Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, one of Tesla’s biggest investors, said Tuesday that it will vote against a proposed compensation package that could pay CEO Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion over a decade.
There will be more than a dozen company proposals up for a vote Thursday during Tesla’s annual meeting, but none have generated more division than Musk’s potentially massive pay package.
“While we appreciate the significant value created under Mr. Musk’s visionary role, we are concerned about the total size of the award, dilution, and lack of mitigation of key person risk consistent with our views on executive compensation,” said Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages the country’s Government Pension Fund Global. “We will continue to seek constructive dialogue with Tesla on this and other topics.”
The fund has a 1.16% stake, the sixth largest holding among institutional investors.
AP AUDIO: Big Tesla investor will vote against Musk’s massive pay package
A proposed compensation package is getting a lot of attention ahead of Tesla’s annual meeting. AP correspondent Mike Hempen reports.
Baron Capital Management, which holds about 0.4% of Tesla’s outstanding shares said Monday that it will vote in favor of the compensation package.
“Elon is the ultimate “key man” of key man risk. Without his relentless drive and uncompromising standards, there would be no Tesla,” wrote founder Ron Baron. “He has built one of the most important companies in the world. He’s redefining transportation, energy and humanoid robotics and creating lasting value for shareholders while doing it. His interests are completely aligned with investors.”
Musk is the company’s largest investor, holding 15.79% of all outstanding shares.
Tesla management has proposed a compensation arrangement that would hand Musk shares worth as much as 12% of the company in a dozen separate packages if the company meets ambitious performance targets, including massive increases in car production, share price and operating profit.
The closest thing resembling drama for the first big reveal of this season’s College Football Playoff rankings hinged on which undefeated team would receive top billing.
The Buckeyes took the top spot in the first set of 2025 rankings Tuesday night, followed by Indiana and Texas A&M.
In choosing the two Big Ten teams ahead of Texas A&M, the 12-person committee appeared to give less weight to A&M’s tougher schedule and its 41-40 win over tenth-ranked Notre Dame and more to the way the Buckeyes and Hoosiers have mowed down opponents this year, with only two games between the two of them decided by less than 10 points.
“I think statistically when we looked at A&M defensively, they’re just lower than both Ohio State and Indiana,” committee chair Mack Rhoades said. “We had to make a hard decision, and you’re trying to find separators, and that was a separator for us.”
Another team with no losses, BYU of the Big 12, was ranked seventh.
Nos. 4, 5 and 6 went to Southeastern Conference teams with one loss each — Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. All of the top six came from either the Big Ten or SEC, a dose of business as usual despite a season that has been anything but predictable.
This marked the first of six weekly rankings the committee will release this season, ending Dec. 7 when the final list will set the bracket for the second 12-team playoff in major college football history.
That tournament begins Dec. 19-20 with four games on the campus of seeds No. 5-8. The top four seeds play winners of those games over the New Year holiday and the title game is set for Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium outside Miami.
Texas Tech was ranked eighth and Oregon came in at No. 9. Rounding out the top 12 were Notre Dame — the only team in the Top 25 not from a power conference — then Texas and Oklahoma.
But if the bracket were set today, the Longhorns and Sooners would miss out,- bumped by No. 14 Virginia of the ACC and Memphis of the American. That’s thanks to a rule that places the five best-ranked conference champions into the bracket even if they’re not in the top 12.
Memphis wasn’t among the committee’s top 25 but was still the highest ranked leader in a Group of Five conference.
There is, of course, plenty of time for teams to make their cases, with four more weeks of the regular season, then a slate of conference title games set for the first weekend in December.
“If we go back to last year, Arizona State wasn’t even in the rankings for our first two rankings,” Rhoades said of the Sun Devils, who won the Big 12 and made the field. “Again, to everybody out there, this is the first ranking and still a lot of ball left to be played.”
The final tally in the top 12: The SEC has six teams, the Big Ten three, the Big 12 two, and the ACC none, with one independent.
Among those still holding out hope are teams such as 16th-ranked Vanderbilt and 17th-ranked Georgia Tech, each of whom spent time in the AP top 10 this season thanks to upsets that turned college football upside down in September and October.
The first-round matchups based on CFP rankings
— No. 12 Memphis at No. 5 Georgia, winner vs. No. 4 Alabama. You can almost hear SEC commissioner Greg Sankey breaking his TV wondering how an unranked team is in here over one of his.
— No. 11 Virginia at No. 6 Ole Miss, winner vs. No. 3 Texas A&M. Virginia’s only Top 25 meeting this season was against Florida State, which does not resemble a Top 25 team now.
— No. 10 Notre Dame at No. 7 BYU, winner vs. No. 2 Indiana. The Fighting Irish have to hope some of the teams immediately below them — like Texas and Oklahoma — do not put up impressive wins since they close with Navy, Pitt, Syracuse and Stanford.
— No. 9 Oregon at No. 8 Texas Tech, winner vs. No. 1 Ohio State. A Booster Bowl pitting teams backed by billionaires Phil Knight (Ducks) and Cody Campbell (Red Raiders).
Tweaks in this year’s bracket
The biggest change in the setup of this year’s bracket was eliminating the first-round bye for the four best conference champions. It would mean that Virginia, instead of jumping from a No. 14 ranking to a No. 3 seed, would be seeded 11th with a road game against Mississippi.
Rhoades also spent time discussing Oregon, which is ranked sixth in the AP poll but ninth in the playoff rankings. The Ducks’ best win this year was a 20-point victory over Northwestern, while its double-overtime win at Penn State early in the season has become less impressive as last year’s semifinalist fell apart.
“When we looked at and evaluated Oregon, we really looked at the quality of the team and how they looked on film,” Rhoades said.
Kimberly-Clark is buying Tylenol maker Kenvue in a cash and stock deal worth about $48.7 billion, creating a massive consumer health goods company.
Shareholders of Kimberly-Clark will own about 54% of the combined company. Kenvue shareholders will own about 46% in what is one of the largest corporate takeovers this year. The deal must still be approved by the shareholders of both companies.
The combined company will have a huge stable of household brands under one roof, putting Kenvue’s Listerine mouthwash and Band-Aid side-by-side with Kimberly-Clark’s Cottonelle toilet paper, Huggies and Kleenex tissues. It will also generate about $32 billion in annual revenue.
Kenvue has spent a relatively brief period as an independent company, having been spun off by Johnson & Johnson two years ago. J&J first announced in late 2021 that it was splitting its slow-growth consumer health division from the pharmaceutical and medical device divisions.
Kenvue has since been targeted by activist investors unhappy about the trajectory of the company and Wall Street appeared to anticipate some heavy lifting ahead for Kimberly-Clark.
Kenvue’s stock jumped 12% Monday afternoon, while shares of Kimberly-Clark, based outside of Dallas, slumped by nearly 15%.
Kenvue shares have shed nearly 50% of their value since approaching $28 in the spring of 2023. Morningstar analyst Keonhee Kim said Kenvue’s volatile journey as a public company may have been driven in part by poor execution and a lack of experience operating as a stand-alone business.
He said the leadership of a more-established consumer products company like Kimberly-Clark could help unlock some of Kenvue’s value.
He also noted that Kenvue brands include Neutrogena, Benadryl and other names that have been in store consumer health aisles for decades. Kim said he thinks Kimberly-Clark may have seen upside in adding those products.
“I think that may have made the deal a lot more attractive … especially after the past couple of months of Kenvue’s stock price decline,” he said.
Trump then urged pregnant women against using the medicine. That went beyond Food and Drug Administration advice that doctors “should consider minimizing” the painkiller acetaminophen’s use in pregnancy — amid inconclusive evidence about whether too much could be linked to autism.
Kennedy reiterated the FDA guidance during a press conference last week. He said that there isn’t sufficient evidence to link the drug to autism.
“We have asked physicians to minimize the use to when it’s absolutely necessary,” he said.
Kenvue has continued to push back on the Trump administration’s public statements about Tylenol and acetaminophen, the active ingredient it contains.
“We strongly disagree with allegations that it does and are deeply concerned about the health risks and confusion this poses for expecting mothers and parents,” Kenvue said in a statement on its website.
The merger could face other hurdles. Citi Investment Research analyst Filippo Falorni said he is concerned about the deal’s size given the recent history in the sector, particularly given the challenges faced by Kenvue.
In July, Kenvue announced that CEO Thibaut Mongon was leaving in the midst of a strategic review, with the company under mounting pressure from activist investors unhappy about growth. Critics say Kenvue has relied too much on its legacy brands and failed to innovate.
Industry analysts also point out the poor track record for mergers involving consumer packaged goods companies. In September, Kraft Heinz said it would break up its decade-old merger. Its net revenue has fallen every year since 2020.
Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue, like Kraft Heinz, are facing increasing competition from cheaper store brands. In 2024, 51% of toilet paper and other household paper products sold in the U.S were store brands, according to Circana, a market research company, while store brands held a 24% share of sales of health products, including medications and vitamins.
On Monday, a bottle of 100 extra-strength Tylenol caplets cost $10.97 on Walmart’s website. A bottle of 100 extra-strength acetaminophen caplets from Walmart’s Equate brand cost $1.98.
Inflation drove some of that buyer behavior, Circana said. Shoppers are also shifting their purchases to stores with more private-label brands, like Aldi and Costco. And stores are improving their offerings and adding more of them; last year, Walmart and Target both launched new store brands to complement their existing ones.
Still, both Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue make name-brand products in segments where consumers are less likely to shift to store brands, including hair care, skin care, feminine products and mouth care, according to Circana. Kenvue owns brands like Aveeno and Neutrogena, for example, while Kimberly-Clark makes Kotex and Depend.
Kimberly-Clark Chairman and CEO Mike Hsu will be chairman and CEO of the combined company. Three members of the Kenvue’s board will join Kimberly-Clark’s board at closing. The combined company will keep Kimberly-Clark’s headquarters in Irving, Texas, but there will be significant operations around Kenvue facilities and locations as well.
The deal is expected to close in the second half of next year. It still needs approval from shareholders of both both companies.
Kenvue shareholders will receive $3.50 per share in cash and 0.14625 Kimberly-Clark shares for each Kenvue share held at closing. That amounts to $21.01 per share, based on the closing price of Kimberly-Clark shares on Friday.
Kimberly-Clark and Kenvue said that they identified about $1.9 billion in cost savings that are expected in the first three years after the transaction’s closing.
___
AP Health Writer Tom Murphy contributed to this report.
Flight delays continued at U.S. airports Sunday amid air traffic controller shortages as the government shutdown entered its second month, with Newark airport in New Jersey experiencing delays of two to three hours.
New York City’s Emergency Management office said on X that Newark delays often ripple out to the region’s other airports.
Travelers flying to, from or through New York “should expect schedule changes, gate holds, and missed connections. Anyone flying today should check flight status before heading to the airport and expect longer waits,” the social media post added.
George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Chicago O’Hare were also seeing dozens of delays and one or two cancellations, along with major airports in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver and Miami, according to FlightAware.
As of Sunday evening, FlightAware said there were 4,295 delays and 557 cancelations of flights within, into or out of the U.S., not all related to controller shortages. In July, before the shutdown, about 69% of flights were on time and 2.5% were canceled.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been warning that travelers will start to see more flight disruptions the longer controllers go without a paycheck.
“We work overtime to make sure the system is safe. And we will slow traffic down, you’ll see delays, we’ll have flights canceled to make sure the system is safe,” Duffy said Sunday on CBS’S “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
He also said he does not plan to fire air traffic controllers who don’t show up for work.
“Again when they’re making decisions to feed their families, I’m not going to fire air traffic controllers,” Duffy said. “They need support, they need money, they need a paycheck. They don’t need to be fired.”
Earlier in October, Duffy had warned air traffic controllers who had called in sick instead of working without a paycheck during the shutdown risked being fired. Even a small number of controllers not showing up for work is causing problems because the FAA has a critical shortage of them.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday on X that nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay for weeks.
Staffing shortages can occur both in regional control centers that manage multiple airports and in individual airport towers, but they don’t always lead to flight disruptions. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, flight data showed strong on-time performance at most major U.S. airports for the month of October despite isolated staffing problems throughout the month.
Before the shutdown, the FAA was already dealing with a long-standing shortage of about 3,000 air traffic controllers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?
Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.
Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.
“Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”
Most bachelor’s degrees are still worth it
A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.
A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70% of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53% in North Dakota to 82% in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.
It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.
Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.
“A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.
“I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”
Lowering college tuition and improving graduate earnings
American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.
Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.
The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.
A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.
“We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.
The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.
A disconnect with the job market
Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52% of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.
“No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.
The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.
A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.
Others see transparency as a key solution.
For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.
Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93% produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.
The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.
Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.
“In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”
___
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
DALLAS (AP) — In the decades since June West Brandt’s older brother was killed in World War II, her kind and artistic sibling who loved to play boogie-woogie on the piano has never been far from her mind. So she was delighted to discover he’s also being remembered by a Dutch couple who regularly visit a marker for him at a Netherlands cemetery.
“It’s wonderful for me to know that someone is there,” said Brandt, 93, who lives near Houston.
Her introduction over the summer to Lisa and Guido Meijers came by way of a new initiative aiming to increase the number of connections between the family members of those buried and remembered on the walls of the missing at the World War II cemetery and the Dutch people who have adopted each one.
The project was spurred on by “The Monuments Men” author Robert Edsel, whose newest book, “Remember Us,” tells the story of the adoption program at the Netherlands American Cemetery. His Dallas-based Monuments Men and Women Foundation teamed with the Dutch foundation responsible for the adoptions to create the Forever Promise Project, which has a searchable database of the names of U.S. service members buried and remembered at the cemetery.
“I’d like us to find and connect as many American families to their Dutch adopters as is possible,” Edsel said.
Ton Hermes, chairman of the Foundation for Adopting Graves American Cemetery Margraten, said that while each of the about 8,300 graves and 1,700 markers for the missing at the cemetery near the village of Margraten have adopters, only about 20% to 30% of them are in contact with the service member’s relatives.
When the Meijerses adopted the marker for Army Air Forces Staff Sgt. William Durham “W.D.” West Jr. several years ago, they knew only basic information about the 20-year-old whose body was never recovered after his B-24 bomber was shot down over the North Sea on a mission into Nazi Germany.
Through talking with Brandt, they’ve learned that West was “quite a creative soul,” Lisa Meijers said.
“That obviously makes a huge change in how to remember someone,” she said.
Brandt said her brother loved to paint and played the piano by ear, and even though she was six years younger, they were “big buddies” growing up in the small western Louisiana city of DeRidder.
“We loved being together, so it was very hard when he left,” Brandt said.
Brandt’s daughter, Allison Brandt Woods, said it’s heartwarming knowing Meijerses are watching over the marker. Woods met up with them on a recent trip and hopes the connection between their families will continue with future generations.
The cemetery, Lisa Meijers said, is among many reminders of World War II in the southern Netherlands, which was liberated by Allied forces in September 1944 after over four years of Nazi occupation.
“We just really feel how extremely important it is to remember these things and to honor the sacrifices these people made for us,” she said.
The Meijerses, who have a 1-year-old son, visit West’s marker about once a month, bringing flowers.
Hermes said the program is so popular that there’s a waiting list to adopt a grave or marker.
Names on the walls for the missing were opened up for adoption in 2008, said Frans Roebroeks, secretary for the Dutch adoption foundation. The formal adoption process for graves began to take shape during a 1945 meeting of the Margraten town council.
“They were meeting to figure out the answer to the question: How do you thank your liberators when they are no longer alive to thank?” Edsel said.
Many initial adopters took on the grave of someone they had gotten to know.
“Once they heard their soldier was killed in action, the Dutch people decided to adopt his grave, to bring flowers and to correspond with the wives or mothers in the United States,” Hermes said.
Roebroeks said many of the graves have been cared for by the same family since the end of the war, including one that’s been passed down through his family. He said Army Pfc. Henry Wolf had stayed at his grandfather’s farm and became “like a son” to him.
Wolf’s grave has passed from Roebroeks’ grandfather to his mother and now to his sister, who will pass it to her daughter, he said.
“That grave stays in the family,” he said.
Edsel said that so far, over 300 families have asked to be put in touch with their adopters.
ATLANTA (AP) — Scottie Scheffler shies away from comparisons to Tiger Woods even as the numbers are starting to make that inevitable.
Scheffler has been No. 1 in the world longer than anyone since Woods. He is the first player since Woods to have five-plus wins in back-to-back years. He comes into the Tour Championship on a streak of 13 tournaments in the top 10.
“It’s very silly to be compared to Tiger Woods,” Scheffler said. “I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. You’ve grown up watching that guy do what he did week in, week out, it was pretty amazing to see.”
Scheffler was amazed by the only time he played with him in a tournament, a moment nearly five years ago that shaped the way the 29-year-old from Dallas now dominates his sport.
It was the final round of the Masters in November 2020, both of them 11 shots out of the lead with no chance to win. What stands out from that autumn Sunday was Woods making a 10 on the par-3 12th hole and then made birdie on five of his last six holes.
Scheffler remembers the opening hole just as well.
As he looks back to the start of his pro career, Scheffler felt he was guilty of not giving himself enough chances at winning and rarely being in the final group.
“I always found myself just a little bit on the outside looking in, and that’s one of the things I learned from playing with Tiger,” he said.
“We’re in 20th place or whatever going into Sunday at the Masters. Tiger has won five Masters, he’s got no chance of winning the tournament. Then we showed up on the first hole and I was watching him read his putt, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy is in it right now.’
“That was something that I just thought about for a long time,” Scheffler said. “I felt like a change I needed to make was bringing that same intensity to each round and each shot. And I feel like the reason I’ve had success in these tournaments is … just the amount of consistency and the intensity that I bring to each round of golf is not taking shots off, not taking rounds off, not taking tournaments off.
“When I show up at a tournament, I’m here for a purpose and that’s to compete hard, and you compete hard on every shot.”
That’s what golf has witnessed since Scheffler finally broke through at the WM Phoenix Open in 2022, and within two months he was a Masters champion and No. 1 in the world.
It doesn’t mean he wins every week — golf is still golf, an impossible game to master.
This week is an example of that. The change to the format in the Tour Championship put emphasis on getting to East Lake, and now the top 30 players start from scratch for 72 holes to see who wins the FedEx Cup.
Scheffler has no advantage by starting at 10-under par, nor does he have a points advantage. It’s a welcome change for most players because they signed off on it. Rory McIlroy, the Masters champion, says he didn’t mind the starting strokes because great play should get some reward.
“I didn’t hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here,” McIlroy said. “But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year.”
Scheffler started with a two-shot lead each of the last three years and it still took him the third try to win the FedEx Cup. He loves the pressure of competing. And besides, not starting with an advantage is sure to get his attention from the start.
He has his caddie, Ted Scott, back on the bag this week as Scott is dealing with a family emergency. Scheffler is quick to point out how his career took off when he brought in Scott to work with all the preparation he put into his job.
This year has been as good as any considering he started late because of hand surgery, and he added the PGA Championship and British Open to his two previous Masters titles.
But it’s not over yet. Scheffler was reminded of that in 2022 when he lost a six-shot lead in the final round to McIlroy. That was the year he won his first Masters, rose to No. 1 in the world and had four victories.
But when he returned home, he was met with condolences for not winning at East Lake.
“It just irked me so bad finishing off the year where guys were like: ‘Hey, great playing, I’m sorry about how it ended.’ It’s like, ‘You know what, man, I won the Masters this year, won a few other tournaments.’ It was a pretty good year.”
The tournament starts Thursday. It’s already been a good year for Scheffler.
The College Football Playoff selection committee announced Wednesday it will place more emphasis on strength of schedule this year when determining which teams make the 12-team field.
The committee said in a statement that the schedule strength metric has been adjusted to apply greater weight to games against strong opponents. An additional metric, record strength, has been added to go beyond a team’s schedule strength to assess how a team performed against that schedule.
“This metric rewards teams defeating high-quality opponents while minimizing the penalty for losing to such a team,” the committee said. “Conversely, these changes will provide minimal reward for defeating a lower-quality opponent while imposing a greater penalty for losing to such a team.”
AP Mobile App CTA
Get the AP News App
The adjustment to the evaluation process comes after some in the Southeastern Conference complained about last season’s inclusion of — at the time of selections — an 11-2 SMU of the Atlantic Coast Conference over a 9-3 Alabama or even a 9-3 South Carolina or 9-3 Mississippi.
SMU’s losses were to an unranked BYU and a ranked Clemson in the ACC championship game. Alabama had bad losses against Vanderbilt and Oklahoma, both .500 at the time, but also had wins over a second-ranked Georgia, No. 21 Missouri and No. 14 LSU.
Prompted by concerns about how teams that don’t play in conference championship games are judged, the committee reviewed the movement of idle teams from the second-to-last ranking to final ranking. The selection committee reaffirmed that movement in the final week should be evidence-based and did not recommend creating a formal policy prohibiting such movement.
The committee also updated its policy on recusal of selection committee members.
A member will be fully recused from the evaluation of a team if he or she receives direct compensation from the school in question or has an immediate family member who is a football player, football staff member or senior administrator at the school. A fully recused member is not allowed to participate in any deliberations or vote concerning that school.
A member will be partially recused if he or she has a secondary relationship with the school in question, such as an immediate family member employed by the institution but outside of the football program or senior administration. A partially recused member may remain present and participate in discussions related to the team in question but is not allowed to participate in votes involving the team.
The selection committee will release its five weekly Top 25 rankings on Nov. 4. The final rankings and playoff field will be announced Dec. 7.
President Donald Trump on Thursday instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the United States illegally from the head count which determines political power and federal spending.
The census will be based on “modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” the Republican president said on his social media platform.
Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump was calling for, whether it was changes to the 2030 census or a mid-decade census, and, if so, whether it would be used for a mid-decade apportionment, which is the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states based on the population count.
Here’s some answers to questions Thursday’s post raises:
Can Trump do this?
It would be extremely difficult to conduct a mid-decade census, if not impossible, according to experts.
Any changes in conducting a U.S. census would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight.
The federal law governing the census permits a mid-decade head count for things like distributing federal funding, but it can’t be used for apportionment or redistricting and must be done in a year ending in 5. Additionally, the 14th Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” are to be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, and the Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody residing in the United States regardless of legal status. Federal courts have repeatedly supported that interpretation, though the Supreme Court has blocked recent efforts to change that on procedural rather than legal grounds.
“He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution,” said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues.
Then there is the question of logistics. The once-a-decade census is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, utilizing a temporary workforce of hundreds of thousands of census takers. It can take as much as 10 years of planning.
“This isn’t something that you can do overnight,” said New York Law professor Jeffrey Wice, a census and redistricting expert. “To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.”
Has this ever been done before?
A mid-decade census has never been conducted before.
In the 1970s, there was interest in developing data from the middle of the decade for more accurate and continuous information about American life, and a mid-decade census was considered. But the funding from Congress never came through, said Margo Anderson, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who has written extensively on the history of the census.
Decades later, those wishes for continuous data would develop into the American Community Survey, the annual survey of American life based on responses from 3.5 million households.
In his first term, President Donald Trump, a Republican, unsuccessfully tried to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census form and signed orders which would have excluded people in the U.S. illegally from the apportionment figures and mandate the collection of citizenship data through administrative records.
The attempt was blocked by the Supreme Court, and both orders were rescinded when Democratic President Joe Biden arrived at the White House in January 2021, before the 2020 census figures were released by Census Bureau.
Any attempt at a repeat would guarantee legal challenges.
“The census isn’t just a head count. It is meant to reflect America as it is – not as some would prefer it to be — and determines how critical resources are allocated,” ACLU Voting Rights project director Sophia Lin Lakin said in a statement. “Nobody should be erased from it. We won’t hesitate to go back to court to protect representation for all communities.”
What is a census used for?
Besides being used to divvy up congressional seats among the states and redraw political districts, the numbers derived from the once-a-decade census are used to guide the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual government spending.
The federal funding is distributed to state and local governments, nonprofits, businesses and households, paying for health care, education, school lunch programs, child care, food assistance programs and highway construction, among other things.
Why is Trump doing this?
A Republican redistricting expert had written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.
Critics believe the writings of Republican redistricting expert Tom Hofeller inspired the first Trump administration’s attempt at restricting the apportionment count and guided legislation introduced this year by Republican lawmakers to add a citizenship question to the 2030 census questionnaire. Trump has been open about his intent to increase the number of Republican seats in Congress and maintain the GOP majority in next year’s midterm elections.
Even though redistricting typically occurs once every 10 years following the census, Trump is pressuring Republicans in Texas to redistrict again, claiming they are “entitled” to five additional Republican seats. Trump’s team is also engaged in similar redistricting discussions in other GOP-controlled states, including Missouri and Indiana.
Some critics see the effort as part of Trump’s wider effort to control the federal statistical system, which has been considered the world’s gold standard.
Last Friday, Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, after standard revisions to the monthly jobs report showed that employers added 258,000 fewer jobs than previously reported in May and June. The revisions suggested that hiring has severely weakened under Trump, undermining his claims of an economic boom.
“Trump is basically destroying the federal statistical system,” Anderson said. “He wants numbers that support his political accomplishments, such as he sees them.”
Delivery drones are so fast they can zip a pint of ice cream to a customer’s driveway before it melts.
Yet the long-promised technology has been slow to take off in the United States. More than six years after the Federal Aviation Administration approved commercial home deliveries with drones, the service mostly has been confined to a few suburbs and rural areas.
That could soon change. The FAA proposed a new rule last week that would make it easier for companies to fly drones outside of an operator’s line of sight and therefore over longer distances. A handful of companies do that now, but they had to obtain waivers and certification as an air carrier to deliver packages.
While the rule is intended to streamline the process, authorized retailers and drone companies that have tested fulfilling orders from the sky say they plan to make drone-based deliveries available to millions more U.S. households.
Walmart’s multistate expansion
Walmart and Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, currently provide deliveries from 18 Walmart stores in the Dallas area. By next summer, they expect to expand to 100 Walmart stores in Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston; and Orlando and Tampa, Florida.
After launching its Prime Air delivery service in College Station, Texas, in late 2022, Amazon received FAA permission last year to operate autonomous drones that fly beyond a pilot’s line of sight. The e-commerce company has since expand its drone delivery program to suburban Phoenix and has plans to offer the service in Dallas, San Antonio, Texas, and Kansas City.
The concept of drone delivery has been around for well over a decade. Drone maker Zipline, which works with Walmart in Arkansas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, began making deliveries to hospitals in Rwanda in 2016. Israel-based Flytrex, one of the drone companies DoorDash works with to carry out orders, launched drone delivery to households in Iceland in 2017.
But Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said drone delivery has been in “treading water mode” in the U.S. for years, with service providers afraid to scale up because the regulatory framework wasn’t in place.
“You want to be at the right moment where there’s an overlap between the customer demand, the partner demand, the technical readiness and the regulatory readiness,” Woodworth said. “I think that we’re reaching that planetary alignment right now.”
Flying ice cream and eggs
DoorDash, which works with both Wing and Flytrex, tested drone drop-offs in rural Virginia and greater Dallas before announcing an expansion into Charlotte. Getting takeout food this way may sound futuristic, but it’s starting to feel normal in suburban Brisbane, Australia, where DoorDash has employed delivery drones for several years, said Harrison Shih, who leads the company’s drone program.
“It comes so fast and it’s something flying into your neighborhood, but it really does seem like part of everyday life,” Shih said.
Even though delivery drones are still considered novel, the cargo they carry can be pretty mundane. Walmart said the top items from the more than 150,000 drone deliveries the nation’s largest retailer has completed since 2021 include ice cream, eggs and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Unlike traditional delivery, where one driver may have a truck full of packages, drones generally deliver one small order at a time. Wing’s drones can carry packages weighing up to 2.5 pounds. They can travel up to 12 miles round trip. One pilot can oversee up to 32 drones.
Zipline has a drone that can carry up to 4 pounds and fly 120 miles round trip. Some drones, like Amazon’s, can carry heavier packages.
Once an order is placed, it’s packaged for flight and attached to a drone at a launch site. The drone automatically finds a route that avoids obstacles. A pilot observes as the aircraft flies to its destinations and lowers its cargo to the ground with retractable cords.
Risks and rewards of commercial drones
Shakiba Enayati, an assistant professor of supply chain and analytics at the University of Missouri, St. Louis, researches ways that drones could speed the delivery of critical health supplies like donated organs and blood samples. The unmanned aircraft offer some advantages as a transport method, such as reduced emissions and improved access to goods for rural residents, Enayati said.
But she also sees plenty of obstacles. Right now, it costs around $13.50 per delivery to carry a package by drone versus $2 for a traditional vehicle, Enayati said. Drones need well-trained employees to oversee them and can have a hard time in certain weather.
Drones also can have mid-air collisions or tumble from the sky. But people have accepted the risk of road accidents because they know the advantages of driving, Enayati said. She thinks the same thing could happen with drones, especially as improved technology reduces the chance for errors.
Woodworth added that U.S. airspace is tightly controlled, and companies need to demonstrate to the FAA that their drones are safe and reliable before they are cleared to fly. Even under the proposed new rules, the FAA would set detailed requirements for drone operators.
“That’s why it takes so long to build a business in the space. But I think it leads to everybody fundamentally building higher quality things,” Woodworth said.
Others worry that drones may potentially replace human delivery drivers. Shih thinks that’s unlikely. One of DoorDash’s most popular items is 24-packs of water, Shih said, which aren’t realistic for existing drones to ferry.
“I believe that drone delivery can be fairly ubiquitous and can cover a lot of things. We just don’t think its probable today that it’ll carry a 40-pound bag of dog food to you,” Shih said.
The view from the ground in Texas
DoorDash said that in the areas where it offers drone deliveries, orders requiring the services of human delivery drivers also increase.
That’s been the experience of John Kim, the owner of PurePoke restaurant in Frisco, Texas. Kim signed on to offer drone deliveries through DoorDash last year. He doesn’t know what percentage of his DoorDash customers are choosing the service instead of regular delivery, but his overall DoorDash orders are up 15% this year.
Kim said he’s heard no complaints from drone delivery customers.
“It’s very stable, maybe even better than some of the drivers that toss it in the back with all the other orders,” Kim said.
For some, drones can simply be a nuisance. When the FAA asked for public comments on Amazon’s request to expand deliveries in College Station, numerous residents expressed concern that drones with cameras violated their privacy. Amazon says its drones use cameras and sensors to navigate and avoid obstacles but may record overhead videos of people while completing a delivery.
Other residents complained about noise.
“It sounds like a giant nagging mosquito,” one respondent wrote. Amazon has since released a quieter drone.
But others love the service. Janet Toth of Frisco, Texas, said she saw drone deliveries in Korea years ago and wondered why the U.S. didn’t have them. So she was thrilled when DoorDash began providing drone delivery in her neighborhood.
Toth now orders drone delivery a few times a month. Her 9-year-old daughter Julep said friends often come over to watch the drone.
“I love to go outside, wave at the drone, say ‘Thank you’ and get the food,” Julep Toth said.
___
AP Video Journalist Kendria LaFleur contributed from Frisco, Texas.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hezly Rivera was the fresh face a year ago. The newcomer. The teenager on a team of 20-something Olympic gymnasts, doing her best to absorb what she could from Simone Biles, Sunisa Lee, Jade Carey and Jordan Chiles.
The one thing that stood out, even more than the sometimes otherworldly gymnastics, is the way her fellow gold-medal-winning teammates went about their business.
“They looked so confident,” Rivera said. “They’re like, ‘I’m going to go out and I’m going to hit.’ It gave me that confidence as well.”
Looks like it.
The now 17-year-old who says she’s paying no attention to the idea that she’s the leader of the women’s program in the early stages of the run-up to the 2028 Olympics certainly looks the part.
Buoyed by a polished steadiness — and a beam routine that finally looked the way it does back home at her home gym in Texas — Rivera captured her first national title Sunday night at the U.S. Championships. Her two-day total of 112.000 was good enough to fend off a challenge from Leanne Wong and put her in excellent position to lead the four-woman American delegation at the world championships in Jakarta, Indonesia, in October.
Rivera, by far the youngest member of the five-woman team that finished atop the podium in Paris a year ago, bounced back from a shaky performance at the U.S. Classic last month with the kind of measured, refined gymnastics that she attributed to simply “letting go” of whatever pressure she might feel as the lone Olympic gold medalist in a remarkably young field.
“No matter how rough the competition is, I still can get back into the gym and work hard because all those months previously that I’ve been working hard, I know it’s going to show up eventually,” she said. “So it kind of just took a weight off my shoulders.”
Rivera, at the very least, locked up a spot in the world championship selection camp next month. So did Wong, a four-time world championship medalist, budding entrepreneur and pre-med student who shows no signs of slowing down despite years of competing collegiately and at the elite level simultaneously.
Asked how she juggles it all, the 21-year-old who insists she doesn’t keep a planner said she lives by the motto “there’s time for everything.”
Joscelyn Roberson, an Olympic alternate last summer, shook off an ankle injury suffered at the end of her floor routine to finish third as the three most internationally experienced athletes in the field looked ready to lead after spending most of the last Olympic quad learning from Biles and company.
“You go from, ‘Oh you’re so young, you’re so young,’ to, ‘Oh, you are the older kid,’” the 19-year-old Roberson said. “People say, ‘How are you feeling?’ Like, I honestly don’t feel that different.”
Two summers ago, Roberson was Biles’ bouncy sidekick. Now she’s among the leaders of the next wave.
“I felt like more responsible to let the little, smaller, less experienced kids know it’s not the end of the day if you have a bad day or if you had one fall,” Roberson said. “I want to help them grow instead of think ‘I have to be perfect.’”
Roberson then walked the walk. Or maybe limped the limp. She appeared ready to make it a three-woman race for first until she turned an ankle on the final tumbling pass of her floor routine.
The rising sophomore at Arkansas gingerly continued on anyway. She gritted her way through her vault dismount, though the five-tenths (0.5) deduction for using an additional pad for her protection took her out of contention for the all-around.
Still, the victory hardly came easy for Rivera. She was pushed through four rotations by Wong, who started Sunday with a stuck Cheng vault and didn’t relent over the course of two hours.
Rivera responded each time — she posted the top scores on three of the four events — but it wasn’t until she walked off the podium following her floor routine with victory in hand that she could relax.
“Everything fell into place,” Rivera said. “I tried not to get too overwhelmed because nerves obviously can be there, especially when you know you’re in a spot to win a national title, but I just took all pressure off myself.”
Skye Blakely, who was injured at the Olympic Trials in both 2021 and 2024, was sublime on both uneven bars and balance beam to put herself in consideration to make the world team.
PHOENIX (AP) — Jocelyn Ruiz remembers when her fifth-grade teacher warned the class about large-scale patrols that would target immigrants in Arizona’s largest metropolitan area. She asked her mom about it — and unearthed a family secret.
Ruiz’s mother had entered the United States illegally, leaving Mexico a decade earlier in search of a better life.
Ruiz, who was born in California and raised in the Phoenix area, was overcome by worry at the time that her mother could be deported at any moment, despite having no criminal history. Ruiz, her two younger siblings and her parents quietly persevered, never discussing their mixed immigration status. They lived “as Americans,” she said.
More than 22 million people live in a U.S. household where at least one occupant is in the country without authorization, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2022 Census data. That represents nearly 5% of households across the U.S. and 5.5% in Arizona, a battleground state where the Latino vote could be key.
If Donald Trump is elected and follows through with a campaign promise to conduct the largest deportation operation in American history, it could not only upend the lives of the 11 million people who according to the U.S. Census Bureau are living in the United States without authorization — it could devastate the U.S. citizens in their families.
The issue of immigration has been a cornerstone of Trump’s platform since he promised to “build a great wall” in 2015 as he announced his first Republican campaign for president. And despite polling that shows the economy as a top concern for voters, Trump remains fixated on the issue, criticizing the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border as an existential threat to American society as Election Day nears.
Trump’s plans for a crackdown have motivated some mixed-status families to speak out. America’s success depends on the contributions of immigrants, they argue, and the people doing this work deserve a pathway to legal residency or citizenship.
Others choose to be silent, hoping to evade attention.
And there are some who support Trump, even though they themselves could become targets for deportation.
The political divide over immigration runs deep: 88% of Trump supporters favor mass deportation, according to a recent Pew survey, compared with 27% of the voters who support Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for president.
Trump was asked about the impact so many deportations would have on mixed-status families when he visited the Arizona-Mexico border in August.
“Provisions will be made, but we have to get the criminals out,” Trump responded to NBC News. He didn’t say what the provisions might include, and his campaign did not share more information when The Associated Press asked for specifics.
Living in a mixed-status family is inherently precarious, as immigration policies and political rhetoric have ripple effects for U.S. citizens and legal residents, said Heide Castañeda, a professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida.
“For most Americans, it’s not a familiar thing to navigate your daily life thinking about somebody in your family possibly being taken,” said Castañeda, author of “Borders of Belonging: Struggle and Solidarity in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families.” “But for mixed-status families, of course, that’s always on their minds.”
What to know about the 2024 Election
Politicians, she said, “think that they’re targeting a particular group, but these groups live in families and communities and households and neighborhoods.”
In Nevada, California, New Jersey and Texas, nearly one in 10 households includes people living in the U.S. without legal permission, according to Pew. Many have lived in the country for decades and have U.S. citizens depending on them.
Michael Kagan, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said recent arrivals aren’t representative of the population in Nevada.
“The vast majority have been here more than 10 years,” Kagan said, warning that their U.S. citizen relatives could inadvertently be swept up.
Erika Andriola, 37, a longtime advocate for immigrants in Arizona, witnessed her mother and brother being detained by immigration agents in 2013. She waged a successful campaign that led to their release, but she now suffers from PTSD and separation anxiety as a result of that day.
“It was just this like constant nightmares. I would wake up crying,” Andriola said. She and her brother are now legal residents, but their 66-year-old mother has been challenging her deportation in court since 2017.
It’s an experience Andriola doesn’t wish upon anyone — and she says the emotional and economic tolls can affect entire communities.
Betzaida Robinson’s brother was deported to Mexico several years ago despite never having lived there. An integral member of the family in Phoenix, he had helped pay bills and raise her two children.
Robinson said Trump and his supporters must not be thinking about what it’s like to have a loved one taken away.
“How about if you were in that position, what would you do and how would you feel?” she said.
Still, there are people living in the country illegally who do support Trump, said Castañeda, the university professor. Even Andriola says she has family members who do.
“They’re not necessarily thinking about what can happen to people like my mom,” Andriola said, “but they’re thinking about their own lives and what they think is best for them.”
Victoria Castro-Corral is a self-described optimist from a mixed-status family in Phoenix who advises students at Chandler-Gilbert Community College. She said she has faith that a mass deportation plan will never happen — and credits her Mexican parents, who crossed the border illegally decades ago, for teaching her how to remain positive.
“We’re here to stay,” she said.
___
Gabriel Sandoval is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
One of the largest solar projects in the U.S. opened in Texas on Friday, backed by what Google said is the largest solar electricity purchase it has ever made.
Google executive Ben Sloss said at the ribbon cutting, about two hours south of Dallas, that the corporation has a responsibility to bring renewable, carbon-free electricity online at the same time it opens operations that will use that power. Google expects to spend $16 billion through 2040 globally to purchase clean energy, he said.
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, who attended, said the solar project is a posterchild for the administration’s efforts to incentivize manufacturers and developers to locate energy projects in the U.S.
“Sometimes when you are in the middle of history, it’s hard to tell, because you are in the middle of it,” she said. “But I’m telling you right now that we are in the middle of history being made.”
SB Energy built three solar farms side by side, the “Orion Solar Belt,” in Buckholts, Texas. Combined, they will be able to provide 875 megawatts of clean energy. That is nearly the size of a typical nuclear facility. In total, Google has contracted with clean energy developers to bring more than 2,800 megawatts of new wind and solar projects to the state, which it says exceeds the amount of power required for its operations there.
Google, Amazon and Microsoft have all recently announced investments in nuclear energy to power data centers, too, as the tech giants seek new sources of carbon-free electricity to meet surging demand from data centers and artificial intelligence. Google has a commitment to get all of its electricity without contributing to climate change, regardless of time of day or whether the sun is up, but neither it nor other large companies are meeting those commitments with the rise of artificial intelligence.
The International Energy Agency forecasts that data centers’ total electricity consumption could reach more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026, more than doubling from 2022. Estimates suggest one terawatt-hour can power 70,000 homes for a year.
The demand for power is also growing globally as buildings and vehicles electrify. People used more electricity than ever last year, placing strain on electric grids around the world.
In August, Google said it planned to invest more than $1 billion in Texas this year to support its cloud and data center infrastructure.
Google will use about 85% of the project’s solar power for data centers in Ellis County and for cloud computing in the Dallas region. In Ellis County, Google operates a data center campus in Midlothian and is building out a new campus in Red Oak. The rest of the solar power will go to the state’s electrical grid. Thousands of sheep graze in the area, maintaining the vegetation around the solar arrays.
“This project was a spreadsheet and a set of emails that I had been exchanging and a bunch of approvals and so on. And then you come over the rise over there and you see it laid out in front of you and it kind of takes your breath away, right? Because there’s this enormous field of solar arrays,” Sloss said during the ceremony. “And we actually collectively have done this. That is amazing.”
SB Energy said most of the solar farm components are made in the United States, and that’s only possible because the climate law formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act spurred clean energy manufacturing. The company expects the projects to be the first to qualify for an extra tax credit the law affords for using domestic content.
___
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Houston Texans wide receiver Stefon Diggs and Green Bay Packers cornerbacks Jaire Alexander and Keisean Nixon exchanged words and shoves during an altercation before their respective teams faced off Sunday.
Diggs said after the Texans’ 24-22 loss that the incident started when he “heard somebody chirping.”
Television cameras showed Diggs jawing with Alexander and Nixon as an official separated them. As officials tried getting Diggs away from the sideline, more Packers converged onto the area and Alexander approached the receiver. Diggs and Alexander then appeared to shove each other as well before they were separated.
“You know, it’s intensity,” Nixon said after the game. “It’s what it is. We don’t take disrespect, and anybody starts anything, we’re going to finish it. As top-flight DBs, that’s what we do.”
Diggs and Alexander have a longstanding rivalry dating to Diggs’ years with the Minnesota Vikings, the Packers’ NFC North rival. Diggs played for the Vikings from 2015-19. Alexander, a 2018 first-round pick, has spent his entire NFL career with the Packers.
The two-time and reigning U.S. champion scored 290.12 points to finish ahead of Kevin Aymoz of France, whose career-best free skate left him with 282.88 points and earned a standing ovation inside Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Allen, Texas.
Kao Miura of Japan, who was second after his short program, finished third with 278.67 points.
“I was really motivated by Kevin’s skate,” said Malinin, the early favorite for gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy. “It really excited me and I was so happy for him. It pushed me to really just get going to try to skate that program, and of course it wasn’t what I wanted today. So after the few mistakes, I just tried to regroup and to make a strategy of what I have to do.”
In the ice dance, American world champions Madison Chock and Evan Bates were unable to overcome a glaring mistake during their rhythm dance on Saturday, ultimately finishing second to Lilah Fear and Lewis Gibson of Britain.
Fear and Gibson wound up with 206.38 points after Sunday’s free skate to become the first non-U.S. team to win Skate America since Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder of France in 2008. Chock and Bates ended with 205.63 points while Olivia Smart and Tim Dieck of Spain earned the bronze medal with 189.44 points.
Malinin and Miura were separated by a mere 0.15 points after their short programs, but it was Aymoz who challenged Malinin for the top of the podium. The 27-year-old from France, who struggled mightily at the end of last season, landed a pair of quads in an error-free program to score 190.84 points — the best of all the free skates — and vault into first place.
“I was super proud,” Aymoz said, “because I did work these last six months.”
Nika Egadze of Georgia was next on the ice but fell on his opening quad lutz and stepped out on his quad salchow, and those two mistakes kept him from medal contention. He wound up fourth with 261.71 points.
Miura, the 19-year-old former world junior champion, landed three quads during a program set to “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” the 1964 musical romantic drama film. But Miura lost points for an under-rotated triple axel and on a step sequence that led into a quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination midway through his free skate.
Malinin was last to take the ice, performing a program set to “I’m Not a Vampire” by the rock band Falling In Reverse.
He opened with a perfect quad flip and then hit a triple axel, even though Malinin remains the only skater to have landed the quad version of the jump in competition. Then came the mistake, when he doubled a planned quad loop, leaving Malinin to make changes on the fly over the second half of the program in an attempt to make up the lost points.
After putting his hand down on his triple lutz, Malinin landed a quad toe loop-triple toe loop combination before a quad salchow-triple axel in sequence — a pair of huge jumping passes that sent his technical score soaring.
Malinin capped the recovery of his program with a backflip during his choreographed sequence, a move that had been banned until this season because of its inherent danger. It was expected all along but nonetheless sent a roar through the crowd, just as Malinin’s program came to an end and a steady stream of stuffed animals were thrown onto the ice.
“It was really hard for me in the middle of the program to think what I have to do — what I need to do,” Malinin said when asked about the early mistake. “I just went full autopilot through there and I’m glad I made it out.”
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The biggest source of new residents to Florida and Texas, the two U.S. states with the largest number of new residents last year, was other countries.
A little over 45% of the almost 634,000 residents in Florida who said that they had lived in a different state or abroad the previous year came from a foreign country, according to migration data released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Florida, with 23 million residents, had more people who said they had lived in a different place the previous year than any other state, though Texas wasn’t far behind. Of the almost 612,000 Texas residents who had lived elsewhere in the previous year, 43% were from another country. Texas has 30.5 million residents.
The migration figures don’t show from which countries the new residents arrived.
Priscila Coronado moved last year to Miami from Guatemala, looking for a better future.
“I am happy. My dream is to study, learn English and graduate with a nursing degree,” Coronado said. “There is no crime here, and that is an achievement.”
Among U.S. states, New York was the top producer of new Floridians, and more recently minted Texans had lived in California the year before than any other state.
But Florida and Texas didn’t just gain residents; some also moved out. Georgia gained the most former Floridians last year, and California had the most ex-Texans.
___
Associated Press writer Gisela Salomon in Miami contributed to this report. Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Tesla unveiled its long-awaited robotaxi at a Hollywood studio Thursday night, though fans of the electric vehicle maker will have to wait until at least 2026 before they are available.
CEO Elon Musk pulled up to a stage at the Warner Bros. studio lot in one of the company’s “Cybercabs,” telling the crowd that the sleek, AI-powered vehicles don’t have steering wheels or pedals. He also expressed confidence in the progress the company has made on autonomous driving technology that makes it possible for vehicles to drive without human intervention.
“We’ll move from supervised Full Self-Driving to unsupervised Full Self-Driving. where you can fall asleep and wake up at your destination,” he said. “It’s going to be a glorious future.”
Tesla expects the Cybercabs to cost under $30,000, Musk said. He estimated that the vehicles would become available in 2026, then added “before 2027.”
The company also expects to make the Full Self-Driving technology available on its popular Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California next year.
“If they’re going to eventually get to robotaxis, they first need to have success with the unsupervised FSD at the current lineup,” said Seth Goldstein, equity strategist at Morningstar Research. “Tonight’s event showed that they’re ready to take that step forward.”
When Tesla will actually take that step, however, has led to more than a little anxiety for investors who see other automakers deploying similar technology right now. Shares of Tesla Inc. tumbled 9% at the opening bell Friday.
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle unit of Alphabet Inc., is carrying passengers in vehicles without human safety drivers in Phoenix and other areas. General Motors’ Cruise self-driving unit had been running robotaxis in San Francisco until a crash last year involving one of its vehicles.
Also, Aurora Innovation said it will start hauling freight in fully autonomous semis on Texas freeways by year’s end. Another autonomous semi company, Gatik, plans to haul freight autonomously by the end of 2025.
“Tesla yet again claimed it is a year or two away from actual automated driving — just as the company has been claiming for a decade. Indeed, Tesla’s whole event had a 2014 vibe, except that in 2014 there were no automated vehicles actually deployed on public roads,” Bryant Walker Smith, a University of South Carolina law professor who studies automated vehicles, told The Associated Press in an email. “Now there are real AVs carrying real people on real roads, but none of those vehicles are Teslas. Tonight did not change this reality; it only made the irony more glaring.”
Tesla had 20 or so Cybercabs on hand and offered event attendees the opportunity to take rides inside the movie studio lot — not on Los Angeles’ roads.
At the presentation, which was dubbed “We, Robot” and was streamed live on Tesla’s website and X, Musk also revealed a sleek minibus-looking vehicle that, like the Cybercab, would be self-driving and can carry up to 20 passengers.
The company also trotted out several of its black and white Optimus humanoid robots, which walked a few feet from the attendees before showing off dance moves in a futuristic-looking gazebo.
Musk estimated that the robots would cost between $28,000-$30,000 and would be able to babysit, mow lawns, fetch groceries, among other tasks.
“Whatever you can think of, it will do,” he said.
The unveiling of the Cybercab comes as Musk tries to persuade investors that his company is more about artificial intelligence and robotics as it labors to sell its core products, an aging lineup of electric vehicles.
Tesla’s model lineup is struggling and isn’t likely to be refreshed until late next year at the earliest, TD Cowen analyst Jeff Osborne wrote in a research note last week.
Osborne also noted that, in TD Cowen’s view, the “politicization of Elon” is tarnishing the Tesla brand among Democrat buyers in the U.S.
Musk has endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and has pushed many conservative causes. Last weekend he joined Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.
Musk has been saying for more than five years that a fleet of robotaxis is near, allowing Tesla owners to make money by having their cars carry passengers while they’re not in use by the owners. Musk said that Tesla owners will be able to put their cars into service on a company robotaxi network.
In addition, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration forced Tesla to recall Full Self-Driving in February because it allowed speeding and violated other traffic laws, especially near intersections. Tesla was to fix the problems with an online software update.
Last April in Snohomish County, Washington, near Seattle, a Tesla using Full Self-Driving hit and killed a motorcyclist, authorities said. The Tesla driver told authorities that he was using the system while looking at his phone when the car rear-ended the motorcyclist. The motorcyclist was pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
NHTSA says it’s evaluating information on the fatal crash from Tesla and law enforcement officials.
CHICAGO (AP) — For Luis Martinez, competing in lowriding bike and car competitions is about more than glory and bragging rights. The lowrider clubs in the Chicago area have become like one big family and a source of mutual support.
“It just starts with the metal,” said Martinez, who got his introduction to lowrider culture when his mother took him to a flea market. He had his first bike when he was 12.
“To me, it’s about expressing my art and what I can do with my own hands,” Martinez told The Associated Press as he polished a shiny red bike at his home in Mishawaka, Indiana.
Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, sits on his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, cleans his custom-built lowrider bike in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A detail on the hub of the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Fluffly dice hang on the lowrider bike custom-built by Luis Martinez, 29, a member of the Uso Chicago Car Club, in Mishawaka, Ind., Saturday, Sept. 21, 2024, (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A movement of expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is an aspect of Latino history in the U.S. in which people show their pride, honor family and uplift culture. But misrepresentation of the culture in entertainment and media has often associated the lowriding’s “low and slow” motto with gang culture.
Still, decades since its emergence, and as the Hispanic U.S. population increases, lowriding has experienced a boom, as evidenced by an increase in car shows and conventions nationwide.
A movement of cultural expression with origins in Mexican American and Chicano communities, lowriding is a way for a person to show their pride for family and culture. (AP Video: Melissa Perez Winder)
Lowriding involves the customization of a vehicle — from the tires to the sound system — with vivid designs and colors. Unlike hot rods or muscle cars, which are often modified to have big tires and move at high speeds, the lowrider community modified the cars and bikes to go “low and slow,” said Alberto Pulido, the chair of the Ethnic Studies department at the University of San Diego.
“It was a way to speak to an identity, a presence and it was done with few resources,” said Pulido, who also directed the award-winning documentary, “Lowriding: Everything Comes From the Streets.”
“Our community didn’t have a lot of money,” he said. “They might have had a little bit expendable income to buy a car but then they were kind of on their own to create their vehicles. We call that Chicano ingenuity.”
Lowriding blends Latino and American culture
AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on the growing popularity of lowriders.
According to Pulido, lowriding originated in the Southwest, although there are disputes about where exactly it first appeared. Pulido said lowriders in Los Angeles would like to make the claim they were the first, while those in San Diego want their undeniable influence in the culture acknowledged.
The culture can be traced to post-World War II, when veterans were coming home with an expendable income. And with the growth of highways and freeways in California, people wanted to modify their vehicles, Pulido said.
Today, conventions attract enthusiasts from all over the U.S. Last month, what was once a small showcase with only 40 lowriders at Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, grew to over 300 lowriders from clubs across the U.S.
Hugo Cardenas and Araceli Martinez, wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, dance while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
University of San Diego professor Alberto Lopez Pulido smiles while speaking with attendees of a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Hector Gonzalez, of the Lincoln Park Conservation Committee, said the car clubs help members travel to all the showcases in the nation. In the ’70s and ’80s, lowrider clubs became a representation of the community and offered mutual aid such as ride-sharing and food donations when the local government could not or would not, Gonzalez said.
“It is something that gets passed on from generation to generation,” said Gonzalez, who, like most lowriders, was introduced to the community with a bike at the young age of 13. He has passed on his love for lowriding to his own children, nephews and cousins
“Kids grow up seeing the cars, they pick it up and they carry on the tradition,” Gonzalez said.
Lauren Pacheco, co-founder and co-curator of the Slow and Low Chicago Low Rider Festival, described lowriding as a global, multibillion-dollar phenomenon of self-expression and innovation.
“It’s a marvel of mechanical innovation,” Pacheco said. “It is the beautiful artistry in the creative practice of muralism, storytelling and upholstery.”
Within the last decade, lowrider conventions have grown so much that they’ve made their way to Japan. In Nagoya, Japanese lowriders have modified their cars, created clubs and even come to events at Chicano Park in San Diego.
Daniel Marquez, 8, is reflected in the mirror of his chrome lowrider bike, built by himself and family friends in memory of his late father Alberto, a longtime member of lowrider car clubs, at his home in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Daniel Marquez, 8, sits inside his late father Alberto’s 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car in Frankfort, Ill., Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
A photo of Daniel Marquez sitting on his late father’s lap inside their 1963 Chevy Impala lowrider car, is displayed with a custom chrome lowrider bike built by Daniel and family friends, in Frankfort, Ill, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Lowrider community sheds gang culture stereotype
Appreciation for lowriding has increased in recent years, enthusiasts say. But that was not always the case.
In the beginning, lowriding was associated with harmful stereotypes about Latinos as gangsters, Pulido said. Because the culture involved predominantly Latino participants, lowriding became racialized and that overshadowed the artistic and community service aspects of the movement.
The 1979 thriller-drama “Boulevard Nights” also helped to perpetuate the lowriders as gangsters trope. The film’s main character, Raymond Avila, played by Richard Yñiguez tried to avoid getting lured into the violent street gangs of East Los Angeles. Lowriding vehicles and the lowrider “cholo” aesthetic was featured throughout the film.
While the perception of lowriding has since gotten better, Pulido said he has been to lowriding car shows where police immediately show up.
Martinez, the Indiana lowrider, said lowriding misconceptions grew in the Chicago area because the community members were tattooed in ways often associated with gang affiliation. Pacheco said the Chicago festival works to dispel those misconceptions.
“We really try not to create a space that glamorizes or romanticizes gang culture,” she said. “It’s really a celebration of creativity and innovation and family.”
A Day of the Dead altar is placed next to a lowrider car on display at the Slow & Low Chicago Lowrider Festival at Navy Pier in Chicago, Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley)
Santos Gonzalez sits between a 1939 and a 1949 Chevy vintage cars during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
The decorated interior of a Monte Carlo vintage car is pictured during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
Lowriding culture becomes a booming industry
Gonzalez, the Texas lowriding showcase organizer, said the culture’s focus on wheels, hydraulic systems and accessories, has helped lowriding become a booming industry.
In El Paso, people have opened small businesses orientated to the lowriding community. In the last couple of years, at least 25 new businesses opened, including body shops, upholstery shops and apparel shops, Gonzalez said.
“It has become a mainstream business,” he said. “Back in the 70s and 80s, it was more of a local thing. Everybody helping each other do things on their own. Now there’s just all kinds of opportunities to purchase things and have things done to your vehicle.”
Originally from Dallas, Texas, Martinez said he would buy the parts he needed from a man in his neighborhood, who would buy in bulk from Lowrider magazine. He said the unfortunate thing about lowriding becoming so big is parts are now mass produced from China instead of being Mexican made.
Lowriding carries family legacy
But lowriding is not just about the often pricey task of modifying cars, Pulido said. It is about building a community that is always there for each other, throughout generations, he said.
“We have grandparents that are lowriders and then their kids and their grandkids are in tune already,” Pulido said.
Wearing Zoot suits of the Mexican American subculture known as Pachucos, Paula, Jacob, center, and Junior Hernandez pose for a photo while attending a lowrider exhibition during the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
American and Mexican flags decorate a vintage car during a lowrider exhibition for the 20th anniversary of Lincoln Park in El Paso, Texas, Sunday, Sept. 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrés Leighton)
It’s a legacy that Sonia Gomez wants for her 8-year-old son, Daniel Marquez. His late father, Alberto Marquez, had been a member of a Chicago area lowrider club. Too young to drive the car left to him by his father, Daniel has a lowriding bike that is more of a memorial to his dad.
“The bike is what he’s doing to build it up,” Gomez said.
The family will do an ofrenda, a display often associated with Mexican Dia de los Muertos celebrations, when local lowriding festivals are held. As part of the ofrenda, Daniel takes an image he has with his father on a lowriding bike and places it next to his actual bike, which he named “Wishing on a Star.”
“We would either go on a (lowriding) cruise with my uncle, or we would go to actual car shows,” Daniel recently recalled, while sitting at the driver’s seat of his dad’s lowriding car parked in the driveway of their home in Frankfort, Illinois.
“My mom would be there,” he said pointing to the passenger seat. “And I’d be back there all squished.”
___
The Associated Press received financial support from the Sony Global Social Justice Fund to expand certain coverage areas. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Major League Baseball announced Tuesday it will produce and distribute local broadcasts for the Cleveland Guardians, Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins next year. All three teams had contracts with Diamond Sports Group that expired at the end of the regular season.
The Texas Rangers, whose deal also expired last month, also announced they will no longer be partnering with Diamond. They are assessing their options for next season.
The addition of the Guardians, Brewers and Twins means MLB will be handling the production and distribution of at least six teams going into 2025.
MLB took over broadcasts of the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2023 season and the Colorado Rockies this year.
Rick Schlesinger, the president of business operations for the Brewers, said he expects more teams could be partnering with MLB by the opening of next season.
“This has been a long process. It’s a very deliberative process,” he said. “We’ve done this through a lot of work, a lot of analysis. I think this is going to be a huge game changer for us, for our content.”
By taking over the broadcasts, MLB expects to increase the market reach of its teams by at least 2 million households in each market. The Diamondbacks went from being available in 930,000 households on a regional sports network to 5.6 million homes through a combination of being on local cable systems, satellite and direct-to-consumer streaming.
“With the media landscape continuing to evolve, Major League Baseball is committed to serving our fans by ensuring they can see their favorite clubs, removing blackouts where we can, and ultimately growing the reach of our games,” Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media, said in a statement.
The Twins took a public relations hit in Minnesota for cutting their 2024 player payroll coming off a division title and their first postseason series win in 22 years, in light of the reduced rights fee coming from Diamond. They will lose the rights fee altogether with this MLB-produced model, but team president Dave St. Peter said this announcement would not have an effect on player spending for the upcoming season.
“We’ve spent a tremendous amount of time with Major League Baseball trying to better understand this marketplace, trying to better understand what a model like this will ultimately provide to the team. We also have studied closely what’s happened in San Diego, in Arizona and in Colorado. We’ve gotten comfortable in those economics. They are where they are,” St. Peter said.
“We do expect that there will be a reduction in local revenue coming to the Twins in 2025. I think that’s a fact. That said, over the long haul we have tremendous confidence in our content and believe, while maybe we’ll take a dip for ’25, that over time the viewership and those economics related to that viewership will increase.”
Cleveland games were available on approximately 1.45 million households on its regional sports network. That reach is expected to increase 235% to 4.86 million households. Minnesota’s will go up 307% from 1.08 million homes to 4.4 million.
Schlesinger said the Brewers had 800,000 households that could receive games this past season, but he also expects to see significant growth with the new model.
“From a fan perspective, it’s great because you’re going to have total access and no blackouts,” he said. “There’s a lot of staffing, a lot of infrastructure, a lot of decisions have to be made, a lot of people to be hired, a lot of sponsors to contact. This is the right time to do this. It’s a good jumping point, platform to make sure when the calendar turns to 2025, we’re already fully immersed in this and that we know when the first game starts, that we’re ready to go and the product’s going to be outstanding.”
MLB could be taking over more teams as Diamond Sports Group continues to go through bankruptcy proceedings. The nation’s largest owner of regional sports networks could be down to doing only Atlanta Braves games in 2025.
The operator of the Bally Sports regional networks presented its reorganization plan in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston last week. As part of the reorganization, Diamond plans to void the contracts of the Detroit Tigers and Tampa Bay Rays and to attempt to rework the deals of the five franchises that are partial owners of their regional sports networks — the Cincinnati Reds, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Angels, Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals.
St. Peter said he expects more teams to sign onto the model in the future.
“Starting to build that direct-to-consumer foundation, which clearly is the future of the way our games will be distributed — it’s time to get on with that and we’re excited about that,” St. Peters said. “Our ownership understands the consequences of that, but I think over time there’s way more upside than short-term downside.”
A final hearing on Diamond’s reorganization plan is scheduled for Nov. 14. Diamond also has the rights to 13 NBA and eight NHL teams.
Diamond Sports Group and Sinclair Broadcast Group bought the regional sports networks from The Walt Disney Co. for nearly $10 billion in 2019. Disney was required by the Department of Justice to sell the networks for its acquisition of 21st Century Fox’s film and television assets to be approved.
___
AP sports writers Dave Campbell in Minneapolis and Steve Megargee in Milwaukee contributed to this story.
DALLAS (AP) — Cynt Marshall is retiring as CEO of the Dallas Mavericks at the end of the year, and then she will stay on for another year as a consultant in the organization where she is credited for a comprehensive overhaul of workplace policies.
Marshall, a former AT&T executive, was introduced by the Mavericks in February 2018, about a week after a Sports Illustrated report detailed years of incidents of sexual harassment and misconduct in the franchise’s business office.
When hired, Marshall became the first Black female CEO in NBA history. She will retire as CEO effective Dec. 31 and will remain in the consultant role through December 2025.
“Cynt Marshall is a force of nature. I like to say her superpower is bringing people together, but the truth is she has many superpowers,” said Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont, whose family bought a majority stake in the team last December.
“Cynt has always gone above and beyond in everything she has done, and her leadership of the Dallas Mavericks is no exception. She is an indelible fixture in the history of this franchise, and we are eternally grateful,” Dumont said. “The positive impact she has had here will be felt for a very long time.”
The franchise said in a news release that Marshall redefined the Mavericks’ culture. That began with the creation of a 100-day plan to implement a revamped corporate culture, setting new standards for inclusion, business effectiveness and corporate responsibility.
