US and Ukraine near an economic deal with mineral rights but no security promise, officials say

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine and the U.S. have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, three senior Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.

The officials, who were familiar with the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One of them said that Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of U.S. military support that Ukraine urgently needs.

The agreement could be signed as early as Friday and plans are being drawn up for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to travel to Washington to meet President Donald Trump, according to one of the Ukrainian officials.

Another official said the agreement would provide an opportunity for Zelenskyy and Trump to discuss continued military aid to Ukraine, which is why Kyiv is eager to finalize the deal.

Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he’d heard that Zelenskyy was coming and added that “it’s okay with me, if he’d like to, and he would like to sign it together with me.”

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Trump administration says it's cutting 90% of USAID foreign aid contracts

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Wednesday it is eliminating more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad.

The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration.

The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.

The Supreme Court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnight.

Wednesday's disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the administration's retreat from U.S. aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of U.S. policy that foreign aid helps U.S. interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.

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The Trump administration sets the stage for large-scale federal worker layoffs in a new memo

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government is facing a generational realignment as President Donald Trump directs federal agencies to develop plans for eliminating employee positions and consolidating programs.

Senior officials set the downsizing in motion on Wednesday with a memo that dramatically expands Trump's efforts to scale back a workforce described as an impediment to his agenda. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired, and now the Republican administration is turning its attention to career officials with civil service protection.

“We’re cutting down the size of government. We have to," Trump said during the first Cabinet meeting of his second term. "We’re bloated. We’re sloppy. We have a lot of people that aren’t doing their job.”

The ripple effects will be felt around the country. Roughly 80% of federal workers live outside the Washington area, and government services — patent approvals, food inspections, park maintenance and more — could be hindered depending on how cuts are handled.

Resistance is expected. Labor unions, Democratic state leaders and other organizations have tried, with some success, to slow Trump down with litigation, while Republicans are growing more concerned about how a slash-and-burn strategy could affect their constituents.

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Hamas hands over bodies of 4 hostages to Israel as dozens of Palestinians leave Israeli prison

KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — Hamas handed over the bodies of four hostages to the Red Cross early Thursday in exchange for Israel's release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, days before the first phase of the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip was to end.

An Israeli security official confirmed that Hamas handed the hostages' bodies to the Red Cross. Israel said the caskets were delivered with the help of Egyptian mediators through an Israeli crossing and an identification process had begun.

At around the same time, a Red Cross convoy carrying several dozen released Palestinian prisoners left Israel’s Ofer prison headed for the West Bank town of Beitunia, where hundreds of well-wishers jostled for a glimpse of the bus as it arrived.

Friends and family greeted the released prisoners, hugging them and snapping photos. One released man made a victory sign as he was carried on the shoulders of supporters, with the crowd chanting “God is Great.” The released prisoners wore Israeli Prison Service T-shirts that some of them took off and set on fire.

Hours later, buses carrying hundreds of other Palestinian prisoners arrived in the Gaza city of Khan Younis, with some men kissing the ground as they emerged from the buses.

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A Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn't vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, state officials said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious — but preventable — respiratory disease since 2015.

The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night amid the widespread outbreak, Texas' largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.

The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The child wasn't identified but was treated at Covenant Children's Hospital in Lubbock, though the facility noted the patient didn't live in Lubbock County.

“This is a big deal,” Dr. Amy Thompson, a pediatrician and chief executive officer of Covenant Health, said Wednesday at a news conference. “We have known that we have measles in our community, and we are now seeing a very serious consequence.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of the Health and Human Services is watching cases and dismissed the Texas outbreak as “not unusual.”

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Who are the Mennonites in a Texas community where measles is spreading?

The Mennonite population being affected by a measles outbreak in West Texas is part of a larger, loosely affiliated group of churches worldwide with varied beliefs and leadership structures — and with sometimes strained or distant relations with health officials and other public authorities.

Mennonites are part of the wider Anabaptist family of churches, which emerged in 1525 as the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation in Central Europe. Other Anabaptist branches today include the Amish, Brethren and Hutterites. Anabaptists believed that a true biblical church had to follow such principles as non-violence, unconditional forgiveness, adult baptism, church discipline, and a refusal to bear arms or swear oaths.

Early Anabaptists suffered persecution and martyrdom under Catholic and Protestant rulers in Europe, a history that still influences some groups today in their suspicion of governmental authorities, including public health officials.

Mennonites, named for an early leader, Menno Simons, vary widely in practice today.

Some Mennonites have largely assimilated into mainstream culture and dress, with a focus on working for peace and social justice in the larger society. Other Mennonites maintain traditions similar to the Amish, with tight-knit, separatist communities marked by such things as limited technology, nonviolence, male leadership and traditional dress, including women's head coverings. Still others are somewhere on a continuum between such practices.

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Why the Trump administration may want Ukraine's minerals

DETROIT (AP) — The United States will have access to Ukraine's critical mineral wealth, including key ingredients for the clean energy transition, under a deal the two countries are expected to sign later this week.

President Donald Trump, who has pushed for the agreement, has long been critical of a transition to green energies, which include wind and solar power, along with electrification of transportation and appliances, all things that require the various minerals the U.S. will have access to in this deal. So if Trump is against this trend, why go after these minerals?

The quick answer could be they're used in a lot of other things, too. Here's a closer look:

Countries vary in which minerals they deem strategically critical. The U.S. Department of the Interior has designated 50, and Ukraine has more than 20 of those.

Deposits of titanium, which is in high demand, are spread across the country. Titanium is used for making aircraft wings and other aerospace manufacturing, for marine uses, chemical processing and medical devices.

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Nurses' stories recount terror of armed man's attack at Pennsylvania hospital

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A nurse who survived an armed man’s attack on an intensive care unit in a Pennsylvania hospital said in a Facebook post on Wednesday that she was held against him as a shield at gunpoint, arms zip-tied behind her back, as they walked through a doorway and encountered a phalanx of responding police officers.

Nurse Tosha Trostle wrote that she had begged the attacker to let her go and that he pushed the gun against her neck and spine. When they encountered police, she prayed as she heard gunshots and smelled smoke, then heard bullet casings hitting the floor, she wrote.

“I eventually fell into the floor under the weight of the shooter’s body. The officers told me to run. I struggled to get out from under him,” Trostle wrote. “I remember his limp cold hand against my face as I pushed away with my feet.”

She fell twice trying to get to her feet before an officer guided her into another room.

Phone and Facebook messages were left for Trostle on Wednesday. A nurse from the hospital who didn’t want to be identified by name because they weren’t authorized to discuss the events confirmed the posting was from Trostle’s Facebook account.

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A Project 2025 author carries out his vision for mass federal layoffs

ATLANTA (AP) — The Trump administration's demand that federal agencies plan to radically downsize is driven by a key figure in the conservative movement who has long planned this move.

In President Donald Trump’s first term, Russell Vought was a largely behind-the-scenes player who eventually became director of the influential but underappreciated Office of Management and Budget. He is back in that job in Trump’s second term after being the principal author of Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda.

The memo Vought co-signed Wednesday is the clearest assertion of his power and the latest seminal writing for a man who argues the federal bureaucracy is an existential threat to the country itself and that it should dramatically downsize. An OMB spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Here is the context of the Wednesday memo and Vought’s previous work:

In Wednesday's memo, Vought framed the federal government as “costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt” and declared that it is “not producing results for the American public. Instead, tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs.”

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Michelle Trachtenberg, 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' and 'Harriet the Spy' star, dies at 39

NEW YORK (AP) — Michelle Trachtenberg, a former child star who appeared in the 1996 “Harriet the Spy” hit movie and went on to co-star in two buzzy millennial-era TV shows — “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl” — has died. She was 39.

Police responded to a 911 call shortly after 8 a.m. at a 51-story luxury apartment tower in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood where officers found Trachtenberg "unconscious and unresponsive,” according to an NYPD statement.

Paramedics pronounced her dead at the scene. No foul play was suspected and the New York Medical Examiner is investigating the cause of death, police said.

“The family requests privacy for their loss," Trachtenberg's representative, Gary Mantoosh, said in a statement Wednesday.

Trachtenberg was 8 when she began playing Nona Mecklenberg on Nickelodeon’s “The Adventures of Pete & Pete” from 1994 to 1996 and then starred in the title role in the film adaptations of “Harriet the Spy” and “Inspector Gadget,” opposite Matthew Broderick.

News from © The Associated Press, 2025