By Lolita C. Baldor and Tara Copp | Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. will provide Ukraine additional Patriot missiles for its air defense systems as part of a massive $6 billion additional aid package, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Friday. The missiles will be used to replenish previously supplied Patriot air defense systems and are part of a package that also includes more munitions for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems, or NASAMS, and additional gear to integrate Western air defense launchers, missiles and radars into Ukraine’s existing weaponry, much ..read more

By Matthew Perrone and Zeke Miller | Associated Press WASHINGTON — For the second time in recent months, President Joe Biden’s administration has delayed a plan to ban menthol cigarettes, a decision that is certain to infuriate anti-smoking advocates but could avoid angering Black voters ahead of November elections. In a statement Friday, Biden’s top health official gave no timeline for issuing the rule, saying only that the administration would take more time to consider feedback, including from civil rights groups. “It’s clear that there are still more conversations to have, and that will ta ..read more

By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org In Humphreys County, Mississippi — about 70 miles north of the state capital, in the heart of the fertile Delta region — a third of the residents live in poverty. In Belzoni, the county seat, there are just a handful of health care clinics. The town’s only major hospital closed more than a decade ago, around the same time its catfish industry collapsed. Jobs in the area are scarce, said Wardell Walton, who was mayor of Belzoni from 2005 to 2013. But even if there were jobs, he said, a lot of Belzoni residents wouldn’t be able to get to them — they don’t own c ..read more

By RYAN J. FOLEY, CARLA K. JOHNSON and SHELBY LUM | Associated Press Demetrio Jackson was desperate for medical help when the paramedics arrived. The 43-year-old was surrounded by police who arrested him after responding to a trespassing call in a Wisconsin parking lot. Officers had shocked him with a Taser and pinned him as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. Now he sat on the ground with hands cuffed behind his back and took in oxygen through a mask. Then, officers moved Jackson to his side so a medic could inject him with a potent knockout drug. “It’s just going to calm you down,” an offic ..read more

By Lillian Mongeau Hughes, KFF Health News MANTI, Utah — Garrett Clark estimates he has spent about six years in the Sanpete County Jail, a plain concrete building perched on a dusty hill just outside this small, rural town where he grew up. He blames his addiction. He started using in middle school, and by the time he was an adult he was addicted to meth and heroin. At various points, he’s done time alongside his mom, his dad, his sister, and his younger brother. “That’s all I’ve known my whole life,” said Clark, 31, in December. On the day of her release from Sanpete County Jail in rural Uta ..read more

By Bernard Condon | Associated Press NEW YORK — Rooting for Donald Trump to fail has rarely been this profitable. Just ask a hardy band of mostly amateur Wall Street investors who have collectively made tens of millions of dollars over the past month by betting that the stock price of his social media business — Truth Social — will keep dropping despite massive buying by Trump loyalists and wild swings that often mirror the candidate’s latest polls, court trials and outbursts on Truth Social itself. Several of these investors interviewed by The Associated Press say their bearish gambles using ..read more

By David Bauder | Associated Press NEW YORK — Catch and kill. Checkbook journalism. Secret deals. Friends helping friends. Even by National Enquirer standards, testimony by its former publisher David Pecker at Donald Trump’s hush money trial this week has revealed an astonishing level of corruption at America’s best-known tabloid and may one day be seen as the moment it effectively died. “It just has zero credibility,” said Lachlan Cartwright, executive editor of the Enquirer from 2014 to 2017. “Whatever sort of credibility it had was totally damaged by what happened in court this week.” On Th ..read more

With just days until Florida’s six-week abortion ban takes effect on Wednesday, providers are rushing to perform as many abortions as possible while planning contingencies for a future where they will need to turn thousands of women away. Clinics have expanded hours, prioritized ultrasounds and added appointments in these final weeks. They’ve fortified their patient navigation efforts and strengthened relationships with abortion fund groups like the Florida Access Network that provide financial and logistical support to people seeking to terminate pregnancies. The ban has limited exceptions fo ..read more

An army of drug-sniffing bots at the U.S.-Mexico border doesn’t sound like such a far-fetched idea in the age of artificial intelligence. While the U.S. isn’t exactly marshaling a robotic platoon, lawmakers are considering how emerging technology, including AI, could contribute to border security. Legislation recently introduced by Rep. Lou Correa, D-Santa Ana, would require top border officials to make sense of how emerging technology could secure the border. The bill, broadly, would instruct the Department of Homeland Security to look into “new, innovative and disruptive” technologies to int ..read more

By COLLEEN LONG WASHINGTON — Donald Trump on Thursday claimed the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was “nothing” compared to ongoing pro-Palestinian campus protests, the latest instance in which he has downplayed a racist incident that was one of the most criticized moments of his presidency. Speaking in a Manhattan courtroom hallway at the day’s end of his criminal hush money trial, Trump blamed President Joe Biden for student protesters who have set up encampments as they call for a cease-fire in the war Israel launched after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. Biden has recently ..read more