Hackers gained access to personal data on the majority of the 1.4 million customers of Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, the company confirmed Saturday.
Minneapolis-based Allianz Life, a subsidiary of Munich, Germany-based Allianz SE, said the data breach happened on July 16 when a “malicious threat actor” gained access to a third-party, cloud-based system used by the company.
“The threat actor was able to obtain personally identifiable data related to the majority of Allianz Life’s customers, financial professionals, and select Allianz Life employees, using a social engineering technique,” Allianz Life said in a statement. “We took immediate action to contain and mitigate the issue and notified the FBI.”
The company said its own systems were not accessed, just the third-party’s platform.
Allianz Life said its investigation is ongoing and that the company has begun reaching out to the impacted individuals. It said the incident involves only Allianz Life in the U.S., not other Allianz corporate entities.
In the case of data breaches, a “social engineering technique” usually involves using trickery to gain access. Spokesman Brett Weinberg said he couldn’t provide details because they are still investigating.
Allianz Life also reported the breach to multiple other authorities, including the Maine Attorney General’s Office. A filing on the agency’s website said the company discovered the breach the day after it happened, and that it will be offering those affected 24 months of identity theft protection and credit monitoring.
Allianz Life was known as North American Life and Casualty until it was acquired by German conglomerate Allianz SE in 1979 and changed its name to Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America. It has nearly 2,000 employees in U.S., with the majority working in Minnesota, according to its website.
It is one of five North American subsidiaries of the Munich-based global financial services group Allianz SE, which says it serves more than 125 million customers worldwide.
Minneapolis-based Allianz Life, a subsidiary of Munich, Germany-based Allianz SE, said the data breach happened on July 16 when a “malicious threat actor” gained access to a third-party, cloud-based system used by the company.
Tea, a provocative dating app designed to let women anonymously ask or warn each other about men they’d encountered, rocketed to the top spot on the U.S. Apple App Store this week. On Friday, the company behind the app confirmed it had been hacked: Thousands of images, including selfies, were leaked online.
“We have engaged third-party cybersecurity experts and are working around the clock to secure our systems,” San Francisco-based Tea Dating Advice Inc. said in a statement.
404 Media, which earlier reported the breach, said it was 4Chan users who discovered an exposed database that “allowed anyone to access the material” from Tea.
Tea founder Sean Cook, a software engineer who previously worked at Salesforce and Shutterfly, says on the app’s website that he founded the company in 2022 after witnessing his own mother’s “terrifying” experiences. Cook said they included unknowingly dating men with criminal records and being ”catfished” — deceived by men using false identities.
Tea markets itself as a safe way for women to anonymously vet men they might meet on dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble— ensuring that the men are who they say they are, not criminals and not already married or in a relationship. “It’s like people have their own little Yelp pages,” said Aaron Minc, whose Cleveland firm, Minc Law, specializes in cases involving online defamation and harassment.
In an Apple Store review, one woman wrote that she used a Tea search to investigate a man she’d begun talking to and discovered “over 20 red flags, including serious allegations like assault and recording women without their consent.” She said she cut off communication. ”I can’t imagine how things could’ve gone had I not known,” she wrote.
A surge in social media attention over the past week pushed Tea to the No. 1 spot on Apple’s U.S. App Store as of July 24, according to Sensor Tower, a research firm. In the seven days from July 17-23, Tea downloads shot up 525% compared to the week before. Tea said in an Instagram post that it had reached 4 million users.
Tea has been criticized for invading men’s privacy
A female columnist for The Times of London newspaper, who signed into the app, on Thursday called Tea a “man-shaming site” and complained that ”this is simply vigilante justice, entirely reliant on the scruples of anonymous women. With Tea on the scene, what man would ever dare date a woman again?”
“Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve gotten hundreds of calls on it. It’s blown up,” attorney Minc said. “People are upset. They’re getting named. They’re getting shamed.’’
In 1996, Congress passed legislation protecting websites and apps from liability for things posted by their users. But the users can be sued for spreading ”false and defamatory” information, Minc said.
In May, however, a federal judge in Illinois threw out an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit by a man who’d been criticized by women in the Facebook chat group “Are We Dating the Same Guy,″ Bloomberg Law reported.
State privacy laws could offer another avenue for bringing legal action against someone who posted your photograph or other personal information in a harmful way, Minc said.
The breach exposed thousands of selfies and photo IDs
In its statement, Tea reported that about 72,000 images were leaked online, including 13,000 images of selfies or photo identification that users submitted during account verification. Another 59,000 images that were publicly viewable in the app from posts, comments and direct messages were also accessed, according to the company’s statement.
No email addresses or phone numbers were exposed, the company said, and the breach only affects users who signed up before February 2024. “At this time, there is no evidence to suggest that additional user data was affected. Protecting tea users’ privacy and data is our highest priority,” Tea said.
It said users did not need to change their passwords or delete their accounts. “All data has been secured.”
Lawyer Minc said he was not surprised to see Tea get targeted. “These sites get attacked,” he said. ”They create enemies. They put targets on themselves where people want to go after them.”
A Southwest Airlines jet heading to Las Vegas from Southern California took a dramatic plunge shortly after takeoff Friday in response to an alert about a nearby plane, sending some passengers flying out of their seats and injuring two flight attendants.
The plane suddenly jolted shortly after takeover then felt like it was falling, said Stef Zamorano, who was flying to Las Vegas with her husband to celebrate his birthday.
In front of her, Zamorano saw a woman who wasn’t wearing her seat belt shoot up and out of her seat, her long hair flying in a tangled mess. The man seated next to her was clutching her arm, and she said the woman across the aisle was panicking.
“She was pretty much verbalizing how we all felt, saying, ‘I want to get off this plane. I want to be on the ground,’ ” Zamorano told The Associated Press.
Data from the flight tracking site FlightAware shows it dropped roughly 300 feet (91.44 meters) in 36 seconds.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the flight, Southwest 1496, was responding to an onboard alert about another aircraft in its vicinity. The FAA is investigating. Southwest said the crew responded to two alerts that required the pilot to climb then descend. The flight departed from Hollywood Burbank Airport just before noon.
Still in shock, Zamorano said she could hardly make out what the pilot was saying when he later addressed the passengers.
Another passenger, comedian Jimmy Dore, posted on X that the pilot mentioned a near miss.
“Pilot said his collision warning went off & he needed to avoid plane coming at us,” Dore posted.
The plane was in the same airspace near Burbank as a Hawker Hunter Mk. 58 just after noon local time, FlightAware shows. A Hawker Hunter is a British fighter plane. Records show it is owned by Hawker Hunter Aviation, a British defense contracting company. The company didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.
Mike Christensen, an airport spokesman for Hollywood Burbank, said that neither the control tower nor the operations department, which tracks planes departing and arriving, have any record of the Southwest flight plunging in their airspace.
Southwest said the flight continued to Las Vegas, “where it landed uneventfully.” The airline said that it is working with the FAA “to further understand the circumstances” of the event.
This close call is just the latest incident to raise questions about aviation safety in the wake of January’s midair collision over Washington, D.C., that killed 67 people.
With this week’s FCC approval, the merger between Paramount Global and Skydance Media is expected to be completed in the coming weeks at a value of $8 billion. The question for the new company is whether the psychic cost is much higher.
Following the Federal Communications Commission approval Thursday, one of the triumvirate of current Paramount leaders, Chris McCarthy, said that he would be leaving the company. McCarthy has been in charge of fading cable properties like MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, expected to bear the brunt of an estimated $2 billion in cost cuts identified by Skydance leaders.
Skydance head David Ellison is expected to head the new company, and he has identified former NBC Universal executive Jeff Shell as the incoming president.
CBS News’ trajectory will be scrutinized
After the merger’s Aug. 7 closing date, the new leaders will be watched most closely for how they deal with CBS News, particularly given the $16 million paid in a settlement of Trump’s complaint that last fall’s “60 Minutes” interview was edited to make opponent Kamala Harris look good. Two news executives — News CEO Wendy McMahon and “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens — resigned due to their opposition to the deal.
The appointment of respected insider Tanya Simon to replace Owens this week was seen as a positive sign by people at “60 Minutes.”
Days before the FCC’s vote, Paramount agreed to hire an ombudsman at CBS News with the mission of investigating complaints of political bias. “In all respects, Skydance will ensure that CBS’s reporting is fair, unbiased, and fact-based,” Skydance said in a letter to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr.
The role of an ombudsman, or public editor, who examines a news outlet’s work is often positive — if they are given independence, said Kelly McBride, an ethics expert who has had that role at NPR for five years. “You really want the person to have loyalty only to their own judgment and the journalistic mission of the organization,” she said.
Having the sole mission of examining bias could be problematic, however. To be fair, a journalist’s work should be closely studied before making that determination, not judged on the basis of one report or passage, she said.
Carr, in an interview with CNBC on Friday, said the role “should go a long way toward restoring America’s trust in media.” Anna Gomez, an FCC commissioner who voted to reject the deal on Thursday, interpreted the arrangement as a way for the government to control journalists.
“They want the news media to report on them in a positive light or in the light that they want,” Gomez told MSNBC. “So they don’t want the media to do their job, which is to hold government to account without fear or favor.”
How the merger could ripple out across Paramount properties
According to published reports, Ellison has explored purchasing The Free Press, a flourishing news site founded by Bari Weiss perhaps best known for a former NPR editor’s study of liberal bias in public broadcasting. An Ellison spokeswoman did not return a message seeking comment on Friday.
Colbert’s slow-motion firing — he’ll work until the end of his contract next May — was described by CBS as a financial decision given late-night television’s collapsing economics. Colbert’s relentless lampooning of Trump, and his criticism of the “60 Minutes” settlement, led to suspicion of those motives.
“Was this really financial?” comic Jon Stewart wondered. “Or maybe the path of least resistance for your $8 billion merger was killing a show that you know rankled a fragile and vengeful president?”
Stewart’s profane criticism on his own Paramount-owned show may provide its own test for Skydance. “The Daily Show” is one of the few original programs left on Comedy Central, and his contract ends later this year.
In an odd way, Comedy Central’s “South Park” buttresses CBS’ claim that the Colbert decision was financial, not political. Creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone delivered an episode this week that depicted a naked Trump in bed with the devil. Paramount just signed Parker and Stone to a new $1.5 billion deal that Skydance executives surely cleared; it makes the entire “South Park” library available for streaming on Paramount+. a platform where Colbert’s show doesn’t do nearly as well.
Figuring out what to do with others at Paramount’s cable networks, or even the networks as a whole, will be an early decision for Ellison, son of multibillionaire and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.
“There is a clear opportunity to improve Paramount’s growth profile by letting those assets go,” analyst Doug Creutz of TD Securities told investors Friday. “On the other hand, we suspect the Ellisons did not purchase Paramount in order to break it up for parts.”
The merger also brings together the Paramount movie studio with one of its most regular partners. David Ellison has been one of the industry’s top investors and producers since founding Skydance in 2006.
Ellison has a challenge here, too: Years of uncertainty over its future and modest investment in its movie pipeline has shrunk Paramount’s market share to last among the major studios. The Paramount+ streaming service has been a money-loser.
To revive Paramount, Ellison will look to revamp its streaming operations, leverage its franchises and try to bolster family content.
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AP Film Writer Jake Coyle contributed to this report. David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP.
Stocks climbed to more records on Wall Street. The S&P 500 rose 0.4% Friday, setting an all-time high for the fifth time this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.2% to its own record set the day before. Deckers helped lead the way with a gain of 11.3%. The company behind Ugg boots and Hoka shoes reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected. That helped offset a sharp drop for Intel, which sank 8.5% after saying it would cut thousands of jobs as it tries to turn around its struggling fortunes.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising toward more records on Friday and coasting toward the close of another winning week.
The S&P 500 was 0.5% higher in late trading and on track to close at an all-time high every day of this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 221 points, or 0.5%, with less than an hour remaining in trading, and the Nasdaq composite was adding 0.4% to its own record set the day before.
Deckers, the company behind Ugg boots and Hoka shoes, jumped 12.3% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the spring than analysts expected. Its growth was particularly strong outside the United States, where revenue soared nearly 50%.
Edwards Lifesciences rose 4.3% after likewise topping Wall Street’s expectations for profit in the latest quarter. It said it saw strength across all its product groups, and it expects profit for the full year to come in at the high end of the forecasted range it had given earlier.
They helped offset a drop of 9.3% for Intel, which fell after reporting a loss for the latest quarter, when analysts were looking for a profit. The struggling chipmaker also said it would cut thousands of jobs and eliminate other expenses as it tries to turn around its fortunes. Intel, which helped launch Silicon Valley as the U.S. technology hub, has fallen behind rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices while demand for artificial intelligence chips soars.
The pressure is on companies to deliver solid growth in profits in order to justify the rallies in their stock prices to record after record in recent weeks. Wall Street has zoomed higher on hopes that President Donald Trump will reach trade deals with other countries that will lower his stiff proposed tariffs, along with the risk that they could cause a recession and drive up inflation. Trump has recently announced deals with Japan and the Philippines, and the next big deadline is looming on Friday, Aug. 1.
Besides potential trade talks, next week will also feature a meeting by the Federal Reserve on interest rates. Trump again on Thursday lobbied the Fed to cut rates, which he has implied could save the U.S. government money on its debt repayments.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though, has continued to insist he wants to wait for more data about how Trump’s tariffs affect the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move. Lower interest rates can help goose the economy, but they can also give inflation more fuel.
Lower rates also may not lower the U.S. government’s costs to borrow money, if the bond market feels they could send inflation higher in the future. In that case, lower short-term rates brought by the Fed could actually have the opposite effect and raise the interest rates that Washington must pay to borrow money over the long term.
The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that the Fed will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady following Trump’s latest attempt to push Powell to cut interest rates. Trump also seemed to back off on threats to fire the Fed’s chair.
“To do that is a big move, and I don’t think that’s necessary,” Trump said. “I just want to see one thing happen, very simple: Interest rates come down.”
If Trump fired Powell, he’d risk freaking out financial markets by raising the possibility of a less independent Fed, one unable to make unpopular choices necessary to keep the economy healthy.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.38% from 4.43% late Thursday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do, held steady at 3.91%, where it was late Thursday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes slipped across much of Europe and Asia.
Stocks fell 1.1% in Hong Kong and 0.3% in Shanghai. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said he will meet with Chinese officials in Sweden next week to work toward a trade deal with Beijing ahead of an Aug. 12 deadline. Trump has said a China trip “is not too distant” as trade tensions ease.
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AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
Australia announced it will reduce restrictions on U.S. beef imports in a move U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration claimed as a major victory over “non-scientific trade barriers.”
Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said Thursday that relaxing the restrictions designed to keep Australia free of mad cow disease, also known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, would not compromise biosecurity.
“Australia stands for open and free trade — our cattle industry has significantly benefited from this,” Collins said in a statement.
Trump celebrated the announcement with a post on Truth Social that said: “Now, we are going to sell so much to Australia because this is undeniable and irrefutable Proof that U.S. Beef is the Safest and Best in the entire World.”
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke L. Rollins responded to Australia’s announcement by congratulating Trump on a “major trade breakthrough that gives greater access to U.S. beef producers selling to Australia.”
“This is yet another example of the kind of market access the President negotiates to bring America into a new golden age of prosperity, with American agriculture leading the way,” she said in a statement.
Australia has allowed imports of beef grown in the United States since 2019. But Australia has not allowed imports from the U.S. of beef sourced from Canada or Mexico because of the disease risk.
But the U.S. has recently introduced additional movement controls that identify and trace all cattle from Mexico and Canada to their farms of origin.
US cattle import controls satisfy Australian authorities
Australian authorities were “satisfied the strengthened control measures put in place by the U.S. effectively manage biosecurity risks,” Collins said.
The timing of the new, reduced restrictions has not been finalized.
Trump attacked Australian import restrictions on U.S. beef when he announced in April that tariffs of at least 10% would be placed on Australian imports, with steel and aluminum facing a 50% tariff.
“Australia bans — and they’re wonderful people, and wonderful everything — but they ban American beef,” Trump told reporters then.
“Yet we imported $3 billion of Australian beef from them just last year alone. They won’t take any of our beef. They don’t want it because they don’t want it to affect their farmers and, you know, I don’t blame them, but we’re doing the same thing right now,” Trump added.
Lawmaker fears appeasing Trump endangers Australian cattle industry
Opposition lawmaker David Littleproud suspected the government was endangering Australia’s cattle industry to appease Trump.
“I want to see the science and it should be predicated on science. I’m suspicious of the speed at which this has been done,” Littleproud told reporters.
“We need to give confidence to the industry, but also to you (the public): this is not just about animal welfare, this is about human welfare, this is about BSE potentially coming into this country and having a human impact, so I think it’s important the government’s very transparent about the science and I don’t think it’s even beyond the question to have an independent panel review that science to give confidence to everybody,” he added.
Around 70% of Australian beef is exported. Producers fear that the export market would vanish overnight if diseases, including mad cow or foot-and-mouth disease, infected Australian cattle.
Will Evans, chief executive of Cattle Australia, who represents more than 52,000 grass-fed beef producers across the nation, said he was confident the agriculture department had taken a cautious approach toward U.S. imports.
“The department’s undertaken a technical scientific assessment and we have to put faith in them. They’ve made this assessment themselves. They’ve said: ‘We’ve looked at this, we’ve looked at the best science, this is a decision that we feel comfortable with,’” Evans said.
“When you have a $75 billion (Australian $50 billion) industry relying on them not making this mistake, I’m sure they’ve been very cautious in their decision-making,” he added.
US beef prices rise because of drought and a domestic cattle shortage
Beef prices have been rising in the U.S. due to factors that include drought and shrinking domestic herd numbers.
The average price of a pound of ground beef in the U.S. rose to $6.12 in June, up nearly 12% from a year ago, according to U.S. government data. The average price of all uncooked beef steaks rose 8% to $11.49 per pound.
Australian demand for U.S. beef is likely to remain low for reasons including a relatively weak Australian dollar.
Australia’s opposition to any U.S. tariffs will be high on the agenda when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secures his first face-to-face meeting with Trump.
Albanese and Trump were to hold a one-on-one meeting on the sidelines of a Group of Seven summit in Canada last month, but the U.S. president left early.
Albanese expects the pair will meet this year, although no date has been announced.
The two countries have had a bilateral free trade deal for 20 years, and the U.S. has maintained a trade surplus with Australia for decades.
Federal regulators on Thursday approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance, clearing the way to close a deal that combined Hollywood glitz with political intrigue.
The stamp of approval from the Federal Communications Commission comes after months of turmoil revolving around President Donald Trump’s legal battle with “60 Minutes,” the crown jewel of Paramount-owned broadcast network CBS. With the specter of the Trump administration potentially blocking the hard-fought deal with Skydance, Paramount earlier this month agreed to pay a $16 million settlement with the president.
Critics of the settlement lambasted it as a veiled bribe to appease Trump, amid rising alarm over editorial independence overall. Further outrage also emerged after CBS said it was canceling Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” just days after the comedian sharply criticized the parent company’s settlement on air. Paramount cited financial reasons, but big names both within and outside the company have questioned those motives.
In a statement accompanying the deal’s approval, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr hailed the merger as an opportunity to bring more balance to “once-storied” CBS.
“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said.
While seeking approval, Skydance management assured regulators that it will carefully watch for any perceived biased at CBS News and hire an ombudsman to review any complaints about fairness. In a Tuesday filing, the company’s general counsel maintained that New Paramount will embody “a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum” — and also noted that it plans to take a “comprehensive review” of CBS to make “any necessary changes.”
The FCC approved the merger by a 2-1 vote, and the regulator who opposed it expressed disdain for how it all came together.
“After months of cowardly capitulation to this administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.” Gomez was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
Paramount and Skydance have said they wanted to seal the deal by this September, and now appear to be on a path to make it happen by then, if not sooner.
Over the past year the merger has periodically looked like it might fall apart as the two sides haggled over terms. But the two companies finally struck an accord that valued the combined company at $28 billion, with a consortium led by the family of Skydance founder David Ellison and RedBird Capital agreeing to invest $8 billion.
Signaling a shakeup would accompany the changing of the guard, Ellison stressed the need to transition into a “tech hybrid” to stay competitive in today’s entertainment landscape. That includes plans to “rebuild” the Paramount+ streaming service, among wider efforts to expand direct-to-consumer offerings in a world with more entertainment options and shorter attention spans.
Ellison, who is poised to become CEO of the restructured Paramount, is the son of Larry Ellison, technology titan and co-founder of Oracle. Besides possessing an estimated $288 billion fortune, Larry Ellison has been described as a friend by Trump.
While Paramount sweated out regulatory approval of the merger, one of TV’s best-known and longest-running programs turned into a political hot potato when Trump sued CBS over the handling of a “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic Party opponent in last year’s presidential election, Kamala Harris. Trump accused “60 Minutes” of editing the interview in a deceptive way designed to help Harris win the election. After initially demanding $10 billion in damages, Trump upped the ante to $20 billion while asserting he had suffered “mental anguish.”
The case quickly became a closely-watched test of whether a corporation would back its journalists and stand up to Trump. Editing for brevity’s sake is commonplace in TV journalism and CBS argued Trump’s claims had no merit. But reports of company executives exploring a potential settlement with Trump later piled up, particularly after Carr — appointed to lead the FCC by Trump — launched an investigation earlier this year.
By the start of July, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million. The company said the money would go to Trump’s future presidential library and to pay his legal fees, but maintained that it was not apologizing or expressing regret for the story.
The settlement triggered an outcry among critics who pilloried Paramount for backing down from the legal fight to increase the chances of closing the Skydance deal. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, said that the deal “could be bribery in plain sight” — and called for an investigation and new rules to restrict donations to presidential libraries.
Concerns about editorial independence at CBS had piled up even in the months before the deal was announced — with Paramount overseeing “60 Minutes” stories in new ways, as well as journalists at the network expressing frustrations about the changes on an award-winning program that has been a weekly staple for nearly 57 years
In April, then-executive producer of “60 Minutes” Bill Owens resigned — noting that it had “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.” Another domino fell in May when CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon also stepped down, citing disagreements with the company “on the path forward,” amid speculation of Paramount nearing a settlement with Trump. CBS has since appointed Tanya Simon as the top producer at “60 Minutes” — elevating a respected insider in a move that could be viewed as a way to calm nerves leading up to the changes that Skydance’s Ellison is expected to make.
Three years after the Supreme Court opened the door to state abortion bans, most U.S. adults say abortion should be legal — views that look similar to before the landmark ruling.
The June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door to state bans on abortion led to major policy changes.
Most states have either moved to protect abortion access or restrict it. Twelve are now enforcing bans on abortion at every stage of pregnancy, and four more do so after about six weeks’ gestation, which is often before women realize they’re pregnant.
Last year, an AP-NORC poll conducted in June found that 7 in 10 U.S. adults said it should be available in all or most cases, up slightly from 65% in May 2022, just before the decision that overruled the constitutional right to abortion, and 57% in June 2021.
The new poll is closer to Americans’ views before the Supreme Court ruled. Now, 64% of adults support legal abortion in most or all cases. More than half the adults in states with the most stringent bans are in that group.
Similarly, about half now say abortion should be available in their state when someone doesn’t want to continue their pregnancy for any reason — about the same as in June 2021 but down from about 6 in 10 who said that in 2024.
Adults in the strictest states are just as likely as others to say abortion should be available in their state to women who want to end pregnancies for any reason.
Democrats support abortion access far more than Republicans do. Support for legal abortion has dropped slightly among members of both parties since June 2024, but nearly 9 in 10 Democrats and roughly 4 in 10 Republicans say abortion should be legal in at least most instances.
Fallout from state bans has influenced some people’s positions — but not others
Seeing what’s happened in the aftermath of the ruling has strengthened the abortion rights position of Wilaysha White, a 25-year-old Ohio mom.
She has some regrets about the abortion she had when she was homeless.
“I don’t think you should be able to get an abortion anytime,” said White, who calls herself a “semi-Republican.”
But she said that hearing about situations — including when a Georgia woman was arrested after a miscarriage and initially charged with concealing a death — is a bigger concern.
“Seeing women being sick and life or death, they’re not being put first — that’s just scary,” she said. “I’d rather have it be legal across the board than have that.”
Julie Reynolds’ strong anti-abortion stance has been cemented for decades and hasn’t shifted since Roe was overturned.
“It’s a moral issue,” said the 66-year-old Arizona woman, who works part-time as a bank teller.
She said her view is shaped partly by having obtained an abortion herself when she was in her 20s. “I would not want a woman to go through that,” she said. “I live with that every day. I took a life.”
Support remains high for legal abortion in certain situations
The vast majority of U.S. adults — at least 8 in 10 — continue to say their state should allow legal abortion if a fetal abnormality would prevent the child from surviving outside the womb, if the patient’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy, or if the person became pregnant as a result of rape or incest.
Consistent with AP-NORC’s June 2024 poll, about 7 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favor protecting access to abortions for patients who are experiencing miscarriages or other pregnancy-related emergencies.
In states that have banned or restricted abortion, such medical exceptions have been sharply in focus.
This is a major concern for Nicole Jones, a 32-year-old Florida resident.
Jones and her husband would like to have children soon. But she said she’s worried about access to abortion if there’s a fetal abnormality or a condition that would threaten her life in pregnancy, since they live in a state that bans most abortions after the first six weeks of gestation.
“What if we needed something?” she asked. “We’d have to travel out of state or risk my life because of this ban.”
Florida’s law has exceptions, including to save the life of a pregnant woman or prevent irreversible impairment of bodily functions. But some patients, advocates and health care providers across the country have often said that restrictions still limit access to emergency care.
Adults support protections for seeking abortions across state lines — but not as strongly
There’s less consensus on whether states that allow abortion should protect access for women who live in places with bans.
Just over half support protecting a patient’s right to obtain an abortion in another state and shielding those who provide abortions from fines or prison time. In both cases, relatively few adults — about 2 in 10 — oppose the measures and about 1 in 4 are neutral.
More Americans also favor than oppose legal protections for doctors who prescribe and mail abortion pills to patients in states with bans. About 4 in 10 “somewhat” or “strongly” favor those protections, and roughly 3 in 10 oppose them.
There have been legal challenges to telehealth abortions, including a lawsuit filed this week by a Texas man claiming a California physician violated state and federal law by sending pills to the plaintiff’s girlfriend.
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The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Abortion-rights activists demonstrate against the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade that established a constitutional right to abortion, on Capitol Hill in Washington, June 30, 2022.
With Mexican cattle again barred this month from entry to the United States over fears of spreading a flesh-eating parasite, ranchers and veterinarians in Mexico hundreds of miles from the border are fighting what has U.S. agricultural authorities so on edge.
In the southern state of Chiapas, which borders Guatemala, the New World screwworm fly’s rapid spread appears to have caught most ranchers off guard, despite memories of previous outbreaks in the 1980s and 1990s.
Mexico is building a plant with U.S. support in Chiapas to produce sterile flies, which have proven effective at stopping the spread, but it won’t be ready until next year. Meanwhile, the price of medicines used to treat livestock infected with the screwworm have soared in price.
That has led some to fall back on home remedies like applying gasoline or lime to open wounds to coax out the worms.
In addition to the cost of the medicine, treatment requires careful monitoring and usually involves multiple courses. Any open wound, even very small ones, are an invitation to the fly to lay its eggs.
Veterinarian Alfredo Chávez left Chiapas to study in 1989, so he says he missed seeing the effects of that outbreak, but now he’s seen cases multiply in his corner of the state over the past month.
He’s heard of dozens of cases in the area now and treated about a dozen himself. It’s not just cows either — sheep, pigs, cats and dogs are targets as well.
Armed with a pair of blue tweezers and an aerosol spray that helps draw the maggots out, Chávez moves from animal to animal. He puts maggots in plastic tubes as samples, which he provides to agricultural authorities.
But beyond providing the tubes and encouraging ranchers to report cases, he said that the government hasn’t provided much help.
U.S. officials worry that if the fly reaches Texas, its maggots could cause large economic losses, something that happened decades ago.
Ranch caretaker Edi Valencia Santos said that Mexican government officials have come to his community to talk to people with livestock, but so far without resources. He has had five infected animals on the ranch.
Despite cattle in this region going to domestic consumption rather than to the U.S., the presence of the screwworm in Mexico has frozen cattle exports to the U.S. nationwide.
Valencia said that he remembers the small planes distributing sterile flies during those earlier outbreaks, so is optimistic they will eventually help, but for now the costs are piling up on ranchers.
The meeting in Florida, which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said he worked to arrange, is part of an ongoing Justice Department effort to cast itself as transparent following fierce backlash from parts of President Donald Trump’s base over an earlier refusal to release additional records in the Epstein investigation.
“Ms. Maxwell answered every single question. She never stopped, she never invoked a privilege, she never declined to answer. She answered all the questions truthfully, honestly and to the best of her ability,” attorney David Oscar Markus told reporters outside the federal courthouse in Tallahassee, where Maxwell met with Blanche.
In a social media post Tuesday, Blanche said that Trump “has told us to release all credible evidence” and that if Maxwell has information about anyone who has committed crimes against victims, the FBI and the Justice Department “will hear what she has to say.”
Markus said his team was “thankful” the deputy attorney general came to question Maxwell, calling it a “good day.”
Asked if his client could potentially receive a pardon or see her prison term reduced, Markus said: “There’s no promises yet. So she’s just answering questions for now.”
Blanche said Thursday in a social media post that he met with Maxwell and the interview will continue on Friday.
“The Department of Justice will share additional information about what we learned at the appropriate time,” he said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The House Committee on Oversight issued a subpoena Wednesday for Maxwell to testify before committee officials in August.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence and is housed at a low-security federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida. She was sentenced three years ago after being convicted of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.
Officials have said Epstein killed himself in his New York jail cell while awaiting trial in 2019, but his case has generated endless attention and conspiracy theories because of his and Maxwell’s links to famous people, including royals, presidents and billionaires.
Earlier this month, the Justice Department said it would not release more files related to the Epstein investigation, despite promises that claimed otherwise from Attorney General Pam Bondi. The department also said an Epstein client list does not exist.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Bondi told Trump in May that his name was among high-profile people mentioned in government files of Epstein, though the mention does not imply wrongdoing.
A subcommittee on Wednesday also voted to subpoena the Justice Department for documents related to Epstein. And senators in both major political parties have expressed openness to holding hearings on the matter after Congress’ August recess.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, has introduced legislation with bipartisan support that would require the Justice Department to “make publicly available in a searchable and downloadable format all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials” related to Epstein and his associates.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republican majority leader, Rep. Steve Scalise, both of Louisiana, have said they will address whatever outstanding Epstein-related issues are in Congress when they return from recess.
Epstein, under a 2008 non-prosecution agreement, pleaded guilty in Florida to state charges of soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. That allowed him to avert a possible life sentence, instead serving 13 months in a work release program. He was required to make payments to victims and register as a sex offender.
In 2019, Epstein was charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan for nearly identical allegations.
Audrey Strauss, acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, during a news conference in New York on July 2, 2020.
A voter-backed California law requiring background checks for people who buy bullets is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday in a blow to the state’s efforts to combat gun violence.
In upholding a 2024 ruling by a lower court, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law violates the Second Amendment. Voters passed the law in 2016 and it took effect in 2019.
Many states, including California, make people pass a background check before they can buy a gun. California went a step further by requiring a background check, which costs either $1 or $19 depending on eligibility, every time someone buys bullets.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez decided that the law was unconstitutional because if people can’t buy bullets, they can’t use their guns for self-defense.
The 9th Circuit agreed. Writing for two of the three judges on the appellate panel, Judge Sandra Segal Ikuta said the law “meaningfully constrains” the constitutional right to keep arms by forcing gun owners to get rechecked before each purchase of bullets.
“The right to keep and bear arms incorporates the right to operate them, which requires ammunition,” the judge wrote.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who supported the background checks, decried the court’s decision.
“Strong gun laws save lives — and today’s decision is a slap in the face to the progress California has made in recent years to keep its communities safer from gun violence,” Newsom said in a statement. “Californians voted to require background checks on ammunition and their voices should matter.”
The California Department of Justice said the state needs “common-sense, lifesaving” laws that prevent ammunition from falling into the wrong hands.
“We are deeply disappointed in today’s ruling — a critical and lifesaving measure that closes a dangerous loophole,” the department said in a statement. “Our families, schools, and neighborhoods deserve nothing less than the most basic protection against preventable gun violence, and we are looking into our legal options.”
Chuck Michel, president and general counsel of the California Rifle & Pistol Association, called the law “absurdly restrictive.”
“This case has been a long hard fight against overreaching government gun control, but a firearm cannot be effective without the ammunition to make it operable. The state of California continues to try to strip our rights, and we continue to prove their actions are unconstitutional,” Michel said.
The law remained in effect while the state appealed the lower court’s decision. Benitez had criticized the state’s automated background check system, which he said rejected about 11% of applicants, or 58,087 requests, in the first half of 2023.
California’s law was meant to help police find people who have guns illegally, such as convicted felons, people with certain mental illnesses and people with some domestic violence convictions. Sometimes they order kits online and assemble guns in their home. The guns don’t have serial numbers and are difficult for law enforcement to track, but the people who own them show up in background checks when they try to buy bullets.
John Parkin, president of Coyote Point Armory in Burlingame, California, said the law made it difficult or impossible for some legal gun owners to purchase ammunition. For example, out-of-state residents and California residents with old guns couldn’t buy bullets because they weren’t in the database of approved gun owners, he said.
“It was written to make California gun owners angry. There wasn’t a lot of logic to it,” Parkin said about the law. “I think there are better ways to keep the public safe.”
California has some of the nation’s toughest gun laws. Many of them are being challenged in court in light of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a new standard for interpreting gun laws. The decision said gun laws must be consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Two other California gun laws were struck down in recent years — one that banned detachable magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets and another that banned the sale of assault-style weapons. Those decisions have been appealed. Other laws being challenged include rules requiring gun stores to have digital surveillance systems and restrictions on the sale of new handguns.
Federal regulators on Thursday approved Paramount’s $8 billion merger with Skydance, clearing the way to close a deal that combined Hollywood glitz with political intrigue.
The stamp of approval from the Federal Communications Commission comes after months of turmoil revolving around President Donald Trump’s legal battle with “60 Minutes,” the crown jewel of Paramount-owned broadcast network CBS. With the specter of the Trump administration potentially blocking the hard-fought deal with Skydance, Paramount earlier this month agreed to pay a $16 million settlement with the president.
Critics of the settlement lambasted it as a veiled bribe to appease Trump, amid rising alarm over editorial independence overall. Further outrage also emerged after CBS said it was canceling Stephen Colbert’s “Late Show” just days after the comedian sharply criticized the parent company’s settlement on air. Paramount cited financial reasons, but big names both within and outside the company have questioned those motives.
In a statement accompanying the deal’s approval, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr hailed the merger as an opportunity to bring more balance to “once-storied” CBS.
“Americans no longer trust the legacy national news media to report fully, accurately, and fairly. It is time for a change,” Carr said.
While seeking approval, Skydance management assured regulators that it will carefully watch for any perceived biased at CBS News and hire an ombudsman to review any complaints about fairness. In a Tuesday filing, the company’s general counsel maintained that New Paramount will embody “a diversity of viewpoints across the political and ideological spectrum” — and also noted that it plans to take a “comprehensive review” of CBS to make “any necessary changes.”
The FCC approved the merger by a 2-1 vote, and the regulator who opposed it expressed disdain for how it all came together.
“After months of cowardly capitulation to this administration, Paramount finally got what it wanted,” FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said in a statement. “Unfortunately, it is the American public who will ultimately pay the price for its actions.”
Paramount and Skydance have said they wanted to seal the deal by this September, and now appear to be on a path to make it happen by then, if not sooner.
Over the past year the merger has periodically looked like it might fall apart as the two sides haggled over terms. But the two companies finally struck an accord that valued the combined company at $28 billion, with a consortium led by the family of Skydance found David Ellison and RedBird Capital agreeing to invest $8 billion.
Signaling a shakeup would accompany the changing of the guard, Ellison stressed the need to transition into a “tech hybrid” to stay competitive in today’s entertainment landscape. That includes plans to “rebuild” the Paramount+ streaming service, among wider efforts to expand direct-to-consumer offerings in a world with more entertainment options and shorter attention spans.
Ellison, who is poised to become CEO of the restructured Paramount, is the son of Larry Ellison, technology titan and co-founder of Oracle. Besides possessing an estimated $288 billion fortune, Larry Ellison has been described as a friend by Trump.
While Paramount sweated out regulatory approval of the merger, one of TV’s best-known and longest-running programs turned into a political hot potato when Trump sued CBS over the handling of a “60 Minutes” interview with his Democratic Party opponent in last year’s presidential election, Kamala Harris. presidential nominee. Trump accused “60 Minutes” of editing the interview in a deceptive way designed to help Harris win the election. After initially demanding $10 billion in damages, Trump upped the ante to $20 billion while asserting he had suffered “mental anguish.”
The case quickly became a closely-watched test of whether a corporation would back its journalists and stand up to Trump. Editing for brevity’s sake is commonplace in TV journalism and CBS argued Trump’s claims had no merit. But reports of company executives exploring a potential settlement with Trump later piled up, particularly after Carr — appointed to lead the FCC by Trump — launched an investigation earlier this year.
By the start of July, Paramount agreed to pay Trump $16 million. The company said the money would go to Trump’s future presidential library and to pay his legal fees, but maintained that it was not apologizing or expressing regret for the story.
The settlement triggered an outcry among critics who pilloried Paramount for backing down from the legal fight to increase the chances of closing the Skydance deal. U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, said that the deal “could be bribery in plain sight” — and called for an investigation and new rules to restrict donations to presidential libraries.
Concerns about editorial independence at CBS had piled up even in the months before the deal was announced — with Paramount overseeing “60 Minutes” stories in new ways, as well as journalists at the network expressing frustrations about the changes on an award-winning program that has been a weekly staple for nearly 57 years
In April, then-executive producer of “60 Minutes” Bill Owens resigned — noting that it had “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it.” Another domino fell in May when CBS News CEO Wendy McMahon also stepped down, citing disagreements with the company “on the path forward,” amid speculation of Paramount nearing a settlement with Trump. CBS has since appointed Tanya Simon as the top producer at “60 Minutes” — elevating a respected insider in a move that could be viewed as a way to calm nerves leading up to the changes that Skydance’s Ellison is expected to make.
In a statement accompanying the deal's approval, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr (pictured above) hailed the merger as an opportunity to bring more balance to “once-storied” CBS.
President Donald Trump publicly scorned Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Thursday for the cost of an extensive building renovation as the two officials began a tour of the unfinished project.
Trump said the project cost $3.1 billion, much higher than the Fed’s $2.5 billion figure, while Powell, standing next to him, silently shook his head.
“This came from us?” Powell said, then figuring out that Trump was including the renovation of the Martin Building that was finished five years ago.
“Do you expect any more additional cost overruns?” Trump asked.
“Don’t expect them,” Powell said.
Trump said in his career as a real estate developer he would fire someone for cost overruns. The president joked that he would back off Powell if he lowered interest rates.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve, known for its tight lips, structured formality and extraordinary power to shape the global economy, opened up a costly building renovation Thursday to reporters and President Donald Trump.
Trump and his allies say a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed headquarters and a neighboring building reflects an institution run amok — a belief they hope to verify in an afternoon tour of the construction site. The Fed allowed reporters to tour the building before the visit by Trump, who, in his real estate career, has bragged about his lavish spending on architectural accoutrements that gave a Versailles-like golden flair to his buildings.
The visit is an attempt to further ratchet up pressure on Fed Chair Jerome Powell, whom the Republican president has relentlessly attacked for not cutting borrowing costs. Trump’s criticisms have put the Fed, a historically independent institution, under a harsh spotlight. Undermining its independence could reduce the Fed’s ability to calm financial markets and stabilize the U.S. economy.
“This stubborn guy at the Fed just doesn’t get it — Never did, and never will,” Trump said Wednesday on Truth Social. “The Board should act, but they don’t have the Courage to do so!”
Journalists get rare tour of Fed renovation
On Thursday, reporters wound through cement mixers, front loaders, and plastic pipes as they got a close-up view of the active construction site that encompasses the Fed’s historic headquarters, known as the Marriner S. Eccles building, and a second building across 20th Street in Washington.
Fed staff, who declined to be identified, said that greater security requirements, rising materials costs and tariffs, and the need to comply with historic preservation measures drove up the cost of the project, which was budgeted in 2022 at $1.9 billion.
The staff pointed out new blast-resistant windows and seismic walls that were needed to comply with modern building codes and security standards set out by the Department of Homeland Security. The Fed has to build with the highest level of security in mind, Fed staff said, including something called “progressive collapse,” in which only parts of the building would fall if hit with explosives.
Sensitivity to the president’s pending visit among Fed staff was high during the tour. Reporters were ushered into a small room outside the Fed’s boardroom, where 19 officials meet eight times a year to decide whether to change short-term interest rates. The room, which will have a security booth, is oval-shaped, and someone had written “oval office” on plywood walls.
The Fed staff downplayed the inscription as a joke. When reporters returned to the room later, it had been painted over.
During the tour, Fed staff also showed the elevator shaft that congressional critics have said is for “VIPs” only. Powell has since said it will be open to all Fed staff. The renovation includes an 18-inch (45-cm) extension so the elevator reaches a slightly elevated area that is now accessible only by steps or a ramp. A planning document that said the elevator will only be for the Fed’s seven governors was erroneous and later amended, staff said.
Renovations have been in the works for a while
Plans for the renovation were first approved by the Fed’s governing board in 2017. The project then wended its way through several local commissions for approval, at least one of which, the Commission for Fine Arts, included several Trump appointees. The commission pushed for more marble in the second of the two buildings the Fed is renovating, known as 1951 Constitution Avenue, specifically in a mostly glass extension that some of Trump’s appointees derided as a “glass box.”
Fed staff also said tariffs and inflationary increases in building material prices drove up costs. Trump in 2018 imposed a 25% duty on steel and 10% on aluminum. He increased them this year to 50%. Steel prices are up about 60% since the plans were approved, while construction materials costs overall are up about 50%, according to government data.
Fed staff also pointed to the complication of historic renovations — both buildings have significant preservation needs. Constructing a new building on an empty site would have been cheaper, they said.
As one example, the staff pointed reporters to where they had excavated beneath the Eccles building to add a floor of mechanical rooms, storage space, and some offices. The Fed staff acknowledged such structural additions underground are expensive, but said it was done to avoid adding HVAC equipment and other mechanics on the roof, which is historic.
The Fed has previously attributed much of the project’s cost to underground construction. It is also adding three underground levels of parking for its second building. Initially the central bank proposed building more above ground, but ran into Washington, D.C.’s height restrictions, forcing more underground construction.
Renovation project could be impetus to push out Powell
Trump wants Powell to dramatically slash the Fed’s benchmark interest rate under the belief that inflation is not a problem, but Powell wants to see how Trump’s tariffs impact the economy before making any rate cuts that could potentially cause inflation to accelerate.
The renovation project has emerged as a possible justification by Trump to take the extraordinary step of firing Powell for cause, an act that some administration officials have played down given that the Fed chair’s term ends in May 2026. White House budget director Russell Vought suggested in a July 10 letter to Powell that changes to the renovations in order to save money might have violated the National Capital Planning Act.
Fed staff said there were just two changes to the plans they had submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission, and neither were significant enough to warrant a re-submission of the plans. They removed a seating area on the roof of the Eccles building, because it was an amenity, and two water features in front of the second building, which they said saved money.
More recently, Trump has said he has no plans to oust Powell, which could be illegal based on a note in a May Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court found that Trump had the power to remove board members of other independent agencies, but indicated that a Fed chair could only be removed for cause.
Pushing Powell out also would almost certainly jilt global markets, potentially having the opposite effect that Trump wants as he pushes for lower borrowing costs.
Not everyone in Trump’s administration agrees with the president’s contention that Powell needs to resign.
“There’s nothing that tells me that he should step down right now,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Trump has floated as a potential replacement for Powell, in a recent interview with Fox Business. “He’s been a good public servant.”
When asked last week if the costly rebuilding could be grounds to fire Powell, Trump said, “I think it sort of is.”
“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation,” Trump said, “I think it’s really disgraceful.”
President Donald Trump listens as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell speaks during a visit to the Federal Reserve, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Washington.
Hulk Hogan, a mustachioed, headscarf-wearing icon in professional wrestling who turned the sport into a massive business and cultural touchstone, died Thursday at age 71, Florida police said.
In Clearwater, Florida, authorities responded to a morning call about a cardiac arrest. Hogan was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said in a statement on Facebook.
Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, was perhaps the biggest star in WWE’s long history. He was the main draw for the first WrestleMania in 1985 and was a fixture for years, facing everyone from Andre The Giant and Randy Savage to The Rock and even company chairman Vince McMahon.
He won at least six WWE championships and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005.
“One of pop culture’s most recognizable figures, Hogan helped WWE achieve global recognition in the 1980s. WWE extends its condolences to Hogan’s family, friends, and fans,” WWE said.
“Hulkamania,” as the energy he created was called, started running wild in the mid-1980s and pushed professional wrestling into the mainstream. He was a flag-waving American hero with the horseshoe mustache, red and yellow gear and massive arms he called his “24-inch pythons.”
In recent years, Hogan has waded further into politics.
At the 2024 Republican National Convention, Hogan merged classic WWE maneuvers with President Donald Trump’s rhetoric to vociferously endorse his longtime acquaintance.
“Let Trumpamania run wild! Let Trumpamania rule again! Let Trumpamania make America Great Again!” Hogan shouted into the crowd.
He ripped off a T-shirt emblazoned with a picture of himself on a motorcycle to reveal a bright red Trump-Vance campaign shirt underneath. Then-presidential candidate Trump stood to applaud the move.
In 2016, a Florida jury awarded Hogan $115 million in his sex tape lawsuit against Gawker Media and then added $25 million in punitive damages. Hogan sued after Gawker in 2012 posted a video of him having sex with his former best friend’s wife. He contended the post violated his privacy.
Hogan smiled and wore black throughout the three-week trial.
“Everywhere I show up, people treat me like I’m still the champ,” he said of the support from fans.
Hogan first became champion in what was then the World Wrestling Federation in 1984, and pro wrestling took off from there. His popularity helped lead to the creation of the annual WrestleMania event in 1985, when he teamed up with Mr. T to beat “Rowdy” Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff in the main event.
He slammed and beat Andre the Giant at WrestleMania III in 1987, and the WWF gained momentum. His feud with the late “Macho Man” Randy Savage – perhaps his greatest rival — carried pro wrestling even further.
Hogan was a central figure in what is known as the Monday Night Wars. The WWE and World Championship Wrestling were battling for ratings supremacy in 1996. Hogan tilted things in WCW’s favor with the birth of the Hollywood Hogan character and the formation of the New World Order, a villainous stable that put WCW ahead in the ratings.
He returned to the WWE in 2002 and became a champion again. His match with The Rock at WrestleMania X8, a loss during which fans cheered for his “bad guy” character, was seen as a passing of the torch.
He was perhaps as known for his larger-than-life personality as he was his in-ring exploits. He was beloved for his “promos,” hype sessions he used to draw fans into matches. He often would play off his interviewer, “Mean” Gene Okerlund, starting his interviews off with, “Well, lemme tell ya something, Mean Gene!”
He crossed over into movies and television as well. He was Thunderlips in the movie Rocky III in 1982.
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White reported from Detroit. AP writer Safiyah Riddle contributed from Montgomery, Alabama.
Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, waits in the courtroom during a break in his trial against Gawker Media in St. Petersburg, Fla., March 9, 2016.
President Donald Trump took to social media Thursday morning to support Elon Musk’s car company, a startling development given their bitter public feud.
”I want Elon, and all businesses within our Country, to THRIVE,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
The post wasn’t enough to help Tesla’s stock, which fell sharply after the company reported another quarter of lackluster financial results and Musk warned of some potentially “rough quarters” into next year. At midday, the stock was down around 9%.
Late Wednesday, Tesla said revenue fell 12% and profit dropped 16% in the April-June quarter. Many prospective buyers have been turned off by Musk’s foray into right-wing politics, and the competition has ramped up in key markets such as Europe and China.
Investors have been unnerved by Musk’s social media spat with the president because Trump has threatened to retaliate by ending government contracts and breaks for Musk’s various businesses, including Tesla.
But Trump struck a starkly different tone Thursday morning.
“Everyone is stating that I will destroy Elon’s companies by taking away some, if not all, of the large scale subsidies he receives from the U.S. Government. This is not so!” Trump wrote. “The better they do, the better the USA does, and that’s good for all of us.”
After Trump’s massive budget bill passed earlier this month, Tesla faces the loss of the $7,500 EV tax credit and stands to make much less money from selling regulatory credits to other automakers. Trump’s tariffs on countries including China and Mexico will also cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars, the company said on its earnings call.
Musk has blasted the budget bill on his own social media platform X for adding to U.S. debt at a time when it is already too large. The Tesla CEO has called the budget pushed by the president a “disgusting abomination” and has threatened to form a new political party.
On Wednesday’s call, Musk said the electric vehicle maker will face “a few rough quarters” as it moves into a future focused less on selling cars and more on offering people rides in self-driving cars. He also talked up the company’s business making humanoid robotics. But he acknowledged those businesses are a ways off from contributing to Tesla’s bottom line.
Tesla began a rollout in June of its paid robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, and hopes to introduce the driverless cabs in several other cities soon. Musk told analysts that the service will be available to probably “half of the population of the U.S. by the end of the year — that’s at least our goal, subject to regulatory approvals.”
“We’re in this weird transition period where we’ll lose a lot of incentives in the U.S.,” Musk said, adding that Tesla “probably could have a few rough quarters” ahead. He added, though, “Once you get to autonomy at scale in the second half of next year, certainly by the end of next year, I would be surprised if Tesla’s economics are not very compelling.”
In homes and offices, air conditioning is sweet relief. But under the scorching sun, outdoor labor can be grueling, brutal, occasionally even deadly.
A street sweeper died in Barcelona during a heat wave last month and, according to a labor union, 12 other city cleaners have suffered heatstroke since. Some of Europe’s powerful unions are pushing for tougher regulations to protect the aging workforce from climate change on the world’s fastest-warming continent.
Cleaning the hot streets
Hundreds of street cleaners and concerned citizens marched through downtown Barcelona last week to protest the death of Montse Aguilar, a 51-year-old street cleaner who worked even as the city’s temperatures hit a June record.
Fellow street sweeper Antonia Rodríguez said at the protest that blistering summers have made her work “unbearable.”
“I have been doing this job for 23 years and each year the heat is worse,” said Rodríguez, 56. “Something has to be done.”
Extreme heat has fueled more than 1,000 excess deaths in Spain so far in June and July, according to the Carlos III Health Institute.
“Climate change is, above all, playing a role in extreme weather events like the heat waves we are experiencing, and is having a big impact in our country,” said Diana Gómez, who heads the institute’s daily mortality observatory.
Even before the march, Barcelona’s City Hall issued new rules requiring the four companies contracted to clean its streets to give workers uniforms made of breathable material, a hat and sun cream. When temperatures reach 34 C (93 F), street cleaners now must have hourly water breaks and routes that allow time in the shade. Cleaning work will be suspended when temperatures hit 40 C (104 F).
Protesters said none of the clothing changes have been put into effect and workers are punished for allegedly slacking in the heat. They said supervisors would sanction workers when they took breaks or slowed down.
Workers marched behind a banner reading “Extreme Heat Is Also Workplace Violence!” and demanded better summer clothing and more breaks during the sweltering summers. They complained that they have to buy their own water.
FCC Medio Ambiente, the company that employed the deceased worker, declined to comment on the protesters’ complaints. In a previous statement, it offered its condolences to Aguilar’s family and said that it trains its staff to work in hot weather.
Emergency measures and a Greek cook
In Greece, regulations for outdoor labor such as construction work and food delivery includes mandatory breaks. Employers are also advised — but not mandated — to adjust shifts to keep workers out of the midday sun.
Greece requires heat-safety inspections during hotter months but the country’s largest labor union, the GSEE, is calling for year-round monitoring.
European labor unions and the United Nations’ International Labor Organization are also pushing for a more coordinated international approach to handling the impact of rising temperatures on workers.
“Heat stress is an invisible killer,” the ILO said in a report last year on how heat hurts workers.
It called for countries to increase worker heat protections, saying Europe and Central Asia have experienced the largest spike in excessive worker heat exposure this century.
In Athens, grill cook Thomas Siamandas shaves meat from a spit in the threshold of the famed Bairaktaris Restaurant. He is out of the sun, but the 38 C (100.4 F) temperature recorded on July 16 was even tougher to endure while standing in front of souvlaki burners.
Grill cooks step into air-conditioned rooms when possible and always keep water within reach. Working with a fan pointed at his feet, the 32-year-old said staying cool means knowing when to take a break, before the heat overwhelms you.
“It’s tough, but we take precautions: We sit down when we can, take frequent breaks and stay hydrated. We drink plenty of water — really a lot,” said Siamandas, who has worked at the restaurant for eight years. “You have to find a way to adjust to the conditions.”
The blazing sun in Rome
Massimo De Filippis spends hours in the blazing sun each day sharing the history of vestal virgins, dueling gladiators and powerful emperors as tourists shuffle through Rome’s Colosseum and Forum.
“Honestly, it is tough. I am not going to lie,” the 45-year-old De Filippis said as he wiped sweat from his face. “Many times it is actually dangerous to go into the Roman Forum between noon and 3:30 p.m.”
At midday on July 22, he led his group down the Forum’s Via Sacra, the central road in ancient Rome. They paused at a fountain to rinse their faces and fill their bottles.
Dehydrated tourists often pass out here in the summer heat, said Francesca Duimich, who represents 300 Roman tour guides in Italy’s national federation, Federagit.
“The Forum is a pit; There is no shade, there is no wind,” Duimich said. “Being there at 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. in the summer heat means you will feel unwell.”
This year, guides have bombarded her with complaints about the heat. In recent weeks, Federagit requested that the state’s Colosseum Archaeological Park, which oversees the Forum, open an hour earlier so tours can get a jump-start before the heat becomes punishing. The request has been to no avail, so far.
The park’s press office said that administrators are working to move the opening up by 30 minutes and will soon schedule visits after sunset.
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Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain, Gatopoulos from Athens and Thomas from Rome.
Street cleaner Raúl Rodriguez rests during a protest over the death of fellow cleaner during a recent heat wave in Barcelona, Spain, Wednesday, July 16, 2025.
The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman, new federal data released Thursday shows.
The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.
The new statistic is on par with fertility rates in western European countries, according to World Bank data.
Alarmed by recent drops, the Trump administration has taken steps to increase falling birth rates, like issuing an executive order meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization and backing the idea of “baby bonuses” that might encourage more couples to have kids.
But there’s no reason to be alarmed, according to Leslie Root, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher focused on fertility and population policy.
“We’re seeing this as part of an ongoing process of fertility delay. We know that the U.S. population is still growing, and we still have a natural increase — more births than deaths,” she said.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the statistic for the total fertility rate with updated birth data for 2024.
In the early 1960s, the U.S. total fertility rate was around 3.5, but plummeted to 1.7 by 1976 after the Baby Boom ended. It gradually rose to 2.1 in 2007 before falling again, aside from a 2014 uptick. The rate in 2023 was 1.621, and inched down in 2024 to 1.599, according to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.
Birth rates are generally declining for women in most age groups — and that doesn’t seem likely to change in the near future, said Karen Guzzo, director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina.
People are marrying later and also worried about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment.
“Worry is not a good moment to have kids,” and that’s why birth rates in most age groups are not improving, she said.
Asked about birth-promoting measures outlined by the Trump administration, Guzzo said they don’t tackle larger needs like parental leave and affordable child care.
“The things that they are doing are really symbolic and not likely to budge things for real Americans,” she said.
Increase in births in new data
The CDC’s new report, which is based on a more complete review of birth certificates than provisional data released earlier this year, also showed a 1% increase in births — about 33,000 more — last year compared to the prior year.
That brought the yearly national total to just over 3.6 million babies born.
But this is different: The provisional data indicated birth rate increases last year for women in their late 20s and 30s. However, the new report found birth rate declines for women in their 20s and early 30s, and no change for women in their late 30s.
What happened? CDC officials said it was due to recalculations stemming from a change in the U.S. Census population estimates used to compute the birth rate.
That’s plausible, Root said. As the total population of women of childbearing age grew due to immigration, it offset small increases in births to women in those age groups, she said.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
President Donald Trump plans to step foot in the Federal Reserve on Thursday as his allies scrutinize its expensive building renovations, a highly personal and confrontational escalation of his campaign to pressure the central bank to slash interest rates.
Trump administration officials have used concerns about the building overhaul to cast doubt on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s decision-making. They were scheduled to inspect the site on Thursday, and the White House announced late Wednesday that the president would also be visiting.
The visit reflects Trump’s disregard for the traditional independence of the Fed, which plays a foundational role in the American economy by setting monetary policy that is supposed to be free of political influence.
While previous presidents have criticized the Fed’s decisions, Trump’s sustained campaign is an unusual and, his critics say, dangerous departure from the norm. He has called on Powell to resign, insulted him repeatedly and suggested he could be fired.
More recently, Trump has said he has no plans to oust Powell, which could be illegal. Pushing Powell out also would send shockwaves through global markets, potentially having the opposite effect that Trump wants as he pushes for lower borrowing costs.
Trump, a Republican, appointed Powell during his first term, and President Joe Biden, a Democrat, extended his tenure. Powell’s term doesn’t end until next May, and he’s previously insisted that he will serve until then.
Not everyone in Trump’s administration agrees with the president’s contention that Powell needs to resign.
“There’s nothing that tells me that he should step down right now,” said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom Trump has floated as a potential replacement for Powell, in a recent interview with Fox Business. “He’s been a good public servant.”
Trump has criticized Powell for months because the chair has kept the short-term interest rate the Fed controls at 4.3% this year, after cutting it three times last year. Powell says the Fed wants to see how the economy responds to Trump’s sweeping tariffs on imports, which Powell says could push up inflation.
Powell’s caution has infuriated Trump, who has demanded the Fed cut borrowing costs to spur the economy and reduce the interest rates the federal government pays on its debt.
Trump will likely be disappointed again soon. A key Fed committee is expected to keep rates where they are when it meets next week.
The Fed has been renovating its Washington headquarters and a neighboring building. With some of the construction occurring underground and as building materials have soared in price after inflation spiked in 2021 and 2022, the estimated cost has ballooned from $1.9 billion to about $2.5 billion.
When asked last week if the costly rebuilding could be grounds to fire Powell, Trump said, “I think it sort of is.”
“When you spend $2.5 billion on, really, a renovation,” Trump said, “I think it’s really disgraceful.”
Ken Silver knows beef because he knows Philly cheesesteak. He hopes that a summer spike in how much he pays for his restaurant’s main product doesn’t cause heartburn for him or his customers.
Silver, president of Jim’s South St. in Philadelphia, said he might have to raise prices for his popular sandwiches to offset the rising cost of beef or even declare a market price, which is commonly associated with seafood.
“I really hate to do that,” said Silver, whose father started the business in 1976.
Silver said the price of beef from his supplier now is about $1 more per pound than it was a year ago. And that is on top of a roughly 50% increase when he reopened in 2024 after a fire — “crazy,” as he put it.
“Our strategy right now is just absorbing the price and hoping that we see a reduction after the summer months are over, the grilling season and all the rest,” Silver said Wednesday.
He said a cheesesteak sandwich at Jim’s South St. costs $13.49, up from $11.49 in 2022, when the restaurant was forced to close for nearly two years due to fire. Cheesesteaks typically are made with thinly sliced beef, cheese and onions, though other toppings are possible, too.
For consumers, the average price of a pound of ground beef rose to $6.12 in June, up nearly 12% from a year ago, according to U.S. government data. The average price of all uncooked beef steaks rose 8% to $11.49 per pound.
“We’ve taken a hit, profitability-wise, just to maintain what our customers would expect to get when they come to us: a reasonably priced cheesesteak of the best quality they can find,” Silver said.
A customer, Bryan Williams, suggested a price hike wouldn’t discourage him from placing an order.
“That’s just how things are going lately,” he said. “There’s really nothing that they can do about it.”
Ken Silver knows beef because he knows Philly cheesesteak. He hopes that a summer spike in how much he pays for his restaurant’s main product doesn’t cause heartburn for him or his customers.
Silver, president of Jim’s South St. in Philadelphia, said he might have to raise prices for his popular sandwiches to offset the rising cost of beef or even declare a market price, which is commonly associated with seafood.
“I really hate to do that,” said Silver, whose father started the business in 1976.
Silver said the price of beef from his supplier now is about $1 more per pound than it was a year ago. And that is on top of a roughly 50% increase when he reopened in 2024 after a fire — “crazy,” as he put it.
“Our strategy right now is just absorbing the price and hoping that we see a reduction after the summer months are over, the grilling season and all the rest,” Silver said Wednesday.
He said a cheesesteak sandwich at Jim’s South St. costs $13.49, up from $11.49 in 2022, when the restaurant was forced to close for nearly two years due to fire. Cheesesteaks typically are made with thinly sliced beef, cheese and onions, though other toppings are possible, too.
For consumers, the average price of a pound of ground beef rose to $6.12 in June, up nearly 12% from a year ago, according to U.S. government data. The average price of all uncooked beef steaks rose 8% to $11.49 per pound.
“We’ve taken a hit, profitability-wise, just to maintain what our customers would expect to get when they come to us: a reasonably priced cheesesteak of the best quality they can find,” Silver said.
A customer, Bryan Williams, suggested a price hike wouldn’t discourage him from placing an order.
“That’s just how things are going lately,” he said. “There’s really nothing that they can do about it.”
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