By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered another review of the U.S. military’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and of the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport that killed American troops and Afghans.

President Donald Trump and Hegseth have repeatedly blasted the Biden administration for the withdrawal, which Hegseth said Tuesday was “disastrous and embarrassing.” He said the new review will interview witnesses, analyze the decision-making and “get the truth.”

There have already been multiple reviews of the withdrawal by the Pentagon, U.S. Central Command, the State Department and Congress, which have involved hundreds of interviews and studies of videos, photographs and other footage and data. It’s unclear what specific new information the new review is seeking.

The Abbey Gate bombing during the final days of the Afghanistan withdrawal killed 13 U.S. service members and 170 Afghans, and wounded scores more. It triggered widespread debate and congressional criticism, fueled by searing photographs of desperate Afghans trying to crowd into the airport to get out of Kabul, with some clinging to U.S. military aircraft as they were taking off.

A detailed U.S. military review was ordered in 2023 to expand the number of people interviewed, after a Marine injured in the blast said snipers believed they saw the possible bomber but couldn’t get approval to take him out.

The findings, released in 2024, refuted those assertions and concluded that the bombing was not preventable. A congressional review was highly critical of the withdrawal, saying the Biden administration did not adequately prepare for it or for all the contingencies and put personnel in danger.

Others, however, have faulted the State Department for not moving quickly enough to decide on an evacuation, resulting in a rush to get out as the Taliban took control of the country. Critics have also blamed Trump for making a deal with the Taliban in 2020 when he was president to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan, which decreased the number of forces on the ground as the pullout went on.

Both Trump and then-President Joe Biden wanted an end to the war and U.S. troops out of Afghanistan.

The new review will be led by Sean Parnell, the assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs. He will convene a panel that will provide updates “at appropriate times,” but there is no time frame or deadline for any report, which is very unusual.

By LINDSEY BAHR

Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt is getting a bit of a god complex. It’s not exactly his fault after defying death and completing impossible missions time and time again. But in “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning,” out Friday, there’s a breathlessness to the naïve trust from his growing band of disciples, including the U.S. president (the formerly skeptical Erika Sloane of “Fallout,” played by Angela Bassett ), and Paris (Pom Klementieff), the once delightfully fun maniac assassin who has been reduced to brooding French philosopher. In a series that has often been best when it’s not taking itself too seriously, these dour developments start to feel a little unintentionally silly. And, for at least the first hour, it’s all we have to hang onto.

Perhaps this is part of the point in pitting a human man against a parasitic artificial intelligence set on inciting nuclear extinction, something we’re meant to believe has been brewing in some way since the beginning of the franchise. You can almost see the behind-the-scenes wheels turning: Gravity is kind of a prerequisite when this much is on the line, and when so much pain has been taken to link 30 years and seven movies that were certainly never meant to be connected by anything other than Ethan Hunt.

But we don’t come to “Mission: Impossible” movies for the bigger picture, and definitely not to learn what the rabbit’s foot was in the third movie. We come to be awed by the thrills and Cruise’s execution, whether he’s speeding through Paris on a motorbike, driving one-handed through Rome in a tiny old Fiat, or hanging on the outside of an airbus, or bullet train, or helicopter, or the Burj Khalifa.

And unlike, say, the “Fast & Furious” movies, which long ago jumped the shark, the “Mission” stunts have always felt grounded in some reality and playfulness. It’s not just Cruise’s willingness to tether himself to all forms of high-speed transportation for our enjoyment. His reactions — surprise, panic, doubt — are unparalleled. Ethan Hunt is never too cool to look unsure.

“Final Reckoning,” Christopher McQuarrie’s fourth “Mission” movie in the director’s chair, does deliver two truly unforgettable sequences. One is in a long-defunct submarine at the bottom of the sea that will have you squirming; another involves two classic biplanes careening at 170 miles per hour over lush South African landscapes. Though they may induce vertigo on IMAX, these are the things that make the trip to the theater worth it. But be warned: It takes a good long while of labored exposition, manic flashbacks and Oscar broadcast-ready greatest-hits montages to get there.

McQuarrie, who co-wrote the script with Erik Jendresen, might have learned the wrong lessons from the past decade of overly interconnected franchise filmmaking. Or perhaps it still seemed like the right call when this two-part finale was put into motion seven years ago. Not only does realizing one previously enjoyable character is related to and motivated by a character from the past do little to raise the stakes, it also bogs everything down.

“Final Reckoning” also overstuffs the cast with faces that are almost distracting (like Hannah Waddingham as a U.S. Navy officer, though her American accent is quite good). Maybe it’s overcompensating for the movie’s flesh-and-bone villain Gabriel (Esai Morales), who seems to be there because Ethan needs someone to chase.

There are some fun additions to the lot: “Severance’s” Tramell Tillman as a submarine captain, as well as Lucy Tulugarjuk and Rolf Saxon, for anyone wondering what became of the poor guy in the Langley vault.

Simon Pegg, as the capably flustered tech wiz Benji, is still great, Ving Rhames gets to flex emotionally, and Bassett really makes you believe she’s chosen a U.S. city to destroy as an offering to “The Entity.” But many get lost in the unnatural, one-size-fits-all dialogue, which is especially true in the bizarrely sweaty Situation Room where everyone is always finishing each other’s sentences.

Maybe when you have a larger-than-life movie star, you need larger-than-life character actors. Besides, everyone knows they’re there as side players supporting the Cruise show — no one more so than Hayley Atwell as Grace, the once inscrutable pickpocket turned wide-eyed Madonna supporting and tending to Ethan. The loss of Rebecca Ferguson is acutely felt here.

The “Mission: Impossible” movies, even when they’re mediocre, remain some of the most effortlessly enjoyable cinematic experiences out there, a pure expression of “let’s put on a show.” There’s nothing else quite like it and maybe they’ve earned this self-important victory lap, though it seems to have gone to the characters’ heads.

Saving the showstopper for last will certainly leave audiences exiting the theater on a happy high note. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that in attempting to tie everything together, “Mission: Impossible” lost the plot.

“Mission: Impossible: The Final Reckoning,” a Paramount Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association for “bloody images, action, brief language, and sequences of strong violence.” Running time: 179 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

By JONATHAN J. COOPER

Former President Joe Biden’s “last known” prostate cancer screening was in 2014, and he had never been diagnosed with the disease before last week, his office said Tuesday.

Biden’s aides released the new details about his diagnosis amid intense scrutiny of Biden’s health during his presidency and skepticism that the disease could have progressed to an advanced stage without being detected.

Although Biden’s cancer can possibly be controlled with treatment, it has spread to his bones and is no longer curable.

The brief statement from Biden’s office did not disclose the results of his 2014 PSA blood test. PSA stands for prostate-specific antigen.

“President Biden’s last known PSA was in 2014. Prior to Friday, President Biden had never been diagnosed with prostate cancer,” the statement said in its entirety.

Biden’s cancer was announced on Sunday, prompting a wave of sympathy but also suggestions from some of his critics, including his successor Donald Trump, that the former president and his aides covered up the disease while he was in the White House given the severity of the cancer when it was announced. Tuesday’s statement appeared aimed at tamping down that speculation.

Asked about Biden during an appearance at the White House, Trump said, “it takes a long time to get to that situation” and that he was “surprised that the public wasn’t notified a long time ago.”

“It’s a very sad situation and I feel very badly about it,” Trump said.

A memo from the White House physician released following Trump’s annual physical exam in April listed a normal PSA. Biden’s White House doctor did not include PSA results in the health summaries he released.

Screening with PSA blood tests can lead to unnecessary treatment with side effects that affect quality of life, and guidelines recommend against prostate cancer screening for men 70 and older. Biden is 82.

When caught early, prostate cancer is highly survivable, but it is also the second-leading cause of cancer death in men. About one in eight men will be diagnosed over their lifetime with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

By MATTHEW LEE and ELLEN KNICKMEYER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Democratic senators sparred Tuesday over the Trump administration’s foreign policies, ranging from Ukraine and Russia to the Middle East, Latin America, the slashing of the U.S. foreign assistance budget and refugee admissions.

Rubio defended the administration’s decisions to his former colleagues during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, his first since being confirmed on President Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day.

He said “America is back” and claimed four months of foreign-policy achievements, even as many of them remain frustratingly inconclusive. Among them are the resumption of nuclear talks with Iran, efforts to bring Russia and Ukraine into peace talks and efforts to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.

America’s top diplomat praised agreements with El Salvador and other Latin American countries to accept migrant deportees, saying “secure borders, safe communities and zero tolerance for criminal cartels are once again the guiding principles of our foreign policy.”

He also rejected assertions that massive cuts to his department’s budget would hurt America’s standing abroad. Instead, he said the cuts would actually improve the U.S. reputation internationally.

Hearing opens with a joke, then turns serious

Committee Chairman Jim Risch opened the hearing with praise for Trump’s changes and spending cuts and welcomed what he called the administration’s promising nuclear talks with Iran.

Risch also noted what he jokingly called “modest disagreement” with Democratic lawmakers, who used Tuesday’s hearing to confront Rubio about Trump administration moves.

Ranking Democratic member Jeanne Shaheen argued that the Trump administration has “eviscerated six decades of foreign-policy investments” and given China openings around the world.

“I urge you to stand up to the extremists of the administration,” the New Hampshire senator said.

Other Democrats excoriated the administration for its suspension of the refugee admissions program, particularly while allowing white Afrikaners from South Africa to enter the country.

Some Republicans also warned about drastic foreign assistance cuts, including former Senate leader Mitch McConnell and Susan Collins. They expressed concern that the U.S. is being outmaneuvered by its rivals internationally after the elimination of thousands of aid programs.

“The basic functions that soft power provides are extremely important,” McConnell told Rubio at a second hearing later in the day before the Senate Appropriations Committee. “You get a whole lot of friends for not much money.”

Rubio says the US is encouraging but not threatening Israel on Gaza aid

Rubio told the Appropriations Committee that the Trump administration is encouraging but not threatening Israel to resume humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza.

He said the U.S. is not following the lead of several European countries that have imposed sanctions or warned of actions against Israel amid the dearth of assistance reaching vulnerable Palestinians. However, he said U.S. officials have stressed in discussions with the Israelis that aid is urgently needed for civilians in Gaza who are suffering during Israel’s military operation against Hamas.

“We’re not prepared to respond the way these countries have,” but the U.S. has engaged with Israel in the last few days about “the need to resume humanitarian aid,” Rubio said. “We anticipate that those flows will increase over the next few days and weeks — it’s important that that be achieved.”

And Rubio acknowledged that the administration was approaching foreign governments about taking mass numbers of civilians from Gaza but insisted that any Palestinians leaving would be “voluntary.”

“There’s no deportation,” Rubio said. “We’ve asked countries preliminarily whether they will be open to accepting people not as a permanent solution, but as a bridge to reconstruction” in Gaza.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., condemned it as a “strategy of forced migration.”

Also on the Middle East, Rubio said the administration has pushed ahead with attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza and promote stability in Syria.

He stressed the importance of U.S. engagement with Syria, saying that otherwise, he fears the interim government there could be weeks or months away from a “potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions.”

Rubio’s comments addressed Trump’s pledge to lift sanctions burdening Syria’s new transitional government, which is led by a former militant chief who led the overthrow of the country’s longtime oppressive leader, Bashar Assad, late last year. The U.S. sanctions were imposed under Assad.

Rubio and senators clash over white South Africans entering the country

In two particularly contentious exchanges, Kaine and Van Hollen demanded answers on the decision to suspend overall refugee admissions but to exempt Afrikaners based on what they called “specious” claims that they have been subjected to massive discrimination by the South African government. Rubio gave no ground.

In one tense exchange, Kaine pressed Rubio to say whether there should be a different refugee policy based on skin color.

“I’m not the one arguing that,” Rubio said. “Apparently, you are, because you don’t like the fact they’re white.”

“The United States has a right to pick and choose who we allow into the United States,” he said. “If there is a subset of people that are easier to vet, who we have a better understanding of who they are and what they’re going to do when they come here, they’re going to receive preference.”

He added: “There are a lot of sad stories around the world, millions and millions of people around the world. It’s heartbreaking, but we cannot assume millions and millions of people around the world. No country can.”

By JACQUES BILLEAUD

PHOENIX (AP) — Twenty years ago, when Arizona became frustrated with its porous border with Mexico, the state passed a series of immigration laws as proponents regularly griped about how local taxpayers get stuck paying the education, health care and other costs for people in the U.S. illegally.

Then-Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio gladly took up the cause, launching 20 large-scale traffic patrols targeting immigrants from January 2008 through October 2011. That led to a 2013 racial profiling verdict and expensive court-ordered overhauls of the agency’s traffic patrol operations and, later, its internal affairs unit.

Eight years after Arpaio was voted out, taxpayers in Maricopa County are still paying legal and compliance bills from the crackdowns. The tab is expected to reach $352 million by midsummer 2026, including $34 million approved Monday by the county’s governing board.

While the agency has made progress on some fronts and garnered favorable compliance grades in certain areas, it hasn’t yet been deemed fully compliant with court-ordered overhauls.

Since the profiling verdict, the sheriff’s office has been criticized for disparate treatment of Hispanic and Black drivers in a series of studies of its traffic stops. The latest study, however, shows significant improvements. The agency’s also dogged by a crushing backlog of internal affairs cases.

Thomas Galvin, chairman of the county’s governing board, said the spending is “staggering” and has vowed to find a way to end the court supervision.

“I believe at some point someone has to ask: Can we just keep doing this?” Galvin said. “Why do we have to keep doing this?”

Critics of the sheriff’s office have questioned why the county wanted to back out of the case now that taxpayers are finally beginning to see changes at the sheriff’s office.

Profiling verdict

Nearly 12 years ago, a federal judge concluded Arpaio’s officers had racially profiled Latinos in his traffic patrols that targeted immigrants.

The patrols, known as “sweeps,” involved large numbers of sheriff’s deputies flooding an area of metro Phoenix — including some Latino neighborhoods — over several days to stop traffic violators and arrest other offenders.

The verdict led the judge to order an overhaul of the traffic patrol operations that included retraining officers on making constitutional stops, establishing an alert system to spot problematic behavior by officers and equipping deputies with body cameras.

Arpaio was later convicted of criminal contempt of court for disobeying the judge’s 2011 order to stop the patrols. He was spared a possible jail sentence when his misdemeanor conviction was pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2017.

Several traffic-stop studies conducted after the profiling verdict showed deputies had often treated Hispanic and Black drivers differently than other drivers, though the reports stop short of saying Hispanics were still being profiled.

The latest report, covering stops in 2023, painted a more favorable picture, saying there’s no evidence of disparities in the length of stops or rates of arrests and searches for Hispanic drivers when compared to white drivers. But when drivers from all racial minorities were grouped together for analysis purposes, the study said they faced stops that were 19 seconds longer than white drivers.

While the case focused on traffic patrols, the judge later ordered changes to the sheriff’s internal affairs operation, which critics alleged was biased in its decision-making under Arpaio and shielded sheriff’s officials from accountability.

The agency has faced criticism for a yearslong backlog of internal affairs cases, which in 2022 stood around 2,100 and was reduced to 939 as of last month.

Taxpayers pick up the bill

By midsummer 2026, taxpayers are projected to pay $289 million in compliance costs for the sheriff’s office alone, plus another $23 million on legal costs and $36 million for a staff of policing professionals who monitor the agency’s progress in complying with the overhauls.

Galvin has criticized the money spent on monitoring and has questioned whether it has made anyone safer.

Raul Piña, a longtime member of a community advisory board created to help improve trust in the sheriff’s office, said the court supervision should continue because county taxpayers are finally seeing improvements. Piña believes Galvin’s criticism of the court oversight is politically driven.

“They just wrote blank checks for years, and now it makes sense to pitch a fit about it being super expensive?” Piña said.

Ending court supervision

Christine Wee, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the sheriff’s office isn’t ready to be released from court supervision.

Wee said the plaintiffs have questions about the traffic-stop data and believe the internal affairs backlog has to be cleared and the quality of investigations needs to be high. “The question of getting out from under the court is premature,” Wee said.

The current sheriff, Jerry Sheridan, said he sees himself asking the court during his term in office to end its supervision of the sheriff’s office. “I would like to completely satisfy the court orders within the next two years,” Sheridan said.

But ending court supervision would not necessarily stop all the spending, the sheriff’s office has said in court records.

Its lawyers said the costs “will likely continue to be necessary even after judicial oversight ends to sustain the reforms that have been implemented.”

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration appears to have begun deporting people from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries, attorneys for the migrants said in court documents.

Immigration authorities may have sent up to a dozen people from several countries to Africa, they told a judge.

Those removals would violate a court order saying people must get a “meaningful opportunity” to argue that sending them to a country outside their homeland would threaten their safety, attorneys said.

The apparent removal of one man from Myanmar was confirmed in an email from an immigration official in Texas, according to court documents. He was informed only in English, a language he does not speak well, and his attorneys learned of the plan hours before his deportation flight, they said.

A woman also reported that her husband from Vietnam and up to 10 other people were flown to Africa Tuesday morning, attorneys from the National Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.

They asked Judge Brian E. Murphy for an emergency court order to prevent the deportations. Murphy, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, previously found that any plans to deport people to Libya without notice would “clearly” violate his ruling, which also applies to people who have otherwise exhausted their legal appeals. A hearing in the case is set for Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Some countries do not accept deportations from the United States, which has led the Trump administration to strike agreements with other countries, including Panama, to house them. The Trump administration has sent Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law hotly contested in the courts.

South Sudan has suffered repeated waves of violence since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011 amid hopes it could use its large oil reserves to bring prosperity to a region long battered by poverty. Just weeks ago, the country’s top U.N. official warned that fighting between forces loyal to the president and a vice president threatened to spiral again into full-scale civil war.

The situation is “darkly reminiscent of the 2013 and 2016 conflicts, which took over 400,000 lives,” Nicholas Haysom, head of the almost 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The U.S. State Department’s annual report on South Sudan, published in April 2024, says “significant human rights issues” include arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane treatment by security forces and extensive violence based on gender and sexual identity.

The U.S. Homeland Security Department has given Temporary Protected Status to a small number of South Sudanese already living in the United States since the country was founded in 2011, shielding them from deportation because conditions were deemed unsafe for return. Secretary Kristi Noem recently extended those protections to November to allow for a more thorough review.

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana, Tim Sullivan and Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

By GISELA SALOMON

DORAL, Fla. (AP) — As a business owner in the largest Venezuelan community in the United States, Wilmer Escaray is stressed and in shock. He is unsure what steps he needs to take after the Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to strip legal protections from hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.

Escaray owns 15 restaurants and three markets, most of them in Doral, a city of 80,000 in the Miami area people known as “Little Venezuela” or “Doralzuela.” At least 70% of Escaray’s 150 employees and many of his customers are Venezuelan immigrants with Temporary Protected Status, also known as TPS.

The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s ruling that had paused the administration’s plans to end TPS for 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to deportation.

Like many U.S. business owners with Venezuelan employees, Escaray lacks direction. He does not know how long his employees will have legal authorization to work or if he will be able to help them, he said.

“The impact for the business will be really hard,” said Escaray, a 37-year-old Venezuelan American who came to the U.S. to study in 2007 and opened his first restaurant six years later. “I don’t know yet what I am going to do. I have to discuss with my team, with my family to see what will be the plan.”

TPS allows people already in the U.S. to legally live and work here because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife. The Trump administration said immigrants were poorly vetted after the Biden administration dramatically expanded the designation.

Immigration attorney Evelyn Alexandra Batista said the Supreme Court did not specifically address the extension of TPS-based work permits, and some work authorizations remain in effect. She warned, though, that there is no guarantee that they will continue to remain valid because the Supreme Court can change this.

“This means that employers and employees alike should be exploring all other alternative options as TPS was never meant to be permanent,” said Batista, who has received hundreds of calls from TPS beneficiaries and companies looking for advice in the months since Trump returned to office and began his immigration crackdown.

Among the options they are exploring, she said, are visas for extraordinary abilities, investment visas, and agricultural visas.

The American Business Immigration Coalition estimates that TPS holders add $31 billion to the U.S. economy through wages and spending power. There are no specific estimates of the impact of Venezuelans, although they make up the largest percentage of TPS beneficiaries.

They work in hospitality, construction, agriculture, health care, retail, and food services.

By CHRISTINE FERNANDO, Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — Days after a bombing outside a Southern California fertility clinic, a White House official confirmed Tuesday that the Trump administration is reviewing a list of recommendations to expand access to in vitro fertilization.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February asking for ways to protect access and “aggressively” lower “out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.” White House spokesperson Kush Desai said the White House Domestic Policy Council wrote the list of recommendations over the last 90 days.

“This is a key priority for President Trump, and the Domestic Policy Council has completed its recommendations,” Desai said in a statement to The Associated Press.

Desai did not offer additional details about when the recommendations or a plan would be released or give details about the contents of the report.

The report was sent to the president days after an explosion damaged part of a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. The FBI believes a 25-year-old man was responsible for the blast, and authorities said his writings suggest he held anti-natalist views that include a belief that it’s morally wrong for people to bring children into the world. Investigators have called the attack an act of terrorism.

The explosion brought renewed attention to the common fertility treatment IVF after it became a major political talking point during the 2024 U.S. presidential race.

Dr. Brian Levine, a New York City reproductive endocrinologist and IVF specialist, said he expects the White House report will contain recommendations for the states and also hopes it calls for expanding IVF coverage for members of the military and federal government employees.

“As a fertility doctor who’s been practicing for the last 13 years, I don’t think I’ve ever had this level of excitement for what the government is going to do,” he said. “For the first time in my career, IVF is a priority at the highest levels of the government. It signals to patients that finally our advocacy is being heard. Both sides of the aisle are recognizing the problem we have in this country with access to IVF care.”

Trump called for universal coverage of IVF treatment while on the campaign trail, after his Supreme Court nominees helped to overturn Roe v. Wade, which had provided a constitutional right to abortion for half a century. That 2022 decision has led to a wave of restrictions in Republican-led states, including some that have threatened IVF access by trying to define life as beginning at conception.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to make the fertility treatment free for women but didn’t give details about how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work. Abortion rights groups countered that IVF would not be threatened if not for the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which Trump has proudly taken credit for.

IVF costs vary but range from about $12,000 to $25,000 per cycle, and people often need more than one cycle. Insurance coverage can be patchy. Some plans cover it, some partly cover it and some don’t cover it at all.

Most Americans want access to IVF protected. Last year, a poll from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about six out of 10 U.S. adults support that.

Trump’s stance on IVF has put him at odds with the actions of much of his own party. While Trump has claimed the Republican Party has been a “leader” on IVF, many Republicans have been left grappling with the tension between support for the procedure and for laws passed by their own party that grant legal personhood not only to fetuses but to any embryos that are destroyed in the IVF process.

GOP efforts to create a national narrative that it is receptive of IVF also have been undercut by state lawmakers, Republican-dominated courts and anti-abortion leaders within the party’s ranks, as well as opposition to legislative attempts to protect IVF access.

Mini Timmaraju, CEO and president of the national abortion rights organization Reproductive Freedom for All, called Trump’s comments about IVF “lip service.”

“All Trump has done is stack his administration with extremists, restrict access to reproductive care, and implement the dangerous Project 2025 plan, which would threaten access to IVF nationwide,” she said.

Associated Press Science Writer Laura Ungar contributed to this report from Louisville, Kentucky.

The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JONEL ALECCIA, Associated Press

Molecules in blood and urine may reveal how much energy a person consumes from ultraprocessed foods, a key step to understanding the impact of the products that make up nearly 60% of the American diet, a new study finds.

It’s the first time that scientists have identified biological markers that can indicate higher or lower intake of the foods, which are linked to a host of health problems, said Erikka Loftfield, a National Cancer Institute researcher who led the study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine.

“It can potentially give us some clues as to what the underlying biology might be between an ultraprocessed food association and a health outcome,” Loftfield said.

Ultraprocessed foods – sugary cereals, sodas, chips, frozen pizzas and more – are products created through industrial processes with ingredients such as additives, colors and preservatives not found in home kitchens. They’re ubiquitous in the U.S. and elsewhere, but studying their health impacts is hard because it’s difficult to accurately track what people eat.

Typical nutrition studies rely on recall: asking people what they ate during a certain period. But such reports are notoriously unreliable because people don’t remember everything they ate, or they record it inaccurately.

“There’s a need for both a more objective measure and potentially also a more accurate measure,” Loftfield explained.

To create the new scores, Loftfield and her colleagues examined data from an existing study of more than 1,000 older U.S. adults who were AARP members. More than 700 of them had provided blood and urine samples, as well as detailed dietary recall reports, collected over a year.

The scientists found that hundreds of metabolites – products of digestion and other processes – corresponded to the percentage of energy a person consumes from ultraprocessed foods. From those, they devised a score of 28 blood markers and up to 33 urine markers that reliably predicted ultraprocessed food intake in people consuming typical diets.

“We found this signature that was sort of predictive of this dietary pattern that’s high in ultraprocessed food and not just a specific food item here and there,” she said.

A few of the markers, notably two amino acids and a carbohydrate, showed up at least 60 times out of 100 testing iterations. One marker showed a potential link between a diet high in ultraprocessed foods and type 2 diabetes, the study found.

To confirm the findings, Loftfield measured the scoring tool with participants in a carefully controlled 2019 National Institutes of Health study of ultraprocessed foods.

In that study, 20 adults went to live for a month at an NIH center. They received diets of ultraprocessed and unprocessed foods matched for calories, sugar, fat, fiber and macronutrients for two weeks each and were told to eat as much as they liked.

Loftfield’s team found that they could use the metabolite scores to tell when the individual participants were eating a lot of ultraprocessed foods and when they weren’t eating those foods.

The results suggested the markers were “valid at the individual level,” Loftfield said.

It’s still early research, but identifying blood and urine markers to predict ultraprocessed foods consumption is “a major scientific advance,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, who was not involved in the study.

“With more research, these metabolic signatures can begin to untangle the biologic pathways and harms of UPF and also differences in health effects of specific UPF food groups, processing methods and additives,” he said.

Loftfield said she hopes to apply the tool to existing studies where blood and urine samples are available to track, for instance, the effect of consuming ultraprocessed foods on cancer risk.

At a time when support for government research is being cut, funding remains uncertain.

“There’s a lot of interest across the board — scientifically, public interest, political interest — in the question of: Does ultraprocessed food impact health and, if so, how?” she said. “How can we fund the studies that need to be done to answer these questions in a timely way?”

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

By HILLEL ITALIE, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Former FBI director James Comey says that he’s still a bit bewildered over how a seemingly innocent Instagram shot of shells arranged in the sand led to allegations by Donald Trump among others that he was calling for the president’s assassination and to an interview with the Secret Service.

“It’s been a bit of a distraction, honestly,” Comey said with a weary laugh Monday night during an appearance at a Barnes & Noble on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Comey was promoting “FDR Drive,” a crime novel coming out this week. One of the book’s themes, ironically, is weighing the potential of speech to incite others to violence.

Comey, whom Trump fired in 2017 amid an FBI investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s first presidential campaign, explained Monday that he and his wife, Patrice, had been returning from a walk on the beach last Thursday when they came upon some shells organized in a way that resembled numbers, including “86.”

They speculated over whether it was a home address, or a political message. His wife noted that “86” in some restaurants means they had run out of an ingredient. Comey remembered it was slang for saying something was boring and should be “ditched.”

“And she said, ‘You should take a picture of it.’ So I took a picture of it, and then we walk home and she said, ‘You should really put that on Instagram. It’s kind of a cool thing.’ I said, ‘You’re right. It’s a cool thing,’” he explained.

To many viewers, the numbers seemed to spell out 86 and 47. Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ’to kill.’”

Trump is the country’s 47th president.

“Some hours later she (Patrice) said to me, ‘You know, people on the internet are saying you’re calling for the assassination of Donald Trump,” Comey explained. “And I said, ’Well, if they’re saying that, I’m taking it down because I don’t want any part of violence.’”

Comey quickly pulled the image, but it had already reached the attention of Trump and other administration officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and FBI Director Kash Patel. Trump himself, interviewed on Friday on Fox News, said that Comey “knew exactly what that meant. A child knows what that meant. If you’re the FBI director and you don’t know what that meant, that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear.”

Comey confirmed Monday that he received a call from the Secret Service later Thursday, spoke to them on the phone and agreed to meet with them in person.

“And so they gave me a ride to their headquarters, the Washington field office interviewed me,” he said. “It seems like a year ago, but it was Friday, right? I told them what I just told you. And so I, it seems like a thing that I don’t fully understand and maybe it’ll go away now.”

Comey has written several books since Trump fired him, including the million-selling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.” More recently, he has taken up fiction, his previous novels including “Central Park Drive” and “Westport.”

By DAVID BAUDER, Associated Press

They have some similarities, Bruce Springsteen and Donald Trump — guys in their 70s with homes in New Jersey and big constituencies among white American men middle-aged and older. And both, in very different respects, are the boss.

That’s about where it ends.

The veteran rock star, long a political opponent of the president, stood up as one of Trump’s most prominent cultural critics last week with a verbal takedown from a British stage.

As is his nature, Trump is fighting back — hard. He calls Springsteen a “dried out prune of a rocker” and is even bringing Beyoncé into the fray.

On Monday, the president suggested Springsteen and Beyoncé should be investigated to see if appearances they made on behalf of his Democratic opponent, Kamala Harris, last fall represented an illegal campaign donation.

Opening a tour in Manchester, England, Springsteen told his audience last Thursday that “the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration.”

He added, “Tonight we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring.”

And the back and forth began

Springsteen later made reference to an “unfit president and a rogue government” who have “no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.”

The next morning, Trump called Springsteen highly overrated. “Never liked him, never liked his music or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — just a pushy, obnoxious JERK,” he wrote on social media.

“This dried out prune of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back in the Country,” he said.

The next night, also in Manchester, Springsteen repeated his criticisms.

“It’s no surprise what Springsteen’s political leanings are and have been for many decades,” said veteran music writer Alan Light, author of the upcoming “Don’t Stop: Why We (Still) Love Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.” “He’s somebody who has been outspoken in his music and his actions.”

The Boss’ statements this week showed he wasn’t afraid to speak out “at a time when so many people and institutions are just kind of rolling over,” Light said.

Springsteen isn’t new to this game

It’s not the first time Springsteen has spoken out against Trump — or a Republican president.

When former President Ronald Reagan referenced Springsteen’s “message of hope” at a campaign stop during the height of the rocker’s “Born in the USA” popularity, Springsteen wondered if Reagan had listened to his music and its references to those left behind in the 1980s economy. He also has had an occasionally bumpy relationship with onetime Republican presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a fan of his music.

Springsteen has campaigned for Trump’s opponents, including Harris last fall. In 2020, he said that “a good portion of our fine country, to my eye, has been thoroughly hypnotized, brainwashed by a con man from Queens.”

He knows the outer-borough reference still stung a man who built his own tower in Manhattan and ascended to the presidency. Trump often stays at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Springsteen grew up in New Jersey — you may have heard — and lives in Colts Neck, New Jersey, now.

Trump doesn’t hesitate to go after the biggest musical names that speak out against him, like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. But the political risk may be less; their younger, more female audiences are less likely to intersect with Trump’s core constituency.

During his career, Springsteen has challenged his audience politically beyond presidential endorsements. The 1995 album “The Ghost of Tom Joad” bluntly documented the lives of struggling immigrants — Mexican and Vietnamese among them. And his 2001 song “American Skin (41 Shots),” criticized the shooting by New York City police officers of an unarmed Guinean immigrant named Amadou Diallo, angering some of the blue-collar segments of his fan base.

Clearly, Springsteen has conservative fans and some who wish he’d steer clear of politics, Light said. Still, “40 years later, it’s hard to imagine what they think would happen” with Trump, he said.

While Trump made a point to reference Springsteen’s criticism in an overseas show, he and the E Street Band haven’t performed in the United States since before the 2024 election. His tour last year hit heavily on themes of mortality, less of politics. He has several European tour dates scheduled this year into July and hasn’t announced any new American shows.

David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

By DEVI SHASTRI and LAURA BARGFELD

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Feel like you can’t focus? Like you’ll never finish a book again? Like the only way to keep your mind and hands busy is to scroll on social media for hours?

You’re far from alone. One body of decades-long research found the average person’s attention span for a single screen is 47 seconds, down from 2.5 minutes in 2004. The 24/7 news cycle, uncertainty about the state of the world and countless hours of screen time don’t help, experts say.

“When my patients talk to me about this stuff there is often a feeling of helplessness or powerlessness,” said Dr. Michael Ziffra, a psychiatrist at Northwestern Medicine. “But you can change these behaviors. You can improve your attention span.”

Here are ways to start that process. As you read, challenge yourself to set a 2.5 minute timer and stay on this article without looking at another device or clicking away.

How did we lose focus?

A shifting attention is an evolutionary feature, not a bug. Our brains are hardwired to quickly filter information and hone in on potential threats or changes in what’s happening around us.

What’s grabbing our attentions has changed. For our ancestors, it might have been a rustle in the bushes putting us on guard for a lurking tiger. Today, it could be a rash of breaking news alerts and phone notifications.

The COVID-19 pandemic warped many people’s sense of time and increased their screen usage like never before, said Stacey Nye, a clinical psychologist at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Technology isn’t the only thing that influences our attention, experts say, but the effects of those pinging notifications or hours scrolling through 30-second long videos can build up over time.

“Our attention span has really been trained to only focus in those little, small blips and it interrupts our natural focus cycles,” she said.

Give your wandering mind ‘active breaks’

Experts say “active” breaks are among the best way to retrain your mind and your attention. They only take about 30 minutes, Nye said, and can be as simple as taking a walk while noticing things around you or moving to another room for lunch.

Don’t be afraid to get creative. Develop a list of alternative activities or randomly choose ideas out of a fish bowl. Try craft projects, a short meditation, fixing a quick meal or talking a walk outside. All the better if you can involve a friend as well.

The break needs to be a physical or mental activity — no passive phone-scrolling.

When the brain is understimulated and looking for change, it’ll usually grab onto the first thing it sees. The smartphone, an “ever-producing change machine,” is an enticing option, said Cindy Lustig, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Michigan.

Turn off unnecessary notifications and put that “do not disturb” mode to good use, especially before bedtime. Better yet, put your phone in a whole different room, Lustig said.

Say no to multitasking

Multitasking may make you feel like you’re getting more done, but brain experts recommend against it.

“Be a single tasker,” Nye said. “Work on one thing at a time, for a specified period of time and begin to work your way up.”

Lustig is a big fan of the “Pomodoro technique,” in which you set a timer and work on something for 25 or 30 minutes before taking a five-minute break.

She tells herself: “I can do anything for this amount of time,” and the world will still be waiting for her at the end.

Start with something you actually like and set a goal

It’s not enough to just have a hobby, Lustig said. It helps to choose hobbies that include deliberate practice and a goal to strive toward, whether it’s playing guitar for an audience or improving in a sport.

It helps to pick something that you enjoy as well.

“You don’t want to start with the heavy nonfiction or like ‘War and Peace,’” Lustig said. “If you need to start with the romance novel, then start with the romance novel. You can work your way up.”

It’s also important to be kind to yourself. Everyone has good and bad days, and attention needs are different — and even vary from task to task.

The key is to make an intentional effort, experts say.

“It is in many ways similar to a muscle in the sense that we can build it up with practice and exercises,” Ziffra said. “Conversely, it can weaken if we’re not exercising it.”

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

By MARC LEVY, Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Voters on Tuesday will choose new candidates to run for some of the top jobs in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, with the winners of the Democratic primaries all but assured of victory in November in the two heavily Democratic cities.

In Philadelphia, Larry Krasner is seeking a third term as district attorney of the nation’s sixth-most populous city.

The longtime civil rights lawyer has, at times, come under heavy criticism as a prosecutor but has thus far a survived efforts to oust him that successfully removed some other progressive district attorneys, including in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Oakland.

Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, the city’s first Black mayor, is seeking a second term. Both are Democrats who originally ran as progressives and face a primary challenger.

To some extent, President Donald Trump looms over the races, as Krasner and Gainey have vowed to resist his conservative agenda.

Republicans will also get to weigh in Tuesday on the Pittsburgh mayor’s race, though their party isn’t fielding a candidate in the Philadelphia district attorney’s contest. There are also two statewide courts contests on Tuesday’s ballots.

Here’s what to know about the contests:

Philadelphia district attorney

Krasner is running again after withstanding an impeachment attempt by Republican state lawmakers and years of being a campaign trail punching bag for Trump.

Krasner has the benefit of crime rates falling in big US cities, including Philadelphia, after they rose sharply during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Krasner’s primary opponent is Pat Dugan, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and was the head administrative judge of the Philadelphia Municipal Court before he resigned to run.

Dugan has aimed to make the race about Krasner’s crime-fighting policies — he calls Krasner “Let ’em Go Larry” — and accused the incumbent of staffing the district attorneys’ office with ill-prepared and inexperienced lawyers.

Krasner originally ran in 2017 on a progressive platform that included holding police accountable and opposing the death penalty, cash bail, prosecuting minor nonviolent offenses and a culture of mass-incarceration.

Like some big-city Democrats, Krasner has turned toward pro-public safety messaging, maintaining that he is serious about pursuing violent crime and touting new technologies and strategies that his office is using to solve or prevent crime.

Krasner has repeatedly invoked Trump and suggested that he is the best candidate to stand up to him. In a TV ad, he cast himself as the foil to “Trump and his billionaire buddies, the shooting groups and gun lobby, the old system that denied people justice for too long. They can come for Philly, but I’m not backing down.”

Dugan has invoked Trump, too, saying in a TV ad that Philadelphia faces the threats of crime, injustice and a “president bent on destruction.” He also accuses Krasner of failing to deliver “real reform or make us safe. Now he wants us to believe he can take on Trump? Get real.”

Pittsburgh mayor

Gainey and Allegheny County Controller Corey O’Connor — the son of a former Pittsburgh mayor — are jousting over affordable housing policy, homelessness, public safety and revitalizing downtown in a city that is trying to grow after recovering from the devasting collapse of its steel industry.

Gainey, who is the city’s first Black mayor and who grew up in subsidized housing, has portrayed himself as the mayor who sides with regular people and as a “mayor that’s going to fight for you” when the Trump administration threatens the city. He also touted the city’s strong economy under his watch.

O’Connor won the local party’s endorsement over Gainey. He criticized Gainey’s management of the city, saying Gainey was reckless with city finances, lacked vision to bring businesses back to downtown and fell badly short in expanding affordable housing. He also said people didn’t feel safe in Pittsburgh.

On the Republican ballot are Thomas West and Tony Moreno. Pittsburgh has not elected a Republican as mayor in nearly a century.

Courts

Two statewide court seats are opening up, one on the Commonwealth Court and one on the Superior Court.

Democrats don’t have a primary in either contest, with Washington County Judge Brandon Neuman running uncontested for Superior Court and Philadelphia Judge Stella Tsai running uncontested for Commonwealth Court.

On the Republican ticket, the Superior Court contest features Clarion County lawyer Maria Battista and Chester County Judge Ann Marie Wheatcraft. The Commonwealth Court contest features Matt Wolford of Erie County, a former state and federal prosecutor, and Josh Prince of Berks County, a prominent gun rights lawyer.

The 15-member Superior Court hears appeals of civil and criminal cases from county courts. The nine-seat Commonwealth Court hears challenges or appeals from county courts in cases involving laws or government actions. Judges are elected to 10-year terms.

By LISA MASCARO, KEVIN FREKING and LEAH ASKARINAM, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is heading to Capitol Hill early Tuesday to seal the deal on his “big, beautiful bill,” using the power of political persuasion to unify divided House Republicans on the multitrillion-dollar package that is at risk of collapsing ahead of planned votes this week.

Trump has implored GOP holdouts to “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE.” But negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear the package, with its sweeping tax breaks and cuts to Medicaid, food stamps and green energy programs, has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority, who are also being asked to add some $350 billion to Trump’s border security, deportation and defense agenda.

Conservatives are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states want bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36 trillion debt are stark.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that they’re going to need more time,” said Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus.

“These are complicated issues with trillions of dollars,” he said. “We’ve got to do this thing right.”

Trump’s visit to address House Republicans at their weekly conference meeting comes at a pivotal moment, testing the president’s deal-making powers. House Speaker Mike Johnson is determined to push the bill forward and needs Trump to provide the momentum, either by encouragement or political warnings or a combination of both.

With House Democrats lined up against the package, GOP leaders have almost no votes to spare. A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.

Democrats argue the package is little more than a giveaway to the wealthy at the expense of health care and food programs Americans rely on.

“They literally are trying to take health care away from millions of Americans at this very moment in the dead of night,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

“If this legislation is designed to make life better for the American people, can someone explain to me why they would hold a hearing to advance the bill at 1 a.m. in the morning?”

Trump has been pushing hard for Republicans to unite behind the bill, which has been uniquely shaped in his image as the president’s signature domestic policy initiative in Congress.

The sprawling 1,116-page package carries Trump’s title, the “ One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” as well as his campaign promises to extend the tax breaks approved during his first term while adding new ones, including no taxes on tips, automobile loan interest and Social Security.

Yet, the price tag is rising and lawmakers are wary of the votes ahead, particularly as the economy teeters with uncertainty.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog group, estimates that the House bill is shaping up to add roughly $3.3 trillion to the debt over the next decade.

Republicans criticizing the measure argued that the bill’s new spending and tax cuts are front-loaded, while the measures to offset the cost are back-loaded.

In particular, the conservative Republicans are looking to speed up the new work requirements that Republicans want to enact for able-bodied participants in Medicaid. They had been proposed to start Jan. 1, 2029, but GOP Majority Leader Steve Scalise said on CNBC that work requirements for some Medicaid beneficiaries would begin in early 2027.

At least 7.6 million fewer people are expected to have health insurance under the initial Medicaid changes, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week.

Republican holdouts are also looking to more quickly halt green energy tax breaks, which had been approved as part of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act, and are now being used for renewable energy projects across the nation.

But for every change Johnson considers to appease the hard-right conservatives, he risks losing support from more traditional and centrist Republicans. Many have signed on to letters protesting deep cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs and the rolling back of clean energy tax credits.

At its core, the sprawling legislative package permanently extends the existing income tax cuts and bolsters the standard deduction, increasing it to $32,000 for joint filers, and the child tax credit to $2,500.

The New Yorkers are fighting for a larger state and local tax deduction beyond the bill’s proposal. As it stands, the bill would triple what’s currently a $10,000 cap on the state and local tax deduction, increasing it to $30,000 for joint filers with incomes up to $400,000 a year. They have proposed a deduction of $62,000 for single filers and $124,000 for joint filers.

If the bill passes the House this week, it would then move to the Senate, where Republicans are also eyeing changes.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

By CHRISTOPHER WEBER

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Investigators on Monday were combing through the writings of a 25-year-old man believed responsible for an explosion that ripped through a Southern California fertility clinic over the weekend.

The FBI identified Guy Edward Bartkus as the suspect in the apparent car bomb detonation Saturday that damaged the American Reproductive Centers building in Palm Springs, east of Los Angeles. Bartkus died in the explosion. None of the facility’s embryos were damaged.

Authorities called the attack terrorism and said Bartkus left behind nihilistic writings that indicated views against procreation, an idea known as anti-natalism.

Here’s what to know about the case.

Witnesses described a chaotic scene.

The blast gutted the clinic and shattered the windows of nearby buildings along a palm tree-lined street. Passersby described a loud boom, with people screaming in terror and glass strewn along sidewalks of the upscale desert city.

Bartkus’ body was found near a charred vehicle.

Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, called it possibly the “largest bombing scene that we’ve had in Southern California.”

There were no patients at the facility and all embryos were saved.

“This was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Davis said Sunday. “Make no mistake: we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”

The investigation is ongoing.

Authorities executed a search warrant in Bartkus’ hometown of Twentynine Palms, a city of 28,000 residents northeast of Palm Springs with a large U.S. Marine Corps base.

Bartkus tried to livestream the explosion, but the attempt failed, the FBI said.

Authorities haven’t shared specifics about the explosives used to make the bomb and where Bartkus may have obtained them.

What were his views?

Authorities were working to learn more about Bartkus’ motives. They haven’t said if he intended to kill himself in the attack or why he chose the specific facility.

His writings communicated “nihilistic ideations” that were still being examined to determine his state of mind, said U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in the area. In general, nihilism suggests that life is meaningless.

He appeared to hold anti-natalist views, which include a belief that it is morally wrong for people to bring children into the world. The clinic he attacked provides services to help people get pregnant, including in vitro fertilization and fertility evaluations.

Some people with extreme anti-procreation views have a lack of purpose and a bleak feeling about their own lives “and they diagnose society as suffering in a similar way that they are,” said Adam Lankford, a criminology professor at the University of Alabama. “Essentially, they feel like we’re all doomed, that it’s all hopeless.”

That hopelessness is a way for attackers to rationalize their violent actions, Lankford said Monday.

By MOGOMOTSI MAGOME, Associated Press

BOTHAVILLE, South Africa (AP) — Days before South Africa’s president meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House this week, Afrikaner farmers at the center of an extraordinary new U.S. refugee policy roamed a memorial to farm attacks in their country’s agricultural heartland, some touching the names of the dead — both Black and white.

Here in Bothaville, where thousands of farmers gathered for a lively agricultural fair with everything from grains to guns on display, even some conservative white Afrikaner groups debunked the Trump administration’s “genocide” and land seizure claims that led it to cut all financial aid to South Africa.

The bustling scene was business as usual, with milkshakes and burgers and tow-headed children pulled in wagons.

The late President Nelson Mandela — South Africa’s first Black leader — stood in Bothaville over a quarter-century ago and acknowledged the increasing violent attacks on farmers in the first years following the decades-long racial system of apartheid. “But the complex problem of crime on our farms, as elsewhere, demand long-term solutions,” he said.

Some at the agricultural fair said fleeing the country isn’t one of them.

“I really hope that during the upcoming visit to Washington, (President Cyril Ramaphosa) is going to be able to put the facts before his counterpart and to demonstrate that there is no mass expropriation of land taking place in South Africa, and there is no genocide taking place,” John Steenhuisen, minister of agriculture, told The Associated Press. He will be part of the delegation for Wednesday’s meeting.

The minority white Afrikaner community is in the spotlight after the U.S. granted refugee status to at least 49 of them claiming to flee racial and violent persecution and widespread seizures of white-owned land — despite evidence that such claims are untrue.

While many at the agricultural fair raised serious concerns about the safety of farmers and farm workers, others were quick to point out that crime targeted both Black and white farmers and farm workers, as shown by South Africa’s crime statistics.

Thobani Ntonga, a Black farmer from Eastern Cape province, told the AP he had been attacked on his farm by criminals and almost kidnapped but a Black neighbor intervened.

“Crime affects both Black and white. … It’s an issue of vulnerability,” he said. “Farmers are separated from your general public. We’re not near towns, we are in the rural areas. And I think it’s exactly that. So, perpetrators, they thrive on that, on the fact that farms are isolated.”

Other farmers echoed his thoughts and called for more resources and policing.

“Crime especially hits small-scale farmers worse because they don’t have resources for private security,” said Afrikaner farmer Willem de Chavonnes Vrugt. He and other farmers wondered why they would leave the land where they have been rooted for decades.

Ramaphosa, himself a cattle farmer, also visited the agricultural fair for the first time in about 20 years — to buy equipment but also do outreach as many in South Africa puzzle over the Trump administration’s focus on their country.

“We must not run away from our problems,” the president said during his visit. “When you run away, you’re a coward.”

Applying to be a refugee

The fast-tracking of the Afrikaners’ refugee applications has raised questions about a system where many seeking asylum in the U.S. can languish for years, waiting.

The State Department has not made details of the process public, but one person who has applied to be resettled told the AP the online application process was “rigorous.”

Katia Beeden, a member of an advocacy group established to assist white South Africans seeking resettlement, said applicants have to go through at least three online interviews and answer questions about their health and criminal background.

They are also required to submit information or proof of being persecuted in South Africa, she said. She said she has been robbed in her house, with robbers locking her in her bedroom.

“They’ve already warned that you can’t lie or hide anything from them. So it’s quite a thorough process and not everyone is guaranteed,” she said.

By the numbers

Violent crime is rife in South Africa, but experts say the vast majority of victims are Black and poor. Police statistics show that up to 75 people are killed daily across the country.

Afrikaner agriculture union TLU SA says it believes farmers are more susceptible to such attacks because of their isolation.

Twelve murders occurred on farms in 2024, police statistics show. One of those killed was a farmer. The rest were farm workers, people staying on farms and a security guard. The data don’t reflect the victims’ race.

Overall across South Africa last year, 6,953 people were killed.

Government data also show that white farmers own the vast majority of South Africa’s farmland — 80% of it, according to the 2017 census of commercial agriculture, which recorded over 40,000 white farmers.

That data, however, only reflects farmers who have revenue of $55,396 a year, which excludes many small-scale farmers, the majority of them Black.

Overall, the white minority — just 7% of the population is white — still owns the vast majority of the land in South Africa, which the World Bank has called “the most unequal country in the world.”

According to the 2017 government land audit, white South Africans hold about 72% of individually owned land — while Black South Africans own 15%.

Associated Press writer Michelle Gumede in Johannesburg contributed to this report.

By SOPHIE BATES, Associated Press

TYLERTOWN, Miss. (AP) — More than two months after a tornado destroyed his home, Brian Lowery still looks through the rubble, hoping to find a tie clip his mother gave him, made from the center stone of her wedding band.

“I still have hope,” Lowery said.

Lowery considers himself lucky. He, his wife and 13-year-old son made it to safety before the tornado ripped apart their trailer home of 15 years. Despite his positive outlook, Lowery admits he’s frustrated; Mississippi’s request for federal aid is still pending before the Federal Emergency Management Agency, meaning badly needed assistance has not yet made it to his hard-hit community of Tylertown.

“I don’t know what you got to do or what you got to have to be able to be declared for a federal disaster area because this is pretty bad,” Lowery said. “We can’t help you because, whatever, we’re waiting on a letter; we’re waiting on somebody to sign his name. You know, all that. I’m just over it.”

Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves asked the Trump administration for a major disaster declaration on April 1 after 18 tornadoes tore through the state on March 14 and 15, leaving seven people dead and hundreds of homes destroyed or damaged.

The declaration would allow the state to access a wide range of FEMA resources, including financial aid for individuals and for government agencies still removing debris and repairing infrastructure.

“We don’t have a declaration yet. People are still hurting,” said Royce McKee, emergency management director for Walthall County, which includes Tylertown.

Mississippi’s request comes at a time of upheaval for FEMA. The agency’s acting administrator, Cameron Hamilton, was recently ousted after he publicly disagreed with proposals to dismantle FEMA, an idea President Donald Trump has floated in calling the agency “very bureaucratic” and “very slow.”

David Richardson, FEMA’s new acting administrator, committed himself to executing Trump’s vision for the agency. He also previewed potential policy changes, saying there could be “more cost-sharing with states” and that FEMA would coordinate federal assistance “when deemed necessary.”

Walthall County was hit especially hard by the massive storm system that wreaked havoc across multiple states. The storm spawned two significant tornadoes in the county, where four people died.

McKee said the county has sunk an estimated $700,000 into cleaning up the damage but can’t afford to spend more and has halted operations until it receives federal help.

“We need federal help, and we need it desperately, and we need it now,” said Bobby McGinnis, a Tylertown resident and firefighter. “I know President Trump said that — America first, we’re going to help our American folks first. But we haven’t seen the federal folks down here.”

While Mississippi has been waiting, a similar major disaster declaration request out of Arkansas after the storms hit was denied, appealed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and finally approved on May 13.

“We are encouraged by FEMA’s decision regarding Arkansas’ application from the same storm system that hit Mississippi,” Scott Simmons, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency’s director of external affairs, said in a statement. “We anxiously await a positive decision.”

Mississippi lawmakers have been pressing federal officials on the issue. During a congressional hearing in early May, Republican Mississippi Rep. Michael Guest asked U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, whose department oversees FEMA, to push forward the request.

“I would ask you if you could make sure that you could do everything to expedite that request,” Guest said. ”It is impacting my local jurisdictions with debris cleanup. It is impacting people as they seek to recover.”

Republican Mississippi U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith also asked Noem about FEMA assistance and the administration’s new approach to the agency.

“President Trump has been very clear that he believes that the way that FEMA exists today should not continue,” Noem responded. “He wants to make sure that those reforms are happening where states are empowered to do the response and trained and equipped, and then the federal government would come in and support them and financially be there when they need them on their worst day.”

PAW PAW, Mich. (AP) A Michigan woman accused of setting her husband on fire then driving a van over his burning body was sentenced to life in prison Monday for murder after failing to convince a jury for the second time that she wasn't responsible.

Since Todd Stermer's death nearly 20 years ago, Linda Stermer has been imprisoned then released while winning an appeal and getting a new trial. But now she's back in custody with a no-parole sentence.

Murder is by its nature a monstrous deed," Van Buren County Judge Kathleen Brickley said. "But the one youve committed is more gruesome than most. I cannot fathom the suffering he endured in his last moments of life.

Prosecutors alleged Stermer doused her husband with gasoline and set him on fire in 2007, a day after he learned she was having an extramarital affair. Stermer insisted it was an accident, telling insurance investigators that Todd had an oil lamp and candles burning in the house.

She was first convicted in 2010. But a federal appeals court in 2020 granted her a new trial, saying her rights were violated when her attorney didn't do enough to counter the arson theme described by prosecutors.

One of the judges on the three-judge panel strongly disagreed and said an accident wasn't plausible. All that was missing, Judge Jeffrey Sutton said at the time, was a film of the mariticide.

Stermer, 60, stuck to her claim of innocence Monday.

While I stand before you, innocent and wrongfully convicted, Im prepared for the battle ahead, she said.

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