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

EU chief floats ‘associate membership’ for Canada. But that doesn’t exist yet

BRUSSELS (AP) — By opening the door this week for Canada to become the first “associate member” of the European Union, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered Prime Minister Mark Carney hope, but also an illusion.

There are many ways to take steps toward joining the world’s biggest trade bloc, or to deepen trade or political ties with it, but associate membership isn’t one of them. It simply does not exist.

Still, no matter how vague, von der Leyen’s offer was a win for Carney, who is locked in a trade war with U.S. President Donald Trump. It also offers the EU a firm partnership with another Western democracy as its own ties with and trust in its old ally the United States fade.

“In this new world, we must urgently reimagine our partnerships,” von der Leyen said on Wednesday. Then she did exactly that, saying to Carney: “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada being the first associate member of the EU.”

While “associate membership” is yet to be defined, Association Agreements do exist. More than 20 countries — ranging from Albania to Israel to Ukraine — already have them with the bloc.

___

Iranians rally by the hundreds of thousands in biggest show of defiance since war began

CAIRO (AP) — Hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied Friday in a government-organized show of defiance after months of war, pledging their readiness to take up arms in the biggest such demonstration since the United States and Israel attacked in February.

Iran’s government has sought to rally the people and stress national unity, even as the economy worsens under a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and new U.S. sanctions meant to increase Tehran’s economic pain.

Estimates varied of the number of people volunteering to receive limited military training and defend the country in an effort described as “Janfaday-e Iran,” or the “ones who sacrifice their lives for Iran.” They marched through downtown Tehran in combat uniform, carrying flags, as onlookers cheered.

For days, state media have encouraged Iranians to join the campaign, saying training with assault rifles would begin soon. The volunteers would be an additional layer of security to the powerful Revolutionary Guard paramilitary and its all-volunteer arm, the Basij.

Tehran’s Guard chief, Gen. Hassan Hassanzadeh, told the state broadcaster that over 600,000 people had registered to participate, with over 1 million expected to take part in the training. On Friday morning, the broadcaster estimated over 300,000 people were on the streets.

___

Fatal building collapse highlights dangers plaguing Gaza nearly a year after ceasefire

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The deadly collapse of a multistory building in Gaza has drawn new attention to the hardships facing Palestinians there nearly a year after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas promised to kickstart reconstruction.

But as talks faltered, plans for rebuilding stalled. Many residents have since moved back into some of the hundreds of thousands of homes damaged by the war despite the risk of weakened foundations and unstable walls suddenly giving way.

The Gaza Health Ministry said 21 people were killed in the collapse in Gaza City on Wednesday. Um Mohammad Adas, whose relatives were among the dead, said the fallen building had become a shelter of last resort.

“Now, they are lying in the street homeless and with absolutely nothing,” she said of her family members who survived the collapse. “Even the clothes they are wearing were borrowed.”

Families living in similar structures said they couldn’t afford any other shelter.

___

Judge orders Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Kennedy Center to provide 30 days’ notice before making any major physical changes to the building, including demolishing it as President Donald Trump has threatened.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said his ruling would “avoid any confusion on that score given more recent events,” including the building’s sudden closure to the public on Wednesday.

Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, said he closed the iconic performing arts center temporarily due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration” of the aging building. The building will be closed for at least seven days to “assess existing safety risks in those portions of the main building exhibiting severe structural deterioration,” Floca said.

The temporary closure, which occurred without notice, is separate from a vote Tuesday by the Kennedy Center’s board to close the center indefinitely for repairs, Floca and other officials said. The closure was based on an inspection of the roof terrace canopy and a partial ceiling collapse earlier this month, Floca said. The closure may be extended after evaluation next week, he added.

Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center’s chairman last year by loyalists on the board, said Wednesday that his efforts to restore the aging building deserve recognition, “because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down. It’s in very, very bad shape, very dangerous shape.”

___

Early voting begins in US midterm elections that could flip control of Congress

HENRICO, Va. (AP) — In-person voting for this year’s midterm elections begins Friday, ushering in the final six weeks for Americans to decide who they trust to lead Congress through a cost-of-living crisis, a prolonged war in Iran and other pressing issues.

Election administrators say they’re prepared and confident the vote will be accurate and secure. Nevertheless, President Donald Trump has continued with efforts to denigrate certain voting methods and reshape how U.S. elections are run, through court challenges, an expansive federal hunt for noncitizen voters and a pressure campaign to force election officials to share sensitive voter data.

Friday marks the start of early voting in Virginia. Voters in a handful of other states, including Idaho, Minnesota and South Dakota, are able to cast absentee ballots in person, typically at a local election office or voting center. More expansive early voting is scheduled to begin in those and other states in the coming weeks.

The Nov. 3 election includes votes for governor and state legislature in most states and will determine whether the U.S. House and Senate maintain their Republican majorities. If Democrats retake Congress, it will alter the trajectory of the final two years of Trump’s term, likely leading to investigations and other oversight efforts.

The start of early voting comes at a time of deep angst among many Americans about issues including rising gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran, the looming risks of artificial intelligence technology and Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement campaign.

___

Anthropic says its model Claude is helping to build the next version of itself

Anthropic’s Claude is helping the company develop the next, more intelligent version of the model, the artificial intelligence lab said in an announcement Thursday.

Claude is leading 26% of Anthropic’s model research and development, which the company said means it can complete most of a given task “end-to-end from a high-level prompt” while still being under human supervision. The model is not yet working completely autonomously.

Still, about 90% of the company’s research and development is done in “collaboration” with Claude, which Anthropic said means the model can do “large chunks of work under close human direction.”

The announcement came as some leading figures in AI, led in large part by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, are calling for a slowdown in the technology’s development over safety concerns.

As leaders consider pacing AI’s development, “we should do everything possible to minimize the gap between what frontier labs know and what the public knows,” the company said in a blog post. “This means better measuring the development of AI, reporting on it publicly, and giving society an opportunity to decide how to use this information.”

___

Postal Service chief says work stopped on computer system key to Trump effort to limit mail voting

WASHINGTON (AP) — The top official at the U.S. Postal Service said Thursday that the agency has stopped work on developing a controversial computer system that was central to President Donald Trump’s effort to limit mail voting after the Supreme Court rejected his executive order this week.

“There’s an injunction so we’re not doing anything,” postmaster general David Steiner told The Associated Press in an interview.

Steiner, a onetime chief executive of Waste Management, has spent most of the past year atop the postal service navigating political and financial challenges. He’s pressing Congress for changes that would help him resolve what he has called a “liquidity crisis.”

And Trump’s efforts to largely eradicate mail voting turned the postal service into an unlikely arbiter of who is eligible to vote just months before this year’s critical midterm elections, a role Steiner seemingly had little interest in playing. Unlike Trump, who was sharply critical of the Supreme Court decision and ridiculed some of the justices, Steiner offered no assessment of the court’s action.

Steiner also declined to take a position on Trump’s policy, presenting himself as the leader of an “independent agency of the executive branch” whose influence over the president’s order was limited to operational concerns.

___

Trump refers to Black man from racially offensive 1988 campaign ad while stumping in North Carolina

As President Donald Trump tries to convince voters that Democrats have let crime run amok, he’s digging into the country’s political past to reference one of the most controversial campaign advertisements that relied heavily on racist tropes.

During a campaign stop Wednesday in Gastonia, North Carolina, to stump for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley, Trump resurrected a 1988 George H.W. Bush presidential campaign ad featuring Willie Horton, a Black man convicted of rape and assault after his release through a Massachusetts prison furlough program.

A grainy black-and-white prison photo of Horton was used in the ad targeting then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, who was ahead of Bush in the polls. On Wednesday, Trump evoked the Horton ad in an effort to convince voters Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper, Whatley’s opponent in the Senate race, is soft on crime.

“Willie Horton was a bad guy, really bad guy,” Trump said, before comparing Dukakis’s release of Horton to the pretrial release of a Black man who faces a murder charge for last year’s killing of a white Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Same thing as this, same as, same exact thing,” the president told the crowd in Gastonia.

___

Virginia’s attorney general says DHS may have violated state election law after whistleblower report

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s attorney general said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security may have violated several state laws after a whistleblower accused its employees of misrepresenting themselves on voter lookup tools to hunt for noncitizen voters.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Attorney General Jay Jones demanded that DHS confirm in writing whether it had directed anyone to access Virginia voters’ information without first obtaining permission from those voters.

“Virginia Election Code does not permit disclosure of this protected information to the federal government without a court order,” he wrote in the letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. The state explicitly limits its voter lookup tools to individuals who attest under penalty of law that they are looking up their own records.

The AP has asked DHS for comment on the letter.

Jones also asked Mullin to preserve all related records, including access logs, correspondence and training materials mentioned in the whistleblower report.

___

Bombing at mosque near police offices in Pakistan kills at least 7 and wounds more than 30

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — A powerful bomb exploded Friday at a mosque near a building housing police offices in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least seven people and wounding more than 30, police and rescue officials said.

Bilal Faizi, a senior rescue official, said the bombing occurred in Kohat, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan.

Most of those wounded were worshippers, he said.

The victims were taken to a nearby hospital where authorities declared an emergency to handle the influx of casualties. Local police said the explosion was powerful enough to badly damage nearby shops and homes.

Footage posted on social media showed the mosque’s roof had collapsed. Rescuers and residents could be seen pulling injured people from the rubble and carrying them to ambulances.