Category: National News Feed

BOSTON (AP) — Fresh off its first-class flight from Glasgow, it received a reception befitting a visiting dignitary: a bagpiper in full regalia playing inside Boston Logan International Airport. Waiting to greet it were diplomats, the governor and Boston’s mayor.

The guest of honor? An orange traffic cone.

Tuesday’s arrival of the “Boston Cone” marked the latest chapter in the city’s unlikely love affair with Scotland’s Tartan Army, whose habit of placing traffic cones atop statues during last month’s World Cup turned the humble orange cone into one of the tournament’s defining symbols.

“I have to admit, this is probably — yes, it is — my first official welcoming ceremony for a traffic cone,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said in the airport’s Terminal E, before signing her name to the cone. “But it’s a pretty special one, isn’t it? Because this cone tells the story of what happened this summer. What happened in Boston, what happened in Massachusetts.”

“And special thanks to the Scots for drinking all the beer,” she added to laughter. “I do promise you, when you return … we will never again run out of beer in Massachusetts.”

During Scottish fans’ World Cup visit, Boston bars struggled to keep up with the Tartan Army’s thirst, with some running out of beer and scrambling for emergency deliveries. The fans transformed parts of Boston into an unofficial outpost of Scotland, filling downtown with bagpipes, songs and chants while bright orange traffic cones sprouted atop some of the city’s most recognizable landmarks — from Samuel Adams outside Faneuil Hall to Red Auerbach outside TD Garden, former Mayor Kevin White near Quincy Market and even the beloved Make Way for Ducklings statues in the Public Garden.

“There are still some traffic cones atop our most important statues,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu joked Tuesday, recalling how Boston had “unofficially become New Scotland.”

The official commemorative cone, decorated with illustrations celebrating Boston and Scotland and the slogan “No Boston, No Party,” will spend the next week visiting landmarks across Massachusetts to raise money for mental health charities before returning home to Scotland.

The tradition dates to Glasgow, where placing bright orange traffic cones atop public statues began as a late-night prank in the 1980s before evolving into an unofficial symbol of the country’s irreverent humor. The best-known example is the Duke of Wellington statue in the city center, where the cone has become so iconic that repeated efforts to remove it have been met with public opposition.

“It’s an in-joke that’s gone too far, actually,” one of the cone’s Scottish escorts, Danny Campbell, said, laughing as he stood beside the cone in a kilt. “But no, it isn’t a joke. This is a metaphor for life.”

Campbell said people can become consumed by “going to our jobs and cooking sausages and all the sort of serious stuff that adults have to do” and lose sight of what matters.

“That’s what our countrymen represented when they came here,” he said, speaking of Scottish fans’ stay in Boston. “They left stomachs and cheeks sore from laughing, they cleaned up after themselves, they spread joy and these people came together with humor and they built relationships with each other.”

“This is not just a silly cone,” Campbell said. “It means love. It means love, and that is the whole point.”

A man running from an encounter with immigration and other federal agents in Florida was struck and killed by a tractor trailer on Tuesday, authorities said.

It was the third death in a week involving encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, following shootings in Texas and Maine.

The 28-year-old was among four occupants of a vehicle that stopped in the parking lot of a gas station and convenience store in the St. Augustine area before 7 a.m. During an encounter with agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations, the four fled on foot, with one darting across a busy road into the path of the semi, Florida Highway Patrol Sgt. Dylan Bryan said in an emailed statement.

The driver of the semi stopped and tried to help the man, Bryan said.

It was at least the 10th death involving encounters with immigration agents since President Donald Trump launched his mass deportation campaign last year.

It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted the encounter Tuesday. In an emailed statement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed it had conducted an operation and said the Florida Highway Patrol and Homeland Security Investigations were “investigating an incident resulting in the death of a Mexican national.”

The department did not respond to an inquiry from The Associated Press about the status of the other three occupants of the vehicle.

State Rep. Angie Nixon, a Democrat from Jacksonville, called the death a tragedy that resulted from an out-of-control agency.

“Whether it’s ICE agents gunning down a father in the streets of Houston, shooting a young man in Maine or conducting operations right here in Northeast Florida that result in a deadly crash, the outcome is the same: fear, chaos and death,” she said.

In two other cases, people died after fleeing agents and being struck by vehicles.

Last summer, a man running from immigration officers outside a Home Depot store in southern California died after being hit by an SUV as he tried to cross a freeway. Homeland Security officials said that 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez, of Guatemala, was not being pursued by immigration authorities when he was struck.

In October, a pickup truck fatally struck 24-year-old gardener Josué Castro Rivera, of Honduras, on a highway in Norfolk, Virginia, as he tried to escape authorities during a traffic stop. Authorities said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and that Castro Rivera had “resisted heavily and fled.”

The Mexican government on Tuesday said it had asked state attorneys general in the U.S. to review the deaths of migrants in ICE custody or during raids for possible criminal prosecution.

BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — In the minutes after an immigration officer opened fire in a small coastal city in southern Maine, a now-familiar story began to unfold: another person had been shot and killed inside a moving vehicle during an immigration enforcement operation.

The Department of Homeland Security later said the officer fired his weapon when the man they were pursuing attempted to flee the scene, threatening “public safety.”

It’s a narrative that has been repeated again and again since the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown began, with federal officers confronting drivers then saying they opened fire when their vehicles became a danger. That’s despite decades of warnings from policing experts that shooting into moving cars presents a danger of its own and should almost always be avoided.

The Embassy of Colombia identified the man killed Monday in Biddeford, roughly 15 miles (24 kilometers) southwest of Portland, as Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 26-year-old Colombian national. Some friends, neighbors and an advocacy group have spelled his name “Joan.”

Nine dead in immigration operations

He is the ninth killed during immigration operations since the start of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. At least four of those deaths involved people in vehicles, including one last week in Houston, a trend so troubling U.S. Sen. Susan Collins said Tuesday she urged DHS secretary Markwayne Mullin “to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

A person familiar with the matter told AP Tuesday that administration officials told immigration officers to suspend most vehicle stops. Some policing experts say Immigration and Customs Enforcement should never have conducted traffic stops.

“They’re saying that all these cases are justified because the officers were in danger,” said John Sandweg, who was acting director at ICE, which is part of DHS, during the Obama administration. “But then why the hell are we putting the officer in danger by asking them to execute traffic stops?”

Sandweg, who estimates there have been roughly 18 traffic-stop shootings during the immigration crackdown, noted there are many other places to make arrests, from homes to workplaces.

“It becomes a much more risky and dangerous situation once you start to pursue someone,” said John Gihon, an immigration lawyer who was an attorney at ICE from 2008 to 2014. “That’s going to escalate.”

Gihon said that during his tenure at ICE he regularly trained deportation officers about vehicle stop policies. He said officers were advised they have discretion on whether to pull over someone they are trying to arrest. But if that person refuses to get out of their car and drives away, the guidance is to let them go and track them down another day.

“If they refuse, you are not pulling them out of the vehicle, you are not putting yourself in front of their car,” he said. “This policy is for everyone’s safety.”

But fatal vehicle stops keep happening during Trump’s second administration.

There was Ruben Ray Martinez, a 23-year-old U.S. citizen, shot during a late-night traffic stop in South Texas in March 2025, and Renee Good, a mother of three shot and killed in January as she drove her car through the streets of a Minneapolis residential neighborhood amid growing anti-crackdown protests.

Last week, it was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican builder shot and killed as he drove his crew to a worksite in Houston, where he had lived and worked for decades.

Shooting into moving vehicles creates danger for all who are near

Each time, officials insisted the federal officers had fired because they feared they or someone else could be killed by the vehicles.

“Many of you have been told this law enforcement officer wasn’t hit by a car, wasn’t being harassed, and murdered an innocent woman,” Vice President JD Vance wrote on X after Good was killed. “The reality is that his life was endangered and he fired in self defense.”

That shooting was captured on multiple bystander videos that contradicted the administration’s narrative and prompted widespread anger and protests against the officers’ use of deadly force.

Much remains unknown about the others.

Officers were not wearing body cameras in the Salgado Araujo or the Durán Guerrero killings, despite DHS announcing months ago that it would outfit all officers with cameras.

Geoffrey P. Alpert, an expert on policing at the University of South Carolina, said without video evidence, investigators must rely on witness statements.

“There’s certainly a pattern, a practice, a trend that is disturbing,” Alpert said, adding that police departments decades ago began prohibiting officers from shooting into moving cars because if the driver is injured or killed, they can lose control, turning the vehicle into “an unguided missile,” threatening anyone nearby.

“Every bullet needs to be understood: why was it fired. Every time an officer pulls the trigger, we need to know why,” Alpert said. “We talked about that last time, and we’ll talk about that the next time.”

Texas lawmaker notes conflicting descriptions of Houston shooting

Doubts are already swirling about the official story the administration told about the fatal shooting of 52-year-old Salgado Araujo in Houston.

DHS officials said in a statement that the Mexican national ignored commands and was trying to evade arrest, then attempted to ram his car into an officer, who opened fire in self-defense.

Rep. Sylvia Garcia said she visited the facility where the men who were in the vehicle with Salgado Araujo are being held and spoke to two of them, raising “many alarming questions” about the administration’s claims.

“Here’s the deal. I visited with them separately, and their stories were consistent, and paint a totally, totally conflicting version of the events,” Garcia said. They said that at no time were any of the ICE officers in front of the vehicle. Instead, they told her the officers were on the passenger side and shot Salgado Araujo, who was driving, through the passenger side window. The window had been open because the vehicle’s air conditioning was broken.

The DHS story quickly shifted

What exactly led to the deadly shooting in Maine remains unclear. Officers were in Biddeford, surveilling an address for a person with a final order of removal from the country, then tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone coming from that address, DHS said.

Maine U.S. Sen. Angus King said DHS Secretary Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon against officers.

But nearly 12 hours after Durán Guerrero was killed, that story shifted: DHS issued a statement saying the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon.”

When asked about the contrasting statements, King told CNN an investigation would reveal the truth.

The state’s Office of the Attorney General announced it would investigate the shooting in coordination with federal authorities, promised transparency and encouraged witnesses to come forward.

On Tuesday, hundreds of protesters gathered near an ICE facility in Scarborough, Maine. They held up a large banner reading “No more ICE killings” and signs saying “stop the murder” and “end this terror.”

“We need to never see this happen in the streets of Biddeford, Maine, and in this country,” said Democratic state Sen. Mattie Daughtry, said during the protest. “Never forget the human toll of what has happened here in Maine, in Minnesota, in Texas.”

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Santana reported from Washington, D.C., Sullivan from Minneapolis and Galofaro from Louisville, Kentucky. Associated Press reporters Valerie Gonzalez in McAllen, Texas, and Jack Brook in New Orleans contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — Subaru of America is recalling more than 541,000 of its Crosstrek, Forester, and Ascent SUVs due to an inaccurate label attached to the vehicles.

According to a notice published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this week, the now-recalled vehicles were made with a certification label that incorrectly states their gross axle weight rating, or GAWR, which reflects the maximum weight that each axle of a vehicle can support.

The NHTSA warns a wrong GAWR label “may lead to an overloaded vehicle,” which could increase the likelihood of a crash.

Subaru has not been aware of any crashes or injuries resulting from this issue in the U.S., according to recall documents. And no mechanical repair is needed — but the company plans to mail impacted owners a “corrective certification label” to place over the faulty one. Customers may also choose to have a dealer place the new label on their cars, free of charge.

The labeling recall covers certain 2026 Crosstrek Hybrid, 2025-2026 Forester and Forester Hybrid, and 2019-2026 Ascent vehicles.

Owner notifications are set to go out in late August — and additional letters will be mailed “once the remedy is available,” NHTSA documents note. In the meantime, drivers can also confirm whether their specific vehicle is included in this recall and find more information using the NHTSA’s website and/or Subaru’s recall lookup platform.

The Associated Press reached out to contacts for Subaru of America — a New Jersey-based subsidiary of the larger Japanese automaker — for further comments Tuesday.

The term weaponized vehicle has become commonplace at news conferences and in statements released by federal officials during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.

Federal authorities initially used that language Monday when talking to state officials about the actions of a Maine driver who was fatally shot by immigration officers. In public statements, Department of Homeland Security officials shifted their description to say officers fired into the vehicle “fearing for public safety.”

It was the second time in a week that federal immigration authorities shot and killed someone behind the wheel of a car, initially accusing the driver of attempting to ram into immigration officers.

But while the weaponization of a car is often used to justify the use of deadly force against a driver, the legal definition is a lot less clear cut.

State legislatures and some courts say cars can be considered weapons

In numerous state and federal courts, judges have agreed that vehicles can be considered weapons when they are used to inflict harm. But many of those cases have been considerations of whether enhanced charges such as aggravated assault with a deadly weapon can be levied against a person after an injury or death was already caused by a vehicle.

Many state laws that address assault with a vehicle are designed to enhance manslaughter or other charges against people violating traffic laws or driving requirements. Judicial opinions have largely focused on crimes of negligence, road rage or driving while intoxicated, and in rare instances, cases where someone purposefully drove their car into a crowd of people.

They rarely deal with the question faced by police or federal law enforcement officials of when a moving vehicle should be considered a dangerous weapon, and when that allows for the use of deadly force.

Training often says to move rather than shoot

Many law enforcement departments and agencies weigh the potential for unintended harm heavily when instructing officers or agents on when it’s acceptable to fire a weapon at a moving vehicle.

Many department policies tell officers to move out of the way of a vehicle rather than shoot because of the potential harm to bystanders who could be struck by unintended gunfire or by a careening vehicle if the driver is incapacitated.

Policies often say a suspect fleeing is not enough justification for using deadly force. Some require another weapon such as a firearm being used as a threat from the person in the vehicle to establish a clear threat to public or officer safety.

Experts say many factors determine when a car is weaponized

Exceptions exist in many use-of-force policies for what became a familiar scene abroad and at times in the U.S. — a person driving a vehicle into crowded public streets to inflict as much damage as possible.

But, experts say those exceptions have been used as a defense in situations where a person was not posing the same level of threat.

They say officers and juries should consider factors such as the speed of the vehicle, whether there are large gatherings of people on the sidewalks or nearby, and the reason for the initial police interaction. For example, a person fleeing an armed robbery at a bank might pose a higher danger than someone fleeing a traffic stop.

NEW YORK (AP) — Infections from the diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora are surging, with state-level data suggesting that 2026 is already the nation’s worst year for reported cases.

More than 30 states have reported infections this year, and current data from them shows the number of infections surpassing the record U.S. mark of about 4,700 set in 2019. The illness is not usually life threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.

Health officials have not yet definitively identified what is causing the infections. On Tuesday, federal health officials said there may be different infection patterns in different places, although they believe cases in at least four states — Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia — are linked.

Michigan officials blame lettuce

In Michigan — where more than 3,300 cases have been reported — officials say early information points to lettuce or salad greens as a possible culprit.

After conducting more than 1,000 interviews with patients, “early information has shown lettuce as a common product that regularly comes up during the investigation,” said Natasha Bagdasarian, the Michigan health department’s chief medical executive.

Because of that commonality and because produce has been behind some past cyclospora outbreaks, Michigan officials advised consumers to buy whole heads of lettuce, discard the outer layers and thoroughly wash what is left. They also suggested people avoid bagged lettuce and pre-mixed salad kits.

On Tuesday, the Taco Bell restaurant chain issued a statement saying it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

In a call with reporters on Tuesday, federal health officials did not directly respond to a question about whether they are looking at Taco Bell or any specific food vendor or distributor.

“FDA certainly is continuing its traceback investigation on multiple produce items, also including locations that are reported by the case patients before they became sick,” said Donald Prater, The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Acting Deputy Commissioner for Food, in response.

Cyclospora causes ‘explosive’ diarrhea

Cyclospora is a microscopic, spherical parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outbreaks tend to occur most often in the late spring and summer.

The heat-loving parasite infects the bowels and spreads through feces. In the past, people have been infected by consuming fruits or vegetables that were exposed to feces-contaminated irrigation water.

The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli. Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source and, for years, few U.S. cyclospora outbreaks were reported. But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2018 and 2019.

Experts say it’s likely that cyclospora cases historically were underreported, in part because some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora. They attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection.

2019 was the worst year for infections

The worst year in the U.S. for infections was 2019, when about 4,700 illnesses were reported, according to federal data on confirmed and suspected cases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention keeps those numbers, but they traditionally lag what is posted by individual city and state health departments dealing with local outbreaks in real time. On Tuesday, CDC officials issued a health alert that said that since May 1, the agency is aware of 1,645 confirmed domestic cases and more than 5,100 that require further analysis to confirm whether the infections were acquired in the U.S. The reports come from 34 states, and no deaths have been reported, the CDC said.

The true number of cases is likely larger than what has been reported so far because some people may have milder illnesses that they don’t seek care for, said Gwen Biggerstaff, deputy director of CDC’s Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases, in the call with reporters.

It can take days to weeks for someone exposed to the parasite to develop symptoms. It’s not clear to what extent people currently are being infected, or whether many of the exposures happened earlier. But Biggerstaff said official expect that case numbers will continue to grow through August.

The CDC also posted information about the investigation of an outbreak affecting the four states.

The federal alert did not detail how many reports came from each state. But Michigan officials have reported more than 3,300 cases, officials in northwest Ohio said they have seen more than 1,100, New York City officials counted more than 400 and Illinois reported more than 200.

Officials do not think all can be tied to a common source. In Illinois, for example, more than half the people with infections said they had traveled outside the United States, and at least some may have been infected elsewhere.

But Michigan officials believe a large share of their total is likely due to a linked domestic outbreak. CDC officials did not go into detail about why they currently think cases in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia are part of the same outbreak.

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Associated Press writer Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

BIDDEFORD, Maine (AP) — Trump administration officials told Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to suspend most vehicle stops after two deadly shootings within a week, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

The policy change came after an ICE officer shot and killed a Colombian driver Monday in Maine and a week after one shot and killed a motorist in Houston, renewing criticism of the agency’s enforcement tactics that were widely condemned last winter after the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota.

In Florida on Tuesday, a third man in roughly a week died during an encounter with immigration officers. This time, a 28-year-old man was killed after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.

The suspension of vehicle stops allows room for exceptions when executing a criminal warrant or working with partner agencies, according to a person who spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive law enforcement operations. Matthew Felling, a spokesperson for Maine Sen. Angus King, said the senator’s office was also told by the Department of Homeland Security that ICE was suspending stops.

Hundreds of people in Maine protested Tuesday over the fatal shooting of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, a 25-year-old Colombian national.

DHS said Monday that an officer, “fearing for public safety,” shot and killed Durán Guerrero while officers were watching the home of someone they believed was in the U.S. illegally and facing a final order of removal from the country. It said in a post on X that when ICE tried to stop a car driven by someone who came from the home, the person attempted to flee in the vehicle and the officer fired.

That was a shift from how King earlier described the encounter, when he said Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin told him the officer opened fire after the man tried to use his vehicle as a weapon. King said Mullin told him the officers were trying to serve an arrest warrant, but not for the man who was shot.

DHS, which oversees ICE, didn’t respond to an email seeking clarity on what led to the shooting.

In a scathing post on X, outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”

Petro, who has openly quarreled with U.S. President Donald Trump, urged Trump to provide an explanation and accused ICE officers of treating Durán Guerrero as “an inferior being without rights.”

The shooting also sparked outrage in Maine, where hundreds of protesters gathered Tuesday outside an ICE detention center in Scarborough, just up the coast between Biddeford and Portland.

“These people are killers and they must leave our state now,” organizer Todd Chretien told the crowd.

Maine’s congressional delegation on Tuesday demanded a “comprehensive, transparent, and expedited investigation.”

Questions surround the shooting

Durán Guerrero’s shooting marked at least the ninth time ICE has used deadly force since Trump began his immigration crackdown.

Photos showed bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved in the shooting didn’t have body cameras, leaving many questions. Among them are how close the officer was to the vehicle when they fired, whether officers told Durán Guerrero to stop, and why ICE believes he had put the public in danger.

“We are always evaluating our procedures to keep our officers safe and criminals off our streets. We will not disclose or discuss law enforcement tactics,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement.

Border Czar Tom Homan told reporters Tuesday that the investigation needs to play out.

“If officers acted inappropriately or illegally, they’ll be held accountable,” he said.

Maine’s attorney general’s office, which noted that it’s working with federal agencies to investigate, said initial statements suggest the driver was trying to flee in the direction of the officer, whose name hasn’t been released and who was placed on leave.

The state’s other senator, Republican Susan Collins, said Mullin told her that DHS’ Office of Inspector General is investigating in cooperation with the FBI.

Democrats seeking to unseat Collins in November sought Tuesday to connect her with ICE’s methods, which have drawn public scrutiny and derision. Collins later said in a statement that although ICE needs to improve, eliminating the agency would make the nation less safe.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who is vying for Collins’ seat, called the ICE officers at the shooting “thugs” during a vigil Tuesday evening in Lewiston.

“That agency is broken and we need to go back to a time where the rule of law united all of us regardless of the politics,” she told the crowd.

Video shows the shooting’s aftermath

According to neighbors and public records, Guerrero lived in an apartment about 150 feet (46 meters) from where his car came to a rest outside an apartment building across the street from a pawnshop and laundromat.

Video from a nearby business’ security camera obtained by the AP shows a white car slowly approaching an intersection before making several circles. A law enforcement SUV blocks its path and two officers open the driver’s door and drag out a limp body.

It isn’t clear from the video when the shots were fired.

Daniel Boucher said he heard a “pop, pop, pop” and ran to the intersection.

“His face was bloody. His head was bloody,” Boucher said. “I clearly heard the victim say, ‘I tried to stop.’”

Boucher said the officer who shot Durán Guerrero walked close to him.

“He looked at me and said, ‘He tried to run me over,’ or something to that effect,” Boucher said. “I don’t remember his exact words.”

Durán Guerrero is survived by his wife and young daughter

Two advocacy groups — the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition and Presente! — said Durán Guerrero was authorized to work in the U.S.

Neighbors say Durán Guerrero was a friendly and familiar face even though they rarely chatted because he didn’t appear to speak English.

Claudia Morton, who often waved to Durán Guerrero, was distraught.

“The whole world should be crying,” she said.

Dozens of Durán Guerrero’s relatives and neighbors gathered in Bucaramanga, his hometown in northeastern Colombia, to remember him on Tuesday. They stood outside his parents’ home, holding candles around a table where a photograph of him rested beside a statue of the Virgin Mary.

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This story has been corrected to show that the Colombian Embassy says Durán Guerrero was 25, not 26 as the embassy had previously stated.

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Brook reported from New Orleans and Sisak from New York. Associated Press reporters Astrid Suarez in Bogota, Colombia, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.

NEW YORK (AP) — The writer E. Jean Carroll has collected over $5.6 million that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said.

The payment — representing the $5 million jury award, plus interest — was made Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment Tuesday.

“We are pleased to report that she has received the damages payment,” Kaplan said in a statement.

Trump’s lawyers have vowed to continue appealing.

Trump deposited the money in an escrow account shortly after the jury ruled against him. The U.S. Supreme Court recently let the civil verdict stand, clearing the way for Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to release the money.

Trump’s lawyers then sought but were denied an emergency order to block the payment. The one-sentence denial set no conditions on how Carroll may use the money. Her lawyers have said in court papers that she plans to put it in a retirement account.

Trump’s attorneys have since filed another appeal seeking to stop or reverse the payment.

The jury found Trump attacked Carroll in 1996 in a New York luxury department store dressing room and defamed her after she told the story publicly in a memoir in 2019, during his first term as president.

Trump insisted nothing sexual happened between him and Carroll, now 82, a former advice columnist. Trump claimed she was “totally lying” and “ not my type ” in a 2019 interview. He said he didn’t know her, dismissing a 1987 photo of them and their then-spouses at a party as inconsequential, and he accused her of harboring political motives and trying to sell books at his expense.

Trump didn’t attend the trial, where Carroll testified that their flirtatious and friendly chance encounter at the department store turned violent.

Carroll sued Trump after New York changed its laws to give sexual abuse survivors a fresh chance to sue over attacks that happened in the distant past.

Trump is also appealing $83 million in defamation compensation granted to Carroll by a separate Manhattan jury after a 2024 trial where Trump briefly testified.

The Associated Press generally does not identify people who say they have been sexually abused. Carroll has agreed to be named.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. inflation cooled last month as the cost of gas, clothes, and used cars fell, providing some relief to consumers, while underlying price pressures also slowed more than expected.

Consumer prices dropped 0.4% from May to June, the largest monthly drop in four years, the Labor Department said Tuesday, after rising 0.5% in the previous month. On a yearly basis, inflation declined to 3.5%, down from a year-over-year gain of 4.2% in May and lower than many economists expected.

Excluding the food and energy categories, core prices were unchanged from May to June, a positive sign that underlying inflation is declining. On a yearly basis, core prices rose just 2.6%, down from 2.9% the previous month. Core inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.

The core figures suggest that the gas price spike from the Iran war, while it pushed up airfares and some other costs, hasn’t so far led to broad-based, sustained inflation, economists said.

“This reading is very much in the camp that the inflation we’ve had this year is transitory,” said Michael Metcalfe, head of macro strategy at State Street Markets. “Yes, gas prices went up, but nothing else did, more or less.”

Yet oil prices rose for a second day Tuesday as the United States renewed attacks on Iran and President Donald Trump announced a new blockade in the Strait of Hormuz, a key shipping route for about one-fifth of the world’s oil. The increase threatens to undo at least some of the progress that occurred last month.

And many Americans have soured on the economy after five years of elevated inflation, posing a risk to Trump and Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.

For his part, Trump on Tuesday blamed his predecessor, Democrat Joe Biden, for the rate of inflation having spiked to athree-year high just last month.

“It’s not my fault,” he said. “We are putting it to sleep. … Inflation is way down.”

“Remember that for the midterms,” he added.

Yet inflation has risen since Trump’s inauguration last year, to 3.5% from 3% in January 2025. It jumped even further after the Iran war began Feb. 28, when it was just 2.4%

Benign report could make Fed rate hike less likely

Tuesday’s report likely reduces pressure on the Fed to boost its short-term interest rate to combat inflation. Last month, Fed officials left their key rate unchanged at about 3.6%.

“Today’s report gave some breathing room for the Federal Reserve in deciding whether and when to raise interest rates,” Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide Financial, said.

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, in written testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, said Tuesday that the Fed has “no tolerance” for high inflation which he pledged would become “a thing of the past.” Yet he provided no hints about what steps the Fed may take in coming months. Warsh will face questions later Tuesday from members of Congress.

More goods and services saw slower price gains than expected

A wider range of prices cooled last month than economists had forecast. Electricity prices, which have been elevated by spiking demand from data centers, fell 1% from May to June, though they are still 4% higher than a year ago. Clothing prices dropped 0.6% from May to June but are 3.9% more expensive than a year earlier.

Groceries rose 0.2% from May to June and are up 2.7% from last year, while apartment rental costs cooled, rising just 0.1% last month and 2.8% from a year ago.

The inflation-fighters at the Fed remain sharply divided over next steps, according to minutes of their June 16-17 meeting. About half of policymakers support raising interest rates by the end of the year to cool borrowing, spending, and price increases, the minutes showed. Another half are willing to wait for signs that inflation may resume falling as gas prices decline, though the minutes predate the recent flare-up of violence in the Middle East.

And the situation in the Middle East continues to change hour to hour. On Tuesday, the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil, the international standard, climbed 4.6% to $87.13 after the United States and Iran each said the Strait of Hormuz is under its control. Gas prices have also risen about 6 cents a gallon in the past week, to a nationwide average of $3.86 a gallon.

“Today’s number is a very good reading, but so much is going to depend on what happens in the Middle East,” Bostjancic said.

Next steps

Many Fed officials have flagged massive investments in the build out of artificial intelligence infrastructure as a factor that could worsen inflation by pushing up prices for memory chips and other semiconductors, as well as electricity. With chips so much more expensive, companies like Apple, Microsoft, and Dell have announced price increases for laptops, tablets, and video game consoles.

Other Fed officials have offered conflicting views on what steps the Fed could take next. On Monday, Fed governor Christopher Waller said he was worried about core inflation, which he noted had risen from 3% last December to 3.4% in May, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. He pointed out that the cost of more than two-thirds of services have risen by 3% or more compared with a year ago.

“If we get another hot reading on core inflation this week, then the (Fed) will need to consider tightening monetary policy in the near term,” Waller said in a speech in New York.

But last week John Williams, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said that if core inflation stays at a 0.2% monthly pace for the rest of this year, the Fed could avoid hiking rates. Tuesday’s data is along the lines of what Williams wants to see.

Other signs of where prices are headed are mixed. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said last week that a survey found that nearly half the companies in its region that have paid tariffs still plan to lift their prices further.

Separately, Walmart last week said it was rolling back prices on thousands of items, including ground beef, potato chips, toys, and clothes. Trump praised the move on social media and sought to take credit for the reduction, though the company did not mention Trump in its announcement.