The legal team for Hong Kong pro-democracy ex-publisher Jimmy Lai says he will not appeal the national security conviction for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Lai was found guilty in December of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles. His Hong Kong legal team told The Associated Press about the decision Friday but would not comment on the reason for not appealing. Lai was one of the first prominent figures to be arrested under the security law in 2020. After the sentencing, Lai's children said a possible visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing later this month could be crucial in securing the release of their father.

After James Talarico won the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas, Republicans are racing to paint him as too progressive. Conservatives started flooding social media with old clips highlighting his comments on gender, immigration and race. Republican strategists believe they can use his comments as fodder for attack ads in the general election. On Wednesday, Talarico warned supporters that powerful elites will smear him because they find him threatening. Although Talarico gained prominence through viral videos, Republicans hope to use years of on-camera musings against him.

The Trump administration’s campaign to end “wokeness” in the military is reshaping its relationship with U.S. higher education. The Pentagon has been breaking off longstanding ties with prestigious universities that have trained generals and admirals while building new bonds with Christian schools and big public universities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forged ahead with his realignment last week, expelling more than a dozen elite colleges from a military fellowship that serves as a pipeline to the upper ranks of leadership. Hegseth has homed in on graduate-level programs while preserving a broader program that covers tuition for nearly 200,000 service members.

This is the weekend when clocks move ahead, causing angst, lost sleep and health issues for many. Over the last decade, at least 19 states have passed laws to let them stay in daylight saving time if the federal government allows it. And some are giving serious consideration to staying in standard time — if their neighbors are willing to make the same move. There's not a clear consensus on what to do when every solution will still leave millions of Americans in the dark later in the morning or earlier in the evening than they would like for a chunk of the year.

Three former U.S. presidents, Grammy-winning artists, clergy and elected officials are expected to attend a Chicago celebration of life Friday for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. The event honoring the protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate follows memorial services that drew large crowds in Chicago and South Carolina, where the civil rights leader was born. The Chicago celebration is expected to be the largest. Former Democratic U.S. presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton plan to attend. That's according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the organization that Jackson founded.

A Wisconsin teenager who killed his parents and stole their money to fund his plan to kill President Donald Trump has been sentenced to life in prison. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Ralph Ramirez sentenced 18-year-old Nikita Casap on Thursday to two life terms with no possibility of parole in connection with the shooting deaths of his mother and stepfather last year. According to investigators, after he killed the couple fled across the country in his stepfather's SUV with $14,000 in cash, jewelry and passports. Investigators said he wrote a manifesto calling for Trump's assassination and was in touch with others, including someone who spoke Russian, about his plan to kill Trump and flee to Ukraine.

A Wisconsin man who allegedly told police he tried to set fire to a Republican congressman’s office last year because he was angry that the lawmaker backed a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell off its U.S. operations has been sentenced to seven years in prison. Court records show that in addition to the prison time, Fond du Lac County Circuit Judge Tricia Walker sentenced 20-year-old Caiden Stachowicz on Thursday to seven years of extended supervision. Stachowicz, of Menasha, pleaded no contest to an arson charge in November. His attorney, Danielle Gorsuch, said Stachowicz was suffering from a mental health crisis.

The Justice Department has released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Donald Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review. The department said last week that it was reviewing to determine if any records were improperly withheld after several news organizations reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public didn’t include files documenting a series of interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump. The department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with the millions of other Epstein files.

Police say the mother of two girls found buried inside suitcases in Cleveland has been charged with two counts of murder. Aliyah Henderson, 28, is accused of killing Mila Chatman and Amor Wilson. Their remains were recovered after a dog walker led authorities to the suitcases four days earlier. Chatman’s father, DeShaun Chatman, said Thursday he had been looking for Mila for five years before investigators told him late Wednesday she was dead. Chatman said he sought emergency custody five times and had tried to locate Mila through a child welfare agency, but those efforts were unsuccessful because he did not know where they were living.

The U.S. and Israel are striking a much wider array of targets in Iran than they did during 12 days of war last summer, when their focus was on the country’s nuclear enrichment sites. Experts say the aim now appears to be destroying Iran’s military and weakening the grip of its theocratic rulers. U.S. Central Command alone says it has hit more than 2,000 targets in less than a week, a far heavier barrage than any American bombing campaign in the Middle East in more than a decade. Israel says it has hit hundreds of sites. The bombardment has affected military bases, weapons factories, soldiers and police, and state TV.

Police body camera footage shows bargoers and pedestrians fleeing and ducking for cover in the chaotic moments after a gunman killed three people in a mass shooting outside a Texas bar. The terrifying moments captured by officers and surveillance cameras were released Thursday. They show how the shooting that left more than a dozen others wounded unfolded quickly early Sunday in downtown Austin. Police Chief Lisa Davis says officers arrived within 56 seconds of the first 911 call. They shot and killed the gunman. Davis wouldn't discuss the motive behind the shooting. The FBI says it’s investigating the attack as a potential act of terrorism.

Forecasters say the first major storm outbreak just ahead of spring is threatening much of the central United States. They warn all forms of severe weather will be possible, including strong tornadoes. The National Weather Service says scattered severe storms are expected to begin firing up late Thursday in the Texas Panhandle, western Oklahoma and parts of Kansas. Forecasters expect the strongest storms to spread Friday across much of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri, while impacting some neighboring states. The national Storm Prediction Center says more than 6 million people face the highest risk Friday. Forecasters also expect very warm weekend temperatures in many areas, up to 30 degrees above average.

President Donald Trump fired Kristi Noem as his Homeland Security secretary Thursday amid growing criticism of her leadership, making her the first Cabinet secretary to leave during his second term. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

Women’s hockey players have taken the next major step to strengthen their voice in shaping the Professional Women’s Hockey League’s future by affiliating with the AFL-CIO. The Professional Women’s Hockey League Players Association on Thursday became the 65th union to join America’s largest labor federation, which represents nearly 15 million workers. And the PWHLPA became the 10th players association to join the AFL-CIO’s sports council, which already includes unions representing NFL, NHL, major league baseball, WNBA and women’s soccer players. The affiliation agreement coincides with women’s hockey enjoying a surge in momentum following the U.S. women’s team winning its third Olympic gold medal.