Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 2.8% to 65,130.03. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 added 0.4% to 8,692.00. The Shanghai Composite gained 0.8% to 4,143.97.

Trading was closed in South Korea and Hong Kong for holidays marking Buddha's birthday. Markets will be closed in the U.S. on Monday for Memorial Day.

Trump said negotiations with Iran were “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner.” Meanwhile, regional officials told The Associated Press on Sunday that the United States is close to reaching a deal with Iran that would end the war, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and see Iran give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium,

Reopening the Strait of Hormuz will help decide the direction of oil prices. The closure has prevented oil tankers from exiting the Persian Gulf and delivering crude to customers worldwide. Japan, for instance, imports almost all its oil, most of it through the strait.

“Markets are rapidly transitioning from pricing geopolitical fear toward pricing a potential peace dividend as Hormuz reopening expectations pressure oil and the dollar lower,” analyst Stephen Innes said in a commentary.

Early Monday, benchmark U.S. crude was down $5.52 at $91.08 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, sank $5.56 to $97.08 a barrel.

In currency trading, the U.S. dollar declined to 158.91 Japanese yen from 159.16 yen. The euro cost $1.1639, up from $1.1605.

Friday on Wall Street, stocks finished their eighth straight winning week, the best such streak since 2023. That’s even though a survey showed U.S. consumers are feeling even worse about the economy than before.

The S&P 500 added 0.4% and pulled closer to its all-time high set in the middle of last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.2%.

Recent earnings reports from U.S. companies that topped analysts’ expectations also helped markets. But worries about inflation have pushed bond yields higher worldwide.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury edged down to 4.56% Friday from 4.57% late Thursday, but it remains well above its 3.97% level from before the war.

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

It was not immediately known if anyone was hurt in the attack on the Mongbwalu General Hospital but Dr. Richard Lokudu, the hospital’s medical director, told The Associated Press the attackers demanded that two bodies of their kin be handed over to them.

There was gunfire and the medics were trying to evacuate the patients and the staff, Lokudu said over the phone.

“Mongbwalu General Hospital is on general alert,” he added. He did not have any further details of the unfolding turmoil.

The attack — the third in a week’s time on healthcare facilities where medical workers struggle with lack of resources to treat suspected Ebola cases — underlined the challenges of the outbreak, which the World Health Organization has declared a public health emergency of international concern.

Bodies of those who died of Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals.

In response to the outbreak, Congolese authorities have mandated that the dangerous work of burying suspected victims be managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met by protests from families and friends. On Friday, the government said funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people would be banned in northeastern Congo in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

On Saturday, a group of residents of Mongbwalu, located in Ituri province, attacked and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group.

During that attack, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and were now unaccounted for, Lokudu had said earlier.

On Thursday, another treatment center, in the town of Rwampara, was burned down after family members were banned from retrieving the body of a local man suspected to have died of Ebola.

WHO has said the outbreak poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.

Earlier on Sunday, the Congolese Ministry of Communication said on X that there were 904 suspected cases of Ebola, mostly in northeastern Ituri Province — a significant jump from the previously announced more than 700 suspected Ebola cases.

The ministry also said the total suspected Ebola deaths stood at 119, but the numbers it released separately for each region added up to 220. Officials could not immediately be reached to explain the discrepancy.

There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola, which spread undetected for weeks in Ituri following the first reported death — in late April in the town of Bunia, the provincial capital — while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu. The agency said it believed the three healthcare workers contracted the virus on March 27 while handling dead bodies as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.

If confirmed, this would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak.

___

Pronczuk reported from Dakar, Senegal.

One of the workers emerged dead while emergency personnel struggled in the early morning hours to revive the other one in an ambulance near the pile of concrete slabs, twisted iron bars and aluminum scaffoldings that was all that remained of the building in Angeles City of Pampanga Province. They eventually gave up and drove away.

The poignant scene was witnessed by a small group of journalists, including from The Associated Press, who stood by as hundreds of rescuers led by firefighters and police scrambled for hours to extricate the two workers, who were at the time alive but trapped under concrete slabs and iron bars.

Rescuers tried to provide water and medicine intravenously to one of the trapped workers in the rubble in a desperate effort to keep him alive in the scorching summer heat, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Jess Mendez told the AP.

“He never made it despite all the efforts,” he said.

The third dead victim was a Malaysian tourist trapped in a budget inn that was partly hit by the avalanche of debris from the collapsed building. Another guest at the inn was injured but managed to dash out, officials said.

A day after the unfinished building collapse with a loud crashing sound after a fierce thunderstorm, Angeles City Mayor Carmelo Lazatin said rescue efforts would still not be shifted to a body retrieval operation.

“My best hope is that we can rescue more people alive,” Lazatin told the AP. “We don’t want to give the families of the trapped workers any bad news.”

Anxiety and fear among relatives of the trapped workers, who are waiting in sheds near the rubble, have deepened.

“I’m losing hope because of what I see— slow rescue work,” said Lea Mendoza Casilao, a 47-year-old sardine factory worker whose boyfriend, a mason, was among those still trapped in the rubble.

She brought a week’s supply of rice and sardines for him at the construction site, but she said they would never meet as scheduled over the weekend after the building where he was sleeping crumbled before dawn on Sunday.

Lazatin said rescuers were moving carefully because huge slabs of concrete were being held up precariously by a tangle of aluminum scaffoldings and could crash down on rescuers.

Twenty-six workers were either rescued or managed to run out of the collapsing building, where they slept on pieces of plywood on the ground floor. Of the 17 workers still missing, one has been located but has yet to be extricated from the rubble, officials said.

National police chief Gen. Jose Melencio Nartatez Jr. said his force will support an “ongoing investigation to determine the cause of the incident and possible violations of safety and building regulations.”

Angeles City hosted one of the largest U.S. Air Force bases outside of the American mainland, helping turn Angeles and outlying cities and towns into entertainment and commercial hubs in the main northern Philippine region of Luzon.

Clark Air Base, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Manila, closed in the early 1990s.

The former American base has become a bustling industrial and tourism enclave called the Clark Freeport Zone, and is still surrounded by remnants of U.S. base-era red-light strips, bars, nightclubs, tattoo shops and budget hotels.

That made his crown jewel Cup Series victory Sunday night all the more special.

Suarez benefited from a crucial pit call, then caught a break from Mother Nature to win the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600, capping an emotional day in which the racing world remembered the late Busch.

Suarez became the first Mexican-born driver to win the Coke 600. It was his third Cup Series win and first since 2024.

The victory was especially emotional for Suarez, who previously raced for Kyle Busch Motorsports.

“Kyle, he was special,” Saurez said as he teared up. “I was doing this for Kyle, for (his wife) Samatha, for (his children) Brexton and Lennix and for all of his family.”

A non-factor for most of the race, Suarez gambled and took two tires during a late pit stop, then held off Christopher Bell and Denny Hamlin on restarts before the race was called when the sky opened up and rain drenched the track shortly before midnight Eastern time.

NASCAR quickly made the decision to call the race with 27 laps remaining.

Bell finished second; Hamlin was third.

The two Joe Gibbs Racing teammates had a chance to catch Suarez on the two restarts, but couldn't clear his No. 7 Chevrolet.

“It’s a bummer," Bell said, who won the rain-shortened 2024 Coca-Cola 600. "It wasn’t meant to be today. That's 2026 for us.”

Hamlin said he was “just a little unlucky.”

“The 20 car (Bell) and us were just really battling because we knew whoever could clear him (would win the race),” Hamlin said. "We were really good all day. We just didn’t get to see it through.”

The race came just three days after Busch’s death sent shockwaves throughout the motorsports world and beyond. The 41-year-old Busch died after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming complications, according to a statement released by his family.

The two-time Cup Series champion and winner of a record 234 races across NASCAR’s three national series had become unresponsive while practicing in a Chevrolet simulator Wednesday, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because no details were released by the family.

Busch's family attended the race and NASCAR CEO Steve O'Donnell told them they are part of the NASCAR community and “we got you.”

NASCAR and CMS honored Busch with his No. 8 and signature on the frontstretch grass and a highway billboard near the main entrance of the track. The U.S. Army Golden Knights carried a Busch flag prior to the race and each of the 39 cars in field carried a small, black No. 8 decal.

Kyle Larson won the first stage race. Hamlin won the second stage and Bell the third.

Crashing out

Defending champion Ross Chastain crashed out when Ricky Stenhouse Jr. clipped his car in Turn 2 with 81 laps remaining in the race.

Connor Zilisch and Austin Cindric only made it 52 laps before getting caught up in a crash. Cindric got turned around and Zilisch came crashing in to the side of his No. 2 Ford, ending both drivers’ day.

Chase Elliott, a two-time winner this year, hit the outside wall and ping-ponged into the inside wall on Lap 90. That car was beyond repair and he finished 37th.

“I was trying to make something happen and I stepped over the line,” Elliott said.

Replacing Busch

Austin Hill, a regular driver in the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series for Richard Childress Racing, took Busch's spot in the race and finished 26th. He drove the No. 33 car after RCR temporarily retired the No. 8 until Busch's 11-year-old son Brexton is ready to drive.

Austin Dillon, went behind the wall with damage to the front of his car with 56 laps to go, ending any hope of an emotional win for RCR. He finished 32nd.

___

AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Mike Burgess, director-general of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the nation’s main domestic spy agency known as ASIO, was testifying at a wide-ranging government inquiry into the spread of antisemitism in Australia ahead of the attack at Bondi Beach on Dec. 14.

ASIO reduced Australia’s National Terrorism Threat Level from “probable” to “possible” — the second-safest level on a five-tier scale -- in November 2022, after the Islamic State group in the Middle East had been defeated and was no longer recruiting fighters.

ASIO then shifted to increase its focus on foreign interference and espionage investigations, but left the organization’s “counterterrorism mission” with sufficient resources, Burgess said.

“Because terrorism has the potential to cause people to lose their lives or get harmed, it always remained a priority for us. There was just less activity that we were investigating because the nature of the environment had changed and the number of tasks we were looking at had reduced,” Burgess said.

“At the same time, every rock we lifted up we found espionage or foreign interference that needed to be inquired and investigated and so resources were moved over there,” Burgess added.

Spy boss had sounded alarm after the Hamas Oct. 7 attack

Five days after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Burgess said he took an unprecedented step for an ASIO boss by making a public statement warning that inflamed language could lead to violence.

“Before the Israeli government responded to that horrific attack, we saw the strong emotions appear in this country where we had people celebrating the Hamas terrorist attack,” Burgess said.

ASIO saw threatening and intimidating behavior directed at Jewish Australians through the end of 2023, particularly in the eastern states of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, Burgess said. That behavior escalated to target Jewish businesses and places of worship in October 2024, he said.

ASIO elevated Australia’s terrorism threat level again to “probable” in August 2024.

Hanukkah event was given the lowest security priority

Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, the highest form of inquiry in Australia, must report to the government before the first anniversary of what was the nation’s worst mass shooting since 1996.

The father and son gunmen, Sajid and Naveed Akram, were inspired by IS and brought handmade IS flags to Bondi, prosecutors allege.

Both were wounded in a gunfight with police, the father fatally, less than eight minutes after the shooting began. The son has been charged with committing a terrorist act, 15 counts of murder and 40 counts of attempted murder. He has entered no pleas.

Richard Lancaster, who leads a team of lawyers in his role as the Senior Counsel Assisting the Royal Commission, said only four police officers were at the event when the gunmen opened fire on a crowd of around 1,000 people.

Within 29 seconds of the start of the shooting, 10 people had been fatally shot and an 11th had been wounded, Lancaster said.

Within five minutes, 11 police officers were at the scene. Three of those officers were wounded, he said.

A Jewish security organization, the Community Security Group, had requested the New South Wales Police Force post officers at the beachfront park for the duration of the Hanukkah event, Lancaster said. Instead, officers were instructed to attend from time to time.

Police gave the Hanukkah celebration the lowest security priority on a three-tier scale, with police resources managed by a local commander, Lancaster said.

Jewish High Holy Days in September and October were top-tier events in which police resources were managed by the specialized Police Force Major Events Group in liaison with the paramilitary Police Force Counter Terrorism and Special Tactics Command.

“There is no evidence that any intelligence agency or law enforcement agency had any actual knowledge or specific information to suggest there might be an armed attack on the Hanukkah celebration,” Lancaster said.

“In that sense, it was a surprise attack,” he added.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Burgess said the agency’s counterterrorism mission was left with sufficient resources.

Some 50,000 residents in Garden Grove, a city of roughly 170,000 about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles, have been evacuated and are waiting for a resolution. The tank overheated Thursday and began venting vapors, leaving local and state officials scrambling to evade a worst possible scenario at the aerospace company site.

No injuries have been reported.

Fire officials planned to send in a team overnight to determine if the pressure has been relieved, which would reduce the worst-case scenario of an explosion, Orange County Fire Authority interim chief TJ McGovern said in a video posted late Sunday to the agency's X account.

Atmospheric modeling showed an active leak from the tank as of Sunday night, McGovern said.

Firefighters have repeatedly sprayed the tank with water in an attempt to cool the chemical inside, methyl methacrylate, which is used to make plastic parts. The tank's interior reached 100 degrees (37.7 Celsius) Sunday, an increase of 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius) since Saturday, according to Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg.

Fire officials over the weekend discovered the tank had cracked, lowering the potential for a devastating blast.

Officials working to prevent a disaster

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Saturday and said he asked President Donald Trump to issue an emergency declaration to bolster federal support for local and state officials.

The tank at GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft, holds 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 to 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate used to make plastic parts.

Monitoring tests found air pollution around the evacuation zone was within normal limits and specialized equipment is being used to ensure gas is not released, state and federal environmental officials said Saturday.

The first goal of firefighters is to cool off the chemical inside the tank to prevent a leak or explosion.

Drones were monitoring temperatures at 10-minute intervals to watch for any spikes. Containment barriers have been set up to prevent the chemical from getting into storm drains or reaching creeks or the nearby ocean in the event of a spill, Orange County Fire Authority division chief Craig Covey said on social media.

As the interior temperature rises, methyl methacrylate converts from a liquid to a gas and increases the pressure, according to Purdue University engineering professor Andrew Whelton, who said the crack could mean product or pressure is being released, reducing the chance of explosion.

“Think of a soda can. If you leave it in a hot car it can explode,” Whelton said. “But if you put a hole in the can, the product is released and the can itself doesn’t explode.”

Firefighters are unlikely to consider making a hole in the tank, fearing a spark that might ignite the volatile and flammable gas. An explosion that could spread the chemical over a broad area and send shrapnel flying would be the worst-case scenario, he said.

Dealing with displacement and health concerns

Aerial photos taken by The Associated Press showed streets in the area were empty Sunday, while several evacuation shelters were open. At a high school in neighboring La Palma, people slept in cars or on mats and sleeping bags on the asphalt.

Garden Grove is next to Anaheim, home to Disneyland’s two theme parks, which were not under evacuation orders. Park officials said they were monitoring the situation.

Exposure to methyl methacrylate can cause serious respiratory problems, neurological problems and irritation to the skin, eyes and throat, according to fact sheets about the chemical.

Whelton said if an explosion occurs, it will be crucial to conduct detailed air monitoring specifically for methyl methacrylate and not just generic tests for volatile organic compounds as officials did after a 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which released more than 115,000 gallons (435,000 liters) of vinyl chloride after officials blew open five tank cars and burned the chemical.

Orange County health officials said the chemical is easy to smell and people may notice it over a large area without being harmed.

Residents taking legal action

Some Garden Grove residents filed a class-action federal lawsuit Saturday against GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems, which operates the facility where the tank is located. Lawyers for the residents argued that regardless of what happens, property values in the surrounding community are sure to be impacted.

GKN Aerospace did not comment on the lawsuit but has apologized to residents and businesses forced to evacuate. It said Sunday it was “working around the clock to mitigate the risk of a leak.”

GKN Aerospace agreed in 2025 to pay state regulators more than $900,000 to settle violations involving recordkeeping, permitting issues and nitrogen oxide emissions, according to a report on the South Coast Air Quality Management District website.

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Associated Press journalist Ethan Swope in Garden Grove, California, contributed to this report.

Kerley, who predicted Usain Bolt's world record of 9.58 seconds would get “destroyed,” ran a time that would have placed him last at the Paris Olympics two years ago, where he ran 9.81 and won bronze.

The only athlete to win the $1 million bonus for going faster than the world record over the four hours of swimming, weightlifting and track in the specially built stadium on the Las Vegas Strip was Kristian Gkolomeev, who closed the night by swimming the 50-meter free in 20.81 seconds.

That record won't go into the books, however, because the Enhanced Games, true to its name, allows performance-enhancing drugs that are banned in mainstream sports.

The men’s 50-meter freestyle world record of 20.88 seconds was set two months ago in a sanctioned event by Cameron McEvoy.

Gkolomeev had also won a $1 million bonus from Enhanced last year for swimming faster than the world record during a “trial.”

“Another million, it’s not bad at all,” he said. “It’s going to change my life to the good, for sure.“

The most iconic marks in Olympic sports, though, are in track, and when Kerley called out Bolt’s 17-year-old record, it made headlines and even got Bolt involved with a short post on social media: “OK,” he said.

By the time the starting gun sounded (or maybe long before that, depending on who you ask) it was clear there wouldn't be much to worry about.

Kerley was in a line of six runners who had to be called out of the blocks three times — an energy sapper — first for a sprinter to re-tie his shoe, then twice more when the false-start signal went off, but early motion was, apparently, undetectable and nobody was disqualified.

“A lot of false starts, a lot of jumping, a lot of people who didn’t want to run their heats,” Kerley said of the less-than-full field for a basically meaningless prelim race in which he false started but wasn't DQ'd. “Got to do better than that. I’m ready to run fast.“

Kerley, who said he is not using performance enhancers, still pocketed $250,000 — the first-place prize for all the events.

Most athletes are making money they could only dream of in mainstream Olympic sports.

The real stakes, however, could be for the investors in the company that brought the world the Enhanced Games with the idea of turning it into a new-age online pharmacy that peddles performance enhancers under medical supervision.

“It's just the beginning,” CEO Max Martin said in front of a specially curated crowd of around 2,500.

Tickets were not on sale to the general public.

The women’s sprints didn’t have anywhere near the star power Kerley injected into the men’s.

What the two races did have in common were winners who claimed not to be taking drugs — results that force questions about both the effectiveness of performance enhancers and the level of the athletes who signed onto the league that began with mega investments from the likes of Peter Thiel and is now a publicly traded company.

Tristan Evelyn’s winning time of 11.25 seconds in the women's sprint was more than three-quarters of a second slower than FloJo's 38-year-old world record (10.49). It would have been .21 seconds behind the seventh-place finisher at the Paris Games two years ago.

In all, Enhanced said there were 14 personal bests set by 12 athletes, all of them swimmers and weightlifters.

Among those who made runs at world marks was Ben Proud, the British Olympic silver medalist, who finished .05 off the 50-meter fly mark of 22.27.

“I think I am,” he said when asked if he was happy after winning $250K. “But I think we all know what we came here for, and that’s a world record.”

Kerley didn’t come close to it. When it was over, he seemed to be blaming everyone but himself.

“Man, they gotta do better than that,” he said. “Gotta train a little harder, train on that (expletive) a little more.”

___

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

The man went under the surface of the water and began to struggle, according to a city bulletin.

While people attempted to help the man, the city said those efforts were unsuccessful. Members of the Boerne Fire Department Water Rescue Team, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, and the Boerne Police Department also responded to the scene.

The city said on Facebook that Boerne City Lake will reopen Monday.

Read also:

• Kendall County Fair reaches settlement with 2 injured in 2024 partial bleacher collapse
• Bravo announces new reality TV series set in Boerne

Vegas coach John Tortorella had his own description.

“This is a game where we showed some balls,” the man known as Torts said after the Golden Knights' latest Houdini act.

Tomas Hertl weaved his way toward the slot and broke a tie at 8:21 of the third period as the Golden Knights overcame a three-goal deficit Sunday night to beat Colorado 5-3 and move within a victory of their third Stanley Cup Final appearance in nine years.

“It obviously feels really good right now, but we’re playing a hell of a hockey team,” Golden Knights forward Mitch Marner said. “We know that the next game is going to be even tougher now. Enjoy this for the next 10 minutes, 30 minutes, go home and then try to take care of yourself, and do what you got to do to be ready tomorrow.”

The Golden Knights go for what would be a stunning sweep over the Presidents' Trophy winners on Tuesday night. Chicago in 2013 was the last team to win the Presidents' Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season.

Colorado will try to become just the fifth team to win a series after falling behind 3-0. Los Angeles in 2014 was the most recent team to accomplish that in eliminating San Jose in their first-round series.

Vegas, which trailed 3-0 after the first period, was 0-19 in the playoffs when behind that many goals. The Avalanche were 74-1 when holding such a lead.

“As low as it can get,” Avalanche coach Jared Bednar said of the team's emotions. “It’s a big hill to climb. The next 24-to-36 hours is for … you’ve got to find a way to get over it, regroup and go again.”

Colorado has other concerns because front-line center Nathan MacKinnon might not be fully healthy going forward. MacKinnon, who has 15 points this postseason and led the league in the regular season with 53 goals, took a puck to his right knee in the second period and played through the injury.

That comes just as the Avalanche got back star defenseman Cale Makar, who missed the first two games this series because of an upper-body injury.

Vegas keeps finding aways, going this deep into the postseason despite being outshot in 11 of 15 games, including now nine in a row. The Golden Knights erased deficits the past two games against Colorado, though Game 2 was just 1-0.

“We’ve been all season long many times down,” Hertl said. “We’ve come back so many times. Even after the first when we were down 3-0 we knew we could do it.”

Hertl, Mark Stone and William Karlsson each had a goal and assist. Keegan Kolesar and Brett Howden scored the other Golden Knights goals, and Mitch Marner and Kaedan Korczak each tallied two assists. Carter Hart made 32 saves.

Stone’s goal came on his first appearance since suffering a lower-body injury in Game 3 of the second-round series against Anaheim. Kolesar, who had gone 37 playoff games without a goal, picked up his first point of the postseason.

Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri and Jack Drury scored for the Avalanche, and Devon Toews had two assists. Scott Wedgewood stopped 18 shots.

The Avalanche dominated the first period by taking a 3-0 lead, but the Golden Knights thought they had cut the deficit to 2-1 when Pavel Dorofeyev appeared to score a power-play goal with 7:26 left. Officials immediately waved it off and the decision was upheld on video review.

Colorado then made the Golden Knights pay when Drury found himself alone on a breakaway, deking Vegas goalie Hart to score the short-handed goal with 6:45 left for the three-goal lead.

But the Golden Knights didn't let the two-goal swing trouble them too much, with Stone's power-play goal 19 seconds into the second period sparking a three-goal answer to tie the game heading into the final period of regulation.

Then Hertl broke the deadlock — and now the Golden Knights just need to win one of four games.

“I want them to feel it for a little bit, as far as what they just did against a really good hockey club,” Tortorella said, “but then we get back to work tomorrow.”

There was a moment of silence before the game for two-time NASCAR champion driver and Las Vegas native Kyle Busch. He died Thursday at 41 after severe pneumonia developed into sepsis, according to a statement from Busch's family.

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

Meals are available to children ages 18 and younger, as well as students under 21 years old enrolled in the district’s Special Education Program.

KSAT has compiled a list of some districts in the area providing summer meals, which can be viewed below:

San Antonio Independent School District

For more information, the district recommends to call (210) 554-2290.

North East Independent School District

North East Independent School District (NEISD) is also participating in the program.

NEISD’s summer food service program begins June 4 and ends July 31.

Meals sponsored by NEISD School Nutrition are available at the following sites and must be eaten on site, according to the district:

Additional food service sites across Texas can be found here or by calling 211 to speak to a live operator.

Read also:

• Free outdoor films under the moon are back at South Side theater
• Free, discounted movies return to San Antonio theaters this summer
• Tejano Conjunto Festival to pay tribute to Flaco Jiménez’s legacy this weekend

It started with an Instagram post from Nav Bhatia, a millionaire businessman and superfan of the Toronto Raptors who is beloved by the Raptors organization.

WATCH: DeRozan poster dunk arguably one of season’s best; Popovich hilariously interrupts DeMar interview

Bhatia shared a photo to Instagram on Sunday of himself and DeMar DeRozan embracing courtside at the AT&T Center when the Spurs hosted the Raptors last January.

It was the first time DeRozan had faced his old team after spending nine seasons in Toronto.

Bhatia referred to DeRozan as a “son” in the post saying, “I will never forget that first time the @raptors played @demar_derozan when he became a Spur. It was like watching your son play for someone elses (sic) family.”

He goes on to wax nostalgic about DeRozan and everything seems fine until Spurs Jesus slid into the comments and Twitter users are not happy about it.

DeRozan scores 25 against old team as Spurs rally from 18 down to beat Raptors

Spurs Jesus has since deleted his comment but not before a screenshot was taken and posted to Twitter.

His comment says, in part, “...how come the Spurs organization doesn’t appreciate me like the Raptors organization appreciates you... ???”

Im sorry but does this annoy anyone else?! 😒 pic.twitter.com/UTYchfBhHW

— desiree (@desiree_june09) January 13, 2020

Spurs Jesus continues and refers to his loyalty of the Spurs franchise and ends his comment with, “Just sayin.... why no love??? Just makes no sense.”

Twitter users reaction are below:

Poor guy can’t believe Spurs Organization doesn’t show him love just because he’s been sitting “Courtside” and a lot of games in a Jesus costume😒

— Angel (@_angel218_) January 14, 2020

So we have confirmed the Spurs Jesus get up is absolutely solely for attention... not because he truly loves the squad and the game. Also what a way to represent yourself.... Commenting on an awesome sentimental post and making it all about yourself. Lol. Next. https://t.co/dOEE8ZMDPP

— Caroline Wright (@c_always_wright) January 16, 2020

“And with the power of one self-absorbed IG comment, Spurs Jesus turned the water into vinegar.”

Book of Manu 2:1-2:3 https://t.co/JJs9WYOCHV

— Matt 🅱️ (@MatthiasBeezy) January 16, 2020

KSAT reached out to Spurs Jesus via Instagram for comment.

De’Aaron Fox had 12 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for San Antonio, which has not lost three consecutive games all season. Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell added 13 points each.

Game 5 is Tuesday in Oklahoma City, followed by Game 6 on Thursday in San Antonio.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 19 points on 6-for-15 shooting for the Thunder.

Wembanyama took Oklahoma City’s 123-108 victory Friday in Game 3 personally. The 7-foot-4 star from France said he needed to be better to make his teammates better. He was monumentally better Sunday night — and so was San Antonio.

The Spurs limited the Thunder to 33% shooting from the field, including 6 for 33 on 3-pointers (18%).

After being outscored 76-23 in bench points in Game 3, San Antonio’s reserves scored 30 points while limiting Oklahoma City to 34.

The Spurs had another hot start in Game 4 after opening the previous game on a 15-0 run. Unlike Friday’s lopsided loss, the Spurs never relinquished that lead.

After blocking Jared McCain’s layup under the rim, Vassell tossed an alley-oop pass to Wembanyama for a dunk as part of 16-0 run that gave the Spurs a 23-8 lead with 4:19 remaining.

San Antonio had an assist on all 10 field goals in the first quarter.

San Antonio held Oklahoma City to 38 points in the first half, tied for its second-lowest half in the past four regular and postseasons. The Thunder are 2-9 when they score less than 40 points in any half over the last five seasons.

Oklahoma City’s franchise low is 65 points in a playoff loss to Memphis on May 3, 2014, and its second-fewest points had been 85 against San Antonio on May 21, 2014.

The Associated Press’ Raul Dominguez contributed to this report.

Two Fort Hood military police officers responded to a report of fighting at approximately 9 p.m. Saturday at the Belton Lake Outdoor Recreation Area on the installation. Multiple shots were fired, according to the Army.

Three people were injured, according to the release.

One civilian was transported to an area hospital, the release said, where they died from their injuries.

A second civilian — described by the Army as not affiliated with the Department of Defense — was transported to an area hospital and remained in stable condition as of the release.

A service member was treated for minor injuries at the scene and released.

The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division is leading the investigation. No arrests or charges have been announced, but the release said there is no active threat to the community.

The Army is asking anyone with information to contact Army CID at www.p3tips.com/armycid or by phone at 254-287-2722.

Read also:

• San Antonio military wife creates community to help families navigate constant relocation
• San Antonio veterans, community members honor fallen heroes ahead of Memorial Day

“The highlight will be when I can finally lay down because I'm so tired,” Legge said.

Legge's quest to become the first woman to complete “The Double” — racing 1,100 miles spread out over two tracks on one day — ended quickly Sunday when she crashed out in the Indianapolis 500.

She flew to North Carolina and finished in 31st at the Coca-Cola 600 and 12 laps back after losing a tire mid-race.

Legge said now it is time to regroup after what she called “a calamity of errors.”

The English driver completed just 17 of the scheduled 200 laps at Indianapolis Motor Speedway's iconic 2.5-mile oval before she ran into the car of Ryan Hunter-Reay, knocking both cars out of the race. Hunter-Reay started spinning in the second turn and braked hard to keep his car off the wall, and the trailing Legge steered inside to try to avoid the 2013 Indy 500 winner. But as smoke emerge from both braking cars, Legge's car hit the inside wall.

“I’m fine, just gutted more than anything,” she said after being checked and released at the track's infield medical center. “Ryan spun in front of me, I think he was battling his car for a minute, I was just chilling, trying to save fuel and he spun down the track and started coming up the track, so I tried to go low and just didn’t make it.”

Legge was the sixth driver ever to attempt “The Double." The only driver to complete it is three-time NASCAR champion Tony Stewart in 2001.

It's been a week full of bad luck for Legge.

Her flight from New York to Indianapolis was delayed, causing her to miss Indy's annual media day. Then she had communications trouble in Friday's final 500 practice, and after flying to Charlotte on Saturday, Coca-Cola 600 qualifying was rained out.

“Hopefully, we get all of the travel woes out of the way now before the weekend, and this weekend goes smoothly,” Legge told The Associated Press on Thursday. “My management has been speaking with Kyle’s management about how to get the logistics sorted out, how they did it and we’re trying our best to copy and paste what they had and they’re just keeping me in the loop.”

Her fortunes briefly looked like they might have changed when the speedway dodged the predicted prerace rain, allowing the race to begin on time. Then came the tangle with Hunter-Reay, who was also was checked and released by IndyCar's medical team.

“It was super tough out there,” Hunter-Reay said. “The whole time I was trying to keep it off the wall. Just super disappointing. That’s the busiest I’ve been around here in 16 years. I was trying to keep it off the wall the whole time and finally, one of those wiggles didn't come back in Turn 2.”

At the 500, crashes and bad weather have been a theme in each of the last three “Double” attempts. A rain-delayed Indy start prevented two-time NASCAR champion Kyle Larson from making it to Charlotte in time for the start in 2024, and Larson crashed out of both races last year after another rain-delayed start in Indy.

But Legge was hoping to avoid all of it.

“She’ll stay here throughout,” her father, Derek Legge, said before the first race while texting from a golf cart outside her garage. “We’re keeping an eye on the weather. It might even be delayed here an hour at a time.”

By then, Legge’s car was already on the Brickyard as the sold-out grandstands filled in and hundreds of people surrounded the cars on the track.

The English driver started from the No. 26 spot, the middle of the ninth row, at Indy, where she drove for HMD Motorsports with A.J. Foyt Racing team.

The other five drivers who previously tried "The Double” had months to prepare, but Legge's teams didn't announce her attempt until last week. Since then, those behind the scenes helped Legge line up the helicopter ride she planned to take from the speedway to Indianapolis International Airport and the private jet that would take her to Charlotte.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

The Uvalde community will gather once again at 7:15 p.m. for a candlelight vigil, as they have done each year since the tragedy, to remember the 21 victims.

These are the names of the lives lost in Uvalde:

• Alithia Ramirez, 10
• Amerie Jo Garza, 10
• Xavier Lopez, 10
• Jose Flores, 10
• Eva Mireles, 4th-grade teacher
• Irma Garcia, 4th-grade teacher
• Nevaeh Bravo, 10
• Ellie Garcia, 9
• Tess Mata, 10
• Lexi Rubio, 10
• Jacklyn Cazares, 9
• Jailah Nicole Siguero, 10
• Jayce Luevanos, 10
• Maranda Mathis, 11
• Makenna Lee Elrod, 10
• Layla Salazar, 11
• Maite Rodriguez, 10
• Annabell Rodriguez, 10
• Eliahana Cruz Torres, 10
• Rojelio Torres, 10
• Uziyah Garcia, 10

The deadly Robb Elementary shooting once again grabbed national attention after a mother of one of the victims gave a speech at the Oscars.

Gloria Cazares, whose child Jacklyn was killed in the Uvalde school shooting, accepted the award for Best Documentary Short at the 98th Academy Awards.

“Jackie is more than just a headline,” Cazares said. “She is our light and our life.”

“All the Empty Rooms,” which premiered last December, documented the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings over the course of seven years.

“Gun violence is now the number one cause of death in kids and teens,” Cazares said. “We believe that if the world could see their empty bedrooms, we’d be a different America.”

Her full speech can be watched below:

Her speech came months after jurors issued a not guilty verdict in the child endangerment trial of ex-Uvalde CISD police officer Adrian Gonzales.

Officers did not breach the door and kill the 18-year-old gunman until about 77 minutes after the first officers arrived at the school, even as students inside the classrooms called 911.

The Uvalde community grappled with mixed emotions following the trial.

“It’s not the end,” Teresa Nira said. “It’ll never be the end, really, because there will always be some outcome we have to deal with.”

Read also:

• ‘More than just a headline’: Mother of Uvalde school shooting victim speaks at the Oscars
• Uvalde community grapples with emotions after not-guilty verdict in former officer’s trial
• Remember Their Names: KSAT honors victims of Uvalde shooting

More than 1.5 million pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia from outside the country, Saleh bin Saad Al-Murabba, commander of the Hajj passport forces, said Friday. The faithful have been pouring into the country for the Hajj against the backdrop of a tenuous ceasefire in the Iran war and related regional tensions and uncertainty.

Egyptian pilgrim Samya Abdul Moneim said she was grateful to God that she made it to the Hajj, which is required once in a lifetime of every Muslim who can afford it and is physically able to make it.

“I am in a state of blessing and happiness,” she said in Mecca on Sunday. “It’s an indescribable feeling, truly. I mean, thank God, I am in a blessing.”

Typically on the first day, many pilgrims in Mecca converge on a vast tent camp in the nearby desert. Ahead of that, pilgrims have been circling the cube-shaped Kaaba in the Grand Mosque in sweltering temperatures. For pilgrims, Hajj can be a deeply moving spiritual experience and a chance to seek God’s forgiveness and the erasure of past sins. Pilgrims perform the Hajj rituals over several days.

Pilgrims brave intense heat

Some spend many years hoping and praying to one day perform the Hajj or saving up money and waiting for a permit to embark on the trip.

As they brave the intense heat to perform religious rituals, many pilgrims have been using umbrellas for shade and carrying handheld fans. Volunteers hand out water bottles to help them stay hydrated and large fans spray fine mists of water.

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump said a deal with Iran on the war, including opening the Strait of Hormuz, has been “largely negotiated” after calls with Israel and other allies in the region. He described it as a “Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE” that still must be finalized by the United States, Iran and the other countries that participated in the calls. That capped a week in which the U.S. weighed a new round of attacks on Iran.

Ahead of the trip for Hajj, some have said they were leaning on their faith as they embark on the journey amid the tensions and that they were feeling immense gratitude for the opportunity to go.

Hajj brings together large numbers of Muslims of diverse races, ethnicities, languages and economic classes, creating a sense of unity for many.

Regional tensions and Hajj travel plans

With uncertainty and global concerns high, authorities in Indonesia, home to the world’s largest Muslim population, have in the run-up to the Hajj season emphasized contingency planning for the pilgrimage and issued instructions to ensure that additional travel costs not be passed on to Indonesian pilgrims.

In India, home to a large Muslim minority, pilgrimage planning has proceeded largely as normal, but high fuel prices have pushed up travel costs for pilgrims.

A reopening of the strait would begin to ease a worldwide energy crisis sparked by the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, which led Tehran to effectively close the waterway. Prices have spiked for oil, gas and several related products, jolting the world economy. The U.S. has blockaded Iranian ports for over a month, and Trump on Sunday said the blockade “will remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed.”

In response to the U.S.-Israeli attacks, Iran has launched retaliatory strikes and the conflict widened; a fragile ceasefire was then reached in April.

In Saudi Arabia, pilgrims have been doing the ritual circuit around the Kaaba since arriving in Mecca over recent days. Pilgrims who make their way to Mina will camp in the vast tent city and pray and worship.

On Tuesday, in what is considered the pinnacle of the pilgrimage, the pilgrims will stand on the plain of Arafat, where they praise God, plead for forgiveness and make supplications. Many carry prayer requests from loved ones and raise their hands in worship with tears streaming down their faces.

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Fam reported from Winter Park, Florida. Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi contributed to this report.

___

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

The Golden Knights, instead, put the setback behind them and rallied to beat the Colorado Avalanche 5-3 and take a 3-0 series lead in the Western Conference Final.

Vegas forward Pavel Dorofeyev appeared to score a power-play goal with 7:26 left in the first period, but officials immediately waved it off and the decision was upheld on video review. The Golden Knights immediately celebrated despite the initial call with a run through the high-five line, believing the call would be changed after officials checked the video.

Officials ruled on the ice that the puck went off Dorofeyev's glove, according to the ESPN broadcast, and found the video inconclusive.

Dorofeyev's stick also might have been above the cross bar, but it was at least even with it.

The Avalanche then made the Golden Knights pay when Jack Drury found himself alone on a breakaway, deking Vegas goalie Carter Hart to score the short-handed goal with 6:45 left for the three-goal lead.

A lead that didn't last.

“Not super ideal, obviously, but I think we got a pretty big penalty kill after that and it kind of settled us down and the period ends,” Golden Knights captain Mark Stone said. "That’s probably the best thing that could happen to us, the period ends.”

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

He had three Oklahoma City defenders in front of him. He took three dribbles. He got three points.

And he made it look easy, too.

A swished 3-pointer from the midcourt stripe to close the first half brought maybe the loudest roars of his night, but it was hardly the only moment in which Wembanyama was unstoppable in Game 4 of the Western Conference finals on Sunday.

He got most of the fourth quarter off and still finished with 33 points, eight rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots as the Spurs beat the Thunder 103-82 to tie the West title series at two games apiece.

“The truth is that we had never been in this kind of situation before,” Wembanyama said. “It was our first deficit in a playoff series and we just responded. It was nothing amazing. It wasn't magic. We just did what we needed to do.”

In other words, he wasn't surprised. A 62-win team in the regular season — and a team that has now beaten Oklahoma City six times in nine opportunities this season — shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore.

Game 5 is Tuesday in Oklahoma City.

It was Wembanyama who pointed the finger of blame at himself following San Antonio's loss in Game 3, saying that the Spurs were “going to see what we're made of” in Game 4 and that he had to do more to get teammates involved.

He delivered on every level.

“I saw a lot and I'm not surprised," Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said. “I think our competitive response all year has been pretty good — and he's been at the forefront of that more often than not. I think tonight, not speaking for him, he felt an obligation to set a tone for us in a variety of ways.”

Wembanyama had 11 points in the first quarter, 11 more on 10 shot attempts in the second quarter and capped all that with the beat-the-clock 3-pointer going into halftime.

And on the other end, he might have been even better.

The unanimous Defensive Player of the Year — who was announced on Sunday night as a first-team All-NBA selection for the first time — led an effort that held Oklahoma City to a season-low in points and a season-high-tying 20 turnovers.

The Thunder had at least 108 points in every game in these playoffs entering Sunday.

“We've played 12 playoff games. When you play 12 playoff games, they're not all going to be masterpieces,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “As much as you want to win, there's nights where you just don't have it for whatever reason.”

On Sunday, that reason might have been Wembanyama. The Thunder were outscored by 29 points when he was on the floor. They shot 18 of 41 inside the paint, with Wembanyama a big reason for that, so more things got forced outside — where they shot 12 of 50.

He was asked how the Spurs bottled up the Thunder so well.

“I'm not going to get into details, but in general, being more disciplined and just trusting the game plan even more,” Wembanyama said.

There's a flight for the Spurs to Oklahoma City on Monday for a game on Tuesday, and the winner of that contest will be one game away from the NBA Finals. It's clear that Wembanyama knows that even after a big win, the job only gets tougher now.

“The series is far from over,” Wembanyama said. “We've got six more wins before we can rest.”

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

De'Aaron Fox had 12 points, 10 rebounds and five assists for San Antonio, which has not lost three consecutive games all season. Stephon Castle and Devin Vassell added 13 points each.

“You definitely don’t want to go down 3-1 going into their house,” Vassell said. “We knew we had to respond and that’s how you respond. You get stops. You don’t try and focus on the offensive end, you get stops, you get out of transition. You guard your yard and that’s what we did.”

Game 5 is Tuesday in Oklahoma City, followed by Game 6 on Thursday in San Antonio.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had 19 points on 6-for-15 shooting for the Thunder.

Wembanyama took Oklahoma City's 123-108 victory Friday in Game 3 personally. The 7-foot-4 star from France said he needed to be better to make his teammates better. He was monumentally better Sunday night — and so was San Antonio.

“We all have high standards and I know I have a lot of responsibilities, but I’m here for it,” Wembanyama said. “Yeah, it was better today. It wasn’t perfect. But, you know, all of us, I’m talking about the whole organization, so we’re going to have to do things that we didn’t sign up for.”

The Spurs limited the Thunder to 33% shooting from the field, including 6 for 33 on 3-pointers (18%).

“I think we made a great defensive adjustment,” Vassell said. “I don’t want to say what it was. We were just able to rotate the shooters and not give them so many wide-open 3s. I feel like they had so many wide-open 3s over the past couple games and you've got to respect them, especially if they’re making them. So, we were trying to cut them out with that and just stay playing fast.”

After being outscored 76-23 in bench points in Game 3, San Antonio's reserves scored 30 points while limiting Oklahoma City to 34.

The Spurs had another hot start in Game 4 after opening the previous game on a 15-0 run. Unlike Friday’s lopsided loss, the Spurs never relinquished that lead.

“They just punched us in our face early,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “It’s two games in a row they’ve come out the aggressor. The last game we were able to course correct. Tonight, we just didn’t do so.”

After blocking Jared McCain’s layup under the rim, Vassell tossed an alley-oop pass to Wembanyama for a dunk as part of 16-0 run that gave the Spurs a 23-8 lead with 4:19 remaining.

“I feel like with who we are, we need to start games like this,” Wembanyama said, “but it really doesn’t mean anything for the way it holds. I mean, it helps for sure, but it’s a whole 'nother type of effort to be consistent rather than just hitting first.”

San Antonio had an assist on all 10 field goals in the first quarter.

San Antonio held Oklahoma City to 38 points in the first half, tied for its second-lowest half in the past four regular and postseasons. The Thunder are 2-9 when they score less than 40 points in any half over the last five seasons.

Oklahoma City’s franchise low is 65 points in a playoff loss to Memphis on May 3, 2014, and its second-fewest points had been 85 against San Antonio on May 21, 2014.

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

Messi — who almost never gets subbed out of matches — left in the 73rd minute, meaning he was long gone before Luis Suárez's third goal of the night helped lift the defending MLS champions past the last-place Philadelphia Union 6-4 on Sunday night.

No preliminary diagnosis of any issue for Messi was immediately announced. Messi has dealt with hamstring issues at least two other times during his three-year stint with Inter Miami.

In past instances of possible soft tissue injuries, the team has ordered an MRI exam relatively quickly to determine severity. There was no indication in this case from the club that any tests on Messi were scheduled; Mateo Silvetti, the Argentine who replaced Messi on Sunday night, said he had no idea what had happened.

“I tried to see how he was doing. ... I have the same doubt as everyone else,” Silvetti said in Spanish after the match.

Messi had two assists and Germán Berterame scored twice during a record-setting first half for Inter Miami. But Messi basically took himself out of play in the 71st minute and reached toward his left hamstring at least once, then didn't even venture toward the Inter Miami bench when he could be subbed out.

Messi was replaced by Silvetti, then left immediately through the tunnel connecting the field with the team’s locker room. Messi was walking under his own power, albeit slowly, and without any team medical personnel with him.

Suárez got the go-ahead goal in the 81st minute. Rodrigo De Paul, on his birthday, scored in stoppage time to seal the win for Inter Miami.

Heavy rain began falling early in the second half, causing some players to seem to slip on the turf. It wasn't clear if Messi's departure was precautionary or not, and it didn't seem like he took any major missteps during the worst of the rain.

Messi has said in the past that he would only play in the World Cup if healthy. Argentina starts group stage play on June 16.

Milan Iloski had a first-half hat trick — including two penalty kicks — and Bruno Damiani also scored for Union, which was up 2-0 only 10 minutes into the match. That start set the stage for the teams to be tied at 4-4 at the half.

The eight goals by halftime was an MLS record, the league said.

Inter Miami (9-2-4, 31 points) enters the break second in the Eastern Conference, two points behind Nashville (10-1-3, 33 points). Inter Miami is also fourth in the Supporters’ Shield standings — a trophy that Philadelphia won last season.

The Union won’t be winning that this season. Not even close.

They’re at the bottom of the league, a stunning first-to-worst collapse and head into the break with seven points — at 1-10-4.

"It's beautiful, it's fun to be a part of the game, it’s fun to sing a national anthem and obviously to see Messi and all these greats so close to me, it’s an honor," said Grammy-nominated and Latin Grammy-winning singer and Miami resident Luis Fonsi, who performed “The Star-Spangled Banner” pregame. "I’m a fan and I’m enjoying every bit of it.”

He was asked what it's like to share the field with Messi.

“He’s a lot more known than me — times a million," Fonsi said.

Messi has already appeared in five World Cups, winning the Golden Ball as the tournament's best player twice — first in 2014, then again in 2022 when he led Argentina to the title. That award has been given out only since 1982, but he is the lone player to win it twice.

Argentina is in Group J for the World Cup. Its group stage matches: Algeria, at Kansas City, on June 16; Austria, at Arlington, Texas, on June 22; and Jordan, back in Arlington, on June 27.

If Argentina wins that group — and the defending champions would be heavily favored to do so — then Messi would play a Round of 32 match in Miami Gardens on July 3. The only other way for Messi to play in South Florida during the tournament would be if Argentina is in the third-place match on July 18.

Of course, all that is contingent on whether Messi plays. And that would now seem to be in at least some question.

___

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

The difference: He was more focused on being a dad and felt less pressure to reach victory lane.

Rosenqvist responded by making a daring, outside move in the closing yards, sling-shotting past leader David Malukas and across the yard of bricks by half a car-length in the closest race in 500 history and cap the most memorable month of his life.

The 0.023-second victory was his second in 120 career IndyCar starts, his first on an oval and came exactly 20 days after he welcomed his first child, daughter Stella.

“After we had our baby, Stella, I was like I've already won the month of May,” said Roseqvist, whose only other win came in July 2020 at Road America. “But winning was the cheery on top of an incredible month.”

Neither Rosenqvist's wife, Emille, nor his newborn daughter were at the track.

Rosenqvist jumped on top of his Meyer Shank Racing car, pumping his arms in the air before tasting the milk and then dumping it over his head. And why not savor it after what he's endured on this iconic 2.5-mile track.

Rosenqvist entered race day with five straight top nine 500 qualifying runs but no poles. He'd also finished fourth in the race twice over the past four years, including 2025, while winding up 27th in the other two.

And it looked as if this one might be slipping away, too, when the red flag came out with seven laps to go and he got passed on the ensuing restart and again when Malukas appeared to be pulling away while Rosenqvist and teammate Marcus Armstrong were racing wheel-to-wheel on the final lap.

“I was given two options: either I lift or I crash with Felix,” said Armstrong, who finished fifth. “I chose to lift. I don’t know if I could have done anything different.”

With Armstrong out of the way, Rosenqvist pulled up behind Malukas, swung his car to the outside and pushed the car as hard as he could. The momentum — and the tow — sent him past Team Penske's top finisher, relegating Malukas to runner-up status for the second straight year.

Meyer Shank earned its second 500 win and Helio Castroneves, one of four four-time 500 winners, celebrated his first as a team owner.

The victory margin was even closer than the 1992 race when Al Unser Jr. beat Scott Goodyear to the finish line by 0.043 seconds. But that was little consolation to Malukas. Even moving up to second in the points standings was little consolation to the 24-year-old American.

“I just don’t know what else we could have done,” an understandably distraught Malukas said. “We were driving 150% that whole time. We had the fastest car out there, loved that whole race. It was ours to win and I knew that, so I just never pushed like that my whole life.”

Malukas seemed to be in position to win with four turns left.

He beat leader Marcus Armstrong off the final restart with one lap to go and led through each of the final four corners as Rosenqvist tried to snake his way down Indy's front straightaway and moved to the outside.

This time, Rosenqvist timed it perfectly, stayed on the high driving line and didn't think twice about going for it. He's the third Swede to win the 500, joining Kenny Brack in 1999 and Marcus Ericsson in 2022.

Rosenqvist even had to hold off his best friend in racing, Pato O'Ward of Arrow McLaren. The two-time race runner-up finished fourth — his fourth top-five finish in four years — behind Malukas' teammate Scott McLaughlin. Armstrong wound up fifth.

“I haven't seen a finish like that ever," Rosenqvist said. “So initially, I was like ‘OK, I’m second' because this never happens, you never have enough time to get that pass. But it happened and it's just incredible."

It was a wild conclusion to a strange race day that included a handful of crashes, two red flag delays — a 12-minute stoppage midway through the race because of rain and the 10-minute delay after Indy rookie Caio Collet slammed hard into the wall with eight laps to go.

But just as it appeared Rosenqvist and O'Ward might come up short again, they got another chance when Mick Schumacher, the son of seven-time world champ Michael Schumacher, brushed the second turn wall with 3 1/2 laps left

That contact set up the final one-lap shootout and this time, Rosenqvist sensed it was going to be different.

“I think somehow this was the first time I felt less (pressure) because I had so much to come home to at night, and I’m like happy,” Rosenqvist said before telling reporters he had already spoken with his wife after the race. “It's actually kind of nice when taking more pressure off of yourself in a way when you think about the right stuff because because we all put enough pressure on these folks. I think actually it turned out to be a good point to become a dad."

Alex Palou, the pole winner and defending Indy champ, extended his lead to 37 points after leading the most laps (59) and making the most on-track passes (60). But he settled for seventh.

Palau was penalized five points after for a technical violation found in the post-race inspection, with IndyCar saying the “non-compliance was the result of an assembly error and not an intentional modification.”

Double trouble

Katherine Legge’s attempt to become the first woman to complete “The Double” ended after just 17 laps when she couldn’t avoid Ryan Hunter-Reay’s spinning car. Legge’s car skidded down the track and into the inside wall in Turn 2.

The English driver was checked at the track’s infield medical care center and was released. She was still planning to travel to Charlotte, North Carolia, for Sunday night’s Coca-Cola 600. She’s scheduled to start 37th.

Up next

The series moves north for the Detroit Grand Prix next Sunday.

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

• MEMORIAL DAY: Mostly sunny & warm. 20% spotty afternoon rain
• TUESDAY/WEDNESDAY: Another pattern for heavy rainfall being possible Tuesday night
• NEXT WEEK: Additional rain chances are shown for next weekend.

FORECAST

MONDAY

Even less of a rain chance than Sunday. It’ll be mostly sunny and warm with a high near 90°. While there is a small chance (20%) for an afternoon pop-up storm, odds favor it staying dry.

NEXT WEEK

Another low pressure system will move across South Central Texas Tuesday through Wednesday. This will bring our highest chance for widespread rain (60%) Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

Be prepared for the possibility of street flooding after the Spurs game Tuesday and for the Wednesday morning commute. Then, expect a drier and warmer weather pattern to end the week.

QUICK WEATHER LINKS

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

San Marcos City Council approved a plan to collect fees for nonresidents to access Rio Vista Park on holidays and weekends this summer.

Beginning June 20, adults who do not live in San Marcos will be charged $5 to enter the park. Children ages 17 and younger may enter for free.

The city said it will enforce park entrance fees on the following days:

• June 20, 21, 27 and 28
• July 3, 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 and 26
• Aug. 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, 16, 22, 23, 29 and 30
• Sept. 4, 5, 6 and 7

Someone will be considered a nonresident if they do not live within city limits, does not have a 78666 zip code and does not live within the San Marcos Consolidated Independent School District boundary.

Those who live within one of the three areas defined above will be able to sign up for a Rio Vista Park Pass, which allows participants to enter for free.

The city is working on a process to register online for a park pass, and to pay the entrance fee, but has not made those systems public yet.

Once the registration system becomes available, residents may obtain a park pass by submitting one of the following:

• Valid driver’s license or government-issued identification card
• Current San Marcos Utilities statement with photo identification
• Current utility statement from another provider with photo identification
• Current rental or housing contract with photo identification
• Enhanced Library Card provided by the San Marcos Public Library
• Current City Park Paid Parking Permit

Some park parking lots or roads may be closed or restricted for accessible parking on days when the city is charging a fee. The city said parking remains available nearby.

Get outdoors with KSAT:

• Memorial Day weekend river and lake levels: What to know before you float
• City of San Antonio to open 7 outdoor pools this Memorial Day weekend
• Heading to a beach for summer vacations? These are areas in Texas with elevated levels of bacteria

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Wayhowe Huang said that fire officials were able to evaluate the tank more closely overnight and discovered the tank had cracked.

Huang told The Associated Press earlier Sunday that it did not appear any of the highly volatile chemicals in the tank have leaked. “There’s still the danger of a possible explosion," Huang said.

Firefighters have been spraying the tank with water in an effort to cool the chemicals inside and prevent an explosion. The inside of the tank reached 100 degrees (37.7 Celsius) Sunday, Democratic state Sen. Tom Umberg said, an increase of 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius) since Saturday.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who declared a state of emergency Saturday, said in a post on X he had asked President Donald Trump to issue an emergency declaration to bolster federal support for local and state officials.

The pressurized tank overheated Thursday and began venting vapors at a company site in Garden Grove, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles, according to the Fire Authority.

No injuries have been reported. Air monitoring tests have found that air pollution around the evacuation zone is within normal limits, and specialized equipment has been deployed to ensure no gas is released from the compromised tank, state and federal environmental officials said Saturday.

The streets were empty in the area Sunday, according to aerial photos taken by the AP.

Tank crack could mitigate damage

A crack could be a welcome development, as it could mean product or pressure inside the tank is being released, reducing the chance the tank explodes, said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University.

“Think of a soda can. If you leave it in a hot car it can explode," he said. “But if you put a hole in the can, the product is released and the can itself doesn’t explode.”

Elias Picazo, a chemistry professor at the University of Southern California, agreed that a crack could be a positive development.

“A strategic leak buys more time for the liquid within the tank to solidify as the reaction continues,” he said. “Depending on where the leak is, it can also be used to direct the unreacted liquid out of the tank in a controlled manner.”

Faisal Khan, head of the chemical engineering department at Texas A&M University, said a crack suggests an explosion could still happen -- just not in the magnitude initially feared.

“Cooling is happening on the surface of the tank while runaway reaction may be occurring deep inside the tank,” he explained. “Yes, reaction is slowed compared to what it started. However, we are not out of explosive release risk.”

Several shelters for evacuees remained open. The parking lot was full Sunday at an evacuation center at a high school in neighboring La Palma. Some people, including a family of seven, slept in cars or on mats and sleeping bags on the asphalt. The large family also had nine cats with them. They stacked up cat carriers for a makeshift table as they waited around, sipping coffee and tending to the pets.

Meanwhile, some Garden Grove residents filed a class-action lawsuit on Saturday against GKN Aerospace Transparency Systems, the company that operates the facility where the tank is located.

Lawyers for residents living in the evacuation zone argued in their federal court lawsuit that regardless of what happens next, property values in the surrounding community are sure to be impacted.

Spokespersons for the company didn’t comment on the lawsuit itself, but pointed to a Saturday statement in which they apologized to residents and businesses that have been forced to evacuate.

On Sunday, the company released another statement saying it was monitoring the “condition of the affected material” and “working around the clock to mitigate the risk of a leak.”

Officials said the valves on the tank are broken or “gummed up,” which prevented crews from removing the chemical or relieving the pressure on the tank, said Craig Covey, Orange County Fire Authority division chief.

Firefighters’ first hope is to find a way to cool off the chemical inside the tank so it won’t leak or explode. If that is not possible, Whelton said it would be best if the tank sprang a leak so the chemical could be mostly contained. An explosion that could spread the chemical over a broad area and send shrapnel flying would be the worst-case scenario.

If the temperature inside the tank continues to increase, the pressure will continue to build as the methyl methacrylate converts from a liquid to a gas. Whelton said it’s unlikely that firefighters would consider creating a hole in the tank because of fears that could create a spark that might ignite the volatile and flammable gas.

Drones were monitoring temperatures at 10-minute intervals to watch for any spikes, Covey said on a social media post on X. Containment barriers have been set up to prevent the chemical from getting into storm drains or reaching creeks or the nearby ocean in the event of a spill, Covey said.

Exposure could lead to health problems

The damaged tank is located at GKN Aerospace, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft. It holds 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 and 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate, used to make plastic parts.

GKN agreed to pay state regulators more than $900,000 in 2025 to settle violations involving recordkeeping, permitting issues and nitrogen oxide emissions, according to a report on the South Coast Air Quality Management District website.

Exposure to methyl methacrylate can cause serious respiratory problems and even render someone unconscious. It can also cause neurological problems and irritate the skin, eyes and throat, according to fact sheets about the chemical. But Orange County health officials said the chemical is easy to smell and residents may notice it over a large area without being harmed.

Whelton said the volume of chemical in the tank is much smaller than in the disastrous 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which he studied when more than 115,000 gallons (435,000 liters) of vinyl chloride was released after officials blew open five tank cars and burned the chemical.

“Many of these are acute, fast-acting effects. But the longer somebody stays in contact with it, the more potential for significant damage that occurs,” Whelton said.

If an explosion releases the chemical into the air, Whelton said, it will be crucial to conduct detailed air monitoring specifically for methyl methacrylate and not just generic tests for volatile organic compounds as officials did in East Palestine.

The weather will be an important factor in determining where a plume of chemicals would go in the event of an explosion. Officials were developing maps to predict different scenarios.

Garden Grove is next to Anaheim, home to Disneyland’s two theme parks, which were not under evacuation orders. Park officials said they were monitoring the incident and supporting employees impacted by evacuations.

___

Marcelo reported from New York. Associated Press journalist Ethan Swope contributed to this report.

The spacecraft blasted off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China. The much-anticipated launch comes as China prepares for its first crewed lunar landing by 2030.

The astronauts on the mission are Zhu Yangzhu, the commander, Zhang Zhiyuan and Lai Ka-ying, also identified by Chinese authorities as Li Jiaying using the Mandarin transliteration of her name.

Lai, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and has a doctoral degree in computer forensics, is the first astronaut from the city on a space mission.

The crew is set to conduct dozens of science and application projects, state media said. They are also expected to complete an in-orbit rotation with the crew of Shenzhou 21, who has been at the Tiangong space station for more than 200 days.

One of the three astronauts on the Shenzhou 23 mission is scheduled to stay at the orbiting space station for a year in what would be among the world’s longest single stays in space. The astronaut's mission is to “explore human adaptability and performance limits” in long-duration spaceflight environments, state media reported.

As China steps up its space program, its astronauts have carried out multiple missions to the Tiangong space station, developed after China was effectively excluded from the International Space Station on U.S. concerns over national security.

The U.S. is seen as China’s top space rival, with NASA aiming to land astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028.

China’s space station Tiangong, which translates to “Heavenly Palace,” first hosted the country's crew in 2021. Last year, an emergency mission in the Shenzhou program, which means “Divine Vessel,” returned a team of astronauts stranded on the space station due to a damaged spacecraft.

___

Associated Press video journalist Wu Jia in Jiuquan, China contributed to this report.

The Secret Service said the bystander, who has not been identified, suffered a gunshot wound described as not life-threatening. It was not clear how he was shot.

Authorities have released few additional details about the early Saturday evening shooting. The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department said the suspect, identified as 21-year-old Nasire Best, started shooting toward a White House security checkpoint when Secret Service officers returned fire. Best, of Dundalk, Maryland, was later pronounced dead at a hospital.

No officers were injured, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in a statement posted on social media. “Our thoughts are also with the innocent bystander who was wounded during this incident,” Curran said. “The Secret Service is hopeful he will make a full recovery.”

President Donald Trump was in the White House at the time of the shooting.

It was the third shooting near the president in the past month, after a man stormed the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in April armed with guns and knives, and Secret Service officers shot and wounded a man who fired at them earlier this month near the Washington Monument.

In a Truth Social post, Trump said the suspect in Saturday’s shooting had a “possible obsession with our Country’s most cherished structure.” He also used the shooting to promote the ballroom he is seeking to build on the site of the White House’s former East Wing, saying the shooting “goes to show how important it is, for all future Presidents, to get, what will be, the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.” Trump is asking Congress for $1 billion for security additions for the White House campus, including the ballroom.

Best had a previous run-in with law enforcement near the White House, according to District of Columbia court records. He was arrested last July for attempting to enter White House grounds near a different checkpoint. He failed to heed officers’ commands to stop, claimed to be Jesus Christ and said he wanted to be arrested.

Best was a track and field athlete at Dundalk High School, from which he graduated in 2023.

A woman who identified herself as Best’s mother told The Washington Post that she learned about the shooting on social media and was in disbelief. She said her son “was never violent, regardless of what people are posting.”

Marcus is a two-year captain of the varsity soccer team. He’s been a member of two undefeated district championship teams.

He was named First-Team All-District twice and a three-time First-Team Academic All-District. He’s also a member of the Surf National Team.

He’s part of a collection and distribution effort to give used soccer cleats to children in need in Africa.

Marcus maintains a 4.0 grade point average and is ranked in the top fifteen percent of his class.

Marcus plans to attend the Colorado School of Mines, play collegiate soccer and major in mechanical engineering.

Cyani is the senior captain of the varsity volleyball team. She’s also a member of varsity track and field where she set the school record in the shot put.

She recently finished fifth in the state competition for shot put. She made Academic All-District in both track and volleyball.

She’s a member of the National Honor Society, PALS, the FFA and has been raising swine for four years. She has completed over 100 hours of community service. Cyani maintains a 4.0 grade point average and is ranked twentieth in her class.

Cyani will attend Prairie View A&M where she will compete in the shot put and discus and become a veterinarian.

At a 79th Cannes Film Festival that saw few films cause a stir, “Fjord” found wide admiration for its engrossing tale of what Mungiu called “left-wing fundamentalism.” It stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve as Romanian Evangelicals who move to Norway, but soon after have their children taken from them by child services for spanking them.

“Today the society is split. It’s divided. It’s radicalized,” said Mungiu. “This film is a pledge against any type of fundamentalism. It's a pledge for these things we quote very often, like trauma and inclusion and empathy. These are lovely words but we need to apply them more often.”

Mungiu becomes just the 10th filmmaker to win the Palme d’Or twice. His “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,” a Romanian abortion drama, won the award in 2007.

The win for “Fjord” extends one of the movies’ most extraordinary streaks. Neon, the specialty label, has now taken seven Palme d’Or winners in a row. “Fjord” adds to its unparalleled run, including last year’s champion, Jafar Panahi’s “It Was Just an Accident,” and the 2024 winner, “Anora.” The latter went on to win best picture at the Oscars.

‘Minotaur’ wins Grand Prix

The Grand Prix, or second prize, went to “Minotaur,” Andrey Zvyagintsev’s domestic thriller set against Russia’s war with Ukraine. Loosely based on Claude Chabrol’s 1969 film “The Unfaithful Wife,” “Minotaur” is about a Russian businessman suspicious of his wife’s indiscretions. At the same time, he’s tasked with conscripting 150 of his workers for Vladimir Putin’s war machine.

“The only person who can stop this butchery is you, Mr. President of the Russian Federation,” Zvyagintsev said, accepting his award. "Put an end to this slaughter. The whole world is waiting for this.”

By wide consensus, it wasn’t a banner festival. Hollywood largely sat out this year’s edition. Many of the selections struggled to bowl over critics. The global buzz that Cannes typically generates was fitful at best.

But the awards handed out Saturday as the 79th Cannes drew to a close will significantly raise the international profiles of the winners. Last year's Cannes produced a long string of Oscar nominees, including “Sentimental Value” and “The Secret Agent.”

The nine-member jury that decided the awards was headed by Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook. Demi Moore, Chloé Zhao and Stellan Skarsgård were also jurors. Park, a Cannes regular including last year with his satirical thriller “No Other Choice,” joked that he preferred not to give away the Palme.

“To be honest, I didn’t want to award the Palme d’Or to any of the films, because it’s an award I myself have never gotten,” Park told reporters after the ceremony. “But I had no other choice.”

Awards are split and shared

Two films won for best director: the Polish filmmaker Pawel Pawlikowski, for his postwar drama “Fatherland,” and the Spanish creative duo Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo for “The Black Ball,” a generation-spanning queer epic “The Black Ball.”

It was Pawlikowski's second time winning the same Cannes prize in as many films, following his “Cold War” in 2018. But the award marked a breakthrough for Ambrossi and Calvo in their first Cannes entry.

"No one knew us. Thierry didn’t know us," Ambrossi told reporters, referring to Thierry Fremaux, Cannes artistic director. “It was just that the movie spoke.”

Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto, the two stars of Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “All of a Sudden” shared the best actress award. In the elegantly empathetic drama, the two play women brought together in friendship out of their mutual sense of care for others.

The jury also split the best actor prize. They chose Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne, the two stars of "Coward,” Lukas Dhont’s drama about young Belgian men sent to the front lines of World War II.

The prize for best screenplay was awarded to Emmanuel Marre for “A Man of His Time,” a French drama about a Nazi collaborator in Vichy France. Marre based it on the experiences of his own great-grandfather.

The jury prize, or third place, went to German filmmaker Valeska Grisebach’s “The Dreamed Adventure,” a crime drama set in a Bulgarian border town.

Saturday’s ceremony was missing its tribute honoree. Barbra Streisand was to receive an honorary Palme d’Or, but a knee injury prevented her from attending. Isabelle Huppert nevertheless celebrated Streisand during the ceremony, and Streisand appeared in a taped video message.

The Camera d’Or, Cannes’ award for best first film, went to Marie Clémentine Dusabejambo’s post-genocide drama “Ben’Imana,” the first Rwandan film to be officially selected for the festival.

U.S. President Donald Trump has lashed out at allies for not doing more to support the United States' war effort in Iran, whose chokehold on the strait has crippled international shipping and sent energy prices soaring. In March, Trump told NATO allies to “go get your own oil” and secure the strait themselves.

On the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula, in the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar, the U.K.’s Royal Navy is preparing to do that — but only once a peace agreement is reached. Trump said Saturday that a deal with Iran has been “largely negotiated” after calls with Israel and other allies in the region, but it still needs finalizing.

Britain’s Armed Forces Minister Al Carns took a small group of reporters to visit the RFA Lyme Bay as it prepares for a possible international operation, led by the U.K. and France, to secure the strait. As Carns spoke, the amphibious landing vessel, docked at the gateway to the Mediterranean, was being loaded with ammunition and mine-hunting sea drones equipped with sonar.

With a crew of several hundred sailors, the RFA Lyme Bay will soon depart Gibraltar to link up with the U.K. destroyer HMS Dragon and allied ships for air support before sailing through the Suez Canal to the Persian Gulf.

“Which other country can pull together 40 nations and come up with a solution to deal with a complex problem that we couldn’t predict because we weren’t involved?” asked Carns, responding to a question from The Associated Press about what Trump wants from his British ally.

After the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Feb. 28, Tehran retaliated by effectively closing the strait, a key waterway for the region’s oil, natural gas and fertilizer, causing global economic pain. The U.K. in particular has drawn the ire of Trump, who has described Britain’s navy as “toys” and Prime Minister Keir Starmer as “not Winston Churchill.”

At least 6,000 ships have been blocked from passing through the strait since the conflict began, Carns said.

There could be a range of threats from Iran’s mines

Iran could have a “huge” variety of mines throughout strait, said Cmdr. Gemma Britton, who is in charge of the Royal Navy’s Mine and Threat Exploitation Group. Mines could be rocket-propelled, cabled or sit on the seabed and be triggered by sound, movement or light.

AP was shown autonomous systems that can scan the seabed and the water with sonar in about half the time it takes for a crewed vessel to enter and map potential dangers. The sea drones equipped with sonar produce a picture of objects under the water, from fishing traps to pipelines. The picture is used to identify mines that can be explored with advanced acoustic systems and cameras, Britton said.

Some of the systems on the RFA Lyme Bay can be loaded onto a smaller vessel that can be launched and piloted autonomously from the ship, which acts as a mother ship, waiting outside any potential minefield, Britton said. That reduces the number of people needed to enter, she said.

Once a mine has been located, a diver with explosives normally places a charge on the mine before swimming away to detonate it. But RFA Lyme Bay is trialing a remotely operated vehicle that dives and drops a charge by a mine before setting it off, Britton said.

The priority, she said, will be to clear a transit lane in the strait to allow around 700 ships to leave. A lane flowing in the opposite direction will then be cleared, allowing ships to enter, she said, but added that clearing the entire strait could take months or years.

It's still not clear if the UK and its allies will be deployed

It's still not clear if any mines are in the strait — or if the U.K. and its allies will be deploying to remove them.

A U.S. official speaking on condition on anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters told the AP that the U.S. has not found or destroyed any mines in the strait, nor have any ships been damaged. Commercial traffic has quietly continued to flow, though at a much lower volume than before the conflict.

When asked by the AP if the British effort was partly for show, to curry favor with the U.S., Carns said he was sure some mines had been blown up or floated away but that assurance is not good enough for commercial insurance companies. He said those companies need “absolute certainty” to get vessels traveling through the strait again.

“That’s what this capability will provide,” he said.

The international effort to secure the strait would happen only once hostilities are over.

“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump said Saturday on social media, with no details on timing.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that a deal has been described as close.

“We don’t know when the Americans, Iranians and Israelis are going to come up with a suitable solution,” Carns said.

In the meantime, the RFA Lyme Bay and its crew will be waiting and will be “really, really ready,” Carns said.

——

Associated Press writer Konstantin Toropin in Washington contributed to this report.

The accolade marks the first All-NBA selection of the center’s career and the first time a San Antonio Spur has earned the honor since the 2016-17 season.

Wembanyama becomes the fifth player in Spurs franchise history to be named to the All-NBA First Team.

The 22-year-old appeared in 64 games this season, posting career highs of 25 points and 11.5 rebounds per game to go with 3.1 assists, a league-leading 3.08 blocks and 1.03 steals in 29.2 minutes per game.

Wembanyama became the seventh player in NBA history to average at least 25 points, 10 rebounds and 3 blocks in a single season.

Wembanyama also claimed the 2025-26 Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year award, becoming the youngest player in league history to win the honor and the first unanimous selection since the award was established in 1982-83.

Wembanyama joins Cade Cunningham of the Detroit Pistons, Luka Dončić of the Los Angeles Lakers, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets on the 2025-26 Kia All-NBA First Team.

Read more stories about Wemby’s postseason accolades:

• Spurs’ Wembanyama named Kia NBA Defensive Player of the Year
• San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama unanimous pick for NBA’s All-Defensive team
• Inside the numbers: Why Victor Wembanyama was not named the NBA’s MVP for the 2026 season

After that approach shot inside 3 feet, he became the first PGA Tour player to win twice with a closing 60.

The 2023 U.S. Open champion shot 11 under on Sunday, overtaking Si Woo Kim by three and pulling away from defending champion Scottie Scheffler after starting the day tied with the top-ranked hometown favorite.

Clark didn't know he was shooting a closing 60 for the win the first time he did it, in 2024 at Pebble Beach. There was supposed to be a final round the next day, but it was wiped out by weather. Clark was declared the winner when officials decided not to play Monday.

One other difference came to mind for Clark, who shot 30-under 254 and had a 28 on the back nine at the revamped but still vulnerable TPC Craig Ranch, about 30 miles north of Dallas.

Two years ago, Clark had an eagle putt for 59 on the iconic 18th green at Pebble Beach but settled for birdie. This time — in his first victory since then — Clark closed with four birdies over five holes, including that short capper at 18.

Clark's ninth birdie matched Kim’s 60 from the second round when the 30-year-old South Korean was in position to shoot 59 but bogeyed the final hole. Kim, who started the final round with a two-stroke lead, shot 65 to finish 27 under.

“I look at Pebble, it was amazing, but that one, I was so close to shooting 59. At that golf course, that would have been just epic,” Clark said after his fourth PGA Tour win. “This one, really 59 wasn’t necessarily in the cards. I’m just really proud of myself that I didn’t waver and I didn’t sit back and just try to hit to 20 feet and kind of leak my way in there. I was still very aggressive.”

Despite the addition of bunkers and significant changes to the contour of the greens on the Lanny Wadkins-led redesign, Clark was just one shot off Scheffler's winning score of a year ago. Scheffler's 31 under tied the tour's 72-hole scoring record of 253.

“I felt pretty comfortable, but I knew I had to put the pedal to the metal and keep making birdies,” Clark said. “I made more than I thought I was going to make, that’s for sure.”

Clark went in front for the first time in the final round with an eagle at the par-5 12th and twice took two-shot leads with clutch birdie putts over the final four holes.

The 32-year-old had an emphatic first pump after his 45-foot birdie putt at the par-3 15th. Clark was a little more reserved, but pumping a fist nonetheless after another birdie 2, this one at the No. 17 stadium hole.

A few minutes after Clark's long putt at 15, Kim was a shot behind when his 44-footer on the same hole slid by the right side of the cup. The deficit was two when Kim couldn't match Clark's birdie at 17.

“I think if I keep knocking on the door, something’s coming,” said Kim, a four-time tour winner looking for his first victory since 2023 at Waialae. “I think it’s pretty much best play golf I’ve ever had. I’m a little frustrated, but nothing I can do. Wyndham played so good.”

Scheffler, who matched Kim's 65 and was 25 under, briefly was tied for the lead on Saturday, but never caught Kim — his partner in the final pairing — or Clark one group ahead after the second hole in the final round.

The four-time major winner was two shots behind Kim and Clark at the short par-4 sixth when his second shot hit the pin and spun away after it bounced, ending up 54 feet away. Scheffler settled for par on a hole Kim and Clark birdied.

Jackson Suber was a career-best fourth, shooting 63 to finish 23 under. Keith Mitchell shot 64 and was a stroke back in fifth.

Brooks Koepka, still looking for his first win since rejoining the PGA Tour from LIV Golf, shot 68.

Jordan Spieth, the other hometown favorite alongside Scheffler, bounced back with a 66 and finished 15 under a day after fading from contention with a 73.

Scheffler almost became the only PGA Tour player since at least 1983 to go an entire tournament without a score of 5 or higher. That ended with his par 5 on 12, when he went bunker to bunker with his first two shots and missed a 12-foot birdie putt. It was his only 5.

“No,” Scheffler said when asked if he was aware. “But you know around this place, what did Wyndham finish out, around 30 under? If you’re going to play 30 under, you can’t be making too many 5s.”

___

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

It was a violent end to a standoff between members of the Republican Peoples’ Party, or CHP, and a leadership team appointed by an appeals court, escalating tensions between the opposition and the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Supporters had barricaded the courtyard entrance with buses and the building with furniture. Footage taken by local media in the courtyard and inside the building showed clouds of tear gas as riot police stormed through the premises, before journalists were removed by the police.

Once the raid began, supporters attempted to resist the police by spraying them with fire extinguishers, but were quickly stopped. Doors, furniture and the ground floor windows were destroyed in the melee.

Among those inside the building was Ozgur Ozel, elected as party chairperson in November 2023 but dismissed by the court ruling. A video from inside his office at the start of the raid shows him being served the court order removing him, which he promptly ripped up.

Leaving party headquarters to cheers from supporters outside, Ozel told journalists: “We are leaving (the building) now only to reclaim it in such a way that no one will be able to meddle again. When we return, neither this administration nor the administration’s collaborators will dare do this once more.”

Ozel asks his supporters to rebuild the party for a third time

Ozel and his supporters then marched to Parliament about 8 kilometers (5 miles) away, joined by hundreds of passersby despite heavy rain and hail. Before arriving at Parliament, he stopped at the National Sovereignty Park where he asked the crowd if they were willing to rebuild the party for a third time.

The CHP was first established in 1923 by Turkey's founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, but was shut down in a 1980 military coup, before reemerging in 1992.

Outside the legislature, Ozel rallied a crowd of hundreds, telling them that the CHP was “de facto shuttered” but would be reestablished.

Even if ousted as the chairperson of the CHP, Ozel is still an elected lawmaker from the western province of Manisa as well as the party's group speaker.

The appeals court on Thursday nullified Ozel's election as CHP chairperson, suspending him and members of the party’s executive board. The ruling said Ozel should be replaced by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, his predecessor, who led the party for 13 years but never won any national elections.

Meanwhile, Ozel, in his first and only election as party leader, delivered a decisive blow to Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in the 2024 municipal polls.

The opposition says the decision was politically motivated to weaken the party as it struggles under waves of legal cases targeting its members and elected officials.

Erdogan's eye is on the next election

The next presidential election isn't due until 2028, but Erdogan can call for an early vote. His main challenger, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, a CHP member, has been imprisoned since March last year and is on trial on corruption charges.

Many observers have said the legal cases against the CHP — mostly centered on corruption allegations — are aimed at neutralizing the party ahead of the next election. The government insists that Turkey’s courts are impartial and act independently of political pressure.

The vast majority of the party has rallied behind Ozel. He and most of the party had been inside the CHP headquarters in Ankara since Thursday’s ruling, with the new administration unable to enter. The rival teams were supposed to meet Sunday afternoon to figure a way out of the impasse.

Early on Sunday, a crowd gathered outside the office, watched by a growing police presence. Kilicdaroglu’s lawyer, Celal Celik, sent a request to Ankara police to assist in vacating the building, a move approved by the provincial governor.

The police raid comes at the start of a nine-day holiday for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, when many people are on vacation and out of the big cities.

Erdogan has ruled Turkey, first as prime minister and then as president, since 2003. His electoral record suffered a setback in 2019, when the CHP seized control of several major cities in local elections. In Istanbul, Imamoglu emerged as a popular and charismatic figure who many felt could successfully topple Erdogan.

Standing on the frontstretch at Charlotte Motor Speedway, O'Donnell looked directly at the Busch family and said, "Samantha, I want you to know that this sport stands with you, and that you and your children are NASCAR family forever. And Brexton and Lennix, your dad loved you with all his heart. Everyone gathered here, everyone behind you, everybody watching on TV, and all those people up in that grandstand are your family — and we’ve got you. ”

Tears rolled down Samantha Busch’s cheek as she wrapped her arm tightly around 11-year-old Brexton, an aspiring racer. Both wore black T-shirts that read “Battle of the Busches.”

Busch’s older brother and former Cup Series champion, Kurt, and his parents, Tom and Gaye, also attended the tribute.

“Kyle Busch is NASCAR,” O'Donnell added. “He was one of a kind and there will never be another.”

A moment of silence followed.

Auto racing's biggest day became a Memorial Day weekend tribute to Busch from Indianapolis to CMS.

Busch died Thurday at 41 after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming complications according to a statement released by his family, and his loss sent shockwaves through the motorsports world and beyond.

Charlotte Motor Speedway honored the two-time Cup Series champion with a large, black No. 8 and his signature on the frontstretch grass and a photo on the videoboard.

The U.S. Army Golden Knights carried Busch's flag prior during pre-race festivities. Each of the 39 cars in field carried Busch's decal. On the pace lap, the cars formed the missing man formation.

The speedway's public address system and the television commentators went silent on the eighth lap of the race.

On Saturday night, Layne Riggs celebrated his Trucks Series win at Charlotte by immitating Busch's traditional bows to the crowd after the race, and Ross Chastain did the same after capturing the rain-shortened O'Reilly Auto Parts race.

“When you think race car driver and what that person should be like, Kyle Busch is probably one of the first that comes to your mind on the type of racer he was," Cup Series driver Joey Logano said.

Fans at CMS arrived in droves Sunday with shirts that read “Rowdy” and “KFB.”

Earlier in the day at the Indianapolis 500, Dale Coyne Racing changed the font of Romain Grosjean's No. 18 car to replicate the font the two-time Brickyard 400 winner used during his 14 seasons with Joe Gibbs Racing in his No. 18 car.

Then came the opening prayer, in which Busch was mentioned by name. And on lap 18, race officials lit up the scoring pylon next to pit lane with Busch's name, his birth year and 2026.

Even with the pageantry of Indianapolis' big IndyCar race, Busch, who had a record 234 victory across NASCAR’s three national series, was never far from the thoughts of people in the city that dubs itself the “Racing Capital of the World.”

“It’s desperately sad. It’s also one of those things where you try not to think about it or let it in because you’ve got so much to do, you can’t let yourself get emotional,” Katherine Legge said. “But honestly, racing has lost one of the greatest drivers, in my opinion, of all time. If you look back at the history and just — he was a legend.”

As Indy held its biggest race of the year, those who knew or competed against Busch raced with a heavy heart.

“How can you not be in shock over the situation?” two-time Indy winner Josef Newgarden said. “I think it just puts into perspective how fragile life is. You just don’t know. Makes me think of his kids, to be honest with you. Gosh, I feel terrible about — I have two sons now. That’s the thing that breaks my heart.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Even opponents nearly half his age — and in front of a hostile crowd.

Djokovic came back from a set down for a 5-7, 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 victory over 22-year-old home player Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard in the first round of the French Open on Sunday in his record 82nd Grand Slam appearance.

“Obviously playing a French player, center court at Roland Garros is never so easy. The crowd gets into it and then you feel the pressure even more,” Djokovic said after the 2 hour, 51-minute encounter. “But all in all it was a good match to be part of: Three hours, just what the doctor ordered at age 39.”

Grunting during long rallies and digging deep on the opening night session on Court Philippe-Chatrier, it wasn’t until 1 hour, 45 minutes in that Djokovic finally found a way to break his 6-foot-7 (2.01-meter) opponent and even the match at a set all.

The crowd was pumped for a potential stunner — after all, Djokovic hasn’t lost in the first round of a Grand Slam in 20 years. But after two tense sets, Mpetshi Perricard seemed deflated of energy.

Djokovic, meanwhile, was just getting warmed up in only his second match on clay this year. In his other match on the surface this season, Djokovic lost to Croatian qualifier Dino Prižmić at the Italian Open after two months out due to a right shoulder injury.

Just by stepping on court two days after his 39th birthday, Djokovic set the men’s record for most Grand Slams contested — one more than Roger Federer and Feliciano Lopez. Djokovic has won a record 24 of those 82 Grand Slams.

Djokovic also tied French players Richard Gasquet and Antoine Gentian with a men’s record 22nd appearance at Roland Garros. He has reached at least the quarterfinals in 19 of the last 20 editions and raised the Coupe des Mousquetaires trophy in 2016, 2021 and 2023.

Djokovic taunts the pro-French crowd

The 80th-ranked Mpetshi Perricard had plenty of crowd support and the fans erupted into chants of “Gio-vanni, Gio-vanni, Gio-vanni” when he ripped a forehand winner on his fourth break point to conclude a long rally during a tense game at 5-5 in the first set. Mpetshi Perricard then finished the set off with consecutive aces — the first of which clocked in at 223 kph (139 mph).

Djokovic said afterward that Mpetshi Perricard — who he played for the first time — has “one of the most tremendous serves in terms of precision and speed that I have ever faced in my career.”

Djokovic couldn’t convert a break point until his 10th try when he concluded the second set with a drop shot that Mpetshi Perricard couldn’t get back. Then Djokovic held his hand to his ear to taunt the pro-French crowd.

Late in the fourth set after he pulled off a delicate half-volley winner, Djokovic skipped back to the baseline in apparent glee. And when it was over, Djokovic performed a celebratory wiggle on the baseline.

Djokovic can't meet Sinner until the final

Despite his reduced schedule of late, it should be remembered that Djokovic reached this year’s Australian Open final where he lost to Carlos Alcaraz and has made the semifinals or better at five straight Grand Slams.

With Alcaraz, the two-time reigning French Open champion, sitting out Roland Garros and Wimbledon with an injured right wrist, Djokovic sees a chance for himself in the lower half of the draw. He would meet top-ranked Jannik Sinner, who is on a 29-match winning streak, only in the final.

Along with 2015 champion Stan Wawrinka, who is playing in his final French Open, Djokovic is the only former men’s singles champion competing in Paris.

Match-fixing whistleblower

Djokovic wasn’t the only player at an advanced age in the win column at Roland Garros on Sunday.

Marco Trungelliti, who at 36 recently became the oldest man in the professional era (since 1969) to break into the top 100 of the rankings, beat Kyrian Jacquet 6-4, 6-2, 6-2.

“I’m reaching my peak (at) 36,” Trungelliti said.

Trungelitti partly attributed his late development to being ostracized from the tennis tour years ago when he became a whistleblower against match-fixing in the sport.

“Really hurt me back then,” said Trungelitti, who still lives in exile in Andorra and feels uncomfortable going home to Argentina. “I was very innocent in the sense that I was expecting that the system would help me out a little bit, and it was completely the opposite.

“The whole package of institutions were never there, and they are still not there,” Trungelitti added. “I have a spine in my heart, and it’s going to be there forever.”

Sorana Cirstea, another 36-year-old who this week became the oldest player to make her debut in the top 20, beat 17-year-old Ksenia Efremova 6-3, 6-1.

And on Monday, 41-year-old Wawrinka will play Jesper De Jong.

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

Trump said negotiations were “proceeding in an orderly and constructive manner,” and the relationship with Iran was becoming “much more professional and productive.” He pushed back against criticism by some fellow Republicans seeking a tougher approach.

The agreement would not be signed Sunday, according to a person familiar with the status of negotiations who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. The sides have previously seemed close to a deal in recent weeks, only to falter.

The strait's reopening would ease a worldwide energy crisis sparked by the U.S. and Israeli bombardment of Iran on Feb. 28, which led Tehran to effectively close the waterway. Prices have spiked for oil, gas and related products. Experts say it would take several weeks or even months for shipping and prices to recover once the strait reopens.

The U.S. has blockaded Iranian ports for over a month, and Trump said it “will remain in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed.”

The emerging deal would include Iran giving up uranium

Under the potential deal, Tehran would agree to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, according to the two regional officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.

One official, with direct knowledge of the negotiations, said how Iran would give up the uranium would be subject to further talks during a 60-day period. Some would likely be diluted, while the rest would be transferred to a third country, the official said. Russia has offered to take it.

A U.S. official confirmed the 60-day period and said if Iran doesn't give up its stockpile there will be no sanctions relief. The official spoke on condition of anonymity about the emerging deal because it has not been made public.

Iran has 440.9 kilograms (972 pounds) of uranium that is enriched up to 60% purity, a short, technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90%, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran has not publicly committed to giving up its uranium, a key Trump demand. President Masoud Pezeshkian told state TV they were ready “to assure the world that we are not after a nuclear weapon.”

Iran has always insisted its program is peaceful while enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels, and asserts its right to nuclear technology.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, on a visit to India, said that “significant progress, although not final progress, has been made” in negotiations, and the world would no longer need to fear Iran getting a nuclear weapon.

Rubio told India Today that the “first stage” ahead would be the full reopening of the strait. “The second is that Iran needs to enter into serious negotiations on three topics: their pledge never to have nuclear weapons, restrictions long-term on their enrichment capabilities, and what do you do with the highly enriched uranium?”

Trump has sought greater concessions from Iran than those required under a 2015 Obama-era agreement that the U.S. later withdrew from under Trump.

On Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told the state-run news agency there are “narrowing differences” between the Iranian and U.S. positions, but Iran is cautious after being attacked twice in the past year during nuclear negotiations.

The strait would reopen and Iran would be able to sell oil

Under the emerging agreement, the Strait of Hormuz would gradually reopen in parallel with the U.S. ending its blockade, the two regional officials and the U.S. official said. The U.S. official said the strait would be demined, though a U.S. official on Friday said the military has not found any mines there.

The U.S. would allow Iran to sell its oil through sanctions waivers, said the second official, who has been briefed on the negotiations. Sanctions relief and the release of Iran’s frozen funds would be negotiated during the 60-day period, the official said.

Both officials said the draft deal includes an end to the war between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon that began two days after the Iran war started.

Twelve weeks have passed since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, killing its supreme leader and other top officials. A ceasefire has held since April 7, though the sides have exchanged fire on occasion.

Israel remains concerned over Hezbollah

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a social media post said he and Trump agreed that "any final agreement with Iran must eliminate the nuclear danger,” and that Trump had reaffirmed Israel's right to defend itself “on every front, including Lebanon.”

The U.S. official said the deal would guarantee Israel’s right to act against imminent threats in self-defense.

Israeli officials are concerned that Hezbollah remains a serious threat to Israel and that Lebanon is ill-equipped to disarm it.

A fragile, U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect in Lebanon on April 17, but fighting has continued, mainly in the south. Hezbollah has launched daily drone and rocket attacks on Israeli forces and northern Israel, and Israel has struck targets across Lebanon while its troops remain in large swaths of the south.

More than 3,000 people have been killed in the latest fighting, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Additionally, 22 Israeli soldiers and a defense contractor have been killed in or near southern Lebanon, and two civilians have been killed in northern Israel, according to Netanyahu’s office.

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Superville reported from Washington and Lidman from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.

Kostyuk fought back tears after beating Oksana Selekhmeteva 6-2, 6-3 on Court Simonne-Mathieu on the opening day of the clay-court Grand Slam at Roland Garros in western Paris.

“I think it was one of the most difficult matches of my career," the 15th-seeded Kostyuk said. “This morning, 100 meters away from my parents’ house, the missile destroyed the building and it was a very difficult morning for me ... I didn’t know how I would handle it, I’ve been crying part of the morning.”

In the opening night session at Roland Garros, Novak Djokovic beat home player Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard 5-7, 7-5, 6-1, 6-4 in his record 82nd Grand Slam.

Kostyuk received a message at 8 a.m. and could not stop thinking what could have happened.

“I felt sick,” she said. “If it was 100 meters closer, I probably wouldn’t have a mom and a sister today.”

Her mother, sister and great aunt — were in the house at the time of the strike, she said, among 17 people in total, so her relief was enormous that no one was injured.

“I don’t want to think what I would do if something worse happened, but I knew that this is the day to go out and play,” she said. “It didn’t cross my mind today that I shouldn’t go out, because, you know, at the end of the day, everyone is alive.”

After the match, she thanked fans and received an ovation. Then she explained how she found the emotional and mental resources to play.

“I think it’s important to keep going. My biggest example is Ukrainian people, I woke up in the morning today and,” the 23-year-old Kostyuk said, becoming tearful before repeating and finishing the sentence.

“I looked at all these people who woke up and kept living their life, kept helping people who are in need,” she said. "I knew a lot of Ukrainian flags would be here today and a lot of Ukrainian people would come out, support. My friends from Ukraine came as well.”

She next plays unseeded American Katie Volynets and Kostyuk's countrywoman Elina Svitolina — a recent winner at the Italian Open in Rome — faces Anna Bondar on Monday.

The heat is on

High temperatures of 33 degrees Celsius (91 Fahrenheit) contributed to Frenchman Arthur Gea taking an emergency bathroom break early into his first-round loss to No. 13 Karen Khachanov on Court Suzanne-Lenglen.

Spectators folded newspapers in half and fanned themselves to keep cool as players attempted to stay hydrated.

Canadian Gabriel Diallo said the heat was the main reason why he retired against Australian James Duckworth after losing the first set 6-3 and trailing 4-1 in the second.

“That’s mainly what it was," he said. "It was getting worse and worse.”

No. 21 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina also struggled.

“I am coming from Hamburg with 10 degrees (and) it’s 22 degrees more,” the Spaniard said after beating Damir Dzumhur 6-7 (3), 6-3, 2-6, 7-5, 6-3. “I didn’t expect that.”

The opening match on Chatrier saw No. 11 Belinda Bencic beating Sinja Kraus 6-2, 6-3 and 2024 runner-up Alexander Zverev, seeded No. 2, won 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 win against Benjamin Bonzi.

Other results

Former U.S. Open champion Emma Raducanu and former French Open runners-up Sloane Stephens and Sofia Kenin all went out.

No. 26 Hailey Baptiste won 6-7 (7), 7-6 (6), 6-2 against 2021 champion Barbora Krejčíková. Baptiste is playing in the women’s doubles alongside American countrywoman Venus Williams. No. 21 Clara Tauson lost while No. 27 Marie Bouzkova and No. 32 Wang Xinyu reached the second round.

In men’s first-round play, No. 23 Tomas Etcheverry lost against Nuno Borges but No. 26 Jakub Mensik and No. 28 João Fonseca advanced.

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AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf in Paris contributed to this report.

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

Freeman Johnson, who turned 106 in March, never witnessed the surprise attack. He never heard his shipmates firing anti-aircraft guns at the attacking planes — shooting down a torpedo plane. By the time he was topside, the St. Louis, a light cruiser, had evaded midget submarines and safely set out to sea.

“While all the rigamarole was going on topside, I was inside a steam drum. Couldn’t see anything, absolutely nothing,” said Johnson, a Centerville, Massachusetts, resident whose living room is filled with mementos and photos of his Navy service, including photos of the St. Louis and him as a young sailor, along with a collection of Navy challenge coins and ribbons representing the places he visited. He still has his military identification tag — popularly known as dog tag.

Even as the St. Louis headed into the Pacific Ocean, Johnson, whose job was known as a fireman on the ship, knew little about the attack.

“We were way out to sea, way out. You couldn’t see any land at all. All you saw was ocean,” he said. “I was just a sailor, just a swabbie, I was not an officer. They don’t tell you anything if you don’t need to know. And I didn’t need know it. So they tell you nothing.”

When he visited schools, children often asked Johnson whether he was scared that day. “You’re not scared. You’re too busy to be scared,” he said, his gravelly voice rising. “Besides, you don’t know what you’re scared of. You can’t see anything. What are you afraid of?”

One of only 11 survivors

Johnson became the oldest survivor after World War II Navy veteran Ira “Ike” Schab died in December. He was 105. With Schab's passing and the death of Clarence Lane in February at the age of 100, there remain only 11 survivors of the surprise attack, which killed just over 2,400 Americans and propelled the United States into the war. The U.S. mourns the nation’s fallen service members on Memorial Day, which takes place Monday.

Every year, there is a remembrance ceremony at the military base’s waterfront for Pearl Harbor survivors.

About 2,000 survivors attended the 50th anniversary event in 1991. A few dozen have showed in recent decades. In 2024, only two made it. That is out of an estimated 87,000 troops stationed on Oahu that day. None made the pilgrimage to Hawaii last year.

Growing recognition

For most of his life, Johnson avoided the spotlight and talked little about surviving the bombing. After all, he was one of the tens of thousands sailors who were there on that tragic day. He recalled his wife, Ruth, “thought that was something special,” so she called the Navy and “the girl laughed at her.”

But as the oldest survivor, he's become a local celebrity and the reluctant face of one of the most important events in World War II. Johnson showed up at his 106th birthday party in a limousine and was mugged by television cameras. He gets letters from all over the world and is routinely called a hero wherever he goes out.

Johnson, who is hard of hearing, needs a walker to get around and suffers from congestive heart failure, can recall his wartime experience down to the smallest detail. A 19-year-old who was unemployed and living at home in Waltham, Johnson said he feared being drafted so he signed up for the Navy — because he felt it would be less physically taxing than the Army.

“As a kid, I walked. If I wanted to go somewhere, I walked or took my bicycle. But I didn't want to walk from France to Germany," he said, sitting in a recliner, dressed in an oversized flannel shirt and waving his hands like an orchestra conductor.

“It's a long way carrying a knapsack with you. ... Water for a day, food for a day, a 9-pound Springfield rifle all on your back and walking through the mud,” he said. “No thanks. That’s why I joined the Navy.”

Witnessing history

Johnson's memories have less to do with battles while on the St. Louis, and later aboard the USS Iowa, than their significant roles in history. He helped commission the Iowa and recalled the battleship's preparations in November 1943 ahead of transporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt to the Tehran Conference with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

The ship was equipped with two elevators and a bathtub. All the ammunition and much of the oil was removed to lighten the ship as it made its way down the Potomac River to pick up Roosevelt. It was reloaded before the ship headed out to sea.

“It was a big meeting,” Johnson said, recalling how the crew were photographed with Roosevelt. “I don’t know what they talked about, but I didn’t need to know. We picked him back up, brought him home.”

Johnson also witnessed the war's end aboard the Iowa. He was on the Iowa's mast watching the surrender ceremonies about a mile away in Tokyo Bay aboard the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945.

“I could see the boats coming up with the Marines escorting the Japanese onto ship and sitting around a table,” he said. “It was all over. That was the end of the war. A bunch of us got together — the war is over. Let's go home.”

Telling the story of Pearl Harbor

These days, his daughter, Diane Johnson, is often by his side. They live together and always take a trip on Dec. 7, often attending Pearl Harbor remembrance events, including the 65th and 80th anniversary in Hawaii. She often poses questions to get her father talking and likes to nag him that he has “a responsibility” to share the story of Pearl Harbor —- especially for children who know little about the bombing.

“It’s kind of overwhelming when you think of it. Well, the 106 is what gets me,” she said. “When I think about his history, he’s at the beginning, he’s at middle, he is at the end when he witnessed the surrender. It’s something.”

Johnson began getting more attention when Diane Johnson heard a local television report suggesting the last survivor in the state had died. She called to correct the record and that raised his profile. Johnson also started making regular appearances in the Cape Cod St. Patrick's Parade, often leading from the front.

“I wish more people were like him today. He just gets on and doesn't complain about anything,” said Desmond Keogh, the chairman of the parade who has accompanied Johnson. “It's what this country was all about. They were just a different generation. They did what was best for their country.”

For all the attention to Pearl Harbor, the gruff Johnson, who is known for his cackling laugh and mischievous smile, doesn't see it as a defining moment in his life.

That would have been getting married after the war to his late wife and having three daughters. He also worked for years in a machinist shop, then in a convenience store and, finally, delivering meals to seniors — all jobs he retired from, the last one at the age of 90.

“Pearl Harbor just happened. I can’t put it any other way,” he said.

His final game ended in a 2-1 loss to Aston Villa on a day charged with emotion as he said goodbye to the fans he gave so much joy during a decade of dominance in English soccer.

“I never could have imagined the amount of love I've found,” said Guardiola, standing in the center of the field at the Etihad Stadium and addressing the crowd. “It is an incredible, tremendous honor to be your manager, to be here 10 years.”

The tears started long before the final whistle, with Guardiola welling up and rubbing his eyes as two of his most loyal servants, Bernardo Silva and John Stones, also said farewell and were given guards of honor when substituted in the second half.

Then it was his turn to receive a guard of honor of his own.

“This is the man who changed everything,” the stadium announcer said as Guardiola ran onto the field wearing khakis and a cream T-shirt, with fans cheering wildly.

“10 more years," they chanted, prompting Guardiola to shake his head in defiance.

After 17 major trophies and records galore, on Friday he confirmed he could do no more. After turning City into the most dominant Premier League team of its generation and a champion of Europe for the first time, he said the time was right to hand over the reins.

“I will not miss it for a while,” he said Sunday. “I feel deeply... it is the right decision.”

Guardiola's day

Former Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca, who won the Club World Cup last year, is favorite to take over with an announcement possibly in the coming week.

Guardiola did not confirm his replacement, but said he would call his successor to offer advice.

“Be yourself... be free with your ideas and work a lot. Everything will be fine,” he said.

That is for another day. This day was about Guardiola and the chance for supporters to show their appreciation.

“He means everything to me and this club. It’s absolutely brilliant what he’s done for it,” City fan Fred Taylor, 82, told The Associated Press. “I can’t think of another manager that’s done what he’s done in the 10-year period he’s been here.”

Guardiola joined City in the summer of 2016 and has led the Abu Dhabi-owned team to six Premier League titles and a first Champions League crown in 2023.

“That's what we always wanted ... we’d never done it,” said Taylor. “That was probably the highlight of his tenure.”

Guardiola's trophy haul included a domestic double this season of the English League Cup and the FA Cup. He led City to the treble in 2023, winning the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup — matching Manchester United’s feat from more than 20 years earlier in 1999.

First to 100 points

There were other benchmarks. City became the first team to win four straight English leagues and the first to amass 100 points in a single season in 2018. The following year City was the first team to win the domestic treble of the league, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season.

Those are big shoes to fill, but Guardiola said expectations of his successor should be realistic.

“Fans don’t forget that winning the treble, doubles is exceptional,” he said. “It is so difficult, this business is so complicated. That’s why when you come here, you win one game, here in the Etihad - enjoy it. Celebrate it.”

More than just trophies, Guardiola has connected with City fans, telling them Sunday to hug him if they ever see him in the future, saying “I will need it.”

“It’s hard to describe, it’s someone you don’t actually know, but you feel like you do know,” City fan Richard Wilbourn said. "When I heard the news (he was leaving) I got a bit emotional. What he’s done for the club has been absolutely unreal, and it’s something that we’ve never seen in our lifetime.

“Growing up through my mid-20s to mid-30s (he's been) a massive part of my life.”

City has honored Guardiola by naming its newly developed north stand after him. He will also take up a role as global ambassador.

“I’m sad he’s leaving, but I think he’s leaving at the right time,” said Taylor. “He’s done everything and he can’t go any further in this club, but I think he’s done brilliant and I wish him all the best.”

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James Robson is at https://x.com/jamesalanrobson

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

Deputies responded to a home just before 2 p.m. Friday in the 2300 block of Rosillos Peak, which is located near Loop 1604 and Marbach Road.

During a Friday news conference, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said a dog bit the girl on her head and the girl was “bleeding.”

However, the sheriff said the girl suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital for further treatment.

According to Salazar, deputies detained two dogs in a patrol vehicle and were awaiting Bexar County Animal Control crews to arrive on scene.

A Bexar County spokesperson told KSAT on Sunday that both dogs are at the animal care facility and are in quarantine.

The sheriff’s office said both the dog owners were issued two citations Sunday — one for allowing the dogs to run free and one for lack of rabies vaccination.

If any further dog attacks are reported, BCSO said arrestable charges could be a possibility.

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Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard looked up to the sky and back down at the trophy, shaking his head in disbelief, before walking in front of his celebrating teammates and lifting it aloft inside Selhurst Park after a campaign-ending 2-1 win at Crystal Palace.

Arsenal clinched a first English league title since 2004 with a game to spare in midweek, after three straight runner-up finishes.

Kroenke made his way to London for the trophy lift and watched the game against Palace next to his son, Josh. About an hour after the game finished, they walked out onto the field with the trophy ahead of the ceremony.

It marked the latest success in Kroenke’s sporting empire. The Denver Nuggets won the NBA Championship in 2023, a year after the LA Rams won the Super Bowl and Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup in NHL. All three of those teams are in the Kroenke Sports & Entertainment portfolio that also now includes the best soccer team in England.

Josh Kroenke, Arsenal's co-chairman, said his family is invested “emotionally, financially, everything.”

“This club means the world to us,” he told Sky Sports. "I think it took a few people a few years to understand what that meant but now we’ve some great people, great players and great coaches.

“We’ve just got to continue providing them the resources to go out and do magical things like they did this season.”

He described the Premier League as a “slower burn than our championships in the United States.”

“Here, the cumulative points — it's a grind and you start to feel it in December,” he said. “Credit to our players, the staff, and Mikel for keeping their heads on. They deserve it.”

For Sunday's big occasion, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and his players wore the team’s classic red-and-white jersey with “Champions 2026” on the back. Arteta was thrown up in the air by the squad in joyous scenes.

The season could get even better for Arsenal, which also has reached the Champions League final for the first time since 2006. Paris Saint-Germain will be the opponent in Budapest, Hungary, next Saturday.

“We’ve achieved one of our goals but we have several others as well," Josh Kroenke said. "There is still one to be played for next weekend. Today is about enjoying today — tomorrow, we will get back to work because there is still one more to play.”

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

West Ham beat Leeds 3-0 but that wasn't enough to climb out of the relegation zone because fourth-to-last Tottenham also won, 1-0 at home to Everton, to stay two points clear of its London rival.

That meant West Ham's 14-year stay in the Premier League was over and Tottenham, which won three of its last five games under recently hired coach Roberto De Zerbi, will be in the top division for a 49th straight season.

“We shouldn’t be in the position we’re in but we’ve found ourselves in it and we’ve not done enough to stay up," West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen said. "Hurt is the only thing.”

Guardiola's decade-long tenure at Manchester City — which has included six Premier League titles among 17 major trophies — ended with a 2-1 loss to Aston Villa that featured a mid-match guard of honor for first Bernardo Silva and then John Stones, two of Guardiola's stalwarts.

Guardiola wept on the sideline as Silva left the field and was given his own guard of honor by players and staff after the match.

“We lived an incredible period,” Guardiola said. “If I had energy, I would stay here (but) a new person has to do this job.”

Salah started and was given a standing ovation — before he kissed the Anfield turf — during his second-half substitution in his 442nd and last game for Liverpool, in which he grabbed an assist in a 1-1 draw with Brentford. The Egypt winger finished his nine years with the Reds with 257 goals and received his own post-match guard of honor, which he walked through in tears.

Arsenal had already clinched the title in midweek and closed its first championship-winning campaign since 2004 with a 2-1 win at Crystal Palace. The players finally got their hands on the trophy about an hour after fulltime at Palace's Selhurst Park stadium, with coach Mikel Arteta and the team wearing jerseys with “Champions 2026” on the back for the occasion.

In the final shake-up for European qualification, Bournemouth and Sunderland finished sixth and seventh, respectively, to get into the Europa League and Brighton was eighth to reach the Conference League.

Brighton lost 3-0 at home to Manchester United, for whom Bruno Fernandes scored and got a record-setting 21st assist of the season.

Sunderland, which beat Chelsea 2-1, will be in Europe for the first time in 53 years — a remarkable achievement for a team in its first season back in the top division and which was in the third tier as recently as 2022. The team's players huddled around a cell phone to see their Europa League qualification confirmed and broke away in delight.

Chelsea, on the contrary, missed out on European competition entirely after finishing in 10th place — 10 months after winning the Club World Cup.

West Ham's third Premier League relegation

Add 2026 to 2003 and 2011 as years when West Ham lost its Premier League status.

The big difference this season is that the team is now playing its home matches in the vast Olympic Stadium, so that 68,000-capacity arena will be staging games in the second-tier Championship against the likes of Wrexham and the two clubs that had already been relegated from the Premier League before Sunday — Wolverhampton and Burnley.

“This club deserves to be in the Premier League,” said Bowen, who scored and set up a goal against Leeds. "Our aim now is to get this club back into the Premier League.”

De Zerbi rescues Tottenham

A top-flight ever present since 1978, Tottenham was heading out of the Premier League before the club hired De Zerbi in what has proved to be an inspired appointment.

Three wins and two draws later — along with two losses — and Spurs have managed to avoid dropping into the bottom three in what would have been the most unlikely relegation since the Premier League was founded in 1992.

Joao Palhinha scored Tottenham's winner against Everton in the 43rd minute, forcing in a rebound after initially heading against the post, and Spurs defended stoutly to stop Everton scoring the two goals that would have kept West Ham up.

“After a bad season like this one, we showed up as a collective and had amazing support from the fans,” Palhinha said.

“The club will grow up with this season and we know what we have to do in the future."

Tottenham, one of the biggest clubs in Europe and the Europa League champion last season, has now finished one place outside the relegation spots in successive seasons.

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Steve Douglas is at https://twitter.com/sdouglas80

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

The deal the Republican president had said was “largely negotiated” has left a range of lawmakers, former Cabinet members and conservative analysts wondering aloud whether the terms as currently known will render the conflict all “for naught.”

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said the president's decision to strike Iran was the “most consequential” of his second term and that he should not let up now.

“If the result of all that is to be an Iranian regime — still run by Islamists who chant ‘death to America’ — now receiving billions of dollars, being able to enrich uranium & develop nuclear weapons, and having effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, then that outcome would be a disastrous mistake,” Cruz wrote Saturday on the social media platform X. It was in reaction to Trump's update after he had spoken with the leaders of Israel and other U.S. allies in the region.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who also is close to Trump, panned any deal that would leave Iran perceived as being a dominant force in the region and in which it would retain its ability to destroy oil infrastructure throughout the Gulf.

Sen. Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the merit of a proposed 60-day ceasefire, saying it would be a “disaster.”

“Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught!” said Wicker, R-Miss.

Trump says it will take time to ‘get it right’

Trump, who has said he only makes good deals and detests being seen as not having the upper hand in any negotiation, dismissed objections to a deal that he said was not “even fully negotiated yet.”

“So don’t listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about,” he said on his social media platform.

Trump said the deal he and his representatives are working out is “THE EXACT OPPOSITE” of a nuclear pact that Iran agreed to under the Democratic Obama administration. Trump pulled out of that agreement and has been trying to iron out a new one.

“Both sides must take their time and get it right. There can be no mistakes!” Trump said.

He added that a U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports would remain “in full force and effect until an agreement is reached, certified, and signed.”

Some support for Trump came from Capitol Hill, too.

GOP Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, often a thorn in the president’s side, defended the White House's approach.

“War virtually always ends with negotiations,” Paul wrote on X. “Critics of President Trump’s peace negotiations should give President Trump the space to find an American First solution.”

Under the proposal, the war would come to an end and Iran would reopen the strait and give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, with the details and timelines to be worked out during a later 60-day window, regional officials told The Associated Press on Sunday.

Critics air objections as details trickle out

Polls show the war, which began when the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, is unpopular with the American public and has cost U.S. taxpayers at least $29 billion, as of this month. Thirteen service members have been killed during the operation.

Trump initially said the war would be over in four weeks to six weeks, but the standoff continues. Iran's closure of the strait, through which about 20% of global energy supplies transit, has jolted the world economy and sent prices for gasoline and other goods climbing.

Mike Pompeo, one of Trump's first-term secretaries of state, asserted on Saturday that the emerging deal seemed to him to be the same as the Obama-era one from which Trump withdrew.

“Not remotely America First,” Pompeo said on X, prompting a profanity-laced rejoinder from Steven Cheung, the White House director of communications.

John Bolton, a national security adviser in the first term who has become a critic of the president, said the emerging plan details seemed to favor the Iranian government.

“If news reports about the impending Iran deal are correct, the ayatollahs will have won a significant victory,” Bolton wrote Sunday on X. “They will be back on the road to nuclear weapons, supporting global terrorism and repressing their own people.”

Rubio says a nuclear Iran is ‘not going to happen’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio pushed back on Sunday during a diplomatic mission in India, telling reporters at a news conference that no president has been stronger against Iran than Trump.

“His commitment to that principle that they’ll never have a nuclear weapon shouldn’t be questioned by anybody,” Rubio said. “And the idea that somehow this president, given everything he’s already proven he’s willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd. That’s just not going to happen.”

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a Trump antagonist who had pushed legislation to restrain the president’s ability to wage war against Iran, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that while the terms are not yet fully known, “if Lindsey Graham and Ted Cuz are crashing out last night, I’d say it’s probably a pretty good deal.”

Massie will leave Congress in January after incurring Trump's wrath and losing his GOP primary last week to a Trump-backed challenger.

An Associated Press reporter on Sunday witnessed police and security guarding the entrance to the mining facility located in Qinyuan county in the city of Changzhi as emergency vehicles were on site.

Hundreds of emergency responders and medical personnel were sent to help with rescue efforts, state media reported. Rescuers were taking turns to go down the mine shaft, according to the official Xinhua News Agency, facing hurdles including flooded tunnels.

Two were missing and dozens of miners were hospitalized, local officials said late Saturday, following the gas explosion Friday evening at the Liushenyu coal mine in the northern province of Shanxi.

The death toll was revised down from 90, with officials blaming “chaotic” scenes in the aftermath and inaccurate information provided by the mine operator. Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for a thorough investigation and accountability of those responsible.

Some hospitalized miners recalled seeing smoke and blacking out, according to state media reports. Many among the injured were hurt by toxic gas, the reports said.

Shanxi is a coal-rich province

The inland Shanxi province, located southwest of Beijing with a population of around 34 million, is China’s main coal-mining area.

A few hundred meters (yards) from the mine lies the village of Shangzhuang, where some of the miners who work at the site live, including some of the victims, residents said.

The village includes a single main street through which mining trucks pass. On both sides stand two-story houses, some with red-tiled roofs. Some of them are divided into separate rooms and rented out to people including miners.

After the explosion, other mines in the area shut down and some miners left, while others stayed behind waiting to receive their pay, residents said.

Wang Linjun, a coal miner at Liushenyu, said he was at home when the gas explosion occurred.

“My heart is very heavy,” he told the AP. “Thinking that those who eat together and work together suddenly are gone, no one would feel good.” Wang said he does not want to continue at the job, but doesn’t know where to go.

Miners can be paid more than 10,000 yuan ($1,500) a month.

Feng Renfu, also a miner at Liushenyu, said he was working underground in a pit next to the one where the accident took place. Feng said he and his co-workers smelled gas and withdrew from the underground.

“My father is over 80 and he is worried about me. He always calls me to check if I am safe and well in my job,” Feng said. “There are eight people in my family and they all depend on me.”

Safety lapses investigated

The coal mine has “seriously” violated the law, according to local officials, although they did not elaborate on the specific violations. China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported that blueprints provided by the Liushenyu coal mine did not match the actual layout, which hampered rescue efforts.

State media said those responsible had been “placed under control.” On Sunday, a commentary in the official People’s Daily newspaper called for all regions and departments to learn from the accident and to “always keep safety in mind.”

Local authorities also announced a “comprehensive, blanket” inspection of the coal mining sector that would include checks of coal mines’ gas drainage, ventilation, safety monitoring systems and their underground layouts.

A broader inspection of coal mines could put pressure on the province’s ability to produce its annual capacity of around 1.3 billion metric tons of coal, which accounts for nearly a third of China’s total. The country's total coal output rose to approximately 4.8 billion metric tons last year.

China still relies on coal

Coal remains a major energy source in China, given its high availability and low cost, even as the country accelerates its green energy transition. Mining accidents were common and authorities had implemented measures to help improve safety over the past years.

China’s National Mine Safety Administration in 2024 put the Liushenyu mine, operated by the privately run Shanxi Tongzhou group, on a national list of disaster-prone coal mines.

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Chan reported from Hong Kong.

The food drive took place at the Regal Alamo Quarry in the 200 block of East Basse Road.

The event raised $1,200 through a charity raffle, which organizers said could provide an estimated 8,400 meals for local families, according to a press release.

The Star Wars Society of San Antonio is a volunteer organization dedicated to charitable service and celebrating the Star Wars franchise, the release states.

Check out some photos from Saturday’s event below:

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• Mission Marquee Plaza keeps San Antonio movie tradition alive with free outdoor film series

It exceeded opening weekend expectations for the movie, a continuation of Disney+ spinoff series “The Mandalorian,” but it’s also on the low end of Disney-era Star Wars releases, closer to “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which made $103 million over the four-day Memorial Day frame in 2018. While “Solo” was considered a disaster, the metrics around “The Mandalorian and Grogu” are a little different.

The production budget for “Solo” was in the $300 million range, while “The Mandalorian and Grogu” was made for significantly less — a reported $165 million, not accounting for marketing and promotion costs. It makes the journey to profitability more likely, especially when factoring in positive audience scores. Although critics were mixed to negative on the movie (it currently carries a 63% on Rotten Tomatoes), ticket buyers overall gave it an A- CinemaScore. Boys under the age of 13 are especially high on the movie: They gave it an A CinemaScore and a perfect five on PostTrak. Parents also gave it a five out of five.

The Jon Favreau-directed movie stars Pedro Pascal as the titular bounty hunter and puts him and his tiny green companion on a mission to save Jabba’s son Rotta the Hutt, who is voiced by Jeremy Allen White.

“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” could also be graded on a bit of a curve because of the streaming component, both that it started as a series, and that it will eventually end up as a value add on Disney+, which was only about a month old when the last Star Wars movie, “The Rise of Skywalker,” debuted in December 2019.

Star Wars as a brand is in a time of transition under its new leadership team of Dave Filoni and Lynwen Brennan; Earlier this year it was announced that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who produced “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” was stepping down after 13 years. The question for the industry is whether audience interest in Star Wars on the big screen might have cooled slightly, and if next year’s “Star Wars: Starfighter,” starring Ryan Gosling, will provide a definitive answer. Until then, the hope is that strong audience and exit scores will propel word-of-mouth generated enthusiasm in the coming weeks.

“The moviegoers rule," said Paul Dergarabedian, the head of marketplace trends for Comscore. "I think given the audience reaction and the scores that are coming from parents and kids, this is going to be in it for the long haul."

Word-of-mouth certainly helped Curry Barker’s relationship horror movie “Obsession” defy the standard box office trajectory and do better business in its second weekend. The Focus Features had an astonishing 30% uptick in ticket sales, earning $22.4 million from 2,655 theaters.

“That’s really unheard of,” Dergarabedian said. “And it is a testament to how this social media buzz from younger viewers is fueling the FOMO factor."

The studio, which acquired the microbudget movie for some $15 million, is projecting that it will have made $28.2 million by the end of Monday, bringing its running total to $58.5 million. It snagged the second-place spot, while “Michael” landed in third place with $20 million for the three-day weekend. The Michael Jackson biopic has now earned $782.4 million.

“Obsession” also did better than the new horror movie “Passenger,” a Paramount Pictures release with Melissa Leo, which grossed an estimated $8.7 million from 2,534 locations. It’s expected to earn $10.5 million over its first four days. The movie received poor reviews from both critics (44% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (B- Cinema Score).

Boots Riley's colorful shoplifting caper meets surreal social satire “I Love Boosters” also opened this weekend to $3.7 million. The Neon release stars Keke Palmer and Demi Moore.

The mix of movies this year didn’t hold a candle to last year’s record Memorial Day weekend, which was led by Disney’s live-action “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning.” The overall four-day frame this year will net out around $211 million, down about 36% from last year’s $330 million. It’s also far from the disastrous 2024 Memorial Day weekend box office, a 30-year low, when “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” opened.

Top 10 movies by domestic box office

With final domestic figures being released Tuesday, this list factors in estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” $82 million.

2. “Obsession,” $22.4 million.

3. “Michael,” $20 million.

4. “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” $12.6 million.

5. “The Sheep Detectives,” $9 million.

6. “Passenger,” $8.7 million.

7. “Mortal Kombat II,” $6.2 million.

8. “I Love Boosters,” $3.7 million.

9. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” $3.2 million.

10. “Project Hail Mary,” $2.7 million.

The force of the explosion caused two of the train cars to overturn and catch fire, sending thick black smoke into the air, according to footage shared online.

The attack happened in an area where security forces are usually stationed, badly damaging several nearby buildings and smashing more than a dozen vehicles parked along the road, according to witnesses and images circulating on social media.

Doctors at local hospitals said they had received the wounded, with 20 in critical condition. Three security officials told The Associated Press the bodies were transported to hospitals following the attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to be able to speak to the media.

The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, which demands independence from Pakistan’s central government, has claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement sent to reporters. The militant group said it targeted a train carrying security personnel.

Quetta is the capital of insurgency-hit Balochistan province. The oil- and mineral-rich region has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency. The insurgents have frequently targeted security forces, government installations and civilians in the province and elsewhere in the country.

“We strongly condemn the targeting of innocent civilians and are deeply saddened by the loss of precious human lives. Terrorist elements deserve no leniency,” said Shahid Rind, Balochistan provincial government spokesman.

He said following the explosion, a medical emergency was declared at hospitals in Quetta, and an investigation has been launched.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif strongly condemned the attack, calling it a “cowardly act of terrorism" in a post on X and offering condolences to the families of the victims.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti strongly condemned the attack in Quetta, saying the militants targeted “innocent civilians, including women and children,” vowing to “hunt (them down)” in a post on X.

Bugti and the federal government in Islamabad often use the phrase “Fitna al-Hindustan” to refer to the BLA, which they allege is backed by India. New Delhi denies the allegation.

Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari denounced the bombing, saying militants and their backers sought to undermine Pakistan’s role in regional and international peace efforts.

The attack came a day after Pakistan said the United States and Iran were close to reaching a memorandum of understanding to end the war in the Middle East that began on Feb. 28 after the U.S. and Israel attacked the Islamic Republic, upending global travel and spiking oil prices. U.S. President Donald Trump had said a deal related to the conflict had been “largely negotiated” following calls with regional allies, including Pakistan.

Zardari promised in a statement that his country “will defeat terrorists, their facilitators, financiers and those providing them safe havens.”

Pakistan and India have long had strained relations and have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which is claimed by both in its entirety.

Although Pakistani authorities say they have quelled the insurgency, violence in Baluchistan has persisted.

At least 26 people, including soldiers, were killed in 2024 when a suicide bomber attacked a train station in Balochistan.

The Knicks can wrap up the Eastern Conference Finals and sweep their second straight series with a win on Monday night. Knicks fans — who were boisterous throughout the night — were chanting “Knicks in four!” as the final seconds of Game 3 ticked away.

New York is the seventh team in NBA history to win at least 10 straight during a postseason run. The last team to do it was the Boston Celtics, who went on a 10-game run on their way to the 2024 title. Cleveland, San Antonio and the Los Angeles Lakers have done it twice.

All but one of the Knicks' wins have been by double digits, with an average margin of victory of 22.5 points.

“We've just have to keep our mind on the task at hand. The game is over and we found a way to win. We have to execute at a high level in Game 4,” said Karl Anthony-Towns, who had 13 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.

OG Anunoby had 21 points as New York led the entire game. The Knicks not only made 55.8% of their shots from the field, they also had 11 3-pointers and were 24 of 27 from the foul line.

Evan Mobley scored 24 points, Donovan Mitchell had 23 points and James Harden added 19 for Cleveland. The Cavaliers were 12 of 41 on 3-pointers and 12 of 19 from the foul line.

Not even an appearance by the superstar couple of Taylor Swift and Cleveland Heights native Travis Kelce could spur the Cavs to beat the Knicks.

“I think their physicality and energy, we couldn’t get to that level to combat it,” Cavaliers coach Kenny Atkinson said. “They’re on a hell of a run. We haven’t been able to stop the momentum. We had one chance in that first game I thought to stop it, but they haven’t been able to halt their momentum.”

New York led 91-82 at the end of the third quarter but put it out reach in the fourth when Landry Shamet made three 3-pointers in a 99-second span to make it 105-94.

“Our guys were locked in from the beginning of the game and it showed from the first few minutes of the game. We got a lot of great contributions,” Knicks coach Mike Brown said. “I thought throughout the whole game we did a good job trying to play fast. We don’t want to go against their set defense all the time, so we’ve got to keep trying to play fast. And then our guys did a better job in the second half trying to defend without fouling.”

The Knicks made their first four shots en route to a 9-1 lead less than two minutes into the game. New York was 12 of 17 from the field in the quarter and was up 37-27 after 12 minutes.

Cleveland rallied to tie it at 50-all on a jumper by Harden before the Knicks countered with a 10-1 run. They went into halftime with a 60-54 advantage.

Brunson had six of his 12 points during an 8-1 run midway through the third quarter as the Knicks extended their lead to 83-70 with 3:41 remaining.

“It’s the next-man-up mentality and the guys found me a few times," Shamet said. We knew we were going to get a real good punch from that team, and we weathered their best punches tonight.

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This story has been updated to reflect that Evan Mobley led the Cavaliers with 24 points and James Harden scored 19.

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

“I need to go to the bathroom. I can’t move anymore. I’m going to (go) on the court,” Gea told the chair umpire in French before hastily running off Court Suzanne-Lenglen.

The 135th-ranked Gea was trailing 13th-seeded Karen Khachanov 4-2 when he made his move. Khachanov won 6-3, 7-6 (3), 6-0.

Usually, bathroom breaks are only permitted between sets.

Khachanov protested to the chair umpire as three minutes passed between games at a point in the match that was not a changeover when players change ends.

Gea said the umpire allowed him the break because of "medical circumstances" and that he was given some medicine to settle his stomach pain.

After the match, Gea said he had not felt ill the night before but started feeling unwell when he woke up in the morning.

“During the match it was even worse,” he said. “I had to go to the toilet really quick.”

His situation was not helped by the intense heat at Roland Garros with lunchtime temperatures hitting 31 degrees Celsius (88 Fahrenheit).

“It was harder than usual, because I was ill,” he said.

The 21-year-old Gea received a wild card invitation from Roland Garros organizers to participate in the main draw.

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

Just before 3 a.m. Sunday, officers responded to a reported crash involving two vehicles in the 2100 block of Culebra Road, near Bandera Road.

Police said a black Ram traveling westbound on Culebra Road struck a vehicle carrying two people traveling eastbound on Bandera Road. The two occupants had a green light at the time of the crash.

One of the occupants suffered major injuries and was taken to a hospital. The condition of the other occupant was not immediately available.

The driver of the Ram fled the scene on foot before police arrived, SAPD said. Officers later arrested the driver for intoxication assault, police said.

SAPD’s investigation is ongoing.

Read also:

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The intense aerial assault damaged buildings across the Ukrainian capital, including near government offices, residential buildings, schools and a market, Ukrainian authorities said. At least 83 people were wounded in the attack.

Air raid sirens blared through the night as smoke billowed across the city from strikes. Associated Press reporters heard powerful explosions near the city center and close to government buildings.

The attack included 600 strike drones and 90 air, sea and ground-launched missiles, according to Ukraine’s Air Force. Ukrainian air defenses destroyed and jammed 549 drones and 55 missiles. Around 19 missiles failed to reach targets, the Air Force said.

Ferit Hoxha, Albania’s foreign minister, reported that the residence of the Albanian ambassador to Ukraine was hit during the attack, denouncing it as “unacceptable” and a “grave escalation”.

The Oreshnik, which is capable of carrying nuclear or conventional warheads, struck the city of Bila Tserkva in the Kyiv region, Zelenskyy said on Telegram.

Russia had vowed to strike back for an attack Friday

Russia’s Defense Ministry on Sunday confirmed the weapon's use, as well as other missile types, to strike Ukrainian “military command and control facilities,” air bases and military industrial enterprises. The ministry added the attack was retaliation for Ukrainian attacks on “civilian facilities on Russian territory,” without giving detail.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced a drone strike on a college dormitory in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, which Moscow blamed on Kyiv. He said there were no military or law enforcement facilities near the college. Putin said he ordered the Russian military to retaliate.

The death toll from that strike had risen to 21, Russian authorities said late Saturday. They said 42 other people had been wounded in the attack the previous night. The Kremlin-installed authorities of the Luhansk region announced two days of mourning for the victims.

At a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on the strike, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian Ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show” and asserting that the May 22 operations “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine.”

Kyiv's European allies, including France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz, condemned the Russian strikes and use of the Oreshnik in statements published on Sunday. Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief, said top diplomats from EU states will meet within days to “discuss how to dial up the international pressure on Russia.”

Ukraine struggles to down all ballistic missiles

Zelenskyy said not all the ballistic missiles were intercepted and that most of the strikes hit Kyiv, the primary target of the attack.

The apparent interception failures underscored Ukraine’s chronic shortage of air defense missiles capable of downing ballistic missiles. Kyiv relies heavily on U.S. Patriot air defense systems to intercept such weapons, but interceptors remain in short supply and are among Ukraine’s most urgent requests to its Western partners.

Developing a domestically produced alternative has become a top priority for Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, though doing so will require time and funding.

Fires rage into the morning in Kyiv after attack

Damage was recorded in 50 locations across several districts of the capital, including residential buildings, shopping centers and schools, Ukraine's emergency service said in a Telegram post. Police department buildings were also damaged, it said.

Fires continued to rage into the morning, complicating rescue efforts as buildings collapsed from the blasts.

“It was a terrible night, and there had never been anything like it in the entire war," said Kyiv resident Svitlana Onofryichuk, 55, who had worked in the market that was damaged for 22 years.

“I am very sorry that I have to say goodbye to Kyiv now, I am not staying there anymore, there is no possibility," she added. “My job is gone, everything is gone, everything has burned down.”

Yevhen Zosin, 74, a Kyiv resident who witnessed the attack, said the moment he heard the explosion he rushed to grab his dog.

“Then there was another explosion and she and I were thrown back like a pin by the shock wave. We both survived, she and I. My apartment was blown to pieces,” he said.

In Kyiv’s Shevchenko district, a five-story residential building was hit, which caused a fire, and one person was killed, Ukraine's state emergency service reported.

A school building was damaged by an attack while people sheltered inside, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Local authorities reported supermarkets and warehouses across the city also were damaged.

Multiple communities recorded damage throughout the Kyiv region, according to Mykola Kalashnyk, who heads the regional administration.

Elsewhere, a Ukrainian drone killed a civilian in the Russian town of Grayvoron, in the Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, local authorities reported on Sunday morning.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces shot down or jammed 33 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday, including over the Moscow region, western and southwestern Russia, and Russian-occupied Crimea.

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Associated Press writer John Leicester in Paris contributed to this report.

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This story corrects Mykola Kalashnyk’s title.

Rubio's first official visit to the South Asian country came amid an economic and diplomatic downturn between the United States and India, largely strained by U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, which raised duties on several Indian exports.

Rubio is set to meet in New Delhi on Tuesday his counterparts from India, Australia and Japan, members of the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance known as the Quad.

India is a US strategic partner, Rubio says

Rubio and Jaishankar held a joint press briefing after Sunday’s initial round of talks. They reiterated their aim to deepen the U.S.-India strategic partnership while pursuing their respective national interests.

The U.S. top diplomat said that India is one of the most important strategic partners of the United States and expressed optimism about finalizing a bilateral trade deal soon. “I don’t view our relation with any country in the world as coming at the expense of our strategic alliance with India,” he said, adding that he hoped that India-U.S. relations would come out much stronger in the coming years.

Rubio stressed that the Trump administration’s trade decisions were of a global perspective to serve the U.S. economy, rather than targeted at New Delhi. “There virtually is no country in the world that I could travel to that isn’t going to raise the issue of trade because we did this from a global perspective.”

Jaishankar said the U.S.-India strategic partnership exists because of a “convergence of national interests" in multiple areas.

“Trump administration has been very forthright in putting forward its foreign policy outlook as America first. ... We have a view of India first. So both of us are obviously driven by our respective national interests,” he said.

The Indian foreign minister also said his country sought dependable, multiple and cheap energy sources for its 1.4 billion people.

“The United States fits the bill in many respects. So do some other countries. So, we will continue to diversify and maintain multiple sources of supply at the most reasonable cost,” Jaishankar said.

India has recently made a notable shift by wrapping up a series of trade deals: three in 2025 with Oman, New Zealand, and the UK. This was followed by an agreement with the European Union in January, which represents a third of global trade.

On tensions in the Strait of Hormuz, following the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran that sparked a war in the region, spiking oil prices and disrupting supply chains, Jaishankar said India and the U.S. are keen on keeping global maritime trade safe and uninterrupted, while ensuring fuel remains affordable and widely available.

He said India's approach is to diversify its energy sources so that energy markets stay open and unconstrained, with prices kept low to support global economic growth.

Rubio's four-day visit includes a multicity tour and a gala reception in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

India and US have different priorities but shared concerns

“In the past one year, statements and rhetoric coming from Washington on some of India’s most sensitive security concerns and trade matters have not been helpful and have created a trust deficit,” said Ashok Malik, a former policy adviser in India’s Foreign Ministry.

“Certain misgivings will remain,” Malik added, noting Rubio’s visit will be considered an achievement if the talks somewhat stabilize the relationship and check further deterioration.

Experts say friction exists between U.S. global strategic ambitions and India’s priorities as an emerging middle power. Historically close to Russia, New Delhi has long expressed unease as it moves closer to the U.S., reflecting India's lingering distrust of American intentions rooted in cultural differences and Cold War-era instincts.

Still, India-U.S. ties steadily deepened over two decades into a broad, robust strategic partnership, increasingly shaped in recent years by shared concerns about China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific and articulated diplomatically through the Quad forum.

The Quad has repeatedly accused China of flexing its military muscles in the South China Sea and aggressively pushing its maritime territorial claims. Beijing maintains that its military is purely defensive to protect what it says are China's sovereign rights and calls the Quad an attempt to contain its economic growth and influence.

After the U.S. presidential inauguration in January 2025, Rubio’s first formal international engagement was meeting with the foreign ministers of the Quad countries jointly and in separate sessions.

Tensions build up over conflict with Pakistan and Russian oil purchases

Despite close ties and often being perceived as ideological allies, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi downplayed Trump’s role in brokering a ceasefire after a brief India-Pakistan military conflict triggered by the April 2025 massacre of mostly Hindu tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir. But Pakistan openly courted Trump and even advocated for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Economic tensions followed, with the Trump administration imposing tariffs on India over its discounted purchases of Russian oil, further straining ties between the two countries.

“In India, there is some skepticism about U.S. policy and predictability,” said Malik, who heads the India chapter of The Asia Group advisory firm in the U.S. He said what has happened in the past year between India and the U.S. “can’t be forgotten or erased easily.”

When the Iran war broke out in February, the U.S. stepped up engagement with Pakistan, which positioned itself as a mediator between Washington and Tehran, deepening unease in New Delhi. Trump’s recent, high-profile visit to China has only added to India’s discomfort.

India-U.S. relations are challenging “due to a few structural tensions and Trump only brought them to the fore,” said Praveen Donthi, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.

“New Delhi’s foreign policy, increasingly colored by its domestic politics, has become more black-and-white in the last decade, as evidenced by its deep discomfort with the U.S.’s ties with Pakistan and its moves toward detente with China,” Donthi said.

Experts say these shifts reflect the growing complexity of India-U.S. relations, rooted in shared strategic interests, yet increasingly shaped by competing priorities and a shifting geopolitical landscape.

“New Delhi is likely to exercise strategic patience and wait for Trump to leave office,” Donthi said. “India would hope that the bipartisan consensus on India in the U.S. survives his term and that it can start building on that again.”

___

Hussain reported from Srinagar, India.

At least 24 workers either managed to dash out of the building, where they mostly slept on the ground floor, or were rescued after the it crumbled to the ground around 2:30 a.m. in a crowded neighborhood of budget hotels, cafes, spas and rural houses outside a former U.S. Air Force base, officials said.

A Malaysian tourist died and another guest was injured in a lodging house, which was partly hit by debris from the collapsing building in Angeles City in Pampanga province, Fire Superintendent Maria Lea Sajili said.

Relatives of those trapped under concrete slabs, twisted iron bars and aluminum scaffoldings and other debris prayed and wept as they waited for word from about 700 rescuers gingerly scouring the rubble pail to create space for them to safely move into the collapsed structure.

“This is the worst day of our lives,” Joamel Angcao, an 18-year-old student, told The Associated Press as she and other siblings waited for word on their parents, who were among those trapped.

Her parents were tending to their food and coffee cart positioned beside the building when it tumbled down. The parents had struggled through poverty to send her and another sibling to school, Angcao said, tears welling in her eyes.

John Carlo Villarente, a young plumber, said that he stepped out of the building about two hours before it collapsed after heavy rains and fierce wind to have a drink.

“I was so shocked, there were people inside, including my nephew,” Villarente told The AP. “We ran and tried to help but we were not allowed to ger near because people said it was very dangerous.”

Randy Alapide, a 41-year-old plumber who was off-duty when the accident unfolded, said he rushed back to the scene and helped rescuers locate trapped workers by drawing a map to pinpoint their location. “I know three of the missing. They are breadwinners and they have families waiting for them,” Alapide said.

Sajili said two of the trapped workers were located alive by rescuers but it was taking time to pluck them out safely. Ambulance vans, firefighters and police lined up waiting for the two to be extricated.

Nearly 200 police officers were helping in the rescue, which would proceed overnight “until all are accounted for,” regional police director Brig. Gen. Jess Mendez said.

Angeles City hosted one of the largest U.S. Air Force bases outside of the American mainland until it closed in the early 1990s, helping develop Angeles and outlying cities and towns into entertainment and commercial hubs in the main northern Philippine region of Luzon.

The former American air base, now a bustling industrial and tourism enclave called the Clark Freeport Zone, lies about about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Manila.

“It’s a problem that lurks in the shadows, that some people don’t talk about, they don’t acknowledge,” Ray said. “Some don’t even know it’s there, but it’s there.”

In an effort to crack down on these crimes and bring awareness to the issue, the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office launched Operation Rolling Thunder.

“We’ve had two now in the Schertz area, one in the Seguin area,” Ray said. “We made nine arrests in all, but we rescued 12 victims this time, which was by far the most victims that we’ve rescued in any of the operations.”

Videos posted by the sheriff’s office show suspects arriving to meet what they thought were underage victims, but instead were met by a group of law enforcement officers who tackled and handcuffed them.

While the operation originally targeted those sexually abusing minors, Ray said predators of all kinds are being targeted in an effort to rescue victims.

“To the casual observer, it looks like prostitution,” Ray said, “but there’s human trafficking."

In the latest operation conducted in early May, Ray said law enforcement rescued a victim from Venezuela, other states and from the San Antonio metropolitan area.

“It’s a multi-agency event,” Ray said. “The Texas Department of Public Safety plays a very large role in helping us coordinate it and put it all together.”

Ray said his office also collaborates with the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and other local and county law enforcement agencies.

GCSO has a unit specifically dedicated to internet crimes against children, which pursues suspects downloading child sexual abuse material online.

“It’s proven statistically that’s where it starts,” Ray said, “but eventually it turns into physical contact.”

The sheriff’s office is also ensuring compliance with sex offender registry requirements.

“We conduct compliance checks regularly. We ensure that they’re reporting the accurate information that they are required to report,” Ray said, “and if they’re not, it’s a criminal offense, and we file those charges quickly.”

Ray said his office is posting the videos of the arrests to social media to deter would-be predators from committing offenses.

“We’re trying to create an atmosphere where they don’t want to come here to prey on our children or to traffic victims,” Ray said.

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“Final aspects and details of the Deal are currently being discussed, and will be announced shortly,” Trump said on social media, with no details. He said he had spoken with leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, Jordan and Bahrain, and separately with Israel.

He described it as a “Memorandum of Understanding pertaining to PEACE" that still must be finalized by the United States, Iran and the other countries that participated in the calls. It capped a week in which the U.S. weighed a new round of attacks on the Islamic Republic that would break a fragile ceasefire.

There was no mention of Iran's nuclear program and highly enriched uranium, which Iran has sought to discuss later. There was no immediate comment from Iran or Israel. Trump said speaking with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had pressed the U.S. to go to war, went “very well.”

There had been growing optimism among officials

Earlier on Saturday, a regional official with direct knowledge of the Pakistan-led mediation efforts said the U.S. and Iran were closing in on a deal to end the war.

The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss closed-door deliberations, cautioned that “last-minute disputes” could blow up the efforts. This is not the first time in recent weeks that a deal has been described as close.

The official said the deal would include an official declaration of the war's end, with two-month negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program. The Strait of Hormuz would be reopened and the U.S. would end its blockade of Iran’s ports.

Iran, meanwhile, had signaled “narrowing differences” in negotiations after Pakistani army chief Asim Munir held more talks in Tehran.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday welcomed Trump’s efforts to advance peace in the Middle East. He said Pakistan would continue supporting peace efforts “with utmost sincerity” and “we hope to host the next round of talks very soon.”

In a post on X, Sharif congratulated Trump on what he called his “extraordinary efforts to pursue peace” and described discussions among regional leaders as “very useful and productive.”

Twelve weeks have passed since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, killing top Iranian officials including its supreme leader and interrupting nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran for the second time in less than a year. Iran fired at Israel and at neighbors hosting U.S. forces, shaking Gulf nations that had considered themselves safe havens in a tough region.

A ceasefire has held since April 7. But Iran’s decision to effectively close the Strait of Hormuz for ships carrying regional oil, natural gas and other critical supplies has been a focal point of global concern and economic pain.

Iran described it as a ‘framework agreement' for more talks

Iran state TV earlier quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei as describing the draft as a “framework agreement” and adding: “We want this to include the main issues required for ending the imposed war and other issues of essential importance to us. Then, over a reasonable time span, between 30 to 60 days, details are discussed and ultimately a final agreement is reached.”

He said the Strait of Hormuz is among the topics discussed.

But Baghaei told Iran’s official IRNA news agency that nuclear issues are not part of current negotiations.

“Our focus at this stage is on ending the war on all fronts, including Lebanon,” he said, adding that lifting sanctions on Tehran “has explicitly been included in the text and remains our fixed position.”

The Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported that the Lebanese militant group's leader received a letter from Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi saying Tehran will not abandon its allies. There is a fragile, U.S.-brokered ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon, a conflict that began two days after the Iran war started.

Trump had said ‘serious negotiations’ were underway

Trump earlier said he was holding off on a military strike against Iran because “serious negotiations” were underway, and at the request of allies in the Middle East. Trump has repeatedly set deadlines for Tehran and then backed off.

Iran’s parliament speaker, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the lead negotiator in historic face-to-face talks with the U.S. last month in Islamabad, said Saturday that Iran has rebuilt its military assets and if Trump resumed attacks, the result would be “more crushing and more bitter” than at the start of the war.

State TV said he spoke after meeting with Pakistan’s army chief, who also met with Araghchi, President Masoud Pezeshkian and other senior officials. Qatar sent a senior official to Tehran to support Pakistan’s efforts.

The war’s stated aims have not been achieved. Iran still has its enriched uranium and a missile program it says is being rebuilt. It continues to express support for armed proxies in the region. The new supreme leader, though still unseen publicly since the war began, is the son of the previous one and close to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.

And the Iranian people have not revolted against the government as both Trump and Netanyahu had predicted after nationwide protests early this year.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo and Superville from Washington. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

No injuries were reported after the pressurized tank overheated Thursday and began venting vapors at a company site in Garden Grove, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles, according to the Orange County Fire Authority.

But officials said the valves on the tank are broken or “gummed up,” which prevented crews from removing the chemical or relieving the pressure on the tank, said Craig Covey, Orange County Fire Authority division chief.

Firefighters’ first hope is to find a way to cool off the chemical inside the tank so it won’t leak or explode. If that is not possible, Purdue University engineering professor Andrew Whelton said it would be best if the tank sprang a leak so the chemical could be mostly contained. An explosion that could spread the chemical over a broad area and send shrapnel flying would be the worst-case scenario.

If the temperature inside the tank continues to increase, the pressure will continue to build as the methyl methacrylate converts from a liquid to a gas, because officials said the pressure relief valves on the tank were no longer working. Whelton said it’s unlikely that firefighters would consider creating a hole in the tank because of fears that could create a spark that might ignite the volatile and flammable gas.

Drones were monitoring temperatures at 10-minute intervals to watch for any spikes and planning was underway to ensure a possible leak could quickly be prevented from spreading into waterways or the ocean, Covey said in an early evening post on social media platform X.

“Sitting back and allowing these tanks to fail is unacceptable,” Covey said, adding there was no guarantee tanks will not breach and leak. “Our goal is to protect your homes — no damage to them — and protect the environment.”

Tank wasn't cooling as first thought

Efforts to cool the tank appeared to be working Friday, but Covey backtracked the following day, saying a reading conducted by drones actually showed the temperature on the outside of the tank, not the inside.

“Unfortunately I do have to report that the temperature was 90 degrees,” Covey said, up from 77 Fahrenheit (25 Celsius) the previous morning.

Cooling the tank is important because the liquid chemical's flashpoint is 50 Fahrenheit (10 Celsius), according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Residents are frustrated and stressed

Initially people in Garden Grove were ordered to leave. Evacuation orders were then expanded to some parts of five other Orange County cities including Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster. Some people with pets planned to sleep in their cars.

Several shelters remained open Saturday, including at three high schools.

Marco Solano, 32, spent Friday night at his parents’ home, frustrated by the situation and monitoring the news to see if he could go home.

“I don’t think that they should have dangerous chemicals in a neighborhood area, especially that dangerous that they have to evacuate people,” Solano said. “But again, it's not up to me. I don’t make the laws. I don’t make the rules. We just have to do what is best I guess.”

Solano, who has multiple jobs, said he felt very tired and weak and believed the stress of the chemical leak was exacerbating his anemia and ulcerative colitis.

“This has been affecting me quite a bit,” he said.

Solano also said he went to his apartment after work Friday to grab belongings and saw other residents who had not evacuated, and he was worried for them.

Exposure could lead to health problems

The damaged tank is located at GKN Aerospace, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft. It holds 6,000 to 7,000 gallons (22,700 and 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate, used to make plastic parts.

Exposure to methyl methacrylate can cause serious respiratory problems and even render someone unconscious. It can also cause neurological problems and irritate the skin, eyes and throat, according to fact sheets about the chemical. But Orange County health officials said the chemical is easy to smell and residents may notice it over a large area without being harmed.

Whelton said the volume of chemical in the tank is much smaller than in the disastrous 2023 train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which he studied when more than 115,000 gallons (435,000 liters) of vinyl chloride was released after officials blew open five tank cars and burned the chemical.

“Many of these are acute, fast-acting effects. But the longer somebody stays in contact with it, the more potential for significant damage that occurs,” Whelton said.

If there is an explosion, officials said they expect “severe structural damage and significant harm” in the blast zone closest to the tank.

If an explosion releases the chemical into the air, Whelton said, it will be crucial to conduct detailed air monitoring specifically for methyl methacrylate and not just generic tests for volatile organic compounds as officials did in East Palestine. General tests, often completed with handheld detectors, may not be capable of detecting the chemical. Indoor tests of buildings and homes may also be needed before residents return home.

The weather will be an important factor in determining where a plume of chemicals would go in the event of an explosion. Officials were developing maps to predict different scenarios about which areas would be most affected.

Meanwhile containment barriers have been set up to prevent the chemical from getting into storm drains or reaching creeks or the nearby ocean in the event of a spill, Covey said.

Emergency declaration

Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Orange County, making state resources available to local agencies and letting state-owned properties and fairgrounds be used for shelters if necessary.

Garden Grove is next to Anaheim, home to Disneyland’s two theme parks, which were not under evacuation orders. Park officials said they were monitoring the incident and supporting employees impacted by evacuations.

GKN agreed to pay state regulators more than $900,000 in 2025 to settle violations involving recordkeeping, permitting issues and nitrogen oxide emissions, according to a report on the South Coast Air Quality Management District website.

___

Associated Press writers Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut, and Michael R. Blood in Los Angeles contributed.

Officials responded to the scene Friday afternoon in the 1000 block of South Mittman Street.

A spokesperson for ACS said the 48-year-old woman was letting her pets into the backyard when the dogs began fighting among themselves.

The woman suffered multiple bites to both forearms and injuries to her left leg, ACS said. The agency did not specify if the woman was hospitalized.

Animal Care Services impounded a 2-year-old male Spitz mix for mandatory quarantine, the spokesperson said.

ACS said criminal citations were issued for lack of a current rabies vaccination and microchip.

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GCSO and the New Braunfels Police Department had increased patrols in the area of South Walnut Street and Divine Way near New Braunfels Middle School during the search.

Officials said two males assaulted the trooper. At least one of the males was tased, according to the sheriff’s office.

No serious injuries were reported, GCSO said.

The alleged assault prompted a multi-agency response with heightened police presence in the surrounding neighborhood, officials said.

The investigation remains ongoing.

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The law enforcement agency said in a statement posted on X that the man was in the area of 17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue when he “pulled a weapon from his bag" shortly after 6 p.m. EDT and began firing. Secret Service officers returned fire and hit the suspect, who died at a hospital, the agency said.

The suspect was identified as 21-year-old Nasire Best, said a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the investigation.

According to District of Columbia court records, Best was arrested in July 2025 after he attempted to enter a different White House checkpoint without authorization, didn’t heed officers’ commands to stop, “claimed he was Jesus Christ” and said he wanted to be arrested.

An initial hearing was held and a “Pretrial Stay Away Order” was issued, typically a measure ordering a defendant not to go near a person or area before a trial. A bench warrant was issued in August after a notice of “noncompliance” against Best, who did appear for a subsequent hearing.

Latest gunfire incident around Trump

It was the third time in the past month that shots were fired near the president after incidents at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April and near the Washington Monument earlier in May.

A bystander was also struck on Saturday, but a law enforcement official said it wasn’t clear whether that person was hit by the suspect’s initial bullets or those fired subsequently by officers.

Secret Service said none of its officers were injured, and that Trump — who was at the White House at the time — was not "impacted.” Trump originally was scheduled to spend the weekend at his New Jersey golf club but changed his plans on Friday to stay at the White House instead.

FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media that agency personnel were on the scene and "we will update the public as we’re able.”

Evidence of the shooting was visible on a sidewalk just outside the White House complex, where yellow crime scene tape snaked across the pavement and Secret Service officers placed dozens of orange evidence markers on the ground. Medical material, including what appeared to be purple surgical gloves and kits typically used by emergency medical personnel, were also seen.

Gunshots heard by journalists at the White House

Journalists working at the White House on Saturday evening reported hearing a series of gunshots and were told to seek shelter inside the press briefing room.

In a post shared on X, ABC News senior White House correspondent Selina Wang shared dramatic video of the moment she said she heard what “sounded like dozens of gunshots” and ducked for cover. Writing that she had been performing a routine task that White House reporters do daily — filming themselves on a cellphone for a social media post — Wang’s video shows her speaking for a few seconds about Trump’s statements earlier Saturday about a potential Iran deal.

As the sounds of gunfire are heard in the background, Wang’s eyes grow wider, and she ducks down in the media tent, which is among those situated in a line along the White House driveway where broadcasters film their reports. On X, Wang’s video had been shared thousands of times as of Saturday evening, and viewed at least 3 million times.

Shooting scene not far from a deadly incident last year

The shooting scene is within walking distance of where a gunman ambushed two members of the West Virginia National Guard last November.

U.S. Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died from the wounds she suffered in that shooting. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, then 24, was critically wounded. Rahmanullah Lakanwal has been charged in that incident.

The gunfire Saturday came nearly a month after what law enforcement authorities said was an attempted assassination of the president as he attended the annual White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at a Washington hotel on April 25. Cole Tomas Allen, of Torrance, California, recently pleaded not guilty to charges that he attempted to kill Trump. Allen is accused of running through a security checkpoint inside the hotel and firing a shotgun at a Secret Service officer.

Following that scare, Secret Service officers shot a suspect they said had fired at officers near the Washington Monument, several blocks from the White House. Michael Marx, 45, of Midland, Texas, was charged in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in connection with the May 4 shooting. A teenage bystander was wounded in that incident.

___

Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press photojournalists Jose Luis Magana and Alex Brandon and AP writers Gary Fields and Matthew Daly contributed to this report.

The win capped a strong performance in the regional finals as Jourdanton took the series in two games.

Jourdanton will now prepare for the state semifinals after extending its impressive playoff run.

The Indians will face the winner of the Franklin and Rogers match up.

KRIS 6’s Larissa Liska contributed to this report.

Read more reporting and watch highlights and full games on the Big Game Coverage page.

• QUIETER SUNDAY & MONDAY: More sun, less storm activity. Chance is only 20% to 30%. Humid & warm.
• NEXT WEEK: Rain returns Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning

FORECAST

REST OF YOUR SATURDAY

Our first round of storms left San Antonio early after noon with some spot seeing 1″-3″!

Some storms could redevelop late overnight and could produce heavy downpours. Your best bet is to stay weather aware all, keeping the KSAT Weather Authority app and radar handy.

SUNDAY & MONDAY

For those with outdoor plans this Memorial Day weekend, we do expect quieter conditions on Sunday and Monday. Isolated activity will remain possible, but will be driven by afternoon heating. Rain chances Sunday sit at 30%, while lower odds are expected on Memorial Day.

NEXT WEEK

After a break from widespread rain Sunday & Monday, another low pressure system will move across South Central Texas. This increases storm chances again Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday morning. Then, expect a drier and warmer weather pattern to end the week.

QUICK WEATHER LINKS

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They got that most of Saturday night for Game 2, along with a huge performance from offseason addition Nikolaj Ehlers.

Ehlers got loose up the center of the ice and popped the puck past Jakub Dobes at 3:29 of overtime to lift the Carolina Hurricanes past the Montreal Canadiens 3-2 on Saturday night to level the Eastern Conference Final at one game apiece.

Ehlers scored twice for the Eastern Conference's top seed, the first with a highlight-reel individual effort in the second period against two Montreal defenders.

And when the game went to OT, the guy the Hurricanes landed as a sought-after free agent carried them to the finish line.

“He's a special talent,” Carolina coach Rod Brind'Amour said, “and it was on full display tonight.”

The winning sequence started with a retreating Jalen Chatfield bouncing the puck back into the neutral zone to Mark Jankowski. Jankowski had a quick redirection to Ehlers entering the zone at full speed for a clean look at Dobes for the sudden winner.

“We didn't get a second breath,” said Dobes, who had 23 saves. “It was over pretty quick.”

As the puck hit the net, that sent a tense home crowd into a relieved but jubilant roar — along with a screaming Ehlers.

“I can barely talk right now, but I was yelling pretty loudly after that OT winner,” Ehlers said.

“It was a great pass ... and then just try to get some speed and get the puck off my stick as quick as possible and try to surprise the goalie,” Ehlers said. “Seeing that go in, seeing how the fans reacted was pretty cool.”

Eric Robinson also scored for Carolina, which improved to 4-0 in overtime in the playoffs — including 3-2 home wins in extra time during Game 2 in all three playoff series so far.

Carolina was facing massive pressure to regroup from Thursday's 6-2 loss in the series opener that only magnified the team's long-running troubles in the Eastern Final. Now the series is level as it shifts to Canada for Monday’s Game 3.

Josh Anderson scored twice for the Canadiens, the second coming at the 12:51 mark of the third period to ultimately force the overtime at 2-2.

The Canadiens won Game 1 by jumping on a Carolina team coming off an 11-day break after sweeping through the first two rounds — the longest wait to start a series in more than a century — for four goals in the opening 11 1/2 minutes. Montreal repeatedly got loose for clean breakouts and breakaways for high-danger chances against Frederik Andersen in that one.

But Carolina looked much closer to its earlier playoff form with is aggressive forecheck and defensive pressure, holding Montreal to 12 shots on goal and giving up far fewer of those quick transition chances the Canadiens kept burying in Game 1.

“It's hard to go 200 feet and produce offense unless you execute a little bit through that pressure," Montreal coach Martin St. Louis said. "I felt today we weren't terrible, we just weren't as good” as Thursday.

___

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

The global music superstar sat courtside at Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals on Saturday night along with fiance and Cleveland native Travis Kelce as the Cavaliers hosted the New York Knicks desperately needing a win in the series.

Swift and Kelce, who recently signed a 3-year, $54 million contract with the Kansas City Chiefs, took their seats in Rocket Arena shortly before the opening tip. Their appearance caused a stir as fans reacted to seeing the power couple together.

Kelce didn't need long to settle in and was animated while cheering for the Cavs.

With the Cavs trailing 91-82 at the end of the third quarter, Kelce and Swift were shown on the arena's giant scoreboard. Fans cheered wildly as Kelce showed off his team cap and wine-and-gold shirt before chugging a beer to help rally the Cavs.

As Kelce gulped down his beverage, Swift covered her mouth and feigned shock and embarrassment.

Swift became a staple at Chiefs home games when she began dating Kelce a few years ago. She also accompanied him to Game 1 of the AL Championship Series at Yankee Stadium in 2024.

Kelce has attended Cavs games in the past and he and his brother, Jason, were celebrated with a bobblehead giveaway by Cleveland in 2024.

The couple announced their engagement last year and there are reports they'll get married sometime this summer.

The Knicks have a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series after winning twice at Madison Square Garden.

___

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

The U.S. Travel Association said that Mullin confirmed he is considering withdrawing CBP officers in a meeting where the trade group was pressing its concerns about other proposals the Trump administration is considering that could hamper travel. U.S. Travel and the major airlines quickly condemned the idea, and even Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said it doesn't make sense to him.

“U.S. Travel believes such a move would have devastating consequences for the travel industry and communities that depend on international visitation,” the industry group said Friday in a statement.

Details of the meeting were first reported by The Atlantic.

Duffy told a Congressional hearing earlier this week that he wasn’t familiar with Mullin’s remarks, and he’d like to learn more about the context and maybe ask Mullin a question about what he meant. But Duffy said it would be a bad idea to start restricting travel based on political views. After all, at some point Democrats will be in charge and “you will all switch spots at one point — hopefully not too soon Mr. Chairman,” Duffy said.

“We have people from around the world and around the country that need to be able to fly into all different kinds of places. We shouldn’t shut down air travel in a state that doesn’t agree with our politics,” Duffy said.

So it's not clear how much support this idea has within the administration, though President Donald Trump has previously threatened to withhold funding from sanctuary cities.

There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. And courts have rejected the idea of pulling funding from them in the past.

In Trump’s first term in office, in 2017, courts struck down his effort to cut funding to the cities.

It’s not clear exactly which cities and airports Mullin might target, but the Justice Department last year published a list of three dozen states, cities and counties that it considers to be sanctuary jurisdictions.

The Airlines for America trade group was quick to say the idea would hurt the economy and disrupt travel.

“Reducing CBP staffing at major airports would have a devastating effect on the airline and tourism industries, causing a significant operational disruption to carriers, travelers and the flow of international cargo.”

___

This story corrects a reference to Customs and Border Protection in second paragraph.

While the rally at a central square in Belgrade passed peacefully, groups of young assailants later clashed with riot police, throwing flares, rocks and bottles at police cordons. Police responded with pepper spray as they charged forward to disperse them.

The groups, including apparent soccer hooligans, rolled trash cans into the streets as shield-carrying riot police tried to surround them. Police parked anti-riot vehicles in a central Belgrade area to block the demonstrators from returning and the violence soon ended. Police said 23 people were detained.

Protests have shaken Vucic

Crowds of protesters earlier on Saturday streamed into central Belgrade, many carrying banners and wearing T-shirts inscribed with the “Students win” motto of the youth movement which organized the gathering. Columns of cars drove into Belgrade from other Serbian towns earlier in the day.

Vucic has sought to curb the mass demonstrations that have shaken his hard-line rule in the Balkan country. Big crowds on Saturday suggested the dissent persists more than a year after protests first started to demand accountability for a train station tragedy in Serbia’s north in November 2024 that killed 16 people.

Serbia’s state railway company on Saturday canceled all trains to and from Belgrade, in an apparent bid to stop at least some people from coming from other parts of the country.

The president said in a video on Instagram on Saturday that protesters “have shown their violent nature and that they cannot stand political opponents.” Vucic, who was on his way to China for a state visit, added that “the state is functioning and will continue to work in line with the law.”

Anti-corruption protests forced then-Prime Minister Milos Vucevic to resign in January 2025 before authorities pushed back hard against the protesters. Many people in Serbia blamed the concrete canopy crash at the station on alleged graft-fueled negligence during the renovation work on the building carried out with Chinese companies.

The students on Saturday demanded an early election and the rule of law, accusing the government of crime and corruption.

Prosecutor Bojana Savovic told the crowd that “a state where laws are not implemented or are implemented selectively is no longer a state, it becomes a mafia organization.”

Parliament speaker Ana Brnabic downplayed the student rally, saying “it offered nothing new.” Police estimated that 34,300 people came to the rally, while organizers said it was many more, without giving a specific figure.

Vucic's supporters gathered at park camp

Clashes first erupted in the vicinity of a park camp of Vucic's loyalists outside the Serbian presidency building that he set up ahead of another big anti-government rally last March as a human shield against protesters. Folk music blared from a fenced area surrounded by rows of riot police in full gear.

The Serbian president has faced international scrutiny for his hard-line tactics against the demonstrators in the past year, including arbitrary arrests and use of excessive force. The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Michael O’Flaherty, criticized Serbia’s government in a report this week and said he “will monitor the situation closely” on Saturday.

O’Flaherty also cited “reports of police protecting unidentified and often masked attackers of journalists and protesters.” He said the overall rights situation has deteriorated since his previous visit in April 2025.

Serbia is formally seeking European Union entry but it has nourished close ties with Russia and China. The democratic backsliding under Vucic could cost the country around 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in European Union funding, the EU’s top enlargement official warned last month.

The venue on Saturday was Belgrade’s Slavija Square, the scene of a huge anti-government protest in March 2025. That rally ended in sudden disruption that experts later said — and the government denied — involved the use of a sonic weapon against peaceful demonstrators.

Students prepare for elections

The youth movement’s quest for justice and rule of law has resonated widely among Serbia’s citizens, who are disillusioned with established politicians after decades of perpetual crisis.

Students now say they plan to challenge Vucic at the approaching elections that they hope will oust the right-wing populist government. Vucic said this week that the ballot could be held between September and November this year.

Vucic, government officials and the pro-government media have branded critics as foreign agents who wish to destroy the country — rhetoric that has ramped up political polarization.

Protester Maja Milas Markovic said students “managed to gather us here with their youth and wonderful energy; I really believe that we have right to live normally.”

___

Associated Press writer Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade, Serbia, contributed to this report.

No one was hurt in the attack, according to initial reports but as patients ran out to escape the fire, 18 people with suspected Ebola infections left the facility and are now unaccounted for, a local hospital director said.

The angry residents had arrived at the clinic in the town of Mongbwalu on Friday night and set fire to a tent set up for suspected and confirmed Ebola cases by the Doctors Without Borders humanitarian group, Dr. Richard Lokudi, director of the Mongbwalu hospital, told The Associated Press.

“We strongly condemn this act, as it caused panic among the staff and also resulted in the escape of 18 suspected cases into the community,” he said.

On Thursday, another treatment center, in the town of Rwampara, was burned down after family members were banned from retrieving the body of a local man suspected to have died of Ebola.

Burials of Ebola-victims stir anger, frustration

The bodies of those who died of Ebola can be highly contagious and lead to further spread when people prepare them for burial and gather for funerals. The dangerous work of burying suspected victims is being managed wherever possible by authorities, which can be met by protests from families and friends.

A communal burial for Ebola patients in Rwampara took place on Saturday under tight security as tensions between health workers and the local community ran high, said David Basima, a team leader with the Red Cross overseeing burials.

Armed soldiers and police monitored the burials as Red Cross workers clad in white protective suits lowered sealed coffins into the ground. Crying family members stood at a distance.

Basima said his team, after arriving at the scene, “experienced a lot of difficulties, including resistance from young people and the community.”

“We were forced to alert the authorities so that they could come to our aid, just for safety,” said Basima.

Authorities in northeastern Congo on Friday banned funeral wakes and gatherings of more than 50 people in an effort to curb the spread of the virus.

The outbreak is a high risk to Congo, WHO says

The World Health Organization has said that the outbreak now poses a “very high” risk for Congo — up from a previous categorization of “high” — but that the risk of the disease spreading globally remains low.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that 82 cases and seven deaths have been confirmed in Congo, but that the outbreak is believed to be “much larger.”

There is no available vaccine for the Bundibugyo virus, a rare type of Ebola, which spread undetected for weeks in Congo’s Ituri province following the first known death, while authorities tested for another, more common, Ebola virus and came up negative. There are now 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, though more are expected as surveillance expands.

Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said a response to the outbreak must include building trust with communities.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Saturday that three of its volunteers had died from the outbreak in Mongbwalu. The agency said it believed the three healthcare workers contracted the virus on March 27 while handling dead bodies as part of a humanitarian mission unrelated to Ebola.

If confirmed, this would significantly push back the timeline of the outbreak from the previous first confirmed death in late April in the town of Bunia, the capital of Ituri.

The US bars green-card holders from Ebola-stricken countries

U.S. federal health officials said on Friday night that they are banning green card holders who have been in Ebola-affected countries from returning to the U.S.

Green card holders are people who are not U.S. citizens but have been granted authorization to live and work permanently in the United States.

According to a Federal Register notice on Friday, the U.S. government is enacting a rule that restricts green card holders who have recently been in Congo, Uganda or South Sudan from reentering the United States.

It's unclear why South Sudan was on the list as the country has not confirmed any Ebola cases so far in this outbreak.

Such a ban will help ensure that Ebola screening, contact tracing, quarantine monitoring, and medical monitoring will be available to U.S. citizens, according to the notice.

Federal law provides for a period before such decisions become final but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services can argue that the order can take effect immediately in certain circumstances.

The department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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McMakin reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe in New York contributed to this report.

For years, fans have gathered on Commerce Street after big Spurs victories, honking horns, waving flags, and celebrating late into the night. But this postseason, the celebrations appear to be spreading across the city.

Southwest Military Drive has emerged as another major gathering spot, with crowds lining the streets and cars honking in celebration after games.

“It’s Game 1, and we’re already crazy,” one fan said during a livestream celebration. “Just imagine when we win the series, because we’re going to win the series, baby!”

Another fan described the atmosphere as uniquely San Antonio.

“This is San Antonio,” the fan said. “We are the most friendly people in the United States.”

The tradition has also spread beyond city limits. Viewers sent videos showing fans honking in Hondo and Floresville after Spurs wins.

>> Floresville Spurs fans ticketed for honking celebrations

Now, some fans are even taking the celebration online.

Alex Pena, a member of Spurs Jackals, said he and his family created a custom Fortnite map inspired by San Antonio’s honking culture.

The customized map includes several San Antonio landmarks, including the Alamo and the Tower of the Americas, along with tributes to Spurs players.

“We have the Alamo in the game — my wife built that,” Pena said. “I saw somebody do doughnuts around the Alamo. Again, this is the virtual Alamo.”

The map also features a crashed UFO atop the Tower of the Americas, a nod to Spurs star Victor Wembanyama.

Pena said the map was designed for everyone.

“Everybody, literally everybody,” he said when asked about the target audience.

Fans interested in joining the virtual celebration can access the Fortnite map using code 6771-2904.

Read also:

• ‘I can’t stop’: SA artist survives heart attack, paints Spurs pride across the city
• San Antonio business owner leads cleanup effort on SW Military Drive after Spurs playoff wins
• South San Antonio artist Lee Valentine releases viral Spurs anthem ‘Ballin Like Wemby’

The 30-year-old South Korean still managed to maintain an edge over a couple of major champions, including hometown favorite and defending champion Scottie Scheffler, heading into the final round.

Kim shot 3-under 68 on Saturday for a two-shot lead over top-ranked Scheffler and 2023 U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, who had matching 65s.

“It’s fun being in contention,” said Clark, a three-time tour winner seeking his first victory since Pebble Beach in 2024. “Whether you have to shoot 8 under to win or 1 under to win, it’s fun because you still feel the same heat. Tomorrow it’s probably going to be exactly that way where you have to make a ton of birdies.”

Sungjae Im, Kim's countryman, followed a second-round 61 with a 67 and was another two shots back with Stephan Jaeger and Tom Hoge. Jaeger's 64 was the low round of the day at the TPC Craig Ranch, and Hoge shot 66.

Zach Bauchou (66) was 16 under, one shot ahead of Brooks Koepka (66) and three others. Koepka, who opened with a 63, is looking for his first win since returning to the PGA Tour from LIV Golf.

Kim, the field's second highest-ranked player behind Scheffler at No. 24, was in position for a 59 in the second round but had a bogey at 18 that forced him to settle for 60.

His five-shot lead was tied for the second-biggest on tour through 36 holes this season behind Rory McIlroy’s six-shot edge when he defended his Masters championship in April.

It was gone by the 11th hole.

Three bogeys in a span of four holes — all on putts inside 10 feet — dropped the four-time tour winner into a tie with Clark at 18 under. Clark had earlier pulled within a stroke with a short eagle putt on the par-5 ninth.

Kim, a Dallas resident, answered with three birdies over the next four holes — a day after he had 12.

“I was thinking about too much scoring like first 10, 11 holes,” Kim said. “So I’m just trying to be back to kind of like yesterday. Yeah, just trying to hit the good shots and trying to like, all the mojo’s back.”

Clark took the lead a scrambling birdie at the par-5 12th, making a 15-foot putt after a bunker shot with his right foot in the grass, his flexed right knee almost touching the ground.

Kim, Scheffler and Clark were tied at 19 under when Kim went in front with a birdie on the short par-4 14th after Scheffler and Clark settled for pars after trying to drive the green.

Clark got even again, but Kim went in front for good with a birdie at the par-3 15th.

Scheffler, a four-time major winner who ran away to an eight-shot victory at last year's Nelson, answered his first bogey of the tournament on the par-3 fourth with three birdies over the final five holes on the front nine.

“Two shots back going into tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to the challenge,” said Scheffler, who is looking for his 21st tour win. “It’s always fun when I get to play with Si Woo. I think it’s good for the community to have two guys that are local up there on the leaderboard. Should be a fun day tomorrow.”

Clark, seeking his first win since 2024 at Pebble Beach, was standing over the putt before what ended up being one of his early birdies when he stepped away and dabbed at his nose. He made the putt, but was still dabbing at his nose a few holes later.

“I don’t really know,” the 32-year-old said when asked if he had a bloody nose. “I had like a cut on my nose, and I went like this. Next thing you know, I was bleeding. It wasn’t quite a bloody nose, but it lasted a couple holes.”

Jordan Spieth, a hometown favorite alongside Scheffler, faded with four bogeys on his first five holes on the back nine a day after six consecutive birdies to start his second nine spurred a 62. He shot 73.

First-round leader Taylor Moore was back in contention after four consecutive birdies, but went in the water at 15 and ended up with a triple-bogey 6. He shot 69 and was 13 under.

Japan's Kensei Hirata, playing in the final group with Kim and Im, shot 70 and trails by seven.

___

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

For Scott Remer, the champion spellers' coach, posing for a picture was more than just a celebration. It was a business necessity.

While nearly every National Spelling Bee champion over the past 15 years has worked with a coach, the 32-year-old Remer is the country's only full-time, professional tutor for elite spellers. Most coaches are former spellers who are still in college or even high school.

When the field of 247 spellers at this year's bee — which begins Tuesday and concludes Thursday in Washington — is cut down to 10 or so finalists, it's all but inevitable the group will include multiple Remer students.

“He’s probably one of the most influential figures in spelling over the past 10 years,” said Shah, now 17.

Remer has coached five national champions, and since the bee emerged from the pandemic disruptions of 2020 and '21, he has scaled up the coaching profession. He claims 34 spellers as his students this year and has worked with no fewer than 29 during each of the past four bees.

He charges more than other coaches: up to $180 for an hourlong private lesson. If spellers finish in the top 10 and earn a cash prize, he receives up to 10% of their winnings, which he called “a performance-based bonus.”

Many spellers and their families believe Remer is worth it — despite, or perhaps because of, the intense personality that emerges during his lessons.

Always earnest and gregarious on any spelling-related topic, Remer describes coaching as a passion that grew out of his disappointing fourth-place finish in 2008, his final year as a speller. He says he's motivated by sharing his knowledge, helping kids reach their potential and the challenge of discovering spelling bee-worthy words.

“This is really about the love of language and the love of the competition. Part of it is once you're stung by the bee, there's kind of no going back,” Remer said. “I'm not going to deny that it pays well, because it does. But I don't know that there's anything wrong with that.”

The last two champions he coached say he was crucial to their victories.

“Even though his classes are more expensive, it's definitely worth it,” Faizan said. “I saw results.”

Faizan's father, Zaki Anwar, said he negotiated a reduced rate of $120 an hour for Remer's services because Faizan was already an accomplished speller. Remer took home 7% of the champion's prize haul of $52,500 — a bonus of $3,675.

“After winning, it doesn't really matter,” Anwar said.

Expensive and demanding, Remer is not for everyone

Remer drills his students on roots, language patterns and the exceptions to those patterns. He seeks to instill a deep understanding of languages that will allow spellers to figure out a word even if they have never seen or heard it before, as Shah did with “rommack” in 2023.

But Remer's pricing, and his coaching style, have led some spellers to seek help elsewhere.

“I found it prohibitively expensive,” said Navneeth Murali, a University of Pennsylvania student who competed through 2020 and now coaches spellers, charging roughly $50 for an hourlong lesson. “It wasn't a realistic option for me.”

Grace Walters, who coached 2022 champion Harini Logan and four other champions, charges $75 an hour. She and Murali take a handful of students each year.

“I'm very much quality over quantity. It's really important to me that I'm able to get to know each speller as a whole person, not just as a speller, and tailor my curriculum to them as individuals,” said Walters, a graduate student in linguistics at the University of Kentucky. “But I have to give credit where it's due: If everyone was doing it like me, there wouldn't be enough coaches for all the spellers out there.”

Sree Vidya Siliveri was coached by Remer before her 60th-place finish in 2024 but didn't respond well to his methods, said her father, Sreedhar Siliveri. She found a new coach and finished 10th in 2025.

“We were looking for alternatives and found some of the fresh, like, high school students who can be friendlier and charge less,” Sreedhar Siliveri said.

Even spellers and their parents who swear by Remer say he can be brusque and demanding of his middle school-age pupils. Simone Kaplan, who finished runner-up to the “octo-champs” of 2019, appreciated Remer's tough coaching but said it's not for everyone.

“Scott is a true logophile, a master of languages. He pushes his students to keep up with him,” Kaplan said. “That can inspire some spellers to learn and succeed, but it can also leave a student feeling like they've disappointed him if they don't spell every word right. And that's difficult for a kid.”

Remer said his goal is to be supportive while giving spellers the feedback they need to avoid repeating mistakes.

“I try to be tough but fair, and I also try to modulate my teaching methods, based on the kids' needs and the kids' personalities,” he said. “Whether I'm always successful at that is I guess an open question.”

From the Ivy League to full-time spelling coach

Remer graduated from Yale in 2016 and earned a master's degree from Cambridge a year later. His first study guide, “Words of Wisdom: Keys to Success in the Scripps National Spelling Bee,” was published in 2010, when he was a teenager. That was also the year he coached his first champion, Anamika Veeramani.

He has published three other books and has worked for the Council on Foreign Relations and as the communications coordinator for an LGBTQ-friendly synagogue in New York. Since 2020, he has been a full-time spelling coach while also offering tutoring in Chinese, Spanish, writing and standardized test prep. Born and raised in the Cleveland suburbs, he now lives in Mexico City.

Remer has written an op-ed about the bee for the Guardian every year since 2019. He emails out lists of his students and sends updates on their progress, calling them “my spellers” even if they have multiple tutors. (Faizan had three coaches last year.) During bee week, Remer is a constant presence, giving lessons on-site and sitting with spellers' families while the television cameras roll.

He knows he has to market himself, but he says he doesn't enjoy it.

“I think I'm trying not to be particularly self-aggrandizing in general,” Remer said, “so if the question is, does it come naturally to me to do that sort of promotional and marketing work, the answer is no.”

Scripps, the Cincinnati-based media company that has run the bee for a century, does not endorse coaching, but Corrie Loeffler, the bee's executive director, described the practice as inevitable, given the intensity of the competition.

Loeffler gently pushed back at the idea that any coach should claim credit for a speller's success.

“It's hard work, it's study ethic, it's perseverance,” she said. “These kids are doing pretty incredible things at a really high level, especially at a young age, and I want them to be able to take credit for that themselves, knowing that it's a community and they've had so much support along the way.”

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Ben Nuckols has covered the Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2012. Follow him at https://x.com/APBenNuckols

Two Marine Corps Osprey aircraft, which have characteristics of both a helicopter and a fixed-wing airplane, flew over the recently reopened U.S. Embassy in Caracas. They landed in the parking lot with the downdraft blowing tree branches. Forces then descended from the aircraft.

“Ensuring the military’s rapid response capability is a key component of mission readiness, both here in Venezuela and around the world,” the embassy said on Instagram.

Venezuela’s government had announced the drill earlier this week. Foreign Minister Yván Gil said the United States would conduct the exercise to prepare “in the event of medical emergencies or catastrophic emergencies.”

The drill comes almost two months after the U.S. formally reopened its embassy in Caracas. The reopening followed the restoration of full diplomatic relations with the South American country after Maduro's ouster in early January.

Some Caracas residents gathered near the embassy to watch the aircraft, while a few dozen others gathered elsewhere in the city to protest Saturday's exercise. The protesters held a Venezuelan flag with the message “No to the Yankee drill” written over it.

U.S. military aircraft last flew over Caracas on Jan. 3, when elite forces rappelled down from helicopters and captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. Both were taken to New York to face drug trafficking charges. They have pleaded not guilty.

Squadron markings on the Ospreys that landed in the capital Saturday identified them as belonging to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263. The same squadron is currently deployed aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima in the Caribbean Ocean. Maduro and Flores were flown to that warship immediately after their detention.

The head of U.S. military operations in Latin America observed the exercise firsthand. Marine Gen. Francis Donovan, head of the U.S. Southern Command, also met on Saturday with senior Venezuelan officials and embassy staff.

U.S. Southern Command said on X that Donovan arrived in one of the Ospreys for his second official visit to Caracas this year. During a visit in February, Donovan met with Venezuela's defense and interior ministers.

Mehdi Taj, president of the Iran Football Federation, announced the decision Saturday in a statement issued by the federation's media relations official. FIFA has not confirmed the move.

Iran had been scheduled to train in Tucson, Arizona, but a move has been a possibility because of uncertainty surrounding the war in the Middle East and security concerns. Officials at Tucson's Kino Sports Complex had no comment.

The federation says the team will now be based in Tijuana, Mexico, just south of San Diego. This year's World Cup runs from June 11 to July 19 and will be co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

“All team base camps for the countries participating in the World Cup must be approved FIFA," Taj said in his statement. "Fortunately, following the requests we submitted and the meetings we held with FIFA and World Cup officials in Istanbul, as well as the webinar meeting we had yesterday in the Tehran with the respected FIFA secretary general, our request to change the team's base from the United States to Mexico was approved.”

Iran plays Group G games in Inglewood, California, against New Zealand on June 15 and Belgium six days later, then faces Egypt on June 26 in Seattle. The federation said Tijuana's relatively close proximity to Inglewood, a suburb of Los Angeles, will benefit the team and the new location “includes all training facilities, gym, private restaurant and everything else the team needs."

Team Melli is appearing in its fourth straight World Cup and seventh overall. It has never advanced past the first round.

Iran's federation said moving the base camp will resolve potential visa issues since the team will enter the U.S. through Mexico. The president said that the team “may even be able to travel to and from Mexico using Iran Air flights.”

Teams use base camps for training ahead of and after matches.

___

AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

DPS said Wade was found after being last seen Friday evening.

The purge of news releases documenting criminal charges, convictions and sentencings is the latest step by the Trump administration to dramatically rewrite the history of the assault on the Capitol, when hundreds of supporters of Republican President Donald Trump stormed the building in an effort to halt the congressional certification of his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump, on his first day back in office in January 2025, pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or vowed to dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes during the Capitol assault, including those convicted of attacking officers with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and crutch.

On Monday, the Justice Department announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund meant to compensate Trump allies who feel they were unjustly investigated and prosecuted. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has not ruled out that rioters convicted of violence will be eligible for payouts, prompting bipartisan anger in Congress.

After a journalist on Friday observed on the social media platform X that the Justice Department was “quietly” removing news releases on its website that were related to the Jan. 6 attack, including about a Texas man who pleaded guilty to assault and also faced separate state charges of soliciting a minor, the department responded through its “rapid response” account that there was “nothing ‘quiet’ about it.”

“We are proud to reverse the DOJ's weaponization under the Biden administration. We will do everything in our power to make whole those who were persecuted for political purposes,” the post said. “This includes stripping DOJ's website of partisan propaganda.”

Among the releases removed from the site were those concerning seditious conspiracy cases against members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, far-right extremist groups. The Justice Department, in an unopposed motion last month, asked a federal appeals court to vacate those seditious conspiracy convictions, a request that was granted Thursday. The department on Friday moved to dismiss the cases against the group members.

Dakota Hunter, vice president of Kyle Busch Companies, said in a news release the family received the medical evaluation on Saturday.

Busch, a two-time NASCAR champion, died at 41 on Thursday, a day after passing out in a Chevrolet simulator.

Sepsis is considered a life-threatening medical emergency that occurs when the body has an extreme, overactive response to an infection, causing the immune system to damage its own tissues and organs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Typically the immune system releases chemicals to fight off pathogens like bacteria, viruses or fungi, but with sepsis the response goes into overdrive. The results can cause widespread inflammation, form microscopic blood clots and make blood vessels leak.

Busch was thought to have had a sinus cold while racing at Watkins Glen on May 10 and radioed in to his team saying that he needed a “shot” from a doctor after the race. However, he bounced back to win the Trucks Series race at Dover last weekend, and then he finished 17th in the All-Star race on Sunday.

Busch, who was preparing to race Sunday at the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway, was testing in the Chevrolet racing simulator in Concord on Wednesday when he became unresponsive and was transported to a hospital in Charlotte, several people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press.

During the emergency call placed late that afternoon, an unidentified caller calmly told the dispatch: “I’ve got an individual that’s (got) shortness of breath, very hot, thinks he’s going to pass out, and is producing a little bit of blood, coughing up some blood.”

The caller said Busch was lying on the bathroom floor inside the complex and told dispatch “he is awake,” according to audio provided by the Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office. The man then gave directions on where emergency responders should go and asked that they turn off any sirens upon arrival.

NASCAR driver Brad Keselowski said he knew Busch wasn’t feeling well recently.

“Yes, but I won’t go into any specifics," Keselowski said. “But then when he ran the Trucks race last week, those (thoughts) were honestly kind of erased in my mind.”

Keselowski said running multiple races on the same weekend can be difficult on a driver's health — but most don't want to miss a race for fear of being replaced.

“There’s no shortage of drivers that would love to take my seat or anybody else’s seat if we weren’t feeling well, and I think every driver feels that pressure,” Keselowski said. “All athletes do. It’s not unique to NASCAR in that sense. We’re all thinking to ourselves, ‘I don’t wanna be replaced.’ ... So you try to power through it the best you can."

Keselowski said Busch’s unexpected death has forced him to pay attention to his own health moving forward.

Chase Briscoe said Busch’s health issues served as a “wake-up call” for him and other drivers, who often put aside dealing with potential issues because they are so busy traveling around the country and competing on a weekly basis.

He said if something feels off, “you need to get checked out.”

Busch's Richard Childress Racing teammate Austin Dillon was not made available for comment.

Austin Hill will replace Busch on Sunday and drive the No. 33 car. RCR is temporarily retiring Busch's No. 8 until his 11-year-old son Brexton is old enough to race.

All 39 cars in the field for Sunday’s race will include a small black No. 8 decal to honor Busch.

Busch won 234 races across NASCAR’s top three series over his two-decade career, more than any driver in history.

Drivers spoke at length on Saturday about his accomplishments, praising his toughness, competitive spirit and penchant for speaking his mind — all of which led to him earning a reputation as NASCAR's villain.

“He was a polarizing figure that no matter if you like him or disliked him as a racer, he was always talked about,” Ryan Blaney said. “Just this guy that was always there and won too much, which is why people didn't like him. And he always spoke his mind. I think people came to respect that about him, that he was true to who he was and that never changed."

Blaney added that Busch's personality outside of the car and his competitiveness behind the wheel made him "a larger-than-life person in racing.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Today on Texas Eats NOW:

MATTENGA’S PIZZERIA

6044 FM3009 Ste 290, Schertz, TX 78154

Mattenga’s Pizzeria is a family-owned pizza restaurant founded by Matt and Enga Stanfield, serving handcrafted pies and comfort food favorites just north of San Antonio in Schertz. Since opening in 2014, the restaurant has built a loyal following through its from-scratch dough, house-shredded mozzarella, and strong ties to the local community, regularly donating pizzas to schools, churches, nonprofits, and neighborhood events throughout the area.

The menu features a variety of flavor-packed specialty pizzas, including the popular Honey Bear topped with cup-and-char pepperoni, fresh jalapeños, and chili-infused honey. Guests also flock to the Hatch Green Chili Pizza, inspired by the owners’ time in New Mexico, as well as the Texas Brisket Pizza paired with the restaurant’s signature Texas Ranch dipping sauce. Pizza rolls stuffed with pepperoni and mozzarella have also become a fan-favorite appetizer, helping establish Mattenga’s as a go-to destination for family-friendly pizza nights in the Schertz area.

TREASURE BUFFET

5237 Walzem Rd, Windcrest, TX 78218

Treasure Buffet is a newly opened all-you-can-eat Asian buffet in Windcrest offering nearly 100 freshly prepared dishes ranging from sushi and hibachi to Chinese-American comfort food favorites. Led by Chef Caleb Lee, who brings more than three decades of restaurant experience to the kitchen, the restaurant focuses on preparing dishes fresh throughout the day while offering guests a wide variety of flavors and options under one roof.

Popular buffet selections include fresh sushi rolls, hibachi-grilled meats and vegetables, lo mein tossed in house-made sauce, and beef and broccoli finished with sesame oil. Guests can also enjoy mochi, fried appetizers, soups, and rotating specialty items depending on the day. Treasure Buffet has quickly become a popular dining destination for families and large groups thanks to its affordable pricing, generous selection, and daily specials, including its Thursday promotion offering $12.99 adult buffets while children 7 and under eat free.

CURRY BOYS BBQ

536 E Courtland Pl, San Antonio, TX 78212

Curry Boys BBQ is one of San Antonio’s most creative culinary concepts, combining Central Texas barbecue with rich Southeast Asian curries in a way that has earned national attention. Opened in 2020 by Andrew Ho, Sean Wen, and Andrew Samia, the restaurant started as a pop-up operating out of a bright pink shipping container on the St. Mary’s Strip before quickly becoming one of the city’s hottest dining destinations. The concept blends slow-smoked meats with bold Thai-inspired flavors, pairing brisket, pulled pork, and smoked chicken with creamy curries served over jasmine rice.

One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is the Brisket Smoke Show, featuring oak-smoked prime brisket topped with fragrant green curry that balances smoky, savory, and spicy flavors in every bite. Other fan favorites include the Tony Porker with yellow curry and smoked pulled pork, along with inventive sides like curry cream corn, green curry potato salad, and cold noodles tossed in chili oil. The James Beard-nominated concept continues to push San Antonio’s food scene forward by blending barbecue tradition with vibrant Southeast Asian flavors.

PEARL FEST

303 Pearl Pkwy, San Antonio, TX 78215

Pearl Fest 2026 is set to transform San Antonio’s Historic Pearl district into a full-day celebration of music, food, and local culture. Taking place Saturday, May 23, the festival will feature free daytime performances throughout the district before transitioning into a ticketed evening concert experience headlined by Grammy-winning trio Los Lonely Boys. Festival organizers are utilizing multiple stages across the Pearl campus, bringing together local musicians, regional artists, and nationally recognized performers for a citywide celebration of Texas music and community.

Beyond the music lineup, Pearl Fest highlights the district’s acclaimed culinary scene with participating restaurants and vendors serving food throughout the day and evening. Guests can grab bites from favorites like Ladino, Southerleigh Fine Food & Brewery, Casanova Barbecue, and Pullman Market concepts while exploring the festival grounds. Free performances begin during the Pearl Farmers Market at 11 a.m., while evening main-stage performances run through the night beneath Highway 281, creating one of San Antonio’s largest entertainment events of the year.

Follow Texas Eats and David Elder on Facebook and Instagram for more food info, pictures, videos and giveaways.

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Many paused to share photographs and other mementos of children and young people who have died or are battling cancer because of the pollution.

Leo's visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo’s commitment to carry on his predecessor’s environmental agenda.

“I have come first of all to gather the tears of those who have lost loved ones, killed by environmental pollution caused by unscrupulous people and organizations who for too long were able to act with impunity,” Leo said in remarks to family members and local clergy inside Acerra's cathedral.

The pontiff recalled that the area now dubbed the Land of Fires was once called “Campania felix,” Latin for blessed or fruitful countryside, "capable for enchanting for its fertility, its produce and its culture, like a hymn to life.

"And yet — here is death, of the land and of men,'' the pope said.

The European Court of Human Rights last year validated a generation of residents’ complaints that mafia dumping, burial and burning of toxic waste led to an increased rate of cancer and other ailments in the area of 90 municipalities around Caserta and Naples, encompassing a population of 2.9 million people.

The court found Italian authorities had known since 1988 about the toxic pollution, blamed on the Camorra crime syndicate that controls waste disposal, but failed to take necessary steps to protect the residents. The binding ruling gave Italy two years to set up a database about the toxic waste and verified health risks associated with living there.

Bishop says the dumping continues

Bishop Antonio Di Donna estimated 150 young people had died in the city of some 58,000 over the past three decades — emphasizing in his opening remarks that the number didn't take into account adults and victims in other municipalities.

He urged the pope to admonish those who continue to pollute, noting that the dumping of tons of toxic waste was reported a day earlier near Castera. Di Donna said that Italian officials had identified dozens more human-caused contamination sites throughout the country, including the Venetian port of Marghera, and the leaching of PFAS forever chemicals into groundwater near Vicenza.

"We say to those brothers of ours ensnared in evil and seized by a mirage of fabulous earnings: Convert, change your ways, because what you are doing is not only a crime, it is a sin that cries out to God for vengeance,'' the bishop said.

The pope later greeted the mayors of the 90 communities impacted by the toxic dumping, and greeted thousands of people waving yellow flags and chanting “Papa Leone” along the route of his popemobile and in a central piazza.

Families of young victims appeal to the pope

The victims include Maria Venturato, who died of cancer in 2016 at the age of 25. Her father, Angelo, said he hopes to speak with the pope to explain their reality, “not for me … for the next generation.”

“I’d like to give these young people a future, so I’m asking for the pope’s help with this. That is, I’m making a strong appeal to him to go to those in power and say, ‘Look, let’s heal this land of fires,’" he said on the eve of the pope's visit.

Inside the cathedral, Filomena Carolla presented the pope with a book containing memories from the life of her daughter, Tina De Angelis, who died of cancer at the age of 24.

“I’m just angry at the people who poisoned the soil, because what did our children have to do with it? What did they have to do with it, so young,” Carolla told The Associated Press on Friday.

Francis' plans to visit the area in 2020 were canceled due to the pandemic.

“As of today, Itamar Ben-Gvir is banned from entering French territory. This decision follows his unspeakable actions toward French and European citizens who were passengers on the Global Sumud Flotilla," the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, announced in a post on X.

“We cannot tolerate that French nationals can be threatened, intimidated or brutalized in this way — all the more so by a public official,” Barrot posted, calling on the European Union to also sanction Ben-Gvir.

The Associated Press has sought comment from Ben-Gvir's spokesperson and the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

This week, Ben-Gvir sparked global outrage after promoting a video of himself taunting detained flotilla activists.

In one clip, Ben-Gvir is seen waving a large Israeli flag over hunched-over detainees whose hands appear to be bound. In another, he taunts a kneeling detainee whose wrists are zip-tied, yelling “Am Yisrael Chai” at him — Hebrew for “The nation of Israel lives.” In a third, detainees can be seen — foreheads to the floor of an outdoor pen — as the Israeli national anthem plays and armed guards encircle them.

Foreign leaders — and even coalition partner Netanyahu — condemned Ben-Gvir's on-camera treatment of some 430 flotilla detainees.

In his post, the French minister was also critical of flotilla activists, who were attempting to breach Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

“We disapprove of this flotilla’s approach, which produces no useful effect and places an additional burden on diplomatic and consular services," Barrot wrote.

The flotilla of 50 boats was intercepted in international waters some 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of Israel. Detained activists accused Israeli forces of mistreatment, describing beatings, tasers and attack dogs.

Poland has also barred Ben-Gvir, announcing a five-year-ban on Thursday.

“In the democratic world we do not abuse and gloat over people in custody," Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski posted.

The official Xinhua News Agency said the accident at Changzhi city’s Liushenyu coal mine happened on Friday evening.

At a news conference late Saturday, local authorities said 82 were dead and that more than 120 people were hospitalized. Two were still missing. The death toll was a revised, lower number from earlier reports by state broadcaster CCTV that said 90 had died.

The scene at the coal mine was “chaotic” in the immediate aftermath of the accident, they said, and figures provided at the time were initial and not definite.

The explosion was under investigation, local officials said, adding there were “serious violations” of the law by the mine’s operator. They did not elaborate on any specific violations.

Earlier on Saturday, Xinhua reported that rescue work was pressing on a day after the accident, with hundreds of rescuers and medical personnel sent to the site. Among the injured, many were hurt by toxic gas, according to CCTV.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing, Xinhua reported. Xi also called for a “thorough investigation" and accountability "in accordance with the law.”

Xinhua later reported that those responsible for the company involved in the mine accident have been "placed under control,” citing the local emergency management bureau.

An investigation team sent by China’s powerful State Council, equivalent to the country’s Cabinet, would be conducting a “rigorous and uncompromising” probe into the deadly explosion, a separate Xinhua report said following Xi’s remarks.

Wang Yong, one of the hospitalized miners, told CCTV in a video interview that he smelled sulfur “like firecrackers” and saw smoke.

“I told people to run,” he said. “As I ran, I saw people being choked by the smoke. And then I blacked out.”

The state broadcaster also reported that blueprints provided by the coal mine did not match the actual layout, hampering rescue efforts.

The coal mine, operated by the Shanxi Tongzhou Coal & Coke Group with an annual production capacity of 1.2 million tons, was placed on a national list of disaster-prone coal mines by China’s National Mine Safety Administration in 2024 for having “high gas content.”

Shanxi province is known as China’s main coal mining province. With a size larger than Greece and a population of around 34 million, the province's hundreds of thousands of miners dug 1.3 billion tons of coal last year, almost a third of China’s total.

In China, coal remains a key energy source due to its lower cost and high availability, even as the country accelerates its transition toward green energy. Mining disasters have been common although authorities had implemented measures to improve safety over the past years.

In February 2023, 53 people were killed after a collapse at an open-pit mine in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. In November 2009, an explosion at a mine in northeastern China’s Heilongjiang province killed 108, according to state media.

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A judge handed the life sentence to Bobby Mercado on Friday.

In February 2024, police found Robert Wellington shot to death after responding to the 1100 block of W. Ridgewood Court.

The DA’s office said investigators identified the suspects as Bobby Mercado and Cristan Villalobos.

Investigators connected Mercado to the murder through witness descriptions, surveillance video, and forensic evidence.

Mercado was apprehended at a nearby bus stop and in possession of narcotics, according to the DA’s office.

He faces a life sentence in prison for murder and a life sentence for felony firearm possession.

Read also:

• Woman found dead at Northeast Side apartment complex; Suspect detained, SAPD says
• Madison HS student injured in drive-by shooting near campus after road rage incident, officials say

Another surprise: The 2022 world champion at 100 meters, banned from the regular track circuit until August 2027 for missing tests required by a system he portrayed as disrespectful and intrusive, has every intention of being on another starting line.

“I will compete at the LA Olympics in 2028," he said.

When Kerley signed onto the Enhanced Games roster, he became their most recognizable name and gave the new enterprise a headliner it had been missing.

Some six months later came his two-year ban by the Athletics Integrity Unit for missing tests, a violation of the antidoping code that doesn't necessarily mean an athlete is taking drugs.

The 31-year-old Kerley, who bet on himself after the COVID-19 pandemic when he successfully gave up the 400-meter grind for the 100-meter straightaway, insisted it was the multimillion-dollar contract, not the prospect of taking performance enhancers, that led him to the breakaway league.

“I don't need it,” he said. “God gave me fast feet for a reason. I'm here to showcase my talent. You still have to work. Drugs aren't going to give you an advantage if you're not putting the work in.”

USADA's doping control officers on hand this week

That, in part, is what the Enhanced Games will or will not prove on Sunday. Most of the 50 athletes competing in track, swimming and weightlifting are taking performance enhancers under the watchful eye of doctors and trainers. A few, like Kerley and Olympic gold-medal relay swimmer Hunter Armstrong, say they are not.

Rick Adams, the former chief of sport performance for the U.S. Olympic team whose move to become an executive for Enhanced also gave the enterprise a greater sense of legitimacy, said doping control officers are on hand in Las Vegas this weekend, testing on behalf of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, which still keeps a list of active athletes who could return to traditional events.

“There's a lot of scrutiny, not only against me but against the Enhanced Games,” Armstrong said. “I want them to test me because I don't want there to be a single doubt that I'm a man of my word.”

Kerley, a man of few words, says he will be ‘fast’ on Sunday

Kerley, who has a reputation as a man of few words, has spent large parts of 2026 using his social media feed to rip into antidoping authorities, while teasing that a 9.4-second run could be possible. He has turned himself into maybe track's most intriguing character this side of Sha'Carri Richardson.

Does he think Usain Bolt's 9.58-second world record can be broken Sunday — a feat that would earn the record breaker $1 million, in addition to a $250,000 first prize? “It's going to be destroyed," Kerley said.

How fast does he think he can go? “Fast.”

How fast? “Fast.”

Does he have a time in mind? “Fast.”

When Kerley's ban for missing tests was announced in March, the easy conclusion was that he didn't care about testing anymore now that he was part of the Enhanced Games.

But the reason, he explained, had to do with the 24/7 whereabouts requirements in antidoping. In essence, athletes in the testing pool have to spell out where they'll be at all times and give drug testers specific windows when they'll be available.

When the ban came down, Kerley argued he had no intention of answering phone calls that looked like spam from Mexico while he was in the U.S. Those, apparently, were from doping control officers trying to track him down.

On Friday, he went a little deeper.

“I grew up with family,” he said. “You just don’t come and disrespect my space. Once you come and start disrespecting my space, it’s irritating.”

But, he says, despite the ban and despite his presence with Enhanced, he continues to be tested by the AIU and USADA.

He says the move to Enhanced had nothing to do with taking drugs, everything to do with signing a contract that he suggested on social media would take $12 million-plus to top.

Like so many in his sport, he has grown tired of shoe contracts that place too many obligations on athletes and sometimes go away if an injury hits or times falter.

“We're training, basically, 365, and it hasn't changed from back in the day when all the greats were running,” Kerley said.

Banned for taking PEDs, Marvin Bracy-Williams makes a comeback

Also running in the 100 on Sunday is Marvin Bracy-Williams, whose own curious doping case resulted in what could have been a career-ending 45-month ban but instead led him to the Enhanced Games where he said he is, in fact, taking drugs.

Bracy-Williams, who finished second at worlds to Kerley by .02 seconds in 2022, conceded that his sudden disappearance from track in 2023 came because he was doping after a series of injuries.

He ended up providing information to authorities that led to the arrest of a Florida man, who faces up to 10 years in prison for violating a law passed in 2020 that allows U.S. authorities to prosecute doping crimes involving international events.

The reduced ban wasn't enough to salvage the 2028 Olympic hopes of Bracy-Williams, now 32, so he jumped when he saw the chance to go to the Enhanced Games.

“We get in these situations where the treatment is good when you're good,” Bracy-Williams said, referencing a $100,000 reduction in his contract that came if he failed to make a U.S. national team. "But when you're in a place where you're not doing so good, it just goes away, and sometimes, for some people, that can be hard.

Bracy-Williams said he trained with Tyson Gay in the early 2010s when Gay got nailed for doping. He passed no judgment on him or anyone else.

“The dude never changed,” Bracy-Williams said. “I didn't look at him like he was some boogeyman now."

He rattled through a long list of great sprinters who had tested positive for doping through the years.

“But you meet them behind closed doors, and they're good guys,” Bracy-Williams said.

As he spoke at a table surrounded by media, his two kids sat quietly against the wall and played on cellphones. There was no need to ask why Bracy-Williams, who has a two-year contract with "lots of zeros" on it, was trying to extend his career at the Enhanced Games.

Same for Kerley, who promises that track and field hasn't seen the last of him.

“At the end of the day," Kerley said, “I'm here to provide for my kids and myself.”

___

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

Authorities in the city of Novorossiysk said falling drone debris sparked a fire at an oil terminal, injuring two people. Russia’s Astra news outlet said Ukrainian drones struck the Sheskharis oil terminal and depot, the terminus for Russian state-controlled pipeline company Transneft’s main oil pipelines in the region. Images posted by Astra appeared to show smoke rising above the oil terminal, but they could not be verified.

On Saturday afternoon, Ukraine's General Staff said its forces had struck the Sheskharis oil terminal overnight.

“The facility provides shipment of oil and oil products for export and is involved in meeting the needs of the Russian army,” the General Staff wrote on Telegram, adding that Ukrainian forces had also hit a tanker in the Black Sea belonging to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet.”

Ukraine has expanded its mid- and long-range strike capabilities, deploying drone and missile technology that it has developed domestically to battle Russia’s 4-year-old invasion. Attacks on Russian oil assets that play a key part in funding the invasion have become almost daily occurrences.

Meanwhile, the death toll from a Ukrainian drone strike overnight into Friday on a college dormitory building in Starobilsk, a city in Ukraine’s Russia-occupied Luhansk region, rose to 18, the press service of Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations said. According to the ministry, 60 people were wounded in the attack.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday denounced the attack on the dormitory as a “crime” and ordered the military to submit its proposals for retaliation. He said there were no military or law enforcement facilities near the college.

At a U.N. Security Council emergency meeting on the strike, held at the request of Russia, Ukrainian Ambassador Andrii Melnyk denied his Russian counterpart’s accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show” and asserting that the May 22 operations “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine.”

___

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

Rep. Mark Takano, whose American-born parents were both incarcerated as young children with their families during the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II, could not help but see the parallels between that chapter of American history and this one.

“I do feel like there's a similarity of circumstance of my own 2-year-old father and my 1-year-old mother being labeled as enemy aliens and they’re considered a danger to national security," he told The Associated Press in an interview.

“They’re put into these incarceration camps,” he said. “Similar arguments have been made by this administration — that immigrants pose a grave danger to our country and it’s for the security of our country that we’re doing this.”

Echoes of history in Trump's immigration sweeps

President Donald Trump’s campaign promise of the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history is at an inflection point. Americans are seeing what it looks like to round up, detain and deport thousands of people, particularly in the aftermath of the deaths this year of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens protesting the actions in Minneapolis.

The White House changed the leadership at the Department of Homeland Security as it reframes its approach. New Secretary Markwayne Mullin promised to keep the department off the front pages.

But Trump is also under mounting pressure from conservative groups not to let up on the goal of deporting 1 million people a year. The president's Republican allies in Congress are fueling the immigration and deportation actions with billions of dollars in special funds.

Takano, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, has drawn from his own family history — and the country's eventual redress to Japanese Americans who were detained — to challenge Trump's approach.

“We look back on that era of history as a shameful one, as a time when our political leaders failed the Constitution, failed the American people,” he said.

One family's story among many

A former high school history teacher before being elected to Congress in 2012, Takano grew up in Southern California and came to understand the family stories.

His grandfather Isao Takano arrived in the U.S. from Hiroshima and married Kazue Takahashi, a U.S.-born citizen. Together they settled in Bellevue, Washington, and launched a business growing tomatoes, strawberries and chrysanthemums for the marketplace in Seattle.

When the U.S. entered the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they were among some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, immigrants and those born in the U.S., forcibly relocated.

His father, William, was 2 years old when his family was sent in 1942 to the incarceration camp at Tule Lake in California. His mother, Nancy Tsugiye Sakamoto, born in California to American-born parents, was a year old when she was relocated to the detention facility in Heart Mountain, Wyoming.

Then, as now, he said, people are being swept up in the anti-immigrant detentions.

“Will Americans generations from now visit Alligator Alcatraz and think to themselves, How could our government do this?” Takano said during a House floor speech, referring to the Trump-era immigration detention facility in Florida.

“These future generations of Americans will look to us, the Congress, to see what we did to try to stop it.”

A Reagan-era law is seen as model for redress

Takano remembers his father taking him to see the land the family once owned. He learned about his great uncles who served in the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team of Japanese American soldiers; one was killed in action in Italy. He recalls his own father later collected donations for the national redress campaign.

In 1988 Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act, which sought to apologize for the “grave injustice” that had been done and provide $20,000 to each person detained. Republican President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

Takano's parents were among those who received a letter of apology from the federal government, he said, and a payment.

Talks are underway among some in Congress, he said, for a similar redress to the people who have had their car windows smashed in, their homes raided and livelihoods upended as part of Trump's immigration enforcement operations.

“Remarkably the country did come to realize the mistake,” he said. “I believe we’re living through one of those eras of mistakes and I believe we can come out of this moment stronger.”

Rubio's first official trip to India comes as Washington seeks to stabilize relations with New Delhi after ties soured over President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, which raised duties on several Indian exports.

Much of Rubio’s four-day visit, however, will focus on a multicity tour, along with a gala reception in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

“There’s a lot to work on with India, they’re a great ally and partner. We do a lot of good work with them so this is an important trip,” Rubio said ahead of his visit to India.

Rubio arrived in eastern city of Kolkata early Saturday and was scheduled to visit Mother House, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa. In coming days, he will also visit northern cities of Agra and Jaipur, known for iconic monuments and palaces.

Later Saturday, Rubio called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi and “shared U.S. perspective on various regional and global issues, including the situation in West Asia,” a statement by Modi's office said. Modi reiterated India’s support for peace efforts and stressed the need to resolve conflicts through dialogue and diplomacy, it said.

Rubio briefed Modi on progress in bilateral cooperation across defense, strategic technologies, trade and investment, energy, connectivity, education and people-to-people ties, the statement added.

Sergio Gor, the U.S. ambassador in India, in a social media post said Rubio extended an invite to Modi on behalf of Trump to visit the White House in the near future. He said the meeting was productive and focused on ways to deepen U.S.-India cooperation in security, trade and critical technologies.

Rubio is also scheduled to hold a bilateral meeting with India’s External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Sunday.

On Tuesday in New Delhi, Rubio will participate in the ministerial meeting of the Quad that has repeatedly accused China of flexing its military muscles in the South China Sea and aggressively pushing its maritime territorial claims.

Beijing maintains that its military is purely defensive to protect what it says are its sovereign rights and calls the Quad an attempt to contain its economic growth and influence.

After his inauguration in January last year, Rubio’s first formal international engagement was meeting with the foreign ministers of the other Quad countries, both jointly and in separate sessions.

The Global Sumud Flotilla of 50 boats was intercepted in international waters some 250 miles (400 kilometers) off the coast of Israel, and activists along with journalists and at least one lawmaker from Italy were transferred onto military boats and brought to a larger military vessel at the Ashdod port in southern Israel, where they were held in containers, according to their accounts. They told The Associated Press they were punched and kicked, as well as dragged and pulled by their hair.

Israel's far-right security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who has called for deporting political opponents and was barred from mandatory military service for his extreme views, sparked global outrage after promoting a video of himself taunting activists from a flotilla to Gaza who were detained by his police force. Foreign leaders have condemned his on-camera treatment of the detainees and several countries summoned Israeli envoys to air their concerns.

Israel denies mistreatment. The allegations were “false and entirely without factual basis,” said Zivan Freidin, a spokesperson for the Israeli Prison Service.

Some 420 activists departed for Turkey on Thursday after they were deported from Israel, many wearing gray sweatsuits and Arab kaffiyehs.

The AP spoke to some Thursday and Friday as they reached Istanbul, Athens and other European cities:

Here are their accounts:

Zeynel Abidin Ozkan, Turkish flotilla board member

He detailed being held in a container alongside other detainees shortly after the flotilla raid and he said some people were taken outside the containers where he heard them being physically assaulted.

“We faced periods where we couldn’t stand, our heads were bowed to the ground, we were dragged and pulled by our hair. The handcuffs left serious marks on us.”

After arriving at Ashdod port, Ozkan says he was denied the right to contact his lawyer, embassy officials or relatives back home. He describes being told to sign papers under duress, which he refused.

“When we refused to sign, they treated us like prisoners, creating a file, taking photos, forcibly handcuffing our hands and feet with iron shackles. And then, with the soldiers, dragged us along the ground, surrounded by dogs, releasing the dogs on us, before loading us into prison trucks.”

Christopher Boren, activist from Hawaii

“When we got to Ashdod port, I was immediately grabbed by five IDF (soldiers) or police officers. They put my head down and started beating me. One of them had gloves on with hardened plastic and he started punching my face and it swelled shut,” he said, showing his black eye.

Alessandro Mantovani, Italian journalist for the daily Il Fatto Quotidiano

“During the crossing, we were put on our knees, blindfolded, and told to make sure the blindfold didn’t move. They repositioned mine 30 times because I kept trying to look around. And there’s absolutely no possibility in this situation to say ‘I’m a member of parliament’ or ‘I’m a journalist’ — you’re dealing with machines that scream and accompany their screaming with physical gestures. They put you flat on the ground, then on your knees, with zip ties on your wrists. The blindfold, plus an additional zip tie securing your wrists down to a metal structure, just a few inches from the deck. So you’re forced to travel in an extremely uncomfortable position on rough concrete. And I had cramps in my legs the whole time, obviously.”

After they were transferred to a ship that was used for detention “the treatment became immediately more violent. We entered through this small hatch and were shoved and dragged by force with our arms twisted behind our backs, forced to kneel in front of a wall with our heads down.”

At one point, he was thrown down “flat on my stomach, hands behind my back, face pressed, head pressed against the soaking wet and dirty floor of this ship — pressed down with their feet — and then they pressed my hands behind my back.”

Once inside the container, “I was kicked in the shin. Honestly, I don’t expect it. And they say ‘Welcome to Israel.’ Then a punch to the face, one from this side, one from that side. A closed-fist punch. I moved to get up and I got kicked in the leg. A little jolt from a taser to the ribs. And then I make it out the other side of this container and reach the deck.”

Mantovani said he was also strip searched, and his eye glasses and wallet discarded. He and the activists on his ship threw their cellphones into the sea when the Israeli boats approached, and he didn’t wear a watch on this mission after his was nearly confiscated on a previous flotilla.

Yiannis Atmatzidis, Greek activist

“I was struck with a taser, beaten with punches and kicks, insulted and humiliated. On the prison ship there was a container that everyone had to pass through. You entered through one door and a group of six or seven people would beat you mercilessly until you emerged from the other side. Every single one of us went through that.”

Atmatzidis said he was being processed for identification when Ben-Gvir was touring the prison ship.

“The minister entered the room and asked me where I was from. I replied, ‘from Greece.’ He then asked why I was there, and I told him that I had come to deliver humanitarian aid to people who needed it. He responded, ‘Are you a friend of Hamas?’ I explained that our mission had no political agenda and was purely humanitarian. He was surrounded by four armed guards who aimed their weapons and laser sights at me while I sat there handcuffed behind my back.”

He added: "Whenever we told them that circulation was being cut off and our hands were going numb, they showed absolutely no mercy. I do not have the words to describe the brutality and cruelty of these people. It is something I will never forget.”

——

AP journalists Emrah Gurel in Istanbul, Andrea Rosa in Rome and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed to this report.

Republicans are eyeing a seat opened by the retirement of Rep. Bobby Guerra, a Democrat from Mission who represented the area since 2013, after the president carried the district last cycle with 50.3% of the vote — a 7-point swing to the right from his 2020 performance.

Similar lurches toward Republicans played out across the Texas-Mexico border, where the Texas GOP’s yearslong efforts to make inroads with Latino voters helped Trump claim 14 of the 18 counties within 20 miles of the border, including some that had not voted for a Republican presidential candidate in more than a century.

But it is not clear those gains will hold, as polls suggest the president’s immigration crackdown and an inflation-hampered economy have cracked the support from Latinos in the state and country. As Republicans brace for political headwinds in a midterm election and Democrats try to ride anti-Trump momentum, HD-41 is shaping up to be a battleground.

Julio Salinas, a 26-year-old former legislative staffer, has pitched himself to Democratic voters as a young progressive ready to take on the Pink Dome’s establishment and fight for affordability, better infrastructure and healthcare access for district residents.

He also wants to give teachers $15,000 raises and cap prescription drug costs.

“I have a fighting track record of fighting up against MAGA Republicans,” Salinas said in a recent phone interview as he block-walked in Edinburgh. “And winning.”

Salinas’ primary opponent, McAllen City Commissioner Victor “Seby” Haddad, says he has the upper hand with seven years of experience in local government and working with small businesses — crucial ties for a representative in a district that covers the Valley’s urban core, including McAllen.

Haddad has also outspent Salinas, who received the most votes in the March 3 primary.

Despite struggling to keep up with Salinas’ fundraising, Haddad spent $164,000 between late February and last week, when he filed his latest campaign finance report. Salinas spent $76,000 in the same period. Salinas has received financial backing from a variety of people, but his biggest donation came from gun control activist David Hogg’s Leaders We Deserve, which gave him $30,000.

Haddad also has another potential advantage to some in the district: Guerra’s endorsement. Meanwhile, Salinas has received endorsements from U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and state Rep. Christina Morales, the Houston Democrat who Salinas worked for.

What’s resulted is a clash between a more traditional moderate Democrat and an insurgent progressive.

Salinas has knocked Haddad for his history of voting in GOP primaries and business connections, saying he’s for the grassroots and his opponent is all for the banks.

The vitriol reached a boiling point last week when Salinas blasted Haddad for a mailer that featured a photo of Haddad with Morales, the Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee chair, with a caption that says she “stands with Seby in the fight for working families.”

Morales endorsed Salinas months ago, before she took on her role leading Democrats’ campaign arm. Salinas demanded an apology from Haddad, and Morales released a short video to reiterate her endorsement of her former employee.

“If they wish to make that request, they can make it directly,” Haddad said, dismissing the idea.

It’s placed Morales in an awkward position. “That race is getting very intense, and I was trying to stay out of it as much as I could,” Morales said.

In an interview, Haddad said his Republican voting history was no secret and he sees bipartisanship as a strength.

“I’m proud to say I am a moderate,” he said. “I’m a South Texas Democrat.”

Across the aisle, two GOP candidates are also vying to be on the ballot in November. Activist Gary Groves is facing criminal defense lawyer Sergio Sanchez, who previously voted in Democratic primaries.

Neither of their campaigns responded to interview requests.

Renzo Downey contributed to this report.

It’s a battle that nominally began last April, but whose contours were set long before — in 2023, when Cornyn cast doubt on President Donald Trump’s electability and Paxton faced an impeachment from members of his own party; in 2022, when Cornyn negotiated a bipartisan gun safety bill and Paxton was one of just two elected officials to show up at Trump’s presidential campaign launch; or perhaps in 2020, when the attorney general led the legal charge to overturn Trump’s presidential election loss.

At stake is the soul of the Texas Republican Party, which has been caught in a tug-of-war over the past several cycles as insurgents have worked to oust the old guard. The outcome will also shape what looks to be a competitive general election, deciding who will be the GOP’s standard-bearer against Democratic nominee James Talarico.

Tuesday’s runoff will be the biggest, most consequential test of whether Texas Republican voters are willing to support an elder statesman and self-described Reagan Republican over a “MAGA warrior,” in the words of Trump, whose ethical and legal baggage have made him simultaneously a hero and pariah to different segments of the GOP.

Trump made his highly-coveted endorsement earlier this week, when he threw his weight behind the attorney general, citing Paxton’s loyalty and Cornyn’s lack thereof “when times were tough.” The decision went against the advice of Senate Majority Leader John Thune and the Republican political machine in Washington, who have spent tens of millions of dollars boosting Cornyn.

The incumbent senator finished first in the March 3 primary, at 42% to Paxton’s 40.5%. But with U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt pulling 13.5% of the vote, no candidate clinched the nomination outright, sending Cornyn and Paxton to an overtime round.

Runoff electorates tend to be smaller and more hardline, a natural advantage for Paxton. But the Cornyn camp’s strategy has been to press its significant financial advantage to bring the senator’s supporters back out and bury Paxton under a deluge of negative ads.

Numerous GOP operatives said Cornyn still has a path to victory after the endorsement, but the realities of runoff electorates and the Trump endorsement have created a powerful advantage for Paxton.

“Runoff voters as a group — independent of demographics, of region, even to a certain extent of high or low levels of vote history in primaries — the primary runoff electorate is just skewing to the right, or towards Paxton anyway … in a way that just conforms pretty strongly to the conventional wisdom,” said Ross Hunt, a GOP operative and pollster who is uninvolved in the contest.

Throughout the race, Cornyn and Paxton have maintained consistent pitches to the voters.

Cornyn has leaned into the electability argument — that he’s the best candidate to extend the Texas GOP’s three-decade statewide winning streak in what’s expected to be a difficult cycle for Republicans. In the eyes of Cornyn and his establishment allies, he is a reliable pro-Trump vote, and if Republicans reject him, they would jeopardize the Senate majority needed to pass Trump’s priorities.

“I won in 2020 by 10 points, and President Trump won that same year [in] Texas by six points,” Cornyn said in an interview with The Texas Tribune Monday. “So I think I’ve demonstrated that I can help the ticket up and down the ballot, and Paxton would be an albatross — and also divert hundreds of millions of dollars that would be spent trying to salvage this Senate seat that could be used in places like Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and New Hampshire.”

But Paxton, whose brand has long been fighting the Republican establishment, frequently derides Cornyn and his fellow Republican senators for their deference to conventions like the legislative filibuster, while promising himself to take a “sledgehammer” to such customs. His stump speech typically begins by challenging voters to name an accomplishment of Cornyn’s, contrasting the senator’s record to his own history of suing the Biden administration and left-leaning organizations.

“The MAGA agenda is dead under John Cornyn,” Paxton said on Fox Wednesday. “He kills it every time, just like the Republican Senate that he’s part of.”

Trump’s decision to endorse Paxton Tuesday was ostensibly the most consequential moment yet in a contest between two well-known, longtime partisans.

“We don’t know for a fact what will happen on election day, but any observer will acknowledge that President Trump’s endorsement makes it significantly more likely that Ken Paxton wins,” Sen. Ted Cruz, who has stayed out of the contest, said on his podcast Tuesday. “How much more likely, I don’t know.”

To that end, in interviews and on the trail since the endorsement, Paxton has begun to pivot to the general election. His campaign and the main super PAC supporting him, Lone Star Liberty PAC, have switched to airing positive ads touting the president’s endorsement. The PAC went up with an anti-Talarico spot Friday, its first that has looked beyond the GOP primary.

At a rally in Dripping Springs Thursday, a few days after receiving the president’s endorsement, Paxton appeared to be in a good mood.

He first tested nicknames for Talarico to laughs from the crowd of about 30 people. He said an aide had come up with one she was proud of, “Low-T Talarico,” and asked her to share it. Paxton said it was like “Low Energy Jeb,” Trump’s moniker for Jeb Bush during the 2016 presidential primaries. He also tested “Tofu Talarico,” knocking the state representative for a baseless claim that he’s vegan. Meanwhile, former GOP state Rep. Rick Green shouted “Talafreacko.”

Paxton’s 20-minute stump speech largely focused on his political journey, from moving to Texas to deciding to run for U.S. Senate. He struck a confident tone and encouraged people to take their friends and family with them to vote because of anticipated low turnout.

“We can win this with people, people that care about what’s happening in Texas, people that care about sending a message to Washington that it’s time to have two senators fighting,” he said, standing in front of an American and Texas flag.

Cornyn, meanwhile, has staked his chances on expanding the electorate, posting a video Thursday in which he appealed to registered voters who did not vote in either primary to turn out in the Republican runoff.

At his final get-out-the-vote event in Corpus Christi Friday, Cornyn was resolute that he could win the runoff — if a broader group of voters than those who typically vote in runoffs showed up to the polls.

Still, he acknowledged that this contest “is kind of a strange position for me to be in,” noting that he’s been through plenty of contested elections, “but in many ways I feel like there’s never been more at stake in an election than this one.”

Cornyn said his campaign’s efforts to mobilize voters had surpassed that of any of his prior races, and he predicted the runoff would end in a “similar surprise” to the primary, when he finished first.

“I think the small fraction of people who actually vote [in runoffs] are not necessarily representative of the whole state and all voters, so that’s the reason why we’re working [as] hard as we can to try to get a broader base to the electorate to make that choice,” Cornyn said. “Because I believe that character does still matter, and it is on the ballot.”

How we got here

The seeds of Tuesday’s runoff were planted long ago, as Paxton’s profile grew and Cornyn cast doubts on Trump’s electability as he was weighing a 2024 bid.

Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas Republican strategist who managed Cornyn’s 2014 reelection, said Paxton was “emboldened and empowered” after defeating an impeachment push from his own party.

“It gave him some political momentum, and he felt like the feedback from a lot of the activists in the party was in support of him — even though the House had voted to impeach him by a pretty wide margin,” Steinhauser said. “I think that he felt emboldened, and it just set all this in motion.”

When Paxton announced last April that he was joining the race, he started from a position of strength, leading Cornyn by double-digit margins in early polling.

But Cornyn, an adept fundraiser with decades-long relationships in Texas and Washington, closed the gap by majorly outspending Paxton, much of it paying for ads touting that he voted with Trump’s stated position 99% of the time and that he was the choice of the Border Patrol union and other law enforcement groups.

After finishing first in the primary, Cornyn appeared to be on the precipice of earning Trump’s endorsement. But two critical things happened that first week of March. First, news of the potential Cornyn endorsement leaked, bringing a massive wave of backlash from Paxton supporters. And then, Paxton took a political gamble that changed the course of the runoff — he offered to consider dropping out of the race if the Senate passed the SAVE America Act, a voting restrictions bill at the top of Trump’s agenda that cannot advance because it lacks the requisite number of votes to overcome a filibuster. Paxton allies and unaligned observers alike see the episode as crucial to the attorney general’s success in securing the endorsement months later.

“By floating the idea of dropping out, and essentially making himself a martyr for the cause of voter integrity, with leverage that he did not have, he showed that he would go further for Trump than most other Republicans — and at the very least, probably further than Cornyn was willing to go,” said Joshua Blank, the research director at the Texas Politics Project. “I think Paxton’s move there was really adept.”

Later in March, Cornyn dropped his longstanding support of the filibuster, expressing his openness to reform in order to pass the SAVE America Act.

But that didn’t seem to be enough, in Trump’s eyes, to match Paxton’s resolve for smashing the system. Trump backed off his endorsement pledge until this week, when he specifically cited Paxton’s support for terminating the filibuster and his championing of the bill.

“What the people of Texas want is a senator who doesn’t have to be dragged to the right during the Republican primary just to get them to do their job,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Flower Mound, who endorsed Paxton in April. “And I think the president recognized that.”

During the runoff, Cornyn’s camp hit Paxton from every direction. Some ads criticized his divorce over an alleged affair. Others attacked the wealth he’s accumulated in office. Numerous spots tackled allegedly soft plea deals the attorney general’s office made in sexual abuse cases.

Paxton’s negative ads capitalized on the anti-incumbent fervor in both parties, calling out the length of Cornyn’s political career and the senator’s old comments expressing skepticism about Trump’s plan for a border wall.

While over $135 million in advertising was spent throughout the primary, operatives said both candidates are so well-defined that the race became more like a general election — where it’s difficult to persuade voters to drop their beliefs about either.

“Republican primary voters are not gullible,” Hunt said. “They don’t think that John Cornyn is a huge moderate. They also don’t — even before the Trump endorsement — they didn’t think that he was President Trump’s best friend. And both of those things are true.”

Early voting tea leaves

Most of the runoff vote has already been cast, with a week of early voting in the books — making some inferences about the runoff possible.

With opinions about both candidates relatively calcified, turnout, rather than persuasion, will drive the runoff results. Two major factors are at play — where Wesley Hunt’s voters go, and which voters from March will come back to the polls for a second go-round.

The Trump endorsement may be most meaningful for Hunt voters, who make up a sizable chunk of the dwindling stable of undecided voters. Hunt himself endorsed Paxton in quick succession after Trump and urged his supporters to vote for the attorney general.

Steinhauser said the Trump endorsement is unquestionably a boost for Paxton, but noted that the attorney general still needs to ensure it’s communicated in advertising this week and over the weekend for election day voters.

“It’s going to make an impact, but it still takes time and money to get the message out about the endorsement,” he said.

Ross Hunt, the GOP data guru, said his analysis of the early voting electorate demonstrated that “there is no big headline” — no obvious advantage for either candidate.

“[If you’re] squinting, you can see a tiny advantage for Cornyn relative to his Round One early vote distribution, but you’ve got to squint pretty hard,” Hunt said. “It’s basically just a wash.”

If Cornyn were to pull it off, Hunt said, he would need high turnout in the Austin area, selective mobilization of the precincts where he overperformed in Houston and the Dallas-Fort Worth areas, and for Paxton voters to stay home — the latter of which may be unlikely because primary turnout was robust for both candidates.

Hunt also said that in his analysis of the first two days of early voting, 85% of those who turned out were voters returning from the March primary. Only 3% were new voters who had not previously voted in any primary.

— Kayla Guo and Alejandro Serrano contributed to this report.

Before it became the somewhat easy-to-mispronounce name of a rare type of Ebola virus, Bundibugyo is a mountainous district in western Uganda that even some locals would struggle to pinpoint on a map.

It's home to roughly 200,000 people. Many are cocoa farmers who search for whatever cultivable land they can find in the impossibly steep landscape of hills and valleys marking Uganda’s border with Congo. As an example of the classic village idyll, Bundibugyo is a beautiful place.

Yet it now trends for an unpleasant reason, making some Ugandans rue Bundibugyo's association with the current Ebola outbreak, which has infected hundreds of people in eastern Congo. There are 160 suspected Ebola deaths in two provinces.

Virus type discovered in 2007

The Ugandan district's connection to the Bundibugyo virus stems from an Ebola outbreak there nearly two decades ago that was flagged as a new species of Ebola, a viral disease that usually manifests as hemorrhagic fever.

The outbreak wasn't the Sudan virus, named for the area in present-day South Sudan where that type was first identified. It also wasn't the type known as Zaire, as present-day Congo was known when Ebola — itself the name of a Congolese river — was first discovered in 1976.

So the November 2007 outbreak in a remote part of western Uganda came to be known as Bundibugyo, one that scientists even now haven't studied as much. That is why Ebola specialists say it is particularly dangerous. Moreover, it was spreading in Congolese villages before health authorities there identified it as the cause of sickness in a growing number of people.

The 2007 outbreak in Bundibugyo killed at least 37 people but had been contained by the end of the year. A second outbreak of the Bundibugyo virus, also relatively small, came in 2012 in Congo's northeast.

Initial cases in those outbreaks were identified early, allowing for a quick public health response, according to Dr. Tom Ksiazek, a University of Texas Medical Branch virologist who directed the group within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that first identified the Bundibugyo virus.

Ugandans upset about the name

This time, while there is no Ebola in Bundibugyo, a lingering connection to the picturesque Ugandan district is hurtful, said Ugandan government spokesman Alan Kasujja, who has urged global health authorities to clarify that Uganda isn't the epicenter of the latest outbreak.

“Bundibugyo is too beautiful to be the name of a disease,” he said on X. “We need to take back its name from this madness.”

The World Health Organization is responsible for the taxonomic descriptions. As was seen with the global mpox outbreak — the disease's name was changed in 2022 from monkeypox — the United Nations agency is sensitive to the use of descriptors or tags that may expose whole communities to stigmatization.

With Ebola, however, the trend has been to name viruses for the places where they were first identified.

Ugandan health authorities have experience dealing with Ebola, one reason they are adamant there is “no Ebola” in this East African country and want WHO to be more specific in its updates on the toll of the outbreak now deemed to be of global concern.

Cases in Uganda linked to Congo

Uganda has reported five cases, all linked to the outbreak in Congo. One of them, a 59-year-old Congolese man, was admitted to a hospital in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, on May 11 and died three days later. On Saturday, Ugandan health authorities said a driver and a health worker — both Ugandans — exposed to that Congolese patient have since tested positive. The others are two Congolese women who sought medical care in Uganda before Congo declared an outbreak on May 15.

This outbreak is on “the Congo side” mainly, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said Thursday, urging local tourism authorities to fight the perception that Ebola is spreading in Uganda.

Museveni urged Ugandans to “stop shaking hands” as part of measures to avoid infection. He also ordered the postponement of an annual religious event that attracts thousands of pilgrims, from Congo and elsewhere, who converge around a Catholic basilica just outside Kampala by June 3.

Other measures announced Thursday include the suspension of all public transportation and flights between Congo and Uganda.

Contact tracing is key

The risk stemming from cross-border commerce is high, said Dr. Emmanuel Batiibwe, who led efforts to stop an Ebola outbreak in 2022 that killed at least 55 people.

Stopping the current outbreak from spreading into Uganda will require “enhanced surveillance at all points of entry,” he said.

Uganda has had multiple Ebola outbreaks, including one in 2000 that killed more than 200 people. There was an outbreak in Kampala last year.

All available vaccines and treatments for Ebola don’t work for Bundibugyo patients. Tracing contacts and isolating them is seen as especially key to stopping the spread of this virus, in addition to getting healthcare workers proper protective equipment.

A family of fruit bats is believed to be the natural hosts of the viruses that cause Ebola, according to WHO. Ebola is spread by contact with the bodily fluids of an infected person or contaminated materials.

Three people found inside the house on Wednesday died. A fourth person who was in the house and one of the emergency responders who became sick were still being treated at a hospital Friday.

A doctor who saw the responders exhibiting symptoms — including nausea and dizziness — said their symptoms most closely resembled fentanyl exposure. However, the investigation into how the exposure happened and what caused it was ongoing.

University of New Mexico Hospital Chief Medical Officer Steve McLaughlin said during a news conference in Albuquerque that authorities were working “under the assumption” that fentanyl was to blame. He said the responders' symptoms ranged from mild to slightly more severe.

“It’s probably not absorbed through your skin, but it would be absorbed through your eyes, nose, mucous membranes, or if you inhale it,” McLaughlin told The Associated Press.

Meth is notoriously toxic when exposed to it, and fentanyl less so. Authorities noted during Friday's news conference that the responders who became ill had directly treated the people found inside the house east of Albuquerque, in the rural town of Mountainair.

More than a dozen first responders were quarantined and decontaminated after responding to the scene.

Of the two people still hospitalized Friday, one was a person who was found unresponsive in the home where three died. Authorities said they were called to the home by a co-worker of one of the people inside after they failed to show up to work.

New Mexico State Police Chief Matt Broom said investigators did not immediately find evidence of drug manufacturing in the house.

State police said early on that there was no threat to the public and that investigators did not believe the substance that caused the responders to become sick was airborne.

Two of the victims were identified Friday as Mika Rascon, 51, and Georgia Rascon, 49. The name of the third person who died has not been released, and the cause and manner of their deaths has not been determined.

Audio archives from the Torrance County Fire Dispatch channel on the site Broadcastify showed that responders went to the home following a report of a 60-year-old man unconscious but breathing.

Within minutes, a dispatcher is heard saying there were three other people at the home, two of whom might not be breathing. Then came a call for naloxone, the opioid-overdose antidote. One person was revived using naloxone, authorities said.

Less than an hour after the initial call, the dispatch center relayed that there were multiple exposures.

Some first responders began coughing, vomiting and experiencing dizziness, authorities said. Most had no symptoms, hospital officials said.

The initial responders on the scene did not have protective gear but followed safety protocols, said Torrance County Fire Chief Gary Smith. They saw two victims inside, pulled them into the fresh air and attempted to resuscitate them, he said.

“This did come in as an overdose. There was no indication of any type of hazmat type scenario,” Smith said.

Debriefings were planned in coming days to determine if there were any weaknesses in the response, he added.

Scientific evidence shows fentanyl, a potent opioid, does not cause overdoses through casual skin contact or brief airborne exposure in typical field scenarios. Experts say overdoses require significant ingestion, injection or inhalation of the substance.

Residents around Mountainair, a town with fewer than 1,000 people, have voiced frustration about drug use in the community and elsewhere.

New Mexico had the fourth-highest rate of drug overdose deaths of any U.S. state in 2024, with 775 deaths, according to the most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Claudia Lauer contributed reporting from Philadelphia.

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Brown reported from Billings, Montana.