JOINT BASE ANDREWS — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would respect the results of the U.S. midterm elections "if they're honest," in what appeared to be a fresh bid to sow doubt ahead of next week's crucial vote. Trump has ramped up his baseless, years-old claims of mass voter fraud as polls show Republicans could lose control of Congress in Tuesday's elections. "I will, if they're honest elections," Trump told reporters when asked if he would respect the results of the midterms, as he headed on a campaign trip to Texas. The 80-year-old president also gave a guarded pledge to work with the rival Democrats if Republicans lose their grip on the House of Representatives and Senate. "We'll figure a way. Look, I have strong veto. I hope that that won't be the case, but if it is, that's happened before with many presidents," Trump said at Joint Base Andrews near Washington. "You have strong veto, and you end up working on deals." Republicans fear a Democrat "blue wave" in the midterms as voters punish them over inflation stoked by oil prices that have soared since Trump launched his war

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday announced a $1 million reward for information about voter fraud, in a fresh bid to sow doubt ahead of the U.S. midterms and push his false claim about winning the 2020 election. "Anybody reporting Voter Fraud in the past Elections, or the upcoming 2026 Midterm Election, will be paid $1,000,000 upon the arrest and conviction of those that created the Fraud!" Trump wrote on his Truth Social network. The president gave no details of how the reward would be funded or administered. With the November 3 elections just eight days away, polls show Democrats pulling ahead as Republicans fight to retain control of both chambers of Congress. A Democratic victory would threaten to stall Trump's agenda and expose his administration to congressional investigations during his final two years in office. Trump has repeatedly made baseless allegations about election fraud, including his claim that he won the 2020 presidential election. Studies have consistently found voter fraud exceptionally rare, particularly voting by non-citizens, which is already ille

WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump said he would ban the term artificial intelligence in documents and everything else, as he questioned why the Wall Street Journal was not using his preferred term, super intelligence. "When will The Wall Street Journal start calling Artificial Intelligence (AI), a very bad and inaccurate name, SI (Super Intelligence), the name which virtually everyone else is using, or soon will be," Trump said in a post on Truth Social. "In short order, we will be officially BANNING the term, “AI/Artificial Intelligence,” in all relevant documents, and everything else, due to its inaccuracy."

One of the seven Cornell University students disciplined in connection with an alleged 2024 gang rape at a fraternity house returned to campus this fall after a three-semester suspension and was placed in a co-ed dorm with a roommate who had no idea about his past, according to a professor familiar with the housing arrangement. University housing officials then left the accused student in that shared room for two weeks after the woman who made the allegation filed a lawsuit in September publicly accusing him of rape , psychology professor Corinna Loeckenhoff said at a Faculty Senate meeting. Meanwhile, Cornell students shared the accused student’s name and dorm location on social media. “This was a clear security risk,” Loeckenhoff told Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff at the Oct. 14 meeting, according to a recording obtained by The Associated Press. “Cornell’s own records show that, at the very least, he admitted to taking drugs and having sex with an intoxicated person,” Loeckenhoff said. “Why was Housing Services not aware of this? They had no clue until the shocked

NEW YORK — Wall Street is ticking higher Tuesday as stocks in the artificial-intelligence industry support the market, at least for now. The S&P 500 rose 0.5 percent and pulled within 1.3 percent of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 27 points, or 0.1 percent, as of 11 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.9 percent higher. The majority of stocks within the S&P 500 were falling, but gains for several influential AI stocks made up for that. Such stocks have been swerving for weeks on worries about whether their boom is under threat because of how expensive it’s become for companies to borrow money to build data centers and buy more AI chips. Broadcom climbed 3.3 percent after announcing a $63 billion financing deal where several Wall Street firms will help Anthropic get access to Broadcom's XPU AI accelerators and networking solutions. Elsewhere in the industry, Advanced Micro Devices rose 4 percent and was one of the strongest forces pushing up on the S&P 500 after Broadcom. CoreWeave, a company that’s borrowed money to buy

Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet are expected to report accelerating cloud growth this week, but turbulence in global markets and mounting concerns over the cost of financing AI investments are clouding the outlook. Investors are pressing for evidence that the AI boom can deliver swift returns to justify its enormous price tag. Rising bond yields at AI cloud providers such as CoreWeave and record costs to insure Meta Platform's debt have amplified concerns about how the massive AI infrastructure buildout is being funded, particularly as higher U.S. interest rates loom. Market turmoil has rekindled warnings of an AI bubble from investors, including hedge fund Citadel's founder Ken Griffin, and pushed companies to delay their IPOs. An expected Democratic sweep of the U.S. midterm elections could spell more trouble for data centers that are already a target of protests over their impact on power grids, electricity bills and the environment. China's tech-stock boom has unravelled, wiping out about $480 billion in market value in less than four months as concerns over AI demand and spending an

KHERSON, Ukraine — Russia and Ukraine began observing a localized ceasefire in a devastated southern Ukrainian city on Tuesday, ahead of a planned humanitarian mission the White House said was brokered by U.S. first lady Melania Trump. Moscow kept up its deadly missile attacks on other cities in the meantime. Meanwhile, Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister spoke by phone with Russian President Vladimir Putin, officials said, in their first known direct contact since shortly after Russia's all-out invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, 2022. Many Western officials have accused Putin of masterminding a campaign of disruption across Europe and have sought to diplomatically isolate the Russian leader. Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb later spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to Zelenskyy's office. A ceasefire takes hold in a southern Ukraine city, officials say A local pause in fighting started at 3 a.m. to allow an aid mission into the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky this week. Food and medical supplie

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will be joined by one of his potential successors on Tuesday as he tries to keep Texas, which hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office in 32 years, in the Republican column in next week's midterm elections. The president will appear in Corpus Christi and Lubbock in his effort to boost Republican Ken Paxton's competitive U.S. Senate campaign against Democrat James Talarico. Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to help Trump show off a newly arrived oil tanker filled with Venezuelan crude to be processed in Texas refineries, according to a congressional aide and two U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Rubio’s schedule ahead of a public announcement. The events mark Trump's third swing through Texas since holding a first-of-its-kind midterm convention in Dallas in September, a sign of the significance he's putting on a state that has spent decades as a Republican stronghold. However, Talarico has made the race competitive, capitalizing on a difficult political environment for Republicans and Paxton's history of ethic

KINSHASA — Africa's latest outbreak of Ebola has passed 10,000 confirmed cases, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Congolese health authorities said on Tuesday, with almost 5,000 fatalities. According to the DRC's figures, 10,060 people have been infected and 4,887 have died since the virus was first detected in May in the vast central African country's deadliest outbreak in its history. Cases have likewise been detected in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, with the World Health Organization warning that Africa faces a "complex" task to contain an outbreak spanning the east, west and center of the continent. While some 2,684 have recovered from the virus in the DRC, the epidemic's fatality rate appears to be close to 50 percent, according to the Congolese National Institute of Public Health. Among the many challenges facing the response is the lack of any approved vaccines or treatments for the rare Bundibugyo species of Ebola behind the epidemic. After spreading under the radar for weeks, the virus was first detected in the northeastern Congolese province of It

ROME — Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday denounced any religious justification for wars raging around the world, saying “there is no such thing as a holy war.” “Only peace is holy,” Leo said in a video-message to a gathering of religious leaders in the Italian hilltop town of Assisi. The American pope was supposed to have presided over the gathering in person, but had to cancel his participation as he recovers from Oct. 13 lung cancer surgery. Instead, Leo sent a videotaped message that was broadcast to the delegates, who included the Archbishop of Canterbury Sarah Mullally, spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, as well as Muslim, Buddhist and other Christian leaders. They were in Assisi, the birthplace of the peace-loving St. Francis, to mark the 40th anniversary of a landmark interfaith peace meeting called by St. John Paul II. That encounter, controversial at the time because it featured leaders of different faiths praying together, spawned a movement of interreligious peace appeals and gatherings. In his message, the American pope denounced the “troubling revival of