Loomer had spent years minimizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine and amplifying Russian propaganda to her nearly 2 million followers. This week she had a change of heart.

“Just experienced my first air raid in Ukraine. Sirens blaring. This is everyday for every Ukrainian,” Loomer wrote on X during her visit to the country. “I often said I don’t care. Looking back, that wasn’t very nice of me to say.”

“We need to have moral clarity,” she added Thursday.

It was a stunning reversal for a woman who had spent years criticizing U.S. support for Ukraine's defense, declaring it “a country full of Nazi apologists” — a claim used by Russia to justify its yearslong invasion — and “led by a Jihadi apologist.”

The skepticism of Ukraine has been shared by other major conservative influencers, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The issue became a major point of contention between more traditional Republicans, like former Vice President Mike Pence, and Trump's MAGA base. Vice President JD Vance was among the earliest and most vocal critics of continued U.S. military aid to the country, and he and Trump clashed with Zelenskyy in a heated Oval Office meeting.

It was unclear what had prompted Loomer's trip or how she had arranged the meeting with Zelenskyy, which she plugged as an interview for her Rumble show, “Loomer Unleashed.”

She posted a photo of the two and later a clip from the interview in which she asked Zelenskyy about the Oval Office confrontation and how his relationship with Trump seemed to have improved since then. Zelenskyy credited a brief conversation at the Vatican for the detente — one he called a “historic moment, because we changed the relations during 15, 20 minutes.”

Loomer and the White House did not respond to requests for comment on the trip, but Trump gave his stamp of approval on social media.

“Very good!!!” he wrote on Thursday evening.

The meeting was confirmed earlier by Dmytro Lytvyn, a spokesperson for the president, who said that no Ukrainian government institution had organized the visit. He added that Zelenskyy's office first learned that Loomer was in Ukraine through social media.

“It is really important that @LauraLoomer is in Ukraine and sees things with her own eyes as they are,” Zelenskyy's office had written Tuesday.

“It takes courage to come to Ukraine and not be deterred by Russian propaganda or air raid sirens. Thank you, Laura,” the office added Thursday.

In addition to the meeting with Zelenskyy, Loomer also visited the Dormition Cathedral of Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, one of the country’s most significant religious landmarks, which came under Russian attack last month.

The attack on the monastic complex of golden domes in the heart of Kyiv, which is also known as the Monastery of the Caves, sparked a fire that caused significant interior and exterior damage, according to UNESCO. Zelenskyy had called it Moscow’s “biggest crime yet against Christian culture.”

Russia denied responsibility for the attack, claiming, without offering evidence, that the complex was hit by one of Ukraine’s U.S.-made Patriot air defense missiles — saying that it might have veered off course due to its age.

In a video recorded from inside the church, Loomer accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of hypocrisy by portraying Russia as pro-Christian.

“I just don’t think that you should be allowed to say that you’re protecting Christianity if you’re trying to drone strike Jesus Christ,” she said.

Sergiy Kyslytsya and Tetyana Berezhna, two top Ukrainian officials, were among those who met with Loomer and joined her for the visit.

The meeting comes amid continued hostilities between Russia and Ukraine that have been overshadowed in recent months by the war with Iran.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday at an annual gathering of foreign ministers in Manila that the administration is poised to help end the “senseless war” in Ukraine but acknowledged there was no quick path to a deal.

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Colvin reported from New York.

Wangchuk’s fast became a rallying point for India’s “Cockroach” protests, which began more than a month ago demanding education reforms after alleged leaks in some of the country’s most competitive entrance exams. Since then, the movement has tapped into broader public anger over unemployment, government accountability and economic opportunity, drawing professionals, families and activists to demonstrations in New Delhi and cities across the country.

The demonstrations have become one of the most sustained waves of public dissent against Modi’s government in recent years, with thousands returning to the streets even after police used tear gas and batons this week to disperse marchers trying to reach Parliament.

In a post on X, Wangchuk said he ended his fast in the presence of two federal ministers after appeals from dozens of members of parliament and following “a long negotiation on various conditions and in view of possible violence in the country.” He did not elaborate on the talks.

Protest organizers said demonstrations would continue until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned. They have called for demonstrations across the country on Friday in solidarity with students who were beaten by police during a march to Parliament on Monday that drew thousands of people.

“We won’t let Sonam sir’s sacrifice go in vain,” said Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of Cockroach Janta Party, a satirical group that has spearheaded the movement, named in reference to a remark by the country's supreme court chief justice that compared some unemployed young people to cockroaches.

The nationwide protests come a day after Modi publicly addressed the protests for the first time, announcing fast-track courts to prosecute cases involving examination paper leaks. In a separate video message, Modi also said his government would introduce a legislation in Parliament to crack down on exam paper leaks.

The announcements did little to calm the movement, as protesters said they failed to address their demands for government accountability, examination reforms and compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after exam paper leaks.

Discussion

At 700 PM CDT (0000 UTC), the center of Tropical Depression Bertha was located near latitude 29.9 North, longitude 95.3 West. Bertha is moving toward the west near 13 mph (20 km/h), and this general motion is expected to continue tonight.

Maximum sustained winds have decreased to near 35 mph (55 km/h) with higher gusts. Additional weakening is expected, and Bertha is likely to dissipate tonight.

The estimated minimum central pressure is 1007 mb (29.74 inches).

Watches and Warnings

CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY:

The Tropical Storm Warning from the Vermilion/Cameron Parish Line, Louisiana, to Sargent, Texas has been discontinued.

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT:

There are no coastal watches or warnings in effect.

Land Hazards

WIND: Wind gusts to tropical storm force are still possible along the upper Texas coast during the next couple of hours.

STORM SURGE: Water levels may remain elevated through the next high tide cycle along the Louisiana and Texas coastline but should subside thereafter.

RAINFALL: Bertha is expected to produce total rainfall amounts of 1 to 3 inches with isolated totals to 4 inches into tonight along the Texas Gulf Coast and South Texas. This rainfall may produce isolated flash flooding, especially in urban areas.

For a complete depiction of forecast rainfall associated with Bertha, please see the National Weather Service Storm Total Rainfall Graphic available at hurricanes.gov/graphics_at2.shtml?rainqpf and the Flash Flood Risk graphic at hurricanes.gov/graphics_at2.shtml?ero.

SURF: Swells generated by Bertha will continue to affect the Louisiana and Texas coast through tonight. These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions. Please consult products from your local weather office.

A depiction of rip current risk for the United States can be found at: hurricanes.gov/graphics_at2.shtml?ripCurrents

Prosecutors are alleging that D4vd killed the girl then dismembered her in the garage after she threatened to reveal their sexual relationship and crater his career. Police technicians took the samples from a rubber floor mat, a rowing machine and a Tesla charger in the garage, and Los Angeles police criminalist Samantha Tosch testified that they matched Rivas Hernandez.

The testimony came on the third day of a preliminary hearing where a judge will decide if Burke should stand trial on charges of murder, sexual abuse of a child and mutilation of a body. He has pleaded not guilty and his lawyers have said they will vigorously defend him.

Tosch said the matches of several samples were “one septillion times more likely to occur if it originated from Celeste rather than anyone else in the population,” and pointed out the number had 24 zeros.

Prosecutors had previously said in a court filing that her DNA was found in the garage, but the evidence hadn't previously been shown publicly.

DNA evidence and testing key to hearing

Testing was also done on a trash bag in the garage and stained cleaning wipes inside it. Tosch said the bag swab showed a mixture of DNA from four people, at least two of them male — and one of them that she said was Burke's.

Rivas Hernandez's DNA was found on the wipes but not the bag. Burke's was not on the wipes.

Another police criminalist testified that most of the garage stains were not visible to the naked eye and were uncovered by a chemical test that makes the area glow blue. A photo displayed in court showed the rubber mat cloaked in bright blue.

Tosch conceded under questioning from the defense that she couldn't say with certainty that the DNA profiles came from blood, and could've been from touch.

“It’s possible that they did not come from blood?” Burke's lawyer, Blair Berk, asked.

“I cannot with any certainty say that they came from blood,” Tosch replied.

Under further questioning by Berk, Tosch also acknowledged that it can't be determined how DNA got on a spot, and that it's even possible for it to transfer between people. And she acknowledged there's no way to clearly establish how long the DNA had been there.

Defense questions how and what police tested for DNA

Burke's lawyers have previously given little indication of any counternarrative they may present about how Rivas Hernandez was killed and how her dismembered body was found in the trunk of Burke’s Tesla about five months later.

But they began giving glimpses into their defense strategy as they pressed various prosecution witnesses on why they didn't conduct more DNA testing on items found in the singer's home and car.

Berk dwelled on a pair of small chain saws found in Burke's garage, where prosecutors say he dismembered the body. Lauren Wallace, another LAPD criminalist, testified that initial chemical tests showed no signs of blood on the saws, so the handles were not swabbed for any DNA left behind by someone who touched it.

“If an item has somebody else’s DNA on it, you wouldn’t be able to see that at the time,” Berk said.

“No you’re not able to see touch DNA,” Wallace said, then reiterated that the blades had tested negative for blood.

“But that doesn’t preclude at all that there could be somebody else’s touch DNA,” Berk said.

An indie-pop singer whose music and online presence brought him a huge following, D4vd's songs and videos often have dark and violent imagery often delivered through an alter-ego character he calls Itami. His breakthrough single in 2022 was called “Romantic Homicide,” one of several of his songs with more than a billion plays on Spotify. His debut full-length album, “Withered,” was released two days after prosecutors say Rivas Hernandez was killed.

On Thursday, he wore orange jail clothes and glasses, sitting at the defense table calmly and intently watching the witnesses testify. He did not betray any emotion during the proceedings but was seen during the recess interacting with and smiling with his attorneys.

Rivas Hernandez's parents were back in the courtroom Thursday afternoon, sitting in the front row. They did not have a visible reaction to the mostly technical testimony.

D4vd relationship with teen began when she was 13

Prosecutors are seeking to prove Burke began a sexual relationship with Rivas Hernandez when she was 13 and he was 18.

They said in a court filing that she had grown jealous of his relationships with other women and threatened to expose him and ruin his multimillion-dollar career the night before she was killed. The court filing said he sent a car to pick her up on the night of April 23, 2025, and stabbed her when she arrived at his home.

Prosecutors say he kept the body for weeks or months in the front trunk of the Tesla, where it was found after the car was towed 4 1/2 months later.

Rubio, who held talks with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in the Philippine capital, alluded to how U.S.-mediated talks have stalled. He called them “unsuccessful or at least unfruitful” in the past but insisted that President Donald Trump was committed to the work “if conditions and factors have changed to make that possible.”

“That’s been the challenge — an end that both sides can accept," Rubio told reporters. "We’ve tried and we’ll continue to try to see if we can, you know, find a middle ground that brings this about. And we’re prepared to play that role if the opportunity presents itself.”

Rubio met Lavrov and several other leaders, including China's foreign minister, on the sidelines of an annual gathering by foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Manila.

America's top diplomat said the U.S. is focused on Asia even as it steps up fighting with Iran, seeks a pathway to end Russia's war in Ukraine and pressures the Cuban government to make changes.

ASEAN talks focused on international conflicts

Three days of closed-door talks that started Tuesday have centered on the escalating fighting in the Middle East and tensions in the South China Sea, where a new clash flared Thursday.

“There’s always going to be a concern that America is so focused on one place that it can’t focus on another,” Rubio said. But he noted that the U.S. remains “engaged in Asia every single day,” citing strong partnerships and economic ties across the region.

After meeting with Rubio, Lavrov largely ignored questions from reporters. The Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow said he emphasized to Rubio “the unacceptability of further arming” Ukraine and accused European countries of pursuing Russia’s “strategic defeat.”

Lavrov reiterated Russia’s readiness for “a political and diplomatic resolution of the conflict” and commitment to agreements reached at a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump in Alaska last year, the Russian ministry said.

But Rubio said “we’ll have to find new suggestions and new ideas” that are acceptable to both sides. There has been no change to Washington’s military support for Ukraine, with weapons being purchased by NATO allies and transferred to the war-ravaged country, he said.

Separately on Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reiterated that his priority is finding a way to get back to negotiations.

U.S. efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war have been overshadowed by the outbreak of the Iran war earlier this year. Renewed strikes by Washington and Tehran have been intensifying after an interim ceasefire deal collapsed.

“The price will continue to get higher every single night until they come to their senses,” Rubio said. He insisted Tehran is “begging” for talks but Trump does not see the use in responding because “Iran is clearly not ready to make a deal, at least not one they’re willing to live by.”

Trump has warned Iran that the U.S. will destroy one Iranian bridge or power plant each time Iran shoots at a ship in the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi responded by saying the country’s defense doctrine was an “eye for an eye.”

“The president’s policy is a head for an eye,” Rubio said. “They will pay a very heavy price for the things they’re doing.”

China defends maritime military actions

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong renewed her country's alarm over the Chinese navy’s recent test-launch of a missile from a nuclear-powered submarine in the region, saying the lack of notification to the Philippines and Pacific nations where the missile flew over and landed was destabilizing.

“It comes in the context of a rapid military build-up of China’s nuclear arsenal without the transparency or reassurance the region expects,” Wong told a university forum in Manila on Thursday. “This is why Australia has described the test as provocative and destabilizing.”

China has defended its actions, saying the launch was part of annual exercises and that it gave countries in the area appropriate notice in advance.

Rubio met Wednesday with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and said they discussed a new altercation this week between Chinese and Filipino forces in a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety. Rubio called the incident “escalatory.”

“Those need to be managed very carefully, because obviously, a conflict — be it economic or otherwise — between the U.S. and China would have a dramatic global impact,” Rubio said.

He also said they talked a lot about Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s planned trip in September, noting he believes Xi will have a “very positive visit when he comes to Washington.”

In Beijing, the Chinese coast guard said it took necessary measures, including monitoring and blocking, to drive away two Philippine ships that disregarded repeated warnings from the Chinese side in a fresh confrontation Thursday. China said its operations were professional and lawful and urged the Philippines to stop its provocative actions infringing on Chinese territory.

The Philippine coast guard, however, said the two fishing vessels were harassed while bringing fuel aid to Filipino fishermen in the Scarborough shoal. It said a Chinese coast guard ship tried to spray one vessel with a powerful water cannon but missed, calling these “illegal, coercive and aggressive actions.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly criticized China’s assertive actions in the South China Sea to the disadvantage of smaller claimant countries like the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia. Taiwan and ASEAN members Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei have also been involved in the often-tense territorial standoffs.

ASEAN aims to conclude yearslong negotiations with China on a proposed non-aggression pact by this year, according to a draft of a joint communiqué seen by The Associated Press. The code of conduct aims to prevent a major conflict in the disputed waters, a key global trade route, that could draw in the United States.

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Associated Press journalists Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, Haruka Nuga in Bangkok and Fu Ting in Washington contributed to this report.

British barrister Karim Khan has been accused of sexual misconduct with a female aide, as outlined by The Associated Press in a series of stories, allegations which he has steadfastly denied.

The saga has dragged on for more than two years and has had profound implications for the global tribunal, which is already under enormous pressure. Earlier this month, the United States, which has long criticized the court, announced a campaign aimed at dismantling the 24-year-old institution.

The 56-year-old Khan was formally removed from his duties at the ICC in June after the executive committee of the court’s oversight body found he had committed “serious breach of duty and serious misconduct” by engaging in a “sexual relationship ... (that) escalated over time” and tried to prevent the woman from pursuing her allegations, according to documents seen by The Associated Press. Khan disputes those findings.

Khan faces an unprecedented removal vote

Now his future lies in the hands of the 125 nations who make up the court's oversight body, the Assembly of States Parties, who are holding a special session in New York. It will culminate in a vote where a majority would need to support a resolution to oust him.

Khan will not be present at the closed-door meeting, as he is barred from entering the United States after being sanctioned by the Trump administration over the court’s investigation into Israeli officials for the military's conduct in the conflict in Gaza.

His lawyers have complained about his absence at the meeting. “We know of no court or tribunal in any proper and fair legal system that bars a person facing the gravest professional sanction from being heard,” Tayab Ali and Sareta Ashraph wrote in a letter to the ASP seen by the AP.

He goes into the vote banned from practicing law in his home country of the United Kingdom after being suspended by the British Bar Standards Board pending their own investigation into the allegations against him.

The outcome of the vote, which is secret, is unclear. The court’s host state of the Netherlands will vote for his removal, the country’s foreign minister Tom Berendsen wrote in a letter to parliament. The Netherlands is the only country to have publicly announced its position.

The Gaza investigation complicates the case

The allegations have become entwined with the court’s investigation into the war in Gaza. “Political considerations have been folded into this, especially as it is the first time a prosecutor has pursued warrants against a western ally,” Iva Vukusic, a researcher at Utrecht University who has been following the process, told the AP.

The court issued arrest warrants in 2024 for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for crimes against humanity. That decision sparked considerable backlash, including multiple rounds of sanctions against Khan and other court staff by the Trump administration.

A divided court faces an uncertain future

The lengthy and complicated process has created huge divisions at the court at a time when the institution already is under tremendous strain. “There has been splintering over how the court has handled this,” Lucy Gaynor, a historian of international criminal tribunals at the University of Amsterdam, told the AP.

In April, a group of staff members within the prosecutor’s office sent a letter to the oversight body expressing serious concerns about Khan’s potential return, writing that his “leadership has been materially diminished.”

Last week, a group of Palestinian organizations issued a public letter expressing concerns about the investigation, including accusing the executive committee of “unwarranted political interference” and “subverting the disciplinary process.”

Should Khan be removed, his replacement will have to be elected later. His office is currently being run by his two deputy prosecutors.

Vukusic said that regardless of the outcome, “the court is going to walk away bruised and battered and wounded and less able to face the greater threats.”

Corey Durell Ruiz, 38, was shot and killed on a city street Wednesday, the moments of his death captured in bystander videos that were later posted online. The race of the officer who fired his gun has not been released by police. Ruiz is identified as Black or Latino in Wisconsin court records.

“It does not matter who you are or what your past is, you should not lose your life as a result of an encounter with law enforcement,” Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said during a news conference Thursday afternoon.

Wisconsin court records show Ruiz had been in and out of jail over the past decade for mostly misdemeanor offenses including disorderly conduct, drug possession, auto theft, battery and invasion of privacy. He was also convicted of felonies including possession of cocaine and marijuana, robbery, strangulation, resisting an officer and causing bodily harm.

“He’s a human being. He had a family. He has parents who loved him who brought him home, who cared for him,” Common Council President Sabrina Madison said, adding that she’s struggling to understand what she’s seen in videos of the shooting that have circulated on social media.

“My first thought is, when the officer’s walking away, why isn’t he walking away in cuffs,” Madison said. “I’m angry, there’s no way around it.”

Ruiz's family has retained Ben Crump, an attorney who has represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, who were all shot and killed by the police. Crump said the case must be examined for excessive force.

Shooting sparks turmoil in a fed-up community

Frustrated residents marched, and a memorial of flowers and signs grew near the place where Ruiz died. It was just blocks from where two other police killings happened in 2015 and 2012.

A group of about 20 protesters burst into Thursday's news conference, taking the microphone from police Chief John Patterson and arguing with some attendees who said they wanted to hear more about the investigation.

One protester held a sign saying “Corrupt cops deserve to die too!!!”

Moments earlier, the mayor said the shooting would be “rigorously investigated.”

Once the protesters quieted down, the chief resumed his presentation, promising his department's full cooperation with the state investigation.

Police have released few details

None of the four officers who were detaining Ruiz wore body cameras, but passersby recorded the confrontation on video, and accused the officers of overreacting.

“I thought, ‘Holy cow — what could have warranted that?’ It looked to me like they had him under control,” David Ortiz-Whittingham, who saw officers swarming and heard the gunshots, said Thursday. “Even now, knowing about the knife, did he have to die for it? Could this have been de-escalated?”

The police chief released few details Thursday, saying a Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation probe of the officer-involved shooting must run its course.

Earlier Thursday, Madison's independent police monitor, Aeiramique Glass, said police had not yet shared evidence or the officer's identity with her office, which will review the case and can recommend to the district attorney that charges be filed if warranted. She said the department and city are “obstructing what the community and the public” want.

“Let me do my job,” she said.

Patterson said the police were committed to cooperating with Glass.

The chief urges people not to draw conclusions

Patterson has urged caution in reading too much from the cellphone videos. He said none show the perspective of the officers, and additional video that hasn't been released is being reviewed.

The officer who fired his weapon is an 11-year veteran of the force, the chief said. He and the three other responding officers will be placed on administrative leave pending the investigation by the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, as required under state law.

Patterson said police were responding to calls that someone was attempting to enter parked vehicles, and the suspect fled on a bike before the officers surrounded him. One deployed a taser, but Patterson said the effort failed to control the man.

In the videos circulating online, the man can be seen standing before he's brought to his knees as the officers struggle to force him into a prone position. Then he falls quickly to the pavement after what sounds like three gunshots, and seems motionless as the officers handcuff him behind his back. Arriving officers then escort one of the officers a short distance away.

Patterson said he did not know the extent of the knife injuries sustained by the officer.

“This situation was clearly dangerous," Patterson said before adding he was saddened by the loss of life.

A neighborhood now accustomed to police shootings

The shooting happened in the middle of an intersection in the popular Marquette neighborhood, less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the state Capitol. Bystander videos show numerous cars at the scene, with people watching as it unfolds.

“I saw everything! I saw everything! You did not need to kill him! ... We watched it all!” a woman yells in the video recorded by Ortiz-Whittingham. Three loud shots can be heard among the sirens, followed by screams.

Residents who dealt with two other police killings expressed frustration Thursday.

In 2015, a white police officer shot and killed Tony Robinson, who was biracial, on the same street. Large protests followed, but the district attorney filed no charges, determining the officer was justified. In 2012, Paul Heenan, a white musician, was fatally shot after he had been drinking and mistakenly entered his neighbor's house. That officer was exonerated as well.

The chief acknowledged that the neighborhood “has experienced a lot of trauma” and urged people to support one another.

“I want transparency. I want accountability,” Patterson said.

Questions about race and technology emerge

Black advocacy groups, protesters and politicians are speaking out against the shooting, which has also focused attention on the Madison Police Department’s lack of body-worn cameras. The force of around 500 is among the largest in the Midwest that doesn’t use the devices.

Madison said Thursday that she expects a police request for $400,000 to be approved, enabling the cameras to be phased in over the next three years. Others lamented that cameras weren't already being used.

The mayor said her budget, which has not yet been released, will include funding for body-worn cameras. She said the city needs to put together a policy for their use before the budget takes effect in January.

And now it's a talking point in the governor's race

The shooting has quickly infused itself into the race to succeed Evers as governor, with voting already underway in the Aug. 11 primary.

Democratic socialist candidate Francesca Hong called the shooting “state sanctioned violence” and Democrat Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said the reports are "painfully reminiscent of the tragedies we have witnessed in Kenosha, Minneapolis, and far too many communities.”

Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany called on his rivals to let the state investigation “establish the facts without politicians rushing to judgment.”

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This story has been corrected to show it is the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation, not the Department of Criminal Investigation.

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Associated Press writers Ed White in Detroit and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.

Since 2016, high schools from across San Antonio and surrounding areas have held a week-long food drive of peanut butter jars leading up to the opening weekend of high school football. Those jars are then distributed to local hunger relief organizations.

Last year, 46 tons of peanut butter were collected and donated to more than 40 organizations. To date, the fundraiser has reached over 1.8 million people.

“It’s pretty exciting when you just stop and think,” Steve Teal, the founder of the Peanut Butter Bowl, said at the event’s annual media day at Alamo Heights High School. “Sometimes you’re just right in it, so to realize, 1.8 million people? That’s not just food and protein, that’s hope for them.”

What started as a single game between Johnson and Brandies has turned into a statewide competition. Copperas Cove set the record for most peanut butter jars collected by a single school last year, totaling 12,240.

“I mean, those guys from Copperas Cove, they took it and ran with it,” said Ron Rittimann, the former coach at Alamo Heights. “And they included their whole community. ... Everybody’s kind of chasing them right now, but I’m (going to) go ahead and pick a San Antonio school to win it this next year.”

Usually, schools answer the call, and the competitive nature of high school football is used to inspire participation.

“We have the best platform in the world: Texas high school football,” Rittimann said. “We have an arena to play the game in but also to reach so many people.”

Coach Joe Hubbard, from East Central High School, emphasized the importance of exposing the Peanut Butter Bowl to young people, as the event sees participation from middle and elementary schools as well.

“I think service is so important. And us continuing to teach that piece to our young men, it’s just great for our community,” Hubbard said.

Peanut butter is a staple in food pantries and an excellent source of protein. According to Hubbard, Peanut Butter Bowl donations have been able to feed families for a full year.

That effort continues to grow today, and it can never get big enough.

“Not only the state is big, this country is big, and there’s a lot of people that are hungry,” Teel said. “So how can we reach the rest of the state, how can we start reaching the nation, feeding people?”

The 2026 Peanut Butter Bowls will take place Aug. 27 to 29.

Read also:

• Harlan High School product Tate Taylor continues rapid ascension using coach’s guidance

Around 5,200 enlisted medical students at the base were relocated due to what officials described as “climate control systems and foundational defects” in the buildings.

In a statement Thursday, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said the Department of Defense plans to replace five barracks that were “plagued by mold and faulty construction.”

Castro said the cost to replace those barracks is over $1 billion, and construction is expected to begin by the end of the year.

Earlier this week, KSAT received several emails and calls from people alleging mold in the dorms forced military members into base hotels.

JBSA’s official statement, however, cited “infrastructure” issues. The base said that “no one is being moved because of mold.”

A JBSA spokesperson confirmed to KSAT that Army, Navy and Air Force enlisted medical students assigned to the Medical Education and Training Campus (METC) “are being relocated to on-base temporary lodging.”

KSAT asked a base official Wednesday for an interview and if any students were reported sick related to the dorm conditions. JBSA-Fort Sam Houston has yet to respond.

Previous coverage of this story on KSAT:

• 5,000+ medical students relocated from JBSA-Fort Sam Houston dorms over ‘infrastructure’ concerns

A short time later, Iranian state media reported explosions along the strait in Qeshm and Bandar Abbas, where two people were reportedly injured, as well as to the northwest near Andimeshk, Omidiyeh and Firuzabad.

U.S. Central Command said the latest attacks concluded shortly before 5 a.m. local time. The strikes were designed to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters” as the Americans push to regain control over the Strait of Hormuz and restore the flow of international shipping.

Meanwhile, the Houthis threatened to shut down another key trade route, with the world economy already reeling from Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the U.S. have stepped up attacks as they vie for control of the strait, through which a fifth of the world's oil and gas transited in peacetime, setting off a scramble for alternative routes.

President Donald Trump threatened “major military punishment” against the Houthis if their attacks on ships continue.

“If they do this again, the U.S. will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves,” Trump wrote on social media.

As the rhetoric escalated, so did the economic fallout. The price of Brent crude oil, the international standard, spiked more than 6% Thursday, to about $100 a barrel. That is the highest level since May, before the two sides reached a preliminary peace agreement last month that has since collapsed.

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi of Iraq, which has close ties to both the U.S. and Iran, was in Tehran on Thursday to call for peace and dialogue, and he promised not to allow Iraqi territory to be used for attacks on Iran, his office said. Al-Zaidi met with Trump earlier this month in Washington.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Thursday that the region is being pulled “into an ever-widening circle of confrontation” with one crisis feeding another and every escalation triggering the next.

“Diplomacy is the only way forward,” Guterres told the U.N. Security Council. He called for Pakistan’s efforts to mediate an end to the war to be strengthened.

Houthi attacks are a ‘double whammy’ on oil shipments

The Houthis' SABA news agency said the rebels had struck two tankers, the Encelia and the Layla, in the Red Sea, causing fires on both. There were no reports of casualties.

It was the first reported Houthi attack on a vessel since they announced a blockade of Saudi-linked shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait earlier this week in retaliation for the kingdom’s blockade on Yemen and a recent attack on the international airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, Sanaa.

Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a vital shipping chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12% of the world’s trade, including a fourth of global container traffic, passes through there, moving between Europe and Asia via Egypt’s Suez Canal.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency reported an attack set the Encelia ablaze overnight in the Red Sea. It did not mention the Layla.

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said it received a report of a tanker being struck by “an unknown projectile” 130 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of Al Shuqaiq, Saudi Arabia, in the Red Sea.

The Houthi attacks put at risk oil shipments from Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port on the Red Sea and present a “double whammy” on top of the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, said maritime data and analysis firm Lloyd’s List Intelligence.

Saudi Arabia has diverted millions of barrels a day of oil exports to Yanbu via an overland pipeline as the war has bottled up the Persian Gulf.

The Houthi threat “raises questions on the viability of this route,” Lloyd’s said in slides accompanying an online webinar Thursday.

The rebels say they are blockading Saudi Arabia, but during their announced blockade of Israel at the height of the war in Gaza, they targeted many vessels with little or no connection to that conflict, disrupting global trade.

Both sides dig in over Strait of Hormuz

Iran says it has the right to manage traffic and potentially charge fees in the Strait of Hormuz, which was open to all toll-free before the war. It has attacked ships using a route through the strait that is overseen by U.S. forces and intended to be outside Tehran’s control.

Trump said on social media Thursday that sanctioned Iranian funds in the possession of the U.S. will cover the expense of fixing boats damaged in the war.

“Please let this statement serve to represent, until further notice, that from this point forth, any and all damages done to Ships, Cargo, or anything related thereto, will be paid for by Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and controls,” Trump said.

It was unclear what legal mechanisms Trump would use to access and spend the funds, but he said that doing so would be “the fair and equitable thing to do.”

In response to Iran’s attacks, the U.S. began the widening campaign of strikes across Iran and restored a naval blockade of Iran's ports. U.S. Central Command said it has redirected about a dozen commercial vessels and disabled one since the blockade resumed.

The war of words has also escalated. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Tehran would adopt an “eye for an eye” policy on U.S. strikes against its infrastructure. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retorted that Trump's policy is “a head for an eye.”

“The price will continue to get higher every single night until they come to their senses,” Rubio told reporters while traveling in the Philippines for a regional summit.

Iran’s health ministry said Thursday that 55 people have been killed and 629 have been wounded since renewed U.S. airstrikes began on June 27.

Iran has responded to U.S. attacks by targeting energy infrastructure and desalination plants providing drinking water in parched neighboring Gulf countries.

Polls have shown the war is unpopular among Americans, a fact reflected in the narrow passage Thursday of a resolution in the U.S. House to halt the war. Though a handful of Republicans crossed party lines to support the measure, the vote remained largely symbolic.

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Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece, and Binkley from Washington. Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad, Pakistan; Bassem Mroue in Beirut; Michelle L. Price and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines; Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Matthew Lee in Washington; and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

The withdrawals in U.S. District Court followed a remarkable back-and-forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government lawyers. They come at a time when the Trump administration is vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage it doesn’t like — and also trying to crack down on leaks inside the government.

The government’s turnabout in the face of vigorous legal opposition and a stern reprimand from a judge marked the latest instance of the Justice Department making aggressive moves to compel journalists to identify their sources before a grand jury — only to later retreat. The administration recently withdrew similar subpoenas that sought to compel testimony from journalists for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal related to separate national security coverage.

Subramanian said he otherwise would have granted the newspaper’s request to reject the subpoenas because regulations pertaining to subpoenas served on journalists maintain that they should be issued as a last resort in an investigation.

“Subpoenas are the last step, not the first step, but the last step,” the judge said, citing rules set to protect against violations of the First Amendment. He said the government’s actions had turned the law and the regulations “on its head.”

“When you see something like this, if this were a civil proceeding, what I would normally do is ask the parties to show causes why sanctions should not be issued,” the judge said, referencing punishment for lawyers for egregious actions.

After the hearing, the Justice Department lashed out at Subramanian in a statement, saying he “threatened our attorneys with sanctions unless subpoenas were withdrawn, and blocked us from presenting the meticulous process of this investigation.”

“The grand jury has a right to hear testimony from all material witnesses in a federal criminal investigation. This judge’s conduct overrides clear longstanding principles and common sense — blocking the grand jury from receiving core evidence in a national security investigation,” the statement said.

“Make no mistake,” it added, “this investigation remains ongoing, and we will pursue justice against those threatening national security by leaking classified information, a serious federal crime.”

Government attorneys upbraided by judge

Subramanian noted that with protections for journalists at stake, the government was required to ensure it could not obtain what it needed from any other sources before issuing subpoenas to journalists.

A Justice Department lawyer, Sean Buckley, cast the government’s missteps as inadvertent errors and said: “No one was trying to pull a fast one.” Buckley apologized for other subpoenas that sought records for phone numbers belonging to one reporter’s mother and two of the journalists’ spouses.

“That was an error, judge, which we own,” Buckley said. “It was a consequence of trying to move quickly.”

“These things are starting to pile up,” Subramanian said, becoming increasingly testy.

The hearing was held publicly despite efforts by the Trump administration to keep secret the litigation spawned by subpoenas it served on the Times’ journalists to try to get them to divulge their sources.

The newspaper’s lawyers had challenged the validity of the grand jury subpoenas, along with subpoenas issued for phone records of several Times journalists and some of their relatives. Senior Times officials, including the paper’s managing editor and general counsel, sat in the gallery watching during Thursday's proceedings.

The request for phone records raised questions about the extent of the investigation being carried out by the Justice Department.

David McCraw, the Times’ chief newsroom lawyer, said after the hearing in a statement that it “was an important affirmation of our country’s commitment to a free press.”

“We are pleased that the government finally conceded that the subpoenas violated the law, but they should never have been issued in the first place,” he said. “We will not be deterred in the face of tactics like these.”

Court action comes after reporting on new Air Force One jet

The new jet in question, a present from Qatar that Trump’s administration spent $400 million to retrofit and upgrade, recently entered service. But Trump used an older model Air Force One jet to leave a NATO summit in Turkey earlier this month.

The Times, citing anonymous sources, reported that the switch had come at the urging of the Secret Service and that the newer plane lacked some of the advanced security features of the older Air Force One aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. On social media, Trump rejected claims of security concerns.

The Times wrote in a letter to the judge several days ago that two subpoenas seek records beginning on Jan. 1, long before the newspaper published articles on July 8 and July 9 that became the basis for the grand jury subpoenas.

It said that lengthy stretch of records sought would indicate that the purpose of the subpoenas might have been “to forage for information about the Journalists’ source relationships more broadly.”

The Times argued for the phone records subpoenas to be disallowed on the grounds that the government had acted in “bad faith” and ignored its own protocols by not giving the journalists advance notice that records were being sought and by demanding the information “without first conducting any serious investigation.”

The Justice Department has justified the grand jury subpoenas by saying that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.” The department also said it had complied with its own regulations in issuing the subpoenas and had taken “certain” investigative steps before seeking them. It said it was authorized to delay disclosure of the phone records subpoenas but decided to alert the journalists’ lawyers “so that counsel could advance any arguments—regardless of merit—in furtherance of their motion.”

In fighting the subpoenas, the Times' lawyers highlighted how the government's carelessness could have exposed sensitive information that had nothing to do with the journalists. The mother whose phone records were mistakenly sought is a mental health professional with confidential client relationships and one of the two spouses is the general counsel of a law firm, the lawyers said.

At Thursday’s hearing, a final rebuke from the judge to the government came when he asked its lawyers to assure him that it won’t repeat a scenario that left one journalist being served a subpoena by an FBI agent while he was home watching the family-friendly movie “The Sheep Detectives,” about sheep on a quest to solve the murder of their shepherd.

Said the judge, to loud courtroom laughter: “I can’t think of anything more inconsistent with ‘Sheep Detective’ than an FBI agent showing up at your door.”

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Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker reported from Washington

The shooting happened around 9:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 12600 block of Emmett Grove, where the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said gunfire was exchanged between two to three vehicles. Investigators say multiple homes and parked cars were struck by bullets.

The violence unfolded just yards from pickleball courts where families and friends had gathered for an evening game, including Henry Madrano IV. A video he and his daughter shared on social media captured the moment players heard a barrage of gunfire and rushed for cover.

“As soon I turned, I saw about six gun flashes out the window, a car window, that was heading away from us,” he said. “So I mainly told my family to get in the farthest corner and get down.”

He described the moment as surreal, and traumatizing for his family and other teens.

“Some of the girls were hysterical. The boys were hysterical,” he said. “When they bunched up in the corner, which is really not the right thing to do, they were just trying to find cover. They were trying to be safe.”

Homeowners who spoke off camera said bullets pierced their windows and shell casings were found in their yards. They hope the shooting was an isolated incident, and they said the gunfire has left them uneasy.

Alessandro Flores regularly plays at the courts and lives in a nearby neighborhood. He said the shooting has him watching his back.

“I know you’re locked in playing the game and stuff, but still you’ve got to be aware of your surroundings,” he said. “No matter where you are, something like that could happen.”

He said he was surprised to learn the violence happened so close to a place where families gather to play.

“You don’t expect something like that,” Flores said. “You kind of expect like, it’ll be like a chill day playing pickleball with your friends or your family. So it was shocking for sure.”

Madrano said he sought out the courts in the Stillwater Ranch neighborhood because he felt it was safe for his family.

“Whether it’s isolated or not, it’s reckless,” Madrano said. “Bullets can go anywhere; they don’t have a name on it. ... I probably wouldn’t go back in the evening. I probably would go in the morning maybe.”

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the shooting.

Deputies arrested a 17-year-old boy and 18-year-old Aniya West less than a mile from the scene. West was charged with tampering with evidence. Information about the juvenile has not been released.

Investigators are also looking into the role of a man who arrived at an urgent care center with gunshot wounds shortly after the shooting. Authorities said he did not cooperate with deputies, and they are working to determine whether he was a victim or involved in the exchange of gunfire.

Read also:

• Suspect tied to business burglaries, stolen ATMs in south Bexar County, affidavit states
• Affidavit: Man arrested in connection with armed robbery at Northeast Side credit union
• Mother of 17-year-old killed in crash on SW Military Drive speaks out after suspect’s bond reduced

In the span of 24 hours, Jin was 15 time zones away, digging into an In-N-Out hamburger in Los Angeles and watching fireworks with his family on the eve of Independence Day, marking America's 250th anniversary.

“It’s so dramatic. It's unimaginable," the pastor told The Associated Press outside the nation's capital.

He said he was suddenly released after being held since October, then put on a plane to the U.S. after President Donald Trump raised his case with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in May.

“It's a miracle," Jin said this week.

Jin has led one of China's most influential underground churches, which defy government restrictions by not being registered with authorities. He is an exceptional case of a high-profile Chinese detainee going free following a U.S. request at a time when Beijing's leadership has only become more unyielding to foreign pressure.

Chinese pastor credits Trump for his release

Jin said Chinese authorities released him without forcing him to make a confession or going through a show trial, dropping the charges instead. He said he did not know if there was any deal or swap for his release and credited Trump's "unique diplomacy.”

“It has results,” the pastor said.

Trump, when leaving Beijing in May, told reporters that he brought up Jin's case and that Xi said he would “strongly consider the pastor.” Trump also has vowed to “save our Great Christian population” worldwide.

When asked about Jin's release, the Chinese foreign ministry said the country manages religious affairs in accordance with the law. “We firmly oppose interfering in China's internal affairs with so-called religious issues," the ministry said.

Jin is handed new Nikes and taken on an unknown journey

Jin said he was called suddenly to gather his few belongings, including a Bible, on July 3. He was handed new clothes and a new pair of Nike shoes. He was told he was being moved from the detention center in the southern city of Beihai, where he had been locked up for 266 days.

“Could it be that these people, now pressured, would put me under home arrest?” Jin said he wondered. He had heard from his lawyers that Trump had brought up his case with Xi less than two months earlier.

But he crossed out that possibility when the police van whisked by his old neighborhood and took him to a high-speed train station.

He was escorted into a train car with no other passengers, just police officers, who were recording video. Jin said he still did not imagine he could be freed because China rarely responds to outside pressure and many other Christian pastors and political activists are still locked up.

“I thought they would move me to a secretive place,” he said. A release was “too good to believe."

He and the officers traveled some 470 miles to the southern metropolis of Guangzhou and then headed to the international airport, Jin said.

A temporary court was set up in a VIP room at the airport, where prosecutors read out a document, the pastor said.

After declaring “criminal evidence solid and criminal facts established," the lead prosecutor informed Jin of the decision not to indict him on charges including illegal business activity and fraud stemming from running an unregistered church.

China has cracked down on the pastor's church

Jin founded Zion Church in 2007, and it grew into one of the most influential independent congregations in China. They are different from officially sanctioned places of worship, which accept Communist Party rule.

In 2018, authorities in Beijing shut down the church's physical sanctuary after the congregation refused to install surveillance cameras. Jin sent his family to the U.S. but stayed behind to keep developing the church, which met in small groups and gained a strong online following during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In October 2025, Jin and other church leaders were detained in another crackdown.

Pastor gets back his passport and heads to America

At the airport, Jin said he was handed his passport before stepping on a plane. A U.S. diplomat had been waiting for him for hours.

For the nearly 13-hour flight, Jin was too excited to sleep. When he landed in Los Angeles, the pastor said he was welcomed by U.S. officials and given a fee-free one-year visa.

He reunited with his family after a yearslong separation and got to hold his three grandchildren for the first time — the youngest was barely a month old.

His daughter Grace Jin Drexel, who had lobbied for months for her father’s release, said she didn’t recognize him at first because he lost a lot of weight and had visibly aged.

Now free, Jin is working for the release of other Christians

Jin said he would be working to help free the eight other Zion Church members and other Christians detained in China. That includes Wang Yi, pastor of the Early Rain Covenant Church, who is serving nine years in jail.

To that end, Jin met House Speaker Mike Johnson this week, along with relatives of three detained Christians in China.

“I am free in this country, so warmly welcomed, so I am making a special call not to forget that many more are still detained,” he told AP, choking up. “I hope we will continue to strive for them to be free."

The Republican speaker said Jin's release had bipartisan support. "This is something we all agree on,” Johnson said. “It’s about religious freedom around the world.”

Jin said another hope is for China to legalize independent churches.

“Probably the most important wish in my lifetime is that Chinese churches can be recognized by their own government,” Jin said.

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Associated Press writers Ken Moritsugu in Beijing, Lisa Mascaro in Washington and Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed to the report.

Is the grid keeping up? And: Are electric bills about to go up?

The short answers, according to both executives: Yes, and, not right now.

ERCOT, the agency that manages the Texas power grid, said the system performed well despite the intense demand this week — the highest the state has seen since a record last set in August 2023.

“We had a peak on Tuesday, we had another peak on Wednesday, and during all of that, the grid was reliable,” ERCOT president and CEO Pablo Vegas said. ”And prices were relatively moderate during all that time, as well."

Vegas credited years of infrastructure investment — including growth in solar, wind, battery storage and natural gas supply — along with expanded transmission lines for helping the grid manage the load.

A major driver of future demand is the rapid expansion of data centers across Texas.

CPS Energy said it has up to 17 gigawatts — or 17,000 megawatts — of new large load in its pipeline. By 2040, the utility projects the commercial sector will grow by more than 104%, compared to approximately 34% for residential customers.

That kind of growth requires billions of dollars in new infrastructure. The question of who pays for it is now before the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

“The Public Utility Commission is taking the opportunity to look at how the cost of infrastructure gets allocated across all the customers in Texas,” Vegas said. “They are putting together plans to be able to ensure that the new investment that is being made in infrastructure, in order to support the growing demand of data centers, is going to be paid for directly by that customer group so that it doesn’t burden traditional residential customers or small businesses.”

A final decision is expected before the end of this year.

For CPS Energy customers wondering whether all of this growth will show up on their bills, interim president and CEO Frank Almaraz was direct.

“We have not proposed a rate increase and to the extent that when we get to the point where we’re ready to talk to the community about such a thing, we’re going to do it in a really inclusive, transparent way,” Almaraz said. “So, we have not announced any rate increase at this time.”

The local utility’s most recent rate increase was 4.25%, which took effect in February 2024.

CPS Energy’s current projected average residential cost is 13.4 cents per kilowatt hour for July 2026. The 12-month average from August 2025 through July 2026 sits at 12.8 cents per kilowatt hour.

More related coverage of this story on KSAT:

• How to save energy when power demand is high in Texas

The National Hurricane Center said wind gusts of tropical storm force were still possible along the upper Texas coast Thursday evening, and water levels in the area may remain high from storm surge.

Bertha is expected to produce 1 to 3 inches (2.5 to 7.6 centimeters) of rainfall, with isolated totals up to 4 inches (10.1 centimeters) that could trigger flash flooding in coastal and south Texas, the hurricane center said. More weakening was expected overnight and the storm is expected to dissipate by Friday.

Bertha first grazed southern Louisiana on Wednesday in a slow crawl westward. The storm weakened as it made its second landfall about 75 miles (115 kilometers) northeast of Galveston, Texas, on Thursday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center said. It remained a tropical storm for a few hours before being downgraded to a depression, marked by maximum sustained winds of 38 mph (61 kph) or less.

Thick clouds associated with Bertha prompted SpaceX to call off Thursday evening’s planned Starship launch from the southern tip of Texas. The space-skimming test flight was rescheduled for Friday, when the forecast called for clear skies.

No deaths or significant damage have been reported since Bertha formed Monday in the Gulf of Mexico south of the Florida Panhandle. The storm caused some coastal flooding as its center first struck land Wednesday in Louisiana southwest of New Orleans, but its heaviest rains stayed over the Gulf waters.

That rainfall south of the storm's center began moving inland along Texas' southeastern coast Thursday afternoon. Tropical storm force winds on Thursday extended as far as 140 miles (225 kilometers) from the storm’s center, the hurricane center said.

A tropical storm warning was discontinued by evening from Sargent, Texas, to the Vermilion and Cameron Parish line in Louisiana.

Galveston businesses stay open as offic

ials predict a 'windy day’

In Galveston, an island city of 53,000 people southeast of Houston, local officials urged residents to brace for a “windy day” and secure any outdoor objects that might become airborne projectiles.

“While no significant impacts are forecast, some gusty storms may blow through the island throughout the day,” Galveston’s Office of Emergency Management said in a Facebook post Thursday.

The Galveston Historic Seaport canceled its sightseeing boat tours Thursday afternoon as a precaution, but was otherwise operating normally, said employee Jesi Hahn.

“We’ll definitely be open,” Hahn said. “We usually close for big hurricanes.”

At the nearby Harbor House Hotel and Marina, employee Justin Timber said he wasn’t aware of any canceled reservations.

“It seems like a normal day,” he said. “Restaurants are clicking. Everything’s great.”

In Florida, storm damages a boardwalk and topples a Waffle House sign

Electrical outages across the Gulf Coast were minimal, according to the website poweroutage.us. Still, Bertha’s passage wasn’t harmless.

In Pensacola, Florida, officials closed an area around a storm-damaged beach boardwalk, Mayor D.C. Reeves said Thursday on Facebook. He posted a photo showing part of the boardwalk’s support structure ripped away and a fence damaged nearby.

Strong gales earlier in the week knocked over a Waffle House sign onto a car in Panama City Beach, Florida. Heavy surf and the threat of rip tides had prompted warnings at Gulf Coast beaches for swimmers to stay out of the water.

Bertha is the second tropical storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. Tropical Storm Arthur in June brought heavy rainfall to the southeastern U.S.

In the eastern Pacific Ocean, Hurricane Fausto churned far from land Thursday. The hurricane was more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California with maximum sustained winds of 80 mph (130 kph).

The hurricane center said swells generated by Fausto could cause life-threatening surf and rip tides in parts of southern California.

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Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia, and Thanawala reported from Atlanta. AP journalist Marcia Dunn in Cape Canaveral, Florida, contributed.

Richardson had the top time of 10.90 seconds in the women's race. That was despite taking an extra moment in the starting block to make sure she didn't false start and shutting it down early to conserve energy. Richardson is a big favorite to win with reigning 100-meter world champion Melissa Jefferson-Wooden skipping the event to focus on the 200.

The semifinals and final will be held Friday at Icahn Stadium.

Lyles, the reigning Olympic champion, started slow — just like Richardson — but quickly powered up to full speed. He finished in 9.97 seconds to edge Ronnie Baker in the second heat. The top time was turned in by Christian Coleman, who went 9.96 in the first heat. Kenny Bednarek, a two-time Olympic silver medalist in the 200, won his heat as well.

Bednarek and Lyles were involved in a shoving and shouting match at U.S. championships last summer as they crossed the finish line of a hotly contested 200-meter final at Hayward Field in Eugene, Oregon.

The fourth and final heat of the men's race Thursday contained some drama. There was a false-start warning given to the field and then, after settling back into the starting blocks, the sprinters were instructed to stand back up. Soon after, another false start was called and Ja’Darien Parker was disqualified. Courtney Lindsey ended up winning the heat.

There were several champions crowned Thursday night, including Madison Wiltrout (javelin), Isaac Grimes (long jump) and Rudy Winkler (hammer throw). In the women's 10,000 meters, Sydney Vaught made a decisive move at the midway point to drop most of the pack. She then pulled away on the last lap to beat Katie Izzo. Vaught finished in a time of 33 minutes, 30.60 seconds.

The men's race saw Woody Kincaid patiently wait for his opportunity to take control. He overtook Grant Fisher with around 200 meters to go and held Fisher off down the stretch for the win. Kincaid finished in 30:13.66.

This is a fast track, with Jamaican great Usain Bolt breaking the 100-meter world record by running 9.72 seconds at Icahn Stadium in 2008. Bolt would eventually lower the mark to its current time of 9.58 at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

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

Thursday's announcement by Harbinger Sports Group did not say what percentage of the Athletics it had acquired. Cuban, who maintains a minority stake in the Mavericks, is the general partner and president of the Atlanta-based group. Atlanta Falcons minority owner Rashaun Williams is the founder and chief investment officer.

Co-founder and CEO Steve Cannon is vice chairman of AMB Sports and Entertainment that oversees Mercedes-Benz Stadium and the Falcons. Managing partner Jonathan Mariner is the former chief financial officer for Major League Baseball.

“We are minority investors looking to make our investors a lot of money,” Cuban said.

John Fisher is the majority owner of the A's and is overseeing construction of a $2 billion, 33,000-capacity domed stadium on the Las Vegas Strip.

“We are very pleased to welcome Harbinger Sports Partners as an investor in the Athletics,” the team said in a statement. “The experience of their principals across sports, media, and entertainment, combined with their long-term perspective, makes them a valuable addition to our ownership group as we work to build the future of the franchise in Las Vegas.”

This is Harbinger's first investment, according to its news release, and it has raised more than $460 million in less than six months. Investing in the A's is part of “a long-term strategy centered on the Las Vegas sports market,” the group said.

“Las Vegas represents one of the greatest sports investment opportunities of our generation,” Williams said in a statement. “We’re not simply investing in a baseball franchise. We’re investing in a city that has fundamentally changed the economics of professional sports.”

The company touted the success of professional sports in Las Vegas, pointing to the increased valuations of the NFL's Raiders and NHL's Golden Knights since they began playing in the city and saying it expects the A's to receive a similar boost. The Raiders moved from Oakland in 2020 and the expansion Golden Knights launched in 2017.

“Our conviction is simple,” Williams said. “The next decade of sports ownership will look very different than the last. We believe Las Vegas will sit at the center of that transformation, and Harbinger intends to be one of the firms helping shape its future.”

The A’s are playing the second of three planned seasons at a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento, California.

Club officials have said the Las Vegas ballpark is on target to open in time for the 2028 season. The stadium already is becoming part of the city's skyline, with work being performed on the upper deck.

“As someone who helped lead the development of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, I was incredibly impressed with the Athletics’ vision,” Cannon said in a statement. “The new ballpark will be more than a baseball stadium. It will become a year-round entertainment venue and another landmark destination on the Las Vegas Strip.”

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AP Sports Writer Schuyler Dixon in Dallas contributed to this report.

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

Records show Mystkial Garcia-Alvear, 27, was already in jail in connection with a different string of burglaries when the new charges were filed.

The latest crimes he is accused of happened one night last September.

According to an arrest affidavit, Garcia-Alvear, along with Brion Shields, 39, and Joseph DeLeon, 32, broke into four businesses in the area near Loop 1604 and U.S. Highway 281 South.

The suspects are accused of stealing merchandise and cash from the businesses.

In some cases, they also took the entire ATMs and a safe, the affidavit states.

Hardip Singh owns one of the businesses that was targeted, Shady Oaks Groceries, but said the trio did more damage there than anything else.

“They cut the locks, and they broke the glass,” Singh said. “They tried to take out the ATM and the game machines, but they can’t do that.”

Singh said the suspects did make off with about $400 from the cash register and approximately $500 from another cash box.

Records shows Singh’s store was the first store that was hit last September.

The affidavit states the same suspects then broke into The Sugar Leaf Smoke Shop, Ruiz Market and Thelma Food Store.

In each case, the warrant states, they were able to enter the businesses by using a saw to cut the locks.

Shields and DeLeon were arrested previously in connection with this case.

Investigators used surveillance video and phone records to identify Garcia-Alvear and link him to this case.

All three suspects also face charges in a whole string of other burglaries.

“I mean, that’s sad. What can you do?” Singh said, in response to the idea of someone stealing from him.

Singh said one thing he has done is to upgrade the security measures at his business to try to keep criminals away.

More recent crime coverage on KSAT:

• Burglary suspect taken into custody after chase on South Side, authorities say
• Bond reduced for woman charged in Del Rio mother’s fatal stabbing
• Mother of 17-year-old killed in crash on SW Military Drive speaks out after suspect’s bond reduced

Gangs and drug traffickers are increasingly encroaching on Ashaninka land and using the rivers in the Amazon and adjacent land for drug routes. Ashaninka leaders say they’ve reported violent episodes — as recent as this month — and asked for protection, including a meeting with Brazilian officials in the capital on Thursday. Security forces have been deployed. But in this region, their presence is usually temporary, while the threats remain permanent, various Indigenous groups say.

The invasion of Ashaninka territory is part of a broad transformation of the Amazon border as criminal routes expand, through what experts call the Solimoes River route.

Indigenous territories are key to this route. Experts say protecting Indigenous land is one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate. But the very forests these communities help protect leave them vulnerable: Dense tree cover in remote, hard-to-reach areas offers attractive hiding sites for drug traffickers.

Despite appeals to authorities, Ashaninka and other Indigenous people say the Brazilian government's help falls short.

“There is an institutional and intercultural blind spot in the public security services provided to Indigenous peoples,” said Maj. Jonatas Soares, a police officer based in the border city of Tabatinga, in Brazil’s Amazonas state near Colombia and Peru.

“The state formally recognizes their territories, yet it fails to translate that presence into continuous protection tailored to their specific needs.”

Indigenous communities become vulnerable as criminal networks expand into the Amazon

The Solimoes River route, which includes a series of navigable rivers flowing from the Peruvian border to Manaus in Brazil, has become a primary route over the past decade for moving cocaine produced in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia to the Brazilian ports on the Atlantic coast, where it is then funneled into domestic and overseas markets, particularly in Europe.

This route is now mostly controlled by the Brazilian gang Red Command, according to Col. César Mello, a retired Amazonas state police officer and professor at the Federal University of Para and the University of the State of Amazonas.

The remote location of Indigenous territories, lack of government oversight, language barriers and cultural differences “make Indigenous peoples a vulnerable population and an attractive source of labor for criminal organizations,” said Col. Mello.

Criminal groups often recruit Indigenous youth by offering them money and status in communities where economic opportunities are scarce. When that doesn't work, they use violence, Col. Mello added.

Preserving traditions has strengthened the Indigenous resistance

The Ashaninka have become an enduring block to trafficking networks in Peru and Brazil.

In the past, drug traffickers approached the community seeking to build a clandestine airstrip inside their territory. The Ashaninka refused.

“We have a long history of opposing any kind of illegal activity,” said Francisco Piyãko, coordinator of the Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Jurua River.

Local tensions escalated earlier this month after a group of armed men reportedly invaded the Kampa Indigenous territory, located along the winding Amonia River in the western Amazon. On July 6, a group of five Spanish-speaking men, carrying machine guns, threatened families and searched for the territory’s main leaders.

Piyãko filed a formal complaint with Acre state authorities and the Brazilian Army, prompting the deployment of security forces.

“It’s one thing for outsiders to enter our territory to steal resources, like timber and wildlife. But this was different. They entered our land looking for our leaders, intending to kill them,” Piyãko said.

Brazil’s Ministries of Indigenous Peoples and Justice did not respond to requests for comment. The Brazilian Army and the Acre state government’s press office also did not respond.

The Foreign Ministry said its representatives would welcome the Ashaninka leaders in Brasilia to hear their concerns and assess further applicable actions with Peru's government.

Earlier this year, Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Flávio Dino ordered the federal government to intensify efforts against criminal organizations operating in the Amazon, citing official records and investigations that showed their growing presence and threat to Indigenous communities.

The community is shaken by the recent threats but determined to resist. Piyãko stressed, however, that confronting armed criminal groups is not the Indigenous responsibility but the duty of the state — both Brazil and Peru.

“They allowed this to happen through their absence, so they bear that responsibility,” he added.

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The “Cockroach” protests began more than a month ago over leaks in some of the country’s most competitive entrance exams for medical colleges and government jobs. The movement has since expanded beyond exam grievances, drawing professionals and families while channeling broader frustration.

Thursday’s demonstrations at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site in New Delhi, followed overnight clashes in which police used tear gas and batons to disperse crowds, the second such confrontation this week.

On Monday, thousands of protesters had defied restrictions and marched toward Parliament before police broke up the demonstration with tear gas and batons.

Protesters regrouped by Thursday morning, returning to the protest site despite roadblocks, while authorities suspended Delhi Metro services at 16 stations to limit access to the demonstrations.

Modi tries to contain protest fallout

The issue of exam leaks has become a powerful symbol of frustration for millions of young Indians. Protesters are demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, examination system reforms and compensation for families of students who died by suicide after exam paper leaks.

Facing mounting pressure, Modi addressed the issue publicly for the first time Thursday, announcing fast-track courts to handle examination paper leak cases. Fast-track courts are special courts created to speed up cases in India’s notoriously slow justice system.

“Nothing is more important than the welfare and future of our youth!,” Modi wrote on X.

The announcement failed to calm protesters, who said Modi was not addressing their demands for accountability and reform.

“Rather than providing solution which is convenient for him, he should work toward a solution which is convenient for the nation and set an example,” law student Daksh Bhargava said.

Cockroach party stays true to satirical origins

Leaders of the Cockroach Janta Party, which launched the protest movement, said they would not end the demonstrations until the education minister resigned. Staying true to the movement’s tongue-in-cheek style, its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, responded by posting a meme of Pradhan captioned, “Hi, my name is Nothing.”

The Cockroach movement began as online satire campaign in May and moved to the streets in June through smaller protests across cities. It gained momentum after prominent activist Sonam Wangchuk joined the demonstration and began a hunger strike that has lasted more than three weeks. Police forcibly transferred Wangchuk to a hospital over the weekend.

Protests reflect rising youth anger

For many young Indians, the protests have become one of the few visible expressions of dissent in a country where demonstrations against Modi’s government have led to a broader crackdown on activists, opposition figures and public protests.

The movement’s rapid growth beyond student groups reflects wider frustration among young Indians and echoes a broader trend across South Asia, where young people have driven anti-government movements in recent years.

The movement also has gained a following among Indians of all ages over concerns about government accountability, unemployment and economic opportunity.

Opposition parties have backed the protests, using the issue to challenge the government in Parliament. Demonstrations and solidarity events have been held in other Indian cities, reflecting how the movement has spread beyond the capital.

India has one of the world’s youngest populations, with millions entering a labor market that has struggled to create enough secure, well-paying jobs. Despite years of rapid economic growth, many young people say their prospects have not improved.

As one of the country’s largest voting blocs, India’s youth could also become an increasingly important political force ahead of future elections.

Trump said the Dodgers edging the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 last fall capped “a hell of a series." He indicated he was surprised to learn that the Dodgers had never before won consecutive titles but also mused about a third in a row.

“I’m thrilled to say welcome back to the White House," he said. "And maybe I’ll see you again next year.”

The president saluted the team in the East Room in April 2025 to mark their 2024 World Series championship over the New York Yankees. He said before the latest event that he was most excited about meeting Ohtani, whom he compared at length to the legendary Babe Ruth — even saying the Dodgers star was arguably the best hitter and pitcher in baseball.

"It’s truly a great — when you talk about a brand — it's one of the great brands anywhere in the world,” Trump said of the Dodgers. He spoke in front of a table with two World Series trophies and a Trump 47 jersey, which the team presented to him.

The Dodgers also gave Trump what looked like a replica of a World Series ring. That prompted Trump to exclaim: “Wow. Do I have to report this? I don't want to report this" before slipping the ring into the inside pocket of his suit jacket.

Trump says Iran war has kept him from following baseball closely

Those in the crowd wore blue Dodgers caps to guard against bright overhead sun, and the band played a jazzy instrumental version of Randy Newman’s “I Love LA” before Trump took the stage.

Trump described last year's World Series' epic Game 3 during which the Dodgers won 6-5 in 18 innings. Trump said he stayed up until around 3 a.m. to watch, noting that “it was a long one, but it was amazing.”

“I thought it was a game that you were going to lose about four or five times, and you ended up winning,” he said, adding, “Luck is OK, too, right?” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts agreed: “Luck is OK.”

“But with talent you get a lot of luck,” Trump continued.

The president said he spoke briefly with Roberts before the event and learned that his team currently has the best record in baseball, noting, “I've been a little busy with Iran and some other things.”

That was his only reference during the event to fighting in the Middle East, which has escalated on both sides in recent days.

Roberts also spoke briefly, saying, “We’re going for a three-peat.”

Championship baseball teams have been coming to the White House since 1869, when President Ulysses S. Grant hosted the Cincinnati Red Stockings. They were the first fully professional team to visit the White House and went undefeated that season, though the World Series wasn’t established in its modern form until 1903.

Sports teams' visits to the Trump White House have sometimes been a source of controversy. In 2018, the president rescinded an invitation to the Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles after many players suggested they might skip such a trip.

Dodgers star right fielder Mookie Betts wasn’t at Thursday’s Rose Garden event, though he did make the 2025 visit. He said he prefers to spend the team’s scheduled days off with his family.

The Dodgers originally considered coming to the White House this past April during a series with the Washington Nationals, but a crowded early season schedule didn’t permit that. Instead, they’re in the nation’s capital during the off-day between a just-completed series against the Philadelphia Phillies and Friday’s opener against the New York Mets in Queens.

The White House has changed since the Dodgers' last visit

Over the past year, Trump has revamped the Rose Garden and added a patio area reminiscent of his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. At Thursday's event for the Dodgers, he referenced the “ Walk of Fame ” installed on the colonnade, which features plaques of past presidents along with partisan insults against Joe Biden and other Democrats.

“I could put some of the great Dodgers on the wall," Trump joked, “but I figured maybe it's more appropriate that we put the presidents.”

Trump, a baseball fan and New York native, has for years been closely associated with the Yankees, whose late, longtime owner George Steinbrenner was a close friend. Trump referenced Steinbrenner on Thursday, saying, “He would do anything to win" before telling the Dodgers' team owners, "But you’re doing the same thing.”

The president isn't always so complimentary of teams, though. During a rally in Georgia on Wednesday, he praised the ownership of the local Atlanta Braves and slammed the Mets for their sky-high payroll and losing record.

Trump was joined on stage during that event by former Braves manager Brian Snitker, and Mike Plant, president and CEO of the Braves Development Company.

”You know, the Mets have the highest salary in baseball, and they lose all the time," Trump said then. And I’m like, maybe we can steal this guy.”

“There are teams like that, where they never go down,” Trump said. “Then you have other teams — ‘We’re rebuilding.’ They’ve been rebuilding for years. I don’t want to mention teams ’cause I know all the owners. They’re all friends of mine.”

___

This story has been corrected to show Game 7 was last November, not last October.

Joel Gonzalez surprised Dr. Kelley Hitchman on Monday at her lab for what he called their fifth “kidney anniversary.”

KSAT has been reporting on the transplant pair for years now, including Hitchman’s journey to climb to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro after the successful transplant to spread awareness about living donors and show people the healthy life a donor can still live.

KSAT also spoke with Gonzalez about how he is now thriving, and the importance of living donors.

This week, he coordinated with family and staff to surprise Hitchman with a gift and flowers.

“Thank you for saving my life,” he said during the reunion hug caught on camera.

Hitchman, who leads University Health’s Transplant Institute, saw how her patients struggled, which is why she decided to become a living donor.

“It’s his kidney. Clearly, it was always meant for him, so I am always so grateful to see him and grateful for his friendship,” Hitchman told KSAT after the reunion.

Gonzalez is working full time, supporting other transplant patients and getting to be a husband, dad and grandfather.

“He’s been through so much, and he’s one of the most positive people, the most optimistic people I think I’ve ever met,” Hitchman said. “I think we could all learn something from a Joel, from having a Joel in our lives,”

Hitchman said their story is proof of how crucial living donors are.

“There are about 6,000 to 7,000 people in the United States every year that make this choice to say ‘yes’ to kidney donation, and that’s wonderful,” she said. “But there are about 109,000 or 110,000 people waiting on our list right now. And the majority of those are waiting for a kidney.”

The wait time for the deceased donor transplant list is five to seven years. Hitchman said transplants are far more successful when they come from living donors.

That’s why she climbed Mount Kilimanjaro two years ago — to show people how safe and fulfilling it is.

“My healing was really very straightforward. I’m just as healthy, if not healthier,” Hitchman said. “It’s a safe thing to do and more people are needed to do it.”

She hopes more people will be inspired to sign up and give people like Gonzalez a true second chance at life.

Anyone interested in learning more about becoming a living donor can visit University Health’s Transplant Institute website, which has a page for living donors.

More coverage of this story on KSAT:

• She did it! Local doctor with one kidney scales Mt. Kilimanjaro to dispel organ donation myths
• San Antonio doctor almost reaches Kilimanjaro summit, raising awareness for organ donation
• Man with diabetes trifecta shares his story of complications to help others

Eleven girls from Girl Scout Troop 702 will travel to New York City from August 5-8, a trip they funded largely through Girl Scout cookie sales.

The troop has spent the past three years working toward the experience, selling about 8,000 boxes of cookies each year.

“We had our goal and we reached our goal, and now we get to go to New York,” said Bella Lozano, who is entering sixth grade at St. Matthew’s Catholic School and has been a Girl Scout for seven years.

For many of the girls, it will be their first visit to New York City. Lozano said she’s most excited to see a Broadway show and learn more about American history.

“We all have our history lessons, so the history that happened in New York was, I think, really eye-catching to us,” she said.

The itinerary also includes visits to the Statue of Liberty and the National Sept. 11 Memorial & Museum.

“I’m most looking forward to the Statue of Liberty because I think it’s a key monument for our country,” Ava Barrera said.

Julianna Reyes said visiting the 9/11 Memorial will be especially meaningful.

“It’s a way to honor all the people who helped get people to safety and to remember everyone who sadly died,” she said.

Along the way, the girls say selling cookies has taught them lessons that extend far beyond business.

“I’ve learned how much it means to be a leader and how it means to work as a group,” Maeve Tynan said.

The scouts also credited patience, a positive attitude and confidence for helping them meet their fundraising goal.

“Anything is possible,” Barrera said. “We never gave up.”

Read also:

• San Antonio exhibit highlights rancheras’ overlooked role in the American Revolution
• America250: Spanish Governor’s Palace offers glimpse into San Antonio’s overlooked role in America’s founding
• Daughters of the American Revolution members preserve history, honor veterans in San Antonio

Arch Manning of Texas, the latest in the long line of football's royal family of quarterbacking, took 20 minutes worth of questions Thursday to close out SEC Media Days. He mostly spoke about 2026.

“I'm not worried about anything in the future right now,” he said. “I’m worried about getting through this interview.”

He did just fine.

Sporting a burnt-orange necktie and a Longhorn pin on his lapel, the son of Cooper, nephew of Peyton and Eli, and grandson of Archie ran the gantlet with reporters lined up three-deep to speak with him.

— How does it feel to be compared to others, both in and out of your family? “I’m trying to do better not comparing myself to others. They say comparison is the defeat of joy.”

— Is he looking forward to leading the Longhorns into Uncle Peyton’s old stomping grounds, Neyland Stadium at Tennessee? “They’ve got a good coach and good players. We’re excited to go. I’m not going to make it about me.”

— What’s his favorite hobby? Answer: golf. “I broke 80 for the first time last week. Well, pretty much. I gave myself a putt.”

Certainly, there's still work to do for the 22-year-old junior-to-be, whose body and reputation took a beating with the Longhorns over a tumultuous, 10-3 season in 2025.

Heading into his second season as the starter, Manning insists he tries to minimize the expectations that have been heaped on him since he emerged in high school as a surefire star-to-be — or the criticism from those who said his 3-2 start last year that dropped him down those NFL draft boards made him one of the biggest busts in college football history.

“Everyone has an opinion and people get paid to talk in the media, so there's really nothing you can do,” he said. “I'm trying to control the controllables.”

He got sacked 23 times last season and was under pressure more than that. Because he's a Manning, everything from his reactions after bad plays to his release time — somewhere around 3.2 seconds — got dissected way more than would those of a typical above-average college QB.

Texas opened last season with a 14-7 loss to Ohio State and followed that five weeks later with a six-sack, 29-21 loss to a Florida team that turned out not to be very good.

Standing out in the loss to the Gators was the image of Manning virtually folded in half, sandwiched by a pair of linebackers, after one of the six sacks. And a video of him plopping down on the bench, dejected, after one of his two interceptions that day. That he came back from that game to go 7-1, throw 20 touchdown passes and get the 'Horns back in the playoff conversation sometimes gets overlooked.

Texas plays both teams again this year, starting with the Buckeyes on Sept. 12. The Longhorns brought in receiver Cam Coleman from Auburn and a pair of running backs, Hollywood Smothers (N.C. State) and Raleek Brown (Arizona State), to help their star QB.

“I think what he got put through probably would have melted or destroyed 99% of people in his shoes,” coach Steve Sarkisian said. “All he did was stay consistent and true to who he was, which was to continue to work hard, continue to be a great teammate, try to get better, and he did.”

And that, Manning said, is pretty much the goal again for 2026.

If he lives up to expectations, then it would be no big surprise to hear his name called first come draft day. He is scheduled to graduate in December. Neither that — nor any conversation about his family, his future or his place in the game — are going to shift his focus.

“I just want to be remembered as a good teammate and someone who did whatever it took to help the team win and help the team get closer,” he said. “I'm not really worried about my legacy. I just want to win games and have a good time.”

___

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages Canyon Lake, told KSAT it does not conduct water quality testing following flood events. Instead, the agency is urging visitors to be responsible by swimming only in designated beach areas, wearing properly fitted life jackets and using caution around flood debris.

Officials also recommend avoiding stagnant, murky or foul-smelling water.

Many visitors at the lake said they weren’t overly concerned.

“I feel like I didn’t see much of a difference, just a little more murky,” said 12-year-old Hilson Tucker.

When asked if that bothered him, he replied “no.”

His father, Ross Tucker, said he checks for any official alerts before bringing his family to the lake.

“It hasn’t concerned me too much,” he said. “I do check to make sure there are no alerts out before we come to the lake, and Canyon Lake is not putting out any alerts. I feel like it’s safe.”

Businesses on the lake also remain open.

Frasier McNew, who operates Jet Ski Dude, said the Corps of Engineers oversees the recreation area and would close it if conditions were considered unsafe.

“No, no we wouldn’t be allowed to be open,” McNew said. “The whole park would be closed. The corps, they oversee us directly, they would be shutting us down.”

McNew said after last year’s flooding, there was more debris. After last week’s flooding, it hasn’t been much of an issue, pointing out that it’s clear enough to see your phone if you drop it in the water.

“Last year, there was a bunch of wind — it kept all the debris in one place until it slowly sank,” McNew said. This year, there wasn’t that much wind, so they actually spread out throughout the lake a little bit.”

KSAT has also reached out to the Guadalupe-Blanco River Authority for the latest Canyon Lake water quality testing results and is still waiting for a response.

Farther upstream, the Upper Guadalupe River Authority said initial testing found bacteria levels at most Upper Guadalupe River sites in Kerr County were within the state’s recreational standard and consistent with pre-flood conditions.

Even so, the agency continues to advise people to avoid swimming in Kerrville and to use caution throughout the river, because murky water and flood debris can hide dangerous hazards.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which conducts routine water quality monitoring every four months, says it plans to test Canyon Lake next week. Until then, the agency recommends people remain aware of debris and other hazards that can linger after major flooding.

Read also:

• Frio River at Concan is open — but river experts, visitors urge caution after flooding
• Kerrville extends disaster declaration after widespread flood damage
• Boerne horse ranch seeks volunteers after flood causes up to $1 million in damage

The person, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the team has not yet announced the news, said Scourton will be placed on injured reserve this week.

Scourton is expected to have a second opinion on the diagnosis, the person said

It’s a huge blow for the Panthers, who were counting on Scourton to be a top pass rusher opposite recently signed free agent Jaelan Phillips.

Scourton, a second-round pick in 2025 out of Texas A&M, had an outstanding rookie season for the Panthers, playing in 17 games with eight starts. He finished the season with 47 tackles, five sacks and nine quarterback hits while developing into a key starter for the NFL’s 15th-ranked defense.

“I'm just sick about it,” Panthers general manager Dan Morgan said Thursday night.

Scourton went down on a wet field late in practice during team drills. Players immediately gathered around him on one knee.

Scourton held his hand over his face as he was led into an awaiting cart.

As he was leaving the field, the cart stopped and Canales and every player on the roster individually walked over to hug Scourton before he was taken to the training room.

“They care about each other,” Panthers coach Dave Canales said. “Whenever you’re in a group of people doing something hard together, it has a way of creating a special bond. Between all the workouts and going through a full season and an offseason and all that, it means something to the guys. I’m proud of that.”

Scourton appeared to be engaged in a block with an offensive lineman at the time of the injury.

Panthers quarterback Bryce Young was near the play at the time, but said he did not see what happened.

He praised Scourton for how quickly he has developed into a leader on defense.

“It’s been really cool to see him come into his own,” Young said. “He has a super-high motor, has great energy. He’s fun to be around. He turns into that different competitor when he’s on the field. We feel that during practice. He has raised the level of (intensity at) practice many times. We don’t know anything yet (on the injury), but we’re just praying for him.”

It's unclear who will take Scourton's place in the starting lineup.

The defending NFC South champions are struggling out of the gate with setbacks.

Panthers longtime right tackle Taylor Moton is out after a blood clot was discovered in his lungs. With left tackle Ickey Ekwonu still recovering from a torn patellar tendon in his knee suffered in last season's wild-card playoff loss to the Los Angeles Rams, the Panthers will begin the season without both starting tackles on the sideline.

Both are expected to return at some point this season, Morgan said.

Two-time Pro Bowl cornerback Jaycee Horn is dealing with a foot laceration and did not practice Thursday. Defensive tackles Tershawn Wharton (neck) and Bobby Brown (hamstring) were also out.

___

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

David and Sara LeBlanc had a rotating display of the roughly 6-foot-tall (1.8-meter-tall) ornaments decorating their Ogunquit lawn until officials in the small coastal town deemed them to be impermissible advertising for their attached restaurant, The Omelette Factory.

The couple initially resisted the town's removal order, insisting the roosters were meant to comfort their daughter Pyper, not advertise their business.

“Roosters don’t lay eggs,” David LeBlanc told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

But they eventually came to an agreement with the town allowing them to keep two of the roosters in front of their home.

As for what to do with the others? That's where friends, neighbors and complete strangers came in.

It started with a beloved stuffed rooster

The LeBlancs took in Pyper as a foster child and later adopted her. She arrived with a stuffed rooster, and roosters became her favorite animal, her parents said. When her father took her to a Tractor Supply Store to play with baby chicks last year, she noticed a large rooster sculpture for sale and asked her dad what it was saying.

“I think he wants to come home,” David LeBlanc said he told her.

Eventually, their collection grew to more than two dozen roosters, which they set up in batches for seasonal and holiday displays. Pyper took to hiding behind one each morning while waiting for the school bus, which her parents said helps her regulate her emotions and navigate transitions.

But the couple ruffled feathers when they added a rooster to their restaurant’s logo, which is featured on its shirts and other merchandise. Although the LeBlancs said they view the rooster as a “family crest,” the town saw their lawn statues as advertising.

A code enforcement officer, Tyler McOsker, issued the LeBlancs $450 in fines and ordered them in April to "remove all unpermitted signage, including but not limited to rooster statues."

McOsker didn't respond to an email requesting comment. But he told the Zoning Board of Appeals in June that he had no idea the roosters were connected to Pyper’s autism diagnosis until the couple appealed the fines. He also pointed to a May 2025 article in a local weekly newspaper that described the roosters as a “fun and unconventional way to announce that The Omelette Factory is officially open for business.”

“That, to me, is the definition of a sign. You’re announcing you’re opening,” McOsker told the board.

David LeBlanc said the reporter misinterpreted a customer’s joke about the roosters serving as an “Open” sign.

“We never said that,” he said.

The town offers a compromise

The zoning board discussed the issue last month. At one point, board member Jay Smith voiced frustration at the lack of medical proof that the roosters were necessary.

“I’m inclined to think there may be some merit to a comfort animal on the front lawn … but the point is, how many does it take?” he said.

Autism spectrum disorder is a complex developmental condition that affects different people in different ways, and comfort objects are frequently incorporated into therapy for autistic children to help manage transitions, support emotional regulation and provide a sense of familiarity, Beverley Cush Evans, a professor of special education at Lesley University, told the AP.

“It’s part of who they are and what they need," she said.

Eventually, the board decided it lacked the authority to rescind the fines but tried to accommodate the family by granting a disability variance that essentially deemed two roosters necessary for Pyper’s access to the home.

“I want to emphasize we’re talking about two roosters. If they have babies or multiply in the night — no,” another board member said.

The variance requires the roosters to be part of a railing, however, and for now, they are just bolted to the steps. The couple has been fined another $500 for noncompliance.

A show of support

David LeBlanc said he is moving on from the dispute and is focusing on the good that has come from it. The family has given roosters to others to “foster” and show their support for autism acceptance, starting with a man named Sam who lives up the road. Though Pyper was sad to see them go, she understands the adage about making lemonade, LeBlanc said.

“She understands that the roosters being taken away were the lemons, and Sam and his friends, fostering them, are the lemonade,” he said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”

Thanks to news coverage and a Roosters of Ogunquit Facebook page, the story has spread far and wide. One supporter wrote in from New Zealand sharing pictures of his children with a rooster statue in their yard.

Hetal Patel, who owns a motel in nearby Wells and has a relative with autism, wanted to buy a rooster after hearing about Pyper. They were sold out in the Ogunquit area, though, so she and her son went to New Hampshire last week to get one.

“We found the last one,” she said. “We couldn’t wait to put it out. People were so supportive, they were honking. It was so nice to see all the love for Pyper.”

The letters have raised concerns among some state lawmakers, including one who said some constituents who received them are U.S. citizens.

Alaska Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher told state lawmakers during a hearing this week that it appears “a lot of old data was picked up somehow" when the division conducted voter roll maintenance that compares its list with information held by the Division of Motor Vehicles. The process usually yields about 200 names for further review, she said.

Beecher estimated during Wednesday's hearing that the number of letters sent was around 3,500, but a Division of Elections spokesperson, Steve Kirch, on Thursday said the total was 3,048.

The revelation comes at a time of heightened sensitivity surrounding claims of noncitizen voting. Research and prosecutions have shown it to be extremely rare, but President Donald Trump and his allies have raised alarms since the presidential election cycle two years ago that noncitizen voting is widespread.

The president also has been trying to push voting changes through Congress that would require people to provide documents proving their citizenship to register to vote and a now-halted executive order that sought to create a federal list of verified voters, even though voter rolls are maintained by the states.

Citizenship verification 'is not disenfranchising' voters

The Alaska letter asks recipients to affirm their citizenship status via letter, phone or email, and Beecher said the division is not requiring paperwork or documentation. Those who receive the letter are moved to a list of “inactive” voters. If the division doesn't hear back from the recipient, they still would be able to cast a special kind of ballot that also requires voters to attest to their qualifications to vote, she said.

“It is not disenfranchising the individual from being able to vote, but it’s a measure the division has to take to make sure that we only have citizens voting,” she said.

People who respond to the letter to say they are citizens will be moved back to the active list, Kirch said.

State Rep. Andrew Gray, a Democrat, said the only people who had contacted his office about the letters were people who are citizens. Another Democrat, state Rep. Ashley Carrick, asked if the letters were related to Alaska's decision late last year to share detailed data about the state's voters with the U.S. Department of Justice.

Beecher said it was not: “It has nothing to do with that,” she said, adding: “The information that we have received is specifically from DMV.”

She said the Division of Elections has not heard from the Department of Justice “regarding any list or the list that we provided that they identified noncitizens on that.”

DMV says request it received was ‘nonroutine’

Alaska was one of at least 16 states that have provided or said it would provide to the Trump administration detailed information about its voters — including dates of birth, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers, according to the Brennan Center. Alaska and Texas also signed agreements. The information is being run through a Department of Homeland Security program that checks for citizenship but has been criticized for its potential to flag eligible voters.

Voting and civil rights groups in Alaska earlier this year sued over the state's sharing of the information. That case is still pending.

In response to questions, the Division of Motor Vehicles released a memo Thursday saying the Division of Elections in March provided the agency “with a list of approximately 15,200 DMV license and identification applicants and requested that DMV provide citizenship information for these records.” The memo described it as a “nonroutine request.”

The memo said the Division of Elections followed up in June, seeking clarification. The DMV said it responded to say that data it provided “included only those records where DMV’s latest confirmed status for an individual was other than ‘Citizen.’”

Kirch said his agency had sent the DMV its “entire voter list and they ran ours against theirs.”

Officials unsure why so many voters had their status questioned

Beecher, during the legislative hearing, said it remained unclear why the list of voters identified as potential noncitizens was so large this time. It is possible people applied to get a driver's license before they were citizens and since then became citizens but that didn't show up in DMV records, she said.

“I believe that people probably don’t realize that all of these governmental entities don’t necessarily talk to each other,” she said.

Kirch gave an example on Thursday. He said if a person was not a citizen some years ago when they received their driver's license but since became a citizen and registered to vote when they applied for the annual dividend the state pays to residents from its oil-wealth fund, data from the DMV would still show them as not being a citizen.

He said people should update their information with the DMV to ensure they are not flagged in future citizenship checks.

Trump said earlier Thursday that a new agreement reached with Saudi Arabia for a civilian nuclear program will require the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel through the Abraham Accords. Trump added that the new nuclear deal, which is expected to last 30 years and involve U.S. firms, does not allow for enrichment of uranium. But experts are concerned the deal lacks guardrails to prevent uranium enrichment to weapons-grade levels.

Meanwhile, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels are threatening to blockade Saudi Arabia, a threat that could widen the Iran war and further disrupt global oil supplies and international trade. The Houthis said on Thursday they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, as international oil spiked to $100 a barrel.

The House on Thursday narrowly passed a resolution to halt U.S. military action in Iran, sending a largely symbolic warning to Trump for the second time. The 214-208 vote requiring congressional approval for the war comes as the Senate is expected to consider a similar resolution later Thursday morning.

Here's the latest:

US military says it’s launching strikes on Iran as clashes escalate over shipping routes

U.S. Central Command once again said the strikes are designed to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters” as the U.S. pushes to regain control over the Strait of Hormuz and restore the flow of international shipping.

Trump says Iran’s frozen assets will pay for repairs to damaged ships

The president said on social media that sanctioned Iranian funds in the possession of the U.S. will cover the expense of fixing boats damaged in the war.

“Please let this statement serve to represent, until further notice, that from this point forth, any and all damages done to Ships, Cargo, or anything related thereto, will be paid for by Iranian Money that the United States has in its possession, and controls,” Trump said.

It was unclear what legal mechanisms Trump would use to access and spend the funds, but he said that doing so would be “the fair and equitable thing to do.”

Some products are exempted from new tariffs, including oil and gas

Some products — including oil, gas and fertilizer — are exempted from the new tariffs announced Thursday. Also being spared are products that qualify for duty-free status under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the North American trade pact Trump negotiated in his first term.

Tariffs are paid by companies in the United States that import foreign products. The importers usually try to pass along the cost by charging consumers higher prices.

Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living, so the administration is taking a risk in rolling out new tariffs ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Trump imposes double-digit tariffs on countries before Friday deadline

Trump is going ahead with new double-digit tariffs on dozens of U.S. trading partners just as the clock runs out Friday on stopgap levies he imposed after a stinging defeat at the Supreme Court.

The United States will impose taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 countries, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor.

The new tariffs come as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday.

Trump had turned to those levies after the Supreme Court struck down his biggest and boldest tariffs in February. Now he’s tapping more durable tariffs under a 1974 trade law.

Trump expands a voluntary pledge to protect consumers from high utility bills from AI data centers

Trump is asking governors and electricity companies to join a pledge aimed at shielding U.S. consumers from higher utility bills because of data centers.

This move highlights the controversy surrounding the development of artificial intelligence before the November midterm elections.

Trump initially announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but voters remain concerned about affordability and competition for resources. A recent analysis shows increased electricity demand could raise utility bills by 15% to 40% by 2030.

Opposition to data centers has become bipartisan. Some governors have taken steps to address these concerns.

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Government withdraws subpoenas of 3 reporters for The New York Times after admitting legal errors

The government has withdrawn subpoenas that would have compelled three New York Times reporters to testify about their sources for articles about Trump’s Qatari-gifted Air Force One jet. The withdrawals in U.S. District Court followed a remarkable back-and-forth between a visibly irritated Judge Arun Subramanian and government attorneys.

They come at a time when the Trump administration is vigorously going after news organizations whose reporting and coverage it doesn’t like — and also trying to crack down on leaks inside the government.

The government’s retreat in the face of vigorous legal opposition and a stern reprimand from a judge marked the latest instance of the Justice Department pulling back on its aggressive efforts to compel journalists to identify their sources before a grand jury. The administration recently withdrew similar subpoenas that sought to compel testimony in Virginia from journalists for The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal.

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Trump is looking forward to meeting Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani

“I’ll meet a man who’s just about the best pitcher in baseball and just about the best hitter in baseball,” Trump said of the upcoming appearance while speaking at an event at the EPA headquarters in Washington.

He was referring to Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers designated hitter and pitcher.

Trump also mentioned Babe Ruth, himself a legendary pitcher and hitter, and suggested that Ohtani was superior to Ruth.

“So we’re going to meet him and all of the people of the Dodgers,” Trump said. “They won the World Championship, and we see the champions, the Super Bowl champions and the baseball and basketball, all of them. They like to come over to the White House.”

Los Angeles edged the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 7 last October to become the first repeat World Series champions in a quarter century.

Trump says communities ‘can’t fight’ data centers, should embrace them

Trump said elected officials and other leaders need to do a better job convincing their communities “how great” data centers are.

Speaking at an event to promote his Ratepayer Protection Pledge, Trump said local communities should accept new data centers that power AI and supercomputers.

“You can’t fight it. You have to go with it, and you’re going to have all that protection, and we’re giving you automatic protection” from rate increases, Trump said Thursday at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Communities that host data centers “are going to make a tremendous amount of money,’′ Trump said. “You’re going to reduce taxes, and you’re going to have something that if you don’t have it, everybody else wants it. Your community and your state’s going to become rich, and there’s very little disruption. You might as well do it yourselves.”

US heaps more sanctions on Cuba energy and financial concerns

The Trump administration has imposed more sanctions on Cuban officials and organizations affiliated with a military-run company that it has previously designated for U.S. penalties.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was targeting nine companies and two people linked to Grupo De Administración Empresarial, or GAESA, for sanctions. GAESA is a military conglomerate that was hit with sanctions in May.

The sanctions also apply to Cuba’s public health minister for his role in overseeing medical assistance overseas that Rubio says is a front for human trafficking.

The move is the latest escalation in the U.S. pressure campaign against the Cuban government, which the administration earlier this week accused of running a decades-old espionage and influence campaign inside the United States to promote left-wing or communist ideology. But it also comes just two days after the delivery of some $60 million in U.S. humanitarian aid to the island.

Trump says trip to Dover was ‘a very sad day’ for him while playing down Iran war death toll

A day after he attended the dignified transfer of four U.S. service members killed in the Middle East, Trump mourned their deaths while comparing the war’s death toll to longer, costlier conflicts.

“I had a very sad day yesterday. I went to Dover. Four great American patriots killed,” Trump said. “That’s 18 in two wars. And one is too many, but it’s 18, whereas in Vietnam we lost 200,000.”

He added that “we want to get it over with, and we want to do it right, but we have to do what we came to do.”

US hits Mexican drug cartel members with new sanctions

The Trump administration has imposed new sanctions on more than 50 members of a Mexican cartel it accuses of narcotrafficking, including its new leader who took over the organization after the death of his stepfather known as “El Mencho.”

The Treasury Department on Thursday said it had targeted the leader of the Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, or CJNG, Juan Carlos Gonzalez. Gonzalez is a dual U.S.-Mexico citizen, along with dozens of other CJNG members, for sanctions. The sanctions include freezing any assets they may have in the United States or that come into contact with financial institutions under U.S. jurisdiction.

The Treasury said the move was the largest ever single action it has taken against the group, which the U.S. accuses of widespread drug smuggling and violence and was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the State Department in February 2025.

US designates Muslim Brotherhood official, several others accused of supporting Hamas as terrorists

The Trump administration on Thursday designated a senior official of the Muslim Brotherhood and several individuals and entities accused of providing support to Hamas as terrorists.

This comes after the U.S. labeled three Middle Eastern branches of the organization in January with the same severe label, making it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group.

In a statement, the Treasury Department said that two of the entities listed are “sham charities” tied to the Muslim Brotherhood that “funneled substantial funding to Hamas’s military wing.”

Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt in 1928, have previously said they disavow violence, with the branches in Egypt and Lebanon denouncing their inclusion on the U.S.’s list.

US providing over $200M in aid to international Red Cross

The State Department says roughly two-thirds is going to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which focuses on the protection of civilians in conflict.

The remainder is directed to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, an umbrella group of national organizations like the American Red Cross.

The “rapid, flexible and global focus” of the funding is part of efforts to help aid groups respond to natural disasters, the needs of people in conflicts and build on existing humanitarian aid channels, the department said.

ICRC said the U.S. has been its top donor for years and committed $363 million last year and a similar amount this year.

Trump will welcome the World Series champion Dodgers to the White House

Trump is welcoming Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers to the White House.

Thursday’s event in the Rose Garden celebrates the team’s second consecutive World Series title. The Dodgers previously celebrated their 2024 win with Trump in April 2025.

Trump has added personal touches to the White House, including a Mar-a-Lago -inspired patio where the team event is being held.

Championship baseball teams have been coming to the White House since 1869, when President Ulysses S. Grant welcomed the Cincinnati Red Stockings.

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A member of Vance’s Secret Service detail is being investigated over a suspected news leak

The Secret Service says a member of Vice President JD Vance ’s security detail is being investigated over a suspected news leak.

An agency spokesperson said Thursday that the member faces an internal investigation and potential criminal inquiry over allegations that the person compromised “operational and information security.”

The Secret Service said the investigation is tied to a report from MS NOW last week that said some Secret Service agents had privately expressed frustration over last-minute travel requests from Vance and his family. The Secret Service did not disclose the identity of the member under investigation.

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Leavitt says Trump is ‘final dealmaker’ on potential US-Saudi nuclear agreement

The U.S. Energy Department and Saudi government announcement on Wednesday made no mention of the civil nuclear deal being contingent on the kingdom normalizing relations with Israel.

So Trump’s social media post on Thursday asserting that the deal was subject to the Saudis joining the accord — what would be a monumental achievement for the administration if it ever happens — was unexpected.

When asked by a reporter why the condition was not mentioned in the initial announcement, Leavitt said the president was the “final dealmaker” and has called on Saudi Arabia to join the accords “on numerous occasions.”

White House says Trump is losing patience with Thune

Asked if Trump is frustrated with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Leavitt said, “The president spoke about this directly yesterday.”

She was referencing comments Trump made at a rally Wednesday in Georgia where he expressed frustration that his agenda is hampered in the Republican-controlled Senate by rules requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation — including the SAVE America voting bill he talks about often.

Trump’s Republican Party doesn’t have 60 members in the Senate.

The president told the rally, his voice rising as he spoke: “Everybody call John Thune at the Senate. He’s the leader of the Republican Party. And tell him to get this stuff approved.”

Leavitt added Thursday at the White House: “His patience is running out.”

Trump administration to announce new tariffs on Thursday

Leavitt said Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative, will announce “later” on Thursday a new set of tariffs.

After the Supreme Court in February rejected Trump’s ability to declare an economic emergency to impose sweeping import taxes, Trump unveiled 10% global tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974 that could only be in place for 150 days. Those replacement tariffs are set to expire Friday.

Greer in March launched a series of investigations using Section 301 tariffs from the Trade Act of 1974. Those taxes could replace the expiring tariffs.

The Section 301 investigations applied to countries with industrial excesses that disadvantage U.S. goods and trade partners that fail to adequately enforce restrictions on importing goods made by forced labor.

Tate brothers won’t get help from the White House

Asked whether the White House would intervene in the extradition of social media influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate, press secretary Karoline Leavitt flatly rejected the idea.

“No, we’ve already answered that question,” Leavitt said before moving on at a Thursday briefing.

The Tate brothers are fighting their extradition to the United Kingdom, where they’re accused of rape and sex trafficking. They were arrested by federal authorities on Saturday in Miami.

White House says Trump has been consistent in demanding Saudi Arabia join Abraham Accords

Leavitt said Trump’s assertion that Saudi Arabia must join the Abraham Accords as part of a civilian nuclear deal is a position he’s long held.

“It will eventually, hopefully be finalized with the condition that the president spoke about this morning,” Leavitt said.

Saudi officials have yet to comment since Trump announced that the deal, announced Wednesday by the two countries, is subject to joining the accords.

But Leavitt made the case that the president’s decision is hardly surprising, saying “this is something he has raised in previous conversations and also said many time in the past” with Saudi officials.

Trump to deliver remarks at Sen. Lindsey Graham’s funeral

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president will honor his friend and ally at a funeral service next week.

“On Tuesday afternoon, the president will deliver a tribute honoring the life and legacy of his dear friend, Sen. Lindsey Graham, at the National Cathedral,” Leavitt said during a Thursday briefing.

Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, died July 11.

Trump is taking his next Cabinet meeting on the road

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced Trump will hold a Cabinet meeting on July 31 — and there’s a twist with this one.

The president will host the Cabinet at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains. Leavitt said the meeting “will be a lot of fun and something different for the Cabinet to experience together.”

Trump last visited Camp David in June to celebrate Father’s Day and his 80th birthday with family.

US to target cyber scammers and online ‘sextortionists’ with travel bans

The Trump administration announced Thursday it would begin revoking or denying visas to foreigners involved in cyber scams and online “sextortion” of minors, barring them and their family members from traveling to the United States.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that the policy was a response to Americans being bilked of at least $10 billion in 2024 in online investment scams by transnational criminal organizations, many of them with Chinese connections, and American children being specifically targeted by overseas predators.

“This policy targets individuals responsible for, or complicit in, cybercrime and cyber-enabled crime, such as those involved in cyberscams, and sextortion,” Rubio said. “By restricting visa issuance to those who are responsible for or complicit in these criminal enterprises, we are sending a clear message: The United States will go after those who prey on our citizens.”

Member of Vance’s security team faces investigation for allegedly compromising information

A member of Vice President JD Vance’s security detail is being investigated for allegedly “compromising operational and information security,” according to the U.S. Secret Service.

Agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the person faces an administrative investigation and “potential criminal inquiry” over alleged misconduct.

“While we will not comment on the specifics of this matter, one principle is unequivocal: any conduct that potentially threatens the safety of a protectee will not be tolerated,” Guglielmi said in a statement.

Vance’s office referred questions to the Secret Service.

China hands over fugitive to the US ahead of expected Xi-Trump meeting

Chinese police on Thursday handed over a wanted U.S. fugitive to American authorities at Shanghai Pudong International Airport, China’s Ministry of Public Security said in a statement.

The case is part of law enforcement cooperation to implement “important consensus” between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Trump, the ministry said. Trump visited Beijing in May and Xi is expected to travel to the U.S. in September.

The ministry did not reveal the suspect’s name but said the fugitive was suspected of sexually assaulting minors and fatally shooting his wife in 2004. It said Interpol issued a red notice calling on law enforcement worldwide to capture the suspect the following year.

After a U.S. request, Chinese police conducted investigations and captured the suspect, the ministry said.

Trump has insisted continued US attacks against Iran don’t mean a return to war

Continued American airstrikes are occurring even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in on the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.

As the House debated the resolution Wednesday evening, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., read out names of 18 service members killed since the war began.

“To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for,” Mast said. “Their sacrifice was not meaningless. This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America.”

The top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, said presidents are supposed to make the case to Congress.

House again passes resolution seeking to halt military action in Iran

The House on Thursday narrowly passed the resolution to halt U.S. military action in Iran, sending a warning to Trump for the second time as the war has escalated and the future of the conflict is increasingly uncertain.

The 214-208 vote requiring congressional approval for the war comes as the Senate is expected to consider a similar resolution later Thursday morning. Though the votes forced by Democrats are largely symbolic, they’re meant as a strong signal to the Republican president that his support on Capitol Hill is chipping away as the war drags on and lawmakers in both parties have questioned his administration’s endgame.

The war has had “no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who led the resolution on the House floor.

The resolution narrowly passed after a handful of Republicans voted with Democrats to end the war. But the vast majority of Republicans voted to back the war and cede congressional war powers to Trump.

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Mideast oil producers step up plans to bypass the Strait of Hormuz

Before the war in Iran, roughly 15 million barrels of Persian Gulf oil were shipped each day through the Strait of Hormuz. Within a few years, much of that oil could bypass the strait.

As Iran’s chokehold over the strait drags on and oil prices surge, countries across the Gulf are planning to spend billions of dollars to build pipelines enabling them to redirect more supplies to ports on the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and the Mediterranean.

At least seven major pipeline projects are under construction, in the planning stage or being discussed as possibilities, according to government officials, oil companies and analysts. The war has been a wake-up call for Gulf oil producers, who are determined to become less dependent on a transit point that hugs Iran’s coast.

But alternatives to Hormuz are also vulnerable to disruption. And some alternative routes will take the oil on longer and more expensive paths to market.

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A three-judge panel on Thursday declined to issue a preliminary injunction against the new districts, paving the way for them to be used in the Aug. 6 primary elections. Tennessee had revised its congressional districts in May, shortly after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities.

President Donald Trump has urged Republican-led states to redraw districts to their advantage to try to hold on to a slim U.S. House majority in the November elections. Tennessee is among eight GOP states to do so since last year. Trump is hoping the mid-decade redistricting can help Republicans buck a historical pattern in which the president’s party typically loses seats in midterms.

Opponents of Tennessee’s new congressional districts had argued in court that Republican lawmakers who passed the plan were motivated at least partly by racial discrimination, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Republicans have insisted they were motivated only by partisan politics, seeking to win the lone Democratic-held seat among the state’s nine districts. Legislatures are free to draw partisan districts under a 2019 Supreme Court ruling.

The federal judges — two Trump appointees and one appointee of former President Barack Obama — wrote in their opinion that the lawsuit is unlikely to succeed because the plaintiffs “lack any direct evidence of racial motivation."

“The road to a reliably 9-0 map runs through Memphis,” the ruling states. “Thus, political motivations readily explain the map’s dilutive effects.”

The Supreme Court in late April struck down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana as an illegal racial gerrymander. That decision weakened protections in the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 that allowed minorities an opportunity to elect the candidate of their choice. It also opened a pathway for Republicans in several Southern states to cite political intentions while redrawing voting districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

In Tennessee, Republicans carved up a Memphis-based district with a majority-Black population that has been represented for about two decades by Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen, who is white. The metropolitan area was instead placed in parts of three districts, with Cohen’s reshaped district stretching a couple hundred miles eastward before reaching north toward the Nashville suburbs.

Cohen announced soon after the redraw that he was ending his bid for reelection.

Amber Sherman, a Memphis voter and plaintiff in the lawsuit, criticized the ruling, saying it’s “painful” to head into an election under a map that weakens the voices of Black voters.

“We deserve the same opportunity to shape our future as anyone else,” Sherman said. “When our voting power is diluted, our neighborhoods have a harder time making their voices heard on the issues that shape our daily lives.”

Ari Savitzky, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project, told the judges in mid-June that Republicans who are “essentially an all-white-controlled legislative body" chose to destroy the state’s lone pocket of Black political power in federal elections.

Attorney Taylor Meehan, representing Tennessee election officials, rejected the assertion of racially discriminatory motivations. She also argued it was too late to revert to Tennessee’s previous congressional districts, noting that primary election ballots already had been finalized using the new boundaries. Early voting began July 17.

“Racial data was turned off” when crafting the new districts, Meehan said. “The map was drafted for politics.”

The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires. It's unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings.

Trump is doubling down on the pledge at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide oversight.

The president, in remarks about the pledge at the Environmental Protection Agency, called on the gathered executives and governors to sell the public on data centers, stressing that the cities and towns that do have them will be “rich.”

“You have to convince your community,” Trump said. “You can’t fight it. You have to go with it.”

The president added: “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it. You might as well do it yourselves.”

Concerns about data centers cross party lines

The president promised that electricity prices would drop because of the nonbinding pledge, saying there would be a surplus of power. It's not clear that data centers generating their own electricity will be sufficient to overcome the rising demand for electricity, but that did not deter Trump from saying that utility bills — a major concern for voters — will be lower.

“Electricity bills for American families will actually come down," Trump said. “They’re going to have a lot of electricity left over, and they’ll put that into the grid.”

The White House said Thursday the pledge has been signed by 23 governors and at least 187 companies, including 55 utilities and 27 data center developers. Signers include some of the nation’s biggest utilities such as NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric.

Data center developers that have signed the pledge include Equinix, Digital Realty and Prologis.

A slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks.

But AI's increasing ability to perform basic tasks — such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets and writing software — also potentially threatens millions of jobs. That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons.

The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company.

Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue. Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable. Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners.

The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov. Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump’s nonbinding pledge.

Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election.

“They are owned by the richest men in the world,” she said of data centers. “We’re all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the Wild West of data centers.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, signed an order to ban construction of large server warehouses in her state for a year. In May, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed a law that he said would prevent utilities from passing along energy costs from data centers to residential and small-business customers.

Already, dozens of state legislatures or utility commissions have moved to put in place requirements that data centers pay the cost of their electricity, including new power plants or transmission system upgrades. But it's not

Tech companies are pushing growth of data centers

In California, however, the industry opposes legislation designed to protect consumers from electricity price increases attributable to data centers, said Matthew Freedman, a staff attorney for the Utility Reform Network.

“It is disappointing, but perhaps not surprising, that the same tech companies signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge are simultaneously opposing efforts at the state level to force them to deliver on their promises,” Freedman said.

In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America’s weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology.

Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out.

Despite the pledge, there are challenges on addressing issues with electricity prices.

The White House has complained that PJM Interconnection, which oversees electric power in 13 states from Virginia to Illinois, can’t ensure adequate electricity supplies at reasonable prices in the AI-driven boom.

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday that PJM —- the nation’s largest grid operator — has failed to implement a bipartisan statement of principles signed by the Trump administration and all 13 governors in the region.

“The Trump administration strongly advises PJM and its member companies to proactively reform its stakeholder process, reform its board governance, and implement the Statement of Principles before it is too late,” Rogers said.

There are efforts to formalize Trump's pledge as law, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee approving a bipartisan bill. The bill would require data centers to bear the costs of grid upgrades.

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Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

The United States will slap taxes of 10% to 12.5% on imports from 60 trading partners accounting for 99% of U.S. imports, charging that they have inadequately enforced bans on goods produced by forced labor.

“The United States has had a forced labor import ban for nearly a century, and rigorously enforces it; it’s well past time for our trading partners to do the same,” said U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

The new tariffs will take effect just as temporary 10% worldwide tariffs expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Trump had turned to those temporary levies after the Supreme Court struck down his biggest and boldest tariffs in February.

Now he's tapping more durable tariffs under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which permits the president to impose import taxes and other sanctions against countries found to engage in “unjustifiable,” “unreasonable” or “discriminatory” trade practices. Trump used Section 301 to impose big tariffs on China in his first term, and they survived court challenges.

More Section 301 tariffs are likely coming: The U.S. Trade Representative’s office has launched a probe into whether 16 countries — accounting for 70% of U.S. imports — have overproduced goods, pushing down prices and putting U.S. companies at a disadvantage in global markets. The administration has yet to complete that investigation.

Trump, who argues that high tariffs will revive American manufacturing, last year overturned decades of U.S. policy that favored lower tariffs and ever-freer trade. Invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, he imposed double-digit tariffs on imports from almost every country on Earth, saying America’s longstanding trade deficit amounted to a national emergency.

But the Supreme Court ruled that IEEPA did not authorize tariffs. The decision forced the administration to pay refunds to importers that had paid the tariffs.

In response, Trump announced 10% worldwide tariffs under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. But he can only use Section 122 levies for 150 days; time runs out on them Friday.

The administration initially proposed the forced labor tariffs last month. Since then, some countries have tightened forced labor enforcement and qualified for lower tariffs, said a senior administration official who spoke under condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. For example, the official said, the tariff on imports from India initially was set at 12.5% but now will be 10%.

Some products — including oil and gas and fertilizer — are exempted from the new tariffs announced Thursday. Also being spared are products that qualify for duty-free status under the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the North American trade pact Trump negotiated in his first term.

The tariffs drew immediate fire from critics.

“Today’s forced labor justification is too convenient to be taken seriously,” said U.S. Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee. “Forced labor is a real and pervasive problem in our supply chains and demands serious enforcement. It should never be cheapened into a pretext for a tariff policy built on dubious legal theories and personal grievances.''

Brazil, which faces a 12.5% forced-labor tariff, called the U.S. move “arbitrary and unjustified” in a statement. It plans to trigger its reciprocity law — which could call for retaliatory tariffs on the United States — and take a complaint to the World Trade Organization. The United States, the Brazilian government said, “chose to manipulate an issue of great importance to human rights and the struggles of workers worldwide in order to accuse 59 countries and the European Union of unfair practices.”

Chile's Undersecretary for International Economic Relations Paula Estévez said that the country has “solid labor institutions, a robust regulatory framework and a firm commitment to the prevention and eradication of forced labor.” Chile faces a 12.5% rate.

“The Government of Chile considers that the application of this measure to our country is inconsistent with these standards, as well as with the technical, political, and legal background presented throughout the investigation process,” she said.

Tariffs are paid by companies in the United States that import foreign products. The importers usually try to pass along the cost by charging consumers higher prices. Americans are already frustrated by the high cost of living. So the administration is taking a risk in rolling out new tariffs ahead of the Nov. 3 midterm elections.

Human rights watchers say that it’s reasonable to be skeptical of the motivation behind the tariffs. But they say the levies could make an impact on the problem of forced labor.

The tariffs are being imposed on countries that the U.S. found either failed to impose or failed to effectively enforce a ban on importing goods made with forced labor.

Forced labor is defined by the International Labor Organization Forced Labor Convention of 1930 as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself (or herself) voluntarily.”

According to the latest statistics from the ILO, which is a U.N. agency focused on human and labor rights, about 27.6 million people were in forced labor worldwide on any given day in 2021.

“We’ve gone on record for years now advocating for import bans, not as a magic bullet, it’s not a silver bullet, but as a potentially effective tool in combating forced labor across the globe,” said Martina Vandenberg, founder and president of The Human Trafficking Legal Center.

“It’s possible to be extremely critical of tariffs, as we are, and to be very concerned about blanket tariffs used as bludgeons against countries,” she said. “And yet I think it’s undeniable that there is a significant response in terms of the adoption of import bans.”

However, Vandenberg and her organization urged in testimony that the tariffs be implemented in a phased approach to give countries time to implement a ban or a plan for enforcement.

“Our concern is that the import bans will be thin slips of paper with no enforcement,” she said. “Countries need time to build import ban mechanisms that are meaningful and enforceable.”

Kenya Davis, partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, said the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, a U.S. federal law passed in 2021 that prohibits the importation of goods made wholly or in part in China’s Xinjiang region or by designated entities, is the most significant legislation related to forced labor that the U.S. has passed before the tariffs.

“The level of effectiveness is certainly up for debate, but it certainly has drawn attention to the issue of labor trafficking and forced labor,” she said. “And so, if nothing else, these import bans will serve that function of bringing greater awareness to forced labor.”

But without a “comprehensive approach” that provides transparency about what the investigations consisted of, and programs that provide countries aid in enforcing bans, “I’m very cautious in my enthusiasm about the (tariffs),” she said.

Isabelle Glimcher, senior research scientist for global labor at the NYU Stern Center for Human Rights, said one flaw in the tariffs is that they focus on levying the tax on countries based on goods they import — not goods they make domestically.

But she said the impending tariffs threat has spurred several countries — such as India — to amend their foreign trade policies to include a forced labor import ban. European Union forced labor regulations due to go into effect later next year are also contributing, she said.

“Not all of these things are necessarily or wholly attributable to the Section 301 investigations, but does seem like countries are responding and starting to take all of this seriously,” she said.

___

Anderson reported from New York.

AP Writers Nayara Batschke in Santiago, Chile, and Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo contributed to this story.

The investment coincides with the team announcing it has reached a long-term extension on a stadium naming rights deal Thursday with Bank of America.

The additional investment in the 30-year-old downtown stadium brings the total cost of renovations to $1.3 billion.

The project is expected to be completed by 2030.

The Panthers released new stadium renderings highlighting enhancements and a broader vision of what is referred to as the new “Charlotte corridor,” which includes a 4,400-seat music venue designed to help make the city a more attractive year-round weekend destination.

“The long-term extension with Bank of America reflects the strength of our partnership and our shared commitment to the Carolinas,” Tepper, the owner and chairman of Tepper Sports & Entertainment (TSE), said in a statement. “For over three decades, Bank of America Stadium has helped create lasting memories for our fans and we’re excited for them to see what’s ahead. Our goal is to create experiences that enhance the passion and energy of the region while transforming this corridor into a weekend destination for world class sports, entertainment and community events.”

Bank of America Stadium is currently home to the Major League Soccer’s Charlotte FC, as well as the Panthers.

It regularly hosts concerts as well as the Atlantic Coast Conference football championship, the Duke's Mayo Bowl and, most recently, a soccer match between the United States and Senegal which served as a precursor to the World Cup.

What about a first-ever Super Bowl in Charlotte?

When asked directly if the Panthers are considering submitting a bid to host a first-ever Super Bowl in Charlotte, team president and TSE CEO Kristi Coleman replied, “We would love to get a Super Bowl. ... I think doing projects like this help you get it. It for sure helps your resume.”

Of course, there are other factors that go into ultimately landing the NFL’s biggest event, including number of hotels and other infrastructure.

“Does this guarantee (a Super Bowl)? No. But does this help? Yes,” Coleman said.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who was in Charlotte on Thursday night for a ceremony celebrating the stadium renovations, was asked about the feasibility of Charlotte hosting a Super Bowl.

“I think if the growth (in this city) continues that is probably somewhere down the line,” Goodell said.

Who is paying for the additional renovations?

The additional renovations are privately funded with no additional taxpayer money required.

TSE will pay for any overage costs and ongoing maintenance associated with the project.

The city of Charlotte originally contributed $650 million to the project in 2024 with TSE adding the additional $150 million, bringing the original cost of stadium renovations to $800 million after Tepper decided to remain in the stadium rather than build a new one.

What's going to be new at the stadium?

The entire stadium and its surroundings are being reimagined.

Renderings released Thursday showcase expanded indoor-outdoor gathering spaces across all levels, a 500-level social patio with sweeping views of Uptown Charlotte. There will also be larger and more dynamic scoreboards and displays and improved audio.

Seating options have been upgraded with premium offerings including technology designed to create a more connected and personalized experience.

When finished, the entire exterior of the stadium will look completely different to Panthers fans with a fresh, modern, open-air look that includes a signature illuminated crown for the Queen City skyline.

The black metal gates that surround portions of the stadium will be removed, creating a more welcoming park-style setting.

The renderings also include expanded retail and food and beverage options, increased restroom capacity, and flexible event spaces that will support game days while serving community, corporate and other special events during the offseason.

Included in what Panthers officials now call the “corridor” is the new entertainment venue outside of the North gate.

The goal: Making Charlotte a weekend destination

Coleman said the goal of everyone involved has been to bring Tepper’s vision to life.

Over the past few years the Panthers have brought some of the team’s fans to opposing cities to see what they like about other stadiums. They have also listened to suggestions and criticisms from existing permanent seat license holders about the game day experience in Charlotte.

“Our fans from Raleigh or Charleston and other places would say ‘we want this to be a weekend destination, not just for Sundays,’” Coleman said.

The need for music was high on the fans' wish list, Coleman said.

Such was the impetus for the building of the entertainment venue that will host 80 to 100 concerts and events during the year, as well as provide enhanced hospitality on NFL game days.

“So now people can come on a Friday and go to a concert, go to a soccer match on Saturday and then stay for a Panthers game on Sunday,” Coleman said. “That was really the vision.”

Coleman said the renovations have something everyone throughout the stadium can benefit from whether sitting in the lower bowl, upper bowl or luxury suites.

“I'm so excited that every fan will experience something different," Coleman said.

Charlotte Mayor Rob Harrington called the project an investment in Charlotte’s future “preserving an iconic venue, enhancing the fan experience, and ensuring Bank of America Stadium continues to create unforgettable memories while giving visitors countless reasons to return to our city for years to come.”

___

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

• TONIGHT: Scattered rain with rumbles of thunder (40%)
• T.S. BERTHA: Weak storm will bring some rain to coastal Texas today
• NUECES & FRIO RIVERS: Continue to flood near Cotulla & Tilden

FORECAST

TONIGHT

The last bit of upper-level rainmaking energy from Bertha will pass overhead tonight and generate scattered showers and non-severe storms. Flooding is unlikely and areas south and east of San Antonio, who didn’t get much rain last week, will have an opportunity to get up to half an inch.

It’s all gone by the morning commute with lingering clouds leading to vast sunshine by midday Friday.

Bertha poses no significant threats to travel and will be gone by the weekend. If you have beach plans, keep them.

NUECES & FRIO RIVERS

It is taking a long time for the nearly 500 billion gallons of water that fell last week to drain into Choke Canyon and Lake Corpus Christi along the Nueces and Frio Rivers. Areas of Cotulla and Tilden along the rivers are still flooded. Cotulla, specifically, can expect the Nueces to remain at major flood stage through the weekend.

QUICK WEATHER LINKS

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• Hourly and 10-Day Forecast
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Omar Resendez-Diaz, 57, was taken into custody Wednesday and charged with aggravated robbery, according to Bexar County court records.

The robbery happened July 18, just before 11 a.m., in the 6900 block of North Loop 1604 East.

The affidavit says Resendez-Diaz and another suspect entered the credit union wearing masks, armed with a handgun and a machete.

Police told KSAT the suspects demanded money from a teller and stole personal belongings from several people inside, including wallets and purses, before fleeing the scene in a vehicle.

The vehicle used in the robbery was later found abandoned on Nacogdoches Road, according to the affidavit. The vehicle had been reported stolen in an aggravated robbery July 17, and the suspects’ clothing in that case matched the clothing worn by one of the credit union robbery suspects.

The affidavit said surveillance video from the area where the vehicle was abandoned shows a Toyota Tundra arriving and leaving. The truck was registered to Resendez-Diaz.

Police body-camera video from before the robbery shows Resendez-Diaz wearing clothing that matched one of the suspects in the bank robbery, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit said there was enough evidence to show Resendez-Diaz was a suspect in the credit union armed bank robbery. San Antonio police said stolen items were recovered during his arrest.

Resendez-Diaz was booked into the Bexar County Adult Detention Center, according to jail records.

The second suspect remains at large, and the investigation is ongoing, police said.

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The deal to create the nation's first transcontinental railroad has been divisive within the industry because it would concentrate so much market power in the hands of one company that would control more than 40% of all rail traffic and reduce the number of major freight railroads in the United States down to five. BNSF and CPKC have both strongly opposed the merger, and CSX has raised concerns about how it would affect the competitive balance in the industry. But now Canadian National said it will support it after winning concessions from Union Pacific.

The U.S. Surface Transportation Board is just beginning to review the proposed $85 billion merger, but it has demanded more information from the railroads by the end of the month before it will move forward. Shippers have also lined up on both sides of the deal with some excited about the promises of faster cross-country deliveries while other companies mainly in the chemical and agriculture industries worry about the possibility of higher rates and service problems.

UP CEO Jim Vena said he believes these agreements with Canadian National will address many of the competitive concerns with the merger because CN will gain permission to be able to serve any customers that will see significantly reduced shipping options after the merger. And CN will take over Norfolk Southern's ownership of smaller railroads in St. Louis and Kansas City to ensure the merged railroad will never control the majority of those operations.

“This is truly more compelling today than we ever looked at it before,” Vena said Thursday as he discussed Union Pacific's second-quarter earnings. “We think we have a strong case.”

Both CN and UP will gain access to each other's tracks

Canadian National will also gain access to tracks between St. Louis and Kansas City where there was the most overlap between UP and NS, and CN will be able to use a key rail yard in Kansas City that will help that railroad compete better for business to and from Mexico. Union Pacific will get the ability to move more traffic around the congested tracks in Chicago.

“As the rail industry considers significant structural change, it is essential that customers continue to benefit from meaningful competition and choice,” CN President and CEO Tracy Robinson said.

Critics say the merger will hurt rail competition

But BNSF spokesperson Zak Andersen said these agreements show what can already be accomplished through cooperative agreements between railroads without all the disruptions of a merger that would leave many customers with fewer competitive shipping options.

“UP is required to demonstrate that the benefits it claims can only be achieved through a merger. Its own agreement with CN shows the opposite. The benefits UP highlights can be pursued today without a merger, and significant portions of the arrangement are not even contingent on merger approval,” Andersen said.

BNSF and CPKC railroads have said clearly they don't believe the merger is a good idea, and neither one is interested in pursuing a deal with another railroad right now. While CSX has expressed concerns about the merger creating competitive imbalance in the industry, that railroad brought in CEO Steve Angel last fall who has experience in mergers and acquisitions.

Rail shipping demand is up

Norfolk Southern CEO Mark George said that demand for rail shipping is up right now across much of the economy. That started after the Iran war began but became more widespread through the spring. But he said that if gas prices remain high long enough, it could hurt the consumer and the growth in shipping volume that both NS and UP reported Thursday could reverse.

The Surface Transportation Board will review the merger under a tough new standard it adopted in 2001 after a series of disastrous rail mergers in the 1990s that led to shipment delays of weeks or even months. These untested rules require any merger of the six largest railroads to be in the public interest and show that it will enhance competition. When the Surface Transportation Board approved the first major rail merger in more than two decades three years ago, it used a less stringent standard allowing Canadian Pacific’s $31 billion acquisition of Kansas City Southern.

Union Pacific CEO predicts approval

Vena remains optimistic the deal will get approved.

“The merger is going to close. It’s just too compelling for the country, but it would be a mistake for this deal not to close,” Vena said.

But critics have said the merger seems designed more to benefit Wall Street investors than the companies that rely on the railroads to ship their products and deliver the raw materials they need.

A lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City on behalf of Rhonda Grayson and Jeffrey Kennedy names Principal Chief David Hill and the Muscogee Nation Citizenship Board as defendants.

It says that Hill and the citizenship board are violating an 1866 treaty between the tribe and the U.S. government by refusing to recognize Black Creek Freedmen as citizens as ordered by the Muscogee Nation Supreme Court in July 2025.

The board had denied the applications of Grayson and Kennedy in 2019 because they could not identify a lineal descendant of the tribe, but the court said the pair are entitled to tribal citizenship.

However, Hill and the board have not yet issued the citizenship cards, denying Grayson and Kennedy their “right to vote and the ability to participate fully as members of the Nation,” according to the lawsuit.

Last August, Hill blocked the tribe’s citizenship board from issuing citizenship cards until leaders decide how to change the tribe’s constitution. The tribe's headquarters is in Okmulgee, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Oklahoma City.

A spokesman for the Muscogee Nation said late Thursday afternoon that it had not yet been served with the complaint.

“We would point out that federal law and precedent is clear that matters of Muscogee Nation law and governance are to be addressed through the Nation’s own governmental institutions,” the Muscogee Nation said in a statement.

“We are committed to ensuring that the Muscogee Nation’s Constitution and laws are followed fairly and consistently," the statement said. “Getting policies right is always more important than getting them done quickly. Anything less would undermine the integrity of our governmental processes and the rights of our citizens.”

The Muscogee Nation is one of five tribes in Oklahoma that once practiced slavery.

Under the 1866 treaty, the tribe abolished slavery and granted citizenship to the formerly enslaved. The Muscogee Nation adopted in 1979 a constitution that restricted membership to the descendants of people listed as “Muscogee (Creek) Indians by blood” on the Dawes Rolls, a census of members of the five tribes created around 1900.

When the Dawes Rolls were created, people were listed on two separate rolls: those who were Muscogee and those who were identified by the U.S. government as Freedmen.

The court's 2025 ruling also directed the board to apply the treaty of 1866 to future applicants who can trace an ancestor to either roll. The decision could create a path to tribal citizenship for thousands of new members who are not Muscogee by blood.

Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons, a Black Creek Indian who is one of the lawyers representing Grayson and Kennedy, said Thursday that there about 100,000 Black Creeks across the United States.

Successful legal cases were brought against two of the five Oklahoma tribes, the Seminole Nation and the Cherokee Nation, which have since granted citizenship to Freedmen descendants.

“Every day of non-compliance is another day that Black Creek Freedman are denied our birthright and our very identity as citizens,” said Grayson, president of the Muscogee Creek Indian Freedmen Band.

“The fight is bigger than every one of us," she told reporters Thursday. "It belongs to every Black Creek Freedman descendant who has carried this history, protected these stories and refused to let our identity be dismissed or diminished.”

————————-

Williams is a member of AP's Race & Ethnicities Team. He reported from Detroit.

The suspect, identified as Raymond Delvalle, 71, was accused of abusing three girls all under the age of 14, Salazar said.

Watch the full Wednesday news conference below:

The sheriff’s office obtained an arrest warrant for sexual abuse of a child under 14, a first-degree felony. The deputies attempted to execute the arrest warrant at Delvalle’s home in the 3900 block of Gristmill Way, near State Highway 211 in west Bexar County, when Salazar said they heard a gunshot.

EMS pronounced Delvalle dead at the scene. Salazar said Delvalle was alone inside the home when the shooting happened, and he doesn’t believe any deputies will be placed on administrative leave since they were all outside the residence.

According to Salazar, Delvalle was a military and law enforcement veteran from another state. The sheriff said some of the alleged abuse occurred in another state and later continued into Bexar County.

Delvalle had access to the three girls “by virtue of his living situation,” Salazar said. The girls are all safe and with family members.

The sheriff’s office’s investigation is ongoing.

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The deal, which includes a full no-movement clause, was announced by the Blackhawks on Thursday.

Kane, 37, became one of the NHL's most dynamic players while spending his first 15-plus seasons in Chicago, helping the Blackhawks win three Stanley Cup championships. He ranks among the franchise's career leaders with 446 goals, 779 assists and 1,225 points.

“Day in and day out for 16 seasons, Patrick captivated the city of Chicago with his dazzling skill, creating some of the most memorable moments in Blackhawks history as he helped bring our storied franchise back to the pinnacle of our sport,” general manager Kyle Davidson said in a release. “He’s shown on countless occasions that he knows what it takes to win at the highest levels."

Kane has been skating at the franchise's practice facility this summer, but the Blackhawks celebrated the reunion by posting video on social media of the winger taking the ice in the team's red practice jersey. Wrigley Field, home of baseball's Chicago Cubs, also heralded Kane's return with “WELCOME HOME PATRICK KANE!” splashed across its iconic marquee.

The addition of Kane adds another offensive presence to a lineup that will begin the season without Connor Bedard, who had surgery on his left shoulder on July 8. Kane likely will play with Bedard when the 21-year-old center returns to the ice.

The rebuilding Blackhawks went 29-39-14 last season, an 11-point improvement on the previous season. The team has finished No. 31 in the NHL each of the past three years.

Chicago is looking for its first postseason appearance since the NHL used an expanded playoff format after the 2020 season was affected by the pandemic.

Kane isn't same player he was during his first stint with the Blackhawks. But he had 16 goals and 41 assists in 67 games with the Detroit Red Wings last season. He has recorded at least 50 points in 18 of his 19 seasons.

The No. 1 overall pick in the 2007 draft passed Mike Modano in January for the most NHL points by a player born in the United States. He has 508 career goals — fourth on the U.S. list — and 1,400 points in 1,369 regular-season games.

Kane was one of Chicago's biggest stars during the best stretch in franchise history, winning the Stanley Cup in 2010, 2013 and 2015. The Blackhawks also made it to the Western Conference Final in 2014, losing to the Los Angeles Kings in an epic seven-game series.

Kane, who won the 2016 Hart Trophy as NHL MVP, was traded to the New York Rangers in February 2023. The Blackhawks then won the draft lottery and took Bedard with the No. 1 overall pick that same year. As reports swirled about the possibility of Kane returning to Chicago, Bedard openly embraced the idea.

“I can’t imagine his first game back at the (United Center), the reaction he’d get and how much juice that would bring to not only our team but our fans, as well,” Bedard said Monday. “That would be incredible to play with him and learn from him. Hopefully he decides to come back.”

___

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

“The Navy continues to fulfill service record requests under our longstanding, standard disclosure procedures,” the Navy said in a statement hours after The Associated Press reported a policy change that meant sailor biographies would be off limits to the press.

On Monday, Capt. Candice Tresch, a spokeswoman for the chief of Naval personnel, told the AP that the service would "no longer provide public, on-demand access to Sailor biographies, unless the subject of the request is a public figure or extenuating circumstances exist.” She explained the policy in the wake of the Navy's denial of a request by The Associated Press for a specific sailor's biography.

A Navy official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation, said Thursday afternoon that Tresch's statement was the result of a misinterpretation of a recently released Navy policy that has now been resolved.

There was confusion over the meaning of the policy

Last week, the Navy’s top spokesman, Rear Admiral John Robinson, released a policy message that mandated the sea service remove all public-facing information about its commanding officers. It was this policy that the Navy official now says was misinterpreted — and that the actual policy of the Navy on disclosing sailor biographies never actually changed.

Tresch said the Navy's personnel office decided to expand the policy to deny access to any currently serving sailor’s service information, in the interest of equality. She said that while they would still confirm whether someone is or previously was a sailor, no other details would be offered until the undefined threat had passed.

Robinson’s office did not respond to emails on both Tuesday and Wednesday with questions about how the Chief of Naval Personnel’s office was interpreting Robinson’s policy. But in a statement posted Thursday on X, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said there had been no change in the Navy’s policy on releasing service records for sailors. He said it merely concerned leadership biographies.

“There has been NO change to the Navy’s policies governing the release of service records,” Parnell wrote. “To enhance the security of our Sailors and their families, Naval Administrative Message (NAVADMIN) 170/26 updated the policy for leadership biographies on public-facing websites — not service records.”

He added: “The Navy continues to review requests for service records on a case-by-case basis. Every single media request has been fulfilled since the NAVADMIN was issued.”

Tresch described the new policy, however, in the wake of the Navy denying a request from The Associated Press for a specific sailor biography. The Navy's latest statement was provided to the AP several hours after Parnell's post.

The data is critical when major things happen to service members

Information about sailors' service history is critical in providing information and context when service members are involved in major news events. It is also information that a constellation of federal laws and Pentagon policies say should be made available on request.

The Pentagon’s governing document on its privacy program notes that information like a service member’s rank, duty assignments, awards, and service status is categorized as information “that is normally releasable” and “may be disclosed without a clearly unwarranted invasion of their personal privacy.” However, according to Tresch, the Navy will now only release these details if the sailor is “a public figure or extenuating circumstances exist."

The Navy cited the new policy last week in denying the AP's request for the biography of a pilot with the Blue Angels, the Navy's demonstration squadron, following a controversial maneuver over a crowded beach. Robinson’s office wouldn't provide the pilot’s biography despite the fact that his name, photo, and other service details were posted on the official Blue Angels website. Tresch did provide a copy of the biography personally after the AP began inquiring about the policy.

Last month, the military asked Congress for the ability to withhold certain types of unclassified records. The legislative proposal would create a new section of federal law that would allow the defense secretary to exempt certain “controlled unclassified information,” or CUI, from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

Transparency advocates, and even the Pentagon’s own internal watchdog, have described the term CUI as inconsistently applied and overused. Critics have argued that it is arbitrarily used to keep embarrassing information from being made public.

Last year, the Pentagon attempted to impose restrictions on journalists working inside the Pentagon, which, in turn, led most news outlets to turn in their access badges and walk out. The policy is now being litigated in federal court. This summer, the Pentagon went a step further and declared that its press office was now a classified space.

___

This story has been updated to correct the name of the Chief of Naval Personnel spokeswoman, Capt. Candice Tresch, not Thresh.

___

Noveck reported from New York.

McALLEN — In 2019, a historic theater’s marquee in McAllen’s downtown district once lauded, “Welcome to McAllen, 7th Safest city in America.”

The theater placed the message front and center ahead of a visit from President Donald Trump during his first term in office, using it to dispute the narrative at the time that the border was a dangerous place. The ranking itself came from a 2015 study by Smart Asset, a financial technology website.

Now, 10 years after that report, McAllen is highlighting its crime rate again — this time, celebrating its lowest crime levels in 40 years.

But McAllen is not unique. The decline in crime here is in line with a national and statewide trend that’s been ongoing for years.

Crime in Texas has been decreasing since 2023, according to Uniform Crime Reporting Data released by the Texas Department of Public Safety. In the last five years, crime in Texas peaked in 2022 — with a rate of 2,830.14 per 100,000 people — before trending downward.

Between 2022 and 2023, the state’s crime rate decreased by 3.3%, and between 2023 and 2024, the crime rate dropped another 8.2%. Then, between 2024 and 2025, Texas’ crime rate decreased by 13%.

McAllen, the second-largest city in the Rio Grande Valley with 151,000 people, reported a 21% drop in 2025. Brownsville, the Valley’s largest city with 193,000 people, also had a 21% drop in crime in 2025.

“We’ve been decreasing crime on a fairly consistent basis,” said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez.

He credited the crime rate drop on the city’s population growth, an engaged community that reports potential crimes to the police and elected officials who prioritize public safety funding, enabling the department to maintain two officers per 1,000 people.

Rodriguez also suggested that heightened immigration enforcement under Trump’s second term may have played a role in driving down crime.

“That saturation of law enforcement authorities in this part of the country also help us, I think, maintain a lower crime rate in this part of the country, in this part of the state, and for McAllen as well,” Rodriguez said.

ICE presence might have played a role, but it might not have driven down crime as much as it could have created fear in reporting it. However, it is still too soon to know, experts said.

McAllen and the state of Texas are not outliers, but part of a broad national trend, said Alex del Carmen, a criminologist with the Dallas and Fort Worth police departments and current dean at Westfield State University in Massachusetts.

Homicides across major U.S. cities fell by about 21% between 2024 and 2025% and are down 44% from the peak in 2021, del Carmen said.

“Texas is riding that same wave,” he said.

The declining crime rate occurred in places with and without active immigration enforcement, said Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction.

“I haven’t seen any hard evidence that suggests that aggressive immigration enforcement has any effect on crime, positive or negative,” Abt said. “Part of it is that it’s too soon to know. It takes time for research to come out.”

However, research shows that immigrants are, on average, less likely than U.S. citizens to commit crimes, del Carmen and Abt said.

“That doesn’t mean that there aren’t immigrants out there who are engaged in crimes,” Abt said. “But if you look at immigrant populations, as a whole, you’ll see that they commit less offenses, and you’ll also see that cities that have higher populations of immigrants often have lower crime rates.”

Studies using Texas’ own arrest and conviction data, del Carmen said, consistently find that immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, are not responsible for the majority of the crimes that take place in the U.S.

Less reporting may be part of the drop

There is a legitimate concern that the decline in crime could be, at least partially, attributed to fear of reporting crimes among immigrant communities.

After the Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched a program to identify immigrants in local jails in 2008, known as Secure Communities, Hispanic victims were about 30% less likely to report crimes to police. And that effect extended to citizens, not just the undocumented, del Carmen said.

More recently, he added, surveys of foreign-born Latinos found 16% have avoided calling police or reporting a crime for fear of being questioned about their legal status, and police chiefs in Los Angeles and Houston have publicly attributed drops in crime reports from Latino residents to deportation fear.

Still, fear of reporting cannot account for all of the decline as homicide numbers, which are less subject to reporting bias, are also going down.

The most serious offenses tend to be the most reliable because there is typically more evidence available, Abt said. If a homicide occurs, undeniable evidence typically comes with it which is the remains of the victim.

​​”We have extremely reliable data on how many homicides we have,” he said. “We also have fairly reliable data on serious assaults and shootings, because people have to go to the hospital, and we can access those records.”

On the other end of the spectrum, the number of shoplifting or drug offenses are largely a function of how much attention law enforcement is paying to those things.

An example of that is during the pandemic, there were reports and anecdotal evidence of a massive increase in shoplifting and disorder that didn’t ultimately show up in data.

“Does that mean that it didn’t happen or does it mean that a lot of stores were just so discouraged that they stopped reporting it?” he said.

Back to normal

Instead, the drop in crime rate could just be a return to normal following a spike in crime that occurred across the country in 2020 and 2021.

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the closure of businesses and public gatherings could have created a recipe for social disruption. That was further fueled by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis by a white police officer, which prompted mass anti-police protests.

Additionally, Americans bought a record number of firearms in 2020, with first-time gun owners accounting for 40% of buyers

In the wake of the crime surge, Abt said there was a fractured view of criminal justice across the country, with many on the political right favoring aggressive law enforcement and many on the left wanting to de-emphasize or even defund the police.

“Neither of those extremes was particularly helpful,” Abt said.

What emerged, instead, was what he believed to be a more sensible approach. With the help of federal funding under President Joe Biden, cities returned to a balanced approach to fighting crime, investing in both law enforcement and in community groups.

“A more sensible center was created that said, ‘Look, we need cops, we need communities, and we need them to work together,’” he said.

In Texas specifically, del Carmen said, about 70% of statewide violent crime volume is concentrated in the most populated 25 jurisdictions. So when cities like Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas invest in hot-spot policing and violent crime reduction plans, the statewide numbers move.

“The honest answer is that no single actor gets to claim credit,” del Carmen said. “Declines this broad, occurring simultaneously in cities with very different policies, tell us structural and post-pandemic forces are doing much of the work.”

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

Fellow lawmakers and survivors of the shooting spoke Thursday at the sentencing hearing for Vance Boelter, the man who pleaded guilty last month to federal charges related to the killing of former House Speaker Hortman and her husband, Mark, as well as critically wounding state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette.

Boelter, 59, agreed to plead guilty in June, almost a year after the Minneapolis-area attacks, so federal prosecutors would not seek the death penalty. Mark Hortman's father and siblings voiced anger that he could not be sentenced to death.

U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim said it was “the longest sentence I have imposed after hearing thousands of cases over the years, but I do believe it is deserved.”

Victims and survivors describe the impact of the attacks

In court Thursday, Sen. Hoffman said he and his family are constantly reminded of the extraordinary violence of that night, even in the mundane details of day-to-day life. He said they don't receive mail at home anymore, they have installed solid steel doors for protection, and they have changed how they do everyday tasks because of their injuries.

“The defendant looked me in the eyes and pulled the trigger. The defendant looked at my wife and chose to do the same,” Hoffman said. “My wife and I now live with injuries. We live with our bodies remembering the gunfire.”

Yvette Hoffman said she has been too traumatized to work since the attack in their home, and that she sees a therapist weekly.

“I will never forget looking down and watching my blood slowly stream down that white washing machine as I felt myself sinking to the floor,” she said, barely holding back tears. “We always have an escape plan now. This isn’t how people should live.”

Boelter admitted in court last month that he spent months identifying and stalking his targets before driving to their homes disguised as a police officer with the intention of killing them. The killings sparked the largest police search in state history.

Democratic State Rep. Kristin Bahner was one of two other legislators whose homes Boelter visited that night, but she and her family were on vacation. Bahner said the shootings had left her shaken.

“I could not fathom why I was spared and (Hortman) was not,” she said. “You failed because I carry her with me. In my mind and in my heart, she guides me.”

The proposed sentence sparks fury

Mark Hortman's parents and siblings spoke of their anger Thursday, both at the man who killed him and the justice system.

“It will not offer me peace of mind that he will have room and board provided for the rest of his life, paid for by my tax dollars,” said Lisa Hortman Bean, Mark's sister.

Melissa Hortman's mother and father and the Hortman's children changed the tone of the statements when they spoke, remembering them as attentive, loving parents and grandparents and people who had a positive impact on thousands of lives.

Sophie Hortman, their daughter, described in vivid detail having to say goodbye to Gilbert, the golden retriever, also shot by Boelter but who was still alive when they arrived at the veterinary hospital. She talked about the bedtime routine her mother had with Gilbert, who failed his service dog test because he was too friendly, and the care and love she gave him.

“I miss my mom. I miss my dad. I miss my best friends. And I miss believing in the goodness of humanity. I hope that one day these aches feel less sharp. And I know just like the love I feel for my parents, the pain will never go away,” she said through tears.

Colin Hortman talked about his parents not being at his recent wedding, about not dancing with his mother who he had hoped would make his wedding cake. He described the horror of the house and the panic attacks and crying that have persisted in the year since they were killed.

“My days are filled with gray, and the blood that was spilled is the last thing I see before I go to sleep and the first thing I see when I wake,” he said. “There is no sentence that weighs 15 gunshots, a murdered dog and the rest of my life.”

“It is impossible to realize the damage that has been done not only to our family, but to our society,” said Melissa's father Harold Haluptzok, who repeatedly referred to her as his “little girl.”

“I wish the perpetrator would have sat down and talked to Melissa about his political positions. ... if only he did that before he decided to kill them,” Haluptzok added.

Defense attorney says Boelter has remorse

Federal defender Manny Atwal spoke only briefly after the victim impact statements Thursday, saying Boelter showed remorse for his actions by pleading guilty and accepting the life sentences.

Boelter remained silent and sat extremely still for most of the hearing, showing little emotion or reaction to the anguish expressed by the survivors and family members.

“To every person I have caused loss, pain, heartache, confusion, sadness, shame or loneliness, I am truly sorry,” Boelter said.

Boelter pretended to be a police officer to gain access

Boelter went to Hortman's home, wearing a tactical uniform and mask, about 3:30 a.m. on June 14, 2025. He rang the doorbell while shouting he was a police officer doing a welfare check, according to court documents.

Mark Hortman answered the door. Boelter gave him a fake name and badge number before requesting he summon Melissa Hortman to the door as well. He shot Mark Hortman multiple times before pushing into the house and shooting the lawmaker as she fled upstairs. Melissa and Mark Hortman were killed.

Boelter had already visited the Hoffmans' home that night, shooting and critically injuring the senator and his wife, according to police and court documents. Court documents said Boelter also went to Bahner's house that night as well as the home of another lawmaker.

Boelter also faces state charges, including two counts of murder, four counts of attempted murder, impersonating a police officer and animal cruelty. Hoffman and his family filed a personal injury lawsuit against Boelter in April.

Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty said in a statement Thursday that Boelter's state prosecution would move forward immediately noting a first appearance is scheduled for Aug. 3.

“The targeted political violence he committed was horrific,” Moriarty wrote. “My thoughts are with Melissa and Mark’s family, as well as John, Yvette, and Hope, as the state prosecution moves forward.”

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This story has been corrected to show Boelter apologized for causing loss, pain, heartache, confusion, sadness, shame or loneliness, not for causing emotions.

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Lauer reported from Philadelphia.

In a series of votes, outside experts to the Food and Drug Administration advised the agency to drop current restrictions barring pharmacies from producing injectable peptides with names like BPC-157, TB-500 and KPV.

The panel’s vote is not binding but is likely to embolden Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has described himself as a “big fan” of peptides and vowed to overturn FDA restrictions put in place under President Joe Biden.

Across several votes, the panelists voted 8-6, with one abstention, in favor of putting the peptides on FDA’s list of substances considered safe for pharmacy compounding. If FDA follows that advice, telehealth companies are expected to ramp up marketing of the chemicals for wellness and cosmetic uses.

Thursday’s vote tally reflected the unusual makeup of the panel. Prior to the meeting, more than a half-dozen people with connections to the peptide industry were added to the panel, including doctors, pharmacists or consultants who work in the field.

“I voted yes because it’s time to put this decision back in the hands of the patient, the physician and the pharmacist,” said David Pope, chief pharmacy officer of Xifin Pharmacy Solutions, after the vote on BPC-157.

The panel will vote Friday on three more peptides. The FDA isn't required to follow the group's advice, though it usually does.

FDA scientists remain unconvinced of peptide safety and benefits

The positive votes came despite highly critical reviews from FDA staff scientists, who said there was little data that BPC-157, TB-500 and the other chemicals can be safely used for medical purposes.

Panel members with backgrounds in academia, rather than peptides, mostly voted against the substances, which are widely advertised on social media.

“I’m concerned we’re responding to a market-induced demand rather than a decision based in solid science,” said Dr. Elizabeth Rebello of the University of Texas MD Anderson Center.

Peptide supporters include podcaster Joe Rogan and longevity influencers such as Gary Brecka, a supporter of Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda who sells peptides through his website.

But medical experts describe the marketplace as a “Wild West” of unproven, unregulated drugs that could cause serious harm, including infection, allergic reactions or other problems.

“This is really alarming,” said Rita Jew, a pharmacist and president of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, in an interview ahead of the meeting. “There aren’t that many other substances people are injecting into themselves where you see that the clinical evidence is so lacking.”

In recent years, the FDA has warned Americans about the risks of injecting peptides like BPC-157 and TB-500. In 2023, both were placed on a list of substances considered high-risk for compounding. But Kennedy announced their removal from that list earlier this year.

Gap between FDA-approved drugs and wellness peptides is wide

Peptides are the building blocks of more complex proteins, triggering hormones inside the body needed for growth, metabolism and healing. Drug companies have brought several to market as medications, including mainstay treatments for diabetes and weight loss.

But most peptides sold online are promoted for unproven uses, often combined in “stacks,” to purportedly heal injuries, build muscle, rejuvenate skin or increase energy.

FDA scientists said they could find little data on the effectiveness of peptides for proposed medical uses like ulcerative colitis, wound healing and opioid addiction.

Five studies of BPC-157 reviewed by the agency “were of short duration, had small sample sizes and evaluated doses that were likely exploratory in nature,” the staffers said.

For TB-500, regulators said they could not find any human studies.

Even determining which form of the peptides should be used was unclear to regulators, since substances like TB-500 aren't recognized as official pharmaceutical ingredients in the U.S.

“There’s no way to know what the substance actually is, was or will be tomorrow because that name has no legal meaning,” said Russell Wesdyk, an associate director in FDA’s drug center.

Peptide supporters push for easier access

The panel votes are only one part of more than 18 hours of discussions and presentations scheduled across two days.

During several public comment periods, the panel heard from more than two dozen speakers — including doctors, lawyers and peptide entrepreneurs — urging that the substances be made more widely available.

Brigham Buhler, a wellness clinic owner whose clients include Rogan and other celebrities, said allowing U.S. pharmacies to compound peptides would steer Americans away from unvetted products imported from China and other foreign countries.

“It’s crucial to allow patients to have safe and effective access to these treatment options,” Buhler said. “Individuals who have gotten these resources are going to continue to utilize these products.”

After the meeting, the FDA will review the votes, discussion and public comments before making a decision on each of the peptides.

FDA-watchers say the most likely outcome may be a temporary policy reassuring pharmacies that they won’t be targeted for compounding the peptides under review. Formally placing the substances on FDA's list of drugs that are safe for compounding would require new regulations, which can take months or years to draft.

“We’re still going through this process, but I think it’s more than likely that the process will end up at the result that Secretary Kennedy wants,” said Nathan Beaver, an attorney specializing in FDA issues.

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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.

The prize-winning writer recalled feeling what he thought was a punch under his chin, then feeling blood coming from his neck.

Soon “I was on the stage, lying down, with an enormous pool of blood all around me,” Rushdie testified. “It was an enormous and expansive lake of blood.”

A Buffalo federal court jury watched Rushdie fixedly as he testified — and at one point removed his glasses to show his now sightless right eye — at Hadi Matar's terrorism trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

Matar already was convicted of a state-level attempted murder charge in the 2022 attack at a cultural institution where Rushdie was poised to speak about threats to writers and artists. Federal prosecutors say Matar was acting on such a threat — an Iranian leader's 1989 call for Rushdie's death because of his novel “The Satanic Verses.”

“I can’t say what his ambitions or his aim was, but the wounds were dispersed across my body,” Rushdie testified.

Rushdie: Knife came ‘a millimeter from my brain'

Rushdie, 79, was composed and straightforward during little more than an hour on the witness stand. He outlined the attack — which blinded him in the right eye, damaged his liver, paralyzed his left hand for a time and briefly put him on a ventilator — and his lengthy recuperation and enduring injuries.

“The knife was a millimeter from my brain,” said Rushdie, whose attacker climbed on stage, approached from behind him and then slashed the author 15 times as the Chautauqua Institution audience gasped. Spectators and another speaker, Henry Reese, scrambled to aid Rushdie and restrain Matar, who was arrested by law enforcement assigned to the event. Rushdie has described the stabbing and recovery previously during Matar’s earlier trial, in a memoir and in interviews with The Associated Press and other outlets.

As Rushdie testified, Matar, 28, looked down at the defense table, sometimes rested his hand on his chin or turned to speak to his lawyer, looking toward the author only as Rushdie walked out a door. The writer glanced at Matar fleetingly, if at all.

Defense lawyer asks Rushdie about book's blowback

Matar's defense has argued that prosecutors can't prove his intent or mindset at the time of the attack — a key element in their claim that it was an act of terrorism motivated by allegiance to Iran's government and the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group. Matar, currently serving a 25-year state prison sentence, faces a potential life sentence if convicted of federal charges that include engaging in an act of transnational terrorism.

When defense lawyer Nathaniel Barone asked whether Rushdie believed the defendant had ties to terrorism, the author replied: “I had no knowledge, but I had my suspicions.

Iran’s late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued the 1989 fatwa, or religious edict, calling for Rushdie to be killed over “The Satanic Verses,” which includes a dream sequence about Islam’s Prophet Muhammad that some Muslims considered blasphemous. The novel sparked often-violent protests against Rushdie, who was born into a Muslim family, and the fatwa drove him into hiding for years. He gradually emerged after the Iranian government distanced itself from the order in 1998, though the fatwa was never officially repealed.

“For two decades or more, I led a public life without a hint of trouble,” Rushdie testified Thursday.

Barone repeatedly asked Rushdie whether he had anticipated blowback from the book.

“Probably, but I don’t believe the book to be on trial here. I believe someone else is on trial,” Rushdie said. At Barone's request, the judge struck the comment from the court transcript.

Matar may testify, lawyer says

Prosecutors say Matar was animated partly by comments that a former Hezbollah leader, the late Hassan Nasrallah, made about Rushdie and the fatwa in 2006. The U.S.-born Matar also holds citizenship in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is based, and Matar's mother has said a 2018 trip there left him moody and withdrawn.

Matar started researching Rushdie in 2020 and eventually wrote to himself, “We need to kill him ASAP,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy Lynch said in an opening statement Wednesday. Matar cast the killing as part of what he considered a jihad, or holy war, Lynch said.

Matar's New Jersey bedroom and electronics held photos and other material showing his regard for Hezbollah, and he carried a fake driver's license with a name similar to that of a Hezbollah figure, said Lynch. The U.S. government designates Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Matar's lawyer has said the government is asking jurors “to connect the dots” in a case without hard evidence about what he was thinking on the date of the attack. In a seeming effort to scrutinize how much the fatwa was on anyone’s mind by Aug. 12, 2022, the defense also has asked some witnesses about the relatively light security around Rushdie that day. A state trooper and a sheriff's deputy were assigned to the event.

Matar declined to testify at his state court trial but may do so at the federal trial, Barone said outside court Thursday.

Rushdie was born in India, raised in Britain and is now a U.S. citizen. He won the Booker Prize in 1981 for his novel “Midnight’s Children.” His most recent work is “The Eleventh Hour,” a book of short stories and novellas published last year.

Iran's government denied involvement in the 2022 stabbing, but its Foreign Ministry's then-spokesperson suggested Rushdie invited trouble by insulting Islam. Hezbollah's Nasrallah did not comment on the attack.

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Peltz reported from New York.

ACS said the seizure was part of an ongoing cruelty investigation at the property, located near Cerro Vista Street and La Charca Drive. ACS said officers obtained a warrant to remove the dogs after the property owners were unresponsive.

The dogs — a mix of American Staffordshire and shepherd breeds — will be examined by veterinarians. Some of the dogs had minor injuries, according to ACS.

A KSAT crew saw multiple ACS and San Antonio Police Department vehicles at the scene.

No charges have been filed as of Thursday afternoon.

Read also:

• 3 animals found dead inside vehicle at downtown parking lot, ACS says

“Honestly, in that moment, I did not understand what was going on, what was happening to me,” Sister Leticia Ugboaja said at a news conference at Our Lady of Sorrows Church in McAllen, where she spoke out for the first time since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested her on June 28.

Ugboaja's attorney says she has for years been granted protection from removal to her native Nigeria because she was likely to face torture there.

Ugboaja, 56, was released several hours after being detained while on her way to church near the U.S.-Mexico border. Parish officials' posting about her on social media brought attention to her case, and Congress members ultimately intervened on her behalf. President Donald Trump made mass deportations a central promise of his second administration, with his immigration crackdown leading to unusually aggressive tactics that have faced scrutiny.

Ugboaja, who has a check-in appointment with ICE on Tuesday, said she wanted to speak out to help others, and pleaded for people to have the chance to be heard before being taken into custody.

“There are many others in this same situation, people who have been given some form of protection under our laws, who have followed every rule asked of them, and who still live with uncertainty,” Ugboaja said.

While she's grateful to those who helped her, she said, that “does not mean I can stay quiet about what happened to me, or about what is still happening to others.”

Her attorney, Carlos M. Garcia, sat next to Ugboaja at the news conference and provided details about her immigration case. He said that in 2019 an immigration judge denied her application for asylum but granted her protection from removal to Nigeria because she likely would be tortured there. Garcia said Ugboaja, who is a nurse, has complied with everything required of her and had permission to work in the U.S.

When ICE detained Ugboaja in June, she wasn't given much explanation as to why she was taken into custody, her attorney said. But the U.S. planned to remove her to a third country, he added.

The Trump administration's third-country removal policy has been criticized by lawyers and human rights groups and has faced legal challenges. The Department of Homeland Security has said the agreements allow people seeking asylum in the U.S. to pursue protection in the other country, and that the agreements are used to try to address large backlogs in immigration courts.

DHS and ICE did not respond to a request to comment on Ugboaja's case on Thursday and did not respond to requests for comment after her detention in June.

Ugboaja is part of the Daughters of Mary Mother of Mercy and volunteered as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion at Our Lady of Sorrows Church, a spokesperson for the Diocese of Brownsville has said. Ugboaja is also a registered nurse at South Texas Health System and worked previously for 10 years as a certified nursing assistant in Edinburg, the spokesperson said.

Ugboaja said that on the day she was taken into custody, she begged the officers to let her attend Mass and receive Holy Communion, but was told she could not.

“For me, a nun, not to go to Mass on Sunday, not to receive Communion, it was very, very heartbreaking for me,” she said.

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Stengle reported from Dallas.

The outbreak included 72 people as of Wednesday.

The Food and Drug Administration has not yet identified which products are linked to the illnesses. Officials also have not said where the cases are located.

“This is an active investigation, and officials are working together to determine the specific cause of illnesses in this cluster,” the Department of Health and Human Services said in an email Thursday.

Federal officials earlier this week said they remained focused on lettuce from Taylor Farms as the source of a separate, multistate outbreak. The company last week announced it was recalling iceberg lettuce grown in central Mexico.

Cyclospora is a microscopic parasite that infects food that has come into contact with human feces, most commonly when produce is irrigated or washed with contaminated water. When ingested, the parasite causes intestinal illness marked by “frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Federal and state health authorities have been investigating separate clusters of cyclospora illnesses, including the one traced to Taylor Farms.

Food safety tips include washing hands with soap and water after using the bathroom and before handling food. Experts say cooking can kill the parasite and advise cooking produce to a temperature of at least 158 degrees Fahrenheit (70 degrees Celsius.)

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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.

Officers were dispatched Jan. 6 to the base area of Taos Ski Valley for a report of two people who were highly intoxicated.

Officer Taylor Thompson, a five-year veteran of SAPD, and his girlfriend were identified as the subjects of the call.

An eyewitness described Thompson to arriving officers as being “super intoxicated,” discipline records show.

On scene, officers noticed Thompson using a ski rack to balance himself and wrote that he had “blood shot watery eyes, slurred speech and an odor of alcoholic beverage emitting from his person,” discipline records show.

Officers wrote that Thompson was “very confused” and was unable to communicate with them.

Thompson later identified himself as “law enforcement” and told a medic attending to him that he was a San Antonio Police Department officer, according to records.

Surveillance cameras recorded Thompson consuming pre-packaged bottles of liquor in a public place and showed him “staggering, falling down, and requiring his transport to a hospital.”

Thompson’s girlfriend was arrested on charges of battery on a peace officer and concealing identity, records show.

One day after the incident, a lieutenant with the Village of Taos Ski Valley Department of Public Safety emailed SAPD internal affairs and wrote, “I wanted to reach out (to) SAPD and inform you of the incident because the level of intoxication was concerning,” records show.

Thompson had not reported the incident to his immediate supervisor, according to records. He was suspended for rules violations covering intoxication and incidents involving officers.

Thompson served the suspension between June 17 and July 1.

Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.

During peak demand periods, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) may issue an elevated request for Texans to reduce their energy use, known as a “conservation appeal.”

ERCOT issues a conservation appeal when there is the potential to enter emergency operations due to lower reserves.

To help reduce energy usage, ERCOT recommends the following tips:

• Adjust your thermostat: During summer months, ERCOT recommends raising the thermostat by a degree or two, if it is safe to do so. In the winter, lowering the thermostat by a degree or two can have a similar effect.
• Avoid using large appliances: Appliances like washers and dryers draw significant amounts of electricity.
• Turn off what you’re not using: ERCOT encourages residents to turn off and unplug non-essential lights and devices throughout the home.
• Run pool pumps at off-peak times: For homeowners with pools, ERCOT recommends setting pool pumps to run during early morning hours or overnight and shutting them off during peak demand hours.

ERCOT recommends that commercial operations turn off lights and office equipment — or place devices in sleep mode — when a space is not in use.

Businesses are also encouraged to turn off air conditioning and heating systems outside of regular business hours.

Residents can follow ERCOT on social media to stay up to date when a conservation appeal is issued.

Read also:

• Heat safety precautions take center stage after city sees first triple-digit temperature of 2026

An emailed statement from Lars Dalseide, communications director for Gov. Patrick Morrisey, did not provide details on where the bodies were found or how the people died. Their identities were not immediately released.

They are the first confirmed deaths from Tuesday’s floods, when forecasters said up to 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain fell. Morrisey said some places received 4.5 inches (11.4 centimeters) in 37 minutes. Officials in north-central West Virginia have described the devastation as extensive.

Video and photos on social media showed submerged vehicles in parking lots, including at a Walmart in Weston where muddy water surged into the store. Across a nearby highway, a hotel’s main floor was inundated. Dozens of people stuck in submerged vehicles throughout the region had to be rescued, and floodwaters initially cut off access to them in some areas.

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This story corrects the day the deaths were announced to Thursday, not Wednesday.

The lawsuit, filed in Rhode Island and challenging Federal Emergency Management Agency and Department of Homeland Security policies, argued that the administration is requiring states to change their elections systems and help DHS with immigration enforcement. The conditions would also allow DHS to terminate grants at any time and for any reason.

“Once again, the Trump Administration is threatening to jeopardize public safety by unlawfully withholding billions in critical funding and once again, they won’t get away with it,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. “This Administration is using the safety of Americans as collateral by attempting to bully the states into relinquishing their constitutional right to enact policies and laws that best serve their residents.”

The states argue putting conditions on congressionally appropriated funding violates the Administrative Procedure Act and the U.S. Constitution’s spending clause.

In a statement, a spokesperson for FEMA called the lawsuit an example of “partisan pushback” and said they expected “these left-wing politicians to oppose common-sense measures designed to protect election security and safeguard the integrity of American democracy.”

“Election security is national security, and protecting our critical infrastructure remains a top priority for the Trump Administration,” they said. “Concerns over voting processes, data security, and registration practices have made it clear that action is required.”

The lawsuit is one of scores that have challenged the Trump administration over its repeated effort to browbeat mostly Democratic states into complying with its priorities to get billions of dollars in federal funding. The strategy has been used on everything from education funding to domestic violence grants to highway funding.

The courts have repeatedly found this strategy to be unlawful and unconstitutional. A ruling last year barred the administration from putting conditions on other FEMA funding, and a second ruling this year blocked the administration from redirecting DHS funding away from states not seen as supportive of its agenda.

“The States face losing billions of dollars in federal funding, are being put in a position of relinquishing their sovereign right to decide how to use their own police officers, are at risk of losing the trust built between local law enforcement and immigrant communities, and will have to scale back, reconsider, or cancel ongoing transportation projects,” U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. wrote last year, when he barred the Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy from cutting off transportation funds to states that did not comply with immigration enforcement actions.

The latest lawsuit argues the administration is attempting to apply some of the same conditions on 2026 funding, as it failed to do with funding last year.

Among the requirements being challenged in Thursday's lawsuit is that states change their elections systems. They must transition to paper-ballot systems, conduct a manual audit of voting systems, reconcile voters and verify the citizenship of every registered voter in the state’s voter databases.

If states fail to comply, they risk losing at least 20% of their Homeland Security Grant Program funding. That money is used to fund measures to protect citizens from cyberattacks and terrorism.

“The Trump Administration is holding critical funding for homeland security and disaster response hostage in their latest attempt to take over our elections and perpetuate baseless conspiracy theories,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said in a statement.

Since his 2020 presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden, Trump has groundlessly claimed mail voting is rife with fraud and has launched a federal investigation into that year’s vote, even though repeated audits and investigations, including ones run by Republicans, found it was free of widespread fraud. Trump also has said he wants to “take over” election administration in Democratic areas.

When the deal was announced Wednesday, neither the U.S. Energy Department nor the Saudi government made any mention of it being contingent on the kingdom's relations with Israel.

Trump’s social media post a day later asserting that the agreement was subject to the Saudis joining the accords was unexpected and almost certain to complicate any final approval. The accords approved in 2020 expanded the number of Arab and Muslim-majority nations with diplomatic ties with Israel.

Getting Saudi Arabia to join would be a monumental diplomatic achievement. The Saudis have previously made clear that normalizing relations with Israel would first require the establishment of a clear path for Palestinian statehood. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected the idea of Palestinian statehood as being untenable for his country’s security.

The Republican president also said the pact does not allow for enrichment of uranium. Nonproliferation experts have raised concerns that the deal fails to include guardrails to prevent enrichment of uranium to weapons-grade levels.

Trump said the agreement “will be approved, but is totally subject to Saudi Arabia joining the very respected and successful Abraham Accords.” He added that the U.S. “is not opposed to Civil (Non-Enriched) Nuclear Facilities.”

When asked by a reporter why the condition was not mentioned in the initial announcement, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president was the “final dealmaker” and has called on Saudi Arabia to join the accords “on numerous occasions.”

The Saudi Embassy in Washington declined to comment Thursday on Trump's assertions about the deal.

Netanyahu’s office in a statement applauded the prospect of Saudi Arabia joining the accords as a “historic leap forward for peace in the Middle East.” The statement made no mention of the deal to bolster Saudi's civil nuclear program.

President has sought to build on the accords

Trump has sought to build on the accords, which also formalized commercial ties between Israel and some Arab and Muslim-majority nations. Saudi Arabia is the most important Arab power in the Middle East, and Trump believes the kingdom joining the accords is critical to establishing long-term stability in the region.

The new nuclear deal is expected to last 30 years and involve U.S. firms in the program’s development. The agreement could allow for the building of a uranium-enrichment facility in Saudi Arabia following a joint U.S.-Saudi study, according to a person familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The pact is to be submitted to Congress for review, according to the U.S. and Saudi governments.

The deal does not include the International Atomic Energy Agency’s “additional protocol,” which would allow for more monitoring, inspections and verification, according to a second person familiar with the agreement.

The oil-rich kingdom’s Energy Ministry on Wednesday said the agreement bolsters “efforts to diversify energy sources, advance cutting-edge technologies, and expand opportunities for cooperation and investment in ways that serve the mutual interests of the two friendly countries.”

Enrichment is not an automatic path to a nuclear weapon — a nation also must master other steps, including the use of synchronized high explosives, for instance. But it does open the door to weaponization, which has fueled concerns over Iran’s program.

Administration says deal is good for US firms

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters Thursday in the Philippine capital of Manila that the agreement would make certain that Saudi Arabia works with American companies instead of “competitors” to build its civil nuclear program. China, South Korea, France and Russia are among alternative partners that Riyadh could look to.

“We’re not the only show in town, but we’re the best show in town,” Rubio said. “We want to make sure that it’s our companies they’re picking.”

Trump has talked up his push to extend the accords, but the aftermath of Israel's war in Gaza and the nearly 5-month-old U.S. and Israel war against Iran have complicated his efforts.

The agreements have proven unpopular in certain signatory countries such as Morocco and Bahrain, sparking widespread protests.

Still, the Trump administration remains optimistic that an agreement with Saudi Arabia on joining the accords can be sealed by the end of Trump’s second term.

Deal faces early scrutiny from Congress, Israel and nuclear experts

The White House and Saudi Arabia have not made public the text of the nuclear cooperation agreement, known as a “123 agreement,” alongside what the Trump administration described as a “bilateral safeguards agreement” that was signed Wednesday by U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Saudi Minister of Energy Abdulaziz bin Salman.

But it already faces scrutiny from Congress, some Israeli officials and nuclear experts.

As details of the deal emerged Wednesday, opposition on Capitol Hill and elsewhere began to snowball, with Republicans and Democrats both questioning the wisdom of the agreement. In addition, conservative commentators who have generally supported Trump’s polices asked why the president would give Saudi Arabia such a deal without getting anything in return.

Then on Thursday, Trump abruptly announced that the deal is contingent on the Saudis joining the accords.

The United Arab Emirates, a neighbor to Saudi Arabia, signed a 123 agreement with the U.S. to build its Barakah nuclear power plant with South Korean assistance. But the UAE did so without seeking enrichment, something nonproliferation experts have held up as the “gold standard” for nations wanting atomic power.

Rubio, as a Republican senator representing Florida, backed a bipartisan 2018 proposal that called for requiring Congress to approve any 123 agreement with Saudi Arabia. The bill was reintroduced by a group of Democratic lawmakers in March but has not passed into law.

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Price reported from Manila, Philippines. Associated Press writers Sam Metz in Jerusalem and Matthew Daly, Seung Min Kim and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

The S&P 500 fell 1.2% and is on track for its first back-to-back weekly loss since March. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 506 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.2%.

Stocks fell under the pressure of rising oil prices, which raise costs for businesses and erode their customers’ ability to spend. The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, jumped 7% to settle at $100.69.

It touched $102 during the day, the highest price since May for the most actively traded Brent contract in the market. The cause: attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea. That threatens another avenue that oil companies use to move their crude from the Middle East to customers worldwide, along with the Strait of Hormuz.

Underscoring the importance of the sea route for the economy, President Donald Trump threatened “major military punishment” against the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who are backed by Iran, if they keep attacking ships.

It was just a few weeks ago that Brent had dropped below $72 per barrel, roughly back to where it was before the United States and Israel attacked Iran to begin their war, on hopes that a wind-down in the war would fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The jumps in oil prices will worsen inflation, just when it had begun to decelerate by more than economists expected. That in turn could push the Federal Reserve and other central banks to raise interest rates, which would slow economies and undercut prices for stocks and other investments.

The European Central Bank held its main interest rates steady at its meeting Thursday. But traders are betting on a 36% chance the Fed will hike the federal funds rate at its meeting next week. That’s up from the nearly 12% probability seen a week ago, according to data from CME Group.

An increase by the Fed would be the first since 2023.

Higher oil prices pushed the yield of the 10-year Treasury up to 4.69% from 4.67% late Wednesday and from just 3.97% before the war with Iran began. That’s a significant increase, and it’s already brought long-term U.S. mortgage rates to their highest levels in nearly a year.

Gasoline prices tend to follow oil prices higher, and a gallon of regular costs an average of $4.09 across the United States, according to AAA. That’s still below highs of roughly $4.56 in May, but it was at just $3.93 a month ago.

On Wall Street, stocks of companies with big fuel bills fell to sharp losses on worries about higher expenses.

American Airlines fell 8.4% even though it reported a much bigger profit for the spring than analysts expected, something that usually sends a stock’s price higher. It raised airfares, which helped it offset its higher fuel prices, during the latest quarter.

Southwest Airlines lost 6.2%, even though it also reported better profit and revenue than analysts expected.

One of the heaviest weights on the U.S. stock market was Tesla, which tumbled 14.5% after Elon Musk’s electric-vehicle company reported a weaker profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Because it’s one of the largest stocks in the S&P 500 by market value, its stock has more influence on the index than nearly every other.

One of the few that’s larger is Alphabet, and its stock fell 7.1% even though the parent company of Google delivered stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected.

Investors focused instead on how much Alphabet is planning to spend on artificial-intelligence investments. Alphabet raised its forecast for capital spending over the full year after its investments last quarter doubled to nearly $45 billion from a year earlier.

CEO Sundar Pichai said AI helped its cloud revenue growth accelerate to 82% last quarter, but unease nevertheless remains about whether all the money going into AI will pay off in terms of productivity and profits.

Such worries have been shaking the AI industry broadly in recent weeks, leading to big swings for the overall stock market.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 90.66 points to 7,408.30. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 506.93 to 51,711.65, and the Nasdaq composite sank 553.21 to 25,137.69.

In stock markets abroad, indexes fell sharply in Europe after oil prices jumped. France’s CAC 40 dropped 1.6% for one of the larger losses.

Indexes in Asia were stronger earlier in the day, and South Korea’s Kospi jumped 4.4%.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, referred Smith to the Justice Department for possible prosecution related to closed-door testimony about whether he had obtained records of lawmakers while investigating Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss.

The referral, sent Wednesday, centers on a December 2025 exchange in which Smith was asked about subpoenas that prosecutors had issued for the toll records of some Republican lawmakers as part of the investigation. Toll records show the time, date, length of call and phone numbers involved but do not reveal the content of the communication.

“Did the toll records that you requested from the senators, did they include the content of the phone calls?” Smith was asked.

“No,” he said. He again answered no when asked whether the toll records he had requested included the content of text messages.

Jordan, in his referral, says that answer was misleading in light of newly released records from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa showing that Smith had obtained the contents of 44 lawmakers' text messages in a separate subpoena to the National Archives and Records Administration that sought the communications of various Trump advisers and aides.

“The responses provided by Mr. Smith gave the impression that neither Mr. Smith nor his team had access to the content of Members’ privileged text messages," Jordan wrote. “We now know this to be false.”

He said a false statement can encompasses instances in which “the witness provides a half-truth or excludes information necessary to make statements accurate.”

Lawyers for Smith called that a “dangerous theory of criminal liability” that has “no limiting principle and risks ensnaring every witness who testifies before a congressional committee who does not proactively disclose information that is not responsive to a question asked (i.e. every witness).”

Smith's lawyers defend his veracity

In a letter to Jordan and Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Smith's lawyers called his answers “unimpeachably truthful” and noted that he was responding to questions explicitly about toll records, which did not include the contents of any text messages.

“The toll record subpoenas that were the focus of those questions did not call for the content of text messages," wrote Smith's lawyers, Peter Koski and Lanny Breuer. “The questions and answers preceding and following these exchanges also make clear that the focus of the questions was on the toll records subpoenas. Notably, the referral letter does not contest the truthfulness of Mr. Smith's answers.”

Raskin said in his own statement that House Republicans had “embarrassed themselves” with the referral and that Smith answered accurately when asked if the toll records subpoenas sought the content of lawmakers' communications. He said Republicans were faulting Smith for not volunteering information he was not asked.

“Wishing that you had asked different questions while you had the opportunity to examine a witness is not a proper basis for a referral of a witness for criminal prosecution. Congressional Republicans never asked Jack Smith about presidential records,” Raskin wrote. “Not during his 9-hour closed-door testimony or his 4-hour public hearing.”

A criminal referral to the Justice Department from Congress or any other party has no legal authority and does not compel prosecutors to act. But the department under the Trump administration has proved to be eager to investigate and in some cases prosecute foes of the president. Smith is certainly one such adversary, with Trump having called him “deranged” and urging his prosecution.

“During his testimony, Mr. Smith provided truthful, responsive answers and candidly discussed his work as Special Counsel,” Smith's lawyers wrote. “This referral reflects a chilling eagerness to weaponize the justice system by attacking a career, nonpartisan public servant who faithfully and fearlessly performed his duties by following the facts and the law.”

The Justice Department in a statement Wednesday night confirmed receipt of the referral and said it “will investigate all evidence of criminal conduct.”

Smith charged Trump with conspiring to undo the election he lost to Democrat Joe Biden and with hoarding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, after his first term in the White House. Smith abandoned both prosecutions after Trump's election win in November 2024, citing longstanding Justice Department opinions that say sitting presidents cannot face federal indictment.

Smith resigned from the Justice Department in early 2025, 10 days before Trump was inaugurated again.

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Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

The attack announced this week by OpenAI, which blamed rogue AI models, underscored the blistering growth in the technology’s capabilities. For many, it also added urgency to questions about whether and how it can be prevented from causing mayhem on a bigger scale, with more serious consequences.

In what OpenAI called an “unprecedented” episode, the company said its advanced AI models used stolen credentials to break into the servers of an AI startup. It started in what was supposed to be a “highly isolated” testing environment, with reduced guardrails, before the AI agent found its way onto the internet.

But the disclosure brought a told-you-so moment for researchers who have called for a slowdown of AI development and warned for years that the technology could pose existential risks to humanity. In its wake, experts have called for improved testing by the AI companies and more dialogue between the U.S. and China to come up with shared solutions.

“I think we’ve got to take this as a warning shot to not make them smarter, and that probably is going to require global collaboration,” said Nate Soares, co-author of the 2025 book “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.”

The hack could pressure companies to improve containment

If a model can decide to do something unethical, illegal or harmful on its own, what — if anything — can humans do to prevent it from doing so?

OpenAI said it had tasked the AI models involved with pursuing “advanced exploitation using complex attack paths” to test cyber capabilities, but the technology went to unexpected lengths. It apparently decided on its own to target Hugging Face, a well-known AI development hub and marketplace, to obtain information it needed to carry out a task.

Zahra Timsah, the co-founder and CEO of governance platform i-GENTIC AI, said she expects the incident to increase pressure on OpenAI and its competitors to complete rigorous testing and explore containment more thoroughly before AI systems are made accessible to the public.

Monitoring an agent’s behavior after the fact, as OpenAI is now doing with its investigation, is no longer enough, she said. “It’s like having a seat belt, air bags, brakes, everything in the car. It should be there before the car starts driving,” Timsah said.

The disclosure comes amid heightened concerns about the cybersecurity capabilities of powerful models. In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order creating a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release.

OpenAI said Thursday that it briefed the White House this week about the Hugging Face attack.

Other experts see the event as a sign of AI's growing pains

Some experts say the hack is part of the trial and error that comes with improving cybersecurity capabilities and is no cause for panic.

“We’ve been dealing with people creating cybersecurity attacks for as long as the internet has existed. And one of the interesting properties of these language models is that the same capabilities that make them able to perform cybersecurity attacks also allow them to do cybersecurity threat analysis and make cybersecurity defenses,” said John Thickstun, an assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University who studies methods that control the behavior of AI models.

The disclosure has raised skepticism from those who say it advantages OpenAI to make its technology seem scarier. Given that humans at OpenAI had decided to turn off some safeguards for the test, some have argued the outcome should not have been terribly surprising.

Thickstun noted the disclosure plays into the need of OpenAI, a startup working toward a Wall Street debut, to raise money.

“The story that they’ve been consistently telling over the lifetime of this company is a story about how dangerous their models are, which their investors read as a story of how powerful their language models are,” he said.

The disclosure renews calls for more regulation

The hack renewed calls in some corners for increased regulations and oversight of AI companies.

U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Texas Democrat, wrote on social media: “We need regular mandatory independent safety testing and oversight, mandatory disclosure of security incidents, and international cooperation to keep people safe from absolute disaster.”

Soares, director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, said the U.S. will need to open talks with its biggest AI competitor, China, something he thinks is not as outlandish as it might have seemed even a year ago. China’s leader Xi Jinping warned at a conference just last week of the need to keep AI from evading human control. And after an early aversion to regulating AI, Trump’s administration has grown more restrictive at reining in cybersecurity risks.

“A lot can change when the national security community starts to notice that they have a serious threat,” Soares said. “Will this wake them up? Hopefully. I’m not sure. If this doesn’t, maybe the next incident will.”

AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio said on social media the episode is deeply concerning and should serve as a “wake-up call.”

“Continuing on the current trajectory of AI development will likely lead to an increase in concrete cases of autonomous cyberattacks as well as other high-risk incidents of misaligned and dangerous AI behavior,” said Bengio, a professor at the University of Montreal. “We urgently need to take action to prevent these situations, rather than attempting to clean up the damage after the fact.”

The elevated price marked a turn from lower oil prices enjoyed briefly when hostilities between the U.S. and Iran waned in June. Brent crude, the international standard, last reached $100 a barrel in May.

Companies that produce and sell fresh food, school supplies and anything that gets shipped using fuel reported cost impacts from an earlier spike in energy prices after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. They’re likely to continue passing some of their increased expenses to consumers.

“Since everything relies on petroleum in our economy, for good or ill, if the cost of petroleum goes up, then everything else goes up as well,” said Joe Adamski, a managing director at procurement services company ProcureAbility.

Here's how higher oil prices could put more strain on the finances of U.S. consumers.

Gasoline prices return to $4 or more in most states

Volatility along the Strait of Hormuz and broader regional instability pushed up the price of crude oil, the main ingredient in gasoline, and could continue to make driving costlier during the second half of summer, according to motor club AAA.

The U.S. price for regular gasoline averaged $4.09 a gallon Thursday, 15 cents more than a week ago, and drivers in most states were paying $4 or more, according to AAA.

“Given the typical lag along the oil industry’s supply chain, prices at the pump are poised to keep rising at least into next week,” said Pavel Molchanov, an investment strategy analyst at investment bank Raymond James.

Molchanov, noted that futures prices for oil delivered later this year and next year were lower, suggesting prices could fall once military action ends.

For the most part, higher gasoline prices haven't stopped Americans from driving. Gasoline demand rose 1% to 8.9 million barrels per day last week, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Shoppers are paying more for a bag of groceries

Grocery prices generally rise with oil because farmers use diesel fuel to power equipment, while many food products are transported by trucks that require fuel.

“Oil at $100 doesn’t make food prices jump right away, but it does put upward pressure across the food supply chains, especially for categories that depend heavily on trucking, cold storage and packaging,” said Miguel Gomez, a Cornell University professor who directs the school's Food Industry Management Program. Fresh produce and dairy could feel a larger impact because they require refrigeration during delivery.

Imported goods are also vulnerable to higher shipping costs, Gomez said. “Things like olive oil that we produce very little here and are coming from mostly from Europe are going to be up.”

Grocery chain Albertsons on Thursday lowered its 2026 fiscal outlook, citing pressure on its core grocery business and a pullback in consumer spending.

Every product that moves will have higher costs baked into the price

Higher fuel costs for ships, trucks and air carriers can trickle down to consumers and businesses that depend on shipping. UPS, FedEx and other shipping services introduced fuel surcharges and other fees as fuel prices increased.

According to an AFS Logistics and TD Cowen Freight Index released July 14, truckload pricing is at a four-year high because of rising fuel costs and capacity constraints.

Andy Dyer, CEO of AFS Logistics, said diesel prices in the second quarter were about 51% higher than in January and February, while jet fuel prices rose 90% from a year earlier.

“Beyond the direct impact of higher freight bills paid by shippers, these price movements also have second-order effects that squeeze rates higher,” he said. “Smaller truckload carriers working on tight margins may park trucks and wait for fuel prices to revert to more palatable levels before returning to operation.”

Retailers are noticing consumers pulling back

Rural lifestyle retailer Tractor Supply Co. reduced its annual sales outlook on Thursday, citing in part higher fuel prices during its spring selling season that weighed on customer spending.

”Our customers often drive longer distances to shop frequently in pickup trucks, many of which are diesel-powered, making them especially sensitive to higher fuel costs,” CEO Hal Lawton told analysts.

Lawton said customers are still investing in their pets, animals, farms and properties, but shopping has become “more deliberate.” Customers are consolidating trips, prioritizing needs-based purchases and taking a more measured approach to discretionary spending.

Back-to-school shoppers may face higher prices

The Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America trade group warned in a report Wednesday that increasing freight and material costs, along with rising tariffs costs, were creating big challenges for the footwear industry as families prepare for back-to-school shopping and companies plan for the remainder of the year.

Matt Priest, CEO and president of the trade group, said some of its members have cited 25% price increases for petroleum-based materials used in footwear manufacturing due to the Middle East conflict. Those costs could eventually translate into roughly a 5% increase in the cost of finished footwear products sold to consumers, Priest said in the report.

Footwear companies have been front-loading inventory and accelerating imports before President Donald Trump imposes new tariffs on foreign products, putting additional pressure on shipping rates, he said.

“Container rates are spiking right now,” Priest said.

Higher jet fuel costs lead to costlier flights

Since the war began, airlines have responded to the jump in fuel costs by raising fares and add-on fees, and trimming flights or routes that are no longer profitable at higher fuel prices. Those moves can help protect the airlines’ margins, but also leave travelers facing higher prices and fewer options, particularly in smaller or less competitive markets.

In the latest sign that the conflict is driving up costs for the travel industry, American Airlines on Thursday reported a sharp decline in second-quarter net income despite record revenue and strong spring travel demand.

American said higher fares helped offset nearly half of its higher fuel bill but not enough to prevent it from lowering its full-year outlook.

Despite higher prices, jet fuel demand in the last four weeks increased 9% compared to the same time last year, according to EIA.

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Associated Press writers Rio Yamat in Las Vegas, Wyatte Grantham-Philips and Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this report.

The partnership is a bid to reignite Ford’s offerings for the European auto market as the legacy carmaker seeks to compete with the likes of fast-moving Chinese companies that are rapidly dominating auto sales across the globe.

It comes amid challenges for the American electric vehicle market and increasing global geopolitical tensions driven by U.S. tariff policy. In the U.S., policy all but locks Chinese firms out of the market — though American automakers still partner with companies in China for production, and Chinese vehicles are making inroads in North America more broadly.

The joint venture, pending regulatory approval, will be owned two-thirds by Ford and one-third by Geely, which also owns brands such as Volvo, Polestar and more.

The two companies said they will focus on five vehicles.

Under the partnership, Ford plans to continue production of the Ford Kuga plug-in hybrid vehicle, as well as a new Bronco SUV, production for which will begin in 2028. Geely plans to make two electric SUVs at the plant, the first of which is also scheduled to begin production in 2028.

The automakers said they will also jointly develop a new “multi-energy” crossover model to arrive in 2028.

“The joint venture addresses the new realities of the European market — intense global competition, relentless cost pressure and tightening regulation — resetting Valencia to build at the industry’s emerging cost benchmark,” a release from the two companies said.

The JV aligns with Ford leadership's stance about being competitive outside its domestic market — yet the automaker's executives have publicly cautioned about Chinese EVs in the U.S.

“We leverage global partnerships and even IP (intellectual property) sharing, including with the Chinese (companies), to grow our business around the world,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in the company's first-quarter earnings call in April. “How I would think about it is Ford continues to be a global company. We want to have the rights to win around the globe. We need IP and partnerships outside the U.S. to do that. And when it comes to the U.S. industry itself, we are extremely protective, as we should be.”

Chinese firms are gaining ground and expanding

Chinese automakers have been gaining momentum in recent years as they produce high-quality and efficient hybrid and pure EVs — coined “new energy vehicles” — with advanced technology at a low price-point. These auto companies have been highly subsidized by the Chinese government with a vested interest in their success.

However, they are also starting to see a slowdown in China due to scaled-back consumer purchase incentives and increasing domestic competition.

So Chinese companies have found early success expanding throughout other nations in Asia, in Latin America and parts of Europe as the global EV transition forges ahead to varying degrees outside of the U.S. The war in Iran has also spurred global interest in Chinese EVs as conflict in the Strait of Hormuz impacts the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

The Ford venture will expand Geely's European local production footprint — and helps keep Ford workers on the line, experts say.

Ford's facing a critical moment

Ford has lost ground in Europe for years, from selling more than 1 ‌million ⁠vehicles across the continent a decade ago, down to under half a million cars last year. While the Valencia factory has annual capacity of 500,000 vehicles, production fell below 100,000 in 2025.

The partnership is sure to reduce pressure on the American auto giant as the two share costs. Ford and Geely already share history; Ford sold Volvo Cars to the Chinese firm in 2010.

“This deal offers a road map for how traditional automakers can survive and thrive in Europe,” said Jessica Caldwell, head of insights at auto research firm Edmunds. “Ford gets the scale and cost efficiencies it needs for its Valencia plant, while Geely gets a direct shortcut around (European Union) tariffs. More broadly, it underscores a major industry shift we’re likely to continue seeing: automakers can no longer go it alone and must collaborate with rivals — Chinese or otherwise — to survive the capital-intensive transition to electrification.”

U.S. automakers, generally, have spent billions of dollars on electrification over the past several years. But the Trump administration has dramatically shifted away from clean vehicle policy, weakening fuel economy rules and auto tailpipe emissions rules.

The administration also eliminated former President Joe Biden's target for half of all new vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric by 2030, and signed off on Congress’ tax and spending bill that ended federal new and used EV purchase tax credits.

U.S. automakers likely see potential in the European EV market amid uncertain EV sales in the U.S., but may also have to explore more partnerships in order to remain competitive there.

“Like GM before it, Ford has been slowly reducing its reliance on Europe,” said Sam Fiorani, vice president at AutoForecast Solutions. “Now, with the help of Geely, Ford can have new products designed for the European market without bearing the full development costs of a new platform.

“While Chinese automakers like Geely continue their growth around the world, Ford should take this opportunity to learn how to cut costs and develop lower-priced vehicles,” Fiorani added. “If Ford cannot compete on price in Europe, the automaker may need to look at selling plants outright rather than sharing them. Losing Europe could hurt Ford’s standing as a global automaker, but continuing to have the region drain its finances could be more devastating.”

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Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

Wembanyama is on the cover of the Standard Edition, Clark is on the Deluxe Edition and Rose will appear on the limited-time Ultra Edition.

The Standard Edition launches widely on Sept. 4. Deluxe and Ultra editions launch with early access on Aug. 28.

Wembanyama said being on the cover was “a dream come true,” and Clark said being on a cover “is special because this game reaches fans all over the world.”

Rose was also on the cover of NBA 2K13.

“This is a chance to inspire young athletes to stay obsessed with the game,” Rose said. “To show them that when you put in the countless hours of hard work, it rewards you.”

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

LUBBOCK — A 5.0 magnitude earthquake rocked the Texas Panhandle early Thursday morning, one of the strongest recorded in Texas.

Effects from the earthquake were felt throughout the rural region and as far as southern Oklahoma and New Mexico.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the earthquake occurred at 5:21 a.m. nearly 24 miles south-southeast of Spearman near the top of the Texas-Oklahoma border. On social media, Spearman residents said the earthquake shook homes. Some in Oklahoma City, nearly 250 miles away, reported feeling the effects of the earthquake.

No structural damage or injuries have been reported so far. The USGS expects economic losses to be minimal.

A.J. Harrel, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Amarillo, said the earthquake originated from northwest Roberts County, nearly 50 miles south of Spearman. Harrel said Thursday’s earthquake was stronger than what they typically see in the region.

“We’ve had smaller earthquakes within the past year or two,” Harrel said. “They do happen here, just not frequently.”

In the last five years, Texas has experienced seven earthquakes that measured at a 5.0 magnitude or higher. According to Earthquake Track, the earthquake in Spearman is tied for the sixth-biggest in Texas history.

Last year, two of the largest earthquakes in state history struck in West Texas. Earthquakes in that region have been attributed to an increase in hydraulic fracking in the area. It is unclear what caused the earthquake in the Panhandle.

“There are some minor fault lines in the Texas Panhandle that could cause weak to moderate earthquakes,” Harrel said. “They’re just not very frequent.”

A controversial data center project in East Texas is no longer moving forward after the company said it wouldn’t be able to comply with Gov. Greg Abbott’s development standards.

Kansas-based Diode Ventures had proposed building a data center in Henderson County near Cedar Creek Reservoir, a historic waterway in a community heavily involved in water conservation. The Fort Worth Star Telegram reported the site was expected to take 12 years to build out and consume 5 million gallons of lake water per day by its fifth year.

The project’s location was concerning because it would have sat right in the middle of a developed subdivision with hundreds of homes around it, Henderson County Commissioner Wendy Spivey told The Texas Tribune. Residents were concerned that it would draw water from Cedar Creek Lake, which supplies water to the Fort Worth area. With little to no rainfall in the region this year, lake levels have been low for residents. They worried what years like this would look like with increased water withdrawals.

“This was a big, big step in a positive direction for Diode to back out,” Spivey said.

However, she does not believe this is the end of the fight. The landowners of the proposed site are still looking for ways to sell or use the land, and just because Diode backed out doesn’t mean another data center may not come in, Spivey said.

Data center proposals have cropped up in droves across the state, especially in the rural communities of East Texas that are water rich and have little to no regulation. In recent weeks, Gov. Greg Abbott said he wanted lawmakers to outright ban project developments in rural areas like those in East Texas and require data centers to be “responsible stewards” of the natural resources.

“Data centers that want to do business in Texas must meet a clear standard. This project did not,” Abbott wrote in a statement released Thursday. “Texas requires companies to put communities first, protect our natural resources and power grid, and respect the quality of life of our residents. Diode did the right thing by withdrawing their project. If other data center developments refuse to meet these standards, I expect them to do the same.”

Abbott’s tougher stance on data center developments and how they affect rural areas is what drove Diode Ventures co-presidents Rachel Attebery and Josh Johnson to cancel the project.

“After completing our initial evaluation and consulting with the community, as well as state and local officials, we have determined not to advance the site beyond preliminary planning and have concluded our work on the site,” Diode Ventures told the Texas Tribune in a written statement. “Diode remains committed to responsible development, ensuring careful assessment of each site and moving forward with only those that align with infrastructure availability, community priorities and long-term project viability.”

Cedar Creek, where the data center was to be built, and nearby watersheds have been the focus of several conservation efforts, including a federal lawsuit, in Henderson County.

Save Cedar Creek Lake, a volunteer-run coalition formed in early 2026 to push back against the proposed data center. Thousands of community members signed a petition demanding the project be canceled and asking lawmakers to establish strong requirements for data centers. The coalition announced it was going to take that fight to Austin during a July 27 committee meeting.

The company’s retraction came days later.

All across the state, data centers have faced more scrutiny by policy makers. Abbott, who has long championed business development, released sweeping regulatory recommendations on data centers for the Legislature to pass in the 2027 session. Among them are requiring data centers to pay for their own grid interconnection and infrastructure costs, requiring closed-loop water systems and banning federal sales tax exemptions for data center proposals.

Henderson County, like many others across Texas, signed a resolution asking Texas lawmakers to grant them authority to regulate these centers. Counties don’t currently have the power to demand any accountability or ensure their communities are protected. Spivey wants to see that change, she said.

“There’s not much the county can do,” Spivey said. “We don’t have zoning rules and regulations.”

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema will operate the massive 86-foot-wide curved dome theater and an adjacent 14-theater complex. Alamo's owner, Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced the plan to restore the Dome and reopen it in early 2028.

Alamo's plan will preserve the distinctive Cinerama Dome's geodesic exterior and large logo that have been a Hollywood landmark since the theater opened in 1963. The dome will not have in-theater dining, as is common in other Drafthouse theaters.

“There is no moviegoing destination anywhere in the world that commands the affection, history, and cultural significance of the Cinerama Dome. It represents the kind of singular experience we value and champion,” said Ravi Ahuja, Chairman and CEO, Sony Pictures Entertainment. Alamo Drafthouse CEO Michael Kustermann said the dome would be its new West Coast flagship theater.

The dome's massive screen supports 70 mm projection, which is having a moment thanks to Christopher Nolan's “The Odyssey.”

It was commissioned in 1963 by Pacific Theatres founder William R. Forman as a state-of-the-art way to see movies using three projectors for its custom curved screen. When the dome permanently closed in April 2021 after being shut down for more than a year, it was one of only three theaters in the world with that capability. Its operator, Pacific Theaters, announced the closing was caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Michael O’Leary, the president and CEO of the movie theater trade group Cinema United, applauded the news.

“The Cinerama Dome has been a treasured and important landmark for movie fans and the entire film community for over six decades,” O’Leary said in a statement. “The timing could not be better with moviegoers making clear this year that they love the unique experience of seeing a movie on the big screen.”

Alamo Drafthouse will also reopen a 14-theater complex next to the dome that used to be operated by ArcLight Cinemas, which also shut down in 2021. Those theaters will have in-theater dining, although the chain has faced backlash recently for its pivot to an in-seat ordering operation that requires use of personal phones.

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This story has been updated to reflect that the dome closed in 2020, not April 2021.

McALLEN— The South Texas nun who was detained by immigration officers last month spoke publicly for the first time since the incident and as her future in the country remains in limbo.

Sister Leticia “Letty” Ugboaja, a 56-year-old nun from Nigeria, was walking the short distance from her home to Our Lady of Sorrows to distribute the Holy Communion at Mass when she was stopped by two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on June 28.

“Even when I told them, ‘Can I go to Mass; can I just attend Mass; can I receive communion,’ the answer was ‘No,’” Ugboaja said.

ICE released Ugboaja later that day, but she now faces a check-in appointment with immigration officials on July 28.

Her attorney, Carlos M. Garcia, said they hope the check-in is determined to be unnecessary and that Ugboaja will not have to report to ICE, after all. If she does, officials could decide to detain her again or place an ankle monitor on her.

“We are asking that she not be detained and that no ankle monitor be placed on a person who has broken no rule, posed no danger, and given this country a decade of nursing and a lifetime of ministry,” Garcia said.

Ugboaja has lived in South Texas and worked as a registered nurse at various hospitals in the area for more than a decade.

After news of her detention broke, federal U.S. lawmakers who represent the Rio Grande Valley denounced her arrest and said they would try to intervene to secure her release.

In 2019, a judge denied her request for asylum but simultaneously granted her protection from removal to Nigeria under the United Nations Convention Against Torture based on the finding that it was more likely than not that she would be tortured if she returned there.

But because her asylum claim was denied, Ugboaja is technically under a final order of removal, Garcia said.

He added that Ugboaja has done everything asked of her since that 2019 order, including holding a valid work permit, complying with every condition of the protection order, and attending every mandatory appointment with immigration officials.

In detaining her last month, officials sought to deport her not to Nigeria, but to a third country, Garcia said.

The practice of third-country removals have been used under President Donald Trump’s second term to shore up deportations of people who could not legally be deported to their home countries because of the likelihood they would be persecuted there.

Ugboaja said she did not want to remain silent about her situation and wants people in similar situations to have the opportunity to tell their story before they’re taken from their homes.

“I believe every person in this situation, like me, deserves to be heard, deserves to be listened to, deserves to be given attention and opportunity,” she said.

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

CHULA VISTA, CRYSTAL CITY — Gabby Perez painstakingly preserved her mother’s home after she died 15 years ago. There was the wall of family portraits, the rosaries and kitchenware, and personal belongings that her late father, who had a knack for holding on to things, piled up.

Only the house was nearly empty now. Most things were washed away in floodwaters last week.

“I’m hurt,” Perez said, her head cocked to the side, staring at the hollow residence. Just a handful of portraits she managed to grab in a pinch survived. “That’s all we had (of my parents), and we lost it.”

“It’s sad,” said her husband, Eusebio, who goes by Tres. “It hurt me seeing her going through the photos of her family. That’s all she had left.”

A flood ravaged this decades-old, predominantly Hispanic neighborhood to the south of Crystal City on Friday afternoon, after the nearby tributary roared its way into that part of town. Perez and many other families scrambled to flee their childhood homes when the county issued an emergency evacuation order.

In the wake of the flooding, Chula Vista, a working-class, low-income enclave of Crystal City, has begun scouring the debris and examining the cratering foundations of the homes their parents had built — grappling with immense loss and an onslaught of new questions about whether they can afford to rebuild.

For swaths of Central Texas, it’s become an all-too-familiar story. Rain pummels the region in the summer, oversaturating the soil and swelling rivers. The excess water floods the region, sending communities into disarray as they attempt to evacuate. In parts of Uvalde and Kerr counties, as much as 28 inches of rain fell over several days. Two people died.

“We didn’t know it was going to flood out like it did,” said Zavala Emergency Management Coordinator Jesse Guajardo.

“We didn’t know it would end up this way”

On Monday, the sun bore down on Chula Vista and the songs of crickets drowned out everything else, barely 24 hours since residents were allowed to return home. After a harried evacuation, many didn’t know what they’d find. Some were lucky to come back to minimal damage. Others lost everything. Residents shared in the shock, grief and the mounting unexpected expenses of a tragedy.

Demolishing the home seemed the logical choice for Javier and Agustín Santana, whose childhood home was flooded. Agustín, who lives in a trailer home next door, evacuated with his dad, Juan, to a relative’s place in town. Juanita, their mom, was at work. They knew to leave because Agustín’s wife was monitoring Facebook for updates. And when she saw the floods breached the Crystal Ballroom, a storied venue for weddings and quinceañeras, she urged them to leave.

The two brothers surveyed their childhood home, which their dad had built in the 1980s. The water tore through the foundation, they said. And their parents, 72 and 69, have no insurance on the house. They demolished another home to build this one. It is a whirlwind of new anxieties for the family, who are managing the dad’s dialysis and their mom’s diabetes. They had few answers about what comes next.

“We didn’t know it would end up this way,” Juan said. “What we built with so much effort.”

Some homes were spared, like Amandina and Carlos Ortega’s trailer home. Built on stilts and raised above the ground, the home did not flood. Nonetheless, Amandina and Carlos, 65 and 66, fled the neighborhood on Thursday at the insistence of their family, particularly Amandina’s daughter-in-law, who had been monitoring social media. On Friday, they returned home to pack more things, but were met with a sudden rush of water and a helicopter overhead from which a megaphone ordered them to leave.

The retired couple’s expenses accumulated quickly, between hotel stays and cleanup. The home also has to be fumigated again, which will run them hundreds of dollars. Two cars stopped working.

“We were depending on our family for information,” Amandina said. “We called the county, and they said for us to go on Facebook. I don’t think we have it.”

Zavala County relied on social media for warnings

In Crystal City, less than one inch of rain fell that week. The town flooded after the Nueces River rushed downstream with water it had accumulated in Uvalde County, jumping from 8 to 30 feet overnight from Thursday to Friday. Zavala County officials were relying on social media and door-knocking to alert residents.

County officials established an emergency operations center on July 15 to coordinate rescue efforts across Zavala’s unincorporated areas, including Chula Vista, La Pryor, north of Crystal City, and Batesville, which the floods reached, said Guajardo, the emergency management official.

“All the risks that we were addressing were because people had not evacuated as they were told,” Guajardo said, adding that the evacuation orders issued that day were voluntary. First responders rescued more than 100 people, said Guajardo.

County officials deployed their first mandatory evacuation on Friday for residents of Chula Vista, Guajardo said. The county mostly relied on social media to alert residents, while the sheriff’s office sent personnel to the neighborhood.

Guajardo said most were notified with ample time before the floods reached Chula Vista, but referred questions surrounding the timing to the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office on Tuesday declined to answer questions, saying he’d issue a press release on social media. County Judge Jesse Gonzalez also declined to answer questions Tuesday.

The river damaged 183 properties. Nearly half of those were reported as unlivable by their owners, Guajardo said. And the county, he added, has exceeded the federal government’s available funds in its first disaster declaration.

Rebuilding will take time, money

Families in Chula Vista remain unsure about how to start rebuilding their community.

Residents here are either retired or rely on a single source of income, such as Social Security payments or disability benefits. Others rely on their family members, many of whom are hundreds of miles away. Financial relief could be on the horizon as the federal government gathers information on the extent of the damage, but those payments are still far off.

Perez, whose house was swept by the floods, is taking days off from her job at a telemarketing company, where she works in billing. Since authorities reopened the area on Sunday, Perez and her family have spent hours cleaning up, missing work. They’ve also tried to help other families, at one point cooking 75 burgers to pass out.

There’s much left. She still has to clean out a room full of her dad’s things, which she hasn’t worked up the courage to do. She does not get paid for the days she’s not working. The family is unsure how they’ll afford to fix the house or help her brother, who is partially disabled and lives in the house. They launched a GoFundMe to take donations. So far, people have donated $310.

While they’re relieved no one died, they’re still reckoning with the structural damages.

“We’re happy nobody was hurt,” she said. “But it’s sad, it’s heartbreaking, to see all this.”

Disclosure: Facebook 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 214-208 vote requiring congressional approval for the war came just before the Senate narrowly rejected a similar resolution, 47-49. Though the votes forced by Democrats are largely symbolic, they are meant as a signal to the Republican president that his support on Capitol Hill is chipping away as the war drags on and lawmakers in both parties have questioned his administration’s endgame.

The war has had “no clear mission, no strategy, no end goal,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat who led the resolution on the House floor.

The House resolution passed after a handful of Republicans voted with Democrats to end the war. But the vast majority of Republicans in both chambers voted to back the war and cede congressional war powers to Trump.

Joint U.S. and Israeli airstrikes launched the war in late February. A tenuous ceasefire deal was reached in April, but Trump declared the ceasefire was “over” earlier this month.

Trump has insisted that continued U.S. attacks against Iran do not mean a return to war or long-term action. After the first House vote to halt the war in early June, he posted on social media that it was “unpatriotic” and “meaningless.”

A statement of administration policy issued by the White House on Thursday noted that the resolutions don't have the force of law and encouraged lawmakers to vote against them.

“The President has the Constitutional authority to defend the United States and our citizens from the danger posed by the Iranian regime,” the policy statement said. “This requires the ability to act decisively to ensure it never obtains a nuclear weapon.”

Continued American airstrikes are occurring even as diplomatic efforts show little public sign of progress and officials on both sides have dug in on the dispute over the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway for global energy that remains largely closed. The unpopular war threatens further worldwide economic disruption and is sending fuel prices up ahead of midterm U.S. elections this fall.

“We are in this new escalatory phase where Americans have been killed, and Americans are experiencing the rising costs — I think it’s important that people be held accountable,” said Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who led the Senate effort on Thursday. “And this is a very unpopular war.”

Most Republicans vote to cede congressional powers

As the House debated the resolution Wednesday evening, Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, R-Fla., read out names of 18 service members killed since the war began.

“To belittle this mission is to belittle and demean the very service these members gave their life for,” Mast said. “Their sacrifice was not meaningless. This operation is bringing reckoning for the hundreds of times Iran has attacked and killed people of the United States of America.”

The top Democrat on the panel, New York Rep. Gregory Meeks, said that presidents are supposed to make the case to Congress.

The service members who died made the ultimate sacrifice for “an illegal unauthorized war that the American people don’t want,” Meeks said.

Democrats said they would continue to force Republicans to vote on the issue.

“If Donald Trump won’t listen to the people and end this war then Congress must,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.

Trump is watching Iran votes closely

Republicans on both sides of the Capitol know that voting against the war can have a political cost, even as many of them have privately questioned the Trump administration’s handling of the conflict.

In his post after the June House vote, Trump called the four Republicans who voted with Democrats “GRANDSTANDERS!” and said they should be “ashamed of themselves.”

“They would rather have our Country fail than give me another, of many, victories,” he said.

When the Senate passed a war powers resolution on Iran for the first time in June, Trump called the four Republicans who voted for it “losers" and then reprimanded them at a Senate GOP luncheon that he attended the next day.

Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the Republicans who had voted with Democrats, said afterward that he had clashed with Trump over the issue. He said he told Trump directly that he needed to give more details to the public about the conflict.

“This was supposed to last four weeks. It’s lasted four months,” said Cassidy, who had just lost reelection in a primary after Trump endorsed one of his opponents. “Our original objectives have not been achieved.”

Trump argued back, Cassidy later told reporters, and he told the president that he wouldn’t change his vote until he got a briefing. The White House later relented, giving Cassidy a one-on-one meeting, and the Louisiana Republican changed his vote in a late-night do-over vote before the Senate left for a two-week recess.

Cassidy voted against the resolution again on Thursday.

Polling finds Americans disapprove of the war

Most Americans disapprove of the way Trump is handling the situation with Iran, according to recent polling. A Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in July found that few Americans think the war in Iran has been worth fighting, and most aren’t confident that the U.S. military action in Iran and negotiations to end the war will prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Only about two-thirds of Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the situation in Iran, according to the poll. Most Republicans, about 6 in 10, think the war has been worth fighting and are confident that the military action and ensuing negotiations will prevent Iran from development nuclear weapons, but a sizable share — about one-third — are unconvinced.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said that if Congress can't force Trump to seek congressional authorization then lawmakers should block war funding. The House on Wednesday adopted a Republican-only $95 billion budget proposal, including money for the Iran war, but its future is uncertain in the Senate.

“He wants to break the law, fine, let him break the law, but we control the appropriations process, and that’s what we need to use,” Kaine said.

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Associated Press writers Steven Sloan and Amelia Thomson DeVeaux contributed to this report.

The club record fee for City eclipses the 100 million pounds ($139 million) it paid for Jack Grealish in 2021 and is among the biggest ever in the Premier League.

The 23-year-old Anderson has signed a five-year contract.

“City are one of the biggest clubs in the world and the squad they have is amazing — so strong in every position. As soon as I knew they wanted me, I was absolutely determined to make this move happen," Anderson said. “As a footballer, you want to test yourself at the highest level. Being at City means I have that opportunity."

Anderson is the first major signing by City since iconic manager Pep Guardiola stepped down at the end of last season. A new era is beginning under former Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca.

“Elliot is one of the outstanding young midfield talents in world football right now. He offers energy, outstanding work rate and an exceptional range of passing," said City director of football Hugo Viana. "His improvement in recent years has been really impressive and underlines his desire to be the best player he can be.

“At just 23, there is plenty of opportunity for development over the coming years and we feel he can become a complete midfielder. Manchester City is the best place for him to develop his game and keep improving, we are glad that he sees things the same way as we do."

Anderson began his career at Newcastle and joined Forest in 2024 where he went on to break into the England squad.

He was a key member of Thomas Tuchel's England squad that won bronze at the World Cup.

“As soon as I arrive in Manchester after a break, I will be doing everything I can to establish myself in the City team," he said. “It’s a club built to win trophies and compete at the very top of the game. That is exciting for any footballer."

England forward Morgan Rogers completed a move to Chelsea earlier this week for a reported 117 million pounds.

Sweden striker Alexander Isak's 125 million pounds (then $170 million) move to Liverpool from Newcastle last year remains the most expensive in British soccer.

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

ACS says the temperature inside a parked vehicle can increase within minutes, creating a dangerous situation that can push pets into heat stress.

Three dogs were found dead inside a vehicle Monday in a downtown San Antonio parking lot. Investigators believe the dogs likely died from heat exposure, though the case remains under investigation and no charges have been filed.

What charges a person could face for leaving a pet in a hot vehicle

Bethany Snowden, captain and ACS interim assistant director, explained how these cases are classified.

“These kind of cases, it’s considered a cruel confinement case. Also, does the animal have access to water, shelter, shade? So those are different things that we look into when we’re investigating essentially animals and vehicles,” Snowden said.

A cruel confinement case can range from a Class C misdemeanor up to a Class A misdemeanor — or higher. A Class A misdemeanor carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $4,000.

If you spot a pet in distress inside a hot vehicle, ACS urges you to call 311 and alert animal control immediately.

“These are our hottest months of the year, and any animal that’s contained in a vehicle, even with the windows cracked, that doesn’t do anything,” Snowden said.

ACS also recommends leaving pets at home whenever possible — in a cool space with access to water.

“Our pets don’t need to go everywhere with us,” Snowden said. “If you want to take them outside, then just making sure that you keep responsibility for everything that you have on you, and that way there’s no duress that happens to any of these animals.”

The benchmark 30-year fixed rate mortgage rate rose to 6.58% from 6.55% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. One year ago, the average rate was 6.74%.

The rate has ticked higher three weeks in a row. Higher mortgage rates can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, limiting homebuyers’ purchasing power. As rates rise, that can lead prospective home shoppers to delay buying a home, one reason U.S. home sales have been sluggish this year.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, often sought by borrowers refinancing a home loan, also rose this week. That average rate increased to 5.96% from 5.93% last week. A year ago, it was at 5.87%, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, from the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions to bond market investors’ expectations for the economy and inflation. They generally follow the trajectory of the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

Rates have been mostly rising this year as the conflict in Iran has driven crude oil prices sharply higher, stoking expectations of hotter inflation. That’s pushed up long-term bond yields relative to where they were before the conflict began in late February, causing mortgage rates to trend higher.

The 10-year Treasury yield was 4.7% at midday Thursday on the bond market, up from 4.57% a week ago. It was just 3.97% in late February, before the war broke out.

Rising oil prices as violence escalates in Iran are threatening to worsen inflation, just as it had begun to decelerate by more than economists expected. That in turn could push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates.

The central bank doesn’t set mortgage rates, but its decisions to raise or lower its short-term rate are watched closely by bond investors and can ultimately affect the yield on 10-year Treasurys.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage is now the highest it’s been since Aug. 21, when it was at 6.58%. As recently as late February, the average rate dropped slightly below 6% for the first time since late 2022.

While average long-term mortgage rates remain lower than they were at this time last year, their upward trajectory has weighed on home sales this year. While seasonally adjusted sales of previously occupied U.S. homes were up 0.7% from January to June compared to the same period last year, they're still hovering close to a 4-million annual pace far short of the historic norm that is closer to 5.2-million.

The trend has extended the national housing market slump that began in 2022, when mortgage rates began to climb from pandemic-era lows. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes were essentially flat last year, stuck at a 30-year low.

As mortgage rates remain elevated, that will mean a slower summer housing market, said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS.

“It’s not just about rates for homebuyers, but rather the full financial picture of buying,” she said. “Home prices hit record highs this summer in many markets across the U.S. while higher gas prices and concerns about overall inflation rising have created more financial strain for would-be buyers.”

Agent Tim Harrison was captured on camera June 10 walking onto the driveway of a Northwest Side home belonging to the parents of Cody Sparks and then striking Sparks.

“He walked onto my property, eyes locked, ready to rumble, which I did not expect,” said Sparks.

Sparks said Harrison punched him twice in the head before he was able to tackle Harrison into the home’s garage door.

“From there I had no choice. I grabbed his testicles, and I squeezed them,” said Sparks.

Both men are heard in the recording yelling to people off camera to call 911.

The door sustained structural damage, and more than a month after the incident, dried blood remains on the driveway.

An Animal Care Services report obtained by KSAT Investigates states Harrison was bitten on his leg by one of the family’s dogs and suffered four puncture wounds to his calf.

Harrison was treated at the scene by paramedics, the ACS report states.

‘We used to kind of be friends’

Sparks said he used to live at his parents’ home, but even after moving away, he returns almost daily to walk the family’s two dogs.

He said his relationship with Harrison turned sour about 18 months ago.

“We used to kind of be friends. We were neighbors,” said Sparks. “He likes to stop and intimidate me, so he’ll stop in the middle of the road whenever I’m walking.”

Sparks said he began to record his interactions with Harrison after Harrison spit on him.

In one incident, recorded by Sparks in May 2025, Harrison challenged Sparks to fight him in the street after accusing him of revving his engine at Harrison and Harrison’s child.

“Come on down, Cody. Mutual combat. I’m right here buddy,” Harrison is heard saying on the recorded video.

The argument came weeks after Sparks was arrested at a nearby residence for tampering with evidence and drug possession.

The tampering case was dismissed in February, and Sparks recently entered pretrial diversion in the drug case in hopes of completing the program and getting the charge removed from his record.

“You and your druggie buddies will be found again. I’ll make sure of it,” Harrison said in the May 2025 recording, as he appeared to reference Sparks’ legal issues.

The night of June 10, Sparks said he began recording Harrison after the man called Sparks a “pu***” and told him to “go get your mommy.”

The footage shows Harrison walk onto the driveway as Sparks repeatedly tells him not to come onto the property.

Officers called to the scene interviewed both Harrison and Sparks.

Harrison told the officers that he walked to the home to speak with Sparks’ mother and that Sparks approached him and “took a swing” at him.

The claim contradicts what was recorded on Sparks’ cell phone.

SAPD’s incident report states that the footage shows Harrison was the first to make physical contact.

Weeks after the fight, Harrison has not been criminally charged.

An SAPD spokesperson told KSAT the case remains under investigation.

“I feel that he feels he’s above the law, that he’s invincible and that he can do whatever he wants to anyone, even trespass and beat someone up on their own property,” said Sparks.

Sparks’ dog was required to be quarantined for 10 days after biting Harrison’s leg.

Sparks confirmed to KSAT that after the incident, he was contacted by ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

ICE officials have declined to say what, if any, action has been taken against Harrison since June 10.

An ICE spokeswoman told KSAT via email, “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not comment on ongoing investigations.”

A woman who answered the door at Harrison’s home spoke with KSAT at length but said she would need to consult with the family’s attorney before commenting on the record.

Since the start of 2025, SAPD has responded 19 times to incidents involving three neighboring homes on the same street: Harrison’s home, the home next door and Sparks’ parents’ home.

Ten of the incidents were for threats, disturbances and disturbances with neighbors.

SAPD earlier this month declined to release the incident reports from the disturbances, claiming in a letter to the Texas Attorney General that some of them are related to an ongoing criminal investigation while another one is related to a closed criminal investigation that did not end up going to court.

Paxton’s office secured the injunction last year against clinics operated by Maria Margarita Rosas. She still faces criminal charge that she provided unlawful abortions and employed unlicensed individuals.

But the Texas 15th Court of Appeals, created three years ago by the Texas Legislature to handle major business and state civil cases, found that the trial court erred in granting the injunction because the judge relied only on affidavits from Paxton’s office that didn’t provide direct evidence that the violations occurred.

Justice Scott Field’s opinion said the evidence submitted to support the injunction “does not reasonably support” the claim that abortions were performed at the clinics and the lower court “abused its discretion in granting the temporary injunctive relief.”

Abortion is completely banned in Texas with very limited exceptions.

The appeals court, overseen by three Republican judges appointed by Gov. Greg Abbott, did not give an opinion on whether the accusations against Rosas are valid. Instead, it focused on the injunction that forced the clinics’ closure.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

In a statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights called the appeals court ruling a “significant step” toward justice for Rojas, adding that the state has unfairly targeted her.

“The state of Texas has no case,” said Jenna Hudson, the group’s senior counsel. “Maria Rojas has been an upstanding midwife who delivered babies and provided lawful care for underserved pregnant patients.”

Rojas owned and operated Clinica Waller Latinoamericana in Waller, Clinica Latinoamericana Telge in Cypress, and Latinoamericana Medical Clinic in Spring, according to the attorney general’s office.

Disclosure: The Center for Reproductive Rights 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.

Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson, said the security-team member faces an internal investigation and potential criminal inquiry over allegations involving compromised “operational and information security.”

“While we will not comment on the specifics of this matter, one principle is unequivocal: any conduct that potentially threatens the safety of a protectee will not be tolerated,” Guglielmi said in a statement.

The agency did not identify the person under investigation.

The Secret Service said the investigation is tied to a report from MS NOW last week saying that some Secret Service agents had privately expressed frustration over last-minute travel requests from Vance and his family.

Vance’s office referred questions to the Secret Service.

Vance and his wife, Usha, live in the vice president's residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory along with their young children.

On Sunday, the couple welcomed their fourth child, Alec Neel Vance, the first baby born to a sitting vice president in more than 150 years. He's joined by older siblings Ewan, 9; Vivek, 6; and Mirabel, 4.

Though naming it after him was not considered a compliment, Kiffin said he can see some value in the provision in a wide-ranging Senate bill that would fix the longstanding problem of college coaches bailing on their teams while the season is still going.

The lightning-rod LSU coach took his turn Thursday at SEC Media Days, where he ate up more than 16 of his 25 minutes behind the mic delivering an opening statement that included the revelation that he's given up social media.

That left time for four questions, the last of which was whether he felt he got a bad rap for his much-discussed and widely criticized move from Mississippi to LSU at the end of last season. That transaction turned him into a pariah in some places and, in Washington at least, the namesake for the part of the Protect College Sports Act that would forbid in-season coaching moves from school to school.

Without getting into what people thought of him, he said he did think the rule could be helpful.

“I guess (so), in that I hope that some way for future coaches, they’re not put in that situation,” Kiffin said. “In the NFL, you’re never put in that situation because of the calendar and because of the rules of movement within seasons. I do hope for future people, that’s fixed so that you’re not in that same predicament.”

Kiffin gives mea culpa for diversity statement in Vanity Fair story

There were other moments of introspection during the 51-year-old coach’s time with media in the most-anticipated news conference over four days of collecting preview material for a season that starts Sept. 3.

Kiffin, clearly prepared for the question, repeated earlier mea culpas when he conceded the headline-grabbing snippet from a Vanity Fair interview earlier this year — in which he said recruiting players to Oxford was more difficult than to Baton Rouge because there was a more diverse and less segregated feeling at LSU — was a mistake.

"I made a challenging decision and change," Kiffin explained. “I think as I look back to that, I thought I could find a way for everybody to understand. Now as I look back later on, that was never going to happen.”

While Kiffin's replacement at Ole Miss, Pete Golding, lit up Media Days a day earlier, calling his old boss “the ex” who never really goes away, Kiffin was interesting in a different, potentially more-scripted way.

In reflecting on the Vanity Fair interview, he noted how life is short and that he grew up with the notion that his dad and wrestler Hulk Hogan were the only people who would never die. Monte Kiffin, the football lifer coach whose reputation was cemented during his dozen years coaching defense in Tampa for the Buccaneers, died two summers ago. Hogan passed away a year ago Friday.

“It just made me reflect on, I can’t be so concerned about little things and what people say,” Kiffin said. “You've got to make decisions; you've got to go with them. You make really good decisions, and you make poor decisions. That was a poor usage of a term that I believe, just like many coaches that have been there before, was factual. But over the course of a long interview, was bad timing and bad usage of the word."

A social media cleanse leads to a new perspective

Kiffin also spent time discussing about how his son, Knox, urged him to get off social media, which he did in May, only to see a whole new world open up.

“Knox pushing me to do that, challenging me, allowed me to help other players, friends, coaches to say, 'Man, you should try this sometime, because once you remove something from your life, you start to realize how many other people are addicted to it or need it,'” Kiffin said.

Turns out, now is a great time for the coach to have quit social media.

Kiffin's flirtation with LSU and eventual decision to leave Ole Miss to sign a seven-year, $91 million contract with its rival upended the end of last regular season. The disruption included debates about Mississippi's prospects in the College Football Playoffs and whether the Rebels would be viewed, or seeded, differently coming into the postseason without their head coach.

The Kiffin move also picked at a decades-old scab that practically defines college sports: Why is it OK for coaches to do whatever they want and make millions while the players have guardrails around their every move?

Paying players helped resolve some, but not all, of that. Players also got something of a break with a recent change that gives those participating in the playoff a few extra days to decide to stay or go into the transfer portal.

Kiffin insisted that in the wake of his social-media cleanse, he's been so disconnected from the news of the day, or the moment, that he really wasn't aware of the rule named after him in Congress until being asked about it in the news conference.

He said it's good to see some changes that benefit players.

“Hopefully," he said, “in some way, they fix it for coaches, too.”

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She was scared, sure. But more than that, she was brought to tears.

“I thought I’d be a bit more petrified, but I was enamored. I was in awe. It was witnessing nature,” she says. “You can’t put it into words the emotions and the feelings that you experience.”

Viewers can watch Rei Ami's experience with sharks while off the Korean Peninsula when Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” kicks off Sunday.

Twenty new, hourlong shows leap deep into the world of the ancient predators, from a record-setting dive attempt into shark-infested waters to trying to find out what triggers giant bull sharks to confront humans.

“Growing up, I always watched ‘Shark Week,’” says Rei Ami. “You see those epic commercials, with the great white jumping out and eating the chum and the tuna. That’s ingrained in my brain forever.”

Actor-comedian Ken Jeong joins her to start the week off with the show “K-Pop Shark Heroes” on Sunday. But while she went on two cage dives and two free dives with hammerheads and reef sharks and bull sharks, he preferred to stay out of the water.

“I’m more of the Christopher Nolan of the shark ‘Odyssey’ — just overseeing it,” Jeong jokes. “Just overlooking everything. High and dry. That’s when I do my best work.”

It’s a shark-a-thon

The seven nights of new shows ends Aug. 1 with a look at how great whites are moving further up the East Coast and an examination of how thresher sharks use their tails to stun and kill prey.

One highlight is watching high diver Molly Carlson leap 50 feet (15 meters) from a helicopter into a Plexiglas cage in the ocean surrounded by circling reef sharks. She's OK with jumping from enormous heights, but sharks terrify her.

“There was zero chances of me ever swimming with sharks. This was just not on my radar,” she says. “That’s always been my thing, and so for me to be invited to be on ‘Shark Week,’ I was like 'Why me?'”

Viewers will see Carlson, who has been frank about her struggles with anxiety, overcome her lifelong fear of sharks. Carlson hopes she can motivate others.

“If I can inspire that next 16-year-old girl who wants to just hide in her room and never come out because she’s scared of so many things, then I’m absolutely going to find a way to do this,” she says. “You’re allowed to be scared and do it anyways. And so I think that was the big purpose behind this project for me.”

This year’s highlights also include an attempt to locate a rumored 15-foot (4-meter) mako off the coast of Southern California, which would make it the largest ever documented.

Marine biologist Kendyl Berna, a “Shark Week” veteran who co-founded the ecology group Beyond the Reef, says her team of scientists were betting on the fact that a marine heat wave has made mako prey in those waters abundant, allowing the sharks to get bigger.

“Sharks are the cockroaches of the sea because they’ve been around for 450 million years. They’re older than dinosaurs, they’re older than trees. Sharks have just been around, but the form that they’re taking constantly changes,” she says.

‘Shark Week’ is fun but also educational

“Shark Week” has become a key part of the summer holiday TV schedule, a place where humans safe on land can see ancient apex predators unnervingly glide into view and snap open their jaws, fueling nightmares.

As always, there is a deep respect for the creatures and strong science beneath the amusing titles, sharky puns, dramatic music and racy titles like “Chum Island: Catching a Killer” and “Sharkzilla Takes New York.”

“While ‘Shark Week’ is very entertaining and thrilling, it is at the core very educational. And I think there’s still so much misinformation regarding sharks and how they behave,” says Rei Ami.

“Through these episodes, people can understand, there’s really no reason to fear them, you know? And I hope that message gets received.”

Discovery’s “Shark Week” has a rival — National Geographic’s “SharkFest,” which also has hours of sharky content. And there's Amazon Studios’ new movie “The Devil’s Mouth,” which has bull sharks terrorizing college students in a flooded cave system.

“Shark Week” also has practical advice about what to do when you find yourself face-to-snout with a shark, a rising concern from Korea to Brooklyn as interactions increase. The advice is clear: Stop splashing.

“It’s even more imperative that humans know how to act and react in a situation when they are in the waters and they see a shark,” says Rei Ami. “It would really, I think, help the public to understand how these apex predators work and behave.”

___

This story has been updated to delete an incorrect reference to a K-pop song in the show being sung by Rei Ami.

___

This story was first published on July 22, 2026. It was updated on July 23, 2026, to fix a misspelled name in the correction note at the bottom of the story. It is Rei Ami, not Rei Amy.

Officers were initially dispatched on a burglary of a vehicle call at approximately 9 a.m. near the Lowe’s Home Improvement store at the intersection of Interstate 35 and South Zarzamora Street.

SAPD officers said they spoke with the victim of the alleged burglary to get a description of a possible suspect.

Police said the suspect then began traveling southbound on I-35 in a vehicle. A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) spokesperson said the man was driving recklessly when he lost control of the car and rolled over onto the access road near Somerset Road.

Authorities said the suspect then abandoned the vehicle and fled on foot.

Officers eventually caught up to the man and took him into custody near the 3100 block of Owasso Street, according to SAPD.

A KSAT crew was at the scene Thursday as a man in a red shirt and multi-colored shorts was placed in handcuffs near an SAPD patrol vehicle. The identity of the man is not yet known.

A DPS spokesperson said one of its sergeants was also at the crash scene.

According to the SAPD officer, first responders determined the man was not seriously injured before he was transported to the Bexar County Adult Detention Center.

Investigators are working to learn what was taken, if anything, from the victim’s vehicle.

More recent crime coverage on KSAT:

• Bond reduced for woman charged in Del Rio mother’s fatal stabbing
• Man shot multiple times while sitting in vehicle on North Side, police say
• Homeowners eager for capture of burglars who stole millions in Stone Oak neighborhood

It was the 33-year-old Carapaz’s first stage win at this year’s race and second overall. He was not chased down by Pogacar because he is not considered a threat to win the Tour, and is in 10th spot.

“This is a wonderful victory,” Carapaz said. “I dedicate it to my family.”

After moving ahead about 3 kilometers (2 miles) from the summit, Carapaz raced clear. He patted each side of his head as he approached the finish line, and was 45 seconds ahead of Swiss rider Mauro Schmid and American Matteo Jorgenson.

“It’s been a special day. It took a lot of hard work,” said Carapaz, who failed to win with a similar breakaway earlier in this year’s race. “This is the most rewarding thing for me, knowing that the work I put in has paid off.”

Pogacar is chasing a third straight Tour title and fifth overall. The Slovenian star rolled over the line in a large group containing his closest rival Remco Evenepoel and Pogacar’s UAE Emirates XRG teammate Isaac Del Toro.

There was no change overall as Pogacar maintained his lead of 4 minutes, 32 seconds over the Belgian time trial star Evenepoel, the winner of two stages at this year's race, and 6:51 over the 22-year-old Mexican Del Toro in third overall.

Thursday's stage was the first of three straight days of Alpine climbs.

The 185-kilometer (115-mile) trek featured an early Category 1 climb — the second-hardest category — up Côte d'Engins, before ending with a Cat. 1 ascent to the Orcières-Merlette ski station.

After going over Engins, Jorgenson was in a small group at the front. They were then joined by Carapaz with Pogacar's yellow jersey group clearly hanging back.

“I think nobody would really commit,” said Pogacar, who has won four stages at this year's race.

Carapaz's stage could have ended when he had a near miss with a fan stood in the road, just swerving around him in time.

Heading into the final climb up Orcières-Merlette, Jorgenson and Schmid could not respond when Carapaz, who won the 2019 Giro d’Italia, attacked.

“This final climb was tough and suited my strengths well,” said Carapaz, whose other Tour stage win came in 2024. “This was a hard-fought victory, but just as tough as the first one. It gets harder every year to win here.”

Tough climbs ahead

Friday's 19th stage ends with a HC climb (the hardest category) up L'Alpe d’Huez, an iconic Tour climb and among the most famed in cycling.

Saturday's 20th and penultimate stage is brutal and could be epic. It features three HC climbs — Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Galibier and Col de Sarenne — and one Cat. 1 climb up Col du Télégraphe, before a hilly finish to L'Alpe d'Huez.

The race ends Sunday on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. ___

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

“Texas should be a leader when it comes to innovation and technology, but that only works if Texans get a say and get a share of that economic growth — and that’s not what’s happening right now,” Talarico said at a news conference in Austin where he rolled out his plan. “We’re often told in our politics that we have to choose between policies that are pro-growth and pro-people. I reject that choice, and the plan that we’re outlining today to hold data centers accountable, I think, strikes a balance between welcoming those investments while also protecting working people.”

Talarico’s proposals include:

• setting minimum federal requirements to protect the grid, environment, jobs and transparency related to new data center development, “preventing a race to the bottom for communities competing to recruit data centers;”
• ending “sweetheart tax deals for big tech companies” by repealing the state’s data center sales tax exemption;
• ensuring large energy users pay for their own infrastructure and grid interconnection costs;
• requiring data centers use closed-loop water systems that reuse a fixed amount of water;  
• granting local communities the authority to approve and reject data center development in their towns;
• releasing government records detailing individual tax break data for data center facilities in Texas.

Talarico is among several statewide Democratic nominees taking aim at data centers as the party looks to seize on Texas voters’ discontent over the industry’s rapid expansion. Echoing the message of his statewide counterparts down the ballot, Talarico on Wednesday framed the proliferation as a product of corporate greed and Republican leadership more sympathetic to big business than everyday people, pointing to the facilities as a culprit for high everyday costs under the Trump administration. 

“Data centers are jacking up utility bills across the state of Texas,” Talarico said. “Billionaire-backed politicians are giving sweetheart tax deals to giant AI companies and then sticking us with the bill.”

State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic candidate for governor, unveiled her own plan Thursday after she visited Amarillo and Lubbock over the weekend on a campaign swing focused on rural communities’ concerns about data centers. She has attacked Gov. Greg Abbott for campaign contributions he’s accepted from donors with ties to data centers and blamed him for state policies, from Texas’ light regulatory touch to its tax incentives for data centers, that have contributed to the initial buildup of the facilities. Lawmakers expanded the sales tax exemption in 2015, during Abbott’s first term, creating a new tax break category for larger data center projects.

“That’s why there is this mad rush to start a data center in Texas — it is like the gold rush,” Hinojosa said during a virtual news conference Thursday. “Greg Abbott talks a big game about what he will do after the election. The thing is, he has the power to do it today.”

Hinojosa called on Abbott to sign an emergency executive order imposing a moratorium on data centers until the Legislature reconvenes in January, noting the governor could also call a special legislative session on the issue at any point before 2027. 

Her proposals also included requiring data centers to hire union workers, empowering local officials to negotiate with developers or reject new projects, barring data centers from using non-disclosure agreements to conceal their water and energy usage, and shielding consumers from data center-driven utility hikes.

“What is happening with data centers is an example of the one fight of our time, and it is the fight to decide: Is this going to be a Texas that is by and for the people, or is this the billionaires’ world and we just live here?” Hinojosa said.

At Hinojosa’s news conference, residents of Granbury, Lubbock and El Paso spoke of data centers and crypto-mining facilities that had popped up in their neighborhoods, describing a lack of local say and transparency surrounding the projects’ development and the tax breaks they received.

“Since when do billionaires deserve charity?” Tom Weeks of Granbury said. “We’re being drowned in our taxes and they’re getting all these breaks. I just think that we’re getting the middle finger is what we’re getting, and I’m at a point where I want to snap that middle finger off.”

The Texas Tribune reported in April that the state is poised to lose $3.2 billion in tax revenue over the next two years because of the data center sales tax exemption first approved by lawmakers in 2013, when the facilities were smaller and used fewer resources. Local officials have asked the state to give them more authority to regulate data center development in their communities. Tracking data center growth in Texas is also difficult, as the state does not log new data center construction, and information about their location and energy use has not been made public.

A spokesperson for Abbott’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Shortly before Hinojosa’s news conference, Abbott’s office announced that a data center project near Cedar Creek Lake in East Texas had withdrawn its proposal “after not meeting Gov. Abbott’s standards.”

“Texas requires companies to put communities first, protect our natural resources and power grid, and respect the quality of life of our residents,” Abbott said. “Diode did the right thing by withdrawing their project. If other data center developments refuse to meet these standards, I expect them to do the same.”

The three-term governor, who is running for a fourth, initially gave his full-throated support for the industry, declaring in November that Texas would become the “epicenter of AI development” while announcing Google had made a $40 billion investment in cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in the state. He has since projected greater concern about how the industry’s development is affecting nearby residents, and last month he proposed a sweeping regulatory scheme that calls for repealing the sales tax exemption and requiring new facilities to add power generation to the state’s grid, among other planks.

Talarico’s GOP opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been quieter on the issue. A spokesperson for Paxton’s campaign did not provide comment Wednesday.

Recent public polling found that a majority of Texans oppose the construction of data centers in their community, with opposition strongest in rural communities, where data centers are more likely to be built and which have historically voted red.

Last week, state Rep. Vikki Goodwin, state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt and Clayton Tucker — the Democratic nominees for lieutenant governor, comptroller and agriculture commissioner, respectively — backed a moratorium on data center development.

“This isn’t about being anti-technology, it’s not about being anti-AI,” Tucker, who has made reining in data center development central to his campaign, said. “It’s about who controls that AI. Because right now, it’s not us. It is a few greedy folks from Wall Street, from Silicon Valley, some of them not even based in the United States.”

Talarico did not call for a moratorium, saying he wanted to support innovation and technology while ensuring local communities had a say in projects looking to build near them. Projects that did not meet “basic guardrails,” he said, should not move ahead.

His plan overlaps significantly with Abbott’s proposals, with both looking to kill the sales tax exemption and require data centers to cover grid interconnection costs and use closed-loop water systems, among other parallels. Abbott later also called for a ban on data center development in “rural neighborhoods.”

Talarico said Wednesday he didn’t know the details of Abbott’s plan, but that he was “willing to work with anybody, including the governor, to pass these commonsense regulations.”

“It should be plain for anybody to see, whether it’s the governor or whether it’s our campaign,” he said. “All of us are hearing the same thing from Texans all over the state, and that is that we don’t have a balance between welcoming growth and protecting people.”

In a statement to the Tribune after the news conference, Talarico said the governor “signed one of the country’s biggest data center giveaways. If he is serious about helping working Texans, he should immediately end these sweetheart tax breaks for data centers.”g Texans, he should immediately end these sweetheart tax breaks for data centers.”

Disclosure: Google 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.

Alberto Barbera, the festival's artistic director, unveiled the lineup Thursday for the 83rd edition of the festival, the first of many in a busy fall film season that culminates in the Hollywood awards showdown. Like the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year, the selection is lighter on Hollywood studio films than in years past.

“Wild Horse Nine,” starring John Malkovich and Sam Rockwell as CIA agents in Chile before the 1973 coup, is among the higher-profile titles playing in competition. It will play alongside “Primetime,” in which Pattinson stars as “To Catch a Predator” host Chris Hansen. The broader slate has anticipated documentaries like Alex Gibney's “Musk,” a sweeping portrait of the billionaire, and Julia Loktev’s “My Undesirable Friends: Part II — Exile,” which follows Russian independent journalists after they leave the country. Similar to the first part, it runs 355 minutes.

The festival's main competition includes a diverse array of international and American films, like Werner Herzog’s “Bucking Fastard,” in which sisters Rooney and Kate Mara play identical twins.

Also on the program are Florian Zeller’s thriller “Bunker,” with Bardem and Cruz playing a married couple, Lee Chang-dong’s “Possible Love,” Stéphane Brizé’s “A Good Little Soldier” and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Look Back,” a coming-of-age story about two girls who dream of being manga artists. Casey Affleck will be in competition for the first time with “Company,” starring Nick Nolte and Ben Mendelsohn. Nanni Moretti also returns for the first time since 1989.

Notable documentary premieres out of competition include “Oasis: Don't Look Back in Anger,” Barbara Kopple’s “Union Town,” Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin's “Everest: The Other Side,” Luca Guadagnino’s seven-hour Bernardo Bertolucci film “Joie de Vivre,” Wim Wenders' look at architect Peter Zumthor, Russell Crowe’s autobiographical musical concert movie, “What Love Builds,” and Laura Poitras’s short about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis, “They're Here,” which she co-directed with Rachel Lauren Mueller.

Barbera said he expects Noel and Liam Gallagher to attend on behalf of the Oasis film, which was directed by Steven Knight and will be in theaters on Sept. 11.

The festival is set to open on Sept. 2 with Danny Boyle’s “Ink,” an adaptation of James Graham’s stage play which dramatizes the rise of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch. “Ink” is also playing in the main competition and in the running for awards such as the Golden Lion, a prize that is decided upon by a jury led this year by filmmaker and actor Maggie Gyllenhaal. Other jurors include filmmakers like Kaouther Ben Hania, Johnnie To and Shahrbanoo Sadat, and composer Daniel Blumberg.

Gyllenhaal has a film playing as well: a Marilyn Monroe-inspired short, “Flesh Impact,” in which Dakota Johnson and Ellen Burstyn “give body and voice to the myth of Marilyn,” Barbera said. The 93-year-old Burstyn will also get a lifetime achievement award from the festival.

Venice has in the last 15 years proved a desirable launching pad for Oscar hopefuls, even if not everything breaks through. Last year’s edition had plenty of star power in the lineup, with Julia Roberts, George Clooney and Dwayne Johnson movies among the splashy premieres. But the glow of the festival moment was short-lived: The films, “After the Hunt,” “Jay Kelly” and “The Smashing Machine,” were neither triumphant with audiences in theaters (“Jay Kelly” was a Netflix release) nor with awards voters.

Still, there’s usually a best picture nominee in the slate: Last year there were two in “Frankenstein” and “Bugonia.”

This year won’t be bereft of a Clooney moment either: The Venice regular is getting a lifetime achievement award.

Should the trend continue, it would push the annual homicide rate to the lowest levels in over a century once final numbers are released at the end of the year.

The report, released Thursday, tracked 13 crimes and recorded drops in nine of those categories, including carjackings, residential burglary and aggravated assaults. There was a small jump in shoplifting, domestic violence incidents, sexual assaults and drug offenses over the same period between 2025 and 2026, the report showed.

Experts say the broadly positive changes are exceeding expectations, improving on baseline crime rates from before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought historic surges in violence.

Democrats and Republicans across the country have tried to capitalize on the positive developments during a competitive midterm election year. But the trends documented in the report carry through in cities with leadership across the political spectrum.

That suggests the most significant factors contributing to the improvements are taking place nationwide and are not specific to a single local public safety measure, said Adam Gelb, the president and CEO of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan think tank for criminal justice policy and research.

“Murder and other crime rates are falling across the map in cities with different political leadership, different housing and economic conditions, different policing and prosecution and violence reduction strategies and different levels of federal enforcement activity,” Gelb said.

The council collects data from police departments and other law enforcement sources. Some of the report categories include data from as many as 36 cities, while others include fewer cities in their totals because of tracking gaps or differences in definitions for specific crimes.

Notably, Gelb said that a significant number of violent crimes were less deadly: There was a 23% drop in the lethality of the crimes committed, which is measured by the share of serious violent crime that is fatal.

Many of the non-violent crimes tracked in the report also saw declines, including a 13% drop in residential burglaries year over year and a 50% drop in burglaries compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. At the same time, reported shoplifting bucked the trends of other property crimes, showing a 5% increase. And while there was a small increase in drug offenses, those were still lower than pre-pandemic levels.

Roughly a third of the 30 sampled cities defied average homicide rate declines across the country, recording an increase in deadly violence from the first half of 2025 to the same period in 2026. That includes Norfolk, Virginia, which saw a 64% increase in homicides, and San Francisco, which saw a 55% increase. The number of cities that saw a longer-term increase was far smaller: Only Norfolk, Austin, Pittsburgh and Minneapolis experienced more homicides in 2026 than in the same period in 2019.

There are many factors that could impact why a location sees increases or decreases in certain crimes when another doesn't, according to John Roman, director of the Center on Public Safety and Justice at the National Opinion Research Center from the University of Chicago.

Roman said that conservative politicians affiliated with President Donald Trump will point to intensified immigration crackdowns and the deployment of the National Guard in cities like Los Angeles and Memphis, whereas liberal politicians might point to former Democratic President Joe Biden's public safety legislation that strengthened background checks on firearm sales.

But ultimately, Roman said, the best explanations transcend specific administrations. That ranges from decreased drug usage and therefore fewer purchases from illegal markets, which are often linked to violence, to an influx of federal funding for localities after the pandemic that was spent on social programming.

Those programs, Roman said, often funded jobs like teachers and social workers who primarily work with “young people who are the highest risk of violence and victimization.”

While both Gelb and Roman concurred that there wasn't a single reason, Gelb said the outcomes should be studied for future insights and celebrated.

“This is one of the most significant public safety developments in decades. It means lives are being saved, families are spared trauma and communities are regaining stability,” Gelb said.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits in the week ending July 18 declined by 22,000 to 187,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's the fewest number of weekly applications since the week ending Sept. 6, 1969, according to Labor Department data.

It's also well below the 215,000 new applications forecast by analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet.

Weekly filings for unemployment benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the U.S. job market.

Despite surging oil prices resulting from the U.S.'s military attack on Iran, the American job market remains healthy and layoffs historically low. However, analysts say a prolonged war and higher than normal energy costs could eventually chip away at that, forcing companies to reduce costs by lowering head counts.

“The economic crisis caused by the energy supply shock is not over yet,” said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Trading. “But the labor market has yet to show any sign of wear and tear from the surge in oil prices.”

The price for a barrel of U.S. crude surged nearly 5% early Thursday to more than $91. That's the highest level in about six weeks. Gas prices in the U.S. are also back up above $4 a gallon on average. That not only squeezes consumers' budgets, but also hits businesses hard, especially those which are heavily dependent on fuel.

In its expansive June jobs report earlier this month, the government reported that employers pulled back on hiring, adding only 57,000 jobs. That’s less than half the previous month’s total and a sign that companies remain cautious about adding to their head counts. The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% from 4.3% in May, though that decline is mostly because many out-of-work people gave up looking for jobs and were no longer counted as unemployed.

June’s tepid hiring comes after a relative surge in job gains the previous three months, countering concerns that the war in Iran could trip up an already wobbly labor market.

Weekly jobless aid applications have stabilized in a range mostly between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. economy emerged from the pandemic recession. However, hiring began slowing about two years ago and tapered further in 2025 due to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his purge of the federal workforce and the lingering effects of high interest rates meant to control inflation.

Among the companies that have trimmed their workforce recently are Verizon, UPS, Amazon, Disney, Starbucks and Walmart.

Earlier this month Microsoft said it was cutting 4,800 jobs, about 2.1% of its global workforce, including a large number of workers at its Xbox video game business.

Thursday’s layoffs data showed that the four-week moving average of weekly jobless claims, which adjusts for volatility, fell by 7,250 to 207,500.

The total number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits for the previous week ending July 11 was down by 2,000 to just under 1.8 million, also a historically healthy figure.

Weary of Caballero's routine of waiting to acknowledge the pitcher just before the pitch clock reaches eight seconds, MLB told umpires Wednesday his regimen amounted to deception.

Plate umpire Quinn Wolcott charged Caballero with a pitch-clock violation in the sixth inning that led to a strikeout and the ejection of hitting coach James Rowson as New York lost a doubleheader opener against the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-3 in 10 innings.

“I’ve seen other guys do some other things and they don’t call anything on them,” Caballero said. “They’re just picking on me.”

Caballero was acquired from Tampa Bay last July 31 and Yankees manager Aaron Boone acknowledged his thoughts on the utilityman spun 180 degrees with the swap.

“He’s one of those guys I would yell at from the dugout,” Boone said Wednesday morning. “He was a pest and I didn’t like it. Now I like him because he's a good player and he's on our side. But, yeah, we've had a laugh about that.”

During a June 14 game at Toronto, Caballero twice was deliberate in raising his head until eight seconds remained on the pitch clock, leading to a warning by plate umpire Steven Jaschinsk. That prompted a delay of more than two minutes while Caballero, Jaschinski, Boone and crew chief John Tumpane discussed the situation.

Benches and bullpens cleared at the end of the eighth inning during Monday night's series opener when Pirates reliever Dennis Santana yelled at Caballero for taking too long to get ready in the batter’s box. Then on Wednesday, Wolcott charged Caballero with a violation in the sixth inning while the batter faced Carmen Mlodzinski with the Yankees trailing 2-0. After a delay of 2 1/2 minutes, Cabellero took a called third strike that stranded a runner.

“He’s not allowed to do an inordinate amount of time looking down, trying to get the pitcher to cause a violation,” Wolcott told a pool reporter. “There’s no other hitter that gets in the box, takes the amount of the time that Caballero does while looking down, not making eye contact with the pitcher. Obviously it’s caused a lot of problems in the past. It’s not going to be allowed anymore.”

MLB adopted the pitch clock for the 2023 season in an effort to cut game times. It has been 15 seconds with no runners and 18 seconds with runners since 2024.

In cracking down on Caballero, MLB cited a provision in its Pace of Game Procedures that states: “Conduct by batters designed to deceive a pitcher into beginning their windup or coming to the set position in violation of these regulations shall be considered circumvention."

Crew chief Adrian Johnson said the series opener skirmish caused MLB to take action.

“It’s not allowed anymore. It was the cause of a bench-clearing situation on Monday night. Major League Baseball stepped in, and they wanted enforced,” crew chief Adrian Johnson said. “We were instructed not to warn him. We were instructed to violate him.”

Boone said MLB didn't inform the Yankees before the game of the change in stance.

“It's embarrassing,” he said.

Based on previous conversations with MLB, Boone instructed Caballero to “make sure you’re looking up at nine so that you are alert by eight.”

“He actually said that they were making new rules today and it’s on me because I was deceiving or something like that to the pitcher, which doesn’t make sense,” Caballero said. “I don’t know, maybe my English is so bad that I don’t understand, but deceiving kind of means that you’re trying to trick someone and I’m not trying to trick someone because I do the same thing over and over. You can check my last 50 at-bats and see if I do it the same or not, or check maybe 100 at-bats or 150.”

MLB issued a memo in 2023 warning batters not to keep a foot out of the batter's box, which Willson Contreras called “the Willson rule.”

Caballero claims he is being singled out.

“For everyone, it is eight seconds. For me was nine," he said. "But now they just don’t want me to do my routine so it’s kind of like tricky for me because it’s the way that I get settled, the way that I try to approach my at-bats.”

Caballero is concerned about giving pitchers control of the timing of pitches.

“If I get in the box and they have 16, 17 seconds left, they can hold the ball on me all that time and I’d be tied up," he said.

___

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

Deputies responded to the shooting just after 9:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 12600 block of Emmett Grove, near Stillwater Parkway.

A caller told a dispatcher they heard multiple gunshots and saw several vehicles flee from the area at a high rate of speed, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said.

Upon arrival, deputies found multiple homes and vehicles were struck by the gunfire. Though no injured people or “active threats” were found at the scene, the sheriff’s office said several shell casings were recovered.

Less than 10 minutes later, BCSO said a dispatcher told deputies that a male with a gunshot wound to his lower body arrived at a nearby urgent care. He was later referred to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

BCSO said the male was uncooperative about his involvement. He does not face any criminal charges at this time.

Deputies determined an exchange of gunfire happened between two, possibly three, vehicles traveling through the area, the sheriff’s office said.

Around 10 p.m., BCSO said deputies were dispatched to the 12300 block of Wagon Boss for reports of a damaged vehicle, less than a mile away from where the first caller reported the shooting.

The sheriff’s office said the vehicle “had damage consistent with being at the location of the shooting.”

Deputies contacted and detained the last occupants of the vehicle at a nearby residence, identified as a 17-year-old boy and Aniya Brenae West, 18.

West was arrested on a charge of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence with intent to impair, BCSO said.

It was not immediately clear whether the 17-year-old was arrested or released. On Wednesday, a BCSO spokesperson said additional information could not be provided because of his age.

BCSO said it’s still in the process of determining whether any other people were involved.

Deputies are working to obtain additional evidence. Anyone with relevant information on the shooting is asked to contact the sheriff’s office at 210-335-6000.

Read also:

• Man arrested at I-35 construction site, accused of impersonating a police officer

During a hearing on Monday, a judge cut down 19-year-old Vynzell Edward McGarity’s bond from $100,000 to $50,000. He was charged with reckless driving and racing on a highway causing serious bodily injury for the June 28 crash.

San Antonio police said McGarity was traveling eastbound on Southwest Military Drive, near Mango Avenue, in a Dodge Charger at a high rate of speed.

McGarity switched lanes and struck Maldonado as she attempted to cross the street, according to a police report.

McGarity is required to be on full house arrest, submit to random drug and alcohol testing, and cannot drive or be in possession of a firearm.

Sandra Maldonado, Monce’s mother, said her daughter was more than a victim in a deadly crash. She was a high school senior with plans to become a nurse, someone who loved animals and looked for ways to help others.

“She was a really cheerful girl. She would take food from her job and give it to people living on the street,” Maldonado told KSAT in Spanish.

Monce worked at El Pollo Loco on Southwest Military Drive when she was killed.

“She still played with toys,” Maldonado said. “She was just a girl, and he took that from her.”

Maldonado said she knew something was wrong the night Monce didn’t come home.

Instead of receiving a phone call, she got into her vehicle and drove to the restaurant where her daughter worked. She searched the parking lot, drove through the drive-thru and called out Monce’s name. As she continued searching, Maldonado’s older daughter mentioned hearing reports about a fatal crash nearby.

“My daughter said, ‘Mama, it’s Monce,’” she said. “I yelled at her, ‘Don’t tell me that. That’s not my daughter. I’m going to wait for the police.’ I went outside and sat on the sidewalk waiting.”

Maldonado said she later learned the victim was her daughter.

Since learning of McGarity’s bond reduction, Maldonado said it has been difficult news to accept.

“She was on her way home, and because of his recklessness, he killed her,” Maldonado said. “He still can go home, he can sleep in his bed. He can watch television. He can hug his mom. My Monce can’t do any of that anymore.”

The family’s attorney, Anthony Alcoser, criticized both the bond reduction and what he said was a lack of communication with the family before the hearing.

“What’s even more concerning is that no one from the DA’s office or the Victim Advocate Office notified my client about this hearing,” Alcoser said.

Alcoser also questioned whether the conditions of McGarity’s release adequately protect the public.

“Reducing this bond for this individual who had prior records for racing. Yes, he’s on an ankle monitor, he’s in a house, but that’s not stopping him from getting in the car and racing again. After the court’s actions yesterday, the streets are unsafer tonight.”

Court records also show this was not McGarity’s first encounter with law enforcement involving his driving.

In March, San Antonio police arrested McGarity on a reckless driving charge after an officer reported seeing his vehicle fishtail while accelerating through the intersection of Bowie Street and East Commerce Street.

The report stated officers found a speeding ticket in McGarity’s pocket that had been issued the day before. The citation alleged he was driving 90 mph in a 70 mph zone.

Maldonado said nothing will bring her daughter back, but she hopes her story will ensure Monce is remembered for who she was rather than only how she died.

She described the pain of losing an only child she raised as a single mother, saying Monce still slept beside her and had a future ahead of her. Now, she said, her focus is on seeking justice.

“I won’t stop until there is justice for my daughter,” Maldonado told KSAT. “I know they are not going to bring her back, but I don’t want her death to go without justice.”

Alcoser said the family is offering a $2,500 cash reward for information about the other vehicles police believe were racing with McGarity the night Monce was killed.

Previous coverage of this story on KSAT:

• ‘Everything is gone’: Family shares heartbreak after driver drag racing hits, kills 17-year-old girl

Studio Ghibli Fest, the long-running theatrical revivals of Ghibli movies, has taken on a special meaning for her, her 3-year-old daughter and her mother, Araceli. Every year, they go to see each Ghibli rerelease in theaters.

“Right when she sees the opening Totoro logo, she screams ‘Totoro!’” VanCleave, 34, says of her daughter. “Everyone in the theater started laughing, and I was like, ‘Oh, gosh, sorry.’”

Though the family discovered the Ghibli movies on HBO Max, the outings to their favorite theater in Austin, Texas, became a tradition. Earlier this month, when they went (again) to see Hayao Miyazaki’s 1988 anime classic, “My Neighbor Totoro,” they wore matching Totoro jammies.

“It’s been our thing,” says VanCleave. “Us three girls together.”

The passionate fandom Ghibli tends to inspire is well-documented. Yet the consistency of the Japanese animation studio’s films in theaters — years, even decades after their release — is without parallel in movies. Every year, longtime Ghibli fans as well as new, little ones, flock to cinemas.

Sporadically dated from June through October, Ghibli Fest has been running for a decade. Movies like “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Spirited Away” and “Ponyo” have become not occasional rereleases but practically theatrical mainstays. Ghibli Fest is more like an ongoing movie marathon: cinema's answer to Bob Dylan's Never Ending Tour.

And, remarkably, it keeps growing. When GKids, the North American distributor for Ghibli, and Fathom Entertainment launched Ghibli Fest in 2017, its five titles accounted for $5 million in ticket sales. But the festival’s biggest box-office years have been the last three — all after Ghibli titles became easy to stream on HBO Max in 2020.

“I’d be lying if I thought the program when we conceived it would be going as long as it has,” says Dave Jesteadt, GKids president. “It does defy conventional wisdom. We keep waiting for the year that people tire of going to the films, but that’s not what’s happening. Every single year, we see records being set. The grosses are going up, not down.”

Ghibli expands its footprint

The biggest year for Ghibli Fest was 2024, when 14 movies accounted for $16.4 million in sales. Last year, eight movies grossed $10.6 million. This year, both “Ponyo” and “My Neighbor Totoro” have already played for popular five-day stints.

Shannah Miller, vice president of marketing for Fathom, a company owned by the country's top theater chains, has watched demand keep expanding.

“When we started, I think our theatrical footprint was about 640 locations,” Miller says. “This year, we’re crossing over 1,100 locations. We started with two, maybe three playdates for a particular title, but due to fan demand, we have five-day runs for some titles.”

When GKids first got Ghibli library in 2011, the Japanese studio emphasized how important theatrical was to them. First GKids hosted retrospectives, mostly in major markets and at arthouses. But Ghibli Fest moved the movies into multiplexes where a new generation of kids might stop before a cardboard cutout of Kiki (from “Kiki’s Delivery Service”) or No Face (from “Spirited Away”) and wonder if there might be animated movie worlds beyond Disney.

“One of the worst things that can happen to classics is that they’re perceived as classics and kept in amber,” says Jesteadt. “We wanted to move to a nationwide celebration that really treated these as equivalent to any new Hollywood film.”

While North America moviegoing is up more than 10% this year, theaters have learned over the last decade that they can’t always depend on a steady stream of new Hollywood releases. There tend to be soft spots in the schedule, and early weekdays are always slow, anyhow.

Older movies have, increasingly, filled in the gaps. Ghibli Fest, though, predates more recent repertory trends. And the long-term effects have paid dividends, helping foster new Ghibli lovers. While an earlier generation might have been introduced first through Miyazaki’s 2001 masterpiece “Spirited Away,” GKids now sees younger moviegoers indoctrinated by “Ponyo” or “Howl’s Moving Castle.”

“When we introduced the catalog to streaming in 2020 for the first time, we thought, ‘OK, surely, this is maybe the moment,’” says Jesteadt. “But if anything, that just brought in a new audience that wanted to see these films in theaters for the first time.”

‘More fun than HBO Max’

This year’s fest continues with “Tales of Earthsea” (Aug. 8, 10), “Only Yesterday” (Aug. 9, 11), the 40th anniversary of the first Ghibli release, 1986’s “Castle in the Sky” (Aug. 22-26), a 4K remastered “Princess Mononoke” (Sept. 26-30) and finally a 25th anniversary for “Spirited Away” (Oct. 17-21).

While some of these movies are revived in other countries, Ghibli Fest is so far a strictly U.S.-based phenomenon.

“We are equally in awe of and proud of what we’re building and the opportunity to celebrate instead of all the doom and gloom, ‘Is theater dead?’ conversations,” Miller says. “We have a different story to tell with Studio Ghibli.”

Studio Ghibli is such a cultural powerhouse that there are countless opportunities to reconnect with its stories. The Academy Museum is hosting a new “Ponyo” exhibit. The composer Joe Hisaishi is touring the music of many of the films, including a seven-night residency at New York’s Radio City Music Hall in August.

But the movies, themselves, on the big screen, are the eternal flames of Ghibli. The screenings are places for Ghibli fans, new and old, to congregate and immerse themselves in the natural splendor of the films.

Angela Lector, 27, has attended “Howl’s Moving Castle” dressed as its hero, Sophie, and met Japanese film students at a showing of “Princess Mononoke,” a favorite from when she was a kid.

“Being in the theater is so much more fun than being on HBO Max,” says Lector. “Being in your home, you can make your own popcorn and cuddle up with your dog. But being in the theater you can actually talk to people you don’t know about the movie.”

Ghibli fans’ only gripes are usually that the festival doesn’t feature more deep cuts from the library. Lector would love to see 1984’s” pre-Ghibli “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” brought back.

“The Ghibli films are timeless. There’s something for everyone in them,” Lector says. “Everything feels human. No one is too powerful or too small.”

That can go for audience members, too. VanCleave recently noticed a classmate of her daughter’s wearing a bow like Kiki's.

“I saw her mom and asked about it. We got to talking, and she also had watched Ghibli movies at home,” VanCleave says. “So, we invited her to ‘Ponyo,’ and it was her first movie theater experience. It was cute. The two 3-year-olds shared a recliner.”

A small fly has the potential to impart a big impact on Texas’ beef and agricultural industry.

On June 3, the New World screwworm was detected in a three-week-old calf in Zavala County by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Since then, the agency reported more screwworm infestations in Texas.

The fly poses a multibillion-dollar crisis for the state’s cattle industry, which generates $41 billion a year. It could also increase already record-high beef prices nationwide.

It’s unclear how many cases could hit Texas. Nearly 28,000 cases have been detected in Mexico since November 2024, according to Mexican officials.

State and federal officials are working together to stop the northern migration, which they have tracked since 2023. In response to the cases, USDA and the Texas Animal Health Commission have ramped up animal surveillance of animals near the confirmed detections by setting up zones around each infestation. Animals are not allowed to leave infested areas without being properly inspected.

Officials are also increasing fly traps, surveillance of wildlife and releasing sterile flies, which are used to break the reproduction cycle of the parasitic screwworm fly.

What is New World Screwworm?

New World Screwworm is a parasitic fly that is attracted to living tissue, burrowing their larvae into open wounds. After they hatch, the maggots then feed off that living flesh, causing damage to the animal. If untreated, the damage can even cause the animal to die.

Screwworm can also burrow through openings in the skin, such as the corner of an eye or through the nose.

From a biological standpoint, all mammals are vulnerable to screwworm, including pets and humans. However, livestock and wildlife tend to be the most susceptible because they spend their entire lives outdoors.

Dogs and cats are vulnerable through small wounds or scratches that break the skin. Health officials recommend pets be medicated for fleas and ticks year-round, said Casey Locklear, veterinarian and parasiticides lead for Elanco Animal Health.

“As a pet owner, if you were to notice that your dog or cat had a wound, especially if it’s foul smelling, it’s enlarging, you may actually see the maggots,” Locklear said. “If you see a wound, get treatment early. Whether that’s for yourself or your pet, early treatment is key.”

Read more about the screwworm here.

Following the July 2026 floods in the Hill Country and South Texas, 33 counties were designated for FEMA assistance:

• Atascosa County
• Bandera County
• Bexar County
• Blanco County
• Brewster County
• Comal County
• Crockett County
• Dimmit County
• Duval County
• Edwards County
• Frio County
• Gillespie County
• Jim Wells County
• Kendall County
• Kerr County
• Kimble County
• Kinney County
• La Salle County
• Live Oak County
• Mason County
• Maverick County
• Medina County
• Menard County
• Pecos County
• Real County
• Schleicher County
• Sutton County
• Terrell County
• Uvalde County
• Val Verde County
• Webb County
• Wilson County
• Zavala County

An appeal form should be included with every decision letter, but can also be found here.

FEMA said that sending estimates for repairs, bills, receipts, property titles, deeds and any documentation that shows you require additional assistance should be used in the appeal process.

The agency said that documents used for an appeal should include the following:

• Full name
• Current phone number and address
• Your FEMA application number on all pages
• The disaster number on every page
• Address of the disaster-damaged home

Receipts, bills and estimates for businesses must also include the business’s name and contact information that can be verified.

Here are the following ways the appeal and supporting documents can be sent to FEMA:

• Uploaded online to a DisasterAssistance.gov account
• In person at a Disaster Recovery Center
• Mail: FEMA, P.O. Box 10055, Hyattsville, MD 20782-8055
• Fax: 800-827-8112 - Attention: FEMA - Individuals & Households Program

If the appeal is being submitted on behalf of someone else, the agency requires written permission from that person.

FEMA said that residents can expect a decision on the appeal within 90 days. The agency will notify residents through mail or a DisasterAssistance.gov account.

The FEMA Helpline at 800-621-3362 will answer questions on the appeal process.

Read also:

• Kerrville extends disaster declaration after widespread flood damage

Local authorities said the fire in a forest near the town of Lège-Cap Ferret, southwest of Bordeaux, spread over more than 31 square kilometers (12 square miles), though no injuries have been reported.

The prefect, or head of the surrounding Gironde region, Sophie Brocas, said some 700 firefighters have been deployed, including forces sent from the Paris region. The fire came within 300 meters (980 feet) of the first homes in Lège, and water bombers were being used.

Later in the day, the prefect's office said the wildfire had not yet been brought under control but remained contained to the north of Lège.

More than 10,000 people, including tourists staying at holiday camps and campgrounds, were moved to safety overnight, along with more than 1,000 residents living in residential areas along the forest edge. Authorities later evacuated the village of Claouey, including residents staying at several campsites, as a precautionary measure. Brocas said the evacuation involved 8,800 people.

Several municipalities have opened reception and respite centers for evacuees, the prefecture said.

Southern Europe has seen multiple large fires this summer. Scientists warn that climate change is exacerbating the frequency and intensity of heat and dryness, making the region more vulnerable to wildfires.

Following a succession of heat waves that started even before the summer, wildfires have raged across France, devastating large swaths of land amid record temperatures and dry weather. Plants and vegetation are under severe water stress, adding to the danger of fires.

According to Interior Minister Laurent Nunez, more than 12,500 wildfires have broken out since the beginning of the year, and almost 44,000 hectares have already burned.

Wildfires in Spain and Italy

Elsewhere in Europe, wildfires continued to rage across Sicily on Thursday, a day after a firefighter was killed during operations to put out a blaze in Caltanissetta, the national fire department said.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella sent a note of condolences to the family and colleagues of the firefighter, Alessandro Marchì, who was a department head.

In Spain, firefighters battled multiple blazes amid a heat wave with the worst temperatures expected to reach 44 C (111 F) in the southeast. A fire near Alcalá de Henares near Madrid caused the high-speed train service between the capital and Barcelona to be briefly suspended Thursday.

Meanwhile, firefighters in the province of Guadalajara continued to extinguish a week-old fire that is the second-largest on record for the country with 320 square kilometers (123 square miles) burned. Other fires raged across central Spain, including one near Toledo that destroyed some 20 homes and triggered evacuations.

The central bank for the 21 countries that use the euro currency left its benchmark rate unchanged at 2.25% following a quarter-point hike at its previous meeting June 11. That increase was aimed at dampening the impact on consumer prices from higher oil prices due to the US-Iran war and subsequent interruption of oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

Analysts say the bank may simply be taking a pause to gather more information amid swings in oil prices, which fell after announcement of a ceasefire but then rose again when the ceasefire agreement collapsed and fighting resumed. Economists are pointing toward the bank's Sept. 10 meeting as a possibility for another rate increase.

“Uncertainty remains high and the full inflationary impact of the energy shock has yet to play out," ECB President Christine Lagarde said at a post-decision news conference. "We are therefore closely monitoring the intensity and duration of the shock, as well as its indirect and second round effects...the longer energy prices stay high, the more likely they are to drive up broader inflation.”

Lagarde said the bank is making decisions meeting by meeting based on incoming data and has not committed to any particular path for rates.

Lagarde also faced a question about whether she would commit to serving out her full, eight-year term which ends in October 2027.

Asked for a “yes or no” response, she said: “You know, I hate to be boxed in in any particular circumstances."

She added that “you are not going to see the back of me before 2027” and that “when there clouds on the horizon, the captain stays on the ship, and this captain is staying on this ship as long as there are clouds on the horizon.”

Rate hikes combat inflation by raising the cost of credit for buying things, from new houses to new factories. That cools demand for goods and eases pressure on prices. Inflation in the eurozone ran at an annual 2.8% in June, down from 3.2% in May.

International benchmark Brent crude rose to $100 Thursday, the first time in two months, after Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, potentially widening the conflict in and around Iran.

Brent spiked 7% after Iranian-backed Houthis launched the attacks near the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, raising doubts about Saudi Arabia’s ability to ship oil through the Red Sea instead of the Strait of Hormuz.

The decision came in an emergency City Council meeting, one week after Kerr County was hit again by devastating flooding.

City officials said the latest round of flooding caused broader damage than last year’s flood, which was largely contained to the Guadalupe River corridor.

“This year, the water was coming from all directions,” Kerrville Public Works Director David Barrera said. “Every creek you can imagine here in town was impacted.”

Barrera said city crews are still responding to damage to critical infrastructure, including roads, water and wastewater utilities, and drainage areas.

He said crews have only recently been able to reach some locations that had been inaccessible since the flooding began.

“We still have a long road ahead of us,” Barrera said. “We’re spread pretty thin, but we’re taking care of stuff.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said floodwater destroyed or heavily damaged about 135 homes in Kerr County. Officials said much of the county’s infrastructure also took a significant hit.

Barrera said the city is still assessing the full extent of the damage.

“What’s keeping me up is just the uncertainty of what we’re going to find or uncover as we gain access to some of these areas,” he said.

Residents and their local governments are patiently waiting to see those government dollars allocated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Amanda DeVeca-Renier with Rebuild.us, a national disaster survivor association, believes FEMA funds are being released more slowly than in past years.

“Historically, it’s moved faster under our current administration,” she said, in part. “It’s been slow, two or three or four weeks even. And so we can’t afford that. People on the ground deserve this assistance to move immediately.”

Kerrville officials are directing residents to the city’s website and Facebook page for up-to-date information on debris pickup, road closures, shelters and other recovery resources.

More Hill Country floods coverage on KSAT:

• Boerne horse ranch seeks volunteers after flood causes up to $1 million in damage
• Volunteers, community rally around popular Kerrville Mexican restaurant after flood

Police reports obtained by KSAT 12 News show the crimes in the Estates at Champions Run subdivision date back to at least February 2026.

The reports detailed nine different break-ins and attempted break-ins there. Most appeared to have happened while the homeowners were out of town or away from home.

“Jewelry, cash, guns. That’s, to my knowledge, what they’re taking,” said one homeowner, who wanted to remain anonymous. “A lot of property damage. A lot of vandalism. Broken stuff. A lot of valuables stolen.”

He said in at least one case, the thief was able to saw their way into a safe.

The homeowner shared video showing a masked man attempting to get into his home earlier this month by breaking his window with a rock.

The thief ran off, though, when he triggered a burglar alarm.

Other video shows there may be two suspects involved. Either way, it is unsettling to many in the neighborhood.

“We have locks on our bedroom door, and we know what’s going to happen if someone were to come to our bedroom,” the unidentified homeowner’s wife said, referring to them arming themselves. “People have hired armed private security to sit in front of their house to protect them because our neighborhood is under attack.”

The husband and wife said until recently, it seemed most people in the neighborhood were in the dark about the crime spree.

They have since made it their mission to shed light on the situation by putting up wanted posters and arranging protests outside their gates.

“Now that we’ve gotten involved and we’re being proactive, things are happening,” the man said.

San Antonio Crime Stoppers recently issued an appeal, offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information about the suspect, who was caught on the couple’s camera.

Neighbors have also pooled their own money together, offering an additional $25,000 reward.

In the meantime, though, the couple said they feel both their neighborhood security company and San Antonio police have failed to do enough to help them.

A KSAT 12 News crew driving an unmarked car Wednesday morning was able to gain entry into the subdivision easily. Without any words spoken, a guard on duty opened the gate as the car approached.

In response to the criticism of police, the San Antonio Police Department emailed a statement saying:

“Property Crimes Detectives are actively working with the victims and the community to positively identify the suspect. Investigators take every burglary incident seriously and thoroughly investigate every case to bring justice and security to the victims and their families.”

KSAT 12 News also sent an email to the office of District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears, whose district serves that neighborhood.

A spokesperson called on the phone, saying Spears was aware of the problem and the issue was discussed at a Public Safety Committee meeting.

She promised a written statement offering more details on what the councilwoman planned to do in response to the crime spree.

On Wednesday evening, Spears sent the following statement to KSAT 12 News:

“Crime stats only tell part of the story. We’re looking at what’s actually happening on the ground to build a real public safety strategy that protects residents.

“And let’s be clear: a gated entrance and a private security patrol do not replace the San Antonio Police Department. Private security can observe. SAPD can enforce the law and make arrests. My office will continue working with SAPD to protect the community.”

District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears

In response to our inquiry about the crime spree, Orlando Tellez with the Estates at Champions Run Homeowners Association, also issued a written statement.

In part, he said the board of directors is concerned about the burglaries and has taken steps to improve security in the community and support law enforcement’s efforts.

He also said the HOA has been increasing communication with homeowners through emails and social media apps.

Anyone with information about the burglaries is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 210-224-STOP (7867).

Read also:

• SAPD: Serial burglar accused of stealing ‘millions of dollars’ worth of items from Stone Oak homes

It was the latest major crackdown on Big Tech by Brussels, which has led the world in reining in some of the world’s largest companies from Silicon Valley to Beijing.

It has done so despite the risk of incurring the wrath of President Donald Trump, who has lashed out at the 27-nation bloc’s digital regulations amid a broader campaign against Europe: imposing high tariffs, making threats to seize Greenland from Denmark by force, and rattling trust within the NATO military alliance.

In the past, Trump has threatened retaliation if American tech companies are penalized.

Google had recently lost its appeal of a $4.5 billion antitrust fine imposed by the EU for throttling competition and reducing consumer choice through the dominance of its mobile Android operating system.

The European Commission, the bloc's executive branch and highest antitrust enforcer, said it was acting in the interest of consumers after an investigation of Google.

“The best products should succeed because they’re better, not because they’re owned by the company running the search engine. And European consumers have a right to be told by app developers where to sign up to the best offers, even when the app store owner does not get a cut,” said Teresa Ribera, the commission's Executive Vice President for Clean, Just and Competitive Transition.

Google’s President of Global Affairs Kent Walker blasted the fine as “product degradation driven by a small group of self-serving complainants” that will have a negative impact on European businesses and consumers.

He said that the EU’s Digital Markets Act forces Google “to strip away real-time search features Europeans love — like instant pricing and direct availability for hotels, flights, and restaurants — and dismantle safety protections on Google Play.”

The EU describes the world’s seven tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok owner ByteDance — as “gatekeepers” that control access for consumers.

“In the EU, businesses have the right to compete fairly. Gatekeepers have the obligation to ensure a level playing field and consumers the right to choose for cheaper alternative offers,” European Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said. Alphabet reported $403 billion in revenue in 2025.

Officers responded to the shooting around 9:15 p.m. in the 1800 block of East Sonterra Boulevard, near the U.S. Highway 281 access road.

According to police, an unknown number of people pulled up in a vehicle next to the man and fired at least 12 shots before the vehicle sped off.

The victim, a 26-year-old man, was hit at least five times, police said. He was rushed to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Police are investigating if the shooting was targeted.

Additional information was not immediately available.

Read also:

• Suspect dies of self-inflicted gunshot wound during arrest attempt on far West Side, sheriff says
• Homeowners eager for capture of burglars who stole millions in Stone Oak neighborhood
• 18-year-old arrested after gunfire between multiple vehicles in far West Side, BCSO says

But with barely three months until November's contest, the perceived threat to rural life, ranchland and dwindling water supplies could become a defining issue for her long-shot challenge to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, dividing conservative rural areas that have traditionally served as a counterweight to Democrats' urban strongholds.

The backlash to energy-guzzling server warehouses is also shaping other statewide campaigns from Arizona to Ohio to New York, and even giving Democrats a glimmer of hope in Texas, where Republicans have dominated for three decades.

“There is this little issue that I recently started hearing about that I wanted to tell you about, in case you don’t know,” Hinojosa quipped to a Democratic Party-organized crowd of about 160 seated on fold-out chairs at an Amarillo social club in Texas' panhandle. “It’s this issue of data centers.”

The crowd booed, and she went on: “They are owned by the richest men in the world. We’re all footing the bill. There are no rules. It is the wild west of data centers.”

The fast growth of massive data centers has already upended races for local offices across the country, often uniting conservatives and liberals in revolting against projects in their midst.

People don't like the secrecy surrounding the projects or the prospect of air, noise, water and light pollution. They fear electric bills going up, wells going dry and losing open space, farmland or forest.

Now the ripple effects have spread to top-of-the-ticket races, where incumbents and challengers are trying to show that they hear an angry electorate.

In Ohio, Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown aired a television advertisement attacking Republican U.S. Sen. John Husted as the "face of data centers in Ohio" as people gather signatures for a statewide referendum to outright ban their construction.

In Wisconsin, a Democratic candidate for governor, Francesca Hong, is pledging to “tax the rich, fund our schools and stop AI data centers” as she campaigns for her party's nomination in a crowded primary.

In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro is facing heat from some voters who feel like he's been too welcoming to tech behemoths. Sam Burleigh, a Democrat whose rural community is fighting off data center projects, accused Shapiro of “allowing these data centers to come in and take over acres and acres of prime farmland.”

Texas is fertile ground for data centers

Any political unrest may be felt most acutely in Texas.

The state is poised to overtake northern Virginia as the largest global data center market by 2030, according to a report by commercial real estate giant JLL. It has lots of land, lots of energy and a friendly regulatory environment under Republican leadership.

In rural west Texas and its panhandle, gargantuan data centers are under construction, including one near Amarillo touted as the world's largest. Some come with designs for natural gas-fired turbines to power them.

Rumors are flying about others popping up — Google, which is building four data centers in northwest Texas, sponsored moderated conversations with officials and business elite in Lubbock and Amarillo in recent weeks — and it is sowing an outcry across small cities, tiny towns and sprawling ranches where people vote overwhelmingly Republican.

Google says its investments are advancing American innovation, fortifying cybersecurity and boosting energy capacity, while President Donald Trump has made data centers a top priority to help the U.S. compete against China for AI superiority.

But tech giants and developers can be secretive about their plans, making it impossible to know what will be built or what sort of pollution they'll create, critics say. Some worry that data centers will destroy rural Texas' low cost of living and sully sunsets and sweeping views that stretch toward the horizon.

Others say construction and an influx of workers are already causing havoc for ranchers and towns, driving up rents, snapping up farmland, illuminating the night sky, clogging roads and turning parts of rural Texas into industrial zones.

Opposition crosses a partisan divide

Democrats are prominent among the data center critics, but so are Republicans, including Texas' sitting agriculture commissioner, Sid Miller. They say there are many more Republicans who are quieter because they fear publicly opposing their governor and party.

“They're upset with Greg Abbott,” said Suzanne Bellsnyder, a former Republican activist from Spearman who writes a syndicated column that advocates for rural Texas. “Whether that translates into voting against him, I don't know.”

Abbott has aggressively advocated for big projects in Texas and, in November, he helped make Google's announcement of a $40 billion investment there, saying “Texas is the epicenter of AI development.”

Compounding that, Texas counties don't have zoning authority — precisely the local land planning authority that communities around the country are increasingly using to fight off data centers.

Abbott seems to recognize that data centers are dividing his base. In recent weeks, he ordered regulators to take steps to ensure Texans weren't paying higher electricity bills because of data centers and promised to push a legislative agenda next year to impose regulations on data centers.

At an East Texas campaign stop, Abbott said that includes taking away the state's billion-dollar-plus-per-year tax break and preventing data centers from being built in “rural Texas neighborhoods.”

Hinojosa and others derided Abbott's words about “rural Texas neighborhoods” as meaningless — "doublespeak that makes no sense to anyone," Hinojosa said — and lacking urgency or seriousness.

“Now we have this gold rush of data centers in our communities," Hinojosa said in an interview, adding that “people want a say, and I think that’s fair.”

As governor, she said she'd block a permit for a data center if it wasn't a good deal for Texans or residents hadn't gotten a say in the matter.

Abbott tries to soothe concerns

Abbott's campaign season turnabout on data centers doesn't seem to have soothed many.

Of great concern is the prospect that data centers will consume massive amounts of water and worsen drought conditions for ranchers and farmers in a state where water shortages already crippled the sugar cane industry.

“Oh, I guarantee you, it's on everybody's mind,” said Giles Dalby, a cattle rancher and a Republican county commissioner in west Texas.

Dalby, who raises Angus and Brangus cattle on ranchland that's been in his family for 125 years, pointed to fast-growing cities where water authorities have had to go to greater lengths to procure water, including the “water wars” between San Antonio and ranchers several years ago.

Texas is increasingly steamrolling over landowner rights in the quest for public water, Dalby said, and that could mean that data centers get in line ahead of ranchers when shortages or rationing worsen.

Clayton Tucker, a rancher and the Democratic nominee for state agriculture commissioner, said his campaign events are consumed by talk of data centers. It doesn't matter whether he's meeting with Democrats or Republicans.

“This is the most cross-partisan issue I’ve ever seen in my life,” Tucker said.

Meanwhile, protest groups are springing up, including one in Lubbock that is led by Republicans. The founders, Stephen Sanders and Hallie Bertrand, like some other Republican opponents of data centers, say it's possible or even certain they won't vote for Abbott, although they may not necessarily vote for Hinojosa.

There is still time for Abbott to push through major legislation before the election and “be a hero,” Sanders said.

The big question is whether enough rural voters will turn against Abbott to give Hinojosa a shot. It’s hard to tell, Bertrand said, especially when some know nothing about the issue.

“They'll just hit that button, Republican all the way down,” Bertrand said. "But I think it’s a step towards something that we have not seen in Texas in a long time, with people on the right switching to the left. Or scooting a little closer to the middle, maybe."

___

Follow Marc Levy at http://twitter.com/timelywriter

Multiple agencies had made sustained and coordinated rescue efforts in the four days since a gas explosion ripped through the tunnel. Following the recovery of all the missing employees, teams carried out a final inspection of the tunnel, the state government of Sikkim said in a statement.

The blast occurred Monday at the 500-megawatt Teesta Hydroelectric Project about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the state capital Gangtok in the Himalayan state.

A buildup of methane gas triggered the explosion, trapping dozens of workers underground. Rescue efforts were hampered by the toxic gas inside, officials said.

The government said it formed a high-level committee to investigate the disaster and recommend safeguards against to prevent such accidents in the future.

Construction accidents are not uncommon in India, where rapid infrastructure growth often collides with fragile geology, construction lapses, extreme weather and safety standards.

The Teesta River basin, where the hydropower project is being built, lies in a seismically active region marked by young, fragile rock formations riddled with fractures and underground pockets that can trap ancient gases. Seismic activity and unpredictable underground conditions make tunnel projects especially risky in the region, according to experts.

A February explosion in a coal mine in neighboring Meghalaya state killed 18 workers. A tunnel section collapsed in 2023 in northern Uttarakhand state, trapping 41 workers for 17 days before they were rescued.

A JBSA spokesperson confirmed to KSAT that Army, Navy and Air Force enlisted medical students assigned to the Medical Education and Training Campus (METC) “are being relocated to on-base temporary lodging.”

KSAT received several emails and calls from people claiming mold in the dorms is forcing hundreds of military members into base hotels.

JBSA’s official statement, however, cited “infrastructure” issues. The base said that “no one is being moved because of mold.”

“This decision was made based on continuing infrastructure degradation that is rooted in the campus construction and can no longer be resolved through routine maintenance or ongoing repairs,” a JBSA official wrote in a statement to KSAT.

All affected service members faced “immediate relocation” while the base works toward a long-term solution.

“The relocation of these students to interim quarters demonstrates the Department of War commitment to its servicemembers to improve their quality of life,” the JBSA statement added.

The Department of War is investing more than $1.2 billion to “improve barrack conditions,” according to JBSA. Construction is expected to begin by the end of this year.

“Our primary focus is the safety, and quality of life of our students,” JBSA’s statement continued. “This relocation will allow the medical training pipeline to continue without compromise.”

KSAT asked a base official Wednesday for an interview and if any students were reported sick related to dorm conditions.

JBSA-Fort Sam Houston has yet to respond to KSAT’s request.

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The visitors that year included President Donald Trump, on his way to a second term, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and dozens of other Republicans intent on making border security the election’s defining issue. It worked: Trump won Maverick County with 59% of the vote and carried other counties up and down the border.

But when James Talarico, the Democratic state representative running for U.S. Senate, visited Eagle Pass last week, the number of illegal crossings had been hovering near historic lows for months under an immigration clampdown from the Trump administration. He was there, he told hundreds gathered at a town hall, to learn about their worries and priorities.

“Usually when politicians show up to the border, they demonize, they weaponize, they grandstand for themselves,” Talarico said at the International Center for Trade. “We’re trying to do the opposite.”

As the nation reeled from two fatal shootings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including one in Houston, Talarico and his GOP opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, headed to South Texas last week to pitch voters on early versions of their border security platforms. Talarico brought a multi-point plan he road-tested across a weeklong tour, while Paxton delivered a familiar promise to follow Trump’s agenda and put “America first.”

At both candidates’ stops, interviews with nearly two dozen voters revealed how the frustrations some border residents had with the Biden administration’s response to record crossings have evolved into alarm about the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, as they see neighbors get deported and their friends’ businesses struggle. The comments mirror public polling, which has found many Latino voters who backed Trump are growing uneasy about his immigration enforcement. One recent survey found that one in five Hispanic business owners in the state have had at least one employee deported.

State Rep. James Talarico speaks during a town hall meeting at the International Center for Trade in Eagle Pass on July 13, 2026. Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks at his “Rally in the Valley” event at University Draft House in McAllen on July 14, 2026. Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

Numerous residents from Del Rio to McAllen, including some Republicans, said they hope the state’s next senator can help modernize the nation’s immigration system — decried as broken by members of both parties — in Washington, despite decades of congressional gridlock on the issue.

Still, many expressed complicated feelings, in some cases displaying the GOP’s durable baseline of support in a region where U.S. Customs and Border Protection jobs are among the most common and highest paying. While Trump is being aggressive with his crackdown, some said in interviews, the circumstances under former President Joe Biden — when crossings reached record highs — were untenable.

Republican Bob Drasner, a 77-year-old who has lived in the Rio Grande Valley for some eight years after decades of coming down seasonally, said the country needs a “good filter” when it comes to immigration. It is evident the country needs skilled workers, like talented doctors and lawyers, he said as he waited for Paxton to take the stage at a rally at a McAllen brewery.

Bob Drasner poses for a photo during the Ken Paxton rally in McAllen on July 14, 2026. Gabriel V. Cárdenas for The Texas Tribune

“If I have a heart condition, I don’t care what color you are,” he said.

In Del Rio, Rodolfo Garcia, 59, waited outside on a scorching afternoon with his 16-year-old daughter, Celeste, to meet Talarico, who was scheduled to visit a Mexican restaurant. He’s supporting the Austin Democrat in part because he hopes Congress can craft a better pathway to citizenship, he said.

“He’s moderate,” Garcia said, standing feet away from Talarico’s bus.

To be sure, most voters told the Tribune that economic issues and driving down everyday costs were their top priorities this election year — highlighting the shifting dynamics surrounding immigration, only two years after Republicans leveraged it to earn massive wins in the state.

Talarico’s listening event in Eagle Pass and restaurant visit in Del Rio were just two stops on a cross-border tour the state lawmaker completed last week. The day of the town hall began 175 miles away in Sanderson, where Talarico unveiled what he is branding as a “commonsense” border security plan.

The main pillars of the plan call for hiring more Border Patrol agents and immigration judges, as well as leaning on surveillance technology to help detect illegal crossings and drug trafficking. Another cornerstone is opposition to a border wall proposed by the Trump administration that would slice through Big Bend National Park. Later on the tour, Talarico said “there are some parts of the border where a physical barrier makes sense” — but not in that sparsely trafficked part of West Texas.

Joining Talarico outside a motel in Sanderson was a group of local electeds who have been among the loudest voices opposing the Trump administration’s plans for the barrier through Big Bend: Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, Jeff Davis County Judge Curtis Evans — both Republicans — and Alpine Mayor Catherine Eaves, an independent.

Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland speaks at Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico’s “Frontera Tour” in Sanderson on July 13, 2026. Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

Cleveland, whose criticism of the Biden administration established his voice as an authority from the U.S.-Mexico border, said Americans had a false sense of security that a border wall would stop all illegal crossings. Instead, he said what works effectively is a combination of barriers and technology — like Talarico’s plan. A week prior, a group trying to cross the border had been detected by a drone, which led to their apprehension in an area where there is no wall currently, the sheriff said.

“I support barriers. But I support barriers where they work. And a barrier is not gonna work here,” said Cleveland, who spent decades as a Border Patrol agent before returning to his hometown of Sanderson to become sheriff. “His plan that I’ve had the opportunity to review, I can tell you that both parties speak it, up in Washington, D.C., they both say the same thing.”

As Talarico hit the road for his border tour, Paxton’s campaign responded by attacking the lawmaker’s voting record in the Legislature on numerous bills surrounding border security. They criticized Talarico for voting against two of the state’s biggest and latest immigration laws — one, from 2023, that lets state police arrest people suspected of having entered the country illegally and another from last year that requires most sheriffs in the state to work with ICE.

Paxton allies have also circulated previous comments from Talarico about the border. Senate Leadership Fund, the main super PAC linked to the upper chamber’s GOP leadership, recently blasted Talarico for calling people without legal status “undocumented Americans” who “lack citizenship documentation.”

Whether the attacks will land with border voters is an open question.

Amber Diaz, a 24-year-old breast-feeding counselor in Eagle Pass, recounted how her recently naturalized stepfather was all in on Trump until he started witnessing the president’s immigration crackdown. As news spread about the ICE shooting death of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston, he called her to talk about his worries.

Amber Diaz, 24, waits outside the International Center for Trade for state Rep. James Talarico’s town hall event in Eagle Pass on July 13, 2026. Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

The White House’s deportation push is certainly on the minds of South Texas residents. Rumors that ICE will partner with local Border Patrol agents frequently swirl around town, spooking people that authorities might show up at the local HEB — one of Eagle Pass’ two major grocery stores that is also frequented by thousands of Mexican nationals who cross the border with visas every day.

For his part, Paxton said his take on immigration is simple: “We need a secure border. We need to protect our country. We need to make sure that we take care of America first.” In his first rally speech since winning the GOP primary, Paxton touted the numerous times he sued to stop the Biden administration’s immigration policies and celebrated a recent endorsement from the biggest union for Border Patrol agents.

In the audience at his McAllen rally was Rocely Gomez, 40, and her 19-year-old son Mario Prado. The two, like numerous other Paxton supporters, back the president’s mass deportations and consider themselves “100% Republican.”

Mario Prado, 19, and his mother, Rocely Gomez, 40, talk at GOP Senate nominee Ken Paxton’s “Rally in the Valley” at University Draft House in McAllen on July 14, 2026. Aiden Gonzalez/The Texas Tribune

Gomez said her husband, who works for Border Patrol, is sleeping better with Trump back in office. She shared frustrations about how border security issues often feel confined to a binary of good or bad that oversimplifies a complex reality. Some people don’t have a husband who comes home unimaginably rattled by his day, Gomez said, like the time hers found an abandoned baby, or another where he encountered a young girl who said she had been raped while migrating north.

Gomez would like some sort of pathway to citizenship to exist, but she also wants border crossings under control.

“It’s kinda tough,” she acknowledged.

Corrival Ranch — a horse breeding, training, rehabilitation and boarding center — opened three years ago.

Ben Wolff, a Corrival Ranch investor, said the flood washed away a significant amount of the work and investment that went into building the facility.

“It all happened in less than an hour,” Wolff said. “We went from being completely dry to having four feet of water standing in the buildings in less than an hour.”

Wolff said the ranch sits near Sister Creek, which feeds into the Guadalupe River. When the river rose, Sister Creek could not drain into it. This caused the water to back up and flood the surrounding property.

As the water rose, staff began moving horses out of danger. Wolff said 65 of the ranch’s 120 horses were taken to a nearby ranch. The other 55 horses were moved to higher ground.

No horse injuries were reported in the information provided, but the property took a major hit. Wolff estimated the total damage could fall between $500,000 and $1 million.

Inside one of the buildings, Wolff pointed to the waterline left behind by the flood.

“This is all underwater,” Wolff said, describing the area where equipment and machines were damaged.

Volunteers have already started showing up to help shovel mud, dry out buildings and begin the rebuilding process. Wolff said the response has been a reminder of the way Texans rally after disasters.

“This is what it means to be part of a Texas community, and it’s unique, I think, in the country,” Wolff said. “God bless Texas.”

The cleanup comes about a year after hundreds of people in the area helped with search and recovery efforts following the July 2025 flood.

The San Antonio Rose Palace is helping raise money for Corrival Ranch. A $40 Horse Fun Obstacle Class is scheduled for Saturday.

Volunteers are welcome at the ranch every day starting at 6:30 a.m.

Organizers said anyone planning to help should bring mud boots.

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The bond for Kitty Diaz, 21, was lowered from $5 million to $2 million during a hearing in Del Rio on Wednesday.

Video taken earlier in the day by a local journalist showed Diaz being escorted out of the courthouse after the hearing.

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Diaz is one of three women charged with murder. Amaya Diaz and Kyandra Faz also face charges in the case.

Pena was stabbed multiple times on June 25 after what witnesses described as an altercation at a home in the 800 block of East 10th Street involving Pena and the three women.

The confrontation spilled into a neighbor’s yard, where dried blood could still be seen on a walkway and on a truck Pena leaned on after she was injured, police said.

Pena was taken to a local hospital and later transported to San Antonio, where she died.

Shah, an emergency physician, will face Republican Jay Feely, a former NFL kicker who was endorsed by President Donald Trump in his primary, in the fall. Before becoming political opponents, Feely and Shah were part of the same team — the New York Jets. Shah was a doctor on the sidelines, while Feely was the kicker.

The DCCC backed Marlene Galán-Woods, a former Republican who switched parties at the beginning of Trump’s first term.

The competition for the 1st Congressional District, an affluent area that includes northeast Phoenix, Scottsdale, Fountain Hills and Paradise Valley, is expected to help determine control of the U.S. House. Although Republicans hold a voter registration advantage, the district has shifted toward the center over the last decade.

The seat is open because Republican Rep. David Schweikert ran for governor, losing to Rep. Andy Biggs in the GOP primary on Tuesday.

The DCCC's decision to endorse Galán-Woods, a former television journalist in Phoenix, puzzled local Democrats because there was little ideological difference between her and Shah. Both are moderates, and the race was not a proxy fight in the party's deepening feud between progressives and centrists.

“Our victory in this primary was a grassroots victory where Arizona voters made their voices heard,” Shah said Wednesday night in a statement that did not address the DCCC snub. “Now, it’s my job to earn the support of every voter in this district.”

Rep. Suzan DelBene, the DCCC Chair, issued a statement calling Feely an “extremist” and saying Shah “will always put his community first,” but did not address the controversy surrounding the support for Galán-Woods.

The National Republican Congressional Committee quickly released a digital ad Wednesday attacking Shah, labeling him a socialist and tying him to progressives in Congress.

“I’m a political outsider committed to delivering results,” Feely said in a statement.

The race was in some ways a replay of 2024, when Shah narrowly won in a crowded primary field that included Galán-Woods and lost in the general election. The DCCC did not endorse in the primary that year but backed Shah in the general.

The DCCC announced its support for Galán-Woods in May, when it added her to a list of candidates it was supporting in Republican-controlled districts. At the time, DelBene talked up Galán-Woods' experience in broadcast journalism but said nothing about Shah.

“I wasn’t exactly my party’s pick,” Shah told supporters Tuesday night. “And I was willing to stand up to that establishment. And that’s what the voters of this district want.”

Still, he has said he would work with the DCCC if nominated. He will need support from the party and its donors to win what's likely to be a tough race in a district Trump carried narrowly in 2024. Former Democratic President Joe Biden won the district in 2020 even as Schweikert was reelected.

Antiestablishment fervor has spooked congressional leaders, who fear that swing voters will see some insurgent candidates as too extreme and squander Democrats’ opportunity to take advantage of Trump’s unpopularity.

Last month progressive Randy Villegas beat a DCCC-backed candidate for a top battleground district in California's Central Valley. And similarly in Maine, Matt Dunlap defeated a more moderate rival backed by the party.

DCCC support generally brings an influx of money and staffing, both from the party itself and from the donors and interest groups that take its cues. But establishment support has been a turnoff for some voters.

“The Democratic Party needs to grow up and wake up,” said Maria Liong, a 24-year-old medical student who volunteered for Shah’s campaign. “They need to realize that they want candidates who listen to their people.”

In the GOP primary, Feely defeated Joseph Chaplik, a former state lawmaker popular with grassroots activists, for the party's nomination. He was in the NFL with seven teams over 14 seasons, including with the Arizona Cardinals from 2010 to 2013. He became an NFL broadcaster after retiring in 2014.

Feely and Shah overlapped on the Jets during the 2008 and 2009 seasons, when Shah worked home games as an airway management physician, according to his campaign. Every NFL game has an airway management doctor on the sideline to intubate and resuscitate a catastrophically injured player.

“It’s an old relationship,” Feely said of Shah on Tuesday night, before it was clear which Democrat he would face in November. “But whoever it is, I want to do this the right way. I want to run this the right way.”

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rep. Suzan DelBene’s last name on first reference, from DeBene.

___

Associated Press writers Jacques Billeaud and Wufei Yu contributed.

About 10 attackers opened fire and threw pipe bombs at soldiers at a security check point near a residential area in Narathiwat province Wednesday evening before fleeing, according to the regional Internal Security Operations Command. It said six civilians were injured during the attack, including a 10-year-old boy who remains hospitalized in stable condition.

Photos released by authorities showed a group identified as the attackers, dressed in black clothing and hats and riding on the back of a black pickup truck. Security officials said the truck was later found abandoned and set on fire about 21 kilometers (13 miles) away from the scene.

They said the attackers had stolen three AK-47 rifles, three bullet proof vests and three mobile phones from the soldiers, who were members of the country's paramilitary Ranger force, which operates as an auxiliary to the regular army and is usually deployed in border regions.

Narathiwat, along with Yala and Pattani, are Thailand’s southernmost provinces and are the only ones with Muslim majorities in the predominantly Buddhist nation. Since 2004, the provinces have been the site of a Muslim separatist insurgency that killed thousands.

Muslim residents have long complained of being treated like second-class citizens in Thailand, and separatist movements have been periodically active for decades. Heavy-handed crackdowns have fueled the discontent. Fighting continues to this day, but at a lower level.

The Internal Security Operations Command Region 4, which oversees security operations in southern Thailand, vowed in a Facebook post to “expedite the investigation and search for the perpetrators with the best efforts.”

Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul condemned the attack, saying it was a “terrorist attack that clearly aimed at killing government officials, and a serious threat to national security,” according to government spokesperson Rachada Dhnadirek.

Footage aired by public broadcaster Thai PBS showed homes and properties of residents nearby were also damaged. One home had damage to its roof, windows and doors, while a motorcycle parked outside the house was destroyed. Another home had bullet holes scattered across its metal front gate.

But river experts and visitors are urging caution — because not every stretch of the water is safe yet.

Brett Rimkus, a member of the flood advisory team at Garner State Park, checks the river every day. He said the cleanup has been remarkable.

“This is the best river we’ve had in probably 19 years,” Rimkus said. “The river’s looking absolutely wonderful. People are ready. We’ve had a drought for the last five years — so people have wanted to come out here and get in the water. It’s cold, the springs are full, and everything about it is screaming, ‘Let’s get in the water and finish out summer.’”

Rimkus said Andy’s on River Road plans to resume tubing Thursday, with more outfitters expected to follow through the weekend. He added that at its peak last week, floodwater crested seven feet over the dam at Garner State Park — and reached nearly 21 feet downstream near Concan.

Matthew Lopez, a visitor from Corpus Christi, said his family had a terrifying experience near Majors Crossing earlier this week — downstream from the dam, where currents are still running fast.

Lopez said his son flipped off a float, and his wife was swept into rapids, where she sustained cuts and bruises before grabbing onto a branch to pull herself out.

“When somebody tells you something, I would 110% listen — because that was scary,” Lopez said. “I thought I was going to lose my wife, my son. That scared me. So after that, it’s like — if we see anything rapid, don’t go. You got little kids, just don’t go.”

Lopez said several outfitters advised waiting until later in the week and recommended that experienced adults scout sections of the river before bringing children.

Rimkus said conditions vary significantly depending on where you put in.

“Talk to the outfitters when you’re going any part of the river — whether it’s in Garner, above Garner, below Garner,” Rimkus said. “You want to make sure that part of the river is right for you.”

He also recommended river shoes for all visitors, saying the flood turned over rocks and left sharper surfaces along the riverbed. Life jackets are strongly encouraged, especially for children.

Garner State Park drew more than 455,000 visitors in 2025, making it one of the most-visited state parks in Texas, according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

As of Wednesday, the National Weather Service maintained flood warnings downstream on the Frio and Nueces river systems in South Texas.

Visitors planning a trip this weekend are encouraged to check conditions directly with Concan-area outfitters.

Read also:

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