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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A man who sprayed vinegar at Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar at a town hall meeting in Minneapolis pleaded guilty to assault Thursday in federal court after reaching a deal with prosecutors.Anthony Kazmierczak, 55, is awaiting sentencing.Kazmierczak, dressed in bright orange jail clothing, gave only a fragmentary explanation Thursday of the Jan. 27 assault, which came as the city was already on edge after the fatal shootings of two people by federal agents during a White House crackdown that brought thousands of immigration officers to Minnesota.After being asked what he remembered of the assault, he told U.S. District Judge Joan N. Ericksen: “It's fuzzy.”Kazmierczak, who was in the audience during Omar’s January town hall, leaped up when the representative called for the ouster of then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He sprayed liquid from a syringe as court documents say he shouted that Noem would not resign and that Omar was “splitting Minnesota apart.”Security officers tackled Kazmierczak, who told them the liquid was vinegar.“I didn’t want anybody to think she was in danger,” he said Thursday.Omar, who was not injured, continued with the town hall after the arrest.Authorities later determined he’d sprayed her with a mixture of water and apple cider vinegar. He was charged with assaulting a U.S. officer.Court documents say Kazmierczak, a critic of Omar who has made online posts supportive of President Donald Trump, told a close associate several years ago that “somebody should kill” her.Omar, a refugee from Somalia, has long been a target of Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. After she was elected seven years ago, Trump said she should “go back” to her home country. He has described her as “garbage” and said she should be investigated.Trump has also accused Omar of staging the attack, telling ABC News, “She probably had herself sprayed, knowing her.”On Thursday, Kazmierczak told Erickson that he was being treated for Parkinson’s disease, and that he’d been diagnosed with ADHD or attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and a form of post-traumatic stress.After his arrest, his then-attorney said that he did not have access to the medications he needed for Parkinson’s and other serious conditions.Minnesota court records show that Kazmierczak, who was convicted of felony auto theft in 1989, has been arrested multiple times for driving under the influence and has had numerous traffic citations. There are also indications he has had significant financial problems, including two bankruptcy filings.In social media posts, Kazmierczak had criticized former President Joe Biden and referred to Democrats as “angry and liars.” Trump wants the U.S. to be "stronger and more prosperous,” he wrote.Threats against members of Congress have increased in recent years, peaking in 2021 following the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters before dipping slightly, only to climb again, according to the most recent figures from the U.S. Capitol Police.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — The leader of the Southern Poverty Law Center pleaded not guilty Thursday on behalf of the organization to charges that the civil rights group defrauded donors by failing to disclose that money would be paid to informants inside extremist groups.The group's interim president and CEO, Bryan Fair, appeared in federal court in Montgomery representing the SPLC on charges of money laundering conspiracy, wire fraud and false statements to a bank.A grand jury indictment was filed April 21 by the U.S. Justice Department. The charges are an extraordinary strike against the Alabama-based organization, which works to combat discrimination and racism particularly in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.The SPLC has denied wrongdoing. No individuals are charged in the case. The trial is set to begin in October.The group has drawn criticism from conservatives including FBI Director Kash Patel, especially after it included Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA in a report about “hate and extremism.” Kirk was killed during a Utah college appearance in 2025.The Justice Department accuses the organization of defrauding donors by using their money to fund the same extremism it says it fights. At least $3 million went to informants affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan, the Aryan Nations, the National Socialist Party of America and other groups between 2014 and 2023, the indictment says.Fair has said the payments went to confidential informants to monitor threats of violence from the extremist groups. The information gathered helped save lives, he said, and was frequently shared with the FBI.“The charges against the SPLC are provably wrong; they are based on inaccurate facts and a misapplication of law,” Fair said in a statement released after Thursday's hearing. “ Our informant program was successful in accomplishing its purposes: Threats and attacks were prevented, criminal activity was stopped, and information was gathered to dismantle the efforts of hate and extremist groups."“The SPLC is no stranger to legal threats by those on the wrong side of history,” Fair continued. “In our 55 years, we have faced and prevailed in numerous fights.”During Thursday's arraignment, the SPLC's attorney Adde Lowell said that the defense may try to dismiss the charges in the coming weeks on the basis of “vindictive prosecution," echoing supporters who have said that the SPLC is being unfairly targeted by the Trump administration for its civil rights triumphs.U.S. Attorney Kevin Davidson dismissed that idea after the trial, saying that his office is following standard procedure for the case.“There was nothing vindictive about this prosecution,” Davidson told reporters.Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche recently acknowledged that the organization has a history of sharing information with law enforcement after he was challenged for saying the opposite.“That's well-documented, and there's no dispute there. They aren't charged with any of that conduct,” Blanche said.___Associated Press writer Ed White in Detroit contributed.

When Vladimir Osechkin wants to take his children to school or go to the supermarket, he calls the police.The Russian activist has lived under protection since 2022 because French officials believe Russia is trying to kill him.In April 2025, a crew of Russian men staked out Osechkin's home and the surrounding area in southwestern France for several hours, taking videos and photos in suspected groundwork for an assassination, according to court documents seen by The Associated Press that are not public. Several years earlier, Osechkin said, a red dot — which he thought was a laser sight for a gun — appeared on his wall.Elsewhere in Europe, Lithuanian officials disrupted a plot last year to kill a Lithuanian supporter of Ukraine and another against a Russian activist. Officials in Germany have similarly broken up two plots: one to target the head of a German weapons company supplying Ukraine, the other against a Ukrainian military official. Polish authorities arrested a man in 2024 in what they said was a plot to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. And that same year, a Russian helicopter pilot who defected was killed in Spain — with Russian operatives the prime suspects.While Russian officials have long been accused of silencing the country’s enemies abroad, three Western intelligence officials from different countries told AP that a campaign of targeted killings has ramped up since President Vladimir Putin's 2022 invasion of Ukraine.The officials said Russia's security services are now more brazen in their choice of targets, going after Russian activists and foreign supporters of Ukraine, in addition to the usual suspects like military defectors. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.“This campaign is not by accident or chance," said one of them, a senior European intelligence official. "There is political authorization.”The intelligence officials, a former senior British counterterrorism official and prosecutors in Lithuania see the campaign as connected to Russia's broader efforts to undermine European countries that support Ukraine, including 191 acts of sabotage, arson and other disruption linked to Russia by Western officials that the AP has mapped across Europe since the beginning of the war.Many accused in that campaign are people who were recruited as cheap proxies for Russian intelligence operatives. Moscow is now using that model to target its perceived enemies abroad, according to the French court documents, officials and information from the Lithuanian prosecutor.Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told AP he didn't see “any need” to comment. Russian officials have previously denied that Moscow is behind attempts to kill its opponents abroad.The AP spoke to three of the people targeted: Osechkin; Lithuanian activist Valdas Bartkevičius; and Ruslan Gabbasov, who advocates for independence for the Russian region of Bashkortostan.A trip to the seasideThree of the four men detained by French police in the plot to kill Osechkin traveled to the beach resort of Biarritz, where Osechkin lives, in April 2025, court documents show. They surveilled his house “with a view to assassinating him and subsequently intimidating all political opponents of the Russian authorities living in France,” the documents said.All four were born in Russia's Dagestan region. One has multiple criminal convictions while another said he had been arrested by Russia's domestic security service and fled the country to avoid being sent to Ukraine.Osechkin founded a rights group for prisoners years ago and runs a project that exposes abuses in Russia's prison system, but he said the threats against him escalated after he began investigating alleged Russian abuses in Ukraine and helping Russian military defectors flee.He moved to France in 2015 and was put under police protection seven years later when French officials received information that his life was in danger.“If it weren’t for them, I probably would have been killed,” he said.Targets say Moscow wins if they hideAcross the continent in Lithuania, Gabbasov, the activist from Bashkortostan, discovered an Apple AirTag tracker hidden on his car in February 2025. Police told him to leave the device and followed the people following him, he said.A few weeks later, Gabbasov said he was attending celebrations marking Lithuania’s independence from the Soviet Union with his wife and 5-year-old son when officers called and told him not to return home.The next day, he said officers told him: “Yesterday, a killer was detained near your house; he was waiting for you with a gun. ... He was ready to wait for you all night.”Lithuanian authorities, he said, offered him the chance to completely “disappear” — change his name, move and stop his work.He turned them down, saying many people from his mainly Muslim home region near Kazakhstan see him as a leader in the campaign for independence. The region is important to the Kremlin, Gabbasov said, because of its gold reserves and because large numbers of its men have been sent to fight in Ukraine.“I can’t betray them all by simply disappearing, especially out of fear,” Gabbasov said, adding that would play into Moscow’s hands.“What difference does it make to them?” Gabbasov asked, referring to Russia’s security services. “They could kill me ... or I could hide from everyone and stop engaging in political activity. That’s exactly what they want.”A plot to put a bomb in a mailboxThe authorities in Lithuania made the same offer to Bartkevičius, after he said they discovered a plot to kill him with a bomb planted in his mailbox in March 2025.But disappearing also wasn't an option for the activist who raises money for Ukraine and who gained notoriety for his anti-Russian acts, including urinating on a Russian war memorial.That, he said, would be “social death."Lithuanian prosecutors charged 13 people from at least seven countries with involvement in the two plots — among at least 20 people authorities have detained, charged or identified as involved in such plots in Europe over the past year.The people involved in the Lithuanian cases were directly ordered by Russian military intelligence, prosecutors said, and some had connections to Russian organized crime and could be linked to other arson and espionage plots elsewhere in Europe.Moscow's switch to relying on such proxies can be traced to a previous attempted assassination, Cmdr. Dominic Murphy told AP before he retired as head of the counterterrorism squad at Britain’s Metropolitan Police.In 2018, former Russian spy Sergei Skripal was poisoned with a nerve agent in Salisbury, England — an attack the U.K. government accused Moscow of carrying out with military intelligence officers.In response, Britain and other Western nations kicked out hundreds of Russian diplomats — and spies — making it harder for Russian officers to operate in Europe, Murphy, a lead investigator, said.The fact that most of the plots made public by Western officials since 2022 have been foiled could indicate that it’s harder for Moscow to carry them out with proxies, as opposed to its own officers, one of the Western intelligence officials said.Still, the attempted killings may serve additional purposes, they said, including scaring the Kremlin’s opponents into silence and wasting European law enforcement resources.Pointing to the case of Maxim Kuzminov — the helicopter pilot who defected and was threatened with death by masked men in military fatigues on Russian state television — the official said it’s clear Russia’s security services can kill someone in Europe if they really want to.For that reason, the European intelligence official said, targets will never be safe.“Even if you thwart an operation once, you still need to be ready in case they strike again.”

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan’s military warned Thursday it would respond strongly against any attack as it marked the anniversary of last year’s four-day conflict with neighboring India that brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of war before a U.S.-brokered ceasefire halted the fighting.The military said that any “hostile design” against Pakistan would be countered with “greater strength, precision and resolve” than what India witnessed during the May 2025 conflict, which Islamabad named “Marka-e-Haq,” or “Battle of Truth.”Pakistan and India had exchanged tit-for-tat strikes following an attack by gunmen in the Indian-controlled part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir that killed 26 people, most of them Hindu tourists. India blamed Pakistan-backed militants for the massacre, an allegation Islamabad denied while calling for an independent investigation.India launched strikes inside Pakistan on May 7, triggering retaliatory attacks by Pakistan that included drone incursions, missile strikes and artillery fire. Dozens of people were killed on both sides before a ceasefire was reached on May 10 following U.S. mediation.Pakistan at the time claimed it shot down at least seven Indian military aircraft, including a French-made Rafale fighter jet. India acknowledged suffering some losses but did not provide details.U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly took the credit for helping avert a wider war.Pakistan and India have long had strained relations and have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir, which is claimed by both in its entirety.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — At the heart of the trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is a moment when they found common cause on an ever more pressing question: how to protect humanity from the risks of artificial intelligence.It turned sour, and the jury is charged with settling the ensuing legal dispute between the two Silicon Valley titans.But the unresolved questions about the dangers of AI have been looming over the federal courthouse in Oakland, California, since the trial began last week. The technology itself is not on trial – the judge has warned lawyers not to get “sidetracked” by questions about its dangers – but witness testimony has touched on concerns around workforce disruptions and the prospect raised by Musk that superhuman AI might one day kill us all.Musk, the world's richest person, filed the case accusing his fellow OpenAI co-founder of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit. Altman, in turn, accuses Musk of trying to hobble the ChatGPT maker for the benefit of his own AI company.One witness, AI pioneer Stuart Russell, said that the “winner take all” power struggle over AI's future is itself threatening humanity.Musk's lawyers brought Russell to the stand as an expert witness, at the rate of $5,000 an hour. The University of California, Berkeley computer scientist listed a host of AI dangers, from racial and gender discrimination to jobs displacement, misinformation and emotional attachments that take some AI chatbot users down a spiral of psychosis.“Whichever company develops AGI first would have a very big advantage” and an increasingly big lead over everyone else, Russell told the court, using the initials for artificial general intelligence, a term for advanced AI technology that surpasses humans at many tasks.A judge's warning hasn't kept out talk of AI's dangersThe trial centers on the 2015 birth of OpenAI as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk.Both Musk and Altman, who has not yet testified in the trial, have said they wanted OpenAI to safely develop AGI for the benefit of humanity and not for any one person’s gain or under any one person’s control. And both camps allege it’s the other guy who was trying to control it.A jury of nine people selected from the San Francisco Bay Area will get to say which one of them is telling the truth.Early on, Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers warned lawyers, particularly Musk’s, not to delve into broader AI concerns that go beyond Musk’s claims that OpenAI violated its charitable mission.“This is not a trial on the safety risks of artificial intelligence. This is not a trial on whether or not AI has damaged humanity,” Gonzalez Rogers told lawyers before jurors arrived at the federal courthouse.Still, Musk managed to skirt that guidance in his testimony last week. Asked to describe artificial general intelligence, Musk said it is when AI becomes “as smart as any human," and added that “we are getting close to that point," and AI will be smarter than any human as soon as next year.Musk said he has “extreme concerns” about AI and has had them for a long time. Musk said he wanted a “counterpoint” to Google, which at the time had “all the money, all the computers and all the talent” for AI, with no counterbalance.“I was concerned AI would be a double-edged sword,” he said.Musk and OpenAI each say they are working for humanity's benefitDuring his testimony, Musk repeatedly said that he could have founded OpenAI as a for-profit company, just like the other companies he started or took over. “I deliberately chose this,” he said, “for the public good."The judge expressed some skepticism. In comments to lawyers last week before the jury came into the room, Gonzalez Rogers pointed out that Musk, “despite these risks, is creating a company that is in the exact same space,” referring to the billionaire’s xAI artificial intelligence company, which launched in 2023 and has since merged with Musk’s rocket company SpaceX.OpenAI's side also claims its goals are to benefit the public. OpenAI co-founder and president Greg Brockman, a defendant in Musk's lawsuit along with Altman and their company, said he thought the technology OpenAI was developing was “transformative” — bigger than corporations, corporate structures and bigger than any one individual. It was, he said, “about humanity as a whole.”Brockman testified this week that his No. 1 goal was always the “mission” of OpenAI and it was Musk who sought unilateral control over the company.Brockman recalled a meeting where at first Musk seemed open to the idea of Altman being OpenAI's CEO. In the end, however, “he said people needed to know he was in charge.”In addition to damages, Musk is seeking Altman’s ouster from OpenAI’s board. If Musk wins, it could derail OpenAI’s plans for an initial public offering of its shares.___O'Brien reported from Providence, Rhode Island.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Republicans in several Southern states pressed ahead with an aggressive election-year redistricting effort Wednesday, undeterred by demonstrations and objections to their plans to reshape majority-Black congressional districts that have suddenly become vulnerable because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.In Tennessee, protesters repeatedly interrupted legislative hearings on the redistricting plans, yet Republicans advanced them for a potential final vote Thursday.Despite passionate pleas from Black Democratic lawmakers, Republicans in the Alabama House approved a measure to upend the state’s congressional primaries if courts allow them to switch their U.S. House districts. In South Carolina, Democrats chided Republican colleagues for abiding by President Donald Trump's desires as they took an initial step toward redrawing a district long held by a Black Democratic lawmaker.The stakes are high for minority voters who stand to lose their preferred representatives and for any Republican lawmakers reluctant to follow Trump's wishes. In Republican primary elections Tuesday, Trump-endorsed challengers defeated at least five of the seven Indiana state lawmakers targeted by the president's allies for refusing to support a congressional redistricting effort last year.The Supreme Court ruled last week that Louisiana relied too heavily on race when creating a second Black-majority House district as it attempted to comply with the Voting Rights Act. The ruling significantly altered a decades-old understanding of the law, giving Republicans in Louisiana and elsewhere grounds to try to eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Democrats.The ruling intensified an already fierce national redistricting battle ahead of a November midterm election that will determine control of the closely divided House.Since Trump prodded Texas to redraw its U.S. House districts last year, eight states have adopted new congressional districts. From that, Republicans think they could gain as many as 13 seats while Democrats think they could gain up to 10. But some of the new districts could be competitive in November, meaning the parties may not get all they sought.Tennessee plan splits up Memphis districtRepublicans on Wednesday proposed a new U.S. House map that would split Memphis’ home of Shelby County into three districts, instead of the current two. The map would break up Tennessee’s lone Democratic-held district, centered on the majority-Black city, creating a ripple effect of alterations to districts throughout the western and central parts of the state.“Tennessee is a conservative state, and our congressional delegation should reflect that. This bill ensures it does,” Republican state Sen. John Stevens said.Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton said the proposed districts were drawn based on population and politics, not racial data.To adopt new House districts, Tennessee lawmakers also are seeking to repeal a state law prohibiting mid-decade redistricting.Democrats and civil rights activists denounced the efforts during Wednesday's committee hearings.The proposal “is Black vote dilution at an industrial scale,” said Sekou Franklin, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University who is part of the Tennessee branch of the NAACP.Protesters interrupted a Senate committee meeting, loudly chanting “Hands off our vote!” After senators suspended the hearing, state troopers cleared people from the room. Senators resumed their work elsewhere, advancing the legislation.Later Wednesday, protesters in the hallway beat on the walls and doors of a committee room where senators were meeting. A House committee also paused its work as state troopers escorted chanting protesters from the room.The candidate qualifying period in Tennessee ended in March, but legislation would reopen it to allow new candidates to join the races and existing candidates to switch districts. The primary election is Aug. 6.Democrats noted that the state Supreme Court in April 2022 rejected a challenge to the current congressional map, finding it was too close to the election to make changes. This year, there’s even less time before the primary elections, raising the potential of confusion for both candidates and voters, Democrats said.Alabama House backs a new primaryThe Republican-led Alabama House on Wednesday passed legislation authorizing special congressional primaries as Republicans eye the possibility of getting a different congressional map in place for the November elections. The bill now moves to the state Senate.Alabama is seeking to lift a federal court order that created a second congressional district with a near-majority of Black voters. That map led to the 2024 election of Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. Republicans want instead to use a 2023 map drawn by state lawmakers that would give the GOP an opportunity to reclaim Figures’ south Alabama district.The legislation won House approval on a party-line vote after four hours of fiery debate during which Black legislators said the moment calls back to the state’s shameful Jim Crow-era history.“It’s a tragic step backward for Black Alabama voters. But we’ve been here before, and we will not give up this fight,” Democratic state Rep. Adline Clarke said.Democratic state Rep. Juandalynn Givan likened the legislation to poll taxes and counting jelly beans in a jar — a virtually impossible task that was used to suppress Black voters during the Jim Crow era.“It is a calculated political maneuver born out of fear, a fear that is of Black people and most importantly Black political power,” Givan said.Tensions rose later Wednesday as dozens of protesters temporarily blocked a hallway outside the Senate, singing “We Shall Overcome” and shouting “we’re not going back” as security officers tried to get them to leave.Alabama's legislation hinges on the U.S. Supreme Court or a district court agreeing to lift the injunction.“We’re going to be ready if the court hands down a favorable ruling,” said Republican state Rep. Chris Pringle, who sponsored the bill.Alabama’s primaries are May 19. If a court grants the state’s request, the legislation would ignore the results for congressional seats and direct the governor to schedule a new primary under the revised districts.South Carolina moves toward redistrictingThe South Carolina House on Wednesday approved a resolution giving lawmakers permission to return later, after their regular work ends, to redraw congressional districts that could eliminate the state’s only Democratic-held district. The proposal now goes to the Senate, where it would need a two-thirds vote.Republican House leaders said after the vote that they plan to introduce a new map Thursday and hold committee meetings on Friday. But during debate Wednesday, Republicans fended off specific questions from Democrats, including why they were willing to stop the June 9 U.S. House primary elections well after candidates filed and how much a rescheduled primary could cost.Democratic Rep. Justin Bamberg said he felt sorry for Republicans who he said were giving up their principles to follow the whims of Trump.“The president of the United States is a very powerful man. Wields a heavy, heavy thumb — Truth Social, X, Meta, Instagram. To be honest I don’t envy our Republican colleagues,” Bamberg said.Democratic Rep. Leon Stavrinakis said democracy will die if lawmakers redraw voting districts for political reasons every time power changes or to protect someone in office.___Chandler reported from Montgomery, Alabama; Collins from Columbia, South Carolina; and Lieb from Jefferson City, Missouri. Associated Press reporter Kristin M. Hall contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner could never be defined by just one role. He was a media mogul, philanthropist and conservationist. A yachtsman who won boating’s most famous race and owner of a baseball team that captured the World Series trophy.The brash television pioneer who died Wednesday made his greatest mark on the news business when he launched CNN nearly a half-century ago and with it, the 24-hour cable news cycle — a revolutionary moment that transformed the industry.His media empire grew to include CNN International, the Cartoon Network, TNT and Turner Classic Movies. Then he used his riches to become one of America’s most extensive landowners, dedicating his final years to preserving natural habitats, saving endangered species and reducing nuclear weapons.Turner died at age 87 while surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises, which oversees his vast businesses and investments. A cause was not released. He was diagnosed in 2018 with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurological disorder.A Southerner with outspoken wit, he earned the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South” during his youthful years.“If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect," he once bragged.Turner was a celebrity in his own right when he married actor Jane Fonda in 1991, just before being named Time magazine’s Man of the Year.“He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same,” Fonda wrote Wednesday on Instagram.Slowed late in life by his illness and long out of the television business, Turner concentrated on philanthropy — donating a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities — and his more than 2 million acres (800,000 hectares) of property, including the nation’s largest bison herd.His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a driven, risk-taking business acumen. By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in a 1996 media megadeal, Turner had turned his late father’s billboard company into a global conglomerate that included seven major cable networks, three professional sports teams and a pair of hit movie studios.President Donald Trump on Wednesday called him “one of the Greats of All Time.”The creation of CNNTurner’s signature achievement was creating CNN, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. It was born of frustration — he often worked late after network newscasts had gone off the air, and was in bed by the time his local stations did their own news.He took a chance by launching what some called the “chicken noodle network” in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office.“I was going to have to hit hard and move incredibly fast and that’s what we did — move so fast that the (broadcast) networks wouldn’t have the time to respond, because they should have done this, not me,” Turner recalled in a 2016 interview with The American Academy of Achievement. “But they didn’t have the imagination.”CNN’s breakthrough came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most television journalists fled Baghdad. CNN stayed, capturing images of the war’s outbreak, with anti-aircraft tracers streaking across the sky and correspondents flinching from the concussion of bombs.“His first love was family and he had five children. But very close behind, he’s always told me that his greatest achievement was CNN. But he had so many over the years,” Tom Johnson, CNN's president from 1990 to 2001, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.Turner was promised a role in CNN after his company’s sale to Time Warner for $7.3 billion in stock but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret.“I made a mistake,” he later said. “The mistake I made was losing control of the company.”That same year — 1996 — saw the birth of Fox News Channel and arrival of a new dominant mogul in cable news, Rupert Murdoch. Turner once compared Murdoch to Adolf Hitler. The bitter rivals later reconciled over environmental concerns.Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav on Wednesday called Turner a visionary and a trailblazer.“Ted’s entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks changed the media industry forever,” Zaslav said in a note to employees at Warner, CNN’s parent company, which is nearing a mega merger with Paramount.Building TBS SuperstationRobert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. After being expelled from Brown University for sneaking a female student into his room, Turner came to Atlanta to work for his father’s billboard company.His ambitions at that point were broad, he later recalled: “I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a signal so weak it didn’t even cover Atlanta.On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became TBS Superstation. “It was the start of something bigger than we ever imagined,” Turner said.TBS’ collection of old movies and “The Andy Griffith Show” reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, which slowly attracted fans across the nation and declared themselves “America’s team.”Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said Turner transformed how fans experience sports.In the 1980s, Turner went deeply into debt to buy MGM, another move greeted with skepticism.But the acquisition gave his company a huge library of vintage movies that eventually launched the TNT and Turner Classic Movies networks. His devotion to older movies earned Turner a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004. He was also criticized for adding color to classic movies like “Casablanca,” which he said he did to appeal to a younger audience.TBS also acquired the Hanna-Barbera animation library, which led to the Cartoon Network.“He sees the obvious before most people do,” Bob Wright, former president and CEO of NBC, told The New Yorker in 2001. “We all look at the same picture, but Ted sees what you don’t see. And after he sees it, it becomes obvious to everybody.”Asked to share the secret to his success, Turner said: “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise.”Acquiring sports teams and landMarried three times, the mustachioed Turner wooed beautiful women with a roguish charm. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She quit acting while married to Turner, but tired of his philandering and divorced him, although they remained friends.“He was sexy. He was brilliant. He had 2 million acres by the time I left. It would have been easy to stay,” Fonda once said.He struck up friendships with world leaders, bonding with Cuban leader Fidel Castro over hunting and arguments about politics.Turner's sports empire included professional baseball, basketball and hockey teams in Atlanta, but he was best remembered at the helm of the Braves, turning the perennial doormats into World Series champions in 1995. Their former stadium, built for the 1996 Olympics, was named Ted Turner Field.He acquired millions of acres in ranches complete with roaming buffalo. He spoke often of reviving the West’s bison herds, and in 2002 started a restaurant chain serving bison burgers, Ted’s Montana Grill.Forbes estimated his net worth at $2.8 billion at the time of his death.He had enough time, and money, to devote his energy to such lofty goals as promoting world peace and protecting the environment.“See, my life is more an adventure than a quest to make money. Adventure is going out and doing something for the pure hell of it,” Turner once said. “You just want to see if you can do it, period. There’s no thought of gain other than your own satisfaction.”‘The Mouth of the South’Through the years, Turner’s antics occasionally overshadowed his business activities.Fresh from skippering his boat “Courageous” to the 1977 America’s Cup title, a very inebriated Turner was captured by TV cameras stretched out on the floor at the victory celebration.Turner managed to insult many with his shoot-from-the-lip style. An atheist since his only sister died of lupus at age 17, he called Christians “losers” and “Jesus freaks,” later apologizing.He once suggested in a speech that unemployed Black people be used to haul mobile missiles with ropes “like the Egyptians building the pyramids.” He said he was joking after civil rights leaders demanded an apology. And he once told an audience in Berlin that “you Germans had a bad century.”“You were on the wrong side of two wars. You were the losers. I know what that’s like. When I bought the Atlanta Braves, we couldn’t win, either. You guys can turn it around. You can start making the right choices. If the Atlanta Braves could do it, then Germany can do it,” Turner said, according to The New Yorker.Dedication to humanitarian causesTurner's 1997 pledge to give $100 million a year for 10 years to United Nations charities made him a leader in American philanthropy. He made good on his promise even as his fortune shrank after the AOL Time Warner merger, calling it the best hope for peace.U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called Turner “a visionary whose conviction, generosity and audacious spirit left a lasting imprint on the United Nations and our world.”Turner promoted a range of humanitarian causes. He joined former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to start the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative.“If I had to predict, the way things are going, I’d say the chances are about 50-50 that humanity will be extinct in 50 years,” Turner said in 2003. “Weapons of mass destruction, disease, I mean this global warming is scaring the living daylights out of me.”___Bauder, a longtime media writer who retired from The Associated Press in 2026, was the principal writer of this story. Seewer reported from Toledo, Ohio. Former Associated Press correspondent Ryan Nakashima and AP writers R.J. Rico in Atlanta, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Susan Montoya Bryan in Albuquerque, New Mexico, contributed.

CARROLLTON, Texas (AP) — A man who police said shot five people, killing two, in back-to-back shootings at a shopping center and an apartment building in suburban Dallas has been charged with two counts of capital murder, police said Wednesday.Seung Ho Han, 69, has also been charged with three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon following Tuesday's shootings in the Koreatown neighborhood of Carrollton, police said.Police said Han acknowledged he was the shooter in an interview with detectives and said he was angry at the people he shot because of financial disagreements over their business dealings. They declined to release the names of the victims and said they were still investigating the motive.Carrollton, with about 130,000 people, is 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Dallas. More than 4,000 residents are of Korean descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.Han was being held Wednesday in Denton County Jail. Jail records did not list an attorney for him.The first shooting happened just before 10 a.m. Tuesday at a shopping center, police said. When police arrived, they found four adults who had been shot, including a man who died. While they were investigating, another shooting was reported at an apartment complex roughly 4 miles (6 kilometers) away. Responding officers found a dead man inside one of the apartments.Police said Wednesday that the three injured people were hospitalized in stable condition.Investigators determined that Han carried out both of the shootings, police said. He was arrested at a nearby grocery store after a short chase on foot.

NEW YORK (AP) — Ted Turner, a brash television pioneer who raced yachts, owned huge chunks of the American West and transformed the news business by launching CNN and introducing the 24-hour cable news cycle, died Wednesday. He was 87.Turner died surrounded by his family, according to Turner Enterprises, the company that oversees his vast business interests.Turner owned professional sports teams in Atlanta, defended the America’s Cup in yachting in 1977 and donated a stunning $1 billion to United Nations charities. He married three women — most famously actor Jane Fonda — and earned the nicknames “Captain Outrageous” and “The Mouth of the South.”He once bragged: “If only I had a little humility, I’d be perfect.”He was slowed in later years by Lewy body dementia. Long out of the television business, he concentrated on philanthropy.His garrulous personality sometimes overshadowed a risk-taking business acumen. By the time he sold his Turner Broadcasting System to Time Warner Inc. in 1996, Turner had turned his late father’s billboard company into a global conglomerate that included seven major cable networks, three professional sports teams and a pair of hit movie studios.President Donald Trump, reacting to Turner's death, called him “one of the Greats of All Time.”The creation of CNNTurner’s signature achievement was creating the Cable News Network, the first 24-hour, all-news television network in 1980. In part, Turner’s own frustration with television news was the instigator. He often worked past 8 p.m., after the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly newscasts had already gone off the air.He took a chance by starting the operation in the early days of cable television, living in an apartment above its Atlanta office.CNN’s breakthrough moment came during the Gulf War with Iraq in 1991. Most television journalists had fled Baghdad but CNN stayed, capturing arresting images of a war’s outbreak.Turner was promised a continued role in CNN after his company’s sale to Time Warner but was gradually pushed out, much to his regret.“The mistake I made was losing control of the company," he later said.Building TBS SuperStationRobert Edward Turner III was born Nov. 19, 1938, in Cincinnati. When he was 9, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia, where he grew up. After being expelled from Brown University, Turner came to Atlanta to work for his domineering father’s billboard company, Turner Advertising.After his father’s 1963 suicide, Turner took over the company. In 1970, he bought an independent UHF station with a weak signal that didn’t even cover Atlanta.On Dec. 17, 1976, he began transmitting the station to cable systems across the country via satellite. It became the TBS SuperStation.TBS’ motley collection of old movies and sitcom reruns was augmented by Turner’s acquisition of baseball’s Atlanta Braves. Perennial doormats, the Braves slowly attracted fans nationwide through their superstation exposure.In the 1980s, Turner went deeply into debt to buy MGM, a move again greeted with skepticism. But the acquisition gave his company a library of vintage movies that eventually were parlayed into the TNT and Turner Classic Movies networks.He revealed his ambitions as a younger man: “I used to tell people I wanted to become the world’s greatest sailor, businessman and lover all at the same time.”Acquiring sports teams and landFor much of his life a partying roustabout who wooed beautiful women, the lean, mustachioed sportsman married three times. He was married to Fonda from 1991 to 2001. She tired of his philandering and divorced him, although they remained friends.Perhaps Turner’s greatest love was for the land. He acquired millions of acres in ranches complete with roaming buffalo and was Nebraska’s largest private landholder. Researchers at Texas A&M University credited his donation of a few bulls in 2005 with helping increase the genetic diversity of the last herd of southern Plains bison.He had a net worth of $2.5 billion in 2023 but had dropped off Forbes magazine’s ranking of the 400 richest Americans in 2021.“See, my life is more an adventure than a quest to make money,” Turner once said.Turner managed to insult many with his shoot-from-the-lip style. An atheist since his only sister died of lupus at age 17, he called Christians “losers” and “Jesus freaks,” later apologizing for both remarks.Dedication to various causesTurner, the father of five children, grabbed a leadership role in American philanthropy with his Sept. 18, 1997, pledge to give $1 billion to United Nations charities.He promoted a range of humanitarian causes. Turner joined former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn to start the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to reducing the threat of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.As he poured millions into nonprofits on a global scale, Turner was also fond of spreading his wealth in small ways. He once gave $500 to a volunteer fire department that helped extinguish a blaze on one of his ranches.___Bauder, a longtime media writer, retired from The Associated Press in 2026. Former Associated Press correspondent Ryan Nakashima contributed to this report.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday evening he was pausing the U.S. effort to guide stranded vessels out of the Strait of Hormuz to allow time for a deal to end the Iran war, but that the American forces’ blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place.Meanwhile, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing on Wednesday morning, the official Xinhua news agency reported, without providing further details.It was the first time since the start of the war that Araghchi has traveled to China, whose close economic and political ties to Tehran give it a unique position of influence.Earlier in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had expressed hope that Beijing would reiterate to Tehran the need to release its chokehold on the strait, which is a vital waterway for global energy.Iran’s effective closure of the strait, through which major oil and gas supplies passed before the war, along with fertilizer and other petroleum products, has sent fuel prices skyrocketing and rattled the global economy. Breaking Iran’s grip would deny its main source of leverage as Trump demands a major rollback of Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.US to pause latest efforts to reopen the Strait of HormuzTrump announced the decision in a social media post, saying the latest effort — which started Monday — would pause for a short period to see whether an agreement with Tehran on ending the war in the Middle East could be finalized.Trump said the move was based “on the request of Pakistan and other Countries, the tremendous Military Success that we have had during the Campaign against the Country of Iran and, additionally, the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with Representatives of Iran.”The White House did not respond to a request for comment or further detail on the progress in negotiations that Trump mentioned. They had appeared to have largely stalled in the conflict that started Feb. 28 when the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran.US officials say ceasefire is holding, despite attacks on UAEThe United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf, said it came under attack from Iranian drones and missiles for a second day Tuesday.But U.S. military leaders and Rubio insisted the nearly month-old ceasefire was still holding and that — while the conflict is not resolved — the initial major U.S. military operation against Iran has concluded.Before the Trump announcement, Rubio told a White House press briefing that for peace to be achieved, Iran must agree to Trump’s demands on its nuclear program and also agree to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.“We would prefer the path of peace,” Rubio said.Rubio also described the day-old U.S. push to reopen the strait to maritime traffic as a defensive operation, aimed at helping thousands of civilian sailors stranded there by the war.“They’re sitting ducks, they’re isolated, they’re starving, they’re vulnerable,” Rubio said. “At least 10 sailors have already died as a result.”On Monday, the U.S. said it had opened a lane and sunk six small Iranian boats that had threatened commercial ships. So far, only two merchant ships are known to have passed through the new U.S.-guarded route, with hundreds more bottled up in the Persian Gulf.Iran says the new US effort violates ceasefireU.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Gen. Dan Caine, the U.S. military’s top officer, told a news conference that Iran’s renewed attacks had not reached the threshold of what Caine called “major combat operations.” He said Tuesday was a “quieter” day in the strait.At the White House, Rubio said clashes with Iran related to American efforts to reopen the straight were “defensive in nature.”“There’s no shooting unless we’re shot at first, OK?” Rubio said. “We’re not attacking them.”Iran’s parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, signaled that Iran has yet to fully respond to the U.S. attempt to reopen the waterway.“We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America; while we have not even begun yet,” he said in a post on X. His statement did not mention negotiations with the U.S. that are now in the form of passing messages via Pakistan.Disputing Washington’s claim of sinking six Iranian boats, an Iranian military commander said two small civilian cargo boats were hit Monday, killing five civilians, Iran’s state TV reported.Caine, the top U.S. general who serves as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said more than 100 U.S. military aircraft are patrolling the skies over the strait. The U.S. has imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports since April 13, depriving Tehran of oil revenue it needs to shore up its ailing economy.The Trump administration has cited the April 8 ceasefire in asserting that the president does not have to give a formal update to Congress on the war under the War Powers Resolution. That law typically requires presidents to seek formal approval from Congress for war activities 60 days after beginning military action.Shippers remain warySo far, just two civilian vessels, both U.S.-flagged merchant ships, are known to have passed through the strait as part of the lane the U.S. says it has created. Shipping company Maersk said one of them, a vehicle carrier that it operates, exited the strait safely Monday with U.S. military assistance.Former military officers who have served on the strait have said opening the waterway that is just 21 miles (34 kilometers) wide would be dangerous and highly challenging, even with military escorts, which the U.S. is not providing now.Hapag-Lloyd AG, one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, said in a statement that its risk assessment “remains unchanged” and that transits through the strait “are for the moment not possible for our ships.”Iran has attacked ships that try to transit without going through its own route in the northern part of the strait along the Iranian coastline. That involves being vetted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and in some cases making a payment.The U.S.-approved route goes through territorial waters of Oman to the south.The UAE bore the brunt of Iran’s retaliationThe UAE’s Defense Ministry said it was responding to another Iranian drone and missile attack on Tuesday, though there were no reports of damage or casualties. A day earlier, it said Emirati air defenses had engaged 15 missiles and four drones from Iran, one of which sparked a fire at a key oil facility, wounding three Indian nationals.The British military reported two cargo vessels ablaze off the UAE, also on Monday. On Tuesday, it reported that a cargo vessel in the strait had been struck by an “unknown projectile,” without further details.Iran denied striking the UAE “in recent days,” according to a statement by Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesman for Iran’s joint military command, that was read Tuesday on state TV.___Madhani and Finley reported from Washington, and Becatoros reported from Athens, Greece. Associated Press writers E. Eduardo Castillo in Beijing; Farnoush Amiri at the United Nations; Collin Binkley and Matthew Lee in Washington; Giovanna Dell'Orto in Minneapolis; Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut; Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; Bill Barrow in Atlanta; David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany; and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.