Mass transit is slowly getting back to normal around the city.

As a snowstorm arrived, Mayor Zohran Mamdani reminded New Yorkers that they could access the romance series that inspired the TV show through their public library.

The Commanders are finalizing a deal to hire Vikings pass game coordinator Daronte Jones as their next defensive coordinator, a source said.

Marineland, a closed aquatic park in Ontario, had threatened to euthanize its whales after the government denied an application to send them to China.

It is far rarer and more difficult for state authorities to try to investigate federal law enforcement officials than the other way around.

The storm deaths were reported in New York, Tennessee, Louisiana, Kansas, Texas, Massachusetts, Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Kentucky and New Jersey, and other deaths were under investigation.

As Japan and China feud, an animal long used in Chinese diplomacy has been summoned back home.

The Justice Department lost a bid to challenge a decision that had found Ms. Habba was serving unlawfully as New Jerseys top federal prosecutor.

Using more than a dozen videos related to the shooting of Alex Pretti, The Times worked to establish what is called ground truth: what happened, how it happened and who might be responsible.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer hopes to boost his countrys lagging economy with a trip to Beijing. But he must carefully navigate between two superpowers.

But the shows, which combine dance, drama and music, are also part of an effort by Myanmars military rulers to project a veneer of legitimacy.

The cost of borrowing is already choking crucial public spending in many developing economies. Now its raising broader alarms.

Landmark trials beginning this week will test a new legal strategy claiming that Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube caused personal injury through addictive products.

Starting this week, a series of trials will test a new legal strategy claiming that Meta, TikTok, Snap and YouTube caused personal injury through addictive products.

Brayden Burries scored 29 points and made the game-saving block in the final seconds as No. 1 Arizona held off a furious rally from No. 13 BYU.

It is time for the U.S. to intervene militarily in Iran, at least to deter future killings of protesters.

A lineman works to restore power in Oxford, Miss. on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, following a weekend ice storm. (AP Photo/Bruce Newman)2026-01-27T05:59:57Z When a massive winter storm descended on the Northeast and parts of the South over the weekend, Lisa Patterson planned to stick it out at her familys home in Nashville. But after she and her husband lost power, trees fell onto their driveway and their wood stove proved no match for the frigid temperatures, the couple and their dog had to be rescued and taken to a warming shelter.Ive been snowed in up there for almost three weeks without being able to get up and down my driveway because of the snow. Im prepared for that. But this was unprecedented, Patterson said.The family was among many across Tennessee and other parts of the South that have fled to warming shelters as crews worked to restore power to hundreds of thousands of households in the face of a new influx of arctic air expected to spur freezing temperatures Tuesday in places already covered in snow and ice. At least 30 deaths have been reported in states afflicted with severe cold, including two people run over by snowplows in Massachusetts and Ohio, fatal sledding accidents that killed teenagers in Arkansas and Texas, and a woman whose body was found covered in snow in Kansas. In New York City, officials said eight people were found dead outdoors over the frigid weekend. The storm had dropped over a foot (30 centimeters) of snow across a 1,300-mile (2,100-kilometer) swath from Arkansas to New England, halting traffic, canceling thousands of flights and triggering wide school closures Monday. The National Weather Service said areas north of Pittsburgh got up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of snow and faced wind chills as low as minus 25 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 degrees Celsius) late Monday into Tuesday. Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel. Follow on More widespread record cold temperatures were forecast for Tuesday, with eastern Texas through western Pennsylvania under extreme cold warnings, according to the National Weather Service. In Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear warned that the temperatures could be so frigid that as little as 10 minutes outside could result in frostbite or hypothermia. And forecasters said its possible another winter storm could hit parts of the East Coast this weekend. There were still more than 550,000 power outages in the nation Monday night, according to poweroutage.com. Most of them were in the South, where weekend blasts of freezing rain caused tree limbs and power lines to snap, inflicting crippling outages on northern Mississippi and parts of Tennessee. Officials warned that it could take days for power to be restored.In Mississippi, Gov. Tate Reeves said Monday at least 14 homes and 20 public roads had major damage in the aftermath of the states worst ice storm since 1994. The University of Mississippi canceled classes for the entire week as its Oxford campus remained coated in treacherous ice. New York City saw its snowiest day in years, with neighborhoods recording 8 to 15 inches (20 to 38 centimeters) of snow, forcing the nations largest public school system to shut down. Meanwhile, bitter cold followed in the storms wake. Communities across the Midwest, South and Northeast awakened Monday to subzero weather. The entire Lower 48 states were forecast to have their coldest average low temperature of minus 9.8 F (minus 12.3 C) since January 2014. Nathan Hoffner sent his 4-year-old son to stay with his sons mother after his rental house in Nashville lost power midday Sunday. He and his roommate layered up with clothes and several blankets overnight and by the next morning the temperature inside the home had dropped dramatically.I saw my breath in the house, Hoffner said.___Kramon reported from Atlanta. Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia. Associated Press writers around the country contributed. CHARLOTTE KRAMON Kramon covers government and politics from Atlanta. She is a Report for America corps member. twitter mailto

Maksudur Rahman, 31, who escaped after fighting for the Russian army, shows a Russian military dog tag during an interview with The Associated Press in Lakshmipur, Bangladesh, Dec. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Rajib Dhar)2026-01-27T05:15:59Z LAKSHMIPUR, Bangladesh (AP) A labor recruiter persuaded Maksudur Rahman to leave the tropical warmth of his hometown in Bangladesh and travel thousands of miles to frigid Russia for a job as a janitor.Within weeks, he found himself on the front lines of Russias war in Ukraine.An Associated Press investigation found that Bangladeshi workers were lured to Russia under the false promise of civilian work, only to be thrust into the chaos of combat in Ukraine. Many were threatened with violence, imprisonment or death.AP spoke with three Bangladeshi men who escaped from the Russian military, including Rahman, who said that after arriving in Moscow, he and a group of fellow Bangladeshi workers were told to sign Russian documents that turned out to be military contracts. They were taken to an army camp for training in drone warfare techniques, medical evacuation procedures and basic combat skills using heavy weapons. Rahman protested, complaining that this was not the work he agreed to do. A Russian commander offered a stark reply through a translation app: Your agent sent you here. We bought you. The three Bangladeshi men shared harrowing accounts of being coerced into front-line tasks against their will, including advancing ahead of Russian forces, transporting supplies, evacuating wounded soldiers and recovering the dead. The families of three other Bangladeshi men who are missing said their loved ones shared similar accounts with relatives. Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel. Follow on Neither the Russian Defense Ministry, the Russian Foreign Ministry nor the South Asian countrys government responded to a list of questions from AP. Rahman said the workers in his group were threatened with 10-year jail terms and beaten.Theyd say, Why dont you work? Why are you crying? and kick us, said Rahman, who escaped and returned home after seven months.The workers accounts were corroborated by documents, including travel papers, Russian military contracts, medical and police reports, and photos. The documents show the visas granted to Bangladeshi workers, their injuries sustained during battles and evidence of their participation in the war. How many Bangladeshis were deceived into fighting is unclear. The Bangladeshi men told AP they saw hundreds of Bangladeshis alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.Officials and activists say Russia has also targeted men from other African and South Asian countries, including India and Nepal.Overseas work supports Bangladeshi familiesIn the lush greenery of the Lakshmipur district in southeast Bangladesh, nearly every family has at least one member employed as a migrant worker overseas. Job scarcity and poverty have made such work essential.Fathers embark on yearslong journeys for migrant work, returning home only for fleeting visits, just long enough to conceive another child, whom they will likely not see again for years. Sons and daughters support entire families with income earned abroad.In 2024, Rahman was back in Lakshmipur after completing a contract in Malaysia and seeking new work. A labor recruiter advertised an opportunity to work as a cleaner in a military camp in Russia. He promised $1,000 to $1,500 a month and the possibility of permanent residency.Rahman took out a loan to pay the fee of 1.2 million Bangladeshi taka, about $9,800, to the broker as a fee. He arrived in Moscow in December 2024. Basic training, then the battlefieldOnce in Russia, Rahman and three other Bangladeshi workers were presented with a document in Russian. Believing it was a contract for cleaning services, Rahman signed.Then they went to a military facility far from Moscow, where they were issued weapons and underwent three days of training, learning to fire, advance and administer first aid. The group went to a barrack near the Russia-Ukraine border and continued training.Rahman and two others were then sent to front-line positions and ordered to dig pits inside a bunker.The Russians would take a group of say, five Bangladeshis. They would send us in front and stay at the back themselves, he said.The men stayed in a leaky bunker in the rain as bombs fell a few kilometers away. Missiles flew overhead.One person was serving food. The next moment, he was shot from a drone and fell to the ground right there. And then he was replaced, Rahman said. Promises of jobs far from the frontSome Bangladeshi workers were lured into the army with promises of positions far from the front line.Mohan Miajee enlisted in the Russian army after the job that initially brought him to Russia serving as an electrician for a gas-processing plant in the remote far east was plagued by harsh working conditions and relentless cold.While searching for employment online, Miajee was contacted by a Russian army recruiter. When he expressed his reluctance to kill, the recruiter said his skills as an electrician made him an ideal candidate for an electronic warfare or drone unit that would be nowhere near combat. With his military papers in order, Miajee was taken in January 2025 to a military camp in the captured city of Avdiivka. He showed the camp commander documents describing his experience and explained that his recruiter had instructed him to ask for electrical work.The commander told me, You have been made to sign a contract to join the battalion. You cannot do any other work here. You have been deceived, he said after returning to his village of Munshiganj.Miajee said he was beaten with shovels, handcuffed and tortured in a cramped basement cell, and held there every time he refused to carry out an order or made a small mistake.Because of language barriers, for example, if they told us to go to the right and we went to the left, they would beat us severely, he said.He was made to carry supplies to the front and collect dead bodies.Meanwhile in Rahmans unit, some weeks later, they were instructed to evacuate a Russian soldier with a wounded leg. The men carried him, but no sooner had they left the position than they saw a Ukrainian drone buzzing above. It fired at them. Then more drones came in a swarm.Rahman could not advance or return to the bunker. A Russian soldier guiding them said land mines were everywhere.He was stuck, and the Russian commander fled.Rahman eventually suffered a leg wound that sent him to a hospital near Moscow. He escaped from the medical center and went directly to the Bangladeshi embassy in Moscow, which prepared a travel pass for him to leave the country.Some months later, Rahman helped his brother-in-law Jehangir Alam, who also spoke with AP, run away using the same method leaving the hospital after being wounded and appealing to the embassy. Families long to learn about missing menFamilies in Lakshmipur hold tightly to the documents of their missing loved ones, believing that one day, when presented to the right person, the papers might unlock the path to their return.The documents included photos of Russian business visas, military contracts and army dog tags. The papers were sent by the missing men, who urged relatives to complain to recruiting agents.The contracts were verified by two Russian groups helping men evade or get out of military service. Maj. Vladimir Yaltsev, head of the Kostroma regional recruitment center for contract military service, is listed as signing the contracts on behalf of the Russian military.In their final messages, these husbands, sons and fathers conveyed to relatives that they were being forcibly taken to the front lines in Ukraine. After that, all communication ceased.The families filed a complaint with police in Dhaka and traveled on three occasions to the capital to pressure the government to investigate.Salma Akdar has not heard from her husband since March 26. In their last conversation, Ajgar Hussein, 40, told her he had been sold to the Russian army. The couple has two sons, ages 7 and 11.Hussein left in mid-December 2024, believing he was being offered a job as a laundry attendant in Russia, his wife said. He had recently returned from Saudi Arabia and planned to stop working overseas for a spell, she explained. But believing Russia offered opportunities to make money, he left again. He sold some of his land to pay the agents fees.For two weeks, he was in regular touch. Then he told his wife he was being taken to an army camp where they were trained to use weapons and carry heavy loads up to 80 kilograms (176 pounds). Seeing all this, he cried a lot and told them, We cannot do these things. We have never done this before, his wife said.For two months after that, he was offline. He reappeared briefly to explain they were being forced to fight in the war.Russian commanders told him that if he did not go, they would detain him, shoot him, stop providing food, she said.Families in the village confronted the recruiting agent, demanding to know why their loved ones were being trained for war. The agent replied dismissively, saying that it was standard procedure in Russia, insisting that even launderers had to undergo similar training.Hussein left a final audio note for this wife: Please pray for me.Son expected to work as a chefMohammed Sirajs 20-year-old son, Sajjad, departed believing he would be working as a chef in Russia. He needed to support his unemployed father and chronically ill mother.Siraj wept as he described his son begging him to ask the agent why he was being made to undergo military training. Sajjad fought with his Russian commanders, insisting he had come to be a chef, not to fight. They threatened him with jail if he did not comply. Then someone else threatened to shoot him, his father recalled.Sajjad called the family and said he was being taken to battle. That is the last message from my son, he said.In February, Siraj learned through a Bangladeshi man serving with Sajjad that his son had been killed in a drone attack. Unable to bear telling his wife the truth, Siraj assured her that their son was doing well. But word spread through the village.You lied to me, Siraj recalled her saying as she confronted him. Soon after, she died, calling out for her son in her final moments.Investigation uncovers network of intermediaries In late 2024, families approached BRAC, an organization that advocates for Bangladeshi workers, and said they could no longer reach their relatives in Russia. That prompted the organization to investigate. It uncovered at least 10 Bangladeshi men who are still missing after they were were lured to fight.There are two or three layers of people who are profiting, said Shariful Islam, the head of BRACs migration program.Bangladesh police investigators uncovered a trafficking ring in Russia after a Bangladeshi man returned in January 2025, alleging he had been deceived into fighting. The police believe that similar networks, operated by Bangladeshi intermediaries with connections to the Russian government, are responsible for facilitating the entry of Bangladeshis into Russia.Another nine people were discovered to have been lured into fighting based on that police investigation, according to investigator Mostafizur Rahman. The Associated Press reviewed the police report filed by one victims wife, who said he went to Russia expecting to work in a chocolate factory. A middleman, a Bangladeshi with Russian citizenship who was residing in Moscow, has been charged.Its not clear how many Bangladeshis were lured to Russia. A Bangladeshi police investigator told AP that about 40 Bangladeshis may have lost their lives in the war.Some go willingly, knowing they will end up on the front lines because the money is too good, according to Rahman, the investigator.In Lakshmipur, investigators learned that the local agent has been funneling recruits to a central agent associated with a company called SP Global. The company did not respond to APs calls and emails. Investigators found it ceased operations in 2025.Families of the missing individuals said they have not received any money earned by their loved ones. Miajee too said he was never paid.I dont want money or anything else, Akdar said. I just want my my childrens father back.___Associated Press writer Julhas Alam in Dhaka, Bangladesh, contributed to this report. SAMYA KULLAB Kullab is an Associated Press reporter covering Ukraine since June 2023. Before that, she covered Iraq and the wider Middle East from her base in Baghdad since joining the AP in 2019. twitter instagram mailto

Russian recruits take a train at a railway station in Prudboi in the Volgograd region of Russia, Sept. 29, 2022. (AP Photo, File)2026-01-27T05:18:58Z For average wage earners in Russia, its a big payday. For criminals seeking to escape the harsh conditions and abuse in prison, its a chance at freedom. For immigrants hoping for a better life, its a simplified path to citizenship.All they have to do is sign a contract to fight in Ukraine.As Russia seeks to replenish its forces in nearly four years of war and avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilization its pulling out all the stops to find new troops to send into the battlefield.Some come from abroad to fight in what has become a bloody war of attrition. After signing a mutual defense treaty with Moscow in 2024, North Korea sent thousands of soldiers to help Russia defend its Kursk region from a Ukrainian incursion.Men from South Asian countries, including India, Nepal and Bangladesh, complain of being duped into signing up to fight by recruiters promising jobs. Officials in Kenya, South Africa and Iraq say the same has happened to citizens from their countries. Russian numbers in UkrainePresident Vladimir Putin told his annual news conference last month that 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine. He gave the same number in 2024, and a slightly lower figure 617,000 in December 2023. Its unclear if those numbers are accurate.Still hidden are the numbers of military casualties, with Moscow having released limited official figures. The British Defense Ministry said last summer that more than 1 million Russian troops may have been killed or wounded. Independent Russian news site Mediazona, together with the BBC and a team of volunteers, scoured news reports, social media and government websites and collected the names of over 160,000 troops killed. More than 550 of those were foreigners from over two dozen countries. How Russia gets new soldiersUnlike Ukraine, where martial law and nationwide mobilization has been in place since the start of Russias full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has resisted ordering a broad call-up. When a limited mobilization of 300,000 men was tried later that year, tens of thousands of people fled abroad. The effort stopped after a few weeks when the target was met, but a Putin decree left the door open for another call-up. It also made all military contracts effectively open-ended and barred soldiers from quitting service or being discharged, unless they reached certain age limits or were incapacitated by injuries. Since then, Moscow has largely relied on what it describes as voluntary enlistment.The flow of voluntary enlistees signing military contracts has remained strong, topping 400,000 last year, Putin said in December. It was not possible to independently verify the claim. Similar numbers were announced in 2024 and 2023.Activists say these contracts often stipulate a fixed term of service, such as one year, leading some potential enlistees to believe the commitment is temporary. But contracts are automatically extended indefinitely, they say. The incentivesThe government offers high pay and extensive benefits to enlistees. Regional authorities offer various enlistment bonuses, sometimes amounting to tens of thousands of dollars.In the Khanty-Mansi region of central Russia, for example, an enlistee would get about $50,000 in various bonuses, according to the local government. Thats more than twice the average annual income in the region, where monthly salaries in the first 10 months of 2025 were reported to be just over $1,600.There also are tax breaks, debt relief and other perks.Despite Kremlin claims of relying on voluntary enlistment, media reports and rights groups say conscripts men aged 18-30 performing fixed-term mandatory military service and exempted from being sent to Ukraine are often coerced by superiors into signing contracts that send them into battle. Recruitment also extends to prisoners and those in pretrial detention centers, a practice led early in the war by the late mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin and adopted by the Defense Ministry. Laws now allow recruitment of both convicts and suspects in criminal cases. Targeting foreignersForeigners also are recruiting targets, both inside Russia and abroad.Laws were adopted offering accelerated Russian citizenship for enlistees. Russian media and activists also report that raids in areas where migrants typically live or work lead to them being pressuring into military service, with new citizens sent to enlistment offices to determine if theyre eligible for mandatory service.In November, Putin decreed that military service was mandatory for certain foreigners seeking permanent residency.Some reportedly are lured to Russia by trafficking rings promising jobs, then duping them into signing military contracts. Cuban authorities in 2023 identified and sought to dismantle one such ring operating from Russia. Nepals Foreign Minister Narayan Prakash Saud told The Associated Press in 2024 that his country asked Russia to return hundreds of Nepali nationals who were recruited to fight in Ukraine, as well as to repatriate the remains of those killed in the war. Nepal has since barred citizens from traveling to Russia or Ukraine for work, citing recruitment efforts. Also in 2024, Indias federal investigation agency said it broke up a network that lured at least 35 of its citizens to Russia under the pretext of employment. The men were trained for combat and deployed to Ukraine against their will, with some grievously injured, the agency said.When Putin hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for talks in 2024, New Delhi said its nationals who were misled into joining the Russian army would be discharged.Iraqi officials say about 5,000 of its citizens have joined the Russian military along with an unspecified number who are fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. Officials in Baghdad cracked down on such recruiting networks, with one man convicted last year of human trafficking and sentenced to life in prison.An unknown number of Iraqis have been killed or gone missing while fighting in Ukraine. Some families have reported that relatives were lured to Russia under false pretenses and forced to enlist; in other cases, Iraqis have joined voluntarily for the salary and Russian citizenship.Foreigners duped into fighting are especially vulnerable because they dont speak Russian, have no military experience and are deemed dispensable, to put it bluntly, by military commanders, said Anton Gorbatsevich of the activist group Idite Lesom, or Get Lost, which helps men desert from the army.A drain on a slowing economyThis month, a Ukrainian agency for the treatment of prisoners of war said over 18,000 foreign nationals had fought or are fighting on the Russian side. Almost 3,400 have been killed, and hundreds of citizens of 40 countries are held in Ukraine as POWs.If true, that represents a fraction of the 700,000 troops that Putin said are fighting for Russia in Ukraine.Using foreigners is only one way to meet the constant demand, said Artyom Klyga, head of the legal department at the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, noting Russian recruitment efforts appear to be stable. Most of those seeking help from the group, which assists men in avoiding military service, are Russian citizens, he said. Kateryna Stepanenko, a Russia researcher at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said the Kremlin has gotten more creative in the last two years with attracting enlistees, including foreigners.But recruitment efforts are becoming extremely expensive for Russia, which faces a slowing economy, she added. Associated Press writers Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed. DASHA LITVINOVA Litvinova is an Associated Press correspondent covering Russia, Belarus, Central Asia and the Caucasus. She is part of the team that covers the Russia-Ukraine war. She has covered Russia and the region for over a decade. twitter mailto

A person holds a sign of Alex Pretti during a protest outside the office of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., on Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)2026-01-27T05:14:45Z Prominent Republicans and gun rights advocates helped elicit a White House turnabout this week after bristling over the administrations characterization of Alex Pretti, the second U.S. citizen and protester killed this month by a federal officer in Minneapolis, as responsible for his own death because he lawfully possessed a weapon.The death produced no clear shifts in U.S. gun politics or policies, even as President Donald Trump shuffles the lieutenants in charge of his militarized immigration crackdown. But important voices in Trumps coalition have called for a thorough investigation of Prettis death while also criticizing inconsistencies in some Republicans Second Amendment stances.If the dynamic persists, it could give Republicans problems as Trump heads into a midterm election year with voters already growing skeptical of his overall immigration approach. The concern is acute enough that Trumps top spokeswoman sought Monday to reassert his brand as a staunch gun rights supporter. The president supports the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding American citizens, absolutely, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.Leavitt qualified that when you are bearing arms and confronted by law enforcement, you are raising the risk of force being used against you. Videos contradict early statements from administrationThat still marked a retreat from the administrations previous messages about the shooting of Pretti. It came the same day the president dispatched border czar Tom Homan to Minnesota, seemingly elevating him over Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino, who had been in charge in Minneapolis.Within hours of Prettis death on Saturday, Bovino suggested Pretti wanted to massacre law enforcement, and Noem said Pretti was brandishing a weapon and acted violently toward officers.I dont know of any peaceful protester that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign, Noem said. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, an architect of Trumps mass deportation effort, went further on X, declaring Pretti an assassin.Bystander videos contradicted each claim, instead showing Pretti holding a cellphone and helping a woman who had been pepper sprayed by a federal officer. Within seconds, Pretti was sprayed, too, and taken to the ground by multiple officers. No video disclosed thus far has shown him unholstering his concealed weapon - which he had a Minnesota permit to carry. It appeared that one officer took Prettis gun and walked away with it just before shots began.As multiple videos went viral online and on television, Vice President JD Vance reposted Millers assessment, while Trump shared an alleged photo of the gunmans gun, loaded (with two additional full magazines!). Swift reactions from gun rights advocatesThe National Rifle Association, which has backed Trump three times, released a statement that began by casting blame on Minnesota Democrats it accused of stoking protests. But the group lashed out after a federal prosecutor in California said on X that, If you approach law enforcement with a gun, there is a high likelihood they will be legally justified in shooting you.That analysis, the NRA said, is dangerous and wrong.FBI Director Kash Patel magnified the blowback Sunday on Fox News Sunday Morning Futures With Maria Bartiromo. No one, Patel said, can bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. Its that simple.Erich Pratt, vice president of Gun Owners of America, was incredulous.I have attended protest rallies while armed, and no one got injured, he said on CNN.Conservative officials around the country made the same connection between the First and Second amendments.Showing up at a protest is very American. Showing up with a weapon is very American, state Rep. Jeremy Faison, who leads the GOP caucus in Tennessee, said on X.Trumps first-term vice president, Mike Pence, called for full and transparent investigation of this officer involved shooting. A different response from the pastLiberals, conservatives and nonpartisan experts noted how the administrations response differed from past conservative positions involving protests and weapons.Multiple Trump supporters were found to have weapons during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump issued blanket pardons to all of them.Republicans were critical in 2020 when Mark and Patricia McCloskey had to pay fines after pointing guns at protesters who marched through their St. Louis neighborhood after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And then theres Kyle Rittenhouse, a counter-protester acquitted after fatally shooting two men and injuring another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during the post-Floyd protests.You remember Kyle Rittenhouse and how he was made a hero on the right, Trey Gowdy, a Republican former congressman and attorney for Trump during one of his first-term impeachments. Alex Prettis firearm was being lawfully carried. He never brandished it. Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor who has studied the history of the gun debate, said the fallout shows how tribal weve become. Republicans spent years talking about the Second Amendment as a means to fight government tyranny, he said.The moment someone whos thought to be from the left, they abandon that principled stance, Winkler said.Meanwhile, Democrats who have criticized open and concealed carry laws for years, Winkler added, are not amplifying that position after Prettis death.Uncertain effects in an election yearThe blowback against the administration from core Trump supporters comes as Republicans are trying to protect their threadbare majority in the U.S. House and face several competitive Senate races.Perhaps reflecting the stakes, GOP staff and campaign aides were reticent Monday to talk about the issue at all.The House Republican campaign chairman, Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina, is sponsoring the GOPs most significant gun legislation of this congressional term, a proposal to make state concealed-carry permits reciprocal across all states.The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee last fall. Asked Monday whether Prettis death and the Minneapolis protests might affect debate, an aide to Speaker Mike Johnson did not offer any update on the bills prospects. Gun rights advocates have notched many legislative victories in Republican-controlled statehouses in recent decades, from rolling back gun-free zones around schools and churches to expanding gun possession rights in schools, on university campuses and in other public spaces.William Sack, legal director of the Second Amendment Foundation, said he was surprised and disappointed by the administrations initial statements following the Pretti shooting. Trumps vacillating, he said, is very likely to cost them dearly with the core of a constituency they count on.___Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report. BILL BARROW Barrow covers U.S. politics for The Associated Press. He is based in Atlanta. twitter mailto

President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews, Md., Thursday, Jan. 22, 2026, after returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos.(AP Photo/Luis M. Alvarez)2026-01-27T05:24:49Z DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) President Donald Trump is headed to Iowa on Tuesday as part of the White Houses midterm-year pivot toward affordability, even as his administration remains mired in the fallout in Minneapolis over a second fatal shooting by federal immigration officers this month.While in Iowa, the president will make a stop at a local business and then deliver a speech on affordability, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. The remarks will be at the Horizon Events Center in Clive, a suburb of Des Moines.The trip will also highlight energy policy, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles said last week. Its part of the White Houses strategy to have Trump travel out of Washington once a week ahead of the midterm elections to focus on affordability issues facing everyday Americans an effort that keeps getting diverted by crisis. The latest comes as the Trump administration is grappling with the weekend shooting death of Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse killed by federal agents in the neighboring state of Minnesota. Even as some top administration officials moved quickly to malign Pretti, the White House said Monday that Trump was waiting until an investigation into the shooting was complete. Trump was last in Iowa ahead of the July 4 holiday to kick off the United States upcoming 250th anniversary, which morphed largely into a celebration of his major spending and tax cut package hours after Congress had approved it. Republicans are hoping that Trumps visit to the state Tuesday draws focus back to that tax bill, which will be a key part of the GOPs pitch as they ask voters to keep them in power in November.I invited President Trump back to Iowa to highlight the real progress weve made: delivering tax relief for working families, securing the border, and growing our economy, Rep. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, said in a statement in advance of his trip. Now weve got to keep that momentum going and pass my affordable housing bill, deliver for Iowas energy producers, and bring down costs for working families. Trumps affordability tour has taken him to Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina as the White House tries to marshal the presidents political power to appeal to voters in key swing states.But his penchant for going off-script has sometimes taken the focus off cost-of-living issues and his administrations plans for how to combat it. In Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, Trump insisted that inflation was no longer a problem and that Democrats were using the term affordability as a hoax to hurt him. At that same event, Trump also griped that immigrants arriving to the U.S. from filthy countries got more attention than his pledges to fight inflation.Although it was a swing state just a little more than a decade ago, Iowa in recent years has been reliably Republican in national and statewide elections. Trump won Iowa by 13 percentage points in 2024.Still, two of Iowas four congressional districts have been among the most competitive in the country and are expected to be again in this years midterm elections. Trump already has endorsed Republican Reps. Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Democrats, who landed three of Iowas four House seats in the 2018 midterm elections during Trumps first term, see a prime opportunity to unseat Iowa incumbents. This election will be the first since 1968 with open seats for both governor and U.S. senator at the top of the ticket after Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and Republican U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst opted out of reelection bids. The political shakeups have rippled throughout the state, with Republican Reps. Randy Feenstra and Ashley Hinson seeking new offices for governor and U.S. senator, respectively. Democrats hope Rob Sand, the lone Democrat in statewide office who is running for governor, will make the entire state more competitive with his appeal to moderate and conservative voters and his $13 million in cash on hand. ___Kim reported from Washington. SEUNG MIN KIM Kim covers the White House for The Associated Press. She joined the AP in 2022 and is based in Washington. Kim is also a political analyst for CNN. twitter mailto HANNAH FINGERHUT Fingerhut is a government and politics reporter based in Des Moines, Iowa. mailto

President Trump said Seoul was not moving fast enough to implement the agreement, which calls for South Korea to invest billions in the United States.

After nearly 20 years of negotiations, the two sides struck a far-reaching agreement that officials called the mother of all trade deals.

People visit a makeshift memorial for 37-year-old Alex Pretti, who was fatally shot by a U.S. Border Patrol officer over the weekend, Monday, Jan. 26, 2026, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Adam Gray)2026-01-27T01:05:41Z WASHINGTON (AP) President Donald Trump shifted toward a more conciliatory approach with Democratic leaders in Minnesota on Monday, a sudden change in tack following an outcry over the second fatal shooting by federal agents in the state this month during the administrations nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants.The about-face comes after Saturdays shooting death of Alex Pretti by federal agents raised doubts including from some Republicans over how the Trump administration has gone about aggressively deporting migrants and confronting protesters opposed to the policy.But its just the latest in a string of moments where Trump has first taken a maximalist position only to appear to later retreat.Earlier this month, Trump repeatedly threatened Iran with military action if his administration found the Islamic Republic was using deadly force to squelch recent antigovernment protests. Human rights groups said thousands were killed, but Trump says hes holding off on acting after he received assurances Tehran was suspending hundreds of planned executions. Last week, Trump first announced plans to impose new tariffs on European allies that refused to go along with his calls for the U.S. to take control of the Arctic territory of Greenland only to abruptly cancel the tariffs after saying hed come to terms of the framework of an agreement. The White House offered scant details about the deal, which Trump announced the day after the stock market saw one of its worst days in months in response to his tariff threat.Then on Monday, Trumps administration changed up oversight of his immigration operation in Minnesota, and the typically bombastic Trump offered a warmer tone toward Gov. Tim Walz after speaking with the Democrat, saying he and Walz were now on a similar wavelength. Some Republicans took issue with what happened in MinneapolisIt was a particularly jarring turnabout for Trump, who had promised to be uncompromising on carrying out mass deportations of undocumented migrants during his 2024 campaign and because Trump has repeatedly scorched Walz and other Minnesota Democrats in personal terms for resisting his policies.Trump said he had dispatched border czar Tom Homan to take charge. Meanwhile, senior Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and some agents were expected to leave Minneapolis as early as Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Trump declared on social media that Walz was happy that Tom Homan was going to Minnesota, and so am I! Later, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey confirmed that some agents would be leaving the city after he spoke with Trump and suggested that the president seemed to be coming to the conclusion that the current state of federal operations was unsustainable. Homan and Frey were expected to meet Tuesday.Trumps change-up in Minnesota came after some Republicans questioned federal agents tactics in Saturdays shooting as well as the White Houses response. Some high-ranking administration officials had branded Pretti a domestic terrorist even as videos of the encounter contradicted their narrative. Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Chris Madel, a Minneapolis attorney, ended his GOP campaign in a surprise video announcement Monday, calling the recent immigration enforcement operation in the Twin Cities an unmitigated disaster and saying he no longer wanted to be a member of the party because of it.Meanwhile, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been a strong supporter of Trumps crackdown on immigration, offered measured criticism in an interview with conservative radio host Mark Davis, saying the White House needs to recalibrate what it was doing in Minnesota. Vermonts Republican Gov. Phil Scott called on Trump to reset and de-escalate.At best, these federal immigration operations are a complete failure of coordination of acceptable public safety and law enforcement practices training, and leadership, Scott said. At worst, its a deliberate federal intimidation and incitement of American citizens thats resulting in the murder of Americans. Trump had scorched Walz. Now, theyre on a similar wavelengthThe presidents approach toward Walz, who served as Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris running mate in 2024, amounted to a sharp U-turn.Just a day earlier, Trumps deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, had derided Walz on social media as trying to incite attacks on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. The White House social media team in a series of posts called the governor a truly disturbed, unstable individual and an unhinged lunatic who rants and raves and lies.Miller also referred to Pretti, a nurse who worked at a Veterans Affairs hospital, as a would-be assassin while Homeland Security Kristi Noem labeled the ICU nurse as committing an act of domestic terrorism.The White House sidestepped whether Trump agreed with his senior aides rhetoric or whether the administration would apologize for it.This incident remains under investigation, press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. And nobody here at the White House, including the president of the United States, wants to see Americans hurt or killed and losing their lives. His response has been muted compared to other recent deathsTrumps response to the deaths of the two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis has been much more muted than reactions to political violence that hes portrayed as targeting his own political movement.After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in September, the president spoke to the nation from the Oval Office and called Kirks death a dark moment for America. In November, Trump gave a national address after two National Guard members were shot in Washington by an Afghan national, one fatally. The guard members had been deployed to the nations capital as part of a federal mission to assist with local policing, and the president called the shooting an act of evil, an act of hatred and an act of terror.But the president has yet to speak directly to the nation about the deaths of Pretti and Renee Good, another U.S. citizen who was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis earlier this month. Trump has so far largely chosen to keep the public informed in the wake of Prettis death with social media posts.Even as his comments Monday appeared to be aimed at turning down the rhetoric, Trumps chief spokesperson, Leavitt, continued to blame Walz and other Minnesota Democrats for encouraging left-wing agitators to stop, record, confront and obstruct federal officers who are just trying to lawfully perform their duties.This is precisely what unfolded in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, Leavitt added.___AP writers Josh Boak and Joey Cappelletti in Washington, Jim Vertuno in Austin, Texas, and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed reporting. Karnowski reported from Minneapolis. AAMER MADHANI Madhani covers the White House for The Associated Press. He is based in Washington. twitter mailto STEVE KARNOWSKI Karnowski covers politics and government from Minnesota for The Associated Press. He also covers the ongoing fallout from the murder of George Floyd, courts and the environment, among other topics. twitter mailto

People walk in front a billboard with graphic showing a U.S aircraft carrier with damaged fighter jets on its deck, and sign reading in Farsi and English: "If you sow the wind, you'll reap whirlwind," at the Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) square, in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)2026-01-27T01:49:11Z DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Irans bloody crackdown on nationwide protests killed at least 6,126 people while many others still are feared dead, activists said Tuesday, as a U.S. aircraft carrier group arrived in the Mideast to lead any American military response to the crisis.The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier and guided missile destroyers accompanying it provide the U.S. the ability to strike Iran, particularly as Gulf Arab states have signaled they want to stay out of any attack despite hosting American military personnel.Two Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast have signaled their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened military action over the killing of peaceful protesters or Tehran launching mass executions in the wake of the demonstrations. Iran has repeatedly threatened to drag the entire Mideast into a war, though its air defenses and military are still reeling after the June war launched by Israel against the country. Both the Houthis and Kataib Hezbollah sat out from Israels 12-day war on Iran that saw the United States bomb Iranian nuclear sites. The hesitancy to get involved shows the disarray still affecting Irans self-described Axis of Resistance after facing attacks from Israel during its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip. People walk in front of a mural depicting the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, right, members of the Basij paramilitary force and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Street in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) People walk in front of a mural depicting the late Iranian revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini, right, members of the Basij paramilitary force and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Street in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Activists offer new death tollThe new figures Tuesday came from the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in multiple rounds of unrest in Iran. The group verifies each death with a network of activists on the ground in Iran.It identified the dead as including at least 5,777 protesters, 214 government-affiliated forces, 86 children and 49 civilians who werent demonstrating. The crackdown has seen over 41,800 arrests, it added. The Associated Press has been unable to independently assess the death toll given authorities cutting off the internet and disrupting calls into the Islamic Republic. Irans government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labeled the rest terrorists. In the past, Irans theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest. A man hands out posters of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a funeral ceremony for a group of security forces, who were killed during anti-government protests, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) A man hands out posters of the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a funeral ceremony for a group of security forces, who were killed during anti-government protests, in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Irans 1979 Islamic Revolution.The protests in Iran began on Dec. 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Irans theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two weeks of internet blackout the most comprehensive in its history.Irans U.N. ambassador told a U.N. Security Council meeting late Monday that Trumps repeated threats to use military force against the country are neither ambiguous nor misinterpreted. Amir Saeid Iravani also repeated allegations that the U.S. leader incited violence by armed terrorist groups supported by the United States and Israel, but gave no evidence to support his claims. Iranian state media has tried to accuse forces abroad for the protests as the theocracy remains broadly unable to address the countrys ailing economy, which is still squeezed by international sanctions, particularly over its nuclear program. FILE - In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP) FILE - In this photo obtained by The Associated Press, Iranians attend an anti-government protest in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP) Add AP News on Google Add AP News as your preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Share Share Facebook Copy Link copied Print Email X LinkedIn Bluesky Flipboard Pinterest Reddit Read More Some Iranian-backed militias suggest willingness to fightIran projected its power across the Mideast through the Axis of Resistance, a network of proxy militant groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq, and other places. It was also seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. But it has collapsed after Israel targeted Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others during the Gaza war. Meanwhile, rebels in 2024 overthrew Syrias Bashar Assad after a yearslong, bloody war in which Iran backed his rule.Yemens Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, have repeatedly warned they could resume fire if needed on shipping in the Red Sea, releasing old footage of a previous attack Monday. Ahmad Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, the leader of Iraqs Kataib Hezbollah militia, warned the enemies that the war on the (Islamic) Republic will not be a picnic; rather, you will taste the bitterest forms of death, and nothing will remain of you in our region.The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one of Irans staunchest allies, refused to say how it planned to react in the case of a possible attack.During the past two months, several parties have asked me a clear and frank question: If Israel and America go to war against Iran, will Hezbollah intervene or not? Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Kassem said in a video address.He said the group is preparing for possible aggression and is determined to defend against it. But as to how it would act, he said, these details will be determined by the battle and we will determine them according to the interests that are present. ___Associated Press writers Edith Lederer at the United Nations and Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report. JON GAMBRELL Gambrell is the news director for the Gulf and Iran for The Associated Press. He has reported from each of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, Iran and other locations across the world since joining the AP in 2006. twitter instagram mailto

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, center, welcomes European Council President Antonio Costa, left and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before their meeting in New Delhi, India, Tuesday, Jan. 27,2026. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)2026-01-27T06:00:05Z NEW DELHI (AP) Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Tuesday that India and the European Union have reached a free trade agreement to deepen their economic and strategic ties. The accord, which touches a whopping 2 billion people, was concluded after nearly two decades of negotiations. It was dubbed the mother of all deals by both sides. It is one of the biggest bilateral engagements on commerce. The timing comes as Washington targets both India and the EU with steep import tariffs. This agreement will bring major opportunities for the people of India and Europe. It represents 25% of the global GDP and one-third of global trade, Modi said while virtually addressing an energy conference. The deal comes at a time when Washington is targeting both India and the EU with steep tariffs, disrupting established trade flows and pushing major economies to seek alternate partnerships. Modi was scheduled to meet with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen later Tuesday to jointly announce the agreement.India has stepped up efforts to diversify its export destinations as part of a broader strategy to offset the impact of higher U.S. tariffs. The tariffs include an extra 25% levy on Indian goods for its unabated purchases of discounted Russian oil, bringing the combined tariffs imposed by the United States on its ally to 50%. Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel. Follow on The deal gives the EU expanded access to one of the worlds fastest-growing major economies, helping European exporters and investors to reduce their reliance on more volatile markets. Bilateral trade between India and EU stood at $136.5 billion in 2024-25. The two sides hope to increase that to about $200 billion by 2030, Indias Trade Ministry officials said.Ultimately, the agreement is about creating a stable commercial corridor between two major markets at a time the global trading system is fragmenting, said Indian trade analyst Ajay Srivastava. The EU is still reeling from the aggressive approach of its once-stalwart ally across the Atlantic. Theres a widespread sense of betrayal across the 27-nation bloc from U.S. President Donald Trumps onslaught of higher tariffs, embrace of far-right parties, and belligerence over Greenland.Brussels has accelerated its outreach to markets around the world: Over the past year, von der Leyen has signed deals with Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, and South America under the catchphrase strategic autonomy, which in practice is akin to decoupling from a U.S. seen by most European leaders as erratic.We are showing a fractured world that another way is possible, she posted on X after arriving in India on Sunday.___Associated Press writer Sam McNeil contributed from Brussels. RAJESH ROY Roy brings over two decades of journalistic experience in covering a spectrum of big stories spanned across defense, geopolitics, business and local politics. Mostly found in the corridors of power: talking, scooping and writing. twitter mailto

Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)2026-01-27T06:00:07Z Three of the worlds biggest tech companies face a landmark trial in Los Angeles starting this week over claims that their platforms Metas Instagram, ByteDances TikTok and Googles YouTube deliberately addict and harm children.Jury selection starts this week in the Los Angeles County Superior Court. Its the first time the companies will argue their case before a jury, and the outcome could have profound effects on their businesses and how they will handle children using their platforms. The selection process is expected to take at least a few days, with 75 potential jurors questioned each day through at least Thursday. A fourth company named in the lawsuit, Snapchat parent company Snap Inc., settled the case last week for an undisclosed sum. At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials KGM, whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out. She and two other plaintiffs have been selected for bellwether trials essentially test cases for both sides to see how their arguments play out before a jury and what damages, if any, may be awarded, said Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow of technology policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. KGM claims that her use of social media from an early age addicted her to the technology and exacerbated depression and suicidal thoughts. Importantly, the lawsuit claims that this was done through deliberate design choices made by companies that sought to make their platforms more addictive to children to boost profits. This argument, if successful, could sidestep the companies First Amendment shield and Section 230, which protects tech companies from liability for material posted on their platforms. Borrowing heavily from the behavioral and neurobiological techniques used by slot machines and exploited by the cigarette industry, Defendants deliberately embedded in their products an array of design features aimed at maximizing youth engagement to drive advertising revenue, the lawsuit says. Executives, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to testify at the trial, which will last six to eight weeks. Experts have drawn similarities to the Big Tobacco trials that led to a 1998 settlement requiring cigarette companies to pay billions in healthcare costs and restrict marketing targeting minors. Plaintiffs are not merely the collateral damage of Defendants products, the lawsuit says. They are the direct victims of the intentional product design choices made by each Defendant. They are the intended targets of the harmful features that pushed them into self-destructive feedback loops.The tech companies dispute the claims that their products deliberately harm children, citing a bevy of safeguards they have added over the years and arguing that they are not liable for content posted on their sites by third parties. Recently, a number of lawsuits have attempted to place the blame for teen mental health struggles squarely on social media companies, Meta said in a recent blog post. But this oversimplifies a serious issue. Clinicians and researchers find that mental health is a deeply complex and multifaceted issue, and trends regarding teens well-being arent clear-cut or universal. Narrowing the challenges faced by teens to a single factor ignores the scientific research and the many stressors impacting young people today, like academic pressure, school safety, socio-economic challenges and substance abuse. Meta, YouTube and TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.The case will be the first in a slew of cases beginning this year that seek to hold social media companies responsible for harming childrens mental well-being. A federal bellwether trial beginning in June in Oakland, California, will be the first to represent school districts that have sued social media platforms over harms to children. In addition, more than 40 state attorneys general have filed lawsuits against Meta, claiming it is harming young people and contributing to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. The majority of cases filed their lawsuits in federal court, but some sued in their respective states.TikTok also faces similar lawsuits in more than a dozen states. BARBARA ORTUTAY Ortutay writes about social media and the internet for The Associated Press. mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Crosses are seen at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the plane crash in the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Jan. 31, 2025, in Arlington, Va. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)2026-01-27T05:05:52Z WASHINGTON (AP) A daylong hearing on Tuesday should make clear what factors played the biggest role in causing last Januarys midair collision near Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people, and the National Transportation Safety Board will recommend what should be done to prevent similar tragedies.Everyone aboard an American Airlines jet flying from Wichita, Kansas, and an Army Black Hawk helicopter died when the two aircraft ran into each other and plummeted into the icy Potomac River on Jan. 29, 2025. It was the deadliest plane crash on U.S. soil since 2001.The Federal Aviation Administration made a number of changes shortly after the crash to ensure that helicopters and planes no longer share the same crowded airspace around the nations capital, and last week it made those changes permanent. But the NTSB will recommend additional action, and the families of the victims have said they hope that leads to meaningful changes. I hope that we see a clear path through the recommendations they offer to ensure that this never happens again, said Rachel Feres, who lost her cousin Peter Livingston and his wife and two young daughters in the crash. That nobody else has to wake up to hear that an entire branch of their family tree is gone or their wife is gone or the child is gone. Thats what I hope coming out of this. I hope we have clarity and urgency. Whether that happens will depend on how Congress, the Army and the Trump administration respond after the hearing. But the victims families say they will keep the pressure on officials to act. Stay up to date with the news and the best of AP by following our WhatsApp channel. Follow on Young Alydia and Everly Livingston were among 28 members of the figure skating community who died in the crash. Many of them had been in Wichita for a national skating competition and development camp. The NTSB has already spelled out many of the key factors that contributed to the crash and detailed what happened that night. That includes a poorly designed helicopter route past Reagan Airport, the fact that the Black Hawk was flying 78 feet (23.7 meters) higher than it should have been, the warnings that the FAA ignored in the years beforehand and the Armys move to turn off a key system that would have broadcast the helicopters location more clearly. A number of other high-profile crashes and close calls followed the D.C. collision last year and worried the flying public. But NTSB statistics show that the total number of crashes last year was actually the lowest since the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with 1,405 crashes nationwide.___Fields reported from Washington. Funk contributed from Omaha, Nebraska and White reported from Detroit. AP Airlines writer Rio Yamat contributed from Las Vegas. JOSH FUNK Funk is an Associated Press reporter who covers transportation including aviation safety and airlines along with all the major freight railroads. Funk also covers Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway, the impact of the ongoing bird flu outbreak, agriculture and other news out of the Midwest. twitter mailto

Cole Palmer, who is reportedly homesick in London, is open to a move to Manchester United. Transfer Talk has the latest.

A video of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell plays on a screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)2026-01-27T05:01:06Z WASHINGTON (AP) After two weeks of intense political and legal scrutiny, the Federal Reserve will seek to make this weeks meeting about interest rates as straightforward and uneventful as possible, though President Donald Trump probably still wont like the result. The central banks interest rate-setting committee is almost certain to keep its key short-term rate unchanged at about 3.6%, after three straight quarter-point cuts last year. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said after Decembers meeting that they were well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves before making any further moves. When the Fed lowers its short-term rate, it can over time influence other borrowing costs for things like mortgages, auto loans and business borrowing, though those rates are also affected by market forces. This weeks meeting one of eight the Fed holds each year will be overshadowed by the bombshell revelation earlier this month that the Justice Department has subpoenaed the Fed as part of a criminal investigation into testimony Powell gave last June about a $2.5 billion building renovation. Its the first time a sitting Fed chair has been investigated, and prompted an unusually public rebuke from Powell. Now, Powell will have to shift from a dispute with the White House to emphasizing that the Feds decisions around interest rates are driven by economic concerns, not politics. Powell said Jan. 11 that the subpoenas were pretexts to punish the Fed for not cutting rates as sharply as Trump wants. Powell will be under even more pressure to underscore, everything were doing here ... is all about the economics, said Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist and chief economist at New Century Advisors. We didnt think about the politics. Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Morgan Stanley and also a former Fed staffer, said that despite the scrutiny, the Fed can be expected to consider its interest rate policies like it always does. The meetings have a regular flow to them, he said. There are presentations that are made, there are discussions that have to be had. ... Some of these other broader-based attacks on the Fed dont really come up. Not long after the Justice Departments subpoenas, the Supreme Court last week considered whether Trump can fire Fed governor Lisa Cook over allegations of mortgage fraud, which she denies. No president has fired a governor in the Feds 112-year history. During an oral argument, the justices appeared to be leaning toward allowing her to stay in her job until the case is resolved. Other Fed officials have also signaled the central bank is likely to keep rates unchanged at their two-day meeting that ends Wednesday. The Feds three rate cuts last year were intended to bolster the economy after hiring slowed sharply over the summer and fall in the wake of Trumps April tariffs on dozens of countries. Yet the unemployment rate ticked lower in December, after picking up for much of last year, and there are other signs the job market may be stabilizing. The number of people seeking unemployment benefits has stayed historically low, a sign layoffs havent spiked. Meanwhile, inflation remains elevated and actually ticked higher last year, according to the Feds preferred measure. Prices rose 2.8% in November from a year earlier, the latest data available. That is up from 2.6% in November 2024. Unless businesses start cutting jobs or the unemployment rate rises, the Fed is unlikely to cut rates again for at least a few months, economists say. If inflation slowly declines this year, as economists expect, the Fed may cut again in the spring or summer. Wall Street investors expect just two quarter-point rate reductions this year, according to futures prices.Many economists expect growth could pick up in the coming months, which would be another reason to forego rate cuts. Gapen estimates that tax refunds could be about 20% higher this spring than last year as the Trump administrations tax cuts take effect. Refunds could average $3,500, Gapen said. The economy expanded at a 4.4% annual rate in last years July-September quarter and may have grown at a similarly healthy pace in the final three months of last year. If such solid growth continues, Fed officials will likely wait to see if hiring picks up as well, further reducing the need for more rate cuts. CHRISTOPHER RUGABER Rugaber has covered the Federal Reserve and the U.S. economy for the AP for 16 years. He is a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb award for business reporting. twitter mailto

The number of prisoners paroled in Louisiana has plummeted under Gov. Jeff Landry to its lowest point in 20 years, the most visible impact of the tough on crime policies he campaigned on.The parole board freed 185 prisoners during Landrys tenure compared with 858 in the two years before his January 2024 inauguration, a 78% drop, according to a Verite News and ProPublica analysis of data provided by the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole.Hundreds of people who would have been paroled under previous administrations now remain in state prisons with little chance of earning an early release through good behavior or by showing they are fit to reenter society and are unlikely to reoffend.Landry a former state attorney general and sheriffs deputy and his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature overhauled Louisianas parole system through a 2024 law that banned parole altogether for anyone convicted after Aug. 1 of that year.The overhaul also impacted the tens of thousands of people incarcerated before that date who must now meet tightened eligibility requirements to be considered for early release: Prisoners need to maintain a clean disciplinary record for three years instead of just one. And they must be deemed to pose a low risk of reoffending through a computerized scoring system, which does not take into account prisoners efforts to rehabilitate themselves and was not intended to be used to make individual parole decisions. Louisiana is the only state using such risk scores to automatically ban people from the parole process, according to a previous investigation by ProPublica and Verite News.The cumulative impact of these changes has caused the number of parole applications to dramatically fall. In the two years prior to Landrys inauguration, the board held 1,785 hearings. That number dropped to 714 in Landrys two years as governor.The Number of Parole Hearings Dropped to Its Lowest Level in at Least a Decade Under Louisiana Gov. Jeff LandryNote: A 2017 Louisiana law expanded parole eligibility for nonviolent offenders to reduce prison crowding, creating a temporary surge in the number of hearings and parolees. Once those prisoners were released, the number eligible for parole declined starting in 2020. Source: Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Lucas Waldron/ProPublicaLandrys approach represents a fundamental shift away from the original intent of the parole system, said defense attorneys, former inmates and civil rights lawyers. The possibility of parole offers an incentive for prisoners to better themselves while behind bars. And the supervision in place for parolees helps them reintegrate in hopes of preventing them from returning to prison.People who have done everything asked of them and would normally be on a fast track to get parole, to get out and make money and take care of their families, theyre crushed and their families are crushed, said Jim Boren, president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. It creates a sense of despair.Even those who manage to satisfy all of the new eligibility requirements and make it before the parole board face steeper odds, in part because five of the seven members have now been appointed by Landry.In weighing their decision, Landry has said, parole board members should prioritize the recommendations from crime victims and law enforcement. But critics say that board members have gone further, focusing almost exclusively on parole applicants criminal records, sometimes even disregarding the wishes of victims and law enforcement when they support prisoners early release.In August, Jessie Soileau begged for the release of her son, Ray, before the five-person panel hearing his parole case. He was approaching the final years of his 14-year sentence for punching her in the eye and then fighting the police as they attempted to arrest him, among earlier crimes. She told the board members she needed her sons help because shes suffering from a host of health issues and only has one leg.I try to do the best I can alone, but I cant do it by myself, she said. Ray is the one that helps me out.Ray Soileau told the board he was off his medication on the day of his arrest and promised that he wouldnt get in trouble anymore.I learned my lesson, he said, to obey my mother and to obey the laws of the system.Caleb Semien, assistant police chief of the Mamou Police Department whose officers arrested Soileau, has known him for 24 years and agreed he should be freed. Semien told the board Soileau has attended church faithfully while incarcerated and vouched for him as just all around a good guy.The testimonies helped sway four of the five board members, including two appointed by Landry, to vote to parole Soileau. But another Landry appointee, Carolyn Stapleton, who worked in victims services in law enforcement for 20 years before retiring, said she considered Soileau a danger to his family and rejected his application despite the endorsement from police and his mothers pleas.I know she needs you, Stapleton told Soileau, but she doesnt need that kind of help.That single no vote was enough to block Soileaus release. And instead of being eligible to reapply for parole again in two years, as had been the case before the new law, Soileau must now wait five years.Verite News and ProPublica could not reach Jessie Soileau; a family member said she lives in a nursing home but did not know where. Semien did not respond to calls for comment.Landry, in pushing for a crackdown on parole, said misguided post-conviction programs return un-reformed, un-repentant and violent criminals to our neighborhoods, causing violent crime to rise and making communities less safe. Those being released come back into the system again and again, he said in a speech kicking off a special legislative session on crime weeks after his inauguration.In fact, people released at the end of their sentences had a five-year recidivism rate that is nearly twice as high as those released on parole 40.3% versus 22.2%, according to the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections 2023 annual report, the latest year for which data is available.Landrys office did not respond to requests for comment.Gov. Jeff Landry and his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature overhauled Louisianas parole system through a 2024 law that banned parole altogether for anyone convicted after Aug. 1 of that year. Hilary Scheinuk/The Advocate via AP, PoolThe new law also requires a unanimous vote for anyone seeking release. Previously, prisoners could be paroled by a majority vote depending on the crime for which they were convicted and as long as they met certain rehabilitative benchmarks.Lawmakers expanded this requirement to ensure that parole is granted only when there is full agreement that release will not jeopardize public safety, said Francis M. Abbott, executive director of the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole, in a statement.Board members are randomly assigned to hear parole cases, typically serving on three-person panels. A five-member panel is required when an inmate has been convicted of a violent crime against a police officer or in some cases involving life sentences. (That was the case with Ray Soileau, whose parole also would have required a unanimous vote prior to the Landry administration because his conviction involved the assault of a law enforcement officer.)Two of Landrys five appointees, including Stapleton, have been the least likely of the current board to grant parole, having voted to do so in only about 21% of cases. By contrast, board chair Sheryl Ranatza, who had been appointed by Landrys Democratic predecessor, John Bel Edwards, voted to release prisoners at nearly twice that rate.Abbott said the recent decline in the number of parole hearings and approvals can be attributed to a number of factors not just the legislative changes enacted in 2024.Edwards pushed through a series of laws passed by a bipartisan Legislature in 2017 that were designed to reduce the states prison population and save money by expanding the pool of people eligible for release, among other changes. That led to a rise in the number of hearings held and prisoners paroled. Once that pool was depleted, the number of parolees began to drop. As a result, Abbott said, people convicted of violent crimes and sex offenses now make up a higher percentage of the states prison population.This equates to more complex cases being considered by the Committee on Parole, Abbott said in a statement. The reforms of 2024 were designed by the Louisiana Legislature and reflect the will of the citizens of Louisiana.Steve Prator, a former police chief and sheriff in northern Louisiana, is the other Landry parole board appointee least likely to grant parole. As Caddo Parish sheriff in 2017, Prator voiced his objections to Edwards criminal justice legislation. He said it would result in the release of good prisoners whom prisons depended on to wash cars, to change oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that, where we save money. Critics, including civil rights attorneys, accused Prator of supporting the exploitation of inmates for his own benefit and said he was therefore unfit to serve on the parole board.Neither Stapleton nor Prator responded to requests for comment. Abbott previously told Verite News and ProPublica that board policy prohibits current board members from speaking to the media.Verite News and ProPublica reached out to several defense attorneys who have represented prisoners before the parole board in the past two years and none would speak on the record for fear that anything negative said about the board would hurt their clients. Two who agreed to comment on the condition of anonymity said Landrys overhaul of the board has forced defense attorneys to change how they make a case for parole.Prior to Landrys changes to parole, the defense attorneys said they highlighted their clients accomplishments in prison to the board: earning a college degree, attending Bible school, repairing relationships with their children. But none of that crap matters now, said one of the defense attorneys in southeast Louisiana, adding that the only factors the board cares about now is the crime detailed in the police report and victim opposition. What we do now is damage control.It is rare for prisoners to appear before the parole board with an attorney, but those who did were more likely to be granted early release prior to Landrys push to make it harder for prisoners to be freed, according to parole experts. Before Landry, the two attorneys estimated that they secured parole for most of their eligible clients. Since the seating of the new board, they havent won parole for any.Overall, during Landrys two years in office, just over a quarter of those eligible have been paroled compared with about half the prisoners who appeared before the parole board prior to his inauguration, according to annual parole rates.The Rate That Parole Was Granted Decreased During Landrys TermSource: Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole Lucas Waldron/ProPublicaOver the past five years, more than two dozen states have been paroling fewer people, a trend attributed, in part, to parole boards being more cautious for fear of public backlash should a parolee commit a violent crime, according to Leah Wang, a senior research analyst with the Prison Policy Initiative and author of an October report on how parole decisions are made.In addition, some states have passed new laws that put parole eligibility further out of reach, but none have been as aggressive as Louisiana, which eliminated parole entirely for nearly all newly incarcerated prisoners. While 17 states have abolished parole, Louisiana is the first in 24 years to do so.No one is doing it well, Wang said. But Louisiana is an outlier. Its a disaster.Civil rights attorneys and prison reform advocates say Landrys changes represent a return to the failed policies of the past, which they said resulted in violent, overcrowded prisons and did not make a dent in the states high crime rates.Tough on crime doesnt work, said Pearl Wise, who was appointed to the parole board by Edwards and served from 2016 until 2023. All it produces is mass incarceration, which costs us more than rehabilitating the individual and making them taxpayers, not tax burdens.James Austin, a national corrections policy expert, estimates that the states prison population will nearly double in six years from about 28,000 to about 55,800 because of recent policy changes. Since Landry took office, the prison population has increased by about 1,700 inmates, but there is not enough data to show whether this is a permanent trend. It costs about $37,000 per year to house a single inmate in a state prison compared with about $2,200 a year for parole supervision.One of those prisoners who will remain incarcerated because of Landrys policies is Tyrone Charles, who was 20 years old when he was arrested for armed robbery and sentenced in 1995 to 50 years in prison as a repeat offender.When Charles appeared before the parole board in July at the age of 53, he told the three-member panel that he had learned the value of his own life and that of others during his three decades in prison.I would like to apologize to my victim today, to their family, Charles said. I apologize to the police. I apologize to my family, to all the people that I hurt, for the pain and suffering that I caused as a young man. Now, Im older, I know the meaning of love, to just be a loving person.Terrance Winn, who runs a Shreveport-based nonprofit offering services to people released from prison, befriended Charles while they were both serving time in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. He told the board he would provide Charles with whatever was necessary, including housing and employment, to ensure his post-prison life was a success.Prator, whose detectives investigated the robbery when he was Shreveport police chief, cast the lone no vote.Winn, in a recent interview, said he was not surprised by Prators denial. In the three years prior to Landrys inauguration, 17 of the 18 people Winn advocated for during that time were granted parole. Since Landry became governor, Winn said the outcome has flipped, with 10 denied and only two approved.With this new parole board, he said, you got to expect the worst.The post Louisiana Paroles Its Lowest Number of Prisoners in 20 Years Under Gov. Jeff Landry appeared first on ProPublica.

A Republican member of Congress argues that neither Biden nor Trump had the right solution on immigration.

But being a hot country does not make you a good country. Or a decent one.

This photo shows the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events which will take place during the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Livigno, Italy, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2025. (AP Photo/Gabriele Facciotti, File)2026-01-27T10:13:08Z MILAN (AP) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents will have a security role during the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Games, according to sources at the U.S. embassy in Rome.The sources who confirmed ICE participation on Tuesday said that federal ICE agents would support diplomatic security details and not run any immigration enforcement operations.

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00263-yAfrican science needs to cut reliance on foreign donors

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00265-wStreet-dog policy in India is barking up the wrong tree

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00262-zSocial-media bans: why corporate fines could backfire

The powerful owners of a payday lending company faced a crisis in March 2021 when their other business, a now-defunct sports gambling operation, was under investigation by Tennessee regulators.The couple, Michael and Tina Hodges, had already turned to Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton in 2014 to create a new triple-digit interest loan called a Flex Loan. The couples company, Advance Financial, through the Flex Loan, went on to make hundreds of millions of dollars lending to the states most financially vulnerable.Now they needed Sextons help keeping their fledgling gambling business, Action 247, afloat as it tried to compete with sportsbooks like FanDuel and DraftKings, which were dominating the market in Tennessee and around the country.In many states, regulators try to keep lending and betting separate; Virginia, for example, bans gambling operators from offering loans to customers. But in Tennessee, its different. A payday lender and a gambling company can have the same owners and operate out of the same storefronts.From November 2020 through Jan. 16, when Action 247 closed, this was happening. A person could walk into any Advance Financial storefront and borrow up to $4,000 at a 279.5% interest rate. Then, at the same window, the customer could legally tell the stores employee to deposit cash into an Action 247 account, through which they could gamble the money on something like a football game.Members of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp., which oversaw sports gambling at the time, were concerned by the arrangement and the company, but the agencys board was prevented from doing anything about it by its attorney in January 2021. Two months later, the board attempted to assert its power over Action 247 by suspending its license for violations related to its failure to ensure that customers adhered to state gambling laws; ultimately, Action 247 went to court, where a judge lifted the suspension but allowed the agency to continue its investigation.Thats when Sexton stepped in.The Hodges own the majority of both Action 247 and Advance Financial. The payday lender is one of the largest donors to Sexton and his political action committee, giving around $105,000 over the past decade.ProPublica and the Tennessee Lookout previously reported how, after creating the new type of payday loan, Advance has gone on to sue more than 110,000 Tennesseans, making the company one of the single largest plaintiffs in the state.Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton told a lottery board official he was not happy with the panels decision to suspend the online sportsbook Action 247; weeks later, he helped pass a bill to remove lottery oversight. John Partipilo/Tennessee LookoutThrough Action, the Hodges also brought in dozens of investors, including two with political ties to Sexton and other powerful state lawmakers, according to an investor document obtained by the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica.A month after the suspension, Sexton met with two members of the lottery board. The legislator made it clear he was not happy with the decision to suspend Action 247, said Susan Lanigan, the chair of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corp.s board at the time.When it appeared lottery officials werent going to drop their ongoing investigation into Action, Sexton pushed through legislation to remove the boards control over sports betting. Less than a month after the closed-door meeting with Lanigan, the state lottery was out of sports gaming and a new regulator, over whom members of the legislature could wield more control, was in.Sexton responded to the news outlets questions in a statement in which he said that creating the new regulatory body was a policy decision that included members of the lottery.After the lottery lost control of sports gambling, it ended the investigation into Action. The company survived, but as one of the smallest sportsbooks in Tennessee. National brands have dominated sports betting in the state.Action announced on its website on Jan. 16 that it was shutting down. Cullen Earnest, the senior vice president of public policy at Advance Financial and a onetime lobbyist for Action 247, sent a statement from Tina Hodges, who said, The current landscape for state-licensed online sports gambling in the United States has proven to be unviable and unprofitable for all operators in the industry.The Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica have been investigating Advance and Action for over a year. In December 2025, a reporter sent Earnest and Sexton a list of questions about the companys politically tied investors and the connections between the gambling and lending businesses. Sexton said, in an emailed statement, I dont keep up with each and every investment of people I know. Earnest didnt respond to the specific questions.Earnest, when asked about the lottery investigation, said by email that the agency was obviously not up to the task of regulating sports betting.With Actions closure, no payday lender is tied to a gambling company, but under Tennessee law its still allowed.Brianne Doura-Schawohl, the former legislative director for the gambling harm-reduction advocacy organization National Council on Problem Gambling, said the mixing of high-interest lending and gambling is problematic because studies show people with a gambling addiction are more likely to struggle with their financial decisions and to borrow money they cant afford to pay back through products like payday loans.Doura-Schawohl said no other state had a scenario where a high-interest lender owns a gambling operation and can use its storefronts to attract customers.Its just really unhealthy and, frankly, predatory, she said.In Tennessee, however, Advance Financial has around 80 storefronts, and Action 247 had operations at all of them for over six years.An Advance Financial store in Sparta, Tennessee, also advertises Action Pay, a money transfer service from sportsbook Action 247, which announced it was shutting down on Jan. 16. Stacy Kranitz for ProPublicaWe Were AlarmedIn April 2020, the Tennessee lottery board opened applications for businesses to apply for licenses to run online sports betting operations. Action 247 had been founded a year earlier, the day after lawmakers legalized sports betting, hoping to be one of the first companies to enter the new business. All companies seeking a sports betting license were required to undergo vetting before receiving approval, and during that process, Lanigan said lottery officials believed at the time that Action would operate independently of Advance.Regulators approved Actions license, and the company launched its online sports betting operations in November and began offering all Advance Financial stores as a place to deposit into or cash out of an Action betting account.At the time, Tennessee law said nothing about payday lenders working with betting companies. The lottery had no rules banning the practice. But in its regulations of lottery and scratch tickets, it prevented stores like Advance from selling the products, acknowledging the dangers of mixing lending and that form of gambling.But almost two weeks after the launch of online sports betting, regulators grew concerned. A gambling investigator for the lottery, working off a tip, entered an Advance store in Nashville and found brochures advertising Action 247.Action 24/7 is the first locally owned and operated sports book in Tennessee, offering convenient cash deposits and withdrawals, the brochures read. Its so easy. For a $2 fee, any Advance Financial store location can help you withdraw your cash or load your account.Gambling investigators photographed the Action 247 brochures they found in an Advance Financial store in Nashville in November 2020. Obtained by Tennessee Lookout and ProPublicaWith the brochure in hand, officials began drafting a violation notice.Regulators emailed Tina Hodges in December 2020, asserting that the company was using Advance as an unregistered vendor and asking her to explain how the companies were working together. It is evident that our licensing decision may have been based on an incomplete picture of your business model, said lottery officials in the notice.At a January 2021 meeting, the lottery board learned from its attorney that there was no law specifically banning the Action and Advance arrangement.We were alarmed, said Lanigan, the chair at the time.Lanigan made it clear at the meeting that the lottery board itself couldnt stop the practice. But regulators continued to look into the company, finding it lacked proper internal controls to enforce the states gambling laws. By March 2021, the lottery board took the regulators recommendations to suspend the company until it could fix them.A week later, a judge ruled the company should remain in business while the investigation continued. But now lottery officials had grabbed the attention of Sexton.In March 2021 the same month that the board suspended the Action 247 operations legislation Sexton co-sponsored to remove the lottery boards control of online sports betting entirely received its first committee hearing in the state House.In 2021, Sexton was two years into his position as the states most powerful legislative official, and his rise had been in part aided by campaign donations from the Hodges. The steps he took to remove the regulators stood to help not just the couple but also some politically connected investors in Action 247, according to an investor document.One of them was John Chip Saltsman, who took the job as Sextons senior campaign adviser when he became speaker in 2019. The other was Ward Baker, a campaign adviser for Tennessees two U.S. senators and the state Senate majority leader. Saltsman initially invested $150,000 and Baker $100,000, but Advances owners had returned some of the investment, leaving Saltsman with $18,000 invested in the company and Baker with $12,000.Saltsman and Baker did not respond to calls, texts and questions sent by the news outlets. Sexton, in an emailed statement, said: Despite what you are insinuating, my focus and decisions remain on the issues that matter to our state, our communities and to Tennesseans. My team manages campaign logistics, provides transparency and ensures compliance to campaign laws.In April, as Sextons bill moved through the state legislature, Lanigan, the lottery board chair, and William Carver, the vice chair, met with Sexton. Lanigan said she came to the meeting expecting a thorough conversation about the future of sports betting and what regulatory body should oversee it. Instead, she said, Sexton only wanted to talk about the suspension of Action 247 and his frustration at lottery officials. Taken aback, she resigned shortly after the meeting.In May 2021, in the final days of the legislative session, Sexton pushed his legislation through.When Tennessee passed its law giving the lottery control of sports betting and oversight of a sports wagering advisory council, Sexton wasnt the House speaker. Two years later, at Sextons behest, lawmakers reversed this decision by creating a sports-betting-specific agency that, according to Doura-Schawohl, doesnt exist in any other state.In his emailed statement, Sexton said that some members of the sports wagering advisory council had serious issues with how the lottery was conducting business when it came to sports betting. He said that the decision to create the new entity happened after much discussion and deliberation with board members.William Orgel, a member of the sports wagering advisory council since 2019 and current chair of the new body, said the council doesnt involve itself in legislative policy, adding if the lawmakers thought a new agency was necessary, the panel would say fine.I believe our body has been pretty hands-off, at least I have, Orgel said. Im not in there trying to make or lobby for the rules or policy, and Ive never heard of anyone else doing that either.While Sexton was working on removing the lotterys control, former Democratic state Rep. Darren Jernigan of Nashville said he saw the news of Advance and Actions co-mingling and decided to propose a law to ban it.Jernigan found a Republican sponsor in the state Senate and built a bipartisan coalition of nearly one-third of the states House members to co-sponsor the bill.Jernigan said that the legislation was a no-brainer. The American Gaming Association reported in July 2025 that 35 of the 38 states that have legalized gambling, plus Washington, D.C., have limits on gaming operators allowing bettors to use borrowed money. This includes Tennessee, where lawmakers have barred gamblers from using a credit card to load money into an account.Jernigan told the Tennessee Lookout and ProPublica he thought it was dangerous to put any type of gambling operations in places that also offer quick, high-interest loans.There was no way to verify if someone was borrowing and betting the money away, Jernigan said.Former state Rep. Darren Jernigan, a Democrat, proposed legislation to ban the use of payday lending stores for betting services, but it failed in 2021. George Walker IV/APOnce the bill was moving, however, the lobbying started. Jernigan said Earnest, the Advance vice president, working on behalf of both Hodges-owned companies as a lobbyist, went around trying to persuade his co-sponsors to drop their support of the bill. Former state Rep. Sam Whitson, a Republican, said the lobbyist approached him in an effort to get him to withdraw his backing.The bill faced delay after delay in getting out of its committee. In April 2021, as the state Houses banking subcommittee looked poised to vote down the legislation, Jernigan withdrew it.Jernigan said that with hindsight he wished hed tried to bring the bill back up before he left the state House three years later, and that its a loophole in the law that needs to be closed.The post How Tennessees Speaker of the House Helped Keep a Payday Lenders Struggling Sports Gambling Company Alive appeared first on ProPublica.

Mr. Vindman will run for the Democratic nomination to take on Senator Ashley Moody, a Republican. The race is an uphill fight for Democrats, but Mr. Vindman could be a strong fund-raiser.

The builders of the Gateway project, a critical rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey, are expected to warn that construction cannot continue without the withheld federal money.

Plus, Mamdanis snowstorm recommendation.

Europes nationalist leaders once saw President Trump as an ideological ally. Now, as he threatens European sovereignty, they are seeking distance at least for the moment.

Scenes from the violent unrest in Minneapolis played on a loop in many American households over the weekend, prompting reflection about where the nation is heading.

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00238-zFor almost two decades, scientists have debated whether sponges or comb jellies are the first animal lineage. Now some are calling for a more harmonious approach.

Nature, Published online: 27 January 2026; doi:10.1038/d41586-026-00225-4Genetic analyses of koala pedigrees help to suss out virus-induced genome changes that affect cancer risk and reproductive success.

Premier League clubs are corporations that have outgrown the "manager" role that legendary Arsenal and Man United clubs once had. Why?

Coco Gauff, a 3-seed and two-time major winner, struggled with her serve and recorded five double-faults in the first set, when she was broken four times, and was ousted by Elina Svitolina.

The National Transportation Safety Board is set to vote on the probable cause of last years crash near Washington and make recommendations.

Farmers are critical to Iowas economy. They have been battered by President Trumps tariffs and are not yet experiencing the golden age that the president promised.

The Federal Reserve is expected to hold interest rates steady on Wednesday, despite relentless attacks from President Trump over borrowing costs.