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  • Trump’s State of the Union seeks to calm economic jitters

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    WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump declared during the State of the Union on Tuesday that “we’re winning so much,” saying he sparked a jobs and manufacturing boom at home while imposing a new world order abroad — hoping that offering a long list of his accomplishments can counter approval ratings that have been falling.

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    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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    By WILL WEISSERT and MICHELLE L. PRICE – Associated Press

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  • Gov. Gavin Newsom takes heat from Republicans and LGBTQ+ lawmakers during book tour

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    LOS ANGELES — If politicians write memoirs to generate online buzz and headlines, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is getting plenty of both — favorable and not.

    Just a few days into a national book tour, the two-term Democrat who is widely expected to seek the presidency in 2028 is taking heat from conservatives who say some recent remarks were racist and from LGBTQ+ advocates bristling at his calls for the Democratic Party to be more “culturally normal.”

    Newsom’s kickoff swing for “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery” comes as he’s sought to position himself as the leading Democratic adversary to President Donald Trump and a capable player on the international stage.

    The book, released Tuesday, focuses heavily on carefully crafted biography over policy and is designed to introduce Newsom to a national audience who may be unfamiliar with the former San Francisco mayor and lieutenant governor. It’s been argued that all publicity is good publicity, but the six-city tour is also testing those limits as Newsom seeks to shake off the image, fair or not, of a liberal elitist out of touch with Main Street.

    Newsom’s middling academic record and lifelong struggles with dyslexia are a key piece of his narrative as he seeks relatability with audiences. But conservatives have seized on comments about those struggles made Sunday during a conversation with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, who is Black.

    “I’m just trying to impress upon you: I’m like you, I’m no better than you, I’m a 960 SAT guy,” he said, referring to a lower-than-average score on the commonly used college entrance exam.

    Republicans said Newsom was disparaging Black people by suggesting they weren’t smart, an assertion Newsom and his office forcefully denied.

    “Black Americans aren’t your low bar,” South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who is Black, wrote on social media. “We’ve built empires, created movements, outworked, outhustled and outsmarted people like you. Stop using your mediocre academics as a way to patronize communities. Its ridiculous!”

    Newsom’s office pushed back hard against another critic, Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, accusing him of being indifferent to racist remarks made by Trump and saying his comments amounted to fake outrage. “You’re going to call me racist for talking about my lifelong struggle with dyslexia?” Newsom wrote on X.

    His office said the crowd, which can be heard laughing, was racially diverse. Dickens said critics were taking the comments out of context.

    “That wasn’t an attack on anyone. It was a moment of vulnerability about his own journey,” the mayor wrote on Instagram. “We’ve gotten so used to loud, chest-pounding politics that when someone speaks about shortcomings, people try to twist it into something else.”

    Other prominent Black Democrats also chimed in to defend Newsom.

    The back-and-forth has put Newsom’s book tour in the national headlines for several days, a premium place to be in a fragmented world of political news.

    “At this early stage of the pre-presidential race, just about any publicity is good publicity,” said Republican strategist Mike Murphy. To “have the spotlight is invaluable and Newsom has a real knack for attracting all the right enemies if you are running for the Democratic presidential nomination.”

    Newsom’s press office later taunted in a social media post that he was dominating news coverage on the same day as Trump’s State of the Union speech. “FOX NEWS IS WALL-TO-WALL COVERAGE OF ME,” the post said.

    Critics of his remarks in Atlanta were largely on the right but included some exceptions like Nina Turner, a co-chair of Sen. Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign, and Cornel West, who tried to launch a third-party presidential bid in 2024. Both are Black.

    Meanwhile, he’s facing blowback from California Democrats over other remarks made this week.

    He told CNN in an interview aired Monday that the Democratic Party needs to be “more culturally normal” and “less prone to spending a disproportionate amount of time on pronouns, identity” while emphasizing energy costs, child care and other kitchen table issues.

    “It’s deeply concerning for anyone, especially our elected leaders, to be defining who or what is ‘culturally normal.’ By definition, it implies someone else is ‘not normal,’” the California Legislative LGBTQ Caucus said in a statement.

    “We cannot adopt the language of MAGA extremists who in the last year are actively seeking to roll back the rights of women, LGBTQ+ individuals and marginalized communities,” the caucus wrote.

    Lindsey Cobia, a senior Newsom campaign adviser, noted his long history supporting the LGBTQ+ community including when, as mayor, he issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples before it was legal.

    “Nobody’s been a bigger supporter of LGBTQ+ rights than Governor Newsom,” she said in a statement.

    It’s not the first time Newsom has angered allies in the LGBTQ+ community. On the first episode of his political podcast last year, he said it was “ deeply unfair ” for transgender athletes to participate in women’s sports. Those comments were widely viewed as an attempt by Newsom to move to the political center.

    Newsom’s last two stops on the book tour are in San Francisco and Los Angeles. With a year left in his governorship, some critics say he should stay focused at home.

    “To go on a book tour when our state is in desperate need of revamping and revisions … its almost comical,” said Hollywood crisis manager Holly Baird, who is not a fan of the governor.

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  • Federal workplace safety regulators penalize businesses over 6 deaths at Colorado dairy

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    Federal workplace safety regulators have issued citations and fines against three businesses for violations in the deaths of six people last year at a Colorado dairy.

    The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Tuesday announced fines including penalties for failing to protect workers against hazardous gases against the dairy owner and a dairy service provider. The deaths of five men and a teenager on Aug. 20, 2025, sent shockwaves through the rural communities in and around Keenesburg, 35 miles (55 kilometers) northeast of Denver.

    Previously, the Weld County coroner’s office determined from autopsies and toxicology tests that all the people who died were exposed to hydrogen sulfide gas.

    Those autopsy reports gave little indication of the circumstances of the deaths, describing only an industrial accident in a confined space at a dairy farm.

    In August 2025, federal regulators opened initial investigations of the dairy, owned by Prospect Ranch as well as Johnstown, Colorado-based Fiske Inc, whose subsidiary High Plains Robotics services dairy equipment and employed some of those who died.

    The hazards of confined spaces on farms and dairies are a well-known and persistent cause of death in agriculture across the U.S. — often from exposure to odorless and colorless noxious gases, or due to asphyxiation in closed spaces where oxygen has been depleted.

    First responders from a rural fire district in Weld County were dispatched around 6 p.m. on Aug. 20 to Prospect Ranch and took their own safety precautions as they entered a confined space.

    All those who died in Colorado were Latino, ranging in age from 17 to 50. Four of them, including the teenage high school student, were from the same extended family.

    Alejandro Espinoza Cruz, of Nunn, was found dead along with his 17-year-old son Oscar Espinoza Leos and a second son, 29-year-old Carlos Espinoza Prado.

    The Espinozas are related by marriage to a 36-year-old from Greeley who died — Jorge Sanchez Pena, according to the Weld County coroner’s office.

    The other two men — Ricardo Gomez Galvan, 40, and Noe Montañez Casañas, 32 — lived in Keenesburg.

    The remains of Montañez Casañas, a veterinarian who was employed under a U.S. visa, were repatriated to the central Mexican state of Hidalgo, according to the Mexican consulate in Denver.

    ___

    Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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  • Tiger Woods nearing decisions on whether to play in Masters and be Ryder Cup captain

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    LOS ANGELES — Tiger Woods is on the clock.

    Woods kept everyone guessing — a favorite hobby of his — with one word and a smug grin last week at Riviera when he was asked if playing in the Masters was off the table.

    “No,” he replied.

    The grin indicated there would be nothing to add. To borrow a phrase from Dan Hicks at NBC when Woods forced a playoff in the 2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, “Expect anything different?”

    He wasn’t about to rule out playing in the Masters with two months to go. And having not competed in more than a year, Woods just doesn’t know yet. But big decisions are looming for Woods in the next month.

    The Masters gets all the attention because a red shirt on Sunday has become nearly as common as a green jacket at Augusta National. But there’s also that small matter of the Ryder Cup.

    Woods is the top choice — the only choice at the moment — to be captain for the 2027 matches in Ireland, just like he was for the last Ryder Cup before he turned it down. Officials were forced to wait longer than ever before announcing Keegan Bradley as captain at Bethpage Black.

    Now the PGA of America is asking Woods to decide before the Masters whether he wants the job. Two people informed of the situation describe it more as a soft deadline than an ultimatum. They spoke on condition of anonymity because these matters are private.

    The Ryder Cup captaincy has become a time-consuming job, and Woods sounds as though he is busier than ever. His most important role is chairman of the Future Competition Committee as it works toward one of the biggest and most complicated overhauls of the PGA Tour schedule.

    Woods offered as much when he said, “I thought I spent a lot of hours practicing in my prime. It doesn’t even compare to what we’ve done in the boardroom.”

    This is what drives him at the moment. He would love to be at the Masters, where in 2024 he set the record by making his 24th consecutive cut. He is a player at heart.

    Woods looked good last week in his role as tournament host at the Genesis Invitational. More than one person noticed the purpose in his step — and how big he looked — just walking through the locker room. He was comfortable in his news conference and in the CBS booth with Jim Nantz and Trevor Immelman.

    Good enough to compete while walking 72 holes at Augusta? Woods kept them guessing, too.

    He said he is hitting full shots — “Not well every day, but I can hit them,” he said — and the Achilles tendon he ruptured a year ago is no longer an issue, rather it’s the recovery from a seventh back surgery in September to replace a disk in his lower back.

    Age doesn’t help. He turned 50 at the end of last year and recovery takes longer.

    As for the Ryder Cup captaincy, it’s all about time and priorities. Woods is driven by the idea that as much as he has done for the game already (think prize money), he can do even more as a chief architect that reshapes the model of golf at the highest level.

    So when the Ryder Cup came up, his first response was he hasn’t decided.

    “I’m trying to figure out what we’re trying to do with our tour,” he said. “That’s been driving me hours upon hours every day and trying to figure out if I can actually do our team — Team USA and our players and everyone that’s going to be involved in the Ryder Cup — if I can do it justice.”

    By the time the azaleas are bursting with blooms in early April, Woods could be wearing yet another hat as Ryder Cup captain. Or the PGA of America will move on to a Plan B that includes predictable options and few surprises.

    Meanwhile, the next two weeks might offer hints on how much progress Woods is making on the job taking up most of his bandwidth.

    PGA Tour Enterprises CEO Brian Rolapp is expected to give an update, pulling back the curtain as much as he can, on the progress of the new schedule. The committee is looking at the sequence of events — a splashy start and a finish that makes sense — with an eye on big markets.

    Woods said the final work might not be done in time for 2027, perhaps only portions of what to expect. That would seem to indicate a later start to the season (Aloha, Hawaii) and moving around some of the postseason events.

    The tour has been looking at moving some of the premier West Coast stops to August for better (warmer) weather and prime-time viewing.

    To move Riviera to August would make sense except golf in LA doesn’t have a history of big attendance in August, and title sponsor Genesis already has a PGA Tour event in July (Scottish Open). Torrey Pines? It was worth noting the strong attendance this year by officials from Wisconsin-based Sentry, currently the title sponsor at Kapalua.

    Pebble Beach has a massive car show that dates to 1950 and is among the best in the world in the middle of August. That tournament is unlikely to move to summer.

    “There’s been a lot of moving parts over the last couple years,” Woods said.

    He was speaking about the tour. He could just as easily be talking about himself.

    ___

    On The Fringe analyzes the biggest topics in golf during the season.

    ___

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

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  • Waymo robotaxis being dispatched in 10 U.S. markets with expansion in Texas, Florida

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    Waymo will begin dispatching its robotaxis in four more cities in Texas and Florida, expanding the territory covered by its fleet of self-driving cars to 10 major U.S. metropolitan markets.

    The move into Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando, Florida, announced Tuesday, widens Waymo’s early lead in autonomous driving while rival services from Tesla and the Amazon-owned Zoox are still testing their vehicles in only a few U.S. cities.

    In contrast, Waymo’s robotaxis already provide more than 400,000 weekly trips in the six metropolitan areas where they have been transporting passengers: Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas.

    Waymo operates its ride-hailing service through its own app in all the U.S. cities except Atlanta and Austin, where its robotaxis can only be summoned through Uber’s ride-hailing service.

    The expansion into four more markets marks a significant step toward Waymo’s goal to surpass 1 million weekly paid trips by the end of 2026. Without identifying where its robotaxis will be available next, Waymo is targeting a list of eight other cities that include Las Vegas, Washington, Detroit and Boston while signaling its first overseas availability is likely to be London.

    To help pay for more robotaxis, Waymo recently raised $16 billion as part of the financial infusion that puts the value of the company at $126 billion. The valuation fueled speculation that Waymo may eventually be spun off from its corporate parent Alphabet, where it began as a secret project within Google in 2009.

    Although Waymo is opening up in four more cities, its robotaxis initially will only be made available to a limited number of people with its ride-hailing app in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Orlando before the service will be available to all comers in those markets.

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  • US military boards third oil tanker in Indian Ocean after tracking it from Caribbean

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    WASHINGTON — U.S. military forces boarded a third sanctioned oil tanker in the Indian Ocean after tracking it from the Caribbean Sea in an effort to target illicit oil connected to Venezuela, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

    U.S. Southern Command said in a post on X that U.S. forces boarded the Bertha overnight, conducting “a right-of-visit, maritime interdiction and boarding.”

    “The vessel was operating in defiance of President Trump’s established quarantine of sanctioned vessels in the Caribbean and attempted to evade,” the post said. “From the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean, we tracked it and stopped it.”

    Venezuela had faced U.S. sanctions on its oil for several years, relying on a shadow fleet of falsely flagged tankers to smuggle crude into global supply chains. President Donald Trump ordered a quarantine of sanctioned tankers in December to pressure Venezuela’s then-President Nicolás Maduro before Maduro was apprehended in January during an American military operation.

    The Bertha is a vessel flagged to the Cook Islands and is under U.S. sanctions related to Iran, according to the website of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

    Video posted by the Pentagon shows U.S. military helicopters flying toward the tanker.

    Trump’s Republican administration has been seizing tankers as part of its broader efforts to take control of Venezuela’s oil. The Pentagon’s post did not state whether the Bertha was formally seized and placed under U.S. control.

    Maduro was brought to the U.S. to face charges of working with drug cartels to facilitate the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S. and has pleaded not guilty.

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  • Hegseth and Anthropic CEO set to meet as debate intensifies

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    WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to meet Tuesday with the CEO of Anthropic, with the artificial intelligence company the only one of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, declined to comment on the meeting but CEO Dario Amodei has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

    The meeting between Hegseth and Amodei was confirmed by a defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    It underscores the debate over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how the technology could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. It also comes as Hegseth has vowed to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

    “A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month.

    The Pentagon announced last summer that it was awarding defense contracts to four AI companies — Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. Each contract is worth up to $200 million.

    Anthropic was the first AI company to get approved for classified military networks, where it works with partners like Palantir. The other three companies, for now, are only operating in unclassified environments.

    By early this year, Hegseth was highlighting only two of them: xAI and Google.

    The defense secretary said in a January speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas that he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

    Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

    In January, Hegseth said Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok would join the Pentagon network, called GenAI.mil. The announcement came days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

    OpenAI announced in early February that it, too, would join the military’s secure AI platform, enabling service members to use a custom version of ChatGPT for unclassified tasks.

    Anthropic has long pitched itself as the more responsible and safety-minded of the leading AI companies, ever since its founders quit OpenAI to form the startup in 2021.

    The uncertainty with the Pentagon is putting those intentions to the test, according to Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis and fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

    “Anthropic’s peers, including Meta, Google and xAI, have been willing to comply with the department’s policy on using models for all lawful applications,” Owens said. “So the company’s bargaining power here is limited, and it risks losing influence in the department’s push to adopt AI.”

    In the AI craze that followed the release of ChatGPT, Anthropic closely aligned with President Joe Biden’s administration in volunteering to subject its AI systems to third-party scrutiny to guard against national security risks.

    Amodei, the CEO, has warned of AI’s potentially catastrophic dangers while rejecting the label that he’s an AI “doomer.” He argued in the January essay that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023″ but that those risks should be managed in a “realistic, pragmatic manner.”

    This would not be the first time Anthropic’s advocacy for stricter AI safeguards has put it at odds with the Trump administration. Anthropic needled chipmaker Nvidia publicly, criticizing Trump’s proposals to loosen export controls to enable some AI computer chips to be sold in China. The AI company, however, remains a close partner with Nvidia.

    The Trump administration and Anthropic also have been on opposite sides of a lobbying push to regulate AI in U.S. states.

    Trump’s top AI adviser, David Sacks, accused Anthropic in October of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”

    Sacks made the remarks on X in response to an Anthropic co-founder, Jack Clark, writing about his attempt to balance technological optimism with “appropriate fear” about the steady march toward more capable AI systems.

    Anthropic hired a number of ex-Biden officials soon after Trump’s return to the White House, but it’s also tried to signal a bipartisan approach. The company recently added Chris Liddell, a former White House official from Trump’s first term, to its board of directors.

    The Pentagon-Anthropic debate is reminiscent of an uproar several years ago when some tech workers objected to their companies’ participation in Project Maven, a Pentagon drone surveillance program. While some workers quit over the project and Google itself dropped out, the Pentagon’s reliance on drone surveillance has only increased.

    Similarly, “the use of AI in military contexts is already a reality and it is not going away,” Owens said.

    “Some contexts are lower stakes, including for back-office work, but battlefield deployments of AI entail different, higher-stakes risks,” he said, referring to the use of lethal force or weapons like nuclear arms. “Military users are aware of these risks and have been thinking about mitigation for almost a decade.”

    ___

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

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  • Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge winners

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    The winners of this year’s Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge created innovative projects to improve their cities’ core services – many using some combination of artificial intelligence and the wisdom of their residents.

    That’s what South Bend, Indiana, Mayor James Mueller did with his initiative that uses AI to interpret data about residents, like a family falling behind on paying its water bill, and to help offer them services and support that could prevent larger issues.

    “Technology is not necessarily good or bad – it’s how it’s used and how you protect against abuses,” said Mueller, a Democrat who has been mayor since 2020. “We’re trying to use cutting edge tools to deliver city services in a proactive way that meets our residents’ needs.”

    The twenty-four winners announced Tuesday range from Boise, Idaho, where they are using geothermal energy to lower residents’ heating bills, to Beira, Mozambique, where they are relocating fishermen and their families from flood-prone coastal homes to safer inland houses. Each will receive $1 million to implement the program, as well as support from Bloomberg Philanthropies experts to help the new initiative succeed.

    The hope, says former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg Philanthropies and Bloomberg L.P., is that successful programs from Mayors Challenge winners can be used in other cities.

    “The most effective city halls are bold, creative, and proactive in solving problems and meeting residents’ needs – and we launched the Mayors Challenge to help more of them succeed,” Bloomberg said in a statement.

    James Anderson, head of government innovation programs at Bloomberg Philanthropies, said many of this year’s winners are integrating AI technology into their work in sophisticated ways, bringing municipal governments closer to the residents they serve.

    “Testing and learning and adapting new ideas don’t generally get funded with public dollars,” Anderson said. “It is up to philanthropy to support experimentation.”

    Vico Sotto, mayor of Pasig City in the Philippines, said becoming one of this year’s Mayors Challenge winners will speed up his project to build floating parks in the Pasig River that will become new community space and reduce flooding threats in the area. Without the support of Bloomberg Philanthropies, Sotto said the initiative wouldn’t be able to start for another year or two.

    “The government doesn’t have a great reputation when it comes to maintaining infrastructure,” Sotto said. “So we will be creating a governance council, including people who live in the area, so definitely they’re not going to abandon these parks. They’re going to take care of them because they’re using them as well.”

    In Lafayette, Louisiana, the city-parish had the opposite problem. Lafayette wanted to update parts of its sewer system, but because some parts were on homeowners’ property the city wasn’t allowed to pay for it.

    Mayor-President Monique Blanco Boulet said the Mayors Challenge encouraged her administration to figure out a solution that will now allow Lafayette to make the repairs and, as a result, encourage development in the city. The plan was also named a Mayors Challenge winner.

    “Bloomberg Philanthropies, the staff, Michael Bloomberg – all of them – have such a global impact in ways that most people will never know,” said Boulet, a Republican elected in 2023. “They bring in a level of capacity and give you the space to really be creative and to come up with solutions that can change lives.”

    South Bend’s Mueller said that the Mayors Challenge comes at a time when more and more global problems need to be solved at a local level.

    “Trust in government is at an all-time low, but local governments consistently perform better in surveys about trust from their residents,” Mueller said. “It is critical for us to maintain that level of trust with our residents and build it even further. So that’s why we’re always looking at innovative ways of doing things better and making the city a better place to live.”

    The winners of the 2026 Bloomberg Philanthropies Mayors Challenge are: As-Salt, Jordan; Barcelona, Spain; Beira, Mozambique; Belfast, Northern Ireland; Benin City, Nigeria; Boise, Idaho, United States; Budapest, Hungary; Cape Town, South Africa; Cartagena, Colombia; Fez, Morocco; Fukuoka, Japan; Ghaziabad, India; Ghent, Belgium; Kanifing, The Gambia; Lafayette, Louisiana, United States; Medellín, Colombia; Netanya, Israel; Pasig, Philippines; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; South Bend, Indiana, United States; Surabaya, Indonesia; Toronto, Canada; Turku, Finland; Visakhapatnam, India.

    _____

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Hegseth and Anthropic CEO set to meet as debate intensifies over the military’s use of AI

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    WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth plans to meet Tuesday with the CEO of Anthropic, with the artificial intelligence company the only one of its peers to not supply its technology to a new U.S. military internal network.

    Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, declined to comment on the meeting but CEO Dario Amodei has made clear his ethical concerns about unchecked government use of AI, including the dangers of fully autonomous armed drones and of AI-assisted mass surveillance that could track dissent.

    The meeting between Hegseth and Amodei was confirmed by a defense official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

    It underscores the debate over AI’s role in national security and concerns about how the technology could be used in high-stakes situations involving lethal force, sensitive information or government surveillance. It also comes as Hegseth has vowed to root out what he calls a “woke culture” in the armed forces.

    “A powerful AI looking across billions of conversations from millions of people could gauge public sentiment, detect pockets of disloyalty forming, and stamp them out before they grow,” Amodei wrote in an essay last month.

    The Pentagon announced last summer that it was awarding defense contracts to four AI companies — Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI. Each contract is worth up to $200 million.

    Anthropic was the first AI company to get approved for classified military networks, where it works with partners like Palantir. The other three companies, for now, are only operating in unclassified environments.

    By early this year, Hegseth was highlighting only two of them: xAI and Google.

    The defense secretary said in a January speech at Musk’s space flight company, SpaceX, in South Texas that he was shrugging off any AI models “that won’t allow you to fight wars.”

    Hegseth said his vision for military AI systems means that they operate “without ideological constraints that limit lawful military applications,” before adding that the Pentagon’s “AI will not be woke.”

    In January, Hegseth said Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok would join the Pentagon network, called GenAI.mil. The announcement came days after Grok — which is embedded into X, the social media network owned by Musk — drew global scrutiny for generating highly sexualized deepfake images of people without their consent.

    OpenAI announced in early February that it, too, would join the military’s secure AI platform, enabling service members to use a custom version of ChatGPT for unclassified tasks.

    Anthropic has long pitched itself as the more responsible and safety-minded of the leading AI companies, ever since its founders quit OpenAI to form the startup in 2021.

    The uncertainty with the Pentagon is putting those intentions to the test, according to Owen Daniels, associate director of analysis and fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

    “Anthropic’s peers, including Meta, Google and xAI, have been willing to comply with the department’s policy on using models for all lawful applications,” Owens said. “So the company’s bargaining power here is limited, and it risks losing influence in the department’s push to adopt AI.”

    In the AI craze that followed the release of ChatGPT, Anthropic closely aligned with President Joe Biden’s administration in volunteering to subject its AI systems to third-party scrutiny to guard against national security risks.

    Amodei, the CEO, has warned of AI’s potentially catastrophic dangers while rejecting the label that he’s an AI “doomer.” He argued in the January essay that “we are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023″ but that those risks should be managed in a “realistic, pragmatic manner.”

    This would not be the first time Anthropic’s advocacy for stricter AI safeguards has put it at odds with the Trump administration. Anthropic needled chipmaker Nvidia publicly, criticizing Trump’s proposals to loosen export controls to enable some AI computer chips to be sold in China. The AI company, however, remains a close partner with Nvidia.

    The Trump administration and Anthropic also have been on opposite sides of a lobbying push to regulate AI in U.S. states.

    Trump’s top AI adviser, David Sacks, accused Anthropic in October of “running a sophisticated regulatory capture strategy based on fear-mongering.”

    Sacks made the remarks on X in response to an Anthropic co-founder, Jack Clark, writing about his attempt to balance technological optimism with “appropriate fear” about the steady march toward more capable AI systems.

    Anthropic hired a number of ex-Biden officials soon after Trump’s return to the White House, but it’s also tried to signal a bipartisan approach. The company recently added Chris Liddell, a former White House official from Trump’s first term, to its board of directors.

    The Pentagon-Anthropic debate is reminiscent of an uproar several years ago when some tech workers objected to their companies’ participation in Project Maven, a Pentagon drone surveillance program. While some workers quit over the project and Google itself dropped out, the Pentagon’s reliance on drone surveillance has only increased.

    Similarly, “the use of AI in military contexts is already a reality and it is not going away,” Owens said.

    “Some contexts are lower stakes, including for back-office work, but battlefield deployments of AI entail different, higher-stakes risks,” he said, referring to the use of lethal force or weapons like nuclear arms. “Military users are aware of these risks and have been thinking about mitigation for almost a decade.”

    ___

    O’Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

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  • ChatGPT-maker OpenAI safety representatives summoned to Canada after school shooting

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    TORONTO — Representatives of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI have been summoned to Ottawa after the company said last week that it considered but didn’t alert Canadian police about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.

    Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon said Monday that he expects the company’s top safety representatives to explain its protocols and how it decides to forward cases to law enforcement when he meets with them on Tuesday.

    OpenAI said last June that the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities.”

    The San Francisco technology company said that it considered whether to refer the account to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP, but determined at the time that the account activity didn’t meet a threshold for referral to law enforcement. OpenAI banned the account in June for violating its usage policy.

    The 18-year-old killed eight people in a remote part of British Columbia this month and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    OpenAI said that the threshold for referring a user to law enforcement is whether the case involves an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others. The company said that it didn’t identify credible or imminent planning. The Wall Street Journal first reported OpenAI’s revelation, reporting that about a dozen employees debated informing Canadian police.

    OpenAI said that it wasn’t until after learning of the school shooting that employees reached out to RCMP with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT

    Solomon said that he contacted OpenAI immediately when he read the reports that OpenAI didn’t contact law enforcement in a timely manner.

    “I have summoned the senior safety team from OpenAI to come here to Ottawa from the United States,” Solomon said. “Canadians expect, first of all, that their children particularly are kept safe and these organizations act in a responsible manner.”

    Solomon said that some of his representatives already met with some OpenAI officials on Sunday. He wouldn’t say whether the Canadian government intends to regulate AI chatbots like ChatGPT, but insists that all options are on the table.

    Police said Van Rootselaar first killed her mother and stepbrother at the family home before attacking the nearby school. Van Rootselaar had a history of mental health contacts with police.

    The motive for the shooting remains unclear.

    The town of Tumbler Ridge in the Canadian Rockies is more than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of Vancouver, near the provincial border with Alberta. Police said the victims included a 39-year-old teaching assistant and five students, ages 12 to 13.

    The attack was Canada’s deadliest rampage since 2020, when a gunman in Nova Scotia killed 13 people and set fires that left another nine dead.

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  • Supreme Court agrees to hear from oil, gas companies trying to block climate lawsuits

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    WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday that it will hear from oil and gas companies trying to block lawsuits seeking to hold the industry liable for billions of dollars in damage linked to climate change.

    The conservative-majority court agreed to take up a case from Boulder, Colorado, among a series of lawsuits alleging the companies deceived the public about how fossil fuels contribute to climate change.

    Governments around the country have sought damages totaling billions of dollars, arguing it’s necessary to help pay for rebuilding after wildfires, rising sea levels and severe storms worsened by climate change. The lawsuits come amid a wave of legal actions in states including California, Hawaii and New Jersey and worldwide seeking to leverage action through the courts.

    Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil appealed to the Supreme Court after Colorado’s highest court let the Boulder case proceed. The companies argue emissions are a national issue that should be heard in federal court, where similar suits have been tossed out.

    “The use of state law to address global climate change represents a serious threat to one of our Nation’s most critical sectors,” attorneys wrote.

    President Donald Trump’s administration weighed in to support the companies and urge the justices to reverse the Colorado Supreme Court decision, saying it would mean “every locality in the country could sue essentially anyone in the world for contributing to global climate change.”

    Trump, a Republican, has criticized the lawsuits in an executive order, and the Justice Department has sought to head some off in court.

    Attorneys for Boulder had agued that the litigation is still in early stages and should stay in state court. “There is no constitutional bar to states addressing in-state harms caused by out-of-state conduct, be it the negligent design of an automobile or sale of asbestos,” they wrote.

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

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  • Police are finding suspects based on their online searches as courts weigh privacy concerns

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    HARRISBURG, Pa. — Criminal investigators hoping to develop suspects in difficult cases have been asking Google to reveal who searched for specific information online, seeking “reverse keyword” warrants that critics warn threaten the privacy of innocent people.

    Unlike traditional search warrants that target a known suspect or location, keyword warrants work backward by identifying internet addresses where searches were made in a certain window of time for particular terms, such as a street address where a crime occurred or a phrase like “pipe bomb.”

    Police have used the method to investigate a series of bombings in Texas, the assassination of a Brazilian politician and a fatal arson in Colorado.

    It’s not a wild guess by investigators to conclude that people are using Google searches in all manner of crimes, as the company’s search engine has become the main gateway to the internet and users’ daily lives increasingly leave online traces. The potential value to investigators of the data Google collects is obvious in cases with no suspect, such as the search for Nancy Guthrie’s kidnapper.

    The legal tension between the need to solve crimes quickly and the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against overly broad searches was at the heart of a recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that upheld the use of a reverse keyword warrant in a rape investigation.

    Privacy advocates see it as giving police “unfettered access to the thoughts, feelings, concerns and secrets of countless people,” according to an amicus brief filed in the Pennsylvania appeal by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Internet Archive and several library organizations.

    In response to written questions about the warrants, Google provided an emailed statement: “Our processes for handling law enforcement requests are designed to protect users’ privacy while meeting our legal obligations. We review all legal demands for legal validity, and we push back against those that are overbroad or improper, including objecting to some entirely.”

    Pennsylvania State Police were stymied in their investigation into the violent rape of a woman in 2016 on a remote cul-de-sac outside Milton, a small community in the center of the state. With no clear leads, police obtained a warrant directing Google to disclose accounts that searched for the victim’s name or address over the week when she was attacked.

    More than a year later, Google reported two searches for the woman’s address were made a few hours before the assault from a specific IP address, a numeric designation that lists where a phone or computer lives on the internet.

    That led them to the home of a state prison guard named John Edward Kurtz.

    Police then conducted surveillance and collected a cigarette butt he discarded that matched DNA recovered from the victim, according to court records. He confessed to the rape and attacks involving four other women over a five-year period, and was convicted in 2020. Now 51, he’s been sentenced to 59 to 280 years.

    Kurtz’s attorneys argued police lacked probable cause to obtain the information and impinged on his privacy rights.

    The state Supreme Court rejected those claims late last year but split on the reasons why. Three justices said Kurtz should not have expected his Google searches to be private, while three more said police had probable cause to look for anyone who searched the victim’s address before the attack. But a dissenting justice said probable cause requires more than just a “bald hunch” and guessing that a perpetrator would have used Google.

    Kurtz lawyer Douglas Taglieri made the same point in a court filing, but conceded, “It was a good guess.”

    Julia Skinner, a prosecutor in the case, said reverse keyword searches are much more effective when there are specific and even unusual terms that can narrow results, such as a distinctive name or an address. They are also particularly effective when crimes appear to have been planned out beforehand, she said.

    “I don’t think they’re used super frequently, because what you need to target has to be so specific,” she said. There were 57 searches returned in the Kurtz case, but many of them were first responders trying to locate the home in the immediate aftermath of the crime, Skinner said.

    In the similar case in Colorado, police sought the IP addresses of anyone who searched over a 15-day period for the address of a home where a deadly arson occurred. Authorities got IP addresses for 61 searches made by eight accounts, ultimately helping identify three teenage suspects.

    The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that although the keyword warrant was constitutionally defective for not specifying an “individualized probable cause,” the evidence could be used because police had acted in good faith about what was known about the law at the time.

    “If dystopian problems emerge, as some fear, the courts stand ready to hear argument regarding how we should rein in law enforcement’s use of rapidly advancing technology,” the majority of Colorado justices ruled.

    Courts have long permitted investigators to seek things like bank records or phone logs. However, civil liberties groups say extending those powers to online keywords turns every search user into a suspect.

    It’s unclear how many keyword warrants are issued every year — Google does not break down the total number of warrants it receives by type, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in a January 2024 brief.

    The two groups said police working on the bombings in Austin, Texas, sought anyone who searched for terms such as “low explosives” and “pipe bomb.” And in Brazil, investigators trying to solve the 2018 assassination in Rio de Janeiro of the politician Marielle Franco asked for those who searched for Franco’s name and the street where she lived. A Brazilian high court is expected to decide soon on the legality of those search disclosures.

    Reverse keyword warrants are distinct from “geofence” warrants, where criminal investigators seek information about who was in a given area at a particular time. The U.S. Supreme Court said last month it will rule on that method’s constitutionality.

    For many people, their Google search history contains some of their most personal thoughts, from health issues and political beliefs to financial decisions and spending patterns. Google is introducing more artificial intelligence into its search engine, seemingly a way to learn even more about users.

    “What could be more embarrassing,” asked University of Pennsylvania law professor and civil rights lawyer David Rudovsky, if every Google search “was now out there, gone viral?”

    Google warns users personal information can be shared outside the company when it has a “good-faith belief that disclosure of the information is reasonably necessary” to respond to applicable laws, regulations, legal processes or an “enforceable government request.”

    In the Kurtz case, Pennsylvania Justice David Wecht drew a distinction between Kurtz deciding to search for the victim’s name on Google and a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision that limited the use of broad collections of cellphone location data.

    “A user who wants to keep such material private has options,” Wecht wrote. “That user does not have to click on Google.”

    ___

    AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Francisco and writer Mauricio Savarese in Sao Paulo, Brazil, contributed.

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  • Robotaxis are coming to London. The city’s famed black cab drivers are skeptical

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    LONDON — The Ford Mustang Mach-E cruises down a London road choked with traffic, using its onboard AI system to avoid jaywalkers and cyclists, and navigate roadwork as it drives to its destination.

    The autonomous vehicle from British startup Wayve Technologies is on a test run ahead of the U.K. government’s robotaxi trials set to launch in the spring. Tech companies including U.S. company Waymo and China’s Baidu also plan to take part in the pilot program, making London the latest arena in the global robotaxi competition.

    While self-driving cabs aren’t new, London’s ancient road layout and busy streetscapes could pose special challenges for the technology.

    There’s also skepticism from London’s famed black cab drivers, who must pass a grueling training course known as “The Knowledge,” which requires memorizing hundreds of routes and takes years to complete. They’ve previously opposed technology that’s disrupted their industry, and protested the arrival of Uber.

    Self-driving taxis are “a solution looking for a problem,” said Steven McNamara, general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, which represents black cabbies.

    He doubts that robotaxis would have any advantage on London’s road network, which is laid out in a convoluted spiderweb that dates back to Roman times — unlike the grid layout in American cities like San Francisco and Phoenix where Waymo operates.

    The British capital is notorious for being one of the world’s most congested cities and its streets are already clogged with other modes of transport, including private cars, buses, motor scooters, bicycles and electric rental bikes.

    McNamara and many others have noted that robotaxis face another challenge from pedestrians crossing the streets. While jaywalking is illegal in the United States and many other countries, it’s not an offense in Britain.

    “It’s virtually impossible to drive anywhere (in London) without somebody walking in front of you,” McNamara said. In London, with a population of nearly 10 million, he wondered “how these cars are going to deal with those volumes of people?”

    The robotaxi companies say there’s room for the new technology.

    “I think Londoners are going to love autonomous driving. It’s going to be another choice alongside the Tube, cycling, walking, “said Wayve CEO Alex Kendall in a recent interview at the company’s workshop.

    Wayve is teaming up with Uber for the taxi trials, which are part of Britain’s move to adopt national regulations for self-driving vehicles. The nation is seeking to position itself as a world leader in the technology.

    Chinese tech company Baidu is also teaming up with Uber, as well as its ride-hailing rival Lyft, to operate its Apollo Go autonomous vehicle service in the London pilot.

    Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, will also take part and plans to launch a London passenger service by the third quarter of 2026, company representatives told reporters last month.

    Waymo officials sought to ease concerns that the company would suddenly flood London streets with robotaxis, noting that it has operated 1,000 total vehicles in San Francisco since going into full service in 2024.

    “We’re not here to replace anyone,” Waymo spokesman Ethan Teicher said. “We’re here to add another option for people who will choose to take black cabs or other modes of transportation when it suits them and choose to take Waymo, when it makes sense.”

    Waymo’s self-driving Jaguar I-Pace sedans have been spotted doing test runs around London. Wayve’s Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicles have also been doing road tests with human backup drivers sitting behind the wheel, ready to intervene if needed.

    On a recent demo ride for The Associated Press, Wayve’s Ford steered automatically through a three-mile (five kilometer) loop in North London without any problems.

    Cruising down a straight and open stretch of road, the car maintained a steady pace of 19 miles (30 kilometers) per hour, a tick under the speed limit.

    A traffic light changed as the car approached, forcing it to brake firmly and lightly jolting the passengers forward — the only moment that the driving was less than smooth.

    Kendall said Wayve takes a different approach from traditional self-driving technology. It doesn’t rely on “high definition” maps and “hand-coded” safety systems rules written by programmers anticipating every scenario.

    Instead, it uses an AI trained on millions of hours of data gathered by its cars to learn and understand how the world works.

    “This is the key thing for self-driving, because every time you drive on the road, you’re going to experience something different,” Kendall said. “You can’t rely on a self-driving car being told how to behave in every scenario it encounters.”

    He said Wayve is positioning itself as a technology company providing hardware and software that can be added to any vehicle to make it autonomous. It signed a deal with Nissan in December to build self-driving cars that will go on sale in Japan and North America by 2027.

    Kendall wouldn’t reveal any more specific details about the robotaxi service it will operate in collaboration with Uber, such as pricing.

    Waymo, which has its own app to hail rides, will have “competitive” prices and fares will be in line with the market, officials said last month, while adding that it is often able to “demand more premium pricing.”

    Experts say there’s a role for robotaxis in Britain, but it might be a niche one.

    They’re best poised to fill gaps in Britain’s public transport network, such as serving villages that have lost bus services connecting them to bigger towns and cities because of budget cuts, said Kevin Vincent, director of the Centre for Connected and Autonomous Automotive Research at Coventry University.

    There will still be demand for human drivers, especially from out-of-town visitors and tourists, he said.

    If you find a “cab driver who knows the area, you can ask him questions. You feel confident and comfortable you’re going where you need to go,” which is a service that won’t be easily replaced in the short term, Vincent said.

    Self-driving taxis can’t replicate the human touch, said Frank O’Beirne, who has been driving black cabs for 14 years.

    For example, one of his recent fares was a pair of blind passengers going to touristy Leicester Square. He ended up parking at a cab rank and walking them across the street to their destination, a Chinese restaurant that turned out to be in the basement of a casino.

    “They would never have found that, ever, (on their own),” said O’Beirne. “There’s nothing like us. I can’t see the space where autonomous taxis can operate, really.”

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  • Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, or BAFTAs

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    LONDON — Winners of the 2026 British Academy Film Awards, announced Sunday:

    Film — “One Battle After Another”

    British Film — “Hamnet”

    Director — Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

    Actor — Robert Aramayo, “I Swear”

    Actress — Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”

    Supporting Actor — Sean Penn, “One Battle After Another”

    Supporting Actress — Wunmi Mosaku, “Sinners”

    Rising Star (voted for by the public) — Robert Aramayo

    Outstanding British Debut — Akinola Davies Jr. and Wale Davies for writing and directing “My Father’s Shadow”

    Original Screenplay — Ryan Coogler, “Sinners”

    Adapted Screenplay — Paul Thomas Anderson, “One Battle After Another”

    Film Not in the English Language — “Sentimental Value”

    Musical Score — “Sinners”

    Cinematography – Michael Bauman, “One Battle After Another”

    Editing – Andy Jurgensen, “One Battle After Another”

    Production Design — “Frankenstein”

    Costume Design – Kate Hawley, “Frankenstein”

    Sound — “F1”

    Casting — Lauren Evans, “I Swear”

    Visual Effects — “Avatar: Fire and Ash”

    Makeup and Hair — “Frankenstein”

    Animated Film — “Zootropolis 2” (released in the U.S. as “Zootopia 2”)

    British Short Film — “This is Endometriosis”

    British Short Animation — “Two Black Boys in Paradise”

    Children’s and Family Film – “Boong”

    Documentary – “Mr. Nobody Against Putin”

    Outstanding British contribution to cinema — Clare Binns, Creative Director of PictureHouse Cinemas

    BAFTA Fellowship — NBCUniversal Entertainment chairperson Donna Langley

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  • US futures fall while Asian markets are mostly higher after the Supreme Court nixes Trump’s tariffs

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    BANGKOK — U.S. futures fell and most Asian markets climbed Monday after the Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

    Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday.

    Hong Kong led regional gains as its Hang Seng index surged 2.2% to 27,003.47. But the Shanghai Composite index lost 1.3% to 4,082.07.

    In South Korea, the Kospi gained 1.1% to 5,873.07.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4% to 9,041.00.

    Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 1.4%.

    The mixed reactions are “highlighting the winners-and-losers effect of shifts in tariff policy that has just delivered a boost to countries who previously had a comparatively bad deal,” Benjamin Picton of Rabobank said in a commentary.

    “U.S. tariff policy will continue to be a source of uncertainty for markets as traders attempt to price in the implications of what is still a movable feast,” he wrote.

    The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.7% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%. The future for the Nasdaq composite index was down 0.8%.

    On Friday, Wall Street kept calm after the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which had triggered panic in financial markets when they were announced last year.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 6,909.51. It had been flipping between small gains and losses before the court’s ruling, following discouraging reports showing slowing growth for the U.S. economy and faster inflation.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 49,625.97. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.9% to 22,886.07.

    Tariffs also aren’t going away, even with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump in the afternoon said he would use other avenues to put taxes on imports from other countries after calling the court’s decision terrible.

    “Just so you understand, we have tariffs, we just have them in a different way,” Trump told reporters in an afternoon briefing. He said he would sign an executive order to impose a 10% global tariff under a law that could limit it to 150 days. He later raised that to 15%.

    The president also said he’s exploring other tariffs through other avenues, ones that would require an investigation through the Commerce Department.

    The reaction has been tentative given persisting uncertainties over what Trump will do.

    On Wall Street, Akamai Technologies dropped 14.1% for one of the market’s sharpest losses. The cybersecurity and cloud computing company reported stronger results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected, but it gave a profit forecast for the upcoming year that fell short of estimates.

    Akamai plans to spend a bigger percentage of its revenue this upcoming year on equipment and other investments. It’s the latest potential indicator of how shortages of computer memory created by the AI boom are affecting customers throughout the economy.

    Discouraging reports showing slowing U.S. economic growth and accelerating inflation drew a relatively muted response from investors.

    The reports underscore the tricky situation the Federal Reserve faces as it sets interest rates, but did not change traders’ expectations much for what the Fed will ultimately do. Traders are still betting that the Fed will lower rates at least twice this year, according to data from CME Group.

    Lower interest rates would give the economy and investment prices a boost, but they also risk worsening inflation. Fed officials said at their last meeting that they want to see inflation fall further before they would support cutting rates further.

    In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 53 cents to $65.95 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 51 cents to $70.79 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 154.11 Japanese yen f rom 154.99 yen. The euro rose to $1.1828 from $1.1780.

    The price of gold rose 1.9%, while the price of silver was up 5.5%.

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  • US futures fall while Asian markets are mostly higher after the Supreme Court nixes Trump’s tariffs

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    BANGKOK — U.S. futures fell and most Asian markets climbed Monday after the Supreme Court struck down most of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

    Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday.

    Hong Kong led regional gains as its Hang Seng index surged 2.2% to 27,003.47. But the Shanghai Composite index lost 1.3% to 4,082.07.

    In South Korea, the Kospi gained 1.1% to 5,873.07.

    Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.4% to 9,041.00.

    Taiwan’s Taiex jumped 1.4%.

    The mixed reactions are “highlighting the winners-and-losers effect of shifts in tariff policy that has just delivered a boost to countries who previously had a comparatively bad deal,” Benjamin Picton of Rabobank said in a commentary.

    “U.S. tariff policy will continue to be a source of uncertainty for markets as traders attempt to price in the implications of what is still a movable feast,” he wrote.

    The future for the S&P 500 lost 0.7% and that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 0.6%. The future for the Nasdaq composite index was down 0.8%.

    On Friday, Wall Street kept calm after the Supreme Court’s ruling against Trump’s sweeping tariffs, which had triggered panic in financial markets when they were announced last year.

    The S&P 500 rose 0.7% to 6,909.51. It had been flipping between small gains and losses before the court’s ruling, following discouraging reports showing slowing growth for the U.S. economy and faster inflation.

    The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to 49,625.97. The Nasdaq composite rose 0.9% to 22,886.07.

    Tariffs also aren’t going away, even with the Supreme Court’s ruling. Trump in the afternoon said he would use other avenues to put taxes on imports from other countries after calling the court’s decision terrible.

    “Just so you understand, we have tariffs, we just have them in a different way,” Trump told reporters in an afternoon briefing. He said he would sign an executive order to impose a 10% global tariff under a law that could limit it to 150 days. He later raised that to 15%.

    The president also said he’s exploring other tariffs through other avenues, ones that would require an investigation through the Commerce Department.

    The reaction has been tentative given persisting uncertainties over what Trump will do.

    On Wall Street, Akamai Technologies dropped 14.1% for one of the market’s sharpest losses. The cybersecurity and cloud computing company reported stronger results for the end of 2025 than analysts expected, but it gave a profit forecast for the upcoming year that fell short of estimates.

    Akamai plans to spend a bigger percentage of its revenue this upcoming year on equipment and other investments. It’s the latest potential indicator of how shortages of computer memory created by the AI boom are affecting customers throughout the economy.

    Discouraging reports showing slowing U.S. economic growth and accelerating inflation drew a relatively muted response from investors.

    The reports underscore the tricky situation the Federal Reserve faces as it sets interest rates, but did not change traders’ expectations much for what the Fed will ultimately do. Traders are still betting that the Fed will lower rates at least twice this year, according to data from CME Group.

    Lower interest rates would give the economy and investment prices a boost, but they also risk worsening inflation. Fed officials said at their last meeting that they want to see inflation fall further before they would support cutting rates further.

    In other dealings early Monday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 53 cents to $65.95 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, gave up 51 cents to $70.79 per barrel.

    The U.S. dollar slipped to 154.11 Japanese yen f rom 154.99 yen. The euro rose to $1.1828 from $1.1780.

    The price of gold rose 1.9%, while the price of silver was up 5.5%.

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  • NBC’s Olympics audience up 94% from Beijing

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    NBC’s Olympics bet looks strong again as viewers pour back in for the Milan Winter Games. NBC was averaging about 24 million viewers across afternoon and primetime coverage through Friday. That marks a 94% jump from the 2022 Beijing Games.…

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    By JOE REEDY – AP Sports Writer

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  • 3 players targeted with racist abuse online after Premier League games

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    Three Premier League players were targeted with racist abuse online after their games this weekend.

    Chelsea defender Wesley Fofana and Burnley midfielder Hannibal Mejbri shared images of racist messages they were sent privately over Instagram following their teams’ match at Stamford Bridge that finished 1-1.

    On Sunday, Wolverhampton striker Tolu Arokodare showed racially aggravated messages he received on Instagram after a 1-0 loss at Crystal Palace, during which he had a penalty saved.

    The incidents came days after UEFA began an investigation into claims by Real Madrid forward Vinicius Junior that he was racially abused on the field by Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni during a Champions League game in Lisbon.

    Fofana, who was sent off for receiving two yellow cards against Burnley, posted screenshots of messages he had been sent and wrote on Instagram: “2026, it’s still the same thing, nothing changes. These people are never punished.

    “You create big campaigns against racism, but nobody actually does anything.”

    Mejbri wrote on his Instagram story: “It’s 2026 and there are still people like that. Educate yourself and your kids, please.”

    Chelsea said in a statement the abuse directed at Fofana was “completely unacceptable and runs counter to the values of the game and everything we stand for as a club.”

    “We stand unequivocally with Wes,” the statement read. “He has our full support, as do all our players who are too often forced to endure this hatred simply for doing their job.

    “We will work with the relevant authorities and platforms in identifying the perpetrators and take the strongest possible action.”

    Burnley said in its statement there was “no place for this in our society and we condemn it unreservedly.”

    One of the racist messages sent to Arokodare on Sunday appeared to be from a gambler.

    Writing on his Instagram story, Arokodare said: “It’s still unbelievable to me that we’re playing in a time where people have so much freedom to communicate such racism without any consequences.”

    ___

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

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  • It’s a quiet box office weekend as ‘GOAT’ edges ‘Wuthering Heights’

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    It was a battle of the holdovers at the North American box office this weekend, with the family friendly film “GOAT” edging out the R-rated “Wuthering Heights.”

    Sony Pictures Animation’s “GOAT” took in $17 million, while Warner Bros.’ “Wuthering Heights” earned $14.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Both films are in their second weekend.

    Overall, it was a quiet weekend at movie theaters around the country, with new offerings all opening under $10 million. Those results applied to the faith-based sequel “I Can Only Imagine 2,” the Glen Powell black comedy “How to Make a Killing” and the horror film “Psycho Killer,” which currently has a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. One bright spot in theaters was Baz Luhrmann’s immersive documentary “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” which earned $3.3 million from only 325 locations in its limited IMAX release. That film expands to nationwide distribution on Feb. 27.

    “GOAT” dropped a slim 38% in its second weekend in theaters, which the studio attributed to positive word-of-mouth. The Stephen Curry-produced movie, about a small goat with big sports dreams (voiced by “Stranger Things’” Caleb McLaughlin) has made over $58.3 million. Globally, its running total is at $102.3 million.

    “Wuthering Heights” meanwhile fell 57% from its opening last weekend, bringing its domestic total to $60 million. Internationally it added another $26.3 million, pushing its global total to $151.7 million against an $80 million production budget. The movie’s top international market continues to be the U.K., where it has made $22.5 million alone.

    Third place for the weekend went to Lionsgate and Kingdom Story’s “I Can Only Imagine 2,” a follow-up to the 2018 Dennis Quaid movie that made $86 million against a $7 million budget. The sequel opened with $8 million, a far cry from the first film’s $17 million launch, though that was in line with expectations. It did score a rare A+ CinemaScore.

    Amazon and MGM’s “Crime 101” fell 59% in its second weekend, bringing in $5.8 million to take fourth place. The Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo heist thriller has now made $24.7 million against a reported $90 million budget. “Send Help” rounded out the top five with $4.5 million.

    “How to Make a Killing” landed in sixth place with $3.6 million. A24 released the StudioCanal movie in 1,600 North American theaters. The film, loosely inspired by “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” stars Powell as a man who, in a quest to acquire a $28 billion inheritance, decides to kill off his family members. Directed by John Patton Ford (“Emily the Criminal”), “How to Make a Killing” was not well-received by critics: it’s sitting at a “rotten” 47% on Rotten Tomatoes.

    “Pyscho Killer,” released by 20th Century Studios, fared much worse and opened outside of the top 10. The horror-thriller written by Andrew Kevin Walker ( “Seven” ) and directed by Gavin Polone (a notable television and film producer in his directorial debut) tanked in its first weekend in theaters with $1.6 million in ticket sales from 1,110 theaters. Audiences were not any happier with it than critics; According to PostTrak, only 31% of ticket buyers would “definitely recommend” it.

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

    1. “GOAT,” $17 million.

    2. “Wuthering Heights,” $14.2 million.

    3. “I Can Only Imagine 2,” $8 million.

    4. “Crime 101,” $5.8 million.

    5. “Send Help,” $4.5 million.

    6. “How to Make a Killing,” $3.6 million.

    7. “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” $3.3 million.

    8. “Solo Mio,” $2.6 million.

    9. “Zootopia 2,” $2.3 million.

    10. “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” $1.8 million.

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  • New law puts Kansas at vanguard of denying trans identities on drivers licenses, birth certificates

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    TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas is set to invalidate about 1,700 driver’s licenses held by transgender residents and roughly as many birth certificates under a new law that goes beyond Republican-imposed restrictions in other states on listing gender identities in government documents.

    The new law takes effect Thursday. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed the measure but the Legislature’s GOP supermajorities overrode it last week as Republican state lawmakers across the U.S. have pursued another round of measures to roll back transgender rights.

    The bill prohibits documents from listing any sex other than the one assigned birth and invalidates any that reflect a conflicting gender identity. Florida, Tennessee and Texas also don’t allow driver’s licenses to reflect a trans person’s gender identity, and at least eight states besides Kansas have policies that bar trans residents from changing their birth certificates.

    But only Kansas’ law requires reversing changes previously made for trans residents. Kansas officials expect to cancel about 1,700 driver’s licenses and issue new birth certificates for up to 1,800 people.

    “It tells me that Kansas Republicans are interested in being on the vanguard of the culture war and in a race to the bottom,” said Democratic state Rep. Abi Boatman, a transgender Air Force veteran appointed in January to fill a vacant Wichita seat.

    Kansas’ new law enjoyed nearly unanimous GOP support. It is the latest success in what has become an annual effort to further roll back transgender rights by Republicans in statehouses across the U.S., bolstered by policies and rhetoric from President Donald Trump’s administration.

    Trump and other Republicans attack research-backed conclusions that gender can change or be fluid as radical “gender ideology.” GOP lawmakers in Kansas regularly describe transgender girls and women as male and as they say they’re protecting women.

    Like fellow Republicans, Kansas Senate Majority Leader Chase Blaisi said Trump’s reelection and other GOP victories in 2024 show that voters want “to return to common sense” on gender.

    “When I go home, people believe there are just two sexes, male and female,” Blasi said. “It’s basic biology I learned in high school.”

    Kelly supports transgender rights, but GOP lawmakers have overridden her vetoes three of the past four years. Kansas bans gender-affirming care for minors and bars transgender women and girls from female sports teams, kindergarten through college.

    Transgender people can’t use public restrooms, locker rooms or other single-sex facilities associated with their gender identities, though there was no enforcement mechanism until this year’s law added tough new provisions.

    Transgender people have said carrying IDs that misgender them opens them to intrusive questions, harassment and even violence when they show it to police, merchants, and others.

    In 2023, Republicans halted changes in Kansas birth certificates and driver’s licenses by enacting a measure ending the state’s legal recognition of trans residents’ gender identities. Though the law didn’t mention either document, it legally defined male and female by a person’s “biological reproductive system” at birth.

    However, a lawsuit led to state court decisions that last year permitted driver’s license changes to resume.

    Legislators in at least seven other states are considering bills to prevent transgender people from changing one or both documents, according to a search using the bill-tracking software Plural.

    But none would reverse past changes.

    The extra step by Kansas legislators reinforces a message “that trans people aren’t welcome,” said Anthony Alvarez, a transgender University of Kansas student who works for a pro-LGBTQ rights group.

    Kansas is likely to notify transgender residents by mail that their driver’s licenses are no longer valid and they need to go to a local licensing office to get a new one, said Zachary Denney, spokesperson for the agency that issues them.

    The Legislature hasn’t earmarked funds to cover the cost, so each person will pay it — $26 for a standard license.

    Alvarez already has had four IDs in four years as he’s changed his name, changed his gender marker and turned 21.

    He’s always planned to stay in his native Kansas after getting his history degree this spring.

    But, he said, “They’re just making it harder and harder for me to live in the state that I love.”

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