A man walks past Google's offices in London's Kings Cross area, on Aug. 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Brian Melley, File)2025-04-17T16:11:51Z Google has been branded an abusive monopolist by a federal judge for the second time in less than a year, this time for illegally exploiting some of its online marketing technology to boost the profits fueling an internet empire currently worth $1.8 trillion. The ruling issued Thursday by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia comes on the heels of a separate decision in August that concluded Googles namesake search engine has been illegally leveraging its dominance to stifle competition and innovation. After the U.S. Justice Department targeted Googles ubiquitous search engine during President Donald Trumps first administration, the same agency went after the companys lucrative digital advertising network in 2023 during President Joe Bidens ensuing administration in an attempt to undercut the power that Google has amassed since its inception in a Silicon Valley garage in 1998. Although antitrust regulators prevailed both times, the battle is likely to continue for several more years as Google tries to overturn the two monopoly decisions in appeals while forging ahead in the new and highly lucrative technological frontier of artificial intelligence. The next step in the latest case is a penalty phase that will likely begin late this year or early next year. The same so-called remedy hearings in the search monopoly case are scheduled to begin Monday in Washington D.C., where Justice Department lawyers will try to convince U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta to impose a sweeping punishment that includes a proposed requirement for Google to sell its Chrome web browser. MICHAEL LIEDTKE Liedtke has been covering technology and wide range of other business topics for The Associated Press since the turn of the century. twitter mailto

Utah's Grace McCallum completes on the floor exercise during the NCAA women's gymnastics championships, April 14, 2022, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, file)2025-04-17T14:51:17Z WASHINGTON (AP) Thomas Bateman kept busy this year managing college fantasy teams in 12 different leagues, a lineup that included SECret Weapon and One and Dunne. Five of them won it all.These were not teams stocked with NFL or NBA players. All 12 were made up of college gymnasts, and the Chicago-based marriage and family therapist is just one member of a fervent and growing fan base that channels their love of the sport into fantasy leagues.Its such a great way to get to know the sport a bit, Bateman said. When I started off, I got these lists from College Gym News and picked athletes I didnt really know, so then I got to know teams I liked and then got familiar with athletes I want to draft. Its a great way to potentially grow the audience of the sport.Interest in gymnastics traditionally peaks with the Olympic cycle, but on the gymternet the online global community for devoted fans its a year-round sport. At the college level, major growth in name, image and likeness deals, viewership and streaming availability has been accompanied by a surge in fantasy leagues, too.This year, over 7,000 womens college gymnastics devotees have found their way to the Gymlytics and GymCastic fantasy platforms all within the last few years. From the Olympics to NCAA Gymlytics, which launched before the 2022 collegiate season, runs through the regular season and has a postseason bracket competition. GymCastic, in its second year, offers weekly fantasy matchups, including the NCAA postseason and elite meets later in the year. The two leagues take slightly different approaches. Gymlytics participants draft individual athletes for their team at the beginning of the season and set lineups for each week of competition. GymCastic runs a salary cap-style draft, in which athletes are valued at a certain number of gym rubles. Participants select athletes until their roster is filled while staying under the cap. Neither are the first platforms of their kind: Founders of both pointed to Kristen Watkins, a former college gymnast and self-taught programmer who created and ran College Fantasy Gymnastics for the decade leading into the pandemic-canceled 2020 season, as an inspiration. Watkins competed for the MIT gymnastics team until it was cut following the 2009 season, a period in which other college gymnastics programs were cut or coming under threat of reduction. The creation of the fantasy league, she said, was motivated in part because she wanted to see if there could be more interest in womens gymnastics. Subsequent leagues have hinged on the same idea.Thats the point of everything we do: Its very, very specific to the gymnastics fans, said Jessica OBeirne, creator of the popular GymCastic podcast and a co-founder of the fantasy league of the same name. We use the lingo of gymnastics. Its so niche and so specific.The Gymlytics audience is similarly a lot of diehard gymnastics fans, said Lauren Pickens, a co-creator. That includes former athletes. Pickens recalled hearing from recently graduated members of the championship-winning Michigan team who had barely missed the Gymlytics draft deadline but wanted to put teams together. (She helped them join in.) Growth beyond diehard fansLike all fantasy team managers who care about results, Bateman and other participants have their hands full. Week to week, participants set lineups across the four apparatuses vault, uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise to maximize the total number of points their team scores. An injury or struggles at a weekend meet are factors in roster changes.Bateman joined Gymlytics in 2022 with friends who had been gymnasts at the University of Michigan. He named SECret Weapon after the Southeastern Conference, whose member school LSU is a repeat favorite at this weeks NCAA championships in Texas. One and Dunne bears the surname of LSU gymnast and popular influencer Olivia Dunne and the name worked in a league where each team could include just one athlete from each college.As GymCastic and Gymlytics have taken off, their creators have seen these diehard fans bring in friends and family who are less familiar with the sport. Weve gotten a lot of emails from people saying, my significant other did fantasy basketball or fantasy football and because theres a fantasy gymnastics, they wanted to connect with me and my passion so they joined a league, said GymCastic COO Steve Cooper. And now theyre screaming at the TV like I am.According to the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association, the number of Americans over the age of 21 participating in fantasy sports grew by about 5% between 2017 and 2022. Its been much more robust for Gymlytics, which launched its first season with 1,000 teams and, according to co-founder Yarden Tamir, had nearly 7,000 teams across 55 countries this season; and for GymCastic, which has seen over 10% growth between its first and second seasons, per Cooper. While overall fantasy sports participation skews male by about a 2:1 ratio, according to FSGA data, the Gymlytics and GymCastic founders both estimated their participants were more gender balanced. Higher visibilityMultiple fantasy gymnastics participants and founders pointed to the 2021 and 2022 collegiate seasons as a turning point. Those seasons followed the delayed Tokyo Games and a 2021 Supreme Court decision allowing college athletes to earn endorsement money, marking the beginning of Olympics gymnasts being able to cash in and retain their NCAA eligibility. Other than Simone Biles, every member of that medal-winning Tokyo team, including alternates, went on to compete in the NCAA. Olympics is so fun but its hard to consistently follow elite athletes because oftentimes theyre only competing three or four times per year, Bateman said. NCAA gymnastics is fun, too, and its such an accessible format.Accessibility has also grown as streaming networks have jumped in. According to ESPN, the three most-watched gymnastics telecasts have been the three most recent national championships. In 2022, ESPN and affiliated platforms broadcast 40 meets across five platforms; after championships this year, it will be more than 60 meets across eight.FOX bought in this year. ESPN is doing GameDay-style shows to lead into their broadcast, said Brandis Heffner, the managing editor of College Gym News and a fantasy player. Giving that option to gymnastics fans has been a fantastic way to help build the sport.Running a custom fantasy league isnt without its challenges. League officials pointed to challenges with data availability and inconsistent information across conferences and regions, including judging details.Gymlytics and GymCastic have both gotten around it by leveraging the devotion among their participants, essentially crowdsourcing scores to get them into their databases. While there are improvements to be made on both the institutional and platform sides, the fantasy league founders all expressed optimism. There are a ton of little features we want to add and make the environment easier to use, more automated, Tamir said. If one actual person you dont know uses it, thats a huge win, but when thousands of users are using it on a daily basis, thats wild. Were just continuing to make that tent larger.___AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports MAYA SWEEDLER Sweedler is a reporter for The Associated Press, with a focus on analyzing election outcomes and procedures and explaining the intricacies of the electoral process. mailto

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08710-yThe development of multimodal foundation models, pretrained on diverse omics datasets, to unravel the intricate complexities of molecular cell biology is envisioned.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00820-xHigh-resolution observations of ocean topography from the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission reveal that small surface structures have a larger-than-expected impact on the oceans total energy budget.

Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger poses for a portrait with a plate of mushrooms that he grows himself for microdosing psilocybin, Wednesday, March 26, 2025, in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)2025-04-17T13:17:19Z Microdosing is gaining popularity with a new breed of health seekers. These self-experimenters take a very small amount of psilocybin mushrooms or LSD to try to reduce anxiety, stress and depression. Some claim the practice gives them access to joy, creativity and connection they cant get otherwise.This isnt a full-blown acid trip or even close. If you see visions, its not a microdose. People who microdose dont do it every day. Instead, they take tiny doses intermittently, on a schedule or when they feel it could be beneficial.One small study suggests any psychological benefits come from users expectations the placebo effect. But the science is still new and research is ongoing.The substances are illegal in most places, but the wave of scientific research focused on the benefits of supervised hallucinatory experiences has spurred Oregon and Colorado to legalize psychedelic therapy. Further opening the door to microdosing, a handful of cities have officially directed police to make psychedelics a low priority for enforcement. This article is part of APs Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well. What are people who microdose reporting?I started microdosing and within a couple of months, I had a general sense of well-being that I hadnt had in so long, said Marine Corps combat veteran Matt Metzger. He grows his own mushrooms in Olympia, Washington, where psilocybin has been decriminalized. Taking small amounts of psilocybin helps him cope with PTSD, he said.In Loveland, Colorado, Aubrie Gates said microdosing psilocybin has made her a better parent and enhanced her creativity. It makes you feel viscerally in your body a new way of being, a more healthy way of being, Gates said. And so instead of just like thinking with your conscious mind, Oh, I need to be more present, you feel what it feels like to be more present. What does the science say about microdosing?These kinds of claims are hard to measure in the lab, say scientists studying microdosing.For starters, belief is so important to the experience that empty capsules can produce the same effects.In one study involving people who microdose, participants didnt know until afterward whether they had spent four weeks taking their usual microdose or placebos. Psychological measures improved after four weeks for everyone in the study, regardless of whether they were taking microdoses or empty capsules.It appears that I was indeed taking placebos throughout the trial. Im quite astonished, wrote one of the study participants. It seems I was able to generate a powerful altered consciousness experience based only (on) the expectation around the possibility of a microdose.Scientists havent found lasting effects on creativity or cognition, according to a review of a handful of small placebo-controlled trials of microdosing LSD.One small study did find glimmers of an effect of small LSD doses on vigor and elation in people with mild depression when compared with a placebo.It may only work in some people and not in other people, so it makes it hard for us to measure it under laboratory conditions, said University of Chicago neuroscience researcher Harriet de Wit, who led the research. The potential has spurred an Australian company to conduct early trials of microdoses of LSD for severe depression and in cancer patients experiencing despair.Meanwhile, few rigorous studies of psilocybin microdosing have been done. Psilocybin mushrooms are the most often used among psychedelic drugs, according to a report by the nonpartisan Rand research group. Rand estimates that 8 million people in the U.S. used psilocybin in 2023 and half of them reported microdosing the last time they used it.A few words of caution about microdosingEven microdosing advocates caution that the long-term effects have not been studied in humans. Other warnings: Unregulated products from shady sources could contain harmful substances. And accidentally taking too much could cause disturbing sensations. The nonprofit Fireside Project offers free phone support for people during a psychedelic experience and has received hundreds of calls about microdosing.People may call just to simply process their experience, said project founder Josh White, who microdoses the plant iboga and LSD to continue to deepen the insight about my life that he gained in a full-blown psychedelic experience. Balazs Szigeti of University of California San Francisco, who has studied microdosing, said it may be a way to harness the placebo effect for personal benefit.Its like a self-fulfilling prophecy, Szigeti said. People who are interested in microdosing should give microdosing a try, but only if theyre enthusiastic about it, if they have a positive expectation about the benefits of microdosing.___The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. CARLA K. JOHNSON Johnson covers research in cancer, addiction and more for The Associated Press. She is a member of APs Health and Science team. twitter mailto

Florida State University students wait for news amid an active shooter incident at the schools campus in Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025 (AP Photo/Kate Payne)2025-04-17T16:26:44Z Lee esta historia en espaol TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) A shooting Thursday on the Florida State University campus sent an unknown number of people to a nearby hospital, a medical center spokesperson said.Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare was receiving and treating people affected by the shooting, said Sarah Cannon, a hospital spokesperson. She said the hospital cannot yet confirm the number of people in care, and said the details are still unfolding.Ambulances, fire trucks and patrol vehicles from multiple law enforcement agencies raced toward the campus midday Thursday after the university issued an active shooter alert near the student union. Hundreds of students streamed away from the direction of the student union. Students were glued to their phones, some visibly emotional.Junior Joshua Sirmans, 20, was in the universitys main library when he said alarms began going off warning of an active shooter. Sirmans said law enforcement officers escorted him and other students out of the library with their hands over their heads.FBI officials are on scene, a spokesperson said.Students and faculty were instructed to seek shelter and await further instructions.Lock and stay away from all doors and windows and be prepared to take additional protective measures, the alert said. KATE PAYNE Payne writes about state government and education and is based in Tallahassee, FL. She is a Report for America corps member. twitter mailto

Nature, Published online: 17 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01265-yFreshwater insects used microplastic as a building material long before scientists coined the term.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01258-xScientists have captured a colossal squid in the deep sea for the first time. Plus, crows have surprising geometry skills and the world now has a plan in place for pandemics.

The Supreme Court in Washington, June 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)2025-04-17T18:11:27Z WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court on Thursday kept on hold President Donald Trumps restrictions on birthright citizenship but agreed to hear arguments on the issue in May.Trumps executive order to end birthright citizenship for the children of people who are in the U.S. illegally has been halted nationwide by three district courts around the country.The Republican administration had sought to narrow those orders to allow for the policy to take effect in parts or most of the country while court challenges play out. That is expected to be the focus of the high court arguments. RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

Nature, Published online: 17 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01255-0Carbonate mineral is long-sought evidence of conditions that supported liquid water.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01101-3The dark cells behind disease, how diabetes drugs might protect cognitive function, and other studies and trials.

Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia of Maryland, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, speaks during a news conference at CASA's Multicultural Center in Hyattsville, Md., April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)2025-04-17T19:29:41Z WASHINGTON (AP) The Trump administrations claim that it cant do anything to free Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvador prison and return him to the U.S. should be shocking, a federal appeals court said Thursday in a scathing ruling in favor of the Maryland man.A three-judge panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously refused to suspend a judges decision to order sworn testimony by Trump administration officials to determine if they complied with her instruction to facilitate Abrego Garcias return.The panel said Republican President Donald Trumps government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order.Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear, they wrote. The Justice Department appealed after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis on Tuesday ordered sworn testimony by at least four officials who work for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department. The 4th Circuit panel unanimously denied the governments request for a stay of Xinis order while they appeal. Its opinion says the executive and judicial branches of the federal government come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around, they wrote. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions.

Nature, Published online: 17 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01264-zBold claims of biosignature molecules trigger an outpouring of scepticism.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01026-xAround 60% of the European Unions soils are considered unhealthy, but geographer Jess Rodrigo Comino is determined to help change that in his native Spain.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08915-1Simultaneous inhibition of LSD1 and GSK3 kinase promotes cell differentiation, providing a therapeutic strategy for treating acute myeloid leukaemia.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08842-1Upon intramuscular administration, COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are primarily taken up by macrophages, in which the cellular machinery extends their poly(A) tails, thereby increasing mRNA stability and translation, providing an explanation for the efficacy of these vaccines.

Nature, Published online: 17 April 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-01263-0The National Science Foundation is the latest US agency to be disrupted by Elon Musks DOGE.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08896-1Biochemical, structural and genetic analysis of the shelterin complex reveal that by recruiting RAP1 to DNA, TRF2 directly inhibits DNA-dependent protein kinase to regulate classical non-homologous end joining at telomeres.

2025-04-17T22:34:43Z NEW YORK (AP) Luigi Mangione was indicted Thursday on a federal murder charge in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a necessary step for prosecutors to seek the death penalty.The indictment returned by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court also charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and a firearms count. It was not immediately clear when the 26-year-old Mangione will be arraigned. A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for his lawyers.Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, also faces separate state murder charges. Hes accused of shooting Thompson, 50, in the back outside a Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4 as the executive arrived for UnitedHealthcares annual investor conference.U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced this month that she had directed federal prosecutors in Manhattan to seek the death penalty, following through on the presidents campaign promise to vigorously pursue capital punishment. Its the first death penalty case sought by the Justice Department since President Donald Trump returned to office in January with a vow to resume federal executions after they were halted under the previous administration. The killing and ensuing five-day manhunt leading to Mangiones arrest rattled the business community, with some health insurers hastily switching to remote work or online shareholder meetings. It also galvanized health insurance critics some of whom have rallied around Mangione as a stand-in for frustrations over coverage denials and hefty medical bills.Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police say the words delay, deny and depose were scrawled on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase commonly used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims. MICHAEL R. SISAK Sisak is an Associated Press reporter covering law enforcement and courts in New York City, including former President Donald Trumps criminal and civil cases and problems plaguing the federal prison system. twitter mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

This image provided by Commonwealth Media Services shows damage after a fire at the Pennsylvania governors mansion while Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family slept inside on Sunday, April 13, 2025, in Harrisburg, Pa. (Commonwealth Media Services via AP)2025-04-17T21:37:40Z HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) The arsonist who broke into the Pennsylvania governors residence while Gov. Josh Shapiro and his extended family slept upstairs on the first night of Passover encountered little resistance as he scaled a security fence, smashed windows with a hammer, ignited two Molotov cocktails and crawled inside before slipping off into the night minutes later.That suggests multiple security failures, according to a former FBI agent who wondered why burglar alarms, motion detectors and other devices did not thwart the intruder sooner.He never should have gotten over the fence. He never should have gotten across the yard and to the house. He never should have broken the window. He never should have gotten inside, said retired FBI Special Agent J.J. Klaver, now a security consultant.The arson early Sunday occurred just hours after Shapiro hosted a Seder for his family and members of the Jewish community. No one was injured, but the fire caused, by one officials estimate, millions of dollars in damage. Id be lying if I said it wasnt jarring, scary to see that in the light of day, to see the areas where wed either make memories privately up in the residence with our kids -- hanging out, laughing, enjoying ourselves or in the more public spaces where weve been able to welcome so many people to our home, Shapiro said Thursday. But were going to rebuild from that. Were going to be stronger. White House, queen have faced intruders Experts said it can be difficult to maintain security at official residences, like the one in Harrisburg, that also open their doors to the public for tours and events. Intruders over the years have managed to breach both the White House and the queens bedroom at Buckingham Palace. Meanwhile, Paul Pelosi, the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was violently attacked inside their private home in California in 2022.The Pennsylvania suspect, an unemployed mechanic from Harrisburg, told police he felt hatred toward Shapiro, and referenced Palestinians in a 911 call that day, according to court documents.Still, Cody Balmers specific motive remains unclear, and both his family and lawyers have said he has struggled with serious mental health issues. Balmer, 38, remains in custody without bail while his lawyers seek a competency evaluation.Police say the attack took just minutesState police, who provide the governors security detail, pledged to hire an outside expert to review the breach and to assess the need for added security. They said the intruder came and went in a matter of minutes early Sunday as troopers on duty spotted the threat on security cameras and searched the grounds while he was still there.It was a very quick event, Lt. Col. George Bivens said.Shapiro, a high-profile Democrat on the national stage who was awakened about 2 a.m. Sunday by his state police detail, has expressed confidence in the agency while confirming that security measures would be bolstered.Klaver, who is based near Philadelphia, has planned site visits involving the governor and said Shapiro typically has several members of his security team in tow. In addition to staff, an array of high-tech systems can help police keep up with ever-evolving threats, another expert said. As people and groups get more creative, thats obviously where you need to adjust and learn. Youre always looking to do things better, said John Geffre, general manager of Unlimited Technology, an Exton, Pa.-based security systems integrator.Yet Balmer told police he relied on a rudimentary method to make the explosives gasoline from his lawn mower and a few beer bottles. And he said he planned to hit Shapiro with the small sledgehammer if he encountered him. Expert: He shouldnt have gotten that closeMohsin Siddiqui, 40, who manages a Sunoco station across the street, said he doesnt often notice security outside the residence, but he never thought they would need it. The events of last weekend took him by surprise. The residence is about a mile north of the Capitol complex, in a mixed-use neighborhood beside the Susquehanna River.Its a peaceful area, Siddiqui said Thursday. We had no idea this could even happen.Shapiro splits his time between the mansion that has housed governors since it was built in the 1960s and a home in Abington, a Philadelphia suburb.The security review, Klaver said, should focus on potential threats or vulnerabilities for any given location, and protecting the people in that location. Every state has a centralized emergency office open round-the-clock that could monitor security system feeds, he said.There should have been electronic security that would have detected all of that before he got close enough, he said of the attacker, so that as soon as he broke the perimeter of the property, the state trooper there should have been alerted, should have been there, and should have taken him into custody. ___ Dale reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporter Bruce Shipkowski contributed to this report from Toms River, New Jersey. MARYCLAIRE DALE Dale covers national legal issues for The Associated Press, often focusing on the federal judiciary, gender law, #MeToo and NFL player concussions. Her work unsealing Bill Cosbys testimony in a decade-old deposition led to his arrest and sexual assault trials. twitter mailto MARK SCOLFORO Scolforo is an Associated Press reporter in the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. twitter mailto

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08733-5The status and prospects of the memristor industry are analysed and the obstacles and pathways to their implementation are discussed.

Nature, Published online: 16 April 2025; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-08860-zA new device based on 7-septuple-layer MnBi2Te4 covered with an AlOx capping layer enables the investigation of antiferromagnetic quantum anomalous Hall effect over wide parameter spaces.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro thanks firefighters in Derry Township, Thursday, April 17, 2025, for their efforts after Sunday's arson attack at the Governor's Residence. (Dan Gleiter/The Patriot-News via AP)2025-04-17T21:51:35Z HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Thursday provided new details about the arson fire early Sunday that prompted his familys evacuation from the governors official residence in Harrisburg, recounting how wife and four kids and their two dogs Bo and Bentley were awakened by state police and guided to safety.Shapiro spoke to reporters after his family served a catered lunch to Harrisburg firefighters in thanks for their role in responding to the blaze that is estimated to have caused millions in damage to the building and its contents. No one was hurt. A suspect has been charged, and the motive is under investigation.Shapiro is a first-term Democrat considered a potential candidate for president in 2028. Heres what Shapiro had to say about the attack, which burned the same room where his family and guests had a Passover Seder a few hours earlier. A fire hours after holiday mealWe concluded our Seder maybe around 10ish or so at night, and guests, family and others were in private areas on the first floor, he said. Everybody was just enjoying one another and spending time celebrating not just the holiday but each other and enjoying each others company, he said. Around midnight, they went upstairs and spent an hour yelling at the kids to go to bed and they didnt listen. Said goodnight to the kids, got the dogs situated, and Id say probably fell asleep around 1 oclock in the morning, Shapiro said. Banging on the doorLess than an hour later, I heard yelling in the hallway, which was not like our kids voices. It was one of the state troopers running down the hallway, and he banged on the door. I dont know how he did it, but it wasnt a knock. It was more of a bang, he said.Shapiro said he and his wife, Lori, were told there was a fire and they had to evacuate immediately.I would say within just a few seconds we ran to each of the doors in the hallway, to open them up and get the kids up, get the dogs up and usher everybody down a back stairwell, he said. And we followed the troopers out to the driveway area, and we were asked multiple times if everyone was present and accounted for. They were. Troopers and Capitol Police kept us safe. Firefighters converged on the property.Shapiro said first responders repeatedly made sure no one was missing. Cold and misty, in pajamasI remember it being a cold and kind of misty night. We were all a little chilly. Everybody was in their pajamas. And we just kind of huddled up and just tried to keep the kids calm and keep everybody calm, he said. They did not realize from where they were just how much damage had been done to the other side of the house. Emergency responders kept arriving.We were able to gather a few items up from the house, he said. And then we were on our way to a safe location for all of us, and we got the kids to sleep. Got them settled.The next morning Shapiro returned to the fire scene.Returning to see the damageShapiro and his wife were again at the residence on Thursday and examined the damage to the private areas where his family lives and the public spaces where they welcome guests. To see those spots that are charred and burned out and glass broken around the areas that before were happy, special places for us is tough, he said. MARK SCOLFORO Scolforo is an Associated Press reporter in the Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg. twitter mailto

2025-04-17T20:15:06Z MEXICO CITY (AP) A U.S. man hijacked a small plane in Belize on Thursday, stabbing two passengers and a pilot, before one of the stabbed passengers fatally shot him, officials in Belize and the United States said. The plane then landed safely. The Tripoc Air plane was carrying 14 passengers and two crew members, and was flying from Corozal, a small town near Belizes border with Mexico, heading to the popular tourist destination of San Pedro when it was hijacked.The plane circled in random directions for nearly two hours as the drama unfolded in the skies. The plane was tailed by a police helicopter before touching down at an airport in the coastal town of Ladyville.Belize authorities declared a full emergency immediately after the incident started, around 8:30 a.m. local time, according to a statement by the Belize Airport Concession Company. In the face of incomprehensible pressure, our pilot acted with extraordinary courage and calm, guiding the aircraft to a safe landing. His actions were nothing short of heroic, said Maximillian Greif, the CEO of the airline company.The two wounded passengers and pilot were being treated at a hospital for their injuries, officials said. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at a news briefing in Washington that officials were still gathering information about what occurred.Horrifying, she said. We are grateful, I think all of us are, that that did not turn into a mass casualty event with I believe over a dozen people on the plane. Clearly we know a few details. We dont know much more. Chester Williams, Belize police commissioner, identified the hijacker as Akinyela Taylor and said he was a U.S. military veteran. U.S. officials could not confirm the Belize police commissioners statement that Taylor was a military veteran.One of the stabbed passengers managed to shoot at Taylor, who was killed, Williams said, adding that the passenger was licensed to carry a firearm and later turned his weapon over to police. The passenger was stabbed in his back and suffered a puncture to his lungs, Williams said. He remains in critical condition. We are praying for him, Williams told reporters. Hes our hero.An official at Tripoc Air, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to journalists, identified the man who shot the hijacker as airline employee Howell Grange, and the two injured passengers as Fitzgerald Brown and Jair Castaeda. Their nationalities were not immediately known.Williams said that Taylor was demanding to be flown out of the country, possibly to Mexico, and at one point wanted the plane to land to add more fuel. U.S. Embassy spokesperson Luke Martin in Belize said Taylor also insisted that he be taken to the U.S. We dont know why he wanted to go back to the United States, Martin said.U.S. officials said they did not know the motive for Taylors hijacking but were working with Belizean authorities to determine what happened. ___Watson reported from San Diego. MEGAN JANETSKY Megan Janetsky covers migration, conflict, human rights and politics in Mexico and Central America for The AP based in Mexico City. Previously, she covered Cuba and the Caribbean for The AP and worked as freelance journalist in Colombia, reporting across South America. twitter instagram facebook mailto

This is a locator map for Yemen with its capital, Sanaa. (AP Photo)2025-04-18T01:21:03Z DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) U.S. airstrikes targeting the Ras Isa oil port held by Yemens Houthi rebels killed 20 people and wounded 50 others, the group said early Friday.The strikes, confirmed by the U.S. militarys Central Command, represent one of the highest death tolls so far in the campaign launched under President Donald Trump that has involved hundreds of strikes since March 15.The Houthis al-Masirah satellite news channel aired graphic footage of the aftermath of the attack, showing corpses strewn across the site. It claimed paramedic and civilians workers at the port had been killed in the attack, which sparked a massive explosion and fires.In a statement, Central Command said that U.S. forces took action to eliminate this source of fuel for the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists and deprive them of illegal revenue that has funded Houthi efforts to terrorize the entire region for over 10 years. This strike was not intended to harm the people of Yemen, who rightly want to throw off the yoke of Houthi subjugation and live peacefully, it added. It did not acknowledge any casualties. On April 9, the U.S. State Department issued a warning about oil shipments to Yemen. The United States will not tolerate any country or commercial entity providing support to foreign terrorist organizations, such as the Houthis, including offloading ships and provisioning oil at Houthi-controlled ports, it said. US strikes come as part of monthlong intense campaignAn Associated Press review has found the new U.S. operation against the Houthis under President Donald Trump appears more extensive than that under former President Joe Biden, as Washington moves from solely targeting launch sites to firing at ranking personnel and dropping bombs on cities.The new campaign of airstrikes started after the rebels threatened to begin targeting Israeli ships again over Israel blocking aid entering the Gaza Strip. The rebels have loosely defined what constitutes an Israeli ship, meaning many vessels could be targeted.The Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors from November 2023 until January of this year. They also launched attacks targeting American warships without success.The U.S. campaign shows no signs of stopping, as the Trump administration has also linked its airstrikes on the Houthis to an effort to pressure Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear program. 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

An aerial view of the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility in Jena, La., Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)2025-04-18T04:02:52Z JENA, La. (AP) Amid rural Louisianas crawfish farms, towering pine trees and cafes serving poboys, nearly 7,000 people are waiting at immigration detention centers to learn whether they will be expelled from the United States.If President Donald Trumps administration has its way, the capacity to hold tens of thousands more migrants will soon be added around the country as the U.S. seeks an explosive expansion of what is already the worlds largest immigration detention system.Trumps effort to conduct mass deportations as promised in the 2024 campaign represents a potential bonanza for private prison companies and a challenge to the government agencies responsible for the orderly expulsion of immigrants. Some critics say the administrations plans also include a deliberate attempt to isolate detainees by locking them up and holding court proceedings far from their attorneys and support systems. The acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Todd Lyons, said at a border security conference in Phoenix last week that the agency needs to get better at treating this like a business and suggested the nations deportation system could function like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.So trying to figure out how to do that with human beings and trying to get them pretty much all over the globe is really something for us, Lyons said. ICE takes steps to add more immigration bedsThis month, ICE invited companies to bid on contracts to operate detention centers at sites around the country for up to $45 billion as the agency begins to scale up from its current budget for about 41,000 beds to 100,000 beds.The money isnt yet there, but contracts are already being awarded. The House narrowly approved a broad spending bill that includes $175 billion for immigration enforcement, about 22 times ICEs annual budget. The agencys 100-plus detention centers nationwide currently hold about 46,000 people, causing overcrowding in locations including Miami. ICE last week awarded a contract worth up to $3.85 billion to Deployed Resources LLC to operate a detention camp at the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas. The little-known company is shifting its business from Border Patrol tent encampments for people arriving in the United States most of which are now closed to ICE facilities for people being deported.The Geo Group Inc. got a contract for 1,000 beds in Newark, New Jersey, valued at $1 billion over 15 years and another for 1,800 beds in Baldwin, Michigan. CoreCivic Inc., won a contract to house 2,400 people in families with young children in Dilley, Texas, for five years.The stock market has rewarded both of these private corrections companies. Geos stock price has soared 94% since Trump was elected. Shares of CoreCivic have surged 62%. Louisiana ranks No. 2 in the nation in immigration detention spaceLouisiana, which has relatively few immigrants and doesnt border Mexico, may not seem like an obvious choice to establish an immigration detention hub. But circumstances converged toward the end of the last decade that allowed ICE to take over five former criminal jails in the state in 2019 alone.Now the state is second only to Texas in the amount of bed space it offers for detained immigrants. ICE was drawn to the state in part by relatively low labor costs, a generally favorable political environment and a ready supply of recently emptied jails.State laws in 2017 lowered criminal penalties, reducing the need for jail and prison beds. In rural areas, where a corrections facility is often a main driver of the local economy, officials were eager to sign contracts for immigration detention.Because Louisiana was a top incarcerator in the world, its not as though you have local legislators who are against prisons or against having a for-profit prison industrial complex come in and actually ensure that these continue to run, said Nora Ahmed, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.Conservative federal courts in the Western District of Louisiana and at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals make it tougher for people in Louisiana immigration jails to challenge detention conditions or to appeal immigration court rulings, said Mary Yanik, a professor and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Tulane University Law School.ICE gets to choose, basically, the courts where their cases are heard by locating detention centers in particular places, she said. Detention centers are often hours away from cities and lawyersLouisianas nine immigration detention centers are in the rural north or western parts of the state. That means a drive of several hours from its largest cities, where immigration advocates and lawyers are clustered. Detainees have long complained of isolation.Being held in deplorable conditions and isolated from their families and support networks can cause people to stop fighting their deportation and make it easier for ICE to remove them, said Carly Prez Fernndez, spokesperson for Detention Watch Network, which helped organize nationwide protests against ICE detention on Thursday. Detention really plays a crucial role in enabling Trumps cruel mass deportation agenda, she said. Increased detention capacity will exacerbate the detention conditions that we already know are inhumane.Most detention facilities are a relatively short distance from Alexandria, where ICE converted a former military base into a 400-bed, short-term holding center with an adjacent airstrip for deportation flights.One facility is in Jena, which is home to 4,200 people, about 220 miles (355 kilometers) from New Orleans. The community has only a single advertised hotel called the Townsmen Inn.The Jena detention center, operated under contract with the Geo Group, is surrounded by no trespassing signs, fencing with layers of razor wire and armed guards.Homero Lopez, a lawyer at Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, which provides free representation in Louisiana detention centers, said the faraway location makes it a lot more difficult to protest and organize.The introduction of video links for immigration court has softened but not eliminated criticism that ICE is deliberately trying to distance detainees from their families, attorneys and other forms of support.Lopez said hes happy to use video conferencing for quick preliminary matters, but he prefers to make the drive to appear in person for substantive hearings. He said video links can be dehumanizing and may lead judges to fail to appreciate whats at stake when they are not facing immigrants in person.___Brumback reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

This 2024 photo provided by MP Materials shows an aerial view of the company's mine in Mountain Pass, Calif. (MP Materials via AP)2025-04-18T04:22:35Z OMAHA, Neb. (AP) Americas only rare earths mine heard from anxious companies soon after China responded to President Donald Trumps tariffs this month by limiting exports of those minerals used for military applications and in many high-tech devices.Based on the number of phone calls were receiving, the effects have been immediate, said Matt Sloustcher, a spokesperson for MP Materials, the company that runs the Mountain Pass mine in Californias Mojave Desert.The trade war between the worlds two biggest economies could lead to a critical shortage of rare earth elements if China maintains its export controls long-term or expands them to seek an advantage in any trade negotiations. The California mine cant meet all of the U.S. demand for rare earths, which is why Trump is trying to clear the way for new mines.Rare earth elements are important ingredients in electric vehicles, powerful magnets, advanced fighter jets, submarines, smartphones, television screens and many other products. Despite their name, the 17 elements arent actually rare, but its hard to find them in a high enough concentration to make a mine worth the investment. Tariffs will impact ore supply and costsMP Materials, which acquired the idle Mountain Pass site in 2017, said Thursday it would stop sending its ore to China for processing because of the export restrictions and 125% tariffs on U.S. imports China imposed. The company said it would continue processing nearly half of what it mines on site and store the rest while it works to expand its processing capability.Selling our valuable critical minerals under 125% tariffs is neither commercially rational nor aligned with Americas national interests, MP Materials said in a statement.Experts say the manufacturers that rely on rare earth elements and other critical minerals will see price increases, but there is likely enough of a global supply available to keep factories operating for now. The California mine yields neodymium and praseodymium, the light rare earths that are the main components of the permanent rare earth magnets in EVs and wind turbines. But small amounts of some of the heavy rare earths that China has restricted, such as terbium and dysprosium are key to helping the magnets withstand high temperatures. Already, the price of terbium has jumped 24% since the end of March to reach $933 per kilogram. Our estimate suggests that there is enough stockpile in the market to sustain demand for now, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence rare earths analyst Neha Mukherjee said, adding that shortages may emerge later this year. China holds power over the marketChina has tremendous power over the rare earths market. The country has the biggest mines, producing 270,000 metric tons (297,624 tons) of minerals last year compared to the 45,000 tons (40,823 metric tons) mined in the U.S. China supplies nearly 90% of the worlds rare earths because it also is home to most of the processing capacity. The restrictions Beijing put in place on April 4 require Chinese exporters of seven heavy rare earths and some magnets to obtain special licenses. The retaliatory controls reinforced what the Trump administration and manufacturers see as a dire need to build additional U.S. mines and reduce the nations dependence on China. Trump has tried, so far unsuccessfully, to strong-arm Greenland and Ukraine into providing more of their rare earths and other critical materials to the United States. Last month, he signed an executive order calling for the federal government to streamline permit approvals for new mines and encourage investments in the projects. Two companies are trying to develop mines in Nebraska and Montana. Officials at NioCorp and U.S. Critical Minerals said they hoped the push from the White House would help them raise money and obtain the necessary approvals to start digging. NioCorp has worked for years to raise $1.1 billion to build a mine in southeast Nebraska.As I sit and I think about how can we deal with this enormous leverage that China has over these minerals that nobody even knows how to pronounce for the most part, we have to deal with this leverage situation, NioCorp CEO Mark Smith said. And the best way, I think, is that we need to make our own heavy rare earths here in the United States. And we can do that. MP Materials is working to quickly expand its processing capability, partly with the help of some $45 million the company received coming out of the first Trump administration. But after investing nearly $1 billion since 2020, the company doesnt currently have the ability to process the heavy rare earths that China is restricting. MP Materials said it was working expeditiously to change that. Big U.S. automakers declined to comment about how dependent they are on rare earths and the impact of Chinas export curbs. Major defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin, which were specifically targeted in Chinas restrictions along with more than a dozen other defense and aerospace companies, also remained circumspect. Military technology is a smaller but important user of rare earths. Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday calling for an investigation into the national security implications of being so reliant on China for the elements. A spokesperson for Lockheed, which makes the F-22 fighter jet, said the company continuously assesses the global rare earth supply chain to ensure access to critical materials that support our customers missions.Manufacturers prepare for price increasesSome battery makers could start to run short of key elements within weeks, according to Steve Christensen, executive director of the Responsible Battery Coalition, an association representing battery and automakers and battery sellers. Already, manufacturers have seen the price of antimony, an element used to extend the life of traditional lead-acid batteries, more than double since China restricted exports of it last year. The element isnt one of the 17 rare earths but is among the critical minerals that Trump wants to see produced domestically. Initially, automakers will likely try to absorb any increase in the cost of their batteries without raising vehicle prices, but that may not be sustainable if Chinas restrictions remain in place, Christensen said. A 25% tariff Trump put on all imported automobiles and auto parts cars already was expected to increase costs, although the president hinted this week that he might give the industry a temporary reprieve. The U.S. fulfilled its rare earths needs with domestic sources until the late 1990s. Production largely ended after low-cost Chinese ores flooded global markets. Robots, drones and other new technologies have rapidly increased demand for the raw materials.NioCorp recently signed a contract to do more exploratory drilling on its site this summer to help prove to the Export-Import Bank that enough rare earth minerals rest underground near Elk Creek, Nebraska, to justify an $800 million loan to help finance the project. But a new rare earths mine is years away from operating in the U.S. NioCorp estimates if all goes well with its fundraising, the site where it hopes to mine and process niobium, scandium, titanium and an assortment of rare earths possibly might be running by the end of Trumps presidency. U.S. Critical Minerals plans to dig up several tons of ore in Montana this summer so it can test out processing methods it has been developing. The Sheep Creek project isnt as far along as the Nebraska project, but U.S. Critical Minerals Director Harvey Kaye said the site has promising ore deposits with high concentrations of rare earths. JOSH FUNK Funk is an Associated Press reporter who covers all the major freight railroads including Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX, Canadian National and CPKC. Funk also covers Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway and has been attending Buffetts Woodstock for Capitalists annual meeting every spring in Omaha, Nebraska, for 19 years. twitter mailto

People gather in a protest demanding the immediate release of hostages held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, during the Jewish holiday of Passover, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Saturday, April 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)2025-04-18T05:24:24Z TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) When nearly 1,000 Israeli Air Force veterans signed an open letter last week calling for an end to the war in Gaza, the military responded immediately, saying it would dismiss any active reservist who signed the document.But in the days since, thousands of retired and reservist soldiers across the military have signed similar letters of support.The growing campaign, which accuses the government of perpetuating the war for political reasons and failing to bring home the remaining hostages, has laid bare the deep division and disillusionment over Israels fighting in Gaza.By spilling over into the military, it has threatened national unity and raised questions about the armys ability to continue fighting at full force. It also resembles the bitter divisions that erupted in early 2023 over the governments attempts to overhaul Israels legal system, which many say weakened the country and encouraged Hamas attack later that year that triggered the war.Its crystal clear that the renewal of the war is for political reasons and not for security reasons, Guy Poran, a retired pilot who was one of the initiators of the air force letter, told The Associated Press. A return to warThe catalyst for the letters was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus decision on March 18 to return to war instead of sticking to a ceasefire that had facilitated the release of some hostages.Netanyahu says the military pressure is needed to force Hamas to release the remaining hostages. Critics, including many families of the hostages, fear that it will get them killed.One month after Netanyahu resumed the war, none of the 59 hostages held by Hamas have been freed or rescued, of whom 24 are believed to still be alive.In their letters, the protesters have stopped short of refusing to serve. And the vast majority of the 10,000 soldiers who have signed are retired in any case. Nonetheless, Poran said their decision to identify themselves as ex-pilots was deliberate given the respect among Israels Jewish majority for the military, and especially for fighter pilots and other prestigious units. Tens of thousands of academics, doctors, former ambassadors, students and high-tech workers have signed similar letters of solidarity in recent days, also demanding an end to the war.We are aware of the relative importance and the weight of the brand of Israeli Air Force pilots and felt that it is exactly the kind of case where we should use this title in order to influence society, said Poran.Elusive war goalsThe war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out a surprise cross-border attack, killing about 1,200 people in southern Israel and taking 251 others hostage.Throughout the war, Netanyahu has set two major goals: destroying Hamas and bringing home the hostages.Israels offensive has reduced much of Gaza to rubble and killed more than 51,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who dont differentiate between civilians and combatants.While Israel has come under heavy international criticism over the devastation in Gaza, the domestic opposition to the conflict reflects a widespread belief that Netanyahus war goals are not realistic. Nearly 70% of Israelis now say bringing home the hostages is the most important goal of the war, up from just over 50% in January 2024, according to a study conducted by the Jerusalem think tank Israel Democracy Institute. Nearly 60% of respondents said Netanyahus two goals cannot be realized together.The survey interviewed nearly 750 people and had a margin of error of 3.6 percentage points.Netanyahus opponents have also accused him of resuming the war to pander to his hardline coalition partners, who have threatened to topple the government if he ends the fighting. Steering clear of politicsMany people were surprised by the militarys snap decision to dismiss air force reservists who signed the protest letter.The army, which is mandatory for most Jewish men, has long served as a melting pot and unifying force among Israels Jewish majority. Many key units rely heavily on reservists, who often to serve well into their 40s.In a statement, the military said it should be above all political dispute.As the protest movement has grown, a military official said the army is taking the letters very seriously.He said it joins a list of challenges to calling up reservists and that the army is working to support them. A growing number of reservists have stopped reporting for duty, citing exhaustion, family reasons, and the financial burden of missing work.Any civilian can have his opinions. The problems come when people use the army as a tool promoting their opinions, whatever they may be, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under military guidelines. The armys dilemmaEran Duvdevani, who organized a letter signed by 2,500 former paratroopers, told the AP that the army faces a dilemma.If it will keep on releasing from service the pilots, what about all the others who signed the letters? Will they be discharged from service as well? he said.He said he organized the letter to show the pilots are not alone. Their concern over the wars direction is a widespread opinion, and you have to take it into consideration.Although only a few hundred of the signatories are still actively serving, the Israeli military has been stretched by 18 months of fighting and isnt in any position to be turning away anyone from reserve duty. Many Israelis are also furious that as reservists repeatedly get called up for action, the government continues to grant military exemptions to Netanyahus ultra-Orthodox governing partners.The number of Israelis continuing to report for reserve duty has dropped so low that the military has taken to social media to try to recruit people to keep serving.Protest letters illuminate widespread divisionsEran Halperin, an expert in social psychology at Jerusalems Hebrew University, called the letters the most important indication of the erosion of the ethos in this particular war.Though the war enjoyed widespread support at the outset, doubts have grown as so many hostages continue to languish in captivity and the Israeli death toll mounts. Nearly 850 soldiers have been killed since the war started.Its very, very difficult to maintain and manage a war in such violent conflict when there are such deep disagreements about the main questions pertaining to the war, Halperin said.In recent days, Netanyahus office has published a flurry of messages touting meetings with families of the hostages, stressing he is doing everything he can to hasten their return.On Tuesday, he and his defense minister toured northern Gaza, where Netanyahu praised the amazing reservists doing marvelous work.Netanyahus office released videos of him marching through the sandy dunes surrounded by dozens of soldiers.We are fighting for our existence, he said. We are fighting for our future. MELANIE LIDMAN Lidman is an Associated Press reporter based in Tel Aviv, Israel. RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

University of California, Berkeley alumna Bethany Schoenfeld demonstrates against the Trump administration at her alma mater as part of a Day of Action for Higher Ed on Thursday, April 17, 2025, in Berkeley, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)2025-04-18T04:04:29Z WASHINGTON (AP) First the nations top law firms. Then its premier universities. Now, President Donald Trump is leaning on the advocacy groups that underpin U.S. civil society.Trump said Thursday that the administration is looking at the tax-exempt status not just of Harvard, but environmental groups and specifically the ethics watchdog organization Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW. It could be a devastating financial blow to the nonprofit organizations and his perceived political foes.The presidents remarks, during an event at the White House, began to confirm what advocacy groups have been quietly warning: Trumps campaign of retribution is coming next for them.Its supposed to be a charitable organization, Trump said about CREW, in particular. The only charity they had is going after Donald Trump. So were looking at that. Were looking at a lot of things. Trump and his team have been working their way through the nations institutions, threatening to chisel away at the independence and autonomy of the law firms, college campuses and now advocacy groups or putting them at risk of losing their federal funds or professional livelihood. Its all coming quickly, not yet 100 days into the new administration, and in ways historically unheard of in this country for their speed and scope. And its sending shock waves reverberating throughout the American system. Its a sad day in this country when organizations that provide critical services to their communities are under attack from their government, said Cole Leiter, executive director of the advocacy group Americans Against Government Censorship. No administration, Republican or Democratic, should be able to weaponize the weight of the government against their political enemies. The list of organizations growsOn their own, Trumps actions are an almost daily list of executive pronouncements from the White House. The Trump administration has issued orders against the law firms that had cases or attorneys perceived to be against him, and it has made demands of the universities over their rules around campus activism.Thursday brought potentially more to the stack: Trump singled out CREW, the watchdog group whose founder, Norm Eisen, played a pivotal role in Trumps first impeachment, and the environmental groups that largely stand at odds with his drill baby drill agenda.Tax exempt status I mean, its a privilege. Its really a privilege, and its been abused by a lot more than Harvard, Trump said. Well be making some statements. Its a big deal. But taken together, the executive orders and actions and memos are making one thing clear: The Trump administration is eager to test new ways to flex executive power, and dare the courts and Congress to intervene. And theres more expected to come.Environmental, immigration and civil society advocacy groups have been bracing for potential threats to their tax-exempt status, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. The person said some expect Trump might start taking action against the environmental groups on Earth Day, which is Tuesday. These are the largely nonprofit organizations and groups, many based in Washington, advocating for various communities, constituencies and causes.Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said environmental groups have heard that the Trump administration is preparing executive orders targeting the tax status of environmental groups that work on climate change, as well as that of any foundations that fund their work.Trump is marshaling all the power of government to punish his perceived enemies, Suckling said. Weve got a crack legal team and will have him in court within 24 hours. Were ready and waiting for him to come at us.CREW has examined Trumps affairs for yearsCREW has been a leading ethics group in Washington, with Trump long the subject of its probes. Ahead of the 2024 election, the group was part of the legal effort to disqualify Trump from regaining the White House under the 14th Amendment, in the aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. More recently, CREW sued over the firing of federal workers by Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency. For more than 20 years, CREW has exposed government corruption from politicians of both parties who violate the public trust and has worked to promote an ethical, transparent government, said Jordan Libowitz, the organizations vice president.Trumps attacks on civil society have created a climate that is potentially chilling for the organizations in question but they have had mixed results.Five of the major law firms and Trump reached a deal in which they agreed to provide a combined hundreds of millions of dollars in pro bono counsel to causes the administration says it supports. The firms are trying to avoid various sanctions, including terminated federal contracts, federal employment investigations over diversity hiring and others. While Columbia University agreed to the Trump administrations demands to overhaul its rules for public protests rather than risk billions of dollars in lost federal funds, Harvard rebuffed the administration and now faces a $2 billion federal funding freeze and the threat to its tax-exempt status.The tax-exempt status allows nonprofit organizations to receive donations that are crucial to their financial bottom line. Changing that could, in some situations, lead to calamity.Good governance groups are the heart of a healthy democracy, Libowitz said. We will continue to do our work to ensure Americans have an ethical and accountable government.___Associated Press writers Matthew Daly and Tammy Webber in Fenton, Michigan, contributed to this report.

U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts, right, and Chris Coons are interviewed by the Associated Press in Taipei, Taiwan, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)2025-04-18T03:19:46Z TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) Republican and Democratic lawmakers made their first trip to Taiwan under the new Trump administration a bipartisan one, aiming to show both Taiwan and China that U.S. support for Taiwans defense remains broad, despite the harsh words and harsh tariffs President Donald Trump has had for the Taiwanese.Taiwans leaders so far in this weeks trip by two Republican and one Democratic senators are messaging back just as hard, assuring the Republican U.S. administration that they have taken in Trumps complaints and are acting on them. Many Asia-Pacific nations are eschewing the retaliatory criticism and tariffs of some of the U.S.'s European allies after Trump earlier this month slapped broad tariffs on many countries around the world, including a 32% one for Taiwan.Despite that hit, conversations in Taiwan this week were optimistic and forward-looking, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said in Taipei. And Im optimistic that were going to see a strong next chapter in U.S.-Taiwan relations. That includes assurances from the Taiwanese that they are working fast to strike new trade and investment deals that suit the Trump administration, on top of the advanced-semiconductor giants $100 billion investment this year alone in chip production in the U.S.. Taking all the lessons from Ukraine in its defense against Russia and criticism from Trump, Taiwan also says it is investing fast to make their military stronger, nimbler and less dependent on the U.S., as the islands strongest deterrent against China, the U.S. lawmakers said. That includes seeking investment with Americans on drone warfare. Sens. Pete Ricketts and Coons, the ranking Republican and Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committees East Asia subcommittee, spoke ahead of scheduled talks Friday with President Lai Ching-te, Defense Minister Wellington Koo and national security adviser Joseph Wu. Republican Sen. Ted Budd also is on the trip. The mission comes at a time that an economy-shaking trade war between the U.S. and China has some warning that China could strike out at Taiwan, a self-governed island with a vibrant democracy and the worlds top production of the most advanced semiconductors. China claims Taiwan as its territory, to be retaken by force if necessary. Trump has repeatedly accused Taiwan of stealing the United States computer chip industry. His criticism of Taiwan, and his insistence last year that Taiwan should pay us for its defense, have heightened concern that the U.S., Taiwans strongest military partner, might decide not to get too involved if China were ever to attack Taiwan.The 32% tariffs on Taiwan included in Trumps sweeping new tariffs on trade partners this month surprised many Taiwanese, who thought that their government had shown itself a true ally to Washington.Look past the rhetoric and look at the action, Ricketts said, repeating a watchword of the Republicans on Trumps statements. After saying he was in no rush to finish trade deals, the president said he thought he could wrap up talks over the next three or four weeks. Ricketts cited the priority that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has placed on helping the Asia-Pacific secure itself against China. That included making the region one of the first he visited in office, Ricketts said.Ricketts said Taiwans leaders already had reached out to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick for negotiations, moving quickly in the 90-day pause that Trump announced before the United States starts enforcing the new tariffs on most countries. Lai, Taiwans president, has pledged to increase Taiwans military spending to 3% of its gross domestic product, up from about 2.5%, bringing it up to nearly a fifth of its overall budget. Taiwan also is talking to Americans about partnerships in producing drones, part of taking a lesson from Ukraine in its defense against Russia in emphasizing fleet fighting forces working with portable Stingers, lawmakers said.Taiwans own defense industry is also producing advanced weapons from submarines to small arms and anti-air missiles. Of course, there is the possibility that Xi Jinping would decide that this is the right time for the Chinese Communist Party to take aggressive action, Coons said of the Chinese president.I think its exactly the wrong thing for them to do, Coons said. I think they would find a forceful and united response.___Knickmeyer reported from Washington. ELLEN KNICKMEYER Knickmeyer covers foreign policy and national security for The Associated Press. She is based in Washington, D.C. twitter SIMINA MISTREANU Mistreanu is a Greater China reporter for The Associated Press, based in Taipei, Taiwan. She has reported on China since 2015. twitter mailto RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

An impromptu memorial shared online brings students bearing flowers near the center of the Florida State campus in sight of the Student Union building, Tallahassee, Fla., Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Gary McCullough)2025-04-18T04:42:19Z TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) When a 20-year-old opened fire at Florida State University, terrified students barricaded doors and fled across campus, abandoning chemistry notes and even shoes, in a shooting that investigators said killed two men and wounded at least six others.By early Friday, memorials of candles and flowers dotted the campus and a school-wide vigil had been scheduled as students and faculty tried to start healing from the previous days shooting, which sent shockwaves of fear across the campus.I heard some gunshots and then, you know, just blacked out after, said Carolina Sena, a 21-year-old accounting student who was inside the student union when the shooting started. Everyone was crying and just panicking. We were trying to barricade ourselves in a little corner in the basement, trying to protect ourselves as much as we could. The shooter, identified by police as Phoenix Ikner, is believed to be a Florida State student and the son of a sheriffs deputy who opened fire with his mothers former service weapon, investigators said. Authorities have not yet revealed a motive for the shooting, which began around lunchtime Thursday just outside the student union. Officers quickly arrived and shot and wounded the gunman after he refused to comply with commands, said Tallahassee Police Chief Lawrence Revell.The two men who were killed were not students, said Florida State University Police Chief Jason Trumbower, adding that he would not release additional information about the victims. The shooter obtained access to a weapon that belongs to his mother, who has been with the sheriffs office for over 18 years and has been a model employee, said Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil. Police said they believed Ikner shot the victims using his mothers former service handgun, which she had kept for personal use after the force upgraded to new weapons. Five people who were wounded were struck by gunfire, while a sixth was hurt while trying to run away, Revell said in a statement Thursday night. They were all in fair condition, a spokesperson for Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare said.The shooter was a long-standing member of the sheriffs offices youth advisory council, the sheriff said.He has been steeped in the Leon County Sheriffs Office family, engaged in a number of training programs that we have, McNeil said. So its not a surprise to us that he had access to weapons.As of Thursday night, Ikner was in the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, according to Revell.Witness says the suspects shotgun jammedAmbulances, fire trucks and patrol vehicles from multiple law enforcement agencies raced toward the campus just west of Floridas capital after the university issued an active shooter alert. Aidan Stickney, a 21-year-old studying business management, was running late to class when he said he saw a man get out of a car with a shotgun and aim at another man in a white polo shirt.The gun jammed, Stickney said, and the shooter rushed back to his car and emerged with a handgun, opening fire on a woman. Stickney ran, warning others as he called 911. I got lucky today. I really did. I really, really did, he said.Trumbower said investigators have no evidence that anyone was shot with the shotgun. Shots sent students scatteringHolden Mendez, a 20-year-old student studying political science and international affairs, said he had just left the student union when he heard a series of shots. He ran into a nearby campus building, where he said his previous emergency response training kicked in.There was a lot of fear. There was a lot of panic. There was a lot of misinformation that was being spread around. I was doing my best to kind of combat that, he said. I told people, Take a deep breath. This building is secure. Everything is going to be ok.Andres Perez, 20, was in a classroom near the student union when the alarm sounded for a lockdown. He said his classmates began moving desks in front of the door and police officers came to escort them out.I always hang out in the student union, Perez said. So the second I found out that the threat was there, my heart sank and I was scared. Shooting shocks campus and the nationPresident Donald Trump said from the Oval Office that he had been fully briefed on the shooting. Its a horrible thing. Its horrible that things like this take place, he said. But Trump also suggested that he would not be advocating for any new gun legislation, saying, The gun doesnt do the shooting, the people do.University President Richard McCullough said he was heartbroken by the violence. Our hearts go out to our students and the victims of this terrible tragedy, he said. Another shooting a decade ago at Florida State Florida State is one of Floridas 12 public universities, with its main campus in Tallahassee. About 44,000 students are enrolled in the university, per the schools 2024 fact sheet.In 2014, the main library was the site of a shooting that wounded three people. Officers shot and killed the gunman, 31-year-old Myron May. The university canceled classes for the rest of the week and canceled home athletic events through Sunday.___Fischer reported from Fort Lauderdale. Associated Press reporters Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Michael Schneider in Orlando, Mike Balsamo in New York, Eric Tucker and Christopher Megerian in Washington, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed to this report. KATE PAYNE Payne writes about state government and education and is based in Tallahassee, FL. She is a Report for America corps member. twitter mailto

In this photo released by the Italian Alpine and Speleological Rescue Corps on Thursday, April 17, 2025, rescuers reach for the smashed gondola of the Mt. Faito cablecar near Naples in southern Italy.2025-04-17T17:21:52Z MILAN (AP) A cable car carrying tourists south of Naples crashed to the ground Thursday after a cable snapped, killing at least four people and critically injuring one, officials said.The snapped cable brought both the upward and downward-going cable cars to a halt as they traversed Monte Faito in the town of Castellammare di Stabia. The upward cable car eventually crashed, causing the fatalities and injury, while eight tourists and an operator were evacuated from the downward cable car, Naples Prefect Michele de Bari said. The traction cable broke. The emergency brake downstream worked, but evidently not the one on the cabin that was entering the station,' said Castellammare Mayor Luigi Vicinanza.Italys alpine rescue, along with firefighters, police and civil protection services responded to the accident. The accident occurred just a week after the cable car, popular for its views of Mount Vesuvius and the Bay of Naples, reopened for the season. Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni expressed her condolences for the victims and their families and said she was in touch with rescuers. She was in Washington, where she met with U.S. President Donald Trump.

by Audrey Dutton ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week. Just weeks after creating a $50 million tax credit to help families pay for private school tuition and homeschooling, Idaho has shut down a program that helped tens of thousands of public school students pay for laptops, school supplies, tutoring and other educational expenses.The Republican leading the push to defund Idahos Empowering Parents grants said it had nothing to do with the partys decision to fund private schools. But the states most prominent conservative group, a strong supporter of the private school tax credit, drew the connection directly.The Idaho Freedom Foundation, on its website, proposed adding the $30 million that fueled Empowering Parents to the newly created tax credit, paying for an additional 6,000 private and homeschool students to join the 10,000 already expected to benefit from the program. The new voucher-style tax credits have major differences from the grants lawmakers killed.The tax credits are off-limits to public school students, while the grants went predominantly to this group. And theres limited state oversight on how the private education tax credits will be used, while the grants to public school families were only allowed to be spent with state-approved educational vendors.Rep. Soia Galaviz, a Democrat who works in a low-income public elementary school in Boise, condemned the plan to kill the grants in a speech to legislative colleagues.I have to go back to the families that I serve, the parents that I love, the kids that I teach, and say, You no longer can get that additional math tutoring that you need, she said, that the state is willing to support other programs for other groups of kids, but not you.When states steer public funds to private schools, well-off families benefit more than those in lower income brackets, as ProPublica has reported in Arizona. The programs are pitched as enabling school choice, but in reality, research has found the money tends to benefit families that have already chosen private schools.Idaho lawmakers passed such a program this year with the new tax credit, which some describe as a version of school vouchers that parents in other states spend on schools of their choosing.The credit allows private and homeschool families to reduce their tax bills by $5,000 per child $7,500 per student with disabilities or get that much money from the state if they owe no taxes. Lower-income families have priority, and theres no cap on how many credits each family can claim. The law says funds must go to traditional academic expenses like private school tuition or homeschool curricula and textbooks, plus a few other costs like transportation. But families dont have to provide proof of how they spent the money unless theyre audited.The Empowering Parents grant program that lawmakers repealed was open to students no matter where they learn, although state data shows at least 81% of the money went to public school students this academic year more than 24,000 of them. It offered up to $1,000 per student, with lower-income families getting first dibs and a family limit of $3,000.Idaho Gov. Brad Little created a similar program in 2020 called Strong Families, Strong Students with federal pandemic funds, to help families make the abrupt shift to remote learning. State lawmakers created the current program in 2022, also using one-time federal pandemic recovery money, and liked it so much they renewed it with ongoing state funding in 2023.Charlene Bradley used the grant this school year to buy a laptop for her daughter, a fifth grader in Nampa School District. Before the purchase, Bradleys daughter could use computers at school, but there was no way to do schoolwork at home, besides my cell phone which we did have to use sometimes, Bradley said in a Facebook message.Debra Whiteley used it for home internet and a printer for her 12-year-old daughter, who attends public school in north-central Idaho. Whiteleys daughter resisted doing projects that needed pictures or graphs. Now when she has a project she can make a tri fold display thats not all hand written and self drawn, which looking back on, I didnt have a clue she may have been embarrassed about, Whiteley said in a Facebook message.Annie Coltrin used it to get much needed tutoring for her daughter, a sophomore in an agricultural community in southern Idaho. The grant paid for Coltrins daughter to receive math tutoring in person twice a week, which took her grade from a low D to a B+.Such families were on the minds of education leaders like Jason Sevy when they advocated for preserving the Empowering Parents program this year.Sevy, who chairs a rural public school district board in southwestern Idaho and is the Idaho School Boards Associations president-elect, said families in his district used the Empowering Parents grants for backpacks and school supplies, or laptops they couldnt afford otherwise.Youre looking at families with five kids that were only making $55,000 a year. Having that little extra money made a big difference, Sevy said. But it also closed that gap for these kids to feel like they were going to be able to keep up with everybody else.Few families in Sevys district will be able to use the states new tuition tax credits for private education, he said. A tiny residential school is the only private school operating in Sevys remote county. The next-closest options require a drive to the neighboring county, and Sevy worries those schools wouldnt take English-language learners or children who need special education. (Unlike public schools, private schools can accept or reject students based on their own criteria.)This is the program that was able to help those groups of people, and theyre just letting it go away to free up money for private schools, Sevy said.The freshman legislator who sponsored the bill to end Empowering Parents is Sen. Camille Blaylock, a Republican from a small city west of Boise.Blaylocks stance is that the grants arent the proper role of government.Speaking on the Senate floor in March, Blaylock highlighted the fact that the vast majority of the Empowering Parents money went to electronics mostly computers, laptops and tablets.This program has drifted far from its original intent, Blaylock said. Its turning into a technology slush fund, and if we choose to continue funding it, we are no longer empowering parents. We are creating entitlements.In an interview, Blaylock denied any desire to divert public school money to private education and said she was unaware the Idaho Freedom Foundation took that unfortunate position.The last thing I want is for this to be a taking away from public schools to give to school choice, because that is not my intent at all, Blaylock said.She told the Senates education committee this year that her hope in ending the grants was to cut government spending by $30 million. But if the savings had to go somewhere, shed want it to benefit other public school programs, especially in a year when lawmakers created the $50 million tax credit for private and homeschooling.Regardless of how the $30 million in savings will be spent in the future, Blaylocks assertion that the grants werent supposed to help families buy computers goes against whats in the legislative record.Lawmakers pitched Empowering Parents three years ago as a way to help lower-income students be on equal footing with their peers, with one legislator arguing that tablets and computers are such a part of education now that without the ability of families to afford those devices, a students learning is substantially jeopardized.Republican Sen. Lori Den Hartog, opening debate on her bill to create Empowering Parents in 2022, said it was partly to address pandemic learning loss. But, she said, its also a recognition of the ongoing needs that students in our state have, and that there is a potential different avenue to provide resources to those students.First in the list of eligible expenses Den Hartog spelled out: computer hardware, internet access, other technology. Then came textbooks, school materials, tutoring and everything else. (Den Hartog, who voted to repeal the program this year, did not respond to a request for comment.)Killing the grants also went against the praise that Little, the states Republican governor, has showered on it. He has described the program as itself a form of school choice, touting how it helped low-income parents afford better education.The grants help families take charge of tools for their childrens education things like computers and software, instructional materials and tutoring, Little said in January 2023 when announcing his intent to make Empowering Parents permanent.He called the grants effective, popular and worthy of continued investment because they keep parents in the drivers seat of their childrens education, as it should be.In the months before Idaho lawmakers voted to kill the program, Little again cited Empowering Parents as a success story, a way to ensure Idaho families have the freedom and access to choose the best fit for their childs unique education and learning needs. He pointed out that the grants mainly went to public school students. He again touted it in his State of the State address in January, not as a temporary pandemic-era program but as our popular grant program to support students education outside of the classroom.Nonetheless, the Idaho House and Senate both voted to kill the grant program by wide margins, and Little signed the bill on April 14.Blaylock disagreed that the grants creators foresaw it would be used mostly for laptops and electronics. And, despite acknowledging state lawmakers decided to make it permanent, she disagrees that it was intended to be an ongoing program. She said public schools already get $36 million a year from the state to spend on technology, which they use to furnish computers students can take home, so families dont need state money to buy more.Little, in a letter explaining his decision to join lawmakers in killing the grants, said he was proud of the positive outcomes from the program. But, he wrote: Now that the pandemic is squarely in the rearview mirror and students have long been back in school, I agree with the Legislature that this program served its purpose.When looking back at how Empowering Parents was created, Sevy, the local school board chair, suspects it was a soft attempt to get the foot in the door toward vouchers, not purely an effort to meet the needs of all students.He remembers telling Den Hartog that the program was helping low-income families in his district. She was super-excited to hear that, Sevy said. Its like, OK! And here we are two years later, just getting rid of it.

Mourners carry white sacks covering the bodies of members of the Abu Al-Rous family, killed when an Israeli airstrike struck their displacement tent overnight, during their funeral in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)2025-04-18T09:37:55Z DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) Israeli airstrikes across Gaza killed at least 17 people early Friday including children, hospital workers said, as the new U.S. ambassador to Israel made his first public appearance in Jerusalem. Among the dead were 10 people in the urban Jabaliya refugee camp, including eight from the same house, according to the Indonesian Hospital, which received the bodies. In the southern city of Khan Younis, seven people were killed, one of them a pregnant woman, according to Nasser Hospital, where the bodies were brought. The strikes came a day after more than two dozen people died in Gaza as Israel ramps up attacks, pressuring Hamas to return the hostages and disarm. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Friday appeared at the Western Wall, the holiest Jewish prayer site in Jerusalems Old City. Huckabee inserted a prayer into the wall, which he said was handwritten by U.S. President Donald Trump. Those are his initials, D.T., said Huckabee while showing the note to the media. In his first act as ambassador, Huckabee said Trump told him to take his prayer and pray for the peace of Jerusalem, he said. Huckabee also said every effort was being made to bring the remaining hostages held by Hamas home. A one-time presidential hopeful, Huckabee has acknowledged his past support for Israels right to annex the West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population into Israel but said it would not be his prerogative to carry out that policy. During his first term, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israels capital over Palestinian objections and moved the embassy from Tel Aviv. Palestinian seek the eastern part of the city that Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war as their future capital. Huckabees arrival comes at a pivotal time in the 18-month war, as international mediators including the U.S. are trying to get a broken ceasefire back on track. Israel is demanding that Hamas release more hostages at the start of any new ceasefire and ultimately agree to disarm and leave the territory. Israel has said it plans occupy large security zones inside Gaza. Khalil al-Hayya, head of Hamas negotiating delegation, said Thursday the group had rejected Israels latest proposal along those lines. He reiterated Hamas stance that it will return hostages only in exchange for the release of more Palestinian prisoners, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting truce, as called for in the now-defunct ceasefire agreement reached in January. Hamas currently holds 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251. Most of the hostages have since been released in ceasefire agreements or other deals.Israels offensive has since killed over 51,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gazas Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. The war has destroyed vast parts of Gaza and most of its food production capabilities. The war has displaced around 90% of the population, with hundreds of thousands of people living in tent camps and bombed-out buildings. On Thursday, aid groups raised the alarm over Israels blockade of of Gaza, where it has barred entry of all food and other goods for more than six weeks. Thousands of children have become malnourished, and most people are barely eating one meal a day as stocks dwindle, the United Nations said.Israels Defense Minister says the blockade is one of the central pressure tactics against Hamas, which Israel accuses of siphoning off aid to maintain its rule. Aid workers deny there is significant diversion of aid, saying the U.N. closely monitors distribution. Rights groups have called it a starvation tactic.-Khaled reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Sam Mednick in Tel Aviv, Israel, contributed to this report.___Follow APs war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, center, and Germany's Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gunter Sautter, right, attend a meeting on Ukraine and its security, in Paris Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Julien de Rosa, Pool via AP)2025-04-18T07:29:24Z PARIS (AP) U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the U.S. may move on from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting.He spoke in Paris after landmark talks among U.S., Ukrainian and European officials produced outlines for steps toward peace and appeared to make some long-awaited progress. A new meeting is expected next week in London, and Rubio suggested that could be decisive in determining whether the Trump administration continues its involvement.We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not, Rubio told reporters upon departure. Because if its not, then I think were just going to move on.Its not our war, Rubio said. We have other priorities to focus on. He said the U.S. administration wants to decide in a matter of days. His comments came as the U.S. and Ukraine are nearing a long-delayed deal granting the U.S. access to Ukraines vast mineral resources, which has been intertwined with President Donald Trumps peace push. Trump said Thursday, We have a minerals deal,' and Ukraines economy minister said Friday that the two countries signed a memorandum of intent ahead of a possible fuller agreement later. The framework of the mineral deal had stalled in February following a contentious Oval Office meeting between Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Negotiations have since resumed. Despite apparent growing U.S. impatience with the peace efforts, Rubio called Thursdays Paris talks constructive. Nobody rejected anything, nobody got up from the table or walked away.Rubio didnt single out Russia or Ukraine as blocking peace efforts. He said he informed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the outlines that emerged when they spoke after the Paris talks, but wouldnt say how Lavrov reacted. After weeks of tensions with European allies, Rubio said the European negotiators proved helpful. The UK and France and Germany can help us move the ball on this.The talks came as European concerns grow about Trumps readiness to draw closer to Russia. They marked the first time since Trumps inauguration that top American, Ukrainian and European officials met to discuss an end to the war, which has posed the biggest security challenge to Europe since World War II.The meetings addressed security guarantees for Ukraine in the future, but Rubio wouldnt discuss any possible U.S. role in that. Some kind of U.S. support for Ukraine is seen as crucial to ensuring that Russia would not attack again after a peace deal is reached.Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff have helped lead U.S. efforts to seek peace, and Witkoff has met three times with Putin, Rubio said. Several rounds of negotiations have been held in Saudi Arabia. Moscow has effectively refused to accept a comprehensive ceasefire that Trump has pushed and Ukraine has endorsed. Russia has made it conditional on a halt in Ukraines mobilization efforts and Western arms supplies, which are demands rejected by Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia kept up a series of deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities, according to officials there, wounding scores of civilians days after missiles killed at least 34 during Palm Sunday celebrations in the northern city of Sumy. One person died and over 60 others were hurt as Russia hit Kharkiv, Ukraines second-largest city, early in the day, Ukraines Emergency Service reported. Mayor Ihor Terekhov said cluster munitions struck a densely populated neighborhood four times. Russian drones also targeted a bakery in Sumy, less than a week after the deadly Palm Sunday strike there, killing a customer and wounding an employee, the regional prosecutors office said. Photos released by the agency showed rows of Easter cakes stacked inside a devastated building, covered in thick dust, as a huge hole gaped in the wall behind them and rubble piled up on the floor. Last Sundays strike on Sumy, resulting in mass casualties, was the second large-scale missile attack to claim civilian lives in just over a week. Some 20 people, including nine children, died on April 4 as missiles struck Zelenskyys hometown of Kryvyi Rih. The U.S.-Ukraine minerals agreement, which Ukrainian Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said she signed with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is expected to pave the way for significant investments, infrastructure modernization, and long-term cooperation.Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report. HANNA ARHIROVA Arhirova is an Associated Press reporter covering Ukraine. She is based in Kyiv. twitter instagram mailto

by Alec MacGillis ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as theyre published. More children ages 1 to 4 die of drowning than any other cause of death. Nearly a quarter of adults received mental health treatment in 2023, an increase of 3.4 million from the prior year. The number of migrants from Mexico and northern Central American countries stopped by the U.S. Border Patrol was surpassed in 2022 by the number of migrants from other nations.We know these things because the federal government collects, organizes and shares the data behind them. Every year, year after year, workers in agencies that many of us have never heard of have been amassing the statistics that undergird decision-making at all levels of government and inform the judgments of business leaders, school administrators and medical providers nationwide.The survival of that data is now in doubt, as a result of the Department of Government Efficiencys comprehensive assault on the federal bureaucracy. Reaction to those cuts has focused understandably on the hundreds of thousands of civil servants who have lost their jobs or are on the verge of doing so and the harm that millions of people could suffer as a result of the shuttering of aid programs. Overlooked amid the turmoil is the fact that many of DOGEs cuts have been targeted at a very specific aspect of the federal government: its collection and sharing of data. In agency after agency, the government is losing its capacity to measure how American society is functioning, making it much harder for elected officials or others to gauge the nature and scale of the problems we are facing and the effectiveness of solutions being deployed against them.The data collection efforts that have been shut down or are at risk of being curtailed are staggering in their breadth. In some cases, datasets from past years now sit orphaned, their caretakers banished and their future uncertain; in others, past data has vanished for the time being, and its unclear if and when it will reappear. Here are just a few examples:The Department of Health and Human Services, now led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., laid off the 17-person team in charge of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which for more than five decades has tracked trends in substance abuse and mental health disorders. The departments Administration for Children and Families is weeks behind on the annual update of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, the nationwide database of child welfare cases, after layoffs effectively wiped out the team that compiles that information. And the department has placed on leave the team that oversees the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a collection of survey responses from women before and after giving birth that has become a crucial tool in trying to address the countrys disconcertingly high rate of maternal mortality.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has eviscerated divisions that oversee the WISQARS database on accidental deaths and injuries everything from fatal shootings to poisonings to car accidents and the team that maintains AtlasPlus, an interactive tool for tracking HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.The Environmental Protection Agency is planning to stop requiring oil refineries, power plants and other industrial facilities to measure and report their greenhouse-gas emissions, as they have done since 2010, making it difficult to know whether any of the policies meant to slow climate change and reduce disaster are effective. The EPA has also taken down EJScreen, a mapping tool on its website that allowed people to see how much industrial pollution occurs in their community and how that compares with other places or previous years.The Office of Homeland Security Statistics has yet to update its monthly tallies on deportations and other indices of immigration enforcement, making it difficult to judge President Donald Trumps triumphant claims of a crackdown; the last available numbers are from November 2024, in the final months of President Joe Bidens tenure. (While we have submitted reports and data files for clearance, the reporting and data file posting are delayed while they are under the new administrations review, Jim Scheye, director of operations and reporting in the statistics unit, told ProPublica.)And, in a particularly concrete example of ceasing to measure, deep cutbacks at the National Weather Service are forcing it to reduce weather balloon launches, which gather a vast repository of second-by-second data on everything from temperature to humidity to atmospheric pressure in order to improve forecasting.Looked at one way, the war on measurement has an obvious potential motivation: making it harder for critics to gauge fallout resulting from Trump administration layoffs, deregulation or other shifts in policy. In some cases, the data now being jettisoned is geared around concepts or presumptions that the administration fundamentally rejects: EJScreen, for instance, stands for environmental justice the effort to ensure that communities dont suffer disproportionately from pollution and other environmental harms. (An EPA spokesperson said the agency is working to diligently implement President Trumps executive orders, including the Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing. The spokesperson added: The EPA will continue to uphold its mission to protect human health and the environment in Trumps second term.) The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.Laura Lindberg, a Rutgers public health professor, lamented the threatened pregnancy-risk data at the annual conference of the Population Association of America in Washington last week. In an interview, she said the administrations cancellation of data collection efforts reminded her of recent actions at the state level, such as Floridas withdrawal in 2022 from the CDCs Youth Risk Behavior Survey after the state passed its law discouraging classroom discussion of sexual orientation. (The states education secretary said the survey was inflammatory and sexualized.) Discontinuing the survey made it harder to discern whether the law had adverse mental health effects among Florida teens. States have taken on policies that would harm people and then are saying, We dont want to collect data about the impact of the policies, Lindbergsaid. Burying your head in the sand is not going to be a way to keep the country healthy. (HHS did not respond to a request for comment.)Making the halt on data gathering more confounding, though, is the fact that, in some areas, the information at risk of being lost has been buttressing some of the administrations own claims. For instance, Trump and Vice President JD Vance have repeatedly cited, as an argument for tougher border enforcement, the past decades surge in fentanyl addiction a trend that has been definitively captured by the national drug use survey that is now imperiled. That surveys mental health components have also undergirded research on the threat being posed to the nations young people by smartphones and social media, which many conservatives have taken up as a cudgel against Big Tech.Or take education. The administration and its conservative allies have been able to argue that Democratic-led states kept schools closed too long during the pandemic because there was nationwide data the National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka the Nations Report Card that showed greater drops in student achievement in districts that stayed closed longer. But now NAEP is likely to be reduced in scope as part of crippling layoffs at the Department of Educations National Center for Education Statistics, which has been slashed from nearly 100 employees to only three, casting into doubt the future not only of NAEP but also of a wide array of long-running longitudinal evaluations and the departments detailed tallies of nationwide K-12 and higher education enrollment. The department did not respond to a request for comment but released a statement on Thursday saying the next round of NAEP assessments would still be held next year.Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the University of Washington, cast the self- defeating nature of the administrations war on educational assessment in blunt terms: The irony here is that if you look at some of the statements around the Department of Education, its, Weve invested X billion in the department and yet achievement has fallen off a cliff. But the only reason we know that is because of the NAEP data collection effort!Shelly Burns, a mathematical statistician who worked at NCES for about 35 years before her entire team was laid off in March, made a similar point about falling student achievement. How does the country know that? They know it because we collected it. And we didnt spin it. We didnt say, Biden is president, so lets make it look good, she said. Their new idea about how to make education great again how will you know if it worked if you dont have independent data collection?Reality has a well-known liberal bias, Stephen Colbert liked to quip, and there have been plenty of liberal commentators who have, over the years, taken that drollery at face value, suggesting that the numbers all point one way in the nations political debates. In fact, in plenty of areas, they dont.Its worth noting that Project 2025s lengthy blueprint for the Trump administration makes no explicit recommendation to undo the governments data-collection efforts. The blueprint is chock full of references to data-based decision-making, and in some areas, such as immigration enforcement, it urges the next administration to collect and share more data than its predecessors had.But when an administration is making such a concerted effort to stifle assessments of government and society at large, it is hard not to conclude that it lacks confidence in the efficacy of its current national overhaul. As one dataset after another falls by the wayside, the nations policymakers are losing their ability to make evidence-based decisions, and the public is losing the ability to hold them accountable for their results. Even if a future administration seeks to resurrect some of the curtailed efforts, the 2025-29 hiatus will make trends harder to identify and understand.Who knows if the country will be able to rebuild that measurement capacity in the future. For now, the loss is incalculable. Jesse Coburn, Eli Hager, Abrahm Lustgarten, Mark Olalde, Jennifer Smith Richards and Lisa Song contributed reporting.

The likeness of George Washington is seen on a U.S. one dollar bill, March 13, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)2025-04-18T10:00:07Z NEW YORK (AP) Among the threats tariffs pose to the U.S. economy, none may be as strange as the sell-off in the dollar.Currencies rise and fall all the time because of inflation fears, central bank moves and other factors. But economists worry that the recent drop in the dollar is so dramatic that it reflects something more ominous as President Donald Trump tries to reshape global trade: a loss of confidence in the U.S. The dollars dominance in cross-border trade and as a safe haven has been nurtured by administrations of both parties for decades because it helps keep U.S. borrowing costs down and allows Washington to project power abroad enormous advantages that could possibly disappear if faith in the U.S. was damaged.Global trust and reliance on the dollar was built up over a half century or more, says University of California, Berkeley, economist Barry Eichengreen. But it can be lost in the blink of an eye. Since mid-January, the dollar has fallen 9% against a basket of currencies, a rare and steep decline, to its lowest level in three years. Many investors spooked by Trump dont think the dollar will be pushed quickly from its position as the worlds reserve currency, instead expecting more of a slow decline. But even that is scary enough, given the benefits that would be lost. With much of worlds goods exchanged in dollars, demand for the currency has stayed strong even as the U.S. has doubled federal debt in a dozen years and does other things that would normally send investors fleeing. That has allowed the U.S. government, consumers and businesses to borrow at unnaturally low rates, which has helped speed economic growth and lift standards of living. Dollar dominance also allows the U.S. to push around other countries like Venezuela, Iran and Russia by locking them out of a currency they need to buy and sell with others. Now that exorbitant privilege, as economists call it, is suddenly at risk.The safe haven properties of the dollar are being eroded, said Deutsch Bank in a note to clients earlier this month warning of a confidence crisis. Added a more circumspect report by Capital Economics, It is no longer hyperbole to say that the dollars reserve status and broader dominant role is at least somewhat in question.Traditionally, the dollar would strengthen as tariffs sink demand for foreign products.But the dollar not only failed to strengthen this time, it fell, puzzling economists and hurting consumers. The dollar lost more than 5% against the euro and pound, and 6% against the yen since early April.As any American traveler abroad knows, you can buy more with a stronger dollar and less with a weaker one. Now the price of French wine and South Korean electronics and a host of other imports could cost more not only due to tariffs but a weaker currency, too. And any loss of safe-haven status could hit U.S. consumers in another way: Higher rates for mortgages and car financing deals as lenders demand more interest for the added risk. More worrisome is possible higher interest rates on the ballooning U.S. federal debt, which is already at a risky 120% of U.S. annual economic output.Most countries with that debt to GDP would cause a major crisis and the only reason we get away with it is that the world needs dollars to trade with, says Benn Steil, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations. At some point people are going to look seriously at alternatives to the dollar. They already have, with a little help from a U.S. economic rival.China has been striking yuan-only trading deals with Brazil for agricultural products, Russia for oil and South Korea for other goods for years. It has also been making loans in yuan to central banks desperate for cash in Argentina, Pakistan and other countries, replacing the dollar as the emergency funder of last resort. Another possible U.S. alternative in future years if their market grows: cryptocurrencies.Said BlackRock Chairman Larry Fink in his annual shareholder letter about dollar dominance, If deficits keep ballooning, America risks losing that position to digital assets like Bitcoin. Not everyone is convinced that a big reason the dollar is falling is because of lost faith in the U.S.Steve Ricchiuto, an economist at Mizuho Financial, says dollar weakness reflects anticipation of higher inflation due to tariffs. But even if investors arent as comfortable holding dollars, he says, they really dont have much of a choice. No other currency or other asset, like yuan or bitcoin or gold, is vast enough to handle all the demand.The U.S. will lose the reserve currency when there is someone out there to take it away, Ricchiuto says. Right now there isnt an alternative.Maybe so, but Trump is testing the limits.Its not just the tariffs, but the erratic way hes rolled them out. The unpredictability makes the U.S. seem less stable, less reliable, and a less safe place for their money. There are also questions about his logic justifying the policy. Trump says the U.S. needs tariffs to drive down its trade deficits with other countries. But most economists believe those deficits, which measure trade in goods, not services, are a bad measure of whether a country is ripping off America, as Trump puts it.Trump has also repeatedly threatened to chip away at the independence of the Federal Reserve, raising fears that he will force interest rates lower to boost the economy even if doing so risks stoking runaway inflation. That is a sure fire way to get people to flee the dollar. After Fed Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that he would wait to make any rate moves, Trump blasted him, saying Powells termination cannot come fast enough!Economists critical of Trumps April 2 tariff announcement recall another event, the Suez Crisis of 1956, that broke the back of the British pound. The military attack on Egypt was poorly planned and badly executed and exposed British political incompetence that sank trust in the country. The pound fell sharply, and its centuries-long position as the dominant trading and reserve currency crumbled.Berkeleys Eichengreen says Liberation Day, as Trump called it, could be remembered as a similar turning point if the president isnt careful.This is the first step down a slippery slope where international confidence in the U.S. dollar is lost. BERNARD CONDON Condon is an Associated Press investigative reporter covering breaking news. He has written about the Maui fire, the Afghanistan withdrawal, gun laws, Chinese loans in Africa and Trumps business. twitter facebook mailto

People walk and drive along Santa Fe County Road 98 to get to the Santuario de Chimayo during a Good Friday pilgrimage, Friday, April 7, 2023. (Eddie Moore/The Albuquerque Journal via AP, file)2025-04-18T04:10:58Z SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) A unique Holy Week tradition is drawing thousands of Catholic pilgrims to a small adobe church in the hills of northern New Mexico, in a journey on foot through desert badlands to reach a spiritual wellspring.For generations, people of the Upper Rio Grande Valley and beyond have walked to reach El Santuario de Chimay to commemorate Good Friday.Pilgrims, some walking for days, were on track to arrive Friday amid a forecast of cool temperatures and sprinkles of rain. Some travelers are lured by an indoor well of dirt believed to have curative powers. Throughout the year, they leave behind crutches, braces and canes in acts of prayer for infirm children and others, and as evidence that miracles happen.Easter week visitors file through an adobe archway and narrow indoor passages to find a crucified Nuestro Seor de Esquipulas at the main altar. According to local lore, the crucifix was found on the site in the early 1800s, a continent away from its analog at a basilica in the Guatemalan town of Esquipulas. A spiritual placeChimay, known for its artisan weavings and chile crops, rests high above the Rio Grande Valley and opposite the national defense laboratory at Los Alamos that sprang up in the race to develop the first atomic weapon.The iconic adobe church at Chimay was cast from local mud at the sunset of Spanish rule in the Americas in the early 1800s, on a site already held sacred by Native Americans.Set amid narrow streets, curio shops and brooks that flow quickly in spring, El Santuario de Chimay has been designated as a National Historic Landmark that includes examples of 19th century Hispanic folk art, religious frescoes and saints carved from wood known as bultos.One votive room is filled with notes of thanks from those who say they had ailments cured.A separate chapel is dedicated to the Santo Nio de Atocha, a patron saint of children, travelers and those seeking liberation and a fitting figure of devotion for Chimay pilgrims on the go. Hundreds of childrens shoes have been left in a prayer room there by the faithful in tribute to the holy child who wears out footwear on miraculous errands. There are even tiny boots tacked to the ceiling.Pueblo people who inhabited the Chimay area long before Spanish settlers believed healing spirits could be found in the form of hot springs. Those springs ultimately dried up, leaving behind earth attributed with healing powers.A way of lifePhotographer Miguel Gandert grew up in the Espaola valley below Chimay and made the pilgrimage as a boy with his parents.Everybody went to Chimay. You didnt have to be Catholic, said Gandert, who was among those who photographed the 1996 pilgrimage through a federal grant. People just went there because it was a powerful, spiritual place.Scenes from that pilgrimage on display at the New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe include children eating snow cones to keep cool, men shouldering large wooden crosses, infants swaddled in blankets, bikers in leather and weary pedestrians resting on highway guardrails to smoke. A generation later, Good Friday pilgrims still haul crosses on the road to Chimay, as families leave behind cars, push strollers and allow time for older hikers. Throngs of visitors often wait hours for a turn to file into the Santuario de Chimay to commemorate the crucifixion.Its just one of hundreds of adobe churches anchoring a uniquely New Mexican way of life for their communities. Many are at risk of crumbling into the ground in disrepair as congregations and traditions fade.A journey on footPilgrims from nearby towns set out for Chimay in the predawn hours. Some have walked 20 miles (32 kilometers) from Santa Fe, while others traveled for days from Albuquerque and elsewhere.Vendors sell religious trinkets, coffee and treats. State transportation workers, law enforcement agencies and other volunteers are stationed along the roadway to ensure safety from oncoming traffic, the outdoor elements and exhaustion.Pilgrims traverse an arid landscape speckled with juniper and pion trees and cholla cactus that finally give way to lush cottonwood trees and green pastures on the final descent into Chimay. The magnitude of the religious pilgrimage has few if any rivals in the U.S. Many participants say their thoughts dwell not only on Jesus Christ but on the suffering of family, friends and neighbors with prayers for relief.___Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Visitors view the frescoes at the South Solon Meeting House, Sunday, April 6, 2025, in Solon, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)2025-04-18T04:15:19Z SOLON, Maine (AP) From the outside, it looks like any other New England church building: a boxy, white structure with a single steeple surrounded by an old stone wall, set against rolling hills and pine forest.Inside, though, the South Solon Meeting House has a secret unknown even to some who drive through the tiny Maine town every day. The interior of the building is covered in 70-year-old fresco murals that encourage some in the states art community to describe it as Maines Sistine Chapel.The murals were painted by artists in the 1950s and, while they have long been appreciated by visitors, the recent creation of a website dedicated to them by students at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, has generated new interest in the paintings.Vronique Plesch, a Colby professor of art, hopes the building inspires more appreciation of frescoes. I fell in love with the place, because I have studies frescoes all my life, said Plesch, who is a member of the board of the historical society that cares for the meeting house. She added that the paintings should stay in public places and not be in private institutions. The meeting house was built in 1842 and hosted church services until the 1940s, though there were periods of closure, such as times of war. A decade later, Margaret Day Blake found the building in a state of disuse and the former student at the nearby Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture put out a call for young artists to paint frescoes under the schools supervision in 1951. The artists were given creative freedom and told there would be no limits to subject matter, but that Biblical scenes would offer rich and suitable imagery. The interior was covered in such scenes from 1952 to 1956 and the walls remain adorned with frescoes, including one that references Leonardo da Vincis The Last Supper.Another fresco depicts the binding of Isaac, in which a hooded Abraham prepares to sacrifice his son on Gods orders. The Great Flood is depicted as it was by Michelangelo at the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Two of the 13 artists Sigmund Abeles of New York City and Sidney Hurwitz of Newton, Massachusetts both in their 90s, are still living. Both spoke fondly about their time at the meeting house.We would go out there and paint and then take a lunch break in the cemetery behind the building. It was a very idyllic time, Hurwitz said. I very much enjoyed it.Today, the meeting house, which is open to the public without locks on its doors, serves as a community gathering and performance space. Many of its old features, including box pews made for smaller people of a different time, are still intact.Abeles recalled painting the scene of Jacob wrestling with the angel from the Book of Genesis.Its a very, very special place, and it was a unique experience to work on the frescoes, Abeles said.On a recent Sunday morning, Plesch gave a lecture at the meeting house before a group of members of the Maine Art Education Association as part of the groups spring conference. Long ago, attendants of the building might have been preparing for an Easter service, but on this day it was full of teachers fascinated by the frescoes. Suzanne Goulet, an art teacher at a nearby high school, said she was previously aware of the frescoes and confessed she had peaked into the windows of the old building, adding that its great the paintings are still inspiring art lovers decades later.The inspiration is that we bring it back to our students, Goulet said. PATRICK WHITTLE Whittle is an Associated Press reporter based in Portland, Maine. He focuses on the environment and oceans. twitter mailto

This combo shows Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, left, pictured in Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2025 and Steve Witkoff, right, White House special envoy, pictured in Washington, Wednesday, March 19, 2025. (AP Photos Stringer, Mark Schiefelbein)2025-04-18T08:32:23Z DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) As far as biographies go, the two men in charge of the delicate negotiations between Iran and the United States over Tehrans rapidly advancing nuclear program couldnt be more different. On the American side, billionaire real estate magnate Steve Witkoff leads the effort by President Donald Trumps administration to restrict Tehrans atomic program, which they fear could allow Iran to build a nuclear weapon. The Bronx-born developer finds himself tapped by Trump to deliver on the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war as well two conflicts that show no signs of stopping. Representing Iran is Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who like many of his generation is a veteran of the bloody Iran-Iraq war. He rose through the ranks of Irans diplomatic corps and served as a trusted negotiator during the talks that led to Irans 2015 nuclear deal with world powers. Whether the two men find common ground in the high-stakes negotiations, with a second round due to take place Saturday in Rome, could mean success or failure in the talks. At risk is a possible American or Israeli military strike on Irans nuclear sites, or the Iranians following through on their threats to pursue an atomic weapon. Abbas Araghchi, 62Arriving in Tokyo as Irans new ambassador in 2008, Araghchi received the equivalent of a diplomatic rave review from the U.S. Embassy of all places.Araghchi is a young, personable, polished and accomplished diplomat. ... Anyone with a limited understanding of the facts would walk away after hearing him with the idea that Iran has bent over backwards and tried everything possible to please the West without result, a March 2008 cable on Araghchi released by WikiLeaks reads. Even when he expressed Irans willingness to defy the international community his message was delivered evenly and in a rational tone. He exudes an air of understated yet passionate belief in the position he is arguing. The low-key style has been a trademark of Araghchi, who has carefully walked the line between hard-liners and reformists within Irans theocracy. It starkly contrasts with the more emotional style of then-Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who reached the 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and struck a close relationship with then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Araghchi, who handled some negotiations for the deal, remarked on the magnitude of their work the closer the deal came to fruition, describing the accord as one of the most important documents in Irans history.Two and a half years of intense negotiations had reached their nerve-wracking final moments, Araghchi wrote in a portion of A Sealed Secret: The JCPOA: A Great Effort for the Rights, Security and Development of Iran, a book in Farsi on the talks. Our nightly sleep was reduced to about one hour. Hundreds of millions of people around the world were watching, and 80 million Iranians were anxious and waiting.Born in Isfahan into a wealthy, religious merchant family, Araghchi bears the the honorific seyed, marking him as a direct descendant of Islams Prophet Muhammad. He was a teenager when the 1979 Islamic Revolution overthrew the shah and installed the countrys theocracy. Araghchi joined the Revolutionary Guard and fought in the 1980-88 war against Iraq, though details about his service arent publicly known. The Guard then was not the massive organization it is today, a paramilitary arm of Iran overseeing its ballistic missile arsenal with deep interests in the countrys economy. While broadly avoiding controversy, politics have affected his career in the past. Under hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Araghchi found himself posted to Japan in the first place as part of a power struggle within the government over nuclear negotiations at the time.Put Araghchi aside, Mr. Ahmadinejad had told Irans foreign minister at the time, Araghchi recounted in Iran-Taishi: Memoirs of Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Ambassador of Iran to Japan, a memoir of his time in Tokyo. Not only from the negotiators team but also from the position of deputy foreign minister in charge of international affairs. Steve Witkoff, 68Speaking before the Republican National Convention in July 2024, Witkoff found himself fully catapulted from the world of real estate into politics. But it was talking about his son Andrew, who died in 2011, that humanized him to delegates.When I lost my boy Andrew to an opioid overdose, the pain was unbearable, Witkoff told the thousands there. But as usual, Donald Trump showed up.That long, close relationship with Trump includes being with the president on a Florida golf course when he was targeted in an assassination attempt in September. And the president since has entrusted Witkoff with some of the most-challenging situations he faces when it comes to global geopolitics. To Trump, whose whole identity as a businessman and politician has revolved around making deals, Witkoff represents someone he can understand. Forbes estimates Witkoffs wealth at around $2 billion, made through his Witkoff Group, which has developed apartment buildings, golf courses and hotels in the U.S. and internationally. Hes also done business with Mideast sovereign wealth funds which often serve as direct vehicles of the regions autocratic rulers. After Trump won the election, Witkoff worked with the outgoing Biden administration to secure a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip in January. Witkoff, who is Jewish, worked on convincing Israel to agree to the terms. Israel is Irans archenemy in the Mideast and has threatened to destroy it repeatedly over the years.The ceasefire collapsed, however, on March 18 after Israel launched a wave of airstrikes that killed hundreds of Palestinians across Gaza. Both Israel and the U.S. blamed the renewed hostilities on Hamas refusal to release more hostages before negotiations on ending the war proceed which was not part of the ceasefire agreement.Then theres the high-level negotiations over Russias war on Ukraine. So far, that war has yet to end despite Trumps diplomatic campaign, particularly a series of talks held in Saudi Arabia. Witkoff has met Russian President Vladimir Putin himself as part of that push. Witkoff attended talks on the war in Ukraine with European allies just before the second round of negotiations with Iran.While successfully making it through the first round of negotiations with Araghchi and meeting him face to face Witkoff has faced the challenge of negotiating over Iran. He made a television appearance in which he suggested 3.67% enrichment for Iran could be something the countries could agree on. But thats exactly the terms set by the 2015 nuclear deal struck under U.S. President Barack Obama, from which Trump unilaterally withdrew America. Witkoff hours later issued a statement underlining something: A deal with Iran will only be completed if it is a Trump deal.Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program, Witkoff added. That immediately drew rounds of criticism from Iran, which long has maintained it should have access to enrichment. ___Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran. Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed to this report.___The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.___Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/ 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

This article was produced in collaborationwith Court Watch, an independent outlet that unearths overlooked court records.Subscribe to them here.A judge in Nevada has ruled that tower dumpsthe law enforcement practice of grabbing vast troves of private personal data from cell towersis unconstitutional. The judge also ruled that the cops could, this one time, still use the evidence they obtained through this unconstitutional search.Cell towers record the location of phones near them about every seven seconds. When the cops request a tower dump, they ask a telecom for the numbers and personal information of every single phone connected to a tower during a set time period. Depending on the area, these tower dumps can return tens of thousands of numbers.Cops have been able to sift through this data to solve crimes. But tower dumps are also a massive privacy violation that flies in the face of the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from unlawful search and seizure. When the cops get a tower dump theyre not just searching and seizing the data of a suspected criminal, theyre sifting through the information of everyone who was in the location.A Nevada man, Cory Spurlock, is facing charges related to dealing marijuana and a murder-for-hire scheme. Cops used a tower dump to connect his cellphone with the location of some of the crimes he is accused of. Spurlocks lawyers argued that the tower dump was an unconstitutional search and that the evidence obtained during it should not be. The cops got a warrant to conduct the tower dump but argued it wasnt technically a search and therefore wasnt subject to the Fourth Amendment.U.S. District Juste Miranda M. Du rejected this argument, but wouldnt suppress the evidence. The Court finds that a tower dump is a search and the warrant law enforcement used to get it is a general warrant forbidden under the Fourth Amendment, she said in a ruling filed on April 11. That said, because the Court appears to be the first court within the Ninth Circuit to reach this conclusion and the good faith exception otherwise applies, the Court will not order any evidence suppressed.Du argued that the officers acted in good faith when they filed the warrant and that they didnt know the search was unconstitutional when they conducted it. According to Du, the warrant wasnt unconstitutional when a judge issued it.Dus ruling is the first time the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has ruled on the constitutionality of tower dumps, but this isnt the first time a federal judge has weighed in. One in Mississippi came to the same conclusion in February. A few weeks later, the Department of Justice appealed the ruling.Theres a decent chance that one of these cases will wind its way up to the Supreme Court and that SCOTUS will have to make a ruling about tower dumps. The last time the issue was in front of them, they kicked the can back to the lower courts.In 2018, the Supreme Court considered Carpenter v. United States, a case where the FBI used cell phone location data to investigate a series of robberies. The Court decided that law enforcement agencies violate the Fourth Amendment when they ask for cell phone location data without a warrant. But the ruling was narrow and the Court declined to rule on the issue of tower dumps.According to the court records for Spurlocks case, the tower dump that caught him captured the private data of 1,686 users. An expert who testified before the court about the dump noted that the wireless company users whose phones showed up in the tower dump data did not opt in to sharing their location with their wireless provider, and indeed, could not opt out from appearing in the type of records received in response to [the] warrant.

Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, D-N.Y., speaks to campaign workers, June 5, 1968, as his wife Ethel, left, and California campaign manager and speaker of the California Assembly, Jesse Unruh, look on, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. (AP Photo)2025-04-18T14:38:11Z WASHINGTON (AP) Approximately 10,000 pages of records related to the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were released Friday, continuing the disclosure of national secrets ordered by President Donald Trump.The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration posted roughly 229 files containing the pages to its public website. Many files related to the senators assassination had been previously released, but others had not been digitized and sat for decades in storage facilities maintained by the federal government.Nearly 60 years after the tragic assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the American people will, for the first time, have the opportunity to review the federal governments investigation thanks to the leadership of President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said in a statement. Gabbard also said the files release shine a long-overdue light on the truth.The release of the RFK files comes a month after unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were disclosed.Trump, a Republican, has championed in the name of transparency the release of documents related to high-profile assassinations and investigations. But hes also been deeply suspicious for years of the governments intelligence agencies, and his administrations release of once-hidden files opens the door for additional public scrutiny and questioning about the conclusions and operations of institutions such as the CIA and the FBI. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a son of the Democratic New York senator who now serves as the U.S. Health and Human Services secretary, commended Trump and Gabbard for their courage and dogged efforts to release the files.Lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government, the health secretary said in a statement.___AP writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers gives the annual State of the State address, Jan. 22, 2025, at the state Capitol in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Morry Gash, File)2025-04-18T14:26:58Z MADISON, Wis. (AP) The Democratic governor of Wisconsins creative use of his uniquely powerful veto can lock in a school funding increase for 400 years, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday.The 4-3 ruling from the liberal-controlled court affirms the partial veto power of Wisconsin governors, which is the broadest of any state and has been used by both Republicans and Democrats to reshape spending bills passed by the Legislature.Wisconsin is the only state where governors can partially veto spending bills by striking words, numbers and punctuation to create new meaning or spending amounts. In most states, governors can only eliminate or reduce spending amounts.The courts four liberal justices ruled Friday that the state constitution allows the governor to strike digits to create a new year or to remove language to create a longer duration than the one approved by the Legislature. We are acutely aware that a 400-year modification is both significant and attention-grabbing, Justice Jill Karofsky wrote for the majority. However, our constitution does not limit the governors partial veto power based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy, even when that change is considerable. Justice Brian Hagedorn, writing for the three-justice conservative minority, said Wisconsin was now in a fantastical state of affairs that allows the governor to write new law through the use of his partial veto. One might scoff at the silliness of it all, but this is no laughing matter, Hagedorn wrote. The decision today cannot be justified under any reasonable reading of the Wisconsin Constitution.Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and Republican legislative leaders did not immediately return messages seeking reaction.The ruling came in a case against Evers that was supported by the Republican-controlled Legislature. It is one of two lawsuits pending before the court dealing with vetoes by the governor. Republicans this year also introduced a constitutional amendment intended to curb veto powers. Everss partial veto in 2023 increased how much revenue K-12 public schools can raise per student by $325 a year until 2425. Evers took language that originally applied the $325 increase for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years and instead vetoed the 20 and the hyphen to make the end date 2425, more than four centuries from now.Evers told lawmakers at the time that his partial veto was intended to give school districts increases in funding in perpetuity.The Legislature, along with the states largest business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, argued that the court should strike down Evers partial veto and declare it unconstitutional. They argued that the Evers veto was barred under a 1990 constitutional amendment adopted by voters that removed the ability to strike individual letters to make new words known as the Vanna White veto, named the co-host of the game show Wheel of Fortune who flips letters to reveal word phrases.Finding otherwise would give governors unlimited power to alter numbers in a budget bill, they argued. But Evers countered that the Vanna White veto ban applies only to striking individual letters to create new words, not vetoing digits to create new numbers. Evers said that he was simply using the longstanding partial veto process allowed under the law.Wisconsins partial veto power was created by a 1930 constitutional amendment, but its been weakened by voters over the years, including in reaction to vetoes made by former Republican and Democratic governors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2020, then controlled by conservatives, undid three of Evers partial vetoes, but a majority of justices did not issue clear guidance on what was allowed.Reshaping state budgets through the partial veto is a longstanding act of gamesmanship in Wisconsin between the governor and Legislature, as lawmakers try to craft bills in a way that is largely immune from creative vetoes.Republican legislative leaders have said they were waiting for the ruling in this case and another pending case affecting the governors veto powers before taking up spending bills this session, including the two-year state budget. The other case centers on whether Evers properly used his partial veto power on a bill that detailed the plan for spending on new literacy programs. The Legislature contends that Evers partial veto was unconstitutional because the bill did not appropriate money. Evers contends the Legislature is trying to control how the executive branch spends money and limit his partial veto power.If the court sides with Evers in that case, it could greatly expand the kinds of bills subject to partial vetoes in the future. SCOTT BAUER Bauer is the APs Statehouse reporter covering politics and state government in Madison, Wisconsin. He also writes music reviews. twitter mailto

We’ve all had that moment where we read something shocking online and think, “Wait… could that be true?” Whether it’s a wild conspiracy or just a twisted version of the truth, false information has a sneaky way of pulling us in. But why? The answer lies in how our brains work. We’re Wired for Shortcuts Humans are busy. Our brains are constantly looking...

Comic books are displayed in Gene Yang's home Tuesday, April 1, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Tony Avelar)2025-04-18T12:01:23Z Superman was born Kryptonian, raised Methodist and sketched into existence by two Jewish teens in 1930s Cleveland. Faith and morality are his DNA.There are no overt religious references in Superman comics. But over eight decades, hes been viewed as a divine entity, a savior figure his sacrifice Christ-like, his will to lead as strong as Moses parting the Red Sea, and his compassion akin to a bodhisattva, an enlightened being who guides Buddhists on the spiritual path.While scholars, comic book writers and fans alike are struck by the religious undertones in Superman comics, they say what separates Superman from the ever-growing pack of superheroes is his singular ability to bring hope in a hopeless world. James Gunns Superman sparks conversationAs fans celebrate Superman Day on Friday, marking the 87th anniversary of the original superheros birth, they are also eagerly anticipating James Gunns film Superman set for release on July 11. This version starring David Corenswet, the first Jewish actor to play Superman in a major film, promises a return to a version of a vulnerable Man of Steel who is rooted in values espoused by most faiths goodness, compassion and hope. The film has sparked a conversation about the place of Superman in the world and his personal code of ethics after several recent depictions of superheroes as anti-heroes. Corenswet said in a recent interview to Fandango that what captivates him about Superman is how he chooses to see good in people and not dwell on the negative. Why think about all the terrible things when we can focus on the good things we did today? he said. In the same interview, Gunn said his Superman will reinforce the characters core value of preserving life at any cost.He believes that the sanctity of life is of the utmost importance, Gunn said, noting the contrast with Supermans archnemesis Lex Luthor, who values scientific advancement over life. Symbol of hope and positive masculinityIt was precisely this benevolent, hopeful version of Superman that inspired Robert Revington, who teaches at the Vancouver School of Theology at the University of British Columbia, to go skydiving in a Superman costume on his 28th birthday. And yet Revington, a Christian, balks at Christ-like portrayals of his favorite superhero.I like Superman and I like Jesus, he said. I dont necessarily want to conflate the two. To me, the best depiction of Superman is as a symbol of hope.Revington also sees Supermans relevance today as an example of positive masculinity.Hes this version of strong, but compassionate masculinity, which several prominent figures dont necessarily embody, he said.Revington and many others beloved iteration of Superman appeared in All-Star Superman, a 12-issue series published by DC Comics between 2005 and 2008. The superhero saves a young person who is about to take their own life with the endearing message: You are stronger than you think you are. Grant Morrison, who wrote those comics, has said his view of Superman was shaped by Giovanni Pico della Mirandolas Oration On The Dignity of Man, which argues that humans ought to be more virtuous than angels. Superman speaks to our better angelsHumans, Morrison said in a 2008 interview, become what they imitate, which is why he made Superman an inspirational character.We live in the stories we tell ourselves, he told Newsarama, a comic book website, and can choose to be the astronaut or the gangster. The superhero or the super villain. The angel or the devil. Its entirely up to us.As a result, said Matthew Brake, founder and editor of Pop Culture and Theology, Superman is an idea that can inspire us to be our best selves.Supermans character is also shaped by his upbringing as a Kansas farm boy, raised by kindly parents Jonathan and Martha Kent. They are portrayed as Methodists in the comics.Superheroes, in recent decades, have received less-than-flattering treatment. In The Boys, a comic book turned Amazon Prime series, the Superman-like character, Homelander, is a government-sponsored hero whose smiling exterior conceals the heart of a sadist. Invincible, a comic turned television series from Robert Kincaid, author of the Walking Dead, features Omni-man, a Superman-like character who turns out to be an alien invader bent on conquest. The main character, Invincible, is Omni-mans son, and must choose between protecting the Earth or taking his fathers side.Dune, the famed sci-fi book adapted into blockbuster movies, warns of superheroes frailtyHeroes are painful, superheroes are a catastrophe, Dunes author Frank Herbert once wrote. The mistakes of superheroes involve too many of us in disaster.A relatable superheroBut Superman has cemented his place in pop culture not just as a beacon of hope, but also as a character relatable to many, regardless of race or ethnicity. Gene Luen Yang, who has written several Superman comics, is best known for his 2020 graphic novel Superman Smashes the Klan, a story about a Chinese American family moving to Metropolis in 1946 and facing discrimination from the Klan. The story follows the Lee family as they confront the white supremacist group with Supermans help. Yang sees his own experience as a Chinese American mirrored in Supermans story.The idea that you have to hide who you are or that youre caught in between cultures, he said. Superman has two names Kal-El, his Kryptonian name and Clark Kent, his American name. I had a Chinese name at home and an American name in school. So even though Im a practicing Catholic, I was more drawn to his Jewish roots because thats where I could relate more.Yang sees Superman as the original superhero who inspired almost religious fervor in the geekdom, featuring cosplayers who reenact scenes as a Christian might reenact biblical episodes around Christmas or Easter. A trip to a comic convention is like a pilgrimage where followers collect original art and all kinds of relics.Stories in pop culture also draw from older storytelling traditions, often rooted in religions.In some ways, you can think of religions as communities that are built around stories that last centuries, Yang said. The idea of self-sacrifice, the idea that you do good deeds without the desire to gain recognition. Thats the whole point of secret identities.While his Catholic faith is an important facet of his life, Yang said he never forced religion into his Superman comics.I write more about my life and my lived experience of faith, with the doubts and the ragged edges, he said.Characters like Superman, while not themselves religious, provide a portal to the sacred through the profane, said A. David Lewis, a Boston-based graphic novelist and comic book writer.I love that people take something from popular culture and find some level of spirituality or find a greater connection to some divine source through it, he said. But I would never say Superman is just of the Jewish or Christian people. Like some of the best narratives out there, Superman gives us access to something transcendent.Supermans strong Jewish rootsSamantha Baskind, professor of art history at Cleveland State University, is Jewish; she sees numerous parallels between Supermans story and the history of Jews. Supermans solitary flight from Krypton in a little spacecraft is reminiscent of how Moses mother placed him in a papyrus basket and left him on the Nile, seeing it has his best chance of survival.Some also compare Supermans backstory to the Kindertransport, she said, referring to a rescue program that transported nearly 10,000 children, mostly Jewish, from Nazi-controlled territories to Great Britain in 1938 and 1939.In Supermans Kryptonian name, Kal-El, chosen by his original Jewish creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the El in Hebrew connotes God. In DC Comics, Superman also frequents the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city shrunk down and placed in a bottle, representing a fragmented piece of Kryptons history. Baskind said to her it is reminiscent of how diaspora Jews visit Israel.Theres also the thinking that Siegel and Shuster created Superman because they were these two, skinny, young Jewish men who couldnt go out and fight Hitler, but Superman fought Nazis on the cover of their comic books, she said. In some early editions, Superman held Hitler by his Nazi uniform as he begged for mercy. Appeal to the religiously unaffiliatedDespite the religious undertones, Supermans appeal to those growing religiously unaffiliated remains strong, said Dan Clanton, professor of religious studies at Doane University in Nebraska. He says its because Supermans story truly encapsulates American civil religion.This idea that there are practices and beliefs that provide all, regardless of religious identity, with a sense of being part of something bigger than themselves, he said.Neal Bailey, a contributor for over a decade to Superman Homepage and an atheist, believes Superman at his best is a philosophical pragmatist solving the most complex problems with the least amount of harm.He actually goes beyond religion to see our commonalities, he said. Superman wouldnt care about peoples religious beliefs. He would care more about whether they are living up to their human potential.___Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. RSShttps://feedx.net https://feedx.site

We're excited to share audio and video of our panel at SXSW, where Jason, Sam, and our friend Brian Merchant of Blood in the Machine discuss how AI slop has taken over the internet, how it is a brute-force attack against the algorithms that control what we see on social media, and what we can do to fight back against it. Here's the panel: It's better with the video, because there are some visual aids, but we also released an audio-only version of this on our podcast feed: This was our first big live event, and we hope to do more in the future. If you're throwing a conference or event, hit us up! We had a wonderful time talking about AI spam, labor, and the future of the internet. Thanks to everyone who came out to meet and party with us. This panel was held at Speakeasy in Austin, Texas at SXSW on March 10, 2025. Thanks to our friends at Flipboard for giving us the space and to DeleteMe for sponsoring the event. SPONSORED This segment is a paid ad. If youre interested in advertising, let's talk.Your Personal Data May Not Be Hidden. Take Control with DeleteMe.Don't want just anyone finding your information on Search Engines? Remove your personal information from Data Brokers using DeleteMe. Use code 404MEDIA for 20% off Learn more And here's a bunch of photos, taken by Case Hartsfield:

Harvey Weinstein appears in Manhattan Criminal Court for the third day of jury selection in his retrial, Thursday, April 17, 2025 in New York. (Steven Hirsch /New York Post via AP, Pool)2025-04-18T16:25:27Z NEW YORK (AP) Harvey Weinstein has been moved to a New York City hospital after a judge approved the ailing ex-studio bosss request to stay there rather than in jail when hes not in court for his #MeToo retrial.Judge Paul Goetz late Thursday ordered that Weinstein be immediately relocated from the citys notorious Rikers Island jail complex to the prison ward at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan so he can receive necessary medical treatment.Weinsteins lawyers lobbied for the move as jury selection got underway this week. They argued in court papers that being locked up in a sometimes freezing jail cell was exacerbating the Oscar-winning producers health issues, which include chronic myeloid leukemia, diabetes and walking difficulties that require a wheelchair to get in and out of court.Goetzs order will remain in effect at least until next Thursday, when he is set to hold a hearing to discuss the matter further. A different judge, Curtis Farber, is presiding over Weinsteins retrial. The case will resume Monday with more jury selection after nine jurors were picked this week. In all, 12 jurors and six alternates need to be seated.Weinstein is being tried again on rape and sexual assault charges after New Yorks highest court, the Court of Appeals, last year overturned his 2020 conviction and 23-year prison sentence and ordered a new trial, finding that improper rulings and prejudicial testimony tainted the original one. Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and denies raping or sexually assaulting anyone.Weinstein has been back and forth numerous times to Bellevue in recent months for treatment of various maladies. At a pretrial hearing in January, he railed against his treatment at Rikers, telling Farber he wanted to get out of this hellhole as quickly as possible.Weinsteins lawyers filed a legal claim against New York City last November, alleging he was receiving substandard medical treatment in unhygienic conditions at Rikers. The claim, which seeks $5 million in damages, argues that Weinstein has been returned to Rikers each time before fully recovering at the hospital.The troubled jail complex has faced growing scrutiny for its mistreatment of detainees and dangerous conditions. Last year, a federal judge cleared the way for a possible federal takeover, finding the city had placed inmates in unconstitutional danger. MICHAEL R. SISAK Sisak is an Associated Press reporter covering law enforcement and courts in New York City, including former President Donald Trumps criminal and civil cases and problems plaguing the federal prison system. twitter mailto

A security officer works inside of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) building headquarters Monday, Feb. 10, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)2025-04-18T16:04:15Z WASHINGTON (AP) A federal judge who blocked President Donald Trumps administration from dismantling the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ruled Friday that the bureau cant go forward immediately with plans to mass fire hundreds of employees.U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson said she is deeply concerned that Trump administration officials arent complying with her earlier order that maintains the bureaus existence until she rules on the merits of a lawsuit seeking to preserve it.During a hearing, Jackson said she will bar officials from carrying out any mass firings or cutting off employees access to bureau computer systems on Friday.Jackson scheduled a hearing on April 28 to hear testimony from officials who were working on the reduction in force, or RIF, procedures.Im willing to resolve it quickly, but Im not going to let this RIF go forward until I have, she said. Roughly 1,500 employees are slated to be cut, leaving around 200 people.Trump, a Republican, has sought to reshape the federal government, saying its rife with fraud, waste and abuse. Conservatives and businesses have often chafed at the bureaus oversight and investigations, and Trump adviser Elon Musk made it a top target of his Department of Government Efficiency.

2025-04-18T17:51:55Z WASHINGTON (AP) The federal judiciary is warning that Congress is not providing enough money for judges security, at a time of escalating threats and chilling efforts at intimidation.More than five dozen judges handling lawsuits against the Trump administration are receiving enhanced online security screening that typically includes scrubbing their personal information from the internet, two federal judges appointed by Republican presidents wrote on behalf of the judiciary in a letter to congressional appropriators.President Donald Trump, senior aide Stephen Miller and billionaire Elon Musk have railed at judges who have blocked parts of Trumps agenda, threatening impeachment and launching personal attacks. Trumps call to impeach the judge who temporarily halted deportations using an 18th century wartime law prompted a rare quick response from Chief Justice John Roberts. Roughly 50 people have been charged with crimes in connection with the threats, U.S. Circuit Judge Amy J. St. Eve and U.S. District Robert J. Conrad Jr. said. Trump appointed St. Eve to the federal appeals court in Chicago during his first term. In extreme cases, the U.S. Marshals Service has been required to take extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of judges, St. Eve and Conrad wrote.Authorities have yet to make any arrests in hundreds of increasingly unsettling and unwanted pizza deliveries to the homes of judges and their children, U.S. District Judge Esther Salas said during an online forum on Tuesday. The most recent deliveries, this week, have been sent in the name of Salas late son, Daniel Anderl, who was shot dead at the family home by a disgruntled lawyer in 2020.The message is unmistakable, Salas said. I know where you live, I know where your kids live, and do you want end up like Judge Salas. Do you want to end up like her son? she said. Last month, a sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was the victim of a bomb threat in Charleston, South Carolina, police said. No bomb was found, police said.The judges letter was sent last week, but posted online Friday by the judiciary. It calls the current funding levels unsustainable, nearly $50 million less than what the courts requested just for security.

This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss Palantir scoops, coping mechanisms, and feeling God in this Samsung television. JOSEPH: Im going to talk about how our Palantir leak story came about, Leaked: Palantirs Plan to Help ICE Deport People, because I think it shows the value of just hammering on a broader story, finding a way in, then getting more and more specifics on it.It really starts with Jasons story on April 9 called Inside a Powerful Database ICE Uses to Identify and Deport People. This was about ICEs tool called the Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. The tool was not new. It had been around for multiple years and other outlets had covered it. What was new was that we got to see actual parts of the database. This provided an opportunity for us to cover it in new, specific detail.