’s sister, Betsy Nava-Flores, said the family learned about the move just days before it happened on a Zoom call with the lead prosecutor.

“She basically told us, ‘Hey, this is going to happen, and I’m not opposed to it,’” Nava-Flores said. “That was the first time she spoke to us, and I just got a sick feeling. I said we’re alone. There’s nobody going to speak for my brother.”

The family hired attorney Israel Chávez, who filed a motion to enforce their rights under the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, arguing the government failed to meaningfully consult the family before making its decision.

“The government has made a lot of decisions — unprecedented decisions — decisions that prosecutors in the office have said they’ve never done in the history of their career — without meaningfully conferring with the Nava family,” Chávez said.

The lead prosecutor on the case, assistant U.S. attorney Maria Armijo, told the family she had never filed a motion to dismiss after a conviction in her 22 years with the office, according to Nava-Flores.

U.S. District Judge Margaret Strickland has not yet ruled on the dismissal. In response to the family’s motion, she appointed John Anderson — a former U.S. attorney for the District of New Mexico originally named by President Donald Trump — to argue against the dismissal in court.

Chávez called the appointment significant.

“Not only did she appoint counsel, she appointed the former United States Attorney for the District of New Mexico to brief this,” he said. “It appears to me the judge wants the full story on the record before she makes a decision.”

Chávez also warned of broader consequences if the officers ultimately face no prison time.

“Not only do I think there’s a chance they won’t face prison time,” he said, “but I think there’s a chance they could go back to being officers in New Mexico or somewhere else.”

The Nava family previously reached a $5 million wrongful death settlement tied to the case. Nava-Flores said the fight was never about money.

“This is much bigger than us,” she said. “Nobody has seen a verdict completely dismissed — never after conviction and verdict. If this can happen to Hector, it’s happening more and more.”

KSAT reached out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Las Cruces for comment. A spokesperson responded via email, pointing to the office’s court filings as its official statement and declining further comment.

A ruling from Strickland has not been scheduled.

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ESPN and The Athletic first reported that the siblings had voted to sell the family trust's remaining interest in the 17-time NBA champion team purchased by their father, Jerry Buss, in 1979. The decision would end Jeanie Buss' tenure as the Lakers' governor because that job requires at least 15% ownership of the team.

Jeannie Buss' attorney, Adam Streisand, wrote to representatives for her five siblings to state that any decision to sell the family trust's ownership stake could not be “effectuated without approval of the current co-trustees, Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss.”

The letter further states that the co-trustees “are bound to vote the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. shares to ensure that the minimum 15% ownership requirement is maintained in order to ensure that Jeanie Buss may remain Controlling Owner. Any attempt by the co-trustees to do otherwise, and any attempt to aid or abet the co-trustees as such, would constitute a breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and be in contempt of court.”

Jeanie Buss has been the Lakers’ governor since Jerry Buss’ death in 2013, and she led the family’s decision to sell a controlling stake in the Lakers to Dodgers owner Mark Walter last year at a valuation of $10 billion. Walter, who is under federal investigation for tax issues, abruptly reached a deal earlier this month to flip the Lakers to Kushner and Iger at a valuation of $12.5 billion, another record for a pro sports team.

Venture capitalist Kushner and former Disney CEO Iger are reportedly buying about 65% of the team from Walter. They would own about 83% if they reach a deal with the Buss siblings — and Jeanie Buss would lose the governor role that she had been slated to keep at least through 2030 under the deal with Walter.

The Buss siblings have been in frequent conflict since their father’s death, with Jeanie firing Jim from his job as the Lakers’ head of basketball operations in 2017, followed a week later by a lawsuit against her brothers amid an attempt by Jim and Johnny to oust Jeanie from her role as the Lakers’ controlling owner.

Not all of the six Buss siblings were in favor of the sale to Walter, and Joey and Jesse were fired from their front-office jobs with the team last November.

The siblings say they voted this month to sell their family's remaining interest in the Lakers, but Jeanie Buss claims any vote is void. ESPN reported that Jeanie Buss was the only sibling who didn't support the final sale.

“We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction,” the Buss family said in a statement. “We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles, but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”

In his letter, Streisand said Joey and Jesse Buss have leaked information to ESPN for many years “for the malicious purpose of doing harm to the Los Angeles Lakers so long as Dr. Buss’s chosen successor, Jeanie Buss, carries out her father’s wishes.”

Jerry Buss was a chemist and real estate investor who bought the Lakers, the NHL's Los Angeles Kings and the Forum arena from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million. The Lakers quickly entered a renaissance in which they became known for their flashy “Showtime” style of play while winning five NBA titles between 1980 and 1988 behind Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

While the NBA and professional sports became increasingly more corporate, the Lakers remained essentially a family business despite their massive profile and steady success. Jerry Buss and the Lakers have employed many of the basketball world's greatest players and coaches of the past five decades, and Kobe Bryant led the Lakers to five additional championships between 2000 and 2010 before LeBron James added the 17th in 2020.

The sale agreement with Kushner and Iger still must be approved by the NBA's board of governors, and the process could take months.

___

AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA

Tyler's “If I Sing You A Love Song" played as her rose-covered coffin was carried into Swansea Minster for the invite-only funeral that was projected on a screen outside. Her “It’s a Heartache” played as the coffin was placed in front of the altar.

“Bonnie was always a star but never a diva,” her manager, Matthew Davis, said in one of several tributes. “She never forgot her roots or where she came from. She would have been amazed and very gratified at the massive outpouring of love from all over the world that has occurred since her sudden and unexpected passing.”

The Grammy-nominated pop star, beloved for her 1983 chart-topping power ballad “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” died last month in a hospital in Portugal at 75. She had been hospitalized in May in Faro, where she had a home, for emergency intestinal surgery.

The funeral was held less than a week after her signature song served as the soundtrack at celebrations marking a total eclipse that darkened skies across parts of Europe.

Crowds lined the streets Saturday in her seaside Welsh village of Mumbles as a hearse carried her coffin, draped in a Welsh flag, home.

Kathleen Davies, who joined the crowd outside the church, said she was starstruck when she first saw Tyler but later came to learn she was down to earth.

“She’s Welsh through and through,” Davies said. "Everything about her, she’s natural, there’s no fake stuff. When you see her on the interviews, she’s just who she is.”

Tyler was born Gaynor Hopkins, a coal miner’s daughter in public housing with an outside toilet in Skewen, Wales, about 7 miles (11 kilometers) outside Swansea. She grew up with three sisters and two brothers.

Canon Justin Davies said in a eulogy written by her family that she first performed in a contest at a rugby club in the late 1960s, singing ”Those Were The Days,” made famous by Mary Hopkin.

“She came in second and won just one pound, but was hooked," Davies said. “The rest, as they say, was history.”

Tyler went on to earn three Grammy nods and in 2013 represented Britain at the Eurovision Song Contest, where she came in 19th. She was honored as a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 2022 for her services to music by Queen Elizabeth II, thanks mainly to “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

The ballad shot to the top of the charts in Britain and the United States and has had more than 1 billion streams, boosted by real eclipses in 2017, 2024 and most recently during last week’s solar eclipse.

She was also known for “Holding Out For a Hero,” from the soundtrack of the film “Footloose.”

___

Melley reported from London.

Officers responded to a call for a disturbance involving a gun just before midnight on Monday in the 6700 block of Spring Front Drive.

A 56-year-old man who called 911 said that people were in his backyard and one of them was armed with a gun, Salame said.

Upon arrival, the officer contacted a woman who was later identified as the caller’s girlfriend, according to an SAPD preliminary report.

While talking with the woman, the report said the officer saw the 56-year-old man carrying two large knives.

Salame said the man refused the officer’s commands to put down the knives.

At some point, the man “aggressively advanced” toward the officer, Salame said.

Police said the officer then fired multiple gunshots, striking the man four times. He died at the scene.

SAPD believes the man may have been experiencing a mental episode, as there was no one armed in his backyard.

Salame said the officer has been with the San Antonio Police Department for around one year.

According to the city, Sunday night’s incident was the eighth SAPD shooting of 2026.

No other injuries were reported. SAPD said its investigation is ongoing. Further information was not readily available.

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Trump explained his decision by citing South Korea’s refusal to join his war against Iran and pointing to what he said was his good relationship with North Korea’s reclusive dictator, a transactional and personal approach to foreign policy that has defined the Republican’s presidency.

“There is no American interest that I can see in this,” said Dan Fried, an assistant secretary of state for European affairs in the George W. Bush administration. “On all levels it makes no sense. It undermines the South Koreans, undermines the Japanese, frightens the Taiwanese, unnerves NATO and emboldens the Chinese, not to mention the North Koreans.”

Danny Russel, former assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific in the Obama administration, said Trump's decision to side with North Korea, which strongly objects to the annual joint military exercises, is "firmly in the ‘hard-to see-how-it-could-be-worse’ category.”

“It is tragically upside-down. Trump is punishing an ally while encouraging an adversary,” said Russel, now a scholar at the Asia Society Policy Institute in New York. “He is protecting Kim Jong Un’s sensitive feelings from an unfriendly signal at the expense of U.S.-South Korean security."

The message it sends to South Koreans

Trump on Sunday ordered the U.S. military to downsize the 11-day Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, which began Monday as scheduled. It wasn’t known which parts of the training were being scaled back.

His announcement baffled many in South Korea, which has been closely allied with the U.S. for decades and where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

It also drew instant criticism from many Democrats in Congress.

“Treating one of America’s closest allies like an adversary weakens our alliances and benefits China and North Korea," said Rep. Greg Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement.

Trump on Monday doubled down, posting a photo of North Korea’s leader speaking on a phone. The caption read: “HEY DONALD ... WE COOL, RIGHT?”

Retired U.S. Ambassador Robert Wood, who served under Republican and Democratic presidents, said the joint military exercises are critical to deterring North Korea, which has shunned any talks with the U.S. over its nuclear program and has accelerated weapons testing.

“We also don’t want South Korea to draw the conclusion that a nuclear weapons capability is the only guarantee it has to ensure its security,” Wood said.

Matthew Kroenig, who previously served in defense and intelligence positions in Republican and Democratic administrations, said polls show that South Koreans have increasingly supported the idea of pursuing their own nuclear weapons.

“The United States has been working really hard to try to persuade South Korea that they are protected,” said Kroenig, who is now with the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Scaling back the exercises “potentially undermines that message,” he said.

Seoul tried to flatter Trump

Trump's turnabout came even after the South Koreans worked to flatter the American president, eager to gain favor on critical issues such as trade and defense.

As soon as he sat down in the gilded Oval Office for his meeting with Trump last year, new President Lee Jae Myung praised the room’s elaborate decor. Laying it on thick, Lee affirmed Trump’s assertion that Kim would not have pursued his nuclear ambitions had Trump won a second consecutive term in 2020, while dangling the prospect of an eventual Trump Tower in North Korea.

Trump just hours earlier had appeared to show sympathy for Lee’s predecessor, Yoon Suk Yeol, who had been ousted from office after imposing martial law in December 2024.

Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Trump's scaling back of the exercises may prompt longtime allies to think more about their own security without U.S. help.

“They are hoping that the American umbrella is there for the future,” said Kupchan, who worked on the National Security Council under Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, “but they have to at least contemplate the idea that Uncle Sam won’t be there for them.”

‘It’s like he wants to burn it all down'

Kupchan said Trump is not mistaken in wanting to have South Korea, as well as the Europeans, contribute more to their defense. But, he said, the president’s unpredictable approach cuts through the solidarity that undergirds those alliances “because he ends up insulting allies.”

Fried said Trump seems unwilling to "take a win” after brow-beating NATO members and Asian allies into increasing their defense spending.

“NATO is building up, South Korea is building up, Japan is building up. Trump has a problem with taking the win," said Fried, who is currently at the Atlantic Council. "It’s like he wants to burn it all down.”

John Herbst, a former ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush, said the Korea decision shows how inconsistent the Trump administration can be in its policy pronouncements. But in general, he said, the U.S. has maintained long-term alliances.

“If these things grow in frequency and in importance, obviously we will be in the process of taking apart the alliance system, which has served us so well since the end of World War II,” said Herbst, who also is with the Atlantic Council. “But despite some statements which seem to head in that direction, we have not headed there in a consistent, strong way.”

Kupchan agreed.

While the president’s language could be taken as “we’re done with you,” Kupchan said, “the reality is that, at least as of today, Trump has left intact America’s forward bases and its core alliance relationships.”

Whether Trump’s message to South Korea will amount to a meaningful policy change or a fleeting social media post is up in the air.

“He’s an unpredictable president,” Kroenig said. “If we move on and the exercises go as planned and we never hear anything about this again, I wouldn’t be surprised.”

——

Associated Press reporters Collin Binkley, Jesse Bedayn, Lisa Mascaro and Seung Min Kim in Washington and Farnoush Amiri in New York contributed to this report.

San Antonio City Council rejected Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones’ attempt to get the city’s funding for a downtown Spurs arena onto the November ballot in a 5-6 vote Monday.

“I think she is trying to look out for the city, but we’ve already voted,” said Houston Carpenter, co-owner of Beau’s Tiny Diner.

KSAT spoke with residents walking around Hemisfair on Monday, who were mixed on the attempt for a second public vote.

Some Spurs fans said the city had already spoken and that it’s important the new arena be built.

“The Spurs brought me memories as a kid,” Elliot Rodriguez said. “They are bringing my kids memories.”

Other residents, who asked to remain anonymous, were skeptical about whether a new arena was the best use of funds.

Regardless of whether they supported the new arena or not, everyone KSAT spoke with agreed that a second vote on funding at the ballot box would likely not be rejected by city residents.

“I think we’d still get the votes we need,” Rodriguez said.

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The formal request comes after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that Texas’ and Louisiana’s laws mandating such displays did not violate the Constitution’s ban on states prioritizing one religion over others. 

“As a parent, I intentionally choose to have my children attend public school because I prefer an educational environment without any religious affiliation,” Nichole Manning, a Dallas-area parent  who is atheist, said in a statement. “In a diverse public school environment, all students should be treated with equal respect, regardless of their religious beliefs, or lack thereof.”

Manning is among more than two dozen families seeking relief from the U.S. Supreme Court. The families participated in two separate cases involving the Ten Commandments —  Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District and Cribbs Ringer v. Comal Independent School District.

The legal fights over the Ten Commandments play a central role in the national debate over whether such laws violate the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling that found such a law unconstitutional. 

A majority of the court’s current justices have shown a willingness to overturn longstanding precedent. Republican state leaders and advocates across the nation have supported new Ten Commandments requirements with the hope that the court’s conservative majority will overturn the decades-old decision. 

Families against Ten Commandments laws say parents should control how to teach their children about religion and that state leaders should respect that children come from a diversity of faiths and nonreligious backgrounds. 

Here’s what we know: Texas can enforce a state law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments in classrooms after an April 21 federal court ruling.

A 9-8 majority of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law requiring public schools to display posters of the Ten Commandments did not violate the Constitution, which prohibits governments from establishing an official state religion.

“It does not tell churches or synagogues or mosques what to believe or how to worship or whom to employ as priests, rabbis, or imams,” the ruling stated. “It punishes no one who rejects the Ten Commandments, no matter the reason.”

Sixteen families from across Texas sued over the law, alleging that it amounted to state leaders promoting their interpretation of Christianity over other faiths.  

All 17 active judges on the court listened to the case — Rabbi Nathan v. Alamo Heights Independent School District — alongside a similar challenge in Louisiana, the first state to pass a Ten Commandments requirement for its public schools. The court cleared the way in February for Louisiana to fully implement its law. 

After the decision, the civil rights organizations representing the families expressed disappointment. 

“The court’s ruling goes against fundamental First Amendment principles and binding U.S. Supreme Court authority,” the groups said in a statement. “The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction. This decision tramples those rights.”

Meanwhile, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton required that schools provide documentation to his office “regarding the display or lack thereof of the Ten Commandments and their policies.” He also called for proof that locally elected school boards voted on whether they would set aside time each day for students and staff to pray. A new state law required trustees to vote on prayer time in school by March 1. 

Background: The Legislature passed Senate Bill 10 in 2025, with Gov. Greg Abbott signing it into law that June. It requires public schools to display donated posters of the Ten Commandments, sized at least 16 by 20 inches, in a visible space on classroom walls.

The families — represented by a coalition of civil rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas — sued 11 school districts to block what their lawyers called “catastrophically unconstitutional” legislation.

U.S. District Judge Fred Biery agreed, blocking the law from taking effect in the districts named in the lawsuit: Alamo Heights, North East, Lackland, Northside, Austin, Lake Travis, Dripping Springs, Houston, Fort Bend, Cypress-Fairbanks and Plano.

Biery concluded the law improperly favors Christianity over other faiths and said it would likely interfere with families’ “exercise of their sincere religious or nonreligious beliefs in substantial ways.”

Paxton asked the 5th Circuit Court to overturn Biery’s ruling and allow all 17 active judges on the court to hear the Texas and Louisiana cases together. Republican presidents appointed 12 of the appeals court’s judges. The court is considered one of the most conservative in the nation.

A federal judge blocked Louisiana’s Ten Commandments law from taking effect in 2024, a decision unanimously upheld last year by a panel of three judges on the 5th Circuit Court. 

The arguments for the case did not include two other prominent Texas lawsuits challenging the Ten Commandments law.

One lawsuit resulted in a federal judge blocking 14 more school districts from complying with the law. The other asked a federal judge to block all Texas schools from following the law.

Why the families sued: They argued that the law subjects children to a state-imposed Protestant version of the Ten Commandments that many religious and nonreligious Texans do not recognize.

The families believe the law seeks to pressure students into observing and adopting Texas officials’ preferred religious principles.

They say the law will inflict harm by alienating children of those who do not follow the state’s preferred religion and that parents’ authority to direct their children’s religious education is undermined.

“Posting the Ten Commandments in public schools is un-American and un-Baptist,” Griff Martin, a pastor, parent and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement last year. “S.B. 10 undermines the separation of church and state as a bedrock principle of my family’s Baptist heritage. Baptists have long held that the government has no role in religion — so that our faith may remain free and authentic.”

The families’ lawyers argue that because children are legally required to attend school, they have virtually no way of avoiding Texas’ required version of the Ten Commandments.

The U.S. Supreme Court found public school displays of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional in 1980. Civil rights attorneys argue that only the Supreme Court can overturn its previous rulings.

What the state argued: Paxton and attorneys from his office say the Ten Commandments played a significant role in the nation’s history and heritage. State leaders have said previous rulings from federal courts and the U.S. Supreme Court did not examine that historical significance.

State lawyers also note that the Supreme Court recently eliminated a test, established by a previous ruling, that determined when a government had unconstitutionally endorsed or established a religion.

“There is no legal reason to stop Texas from honoring a core ethical foundation of our law, especially not a bogus claim about the ‘separation of church and state,’ which is a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution,” Paxton said last year.

Lawyers with the attorney general’s office see the Ten Commandments requirement as requiring only a “passive display on the wall” that does not rise to the level of coercion because students are free to ignore the posters. The law might cross the line if it sought to incorporate the Ten Commandments into lessons or assignments, they argued.

The posters must go up in Texas classrooms only if donated by someone. The law does not specify what would happen if school leaders choose not to comply. The state views that as evidence no threat or harm is posed to families. However, Paxton threatened legal action if schools do not comply and sued three districts for alleged noncompliance.

What happened during oral arguments: Some judges questioned state officials from Texas and Louisiana about their decisions to use a Protestant version of the Ten Commandments and how that would affect families who do not follow those religious principles. 

Lawyers for the states argued that the laws do not ask children to subscribe to a particular belief and urged the judges to consider legislators’ intent to teach students about important documents in U.S. history.

The judges questioned how children would know the posters have anything to do with American history. They also asked for historical evidence showing the use of the Ten Commandments in public schools. 

Lawyers for the states pointed to early textbooks that referenced the Ten Commandments but acknowledged those materials were largely used in religious settings prior to the establishment of public schools in the 1800s. 

Public schools used the materials through the early 20th century. However, a prominent historian who testified in the case noted that the Ten Commandments were not significant aspects of the texts and that it is unclear how much teachers relied on those specific lessons. 

“A legislature in Louisiana, a legislature in Texas, is absolutely well within its right to say: We want to actually teach our students about founding documents,” said Ben Aguiñaga, the attorney representing Louisiana. 

Judges asked the lawyers representing the families why they consider the Ten Commandments posters problematic when students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and learn about the Declaration of Independence and Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail — all of which refer to God. 

King’s letter and the Declaration of Independence may reference religion, the lawyers replied, but they’re about more than religion.

Some judges noted during arguments that the Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling heavily relied on a test that courts no longer use. The families’ lawyers countered that removing the test did not overturn Supreme Court precedent preventing the Ten Commandments from going up in public classrooms.

If students do not follow the religious principles in the state’s mandated version of the Ten Commandments, judges asked, can’t they ignore the posters? 

“They can’t just look away, your honor,” said attorney Jon Youngwood, representing the families. “Not for 13 years. Not in every class. Not every minute of every day.”

What the appeals court ruled: A court majority concluded that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1980 ruling in Stone v. Graham is no longer valid. That case found a Kentucky law requiring the posting of the Ten Commandments unconstitutional. 

The Supreme Court recently abandoned the test established in Stone that determined whether states had illegally endorsed or promoted a religion, the 5th U.S. Circuit judges noted. That means “there is nothing left of Stone,” they noted in the ruling.

They concluded that Texas’ Ten Commandments law does not establish an official state religion. Among reasons, they noted that it “levies no taxes to support any clergy. It does not co-opt churches to perform civic functions.”

The judges ruled that the law is not coercive because it does not require students to learn the Ten Commandments or give teachers authority to undermine students’ religious beliefs. 

“Yes, Plaintiffs have sincere religious disagreements with its content,” the opinion reads. “But that does not transform the poster into a summons to prayer.”

An opinion written by judges who opposed the decision argued in response that it is insignificant that Texas’ law does not require schools to teach the Ten Commandments. 

The law poses a threat to children’s religious beliefs and undermines what parents may want their kids to learn about religion, they wrote in dissenting statements.

The opposing judges agreed with the argument of families who sued that the Supreme Court has not overturned its Stone v. Graham ruling. Lower courts are bound by Stone even if the test established in it is no longer in use, they added. Taking into account the historical-based approach courts must now use, the dissenting judges said Texas’ law still violates the Constitution.

Alamo Colleges District and Texas State University are two of nine schools statewide that will receive a combined $2.025 million in an effort to “support free, open educational resources for students in nursing and workforce training programs,” according to a Monday news release from Gov. Greg Abbott’s Office.

“Texas schools offer a competitive education for a variety of high-demand careers,” Abbott said in the release. “As we strengthen our workforce in nursing, cybersecurity, electrical technology, and business, it is critical that students have access to the resources they need to succeed in their chosen field. These grants will expand access to free learning materials to make education more affordable for Texans.”

The governor’s office said the grants are made possible through the state’s Open Educational Resources Grant Program (OERGP), which allows for schools “to create and adopt” textbooks and other learning materials for students’ use.

Alamo Colleges District and Texas State will each receive $285,000 worth of grants between 2026 and 2028. The other seven Texas institutions receiving funding are:

• Collin County Community College District ($285,000)
• El Paso County Community College District ($285,000)
• Lamar Institute of Technology ($285,000)
• Lee College ($285,000)
• North Central Texas College ($285,000)
• Texas A&M University-Kingsville ($15,000)
• West Texas A&M University ($15,000)

“As every college student knows, the cost of textbooks and supplies can put a dent in their bank account,” Texas Higher Education Commissioner Wynn Rosser said in the news release. “The OER grant program has reduced those costs for thousands of Texas students through the continual expansion of the OERTX online library of free textbooks and course materials.”

Impact at Alamo Colleges District

In a statement to KSAT, Alamo Colleges District Chancellor Mike Flores said the grant will have a large effect on the school’s “business management courses.”

“The Alamo Colleges District is grateful to Governor Abbott and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board for this $285,000 investment in open educational resources. This grant builds on the impact of our AlamoBOOKS+ initiative by helping us develop free, high-quality course materials for five high-enrollment business management courses. Business management is an important workforce program that prepares students with skills aligned to high-wage, in-demand occupations across Texas.

“By replacing commercial textbooks and course materials with openly licensed resources, the project is expected to save students approximately $419,000 annually while giving them access to course materials at no cost from the first day of class. This investment will help remove financial barriers for students while strengthening pathways from higher education to the Texas workforce.”

Alamo Colleges District Chancellor Mike Flores

Texas State University officials said they received KSAT’s request for comment Monday. As of Monday night, a formal response had not been sent to KSAT.

More Texas education coverage on KSAT:

• Supreme Court asked to review Texas law requiring the Ten Commandments in public schools
• North East ISD jumps from C to B in TEA accountability ratings
• North East ISD among 3 San Antonio-area districts starting school Monday

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring the area's pristine environment. They argue the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers. Border crossings in the area have historically been lower than other regions and have dropped even further over the past two years.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection, said on X. Scott said over the next couple of days, he was going to “listen to local leadership, community members and stakeholders” to address what he said were “real” national security threats while protecting the park.

Customs and Border Protection did not respond to questions about how long the construction was paused or give any details on whom Scott would be meeting with in Texas.

A rare concession from Trump administration

While it isn’t clear whether the brief suspension portended a more permanent halt to the construction in the area, it reflected the intensity of the bipartisan opposition and was a rare concession from the administration on a signature promise of the president’s that it has raced to complete.

Congress gave the Trump administration $46 billion last summer to build a wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, and the administration has been charging ahead and waiving numerous regulations in an effort to swiftly build the wall.

Scott has said he expects the first layer of the wall to be built by the end of next year.

But the administration has run into fierce opposition in Texas, especially when it comes to construction in and near Big Bend National Park and a state park to the west.

Customs and Border Protection earlier this year backed off plans to build a 30-foot-tall bollard wall through the parks but was still moving forward with other border protection measures such as a new road, lights, barriers designed to stop cars from crossing the border and technology such as buried fiber optic cables.

That has sparked opposition from Democratic and Republican sheriffs in the region, former national park officials, local residents who rely on the parks for their livelihood and some Texas elected officials. Critics have said it will scar the rugged landscape that attracts tourists who raft down the Rio Grande River and take advantage of some of the clearest night skies in the U.S. to gaze at stars.

The sheriff of Brewster County, which includes Big Bend National Park, said Monday that he'll be meeting with Scott during his trip and that he was glad the commissioner was going to have the opportunity to see the terrain with his own eyes and hear firsthand from people in the region.

Ronny Dodson is concerned about possible damage to archeological sites and Native American burial grounds caused by construction for the new road that's supposed to be built through the park. He hopes Scott will see how closely the new road mirrors an already existing road, and Dodson said he wants more information about the technology the agency plans to use to secure the border.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he spoke with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin over the weekend and suggested that the construction pause was a result of their talk. Abbott said the secretary committed to the governor that there would be no wall or barriers built in the park, but the governor made no mention of the road building that has concerned local residents.

Bulldozers seen recently in park clearing land

Last week, bulldozers were seen clearing land at the park, sparking even more concern and raising questions from one of the state's Republican senators.

At the time the bulldozers were seen, the Department of Homeland Security said on X that they were related to “survey and design work.”

Sen. John Cornyn, who lost the Republican primary to the state's attorney general, wrote to Mullin over construction concerns.

“My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States. The dangerous terrain includes steep mountains, deep canyons, and expansive deserts which they believe act a natural barrier that limits large-scale movements,” Cornyn wrote.

As the wall-building efforts have shifted into high gear this year along the roughly 2,000-mile border, opposition has spiked as well.

The administration has faced criticism from Native American groups saying wall contractors are desecrating religious sites, a small Texas town worried the wall will damage its levee system, and a Catholic archdiocese that says wall construction in the El Paso area mars an important religious site.

Activists praise the pause but say it's only a first step

Activists who have been rallying opposition to the administration's plans said they were encouraged by the pause but they would be watching closely to see if CBP makes any significant changes or simply goes back to its previous plans.

Bob Krumenaker was the superintendent of Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild,” which aims to preserve the park's wild nature. He said he was “wary but optimistic” after news of the pause.

“They are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it's unlikely that CBP is going to entirely abandon all its plans in the region. Krumenaker said he and others would be watching to see whether the equipment like the bulldozers is removed from the park, the agency outlines a clear plan going forward and it repairs any damage already done.

“Let’s hope they significantly modify their plans in response to what they hear, and make it transparent,” he said.

Another group, which sued Homeland Security over its decision to broadly waive regulations to speed up construction projects in the Big Bend region, called the announcement “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

“This temporary pause proves how much non-partisan public pressure is mounting in West Texas and across America to stop the irreversible destruction unfolding in this crown jewel national park,” said Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity.

“We’re not resting until these contracts are canceled, these workers are sent packing, the waivers are rescinded and every wall plan for the greater Big Bend region is scrapped for good.”

The Ravens announced Brigance's death on Monday.

“We are devastated by the awful news that we have lost O.J. Brigance,” Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said in a statement. “O.J. was a beloved legend, mentor and man to everyone who was fortunate enough to know him. He was a vibrant person who became one of the first Ravens heroes with his passionate play, including the first tackle in the 2000 Super Bowl.”

Brigance was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, in 2007. Not long after that, he and his wife, Chanda, formed the Brigance Brigade Foundation, an organization whose mission is to “equip, encourage and empower” those afflicted with ALS.

Despite using a wheelchair and a communication device that translated his messages, Brigance served as senior adviser for player engagement with the Ravens, a job he started in 2004. In addition to assisting players in each phase of their career, Brigance proved a source of motivation within the organization.

“Every day I walk by, not just to tell him how much I love him, but to tell him that he is the one thing that lets me not complain about anything,” Ravens Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Lewis said in 2012, his final pro season. “I played with that guy. His spirit is just awesome.”

Brigance is the only player to win a Canadian Football League title and a Super Bowl championship for a team in the same city, Baltimore.

“While winning CFL and NFL championships are great personal remembrances, I wouldn’t say any of these events define me,” he said. “Rather, they are part of an accumulation of life events which catapulted me to do what God wanted me to accomplish. If you were to remove any of those events, I wouldn’t be the same person or have the position of influence. With that being said, I consider the Brigance Brigade to be the most significant achievement of my life because of my ability to touch the lives of others.”

Brigance said his career as a professional football player — he played linebacker and on special teams — helped prepare him for the fight against ALS.

“Many people think football is all about strength and physical ability,” Brigance said in a 2012 interview with The Associated Press. “While these are integral parts of one’s success, the fortitude, discipline and the desire necessary to play the sport are characteristics that are readily transferrable to everyday life.”

Brigance didn’t set out to be an example of how to live under difficult circumstances, but he had no intention of letting ALS get him down. He and Chanda collaborated to help and encourage others with the disease.

“I have found that when adversity strikes, there is a decision to be made. We chose to respond and continue to live, and also help others living with ALS to respond also,” he said. “We have found that we have been a great encouragement not only to those within the ALS community, but to people in all walks of life.”

Orenthial James Brigance was born Sept. 29, 1969 and played in college at Rice in his hometown of Houston. He began his professional career in 1991 as a linebacker for the British Columbia Lions. He played three seasons with BC, making 20 sacks in 1993, before joining the Baltimore Stallions. In his second season in Baltimore, the team won the 1995 Grey Cup.

In 1996, Brigance was signed by the Miami Dolphins as a free agent. He was twice voted a team captain during his four seasons there and was the Ed Block Courage Award recipient in 1999. He was honored with the NFL Players Association's “Unsung Hero Award” that same season.

Brigance’s lone season with Baltimore was 2000. He had a team-high 10 tackles on special teams during Baltimore’s playoff run, which ended with a 34-7 win over the New York Giants in the Super Bowl.

Brigance played for the St. Louis Rams in 2001 and 2002, and his final game was with New England in 2002.

“I am devastated and at a loss for words. O.J. was one of the most genuine, sincere people I have ever known,” Ravens executive vice president Ozzie Newsome said. “From the moment he arrived in Baltimore, you could feel his energy. His amazing smile, welcoming nature and infectious personality made everyone around him feel like family.”

And his tenacity would serve him well long after his playing days ended.

___

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

In its updated list, Condé Nast Traveler highlights zoos worldwide that make an impact beyond their gates through conservation, restoration and fieldwork.

The release states the San Antonio Zoo is specifically recognized for its local and global conservation efforts, including the Texas Horned Lizard Reintroduction Project and Project Selva, a collaborative conservation initiative working alongside Indigenous communities in the Amazon River basin.

“To be recognized as one of the best zoos in the world is an incredible honor, but what makes this recognition especially meaningful is the focus on conservation,” said Tim Morrow, president & CEO of San Antonio Zoo. “Our vision has always been to secure a future for wildlife, whether that work is happening right here in Texas or alongside communities thousands of miles away.”

The global recognition comes as the San Antonio Zoo enters a transformative period.

The zoo has undergone major expansions in recent years, including Naylor Savanna, an immersive African savanna habitat, and Congo Falls, a world-class gorilla habitat.

This summer, the San Antonio Zoo earned Best Family Attraction and Best Tourist Attraction honors locally. Earlier this year, the zoo was also ranked No. 7 among the best zoos in America in the USA Today 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards, according to the release.

In 2025, the release states the zoo was named one of the top 10 zoos in the country by Condé Nast Traveler and No. 2 in the U.S. by Newsweek.

Read also:

• San Antonio Zoo opens hands-on water life exhibit focused on ocean conservation

Posters featuring the Ten Commandments began going up almost a year ago in classrooms across Texas, which educates about 5.5 million students. An appeals court earlier this year cleared the way for Texas' law and one in Louisiana, and similar laws have been passed in Arkansas and Alabama.

“This is an issue of nationwide importance because a number of states have been considering these laws in recent years,” said Heather Weaver, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Over two dozen Texas families represented by the ACLU and other groups petitioned the nation’s highest court to hear their challenge after the conservative-leaning 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April upheld the Texas law in a 9-8 ruling.

“We would like for the Supreme Court to make clear that singling out Scripture for display in public schools is a violation of the First Amendment,” Weaver said.

The office for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton did not immediately comment Monday.

In the families' Supreme Court brief, their attorneys argue that the law violates basic First Amendment principles governing the separation of church and state.

"The question of whether a state may impose scripture on impressionable, captive-audience children — for nearly every hour of every school day, for up to (13) years — implicates the most fundamental guarantees of the First Amendment and our Nation’s highest ideals," they wrote.

The New Orleans-based 5th Circuit reversed lower federal court rulings that had blocked some Texas school districts from putting up the posters.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which took effect last September. Because Texas’ law only requires districts to hang the Ten Commandments if they are donated, conservative groups and individuals began dropping off boxes of posters at campuses across the state as the school year began last year.

“No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin,” the 5th Circuit's ruling says.

In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a similar Kentucky law violated the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says Congress can “make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” The high court found that the law had no secular purpose but rather served a plainly religious purpose.

___

Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas.

Hidden Forest Elementary in North East ISD received an A rating, reflecting strong performance in educating students.

North East ISD also improved its overall rating, moving from a C to a B.

More than 9,000 campuses across Texas are rated by the TEA each year — measuring how ready students are to move to the next grade level, enter college, join the workforce or serve in the military.

In San Antonio and Bexar County, more than 45 campuses received an F rating. Many are in underserved communities, and some are charter schools.

There were also signs of improvement. San Antonio ISD reduced the number of failing schools from 20 last year to nine in 2026.

“Public education exists to be the great equalizer,” Education Commissioner Mike Morath said. “We want to ensure that all children, regardless of their background, regardless of where they live, that they have access to a great school.”

Morath said the ratings are meant to help educators evaluate their performance and develop action plans for the following school year. He also encouraged parents to review their schools’ ratings and stay involved.

Under state law, schools with five consecutive F ratings may face closure, or the district may be required to replace its elected trustees and superintendent.

In Bexar County, Fort Sam Houston ISD and Randolph Field ISD received A ratings. Alamo Heights ISD, Somerset ISD, Southside ISD and Medina Valley ISD received B ratings.

Edgewood ISD improved but received a D rating.

Read also:

• TEA ACCOUNTABILITY RATINGS: Latest grades show mixed results for San Antonio-area school districts

Somerset ISD, North East ISD and New Braunfels ISD are set to start class.

KSAT’s Patty Santos was live from Hidden Forest Elementary in NEISD all Monday morning in anticipation of the students’ return.

More Back to School coverage on KSAT:

• Ingram ISD students return to class as flood repairs continue
• Passing stopped school buses could cost drivers up to $1,250 and their license, NISD police say
• Beloved Alamo Heights ISD custodian uses art to comfort and inspire young students

The league announced the approval Monday after a vote. Feliciano and Jones reached an agreement in May to buy the Padres from the family of late owner Peter Seidler at an MLB-record valuation of $3.9 billion. The deal is still contingent on the official closing of the transaction in the coming weeks.

“José and Kwanza understand the unique place the Padres hold in San Diego and the powerful bond between the club and its fans,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement. “We look forward to their leadership of the Padres and to working with them to build on the club’s strong foundation in a market that is so important to Major League Baseball.”

Seidler's family announced its intention to explore a sale of the Padres last November, two years after Peter Seidler's death. The 53-year-old Feliciano, a co-founder of Santa Monica-based private equity firm Clearlake Capital, emerged from the competition as the Seidler family's top choice.

Padres CEO Erik Greupner and general manager A.J. Preller will remain in charge of day-to-day operations, according to MLB's announcement.

“We are a family first, and becoming owners of the San Diego Padres means joining an even larger one,” Jones and Feliciano said in a statement. “We are grateful to the Seidler family, and especially to Peter, for raising the expectations of what this franchise can achieve. ... Our ambition is clear: to bring a World Series championship to San Diego and build an enduring organization capable of competing for championships year after year. We intend to be engaged owners, bringing our energy, experience and perspective while working alongside the talented team already in place and investing ambitiously and thoughtfully in the Padres’ future.

“We are all in and committed to winning.”

Peter Seidler assumed majority control of the Padres in 2020 after first joining their ownership group in 2012, but he became beloved in San Diego for his aggressive financial pursuit of winning and his eagerness to engage with the team's fan base. He died at 63 in November 2023.

The Padres dramatically increased their payroll under Seidler, allowing Preller to build the foundation for the current team, which has made four playoff appearances in the past six years and won at least 89 games in three of the last four seasons during the most successful stretch in franchise history. San Diego is currently in the playoff race again, winning 17 of its last 22 games entering Monday to surge into an NL wild-card position at 67-58.

“As far as the day-to-day operations, nothing changes for us," Padres manager Craig Stammen said in New York before San Diego's series opener against the Mets. "We’ve got to go out here and play the games, just like we have all season long. The ownership sale has kind of been something that’s been going on throughout the entire year. It doesn’t really affect the play on the field, but we’re excited to have José and Kwanza a part of the Padres and can’t wait to welcome them.”

The minority partners in the Padres' new ownership group include Joey and Jesse Buss, two sons of former Los Angeles Lakers owner Jerry Buss. Coincidentally, the six Buss siblings decided earlier Monday to sell their remaining minority ownership stake in the Lakers to incoming majority owners Josh Kushner and Bob Iger.

When Feliciano and Jones reached their agreement to purchase the Padres earlier this year, they praised the team as "a unifying force in San Diego, rooted in community, connection and belonging.” They've since been spotted at Padres games in San Diego and in Mexico City.

“It’s good to see people that care working with us, you know?” Padres outfielder Jackson Merrill said. "I mean, the Seidlers cared a lot. It’ll be fun to see how these people take it, mold it into their own, you know? Trust in them, as they trust in us on the field. So, full confidence in them. Excited to meet them.”

The Padres have never won a World Series, but they were a valuable commodity for potential owners as the only team in the four biggest North American sports leagues in a metropolitan area with roughly 3.3 million people. Downtown Petco Park has become one of the liveliest ballparks in the sport, and the Padres ranked second in the majors in attendance last season.

Feliciano, who was born in Puerto Rico, becomes the second Latino principal owner in baseball, along with the Los Angeles Angels' Arte Moreno. Latino and Hispanic players comprise roughly 30% of major league rosters.

Feliciano and Jones will hold an introductory news conference at Petco Park on Monday, Aug. 24.

___

AP Baseball Writer Mike Fitzpatrick in New York contributed to this report.

___

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

• HOT/DRY STRETCH AHEAD: Near 100° everyday, tiny rain chance next weekend
• 100° DAY COUNT: 5 (including today)
• MORE OF A DRY HEAT: Afternoon humidity drops, not as sticky
• SHORTER DAYS: Sunset will be before 8pm by August 29th

FORECAST

100° IS THE RULE, NOT THE EXCEPTION

Don’t blame the messenger, but we are entering our hottest stretch of the year. As another round of school districts head back this week, it’ll be consistently hot, with highs near 100° everyday this week.

MORE OF A DRY HEAT

While humidity will be high in the mornings, the afternoons will feature more of a ‘dry heat’. Meaning that while temperatures will be hot, heat index values won’t be out of control.

SHORTER DAYS

As our days get shorter, know that sunsets times are closing in on 8:00pm. August 29th will be our first day in which the sunset is before 8:00pm. By mid-October, the sun will set before 7pm.

QUICK WEATHER LINKS

• WATCH LIVE: Doppler Radar
• Hourly and 10-Day Forecast
• Download FREE KSAT Weather Authority App: Up-to-date forecast information and livestreams from trusted local meteorologists.
• KSAT Connect: Share your weather photos.

Abbott sent a letter to the North Texas airport’s CEO Christopher McLaughlin, as well as the mayors of Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, stating his office was in the process of reviewing all grant funds over facilities in their cities’ airports. He also sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to refer the airports for federal investigations.

“These ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion. That is illegal,” Abbott said in a news release announcing the grant reviews. “Both airports are government-owned facilities. The federal and state constitutions prohibit government from facilitating this sort of discrimination. Just as the government cannot favor the secular over the sacred, it also cannot favor one religious view over all others.”

At the center of the investigation and grant reviews are ablution facilities, used by Muslim people for wudu, in which hands and feet are rinsed prior to prayer. Abbott said funding would be revoked if their use continued.

Houston’s airport has had an ablution room since 2024, described as for use by people of all faiths. DFW told KERA that it has had a station since 2019.

In a statement on Monday, Houston Mayor John Whitmire did not specify how the city or airport would respond to Abbott’s letter, but defended the ablution facility in the airport as available to all. He also clarified that the facility was paid for through fees on international airlines, rather than taxes or grant funds of any kind.

“IAH is a global gateway, as it connects Houston to five continents via more than 200 nonstop routes,” Whitmire said. “The ablution room was created in response to passenger requests and serves a practical need.”

Shortly after Abbott’s public announcement about the grant reviews on Friday, a DFW airport spokesperson said in a statement that plans for the facility had been canceled after deciding it “would not deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits.”

“Like all proposed projects, the airport ultimately considers the operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs before approving them,” the statement read.

Anti-Islamic rhetoric has been at the forefront of Texas Republican messaging through the year, as GOP leaders have railed for months about the urgency of ending the so-called “Islamification” of Texas.

Abbott has repeatedly used threats of withdrawing funding as a means of exerting control over Texas cities to press issues important to the GOP base in the state. Most recently, Abbott threatened $530,000 in grants for Grand Prairie unless the city canceled an event at a water park initially advertised as a “Muslims only” gathering. He also threatened funding for transportation last year unless cities removed rainbow crosswalks intended to show support for LGBTQ+ communities.

Abbott’s letters about the ablution facilities follow another letter sent Thursday by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, to DFW airport officials. Parker, who chairs the state Senate’s transportation committee, sent a list of questions to administrators asking how the private donation for the facility was accepted and who it came from.

In a statement Saturday morning, a spokesperson for the airport said the design firm filling out the permit form for the facility made an “administrative error” and accidentally listed it as privately funded. The project was intended to be paid for by airport funds made through parking and concessions before it was canceled.

Abigail Reder, a former behavioral therapist and survivor, recently released “Joy Follows: Seven Paths Back to Yourself.” The book is part-memoir, part-guided journal, with writing prompts, calming practices, lists and scripts designed to help women ask for support.

“I believe that we get to rewrite our story,” Reder said. “We do not have to accept the hand that we were dealt.”

Reder said she left her marriage for her safety on July 31, 2024, while she was two months pregnant. Two years later, on that same date, she published her book.

“Instead of the day that I left, it’s now the day I became a published author,” she said.

Reder said she wrote the book for women who may be facing the same fear and uncertainty she once experienced.

“I wrote this for the women that are in that position now,” she said. “I wrote it for any woman who is struggling with their mental health, any woman who’s feeling unsafe and needs to find a way back to herself.”

The book is organized around seven paths and seven practices. Reder said the exercises are based on the tools she used during her own healing.

“These are the tools that I have used to pull myself out of and fight out of some of the most difficult places,” she said.

When asked how she found herself again, Reder said the first step was asking for help.

That step, she said, can feel overwhelming for people who have experienced abuse.

“We think it’s some mountain that we have to look at and tackle,” Reder said. “I talk about it like, break that mountain into pebbles.”

The book includes straightforward exercises meant to make healing feel more manageable, including pages readers can burn as part of the process.

There are guided lists to make, therapy-based calming practices, scripts for asking for help, goal-setting prompts, as well as Reder’s personal story told throughout.

Reder said her work is also shaped by motherhood and the example she wants to set for her daughter.

“I want her to know that women are capable of anything. Mothers are capable of anything,” she said through tears. “I want to raise a strong, resilient girl with grit and grace, and I want her to watch me do it.”

Reder also started a blog, Rosie Red Nest, named for her daughter, Rosie. The blog is aimed at overwhelmed moms and includes healing resources and simplified lifestyle help.

On that blog site is a page where anyone can buy her new book.

Reder said she hopes women who need support will reach out and know they do not have to navigate healing alone.

Any women who want to reach out to Reder directly can email her at hello@rosierednest.com.

Read also:

• ACS offers options for domestic violence survivors scared to leave their pets behind

Trump made the accusation in a social media post on Sunday without saying why he believes it's the work of vandals instead of trampled turf from the Independence Day festivities. The Republican president posted a photo showing a once-grassy area by the World War II Memorial, now patchy and brown across much of the sprawling turf.

“Look what VANDALS did to the grass connecting the vandalized World War II Monument and the vandalized Reflecting Pool, which will be opened again, and better than ever, shortly,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

“Anybody who thinks the Reflecting Pool wasn’t vandalized should go back to Law School!” he added.

Trump has repeatedly blamed vandals for damage to his renovation projects in the nation's capital, often without evidence and sometimes despite opposing accounts from his officials. Trump lashed out at U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro this month after her office concluded that damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of poor construction and not the work of vandals, as Trump claimed.

The photo Trump posted matches what you'd expect to see with a large summer event, according to Penn State University turf professor John Kaminski.

“Nothing in the photograph clearly indicates vandalism. Jumping to that conclusion seems like a fairly large leap, although it is impossible to rule anything in or out,” he said.

Bradley S. Klein, a freelance journalist and golf course consultant, said the president's post didn't make clear what the problem was in detail.

“He sounds like every grumpy golfer who’s complaining about their golf course and actually has no idea what it takes to maintain it on a day-to-day basis,” he said.

Messages seeking more information were left with the National Park Service and the Department of the Interior.

Authorities on Friday announced an arrest in connection with vandalism at the World War II Memorial, after the words “Clean hands dirty $” were found painted on the monument and bubbles filled a fountain. Pirro said felony charges were being brought against Melissa L. Farris.

Farris, 41, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky remained in custody over the weekend, but court records Monday showed that U.S. District Court Federal Magistrate Judge Matthew J. Sharbaugh ordered her released on her own recognizance. Conditions include she stay away from the memorial and Washington, D.C., except for court or pretrial activities. She is due back for a pretrial hearing Sept. 3. A message left with her court-appointed lawyer, was not returned. Pirro's office asked the judge to reconsider its request that Farris be held in pretrial detention.

Charging documents in that case make no mention of the grassy area Trump is highlighting in his new claims. Authorities said Farris had previously been arrested for camping on federal property a few blocks from the World War II Memorial, but not the area cited by Trump.

That stretch of lawn is instead where a large stage was built and crowds gathered to hear from Trump and watch fireworks at a July 4 event celebrating the nation's 250th anniversary. Trump claimed without providing evidence that more than 400,000 people attended the event before a storm hit the area and delayed his remarks.

Extreme heat also hit the area with Washington setting an all-time record for July 4th, when temperatures rose to 103 degrees Fahrenheit (39.44 degrees Celsius). High temperatures forced organizers to shut down activities for several hours July 3 and delay the start July 4. Emergency personnel treated dozens of people for heat-related illnesses.

Photos from the time, taken by a streaming webcam atop the Washington Monument, show a large bandstand and seating areas covering nearly the entire lawn Trump now says has been vandalized. Associated Press photos from the days that followed showed workers removing the structures, revealing brown, damaged grass underneath.

On Aug. 1, Trump posted a different photo of the same area that appears to show the numbers “86 47” — which federal officials have said constitutes a threat against Trump, the 47th president — emblazoned into the grass. He cited it as evidence refuting Pirro's conclusion, calling it “a pure case of VANDALISM, that included the grass.”

“There may have been some contractor difficulty, but the major damage was caused by VANDALS!” he wrote.

Those numbers are not visible in the photo Trump posted to social media on Sunday.

The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.2%, up from 3.6% the year before. That’s an estimated 155,000 children nationally during the 2025-2026 school year.

It’s the fourth consecutive year that the national average exemption rate has reached a record, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons. Exemptions increased in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

Experts point to turmoil caused by federal health officials.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was a leading voice in the antivaccine movement before President Donald Trump put him in charge of federal health agencies. In the last 18 months, Kennedy and other federal officials have repeatedly tried to revise and reduce childhood vaccination guidance. Earlier this month, Trump called for revamped childhood vaccination recommendations that promote his discredited theory that childhood shots should be spaced out into separate medical visits.

“The root cause of this is primarily because there’s so much chaos and confusion in vaccination recommendation systems in the last year or so,” said Dr. James Campbell, of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Vaccination rates fell for many diseases

The CDC reported that 92.4% of 2025-26 kindergarteners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate was 95% — the level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

Vaccination rates also fell for polio, for the combination shot against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, and for the first dose of the vaccine against chickenpox.

The rate held steady for protection against hepatitis B. But that's a vaccine given shortly after birth, and it will take a few years before recent federal efforts to upend infant hepatitis B vaccine recommendations would appear in the vaccination rates of kindergartners, Campbell said.

The vaccination numbers were posted as the U.S. experiences its worst year for measles since 1991.

The numbers indicate that more than a quarter of a million children entering kindergarten are susceptible to measles, said Campbell, a University of Maryland researcher who is chair of the AAP's infectious diseases committee.

Those at-risk kids are not evenly distributed — concentrations of unvaccinated children are higher in some places than others, which helps explain why measles waves vary in intensity.

This is when public health officials typically tout vaccines' benefits

The CDC data is coming out as school and health officials across the country are encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated as the school year starts.

“Back-to-school season is an important reminder that protecting our children’s health is both a shared responsibility and a shared goal,” North Carolina Health and Human Services Secretary Dev Sangvai said in a statement. “Vaccines help keep our children and teens healthy and in the classroom.”

In the past, the CDC has released the vaccination coverage data in its flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials usually speak to the trends and stress the importance of vaccinations.

But since the Trump administration took office early last year, the agency has posted the data online. This year, the agency issued a three-sentence statement that noted a small decline in vaccination coverage among children entering kindergarten and said: “CDC continues to encourage parents to discuss vaccination options with their doctors.”

Medical exemption rates are steady

Public health officials focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and launching pads for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to school attendance mandates that required key vaccinations. All U.S. states and territories require that children attending childcare centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has risen.

According to the CDC data, 17.5% of kindergartners had an exemption to one or more vaccines in Idaho in the last school year. But fewer than 0.5% did in Connecticut.

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

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After ordering the Pentagon to scale back annual joint military exercises with South Korea, claiming the nation declined to help with the United States’ war against Iran, Trump said that he has spoken with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un about a scheduled conversation.

Trump’s son-in-law and Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner held hourslong meetings with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after talking with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament. Netanyahu rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the truce deal forward in Gaza. Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament.

The Latest:

ICE pitches legal insurance to help shield local officers who make immigration arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is pitching a plan to help shield local police officers who make immigration arrests from possible financial consequences if they are accused of on-duty misconduct.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

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Lawmaker apologizes for ‘personal mistakes’ and will cooperate with Ethics probe

Gomez’s office issued the statement after the Ethics committee announced it was investigating allegations that he may have engaged in sexual misconduct, including inappropriate sexual conduct with a House staff member.

“I made personal mistakes outside my marriage. Although my actions were consensual in nature and haven’t violated the law or House Ethics rules, that doesn’t diminish the impact that these mistakes have made on those I care about the most,” Gomez said in a statement.

“I take full responsibility,” he said. “I have and continue to sincerely apologize to my family, friends, and the people that I have the privilege to serve. I am deeply sorry to my wife for the pain and embarrassment that I have brought into our lives.”

Gomez noted that he respects the committee’s process and is ready to cooperate with the inquiry.

Activists welcome Big Bend construction pause but say it’s only a first step

Activists rallying support against the Trump administration’s border construction plans in Texas welcomed news that the administration is pausing construction in Big Bend National Park but say the real question is what comes next.

Bob Krumenaker was the former superintendent of the Big Bend National Park from 2018 to 2023 and now chairs the organization “Keep Big Bend Wild.”

“It shows that they are paying attention to all of the objections that have been raised across the political spectrum,” he said.

But Krumenaker said it’s unlikely that Customs and Border Protection will entirely abandon its plans. He wants to see equipment like the bulldozers removed from the park and damage repaired and he’ll be looking to see how transparent the agency is in outlining a plan going forward.

Laiken Jordahl with the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that the it was “welcome news” but warned that construction could resume “at any moment.”

Senator to file War Powers Resolution to halt Trump’s threats against Oman

Sen. Tim Kaine said Trump “is increasingly deranged in his one-man campaign to threaten and initiate wars all over the globe.”

The Virginia Democrat said Trump’s threats against Oman, a country the U.S. has diplomatic and trade relationships with, makes adversaries like China and Russia “rub their hands with glee.”

The senator said he would file a War Powers Resolution to prohibit military action against Oman as soon as lawmakers return to Washington from summer recess.

House Ethics committee investigating lawmaker for potential sexual misconduct

The House Ethics Committee says it is reviewing allegations that Democratic Rep. Jimmy Gomez of California may have engaged in sexual misconduct in violation of the code of official conduct.

In a release Monday, the committee said it is reviewing the allegations including inappropriate sexual contact with a House staff member.

It noted that the fact that it is investigating the allegations, and publicly disclosing its review, does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred.

The congressman’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It comes as the House is pursuing claims of misconduct and lawmakers have stepped aside this year during investigations of improper behavior.

Melania Trump helped reunite child and family separated by the war in Ukraine

According to the first lady’s office, it was the latest of 34 children that Melania Trump has helped reunite with their families after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Last year, the first lady penned a letter calling for peace to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which, she said at the time, led to an “open channel of communication” about the welfare of children caught up in the war.

“There is nothing more powerful than reuniting a mother with her child after an extended period of time,” Melania Trump said in a statement Monday.

‘I like the idea of declaring’ the Strait of Hormuz a territory

The president was asked about an offhand comment he made last week about the waterway crucial to oil shipping that’s become a centerpiece of negotiations over the war with Iran.

“I like the idea of declaring it a territory,” Trump said on Monday, without providing further details.

It’s not the first time Trump has toyed with the idea of expanding American territory. He has previously mused about taking over Greenland, Canada and Venezuela.

Trump likens his sentiment toward South Korea to his feelings about NATO

The U.S. president further explained his decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, likening his relationship with Seoul to his often-frayed ties with the trans-Atlantic alliance.

Trump said the U.S. keeps tens of thousands of troops in South Korea for its protection, and was rebuffed when it asked Seoul for assistance regarding the war in Iran earlier this year.

As he discussed his decision on South Korea, Trump said “look at NATO” and later added, “all I want is fairness.”

“We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” Trump said.

Trump says concerns about conditions on USS Lincoln are ‘fake’

Trump downplayed reports about conditions on the USS Abraham Lincoln to reporters in the Oval Office. The aircraft carrier has been the subject of escalating concern over mental health and supply issues for American sailors enduring nearly nine months at sea.

Trump called it a “good period of time” but added that “over the years, we’ve had them out there much longer.”

The carrier has had a record-setting uninterrupted time at sea of more than 240 days.

But Trump said he spoke with a retired admiral over the weekend who recounted being on ships for “much longer.” Trump said the admiral assured him that the Lincoln is “beautifully maintained and beautifully taken care of.”

Trump did not name the admiral.

Trump administration pauses contentious border construction in Texas’ Big Bend National Park

The Trump administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in the Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits Texas to do an “on-the-ground evaluation.”

The project through the national park in southern Texas has faced fierce bipartisan opposition by critics who say it is marring a pristine environmental area and that the region’s rugged and remote terrain already serves as a deterrent to migrants and smugglers.

Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection which is tasked with building the wall, said in an announcement on X that he was visiting Texas to do an evaluation.

“CBP is pausing all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation,” Scott said.

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Trump calls UK prime minister’s text exchange a ‘miscommunication’

The U.S. president was asked about a report that said new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone posing as Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff.

“I’m sure that he had a miscommunication,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

The report from Politico said Burnham thought he was messaging with Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

Earlier Monday, the White House said the incident had nothing to do with Wiles’ devices being hacked.

Trump says North Korea’s Kim has responded to request for a conversation

The U.S. president was pressed on whether he has had a conversation with the North Korean leader.

Trump said “yeah he has” responded to Trump’s request to have a conversation, referring to Kim Jong Un.

Trump offered no other details, but noted later during the Oval Office appearance that “I get along with him very well.”

Trump says his administration is taking a look at Flock cameras

The president said there are pros and cons to Flock Safety cameras, which have come under scrutiny from civil rights groups and lawmakers in both parties.

“It’s being studied right now,” Trump said when asked about the subject Monday at an Oval Office event. “We’ll have an answer soon as to our views on it.”

The company’s nationwide network of cameras record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of passing vehicles.

Thousands of police agencies can use Flock data to support investigations, and advocates call it an important crime-fighting tool. Critics say it amounts to needless mass surveillance.

Trump sits with 10-year-old and his lifeguard rescuer in Oval Office

Nathaniel Rai had been swept off his feet along the California coast, was rescued by a 16-year-old lifeguard and was now sitting in the Oval Office.

Rai wore a dark suit and maroon tie and sat on a gold couch aside his father and the president of the United States. Across from Rai was his rescuer Ryder Williams, both of whom watched Trump speak of their ordeal, a video of which went viral.

“He’s a real hero. I don’t know if I’d do it,” said Trump. “I wouldn’t probably. You’re lucky I wasn’t on the service that day.”

Trump meeting with teenage lifeguard who saved boy in dramatic viral video

A teenage lifeguard who saved a 10-year-old boy from pounding waves off the California last month is being honored at the White House on Monday.

President Donald Trump is meeting Ryder Williams after saying the teen deserved a civilian honor. Trump previously said on social media that he would be inviting Williams to the White House to reward his bravery.

Dramatic video of the rescue went viral last month. It showed Williams clinging to Nathaniel Rai as waves repeatedly crash over them. The pair disappeared from view and reemerged after several seconds as the wave receded.

A second lifeguard was eventually able to help get them both back to shore at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz.

Trump initially commented on the video in response to a post from his son, Eric Trump, who said Williams deserved “the highest civilian honor.”

After killing hundreds in boat strikes, US military expands campaign on land

The Trump administration says it is seeking to expand its lethal campaign of bombing boats off Latin America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts onto land.

It will be “like you saw with the strikes on the drug boats,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said during a military drill in the jungle in Panama last week. “Same effect on land.”

The government has lined up regional allies to let the U.S. military operate within their borders in a campaign to assert what it calls “American dominance over the Western Hemisphere.”

Critics say the expansion could pave the way for more civilian casualties and anger toward Washington that may outlast the Trump administration.

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Trump dwarfs his predecessors in ultra-rich appointees

Wealth, perhaps second only to loyalty, has been a prized attribute for Donald Trump during his second presidency.

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total of his three predecessors, according to a report from Public Citizen.

The consumer advocacy group’s report Monday says 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and eight of his Cabinet members. Treasury Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon are billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his deference to the financial success of the ultrawealthy. Yet Trump owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, and now faces an electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

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Public Citizen says ultra-wealthy White House can lead to corruption

Trump’s views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

And to encourage billionaires to deliver future economic growth, Trump has pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

But a government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report’s authors said.

“When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ’Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

Trump’s scaling back military training with South Korea is ‘inane,’ senator says

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Trump appears to be appeasing North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un while worsening relations with U.S. allies.

“This is another inane, haphazard decision by President Trump and his chaotic administration,” Reed said in a statement.

“America’s alliances are built on trust and strength,” he said. “When President Trump cuts military exercises to flatter a dictator or punishes South Korea for declining to join a war he started, all of our allies — and adversaries — think that America’s commitments are negotiable.”

Reed noted that the U.S. and South Korea have conducted joint military exercises since the 1950s as a show of strength and deterrence against aggression from North Korea. And he warned that warned that China and Russia are watching how easily Trump abandons America’s allies.

The buck stops somewhere else: A look at Trump’s tendency to avoid blame

President Harry Truman famously kept a “The Buck Stops Here” sign on his White House desk. The current Oval Office occupant often veers from that motto of taking responsibility.

Trump has blamed his predecessors for the weak economy, high inflation and the increasingly unpopular war in Iran that has kept oil prices high and his approval rating low while sending shock waves through the global economy.

He blames vandals for the problem-plagued Reflecting Pool renovation, and now the dead grass where his July 4th event was held on the National Mall.

All presidents try to shift some responsibility, but none in modern history has taken it as far as Trump.

The White House says Trump is working to correct long-festering challenges. But his unwillingness to accept blame sometimes leads him to deny problems, which could put GOP seats in jeopardy as Republicans face voters.

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Wall Street nears new records as big US companies report booming profits

Big U.S. companies in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. Still to come are profit reports from big retailers, including Home Depot, Target and Walmart this week.

They’re facing pressure. Customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added, as bills rise quickly with inflation much higher than anyone would like. Shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June.

And the wait continues to see what the Iran war will do with oil prices. Brent crude rose 0.7% to $89.15 a barrel Monday, a relatively modest move after jagged recent swings.

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Trump threatens Oman during interview with Fox News

Trump has warned Oman as the Gulf nation works with Iran on a plan for the Strait of Hormuz, telling Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the Monday interview.

This is not the first time that Trump has threatened Oman. In May, he told reporters during a Cabinet meeting that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on ending the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. And Trump said the U.S. has a backchannel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst said.

The agency is proposing to subsidize liability insurance for state and local officers who are trained and deputized to enforce federal immigration laws, according to a planning document published Friday.

ICE’s partnerships with local departments have soared since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year and may get an additional boost with liability insurance by removing a hurdle that has made some local police departments reluctant to join. The Associated Press is the first to report on this insurance proposal.

Under the plan, officers would purchase insurance covering up to $500,000 in personal liability, which typically funds legal fees, settlements and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 annually — roughly what the insurance is expected to cost.

One prominent critic of ICE’s immigration crackdown said the program would be yet another way for officers to avoid personal accountability for misconduct.

“The concern here is that ICE is going above and beyond to guarantee law enforcement does not have even the slightest risk of liability for violating Americans’ rights while helping ICE arrest people,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, who has called on Congress to make it easier to sue ICE agents for wrongdoing.

ICE outlined the plan in a document informing industry officials that it is considering hiring a contractor to help provide outreach, training and communications support for its so-called 287(g) partnerships with local departments, which are named for a section of a 1996 immigration law. The contractor would hire the insurance vendor and process the reimbursements, among other tasks.

ICE has asked for industry feedback by Thursday. The proposed timeline for launching the program and its estimated cost are unclear.

ICE had no immediate comment on the plan.

Arrests by ICE’s local partners have spiked since last year

During Trump’s second term, ICE has offered generous financial incentives to participating local agencies, increasing the number who have partnered with the federal government, as well as the number of arrests.

Nearly 1,600 agencies in 32 states now have agreements to participate in ICE’s task force model, in which trained local officers can interrogate, arrest and charge people suspected of being in the country illegally, according to ICE data.

Departments qualify for funding to help cover expenses like their officers’ pay, equipment and vehicles. With encouragement from state and local Republican officials, agencies in Florida, Texas, Oklahoma and Georgia have been among the leaders.

Arrests made through such programs jumped to an average of 3,000 per month in the first two months of 2026, according to the most recent ICE data provided to the University of California Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. That compares to a monthly average of 250 in 2024 under President Joe Biden.

Local departments, officers worried about liability for ICE work

As local officers increasingly carry out federal immigration work, they and their departments have expressed concerns about the civil liability that could result from claims alleging excessive use of force, wrongful arrest and illegal search and seizure, among other things.

That’s because insurance policies that cover their local work may not apply. Pennsylvania’s risk pool, for instance, recently made clear that it would exclude “proactive immigration enforcement activities” from coverage, forcing several participating counties to search for other insurance options.

Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe said he found insurance to cover his 13 deputies participating in the program at a cost of $20,000 in annual premiums.

“I want to make sure the guys are additionally covered, so we had to spend the money,” he said, adding that federal funding would cover the cost.

Federal officers usually enjoy legal immunities and a government-funded defense when they face lawsuits. But those protections may not always apply to local officers, which has heightened their concerns over liability and the need for insurance.

While civil lawsuits are the main concern, professional liability insurance typically helps cover legal fees for officers facing criminal investigations as well.

Sheriffs’ group says ICE’s insurance idea sounds promising

Justin Smith, a former Colorado sheriff who is executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said ICE’s plan sounds promising and that he was anxious to speak with ICE about how the plan would work.

Smith said he has shared concerns with ICE that some sheriffs are reluctant to join the partnerships because of the potential liability at a time when immigration enforcement faces intense public protests and media scrutiny. Smith said others who are partnering with ICE have already started facing legal claims tied to their immigration work, which can be costly whether or not deputies are ultimately found to have done anything wrong.

“Right now, any time you are working on immigration there is going to be a much higher potential for there being problems and having suits and issues,” he said. “They’re recognizing that it is a different environment. And I think trying to be good partners with us as best they can.”

Under their agreements, ICE warns local departments that they are responsible for the costs of incidents that give rise to liability. But it seeks to reduce the risk by saying local officers performing ICE-authorized functions are “acting under color of federal authority,” which would bar lawsuits against individual officers.

The agreements also state that local officers who face civil lawsuits can ask the U.S. Department of Justice to represent them, and that ICE will generally support their requests. But the final decision on whether to do so rests with DOJ.

Today on Texas Eats NOW:

APCO

APCO Brand Meats is the flagship product line of San Antonio Packing Company, a family-owned operation with more than 80 years of history rooted in the heart of San Antonio. Known for using authentic, hand-blended recipes and premium ingredients at a USDA-inspected facility, APCO has built its reputation on consistency, quality, and an unwavering commitment to traditional methods — including the signature string-tied casings still used on select products today.

The product lineup featured three distinct proteins: the Chorizo Especial, a traditional, lean pork chorizo with no nitrites, no sulfites, and a clean label; the Chorizo Premium; and the Longaniza Especial, made with hams for a different flavor profile. All three were cooked up skillet-style alongside potatoes and eggs and wrapped in butter tortillas, showcasing how each pack — priced under $4 at H-E-B and local grocery stores — can feed a family without breaking the bank.

DUCK & DUMPLING

3003 Thousand Oaks Dr, San Antonio, TX 78247

Duck & Dumpling is a Chinese restaurant serving traditional Peking duck and scratch-made dumplings alongside a broad menu of regional Chinese dishes. Owned by William Chu, the restaurant brings an authentic approach to the table, with a chef who has spent years mastering the art of duck preparation. The Peking duck undergoes a meticulous two-day air-drying process before being roasted to achieve the crispy skin and juicy interior that define the dish, and the spring pancakes that accompany it are made entirely in-house.

The menu spans a wide range of flavors and textures. Pork soup dumplings deliver a rich, savory broth in every bite, while northern Chinese-style hand-pulled noodles are served in a garlic-forward eggplant dish. The wok-charred green beans are a menu staple, and the pan-fried dumplings — crisped on the bottom and still steaming inside — arrive stuffed with a generous portion of filling. The star of the show, the Peking duck, is presented tableside with house-made spring pancakes, cucumbers, scallions, and a scratch-made duck sauce, assembled taco-style for the perfect bite. The menu also includes milk teas and fresh juices to round out the meal.

BEST QUALITY DAUGHTER

602 Avenue A, San Antonio, TX 78215

Best Quality Daughter is an Asian-American restaurant at the Pearl in San Antonio, pioneering a cuisine that blends Chinese, Southeast Asian, and South Texas flavors in a building more than 100 years old. The concept launched in 2018 as a series of pop-ups by Chef Jennifer Hwa Dobbertin, a second-generation Chinese-American whose cooking reflects both her cultural heritage and her deep ties to the San Antonio food community. The restaurant opened in its permanent Pearl location in November 2020, with Alan Nelson serving as Chef de Cuisine.

The menu is built around wok-fired cooking and locally sourced ingredients. The drunken noodle — officially the Drunken Noodle Red Curry Mole — features farm-to-table wagyu beef flank, wide noodles, bell peppers, Fresno chiles, fresh Thai basil, and a sauce that marries Thai curry paste and mole elements. The pork belly is slow-cooked for ten hours until deeply tender and served wrapped in lettuce with pickled red onions, cilantro, and a red chili fish sauce that cuts through the richness. The impossible potstickers, a vegan option, are filled with Impossible meat, shiitake mushroom, ginger, and garlic, and served with a black vinegar, soy, and chili paste dipping sauce.

LORO

2115 S Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78704

Loro is an Asian smokehouse and bar in Austin’s South Lamar corridor, a collaboration between two James Beard Award-winning chefs — Aaron Franklin of Franklin Barbecue and Tyson Cole of Uchi — that opened in 2018. The concept marries Central Texas barbecue tradition with Southeast Asian flavors, smoking all of its meats on-property using post oak in J&R carousel smokers for both hot and cold smoking. The result is a menu unlike anything else in Texas, served in an expansive indoor-outdoor setting with a beer garden and a robust slushy cocktail program.

The brisket is smoked on-site and served dressed with confit garlic shallots, pickled red onions, and fresh Thai herbs — a dish that puts the restaurant’s dual identity on full display. The corn fritters, formed into golf ball-sized portions and fried to order, are served alongside a chili aioli. The drinks menu features a slushy flight showcasing a frozen gin and tonic, a Vietnamese coffee with bourbon, a mango sake slushy, a frozen watermelon mango margarita, and a non-alcoholic high blackberry margarita.

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Jared Bridegan, 33, was killed in Jacksonville Beach in 2022 when he got out of his vehicle to remove a tire that was placed in the road while his 2-year-old daughter from a second marriage was strapped in her car seat.

More than four years later, Mario Fernandez Saldana, 38, is on trial for first-degree murder and solicitation of murder. He’s accused of arranging the death by hiring a gunman. Bridegan's ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, 39, faces her own trial in September. The alleged gunman, Henry Tenon, is slated to go to trial next year after backing out of a guilty plea.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Simak Stifler said in Duval County court.

“A tire in the road, a dark place,” she said in her opening remarks. “No one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible. ... The architects of Jared Bridegan's murder intended it to be a perfect crime and it almost was.”

Defense says Fernandez Saldana didn't act like a mastermind

But defense attorney James Hill told jurors that Fernandez Saldana, an Army veteran, had no motive to get rid of Bridegan and his actions shortly after the killing — a road trip to Pennsylvania and back — didn’t resemble that of a criminal schemer “running from the law.”

“He had access to a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hill acknowledged, referring to his wife Gardner's trust fund. “He could have fled the country.”

While addressing the jury, Stifler traced the bitter relationship between Bridegan and Gardner, the execution-style killing and the difficulty of trying to solve a shocking homicide with no witnesses. The victim, she said, had no obvious enemies and was a devout member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Bridegan and Gardner were divorced in 2015. The end of the marriage, however, led to years of acrimony about how to raise their twins, from disputes about religion to doctor's appointments and even school conferences, Stifler said.

“It was pretty terrible,” Bridegan's second wife, Kirsten Bridegan, testified. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn't do phone calls.”

Widow says she immediately suspected ex-wife

Bridegan married Kristen in 2017, and they had two children. Gardner, meanwhile, married Fernandez Saldana, who was a maintenance man at a gym where she worked out.

Bridegan was attacked shortly after returning 9-year-old twins to Gardner’s home from his “date night” with the children.

He was driving back to St. Augustine with another child when he stopped his Volkswagen Atlas and put on warning lights to remove a tire from the road. Bridegan was shot twice moments later.

Traffic began to back up. The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, said that she comforted Bridegan's daughter with a blanket in a separate vehicle while her boyfriend tried to figure out what had happened.

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

Later that night, Kirsten Bridegan said she followed her “gut instinct” and urged police to investigate Gardner and Fernandez Saldana.

A second tire gave police a big break

Stifler said police a few months later discovered a lead “that blew the case open.” A tire at a rental property owned by Fernandez Saldana was very similar to the tire that had blocked Bridegan's vehicle when he was shot.

Police matched DNA on those two tires to Tenon, a former tenant with a criminal record and financial problems. Records revealed that he was paid $10,000 by Fernandez Saldana after the murder, though the checks said the work was for landscaping, roof repair and a business idea.

Hill, the defense lawyer, disputed anything nefarious, telling the jury: “Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder.”

Tenon, 65, was charged with shooting Bridegan. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and had agreed to testify against Fernandez Saldana. He withdrew the plea earlier this year and will have his own trial.

Stifler said Gardner, who was from a wealthy family, relocated to Washington state with her children after Bridegan's death. Fernandez Saldana, meanwhile, moved to Orlando.

“Ms. Gardner got what she wanted: full control over her children and the freedom to move out of Jacksonville, Florida,” the prosecutor said.

Bridegan was chief technology officer at Utah-based Clean Simple Eats before working at Microsoft for less than a year before his death, his wife said.

Judge Gregory Carro issued an order Monday canceling the trial and giving the Manhattan District Attorney's office, which is prosecuting the state case, until Oct. 9 to respond to the defense's double jeopardy claims. A hearing will be held on Dec. 10, Carro said, about a week before Mangione is scheduled to be sentenced in the federal case.

Mangione, 28, pleaded guilty Friday in Manhattan federal court to a pair of stalking charges and admitted trailing Thompson to UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference and gunning him down outside a Manhattan hotel in 2024. Federal prosecutors said they would seek life in prison when Mangione is sentenced Dec. 18, though federal sentencing guidelines call for a term of 24 to 30 years.

“On the morning of Dec. 4, 2024, I shot Mr. Thompson in Manhattan, and he died,” Mangione said.

Immediately after his plea, Mangione’s lawyers filed paperwork seeking to have the state case thrown out on double jeopardy and due process grounds. They described him as a “pawn in parallel prosecutions" and accused state and federal prosecutors of “trying to punish him twice for the exact conduct.”

Mangione has pleaded not guilty in the state case, which also carries the possibility of a life sentence.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said in a statement that it would fight efforts to end the state case, in part because Mangione’s federal sentence isn’t yet known.

Compared with federal law and that of other states, New York has uncommonly strong protections for defendants facing multiple prosecutions. A state prosecution can be barred if a federal case involving the same course of conduct or criminal transaction ends in a guilty plea or if a jury is sworn.

It will be up to Carro to decide if that applies to Mangione. However Carro rules, his decision will be subject to appeal.

Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges that accused him of traveling across state lines by bus to stalk and kill Thompson. The charges alleged that he used a cellphone, the internet, interstate highways and a hostel serving out-of-state customers to plan and carry out the attack.

“The full range of conduct that comprises the stalking offense is coterminous with the conduct committed as part of the murder offense,” Mangione’s lawyers wrote in their double jeopardy filing.

That Mangione traveled from out of state "to be at the crime scene at the time of the shooting does nothing to eliminate the stalking of Mr. Thompson from the acts constituting his murder,” they added. “They are all part of the same criminal incident or criminal transaction.”

Bragg’s office contends that the state charges, including murder and firearms offenses, involve different legal elements and criminal conduct. In a letter last month, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann objected to the possibility of a federal guilty plea wiping out the state case.

Any guilty plea, Seidemann wrote, “must account for the seriousness of defendant’s offenses” and for the state's interests in prosecuting Mangione, “including the sanctity of life principle that underpins the state homicide charges.”

The S&P 500 fell 0.5% but remains near its all-time high set Thursday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272 points, or 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.3%.

Wall Street’s losses solidified in the afternoon when oil prices accelerated upward. The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 2.7% to $90.87.

It’s been careening back and forth because of uncertainty about what the war with Iran will do to the global flow of crude. Last month alone, Brent zigzagged between $72 and $102 as hopes rose and fell that the United States and Iran could reach a deal that would allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again.

Monday’s rally for oil prices sent Treasury yields in the bond market higher, which in turn raised the pressure on the economy and prices for all kinds of investments.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.72% from 4.68% late Friday. It has shot up from just 3.97% before the war with Iran, largely because higher oil prices are worsening inflation and upping the probability that the Federal Reserve will have to hike interest rates.

Higher rates could keep a lid on inflation, but they do so by intentionally slowing the economy. The average long-term U.S. mortgage rate has already jumped near its highest level in a year because of the rise in the 10-year Treasury yield, though reports last week said that inflation in July was not as bad as earlier in the summer.

Usually around this time of year, anticipation is building on Wall Street to hear from the head of the Federal Reserve about where it may take interest rates. But the Fed’s new chairman, Kevin Warsh, may give little insight at this year’s economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at the end of this month, according to Thierry Wizman, a strategist at Macquarie Group

Warsh has been adamant about giving Wall Street less guidance about the Fed’s plans for interest rates.

Wall Street has run to records despite high inflation in large part because profits are booming for U.S. companies.

Those in the S&P 500 index are on track to deliver growth of roughly 50% for earnings per share in the spring from a year earlier, according to FactSet. That’s much better than analysts expected and would be the best since five years ago, when the economy was erupting out of the chasm created by the COVID pandemic.

Nearly all the companies in the S&P 500 have turned in their profit reports for the spring. Still to come are big retailers, including reports this week from Home Depot, Target and Walmart.

They’re facing pressure. Their customers’ incomes may be turning iffier after U.S. employers surprisingly cut more jobs last month than they added. At the same time, their customers are continuing to see bills rise quickly as inflation remains much higher than anyone would like.

A report last week said that shoppers surprisingly spent less at U.S. retailers last month than in June, and CEOs for retailers could give color this week on what they’re seeing.

On Wall Street, trading was relatively quiet Monday.

L3Harris Technologies fell 4.6% after the defense company said Christopher Kubasik stepped down as its CEO and chairman following “certain conduct by Kubasik that was not consistent with the values of the Company.” It gave few details but said the conduct was not related to its financial reporting, controls, customer relationships or operational performance.

Alphabet dipped 0.5% even though Berkshire Hathaway said it increased its investment in Google’s parent company, along with several homebuilders. Berkshire built a reputation for buying stocks at affordable prices under its former CEO, famed investor Warren Buffett.

Constellation Brands fell 6.2% after Berkshire said it sold all its holdings in the seller of Modelo beer and Robert Mondavi wine.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 40.70 points to 7,745.06. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 272.63 to 53,459.78, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 84.25 to 26,644.91.

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

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.7% after a report said Japan’s economy grew at a slower pace in the April-June quarter than economists expected. Indexes jumped 1.3% in Hong Kong and 1.4% in Shanghai for some of the world’s biggest moves.

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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Michelle Champan contributed to this report.

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Earlier versions of this story incorrectly reported that Japan’s economy grew slightly faster than expected in the April-June quarter.

The Trump administration is making it harder for the public to know, moving to toss aside a 60-year-old requirement for tens of thousands of private sector employers to submit workforce demographic reports each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the agency responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws in the workplace.

The EEOC's Republican majority voted 2-1 Tuesday to rescind the data collection requirement, submitting the proposal to a 30-day public commentary period before final approval. The proposal is a quiet but profound salvo in President Donald Trump's shake up of civil rights enforcement, ending a practice that has endured through 10 Republican and Democratic administrations.

EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, an outspoken critic of diversity and inclusion practices who has urged white men to come forward with discrimination complaints, argued that requiring companies to submit the annual demographic reports risks encouraging companies to justify discriminatory practices to diversify their workforce.

“It may promote racial stereotyping at work, and it may encourage employers to engage in discrimination," Lucas said during a hearing ahead of the vote.

Former Democratic EEOC commissioners and civil rights organizations have denounced the proposal, saying it will deprive the agency of a critical tool for uncovering discrimination patterns and tracking how women and racial minorities have fared since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which created the EEOC and prohibited employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, national origin and religion.

The EEOC, which receives more than 88,000 worker complaints each year, has historically used the data to guide its enforcement priorities and inform some of its investigations.

Commissioner Kalpana Kotagal, the sole Democrat left on the EEOC since Trump moved to wrest control of the agency, voted against the proposal.

“Today, the commission discusses whether to turn back time to a period before the civil rights movement, kneecapping its ability to protect workers,” Kotagal said.

Here's what to know about the reporting requirement and the proposal to end it:

How the EEOC has collected the data

Since 1966, the EEOC has required companies with at least 100 employees, or federal contractors with at least 50 workers, to submit a form called the EEO-1 each year.

The form, which has evolved over time, identifies 10 job categories from “Executive/Senior Level Officials and Managers” to “Laborers” and “Service Workers.” It asks employers to report on the number male and female workers in each job category, as well as the number of workers from different race and ethnicities: Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American, Asian, Native Hawaiian, American Indian or Alaska Native and two or more races.

The data typically covers more than 50 million employees and 73,000 employers nationwide.

A view into gender and race in the private sector

The EEOC launched during the Biden administration an interactive tool allowing the public to explore historical demographic metrics across industries and job categories. The most recent data is from 2023. Under the Trump administration, the EEOC last collected EEO-1 data for the year 2024 but has not publicly disclosed it. Collection of the year 2025 would have begun this year.

The data shows white men dominating executive and senior manager roles at private companies, though women and minorities have made inroads, especially in the years following the #MeToo and Black Lives Matters movements.

Women remain underrepresented in the top ranks of companies. While they make up nearly half the workforce at the companies surveyed, women held just 34.5% of executives and senior manager roles in 2023. That was up from 29.2% a decade earlier.

White and Asian women made the fastest gains, and by 2023, were no longer underrepresented in senior roles compared to their numbers in the overall workforce. In contrast, Black and Hispanic women remained sharply underrepresented in executive and senior manager roles despite making modest gains.

Asian men have been proportionally represented in senior roles for years, while Black and Hispanic men remained underrepresented in 2023.

Of those demographic groups, only one was overrepresented in senior roles: white men, who made up a third of the overall workforce at the companies surveyed but held 52.7% of executive and senior management roles.

Why the government wants to end the data collection

Lucas said the annual reporting requirements impose “hundreds of millions of dollars” on costs on employers, a burden she argued was unnecessary absent “any allegation, indication, or evidence of discrimination.”

The move was recommended by Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint that has guided many of the Trump administration’s policies.

A group of former Democratic EEOC commissioners and legal counselors said there is little evidence that companies are routinely using employment data to engage in quotas or race-based hiring.

“This is simply inaccurate and unsupported speculation, at odds with the ways in which this data is actually collected, managed and used,” the former officials said in a statement.

Instead, the officials said, tracking such data encourages companies to proactively examine their hiring, promotion, benefits and other policies to ensure they are not unnecessarily erecting barriers.

Kotagal said the agency has used the data to determine whether a discrimination charge might be part of a deeper pattern at a company. She cited a recent investigation of California supermarket chain Vallarta Food Enterprises, in which the EEOC alleges the grocer failed or refused to recruit, hire or promote non-Hispanic individuals. In that case, EEO-1 data showed that “nearly 100 percent of its employees were Hispanic,” Kotagal said. “It’s a key tool in our toolbox.”

The agency has also issued special reports on demographic employment trends across certain industries or roles.

Kotagal highlighted a 2024 report on the tech sector, which showed that women had made virtually no gains between 2014 and 2022, and that workers under 40 years old had actually lost ground. The report also found tech company workers were more likely that others to file age or pay discrimination charges, suggesting systemic barriers to women and older workers in the industry.

The report has been removed from the EEOC’s website.

Corporate retreat from demographic disclosure

The EEOC is prohibited from publicly releasing an individual company’s EEO-1 form, only publishing the information in the aggregate. In recent years, however, a growing number of the country’s top companies began publicly releasing their forms in response to pressure from shareholders and Democratic elected officials to show transparency in their diversity efforts.

Many of those companies have complained that job categories in the EEO-1 forms don't align with their internal structures, a point Lucas echoed Tuesday, saying the categories don't reflect the modern workforce. But advocates of EEO-1 disclosure argued it's the only standardized form that allows for comparison across companies, and offer more detail.

However, the trend toward transparency has started to reverse.

Companies have started to pull back on publicizing both EEO-1 forms and their own diversity reports, which conservative advocates and the Trump administration have seized on to argue that companies are using discriminatory tactics to add women and minorities to their ranks.

In 2025, 24 companies in the S&P 100 — the largest U.S. publicly traded companies — chose not to disclose their EEO-1 data after having done so the year before, according to Andrew Jones, principal researcher at The Conference Board Governance & Sustainability Center. Still, 60 S&P 100 companies did release the data.

Meanwhile, fewer companies are publicizing any form of demographic metrics. The number of Russell 3,000 companies that disclosed metrics on women in the workforce fell from 75% in 2024 to 62% in 2025, according to a study by The Conference Board using data from corporate governance data and analysis firm ESGAUGE. Those disclosing metrics on minority representation fell from 30.9% to 26.5%.

Why companies may keep gathering data

Companies are still likely to keep track of their demographic data, whether or not they disclose any of those metrics publicly, and even if they are no longer required to submit annual EEO-1 reports. That's because Title VII requires employers to keep records that could be pertinent to any discrimination investigation, and the EEOC is empowered to request them.

“What we are generally advising is to stay the course,” Jennifer Robins, counsel in law firm Saul Ewing’s Labor and Employment Group. “Private litigants, employment discrimination lawsuits are not going away, and this data is helpful to defending oneself.”

The EEOC has demanded extensive demographic data from companies to bolster Lucas' own marquee cases. Those include an investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion practices of sports giant Nike, which Lucas has alleged discriminate against white employees; a lawsuit against the New York Times for allegedly discriminating against a white man who was passed over for a promotion, and an investigation into alleged antisemitism against staff at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lucas emphasized Tuesday that the EEOC would continue to demand data in the course of its investigations. Kotagal warned employers that under future leadership, the EEOC could reinstitute the EEO-1 collection.

Jocelyn Frye, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families, said she sees the elimination of EEO-1 data as part of an effort to obscure the prevalence of discrimination against racial minorities and women and create of a sense of urgency around protecting white workers from DEI-related policies.

But Frye said the data "doesn’t suggest that their top priority ought to be discrimination against white men.

"If the chair is moving forward with an agenda that thinks she ought to be focused on men and ought to be focused on white people, my answer is, ‘Well, does the data tell you that?’” Frye said.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. 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.

Hamas has already agreed to the proposal. American negotiators appeared to acquiesce to Israeli demands that Hamas disarmament must come before any reconstruction of the devastated Palestinian enclave. They did not publicly signal that Israel had made any commitments to withdraw from the 60% of Gaza that Israeli troops currently occupy.

That’s a major sticking point in the plan and one that Hamas had pressed negotiators to compel Israel to fulfill prior to the meeting. The talks came days after Netanyahu rejected the 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward, saying there would be no withdrawal without disarmament.

A day earlier, Kushner met for two hours with Hamas' leader in Egypt.

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and the director of the U.S.-created Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, were also in the meeting with Netanyahu, according to a source familiar with the plans and a diplomatic source. Both spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a closed-door meeting.

At stake are the lives of some 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, rebuilding plans and future control over the territory.

Netanyahu says talks were ‘deep and constructive’

In a statement, Netanyahu's office said the talks were “deep and constructive.” Israel and the board agreed to establish two working groups — one on the disarmament and demilitarization of Gaza and another focused on public health issues for Gaza.

Israel and the board agreed that the demilitarization “should be prompt and completed before any reconstruction," the statement said.

A Board of Peace official said they also agreed that the demilitarization must include “every weapon, light and heavy, and every tunnel.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.

“Backed by President Donald Trump, the parties share clear goals: a fully demilitarized and deradicalized Gaza that poses no threat to Israel, and where Gazans can pursue prosperity and dignity peacefully,” the official said.

Another Board of Peace official said the meeting was “very productive” and resulted in agreement on “a path forward.”

"The Israelis are going to give this a chance. Now it’s up to Hamas to show if it truly intends to comply,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity.

Asked if Israel had committed to the U.S. plan for Gaza, a spokesperson for Mladenov said it was a “work in progress.”

Meeting followed Kushner's conversation with Hamas

Kushner, who is Trump's son-in-law, met Sunday with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Cairo on disarmament, according to a regional official and a Hamas official, who both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Officials from mediating countries Egypt, Qatar and Turkey also were there.

The Hamas official said the Hamas leader demanded that Israel halt its attacks on Gaza and withdraw to the so-called “yellow line” dividing the territory before beginning implementation.

The yellow line was never precisely defined. Israeli forces have moved beyond it and now control about 60% of Gaza. In May, Netanyahu said the next step was to move to 70% control, with Israel “tightening the grip” on Hamas “from every direction.”

Several regional powers including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates issued a statement Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection of the road map. They said Israel "now bears responsibility for obstructing the efforts to bring peace in Gaza.” Other signers included Jordan, Pakistan, Indonesia and the ceasefire mediators.

The foreign ministers’ statement called on the Board of Peace and the U.S. to take “immediate and concrete measures” to keep any party from obstructing the plan’s implementation.

Talks spark hope and doubt in Gaza

While some in Gaza hope that efforts to implement the road map will bring an end to the war sparked by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, others are skeptical.

Mohammad Abu al-Qombuz cast doubt on all talks and visits currently taking place.

“A conference here and there, it is all lies. We need a definitive solution that would work for everybody,” said Abu al-Qombuz, who lives in a Gaza City tent camp, part of the territory's vast displaced population.

Under the road map, Hamas would hand over weapons to the Palestinian technocratic committee meant to oversee daily operations in the territory. The committee has not yet entered Gaza.

But Hamas has linked the surrender of its heaviest weapons to the creation of a Palestinian state, and the road map entails the creation of a “credible pathway toward achieving Palestinian self-determination and statehood,” something Israel’s current government rejects.

Until the road map is agreed to, other elements of the ceasefire are on hold, including reconstruction and the deployment of international forces to separate Israeli forces from committee-controlled areas.

Netanyahu faces a challenging election on Oct. 27 as he tries to hold onto power with a coalition that includes ministers taking a harsh line on Gaza, and it’s not clear whether he will take decisive steps on the ceasefire before then.

Also coming up is the anniversary of the 2023 attack.

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Frankel reported from Jerusalem, Magdy from Cairo and Shurafa from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Associated Press journalists Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel; Collin Binkley in Washington; and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.

Location: Remote in MI, TX, or FL

Description

Graham Media Group is searching for its next Sales Support Coordinator who will be responsible for assisting the sales team with the processing and fulfillment of sales orders, strategically process makegoods, troubleshoot scheduling problems and traffic issues, solve billing discrepancies, manage program changes, provide weekly reports and correspondence with clients.

The key function of this role is to assist management, account executives and the sales team in reaching annual budgets for TV, Digital and New Business. Qualified candidates must be able to multi-task and get their task assignments done accurately and efficiently.

Responsibilities

• Work closely with Account Executives to coordinate advertising campaigns
• Input and manage broadcast orders into Wide Orbit – for local, national, paid programming, pay-for-delivery, and political campaigns
• Work makegoods with buyers/agencies and input into order management systems
• Monitor network and station schedules for program changes
• Resolve billing discrepancies and assisting with collections
• Regularly monitor campaign performance to ensure clients’ goals are being met
• Pull TV post reports to ensure campaign delivery is on track
• Provide in-depth reporting tailored to each client’s goals and objectives
• Troubleshoot scheduling problems, preemptions and traffic issues
• Communicate with advertisers for video and traffic instructions, scheduling changes and campaign performance as needed. Encourage upsell opportunities where appropriate
• Serve as backup coverage for other national and/or local sales support as needed
• Provide reports for clients and management
• Establish and maintain high retention rates and a high level of customer satisfaction by exceeding customer expectations and proactively anticipating their shifting needs
• Responsible for Political order entry as well as maintaining our FCC files related to Political
• Other duties as assigned

Requirements

• Minimum of 1 year of related work experience in media sales preferred or equivalent combination of education and experience
• Bachelor’s degree in marketing or related field preferred
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Strong organizational, multi-tasking and time management skills a must!
• A team player who can work with others toward common goals
• Adaptable and flexible with ability to shift focus on new priorities
• Ability to manage multiple projects and priorities simultaneously
• Ability to adhere to strict deadlines and complete work in a timely and accurate manner
• Understand Nielsen & ComScore ratings and impressions
• Experience in a television station’s sales/traffic department preferred
• Previous experience with Wide Orbit applications highly preferred
• Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite, especially Excel/spreadsheets and PowerPoint or presentation tools. Comfortable learning new software and processes as needed

Please send resumes to Brittany Salyers at bsalyers@grahammedia.com

Graham Media Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. In addition to complying with the requirements of federal law, GMG will comply with applicable state and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Any offer of employment is conditional upon the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screening, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks.

Location: Detroit, MI (Graham Media Group HQ)

About the Role

Graham Media Group is seeking a highly analytical, detail-oriented, and process-driven Revenue Planning & Analysis Analyst II to join our Revenue Operations team. Reporting directly to the Director of Revenue Planning & Analysis, this role serves as a critical bridge between Revenue Operations, Sales, Finance, Technology, and Market Leadership teams.

The ideal candidate combines strong analytical capabilities with expertise in data governance, quality assurance, process documentation, Salesforce and project management. This individual will champion data integrity across revenue systems, lead cross-functional initiatives, develop scalable operational processes, and leverage emerging AI technologies to drive efficiency and innovation across the organization.

Responsibilities:

• Conduct recurring audits of Salesforce, reporting platforms, and revenue datasets to ensure compliance with data standards
• Partner with stakeholders to improve data collection methods, system adoption, and overall data quality
• Monitor key data health metrics and build scorecards to measure accuracy and completeness
• Create and maintain user guides, training materials, process documentation, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to support system adoption and operational consistency.
• Support onboarding and ongoing training efforts for revenue systems, reporting tools, and operational processes
• Partner with the Salesforce Administrator to support CRM enhancements, testing, user adoption, data hygiene, and reporting
• Assist in troubleshooting system issues and validating system changes and integrations
• Document processes, workflows, and system requirements to support ongoing optimization efforts
• Act as the Revenue Operations team’s project manager for key initiatives, coordinating efforts across Sales, Finance, Marketing, Technology, and Market Leadership.
• Gather business requirements, document processes, manage timelines, and communicate progress to stakeholders.
• Drive process improvement initiatives that increase efficiency, scalability, and operational effectiveness.
• Identify opportunities to leverage AI and automation to improve reporting, forecasting, documentation, and operational workflows
• Assist in the design, testing, and deployment of AI-powered solutions and agents that increase productivity and streamline business processes

Requirements:

• Experience creating and maintaining training materials, user guides, process documentation, and standard operating procedures
• Ability to communicate complex processes and technical concepts in a clear, user-friendly manner for both technical and non-technical audiences
• Experience facilitating training sessions and supporting user adoption of new tools, systems, and processes is a plus
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail — you catch errors before others do
• Collaborative, low-ego, and comfortable in a fast-moving, multi-market environment
• Media, broadcasting, or advertising industry experience a plus, but not required

Please send resumes to Becky Hollandsworth at Bhollandsworth@grahammedia.com

Graham Media Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. In addition to complying with the requirements of federal law, GMG will comply with applicable state and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Any offer of employment is conditional upon the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screening, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks.

Clancy's mother, Paula Musgrove, sounding at times emotional, described her daughter as a dedicated and loving mother whose mental health began declining in October 2022 — about three months before Clancy strangled the children and attempted to kill herself.

“Mom, will you please come up and stay with me for a bit? I’m really sick. Something is wrong,” Clancy wrote in a text message displayed to the jury. “I had horrible insomnia all night, and I just don’t know how I am going to get through the day. ... It’s just really scary, and I don’t want to be alone.”

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

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Musgrove also recalled a more alarming disclosure in December, when she was standing in the kitchen with Clancy and her then-husband, Patrick Clancy. Musgrove said her daughter appeared nervous and told them she needed to tell them something.

“She told us she had thoughts of harming the children,” Musgrove said.

Musgrove, who lived in Connecticut, often stayed with her daughter in Massachusetts from October into December 2022. She said Clancy was scared of sleeping alone, became increasingly paranoid and believed the medications she was taking “were destroying her mind.”

Clancy’s sister described a similar decline. Allison Ozga testified that at the end of December Clancy told her she had experienced suicidal thoughts every day for a month.

The testimony came in the fourth week of Clancy's murder trial, soon after the prosecution rested their case.

Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the Jan. 24, 2023, killings and contrived to get her husband out of the house by sending him to get takeout and to the pharmacy.

Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington does not dispute that she killed the children. But he says she shouldn't be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth. He said she also had bipolar disorder and that antidepressants prescribed worsened her condition.

‘How could a mother hurt her children?’

A former co-worker testified Monday about Clancy’s years as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, describing Clancy as a “really good” nurse who loved her job and was “compassionate, kind and a patient advocate.”

“She was the type of nurse that you wanted taking care of you or your loved one when you walked onto our unit,” said Margaret Hamp.

Hamp said she and Clancy worked night shifts together and that Clancy regularly sought parenting advice from her co-workers, asking about everything from children’s sleeping habits and choosing a daycare provider to monogrammed lunch boxes.

Hamp also recalled a conversation from Clancy’s first year on the unit after a pregnant patient arrived with plans to harm herself. Hamp said she spoke with Clancy about mental health during pregnancy and postpartum and asked whether she had heard of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.

“I explained that to her, and she cried,” Hamp testified. “She said, ‘How could a mother hurt her children?’”

A disputed picture of her mental health

Earlier in the trial, the jury heard that Clancy had sought treatment for severe mental health problems, including admitting herself to a psychiatric hospital. But witnesses also noted Clancy wouldn't always take the medications prescribed to help with her insomnia, anxiety and depression, and that she expressed fears she was addicted to some of them.

The defense has argued that Clancy was overmedicated and that her care was disjointed, with doctors not speaking to one another or sharing notes. The defense also showed she was discharged from one facility after a day and denied a higher level of care at another when she couldn't show that she had a suicide plan.

Prosecutors have questioned the seriousness of Clancy's suicide attempt and showed through texts and photos that she performed many normal activities the day of the killings, including taking her children to the doctor and playing with them in the snow.

Her doctors have testified they never saw Clancy exhibit signs of mania or psychosis, though she did repeatedly talk of feeling suicidal.

Clancy hasn't testified and isn't required to do so, but jurors have seen her break down in sobs at several points, including when prosecutors showed the jury autopsy photos of the children.

At the start of the trial, Patrick Clancy described the horror of returning home to find his dead children. During his testimony, prosecutors played a harrowing seven-minute 911 call, which was not released to the public. Clancy can be heard checking on Lindsay Clancy in the backyard, before heading down to his basement and finding his children.

He screams and howls before telling a dispatcher, “She killed the kids!”

Meanwhile, the 60-day negotiating period to find a peace deal between the United States and Iran was expiring, with no word of an extension and both sides seemingly as far apart as they were at the start.

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

Iran says it is near finalizing a deal with Oman

Iran said it has reached an agreement with Oman over a plan for ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz, which runs between the two countries, and they are now working to finalize details for a joint statement.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei told reporters in Tehran, Iran's capital, that “an understanding has been reached regarding the map of the transit route.”

He did not elaborate, but details that have previously emerged suggest the deal would reopen the strait with ships entering through a route close to Iran and exiting through a route close to Oman. Ships would transit without paying fees or tolls during an interim period.

The U.S. has sought an acceptable deal on opening the strait before ending its blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran effectively closed the strait — through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies passed before the war — after Israel and the U.S. attacked the country on Feb. 28.

Trump says US will bomb Oman if it gets in the way

Trump told Fox News reporter Trey Yingst that the U.S. would bomb Oman if it “gets in the way,” using an expletive for emphasis.

Fox News did not provide audio of the interview.

This is not the first time that Trump has threatened Oman. In May, he told reporters during a Cabinet meeting that “Oman will behave just like everybody else, or we will have to blow them up.”

Trump also said the expiration of the 60-day deadline on talks to end the war was irrelevant and said there was no timeline, Yingst said. Trump said the U.S. has a back channel for talks with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Yingst added.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres wants Iran and the U.S. to resume peace negotiations, saying there is no military solution to the conflict, according to U.N. spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric.

Dujarric said the U.N. chief also thinks the countries need to “lower the rhetoric that we’ve been hearing in recent days.”

Kushner meets with Netanyahu over Gaza road map

Mideast negotiator Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, met on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the day after he had a rare, two-hour meeting with Hamas chief Khalil al-Hayya in Egypt on disarmament of the Palestinian militant group.

Netanyahu last week rejected a 15-point, U.S.-backed road map to move the ceasefire deal forward in Gaza.

Hamas says it has agreed to the road map, which includes disarmament, and the group is urging mediators and the U.S.-created Board of Peace to “compel” Israel to sign on.

But Israel, which under the road map must gradually withdraw from Gaza, says Hamas must fully disarm before any Israeli withdrawal.

Israeli troops occupy about 60% of the strip, and Netanyahu has previously threatened to advance further.

Houthi rebels say they attacked boats in the Red Sea

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed that they attacked a ship and four military boats on Monday in the Red Sea off the Yemeni city of Mokha, near the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The rebels fired a number of ballistic missiles at the vessels, resulting in the capsizing and burning of the boats, Yahya Saree, a military spokesperson for the Houthis, said in a statement.

The rebels claimed that the vessels belonged to Saudi Arabia, without providing evidence. There was no immediate comment from Saudi Arabia, and The Associated Press could not independently verify the Houthi claim.

Saree also said the rebels launched a drone attack on government forces in the central province of Marib.

Drone attacks target Iraqi officials

Two officials in northern Iraq were targeted in drone attacks that the regional counterterrorism service said were launched from the border with Iran.

One was fired at the office of Masrour Barzani, prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region, and the other targeted the home of a top regional intelligence official, the counterterrorism service said.

There were no casualties and no immediate claim of responsibility.

Since the beginning of the war in Iran, Tehran and Iranian-backed Iraqi militias have launched regular attacks on U.S. military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq, and on bases of exiled Iranian Kurdish dissident groups, but Monday’s direct attack on regional government buildings was unusual.

Barzani on X called the attack “a dangerous escalation and a direct threat to the security and stability" of the region.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi appeared to be trying to distance Iran from the attack. He said on social media that nothing justified the attack on Barzani and that “Kurdish friends should be vigilant against false-flag ploys to sow discord between neighbors.”

U.S. forces currently stationed in the Kurdish region of Iraq have begun withdrawing ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline agreed upon between Washington and Baghdad to end the U.S. military presence in Iraq.

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This story was corrected earlier to show that the first name of the prime minister of Iraq’s semi-autonomous northern Kurdish region is Masrour Barzani, instead of Masoud Barzani.

A forest ranger said the fire in Belgium could continue for months underground in peaty soil and sporadically flare up.

Europe is sweltering through one of its hottest and driest summers on record, which a recent study said was fueled by climate change.

Rain helps, but Belgian blaze is not yet under control

Belgium’s King Philippe interrupted his summer vacation to visit emergency services fighting the wildfire in the eastern High Fens, about eight kilometers (five miles) from the German border, as it spread east after moving into a pine forest on Sunday.

The fire in Liège province has burned an estimated 30 square kilometers (about 12 square miles), leaving blackened trees and smoldering ground.

While the fire did not significantly grow, due in part to favorable winds, it remained out of control in areas inaccessible to ground crews, the Wallonia region said in an update.

Some 500 firefighters were aided by aircraft sent from Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands and local police with drones after a cold front brought overnight rain. Farmers were helping supply water to firefighting efforts, regional officials said. Helicopters emptied huge sacks of water over the flames as smoke billowed from forests.

“We managed to maintain the fire where the firemen are situated but there’s still a place which is totally inaccessible, where the fire is still going on in the direction of Monschau in Germany,” said Nicolas Yernaux, spokesperson for the Wallonia regional public services.

He said overnight rains helped contain the blaze and dampen the possibility that smoldering fires will flare up again, but he said they did not significantly impact the center of the fire.

A forest ranger from the region told The Associated Press that the blaze could continue for months underground because of the peaty soil.

“What we see here is that the grassland has burned and the fire has gone into the soil to a certain depth, into the peat, and it is still burning," said Yves Pieper. “It can go down very, very low in the peat layer.”

He said the fire can continue smoldering largely unseen underground for weeks or months before flaring up again, noting that new flames had already appeared nearby.

Precautionary evacuation orders remained in effect for hundreds of residents.

Veterinarian Hugues Guyvot, who was involved in animal rescue efforts, said large animals were able to flee but smaller ones like frogs and mice likely burrowed and were baked underground in a landscape of peat bogs.

“Maybe it will take decades to recover from this fire,” he said.

Greece quickly extinguishes fire near main airport

In Greece, fire department investigators examined the area on the island of Salamina where a fast-moving wildfire on Sunday killed two people, injured another nine and destroyed several homes. The island lies just west of the Greek capital.

New wildfires broke out elsewhere Monday. Dozens of firefighters along with two water-dropping planes and two helicopters raced to tackle one in Spata, an area east of Athens that includes the main international airport. The fire department said the blaze was contained within 30 minutes.

Separately, the fire department said an 80-year-old man was arrested in the northern town of Kavala on arson charges for allegedly deliberately setting fire to dried vegetation. It was among 302 fire-related arrests since Jan. 1 in Greece, including 31 for deliberate arson and 271 for negligence that sparked fires, the department said.

France says a fire in the southwest is under control

In southwestern France, authorities said a fire in the Landes region was under control after four days of battling the flames, allowing about half of the evacuated residents to begin returning home.

More than 600 residents evacuated last week as the fire burned about 17 square kilometers (6.6 square miles) during a prolonged spell of extreme heat. Some respite was on the way Monday as temperatures began to drop.

French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said the state would provide a 12 million-euro ($13.9 million) aid package to Gironde and Landes, the regions hardest hit by the wildfires, to help rebuild homes and support affected businesses, including in Le Porge, where 183 homes were destroyed in a massive blaze last month.

Croatian police arrest arson suspects

In Croatia, four people are suspected of deliberately starting as many as 10 fires in the region around the coastal town of Zadar, a major tourism hub on the Adriatic coast.

The suspects were questioned by an investigative judge following their arrest on Saturday on a tip from residents.

The four are suspected of starting fires on Aug. 14 and 15 with an aim to “endanger lives and valuable property and inflict damage on a large number of residents in Zadar county,” police said in a statement. There was no word on a possible motive.

Police said they were assessing the extent of the damage caused.

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Corbet reported from Paris. Elena Becatoros in Argostoli, Greece, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed.

The Republican president’s lawyers had asked the justices to reconsider their refusal to hear his appeal. The court denied Trump’s petition along with several others.

It’s unusual — although not unheard of — for the court to grant such requests. Trump paid the judgment shortly after the court declined to take up his appeal in June.

Trump and the Justice Department are also asking the high court to toss out a second Carroll verdict totaling $83 million. They argue he’s immune from being sued over comments he made about her in 2019, when he was president. The court has not yet acted on that appeal.

Carroll is a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. She testified at a 2023 trial that Trump turned a friendly 1990s encounter into a violent attack in the dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower in Manhattan. The jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll when he denied her allegation in 2022.

Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, said they were pleased by the Supreme Court's decision.

"As a result, the jury’s unanimous verdict that Donald Trump sexually assaulted and then defamed E. Jean Carroll is now final and cannot be challenged in any court,” Kaplan said in a statement.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

In a video posted to X on Monday, Scott announced that he was en route to the park and had ordered a construction pause Sunday night.

“I put a pause on all activity in that park, as far as construction goes, until I can get down there and do a personal evaluation, talk to some stakeholders, talk to some local law enforcement in that area,” Scott said. “More to follow this week.”

Scott’s announcement comes amid massive outcry from local residents, businesses and law enforcement officials. Many have derided plans to build border infrastructure in the parklands and called for CBP officials to engage with their concerns.

It was not immediately clear how long CBP plans to implement the pause.

The federal government plans to build an access road and vehicle barriers in the park, a treasured spot for generations of Texans. Bulldozers arrived in Big Bend earlier this month to begin what CBP says is survey and design work.

The onset of construction has yielded bipartisan frustration. Texas Democrats have stood against the project for months, maintaining that the effort to build border infrastructure in the park is unnecessary, damaging and an affront to Texas’ sovereignty. And both candidates for Texas’ 23rd Congressional District, which contains the Big Bend region, oppose the wall effort.

More elected Republicans have begun to make noise in recent days. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, asked Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in an Aug. 7 letter to halt construction until he or a designee consults with stakeholders — a request Scott now appears to be heeding.

In a statement, Scott said he and a small team will “evaluate the terrain and listen to local leadership, community members and stakeholders to ensure that we secure our borders while simultaneously protecting BBNP for generations to come.”

Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a retired Border Patrol agent who has argued that a border wall in the Big Bend region is unnecessary, said he has been in communication with Scott, a friend dating back to their days as Border Patrol colleagues in the 1990s.

Cleveland told the Tribune that he and other sheriffs in the Big Bend area, including his counterparts in Brewster, Hudspeth and Jeff Davis counties, are meeting with Scott in Alpine Tuesday afternoon.

CBP has said it does not plan to build a 30-foot wall or place stadium lighting in the park. In a statement Thursday, the agency said it is working to maintain visitor access and preserve the landscape, but that the construction is necessary for border security.

“These improvements will help our agents detect illegal crossings, respond faster, and assist visitors in danger,” Scott said. “As we strengthen the border across the southwest, we will not leave Big Bend as an opening for cartels to exploit by shifting their routes and tactics.”

Local officials and park advocates have maintained that the 1,000-foot cliffs along the riverbank in the park are “God’s walls” — a natural deterrent for migration — and that any construction would irreparably damage the park’s unique ecology and the local tourism and outdoors industries. CBP’s Big Bend sector is geographically large yet quiet, account for just 1.3% of apprehensions along the southern border in fiscal year 2025.

U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Austin, who has said that the administration needs to make its intentions in the park clear to the public and called a 30-foot bollard fence in the park unnecessary, thanked Scott for his announcement.

“We can secure Big Bend while protecting its God-given scenery,” he wrote on social media.

Park advocates celebrated the pause but pushed for a more permanent answer.

“This temporary pause proves how much non-partisan public pressure is mounting in West Texas and across America to stop the irreversible destruction unfolding in this crown jewel national park,” said Laiken Jordahl, a national public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity. “It’s welcome news, but construction at Big Bend is likely to resume at any moment. We’re not resting until these contracts are canceled, these workers are sent packing, the waivers are rescinded and every wall plan for the greater Big Bend region is scrapped for good.”

Various groups have launched legal efforts to force CBP out of the park. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, filed a petition seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent construction in the park until the case can be adjudicated.

Gutierrez said the pause is a “good thing, for sure” but that opponents should continue to press for a full stoppage. He accused CBP of misrepresenting the activity it has already taken in the park as simple surveying.

“That’s not what has happened here,” Gutierrez said. “It has been complete clear-cutting of the countryside, of hills and mountains — Mariscal Mountains and beyond — right along the Santa Elena Canyon, destroying vegetation [and] archaeological sites without any care in the world. We need to stop this.”

Many residents on Flores island in East Nusa Tenggara province spent the day mourning victims while military teams tried to deliver food, clean water and clothing to inaccessible communities by plane.

The Saturday morning quake left widespread damage, with buildings collapsed onto parked cars, homes shattered and trees and boulders blocking roads.

“My house is just rubble now,” said Rasyid Jafar, a clothing trader in the village of Reo, the hardest-hit area in Manggarai regency. "We need food, medicine and clean water urgently.”

During Indonesia’s Independence Day ceremony in the capital, Jakarta, President Prabowo Subianto asked participants to pray for people affected by disasters in East Nusa Tenggara and other parts of the country, while leading a nationwide moment of silence honoring the nation’s independence heroes.

More than 4,500 homes were damaged when the quake struck Flores island early Saturday. Some 19,000 people were forced into temporary shelters and 213 people were injured, according to the National Disaster Management Agency or BNPB. The disaster also damaged 122 health facilities, 252 schools and 84 places of worship.

The province's governor declared a 14-day state of emergency on Sunday.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued but later lifted. Authorities have since recorded 1,576 aftershocks into Monday, though only 54 were felt by residents.

Thousands await aid amid devastation

Thousands of people on Flores camped outside collapsed homes under tarpaulin tents overnight into Monday, sleeping outside because of the danger of more aftershocks.

For many residents, the disaster revived painful memories of a powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck Flores in 1992, killing about 2,500 people.

As thousands of survivors remain in need of food, shelter and medical treatment, the government said more than 1,800 military and police personnel have been deployed across the disaster zone, supported by 10 aircraft and several vessels, to distribute more than 100 metric tons of emergency aid.

Nearly 5,400 food packages, two field hospital tents, medicines and clothing were being delivered to communities across the disaster zone, as logistical challenges slowed deliveries to some hard-hit communities, national disaster agency Deputy Chief Abdul Muhari said in a video statement.

Authorities set up two emergency field hospitals in the worst-hit town of Ruteng to treat earthquake victims after local hospitals were damaged, with two crisis management teams overseeing a health emergency operation center, Muhari said.

He also said rescue teams continued searching for victims in the affected areas, although no residents have reported any family members still missing.

Rescuers struggle to reach isolated communities

Aid workers reached tiny Palue Island, one of the areas closest to the earthquake’s epicenter, late Sunday, after a difficult sea and land journey through landslide-hit terrain, authorities said. Thousands of residents remained in urgent need of assistance.

"The roads are steep and many were blocked by landslides. It was a near-death journey,” said the deputy police chief of Sikka regency, Marselus Yugo Amboro, whose team was among the first to reach the island with emergency supplies.

He said initial assessments revealed extensive damage, with one villager killed, two seriously injured and nearly 150 homes destroyed.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.

In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries, nearly 170,000 in Aceh province alone.

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Karmini reported from Jakarta. Associated Press journalists Edna Tarigan, Dita Alangkara and Andi Jatmiko, in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this story.

The Buckeyes received 40 first-place votes and Oregon received 14 in voting by 69 media members who cover college football.

Ohio State will go into a season No. 1 for the ninth time, and first since 2015. The Buckeyes are now tied with Alabama for second-most preseason No. 1 rankings behind Oklahoma’s 10.

Oregon has its highest preseason ranking in program history after having opened No. 3 four times.

Georgia, Notre Dame and Texas round out the top five. Defending national champion Indiana starts at No. 6 and is followed by Miami, Texas A&M, Mississippi and Oklahoma.

Notre Dame received six first-place votes, Indiana got eight and Miami one.

This is the first year a conference has held down the top two spots in the preseason poll since Oklahoma and Nebraska of the Big Eight were 1-2 in 1987.

The last time the Big Ten had the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the preseason was 1961, when Iowa and Ohio State topped the poll. The Hawkeyes lost four of their last five games after a 4-0 start and finished that season unranked. The Buckeyes went 8-0-1 and ended the season No. 2 behind unbeaten Alabama.

The Big Ten has won three straight College Football Playoff championships (Michigan, Ohio State, Indiana) and will be going for an unprecedented fourth straight national title. This is the fourth consecutive year the Big Ten has had two of the top three teams in the preseason rankings.

The Southeastern Conference leads all conferences with nine teams in the preseason Top 25, marking the third straight year it has had at least that many. Five of the top 10 teams are from the SEC for the first time since 2013.

Four Big 12 teams are ranked, with conference champion Texas Tech the highest at No. 12. The Atlantic Coast Conference has three ranked teams, with the Hurricanes joined by No. 19 SMU and No. 24 Louisville. There are no Group of Six schools in the Top 25.

Top-ranked Buckeyes

The offense is loaded. Heisman Trophy finalist Julian Sayin was the most accurate passer in the nation by a wide margin last season, Jeremiah Smith leads the nation in receiving yards and receiving touchdowns over the last two years and Bo Jackson is coming off a 1,000-yard rushing season as a freshman.

There is little concern about the defense even though eight starters must be replaced for a second straight year. At least six transfers are projected to start or play major roles.

Ohio State will get tested early and often. The Buckeyes visit Texas on Sept. 12 and five of their nine conference games are against preseason ranked teams, including at Indiana and against Oregon at home.

The Buckeyes have ended a season No. 1 in the AP poll six times (1942, 1954, 1968, 2002, 2014, 2024).

Bulldogs best of the SEC

The beat goes on for Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs. They’re in the preseason top five for the ninth straight year. The two-time defending SEC champion Bulldogs are favored to play in a sixth straight conference title game and appear in the CFP for the sixth time in 10 years.

Texas, the preseason No. 1 last year, opens in the top five for the third straight year. No. 8 Texas A&M is in the preseason top 10 for the first time since it was No. 6 in 2022, the year that marked the beginning of the end for coach Jimbo Fisher.

Pete Golding’s first full season as Mississippi head coach starts with the No. 9 Rebels in the preseason top 10 for the second time in three years and third time since 1970. No. 10 Oklahoma is in the preseason top 10 for the first time since 2022, when it was in the Big 12.

What about the Hoosiers?

Indiana is the seventh returning national champion in 40 years, and second in three years, to be ranked outside the top five in the preseason (Michigan went into the 2024 season ranked No. 9 after winning the national title).

The Hoosiers became the first team in the modern era to go 16-0, and they return lots of talent and signed a top-10 transfer class. The move from Heisman Trophy winner and No. 1 NFL draft pick Fernando Mendoza to TCU transfer Josh Hoover at quarterback apparently put doubts in the minds of voters.

Poll nuggets

— Ohio State will try to become the 12th team to start and finish No. 1 since the AP preseason poll debuted in 1950. The last team to do it was Alabama in 2017.

— Notre Dame has its highest preseason ranking since it was No. 2 in 2006. The Fighting Irish, who have a Heisman candidate in quarterback CJ Carr, bring a 10-game winning streak into the season and are still smarting from being left out of the playoff.

— Lane Kiffin’s first LSU team is No. 11 after finishing 7-6 and unranked under Brian Kelly and Frank Wilson.

— Ten of the 12 CFP teams last season are ranked. The two that aren’t are James Madison and Tulane from the Group of Six.

— No. 23 Houston has its first preseason ranking in four years and third since 1991.

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Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here, visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here

The Southeastern Conference gets bragging rights with nine ranked teams, but the Big Ten isn’t far behind with eight.

Indiana finished the 2025 season at No. 1 in the rankings after a historic 16-0 run and national championship game victory. This season, Ohio State enters with the best odds (+600) to win it all. Notre Dame (+650), Texas (+650), Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

The Top 25 voters are more than 60 journalists covering college football for AP members and other news organizations. They’re urged to base their votes on head-to-head results, not reputation, preseason speculation or regional bias.

What comes next?

Now comes the good part.

The first regular-season poll will be released at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 8, after the opening two weekends of college football. After that, the AP Top 25 will drop every Sunday at 2 p.m. ET through the end of the regular season.

The final regular-season poll will be released Dec. 6 at 11 a.m. ET, right before the College Football Playoff bracket is revealed. The final AP Top 25 of the season will be released at noon on Jan. 26, after the national championship game.

The CFP bracket based on the preseason AP Top 25

Based on the AP Top 25 preseason rankings, the CFP would open like this:

— No. 9 seed Mississippi at No. 8 Texas A&M. Winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State.

— No. 12 seed Boise State at No. 5 Texas. Winner vs. No. 4 Notre Dame.

— No. 10 seed Oklahoma at No. 7 seed Miami. Winner vs. No. 2 Oregon.

— No. 11 seed Texas Tech at No. 6 Indiana. Winner vs. No. 3 Georgia.

Music City Kickoff got a good one

Last year’s Week 1 featured three marquee matchups between ranked teams as Texas traveled to Ohio State, Miami faced Notre Dame and LSU took on Clemson.

This year, the inaugural Music City Kickoff game in Nashville will feature the only ranked-on-ranked matchup in Week 1. No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 24 Louisville meet at Nissan Stadium, home of the Tennessee Titans, on Sept. 6.

The ranked matchups pick up in Week 2 with two ranked matchups featuring SEC and Big Ten schools. Texas will host Ohio State in a rematch under the lights on Saturday, Sept. 12, while Oklahoma heads to Ann Arbor to face Michigan at noon.

No. 4 Notre Dame set to embark on revenge tour

No matter how Marcus Freeman wants to downplay it, Notre Dame is still smarting about not being selected for the CFP after winning 10 straight games following season-opening losses to Miami and Texas A&M.

Quarterback C.J. Carr returns and is being touted as a Heisman Trophy candidate. He’ll be working with a deep receiving corps led by Jordan Faison and Jaden Greathouse. Former Ohio State receivers Mylan Graham and Quincy Porter also are in the mix.

All-America candidate Leonard Moore returns at defensive back while defensive end Boubacar Traore and linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa add punch to the Notre Dame’s defense.

No. 2 Oregon appears set to break through

Oregon has the look of a team that could be ready to break through and win its first national championship.

The Ducks have one of the most seasoned teams in the nation with quarterback Dante Moore among six starters back on offense. Defensive lineman A’Mauri Washington and edge Matayo Uiagalelei lead a defense that returns eight starters.

Each of the last two years the Ducks have had their season end in the CFP with a loss to a Big Ten opponent they were playing for the second time that season.

In 2024, Oregon won the Big Ten title with a 13-0 record in its first year in the conference and was the No. 1 CFP seed. The Ducks, who beat Ohio State 32-31 in the regular season, lost 41-21 to the Buckeyes.

In 2025, Oregon’s only two losses were to Indiana – 30-20 in the regular season and 56-22 in a playoff semifinal.

“I think that speaks volumes about our league, especially when you’re talking about repeat games within our league,” coach Dan Lanning said. “We have some unbelievable coaches, great teams. There’s a lot of things we studied with ourselves in this offseason.

“Sometimes the ball has to bounce the right way. Sometimes you can do something schematically. We have studied other teams that have won games in their second opportunity. We’re looking for our opportunity to be a team like that.”

No. 1 Buckeyes are loaded but face tough schedule

Ohio State starts a season No. 1 for the ninth time. The Buckeyes didn’t end there the previous eight.

They have an excruciating schedule but are built for what awaits.

Jeremiah Smith is the most productive receiver in the nation, quarterback Julian Sayin is one of the most accurate passers and the offensive line is elite. There are plenty of talented transfers waiting to emerge for a defense replacing eight starters, all of whom were drafted.

The Buckeyes visit Indiana on Oct. 17 and host Oregon on Nov. 7. Those games will go a long way in deciding which teams make the Big Ten championship game in Indianapolis, not to mention impact CFP seeding.

Missouri only team that will play 5 of the preseason top 10 teams

No. 25 Missouri has the 12th-toughest schedule in the country, according to ESPN, but the Tigers are the only team that will play five of the top 10 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll.

All five of those are bunched into the Tigers’ final seven regular-season games. They play No. 8 Texas A&M on Oct. 10, at No. 9 Mississippi on Oct. 17, No. 5 Texas on Nov. 7, at No. 3 Georgia on Nov. 14 and No. 10 Oklahoma on Nov. 28.

Oklahoma, which plays four top-10 teams, has ESPN’s second-toughest schedule behind Arkansas. No. 5 Texas’ schedule is ranked third in degree of difficulty.

On the bubble

Clemson was the first team out with 112 points, five fewer than No. 25 Missouri. Florida, Boise State, Arizona, TCU, Navy and South Carolina were the next teams out, each received double-digit points.

The bubble teams enter the season in unique position to move up quickly in the ranks. With Clemson just points away at No. 26, a Week 1 win could easily do the trick.

The bad news? Clemson heads to No. 11 LSU for its season debut on Sept. 5.

Expectations remain high for Texas – just not as high as last year

After ranking No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, the Longhorns enter the 2026 season at No. 5, behind Ohio State, Oregon, Georgia and Notre Dame.

Texas will be put to the test early, with a Week 2 rematch against Ohio State giving the Longhorns a chance to make a case for a higher ranking.

Arch Manning struggled under high expectations in his first career start last season against Ohio State, gaining momentum only in the fourth quarter of a 14-7 loss. After completing nine passes for 38 yards and an interception through the first three quarters, Manning finished the game with 17 completions for 170 yards.

A Week 2 win against the top-ranked team in the preseason poll would give the Longhorns the kind of start they desperately needed last year.

In the ACC, it’s Miami … and everyone else

Miami has a good-sized lead over the other ACC teams in the preseason poll. The Hurricanes came in at No. 7 and earned one first-place vote after a season that ended just shy of a national title.

SMU was the next-closest team at No. 19. Louisville squeaked in at No. 24.

The ACC also had three teams ranked in last year’s preseason poll. Clemson ranked No. 4 before what turned out to be a disappointing season. Miami ranked No. 10, and SMU came in at No. 16.

The ACC ended up being a weird one last year, with an unranked Duke team taking on then-No. 16 Virginia in the conference championship game. Duke delivered a 27-20 overtime win, but it wasn’t enough for the CFP committee to view them as a viable option. Miami instead earned an at-large bid, and James Madison and Tulane secured bids as two of the five highest-ranked conference champions.

Clemson left out of preseason poll for first time since 2011

Clemson is unranked in the AP preseason Top 25 for the first time since 2011.

The Tigers almost got in. They received the most voting points among teams left out. They’re five points behind No. 25 Missouri.

Clemson is coming off a 7-6 season, its worst since 2010. The offense struggled to get anything going in the ground game and was second-to-last in the ACC in third-down conversions. The defense underachieved.

Look for the offense to be much better with the return of offensive coordinator Chad Morris, who led some of the nation’s most potent offenses when he had the same job at Clemson from 2011-14. The defense should play with more confidence in Tom Allen’s second year as coordinator.

Clemson gets a measuring-stick game right away when they open at No. 11 LSU.

Five teams got first-place votes, but not No. 3 and No. 5

Of the top seven teams, five received first-place votes: Ohio State (40), Oregon (14), Notre Dame (6), Indiana (8) and Miami (1). Voters skipped over No. 3 Georgia and No. 5 Texas, which both fell into the top five but didn’t receive first-place votes.

Perhaps most notably, voters don’t see an SEC team breaking a three-year championship drought. After Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana took home the last three titles, faith in the Big Ten remains high.

Ohio State and Oregon, the top two teams in the poll, give the Big Ten its first preseason 1-2 since 1961 — a sign that voters expect the conference to bring home a fourth straight national title.

Sarkisian: Preseason polls great for conversation, and that’s about it

Texas coach Steve Sarkisian, whose team landed No. 5 in the AP Top 25 preseason poll, doesn’t put much credence in the polls. The polls do have some value, though, he said.

“I love the polls for college football fans, for the excitement, for the marquee matchups, for all those things,” he said. “But the polls internally, they just don’t matter. They’re really irrelevant. I think we’ve gotten to a point now as a team to understand that what matters is how we play each and every Saturday.”

Georgia holds steady in the top five

Georgia enters the season at No. 3, marking the eighth straight year with a top-five preseason ranking.

The Bulldogs will have plenty of familiar faces taking the field this fall, with quarterback Gunner Stockton, running back duo Nate Frazier and Chauncey Bowens and tight end Lawson Luckie bringing valuable game experience to the offense. Expectations are high for linebackers Raylen Wilson and Chris Cole, while KJ Bolden, Kyron Jones and Ellis Robinson IV will hold down the secondary.

Georgia earned the No. 3 seed and a first-round bye in the 12-team College Football Playoff after beating Alabama in the SEC Championship game. The Bulldogs went on to fall 39-34 to Ole Miss in the Sugar Bowl.

Conference breakdown

SEC (9): No. 3 Georgia, No. 5 Texas, No. 8 Texas A&M, No. 9 Mississippi, No. 10 Oklahoma, No. 11 LSU, No. 13 Alabama, No. 20 Tennessee, No. 25 Missouri

Big Ten (8): No. 1 Ohio State, No. 2 Oregon, No. 6 Indiana, No. T-14 USC, No. 16 Michigan, No. 17 Washington, No. 18 Penn State, No. 22 Iowa

Big 12 (4): No. 12 Texas Tech, No. T-14 BYU, No. 21 Utah, No. 23 Houston

ACC (3): No. 7 Miami, No. 19 SMU, No. 24 Louisville

Independent (1): No. 4 Notre Dame

No Group of 6 teams ranked

After two non-power conference teams (Tulane, James Madison) made the CFP in 2025, none cracked the preseason Top 25.

Since two were ranked in the preseason in 2022, only Tulane in 2023 and Boise State in 2025 have started a season in the Top 25.

Boise State, which has moved from the Mountain West to the new Pac-12, was the top vote-getter among Group of Six teams outside the Top 25. Nine others got at least one vote.

New coaches, same expectations

Four Top 25 teams have new coaches, and they’ve been given a short runway.

Pete Golding, who begins his first full season at No. 9 Mississippi, was able to keep key pieces of the staff and he brought back top players. He led the Rebels to the CFP semifinals after Lane Kiffin’s ugly departure, and another magical run is possible.

Speaking of Kiffin, much is expected at No. 11 LSU. The Tigers haven’t gone to the CFP since winning it all in 2019 and have lost at least four games in five of the six seasons since.

Penn State is No. 18, which seems generous given Matt Campbell will be relying on players he brought with him from Iowa State.

Morgan Scalley, entering his 19th year at No. 21 Utah, gets back QB Devon Dampier and RB Wayshawn Parker but not many other starters from an 11-2 team.

SEC has 9 ranked teams to Big Ten’s 8

Having Ohio State and Oregon enter the season Nos. 1 and 2 ahead of sixth-ranked defending conference and national champion Indiana is a flex for the Big Ten, which already is riding the momentum of winning the last three national titles.

Having five of the top 10 teams, and seven of the top 13, bolsters the SEC’s contention that it has greater depth. The SEC has nine ranked teams compared to the Big Ten’s eight.

The debate goes on over conference supremacy and will only heat up when the Big Ten and SEC square off in the first heavyweight games of the season Sept. 12. That’s when No. 10 Oklahoma visits No. 16 Michigan and No. 1 Ohio State goes to No. 5 Texas. Both are rematches of games won by the home team last year — OU 24-13 and Ohio State 14-7.

Longhorns, No. 1 in last year’s preseason poll, look to bounce back

The Longhorns entered the 2025 season at No. 1 after receiving 25 first-place votes — two more than No. 2 Penn State. But after a Week 1 loss to Ohio State, Texas found itself fighting upstream to maintain its top-ranked status. An October loss to a struggling Florida team didn’t help either, knocking Texas out of the rankings altogether.

The Longhorns, despite gutting out a few impressive wins, ultimately fell short of the 12-team College Football Playoff after Georgia handed them a third loss.

Eyes will be on quarterback Arch Manning, who the Longhorns hope makes the expected jump from year one to year two as a full-time starter. Manning, a favorite for the Heisman Trophy this year, will have to lead a team facing plenty of expectations once again.

Buckeyes are an early favorite

It’s the first time the Buckeyes have topped the list since the 2015 preseason.

Ohio State ranked No. 1 in the AP Top 25 for the entire regular season last year, only dropping after a Big Ten Championship game defeat from Indiana. With a 12-1 record, Ohio State still earned the No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff. The Buckeyes ultimately went on to drop 24-14 to eventual runners-up, Miami, in the Cotton Bowl.Gallery

This season appears promising with quarterback and receiver duo Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith returning to the offense. Veteran defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. is expected to anchor the defense. Notre Dame and Texas are tied for the second best odds at +650. Indiana (+800) and Oregon (+800) round out the top five.

How are votes counted?

There was a time when voters called, emailed and faxed their votes to the AP. Long ago, the ballots were tabulated by hand.

Now voting is done online and all the tabulation is automated.

There is a 1-25 point system, with a team voted No. 1 receiving 25 points down to 1 point for a 25th-place vote. After that, it’s simple: The poll lists the teams with the most points from 1 to 25 and others receiving votes are also noted.

Where did we leave off?

After shocking the nation with a perfect 16-0 record, Big Ten title and national championship victory, the Indiana Hoosiers were unanimously voted No. 1 in the final poll of the season.

Runners-up Miami finished right behind after falling just short of a national title. Miami’s No. 2 ranking was its highest since the 2002 season.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State rounded out the top five.

But a lot can change from one year to the next.

Eight Hoosiers ascended to the pros, including Heisman winner and first-overall pick Fernando Mendoza. Miami had nine draftees, including three first-rounders.

Ole Miss, Oregon and Ohio State have the advantage of a returning quarterback in 2026 — each in the Heisman conversation ahead of the season.

The origin story

The Associated Press Top 25 college football poll started in 1936, the brainchild of former sports editor Alan J. Gould.

The number of teams ranked, the number of voters on the panel and how the ballots are tabulated has fluctuated over the years, but no news organization has been ranking teams and naming a major college football national champion longer than the AP. It has been the Top 10, Top 20 and, since 1989, the Top 25.

The process launched by newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche is a victory for Second Amendment advocates who have long pushed for nonviolent people with felony convictions to be given a pathway to regain their legal right to own firearms.

“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right, and the federal government should not permanently deprive Americans of a constitutional right without regard to whether they pose a danger to public safety,” Blanche said in a statement. The attorney general said the new process will protect “public safety while giving deserving Americans a real path to restoration.”

It’s the latest move by President Donald Trump's administration to ease firearms restrictions. The Justice Department moved earlier this year to roll back and modify a slate of gun regulations. Separately, the department recently decided against challenging a court ruling that struck down regulations on firearm suppressors and certain guns.

Federal law has long allowed people who've had their gun rights stripped because of felony convictions to petition the government for the ability to own firearms again, but Congress since 1992 has effectively barred the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from processing applications.

The Trump administration's rule aims to circumvent that by establishing a new application system using an online portal.

The Justice Department says restoration will be granted on a case-by-case basis, weighing a person's record and reputation to determine whether they pose a likely threat to public safety. Officials say people who have been convicted of violent crimes, registered sex offenders, people living in the country illegally and others whom officials believe pose a danger to society will be denied “absent extraordinary circumstances.”

Kris Brown, the president of Brady, which advocates for stronger gun laws, said her group is still reviewing the administration’s final rule but has stressed the need for a “robust and thoughtful system that minimizes the risk to public safety."

“Yet the Trump administration has consistently shown us they have no such discretion, including by restoring gun rights to convicted domestic abusers and violent January 6 insurrectionists, and by tirelessly rolling back broad policies proven to prevent crime and gun violence,” Brown said in a statement.

Rodri was expected to undergo a medical on Tuesday as Barcelona and City exchanged documentation to finalize the agreement.

Barcelona agreed to a deal worth 76.5 million euros ($88.5 million), a person with knowledge of the transaction confirmed to the Associated Press on Sunday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because details of the transfer have not been made public.

“Very happy to arrive. There have been some very intense days, but I'm happy that everything has been resolved,” Rodri told reporters briefly. “For me it's a dream to play for Barcelona. I'm excited about being with my teammates, many of them I already know. Now it's time to get to work and give my best.”

The 30-year-old Rodri helped Spain secure its second World Cup title last month and will join international teammates Lamine Yamal, Dani Olmo, Pau Cubarsí, Gavi and Pedri at Barceclona.

Rodri won the Golden Ball as the World Cup’s best player. He had one year left on his contract at City. His deal with Barcelona reportedly will go until 2030.

Real Madrid was also reportedly interested in signing Rodri, and he had loudly praised the Barcelona rival in the past.

Hansi Flick's Barcelona, chasing a three-peat in La Liga, has already boosted its squad with England forward Anthony Gordon, who will help to make up for the departures of Robert Lewandowski and Ferran Torres, who scored the winning goal in extra time in the World Cup final against Argentina.

The club is also set to add defender João Cancelo in the next few days.

Rodri joined City from Atletico Madrid in 2019. He scored the winning goal in the Champions League final victory over Inter Milan in 2023, and won the Ballon d'Or as the world's best player the following year after being part of Spain's European Championship-winning team.

His departure further weakens City's midfield, with Bernardo Silva having left for Real Madrid this offseason.

Rodri did not play on Sunday in City’s 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in the Community Shield. He is recovering from minor back surgery he underwent after the World Cup.

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AP Sports Writers Steve Douglas and Joseph Wilson contributed to this report.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

In a meeting on Monday, council members voted 5-6 to add the measure to the November ballot.

The $1.3 billion NBA arena planned for Hemisfair relies on the Spurs, the City of San Antonio and Bexar County all chipping in.

The Spurs would pay at least $500 million, the city would pay up to $489 million and the county up to $311 million.

In a July 31 memo to her colleagues, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones called for a separate vote on the city’s share of funding, saying that “since they pay twice, City voters deserve to vote twice.”

Bexar County voters already approved the county share, funded with a tax on hotel stays and car rentals, in November 2025. The city’s proposed financing is tied to special tax capture districts and lease payments from the arena and related development and does not require a similar vote, though the city could ask voters’ opinion anyway.

Jones needed at least five of the 10 other City Council members to agree in order to order a vote; however, at least six council members have spoken against the idea.

More coverage of this story on KSAT:

• Mayor Jones lacks votes to get second Spurs arena vote onto November ballot
• Cuts, tax hikes, and ballot measures: San Antonio set for messy budget conversations
• KSAT Q&A: Mayor Jones renews call to put city’s contribution to new Spurs arena up for citywide vote
• KSAT Q&A: D7 Councilwoman Marina Alderete Gavito opposes revoting for new San Antonio Spurs arena

Here are some of her most memorable films and television shows, and where to stream them.

“A Bug’s Life” (1998)

She was already a veteran of soaps (she got her first role at age 4, playing Sarah Roberts on “One Life to Live”) and commercials when she was selected to voice Princess Dot in the Pixar movie. Co-director and writer Andrew Stanton said he wanted to include a little girl because of his newborn daughter.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Disney+.

“Remember the Titans” (2000)

Playing the football-loving, wise-beyond-her-years Sheryl Yoast was a breakthrough moment for Panettiere, who was 10 at the time of filming but playing “nine and a half, thank you very much,” as she so memorably informed Denzel Washington’s Coach Boone. It was her absolute favorite movie to film, she told ET in 2023. “What an incredible time in my life … I was surrounded by the cutest boys. Kate Bosworth was like my big sister,” she said in the interview. “If I had wished to go back to any time in my life, it would be going back to ‘Remember the Titans.’”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

“Ice Princess” (2005)

A teen sports trifle that’s now bonded in tragedy after the deaths of both Michelle Trachtenberg and Panettiere, who played Casey Carlyle’s (Trachtenberg) fellow junior ice skater Gennifer “Gen” Harwood and daughter of Kim Cattrall’s coach character. Panettiere did much of her own skating in the film.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Disney+.

“Bring It On: All or Nothing” (2006)

It might not be a particularly good movie, or her only cheerleader role of the year, but the third “Bring It On,” co-starring Solange, has become a nostalgic millennial classic. Rihanna also had a cameo as herself, as a cheerleading competition judge.

“I loved the passion that people had for ‘Bring It On.’ When fans would come up who loved that movie, they would freak out — have a physical, visceral reaction to me that I had never seen before,” Panettiere told Entertainment Weekly this year.

WHERE TO WATCH: Available to rent on various platforms.

“Heroes” (2006-2010)

“Save the cheerleader, save the world.” Panettiere was the indestructible Claire Bennet at the heart of the popular sci-fi series, the first season of which regularly drew over 14 million viewers.

“I think ‘Heroes’ is really hot because it's just a really great combination of everything that people love,” she told The Associated Press in 2008. “They love reality, they love sci-fi and then things like ‘X-Men’ where they get to, you know, dream of something bigger. And at the core of it are these human stories that people just can relate to.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

“I Love You, Beth Cooper” (2009)

Chris Columbus directed this teen rom-com about a nerd (Paul Rust) and the popular girl of his dreams. Yes, her character here was a cheerleader as well.

WHERE TO WATCH: Available to rent on various platforms.

“The Cove” (2009)

When she was 18 years old, Panettiere, who advocated for whale and dolphin safety as a spokesperson for The Whaleman Foundation and creator of the “Save the Whales, Again!” campaign, went to Taiji, Japan, to protest and disrupt the dolphin hunting with a group of activists on paddleboards. A tense encounter with the men on the boats was featured prominently in the Oscar-winning documentary “The Cove.” Weeks after the film won, she returned to Taiji to try to meet with officials about their whaling practices.

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Tubi, Fandango and Pluto TV.

“Nashville” (2012-2018)

Playing rising country superstar Juliette Barnes was perhaps her defining role, but she wasn't even originally envisioned as the series' main star. Connie Britton's Rayna was.

“Unfortunately, after the pilot, it was clear that my billing had gone way up. I went from maybe number five in terms of importance to nipping at Connie’s heels,” she wrote in her memoir. “I was deeply uncomfortable with this development.”

On Jay Shetty's podcast this year, she spoke about how closely Juliette's trials resembled her own. “I didn't know where Juliette began and Hayden ended,” she said. “I didn't even realize I was becoming her constantly, and I wasn't able to take care of myself.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

“Scream VI” (2023)

Fans immediately took to Panettiere’s horror movie loving character Kirby Reed in the otherwise much-derided “Scream 4,” which left her fate ambiguous. In the 2022 “Scream,” it was revealed that she was still alive. Panettiere played a part in advocating for her return in “Scream VI,” which became a box office hit.

“It was thrilling that people fell in love with Kirby,” Panettiere told ET in 2023. “I loved playing Kirby, so I’m glad they love her as much as I did.”

WHERE TO WATCH: Streaming on Netflix.

Lt. Benjamin Paul Flores, 47, was taken into custody by Helotes police officers just after 1 a.m. on Aug. 9 in the 18600 block of Bandera Road, a Helotes PD incident report shows.

Flores has been charged with driving while intoxicated (DWI), Bexar County court records show. The charge is considered a Class B misdemeanor.

Flores, who’s been employed with SAPD for 25 years, was also booked Aug. 9 into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center, jail records show. He was later released on a $1,000 bond the same day.

Flores has since been placed on administrative duty, the release states. At the time of his arrest, Flores was assigned to the department’s patrol division.

According to a KSAT Investigates analysis, Flores is the ninth SAPD officer arrested in 2026.

SAPD said it is conducting an administrative investigation into Flores’ arrest.

Read also:

• 1 dead, 1 injured after overnight shooting in northeast Bexar County, sheriff says

Officers responded to the crash around 11 a.m. Sunday at the intersection of Culebra Road and Village Park.

According to an SAPD preliminary report, a 29-year-old man traveling eastbound on Culebra Road in a Hyundai Sonata attempted to turn onto Village Park.

As the man attempted to make the turn, officers said a Ford F-150 and a Chevrolet Silverado were traveling westbound on Culebra Road.

At some point, the Chevrolet rear-ended the F-150, which caused the Ford to hit the sidewalk and crash into a telephone pole, SAPD said. The telephone pole was knocked down in the process.

The Silverado also struck a GMC Acadia stopped at a red light on Culebra Road, the report said. Following the collision, police said the GMC was propelled forward into the intersection and struck the Hyundai.

Meanwhile, authorities said the Silverado veered to the right and crashed into a Dodge Ram.

The Hyundai then “rotated” and crashed into a Nissan Frontier that was stopped on Village Park before it moved backwards into the Dodge Ram, the report states.

The 29-year-old man, the Ford F-150 driver and the Silverado driver were hospitalized for further treatment.

An officer at the scene Sunday said two of the drivers were in critical but non-life-threatening condition, police said. A third person sustained non-critical injuries.

Officers told KSAT that a witness reported that at least one vehicle may have been speeding. Police said there were no signs of intoxication.

It is unknown whether criminal charges will be filed. SAPD said its investigation is ongoing.

Read also:

• Man found dead after officers respond to assault call on Northeast Side, SAPD says

Officers were dispatched to a crash just before 8:45 p.m. in the 4100 block of Loop 1604, which is located near the Interstate 10 interchange.

According to an SAPD preliminary report, multiple officers found a yet-to-be identified female unresponsive on the highway.

Investigators said the female was seen walking eastbound on Loop 1604 outside of the designated sidewalk when she was struck by a Volkswagen Jetta.

The driver of the Volkswagen Jetta remained at the scene and called first responders, police said. The female was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the report.

At this time, it is unclear if the driver of the Volkswagen Jetta will face any charges connected to the crash.

SAPD said its investigation is ongoing.

The review will examine government policies and wiretap investigations in which the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration may have learned of fentanyl deliveries before they happened but stood down to avoid jeopardizing larger prosecutions.

Current and former agents said that investigative strategy — known as allowing drugs to “walk” — amounts to a gamble with public safety and may have violated Justice Department rules intended to safeguard communities from a synthetic opioid the White House last year designated as a “ weapon of mass destruction.”

The review comes less than two months after an Associated Press investigation found DEA agents repeatedly monitored — but did not seize — major fentanyl shipments in New Mexico between 2023 and 2025. It was disclosed in a news release by Justice Department Inspector General Don Berthiaume, one of his first official actions since being sworn in on Friday.

The DEA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. DEA Administrator Terry Cole requested a narrower inspector general inquiry following AP’s reporting, including a review of his agency’s handling of a whistleblower complaint brought by Agent David Howell.

Cole wrote in an earlier statement that his request for an outside inquiry “should not be interpreted as reflecting any lack of confidence in the professionalism or integrity of DEA personnel.”

Howell told AP that federal authorities “poisoned our community to make cases” in New Mexico. An internal DEA report reviewed by AP detailed how the DEA watched and declined to interdict a fentanyl delivery of 74,000 pills in a mobile home park in Albuquerque.

The fentanyl went unseized amid the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history and as DEA led a public awareness campaign — “One Pill Can Kill” — emphasizing that even a few milligrams of the substance can be lethal.

The inspector general said the review will focus on the Justice Department’s actions over the past two years. It could determine whether the DEA permitted similar drug shipments to occur in other cities.

Howell said he expects the review to show federal authorities “endangered the public through willful inaction.”

The new review comes as New Mexico authorities continue an investigation into whether DEA agents broke state law by allowing hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills to reach the streets of Albuquerque. Attorney General Raúl Torrez, a Democrat, recently threatened to sue the Justice Department after it refused to provide a list of records he requested. The DEA also has not allowed Howell to be interviewed by state authorities.

“The state is bearing the societal and financial harms of an influx of fentanyl into its communities,” Torrez wrote in a letter to federal authorities earlier this month.

Two additional DEA whistleblowers in New Mexico have come forward in recent weeks, including one who said his colleagues there failed to seize 350,000 fentanyl pills that they learned about during the very first call they intercepted in a 2024 wiretap. That shipment was part of an investigation that resulted in the largest fentanyl seizure in DEA history. Court records show agents had the opportunity to seize thousands of fentanyl pills but allowed trafficking to continue for months as they investigated.

The other whistleblower filed a complaint this month alleging his colleagues monitored — but did not arrest — a drug courier who made repeated deliveries of fentanyl from Phoenix to Albuquerque between 2022 and 2023. Agents estimated each delivery to contain between 50,000 and 100,000 fentanyl pills that went unseized.

___

Goodman reported from Miami.

No-cost flu shots will be available at four locations across San Antonio from September through October. Each event will run from 8 a.m. to noon.

The events are open to adults and children 6 months and older. Registration is required for everyone receiving a vaccination.

University Health officials said COVID-19 vaccines will not be offered at the events.

Drive-thru flu shot events:

• Saturday, Sept. 12: Commissioner Rebeca Clay-Flores’ Precinct 1 Satellite Office, 3505 Pleasanton Road

• Saturday, Sept. 19: Freeman Coliseum, 3201 East Houston Street, hosted by Commissioner Tommy Calvert

• Saturday, Oct. 3: Gustafson Stadium, 7001 Culebra Road, hosted by Commissioner Justin Rodriguez

• Saturday, Oct. 10: Dub Farris Athletic Complex, 8400 N Loop 1604 W, hosted by Commissioner Grant Moody

KSAT Community operates in partnership with University Health and Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union. Click here to read about other KSAT Community efforts. Interested in partnering with KSAT Community? Get in touch by filling out this form.

Las vacunas contra la gripe estarán disponibles sin costo en cuatro ubicaciones de San Antonio entre septiembre y octubre. Cada evento se llevará a cabo de 8 a.m. al mediodía.

Los eventos están abiertos a adultos y niños de 6 meses en adelante. Todas las personas que reciban una vacuna deben registrarse.

Funcionarios de University Health dijeron que no se ofrecerán vacunas contra el COVID-19 durante los eventos.

Eventos de vacunación contra la gripe desde el auto

• Sábado 12 de Septiembre: Oficina satélite de la comisionada Rebeca Clay-Flores, Precinto 1, 3505 Pleasanton Road.
• Sábado 19 de Septiembre: Freeman Coliseum, 3201 East Houston Street, organizado por el comisionado Tommy Calvert.
• Sábado 3 de Octubre: Gustafson Stadium, 7001 Culebra Road, organizado por el comisionado Justin Rodriguez.
• Sábado 10 de Octubre: Dub Farris Athletic Complex, 8400 N Loop 1604 W, organizado por el comisionado Grant Moody

KSAT Community opera en colaboración con University Health y Randolph-Brooks Federal Credit Union. Haga clic aquí para conocer otros esfuerzos de KSAT Community. ¿Está interesado en asociarse con KSAT Community? Comuníquese con nosotros completando este formulario.

Police said Panettiere was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. Lifesaving measures were performed but she was pronounced dead at the scene.

No cause of death has been determined and Panettiere's death remains under investigation. An autopsy found no signs of trauma and police said officers saw no signs of foul play.

The television and film performer, who would have turned 37 on Friday, had been open about her private battles and wrote at length about them in the memoir, “This Is Me,” which came out in May. She described lifelong scars from her early fame, and acknowledged being addicted to alcohol and enduring postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter, Kaya, with Ukrainian boxer Wladimir Klitschko in 2014.

“It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of our beloved Hayden,” her father, Skip Panettiere, said in a statement provided to ABC. “She was an incredible light and a force of nature who brought immeasurable love and joy to all who knew her — and to the millions who watched her onscreen.”

A publicist for Panettiere did not provide any additional details in response to inquiries from The Associated Press.

Panettiere started out as a child actor

Panettiere was one of two children born to Skip Panettiere, a former New York City fire captain, and Lesley Vogel, a former soap opera star who had been the prime force behind her early career before the two became estranged. Panettiere began acting in commercials and soap operas, including as the ever-troubled Lizzie Spaulding on “Guiding Light.” In “This Is Me,” she wrote that the traumas her character endured, from being kidnapped to killing her mother’s boyfriend, led her to associate “catastrophe with adoration.”

“Grown-ups gave me positive attention when — as an actor — I failed, got sick, screamed and cried, killed, grieved, and suffered,” she wrote. “Is it any wonder why I’ve faced so many real struggles in my life? I’ve often wondered whether — unintentionally — I’ve brought on my traumas because I’m wired to think they’re good for me.”

She had much warmer memories of her role as a cheerleader with supernatural powers in “Heroes,” which propelled her to fame in 2006. The series revolved around the mantra: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.”

“I think ‘Heroes’ is really hot because it’s just a really great combination of everything that people love — they love reality, they love sci-fi and things like ‘X-Men’ where they get to dream of something bigger,” Panettiere told the AP in 2008. “And at the core of it are these human stories that people can relate to, very rugged. And it’s just grabbed everyone in every age group.”

She went on to win three Teen Choice Awards for that role and was nominated for a Grammy for a children’s spoken word album, “A Bug’s Life: Read-Along,” also voicing a role in the Disney animated movie.

Panettiere later played a brash country upstart opposite Connie Britton on “Nashville,” which aired on ABC for four seasons before being canceled and revived on CMT. She did her own singing in the show, which scored some hits on country charts, spawned U.S. tours and earned Panettiere two supporting actress Golden Globe nominations. Eleven songs that Panettiere recorded for “Nashville” appeared on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs charts during the show’s run, including two featuring Britton.

She checked herself into rehab

Panettiere’s daughter, now 11, began living with Klitschko full-time in Ukraine when she was 2. At the time, the actor was struggling with mental health and addiction.

“I think there’s been this very common misconception that I just gave up my child,” she said in an interview with podcaster Jay Shetty in May. “That could not be farther from the truth.”

She said she was in a “horrible cycle for years of battling depression and anxiety and alcoholism and substance abuse” while “just trying to find my way back, my way out of the darkness.”

She entered rehab in 2015, while filming “Nashville.”

“I was the one who put myself in the first treatment center. I was drowning,” she said in a 2023 interview with Women’s Health magazine.

Panettiere had endured numerous family struggles, and tragedy. Her parents' marriage was strained, and eventually ended. Her younger brother, Jansen Panettiere, who was also an actor, died of a heart condition in 2023, at age 28. Years earlier, Hayden had made the painful decision to part professionally with her mother, who throughout her childhood had “defined and driven her” and watched her “struggle, learn, grow, fall apart, and triumph.”

“She and I spent so much time together, so deeply enmeshed in each other’s lives, that we started grating on each other,” Panettiere wrote in her memoir. “I hated when Mom whispered about other actors during auditions, positive that they could hear her compare them to me. I hated when Mom went to industry parties and got tipsy on the merlot she loved.”

In recent years, she had been in a tumultuous relationship with actor Brian Hickerson.

On Shetty’s podcast, Panettiere recalled how she exploded into the public eye through “Heroes,” including the first time she was tracked by the paparazzi. She described her response as “sheer terror.” In her memoir, she would remember unwanted encounters with fellow celebrities — from an Oscar-winning actor-director exposing himself to her to being forced into bed with a “famous thirtysomething British singer-songwriter.”

She had spoken positively about her experience filming “Remember the Titans,” saying she felt similar to the character she played — Sheryl Yoast, the opinionated, football-loving daughter of Will Patton’s Coach Bill Yoast. Panettiere also appeared in two of the “Scream” movies, and starred as the title character in the 2009 film “I Love You Beth Cooper.”

In her memoir, Panettiere described herself as an “optimist to the core” who refused to be defined by tragedy.

“One thing I know from my 36 years in the public eye is this: Life is a process that evolves day by day, year by year and — like it or not — you are engaged in a cycle of growth until the moment you take your last breath,” she wrote.

___

Associated Press writer Dave Collins and National Writer Hillel Italie contributed reporting.

Russia has repeatedly battered the Ukrainian power grid since its all-out invasion more than four years ago. Moscow hopes to sap Ukraine’s will to fight by denying civilians light, heating and running water during the bitter winter months.

Ukrainian officials, who say Russia is “weaponizing winter,” fear Moscow will pursue its campaign through the coming winter, too.

Russian drones and missiles struck facilities in several regions of the country, with one asset hit multiple times during the week, Naftogaz said, reporting serious damage to equipment and production capacity. No employees were hurt in the attacks, the company said.

DTEK Group, a coal mining and power production company which says it is the largest private investor in Ukraine’s energy sector, also said a Russian attack started a fire at one of its mines, killing a 52-year-old man.

With troops largely bogged down by drones and robots along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line, both Russia and Ukraine are expanding their aerial campaigns and devising new long-range weapons.

Ukrainian long-range attacks on Russia killed seven people, while five civilians died in Ukraine after strikes by Moscow’s forces, officials said Monday as they collated overnight attacks.

With the Russian capital now within range of Ukrainian drones that regularly attack the region, organizers canceled a large military music festival due to be held on central Moscow’s Red Square from Friday.

The organizers of the Spasskaya Tower International Military Music Festival said on social media Monday that the event was postponed until next year due to reasons beyond their control.

In May, authorities significantly scaled back Russia's annual Victory Day celebrations on Red Square for the first time in nearly two decades. Officials put the move down to the “current operational situation” but did not elaborate.

Ukraine depended heavily on foreign military aid after Russia’s full-scale invasion of February 2022 but has gradually increased its domestically produced firepower, firing a salvo of more than 800 long-range drones at Russia on Sunday.

Ukraine also has successfully targeted depots owned by Wildberries, Russia’s main online retailer, as far as 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) from Ukraine’s border.

Russian forces have increasingly hit apartment blocks, ports, schools and hospitals, among other urban targets, killing close to 17,000 civilians, according to the United Nations. The death toll of 437 Ukrainian civilians in July was 70% higher than the same month in 2025, it said last week, as Russia's barrages intensified.

Russia has exploited Ukraine’s severe shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, which are the only way of countering ballistic missiles.

But Kyiv is swiftly innovating, with Ukraine now developing its own ballistic missile to hit back at Russia and working with European countries on developing more anti-ballistic air defenses.

___

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

The verdict against Lev Shlosberg, a senior member of the Yabloko party, was another step by the Kremlin to stifle dissent since Russia invaded its neighbor in February 2022. Yabloko is the only official political party overtly opposing the war.

In a separate ruling Monday, Russia’s Supreme Court upheld its earlier decision to bar Yabloko from the ballot in the Sept. 18-20 parliamentary vote, denying an appeal by the party.

The moves against Shlosberg and Yabloko highlight the Kremlin’s intolerance toward any criticism of the war, now in its fifth year.

It was Shlosberg's second trial in 2 years

Shlosberg, 63, is Yabloko's deputy chairman and served in the regional legislature of Pskov from 2016-21. He stood trial in the city of Pskov, some 600 kilometers (370 miles) northwest of Moscow, on charges of "discrediting” and spreading “false information” about the Russian military.

The charges stemmed from a debate in which he called for ending the war and from posting on his Telegram channel a British tabloid front page featuring an image of a bloodied woman next to one of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the headline: "Her blood ... his hands.” Shlosberg has rejected the charges as unfounded.

It was the second trial for Shlosberg in the last two years. He has also been designated a “foreign agent,” a label that carries strong pejorative connotations in Russia and brings additional government scrutiny. He was convicted of violating the foreign agent regulations.

In December 2025, he was placed in pretrial detention on the new charges and has been behind bars ever since. He is one of several prominent Yabloko members in recent years to be jailed or designated a “foreign agent” as Kremlin pressure on the party has mounted.

Yabloko called the sentence ‘barbaric’

In his final statement to the court Friday, Shlosberg said that for 30 years, Russia has traveled “a path from hopes for freedom to the almost complete destruction of human and civil rights and freedoms.”

He said the war in Ukraine has “changed the lives of every Russian citizen without exception,” and predicted that once its true death toll becomes known, “the entire country will shudder.”

Yabloko said Shlosberg received a “barbaric sentence” for “love of the Motherland and calls for a ceasefire.” In a statement on Telegram, the party said Shlosberg will appeal.

Amnesty International denounced the verdict against Shlosberg.

“His arbitrary prosecution and sentencing are blatant reprisals for exercising his right to freedom of expression to call for peace,” said Marie Struthers, the group's Eastern Europe and Central Asia director.

“The Russian authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Lev Shlosberg and quash his conviction," her statement added. “They must repeal legislation criminalizing peaceful anti-war expression, end the persecution of Yabloko members and supporters, and respect the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and political participation for all Russians.”

Supreme Court upholds removing Yabloko from the ballot

In Moscow, the Supreme Court upheld its ruling of a week ago to remove Yabloko from the ballot in the election for the State Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, denying an appeal by the party.

The Central Election Commission in July had allowed Yabloko on the ballot along with 10 other parties. Young social media users and many Russian opposition figures in exile have since come out in support of Yabloko, urging voters to back the party, once a leading liberal voice in parliament that later lost its bloc of seats as the Kremlin tightened its grip on politics.

In recent years, Yabloko was the only registered opposition party that opposed Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Its campaign slogans for this year’s election included, “For a ceasefire agreement, diplomacy and peace!” “Our goal is to prevent nuclear war!” and “For a Russia free from fear and political repression!”

Several Kremlin parties publicly assailed Yabloko for its anti-war stance after it got a slot on the ballot. The Motherland Party filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, demanding its removal from the ballot, accusing Yabloko of copyright infringement and exceeding campaign spending limits. The party also viewed Yabloko’s stance on Ukraine as unlawful and tantamount to calling for the violation of Russia’s territorial integrity.

Yabloko rejected these accusations, but the Supreme Court sided with the Motherland Party.

As the court met Monday on Yabloko's appeal, the party's supporters gathered outside the courthouse and Russian media reported that several dozen people were detained.

Liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky, who co-founded Yabloko in the 1990s and chairs its political committee, deplored the court's ruling in an online statement. It marked “a serious, deepening crisis in the Russian political system and a lack of understanding of a desired future,” he said.

“People begin to feel this more acutely, regardless of their political views and positions," he said, adding that Yabloko's campaign “for peace and freedom” hit this particular “sore point.”

Yabloko chairman Nikolai Rybakov told reporters after the ruling that the party will continue its fight by lodging a complaint to the Presidium of the Supreme Court and possibly going to the Constitutional Court.

“We achieved the main thing: The whole world knows how many people in Russia want peace, want to live normally and to raise children under a peaceful sky in their country,” Rybakov said.

Regarding the prison term handed to Shlosberg, Rybakov said that “our feelings are with Lev and other political prisoners who have fought and are fighting for peace, for people to not die.”

Officers responded around 11:18 a.m. on Interstate 35 southbound near the West César E Chávez Boulevard exit.

Upon arrival, the officers found the man, who has yet to be identified, injured after the crash.

He was later pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

After further investigation, officers learned that the man was traveling southbound when he attempted to exit on West César E Chávez Blvd.

SAPD said the man failed to remain in his lane and struck a concrete barrier, which caused him to crash.

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Girl Gym is a place for the ladies to workout in a safe, supportive environment. We give a mini workout, perfect for getting into that back-to-school routine.

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Have you been doing all the right things but the scale isn’t moving? The issue could be something called “metabolic friction.” We chat with a doctor from My Optimal body who specializes in breaking through this barrier & help you drop the pounds.

These desperate maneuvers — some of which have not come to fruition — underscore how inflation, a slower economy and moves by state lawmakers have put Texas’ biggest cities in a tightening financial noose that will take big moves to get out of.

“This is going to be our new normal going forward,” Dallas City Manager Kimberly Bizor Tolbert said Tuesday during a briefing on the city’s upcoming budget.

In Dallas, the budget gap is $51 million. In Fort Worth, it’s $94 million. In San Antonio, the city faces a $158 million deficit over the next two years. Austin faces a structural deficit that could grow past $100 million by the start of the next decade.

In Dallas, officials plan to lay off more than 100 employees and cut back on library hours. In Fort Worth, budget writers want to eliminate vacant positions and slash pay increases for civilian employees. Officials in San Antonio and Austin plan to increase property taxes while cutting services or finding ways to deliver them at a lower cost.

Despite those moves, it’s likely cities are stuck in a bind, said John Diamond, senior director of the Center for Public Finance at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. It’s politically tricky to make deep spending cuts, he said. At the same time, broader headwinds putting pressure on city budgets like inflation and a slower economy likely won’t let up in the near future.

“I just don’t see an out,” Diamond said. “I keep looking for what would make me believe that the fiscal health of the cities will get any better anytime soon, and honestly, I see no reason to believe that.”

Cities likely won’t get any help from the Texas Legislature to combat their financial woes when lawmakers convene in January. GOP legislators have already placed strict revenue limits on cities as part of an ongoing campaign to rein in the state’s high property taxes.

Gov. Greg Abbott wants state lawmakers next year to further limit city budgets and make it harder for cities to raise property taxes without asking voters.

“You have to live on a budget, and if that’s not good enough, you have to make cuts,” said state Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate Local Government Committee and has pushed many of the Legislature’s tax-cut proposals.

Some argue that’s not the right path given cities also face pressure to provide services and maintain infrastructure as the state grows.

“Local governments are closest to the people, and we’ve completely hamstrung them,” said state Sen. Molly Cook, a Houston Democrat who also serves on the chamber’s Local Government committee. “The statewide preemptions and mandates on our cities are one of the most un-Texan things this Legislature continues to peddle.”

Cities need to start looking at creative ways to keep the revenue they give away through tax incentive programs and make daring decisions to grow their tax base by building more housing, experts say.

Slowing revenue

Several factors have pinched off revenue from local budgets, city budget writers and observers have said.

Cities’ sales tax revenue has taken a hit amid a slower economy. What’s more is higher housing, food and healthcare costs mean Texans are spending more on expenses that don’t generate much if any sales tax revenue, Diamond said.

Property values, too, have slowed. In the case of San Antonio and Fort Worth, values have actually fallen, in part because local appraisal districts have changed how they conduct appraisals, budget officials have said. San Antonio’s property values have fallen for three straight years. Fort Worth’s budget hole grew more than expected, budget officials there said, because more homeowners protested their home values.

In a political environment where tax hikes have faced intense scrutiny, some cities are treading lightly while others are considering increases. State law limits how much more in property tax revenue cities and counties can collect each year without asking voters to 3.5% — and localities have partially blamed that limit for their budget crunches.

Bettencourt, who authored the limit, dismissed that criticism.

“If they have a project and they need voter approval, they can take it to the voters and ask,” Bettencourt said. “They’re not doing it.”

Austin officials raised their tax rate to the maximum allowed under state law without going to voters, nearly a year after city voters rejected a tax increase at the polls. That increase will help Austin absorb cost increases and avoid a structural budget shortfall that officials had projected could grow past $122 million early next decade.

For the owner of an average Austin home, that means a $195 increase on their annual tax bill, a 7.4% bump. With additional fee increases, the typical Austin homeowner’s annual tab to the city will grow by $285 under the upcoming budget.

Austin Mayor Kirk Watson and Council Member Marc Duchen voted against the budget Wednesday on those grounds.

“I don’t feel like the budget takes into account the struggles of so much of our community when it comes to being able to afford to live here,” Watson said in a Thursday morning newsletter.

In San Antonio, budget officials have considered raising the city’s property tax rate for the first time in more than three decades — using wiggle room state law grants them to raise taxes a certain amount without asking voters. For the owner of an average San Antonio home, that would mean an annual increase of about $2.95 a month, City Manager Erik Walsh said in an interview. At the same time, the city’s eying some $90 million in cuts.

“We need to reduce our expense load, and we need to increase our revenue because we’re not structurally balanced right now,” Walsh said.

Fort Worth officials have also proposed raising the city’s property tax rate, paired with spending cuts, to help cover a $94.4 million budget gap. That bump is necessary to avoid deeper cuts that would force the closures of libraries and community centers, City Manager Jay Chapa told City Council members during a budget briefing Tuesday.

The typical Fort Worth homeowner would save about $17 on their annual tax bill under the proposed rate, according to a city presentation, owing to lower property values. But those savings would get washed away by higher city fees on services like water and solid waste.

Dallas officials, meanwhile, have eyed a slight tax cut that would net the typical homeowner about $61 in annual savings.

Some council members don’t think that’s responsible.

“We have to stop putting ourselves in this position for nominal cuts to save somebody a couple of bucks annually,” Dallas City Council Member Adam Bazaldua said. “For us to be put into a position where we have to make service cuts in order to balance our budget is not a place of good governance.”

Rising costs here, cost-cutting there

As city revenue gets squeezed and pressure mounts to deliver tax relief, cities face rising costs. In many major Texas cities, police officers, firefighters and civilian employees are slated to get pay bumps while their health care costs rise.

Public safety is a major driver of cities’ rising budgets. Spending on police and fire protection typically makes up the bulk of a city’s budget, and city officials are often under pressure from the public to hire more cops and firefighters.

In Dallas, officials want to hire 700 new officers over the next two years. At the same time, overtime costs for officers and firefighters have grown.

Some City Council members argued that the approach shouldn’t come at the expense of other services. A number of other city services including parks, libraries and housing are taking a hit in the upcoming budget, they noted.

“Dallas voters overwhelmingly support public safety,” Dallas City Council Member Jaime Resendez said. “But our residents also expect libraries, parks, housing and community empowerment programs, along with other neighborhood services.”

Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin are looking at eliminating vacant positions to save money among other cutting efforts.

Given San Antonio’s deficit, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones wants city voters to have a direct say in whether the city should put some $489 million tax dollars toward a downtown arena for the San Antonio Spurs.

The San Antonio City Council will vote Monday on whether to stick the mayor’s proposal on the November ballot. In a statement, Jones couched the push as a way to relieve residents’ “unease about our financial picture.”

The city’s financial contribution to the Spurs arena wouldn’t come out of San Antonio’s operating budget or be paid by residential property taxes, Walsh said in a Friday memo to Jones and City Council members. The city plans to help finance the project with $489 million in revenue bonds, which would be repaid with revenue generated by economic activity at the arena and surrounding development, Walsh said.

While those efforts can make bigger dents in their budgets, cities are also hoping enough smaller, more creative cuts can add up.

In Dallas, Mayor Eric Johnson has proposed leasing space in city libraries to coffee shops and cafes, as Austin and Cedar Hill do, and charging non-Dallas residents more to get into the Dallas Zoo and Dallas Arboretum, which are supported by Dallas taxpayers.

“This is fundamentally unfair to our residents,” Johnson wrote in a July memo. “Correcting this imbalance is necessary to save money and stop burdening our taxpayers with the costs of serving the entire region.”

What should cities do?

To shore up their budgets, cities need to adopt different strategies, said Diamond.

Cities might consider contracting out more services so they can save money on employee benefits or rethink how much they give away in property tax exemptions to lure companies or spur development, he said.

Dallas exempts some $75.1 billion in property from paying taxes, city budget officials said Tuesday — up from $41.6 billion from around the start of the decade. That translates to about $524.1 million in revenue the city will forego in its upcoming budget.

State lawmakers could also help cities by getting rid of certain sales tax exemptions, Diamond said, which would boost sales tax revenue for the state and localities alike.

In the meantime, cities need to keep a tighter leash on how quickly their spending grows, he said.

“They’re going to have to be really choosy about where they spend their money,” Diamond said.

Some officials and observers have floated the idea that cities need to allow denser kinds of housing to grow their tax base.

Nearly every Texas city’s tax base is heavily reliant on detached single-family homes on relatively large lots. But those homes often cost more to provide services to than they generate.

Denser kinds of homes like townhomes, duplexes, fourplexes and smaller apartment buildings — often referred to as “missing middle” housing — generate more revenue per acre than traditional single-family homes. But cities largely make those kinds of homes difficult to build.

Allowing denser kinds of homes would rein in the high cost of housing while also firming up local budgets, said Tushar Kansal, a senior officer for the Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing policy initiative. Doing so also broadens the tax base and spreads the tax burden across more households, so each household has to shoulder less of the cost of government, Kansal said.

“Making it easier to build housing in already developed areas is good for people’s affordability, it’s good for families’ quality of life, and it’s good for taxpayers and local budgets,” Kansal said.

More households also means more sales tax revenue, added Bettencourt, who shepherded a series of new state laws last year aimed at easing the state’s housing crunch.

Any move to allow missing middle housing tends to generate considerable “not-in-my-backyard” pushback from existing homeowners that can discourage city officials from pursuing such moves.

Still, city officials should keep in mind that allowing new development means new tax revenue, Dallas City Council Member Chad West said during Tuesday’s council briefing.

“We don’t always have that conversation,” West said.

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

The number of people worth at least $100 million whom the Republican president has appointed to his administration is more than four times the combined total under the three previous presidents, according to a report from the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

It’s the numbers for the Trump administration, in the context of previous administrations, that stand out in Public Citizen’s report, published on Monday. In all, 57 Trump officials are worth at least $100 million, including 17 ambassadors and the remaining 40 in senior posts across the executive branch.

Look no further than Trump's Cabinet. Eight of its 23 members fit the category, notably Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, both billionaires.

The president, himself a billionaire, has described his inclination toward appointing the ultrawealthy as deference to financial success. And yet, Trump, who owes his White House comeback to support from middle-income, working Americans drawn to his pledge to lower everyday costs, now faces a midterm election electorate decidedly less keen on his handling of the economy.

Presidents have long sought counsel from the nation’s wealthiest people and tapped some for high-profile administrative leadership roles. Likewise, presidents routinely reward wealthy and influential supporters with ambassadorships.

Among the most notable examples is Andrew Mellon, the aluminum, oil and banking tycoon who was among the handful of the nation’s wealthiest people in the 1920s and served as treasury secretary for three presidents.

The Trump officials worth at least $100 million include Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who are also billionaires, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and special envoy Steve Witkoff, both worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

By comparison, Republican George W. Bush’s administration and Democrat Joe Biden’s each included five members worth $100 million or more. Democrat Barack Obama’s included three, the report states.

A government populated by so many of the economic elite presents potential problems, the report's authors said.

"When the people holding the reins of government are drawn overwhelmingly from the ranks of the ultra-rich, it leads to misplaced incentives and corruption, and begs the question, ‘Whose interests they are truly serving?” said Lisa Gilbert, Public Citizen’s co-president.

The list does not include Trump, whose net worth Forbes estimates at more than $6 billion. Nor does it include space and social media giant Elon Musk, who advised Trump last year on an effort to reduce the federal government's size, scope and workforce and is the world's wealthiest person, with a net worth Forbes estimates at about $860 billion.

Trump's views are well established: Financial success is evidence of executive mastery and negotiating strength.

“They have great competence, those people. Incredible competence. Some of the smartest business leaders,” Trump said last year in explaining why he put considerable weight on advice from business executives.

He has also pointed to investments by wealthy people as a signal of future economic growth. To encourage billionaires to deliver, Trump, in his first year back in the White House, pursued policies on artificial intelligence and financial regulation that could benefit wealthy people, along with tax cuts and reduced regulatory burdens for large-scale investments.

Still, last month, only 32% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, down from 40% at the beginning of his second term and as his Republican Party faces headwinds in its attempt to hold both majorities in Congress in November.

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This story has been corrected to show Lutnick is commerce secretary, not treasury secretary.

Marsh died Friday in Connecticut, his friend Jeffrey St. Clair, a co-editor of the online magazine Counterpunch, told The Associated Press. St. Clair said Marsh had been suffering from a degenerative brain disease for several years. Jim Rotolo, the SiriusXM radio host, announced Marsh’s death on his social media accounts.

Springsteen paid tribute to Marsh in an Instagram post, writing that the loss had left the band “heartbroken.”

“My great friend Dave, with his straight out of Detroit attitude, was a true Rock ‘n’ Roll lifer. He was soulful, intelligent, heartfelt, opinionated, bruising and often fantastically argumentative,” Springsteen wrote. “He deeply believed in what I was trying to accomplish and his lifetime of support meant the world to me.”

Steven Van Zandt also wrote a remembrance on Instagram, writing “he was fearless, relentless, arrogant, everything you'd want in a RocknRoll troublemaker. And by the way, a tremendous writer.”

Marsh was an early champion of Springsteen, writing about him for Creem magazine and penning his first Rolling Stone cover story in 1978. In 1979 his biography “Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story” was released and became a best seller. He followed it in 1986 with “Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s.” Legend has it that he was the one responsible for getting Jon Landau, Springsteen's longtime manager and record producer, to his first Springsteen concert.

Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1950, Marsh dropped out of Detroit’s Wayne State University in 1969 to write for the new rock magazine “Creem,” where Lester Bangs was among his friends and mentors. Springsteen wasn’t Marsh’s only subject, but he was always close by. In 1979, he married Barbara Carr, who would go on to be Springsteen’s co-manager alongside Landau for decades. The rocker even attended their wedding.

He and Carr also devoted much effort to The Kristen Ann Carr Fund, a charity that they started named after their daughter who died from sarcoma at age 21 in 1993. Later that year, Springsteen hosted a benefit concert at Madison Square Garden, where they raised $1.5 million.

Marsh also wrote “The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made,” a biography of The Who, and a book about The Kingsmen hit “Louie Louie.” In recent years he was a frequent co-host and guest on the E Street Nation SiriusXM channel.

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National Writer Hillel Italie contributed from New York.

Trump was visiting the Nassau County police academy in suburban Long Island, where he was expected to promote new FBI crime statistics being released Friday showing a decrease in violent crime for 2025. But despite the setting and an array of uniformed local police officers behind him on stage, the event was overwhelmingly a political one, with Trump lashing Democrats and promoting his record and his party's candidates.

Trump's visit aimed at boosting Republicans in closely contested races across his home state, but just how much his presence will help is in question as he faces lagging approval ratings and a deeply unpopular war in Iran with no end in sight.

Trump briefly touched on the new crime statistics, but before long he was returning to familiar attacking lines, calling his opponents “Radical left Democrats” and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, “Sleepy Joe."

“We call them Dumb-ocrats now because their policies are so dumb. Fighting to defund the police. Does that play well in this room?” Trump said at one point, turning around to look at the officers behind him.

Trump slams Democrats and promotes policies on crime, tariffs and more

He criticized the state’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and insulted the state’s Attorney General, Letitia James, as “a real slob” and “a disgrace.”

James successfully sued the president and his companies for financial fraud. The Justice Department last year secured a mortgage fraud indictment against James, but the case was dismissed after a judge concluded that the prosecutor who charged her and another Trump adversary, former FBI Director James Comey, was illegally appointed.

He touted his deployment of the National Guard to cities around the U.S., including in the nation's capital. Trump repeatedly said that “young, beautiful girls in the White House" have thanked him for making Washington safer. It was not clear who he was referring to, but he said, “These young, these gorgeous, beautiful girls are — they want to be safe.”

“Two years ago, we were in a hellhole, and now we have one of the safest cities,” he said.

The new FBI statistics released Friday showed the homicide rate in the United States dropped to the lowest it’s been in 75 years. The report on 2025 crime statistics also showed that overall violent crime dropped 9.3% last year. Experts note that national violent crime rates have been declining since 2022, and pinpointing an exact reason is difficult.

Trump also promoted his tariff policies, along with his tax cuts and spending law passed last year and suggested that the tax breaks on overtime would be popular with police officers. Many of his lines, especially the political attacks, didn’t get as much of a reaction from the uniformed officers as it did from the crowd of regular Trump supporters in the audience, who enthusiastically cheered and booed on cue.

To the side of the stage during his remarks were the new U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel, who each spoke to warm up the crowd before the president. Their appearance at an event that in part was designed to help Republican candidates broke longstanding norms in which the nation’s law enforcement generally tried to steer clear of participating in overtly political events.

Also seated among the guests of honor was actor Kelsey Grammer.

Trump narrowly won Nassau County in 2024, flipping the county in the largely Democratic state to Republicans for the first time in more than two decades.

It's home to one of the largest police forces in the nation and two Democratic House seats that Republicans now see as winnable this fall, and it's home turf for Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Trump-endorsed Republican challenging Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Crime becoming a theme in New York races

It's the second time this year Trump has visited New York in support of Blakeman and other Republicans. He stopped by the Hudson Valley area in May for a speech in which he said Blakeman would curb “out of control” crime.

Crime has emerged as a significant issue in the governor's race, with both candidates claiming to have the better track record of making New Yorkers safe. Hochul visited a different Long Island police department in July to announce a statewide investment in policing technology.

Blakeman, who briefly took the stage during Trump's remarks, said he was honored Trump was visiting.

In a Fox Business interview on Thursday, Blakeman downplayed concerns that Trump's visit would be unpopular with voters in New York City.

“When the most powerful person in the world comes to visit you and shows that you have a relationship together, I think that’s a very good thing,” Blakeman said, adding that even voters who disagree with Trump might appreciate a governor with a direct line to the president.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the governor “has invested billions in public safety to protect New Yorkers — ‘MAGA all the way’ Bruce Blakeman is bringing Donald Trump to tour the county where he let violent crime spike to decade highs and Trump’s unaccountable ICE agents abuse their power.”

For GOP, safety is seen as a winning issue

Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist, said Trump's visit stands to boost Blakeman along with Republican challengers looking to unseat a pair of Democratic incumbents in Nassau County districts. Michael LiPetri Jr. is challenging Rep. Tom Suozzi in New York's 3rd Congressional District, while Jeanine Driscoll is opposing Rep. Laura Gillen in the 4th Congressional District.

The focus on crime is seen as a cornerstone issue for Republicans that appeals to Trump's base along with suburban swing voters, Gorman said.

“On the strategic level, crime is an issue that Republicans feel comfortable going on offense with, where the country kind of broadly agrees with them,” he said.

Trump is touting the issue as he faces low approval ratings on a number of other issues, including the economy and the Iran war. An AP-NORC poll from August 2025 found that Trump’s handling of crime was among his strongest issues, though his approval on the issue had fallen by 10 points by December 2025.

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This story was first published on Aug. 14, 2026. It was published again on Aug. 17, 2026, to correct the name of the lawmaker who represents New York’s 4th Congressional District to Rep. Laura Gillen, not Rep. Lauren Gillen.

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Price reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

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The band, which was originally set to play two nights this week at Madison Square Garden, added a third show at the Garden last month due to popular demand. The overwhelming feedback to the New York City shows has led to Monday’s announcement of the Jonas Brothers’ “Burning Up Tour All Over Again.”

The 45-city North American tour begins Sept. 25 at the TD Garden in Boston, MA, a news release said. The tour will make a stop at the Frost Bank Center on Saturday, Nov. 14.

The brothers’ San Antonio performance will be the third in the state following concerts in Dallas (Tuesday, Nov. 10 at American Airlines Center) and Austin (Friday, Nov. 13 at Moody Center).

“Our last tour reminded us just how much this music means to us and to the fans who’ve been with us from the start,” the Jonas Brothers said in a news release. “The response was so overwhelming announcing the MSG shows that we knew we couldn’t stop at New York. We’re taking The Burning Up Tour All Over Again on the road so we can relive it with all of you, city by city. We can’t wait to run it back with all of you.”

General tickets will hit the market at 10 a.m. Friday on the Frost Bank Center’s website and Ticketmaster.com. According to promoter Live Nation, presale begins at 10 a.m. Thursday.

More recent Things To Do coverage on KSAT:

• Robert Earl Keen brings Fan Appreciation Day back to Floore’s Country Store in Helotes
• Free admission opportunities available at downtown Briscoe Western Art Museum

A spokesperson for Burnham declined to comment, saying it was policy not to discuss “national security matters.”

Politico cited four unnamed officials in first reporting that Burnham thought he was messaging with Susie Wiles before he became suspicious and cut off communications.

The White House said the incident had nothing to do with Wiles’ devices being hacked.

Last year, the U.S. government investigated a series of messages that elected officials, business executives and other prominent figures in the U.S. received messages from someone posing as Wiles.

Soon after those incidents, the State Department warned U.S. diplomats of attempts to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and possibly other officials using artificial intelligence. The warning followed the discovery that an impostor posing as Rubio had attempted to reach out to at least three foreign ministers, a U.S. senator and a governor.

The FBI had warned of “malicious actors” misusing AI to impersonate senior U.S. government officials.

Burnham, who became prime minister less than a month ago, has tried to forge good ties with the White House. Trump initially warmed to Burnham's predecessor, Keir Starmer, before souring on him.

Ukraine's drones have pummeled the giant depots belonging to Wildberries, Russia’s biggest online retailer, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise and bringing the war home to the broad public.

The attacks on about 20 Wildberries facilities have underlined Kyiv’s ability to strike far and wide inside Russia and posed a new challenge to President Vladimir Putin nearly 4½ years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

They have badly shaken the empire built by Tatyana Kim, the country’s richest female entrepreneur, whose fortune has been estimated at $8.1 billion.

Hundreds of thousands of individual sellers have lost their merchandise, sending shock waves across Russia’s economy. Wildberries has drawn massive loans from VTB and other banks as it expanded and likely will have trouble repaying them, putting more pressure on the financial system.

An online giant began in a Moscow apartment

Kim, 50, was born in Grozny, the capital of the province of Chechnya, to an ethnic Korean family of an engineer and a teacher. She launched Wildberries in 2004 from her Moscow apartment soon after giving birth to her first child while working as an English teacher.

“The idea was born from my own needs, and turned out to be needed by hundreds of thousands,” said Kim, now a mother of seven. “If a product or service makes your own life easier, you’re on the right track.”

Wildberries initially sold clothing before expanding to appliances, household items, cosmetics, books and more. The platform with its distinct purple logo has become an undisputed leader in e-commerce, accounting for about half of all online orders in Russia. Businesses big and small use it to store, ship and deliver merchandise across the country's 11 time zones.

An estimated 500,000 to 800,000 sellers use Wildberries, often described as Russia's Amazon. After Western brands fled following the war in Ukraine, online retailers filled the void with merchandise from China, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere.

The company also acquired a bank, expanded to tourism and even considered buying an airline.

In 2024, Kim divorced her husband, Vladislav Bakalchuk, triggering a fight for control of the company. Bakalchuk sought the support of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov and his feared paramilitary forces but eventually lost the battle, which peaked in a shootout at a business center near the Kremlin that left two people dead and several wounded.

Wildberries depots are easy targets

Unlike smaller competitors Ozon and Yandex Market, the company has prided itself on relying on about two dozen mammoth warehouses as the core of its vast logistical network, stockpiling the goods before shipping to about 100,000 storefront distribution points.

As Ukraine embarked on a strategy of long-range drone attacks deep inside Russia, it has expanded from striking military bases, oil refineries and other infrastructure to Wildberries warehouses, which provided particularly soft targets.

Since the first attack July 18 in Elektrostal, just east of Moscow, and in the southwestern Tambov region, Wildberries depots burned one after another in massive fires that flooded social media.

The depots, some as big as 300,000 square meters (about 3.2 million square feet) were unprotected. It took three days to extinguish the fire in Elektrostal, a key Moscow region hub.

On Sunday, Ukraine set ablaze another such hub in Podolsk, also near the capital.

Seven of Wildberries' 10 largest logistics centers have been knocked out of operation, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said. Wildberries did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“These are not military and high-value political targets, therefore they’re not especially secured, they’re not really built to be able to shrug off drone strikes,” said podcaster Mark Galeotti, a Russia expert who heads the Mayak Intelligence consultancy.

The strikes have stretched from the European part of Russia to Yekaterinburg, over 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) from Ukraine's border.

There's scarce public data, but some estimates indicate up to 20% of the company's total warehouse space has been destroyed, with assessments of losses running as high as $6 billion.

Kim said Wildberries’ sites have been “reinforced and strengthened” defensively, but the attacks continued. Some warehouses suffered only minor damage, and Ukraine tried to hit them again.

Wildberries said it's rearranging supply chains to create “partner hubs” for storing merchandise — a challenging process, given its dependence on big depots.

Attacks cause a ripple effect

Ukrainian officials have said Wildberries sells gear and technical components, including drones, to the military. Moscow denied it, but such dual-use items as drone components, flak jackets or thermal weapon sights remain available on the platform.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the attacks were designed to disrupt military supplies, breed popular discontent and cause a domino effect in the Russian economy by putting stress on major banks, including VTB and Sberbank, that made massive loans to Wildberries.

Wildberries’ debts were estimated at the equivalent of about $15 billion at the end of 2025.

Russia's small and medium businesses already have been hit hard by tax increases, regulatory hurdles and, most recently, a fuel crisis from attacks on oil refineries.

Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro-Advisory Ltd. Consultancy, said Monday the attacks have exacerbated Russia's business environment and are an attempt by Kyiv “to undermine public confidence.”

“There is a segment of the manufacturing sectors in Russia and elsewhere that are definitely suffering significantly from that,” he said.

Wildberries had recently changed its seller policy, exempting it from liability for stock damaged by a “force majeure” that includes drone attacks.

Kim pledged to support sellers with discounts on storage, free transfer of goods to other sites, discounted loans and other measures. Wildberries also issued some reimbursements that covered only a fraction of the losses.

Russia’s Central Bank has asked lenders to restructure loans to small and medium businesses that lost merchandise.

Meanwhile, many owners of Wildberries pickup points face lost revenue amid the plunging deliveries. Some vented frustrations on social media about going out of business.

The lost goods mean tens of thousands of small businesses can't continue to operate, service their loans or pay taxes. Many are pleading for government support.

Galeotti said the strikes reflected Kyiv's effort to bring the war home to Russia.

“It’s not just about seeing great clouds of black smoke over your cities because of some oil refinery on the outskirts being hit," he said. "You might be a small business whose inventory has just gone up in smoke in one of the Wildberries’ warehouses. Or else you just simply might be an ordinary consumer who just suddenly is no longer going to get the goods that you plan to buy.”

Some analysts warn the attacks could fuel stronger anti-Ukrainian and anti-Western fervor.

The Wildberries attacks have played into the hands of Russian hawks who urge escalating the war, said pro-Kremlin political expert Sergei Markov.

“It strengthens the view that it’s necessary to hit Europe,” he said. “And better sooner than later.”

Former President Dmitry Medvedev sought to stir up anger at Ukraine for trying to destroy an essential daily routine for millions.

“Our enemy is fighting not the Russian leadership or the army, but ordinary citizens,” he said.

On Aug. 3, San Antonio police said 19-year-old Jaqueline Flores was going 87 mph in a 40-mph zone when she hit driver Valerie Keeney, 64.

Jeannie Wilkins Bisesi told KSAT she has four kids learning to drive and has even more concerns after her son got into a wreck on Hardy Oak Boulevard.

“Had I known how much, how often cars speed on Hardy Oak, I probably wouldn’t have chosen that house to live there,” she said.

KSAT tracked drivers around 5 p.m. Friday with a speed gun and found most drivers were going at or near the speed limit, but some cars reached speeds of 53 mph.

Richard Wallner, who lives in the area, told KSAT his concerns, especially with Jose M. Lopez Middle School and Hardy Oak Elementary School in the area.

“They tend to come over that rise really quickly and ignore the fact that there’s a school right there. There’s two schools in this area,” Wallner said.

Wilkins Bisesi mentioned several neighborhoods along Wilderness Oak have an added safety measure: a four-way stop.

She said it could be a simple fix to her neighborhood, Mesa Verde, near Hardy Oak Boulevard and Sable Canyon Road, where that fatal crash occurred.

“Hardy Oak is the last roadway in Stone Oak where we want to be speeding,” she said. “There’s retirement homes, there’s schools, there are neighborhoods full of children.”

San Antonio District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears provided KSAT with the following information on the crash:

“Multiple traffic studies have been completed on Hardy Oak, and we are awaiting Public Works’ recommendation on a traffic signal or stop sign,” Spears said. “This tragedy makes the urgency clear. We must slow traffic down, improve safety and take action to prevent another tragedy.”

Fatal crash

Officers responded to the Aug. 3 crash around 11 a.m. at the intersection of Hardy Oak Boulevard and Sable Canyon.

Keeney attempted to exit a neighborhood and travel southbound on Hardy Oak Boulevard, according to authorities.

However, Keeney disregarded a stop sign, and Flores, who was traveling northbound, crashed into her, police said.

The collision caused Keeney to be trapped in her vehicle before she later died from her injuries.

Flores has been charged with manslaughter, according to an affidavit obtained by KSAT. Further investigation and witness statements revealed that Flores didn’t possess a driver’s license at the time of the crash and was driving over twice the posted speed limit, the affidavit states.

Flores’ next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 10, according to jail records.

More coverage of this story on KSAT:

• Woman, 19, charged with manslaughter in connection with Stone Oak crash, affidavit says

Trump cited his good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for the decision, a likely bid to reengage with Kim, who views U.S.-South Korean military exercises as invasion rehearsals. But experts say the North Korean leader, now emboldened by his advancing nuclear arsenal and expanding military cooperation with Russia, won’t likely return to talks unless he is assured of serious U.S. concessions.

The 11-day, summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises began Monday morning as scheduled and it wasn’t known which parts of the training were being downsized. Trump's announcement baffled many in South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia where national security is a top priority due to threats from nuclear-armed North Korea.

Trump orders military to ‘substantially reduce’ drills

Trump said in a social media post that the exercises are not only costly but “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his time in the White House.

Trump instructed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises. He added that he recently asked President Lee Jae Myung if South Korea would join the U.S. in the “denuclearization” of Iran, “and they said, ‘No thanks!’”

Trump’s move is the latest example of the American president appearing to turn against an ally in favor of a leader cast by previous administrations as an adversary. Trump and others in his administration also have railed against NATO allies over a perceived lack of support for his war against Iran, even as they seek to confront an increasingly aggressive Russia in the Baltic region.

The trust many South Koreans have in the U.S. has eroded following a tariff war instigated by Trump’s administration and his transactional approach to security.

South Korea hopes for talks between US and North Korea

The office of South Korea's president said later Monday that the government hopes “friendly relationship” between Trump and Kim would lead to “meaningful dialogue” between the U.S. and North Korea and start discussions on promoting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. It said that South Korea will make necessary diplomatic efforts for that.

South Korea and the U.S. are closely discussing practical and military contributions that can be made to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, according to South Korea's presidential office.

Lee is a liberal who espouses improved ties with North Korea. Since taking office last year, his government has taken proactive steps to improve ties with North Korea, including turning off front line loudspeakers that blared K-pop music and world news. On Saturday, Lee offered to hold talks to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The conservative People Power Party, the main opposition party, lambasted Lee for allegedly “turning a blind eye on the public's security concerns” caused by Trump's announcement and prioritizing hopes for U.S.-North Korea diplomacy.

North Korea has shunned any talks with South Korea and the U.S. and accelerated weapons testing activities since Kim's high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with Trump broke down in 2019. Kim also has bolstered his diplomatic credentials by aligning with Russia over its war against Ukraine and taking steps to deepen cooperation with China.

In September 2025, Kim suggested he could resume talks with the American president if the U.S. drops “its delusional obsession with denuclearization” of North Korea. Experts say Kim likely aims to use his enlarged nuclear arsenal to win major concessions like extensive sanctions relief.

“Trump’s recent social media posts about Kim Jong Un suggest a willingness to reengage, but North Korea is busy profiting from Russia’s war against Ukraine while modernizing its own military,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul.

Downsizing the U.S. and South Korean drills “can damage alliance coordination, slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defense, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia,” Easley said.

Duyeon Kim, a senior analyst at Washington’s Center for a New American Security, said “reducing joint drills weakens military readiness over time against another potential North Korean attack.”

Military drills test tactics and anger North Korea

South Korea's military earlier said the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises this year would be similar to previous years in scale, with about 18,000 South Korean soldiers taking part.

The U.S. military said the drills would incorporate lessens from recent conflicts such as North Korea's battlefield experiences in the Russia-Ukraine front, while including a live-fire exercise to test joint precision targeting and maneuver, a wet gap crossing and distribution of prepositioned military equipment.

North Korea's Foreign Ministry on Friday accused the U.S. and South Korea of plotting more provocative drills this year and vowed to respond with “a new level of a deterrent.” Earlier this month, North Korea fired two ballistic missiles into the sea in a likely protest of the drills.

Duyeon Kim, the analyst, said North Korea uses U.S.-South Korean drills “for domestic propaganda purposes to create a false narrative of a hostile America and justify its nuclear weapons program.”

This is not the first time Trump has sought to suspend the drills. After his first summit with Kim in 2018, Trump unilaterally announced the suspension of the U.S.-South Korean summertime exercises, calling them “very provocative” and “tremendously expensive.”

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said North Korea feels less urgency to return to talks with the U.S. and South Korea now than when it entered talks with its rivals in 2018, but is unlikely to completely ignore Trump's overture.

He predicted North Korea will likely say it has noted Trump's post but will wait for further action showing the U.S. intends to drop hostilities against North Korea.

That’s true — with a caveat. Wasserman Schultz is seeking her 12th term by running in a new district after Republicans scrambled the state’s congressional map earlier this year.

The fallout pushed Wasserman Schultz, a former national party chair with powerful ties in Washington, to cross district lines from her Fort Lauderdale exurb and be the only white candidate against four Black candidates in an area of Broward County that has helped send Black Democrats to Congress since 1992. That’s yielded an uncomfortable fight following the U.S. Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act provisions undergirding minority voting strength and effectively cleared Old Confederacy states, including Florida, to reshape House districts.

“For her to come in like this is just another Broward seat, it's a complete erasure of our history, our fight for Black access,” said former Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, 47, who resigned from the seat in April while facing an ethics investigation but now wants it back.

Another candidate, 27-year-old progressive organizer and substitute teacher Elijah Manley, said Republicans’ redistricting ploy is not Wasserman Schultz’s fault. But she “had other options,” Manley added, including running in her new home district, which was gerrymandered to include the more conservative Gulf Coast.

“Instead, she stabbed us in the back, trying to take away Black representation,” Manley said, pointing to Congressional Black Caucus warnings that it could lose more than a quarter of its 60-plus members this fall.

Wasserman Schultz, 59, is by far the best funded out of five Democratic candidates and benefits from Florida rules that do not require a majority to win primaries.

She argued that she can ably advocate for the whole region after representing wide swaths of Broward as a state and federal legislator across three decades. “I’m not air dropping myself into this district,” she told The Associated Press. “I have represented diverse communities. I know how to tailor my service to them and represent a district more broadly.”

A win by Wasserman Schultz would be a rarity

President Donald Trump started pushing Republican-run states to redraw House boundaries last year to help preserve the party's fragile majority. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis responded with an effort that clusters southeast Florida Democrats together, intending to reduce five Democratic seats to three. Broward, the state’s most Democratic county, situated between Miami-Dade and Palm Beach, now has just one presumed-Democratic district anchored in and around Fort Lauderdale.

Nationally, white lawmakers typically hold some of the 115-plus House seats where the voting-age population is majority non-white. Wasserman Schultz does it in her existing north Broward-Palm Beach district, which was drawn after the 2020 census to be 42% Hispanic, 18% Black and about 6% Asian American. White voters compose the remaining third.

But a white lawmaker is a rarity for majority or plurality Black districts, like the new Florida 20th. The district is 42% Black, 23% Hispanic and 4% Asian, the rest white. The Black share includes a large Caribbean population, most notably Haitian Americans.

Going into November, an Associated Press analysis found that Wasserman Schultz is the only white Democrat positioned to represent any of the remaining districts with a Black majority or plurality.

Cherfilus-McCormick said she can win, despite losing Black constituents she previously represented in Palm Beach County. She dismissed concerns over federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds. She has pleaded not guilty and has denied alleged violations of House rules.

The criminal case and redistricting fit together, she insisted, and “the people see what’s going on — them trying to silence the only Haitian member of Congress and take away our voice.”

Manley, though, was more circumspect about Wasserman Schultz’s status as the favorite. He mused about upsetting the veteran congresswoman on Tuesday yet looked ahead to the 2028 elections, hoping Black Democrats rally around one candidate rather than four. The current field also includes former 2 Live Crew rapper Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and real estate broker and former local elected official Dale Holness.

Von Howard, a Black resident of Plantation, said the choice was wrenching. He declined to disclose his vote but said he wanted someone who “understands the totality of the district.”

“If you're not of the people, and you just want this for the clout, in some instances, that could be a turnoff,” the 47-year-old said.

Broward NAACP President Marsha Ellison was more direct, without endorsing any candidate.

“The whole mission was to take away Black power, so we don’t have representation to understand our lived experience,” she said. “That may not be important to Debbie, but it’s certainly important to us.”

There's a debate over what representation means

Wasserman Schultz said she occasionally hears those concerns from voters. Her response is that “lived experience matters, but experience broadly matters" as well.

She notes her Appropriations Committee seat, which could be even more influential should Democrats win a House majority. She recalls programs impacting Black communities she helped create and fund since her first years in the Florida Legislature.

“I fight every single day to help improve the lived experience of the people that I represent,” she said.

Wasserman Schultz also said she’s worked to connect across race and culture in Broward. Because of her existing district makeup, “I spent six years learning Spanish,” to converse with individuals and in town halls, news conferences and interviews broadcast on Spanish-language stations.

“Out of respect,” she said, “anything I can do to inspire people’s confidence that the person representing them understands them.”

Wasserman Schultz is a recognizable figure

Several times outside of early voting sites, Black, white and Hispanic voters waved or stopped to talk to the congresswoman. Among them were Broward County sheriff’s deputies who wanted photos and a trio of women who lamented they had been drawn into a new Republican-leaning district.

Yusdefs Delgado, a naturalized citizen from Colombia, told Wasserman Schultz that he enjoys her social media posts but wants to hear more about policy and less about the president.

“We know Trump sucks,” he told her, smiling and confirming that he voted for her. “I don’t agree with her on everything, but she’s closest to where I am, and I trust her to try to do the right thing for us,” Delgado explained later.

Cherfilus-McCormick and Manley said that’s not enough given the environment after the Supreme Court decision, Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives and his push to rewrite how the U.S. tells its history on race and racism.

“We’re not at a place in this country where we can be completely colorblind politically,” Manley said. “We’re just not.”

Wasserman Schultz said the new district “is drawn in a way that the plurality population has the ability to elect the person of their choice” — language that alludes to the now-diminished Voting Rights Act. Voters, she said, can “consider all of the qualities that matter to them.”

As for putting herself on the ballot again, she remained unapologetic.

“Trump and DeSantis did this to our community,” she said, adding, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them steal Broward’s political power, de-unify us and prevent us from standing up for our community’s values.”

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Associated Press journalist Matthew Klein contributed from Washington.

“This church has no windows that you can really open up, and so we put some fans in with some open doors, and we did our best to actually keep the people cool,” said Father Jimmy Drennan, the church’s pastor.

Even though electric fans were set up, parishioners attending morning and afternoon Mass still had to use hand fans to try and get cool.

Drennan said church attendees were also offered water so they could remain hydrated.

He said the church is forced to endure the heat inside after a would-be thief could not break into the church’s mechanical room and turned their attention to the church’s water chiller tower.

“The damage that was done to the water chiller was within the bearings and the large fan,” Drennan said.

As a result, the A/C units inside the church do not work.

“This serves the entire church building,” Drennan said. “Yeah, so this one unit is what keeps the entire church cool; without that, we can’t cool the church.”

Last week’s temperatures were a preview of this week. Triple-digit temperatures are in the forecast daily.

Drennan said the parts to fix the chiller have been ordered, and he is praying the repair company can fix it this week.

He is also praying the church will be able to pay for it when they learn what it is going to cost.

“Unfortunately, we are a struggling parish,” Drennan shared. “We don’t have the revenues set aside for something like this.”

Despite the unbearable hit, Drennan marveled at his congregation’s faithfulness.

The church is praying for the person or persons responsible to come and worship at their church home.

“People’s devotion to Christ is what keeps them coming, and the heat wasn’t gonna keep them out,” Drennan said.

Drennan said once they learn the cost of the repair, the church will be able to file a police report.

He added that once the water chiller is fixed, the congregation may have to look at putting a fence and a cage all the way around it.

Until it is, parishioners are being advised to dress lightly and comfortably.

On a hot August afternoon, Marcus Martin walked out of the Travis County Correctional Complex in Southeast Austin after about six months behind bars, a broad smile stretched across his face. He’s been incarcerated before, but he believes this time is different.

Outside the facility, several people awaited his release in their vehicles, blasting the air conditioning, while another went inside to greet Martin, made sure he had all of his belongings and walked him through what came next.

The team waiting for him were not social workers, case managers or family, but sworn Austin Police Department officers assigned to a new program called No Wrong Door, a cross-agency effort aimed at helping people experiencing homelessness with complex mental health disorders who have frequent interactions with law enforcement and public health systems.

“This right here is a beautiful blessing,” Martin said. APD Officer Edward Soltys “didn’t look down on me. He actually talked to me and made me feel like a human again, and not just an inconvenience.”

Martin is one of roughly 950 people local officials identify as the county’s highest “utilizers,” residents whose repeated arrests, emergency room visits, psychiatric crises and criminal trespasses cost an estimated $137 million in public resources each year while often leaving the underlying problems untreated.

Austin leaders believe No Wrong Door, could change that by coordinating police, hospitals, homeless service providers and other agencies around people who have proven hardest for existing systems to reach. The effort is a test of whether Austin can move beyond repeatedly responding to the same crises and instead help some of the city’s most vulnerable residents escape the cycle of jail, hospitals and the streets.

For Martin, a series of life events and a bad breakup led to him becoming homeless for several years. Drug use kept him there and away from his family.

“With me going down the rabbit hole I was going down, it wasn’t productive or beneficial for me to be around them,” he said. “I was being selfish, to be honest with you, and chose drugs over my own safety.”

That rabbit hole led to frequent interactions with local law enforcement and, eventually, a jail sentence. It also led to Martin being identified as a candidate for No Wrong Door while behind bars. Officers in the program met with him while he was incarcerated to determine what support he would need upon release to stay healthy and out of jail. For Martin, that meant checking in at an Integral Care clinic to continue receiving mental health treatment.

“I’m ready to grow,” he said. “I think it’s gonna be a beautiful thing.”

A different kind of policing

Repeated cycling through public systems without resolving the problems that brought them there is common among the people No Wrong Door is designed to reach, city officials say.

“The system isn’t built for them,” said Cody Martin, an APD officer assigned to the program. “These are complex individuals with complex needs that require hyper-focused attention and effort.”

Both he and Soltys are two of the four Austin police officers selected for the program based on their experience or interest in mental health calls, homeless outreach efforts and substance abuse.

Since early March, each officer has been assigned about 25 people who meet the program’s criteria. Their job is to meet clients where they are — on the streets, in rehabilitation facilities, at homeless shelters, in jails — and help coordinate treatment, housing and other services.

The officers said they’re working to build relationships with clients to better understand the root causes driving their repeated interactions with law enforcement and other public systems. APD’s work through this program is being funded through existing resources.

“Getting somebody housed or getting them the treatment that they need is a daunting task,” said Officer Steven Creamer, another one of the program’s officers. “I think they’re excited to have somebody in their corner cheering for them and trying to get them through the process.”

Officer Martin recently drove one of his clients, a military veteran, from the Travis County Jail to a VA hospital in Temple, about 75 miles north of Austin, after securing him a spot in a treatment program. Before No Wrong Door, Martin said the man was a familiar face with law enforcement.

“He was getting arrested every single week, and we have not had a police interaction with him in 119 days,” he said.

That kind of hands-on involvement is central to the program. It also raises a fundamental question about its approach: whether police officers should be the ones building those relationships.

Some advocates question whether law enforcement should be tasked with helping this population. At a time when police are involved in encampment sweeps and facing ongoing criticism for interactions with people experiencing homelessness, they question whether officers should serve as a primary point of contact for the people the program is trying to help.

“I think this sounds like some good intentions there, but I’m very worried about rights violations and making sure people still have agency,” said Cate Graziani, co-director of VOCAL-TX, a local homelessness advocacy group. “When a cop is asking you to do something, it’s not the same as when a social worker was talking to you about it.”

A collaborative approach

City officials note the four officers are only one piece of No Wrong Door. The broader effort is built around addressing another problem: agencies that encounter many of the same people have historically operated with little coordination.

Austin Legislative Director Carrie Rogers said when she began examining the city’s homelessness response, she found agencies and organizations serving the population were often operating in silos with little coordination, making it harder to connect people experiencing mental health crises with the care they needed.

“We’re trying to figure out where those gaps are,” Rogers said.

Rogers said all 17 partner organizations have entered agreements to share resources and information to identify the people cycling through systems and better connect them with care so they don’t end up back on the streets without proper treatment. If an Austin police officer or EMS responder comes into contact with someone identified through No Wrong Door, they may be able to alert one of the program’s dedicated APD officers, who can help coordinate a response rather than starting from scratch.

Representatives from the 17 partner organizations also meet regularly to discuss high-utilizer cases and coordinate care.

“I think the public expects our systems to coordinate and work. That’s not what we were doing before,” said David Gray, director of Austin Homeless Strategies and Operations. “No Wrong Door allows us to do that type of coordination to ultimately get people into the right type of long-term care.”

Gray said Austin’s comparatively robust behavioral health system has also made the city a destination for people with complex health needs from surrounding counties that have fewer resources.

He pointed to a recent case involving an elderly woman who, he said, arrived in Austin after being given the choice of a bus ticket to Austin, Houston or Dallas. She stepped off the bus without a wheelchair, medications, a phone or any support system, an example of what Gray described as outside jurisdictions “essentially dumping their challenges into cities like Austin.”

“No human should ever be treated this way,” Gray said in a recent social media post about the situation.

Gray said cases like that illustrate why city leaders believe coordination alone cannot solve the region’s behavioral health challenges. Austin continues to see rising homelessness while providers say the need for mental health treatment and supportive housing has outpaced available resources.

In 2025, volunteers and local providers counted more than 3,200 people living outside or in shelters, up about 50% from about 2,150 people in 2018, according to point-in-time data.

For Graziani, however, better coordination comes after years in which the government failed to make the investments that might have prevented some people from reaching this point.

“When those people were asking for help years ago, they weren’t doing anything to help them,” Graziani said. “There were so many things they could have done to help these people earlier.”

Graziani said that could have included greater investments a decade ago in expanding mental health care or creating more deeply affordable housing, defined as housing affordable to families earning 30% of the median family income or less.

“If somebody’s on a disability check, they can’t live anywhere in Austin, so they live on the street,” she said. “Living on the street is going to traumatize people.”

What comes next

No Wrong Door is still in its early months, but Austin police say they are beginning to see signs that the approach can reduce repeated encounters with officers.

The department analyzed how much time officers spent with a person experiencing chronic homelessness before and after the person entered the program. The number of patrol incidents, officers involved and hours spent responding to the person all decreased sharply since April, according to the department analysis, reducing costs and freeing officers to respond to other incidents.

“We’re getting some wins, but we’re going to need money,” Mayor Kirk Watson said. “We don’t have a system that is working, and we don’t have enough beds.”

That shortage is now shaping a legislative agenda the city plans to pursue next session, including advocating the state for funding to build a new mental health crisis care center, which could go on the same property as the Austin State Hospital.

Austin State Hospital remains at capacity, and city officials say many patients who no longer need inpatient psychiatric care have nowhere to go. Along with funding for a new mental health crisis center, the city plans to advocate for additional “step-down” beds where people can continue recovering after leaving the state hospital.

For city leaders,that is part of the larger test of No Wrong Door. The program can connect people with services and coordinate agencies that once worked independently, but breaking the cycle also depends on whether treatment, housing and other resources people need are available and ready for them.

For Marcus Martin, that test is now beginning.

“I’m ready to go forward,” Marcus Martin said. “I’m ready to progress.”

The 41-year-old superstar’s contract with Riyadh club Al-Nassr, signed in December 2022, expires next June, and he has told Vogue magazine that another is unlikely.

“This is probably my last year of football, and I want to leave a spectacular legacy,” Ronaldo said.

The Portugal forward, who has scored 976 career goals, married long-time partner, Georgina Rodriguez, earlier this month.

“I have my future all mapped out,” he said. “I have so many things to keep me busy that to tell you just one thing is hard. Because football could leave a big hole, you have to fill your time in various ways, not just one.

“And also have more fun, travel more, watch and play padel, which I really like, and continue to enjoy what I’ve earned — what we’ve earned. Because after all, it’s been 25 years with a lot of sacrifice.”

The 2026-27 SPL season is Ronaldo’s 25th as a professional. During his career, he has won five Ballon d’Or awards and five UEFA Champions League titles.

Ronaldo’s 28 league goals last season helped Al-Nassr become champion of Saudi Arabia in May to secure his first trophy since arriving in Riyadh, and a first league title for the club since 2019.

After returning from his wedding, he missed Al-Nassr’s first game of its title defense on Saturday, watching from the sidelines as it opened with a 3-0 win over Al-Fateh.

“Cristiano is here today, and he is always present with us,” Al-Nassr coach Ange Postecoglou said after the game.

Ronaldo could play against Al-Diriyah in the King’s Cup on Tuesday.

“The most important thing now is recovery, especially as we have only two days after this match,” former Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest coach Postecoglou said.

Ronaldo’s comments came days after long-time rival Lionel Messi revealed that, following his father’s death, he may soon retire.

“I don’t know how to carry on,” Messi, 39, said. “I used to just play football, and now I’m really not sure if I’ll carry on doing it for much longer.”

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

That idea drew the two-time Oscar nominee to “The Magic Faraway Tree,” a family adventure about Tim, a stay-at-home father whose family is forced to reconsider life after his wife, Polly, quits her job. They move to the countryside, where their children discover the magical Faraway Tree and its ever-changing worlds, sending the family into a series of fantastical adventures. The film, based on Enid Blyton’s children’s books, arrives in U.S. theaters on Friday.

For Garfield, the story’s themes of nature, imagination and community feel especially timely as technology increasingly shapes everyday life. “I think people are craving connection and community and a kind of reconnection to the earth and to each other,” he said.

Garfield said he became passionate about the project after reading Simon Farnaby’s screenplay. “I really just adore his sense of whimsy and heartfeltness and magic and joy,” he said. “I felt very, very passionate about it.”

Tim’s journey reflects the film’s larger ideas about finding wonder outside the routine and distractions of modern life. For Garfield, that sense of wonder extends beyond fantasy. “I think it’s all around us,” he said. “There are so many things to be in awe of on this planet.” The film, he said, is ultimately about recognizing that “there’s magic in the ordinary” as well as in the extraordinary.

Garfield, whose credits include playing Spider-Man, says he is drawn to roles with an element of play, community and the natural world. He focuses on “anything that keeps me awake to the remembering of the connection that we have to each other, the connection we have to nature, how we are all interconnected,” he said.

Garfield grew up reading Enid Blyton’s “The Famous Five” with his brother but did not read “The Faraway Tree” series as a child. His mother introduced him to another beloved literary adventurer: Bilbo Baggins, the hero of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit.”

“Any underdog story, really, those are the ones that get me,” Garfield said.

Another childhood escape was the video store. Garfield remembers being fascinated by the rows of VHS tapes and the possibilities behind their covers. The habit has survived in a new form in adulthood: spending an evening browsing streaming services without picking anything, enjoying the feeling of looking “into the windows of all these imaginary worlds.”

That may help explain why Garfield welcomes the resurgence of VHS and other analog technology among younger audiences.

“I dig that,” he said. “The regression to analog is looking good to me.”

The deadline was Monday, and the two sides are further apart than they were then.

Talks, such as they are, have focused on reopening the Strait of Hormuz and lifting a U.S. blockade on Iran, both of which were supposed to have happened under the interim deal. There has been no sign of any compromise on the strait, or that detailed nuclear talks have even begun.

The U.S., meanwhile, has no good options for getting out of the war it started alongside Israel.

Acceding to Iran's latest demands would mean giving it control over a critical international waterway that carried a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas before the war — and would be tantamount to admitting defeat. Escalating the deeply unpopular war would further draw down U.S. supplies of advanced missile interceptors, jolt the world economy, and drive up gas prices ahead of U.S. congressional elections.

So both sides have dug in, hoping the other will blink first. So far, neither has.

The interim deal collapsed weeks later

The June deal, known as the Memorandum of Understanding, called for a halt to all military operations and set a 60-day deadline for an agreement to permanently end the war and resolve the longstanding dispute over Iran's nuclear activities.

It called for the Strait of Hormuz to be reopened but gave Iran a vaguely defined role in facilitating traffic, leaving open the possibility it could charge fees after the 60-day deadline. Iran has seized on that clause to claim control over the waterway.

A week after the deal was signed, Iran began firing on vessels using a route along the coast of Oman, on the other side of the strait, that is overseen by the U.S. military and intended to bypass Tehran's control.

The U.S. responded by striking Iran, which retaliated by attacking Arab countries hosting American forces, like Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. The U.S. canceled waivers issued as part of the deal that had allowed Iran to sell its oil internationally and Trump restored a blockade of Iran's ports.

Each side accused the other of violating the June agreement, of which almost nothing remains.

The fighting eventually died down. A related truce in Lebanon between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah has mostly held, even as Israeli troops occupy large areas in the country's south. Lebanon's "territorial integrity and sovereignty" were to have been ensured under the June deal.

Iranian officials say they stopped negotiating with the U.S. in June, while acknowledging that messages have been relayed by intermediaries. Trump says the talks have continued, occasionally claiming progress after pulling back from threatening major strikes.

Pakistan, which played a key role in brokering the June agreement, noted last week that the deadline was Monday while expressing hope it would be extended.

“We are not closing the chapter,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Andrabi said. “Pakistan is making all-out efforts to bring the two parties to the negotiating table.”

Iran's leaders think they can force Trump to give up the strait

Earlier this month, Iran issued a list of demands for reopening the strait, including the lifting of the American blockade, the withdrawal of U.S. forces from around Iran and the payment of reparations for damage inflicted in the war started by the U.S. and Israel on Feb. 28.

Even then, Iran has said it would control the strait — and potentially charge fees — through an agreement it is negotiating with Oman, and that the strait will not go back to being an open, toll-free waterway as it was before the war.

Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have meanwhile begun attacking Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, threatening another crucial trade route that had been used to relieve some of the pressure from the strait being closed.

Trump has rejected Iran's demands — saying it's Tehran that should pay war reparations and claiming the U.S. controls the strait. He appears to be banking on economic pressure — in the form of the blockade and longstanding sanctions — to bring Iran's rulers to their knees.

Iran's economy has been battered by the war and isolation, and inflation has soared. The crisis could stoke renewed anti-government protests, like those that were brutally crushed in January.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which rose immediately after the interim deal, is back to a small fraction of what it was before the war. Rising prices of fuel and other goods are expected to climb further the longer this continues with effects far beyond the Middle East.

The clock is still ticking for both sides.

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Associated Press writer Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed.

States are seeking extensive financial damages that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion, plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram.

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to its platforms. It also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains,” the lawsuit says.

Dozens of states filed the lawsuit three years ago. The trial set to begin Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, features four of the states as plaintiffs — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The other 25 states are expected to have trials later.

Meta said it disputes the allegations, and the trial evidence will show its commitment to supporting young people. “We’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most,” the company said in a statement.

States seek to land a major blow against Meta

For Meta, which already lost two pivotal cases over harms to children and teens this year, the stakes are high. The company reported a rare profit decline last month, in part due to $2.4 billion in legal expenses.

The $1.4 trillion figure, which Meta disclosed in a legal filing, is almost as high as the Menlo Park, California, company’s entire market capitalization — that is, the value of all its outstanding shares on the stock market. Paying it would inevitably put Meta Platforms in bankruptcy and perhaps put the company under state ownership.

“The state attorneys general are going for the gusto,” said Eric Goldman, a professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. “They are trying to set the definitive precedent in this case and they have asked for extraordinary damages and they are going to seek extraordinary structural remedies if they succeed.”

Meta calls the possible penalty “untethered to any claimed violation” by the states.

“A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement,” Meta said in a July 6 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

If Meta loses the trial, the court would have wide discretion over the size of any financial penalty, and legal experts say anything close to $1.4 trillion would be unlikely.

“It’s not plausible in the sense that Meta doesn’t have that much money and could not get it,” said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. “An award that large would put Meta into bankruptcy, wipe out its owners, and effectively result in the states owning Meta.”

As a practical matter, Grimmelmann added, “that seems extremely unlikely to happen.”

In other cases that have involved high potential damages for multiple individual offenses, he said courts have stopped short of imposing the maximum penalties. One example is the Anthropic artificial intelligence training case, where plaintiffs were claiming damages of $150,000 per book that Anthropic copied, but the penalty ended up being $3,000 per book, totaling about $1.5 billion.

Trial seeks to hold Meta accountable on state and federal statutes

The federal trial this week is more complex than one earlier this year, in Los Angeles, where a state court awarded $6 million in damages from Meta and Google’s YouTube to a single plaintiff, a young woman who testified she became addicted to social media as a child.

That case was a bellwether, or test case, picked from thousands of similar civil tort lawsuits to give both plaintiffs and the defendants an idea of how their arguments fare in court. The jury determined that Meta and YouTube were negligent in the design or operation of their respective platforms, and that the negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff. They also determined each company knew their platforms could be dangerous when used by a minor and that they failed to adequately warn of that danger.

The Oakland case, meanwhile, has state attorneys general as the plaintiffs and centers on state and federal statutes they allege Meta violated, which lay out potential penalty amounts for each violation.

“And there’s a lot of them because it’s four different states and at least three different kinds of statutes. There’s a child privacy statute, there’s a false advertising statute and there’s unfair competition statutes,” said Rebecca Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School.

Meta has added safety tools — but states want more

An outcome that leads to changes in how Facebook and Instagram operate could be as consequential as any financial penalty.

Meta has introduced a slew of new features in recent years designed to protect minors. In 2024 it launched teen accounts on Instagram, which are private by default and come with messaging and content restrictions, and parental controls. The company also uses artificial intelligence to determine if kids under 13 are using Instagram or if teenagers are lying about their age to access adult accounts.

Safety advocates have called on the company to do more. A New Mexico judge earlier this month ordered new safety measures on the platforms including time limits for minors, AI chatbot restrictions, and mandatory warnings on the platforms, but his order applied only to users in the state.

“These AGs have a real chance at fixing the product,” Laura Marquez-Garrett of the Social Media Victims Law Center said Friday in a virtual discussion with advocates hosted by the Tech Oversight Project. “For these companies, this is a real point of reckoning. As these cases go forward, this is a leap forward, folks, not a step.”

During jury selection last week, prospective jurors were asked whether and how much they believe Meta has contributed to the youth mental health crisis. While many agreed that it did, they also put responsibility on parents, and said things like climate change and the state of the world are also causing children's and teenagers' mental health issues.

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AP Technology Writer Kaitlyn Huamani contributed to this report.

Rescuers dug through debris looking for anyone buried beneath landslides triggered by the quake across six regencies on Flores, a predominantly Catholic island in the Muslim-majority country. They focused on three regencies that remained inaccessible: hardest-hit Manggarai, East Manggarai and Nagekeo.

“We have cleared most landslides and reopened roads to previously isolated villages, although communication disruptions and power outages continue to hamper search efforts,” said Fathur Rahman, head of the search-and-rescue office in Maumere, the capital of Sikka regency.

More than 900 homes were destroyed and 450 more damaged in East Nusa Tenggara province, forcing about 5,000 people into temporary shelters. At least 241 homes were damaged in the Flores region alone, said Abdul Muhari, the National Disaster Management Agency’s chief for disaster prevention.

The quake occurred at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) shortly before 6 a.m. Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Residents fled in panic as tsunami warnings were issued and later lifted.

Authorities have since recorded at least 995 aftershocks, but only 46 were felt by residents, Muhari said, adding that 135 people were injured.

Many residents at Labuan Bajo, the gateway to Komodo National Park, one of Indonesia’s best-known tourist destinations, spent the night outside because of the aftershocks.

“The shaking was terrifying, so intense that my house nearly collapsed,” said farmer Anastasia Imad, speaking from a makeshift green tent beside her damaged home. “We feared the aftershocks would bring it down on us while we slept.”

Landslides blocked sections of the Trans-Flores Highway, a roughly 700-kilometer (435-mile) road linking communities across the mountainous island.

Meanwhile, relief workers distributed rice, ready-to-eat meals, drinking water, blankets and medicine, while emergency shelters were set up for displaced residents. Authorities said restoring electricity and communications, as well as delivering aid to remote villages isolated by landslides, were among the biggest challenges.

Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions because of its location on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped arc of seismic faults and volcanoes.

Flores has experienced some of the country’s deadliest disasters. A powerful earthquake and tsunami in 1992 killed about 2,500 people on the island.

In 2018, a magnitude 7.5 earthquake triggered a tsunami on the island of Sulawesi that killed more than 4,400 people. In 2004, a magnitude 9.1 quake off Sumatra unleashed a tsunami that killed about 230,000 people in a dozen countries.

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Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

For Phoenix Mercury fans, that case is already closed: She's undeniably the G.O.A.T.

Taurasi was inducted into the Mercury Ring of Honor on Sunday at halftime of a game between the Mercury and Portland Fire, with the franchise retiring her No. 3 jersey and celebrating a superstar who has become synonymous with basketball in Arizona for more than two decades.

“This place has made me who I am,” Taurasi said just before her banner was unveiled in the arena's rafters. “You guys let me grow, you let me fall, you let me get back up and gave me the space to become who I am today. Through the championships, all the good times and all the bad times, the loyalty you have given me is something I will take with me forever.”

Two decades of excellence in Arizona

Taurasi, 44, played for the Mercury from 2004 to 2024 and won just about every championship and award that is possible for a player.

She's the WNBA's career scoring leader (by more than 2,000 points), an 11-time All-Star, a six-time Olympic gold medalist, a five-time scoring champion, a three-time WNBA champion, a two-time WNBA Finals MVP, the 2009 regular-season MVP and the 2004 Rookie of the Year.

She said Sunday's honor ranks up there with her biggest accomplishments.

“Today's a big one,” Taurasi said before the game. “Today feels different. When your number goes up there, you can't use it anymore, it's done. So if there was any little competitiveness still in me, I think today it goes up in the rafters with the number and it feels really good.”

More than the sheer numbers, she's remembered for her fierce personality that resonated in Arizona, helping turn the Mercury into one of the WNBA's premier franchises. Taurasi was surrounded on Sunday by friends and family, including her wife, Penny Taylor, and their two children.

She said she's lucky to have 20 years of friendships to celebrate — including her long relationship with the “X-Factor," which is the nickname for the team's loyal fan base.

“When I walk into (the arena), I don't see strangers, I don't see employees,” Taurasi said. “I see friends, I see people I go to dinner with, I see people I text regularly with. This isn't just something where I showed up and said, 'Well, let's see what we can do here and then leave.'"

“I treated this like my extended family. I think that's why walking in today — I'm really emotional.”

Thousands of fans celebrate

Hundreds of fans had gathered in downtown Phoenix more than two hours before the game — many wearing the No. 3 jersey Taurasi donned for two decades — even on an August afternoon with temperatures topping 105 degrees. Some took pictures in front of a mural featuring Taurasi on the side of the arena.

The announced attendance was 16,513, a sellout and a testament to how much the WNBA has grown since she debuted with the Mercury in 2004 after a stellar college career at UConn.

A string of tributes flowed throughout the evening, including from Suns star Devin Booker, former teammate Brittney Griner and recent football Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee Larry Fitzgerald. Three-time WNBA MVP Sheryl Swoopes and 23-time gold medalist swimmer Michael Phelps were also in attendance.

Taurasi’s name was in lights several feet off one of the baselines, with some real, live goats grazing on hay. There was also a “Goat Plush Toss” where game staff threw toy goats into the stands.

The celebration continued during a postgame ceremony that featured video tributes from Lisa Leslie, Paige Bueckers, Magic Johnson and LeBron James and in-person praise from several others, including a poem from her wife, Penny.

At the end of the evening, Taurasi stepped to the microphone one more time. It took her a little while to start speaking — the crowd gave her a 45-second standing ovation.

Her roughly 30-minute speech was half serious and half comedy routine, drawing multiple laughs from the thousands who stayed.

“Tonight feels like the end and the beginning of so many things in my life,” Taurasi said. "Driving to the game today, I didn't know if I was going to suit up and play, whether it was my funeral or a celebration.

“I've come to realize — it's all of it. And it's amazing.”

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AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

The Cowboys agreed to terms for a 1-year-deal with Miller, according to multiple reports. Miller and the Cowboys confirmed they agreed to terms in multiple social media posts.

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Miller attended DeSoto High School and played for Texas A&M before being drafted by the Denver Broncos, where he spent 10 seasons and was named Super Bowl MVP in 2016. Miller also won a Super Bowl with the Los Angeles Rams in 2022.

Miller most recently played for NFC East rival Washington Commanders.

This story is developing. Check back later for updates.

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• SUNDAY: Heat returns with triple-digit temperatures and heat index values exceeding 105°.
• THROUGH THE WEEK: A persistent ridge will keep us hot and dry.
• HEAT SAFETY: Stay hydrated, take frequent breaks, and avoid strenuous activity during peak heat.

FORECAST

WEEKEND WRAP UP

We made it through Sunday without hitting 100 degrees in San Antonio, but the heat is about to kick on.

HOT & DRY THORUGH THE WEEK

The heat will ramp up Monday as a strong upper-level high-pressure system remains in control across the region. Hot and dry conditions are expected to persist across South Central Texas through the workweek and into next weekend. While the ridge is forecast to shift northwest toward the Four Corners by Tuesday, its influence will continue across South Central Texas, keeping highs near 100 degrees. Heat index values could climb as high as 108 degrees, making heat safety a priority.

By late Thursday into Friday, a subtropical high pressure rebuilds over South Central Texas. This pattern will keep the region hot and dry, with little to no significant rainfall expected through the weekend.

HEAT SAFETY

With temperatures near or above 100 degrees for several days, heat safety will be especially important. Stay hydrated, take frequent breaks in the shade or air conditioning, and avoid strenuous outdoor activities during the hottest part of the day.

If you’re heading to the pool or splash pad Sunday, enjoy it, but remember that the water won’t eliminate the risk from prolonged heat and high humidity.

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