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

Trump expresses doubts Putin is willing to end the Ukraine war, a day after saying a deal was close

ROME (AP) — President Donald Trump said Saturday that he doubts Russia’s Vladimir Putin wants to end his war in Ukraine, expressing new skepticism that a peace deal can be reached soon. Only a day earlier, Trump had said Ukraine and Russia were “ very close to a deal.”

“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days,” Trump said in a social media post as he flew back to the United States after attending Pope Francis’ funeral at the Vatican, where he met briefly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump also hinted at further sanctions against Russia.

“It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through “Banking” or “Secondary Sanctions?” Too many people are dying!!!” Trump wrote.

The new doubts aired by Trump come as the president and top aides intensify their push to come to a deal to end the war that began in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

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Russia says it has fully reclaimed the Kursk region. Ukraine says it is still fighting there.

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — All Ukrainian troops have been forced from parts of Russia’s Kursk region, which Moscow lost control of last year to a surprise Ukrainian incursion, Russia’s top general said in a Kremlin meeting Saturday. Ukrainian officials denied the claim.

Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff for Russia’s Armed Forces, gave Russian President Vladimir Putin the news in a meeting Saturday, Peskov told Russian state news outlet Interfax.

In a statement, Putin congratulated the Russian soldiers and commanders and said that Kyiv’s incursion had “completely failed”.

“The complete defeat of our enemy along Kursk’s border region creates the right conditions for further successes for our troops and in other important areas of the front,” he said.

Ukrainian officials, however, said the fighting was still continuing. “The statements of representatives of the high command of the aggressor country about the alleged end of hostilities in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation are not true,” Ukraine’s General staff said Saturday.

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Mighty and meek say farewell to Pope Francis during Vatican funeral and last popemobile ride

VATICAN CITY (AP) — World leaders and rank-and-file Catholic faithful bade farewell to Pope Francis in a funeral Saturday that highlighted his concern for people on the peripheries and reflected his wish to be remembered as a simple pastor. Though presidents and princes attended the Mass in St. Peter’s Square, prisoners and migrants welcomed Francis’ coffin at his final resting place in a basilica across town.

According to Vatican estimates, some 250,000 people flocked to the funeral Mass at the Vatican and 150,000 more lined the motorcade route through downtown Rome to witness the first funeral procession for a pope in a century. They clapped and cheered “Papa Francesco” as his simple wooden coffin traveled aboard a modified popemobile to St. Mary Major Basilica, some 6 kilometers (3.5-miles) away.

As bells tolled, the pallbearers brought the coffin past several dozen migrants, prisoners and homeless people holding white roses outside the basilica. Once inside, the pallbearers stopped in front of the icon of the Virgin Mary that Francis loved. Four children deposited the roses at the foot of the altar before cardinals performed the burial rite at his tomb in a nearby niche.

“I’m so sorry that we’ve lost him,” said Mohammed Abdallah, a 35-year-old migrant from Sudan who was one of the people who welcomed Francis to his final resting place. “Francis helped so many people, refugees like us, and many other people in the world.”

Earlier, Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogized history’s first Latin American pontiff during the Vatican Mass as a pope of the people, a pastor who knew how to communicate to the “least among us” with an informal, spontaneous style.

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A massive explosion at an Iranian port linked to missile fuel shipment kills 14, injures some 750

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — A massive explosion and fire rocked a port Saturday in southern Iran purportedly linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant, killing 14 people and injuring around 750 others.

Helicopters and aircraft dumped water from the air on the raging fire through the night into Sunday morning at the Shahid Rajaei port. The explosion occurred just as Iran and the United States met Saturday in Oman for the third round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.

No one in Iran outright suggested that the explosion came from an attack. However, even Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who led the talks, on Wednesday acknowledged that “our security services are on high alert given past instances of attempted sabotage and assassination operations designed to provoke a legitimate response.”

State media offered the casualty figures. But there were few details on what sparked the blaze just outside of Bandar Abbas, causing other containers to reportedly explode.

The port took in a shipment of the missile fuel chemical in March, the private security firm Ambrey said. The fuel is part of a shipment of ammonium perchlorate from China by two vessels to Iran first reported in January by the Financial Times. The chemical used to make solid propellant for rockets was going to be used to replenish Iran’s missile stocks, which had been depleted by its direct attacks on Israel during the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

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Iran and the US hold hours of expert talks in Oman over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — Iran and the United States held in-depth negotiations in Oman over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program on Saturday, ending the discussions with a promise for more talks and perhaps another high-level meeting next weekend.

The talks ran for several hours in Muscat, the mountain-wrapped capital of this sultanate on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told state television after the talks that the parties exchanged written points throughout the day in discussions that he described as “very serious and work-focused.”

“This time, the negotiations were much more serious than in the past, and we gradually entered into deeper and more detailed discussions,” he said. “We have moved somewhat away from broader, general discussions — though it is not the case that all disagreements have been resolved. Differences still exist both on major issues and on the details.”

A senior U.S. administration official said that the talks were “positive and productive.”

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Protesters chant after arrest of judge accused of helping man evade immigration authorities

MILWAUKEE (AP) — Protesters chanted and marched Saturday outside the FBI after agents arrested a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities. The case has escalated a clash between the Trump administration and local authorities over the Republican president’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest. The man was taken into custody outside the courthouse after agents chased him on foot.

President Donald Trump’s administration has accused state and local officials of interfering with his immigration enforcement priorities. The arrest also comes amid a growing battle between the administration and the federal judiciary over the president’s executive actions over deportations and other matters.

On Saturday, protesters chanted “Immigrants are here to stay” and held up signs saying, “Liberty and Justice for All” outside the FBI’s Milwaukee division.

“The judiciary acts as a check to unchecked executive power. And functioning democracies do not lock up judges,” Democratic state Rep. Ryan Clancy told the crowd before it marched around the area.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has appointed a new deputy in a major step in naming a successor

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday named a veteran aide and confidant as his new vice president. It’s a major step by the aging leader to designate a successor.

The appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as vice president of the Palestine Liberation Organization does not guarantee he will be the next Palestinian president. But it makes him the front-runner among longtime politicians in the dominant Fatah party who hope to succeed the 89-year-old Abbas.

The move is unlikely to boost the image among many Palestinians of Fatah as a closed and corrupt movement out of touch with the general public.

Abbas hopes to play a major role in postwar Gaza. He has been under pressure from Western and Arab allies to rehabilitate the Palestinian Authority, which has limited autonomy in parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. He has announced a series of reforms in recent months, and last week his Fatah movement approved the new position of PLO vice president.

The PLO is the internationally recognized representative of the Palestinian people and oversees the Western-backed Palestinian Authority. Abbas has led both entities for two decades.

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Only about half of Republicans say Trump has focused on the right priorities, AP-NORC poll finds

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many Americans do not agree with President Trump’s aggressive efforts to quickly enact his agenda, a new poll finds, and even Republicans are not overwhelmingly convinced that his attention has been in the right place.

Americans are nearly twice as likely to say Trump has been mostly focusing on the wrong priorities as to say he has been focusing on the right ones, according to the survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Further, about 4 in 10 Americans say Trump has been a “terrible” president in his second term, and about 1 in 10 say he has been “poor.” In contrast, about 3 in 10 say he has been “great or ”good,” while just under 2 in 10 say he has been “average.”

Most haven’t been shocked by the drama of Trump’s first 100 days. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults say the first few months of Trump’s second term have been mostly what they expected, and only about 3 in 10 say the Republican president’s actions have been mostly unexpected.

But that does not mean they are pleased with how those opening months have gone.

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Israeli airstrike kills 10 people, half of them children, as mediators try to restart a ceasefire

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike flattened a three-story home in Gaza City on Saturday, killing 10 people — half of them children — as Arab mediators scrambled to restart a ceasefire.

Israeli strikes killed at least 49 people in the past 24 hours, according to health officials.

The dead in the early morning airstrike in a neighborhood in western Gaza City included three women and five children, according to Shifa Hospital, which received the bodies.

Israel’s military said that it had struck a Hamas militant and the structure where he operated collapsed, adding that the collapse was under review.

“There is no one from the resistance among them,” said Saed Al-Khour, who lost his family in the strike. “Since 1 o’clock until now we have been pulling out the remains of children, women and elderly people.” He stood amid the rubble, under a tilted ceiling.

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Boston celebrates 1965 Freedom Rally led by MLK as advocates urge continued fight against injustice

BOSTON (AP) — As a Black teenager growing up in Boston, Wayne Lucas vividly remembers joining about 20,000 people to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speak out against the city’s segregated school system and the entrenched poverty in poor communities.

Sixty years on, Lucas was back on the Boston Common on Saturday to celebrate the anniversary of what became known as the 1965 Freedom Rally. He joined others in calling for continued activism against many of the same injustices and inequities that King fought against, and in criticizing President Donald Trump and his administration for current divisions and fears about race and immigration across the country.

“The message was … that we still have work to do,” said Lucas, 75. “It was a lot of inspiration by every speaker out there.”

The gathering drew several hundred people on a rainy and windy day, conditions similar to those during the 1965 event. It was preceded by a march by a smaller group of people, mostly along the route taken to the Boston Common 60 years earlier. Up to 125 different organizations took part.

King’s son, Martin Luther King III, gave a keynote speech, saying he never thought racism would still be around and on the rise like it is today.