AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Trump celebrates DeSantis’ decision to drop out, ending a bitter feud that defined the 2024 campaign

ROCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Donald Trump set aside months of criticism and mockery of Ron DeSantis on Sunday night, celebrating his onetime Republican rival as his newest supporter after the Florida governor ended his presidential campaign and endorsed the former president.

For Trump, it’s become a familiar ritual to welcome the backing of someone who tried to take him on. Nonetheless, it was notable at Sunday’s rally in New Hampshire to see Trump praise DeSantis without calling him “DeSantimonious” or “DeSanctus,” putting an end to perhaps the most bitter rivalry of Republicans’ 2024 campaign.

“I just want to thank Ron and congratulate him on doing a very good job,” Trump said at the outset of his remarks. “He was very gracious, and he endorsed me. I appreciate that, and I also look forward to working with Ron.” Trump described DeSantis as “a really terrific person.”

Earlier in the day, DeSantis said via video that he would be ending his campaign two days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation GOP primary. But, Trump’s glee Sunday night aside, it wasn’t the warmest of endorsements.

“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said, offering matter-of-fact analysis through a forced smile, without adding plaudits for Trump.

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Ron DeSantis ends his struggling presidential bid before New Hampshire and endorses Donald Trump

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended his Republican presidential campaign on Sunday, ending his 2024 White House bid just before the New Hampshire primary while endorsing his bitter rival Donald Trump.

The decision leaves Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley as the last major candidates remaining in the race ahead of Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. This is the scenario Trump’s foes in the GOP have long sought, raising the stakes for this week’s contest as the party’s last chance to stop the former president who has so far dominated the race.

But as some Trump critics cheered, DeSantis nodded toward Trump’s primary dominance — and attacked Haley — in an exit video he posted on social media.

“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said in the straight-to-camera video, delivered in a cheerful tone.

He continued: “I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents.”

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Palestinian death toll in Gaza surpasses 25,000 while Israel announces the death of another hostage

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The Palestinian death toll from the war between Israel and Hamas has soared past 25,000, the Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip said Sunday, while Israel announced the death of another hostage and appeared far from achieving its goals of freeing more than 100 others and crushing the militant group.

The war’s deaths, destruction and displacement are without precedent in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The war has divided Israelis while the offensive threatens to ignite a wider conflict involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen that support the Palestinians.

Furious with the Israeli government and demanding the release of remaining hostages, relatives and others set up a tent camp outside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem and vowed to stay until a deal is reached.

Netanyahu, in a defiant new statement, said he stressed in his conversation Friday with U.S. President Joe Biden that he rejects Hamas demands for a cease-fire, Israeli forces’ withdrawal and the release of Palestinians held by Israel in exchange for the remaining hostages. He said that agreeing means another devastating Hamas attack “would only be a matter of time.”

Netanyahu also rejects calls from U.S, its closest ally, for postwar plans that would include a path to Palestinian statehood. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the refusal to accept a two-state solution unacceptable.

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Much of US still gripped by arctic weather as Memphis deals with numerous broken water pipes

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Subfreezing conditions and treacherous roadways have contributed to dozens of deaths this month across the U.S., where states as far south as Texas and Florida remain gripped by deadly arctic weather Sunday. But the numbing cold is expected to ease up in the coming days.

Nationally, winter storms have claimed at least 72 lives around the U.S. this January, many involving hypothermia or road accidents.

On Sunday, crews in Memphis, Tennessee, continued to work around the clock to find and fix broken pipes that were causing low water pressure throughout the system. Memphis Light, Gas and Water President and CEO Doug McGowen told reporters Sunday afternoon that crews are making progress and he expects most of the 700,000 people the utility services to have water restored over the next 24 hours.

“If we remain on this very positive path, and we are on a positive path, I believe that by Wednesday we will have pressure sufficient for us to take samples of our water system,” he said. “Assuming good results, we think that means a Thursday for lifting of the boil water advisory.”

McGowen also asked people to stop dripping their faucets to help build pressure in the system.

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A temple to one of Hinduism’s holiest deities is opening in India. What’s its significance?

AYODHYA, India (AP) — About 80 chartered flights have landed at the new international airport of India’s holy city of Ayodhya for Monday’s partial opening of the controversial grand temple for one of Hinduism’s most revered deities, Lord Ram.

Ayodhya’s airport can barely accommodate the influx of private jets. “The planes will depart after dropping guests,” airport manager Saurabh Singh said.

The temple was built over an ancient razed mosque, and most political opposition leaders are boycotting the temple’s opening, saying it doesn’t befit a secular India.

However, the list of attendees boasts some of India’s most influential people: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani and Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan.

Ahead of the upcoming general election, Modi’s Hindu nationalist party is using the elaborate consecration ceremony to lobby the country’s Hindu majority.

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Can Trump be stopped? Key questions ahead of New Hampshire after DeSantis drops out of race

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — Donald Trump’s effort to march to the Republican presidential nomination faces perhaps its greatest challenge on Tuesday when voters in New Hampshire hold the first-in-the-nation primary.

With Ron DeSantis ending his 2024 campaign and endorsing Trump on Sunday, the primary becomes the first one-on-one matchup between Trump and Nikki Haley.

The former president enters the contest emboldened by his record-setting performance in last week’s Iowa caucuses. But New Hampshire has a more moderate political tradition and primary rules that allow unaffiliated voters to participate in the race. Trump-backed MAGA candidates have struggled here in recent years.

Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and onetime South Carolina governor, is hoping to capitalize on those vulnerabilities, especially now that she is the only major candidate left in the GOP primary aiming to defeat Trump outright. DeSantis, even before dropping out altogether, had effectively surrendered New Hampshire to focus instead on South Carolina’s Feb. 24 primary. But he did have supporters in New Hampshire who now must decide what to do.

A Haley victory would usher in a more competitive phase of a primary that Trump has so far dominated. A Trump win, however, could create a sense of inevitability that he would become the GOP nominee for the third consecutive time.

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At least 27 people are reported killed in an attack on Donetsk in Russian-occupied Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Moscow-installed officials said Ukrainian shelling killed at least 27 people and wounded 25 on Sunday at a market on the outskirts of Donetsk, a Russian-occupied city in the eastern part of the country.

Among the injured in the suburb of Tekstilshchik were two children, said Denis Pushilin, the local leader.

Ukrainian officials in Kyiv did not comment on the incident, and the claims could not be independently verified by The Associated Press. Both sides have increasingly relied on longer-range attacks this winter amid largely unchanged positions on the 1,500-kilometer (930-mile) front line in the nearly 2-year-old war.

The artillery shells that hit the area had been fired from the area of Kurakhove and Krasnohorivka to the west, Pushilin said, adding that emergency services responded to the scene.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “strongly condemns all attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including today’s shelling of the city of Donetsk in Ukraine,” according to a U.N. spokesperson, adding that all such attacks are prohibited under international humanitarian law.

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Latest EPA assessment shows almost no improvement in river and stream nitrogen pollution

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The nation’s rivers and streams remain stubbornly polluted with nutrients that contaminate drinking water and fuel a gigantic dead zone for aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a recently released Environmental Protection Agency assessment.

It’s a difficult problem that’s concentrated in agricultural regions that drain into the Mississippi River. More than half of the basin’s miles of rivers and streams were in poor condition for nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer that drains into waterways, the agency found. For decades, federal and state officials have struggled to control farm runoff, the biggest source of nutrient pollution that is not typically federally regulated.

It’s a problem only expected to get harder to control as climate change produces more intense storms that dump rain on the Midwest and South. Those heavy rains flood farm fields, pick up commercial fertilizers and carry them into nearby rivers.

“It’s really worrying that we are clearly not meeting the goals that we’ve set for ourselves,” said Olivia Dorothy, director of river restoration with the conservation group American Rivers.

The assessment is based on samples collected in 2018 and 2019 and it allows experts to compare river conditions from previous rounds of sampling, although different sampling sites were used. It takes years for the agency to compile the results and release the report, which is the most comprehensive assessment of the nation’s river and stream health. Phosphorus levels dipped slightly while nitrogen levels remained almost exactly the same.

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Alabama plans to carry out first nitrogen gas execution. How will it work and what are the risks?

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama is preparing to use a new method of execution: nitrogen gas.

Kenneth Eugene Smith, who survived the state’s previous attempt to put him to death by lethal injection in 2022, is scheduled to be put to death Thursday by nitrogen hypoxia. If carried out, it would the first new method of execution since lethal injection was introduced in 1982.

The state maintains that nitrogen gas will cause unconsciousness quickly but critics have likened the never-used method of execution to human experimentation.

Nitrogen hypoxia execution would cause death by forcing the inmate to breathe pure nitrogen, depriving him or her of the oxygen needed to maintain bodily functions.

No state has used nitrogen hypoxia to carry out a death sentence. In 2018, Alabama became the third state — along with Oklahoma and Mississippi — to authorize the use of nitrogen gas to execute prisoners.

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Kelce scores twice and Chiefs beat Bills 27-24 to advance to face Ravens in AFC championship

ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Travis Kelce caught two touchdown passes from Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs advanced to their sixth straight AFC championship game with a 27-24 win over the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night.

Isiah Pacheco scored the go-ahead touchdown on a 4-yard run 40 seconds into the fourth quarter, the last of five lead changes. The Chiefs clinched the win by running out the clock after Buffalo’s Tyler Bass was wide right on a 44-yard field goal attempt with 1:43 remaining.

The defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs (13-6) move on to Baltimore to face Lamar Jackson and the conference’s top-seeded Ravens, who beat Houston 34-10 on Saturday.

Kansas City is 0-1 in the playoffs against the Ravens, following a 30-7 loss in the 2010 wild-card round. Baltimore defeated Kansas City 36-35 in their most recent regular-season matchup in Week 2 of the 2021 season.

“There’s no weakness there,” Mahomes said of the Ravens. “It’s going to take our best effort. Defense, offense, special teams, they do it all. It’s always a great challenge and that stadium’s going to be rocking, so we’re excited for the challenge.”