Associated Press stories, Page 239

BROSSARD, Quebec — Jack Eichel is not the most well-known American in hockey. He’s not even the most famous center from his country, thanks to captain Auston Matthews and his star power. He’s just the United States’ best and most important player, less than two years removed from keying the...

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla — Bubba Wallace said he “couldn’t care less” if Donald Trump attends the Daytona 500 on Sunday, nearly five years after the president accused the NASCAR Cup Series’ only Black full-time driver of perpetrating “a hoax ” when a crew member found a noose in the team...

LONDON — King Charles III learned how to throw an American football like a quarterback. Thankfully, there was no tush push. The 76-year-old monarch visited Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in north London as part of a community event sponsored by the Premier League club and the NFL on Wednesday. The king...

LAS VEGAS — UNLV senior offensive lineman Ben Christman, who transferred after last season from Kentucky, has died, the university announced. Christman, who was 21, was found dead in an off-campus apartment on Tuesday morning. The university said it didn’t have other details and a cause of death would later...

NEW YORK — To its fans, it’s an undeniable force for good in a corrupt world, a groundbreaking anti-bribery statute that has brought powerful businessmen to heel for secretly paying off foreign government officials to win contracts abroad. To detractors, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unfairly hobbles American companies while...

BRUSSELS — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by international troops. Hours later, President Donald Trump...

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Katie Britt has been working to make sure the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency doesn’t hit what she called “life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions,” including her state’s beloved University of Alabama. Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran is worried that food from heartland farmers would...

WASHINGTON — Newly filed affidavits of U.S. Agency for International Development workers describe a lieutenant of Trump ally Elon Musk and other outsiders directing the immediate termination of hundreds of American aid and foreign assistance programs abroad this week, without required documentation or justification. Other affidavits described some agency employees...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump upended three years of U.S. policy toward Ukraine on Wednesday, saying that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin negotiations on ending the war following a dramatic prisoner swap. Trump said in a social media post that he and Putin held a...

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence after Republicans who had initially questioned her experience and judgment fell in line behind her nomination. Gabbard was an unconventional pick to oversee and coordinate the country’s 18 different intelligence agencies, given her...

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department is scrapping last-minute guidance issued by the Biden administration that threatened to upend colleges’ plans to pay athletes for their name, image and likeness by making those payments subject to federal Title IX rules. In a move that was largely expected, President Donald Trump’s...

NEW ORLEANS — Seven years after Doug Pederson and Nick Foles delivered Philadelphia its first Super Bowl title, Nick Sirianni and Jalen Hurts did it again with a 40-22 win over Kansas City in Super Bowl 59. Winning multiple titles in that short a time period is far from rare...

LOS ANGELES — Chibuzo Agbo scored 21 points with a career-high seven 3-pointers and Desmond Claude scored 16 points and USC broke it open in the second half and beat Penn State, 92-67, on Tuesday night. USC (14-10, 6-7 Big Ten) shot a blistering 67.3% (33 for 49), including 75%...

VIENNA — Austrian far-right leader Herbert Kickl said Wednesday that his talks on forming a coalition government with a conservative party have collapsed. Austria’s president gave Kickl a mandate to try to form a new government on Jan. 6 after efforts to put together a governing alliance with his Freedom...

Spirit Airlines has again rejected a third takeover bid from budget rival Frontier, saying that it would focus on its own plan to emerge from bankruptcy and stabilize its finances. The offer this week, like the last bid, offers Spirit shareholders $400 million in debt and a 19% stake in...

WASHINGTON — U.S. inflation accelerated last month as the cost of groceries, gasoline and rents rose, a disappointment for families and businesses struggling with higher costs and likely underscoring the Federal Reserve’s resolve to delay further interest rate cuts. The consumer price index increased 3% in January from a year...

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s most powerful adviser, Elon Musk, made a rare public appearance at the White House on Tuesday to defend the swift and extensive cuts he’s pushing across the federal government while acknowledging there have been mistakes and will be more. Musk stood next to the Resolute...

Russia has released an American teacher imprisoned over what his family said was prescribed medical marijuana, but several other Americans remain in Russian custody. Teacher Marc Fogel was released in what the White House described Tuesday as a diplomatic thaw. Fogel was arrested in August 2021 and is serving a...