AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EDT

Trump, Xi wrap up summit claiming progress stabilizing US-China relations but differences persist

BEIJING (AP) — Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping wrapped up critical talks on Friday, claiming important progress in stabilizing U.S.-China relations even as deep differences persist between the world’s two biggest powers on Iran, Taiwan and more.

Xi welcomed Trump at his official residence, Zhongnanhai, on Friday for their final engagement of the summit before the U.S. leader’s return to Washington. The leaders took a short walk through the grounds that feature ancient trees and Chinese roses, and strolled through a covered passageway with green columns and archways painted with birds and traditional Chinese mountain scenes.

Over tea and lunch, Trump and Xi — with top aides and translators in tow — huddled for nearly three hours of talks before the U.S. leader completed his three-day visit to China.

“It’s been really a great couple of days,” Trump told reporters.

Xi, for his part, called it a “milestone” visit. “We have established a new bilateral relationship, or rather a constructive, strategic, stable relationship,” he said.

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Democrats test a new red state strategy: Back independents over their own nominees

NEW YORK (AP) — Democratic leaders, desperate to compete in red states where their party brand is toxic, are embracing something new this midterm season: Not backing Democrats.

In states like Nebraska, Idaho and Alaska, Democratic officials are, in some cases, looking past their own party’s candidates while subtly encouraging — or even openly promoting — independent candidates they hope can outperform the Democratic label. The Democratic National Committee and some of its allies in Washington are quietly supporting the new strategy.

Meanwhile, some of the independent candidates are chatting in a group text about their approach as they plot a path that could shake up Congress, which is consumed by partisan gridlock.

Nebraska Democrats this week chose a nominee for U.S. Senate, Cindy Burbank, who said a major campaign priority was to ensure a Democrat wouldn’t be on the fall ballot to pull support from independent Dan Osborn. Shortly after polls closed, Burbank reiterated her plan to drop out in the coming weeks during a private conversation with a party official, according to state Democratic chair Jane Kleeb.

Democratic leaders believe Osborn, who came within 7 points of winning a Senate seat in 2024, has the best chance to defeat Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts.

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Tensions flare near Strait of Hormuz as a ship is seized and another is sunk

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A ship anchored off the United Arab Emirates was seized and taken toward Iran and another — a cargo ship near Oman — sank after being attacked, authorities said Thursday, as tensions escalated near the Strait of Hormuz.

It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind these incidents, but they happened as a senior Iranian official reiterated his country’s claim of control over the waterway and another said it had a right to seize oil tankers connected to the U.S.

The turmoil in the strait, which a fifth of the world’s oil passed through before the war, has been a sticking point for weeks in talks between the U.S. and Iran to end the conflict. Iran’s grip on the vital waterway has jolted the world economy and spiked fuel prices far beyond the Middle East.

The ongoing instability in the region came as U.S. President Donald Trump met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing. The White House said both sides had agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open.

Just last week, tensions flared in the strait when U.S. forces fired on and disabled Iranian oil tankers that they said were trying to breach its blockade of Iran’s ports.

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War worsens Lebanon’s economic crisis with job losses, price gouging and slow business

CHIYAH, Lebanon (AP) — Ayman al-Zain watched on a recent afternoon as a bulldozer cleared the rubble of what used to be his sports clothing store, which was one of dozens of buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes against the Hezbollah militant group.

With a nominal truce in place that has reduced but not halted the fighting, Al-Zain tried to assess whether to rebuild the shop in Beirut’s southern suburbs that he once hoped to pass down to his kids. But it’s unlikely he will be able to do so anytime soon, and not only because of the fear of more airstrikes.

“Everything is expensive,” he told The Associated Press. “If I want to open a new store and get mannequins, hangers and some accessories, the prices are very different than before.”

The U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have sent economic shock waves across the Mideast. In Lebanon, those woes have been compounded by the country’s existing economic problems and by largely unregulated markets that are vulnerable to price gouging.

“This continues to be a major economic shock, one of honestly an existential nature,” said Economy Minister Amer Bisat, who is part of the Lebanese Cabinet that came into office over a year ago on a reformist agenda.

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Palestinians in Gaza mark anniversary of 1948 mass expulsion and say today’s catastrophe is worse

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Blink and you might miss the few stone walls that are all that’s left of the village that Yusuf Abu Hamam’s family was forced to flee when he was an infant in 1948.

The village, al-Joura, was demolished by the Israeli military at the time. It has since vanished under neighborhoods of the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon and the grounds of a national park.

The neighborhood where Abu Hamam’s family ended up — and where he spent most of his life — now lies also largely in ruins. Buildings in the Shati Camp in the northern Gaza Strip have been razed and wrecked by Israeli bombardment and demolitions during the past 2 1/2 years of war.

On Friday, Abu Hamam and millions of Palestinians mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe,” referring to the mass expulsion and flight of some 750,000 Palestinians from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. It’s the third commemoration of the Nakba since the war in Gaza began.

The 78-year-old Abu Hamam, one of a dwindling number of Nakba survivors, says the current war is an even greater catastrophe.

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Florida court to consider whether new US House map violates state ban on partisan gerrymandering

New U.S. House districts that could help Republicans win several additional seats in Florida are set to face their first test in court Friday against assertions that they violate a state constitutional ban on partisan gerrymandering.

Lawsuits filed on behalf of voters ask a state judge to block the districts from being used in the midterm elections. The move would create a significant wrinkle in President Donald Trump’s attempt to hold on to a narrow House majority by redrawing voting districts to the GOP’s advantage.

Republicans already hold 20 of Florida’s 28 U.S. House seats. New voting districts signed into law by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis after a swift two-day special legislative session could improve the GOP’s chances to win four additional seats in the November elections.

Florida’s Legislature approved the new House map on April 29 — the same day the U.S. Supreme Court weakened federal Voting Rights Act protections for minorities while striking down a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana. Since then, several Southern states have taken steps to try to eliminate minority districts that have elected Democrats.

Congressional districts typically are redrawn once a decade, after each census, to rebalance populations. But since Trump urged mid-decade redistricting last year, Republicans think they could gain as many as 15 seats from new House maps in Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. Democrats, meanwhile, think they could gain six seats from new maps in California and Utah.

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Supreme Court voting rights ruling fuels a new push to defend Black representation

ATLANTA (AP) — Same fight. New generation.

That’s the mantra of a multiracial group of civil rights leaders and activists organizing opposition to a mostly white conservative alliance dismantling the Voting Rights Act and political districts that allowed Black and other nonwhite voters to choose more of their elected leaders for the last half-century.

“We have to respond as quickly as possible,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in an interview. “The real question,” Johnson told The Associated Press, “is how do we as a country really address the effort to shrink us backwards into a 1950s reality?”

Johnson’s 117-year-old association, which was at the forefront of legal and legislative fights for Black political rights in the 20th century, is among scores of groups coming together Saturday in Alabama for a rally and tribute to the Civil Rights Movement that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They plan events in Selma, where voting rights advocates were attacked by white law enforcement officers on Bloody Sunday, and Montgomery, where a rescheduled march concluded two weeks later.

Unlike 61 years ago, the Alabama events are not the pinnacle of a protracted movement. Instead, civil rights activists hope they serve as a catalyst for a renewed crusade after the U.S. Supreme Court, two weeks ago, further weakened the VRA by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.

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A Texas town may offer a preview of a Trump plan to force noncitizens from public housing

PORT ISABEL, Texas (AP) — Until recently, young children ran in and out of their public housing homes in this Gulf Coast town, playing on sun-dappled lawns as mothers looked over their shoulders for the school bus to drop off their older kids. Suddenly, couches, dressers and refrigerators started appearing curbside for movers or garbage collectors.

Within weeks, the neighborhood was a ghost town and the playground was empty.

What prompted the mass exodus was a bungled message from the housing authority in Port Isabel, a South Texas community of 5,000 people, many of whom are immigrants working at hotels and restaurants on the beaches of nearby South Padre Island. The Port Isabel Housing Authority indicated a Trump administration proposal was about to take effect that would end housing assistance to families with at least one member in the country illegally. The events that followed provided a glimpse of what could happen in communities across the U.S. if the proposed rule is actually finalized.

“The impact was not limited to undocumented immigrants, but really to immigrants who are here legally as well as people within their families who are citizens,” Marie Claire Tran-Leung, senior staff attorney at National Housing Law Project, said.

For decades, families with at least one legal or eligible resident have been allowed to live in public housing provided those who are here illegally or are otherwise ineligible due to their immigration status pay a full, unsubsidized share of rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Department wants to reverse that.

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Death toll in attack on Kyiv apartment building now stands at 24

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that a Russian missile attack on a Kyiv apartment building the previous day killed 24 people, including what local officials said were three teenagers.

Emergency workers finished digging through the building’s rubble after more than a day, Zelenskyy said on X.

The cruise missile hit the nine-story corner block during what the Ukrainian air force said was Russia’s biggest barrage of the country since its all-out invasion.

The assault mostly targeted the Ukrainian capital, where 48 people were wounded, including two children, Zelenskyy said.

Russia hammered Ukraine with large-scale aerial attacks in the days following a May 9-11 ceasefire that U.S. President Donald Trump said he asked Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin to observe. Fighting went on over those 72 hours, although reportedly on a lesser scale.

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CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Raul Castro’s grandson in Havana, US and Cuban officials say

HAVANA (AP) — CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials including Raúl Castro’s grandson during a high-level visit to the island Thursday, Cuban and U.S. officials said.

Ratcliffe met with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, Interior Minister Lázaro Álvarez Casas and the head of Cuban intelligence services, and discussed intelligence cooperation, economic stability and security issues. A CIA official confirmed the meetings to the AP.

Ratcliffe was there “to personally deliver President Donald Trump’s message that the United States is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” the CIA official said.

An official statement from Cuba’s government noted that Thursday’s meeting “took place … against a backdrop of complex bilateral relations.”

While the U.S. stressed that Cuba cannot continue to be a “safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere,” the Cuban delegation insisted that the island presents no threat to U.S. security. Cuban officials also took issue with the nation’s continued inclusion on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.