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TORONTO (AP) — DeMar DeRozan scored 23 points, Jonas Valanciunas had 18 points and 11 rebounds and the Toronto Raptors rallied from a 13-point deficit to beat the Minnesota Timberwolves 109-104 on Tuesday night. Kyle Lowry and Serge Ibaka each scored 15 points and Jakob Poeltl had six of his 12 points in the fourth quarter as the Raptors won their 14th straight home meeting with the Timberwolves. Minnesota has not won in Toronto since Jan. 21, 2004, when current Timberwolves star Andrew Wiggins was eight years old. Toronto is 19-4 at home this season, the second-best record in the NBA behind San Antonio (21-4). Jimmy Butler scored 25 points, Wiggins had 15 and Jeff Teague and Gorgiu Dieng each finished with 14 but the Timberwolves lost for the fourth time in five games. Taj Gibson scored 12 points and Karl-Anthony Towns had 11 points and 10 rebounds for Minnesota. The Timberwolves went 1-8 on the road in January. They're 12-16 away from home this season. Trailing 80-78 to begin the fourth, Toronto tied it on a fast break dunk by Norman Powell. Wiggins replied with a layup, but Poeltl's layup sparked a 12-2 Raptors run over the next three minutes, putting Toronto up 92-84 with 7:46 remaining. Wiggins made his first 3 with 1:01 left, capping a 7-0 Minnesota spurt that cut the gap to two, 103-101. Following a Toronto timeout, DeRozan's short jumper pushed the lead back to four points. Wiggins missed a 3 with 21 seconds left and DeRozan was fouled after grabbing the rebound. He and Valanciunas each made a pair of free throws in the final seconds. Making his lone appearance of the season in his home city, Wiggins shot 7 for 22, going 1 for 6 from 3-point range and coming up empty on a dunk in the fourth. TIP-INS Timberwolves: Wiggins missed his first six shot attempts before connecting on a jumper. ... Dieng made his first six shots before missing. Raptors: G Fred VanVleet flew home to Rockford, Illinois, following Sunday's home win over the Lakers to attend the birth of his first child, a girl. VanVleet was excused from practice Monday and rejoined the team shortly before game time Tuesday. He finished with 10 points. ... F C.J. Miles (right knee) was not available. ... Toronto has 18 assists on 19 first-half baskets. ... Lowry led the Raptors with nine assists. UP NEXT Timberwolves: Host the Bucks on Thursday. Minnesota lost at Milwaukee earlier this season. Raptors: Visit Washington on Thursday. Toronto has won seven straight road meetings with the Wizards. ___ More NBA basketball: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- An American contributor to the New York Times, Chris Horton, captured this photo of Taipei's skyline at night from Fudekeng (福德坑) on May 29. Horton, who is based in Taipei, said that he snapped the photo while cycling through Fudekeng Reserve Park at 7 p.m. on Tuesday. To the right of Taipei 101 is the new 48-story Taipei Nan Shan Plaza tower, which is now the second tallest building in the city and the third tallest in Taiwan. Taipei skyline at night. (Photo by Chris Horton)

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Vera Katz, a Jewish refugee elected to three terms as Portland's mayor and helped transform it from a sleepy backwater into a trendy city known for its public transit, eco-conscious design and live-work architecture style, died Monday. She was 84. Katz was diagnosed with acute leukemia this month after undergoing dialysis for more than a dozen years following cancer treatment. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden called Katz an "indomitable woman" who left a lasting impact on Oregon and its largest city. She also served as first female speaker of the Oregon House. A visionary urban planner with the ability to reach across the aisle, Mayor Katz oversaw plans for the internationally known Pearl District and neighborhoods along the Willamette River that changed the city into a hipster haven and international tourist destination. A champion of the arts, Katz also oversaw construction of Lan Su Yuan, an intricate Suzhou-style Chinese garden in the heart of the city's old town that draws visitors from around the world. "Vera Katz was more than a pioneer. She was a force. She escaped the Nazis. She battled cancer. She ran the House. She ran the city. She was a natural leader. Vera led and people followed," said Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney. "Oregon has lost a great human being." Katz was born Vera Pistrak to Russian exiles in Dusseldorf, Germany, on Aug. 3, 1933, just as the Nazis were seizing power. When she was an infant, her family escaped to Paris and then, when she was 7, the family crossed the Pyrenees by foot into Spain. She arrived in America on a Greek steamboat and grew up as a poor refugee in New York City. "My mom was the embodiment of the American dream: coming with nothing and making life better not just for herself but for the countless others she touched," her son, Jesse Katz, said in a statement. In 1964, Vera Katz moved to Portland with her husband, Mel, and worked as a stay-at-home mother. She didn't become active in politics until age 34, when she volunteered for Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign. Within five years, Katz was elected to the state Legislature and eventually became the first female speaker of the House, a job she kept for three terms. She went on to serve three terms as Portland's mayor, from 1993 to 2005 — a critical period for a city that was on the cusp of evolution. In both roles, Katz espoused progressive causes such as gender equality and gay rights long before they were mainstream and championed education, the arts and labor rights. She sponsored a landmark school reform bill in the state House and helped pass gun control legislation. Katz was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000 and an aggressive form of uterine cancer in 2004. Treatment for the cancer was successful but left her reliant on dialysis three times a week for 13 years, her family said. Earlier this month, she was diagnosed with acute leukemia and entered hospice. A memorial will be held in January. ___ Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus .

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chandler Stephenson, Andre Burakovsky and T.J. Oshie ended lengthy goal droughts to help the Washington Capitals rally past the Philadelphia Flyers 5-3 on Wednesday night. Stephenson scored twice after going without a goal for 28 games, Burakovsky scored on the power play after coming up empty for 10 games and Oshie lifted his arms and looked to the sky when he scored on the power-play to end his 13-game dry spell. Devante Smith-Pelly scored Washington's fifth goal on 20 shots to chase Philadelphia starter Michal Neuvirth midway through the third period of a game the Capitals trailed 2-0 after one. Braden Holtby stopped 27 of the 30 shots, including an important glove save early on Travis Konecny and several saves against Flyers captain Claude Giroux. The Capitals avoided what would have been their first four-game home losing streak since 2010 on the heels of their NHL-best 10-game home winning streak that ended Jan 11. No. 2 pick Nolan Patrick, Konecny and Jakub Voracek scored for Philadelphia. Alex Lyon made his NHL debut in relief of Neuvirth, stopping five shots in preparation for what could be his first start Thursday at New Jersey. The Flyers got off to a hot start when Patrick made the most of his promotion to second-line center by scoring on a 2-on-1 rush with Wayne Simmonds just 1:18 in. Holtby robbed Konecny on another rush, but the young forward scored to make it 2-0 at 7:50 as he followed up Sean Couturier's initial shot. As much as Philadelphia dominated the first period, Washington took over in the second, starting with a mistake by Neuvirth when he lost the puck under him. Stephenson poked it in to get the Capitals on the board and scored on a breakaway 47 seconds later to tie it at 2. Stephenson's two goals in under a minute came after he scored two in his first 36 games this season. With Flyers defenseman Andrew MacDonald in the penalty box for slashing, Lars Eller won a faceoff and a puck battle before directing it on net for Burakovsky's first power-play goal of the season 14:32 into the second to give the Capitals the lead. It was all Capitals from there, though Flyers fans filled the arena with "E-A-G-L-E-S" chants days before the Super Bowl. NOTES: Smith-Pelly replaced healthy scratch Jakub Vrana, who has one point in 13 games. Smith-Pelly's goal was his first since Jan. 2. ... Patrick had his first career multipoint game. ... Neuvirth and Lyon were Philadelphia's goaltending tandem because Brian Elliott is on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. UP NEXT Flyers: Visit the New Jersey Devils on Thursday night. Capitals: Visit the Pittsburgh Penguins on Friday night. ___ Follow Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno on Twitter at https://twitter.com/SWhyno ___ For more NHL coverage: https://apnews.com/tag/NHLhockey

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 24, 2018--, a global procurement intelligence advisory firm, has announced the release of their ‘ . ’ The insights and data in this report provide a strategic analysis of the supply markets, factors influencing purchasing decisions, procurement best practices, pricing models, supplier landscape, and an analysis of the supplier capability matrix for the . This report breaks down the data and analysis behind the procurement of construction chemicals and acts as an all-inclusive guide for making smart purchasing decisions. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180424006238/en/ Construction Chemicals Procurement Report (Graphic: Business Wire) “The increase in building and infrastructural developmental activities worldwide will influence the growth of the global construction chemicals market,” says SpendEdge procurement analyst Anil Seth. “Also, the manufacturers of construction chemicals have created a wide distribution channel in the market using both physical retail stores and online retailing, ” added Anil. Looking for more insights from this report? SpendEdge sample reports are free of charge and provide insights that focus on cost-saving aspects of procurement and optimization of category spend. Procurement analysts at SpendEdge highlight the following top three market trends that are contributing to the growth of the Global Construction Chemicals Market: Increase in demand for ready-mix concrete solutions Rise in adoption of eco-friendly and non-hazardous construction chemicals Increase in R&D spend and focus on technological innovations by leading suppliers This report is available at USD 1000 discount for a limited time only: Increase in demand for ready-mix concrete solutions In the last couple of years, there has been a considerable demand for ready-mix solutions. These solutions help the buyers avail high-quality concrete as per their requirements. It also reduces management effort associated with the mixing of concrete. Rise in adoption of eco-friendly and non-hazardous construction chemicals The demand for eco-friendly and non-hazardous construction chemicals is increasing due to the growing awareness on safety and health. This further helps to enhance the environmental safety and helps end-users comply with safety regulations. Increase in R&D spend and focus on technological innovations by leading suppliers Globally, the suppliers are increasingly investing in R&D initiatives to develop new products with enhanced capabilities. This provides the buyers access to a wide range of enhanced products that are best suited to meet their business requirements. to gain detailed insights into the current market trends. Get unlimited access to all our reports. Our Insights platform provides ready-to-use procurement research reports, latest supplier news, innovation landscape, markets insights, supplier tracking, and much more at the click of a button. We also reports to meet clients’ requirements. Related Reports: About SpendEdge SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are a preferred procurement market intelligence partner for Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence that helps sourcing and procurement professionals make informed decisions. These innovative procurement solutions help enterprises transform structural capabilities, improve execution efficiency, and fast-track time to savings. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180424006238/en/ CONTACT: SpendEdge Anirban Choudhury Marketing Consultant US: +1 630 984 7340 hello@spendedge.com KEYWORD: INDUSTRY KEYWORD: MANUFACTURING CHEMICALS/PLASTICS CONSTRUCTION & PROPERTY OTHER CONSTRUCTION & PROPERTY SOURCE: SpendEdge Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 04/24/2018 04:15 PM/DISC: 04/24/2018 04:15 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180424006238/en

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The nation's most restrictive abortion law is headed for a showdown before a federal judge only hours after it was signed by Mississippi's governor. U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves late Monday scheduled arguments Tuesday morning over whether he should immediately block the law after a request by the state's only abortion clinic and a physician who works there. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant signed House Bill 1510 on Monday, immediately banning most abortions after 15 weeks of gestation. How quickly will the effects of the law be felt in Mississippi? Dr. Sacheen Carr-Ellis of the Jackson Women's Health Organization stated in court papers that a woman 15 weeks or more pregnant is scheduled for a Tuesday afternoon abortion. The law and responding challenge set up a confrontation sought by abortion opponents, who are hoping federal courts will ultimately prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable. Current federal law does not. Some legal experts have said a change in the law is unlikely unless the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court changes in a way that favors abortion opponents. "We are saving more of the unborn than any state in America, and what better thing can we do?" Bryant said in a video his office posted on social media. The law's only exceptions are if a fetus has health problems making it "incompatible with life" outside of the womb at full term, or if a pregnant woman's life or a "major bodily function" is threatened by pregnancy. Pregnancies resulting from rape and incest aren't exempted. Mississippi previously tied with North Carolina for the nation's strictest abortion limits at 20 weeks. Both states count pregnancy as beginning on the first day of a woman's previous menstrual period. That means the restrictions kick in about two weeks before those of states whose 20-week bans begin at conception. "We'll probably be sued in about half an hour," Bryant said to laughter from supporters as he signed the bill. "That'll be fine with me. It'll be worth fighting over." Bryant's prediction was accurate. The state's only abortion clinic and one of the physicians who practices there sued in federal court within an hour, arguing the law violates other federal court rulings saying a state can't restrict abortion before a child can survive on its own outside the womb. The Jackson Women's Health Organization, in a lawsuit handled by the Center of Reproductive Rights, argued the measure is unconstitutional and should immediately be struck down. "Under decades of United States Supreme Court precedent, the state of Mississippi cannot ban abortion prior to viability, regardless of what exceptions are provided to the ban," the suit states. The suit says the clinic performed 78 abortions in 2017 when the fetus was identified as being 15 weeks or older. That's out of about 2,500 abortions performed statewide, mostly at the clinic. Carr-Ellis, in a sworn statement, says she'll have to stop providing abortions to women past the 15 week ban, or else lose her Mississippi medical license, as House Bill 1510 requires. She says women shouldn't be forced to carry their pregnancies to term against their wills or leave the state to obtain abortions. "A woman who is pregnant should have the ability to make the decision that is best for her about the course of her pregnancy, based on her own values and goals for her life," Carr-Ellis said in the statement. Republican legislative leaders Lt. Gov Tate Reeves and House Speaker Philip Gunn both attended Bryant's private signing ceremony "The winners (today) are those babies that are in the womb, first and foremost," Gunn said. "Those are the ones we're trying to protect." When asked if the state is prepared to bear the cost of a lawsuit, Gunn said, "Absolutely." "I don't know if you can put any value on human life," Gunn said. "We are all about fighting to protect the unborn. Whatever challenges we have to take on to do that, is something we're willing to do." Opponents, though, predicted the attempt to allow states to restrict abortion before viability would fail. "We certainly think this bill is unconstitutional," said Katherine Klein, equality advocacy coordinator for the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi. "The 15-week marker has no bearing in science. It's just completely unfounded and a court has never upheld anything under the 20-week viability marker." The bill was drafted with the assistance of conservative groups including the Mississippi Center for Public Policy and the Alliance Defending Freedom. "We believe this law should be a model for the rest of the country," Jameson Taylor, acting president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, said in a statement. Both Republican-controlled chambers passed the bill overwhelmingly in early March, by a vote of 35-14 in the Senate and 76-34 in the House. The U.S. Senate failed to pass a 20-week abortion ban bill in January. With 60 "yes" votes required to advance, the bill failed on a 51-46 vote. ___ Follow Jeff Amy at: http://twitter.com/jeffamy . Read his work at https://www.apnews.com/search/Jeff_Amy .

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A failed attempt to sneak into Japan to visit Disneyland in 2001 may have doomed the leadership dreams of the half-brother of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who was assassinated this week in an airport in Malaysia. Banished from his dictator father's favor, the exiled Kim Jong Nam frequented casinos, five-star hotels and traveled around Asia, with little say in North Korean affairs. That ended Monday when he was killed in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Officials in South Korea say they believe the attack was carried out by North Korean agents. Despite multiple reported assassination attempts over the years, Kim Jong Nam was still a member of the most important family in North Korea, a direct blood descendent of North Korea founder Kim Il Sung. Estranged for years from his relatives, the 45-year-old gambler and playboy played a key, if complicated role in the dynasty that has ruled for three generations since North Korea's foundation in 1948. Here's a look: __ PARENTS Kim Jong Nam is the eldest son of Kim Jong Il, the second member of the Kim family to rule North Korea. Kim Jong Il had three known sons with two different women. Jong Nam was born from his father's unofficial relationship with North Korean actress Sung Hae Rim. Kim Jong Il forced Sung to divorce her first husband and live with him, but Kim Il Sung — the first leader of North Korea and Kim Jong Il's father — never accepted Sung as his daughter-in-law. Kim Jong Il reportedly kept Kim Jong Nam's 1971 birth a secret from his father for several years. Sung was reportedly forced to leave North Korea and died in Moscow in 2002. Despite his mother's exile, some foreign experts believed that Kim Jong Nam would end up inheriting power because of a traditional Korean value system that favors the eldest son as heir. Unlike his mother, Kim Jong Nam eventually won the affection of his grandfather, who died in 1994, according to South Korean media reports. __ BROTHERS AND SISTERS Kim Jong Nam's two younger brothers share a mother: Kim Jong Il's Japan-born mistress, the dancer Ko Yong Hui. Ko's links to Japan, which colonized the Korean Peninsula in the early part of the 20th century, led some to believe that Kim Jong Nam would outpace his siblings in the succession race. Ko immigrated to North Korea in the 1960s from Japan, where she had lived among the ethnic Korean minority. She died in Paris in 2004. Kim Jong Un eventually won the succession race and became the North's supreme leader in late 2011 upon the death of his father. Believed to be in his early 30s, Kim Jong Un has carried out a series of high-profile executions and purges, and outside experts say few can now challenge his rule. Kim Jong Nam's other half-brother, Kim Jong Chol, was once viewed by some outsiders as a potential candidate for leader. But a former sushi chef of Kim Jong Il said the late leader derided the middle son, known as a huge fan of rock guitarist Eric Clapton, as "girlish." The brothers also had at least two known sisters. One is Kim Yo Jong, who shares a mother with Kim Jong Un and who is currently working as a top propaganda official. Another sister, Kim Sol Song, was born from Kim Jong Il's relationship with another woman, Kim Yong Sok. There has been little information about Kim Sol Song, but unconfirmed rumors in the South say she is being detained. __ AUNT AND UNCLE Kim Jong Nam's aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, is Kim Jong Il's younger sister. She was reportedly behind the expulsion of Kim Jong Nam's mother to the then Soviet Union in the 1970s. Kim Kyong Hui and her husband Jang Song Thaek then acted as Kim Jong Nam's caretaker. But Jong Nam gradually lost favor with his father. He reportedly spent too much money at a Pyongyang hotel and made wild shopping excursions to China. When he was detained in Tokyo for trying to enter the country with a fake Dominican passport, he sported a diamond-encrusted Rolex watch and carried wads of cash. Kim Kyong Hui and Jang were believed to have played a major role in grooming Kim Jong Un as the next leader. After Kim Jong Un took power, the two initially enjoyed great power. Jang was seen as the country's No.2 until he was stripped of all posts and executed in a sudden purge for alleged treason in 2013. Kim Kyong Hui, who was reportedly seriously ill, disappeared from the public eye. __ Follow Hyung-jin Kim on Twitter at twitter.com/hyungjin1972

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Marreese Speights scored 21 points in his second start of the season, Evan Fournier added 19 and the Orlando Magic ran away from the Los Angeles Lakers in the third quarter Wednesday night for a 127-105 victory. Winning for only the fourth time in 24 games, the Magic made a franchise-record nine 3s in a 43-point third period, their highest-scoring quarter of the season. They shot 18 for 32 (56 percent) from behind the arc in the game. With 15 points and six assists, Elfrid Payton was one of seven players to score in double figures for the Magic (15-35). Julius Randle and Jordan Clarkson scored 20 each for the Lakers, who never led after the first quarter. When Payton's three-point play gave the Magic a 66-53 lead 93 seconds into the third, Lakers coach Luke Walton yanked all five of his starters out of the game. But the Lakers (19-31) never again got the margin under 11. Mario Hezonja hit a 3-pointer, Fournier quickly followed with two more and Jonathon Simmons added two more 3s to help the Magic finish the period on a 22-13 run for a 20-point lead. They led by 29 early in the fourth. The Lakers, who had won eight of 11, were down by 12 when three straight baskets by Clarkson got them back in the game midway through the second. Speights scored Orlando's final 10 points of the half, including a couple of 3-pointers, to leave the Magic with a 58-51 halftime lead. TIP-INS Lakers: It was Clarkson's sixth straight game of 15 or more points. ... Rookie G Lonzo Ball missed his eighth straight game with a sore left knee. ... The Lakers, the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA, went 4 of 20 from long range. Magic: F Aaron Gordon missed a second straight game (his 11th of the season) with a strained left hip flexor. ... The Magic shot 54 percent. UP NEXT Lakers: Play at Brooklyn on Friday night, the fourth stop on a five-game road trip. Magic: Home on Saturday night against Washington. ___ More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola says Leroy Sane will be out for "six, seven weeks" after sustaining ankle ligament damage during the team's FA Cup win over Cardiff. Sane's absence leaves the Premier League leaders short of attacking options in a crucial part of the season, with the Germany winger potentially missing up to 11 matches in four competitions. That includes the League Cup final. With Gabriel Jesus also injured, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling and Bernardo Silva will shoulder the attacking burden for City. The 22-year-old Sane, who has scored 11 goals and set up 14 more in all competitions this season, was injured by a challenge from Cardiff defender Joe Bennett, who was shown a yellow card for the tackle and later sent off for a second bookable offense.

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri death row inmate whose life was spared by a last-minute stay of execution four years ago is asking the U.S. Supreme Court for another reprieve, claiming the process of killing him could cause blood-filled tumors to burst inside his head. Russell Bucklew is scheduled to die by injection Tuesday evening for killing a former girlfriend's new boyfriend during a violent rampage in 1996. He would be the first Missouri prisoner put to death since January 2017. Bucklew, 49, was within an hour of execution in May 2014 when the U.S. Supreme Court halted it over concerns about Bucklew's rare medical condition, cavernous hemangioma. The ailment causes weakened and malformed blood vessels, tumors in his head and throat and on his lip, and vein problems. His attorney, Cheryl Pilate, is again asking the Supreme Court to intervene, claiming Bucklew's condition has only gotten worse. The tumor on Bucklew's lip has grown substantially since 2014 and is now the size of a grape, Pilate said. She believes the internal tumors have grown, too, and will likely rupture and bleed during the execution, potentially causing Bucklew "to choke and cough on his own blood during the lethal injection process." Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley disagrees, writing in his filing to the Supreme Court that the growth in Bucklew's mouth shrunk 10 percent between 2010 and 2016. The condition also compromises his veins, and Pilate said the fatal injection couldn't be administered in the typical way through an arm vein. Hawley wrote that the lethal dose of pentobarbital could be administered through a leg or other vein instead of the arm. Pilate also has asked for clemency from Republican Gov. Eric Greitens. A spokesman for the governor declined comment. Bucklew's appeals have suggested that if the execution is carried out, the state should use lethal gas instead of an injection of pentobarbital. Missouri law still provides for the option of lethal gas, but the state no longer has a gas chamber and has not used the method since 1965. None of the 20 inmates executed since Missouri began using pentobarbital in 2013 have shown obvious signs of pain or suffering. Bucklew became angry when his girlfriend, Stephanie Ray, ended their relationship in 1996. Hawley said in court filings that Bucklew slashed Ray's face with a knife, beat her and threatened to kill her. She took her children and left. Over the next two weeks, Bucklew stalked Ray, even as he stole a car, firearms, two sets of handcuffs and duct tape. He eventually found out where she was staying and broke into the southeastern Missouri trailer home of Michael Sanders, Ray's new boyfriend, fatally shooting him. When Sanders' 6-year-old son came out of hiding, Bucklew shot at the boy and missed. Bucklew pistol-whipped Ray, put her in handcuffs and dragged her to his car, where he raped her. Police pursued Bucklew — a chase ending in a gunfight that wounded an officer. Once in jail, Bucklew managed to escape and went to the home of Ray's mother, where he attacked her with a hammer before he was finally captured. Some civil rights organizations have joined in asking that Bucklew be allowed to live out his life in prison. In a letter last week to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote that executing Bucklew "would be egregious, torturous, and in violation of the U.S. and international law prohibiting torture, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment."

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Islamic State militants attacked Afghan soldiers guarding a military academy in the capital on Monday, killing at least 11 troops and wounding 16. The attack, which began before dawn and continued well past daybreak, was the latest in a wave of relentless violence in Kabul this month unleashed by the Taliban and the rival Islamic State group that has killed scores and left hundreds wounded. President Donald Trump condemned the recent spate of violence, saying "innocent people are being killed left and right," including children. After previously expressing support for Afghan efforts to reach a political settlement with the insurgent group, Trump said "there's no talking to the Taliban." Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Dawlat Waziri said a suicide bomber struck the military unit guarding the academy, setting off a gunbattle. Two of the attackers were killed in the gunbattle, two detonated their suicide vests and one was arrested by the troops, he said. Waziri confirmed that 11 soldiers were killed. He said "the attack was against an army unit providing security for the academy and not the academy itself." The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan, which calls itself Khorasan Province, claimed the attack in a statement carried by its Aamaq news agency, saying its fighters targeted the academy. The academy, known as Marshal Fahim National Defense University, is sometimes called "Sandhurst in the Sand" — a reference to the British academy. Named after Mohammed Fahim, the country's late vice president and a military commander of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban, the academy was inaugurated in 2013 after British forces oversaw the development of its officers' school and its training program. The academy was also the site where the highest-ranking U.S. military officer to be killed in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq lost his life, in August 2014. Army Maj Gen. Harold J. Greene, then deputy commander of the transition force in the country, was shot and killed by an Afghan soldier in a so-called "insider attack" that was later claimed by the Taliban. The same academy was also attacked in October last year by a suicide bomber who killed 15 officers. The attacker was on foot and detonated his suicide vest as the on-duty officers were leaving the facility. That attack was also claimed by the Taliban. President Ashraf Ghani denounced Monday's attack, saying the "Taliban must choose between Islam and terrorism." Neighboring Pakistan also condemned Monday's attack, saying it "reiterates its strong condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, especially the series of heinous attacks within the last week in Afghanistan." Both the Taliban and IS have stepped up attacks in recent weeks, in what analysts say is a campaign of violence intended to undermine the U.S.-backed government. On Saturday, a Taliban attacker drove an ambulance filled with explosives into the heart of the city, killing at least 103 people and wounding as many as 235. The Taliban claimed the ambulance attack, as well as an attack a week earlier in which militants stormed a luxury hotel in Kabul, killing 22 people, including 14 foreigners, and setting off a 13-hour battle with security forces. Masoom Stanekzai, the head of Afghanistan's intelligence service, said five suspects have been arrested for their involvement in the hotel attack. A sixth suspect had fled the country, he said. He also said that four people have been arrested in connection with Saturday's ambulance attack. The recent attacks have underscored the weaknesses of Afghan security forces more than 16 years after the U.S.-led invasion toppled the Taliban. They also raise questions about Trump's strategy for winning America's longest war, which was announced in August but has changed little on the ground. That strategy was based on ramping up military pressure on the Taliban to eventually force them into peace talks with the government. But in a meeting with visiting ambassadors on Monday, Trump said "we don't want to talk with the Taliban." The Taliban have been waging an insurgency since they were driven from power by U.S. and Afghan forces after the Sept. 11 attacks. In recent years, they have seized districts across the country and carried out near-daily attacks, mainly targeting Afghan security forces and the U.S.-backed government. They say they are open to direct peace talks with the United States, something Washington has long rejected. The Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan emerged in 2014, as the U.S. and NATO were winding down their combat mission and around the time that IS declared its self-styled Islamic caliphate, headquartered in Syria and Iraq. Its followers have clashed with both Afghan forces and the Taliban. ___ Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo and Patrick Quinn in Beirut contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is making his first Supreme Court visit at a moment of high legal drama. The justices are weighing what to do with the president's ban on travelers from six mostly Muslim countries. But the reason for his high court trip Thursday is purely ceremonial, to mark Justice Neil Gorsuch's ascension to the bench. Trump has no role in the courtroom ceremony, but presidents often make the trip to the court from the White House to honor their nominees. While the dispute over the travel ban and other controversies have simmered during Trump's first few months in office, his choice of the 49-year-old Gorsuch for the Supreme Court won widespread praise in the legal community as well as unanimous Republican support in the Senate. A federal judge first blocked Trump's initial travel ban in early February. The president issued a revised version in March. It never took effect after judges in Maryland and Hawaii put it on hold. Two federal appeals courts have since upheld those lower court orders. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the ban to take effect immediately. Gorsuch actually has been a member of the high court since April, and he even issued his first opinion on Monday. The investiture ceremony typically takes place before a new justice's first day on the bench, but Gorsuch was confirmed and sworn in on a tight schedule. He filled the seat that had been held for nearly 30 years by Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016. The high court seat was vacant for nearly 14 months after Senate Republicans refused to take up President Barack Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch bank ABN Amro says its underlying net profit, which strips out exceptional items, rose 23 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 to 333 million euros ($351 million). The bank, which has been restructured and re-privatized following its bailout by the Dutch government in 2008 during the global financial crisis, said Wednesday that operating income for the fourth quarter rose 7 percent to 2.2 billion euros ($2.3 billion). CEO Kees van Dijkhuizen says that in the last quarter the bank "achieved loan growth in all of our major loan books: we were the number one provider of new mortgages in the Netherlands for the second consecutive year."

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil coach Tite pledged not to take the national team to the capital Brasilia to pose with politicians in this election year due to widespread accusations of corruption against several of them. "I won't go at all. Neither before the World Cup nor afterward. Neither winning nor losing (the title)," Tite, whose real name is Adenor Bacchi, answered TV Record in an interview aired on Saturday. Since 1970, Brazil has a tradition of visiting the president before or after World Cups so players can receive medals of merit at the presidential palace. Brazilian President Michel Temer's popularity is at single digits after a series of corruption allegations against him in recent months. Temer has survived because the Chamber of Deputies rejected two requests to suspend him from office and put him on trial. The Brazil general elections are in October. Tite says he has no problem working under Brazil football boss Marco Polo del Nero, who has been suspended by FIFA after graft charges. "I have total autonomy with the team," Tite said. The Brazil coach, who took over after the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016, also said he was sorry for not having four years to prepare for the World Cup in Russia in June, but believes his relationship with the players was "100 percent."

NEW YORK (AP) — Spencer Dinwiddie scored 27 points, D'Angelo Russell added 22 in his best performance since returning from knee surgery, and the Brooklyn Nets snapped a four-game skid with a 116-108 victory over the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday night. Rookie center Jarrett Allen, making his first start at home, had 16 points and 12 rebounds for the Nets, who took charge of a close game with an 11-0 run early in the fourth quarter. Dinwiddie had six points during the spurt and a pair of recent 76ers contributed the other five points in the first meeting since a trade between the teams last month. Joel Embiid had 29 points and 14 rebounds for the 76ers, who dropped their third straight and fell back to .500 at 24-24. Ben Simmons scored 24 and J.J. Redick had 20 in his return from a seven-game absence with a leg injury. Simmons was 9 of 10 for 18 points in his first 14 minutes but the Sixers couldn't build much of a lead in part because of Russell, who recently returned from a two-month absence and felt good enough to play on both nights of a back-to-back. Neither team led by double digits through three quarters and the 76ers were ahead 92-91 in the opening minute of the fourth before Nik Stauskas — traded by Philadelphia along with Jahlil Okafor to Brooklyn in December — made a 3-pointer. Dinwiddie followed with three free throws and another 3, and Okafor scored inside to cap the run and make it 102-92 with 7:09 to play. Embiid tried to bring the Sixers back, bulling his way for consecutive baskets that cut it to 111-107. But soon after he fouled Allen and DeMarre Carroll, who made all four free throws to keep Brooklyn safely ahead. TIP-INS 76ers: Coach Brett Brown said he expects No. 1 draft pick Markelle Fultz, who appeared in just four games before a right shoulder injury, to play again this season. Brown just can't predict when. "It's just an answer that I can't give anybody, we can't give anybody, nor can he," Brown said. "I mean at the end of the day it's going to be when he feels good about himself and feels good about his shoulder, and that's almost the bottom line. We'll help him, but really he's got to feel comfortable that he can go be himself and none of us should begrudge him for that." Nets: Coach Kenny Atkinson said the Nets hope reserve guard Caris LeVert (left groin) could return Friday, but starting forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (right groin) will be out a couple more games. ... Carroll scored 15 points and has matched his career best with 12 straight games in double figures, set in 2014-15 for Atlanta. NUMBERS GAME Brown said the only reason Okafor wasn't playing in Philadelphia before the 76ers dealt him to the Nets in December was because of the big men ahead of him in a crowded frontcourt the last couple of seasons. "What everybody should really hear is, he's just so young. He was drafted third for a reason," Brown said. "He's a hell of a player and for us in the time and the moment that we're in and with Joel, etc., the court time just wasn't available." SUPPORT FOR SAM Atkinson was discussing the 76ers' young talent when he pivoted to praise Sam Hinkie, the former Philadelphia executive whose strategy of building through the draft was heavily debated. "I think of Sam Hinkie, there should be a management award for him, or a management study on what he did," Atkinson said. "We can argue you like it, you don't like it, but I was around him. I really like him as a person and I just think he did a phenomenal job and thinking long term like that, to have that vision that most of us don't have, let's be honest, I don't think he gets enough credit." UP NEXT 76ers: Host the Miami Heat on Friday. Nets: Host the Los Angeles Lakers on Friday. ___ More AP basketball: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Voters in Greenland are going to the polls in a parliamentary election that has featured discussion on what the sparsely populated Arctic island needs to do to become independent from Denmark. Residents of the semi-independent Danish territory harbor hopes of independence, but know the economy, which depends mainly on fisheries, needs to improve. Another debated issue in the election for the 31-seat parliament is upgrading three airports to allow international flights land in Greenland and therefore increase tourism. Prime Minister Kim Kielsen's center-left Siumut party said during the campaign that English, not Danish, should be taught as a second language in schools to allow the island's 56,000 inhabitants become more international. Recent polls have Kielsen's party neck-and-neck with the left-leaning Inuit Ataqatigiit. They are likely to form a governing coalition.

DETROIT (AP) — The mother of a G League basketball player who died in March after collapsing on the court during a game has filed a lawsuit accusing the NBA and the Detroit Pistons of negligence. Zeke Upshaw played for the Grand Rapids Drive, a G League affiliate of the Pistons. He collapsed during a game at Grand Rapids on March 24 and died two days later . The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The NBA and Pistons are named as defendants, along with SSJ Group and The DeltaPlex Arena. The lawsuit alleges that medical personnel at the game failed to attempt lifesaving measures in a timely fashion. ___ More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

EDITOR'S NOTE — It was just after 2 a.m. on Jan. 31, 1968, when the crackle of celebratory fireworks in South Vietnam's capital gave way to the pounding of machine guns, grenades and rockets. As the country celebrated Lunar New Year, communist forces launched a wave of surprise attacks that became known as the Tet Offensive and would change the course of the Vietnam War. From Saigon to Hue to Nha Trang, North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces attacked the major population centers that they had until then avoided. From the jungles and rice fields of the north, an estimated 80,000 fighters brought the war south with coordinated attacks on 39 of South Vietnam's 44 provincial capitals, 64 district headquarters, nearly every allied airfield and Saigon. In Saigon, fighting raged across the city, including an ambitious attack on the American Embassy. While the battles went on for a month in some place like Hue, the Tet Offensive was ultimately seen from a strictly military standpoint as a defeat for the communist forces. But the campaign had a lasting impact on the war, raising questions about Washington's strategy and deepening the American public's doubts about U.S. involvement in the campaign. The AP's Peter Arnett reported on the Vietnam War from 1962 until its end in 1975. On the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive, the AP is publishing this edited extract from his book "We're Taking Fire: A Reporter's View of the Vietnam War, Tet and the Fall of LBJ." ___ TET: THE FIRST 36 HOURS The blast of strings of exploding firecrackers jerked me awake as Vietnamese neighbors continued their celebrations into the early hours of the morning. It was Saigon, January 31, 1968, the first day of the year of the traditional lunar calendar, Tet Nguyen Dan, and the most important Vietnamese festival. Amid the cacophony I noticed a loud, methodical rat-tat-tat that shook our apartment shutters as though someone was banging on them with a hammer. I'd heard that sound before in the battlefield, the roar of a heavy-caliber machine gun, and it seemed to be shooting up Pasteur Street just three room-lengths away. A weapon that lethal had not been discharged in Saigon since the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem four years earlier. I opened my bedroom window and watched as war came to Saigon from the jungles and paddy fields and peasant villages where it had lingered for years. Red tracer bullets zipped through the sky and firefights were erupting near the centers of power in South Vietnam's capital, the presidential palace and the American Embassy. As the sounds of exploding grenades and rockets vibrated through the darkness, I bundled my wife Nina and my young children, Elsa and Andrew, and our maid into the bathroom, which I hoped was safer than the rest of our small apartment, and I covered them with mattresses from the beds. I phoned The Associated Press office, and bureau chief Robert Tuckman answered, his voice high-pitched and excited: "They're shelling the city, for God's sake." I told him I was on my way. I wasn't the only one so rudely awakened in total surprise at around 2:30 that morning. Only those in the know — the attacking Vietcong guerrillas and North Vietnamese military forces and their allied clandestine networks in the city — had any idea of what was happening. By quietly moving combat troops through the supposedly secure countryside into the heart of Saigon, they were able to strike without warning. Gen. William Westmoreland, the increasingly confident commander of all American combat forces fighting in Vietnam, was asleep in his comfortable villa at Tran Quy Cap street when attacks began all around his neighborhood. Just nine weeks earlier, the general visited the United States on the orders of President Lyndon Johnson to participate in a "success offensive," a concerted effort to bolster public support for the war. In an address at the National Press Club, he asserted that the Vietcong were "unable to mount a major offensive" and that the point was reached "when the end begins to come into view." But on this early morning, Westmoreland was stuck, unable to reach his Saigon headquarters as gunfire roared in the street outside. By telephone, he learned of the spiraling crisis, particularly a fierce attack on the six-story American Embassy at Thong Nhut street several blocks away. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker was similarly blindsided by the ferocity of the enemy attacks, particularly the assault on his embassy. He was asleep in his villa four blocks away when his security team rushed into his bedroom and ushered him down to the basement in his pajamas. Wearing his bathrobe, he was soon loaded into an armored car and driven to a safe house. Bunker had been in South Vietnam less than a year, and in that time, he had worked closely with Westmoreland and endorsed his views. In Washington, D.C., half a day behind Vietnam in time, it was the early afternoon of January 30. President Johnson was presiding over a meeting of his closest security advisers, their biggest Vietnam concern the struggle to avoid the loss of the U.S. Marine combat base of Khe Sanh that over the weeks had been threatened by a growing number of North Vietnamese troops. Nearly half of all American combat troops in Vietnam were being moved to the northern provinces to support Khe Sanh and other border bases. It was during the meeting that President Johnson first heard the alarming news from Saigon. His special assistant for national security affairs, Walt Rostow, returned after taking a call from the National Military Command Center. It was 2:35 p.m. Rostow, a hawk on Vietnam who late in 1967 had used the phrase "light at the end of the tunnel" to describe the war policy's successes, announced, "We have just been informed that we are being heavily mortared in Saigon. The presidential palace, our bachelor officers' quarters, the embassy and the city itself have been hit." The minutes of the meeting record President Johnson as responding, "This could be very bad. What can we do to shake them from this? ... What comes to mind in the way of retaliation?" Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, the primary architect of early war policy whose growing doubts about the morality of the American effort had led to his announced replacement, gave little weight to the initial information, suggesting it should be handled as "a 'public relations' issue." Around the same time, William Colby, the CIA's chief of the Far East Division, at work at the agency's Langley, Virginia, headquarters, received a flash message from Saigon station reporting that "a violent attack against the American Embassy is in progress with the attackers possibly within the embassy itself." Colby advised them in a flash return message that the Communications Center should button up its steel doors. Colby was a former CIA station chief in Saigon, a confidant of the slain President Ngo Dinh Diem, and a proponent of a counter insurgency strategy that relied less on American combat troops. Within days, he would be on his way to South Vietnam to help pick up the pieces of a crumbling policy. As the 3 million people of Saigon became abruptly aware of the brutal enemy intrusion in their Tet holiday celebrations, there was confusion within the South Vietnamese security ranks. Many of the military police primarily responsible for city protection were at home celebrating with their families. President Nguyen Van Thieu, who was also the commander of Vietnam's armed forces, was on a Tet holiday with his family and could not be immediately located. A month earlier, the American military command had handed over the security of the nation's capital entirely to the Vietnamese paramilitary police forces, and Thieu's authority was necessary to facilitate supporting troop movements from outside. Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky complained later, "Catastrophe loomed. In expectation of the usual Tet truce, half of our armed forces had gone on leave. To make things worse, most of our army's combat forces were not deployed in or near big cities." General Westmoreland was particularly unhappy about President Thieu, who had been informed of security concerns in the northern region and had agreed to cancel the Tet cease-fire there a day earlier. The day passed with no notice of the cancellation, and according to Westmoreland, "I telephoned the American Embassy to find that the South Vietnamese government had provided its press officer with a release but that the press office was shut tight, closed for Tet. President Thieu had departed to pass the holidays in My Tho, his wife's hometown in the Mekong Delta. Such a lackadaisical attitude on the part of the government was shocking and frustrating yet indicative of the state of mind, to near euphoria, that envelops the Vietnamese at Tet." Not all the Vietnamese, however, were euphoric celebrants, certainly not the Vietcong who were violating their own announced seven-day Tet truce with surprise attacks across the country. We would soon learn that the Saigon attacks were just the point of the spear. The Vietcong and the North Vietnamese, who had until now avoided attacking major population centers, were using an estimated 80,000 fighters in a coordinated assault against 39 of South Vietnam's 44 province capitals, 64 district headquarters, almost every allied airfield, and Saigon. A puzzle was that the only American installation attacked was the embassy. I said goodbye to my family to begin my reporting day, and opened my apartment door as a burst of heavy machine-gun fire flashed through the darkness in the direction of the presidential palace two blocks away. I waited for a break in the shooting and stepped out into the lamplight, raising my arms in a friendly gesture to the invisible gunners behind the sandbags just down the street. I was in shirt sleeves and slacks and I smiled and shouted "journalist" in Vietnamese. There was no reaction, so I just walked past them on my way to the AP office. Our staff were on the telephones, reporting what best they could to our news headquarters in New York City. The American Embassy was under attack; so was Tan Son Nhut airport and the main Saigon radio station, the presidential palace, and Vietnamese security installations. We needed eyewitness stories, bureau chief Tuckman told me. I was joined by reporter colleague John Nance and photographer Joe Holloway, grabbing the keys to the office mini-jeep and setting off across the embattled city, the night sky bright with tracer bullets and the swinging arcs of parachute flares. We drove up a side street behind the presidential palace to get closer to the action. A South Vietnamese soldier stepped out in front of the jeep and signaled us to turn back, indicating that the Vietcong had moved into a nearby unfinished building, after their attack by rockets and hand grenades against the palace gate had been repulsed. As we turned, a hail of bullets splattered the street around us, sending us quickly on our way. One of the Vietcong combatants who fired at us was a woman, Vu Minh Nghia, 21 years old, who was among the eight Vietcong attackers who survived. She told her captors her assault team had sneaked into Saigon the previous evening, worried by the last-minute order to attack the well-defended palace. They were briefly fighting around the gate, she said, before retreating to the nearby house after seven of their number were killed. They were shooting at anyone who approached until later in the day when they gave up. When I returned to the AP office at 4:30 a.m. I received a call from Barry Zorthian, the chief of the joint U.S. information office, offering me a scoop, a phone interview with a top American official trapped in his two-story cottage in a corner of the courtyard of the embattled embassy. "We just want you to get the story straight, Peter," Zorthian said. There were gunshot sounds and explosions in the background when I interviewed George "Jake" Jacobson, the veteran embassy coordinator, who told me that several enemy commandos had blown a hole in the embassy wall an hour or so earlier and were roaming the grounds outside his cottage, firing bazooka shells at the façade of the shiny, new eight-story embassy chancery building. And the attackers were exchanging fire with snipers in buildings across the street. "They know I am here," Jacobson, a courtly older man, told me in a whisper on the phone. He said his upstairs bedroom windows were already shot out by a rocket. He had armed himself with a hand grenade for a last-ditch stand. He was a cool one, a veteran of nine years' service in Vietnam. His last comments to me were that, "The Vietcong are calculating a big splash all over the world with their activities." I was intrigued by these comments from a senior official crouching in his bedroom and fearing for his life but also figuring out a credible explanation for what was going on — that it was a communist publicity stunt. As I wrote the story for the AP, I could hardly believe the audacity of the Vietcong, who were not only assaulting the American Embassy, but also launching vigorous attacks against a dozen other targets across Saigon, all at a time when conventional wisdom had them pushed to the ropes. The fate of George Jacobson and that of the embassy itself in the developing battle became an immediate priority for our coverage because it was the highest profile target in the first hours of the offensive, and it was just five blocks away from the AP office. We set off for the embassy on foot, heading up Tu Do street past the towering red-brick Roman Catholic basilica, noticing security men in the adjoining park hiding behind trees; but they made no effort to stop us. Bursts of rockets and the crack of small arms drew us down Thong Nhut Boulevard, past the headquarters of the Texas construction giant RMK-BRJ to Hai Ba Trung street, and the corner of the block where the embassy, behind an eight-foot concrete wall, loomed above us in the darkness. We edged along the street and crouched down as small as we could make ourselves. The boulevard was a shooting gallery; gunfire crackled over our heads and thudded into tree trucks and walls. American military police from the 716 battalion had occupied an upper floor of an apartment building across the street and were directing fire into the embassy grounds. The Vietcong inside were returning fire. The senior Marine guard at the embassy, Staff Sergeant Ronald Harper, was taking cover in the floodlit lobby when a rocket smashed into a window next to the wooden door, wounding a fellow Marine in the arms, face and legs. A few seconds later the attackers dropped a hand grenade through the broken window as another rocket exploded against the door. Harper said later, "I figured the Vietcong were coming in. I moved back to the armory to get my 9mm Beretta submachine gun, then I helped move my buddy upstairs. I figured we were in for it." He returned and fired a test burst from his machine gun and backed into the corner of the lobby, able to see through the steel grills in the open window. As more rockets thumped into the fragile concrete latticework on the embassy façade, Harper said, bits of searing, hot metal took their toll on these trapped in the embassy. "One Marine guard fell dead; six others were wounded," including himself. The first glow of a gray dawn lit the scene. We saw a bullet-riddled black Citroen sedan in the middle of the street, its driver slumped over the steering wheel. Outside the embassy gate were two other immobilized vehicles. There was concrete rubble scattered near them and a haze of dust in the air from the blasting the Vietcong had done to make their way into the embassy grounds. I wondered what had happened to George Jacobson, and I was told by a Marine captain, Robert O'Brien, who had arrived with Marine guard reinforcements, that he had been in radio communication with Jacobson and the handful of embassy staffers in the chancery on overnight duty. He said, "I've relayed to them the word from command headquarters they would have to hold out because a counterattack would be too dangerous in the darkness." Inside the embassy, the duty officer, 32-year-old Allan Wendt, was asleep in a cot in room 433 on the fourth floor of the embassy when the attack began. He later recalled, "Suddenly the building was hit by a loud explosion. Automatic weapons fire broke out and rockets began to thud into the building. I quickly retreated to the more secure and better equipped communications room where a specialist, James A Griffin, was on duty. A call to the ground-floor Marine security guard post revealed that at least one Marine guard, Staff Sergeant Ronald W. Harper, was alive and functioning. The Vietcong attackers, at that point, were not in the building. I placed and received phone calls from the White House Situation Room, the State Department operations center, and the American military command in Saigon. I spoke regularly to embassy officers at the off-site command post setup by Ambassador Bunker. As the siege wore on, we pleaded with the U.S. military command for relief. We were told an armored column was on its way. It never arrived. One helicopter finally did land on the roof and evacuated a wounded Marine. But to my consternation, I also discovered that two armed American military personnel including a Marine whose presence I had not detected, also took off on the chopper, leaving the lone Marine on the ground floor and a few civilians and me to fend for ourselves." (There is no available record on whether this incident was followed up.) As the morning brightened, John Nance and I, still concealed near the outside wall, saw military policemen crawling along the exposed gutters and the sidewalk next to the embassy wall up ahead of us, moving into position for a counterattack while others were gathering in formation to assist them. A dozen Huey helicopters came in low over the gardens at the Saigon zoo end of the street, heading towards us. I realized they were going to attempt an infantry assault against the embassy. Nance, who had taken shelter behind one of the immobilized vehicles, watched as an MP rose to his feet and slammed his shoulder against the wrought iron embassy gate. It swung open and the military policemen rushed inside as the roar of exploding hand grenades and automatic weapons fire erupted. I could see the first of the helicopters hovering over us, trying to land on the embassy roof. In a barrage of gunfire from the courtyard it pulled away and was gone, and soon many of the soldiers who had stormed through the gate were back outside, pointing to the middle floors of the chancery building. Not only were the Vietcong inside embassy grounds, but they had apparently penetrated the embassy itself and were upstairs. I asked a disheveled officer if he was sure and he said, "My god, yes, we're taking fire from up there. Keep your head down." I ran to the construction building down the street where the night porter let me use the phone to send my story. Ed White calmly took my dictation, and I returned to the corner of Hai Ba Trung where newspaper and television colleagues were assembling to cover one of the most sensational actions of the whole war. An hour later, a second helicopter assault was launched, and we saw soldiers from the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division jumping to the chancery roof and beginning their descent through the building. I saw correspondent Howard Tuckner of NBC and his cameraman Vo Huynh follow a military police squad through the front gate into the embassy grounds, and we were all soon joining them, gasping at the evidence of the fierce struggle inside. A large hole had been blasted through the protective wall, the Great Seal of the United States was bullet-riddled and knocked down from above the door, and the lobby was a tangled wreck. There was a score of dead Vietcong in green and brown clothing and red armbands and several dead Americans, their blood splashed on the pathways and walls. We heard gunshots from the rear of the courtyard. We saw a pale George Jacobson emerge from his villa, the victor over a lone, wounded Vietcong gunman who had entered his house and hidden in a bathroom, and then attempted to kill him with an automatic weapon. Using a hand gun thrown up to him as he leaned from his upstairs bedroom, Jacobson killed his attacker who was coming up the stairs. Nineteen of the Vietcong attackers were killed and one was captured. Five American soldiers died. When Westmoreland arrived at the scene soon afterwards, anxious to return to a scene of normality, he instructed Allan Wendt to have the embassy cleaned up and the employees back at work by noon. Wendt said later, "This was quite unrealistic. Fighting was raging all over the city." At mid-morning, the 32-year-old diplomat drove home in his bullet-scarred car parked at the back of the chancery. Its windshield was shot away but at least he could drive it. In a report to the Department of State a few weeks later, Wendt said, "The attack on the embassy revealed our lack of military and civilian preparedness. As civilian duty officer, I was ill-prepared. I was given no useful intelligence. I had no training in the use of weapons or first aid. I was lucky to survive; the odds were against it. But a few good decisions saved us. At the first shot, a quick-thinking Marine at an adjoining building in the compound had rushed across the compound and closed the embassy's thick wooden doors. The architecture of the building with its lattice work concrete absorbed the rocket rounds fired into it. The Vietcong attackers were not of World War II caliber and fortunately for us were hit by Vietnamese and American personnel firing down on them from adjoining rooftops." A concerned President Johnson — glued to the three wire service news printers running in his office, checking the evening newspapers and watching television news — was impressed by Westmoreland's strident assertions of victory while standing amid the bloody carnage of the American Embassy courtyard and saying that no Vietcong had penetrated the inside of the chancery. The general described the enemy attacks across the city as "a diversion" to draw attention away from what he described as the "real intentions" of the enemy, which he said were to secure a victory against the Marine combat base at Khe Sanh. Westmoreland had warned for weeks that the communists were looking to achieve a success at Khe Sanh similar to that of the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu, also an isolated stronghold located in a border area. The major defeat there had forced the French to withdraw from Vietnam after a 10-year struggle to re-establish its colonial territories following World War II. In Washington, President Johnson saw Westmoreland's confident assertions of victory as an antidote to the rising clamor of criticism in Congress and in the media over war policy. He messaged Saigon that the general should give two news briefings each day rather than the planned single appearance. Accordingly, Westmoreland appeared at the press center auditorium where the official daily late afternoon briefing, nicknamed "the five o'clock follies," was being held. He doubled up on his optimism, describing the massive attacks as "a major go-for-broke offensive, but I anticipate that the enemy will shortly run out of steam." He also announced that the important central Vietnamese city of Hue had been cleared of enemy forces. But officials later had to retract that statement because the old imperial capital had already fallen to Vietcong and North Vietnamese troops after a few hours' battle. Control would be relinquished there only after a brutal 24-day struggle primarily fought by U.S. Marines. And fighting was continuing in several other provincial capitals including Kontum, Ben Tre, Phan Thiet, Ban Me Thuot and Can Tho, all indications that this was more than a communist diversion but a major offensive planned and implemented over several months while America's attention was on the northern provinces. Westmoreland would soon personally experience the persistent dangers existing in Saigon at this time. He was required to move to the headquarters of the American military assistance command because his own residence remained insecure. Lewis Sorley, who wrote a biography of the general, quoted Brigadier General Zeb Bradford, then a field grade officer and aide-de-camp: "It was humiliating for Westmoreland. He couldn't get out of his own headquarters. That first day, the senior generals assembled in a makeshift dining room for the evening meal. The mood was grim, even despondent. It appeared that all that had been achieved over the years had been for nothing. The gloom was made complete when a stray bullet smashed through the window in the room where the generals were eating. With as much dignity as possible these senior officers had to evacuate themselves to a safer part of the building." In the morning of day two of the offensive, Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams and an NBC television crew encountered General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the cold-eyed national police chief, on a street near the An Quang pagoda. He was directing a cleanup operation by some of his uniformed and heavily armed police units, and stopped to chat with the newsmen. General Loan had friends in Washington. President Johnson, at the White House meeting where he first learned of the Tet Offensive, was urged to make sure General Loan kept his job as national police chief, despite criticism from American officials in Saigon who had previously sparred with him over security issues and his heavy-handed behavior. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said, "I recommend that we need to keep General Loan in charge of the Saigon police. He should not be removed, as some of our people in the State Department are recommending. At least until we find someone better." CIA Director Richard Helms said, "I agree." McNamara said, "He is the best security chief since Diem's time. He has cleaned up Saigon well." Secretary of State Dean Rusk said, "He is a good police chief, but he has been rather uncooperative with some of our people." Standing alongside General Loan in the late morning heat on a street empty of traffic and civilians, as gunfire echoed around the silent buildings, Adams saw a group of helmeted police talking loudly as they approached with a handcuffed Vietnamese man in civilian clothes in their midst. They placed him in front of the general who questioned him briefly. Adams saw that the police chief was holding a .38-caliber revolver in his right hand, and watched as the officer's right arm swung up. So, too, did Adams' hands swing up, clutching his camera. He snapped a picture as General Loan murdered the prisoner standing in front of him with a single shot to the head. The general turned to Adams and said, "These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me," and walked away. The NBC crew, camera rolling, caught the whole sequence of events on film. I was at the Saigon AP bureau when Adams returned with his film. He was pale-faced, wide-eyed. "I just saw something unbelievable. But I don't know if I got the picture," he said. Fifteen minutes later his film emerged from the darkroom, revealing the horrifying image Adams had captured, the photo of South Vietnam's top police official with his outstretched arm holding a firearm inches from the face of a man whose head had been snapped back the split second a bullet entered his brain. The photograph was quickly fed into the Associated Press's international news distribution service and used widely in newspapers and on television. The victim was later identified as Nguyen Van Lem, said to be the leader of a clandestine Vietcong execution squad that was targeting Saigon government officials. The photograph of his public execution by one of those officials brought home to the world the horrors of a continuing brutal war that had emerged into the daylight of South Vietnam's biggest cities from the shadows of the countryside. Many thousands of communist soldiers were killed in the first month of the offensive, with the Saigon government and the American command claiming a decisive victory based on the body-count formula that was in use to chart the progress of the war. But allied casualties were also high. In the first month's combat, more than 2,100 American soldiers died, along with 4,000 South Vietnamese troops killed and tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians killed and wounded. But the psychological victory went to the communists who had achieved almost complete strategic surprise in the Tet Offensive, with some military commentators soon labeling it "the worst intelligence failure for the United States since the attack on Pearl Harbor." Harry McPherson was a special counsel for President Johnson who served in his administration from 1965 to 1969 and was with him in the White House as the Tet Offensive ran its course. He reflected on the rapidly growing controversies in the early days of the Tet Offensive battle, in an interview for the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library in Austin, Texas. "There were competing views and opposing phenomena all over the place," he said. "The embassy in Saigon and the military operation in Saigon were telling us that we had really beat the hell out of the enemy and they have taken tremendous casualties. They lost an enormous number of people including some of their best people. They surfaced a lot of assets, to use a military phrase. A lot of people who were in the infrastructure in South Vietnam and living apparently normal lives while being VC agents came out into the open and were either killed, captured or at least identified and chased out of their villages. They (the enemy) lost a lot; they did not achieve what they expected to achieve or hoped to achieve at the outset. The South Vietnamese did get a momentary shot in the arm; they did work harder. When it was over they got together more effectively. A number of citizens efforts were begun for the first time. All of this was a plus. "The negative was tremendous and was underplayed by Saigon. The negative was essentially here in this country. It was the feeling on the part of vast numbers of Americans, particularly after Westmoreland and Bunker had come back in the fall of the previous year and said things were just looking really good. I believe they used the expression 'light at the end of the tunnel.' After all of that, and after a tremendous commitment for three years — air power, 550,000 men, and all the rest of it — that this crowd (the Vietcong) was still able to mount a major offensive that smashed into cities and secure hamlets and such things. That they were able to hold Hue for a long time while the U.S. Marines encircled them. They were able to get into Saigon and terrorize the population, all that, and the awful picture you may remember of General Loan, the national police chief, executing a VC on the street. "The terrible quality of the war in Vietnam came home to people. It appeared that these guys didn't want to quit at all and were never going to quit, and that our crowd was as caught off guard as ever." ___ "We're Taking Fire" by Peter Arnett is exclusively available at Amazon.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's pick to be secretary of Veterans Affairs (all times local): 9:20 a.m. The White House is standing behind Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's choice to be Veterans Affairs secretary amid growing questions about his qualifications. Spokesman Hogan Gidley is praising Jackson, who is Trump's White House doctor and a Navy rear admiral, for serving as a physician to three U.S. presidents, both Republican and Democrat. He says Jackson has a record of "strong decisive leadership" and is "exactly what's needed at the VA." Senators have been discussing plans to delay Jackson's confirmation hearing, saying more time may be needed to review whether Jackson can manage a massive agency of 360,000 employees serving 9 million veterans. The hearing is scheduled for Wednesday. ___ 1:46 a.m. Senators are discussing plans to delay the confirmation hearing for President Donald Trump's pick to be Veteran Affairs secretary over growing questions about the nominee's ability to manage the government's second-largest department. The hearing for Ronny Jackson, Trump's White House doctor, is scheduled for Wednesday. Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal says some Republicans have told him that they think the hearing should be postponed, which he says deserves consideration. Blumenthal says he thinks there may well be a need for more time, in fairness to Jackson, so that he and the administration have an opportunity to answer these questions fully and fairly. Blumenthal declined to discuss why more time might be needed. White House and VA officials are also discussing a delay with key allies outside the administration.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. sailor has been arrested on allegations of stealing grenades from a San Diego-based Navy ship. Federal prosecutors say Gunner's Mate Second Class Aaron Booker was detained Tuesday in Great Lakes, Illinois. He is accused of possessing 20 concussion hand grenades reported missing from the USS Pinckney guided missile destroyer. Booker could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he had a lawyer. Court documents say the grenades were discovered missing Feb. 8, 2017. Booker was tasked with checking the temperature of the ship's locker where the grenades were kept. He was later sent for duties in Illinois. In April, an off-duty law enforcement officer in Arizona found a military-issued backpack on the side of a highway with "GM2 BOOKER" written on it containing 18 grenades.

CHESHIRE, Conn. (AP) — Officials from across the nation are checking out a Connecticut prison program that can serve as a model for treating young adult offenders. Connecticut prison officials are showing off the TRUE Unit on Wednesday at the Cheshire Correctional Institution. It houses 18- to 25-year-old inmates along with older mentors, some of whom are serving life sentences. The unit is based on a prison in Germany and focuses on education, family and skill development. Correction Commissioner Scott Semple says the idea is to create an environment that supports inmates whose brains are still developing. The unit had been scaled back from a planned prison for young adults due to budget cuts. It has been open for about a year and will soon expand to the state's prison for women.

ATLANTA (AP) — Former Attorney General Eric Holder will participate in a panel discussion on race. Holder, the first black U.S. attorney general, served under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2015. The panel discussion will be held at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta. The panel includes authors Michael Eric Dyson and Elizabeth Hinton, Black Lives Matters co-founder DeRay McKesson and Pulitzer Prize winner Douglas Blackmon. The event co-sponsored by The Miller Center at the University of Virginia and is part of that institution's First Year Project, which is described as a three-year initiative to develop bipartisan insight and recommendations for the first year of the new administration.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics has reported a surge in quarterly earnings thanks to its record-breaking chip business. The South Korean company said Wednesday that its October-December earnings jumped 74 percent to 12 trillion won ($11.2 billion), compared with 6.9 trillion won a year earlier. Sales and operating profit also rose in line with Samsung's earlier guidance. Samsung's flagship semiconductor business continued making record-high profits. The division, which supplies chips that help data centers, servers, mobile devices and computers save data and run multiple programs rapidly, generated 10.9 trillion won in operating income during the quarter on sales of 21.11 trillion won, an unusually lucrative record for a manufacturing company. Profits have not suffered from the vice chairman's bribery conviction. Company heir Lee Jae-yong is waiting for an appeal ruling next week.

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Joel Embiid had 25 points and 19 rebounds and Ben Simmons had a triple-double to lead the Philadelphia 76ers to a 108-94 win over the Charlotte Hornets on Monday night. Simmons had 11 points, 12 rebounds and 15 assists to help the Sixers keep alive their shot at finishing fourth in the Eastern Conference and earning home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. The 76ers have one of the easiest schedules of any team the rest of the season. The Sixers would have to pass Washington and Indiana to grab the No. 4 seed and stave off a potential Toronto or Boston matchup for at least a round. "Our goal is to make the playoffs," coach Brett Brown said. "Now, seemingly, we are pretty close to doing that. Now we all get greedy and say, 'Let's get a home court.' And I'm the captain of that new club. And it can only happen if we guard. And that's the message to our team." How's this for D? The Hornets missed 17 of 21 shots in the third (1 of 5 on 3s) to crush their chances of stretching a seven-point halftime lead. "Nothing matters unless we play defense," Brown said. "It's how we set the tone in this program since the day I arrived." The 76ers have had countless dark days since Brown arrived in 2013. The 19-, 18- and 10-win seasons that give birth to The Process have paid off this year, and the Sixers are set to reach the playoffs for the first time since 2012. They are the favorites in the majority of their games and have become the team that now has to worry about playing down to the level of their competition. Philadelphia could never really shake Charlotte until late. Embiid hit two straight 3s and JJ Redick hit one to give the Sixers a 58-56 lead in the third. Marco Belinelli hit consecutive 3s late in the third to make it 72-64. He hit one more 3 for a 10-point lead to help the Sixers beat their third straight sub.-500 team (New York, Brooklyn). Embiid hit one more 3 at the top of the arc to close the quarter. Dario Saric hit a 3 in the fourth for an 88-83 lead and Robert Covington, who scored 18 points, sealed it with Philadelphia's 16th 3 of the game for a 12-point edge late in the fourth. Kemba Walker led the Hornets, coming off a 124-101 loss to the Knicks, with 24 points. Wily Hernangomez scored 17 points off the bench in just 12 minutes in the first half to help the Hornets lead 56-49 at the break. TIP-INS Hornets: The Hornets made all 14 free throws in the first half. ... Hernangomez scored 15 points in the second quarter. ... Jeremy Lamb started start in place of injured guard Nicolas Batum (Achilles). 76ers: The 76ers went just 3 for 4 from the free-throw line in the first half. ... The loudest ovation of the night came when Hernangomez missed two straight free throws in the third to win every fan a free fast-food treat. ... Allen Iverson was in the house. UP NEXT Hornets: Play Wednesday at Brooklyn. 76ers: Host Memphis on Wednesday. ___ More NBA basketball: https://apnews.com/tags/NBAbasketball

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) — Justice Department won't retry Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez and co-defendant after judge acquitted them on some counts.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Sports doctor Larry Nassar's return to court to face another prison sentence for molesting gymnasts could unfold much the same as a hearing last week in another Michigan county. Judge Janice Cunningham has set aside several days for roughly 60 people who want to confront Nassar or have their statement read in court. This time Nassar is to be confronted by gymnasts from an elite Michigan club run by an Olympic coach. Last week Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison. The hearing starting Wednesday in Eaton County centers on his assaults at Twistars, a Lansing-area gymnastics club that was run by 2012 Olympic coach John Geddert. Nassar admits penetrating three girls with his hands when he was supposed to be treating them for injuries.

BERLIN (AP) — An activist group on Tuesday published a database of information on suspected chemical attacks in Syria , adding to a growing collection of videos and images documenting alleged war crimes during the seven-year conflict. The Syrian Archive, which works with human rights groups such as Amnesty International, said it has verified 861 videos covering some 212 attacks — most of them believed to have been carried out by government forces. The material comes from 193 sources and much of it was uploaded to social media by ordinary Syrians, the group's co-founder, Hadi al-Khatib, told an audience in Berlin. Al-Khatib, who has lived in Germany since 2014, said the group wants to preserve sensitive material from disappearing , so that it might eventually be used to bring those responsible for war crimes to trial. But the team, which is spread across Europe and the Middle East, also wants to "add value" to the raw material, such as by determining the location where a video was taken and, most importantly, verifying that it shows what is claimed. The Syrian Archive cooperates with the open source journalism site Bellingcat that has made a name for itself forensically examining footage from war zones. While most of the chemical attacks documented by the group are alleged to have been carried out by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, including most recently in the town of Douma near Damascus, a handful have been attributed to rebel forces and the Islamic State extremist group, said Abdulrahman al-Jaloud, one of the Syrian Archive's researchers. Al-Khatib said he and fellow activists try not to get disheartened by the fact that efforts to bring those responsible for war crimes in Syria to trial have so far been unsuccessful. "That doesn't mean we should stop," he said. "We are looking forward to the day when we can use this material, because the reconstruction of Syria must include acknowledging, investigating and prosecuting crimes."

President Donald Trump's new immigration plan is stirring up controversy with its proposals on legal immigration. Much of the public debate to this point has been about young immigrants brought to this country as children illegally. But the plan's potential impact on legal immigration has sparked fierce Democratic opposition and appears it may sink chances for a bipartisan deal in Congress. The proposal outlined Thursday by the White House would end much family-based immigration and the visa lottery program, moves that some experts estimate could cut legal immigration into the United States nearly in half. The plan would also protect some 700,000 young immigrants from deportation and provide a pathway to citizenship, a top Democratic goal.

NEW YORK (AP) — On college campuses and in workplaces, gender-neutral pronouns are more than just a new wave of political correctness. They're the focus of debate that stretches back hundreds of years. University of Illinois language historian Dennis Baron says early pronoun scrappers were usually more concerned with grammatical correctness over a keen commitment to inclusivity in avoiding the generic "he" and singular "they" as a replacement. In 1884, the invented pronoun "thon" was publicized by the coiner, C.C. Converse, as an expedient pronoun for all genders. This time around, "they" and "them" seem to be winning the race of acceptance as gender neutrals. Baron says time will tell whether they're afforded broad acceptance.

TOP STORY: SOC--ENGLISH ROUNDUP MANCHESTER, England — Manchester United and Chelsea couldn?t afford any slip-ups if they were to have even the slightest chance of catching Manchester City in the final months of the Premier League. By Steve Douglas. SENT: 707 words, photos. NEW/DEVELOPING: SOC--EUROPE-TRANSFERS The Premier League had already spent a record amount in the January transfer window before the likes of Arsenal and Chelsea added to their squads on the final day. By Rob Harris. UPCOMING: 700 words by 0100 GMT, photos. CAR--F1-WOMEN ON GRID PARIS — There will be no more "grid girls" before Formula One races and no more "podium girls" celebrating with the drivers after them. By Jerome Pugmire. SENT: 387 words, photos. GYM--DOCTOR-SEXUAL ASSAULT CHARLOTTE, Michigan — Another wave of victims confronted Larry Nassar on Wednesday, this time about sexual abuse at an elite Michigan gymnastics club where young athletes felt they had to use the disgraced doctor's services and could not question the adults who ran the facility. By David Eggert. SENT: 868 words, photos, video. OLY--RUSSIAN DOPING-PUTIN MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has told the country's athletes to forget about doping scandals when they compete at the Pyeongchang Olympics. SENT: 387 words, photos. FOOTBALL: SOC--SPANISH ROUNDUP MADRID — Leganes boosted its chances of reaching the Copa del Rey final for the first time by salvaging a 1-1 draw against Sevilla on Wednesday, netting the equalizer after a mistake by Sevilla goalkeeper Sergio Rico. By Tales Azzoni. SENT: 164 words, photos. SOC--ITALIAN ROUNDUP MILAN — AC Milan drew 0-0 at home to Lazio in the first leg of their Italian Cup semifinal on Wednesday and could be left counting the cost of an embarrassing miss by Hakan Calhanoglu. SENT: 322 words, photos. SOC--FRENCH ROUNDUP PARIS — First-half goals from Radamel Falcao sent Monaco back into the League Cup final after a 2-0 home win against Montpellier on Wednesday. SENT: 297 words, photos. SOC--GERMANY TRANSFERS BERLIN — Borussia Dortmund dominated the end of the transfer window in Germany with a flurry of activity that saw star striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang leave and Michy Batshuayi take his place on Wednesday. By Ciaran Fahey. SENT: 698 words, photos. SOC--ITALY-TRANSFERS MILAN — Roma was the only one of the top-five Serie A clubs to make a major signing as the Italian transfer window closed on Wednesday, with the capital club bringing in Argentina left back Jonathan Silva on loan from Sporting Lisbon. By Daniella Matar. SENT: 346 words, photos. SOC--SPAIN-TRANSFERS MADRID — Real Sociedad signed veteran Mexico defender Hector Moreno on a day without major transfers involving Spain's top clubs. By Tales Azzoni. SENT: 382 words, photos. WINTER OLYMPICS: OLY--LUG-GERMAN GREATNESS There has never been a women's luge athlete who has won more World Cup medals than Natalie Geisenberger. Same goes for world championship medals, same goes for Olympic medals. Her resume is beyond compare. So she's the best ever to slide, right? "No," she says, adamantly. "I'm not the best." SENT: 801 words, photos. TENNIS: TEN--FED CUP-FRANCE PARIS — Kristina Mladenovic, Pauline Parmentier and Amandine Hesse were named in France's Fed Cup team on Wednesday for the first-round match against Belgium. SENT: 267 words. TEN--ST PETERSBURG LADIES TROPHY ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — Petra Kvitova advanced to the second round of the St. Petersburg Ladies Trophy on Wednesday, and Caroline Garcia was eliminated. SENT: 82 words. GOLF: GLF--PHOENIX OPEN SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm will get the party started early Thursday in the Waste Management Phoenix Open. By John Nicholson. SENT: 752 words. Other Stories: — HKO--Kladno-Jagr. Jaromir Jagr signs contract with his Czech hometown club. SENT: 206 words. YOUR QUERIES: Questions and story requests are welcome. Contact your local AP bureau or the AP International Sports Desk in London by telephone at +44 207 427 4224 or email lonsports@ap.org.

Global Forecast - Asia as of 13:30 GMT Tuesday, April 24, 2018 Minimum and maximum temperatures in Celsius, precipitation in centimeters and weather conditions as recorded for the previous day (Apr 23 except Asia and Australia where data is for Apr 24) and forecast for the current and following day in each city as of 1330 GMT: _____ CITY;MIN;MAX;COND;PRECIP;MIN;MAX;COND;MIN;MAX;COND Abidjan;26;32;pc;0.99;26;32;rn;26;32;rn Abu Dhabi;25;39;clr;0;25;33;clr;26;35;pc Aleppo;15;28;clr;0;16;29;clr;17;29;pc Algiers;16;23;pc;0;14;20;rn;13;16;rn Amsterdam;9;15;rn;0;8;14;rn;7;13;rn Anchorage;3;9;rn;1.6;3;9;pc;2;8;pc Ashgabat;13;22;rn;2.46;15;23;clr;15;27;clr Astana;6;15;rn;4.09;1;10;pc;1;9;sn Asuncion;22;35;pc;0;22;34;clr;21;34;c Athens;14;27;pc;0;13;28;pc;13;27;pc Auckland;13;17;c;0;11;19;pc;14;19;pc Baghdad;15;29;clr;0;19;30;pc;19;32;c Bahrain;25;29;clr;3;25;30;pc;26;32;pc Banda Aceh;24;33;rn;3.66;24;34;rn;23;29;rn Bangalore;22;33;pc;0.99;22;35;clr;23;34;clr Bangkok;28;36;clr;0;28;36;pc;28;36;rn Barcelona;15;23;clr;0;15;21;pc;14;21;rn Beijing;10;23;pc;0;11;25;clr;13;26;pc Belgrade;13;26;rn;0;14;28;rn;13;29;pc Berlin;11;16;c;4.88;7;17;rn;6;14;rn Bogota;10;20;rn;2.29;10;19;c;10;17;c Brasilia;15;27;pc;11.68;14;25;pc;16;27;rn Bratislava;12;24;pc;9.93;15;27;pc;8;17;rn Brisbane;17;26;rn;3.05;17;27;clr;17;29;clr Brussels;11;15;rn;1.75;6;14;rn;5;13;rn Bucharest;13;29;pc;0;14;28;pc;14;30;pc Budapest;13;26;rn;6.45;15;27;pc;11;22;rn Buenos Aires;20;23;rn;0;20;25;rn;23;26;rn Bujumbura;18;30;c;10.29;18;30;rn;18;29;rn Busan;10;17;rn;58.72;9;20;clr;12;20;c Cairo;16;27;clr;0;18;26;pc;18;30;clr Cape Town;11;20;pc;9.45;13;20;rn;12;18;rn Caracas;20;29;pc;2.31;19;29;pc;21;29;pc Chennai;28;37;clr;0;28;37;clr;28;37;clr Chicago;5;13;c;0.25;2;10;pc;6;16;pc Colombo;26;33;pc;0.25;25;32;rn;25;32;rn Copenhagen;6;12;rn;6.76;6;12;rn;6;11;rn Dakar;18;24;clr;0;19;24;clr;19;24;clr Dallas;16;28;clr;0;11;22;rn;13;24;pc Dar es Salaam;23;32;pc;0.99;23;31;pc;24;31;clr Denver;-1;6;c;3.23;4;18;clr;0;13;c Dhahran;23;30;pc;5.03;23;31;pc;23;33;clr Dhaka;26;33;rn;0;22;37;rn;25;35;rn Dili;23;36;clr;0;23;33;pc;22;33;pc Dubai;27;38;clr;0;28;34;clr;27;35;pc Dublin;5;12;rn;1.22;5;12;rn;4;12;rn Dushanbe;13;28;c;0;11;21;c;12;24;clr Gibraltar;15;20;rn;4.39;15;20;rn;15;21;pc Hanoi;24;29;rn;0;23;25;rn;23;27;rn Harare;10;26;clr;0;9;25;clr;10;25;clr Havana;21;30;pc;0.99;20;28;rn;21;28;rn Helsinki;3;10;rn;0;2;9;rn;1;11;rn Ho Chi Minh City;27;35;pc;1.45;27;35;rn;27;34;pc Hong Kong;21;27;rn;0;22;26;c;23;26;pc Honolulu;23;28;rn;0;23;27;rn;22;28;pc Hyderabad;25;40;clr;0;25;38;pc;25;38;pc Islamabad;20;35;clr;0;21;36;clr;21;36;clr Istanbul;15;25;clr;0;15;26;pc;14;26;clr Jakarta;24;31;pc;6.45;25;31;c;25;30;rn Jeddah;25;34;clr;0;26;35;clr;23;32;clr Jerusalem;14;24;clr;0;12;18;rn;13;18;c Johannesburg;11;26;clr;0;10;26;clr;11;25;clr Kabul;11;27;pc;0;9;25;clr;10;26;clr Karachi;26;37;clr;0;26;35;clr;27;35;clr Kathmandu;15;28;pc;0;15;28;pc;14;26;rn Khartoum;24;41;clr;0;24;42;clr;22;40;clr Kiev;9;20;c;0;14;22;rn;11;22;pc Kingston;25;31;pc;0.25;26;30;pc;25;31;pc Kinshasa;22;32;rn;5.97;23;31;rn;22;31;rn Kolkata;26;37;rn;0;26;37;rn;25;36;rn Kuala Lumpur;24;31;c;21.82;24;33;c;24;33;rn Kuwait;22;32;clr;1.98;22;32;pc;22;33;pc La Paz;1;13;pc;0;1;13;rn;1;15;pc Lagos;26;33;pc;0.99;26;32;rn;26;32;rn Lima;19;23;pc;0;19;23;pc;19;23;pc Lisbon;14;26;pc;3.81;13;22;pc;12;24;clr London;8;17;rn;0;6;14;rn;7;13;pc Los Angeles;12;24;pc;0;12;23;pc;12;22;pc Luanda;26;32;c;0.99;26;32;pc;26;31;rn Madrid;14;26;pc;1.17;14;27;pc;14;25;clr Male;28;31;pc;2.77;28;32;rn;27;32;rn Manaus;22;29;pc;4.29;23;29;pc;24;30;rn Manila;26;34;rn;0;26;35;rn;26;35;rn Mecca;27;39;rn;1.98;27;40;rn;24;37;rn Melbourne;13;25;rn;0;12;20;pc;10;17;pc Mexico City;13;25;pc;7.62;13;25;pc;13;26;pc Miami;21;30;pc;4.75;19;30;pc;20;29;clr Minsk;6;17;rn;0;7;13;rn;2;14;rn Mogadishu;26;31;rn;5.23;26;31;rn;26;30;pc Montevideo;18;22;pc;0.25;18;24;rn;20;25;c Montreal;8;19;pc;0;8;12;rn;6;13;rn 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ENGLEWOOD, Colorado (AP) — Terrell Davis' first visit to Denver Broncos headquarters since being elected to the Hall of Fame brought back memories of his first training camp when he couldn't see much of a future in football and came close to quitting. The Broncos were in Japan practicing for a preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers in the summer of 1995. "Let's just say, if I spoke better Japanese I wouldn't be here," Davis said Wednesday. "I'm telling you, I was this close to walking out of there because I looked at everything around me and I just had no shot of making the team. I was a sixth-round draft pick, I was seventh on the depth chart, I wasn't getting any reps in practice, I had my coach constantly on me and it just didn't feel like there was any way of me making the team." Davis didn't figure he had much of a present in football, much less a future. "And yeah, I had a moment, I had a weak moment where I thought after practice I'm out of here. I'm not going to wait until we get back to Denver to get cut. I'm going to walk out of here," Davis said. "Thank God I didn't. And then I made the big hit." In the preseason game against the 49ers, Davis delivered a crushing hit on kick returner Tyrone Drakeford that got the attention of the coaching staff and prompted fellow future Hall of Famer Shannon Sharpe to marvel, "Who was that?" That was the man who would go down in league history as the only running back to own back-to-back Super Bowl titles, an MVP trophy, a Super Bowl MVP honor, a 2,000-yard season and seven consecutive playoff wins in which he topped 100 yards rushing. Davis, who will be inducted into the Hall of Fame this summer, said he uses that rags-to-riches anecdote all the time. "Because it goes to show you that my thing is if you quit, the result is always failure," said Davis, now an analyst for the NFL Network. "But if you don't quit, you never know what the outcome could be. So, quitting on yourself should never be an option, which I almost did. "And for anybody that's out there struggling ... I try to tell them even if your situation seems dire, don't give up. Just keep fighting, keep fighting, keep fighting. You never know. The only thing you can control is the effort. You can't control the outcome or the results, but just keep going at it and you never know how that plays out." Sticking it out landed Davis with football immortality. "I think what's great about it is the story behind it, it's not (one of) a typical, first-round selection, big school, all-time leading rusher. I was totally sort of opposite of all those things and yet I was still able to make it to the Hall of Fame," Davis said. "So, what does that tell a kid right now who is struggling and is not maybe first team or not at the school that he wants to be at, or whatever the situation may be?" ___ For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL ___ Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton

Oh, the injustice of it all. Who among us hasn't felt abused as a consumer? We get billed for stuff we didn't receive, or that doesn't work, or that didn't live up to its hype. Companies charge us unexpected fees and insist the costs were revealed in the fine print. Health insurers take customer disservice to a whole new, awful level, inexplicably refusing to pay for services they promised to cover and deluging us with impossible-to-decrypt paperwork. It's understandable if you feel that enough is enough. But taking a righteous stand against paying an unfair bill can boomerang on you — hard. Here are some situations where you might be tempted to refuse to pay, and what you might want to consider doing instead. BILLING DISPUTES Several years ago a friend refused to pay a bill for internet service that didn't work. The collection account that later appeared on his credit reports nearly cost him a job offer. (He paid off the collection and wound up taking a job with a different employer.) The balance of power is tilted heavily in favor of companies and collection agencies that can report an unpaid bill to the credit bureaus. You can include a 100-word dispute in your credit files, but good luck getting anyone to read it. The credit scores most lenders and insurers use don't factor in those statements. Employers, who typically use credit reports rather than scores to evaluate applicants, may see your statement, but it may not affect hiring, firing or promotion decisions. —What to do instead: Settle disputes before a bill goes to collections. Consider asking a government regulator for help (search for "Who regulates (company name)?" to find the agency) or turning to a lawmaker whose staff can help with constituent disputes. As a last resort, consider paying the bill, then suing the company in small claims court. If you used a credit card to pay the bill, you're in luck. Credit card users have a powerful, built-in weapon to deal with shoddy services or goods — the chargeback . A chargeback, which reverses a payment to a merchant, prevents damage to your credit report for nonpayment while a dispute is resolved. MEDICAL BILLS For about 43 million people, or 1 out of 5 credit reports, there's overdue medical debt, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. For 15 million people, medical bills are the only overdue debt on their credit reports. Clearly, many of us are having trouble paying our medical bills — or thinking they have been paid when they haven't, since many ricochet between health care providers and insurers, sometimes for months. The latest versions of the FICO and VantageScore credit scoring models treat medical debt less harshly than other collections, but most lenders use older versions of the scores. The toll can be significant: A single collection account can drop a 680 FICO score by 40 points and a 780 score by 100 points. (The most widely used credit scoring formulas, such as the FICO 8, use a 300-to-850 range.) —What to do instead: If you have health insurance, follow up on every medical bill you receive to make sure it gets paid. If you don't have insurance or can't pay your bill, ask health care providers if they have charity programs or payment plans that could make the costs more manageable. FEDERAL STUDENT LOANS Only half of recent graduates strongly agreed that college was worth the cost, a 2015 Gallup-Purdue Index poll found. That may explain why about 1 in 10 borrowers who were scheduled to start paying their federal student loans in 2013-14 have defaulted instead, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Refusing to pay your loans is shortsighted. The default hurts your credit scores, which will make other borrowing difficult and can increase the cost of items like car insurance and cell phone plans. But that's just the start. Government collectors can seize your tax refund, take a portion of your wages without going to court and literally pursue you to the grave. The U.S. Supreme Court decided a portion of Social Security benefits, which are typically off-limits to creditors, could be seized to repay delinquent federal student loans. —What to do instead: The education department offers several affordable repayment options , including an income-based plan that can reduce required payments to zero. Struggling borrowers can find plenty of information at the education department's Federal Student Aid site . For private student loans, consider calling the loan servicer directly to ask about options such as interest-only payments. _______ This column was provided to The Associated Press by the personal finance website NerdWallet . Liz Weston is a columnist at NerdWallet, a certified financial planner and author of "Your Credit Score." Email: lweston@nerdwallet.com . Twitter: @lizweston. RELATED LINK: NerdWallet: How to choose a student loan repayment plan https://nerd.me/student-loan-repayment Federal Student Aid: Guide to repaying federal student loans https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans Forbes: When you should and shouldn't dispute a credit card purchase https://www.forbes.com/sites/clairetsosie/2017/03/16/when-you-should-and-shouldnt-dispute-a-credit-card-purchase/#4674067d2e39

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israeli leaders angrily criticized pending legislation in Poland that would outlaw blaming Poles for the crimes of the Holocaust, with some accusing the Polish government of outright denial Saturday as the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the proposed law "baseless" and ordered his country's ambassador to Poland to meet with Polish leaders to express his strong opposition. "One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied," he said. The lower house of the Polish parliament on Friday passed the bill, which prescribes prison time for using phrases such as "Polish death camps" to refer to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland during World War II. Many Poles fear such phrasing makes some people incorrectly conclude that Poles had a role in running the camps. But critics say the legislation could have a chilling effect on debating history, harming freedom of expression and opening a window to Holocaust denial. The bill still needs approval from Poland's Senate and president. However, it marks a dramatic step by the country's current nationalist government to target anyone who tries to undermine its official stance that Poles only were heroes during the war, not Nazi collaborators who committed heinous crimes. Netanyahu's government generally has had good relations with Poland, which has been recently voting with Israel in international organizations. At Auschwitz on Saturday evening, Israel's ambassador to Poland, Anna Azari, abandoned a prepared speech to criticize the bill, saying that "everyone in Israel was revolted at this news." In Israel, which was established three years after the Holocaust and is home to the world's largest community of survivors, the legislation provoked outrage. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, noting that exactly 73 years had passed since the Auschwitz death camp on Polish soil was liberated, cited the words of a former Polish president about how history could not be faked and the truth could not be hidden. "The Jewish people, the State of Israel, and the entire world must ensure that the Holocaust is recognized for its horrors and atrocities," Rivlin said. "Also among the Polish people, there were those who aided the Nazis in their crimes. Every crime, every offense, must be condemned. They must be examined and revealed." Today's Poles have been raised on stories of their people's wartime suffering and heroism. Many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews. In a sign of the sensitivities on both sides, Yair Lapid, head of Israel's centrist Yesh Atid party and the son of a survivor, got into a heated Twitter spat Saturday with the Polish Embassy in Israel. "I utterly condemn the new Polish law which tries to deny Polish complicity in the Holocaust. It was conceived in Germany but hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered without ever meeting a German soldier. There were Polish death camps and no law can ever change that," Lapid wrote. That sparked the Embassy to respond: "Your unsupportable claims show how badly Holocaust education is needed, even here in Israel." "My grandmother was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles," Lapid responded. "I don't need Holocaust education from you. We live with the consequences every day in our collective memory. Your embassy should offer an immediate apology." To which the embassy retorted: "Shameless." Israel's foreign ministry said the deputy Polish ambassador to Israel had been summoned for a clarification. For decades, Polish society avoided discussing the killing of Jews by civilians or denied that anti-Semitism motivated the slayings, blaming all atrocities on the Germans. A turning point was the publication in 2000 of a book, "Neighbors," by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jews by their Polish neighbors in the village of Jedwabne. The book resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies. But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussions and research on the topic. It demonized Gross and investigated whether he had slandered Poland by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war. Holocaust researchers have collected ample evidence of Polish villagers who murdered Jews fleeing the Nazis. According to one scholar at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, of the 160,000-250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles, about 10 percent to 20 percent survived. The rest were rejected, informed upon or killed by rural Poles, according to the Tel Aviv University scholar, Havi Dreifuss. At Auschwitz, however, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki stressed the Poles who helped Jews risking their own lives, noting that some 7,000 had been recognized by Yad Vashem but suggesting that the Polish sacrifices have not been acknowledged adequately. "Jews, Poles, and all victims should be guardians of the memory of all who were murdered by German Nazis. Auschwitz-Birkenau is not a Polish name, and Arbeit Macht Frei is not a Polish phrase," Morawiecki said later on Twitter. Yad Vashem issued a statement Saturday night opposing the Polish legislation and trying to put into historical context the "complex truth" regarding the Polish population's attitude toward its Jews. "There is no doubt that the term 'Polish death camps' is a historical misrepresentation," the Yad Vashem memorial said. "However, restrictions on statements by scholars and others regarding the Polish people's direct or indirect complicity with the crimes committed on their land during the Holocaust are a serious distortion." ___ Vanessa Gera contributed from Warsaw. ____ Follow Heller at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap

A boost in equipment sales propelled Caterpillar's first-quarter profit, as a strong global economy helped support construction and energy industry projects. The maker of heavy equipment and machinery also greatly increased its outlook for the year, citing an upbeat global markets, better pricing and demand. Profit rose eightfold to $1.67 billion, or $2.74 per share, while revenue surged 31 percent to $12.86 billion. The results topped Wall Street expectations. Construction equipment sales rose 38 percent during the quarter, while energy and transportation equipment sales rose 26 percent. North America remained the company's biggest market, with its Asia/Pacific region coming in as its next biggest. Looking ahead, the Deerfield, Illinois company boosted its full-year outlook by $2 to a range of $9.75 to $10.75 per share.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's top five economies are warning the United States that its massive tax overhaul could contravene some of its international obligations and risks "having a major distortive impact on international trade." In a letter to U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, the finance ministers of Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain wrote they had "significant concerns" about three tax initiatives in particular, including the so-called base erosion and anti-abuse tax Senate bill. In a letter seen by The Associated Press, the five wrote that "it is important that the U.S. government's rights over domestic tax policy be exercised in a way that adheres with international obligations to which it has signed-up."

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemeni security officials say local forces backed by the United Arab Emirates are expanding their reach in the country's south, where they have clashed with forces loyal to the internationally recognized president. The UAE is part of the Saudi-led coalition battling Yemen's Shiite rebels on behalf of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, but has been at odds with Hadi for months. The security officials said Monday that hundreds of Security Belt forces — fighters trained and financed by the UAE, have deployed in the Dhale province. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters. The UAE and Hadi maintain separate security forces based in the southern city of Aden, which have clashed in recent months.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Democrats see Tuesday's special Senate election as a chance to renounce a history littered with politicians whose race-baiting, bombast and other baggage have long soiled the state's reputation beyond its borders. Many Republicans see the vote as chance to ratify their conservative values and protect President Donald Trump's agenda ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. At the center are Republican Roy Moore, a former jurist twice removed as state chief justice and now accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls decades ago, and Democrat Doug Jones, an erstwhile federal prosecutor best known for prosecuting two Ku Klux Klansmen responsible for killing four black girls in the 1963 bombing of Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church. The winner will take the seat held previously by Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Republicans control the Senate with 52 seats. In truth, the matchup mixes both Alabama's tortured history and the nation's current divisive, bitterly partisan politics, and it has made a spectacle of a Deep South state well acquainted with national scrutiny but not accustomed to competitive general elections. "This is an election to tell the whole world what we stand for," Jones told supporters at one stop Sunday, adding that his campaign "is on the right side of history." At an earlier appearance, he declared Alabama is "at a crossroads" and that Moore, an unapologetic evangelical populist, tries only to "create conflict and division." Jones, 63, stops short of explicitly comparing Moore to the four-term Gov. George Wallace, whose populism was rooted in segregation. But Jones alluded Sunday to that era of Alabama politics. "Elect a responsible man to a responsible office," Jones said, repeating the campaign slogan of another Alabama governor, Albert Brewer, who nearly defeated Wallace in 1970 in a contest Alabama liberals and many moderates still lament as a lost opportunity. Some of Jones' supporters put it even more bluntly. "I thought Alabama's image was pretty much at the bottom," said Pat Lawrence, a retired software engineer in Huntsville. A Moore win, Lawrence added, "will be a whole new bottom." Those concerns extend even to some GOP quarters. Alabama's senior senator, Richard Shelby, confirmed Sunday that he did not vote for Moore, saying he wrote in another "distinguished" party figure he declined to name. Yet for many Republicans, Moore is a paragon of traditional values. They reject accusations that he molested two teenage girls and pursued relationships with others decades ago. Moore denies the charges. "Everyone has to vote their convictions," said Kevin Mims of Montgomery, as he held his Bible outside his Baptist church Sunday in Montgomery. "My conviction is he's the right man for the job." Where Moore's critics see a state judge who defied federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court's decision legalizing same-sex marriage, Mims see a stalwart who stands "on the word of God." Other conservatives see an anti-establishment firebrand in the mold of Trump, who won Alabama by 28 percentage points. Moore encourages that view with fundraising emails that urge backers to help him "defeat the elite," a swipe at both Democrats and the establishment Republicans who tried to deny him the GOP nomination earlier this year. Ultimately, Republicans from Moore to Trump himself are betting on a simple bottom line: Most Alabama conservatives simply won't defect to a Democrat. "If Alabama elects liberal Democrat Doug Jones, all of our progress will be stopped cold," Trump says in a robocall the Moore campaign plans to push out Monday. The president also invokes a common fear among Republicans, calling Jones "a puppet of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer," the Democratic House and Senate leaders in Washington, both of them reviled by conservative voters. "Roy Moore is the guy we need to pass our Make American Great Again agenda," the president insists. Moore's baggage could make it difficult to draw conclusions about what the results might mean beyond Alabama, but both parties are watching closely. Democrats need to flip 24 GOP-held seats to reclaim a House majority, and they're trying to dent the slim Republican advantage in the Senate and its dominance of statehouses around the country. In many of those races, they'll need the same thing Jones must get to win in Alabama: strong turnout among young and non-white voters, along with improved performance among suburban moderates. A Jones victory would be hailed as a potential precursor, and Democrats have indicated they have a post-Alabama strategy even if Jones loses: They'll take Alabama's brand national, hammering Republicans as "the party of Donald Trump and Roy Moore." ----- Barrow reported from Mobile, Alabama. Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP and Chandler at https://twitter.com/StatehouseKim.

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — Academy Award winner Meryl Streep, former New York Yankees pitcher Al Leiter (LY'-tur) and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt are among the 20 newest members of the New Jersey Hall of Fame. The class of 2017 also includes singers Debbie Harry and Frankie Valli and "Cake Boss" reality TV star Buddy Valastro for the performing arts. Authors Harlan Coben and Anna Quindlen represent arts and letters. The inductees for public service are astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly, late Republican Rep. Millicent Fenwick and Army nurse Clara Maass, who died as a result of volunteering for medical experiments to study yellow fever. Other class members are real estate developer Jon Hanson, magazine publisher Steve Forbes, politician Joe Buckelew and running champion Mary Decker. All will be inducted during a ceremony in May.

NEW YORK (AP) — A new bipartisan task force will tackle what its founders say is the erosion of governmental norms created by the election of President Donald Trump. Democratic former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and Republican former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman announced the task force in an editorial published in USA Today , the pair said that since the election of President Donald Trump, they've seen a deep erosion of "the norms and boundaries traditionally guiding American political behavior." "A workable democracy can thrive only when there are basic rules, often unwritten, that curb abuse and guide policymakers," they said. "It's time to turn soft norms into hard law." The opinion piece cited Trump's refusal to divorce himself from his business interests and what Bharara and Whitman said were the Republican president's efforts to influence federal criminal investigations. "All this shows just how easily a chief executive can ignore the unwritten rules that typically constrain presidents. We see similar erosion elsewhere in government, too. For example, a major tax bill, affecting the whole economy, enacted with no committee hearings," they wrote. The pair said the task force will be based at the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy institute at New York University's School of Law. They said it would review whether informal norms surrounding financial conflicts, political interference with law enforcement, the use of government data and science and the appointment of public officials should be codified into enforceable law. Bharara is a frequent critic of Trump, who fired him last year as part of a purge of prosecutors appointed by President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Whitman was a former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator under Republican President George W. Bush and has criticized Trump's environmental policies.

DETROIT (AP) — Alondra Alvarez lives about five minutes from her high school on Detroit's southwest side but she drives there instead of walking because her mother fears for her safety. Once the 18-year-old enters the building, her surroundings take on a more secure feel almost immediately as she passes through a bank of closely monitored metal detectors. "My mom has never been comfortable with me walking to school. My mom is really scared of street thugs," said Alvarez, who attends Western International. As schools around the U.S. look for ways to impose tougher security measures in the wake of last month's school shooting in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead, they don't have to look further than urban districts such as Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York that installed metal detectors and other security in the 1980s and 1990s to combat gang and drug violence. Security experts believe these measures have made urban districts less prone to mass shootings, which have mostly occurred in suburban and rural districts. Officials in some suburban and rural school districts are now considering detectors as they rethink their security plans after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz allegedly brought in a duffel bag containing an assault rifle and opened fire. He's charged with 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. The massacre has galvanized thousands of students around the country who walked out of their classrooms for 17 minutes — one for each Parkland victim — on March 14 to protest gun violence. "I think urban schools are eons ahead. They've been dealing with violence a lot longer than suburban schools," said Philip Smith, president of the National African American Gun Association. During the mid-1980s, Detroit was one of the first districts in the nation to put permanent, walk-through metal detectors in high schools and middle schools. New York schools also had them in some buildings. By 1992, metal detectors had been installed in a few dozen Chicago high schools. And in 1993, under pressure to make schools safer, Los Angeles' district announced that it would randomly search students with metal detectors. Such measures "are designed to identify and hopefully deter anybody from bringing a weapon to school, but metal detectors alone portray an illusion of being safe," said Nikolai Vitti, superintendent of the 50,000-student Detroit Public Schools Community District. "Our schools need to be safer than they are," Vitti said. "As a nation, we need to fully fund and make sure all districts can adequately staff school resource officers and also offer mental health and first-aid training to all educators." Security measures don't always keep guns off school grounds. A 17-year-old high school senior was killed and another student wounded March 7 in a Birmingham, Alabama, classroom shooting. Metal detectors at the school were not in use that day. A 17-year-old student has been charged with manslaughter. Two students were shot and three people suffered other injuries in February when a gun in a backpack accidentally fired inside a Los Angeles Unified School District middle school. The district does random metal-detector wand searches daily in middle schools and high schools. A 12-year-old girl has been charged with being a minor in possession of a firearm and having a weapon on school grounds. In response to the Parkland shooting, Florida's governor has said he wants to spend $500 million to increase law enforcement and mental health counselors at schools, to make buildings more secure with metal detectors and to create an anonymous tip line. A package of legislation passed by the New York state Senate includes provisions for metal detectors and improved security technology in schools. A parent in Knox County, Kentucky, has said his law office would donate $25,000 for metal detectors in schools there. Alvarez, the student at Detroit's Western International, said she and others who attend the school go through metal detectors every morning. Her elementary and middle schools also had metal detectors. "I've always seen it as something that made me feel safe," she said, adding that all schools should have them and not just inner-city ones "so students don't feel discriminated against." Metal detectors are seen as a symptom of a "stigma that already exists," said Mark Fancher, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan's Racial Justice Project. "There is a presumption that urban schools — particularly those with students of color — are violent places and security demands you have procedures in place that are intended to protect the safety of the students," Fancher said. But metal detectors, property searches, security guards and police in schools create conditions similar to those found in prisons, he said. "Students, themselves, internalize these things," Fancher said. "If you create a school that looks like a prison, the people who go there will pretty much decide that's what is expected of them." Many urban districts have a greater awareness and sensitivity when it comes to students' needs, said Kenneth Trump, president of the Cleveland-based National School Safety and Security Services, a K-12 security consulting firm. "I think in urban schools, the approach of most of the educators, administrators and security personnel is, 'We realize there are issues kids bring to school,'" said Trump, who has been in the school safety field for more than 30 years. "The people will tell you, 'We are not in denial ... we acknowledge our problems. We just don't have enough resources to deal with it.'" Suburban and rural administrators, parents and students often view themselves as different from their big-city counterparts, and that may impact how they treat school security, he said. "There's very often that divide of 'There's us and there's them. We're not the urban district. We are the alternative. We're the place people go to get away from the urban district,'" he said. ___ Associated Press writer Jesse Holland in Washington contributed to this report.

BOSTON (AP) — A Massachusetts governor's race candidate is shutting down a nonprofit organization that he founded that ended up on a list of U.S.-based hate groups. Republican Scott Lively has described his Abiding Truth Ministries as pro-family, but his opposition to gay rights has landed him and his Springfield-based ministry on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of designated hate groups. Lively said Wednesday he still believes society should follow the Bible as the guide to sexual morality in public policy. But he says he hopes to enlist "authentically conservative homosexuals" and political liberals in his effort to shift his emphasis "to a conservationist perspective in which the natural family is recognized as the essential eco-system of humanity." Lively hopes to unseat Gov. Charlie Baker in the GOP primary. Baker calls Lively's views "outrageous."

CLEVELAND (AP) — Los Angeles Dodgers Yasiel Puig has been suspended one game and fined by Major League Baseball for making an obscene gesture to Indians fans on Tuesday night. Puig flashed the middle finger on both hands at fans sitting behind home plate at Progressive Field after hitting a home run in the second inning. Baseball executive Joe Torre announced the one-game penalty and undisclosed fine. Puig is appealing the decision and will play Wednesday night. The mercurial player said he "stooped" to the level of fans who he said were heckling him in the on-deck circle. Puig said that the group of fans kept talking to him after the home run. The suspension is the latest incident involving Puig, who has tried the Dodgers' patience with previous behavior. Puig got two hits in the Dodgers' 7-5 win over the Indians.

SEATTLE (AP) — The Latest on courts blocking the president's efforts to keep transgender people from enlisting in the military (all times local): 5:20 p.m. A third federal judge has blocked President Donald Trump's ban on transgender people joining the military. U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman issued her ruling Monday in a case brought by several plaintiffs, including a soldier based in Washington state and two young men who hope to enlist. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson also intervened in the case to challenge Trump's policy. Pechman found that the ban likely violates the plaintiffs' rights to due process and to equal protection under the law without advancing any government interest. She also said it would harm the state's efforts to protect its residents from discrimination. Pechman blocked the government from imposing the ban pending further proceedings. Judges in Maryland and Washington, D.C., also have ruled against the ban. It had been due to take effect Jan. 1. ___ 8:10 a.m. The Pentagon official tells The Associated Press that transgender people can enlist in the military beginning Jan. 1, despite President Donald Trump's opposition. The new policy reflects growing legal pressure on the issue and the difficult hurdles the federal government would have to cross to enforce Trump's demand to ban transgender individuals from the military. Two federal courts already have ruled against the ban. Potential transgender recruits will have to overcome a lengthy and strict set of physical, medical and mental conditions that make it possible, though difficult, for them to join the armed services. Maj. David Eastburn says the enlistment of transgender recruits will start Jan. 1 and go on amid the legal battles. The Department of Defense also is studying the issue.

AMERICAN LEAGUE Toronto 000 002 002—4 6 1 Boston 001 012 02x—6 11 1 Gaviglio, Oh (7), Tepera (8) and Maile; Rodriguez, Barnes (7), Johnson (9), Kimbrel (9) and C.Vazquez. W_Rodriguez 6-1. L_Gaviglio 2-1. Sv_Kimbrel (18). HRs_Toronto, Hernandez (8). Boston, Nunez (4), Martinez (18). ___ Chicago 000 000 001—1 5 2 Cleveland 205 200 00x—9 13 0 Lopez, Volstad (3), Avilan (4), Rondon (5), Fry (6), N.Jones (7), Soria (8) and Narvaez; Kluber, Beliveau (7), Marshall (8), B.Taylor (9) and Gomes. W_Kluber 8-2. L_Lopez 1-4. HRs_Chicago, Sanchez (3). Cleveland, Ramirez (17), Encarnacion (13). ___ Houston 000 020 001—3 7 0 New York 100 022 00x—5 8 1 Keuchel, McHugh (6) and Stassi; L.Severino, Robertson (8), Chapman (9) and Romine. W_L.Severino 8-1. L_Keuchel 3-7. Sv_Chapman (12). HRs_Houston, Stassi (5). ___ INTERLEAGUE Washington 001 000 100—2 7 0 Baltimore 000 000 000—0 4 0 Scherzer, Doolittle (9) and P.Severino; Hess, Castro (7), Hart (8), Wright Jr. (9) and Sisco. W_Scherzer 9-1. L_Hess 2-2. Sv_Doolittle (13). HRs_Washington, Harper (18). ___ NATIONAL LEAGUE St. Louis 000 000 200—2 8 1 Milwaukee 000 010 20x—3 10 1 Reyes, Gant (5), Lyons (7), Tuivailala (7) and Kelly; Guerra, Jeffress (7), Hader (8), Knebel (9) and Kratz, Pina. W_Jeffress 5-0. L_Tuivailala 1-1. Sv_Knebel (5). HRs_St. Louis, Bader (5). Milwaukee, Yelich (7). ___ Cincinnati 000 402 001—7 12 0 Arizona 301 000 000—4 13 1 Romano, W.Peralta (6), Hughes (7), Garrett (7), Iglesias (8) and Barnhart; Corbin, Salas (7), Chafin (8), McFarland (9) and Murphy. W_Romano 3-6. L_Corbin 5-2. Sv_Iglesias (9). HRs_Cincinnati, Schebler (6), Duvall (10). Arizona, Goldschmidt (7), Murphy (7). ___ Chicago 100 000 000—1 9 1 Pittsburgh 110 000 00x—2 9 0 Hendricks, R.Rosario (6), Mazzoni (7), Wilson (7) and Contreras; Musgrove, Crick (8), F.Vazquez (9) and Cervelli. W_Musgrove 2-0. L_Hendricks 4-4. Sv_F.Vazquez (10). HRs_Pittsburgh, Harrison (2). ___ New York 000 100 111—4 9 1 Atlanta 000 000 100—1 5 0 Vargas, T.Peterson (6), Familia (8), Gsellman (9) and Plawecki; Teheran, Carle (8), S.Freeman (8), Socolovich (9) and Suzuki. W_Vargas 2-3. L_Teheran 4-3. Sv_Gsellman (2). HRs_Atlanta, Camargo (4).

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says foreign businesses cannot be sued in U.S. courts by foreign victims of human rights abuses and extremist attacks. The justices voted 5-4 on Tuesday in favor of Arab Bank, which is based in Jordan. The bank was sued by Israeli victims of attacks in the West Bank and Gaza who claim that it helped finance the attacks. The victims had tried to use the 18th-century Alien Tort Statute to hold the bank accountable for its role. The decision continues the court's paring back of a three-decade-old strategy by human rights lawyers to use civil suits to pursue individuals who may be responsible for torture and other atrocities, as well as companies with operations in countries with poor records in the area of human rights.

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — A Philippine army commander says government forces have foiled an attempt by a few dozen Muslim militants aligned with the Islamic State group to attack a small southern town in fighting that left four gunmen dead. Army Lt. Col. Harold Cabunoc says troops clashed with 30 to 40 militants Tuesday and drove them away from the small farming community of Mopac where they planned to launch an attack on the town hall of Datu Paglas town about a half kilometer (quarter mile) away. Cabunoc said Wednesday the militants from the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters led by Solaiman Tudon occupied several abandoned houses in Mopac, where he used to live, over the weekend but his family and other villagers asked the gunmen to leave. Troops later clashed with the militants.

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — The Latest on the Alabama Senate race (all times local): 9:45 a.m. An official has quit the Republican National Committee over the GOP's support of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who faces accusations of sexual assault and harassment. Joyce Simmons, the GOP national committeewoman from Nebraska, emailed the 168-member governing body Monday to inform them that she had tendered her resignation. She writes: "I strongly disagree with the recent RNC financial support directed to the Alabama Republican Party for use in the Roy Moore race." Simmons adds that she wishes she could have continued her service "to the national Republican Party that I used to know well.' The RNC had pulled support from Moore after the allegations surfaced against him last month. But the organization re-entered the race once President Donald Trump endorsed Moore, citing the need for a Republican in the seat. ___ 3:35 a.m. Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones are making their final pushes ahead of Tuesday's special Senate election in Alabama. Jones and Democrats are framing the election as a way for Alabama to reject its history of politicians with baggage that hampers the state. Republicans say its about keeping a conservative hold on Alabama and not giving Democrats any opportunity to derail President Donald Trump's agenda before the 2018 midterms. In truth, the matchup is a mix of Alabama's history and the partisan divides plaguing Washington. Jones says it would be disastrous to elect Moore after the former judge was accused of sexual misconduct with teenage girls. Moore denies the charges. Moore and other Republicans say Jones would be a puppet of liberal Democratic leaders out of step with Alabama.

KARACHI, Pakistan (AP) — A Pakistani court has convicted two Chinese nationals for tampering with an ATM machine, sentencing each of them to a year in prison and a fine of around $400. Akbar Khan, a cybercrimes investigator, said Monday that Zhong Xiaming and Zhong Xianquan were arrested a year ago while attaching a skimming device to an ATM in Karachi. The devices are placed over ATM slots and scan the magnetic strips of cards when customers insert them. They are often used in conjunction with hidden cameras that can film PIN numbers. Khan says cybercrimes investigators have arrested another six Chinese nationals in recent months who are alleged to have used skimming devices. Similar incidents were reported in other Pakistani cities.

BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers are taking part in a special parliamentary session commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, those who helped the persecuted and others who resisted Adolf Hitler's tyranny. After lawmakers stood for a minute of silence, parliament speaker Wolfgang Schaeuble told them Wednesday that Hitler had easily turned "racial ideology into public policy." He said the lesson is that there must be "consistent opposition to any form of exclusion before it is too late." Schaeuble says "it was all about us and the others, and the others did not belong, were not allowed to belong." International Holocaust Remembrance Day fell this year on Saturday, 73 years after the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian health authorities are urging Carnival visitors to stick to celebrations in the city of Rio de Janeiro and avoid sightseeing at waterfalls and forests where yellow fever has been detected. Rio state Health Secretary Luiz Antonio Teixeira Junior said on Tuesday that there have been no recent cases of the disease in urban areas and that the risk of contagion in touristic parts of Rio is "nearly zero." Brazil is vaccinating more than 20 million people against yellow fever to control a budding outbreak, and the secretary says Rio state alone has vaccinated more than 8 million. Brazil's Health Ministry says 130 cases have been confirmed across the country and 53 people have died in the current outbreak.

And there he was again — The man for whom dozens of obituaries had just been written and whose name had been added to journalists' memorial in Moscow only hours before. Arkady Babchenkoreturned to the land of the living in the company of Ukraine’s secret service chief and prosecutor general. The journalist was found by his wife outside the couple’s apartment, bleeding and apparently having been shot multiple times. Reporters had gathered on Wednesday to find out more about the "murder" investigation, with the official line being that he had died. It was then that Vasyl Gritsak, head of the Ukrainian Security Service, announced that the press would have the opportunity to speak to Babchenko themselves. The 41-year-old entered the room, clad in a black sweater, to applause and gasps. "I’m still alive," he said. Proving a link Babchenko thanked Ukraine's security services for saving his life before apologizing to his wife for putting her through such an ordeal. His hosts explained that the stunt had been necessary to lull the individuals suspected of ordering and organizing a hit against the Kremlin critic into a false sense of security. The aim all along had been to collect further evidence linking the plot's alleged lynchpin with Russian secret services. They presented grainy footage purporting to show the plot's organizer handing over thousands of dollars to the man tasked with shooting Babchenko. The intended shooter turned out to be working for Ukrainian security services. Minutes later yet more footage was shown – this time of a middle-aged man being arrested on a busy city street before being bundled away by plainclothes agents. This, they said, was the organizer of the plot to kill Babchenko. Not only Babchenko, but as many as 30 other Russian exiles in Ukraine. Read more: 'Killing' of Babchenko: A big show raises lots of questions Barely able to contain his satisfaction, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko read out a series of earlier comments from political opponents inside and outside the country – slamming Ukraine's inability to protect journalists like Arkady Babchenko. The critics, he said, had been proved wrong. Political killings to destabilize? President Petro Poroshenko hailed the news as a sign that Ukraine had "passed the sovereignty test" and called the day a "birthday" of sorts for the nation. But even beyond government circles there was much vocal approval online for the government's strategy and its willingness to take risks. Read more: Ukraine foreign minister urges tougher Russia action, World Cup boycott But what about the cost to Ukraine's international credibility? The hours following Babchenko's "killing” saw Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman slam Russia's "totalitarian machine” and call for his "killer” to be punished in a late night Facebook post. Could Groysman not have known what was going on? At about the same time Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was at the UN in New York, where he spoke of his government's reasons for believing that Russia would not shy away from political killings to destabilize Ukraine. But, he stressed, the investigation had only just got underway. With hindsight it seems like a remarkably measured statement. An attempt to avoid saying anything more compromising? Perhaps we'll never know. Elementary methods Ukrainian MP Anton Gerashenko was adamant that the ends very definitely justified the means, "Even Sherlock Holmes successfully faked his own death in order to get to the bottom of difficult and complex crimes. However painful that might have been for his family and Doctor Watson" - a sentiment that was echoed by many in Kyiv's political classes. Read more: Ukraine: The forgotten victims of Donbass But beyond Ukraine's borders the reaction has been much less forgiving. The head of Reporters without Borders, Christophe Deloire, called the day's developments "pathetic and regrettable.” The the OSCE's Representative on Media Freedom, Harlem Desir, was on his way to Kyiv when news emerged that Babchenko was not after all dead. So far Ukraine's European allies have yet to respond, but they are unlikely to appreciate being dragged into a stunt that saw everyone from Germany's president to the British foreign secretary expressing their dismay and offering their condolences to Babchenko's family. The onus is now firmly on Ukrainian investigators to prove that this abuse of public trust was really worthwhile. They'll need to show that Babchenko's disappearance allowed investigators to conclusively prove a connection between the purported organizer of this plot and Russia's secret services. The outside world is waiting.

ASPEN, Colo. (AP) — Injured Olympic halfpipe champion Iouri Podladtchikov tweeted a picture of himself in a hospital gown along with the message "I am doing OK," after a scary wreck at the Winter X Games. The snowboarder known as the I-Pod has a broken nose, but scans showed no signs of brain or neck trauma. In one tweet, posted late Monday, he says: "Thank you so much for all the messages. I am so sorry for the mess of yesterday. I am doing OK." He made no mention of whether he'll be able to compete at the Olympics. The men's halfpipe contest starts Feb. 13, and most snowboarders are heading to South Korea this weekend. Podladtchikov's face slammed hard into the halfpipe Sunday night as he was landing a trick and he had to be taken off on a stretcher. ___ More AP Olympics: https://wintergames.ap.org

PARIS (AP) — Paris' prosecutor's office says that three suspects in a thwarted attack last week in the southern French city of Montpellier have been handed preliminary terrorism charges. Authorities gave on the suspects' first names. A teenage girl, Sara, and a man called Thomas were charged with terrorist association and possessing explosives Tuesday night. Another man, Malik, was also charged with justifying terrorism. Last week, anti-terrorism forces uncovered a makeshift laboratory for fabricating a bomb. France's top security official Friday said the raid thwarted an "imminent attack." A police official said the teenage girl — among several arrested — had pledged loyalty to the Islamic State group in a recent video. France is still under a state of emergency after several deadly attacks in 2015 and 2016.

STOCKHOLM (AP) — Britain's Prince William has praised Sweden's embrace of the great outdoors, in particular the physical and mental benefits of outdoor exercise for children. Speaking Wednesday at the end of a two-day visit to Sweden, William said that "one lesson that we will take home with us, is that children are actively encouraged to spend time outdoors, whatever the weather." During the visit, William and the Duchess of Cambridge sought to meet Swedes from all walks of life. At a medical institute, they discussed with academics Sweden's approach to managing mental health challenges, a subject the royals have campaigned about. William and Kate, both 35, will begin a two-day visit to Norway on Thursday.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has insisted that indigenous peoples must give prior consent for any economic activity on their ancestral lands — an indirect critique as the Donald Trump administration seeks to advance construction on a $3.8 billion oil pipeline over opposition from American Indians. Francis met Wednesday with representatives of indigenous peoples attending a U.N. agricultural meeting in Rome. He said the key issue facing them is how to reconcile the right to development with protection of their cultures and territories. He said "the right to prior and informed consent" should always prevail especially "when planning economic activities which may interfere with indigenous cultures and their ancestral relationship to the Earth." The Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux tribes are suing to stop the Dakota Access project.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — The maker of a video game that pits players worldwide in a fight for survival on virtual terrain is using U.S. courts to chasten cheaters from Ukraine to Minnesota. North Carolina-based Epic Games has gotten promises from men in Minnesota, Sweden and Russia to stop cheating and spoiling revenues from its popular "Fortnite" online multiplayer game. The company also closed its case against a Louisiana boy with a confidential settlement. Only the Minnesotan faces a $5,000 penalty if he resumes cheating. Epic Games spokesman Nick Chester would not say Wednesday whether that's because the company can't enforce financial penalties against foreign copyright violators. The company has sued three Americans and seven foreign hackers for undercutting the game played by 10 million people worldwide.

Taipei, (Taiwan News)—The Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC) said it will revoke the operating license of a bus company involved in one of the deadliest bus incidents in Taiwan that has claimed 33 lives and injured 11. “With investigators still figuring out the cause of the incident, the ministry will revoke Yeow Lih Transportation’s (友力通運) tour bus operating license for severely violating Article 77 of the Highway Act (公路法), " said MOTC minister Hochen Tan (賀陳旦), Tuesday. Road conditions were ruled out by the minister as the main cause of the fatal accident, and Hochen pointed out the driver and mechanical failure were the more likely cause. Hochen admitted previous ministry assessments of tour bus safety and quality evaluation criteria had been inadequate in eliminating poor quality bus service companies from the market. The ministry had been publicizing information the mandatory Directorate-General of Highways (DGH) compulsory biennial evaluation results, but it has not been enough to stem sub-standard bus services. The ministry will soon carry out a new round of inspections on poorly performing bus service companies, namely companies that receive below "C" grade from the DGH evaluations. Tour bus operators that receive a "D" grade from the DGH compulsory evaluations will be made public, and their operations will be examined by the ministry, said Hochen. These firms will be given a two week period to improve, but if issues persist some of their operations will be suspended or their operating licenses will be revoked as stipulated in Article 47 of the Act. The same sanction is applicable to operators that receive a grade of "C", but they are granted a two months to address their problems. The minister urged tour bus companies to review records of bus drivers, and consider removing those with any behavioral issues to reassure public they are taking responsibility, said Hochen. The ministry also suspended Taipei-based Iris Travel Service Co (蝶戀花旅行社) operations until it addresses the incident and related insurance compensation. Established in 1999, Iris Travel Service exclusively offers domestic tours with duration of one-day, two-days and more. The travel agency, arranged the one-day tour to Wuling Farm (武陵農場) in Taichung City to view cherry blossoms, and rented the tour bus from Yeow Lih Transportation. Latest evidence from the bus tacometer showed it was 20 kilometers over the highway ramp’s speed limit of 40 kilometers per hour before the bus crashed off the ramp connecting Freeway No.5 and Freeway No. 3 in eastern Taipei, according to findings by the National Highway Police Bureau. Police confirmed the deceased driver, Kang Yu-hsun, was not driving under the influence, but have cited exhaustion as a possible cause of the accident. Kang, who received his tour bus permit in 2011, has unaddressed traffic violations, one for failure to fasten his seatbelt and one breach for tire tread regulations. DGH is evaluating whether to make seatbelts mandatory in tour buses following the incident, since only passengers in small vehicles are required to buckle up. Regulations for coaches in 2007 have made seatbelts for passengers mandatory only for those next to the driver, close to emergency exit doors or in the last row.

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran's Foreign Ministry says it will raise the case of a detained British-Iranian woman with the judiciary "out of humanitarian concerns" following a visit by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson. Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi said Monday that the final decision on whether to release Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is serving a five-year sentence for allegedly plotting to overthrow the government, rests with the judiciary. Johnson raised the case during a two-day visit to Iran that concluded Sunday. Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a charity worker, was detained in April 2016. Her family has denied the allegations against her. She is among several dual nationals held in Iran, where the judiciary and security forces are dominated by anti-Western hard-liners. It's unclear whether Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, a relative moderate, can secure her release.

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Denmark's prime minister says a letter from President Donald Trump accusing Danes of not spending enough on NATO has "a unilateral focus on military spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product on defense." Ahead of a July 11-12 NATO summit, Trump sent letters to several NATO allies demanding they boost their defense spending. In an email Wednesday to The Associated Press, Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said he "was not surprised by the letter" where Trump wrote "the United States is increasingly unwilling to ignore the European failure to meet shared security commitments." After Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, NATO allies agreed to stop cutting defense budgets and start moving toward a goal of devoting 2 percent of GDP to defense within a decade.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand's Pacific Challenge rugby test with Samoa on Friday will be important viewing for the British and Irish Lions eight days out from their series-opening test. While the Lions have seen individual All Blacks in action for Super Rugby teams so far on tour, Friday's match will give the tourists the first glimpse of a full All Blacks team and a better sense of the challenge awaiting them in the three-test series. At the same time, the All Blacks have had a chance to assess the British and Irish squad in four tour matches to date and will gain more detailed knowledge of their opponents when the Lions field a near test-strength lineup against the New Zealand Maori on Saturday. New Zealand has selected a strong lineup to face Samoa, and Lions coach Warren Gatland believes it provides insight into their selection thinking and the style they will adopt. "It's close to their test team, I think," Gatland said. "It looks like their strongest side. "They're trying to get a game under their belts. I'm not sure they'll make many changes from that game against Samoa to the following weeks." The All Blacks and Lions have something in common in the weekend matches as both will start under new captains. New Zealand captain Kieran Read will miss the Samoa match as he continues his recovery from a broken thumb and fullback Ben Smith will lead the team for the first time. The Lions have named tour captain Sam Warburton on the bench for the match against the Maori, elevating Ireland flanker Peter O'Mahony to the captaincy. In doing so they have provided the strongest indication yet that Warburton, recovering from an ankle injury, may not be fit for the first test. The All Blacks and Lions also have in common a strong sense of respect for their opponents this weekend. The Lions lost to the Maori when the teams last met in 2005. The All Blacks were lucky to beat Samoa 25-16 in their most-recent meeting in Samoa in 2015. Head coach Steve Hansen said the All Blacks were focusing closely on the Samoa match. "Whilst we asked for this game to help us prepare for the Lions series, once it became a reality it then took on its own importance," he said. "Samoa is about to kick off the qualifying stage of their Rugby World Cup campaign so this will make them even more dangerous." All Blacks selectors will look closely at the form of scrumhalf Aaron Smith, under pressure from T.J. Perenara, and center Sonny Bill Williams, who could start against the Lions if Ryan Crotty is unfit. Hooker Codie Taylor is in line to start ahead of Dane Coles, who is concussed and will need to reassure the selectors that he is fit. Samoa will use the match as a springboard into midyear tests, which include World Cup qualifying games during the Pacific Nations Cup. "The boys know they are playing the best team in the world and they know if they don't get it right it's going to be a long day," Samoa coach and former All Black Alama Ieremia said. "We have to be smart." Friday's Pacific Challenge is a rarity which will see two test matches played at the same venue on the same day. Before the All Blacks play Samoa, Wales will play Tonga at Eden Park. Wales will be without regular starters who are touring with the Lions and will use Friday's match to give a new generation of talent some test experience. Tonga welcomes a rare opportunity to play a top tier nation. Veteran center Jamie Roberts will lead Wales for the first time and said they will have to be at their physical best to hold out Tonga's challenge. "When you play against the Pacific island teams, if you don't match these guys physically you're in for a long day," Roberts said. "You have to take the game to them. "They've got threats across the park and certainly they're pretty special athletes."

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has told the country's athletes to forget about doping scandals when they compete at the Pyeongchang Olympics. As punishment for what it deemed a doping scheme during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has invited 169 Russians to compete under a neutral flag using the name "Olympic Athletes from Russia." At a meeting with athletes at his presidential residence outside Moscow, Putin says "I wish you not to think about anything which has recently accompanied your preparation for these Olympics." He adds that he hopes they "focus on sporting competition, and that you know that following you, as usual, are hundreds of thousands, millions, of fans who love you and hope you win."

TOKYO (AP) — Japanese media say 11 people have died in a fire that engulfed a home for elderly welfare recipients in northern Japan. The fire broke out before midnight Thursday in Sapporo, the main city on the island of Hokkaido. Media reports say that five residents were rescued. Footage on public broadcaster NHK showed flames and smoke pouring out of the three-story building as firefighters battled the blaze. The cause of the fire is under investigation. Kyodo News service says the building was a former inn that had been rented by the operator of the facility.

CANTON, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 23, 2018--US Acute Care Solutions (USACS) today announced Dr. Dominic J. Bagnoli will assume the position of Executive Chairman of the Board and the company named James Frary Chief Executive Officer. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005319/en/ James Frary, Chief Executive Officer of US Acute Care Solutions (Photo: Business Wire) In his role as Executive Chairman, Dr. Bagnoli will, in partnership with Mr. Frary, focus on clinician advocacy, strategic planning, business development and hospital partner relationships. Dr. Bagnoli said, “This new role affords me the opportunity to do what I love – advance the merits of the physician-owned practice model to physicians, prospective groups and system partners. I am very excited to turn over the CEO role to James at this point in our company’s history. James’ experience in partnering with clinicians and his passion for the USACS model makes him a perfect fit for our company.” Mr. Frary said, “USACS has emerged as the destination for physicians seeking to preserve ownership in their practice and is the leader among acute care provider groups in quality and innovation. I am proud to join an organization built on such a noble foundation and we will remain true to our core principles as we continue to grow and serve more patients throughout their acute care episodes.” Mr. Frary was most recently President of AmerisourceBergen Specialty Group, the U.S. market leader in solutions that enable providers to improve specialty care delivery to patients. In his role, Mr. Frary partnered with hospitals, oncologists, urologists and other specialists to increase access, affordability and outcomes of lifesaving specialty medications. Prior to AmerisourceBergen, Mr. Frary was a principal with global strategy firm Oliver Wyman. Mr. Frary is also the Chairman of the North Texas chapter of CEOs Against Cancer, an initiative of the American Cancer Society. Mr. Frary holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Dr. Peter Hudson, founding Chairman of the Board and a director since 2015, will remain on the USACS Board as a director. Dr. Hudson said, “Our Board of Directors, which is physician-led, has extraordinary confidence in the partnership between Dr. Bagnoli and Mr. Frary. We are certain USACS will only strengthen its position as an essential partner for independent physician groups and hospitals to provide patients the best possible care.” About USACS Founded by emergency medicine physician groups in Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Ohio and Texas and capital partner Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, USACS is the national leader in physician-owned integrated acute care, including emergency medicine, hospitalist and observation services. USACS provides high quality emergency and hospitalist care to over 6 million patients annually at more than 200 locations in 22 states, and is aligned with leading hospital systems across the country. Visit www.usacs.com to learn more. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005319/en/ CONTACT: US Acute Care Solutions Marty Richmond, 330-493-4443 x1406 Corporate Communications Director richmondm@usacs.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA OHIO INDUSTRY KEYWORD: PRACTICE MANAGEMENT HEALTH HOSPITALS ONCOLOGY OTHER HEALTH GENERAL HEALTH SOURCE: US Acute Care Solutions Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 04/23/2018 09:00 AM/DISC: 04/23/2018 09:01 AM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005319/en

PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 30, 2018--Leyard and Planar, global leaders in visualization products, today introduced the Leyard ® DirectLight ® X LED Video Wall System, adding unrivaled video processing and management capabilities into the product. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530005173/en/ The next-generation Leyard DirectLight X adds advanced video processing (Photo: Business Wire) The award-winning Leyard ® DirectLight ® LED Video Wall System, introduced in late 2016, delivered unique value in the areas of front-mounting, thin profile, precise alignment, front service access, low power consumption, hot-swap off-board power and refined image performance. Leyard DirectLight X builds on this foundation adding the latest 4K video standards, signal extension, multi-source processing, system monitoring and modern web-based graphical control software. The result is a complete system that reduces dependence on external processing systems while making the video wall easier to operate and monitor. “It is exciting to deliver on the next chapter of the Leyard DirectLight vision,” said Steve Seminario, vice president of product marketing at Leyard and Planar. “With Leyard DirectLight X, we incorporate, in the box, the 4K standards compliance, video processing and modern UI that will allow our customers to realize more flexible and compelling video wall installations, more easily.” Leyard DirectLight X features a new, off-board video controller that offers unrivaled video processing capabilities built into the product. It includes new Leyard ® WallDirector ™ Software to further simplify video wall installation, monitoring and management while maintaining popular DirectLight features such as precision wall mounting, energy efficiency and fault tolerant operation. Advanced Video Wall Processing Leyard DirectLight X comes with the Leyard ® Video Controller, making it the first LED video wall system on the market to integrate a remote power supply and advanced video processing directly into the product. Rack-mounted Leyard Video Controllers can scale to support nearly any size video wall, and allow for scaling, windowing and Picture-in-Picture to give customers flexibility as to how and where sources are displayed. The Leyard Video Controller includes Planar ® Big Picture Plus ™ video wall processing, which can scale sources across the entire video wall or across sections of the video wall. It also incorporates Leyard ® WallSync ™, providing precisely synchronized video playback and genlock across the video wall. The Leyard Video Controller supports multiple 4K @ 60Hz inputs and the latest video standards including HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDCP 2.2. It provides a built-in video signal extension over CAT6 and optional fiber optic support for longer video runs and greater signal security. Simplified Operation and Management Leyard DirectLight X comes with Leyard WallDirector Software, a powerful, web-based user interface that simplifies video wall set-up, configuration, operation and monitoring. Leyard WallDirector offers the ability to drag-and-drop sources onto the video wall canvas and easily manipulate their size and position. It also includes presets that can recall video wall windowing layouts, making it quick to configure video wall content. With Leyard WallDirector, customers can monitor the health status of video wall components from a central, local or remote location—proactively troubleshooting their video wall’s power supplies and video controllers. Leyard WallDirector is browser-based, cross-platform and can be operated on a tablet. Easy Installation and Maintenance Leyard DirectLight X is available in 0.7, 0.9, 1.2, 1.5, 1.8 and 2.5 millimeter pixel pitches. It features a 27-inch cabinet with a 16:9 aspect ratio, and comes with the Leyard ® Remote Power Supply, a redundant and hot swappable power supply that eliminates heat, weight and points of failure from the video wall. With the Leyard ® EasyAlign ™ Mounting System, Leyard DirectLight X can be fully installed and serviced from the front—using six-axis alignment features to ensure the video wall is perfectly aligned and seamless. The video wall can be installed to occupy less than four inches of depth from the wall, making it compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Leyard DirectLight X is available through Leyard and Planar’s global worldwide network of authorized resellers. It will be showcased at Leyard and Planar’s booth at InfoComm 2018 (#C2520). For more information, please visit www.leyard.com/DirectLightX or www.planar.com/DirectLightX. About Leyard and Planar, A Leyard Company Leyard is a global leader in the design, production, distribution and service of digital displays, video walls and visualization products worldwide. The Leyard Group of companies and brands, which includes Planar Systems and eyevis, is comprised of displays, entertainment and lighting system solutions. Leyard is the number one market share leader in the LED display market and fine pitch LED and offers indoor, outdoor, fixed and creative displays ( Futuresource 2017). Used in applications such as broadcast, sports arenas, stadiums, advertisement networks, retail digital signage, control rooms, exhibitions, large scale events and digital cultural experiences, Leyard enjoys marquee installations globally and has over 300 patents in display technology. Founded in 1995, the group is headquartered in Beijing, China, and is traded on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (stock code: 300296). Forbes magazine (2013) named Leyard among “China’s Top 100 Most Potential Listed Companies.” For more information, visit www.leyard.com. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530005173/en/ CONTACT: Blu Print Public Relations 503-850-2454 team@bluprintpr.net or Leyard and Planar Kim Brown pr@leyardgroup.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA OREGON INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TECHNOLOGY HARDWARE SOFTWARE AUDIO/VIDEO SOURCE: Leyard and Planar, A Leyard Company Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 05/30/2018 12:00 PM/DISC: 05/30/2018 12:01 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530005173/en

TOKYO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 23, 2018--Two of Mitsubishi Motors’ latest creations – the Eclipse Cross CUV and the GT-PHEV Concept – have received GOOD DESIGN™* awards from experts at The Chicago Athenaeum. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005470/en/ 2018 Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross (Photo: Business Wire) The awards are an indication of the success of Mitsubishi Motors’ design renaissance, which include the face-lift for the Outlander, a string of acclaimed concept cars, and the all-new Eclipse Cross. The GOOD DESIGN™ awards are the oldest and the most prestigious Global Awards Program for Design Excellence and Design Innovation. Organized by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, they are intended to create an awareness of contemporary design and to honor both products and industry leaders in design and manufacturing. GOOD DESIGN™ was founded in Chicago in 1950 by architecture and design legends Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., Eero Saarinen, and Charles and Ray Eames. “It is an honor to have our hard work recognized by such a prestigious organization,” said Tsunehiro Kunimoto, CVP of the Design Division, MMC. “The Eclipse Cross is the first all-new car which features our Robust and Ingenious design philosophy. The GT-PHEV Concept hints at how this direction will shape the next generation of Mitsubishi SUVs.” The Eclipse Cross is a fusion of sharp coupe looks and dynamic SUV mobility with signature Mitsubishi styling, technology and driving confidence. It features Mitsubishi's signature DYNAMIC SHIELD front design concept, with a protective shield shape visually formed by the black central area and chrome accents. The rear design is distinguished by the almost cubist styling created around the high-mounted, stretched rear lamps and a horizontally divided rear window. The MITSUBISHI GT-PHEV Concept, first seen at the Paris Motor Show in 2016, also features Mitsubishi’s latest design language together with MMC’s advanced and proprietary electric and all-wheel control technologies. In its overall design, the MITSUBISHI GT-PHEV Concept projects the image of a “ground tourer,” expressing robust and ingenious qualities. “The GT-PHEV is not a production car. But it gives a clear indication of how Mitsubishi’s design language will evolve into cars you will be able to buy in the near future,” said Kunimoto. “I hope our work to bring Robust and Ingenious designs to fruition will continue to be recognized.” *… GOOD DESIGN™ is a Federally Registered and Protected Trademark of The Chicago Athenaeum. Eclipse Cross: http://good-designawards.com/award-details.html?award=31770 GT-PHEV Concept: http://good-designawards.com/award-category.html?cat=30178&page=4 About Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc., (MMNA) is responsible for all research and development, marketing, and sales for Mitsubishi Motors in the United States. MMNA sells sedans and crossovers/SUVs through a network of approximately 360 dealers. MMNA is leading the way in the development of highly efficient, affordably priced new gasoline-powered automobiles while using its industry-leading knowledge in battery electric vehicles to develop future EV and PHEV models. Mitsubishi has been producing cars for over 100 years. For more information, contact the Mitsubishi Motors News Bureau at (888) 560-6672 or visit media.mitsubishicars.com. About Mitsubishi Motors Corporation Mitsubishi Motors Corporation is a global automobile company based in Tokyo, Japan, which has a competitive edge in SUVs and pickup trucks, electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Since the Mitsubishi group produced its first car more than a century ago, we have demonstrated an ambitious and often disruptive approach, developing new vehicle genres and pioneering cutting-edge technologies. Deeply rooted in Mitsubishi Motors’ DNA, our brand strategy will appeal to ambitious drivers, willing to challenge conventional wisdom and ready to embrace change. Consistent with this mindset, Mitsubishi Motors introduced its new brand strategy in 2017, expressed in its “Drive your Ambition” tagline – a combination of personal drive and forward attitude, and a reflection of the constant dialogue between the brand and its customers. Today Mitsubishi Motors is committed to continuous investment in innovative new technologies, attractive design and product development, bringing exciting and authentic new vehicles to customers around the world. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005470/en/ CONTACT: For more information, please contact: Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Jeff Holland Director, Public Relations Desk: 714-372-6008 jeffrey.holland@na.mitsubishi-motors.com or Erica Rasch Senior Specialist, Public Relations Desk: 714-372-6146 erica.rasch@na.mitsubishi-motors.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES ASIA PACIFIC NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA ILLINOIS JAPAN INDUSTRY KEYWORD: ENTERTAINMENT ARTS/MUSEUMS MANUFACTURING AUTOMOTIVE MANUFACTURING ALTERNATIVE VEHICLES/FUELS AUTOMOTIVE RECREATIONAL VEHICLES GENERAL AUTOMOTIVE SOURCE: Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 04/23/2018 09:00 AM/DISC: 04/23/2018 09:01 AM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005470/en

All Times EDT EASTERN CONFERENCE GP W L OT Pts GF GA Home Away Div Tampa Bay 72 49 19 4 102 260 202 26-8-2 23-11-2 15-7-2 Boston 71 45 17 9 99 239 184 25-7-5 20-10-4 15-5-2 Toronto 72 43 22 7 93 243 204 25-8-2 18-14-5 13-6-3 Washington 72 41 24 7 89 225 214 25-9-2 16-15-5 13-7-3 Pittsburgh 72 41 26 5 87 237 218 26-8-1 15-18-4 15-6-1 Columbus 73 40 28 5 85 205 203 24-11-2 16-17-3 13-10-3 Philadelphia 73 37 25 11 85 218 215 18-13-6 19-12-5 11-7-5 New Jersey 72 37 27 8 82 217 215 18-14-3 19-13-5 12-9-1 Florida 70 36 27 7 79 212 216 22-11-3 14-16-4 13-6-2 Carolina 72 31 30 11 73 194 225 16-14-6 15-16-5 9-10-5 N.Y. Rangers 72 32 32 8 72 208 231 20-13-4 12-19-4 9-8-3 N.Y. Islanders 72 30 32 10 70 231 262 16-14-4 14-18-6 10-12-2 Montreal 73 26 35 12 64 182 232 17-12-8 9-23-4 10-9-5 Ottawa 71 26 34 11 63 197 244 15-14-6 11-20-5 8-11-4 Detroit 72 26 35 11 63 184 224 13-14-8 13-21-3 6-13-4 Buffalo 72 23 37 12 58 172 236 11-21-5 12-16-7 10-8-3 WESTERN CONFERENCE GP W L OT Pts GF GA Home Away Div Nashville 72 48 14 10 106 236 178 25-7-4 23-7-6 17-4-2 Vegas 72 46 21 5 97 244 199 25-9-2 21-12-3 17-3-2 Winnipeg 72 43 19 10 96 240 189 26-7-2 17-12-8 13-8-2 Minnesota 72 41 24 7 89 224 206 24-6-6 17-18-1 11-11-0 San Jose 72 40 23 9 89 219 199 21-11-3 19-12-6 19-4-3 Colorado 72 39 25 8 86 231 209 25-9-2 14-16-6 10-10-3 Anaheim 73 37 24 12 86 206 197 22-10-5 15-14-7 11-6-7 Los Angeles 72 39 27 6 84 207 181 19-14-3 20-13-3 11-10-4 Dallas 73 38 27 8 84 209 197 24-10-3 14-17-5 11-13-0 St. Louis 72 39 28 5 83 201 193 21-15-0 18-13-5 10-10-3 Calgary 73 35 28 10 80 202 217 15-17-4 20-11-6 10-9-3 Chicago 73 30 34 9 69 208 223 17-15-4 13-19-5 7-10-3 Edmonton 72 31 36 5 67 201 231 16-17-3 15-19-2 13-9-1 Vancouver 72 25 38 9 59 186 236 12-18-6 13-20-3 6-16-1 Arizona 71 23 37 11 57 170 228 14-20-4 9-17-7 7-10-6 NOTE: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards per conference advance to playoffs. Sunday's Games Colorado 5, Detroit 1 Vegas 4, Calgary 0 Tampa Bay 3, Edmonton 1 Carolina 4, N.Y. Islanders 3 Philadelphia 6, Washington 3 Winnipeg 4, Dallas 2 St. Louis 5, Chicago 4, OT Anaheim 4, New Jersey 2 Monday's Games Columbus 5, Boston 4, OT Nashville 4, Buffalo 0 Florida 2, Montreal 0 Los Angeles at Minnesota, 8 p.m. Calgary at Arizona, 10 p.m. Tuesday's Games Columbus at N.Y. Rangers, 7 p.m. Dallas at Washington, 7 p.m. Pittsburgh at N.Y. Islanders, 7 p.m. Edmonton at Carolina, 7 p.m. Florida at Ottawa, 7:30 p.m. Philadelphia at Detroit, 7:30 p.m. Toronto at Tampa Bay, 7:30 p.m. Los Angeles at Winnipeg, 8 p.m. Colorado at Chicago, 8:30 p.m. Vancouver at Vegas, 10 p.m. New Jersey at San Jose, 10:30 p.m. Wednesday's Games Montreal at Pittsburgh, 7 p.m. Arizona at Buffalo, 7 p.m. Boston at St. Louis, 8 p.m. Anaheim at Calgary, 9:30 p.m. Thursday's Games N.Y. Rangers at Philadelphia, 7 p.m. Arizona at Carolina, 7 p.m. Florida at Columbus, 7 p.m. Tampa Bay at N.Y. Islanders, 7 p.m. Washington at Detroit, 7:30 p.m. Edmonton at Ottawa, 7:30 p.m. Toronto at Nashville, 8 p.m. Vancouver at Chicago, 8:30 p.m. Los Angeles at Colorado, 9 p.m. Vegas at San Jose, 10 p.m.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three-division world champion Vasyl Lomachenko has undergone surgery to fix a torn labrum in his right shoulder. The two-time Olympic gold medalist from Ukraine hopes to return to the ring later this year, according to a statement Wednesday from his promoter. Lomachenko (11-1, 9 KOs) had arthroscopic surgery at the Cedars-Sinai Kerlan-Jobe Institute in Los Angeles by orthopedic surgeon Neal ElAttrache. Lomachenko says he hurt his shoulder during the second round of his 10th-round stoppage victory over Jorge Linares in New York on May 12 to defend his WBA lightweight title. ElAttrache says Lomachenko had an "extensive" tear in his labrum along with cartilage damage, but the surgeon believes Lomachenko will make a full recovery. Lomachenko initially planned to fight again Aug. 25, but won't make that date while recovering.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The United Arab Emirates says its ambassador to Afghanistan has died of wounds sustained in a January bombing that also claimed the lives of five other Emirati nationals. The official WAM news agency on Wednesday cited the Ministry of Presidential Affairs in announcing the death of Ambassador Juma Mohammed Abdullah al-Kaabi. The ambassador was wounded in a bombing in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar on Jan. 10. Kandahar Gov. Homayun Azizia was among others wounded in the explosion. The Taliban denied they were behind the blast, which the militant group blamed on an "internal local rivalry."

SANAA, Yemen (AP) — The U.N. envoy to Yemen has expressed optimism after meeting with the top leader of the Houthi rebels in a bid to end the country's devastating civil war. In a statement issued before his departure from the rebel-held capital, Sanaa, Martin Griffiths said the rebels expressed a "strong desire for peace" and discussed "concrete ideas for achieving peace," without elaborating. He said he may meet with President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi in the southern city of Aden. A Saudi-led coalition allied with Hadi's internationally recognized government has been at war with the Houthis since 2015, and previous peace efforts have failed. The U.N. hopes to prevent a full-scale coalition assault on the port city of Hodeida, a vital lifeline for a country already teetering on the brink of famine.

LONDON (AP) — A senior BBC journalist who quit her post to protest the gender pay gap says management is hurting the corporation's credibility by failing to address the issue. Carrie Gracie, the broadcaster's former China editor, says BBC managers have treated women who speak out about pay "as some sort of enemy." Tensions over pay flared last summer when the BBC released a list of top earners that showed many high-profile women earned far less than their male counterparts. She told a committee of lawmakers on Wednesday that management's failure to address the problem was "damaging the credibility of the BBC in a completely unacceptable way." Gracie resigned from her post in early January, after learning that male colleagues in similar jobs had much higher salaries.

AMSTERDAM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 24, 2018--Gemalto, the world leader in digital security, can today reveal that it has partnered with Casio, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of consumer electronics products and business equipment solutions, to enable Casio to seamlessly bring digital education into the classroom and beyond. This move will help Casio continue its leadership in classroom technology, fuelled by trends including increased use of connected devices, remote learning and the gamification of education, at the same time maximising revenues and streamlining business operations. With the implementation of Gemalto Sentinel Entitlement Management System (EMS) and software license Rights Management System (RMS) solutions, Casio will have an enhanced understanding of how their software features are being used in the classroom. Founded in 1957, Casio released the world’s first personal calculator and has gone on to produce a variety of products including calculators, watches, electronic dictionaries, electronic musical instruments, digital cameras and system equipment. Now, with Gemalto technology, the Tokyo headquartered manufacturer has been able to ensure its scientific calculators can be used by educators around the world who are moving away from traditional teaching methods and incorporating digital technologies into their classrooms. “While the majority of our business revolves around hardware, we are seeing great growth opportunity in software business, and we needed to find a way to expand and enrich our own model to meet our customers’ needs,” said Tomoaki Satoh, General Manager, Product Planning Department, Consumer & Educational Solution Product Division for Casio. “Now, thanks to Gemalto’s advanced technology and insights, we’ve been able to address new markets, streamline our fulfilment process, improve efficiency, and reduce operational costs. We are looking forward to growing together through collaboration and cooperation.” After implementing Gemalto Sentinel Entitlement Management System (EMS) and software license Rights Management System (RMS) solutions, Casio is now a successful hardware and software-enabled company. Utilising RMS to ensure control and visibility on how its education software is being used and EMS to maximise revenues and streamline business operations, Casio has cemented its future as a market leader in both education hardware and software. Combining both solutions has enabled the company to tailor its offerings to different markets with one and three-year licenses, to fit in with student needs, as well as a 90-day trial version available. Sales will be boosted through the development of the website for electronic distribution and existing sales channels. “The education sector is changing to a more digital focus and companies operating in this space need to change with it,” said Shlomo Weiss, senior vice president of Software Monetization at Gemalto. “Through this business transformation, our technology will enable Casio to meet the demands of its customers and offer an innovative service that can meet these emerging trends.” Additional Resources: To learn more about how software is powering the hardware Renaissance, visit our research website To learn more about Gemalto Sentinel RMS and EMS solutions , click here. About Gemalto Gemalto (Euronext NL0000400653 GTO) is the global leader in digital security, with 2017 annual revenues of €3 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world. From secure software to biometrics and encryption, our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between. Gemalto’s solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the internet of things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software – enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things. Our 15,000 employees operate out of 114 offices, 40 personalization and data centers, and 35 research and software development centers located in 47 countries. For more information visit www.gemalto.com, or follow @gemalto on Twitter. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005700/en/ CONTACT: Gemalto media contacts: Tauri Cox, +1 512 257 3916 North America tauri.cox@gemalto.com or Sophie Dombres, +33 4 42 55 36 57 38 Europe Middle East & Africa sophie.dombres@gemalto.com or Jaslin Huang, +65 6317 3005 Asia Pacific jaslin.huang@gemalto.com or Enriqueta Sedano, +52 5521221422 Latin America enriqueta.sedano@gemalto.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES EUROPE NORTH AMERICA CANADA NETHERLANDS NEW YORK INDUSTRY KEYWORD: EDUCATION PRIMARY/SECONDARY TECHNOLOGY CONSUMER ELECTRONICS HARDWARE SOURCE: Gemalto Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 04/24/2018 01:00 AM/DISC: 04/24/2018 01:01 AM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423005700/en

There has never been a women's luge athlete who has won more World Cup medals than Natalie Geisenberger. Same goes for world championship medals, same goes for Olympic medals. Her resume is beyond compare. So she's the best ever to slide, right? "No," she says, adamantly. "I'm not the best." She may not think so, but plenty of people in the luge world think otherwise. There may no other athlete at the Pyeongchang Olympics — not Lindsey Vonn, not Mikaela Shiffrin, not Nathan Chen — more expected to win than Geisenberger, the star attraction of a juggernaut German luge program that has been miles ahead of the rest of the world for generations. "I'm not one who looks to the number of races or being on the podium," Geisenberger said . Maybe she should. Here's a baffling comparison: The United States, in its entire World Cup luge history, has 45 gold medals. Geisenberger has 43 golds in singles races alone, 64 when adding her appearances in relay events and 117 total medals just from World Cup events. She has 12 world championship medals and three Olympic medals, both tying for the best ever. In Germany, she is considered an absolute sporting superstar — whether she wants the spotlight or not. "The motivation is that I like what I do, I love what I do," Geisenberger said. "I like the sport. I love to race against other people, to fight against myself and I like to be successful. I know the feeling to stand on the podium, on the top. I know the feeling when the national anthem is playing. I'm addicted to that feeling." Germans don't win every race. It just seems that way. Geisenberger is the defending Olympic champion who won 13 medals in 13 races in World Cup singles competition this season. Two-time defending men's Olympic champion Felix Loch led all men with eight singles medals. The doubles team of Toni Eggert and Sascha Benecken medaled in 12 of 13 events, winning gold in 10 of them. Add up all the World Cup races from this winter, and the rest of the world won 17. Germany won 28. "I don't know what the magic ingredient is," said U.S. women's luge veteran Erin Hamlin, a two-time world champion and the 2014 Olympic women's bronze medalist. "They're competitors. They come out on race day and you can pretty much bet they're going to go faster than they did all week in training. Happens all the time. They're breaking track records almost every week." Loch is trying to be only the second man to win three consecutive Olympic luge gold medals. The other, of course, was a German — Georg Hackl did it in 1992, 1994 and 1998. Geisenberger could be the first woman to win three Olympic luge golds, after winning in singles and as part of the team relay at Sochi in 2014. "I like the sport very much and that's the important thing," said Loch, who's only 28 and plans on going through at least one more Olympic cycle. "I like sliding, the feeling, the speed. That's what's so cool about the sport." They make it seem so simple. It is anything but. Luge is highly technical, with the quality of equipment every bit as important as the slider's technique. The Germans have four tracks, which is more than any other nation, so they have the best home-ice advantage in the sport. And they're an extremely well-funded program, which never hurts. That, along with the widespread belief that they have some secrets to get the most out of their sleds, frustrates other sliders in countless ways. Take Loch's final run on the Americans' home track in Lake Placid, New York, earlier this season: He bounced off walls, was late into some curves, didn't exit some others on the fastest possible line, and all that often means a slider loses time. But Loch somehow crossed the line with one of the fastest times in the heat, which baffled some of his competitors. "It's tough to understand how that happens," U.S. men's veteran Chris Mazdzer said. Geisenberger turns 30 on Monday, and could easily keep going through the 2022 Olympics if so inclined. If she knows what her future is, she's not telling — though it is expected that she'll be back next season since the world championships are in Germany. For now, all she's thinking about is Pyeongchang. And if anyone other than Geisenberger wins gold, it'll be an upset. "I have not said that I will stop after the Olympics, and I have not said I will continue for sure," Geisenberger said. "If my body is still OK and if I'm still hungry for success, I will continue. If not, I will stop." ___ More AP Olympics: https://wintergames.ap.org

BC-BBA--Top Ten BASEBALL'S TOP TEN By The Associated Press AMERICAN LEAGUE G AB R H Pct. MMachado Bal 23 89 13 32 .360 Lowrie Oak 23 98 13 35 .357 Altuve Hou 24 94 13 33 .351 Betts Bos 20 75 23 26 .347 Gregorius NYY 22 75 19 26 .347 Correa Hou 23 81 17 28 .346 MSmith TB 19 61 9 21 .344 Judge NYY 22 82 22 28 .341 HRamirez Bos 19 75 16 25 .333 Cano Sea 22 78 16 25 .321 Haniger Sea 22 78 12 25 .321 Home Runs Trout, Los Angeles, 9; Haniger, Seattle, 8; Gregorius, New York, 8; MMachado, Baltimore, 8; Gallo, Texas, 7; JoRamirez, Cleveland, 7; Judge, New York, 7; 6 tied at 6. Runs Batted In Gregorius, New York, 27; Haniger, Seattle, 24; Lowrie, Oakland, 23; KDavis, Oakland, 21; Correa, Houston, 19; GSanchez, New York, 18; 6 tied at 17. Pitching Porcello, Boston, 4-0; Carrasco, Cleveland, 4-0; Severino, New York, 4-1; Clippard, Toronto, 3-0; Velazquez, Boston, 3-0; Richards, Los Angeles, 3-0; Morton, Houston, 3-0; Verlander, Houston, 3-0; 6 tied at 3-1.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexican authorities say a measuring device containing radioactive material has been stolen in north-central Mexico. The Interior Department says the gauge — apparently of a type commonly used in road construction — was taken on Monay from a roadside in the state of Queretaro. The department said Tuesday that the equipment poses a low level of risk, but urged the public to report it if they find it. There have been a half dozen thefts of radioactive material in Mexico in the last two years. The hazardous materials have been recovered in the previous cases.

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 30, 2018--AmericanTours International (ATI) was honored by the U.S. Travel Association (USTA) and Brand USA as one of America’s highest-volume tour operators at the Chairman’s Circle Honors Awards ceremony during the association’s 50th annual IPW in Denver, Colorado. This elite awards event —co-hosted by Brand USA— honored international travel buyers for outstanding efforts to bring the world to America. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530006439/en/ L-R Chris Thompson CEO of Brand USA, Nick Hentschel COO of ATI, Noel Irwin Hentschel CEO of ATI and Roger Dow President USTA (Photo: Business Wire) “IPW’s goal is to bring the world to America, and this year’s Chairman’s Circle honorees do all that they can to make that vision a reality,” said USTA President and CEO Roger Dow. “The honorees do tremendous work to ensure that travelers all around the world know that the U.S. is a great place to visit and they have my deepest gratitude for their contributions to the U.S. travel industry.” Presented with the award by Roger Dow, ATI Chair/CEO Noel Irwin Hentschel stated, “It is an honor to be recognized by USTA and Brand USA for ATI’s passionate work in showcasing America to the world. ATI appreciates our partnerships with all the international tour operators, hotel companies and great destinations like Las Vegas, Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Parks. We roll out the red carpet welcoming travelers to visit all 50 states with ATI-every visitor to the USA is a VIP.” Hentschel was recently appointed to the board of directors of Brand USA by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. Brand USA is the destination marketing organization for the United States and a public-private partnership created by the Travel Promotion Act to increase incremental international visitation to fuel the nation’s economy and enhance the image of the USA worldwide. ATI revolutionizes the inbound travel industry setting standards for quality of service, product innovation, and technological expertise. ATI creates and operates unique motorcoach tours, creative incentives, customized special interest group experiences and DriveAmerica fly-drive itineraries in multiple languages. ATI packages wholesale hotel and attraction inventory from 30,000 suppliers across all 50 states in over 70 international markets. ATI is America's largest privately held, American-owned, full-service Visit USA destination management and marketing organization. Headquartered in California and Florida with offices in New York and Hawaii, ATI serves nearly one million visitors generating an estimated $3 billion into the U.S. economy annually. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530006439/en/ CONTACT: AmericanTours International Rebecca Rueseler 310-590-4118 Rebecca_rueseler@americantours.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TRAVEL DESTINATIONS VACATION COMMUNICATIONS ADVERTISING MARKETING SOURCE: AmericanTours International Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 05/30/2018 04:27 PM/DISC: 05/30/2018 04:27 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180530006439/en

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) -- American travel salesman Mark Rolison captured this photo in 2015 of Fuxing North Road and the Wenhu Line from the Nanjing Fuxing MRT station on the border of Taipei's Songshan and Zhongshan districts. The photo was taken at 11:30 a.m. on Sept. 5, 2015 at the corner of Fuxing North Road and Nanjing East Road with the elevated Wenhu Line rolling, seemingly endlessly toward Yangmingshan in the distance. Rolison, 32, who is based in New Orleans, Louisiana, was vising a friend in Taiwan at the time he took the photo. As for Rolison's impression of the city, "I found Taipei to be very clean and organized compared to other Asian cities I have visited. This photo is a great representation of that." (Photo by Mark Rolison)

SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) — Paleontologists from Bulgaria and Macedonia are excavating the fossilized remains of a prehistoric elephant believed to pre-date the mammoth, after its bones were discovered accidentally by a man working in a field. Scientists at the Natural Science Museum of Macedonia and the Natural History Museum of Sofia said Tuesday they began excavating the skeleton in Dolni Disan in central Macedonia last Friday. They estimated the animal would have weighed about 10 tons and have been about 50 years old at the time of its death, roughly 8 million years ago during the Miocene epoch. Biljana Garevska of the Natural Science Museum in Skopje said the fossil was of one of the elephant's ancestors which roamed the region at a time when it was covered by African-like savannah.

NEW YORK (AP) — Tim Hardaway Jr. scored 22 points and Michael Beasley added 17 as the New York Knicks defeated the Chicago Bulls 110-92 on Monday night. Enes Kanter had 10 points and 13 rebounds, while Troy Williams added 11 for the Knicks. Cristiano Felicio scored a career-high 17 points for the Bulls, who were missing their top three scorers and went 3-for-30 from 3-point range. Bobby Portis and Antonio Blakeney scored 16 points apiece. The Knicks used an 11-0 run to end the second quarter and take a 47-37 halftime lead. Felicio scored Chicago's first 11 points of the second half and the Bulls pulled within four, 56-52, on Denzel Valentine's layup with 7:45 left. That was close as they would get, as the Knicks followed with a 21-5 stretch and opened up a 77-57 lead on the second of Hardaway's consecutive 3-pointers with 2:35 left in the quarter. New York led 83-67 at the end of the third, and the Bulls got within 10 points midway through the fourth. The Knicks responded with an 11-2 run that put the game away. TIP-INS Bulls: Coach Fred Hoiberg said Kris Dunn was being put in a walking boot after he suffered a right toe sprain against Memphis on Thursday. Dunn also missed Chicago's game against Cleveland on Saturday. ... The Bulls had beaten the Knicks in the teams' previous three meetings this season. Knicks: Courtney Lee returned after missing Saturday's game for personal reasons. Lance Thomas missed his second straight game for personal reasons. ... The Knicks ended their five-game homestand at 2-3. MISSING THE POINT Chicago's Zach LaVine (16.7 points per game), Lauri Markkanen (14.9) and Dunn (13.4) were out with injuries. Nikola Mirotic, who had been leading the Bulls in scoring (16.8), was traded to New Orleans on February 1. HONORING A HERO During a timeout, the Knicks honored former Army Staff Sgt. Alfredo De Los Santos and presented him with a $10,000 scholarship for his daughter, Josely. De Los Santos lost his right leg when he was wounded in Afghanistan in 2008. He is now a professional hand cyclist who had a 4th-place finish at the 2016 Paralympics. ALTERNATE UNIVERSE The Bulls lost to the Cavaliers on Saturday and dropped consecutive games for the first time since Feb. 26-27. The Knicks, who beat the Hornets on Saturday, won consecutive games for the first time since Jan. 26-30. LONELY VALENTINE Denzel Valentine is the only player on either team who has played in every game this season. He has started 34 of the Bulls' 70 games. UP NEXT Bulls: Host Denver on Wednesday. Knicks: Visit Miami on Wednesday. ___ More NBA basketball: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Apr 24, 2018--PureTech Health plc (LSE: PRTC) (“PureTech Health” or the “Company”), an advanced, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company, is pleased to announce today the appointment of Joep Muijrers, as the Company’s Chief Financial Officer after 11 successful years as a Partner and Portfolio Manager at LSP (Life Sciences Partners), a trans-Atlantic investor group with exclusive focus on life sciences, where he helped several companies become leaders in the biopharma industry and generated tremendous value for his firm’s stakeholders. In his new role at PureTech Health, Dr. Muijrers will be responsible for all aspects of the Company’s finances, including capital markets strategy and execution, driving monetization events for growth stage affiliates, strategic and financial planning, and financial reporting. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423006532/en/ Dr. Joep Muijrers joins PureTech Health as Chief Financial Officer (Photo: Business Wire) “We are delighted to have Joep join PureTech Health and bring his diverse experience in life sciences and impressive track record of significant value creation to our team as we enter this next important phase of our growth,” said Daphne Zohar, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of PureTech Health. “I have had the privilege of leading investments in a number of successful biotech companies, including those that were involved in some of the largest strategic transactions since the beginning of last year (Kite Pharma, Ablynx, CoLucid, Forward Pharma, NeuroDerm, and Juno Therapeutics). After a highly rewarding experience as an investor and investment banker, I am excited to be transitioning into an operating role,” Dr. Muijrers commented. “I am thrilled to join PureTech Health, one of the most exciting and unique biopharma companies I have come across in my career. I look forward to working with the seasoned team at the Company to help unlock the enormous value in the compelling internally-funded pipeline, as well as the exciting pipeline of affiliates.” Dr. Muijrers joins PureTech Health with two decades of experience in corporate and capital finance, specifically focused on public market investment, M&A, portfolio management, strategic asset allocation, financial and regulatory reporting, and fundraising. In his previous role at LSP, Dr. Muijrers was responsible for investing in publicly-traded life sciences companies, a strategy that generated a total return in excess of 900% during the past decade, more than twice the return of the Nasdaq Biotechnology Index during the same period. Prior to joining LSP, Dr. Muijrers served as Director Corporate Finance and Capital Markets at Fortis Bank, currently part of ABN AMRO. Dr. Muijrers holds a Ph.D. degree in Molecular Biology from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, and a Master’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Nijmegen, the Netherlands. About PureTech Health PureTech Health (PRTC.L) is an advanced, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel medicines targeting serious diseases that result from dysfunctions in the nervous, immune, and gastrointestinal systems (brain-immune-gut or the “BIG” axis), which together represent the adaptive human systems. PureTech Health is at the forefront of understanding and addressing the biological processes and crosstalk associated with the BIG axis. By harnessing this emerging field of human biology, PureTech Health is pioneering new categories of medicine with the potential to have great impact on people with serious diseases. PureTech Health is advancing a rich pipeline of innovative therapies that includes two pivotal stage programs, multiple human proof-of-concept studies and a number of early clinical and pre-clinical programs. PureTech’s research and development pipeline has been advanced in collaboration with some of the world’s leading scientific experts, who along with PureTech's team of biopharma pioneers, entrepreneurs and seasoned Board, identify, invent, and clinically de-risk new medicines. With this experienced team pursuing cutting edge science, PureTech Health is building the biopharma company of the future focused on improving and extending the lives of people with serious disease. For more information, visit www.puretechhealth.com or connect with us on Twitter @puretechh. Forward Looking Statement This press release contains statements that are or may be forward-looking statements, including statements that relate to PureTech’s future prospects, developments and strategies. The forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from current expectations, including, but not limited to, those risks and uncertainties described in the risk factors included in the regulatory filings for PureTech Health. These forward-looking statements are based on assumptions regarding the present and future business strategies of the company and the environment in which it will operate in the future. Each forward-looking statement speaks only as at the date of this press release. Except as required by law and regulatory requirements, neither PureTech Health nor any other party intends to update or revise these forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. View source version on businesswire.com:https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423006532/en/ CONTACT: PureTech Health Allison Mead Talbot, +1 617-651-3156 amt@puretechhealth.com or Ten Bridge Communications Tom Donovan, +1 857 559 3397 tom@tenbridgecommunications.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA MASSACHUSETTS INDUSTRY KEYWORD: HEALTH BIOTECHNOLOGY PHARMACEUTICAL GENERAL HEALTH SOURCE: PureTech Health Copyright Business Wire 2018. PUB: 04/24/2018 02:00 AM/DISC: 04/24/2018 02:01 AM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180423006532/en

All Times EST EASTERN CONFERENCE Atlantic Division GP W L OT Pts GF GA Tampa Bay 50 34 13 3 71 176 128 Boston 48 29 11 8 66 157 119 Toronto 51 28 18 5 61 162 146 Florida 48 20 22 6 46 136 159 Detroit 48 19 21 8 46 126 146 Montreal 50 20 24 6 46 130 159 Ottawa 48 15 24 9 39 125 168 Buffalo 50 14 27 9 37 115 166 Metropolitan Division GP W L OT Pts GF GA Washington 49 29 15 5 63 150 138 Pittsburgh 52 28 21 3 59 156 155 New Jersey 49 25 16 8 58 147 147 Columbus 50 27 19 4 58 133 140 Philadelphia 49 24 17 8 56 141 141 N.Y. Rangers 50 25 20 5 55 153 151 N.Y. Islanders 51 25 21 5 55 173 184 Carolina 50 23 19 8 54 139 155 WESTERN CONFERENCE Central Division GP W L OT Pts GF GA Winnipeg 51 30 13 8 68 167 137 Nashville 48 29 12 7 65 146 125 St. Louis 52 31 18 3 65 151 131 Dallas 50 28 18 4 60 155 134 Minnesota 50 27 18 5 59 147 142 Colorado 48 27 18 3 57 157 139 Chicago 50 24 19 7 55 148 137 Pacific Division GP W L OT Pts GF GA Vegas 48 32 12 4 68 164 128 San Jose 49 26 16 7 59 145 138 Anaheim 51 25 17 9 59 144 142 Calgary 49 25 16 8 58 137 135 Los Angeles 49 26 18 5 57 139 121 Edmonton 49 22 24 3 47 135 157 Vancouver 49 19 24 6 44 127 159 Arizona 50 12 29 9 33 118 172 NOTE: Two points for a win, one point for overtime loss. Top three teams in each division and two wild cards per conference advance to playoffs. Monday's Games No games scheduled Tuesday's Games Minnesota 3, Columbus 2, SO Pittsburgh 5, San Jose 2 Florida 4, N.Y. Islanders 1 Anaheim 3, Boston 1 Carolina 2, Ottawa 1 New Jersey 3, Buffalo 1 Winnipeg 3, Tampa Bay 1 St. Louis 3, Montreal 1 Chicago 2, Nashville 1 Los Angeles at Dallas, 8:30 p.m. Vegas at Calgary, 9 p.m. Colorado at Vancouver, 10 p.m. Wednesday's Games N.Y. Islanders at Toronto, 7:30 p.m. San Jose at Detroit, 8 p.m. Philadelphia at Washington, 8 p.m. Thursday's Games Toronto at N.Y. Rangers, 7 p.m. Montreal at Carolina, 7 p.m. St. Louis at Boston, 7 p.m. Florida at Buffalo, 7 p.m. Anaheim at Ottawa, 7 p.m. Philadelphia at New Jersey, 7 p.m. Vegas at Winnipeg, 8 p.m. Los Angeles at Nashville, 8:30 p.m. Tampa Bay at Calgary, 9 p.m. Dallas at Arizona, 9 p.m. Colorado at Edmonton, 9 p.m. Chicago at Vancouver, 10 p.m. Friday's Games Washington at Pittsburgh, 7 p.m. Detroit at Carolina, 7 p.m. San Jose at Columbus, 7 p.m. Vegas at Minnesota, 8 p.m.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A federal judge overseeing the restructuring of Puerto Rico's debt has created a mediation team to help resolve the U.S. territory's bankruptcy cases. Laura Taylor Swain said in a ruling Wednesday that five federal judges have been appointed to the team. All settlement negotiations will be confidential. The team will be led by Chief Judge Barbara Houser of the U.S. bankruptcy court for Texas' northern district. Houser is expected to provide details of the mediation process at a June 28 hearing in Puerto Rico. Swain said the mediation process will remain separate from any bankruptcy cases and will be seen concurrently with those. Puerto Rico is mired in a 10-year economic recession and seeking to restructure a portion of its $73 billion public debt.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The estate of Michael Jackson is suing Disney, saying an ABC television special on the singer's last days infringed on its intellectual property. The Associated Press obtained the lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. court in Los Angeles against the network and parent company Disney. It alleges that last week's special, "The Last Days of Michael Jackson," illegally uses significant excerpts of his most valuable songs, including "Billie Jean" and "Bad," and music videos, including "Thriller" and "Black or White." It says the special also used clips from a documentary and feature film belonging to the estate. ABC representatives didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But when the Jackson camp raised objections last week, the network defended it as a news show that didn't violate the estate's rights.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's media regulator has imposed a fine of nearly 1.5 million zlotys ($420,000) on a private news channel for what it alleges was unfair reporting during a political crisis last year. The broadcaster, TVN24, said it will appeal what it called an "unfounded" penalty. The move comes amid reports that Poland's ruling Law and Justice party is seeking a state takeover of TVN24, which is owned by an American company, Scripps Networks Interactive, and whose reporting is sometimes critical of the government. The National Broadcasting Council said in a statement Monday that TVN24 coverage of street protests in December 2016 violated the law by "propagating illegal activities and promoting behavior that threatens security." Scripps Networks Interactive, based in Knoxville, Tennessee, is being bought out by Discovery Communications.

NEW YORK (AP) — Quite a rally for Rumor — a commanding comeback for German shepherds, too. Rumor was crowned America's top dog Tuesday night when, a year after a near miss on the very same green carpet, she came out of retirement to win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club. Cheered loudly all around the ring by a packed crowd at Madison Square Garden, she's just the second German shepherd champion at the event that began in 1877. "Unbelievable," handler and co-owner Kent Boyles said. In a year that's seen lots of late, startling twists in sports — think Patriots, Cubs and Cavaliers — Rumor pulled something of a shocker. She'd been at home in Wisconsin for months, a house pet headed toward having puppies, when she suddenly jumped back into the show ring in January. Boyles is a fan of the Packers and star quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Seeing a pet go from the couch to this top prize, heck, that's a dog world Hail Mary. The 5-year-old Rumor beat out a Norwegian elkhound, a Pekingese, a miniature poodle, an Irish setter, a boxer and a Norwich terrier in the final ring. The Irish setter called Adrian finished second. "The German shepherd standard talks about quality and nobility," judge Thomas Bradley III said. "When you recognize it, it hits you at home, and that's what it really is. She is just magnificent." Rumor is named for the hit song "Rumor Has It" by Adele, a champion herself after sweeping the major categories at the Grammy Awards on Sunday. This was the 104th career win for Rumor, and earlier in the day, Boyles said that this would definitely, for real, be her last major show. "She's going to be relaxing for a while," Boyles said after the win, but ultimately, there are "puppies in her future." Clearly the crowd favorite, Rumor came out flying into the best-of-seven final ring to fans whistling and calling her name. Rumor raised up for a well-deserved treat right after the win. Moments later, as Boyles did post-show interviews, Rumor spotted him and ran toward the man who guided her to victory. Rumor joined the fittingly named Manhattan in 1987 as the only German shepherds to go best in show at the Garden. There were nearly 2,800 dogs entered in the 141st Westminster canine competition, spread across the 202 eligible breeds and varieties. The moment any German shepherd steps into the ring at the Garden, the crowd goes crazy. New Yorkers just love 'em. Some say it's because rooting for a German shepherd is the same as putting on an NYPD or FDNY hat, standing up for a dog that stood tall at a time of the city's greatest need. "My sentiments, exactly," Boyles said. While German shepherds hadn't won a lot here, many of them were on the green carpet of the center ring in 2002 when Westminster honored search and rescue dogs for their tireless work at the World Trade Center and Pentagon following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The solemn tribute is considered by many the most cherished memory ever at Westminster. "They're loyal, dependable dogs that you can count on," Boyles said. Rumor nearly won Westminster last year. She came to town as the nation's No. 1 show dog with more than 100 overall ribbons but was beaten in a surprise by a German shorthaired pointer named CJ. In fact, when the judge began to announce his champion pick with "German sh...," Boyles took a step forward, anticipating the prize. "I was thinking," Boyles said. That was supposed to be Rumor's last show, and she was set to head home with Boyles to Edgerton, Wisconsin, to be a house pet and have puppies. She didn't conceive and late in the year, Boyles thought twice about Rumor's retirement. "She liked to show and was in good shape, so we thought, why not?" he said. Rumor went back on the circuit in January for 10 shows. She won the herding group Monday night at the Garden, beating top show favorite Preston the puli. She topped that with the ultimate win at America's most prestigious dog show, rewarding the faith German shepherd fans always show in them. "It's a recognizable dog, people have liked them for a long, long time," WKC President Sean McCarthy said earlier. "I think it goes back to Rin Tin Tin." ___ AP freelance writer Ginger Tidwell contributed to this report.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Michigan State's rowing team has met with members of the school's board of trustees about concerns involving Larry Nassar . The team posted a message Monday on Twitter saying, "We feel we have begun a dialogue for a change, but much work remains." Nassar, a former Michigan State doctor, was sentenced last week to up to 175 years in prison for molesting young women and girls. He was the rowing team's doctor from 1998 to 2016. Congress passed legislation Monday requiring governing bodies for amateur athletics to report abuse claims to law enforcement. State Attorney General Bill Schuette has asked the school for emails and text messages relating to Nassar from 20 current and former school officials. The school has been criticized for its handling of the crisis on campus.

BIRMINGHAM, England (AP) — India won the toss and chose to bowl first against Bangladesh in the Champions Trophy semifinal match at Edgbaston on Thursday. Both teams selected unchanged teams. The winner will play Pakistan in the final at The Oval on Sunday. India is the defending champion, while Bangladesh is playing in its first semifinal at an ICC competition. ___ Lineups: India: Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli (captain), Yuvraj Singh, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Hardik Pandya, Kedar Jadhav, Ravindra Jadeja, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah. Bangladesh: Tamim Iqbal, Soumya Sarkar, Mushfiqur Rahim, Shakib Al Hasan, Sabbir Rahman, Mahmudullah, Mosaddek Hossain, Mashrafe Mortaza (captain), Rubel Hossain, Taskin Ahmed, Mustafizur Rahman.

MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaraguan authorities have released some student protesters arrested during anti-government demonstrations over the past week as President Daniel Ortega seeks to lower tensions. With freshly shaved heads and some bearing bruises they said were inflicted by police during their captivity, students were dropped along a highway on the outskirts of the capital. The police said in a statement Tuesday that students were handed over to their families and religious committees. Ortega on Sunday repealed a social security overhaul that would have increased contributions and reduced pensions. The changes triggered protests that soon spread beyond the social security system. Right groups say at least 30 people died. Pablo Cuevas of the Permanent Commission on Human Rights accused police of violating students' due process and being guilty of beatings and theft.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Guns drawn, Iranian intelligence agents rushed into the apartment of a Washington Post reporter and his journalist wife in Tehran. Threatening to kill Jason Rezaian in front of his wife, Yeganeh, the 20 agents in the July 2014 raid tore through their belongings and rifled through drawers, clothes and valuables for an hour. But perhaps their most eagerly sought target wasn't exactly inside the house: They forced the couple to hand over the passwords to their email and social media profiles. That raid demonstrated how much of a threat Iran's theocratic government sees in the internet. It has long sought to strictly control cyberspace and social media — and, thereby, the flow of information to the public. But the Islamic Republic's relationship with the world wide web is far more complicated than simple repression. Over the past four years, authorities have encouraged wider use of the internet among Iranians, hoping to generate the benefits of a more modern economy. As a result, nearly half the population has in its pockets a tool that the state is struggling to constrain: smartphones, with cameras and internet links that let anyone broadcast to the world. Those smartphones helped spread the startling burst of protests across Iran that opened 2018. The government succeeded in suffocating the flare-up in part by shutting off key social media and messaging apps, but the lesson was clear: The same oxygen that can resuscitate commerce can also give breath to potential revolt. Authorities' solution has been to create a so-called "halal net," Iran's own locally controlled version of the internet aimed at restricting what the public can see. As Iran approaches the 40th anniversary of the revolution that brought its cleric-led rule to power, how it handles the power of cyberspace will be crucial to its future, determining whether it moves to greater openness or seals itself off from the world. "The Islamic Republic is not black and white. It shows a myriad of contradictions and its internet policy ... is one of the great examples of those contradictions," said Sanam Vakil, an associate fellow at Chatham House who studies Iran. "The government has taken the internet and effectively used it for its own purposes and also has realized the dangers of it as well." ___ Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, how information spreads across mass media has been tightly controlled. All television and radio broadcasts within Iran are from state-run stations. Satellite dishes remain ostensibly illegal, though they are plentiful, drawing occasional attacks from bat-wielding government enforcers. Journalists face restrictions in what they can cover and where they can travel across a country of 80 million people that's nearly two-and-a-half times the size of Texas. The internet helped collapse that distance. During Iran's 2009 protests surrounding the disputed re-election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, still nascent social media spread word of the events among Iranians and brought videos of the shooting death of 26-year-old Neda Agha Soltan to the world. Iran's government, overseen by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, violently suppressed the demonstrations. The crackdown killed dozens and saw thousands imprisoned, with some tortured by their jailers. Even before the 2009 protests, Iran blocked access to YouTube. Twitter and Facebook followed amid the unrest, as did many other sites later. Some in Iran began using virtual private networks, or VPNs, which allow users to bypass government censorship. The chief difference between then and the protests that rocked the country coming into 2018 was the massive proliferation of smartphones. As recently as 2014, only an estimated 2 million Iranians possessed one. Today, estimates suggest Iranians own 48 million. That explosive growth was spurred by the administration of President Hasan Rouhani, a cleric who is a relative moderate within Iran's system. His officials allowed more mobile phone service providers to offer 3G and 4G internet, suddenly making sharing photos and images possible. Home internet connections became faster. The encrypted messaging platform Telegram spread like wildfire. Over 40 million Iranians are estimated to use it, for everything from benign conversations to commerce and political campaigning. In the recent unrest, protesters used Telegram's mass-messaging channels to share information and videos across 75 cities and towns where demonstrations erupted. Some showed people openly in the streets shouting, "Death to Khamenei!" It shocked many, especially as such cries could bring a death sentence. When the government temporarily blocked Telegram as well as Instagram, it helped smother the protests within days. Notably, however, Telegram's silencing quickly brought complaints from businesspeople who use its channels to promote and sell their goods. Even after the unrest, Rouhani argued it was futile trying to shut off an indispensable tool of modern life. "If you want cyberspace to be useful to the community, come forward with a solution using it to promote the culture instead of blocking it," he said, noting that past Iranian government tried to stop people from listening to the radio "but this prevention was useless." ___ The danger — and potential — of the internet as a weapon came into focus for Iran when it faced the world's first cyberweapon almost a decade ago. At the height of tensions between Tehran and the West over its nuclear program, thousands of centrifuges enriching uranium at Iran's underground Natanz facility suddenly began spinning themselves to death. They had been hit by the Stuxnet computer virus, widely believed to be an American and Israeli creation. Material leaked by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who exposed U.S. government surveillance programs in 2013, suggested Iran at the time was the country where American spies collected the most electronic data. Beginning in 2011, Iran worked to strike back. Among the most spectacular cyberattacks attributed to Iran is Shamoon, a virus that hit the state-run giant Saudi Arabian Oil Co. and Qatari natural gas producer RasGas, deleting hard drives and displaying a picture of a burning American flag on computer screens. Saudi Aramco ultimately shut down its network and destroyed over 30,000 computers. A later iteration of Shamoon in late 2016 caused even more damage. The U.S. blames Iranian hackers for a denial-of-service attack that overwhelmed six major American banks in 2012. U.S. prosecutors in 2016 accused hackers believed to be backed by Iran of attacking dozens of banks and a small dam near New York City. They also have been suspected of targeting the email and social media accounts of Obama administration officials. Analysts and security experts believe many of these hackers likely receive backing from Iran's Revolutionary Guard, a powerful paramilitary and economic force in the country answerable only to Khamenei himself. The Guard employs more direct means as well, like its wresting away of the passwords of Rezaian and his wife, recounted in a lawsuit he filed against the Guard and Iran in U.S. federal court. Similarly, it seized control of the Facebook and email accounts of Iranian-American dual national Siamak Namazi, who remains detained in Iran along with his octogenarian father Baquer. The Guard then pretended to be Namazi in correspondence with U.S. government officials and others, like New Yorker journalist Robin Wright, tricking them into opening a file that gave the hackers access to their computers. Cyberespionage is even used in Iran's internal rivalries, with attacks on members of the government, particularly officials in Rouhani's Foreign Ministry, including Zarif, according to a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "The targeting of members of government — individuals that have already been vetted by the regime — reflects the importance of cybersurveillance as a tool of the hard-line security establishment to monitor potential rivals for power," the report said. Then Iran moved to target the internet itself. ___ The idea of Iran setting up its own "halal," or "permissible," internet first came in 2011 in the wake of the 2009 protests. It's evolved into what's known as the National Information Network. It is essentially a net neutrality supporter's nightmare: The network has some 500 government-approved national websites that stream content far faster than those based abroad, which are intentionally slowed, according to a recent report by the Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Service providers offer cheaper packages to customers accessing only the NIN websites. Search results also are gamed within the network, allowing the government to censor what users find. One of the principal designers of the network is the Iran Telecommunications Co., owned by proxies of the Guard. It resembles in a way China's "Great Firewall," which blocks access to thousands of websites, from Facebook to Twitter to some news outlets. Chinese internet users also find access to websites outside of the country slower. "Iran's National Information Network may lack the name cachet of the 'Great Firewall,' but its performance in strangling access to opposition content during the most recent protests proved that Iran is hard on China's heels in terms of controlling the flow of information," the private U.S. intelligence firm Stratfor wrote in a Jan. 17 analysis. Firuzeh Mahmoudi, the executive director of the San Francisco-based group United for Iran, said authorities have had success in getting businesses to operate on the NIN. The more they do so, she warned, "the easier it will be for them to shut down or throttle the real internet when they want to." Hard-liners have suggested removing Iran entirely from the internet and creating its own at home. "Cyberspace was the kindling in the fire of the battle," hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami recently told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran. "When cyberspace was closed down, the sedition was stopped. The nation does not support a social network that has its key in the hands of the United States." Amid the protests, the Trump administration said it wanted to help Iranians access the internet. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned the Guard, Iran's Supreme Council of Cyberspace and other officials for "engaging in censorship." Top Trump administration officials have met with Google, Facebook, Twitter and other leading tech companies to ask what more they can do to help people in Iran and other authoritarian-run countries communicate freely, according to U.S. officials briefed on the meetings. But fear of crossing U.S. sanctions has made companies skittish. Some firms don't allow their services to be used in Iran. That prevents Iranians from accessing many encrypted communication apps or VPNs. Even when the Trump administration has floated the possibility of easing some sanctions or offering carve-outs, some tech companies have been reluctant to offer more services in Iran, said the officials, who weren't authorized to discuss the conversations and demanded anonymity. So it remains in question whether Iranians will have access to an open internet if anger over the economy boils over into protests again, as many predict it will. "We believe that the U.S. government could do more to enable the free flow of information in Iran and establish a thriving entrepreneurial civil society independent of the regime," said Morad Ghorban of the Washington-based Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans. "This movement has continued despite persecution by hard-line elements." ___ Associated Press writers Josh Lederman in Washington and Gillian Wong in Beijing contributed to this report. ___ Follow Jon Gambrell on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jongambrellap . His work can be found at http://apne.ws/2galNpz .

After dozens of coaching changes in the last 25 years, Saudi Arabia has a proven winner in charge for this year's World Cup. Juan Antonio Pizzi led Chile to the 2016 Copa America title, but it won't likely be easy for the Argentine to get his new team to play the same kind of high-octane, pressing style he used in South America. Most of the squad heading to Russia doesn't have any significant experience playing club football outside their homeland. The team is currently the lowest ranked of the 32 participants at No. 70. Saudi sports authorities tried to change that by sending nine players, including four internationals, on a half-season loan to Spanish clubs in January. Although wingers Fahad Al Muwallad and Salam Al Dawsari, and midfielder Yahya Al Sherhi are being exposed to different training methods, they have not played a competitive game. The Saudis made their World Cup debut in 1994, reaching the round of 16. Since then, the team has gone through more than 30 coaching changes while qualifying for the 1998, 2002 and 2006 tournaments and going out in the group stage. Bert van Marwijk, who coached the Netherlands to the 2010 World Cup final, led Saudi Arabia through the most recent qualification campaign but failed to agree on a new contract to lead the team in Russia. Edgardo Bauza replaced the Dutchman, but he lasted only two months. The Argentine was fired in November after underwhelming performances in five friendlies and was replaced by Pizzi. Here's a closer look at the Saudi Arabia team: COACH Pizzi took over after failing to qualify for the World Cup with Chile. The 49-year-old coach's target is making the round of 16. There have been signs so far of an attempt to introduce more of a passing style instead of the direct strategy used in the two years under Van Marwijk. GOALKEEPERS Four goalkeepers were called up for the recent warm-up games and Pizzi isn't fixed on a starter. Walled Abdullah and Yasser Al Mosailem appear to be vying for the role. Abdullah is more experienced and is likely to be better able to handle physical challenges, although Mosailem performed well in a 1-1 draw with Ukraine in March. DEFENDERS The back four is an experienced unit but with three likely starters over 30 they are susceptible to pace from opponents. The 34-year-old Omasa Hawsawi and 32-year-old Omar Hawsawi are set to partner in the center. MIDFIELDERS Much depends on Abdullah Otayf, a holding midfielder who has drawn comparisons with Luka Modric of Real Madrid. If Saudi Arabia can start to play out from the back, the 25-year-old Otayf can make the team tick. Taisir Al-Jassim, who has made more than 130 international appearances, adds to the solidity in the center while Al-Shehri provides creativity going forward. FORWARDS The team lacks a proven scorer at the top level with Mohammad Al-Sahlawi and Nasser Al-Shamrani both over 30 and not convincing against strong defenses. The wide players are vital. Salem Al Dawsari and Fahad Al Muwallad, the most talented player available, provide much of the threat, although both have been sitting on the sidelines in Spain. GROUP GAMES The Saudis will be based in St. Petersburg but will play their opening match against host Russia in Moscow on June 14. That will be followed by a trip to Rostov-on-Don to play Uruguay on June 20 and to Volgograd to take on Egypt on June 25. ___ More AP World Cup coverage: www.apnews.com/tag/WorldCup

WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer who has suggested that FBI officials were part of a "brazen plot" to exonerate Hillary Clinton and frame Donald Trump has been added to the president's legal team. Joseph diGenova, a former United States attorney in the District of Columbia and a frequent television commentator, will join the team at a sensitive moment as Trump's lawyers weigh whether to make the president available for an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller and under what terms. He will work alongside attorneys John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, who said in a statement Monday that he was confident that diGenova will "be a great asset in our representation of the president." Mueller is investigating potential coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign and possible obstruction of justice by the president. DiGenova, who will start later this week, declined to comment to The Associated Press on Monday. Though the White House and Trump legal team has spoken publicly of its cooperative relationship with Mueller's office, that rapport appeared frayed over the weekend when Dowd said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — who appointed Mueller and oversees his team of prosecutors — should "bring an end" to the investigation. Dowd said he was speaking for just himself, but his emailed statement appeared to reflect the frustration of the president, who lashed out at the investigation in a series of weekend tweets, including one in which he mentioned Mueller by name. As Mueller seeks an interview with the president, the addition of diGenova could signal a more combative stance, if past comments are any indication. In a January interview on Fox News, for instance, he said that anti-Trump text messages exchanged between two FBI officials who were once on Mueller's team reflect a "brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton, and if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime. "Everything that we have seen from these texts, and from all of the facts developing, shows that the FBI and senior (Justice Department) officials conspired to violate the law and to deny Donald Trump his civil rights," he added. The addition of diGenova was first reported by The New York Times. ___ Associated Press writer Chad Day contributed to this report.

ROME (AP) — Already in serious crisis following the Azzurri's failure to qualify for the World Cup, the Italian football federation is facing emergency measures after four failed votes to elect a new president. The election assembly fell apart on Monday when amateur leagues president Cosimo Sibilia ordered his supporters to leave their ballots empty in the final round. "After having sought to reach an agreement in every manner possible, we can't proceed further," Sibilia told the nearly 300-person assembly near the end of the 10-hour election. In the third round, Sibilia led with 39 percent of the votes, slightly ahead of Serie C president Gabriele Gravina with 38 percent. Players' Association president Damiano Tommasi, a reform candidate and former Roma player, was eliminated with 21 percent. A majority was needed to win. While there was no hope for a winner, a fourth vote was held that resulted in Gravina leading with 39 percent and Sibilia with 2 percent. The Italian Olympic Committee, which oversees all sports in Italy, will likely impose an emergency leader for the federation. "This is a loss for our system. ... But it's fair that someone from outside gives us a hand," Tommasi said. "Maybe it's not a coincidence that we didn't qualify for the World Cup." After Tommasi was eliminated, the Players' Association's refusal to throw its weight behind Sibilia or Gravina ended any hope of a successful election. "We needed change and we believed that neither of the two candidates seriously represented reform," Tommasi said. "One of the reasons we didn't qualify for the World Cup is due to our administrative struggles." The federation was previously put under emergency leadership in 2006, when ex-senator Guido Rossi took charge following the "Calciopoli" refereeing scandal. "An emergency administration would be a loss for everyone," Torino president Urbano Cairo said. "It means refusing to find a solution for re-launching the sport. Having someone from outside take charge is something negative and I don't like it." Sibilia, a supporter of previous president Carlo Tavecchio, also led the first two rounds of voting, when 75 percent and 66 percent of the votes were needed to win, respectively. "It's not something to laugh at," former FIGC president Giancarlo Abete said of the failed votes. "It's something to cry over." The election was called after Tavecchio resigned in November after Italy's playoff loss to Sweden meant the four-time champion missed out on the sport's showcase event for the first time in six decades. "The fans needed someone to blame but we've done a lot of positive things in the FIGC and that should not be forgotten," Tavecchio said in his outgoing address, which was met by a standing ovation. In the meantime, Italy's national team remains without a coach. Gian Piero Ventura, the previous coach, was fired two days after the playoff loss. Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte, and Roberto Mancini are among the leading candidates to replace Ventura. Italy's next match is on March 27, a friendly against England in London. ___ More AP Serie A coverage: https://apnews.com/tag/SerieA ___ Andrew Dampf on Twitter: www.twitter.com/asdampf

PARIS (AP) — The Louvre Museum is putting 31 paintings on permanent display in an effort to find the rightful owners of those and other works of art looted by Nazis during World War II. The Paris museum opened two showrooms last month to display the paintings, which are among thousands of works of art looted by German forces in France between 1940 and 1945. More than 45,000 objects have been handed back to their rightful owners since the war, but more than 2,000 remain unclaimed, including 296 paintings stored at the Louvre. "These paintings don't belong to us. Museums often looked like predators in the past, but our goal is to return them," Sebastien Allard, the head of the paintings department at the Louvre, told The Associated Press in an interview on Tuesday. "The large majority of the retrieved artworks have been plundered from Jewish families during World War II. Heirs can see these artworks, declare that these artworks belong to them, and officially ask for their return." The paintings in the new showrooms are from various artists of different eras and horizons, including a remarkable landscape from Theodore Rousseau, "La Source du Lizon." Other more famous looted works had already been on display in the museum, but visitors did not necessarily know they had been stolen by the Nazis. In museums, pieces of art retrieved by the French authorities are identified with the label "MNR," French initials for National Museums Recovery. "We needed to draw attention further to the matter and raise public awareness," said Allard. "We thought it was important to highlight the specific case of these works, which are not listed on our inventories." The Louvre initiative is the latest effort by French authorities to find heirs of families who lost their artwork. A working group set up by the Culture Ministry is in charge of tracing back the origins of the art and identifying owners. But it's a long and laborious task: only some 50 pieces have been returned since 1951. "People who come forward need, for instance, to establish the proof that the artwork belonged to their grandfather," Allard said. "They need to find old family pictures and payment slips, or gather testimonies. It can take years." In addition to the display of art in several museums across the country, French authorities have also designed an MNR catalog, which is available online and can help owners identify their items without traveling to the Louvre. The complete list is known under the name of Rose Valland, a French curator who risked her life keeping notes on all the art the Nazis stole during the war.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The union representing thousands of Las Vegas casino workers says two companies would lose more than $10 million a day combined if housekeepers, cooks and others go on strike. The Culinary Union detailed Wednesday how it thinks a one-month strike would affect MGM Resorts International and Caesars Entertainment, which operate more than half the properties that would be affected. The contracts of 50,000 workers employed at 34 casino-hotels expire at midnight Thursday. They could walk off the job any time starting Friday after voting last week to authorize a strike. MGM says it met with union negotiators this week and has more talks scheduled. The company says it remains confident that it can "resolve the outstanding contract issues." Caesars did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

NEW YORK (AP) — Enes Kanter thought it might be the nice new uniforms. Kristaps Porzingis thought it might have been Kanter's ugly lip. In reality, it didn't matter what the Knicks looked like when they played Brooklyn this season. Porzingis scored 28 points, Kanter had 20 points, 20 rebounds and five assists, and the Knicks completed a New York City sweep of the Nets with a 111-95 victory Tuesday night. The Knicks returned home from their longest road trip of the season in new uniforms but their same old dominance of the Nets, with their fourth victory in four tries this season. They dominated the interior again and swept the series for the first time since 2010-11 — before the rivals shared the same city. Kanter said he knew he and Porzingis had a chance to overwhelm the Nets' smaller front line again. "Especially KP, because we know they cannot guard KP 1-on-1 ... so we know that they were going to send double-teams at me and KP, so we just made extra passes and won the game," Kanter said. Kanter was 8 of 10 from the field, a day after needing stitches when he was cut by teammate Doug McDermott in practice. "Enes was a monster today, just bulldozer," Porzingis said. "He did what he does and just great game for him, 20-20. Maybe he was mad from yesterday that he got hit in the mouth." Tim Hardaway Jr. added 15 points for the Knicks, who went 3-4 on their trip, which started with a victory in Brooklyn on Jan. 15. Michael Beasley finished with 12 points and 13 rebounds. They kept up their strong offensive play since then after averaging 111.3 points on the trip, fourth-best in the NBA during that span. DeMarre Carroll scored 13 points for the Nets, who lost their fourth straight game. They played their second in a row without starting forward Rondae Hollis-Jefferson (strained right groin) and reserve guard Caris LeVert (sore left groin). "They're better than us right now," Nets coach Kenny Atkinson said. "It's great motivation for us. When we look at the scores for the season, they're just better than us right now. We got a lot of catching up to do." Brooklyn fell behind by 18 in the second quarter but cut it to 10 midway through the period before the Knicks opened it up again, building a 61-41 advantage at halftime. The Knicks opened a 25-point lead that Nets trimmed it to 10 again, but Porzingis nailed a 3-pointer with 7 ½ minutes remaining to halt their push. TIP-INS Nets: Atkinson said the Nets would determine Wednesday whether guard D'Angelo Russell, recently back from knee surgery, is able to play on the second night of a back-to-back. If not, and if LeVert remains out, he said Nik Stauskas and Isaiah Whitehead could be ballhandling options. Knicks: The Knicks debuted their City Edition uniforms, which pay homage to New York's firefighters and were designed in part by the Uniformed Firefighters Association. They're a darker blue than the Knicks' usual uniforms, a nod to the firefighters' dress uniforms. ... Guard Ron Baker left in the first quarter with a right shoulder injury. He appeared to be kicked by Carroll as the Nets forward jumped to take a shot. X-rays were negative but Baker won't travel to Boston on Wednesday. NO NOAH Joakim Noah remained out and won't play Wednesday in Boston, coach Jeff Hornacek said. The backup center left the team near the end of the trip after getting frustrated with Hornacek. MORE OKAFOR? Though he had just five points with his 13 rebounds Tuesday, Jahlil Okafor may have earned himself a larger rotation role with his season-high 21 points in a season-best 24 minutes Saturday in a loss at Minnesota. He plays Wednesday for the first time against Philadelphia, the team that took him with the No. 3 pick in 2015 but banished him to the bench before trading him to Brooklyn in December. "We told him when he came here you've got to earn it. There's nothing given and that was a good showing in Minnesota," Atkinson said. "I thought he's getting in better shape, he's understanding better what we're trying to do. So yeah, he's starting to earn more minutes." UP NEXT Nets: Host Philadelphia on Wednesday. Knicks: Visit Boston on Wednesday. ___ More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/tag/NBAbasketball

WASHINGTON (AP) — A jump in traffic fatalities last year pushed deaths on U.S. roads to their highest level in nearly a decade, erasing improvements made during the Great Recession and economic recovery, a leading safety organization said Wednesday. Fatalities rose 6 percent in 2016, reaching an estimated 40,200 deaths compared to 37,757 deaths the previous year, according the National Safety Council. The group gets its data from states. The last time there were more than 40,000 fatalities in a single year was in 2007, just before the economy tanked. There were 41,000 deaths that year. The increase came as Americans drove more last year — a 3 percent increase in total miles. The council cited continued lower gasoline prices and an improving economy as key factors. Following an increase in fatalities in 2015, the United States has had the sharpest two-year increase in traffic deaths in 53 years, the council said. Americans have come to accept large numbers of traffic deaths as inevitable instead of than taking actions that would prevent them, said Deborah Hersman, the council's president. "Motor vehicle fatality numbers have been ringing the alarm for two years," she said. "Unfortunately, we have been tone-deaf to the data and the carnage on our roadways. If we fail to take action, the death toll will continue to rise." Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, which represents state highway safety offices, said state officials continue to point to three predominant factors in traffic deaths — "belts, booze and speed." "Additionally, driver distraction and our society's addiction to electronic devices is likely playing a role in the increase in deaths," he said. The estimated annual mileage death rate last year was 1.25 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles, an increase of 3 percent from the 2015 rate. Traffic deaths began dropping in 2008 and reached their lowest point in six decades in 2011 at 32,000 deaths. They fluctuated slightly over the next two years, but started climbing in the last quarter of 2014. The surge comes as cars and trucks have more safety features than ever. Nearly all new cars and light trucks now have electronic stability control and rearview cameras, for example. Automakers are also beginning to equip more cars with sophisticated safety technology like adaptive cruise control, automatic emergency-braking and blind-spot monitoring that are designed to prevent crashes rather than merely make them survivable. Other important safety advances are also on the horizon, including vehicle-to-vehicle communications that allow cars to wirelessly warn each other of their movements in time to avoid collisions and self-driving cars that hold the potential to eliminate human error, a factor in more than 90 percent of crashes. The council's fatality estimates differ slightly from those of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The government counts only deaths that occur on public roads, while the council includes fatalities that occur in parking lots, driveways and private roads. Last month, NHTSA reported that traffic deaths surged about 8 percent in the first nine months of 2016. ___ Follow Joan Lowy at http://twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy. Her work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/joan-lowy

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Zach Parise and Chris Stewart scored in the shootout, and the Minnesota Wild beat the Columbus Blue Jackets 3-2 on Tuesday night. Devan Dubnyk had 28 saves for Minnesota (27-18-5), which earned its 10th road win of the season. Jason Zucker scored his 20th goal, and Charlie Coyle added his fifth in the third period. Columbus (27-19-4) lost for the fourth time in six games. Sergei Bobrovsky made 41 stops, Artemi Panarin had a goal and an assist and David Savard scored his third of the season.

NEW YORK (AP) — If you've made changes to how you use social media since Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy debacle, you're not alone. A new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 7 out of 10 of online adults who've heard of the scandal — revelations that a data mining firm may have accessed the private information of some 87 million Facebook users to influence elections — have unfollowed accounts, deleted their profiles or made other changes in how they use social media. And since 9 in 10 Americans have heard at least a little bit about Cambridge Analytica, this means the scandal has led to widespread changes in the use of social media among Americans. What's less clear is whether these changes are permanent, and whether they will affect business at Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies. Facebook has said that it hasn't noticed a meaningful decline in usage since the scandal broke and it doesn't seem to have experienced much of an advertiser exodus, either. But that doesn't mean the social media giant is in the clear. Some high-profile tech luminaries such as Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak have disavowed Facebook, and a "DeleteFacebook" online campaign — even if it didn't lead to mass defections — has bruised the company's already-battered image. Cole Bearden, 26, a musician and liquor store employee in Nashville, said he soured on Facebook a while ago, after his parents friended him and turned his app into "a perpetual recipe video-sharing machine." That, along with his concerns about surveillance and advertisements, convinced him to drop the app from his phone a year ago. He said in an interview last month that he checks his profile only occasionally. Still, Bearden says deleting his profile won't mean a lot unless many other Facebook users do the same. And even that, he says, may come too late. "The real damage has been done. Our concept of open democracy has been undermined, subverted and potentially irreparably damaged," he said. Some people, though, were cautious long before Cambridge Analytica. Jessica Garcia, who lives in Homewood, Illinois, said she was already "pretty strict" with all her settings and she uses social media (Facebook, mostly) only minimally. She doesn't post much and stays out of politics. Asked who bears the responsibility to protect people's online privacy, the poll found that vast majorities of Americans think both social media companies (84 percent) and individual users (72 percent) have a large share. Just short of half — 46 percent — see that as a large responsibility of the federal government. Garcia agrees with the majority and said it's a combination of individual and company responsibility. "I don't feel like the government needs to step in and start controlling that," she said. "If we can't make good decisions and people and they don't make good decisions as companies, it'll fall apart on its own." Americans who have taken some action after hearing about Facebook's recent privacy crisis include 29 percent who have deleted certain social media accounts — the most drastic step. A larger number, 38 percent, uninstalled apps on their phone, while 42 percent said they used certain platforms less often. Nearly half, 47 percent, unfollowed or unfriended certain people, and 41 percent unfollowed groups or organizations. Forty-five percent reviewed or changed their privacy settings — something Facebook encouraged recently by sending a notice to users through their Facebook pages. First, it notified the 87 million people whose information may have been leaked to Cambridge Analytica. This week, it began sending all 2.2 billion Facebook users a more generic notice to review their settings that show what apps have access to their data. According to the poll, women were more likely than men to have made at least one change, and younger people were more likely to say they have reviewed their privacy settings or uninstalled apps from their phones. Older Americans were more likely to say they have followed news of the scandal. The Cambridge Analytica fiasco was not Facebook's first privacy scandal, though it may have been its worst. The poll also found that Americans have broader concerns about how their data is used by companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google. Sixty percent said they were very or extremely concerned that such companies may not keep their personal information secure, and more than half said they were concerned that the companies might track their data even after they have tried to delete it. African Americans were more likely to express concern about privacy than whites. For example, 72 percent of blacks and 57 percent of whites are worried about companies securing their personal information, while 62 percent of blacks and 44 percent of whites are concerned about companies tracking their location. ___ The AP-NORC poll of 1,140 adults was conducted April 11-16 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 all respondents is plus or minus 4 percentage points ___ AP Polling Editor Emily Swanson in Washington and AP Business Writer Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this story. ___ Online: AP-NORC Center: http://www.apnorc.org/

WOLVEGA, Netherlands (AP) — No! Absolutely no way! No one should be counting on a repeat performance. Not even the most optimistic Dutchman does. Yes, count on the Dutch to dominate the oval at the Pyeongchang Olympics, but don't expect them to suffocate opposition like they did in Sochi four years ago, when they turned the Olympic hall into a swelling sea of their national color, orange, courtesy of a massive haul of 23 of 36 medals, including eight out of 12 golds. It was dominance rarely seen in top class international sports. Think the USA ruling Olympic basketball, Jamaica the recent track sprints and China table tennis. "There is only one goal and that is doing the best you can. The more, the better," Dutch skating technical director Arie Koops said in an interview in Friesland, the pond- and canal-ridden flatlands in the northern Netherlands which have produced countless champions. Yet even he knows that the endless nights in Sochi's Holland Heineken House celebrating the likes of Sven Kramer and Ireen Wust cannot be repeated every four years. "It is really more realistic to talk about 15, or even less," he said. History bears him out. The only other time the Netherlands broke into double digits over the past two decades was at the 1998 Nagano Games with 11. OK, he said. "If it is less than 12, we underperform. We can say that." In one sense though, it has become easier to haul in medals since the mass start event has been added to the program, bumping the total from 36 to 42. And in an unexpected boon for the Dutch, the IOC's punishment for Russia's doping program has a direct and fundamental impact on the men's competition. Look at the World Cup standings this year, and right on top sits Denis Yuskov with five gold medals already in the 1,000 and 1,500 meters. He has been ruled out of the Pyeongchang Games. Same goes for Pavel Kulizhnikov, who already won a World Cup 1,000 and is also a fearsome 500 sprinter. Then again, some things are going against the Dutch this year. They had four clean sweeps in Sochi in 10 possible events, including the women's 1,500 where the top four were Dutch. It almost turned into an embarrassment. Four entries per event were whittled to three in some races this year and for the men's 10,000 and women's 5,000 only two per nation are allowed this time around. Gone is any mathematical chance for a sweep in the longest races on the track. "It will directly influence our chances for the medals," said Koops. And this time around, it looks like the opposition is in better shape, too. In the women's races going into the Olympics, the Japanese are definitely the No. 1 team, with Miho Takagi and Nao Kodaira topping the provisional World Cup standings and with the relay team adding one world record after another. Canada and Norway also look in better shape. And the United States especially will want to bounce back from a humiliating no-medal showing in Sochi. Heather Bergsma has already won a World Cup gold in the 1,000 this season and Brittany Bowe is starting to hit her stride. And count on Joey Mantia as a medal contender among the men. While the Americans immediately settled into a rut in Sochi, U.S. coach Matt Kooreman saw how the Dutch rode a great early start when they swept the opening men's 5,000 meters. "They got the momentum going there and you could see that confidence build throughout their team which turned them into the dominant force," Kooreman said. Then again, he added, it is only natural. No country comes close to unleashing national passion for speedskating like the Dutch do. While a Florida resident like Bowe needs to fly halfway across the continent to get to a big oval, an Amsterdammer can get to 16 of them, all lying within a few hours by train or car. The Dutch have some 60 pro skaters and a half-dozen commercial teams. More importantly, said Koops, "when the temperature is below zero everybody is skating on canals and lakes." And that counts for far more than a million in the nation of 17 million. Sometimes Kooreman thinks it is quite an achievement to just get close to the Dutch in the medal tables, let alone beat them. "We are always all a little bit shocked with how well we actually do," said Kooreman. Another thing also pleads in Dutch favor. The famed oompah band Kleintje Pils will also be on the sidelines of the oval to bring that special Dutch atmosphere to South Korea.

SILVERSTONE, England (AP) — Struggling Formula One outfit McLaren has accepted Eric Boullier's resignation as racing director and announced a restructure of its leadership. Boullier, who joined the British team in 2014, had overseen its worst run across its 52-year history. McLaren has not won a race since 2012 and hasn't landed a podium position in more than four years. McLaren says in a statement that former IndyCar champion Gil de Ferran has been appointed to the new role of sporting director. Simon Roberts will oversee production, engineering and logistics, and Andrea Stella has been promoted to performance director, responsible for trackside operations. Stella had joined McLaren with Fernando Alonso from Ferrari. McLaren chief executive Zak Brown says the team's performance this year "has not met the expectations of anyone at McLaren" and that "the causes are systemic and structural, which require major change from within. With today's announcement, we start to address those issues head on and take the first step on our road to recovery." McLaren is sixth in the constructors' championship, 203 points behind leader Ferrari. McLaren driver Fernando Alonso is eighth in the drivers' standings with 36 points. The British Grand Prix takes place on Sunday.