KYIV, Ukraine — Russia attacked Ukraine’s capital with ballistic missiles and drones on Saturday, killing at least one person and wounding 27, a day before talks between the leaders of Ukraine and the United States, authorities said.

Explosions boomed across Kyiv as the attack began in early morning and continued for hours.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy prepared to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida on Sunday for further talks on ending the nearly four-year war. Zelenskyy told reporters that he and Trump plan to discuss several matters including security guarantees and territorial issues in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.

“This attack is Russia’s answer on our peace efforts. It really shows that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin doesn’t want peace,” Zelenskyy said after stopping in Canada to meet with Prime Minister Mark Carney in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Carney announced $1.8 billion worth of economic assistance to Ukraine that helps unlock financing from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank for reconstruction and development.

“The barbarism that we saw overnight, the attack of Kyiv, shows just how important that we stand with Ukraine during this difficult time,” Carney said.

Apartment buildings hit

The Russian Defense Ministry said that it carried out a “massive strike” overnight, using “long-range precision-guided weapons from land, air and sea, including Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles” and drones. It said it targeted energy infrastructure facilities used by Ukraine’s forces and military-industrial enterprises.

But several residential buildings were struck.

The ministry said the strike was in response to Ukraine’s attacks on “civilian objects” in Russia.

Earlier on Saturday, the ministry said air defenses shot down seven Ukrainian drones over the Russian regions of Krasnodar and Adygeya overnight. On Saturday afternoon, the ministry said 147 more drones were shot down over a number of Russian regions.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defenses intercepted more than 20 drones “flying towards” the Russian capital on Saturday. He didn’t report any damage or casualties. It wasn’t immediately clear whether those were included in the Defense Ministry’s count.

Russia claims territorial gains

In what could be viewed as an effort to further ramp up pressure on Ukraine before the Zelenskyy-Trump talks, the Kremlin on Saturday night released a video of Putin in military fatigues receiving reports from top military officials in an unidentified military command post.

Russia’s General Staff chief, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, reported to Putin that the Russian troops have taken full control of Myrnohrad in the Donetsk region — Russia uses the old Soviet name of the city, Dimitrov — the city of Huliaipole in the Zaporizhzhia region, and a few other settlements.

Putin said that ”if Kyiv authorities are not willing to end the matter peacefully, we will achieve all the goals we have in the special military operation by military means.”

Ukraine’s General Staff rejected these claims as “not supported by facts.” It said that the situation in Huliaipole is “difficult, but the defensive operation in the city is ongoing.” In Myrnohrad, the situation remains “challenging.”

“The senior political leadership of the aggressor state has once again resorted to spreading false claims about significant ‘successes’ by the Russian army on the battlefield,” the General Staff said in an online statement.

Poland on alert

Poland scrambled fighter jets and closed airports in Lublin and Rzeszow near the border with Ukraine for several hours during the Russian attacks, the country’s armed forces command said on social media. There was no violation of Polish airspace, it said.

Civil aviation authority Pansa later said the airports had resumed operations. It was unclear what caused the alert in Poland when the Russian attacks were focused on Kyiv, which is far from the border.

Russia targeted Ukraine with 519 drones and 40 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said. The main target was energy and civilian infrastructure in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said. In some districts of the region there is no electricity or heating because of the attacks, he said.

Man burns to death

More than 10 residential buildings were damaged, Ukrainian Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on social media.

Olena Karpenko, 52, said she heard a man as he burned to death. “His scream is still in my ears. I can’t believe it,” she said, weeping.

Karpenko said they heard a explosion at the nearby thermal power plant, followed by a stronger blast that shook the windows of her home. Then came the strike on her building.

Two children were among those wounded in the attack, which hit seven locations across the capital, the head of the Kyiv Military Administration, Tymur Tkachenko, said on social media.

A body was found under the rubble of one damaged building, he said. It wasn’t immediately clear if that person was the man who burned to death.

A fire broke out in an 18-story residential building in the Dnipro district, and emergency crews rushed to contain the flames. A 24-story residential building in the Darnytsia district was also hit, Tkachenko said, and more fires broke out in the Obolonskyi and Holosiivsky districts.

In the wider Kyiv region, the strikes hit industrial and residential buildings, according to Ukraine’s Emergency Service. In the Vyshhorod area, emergency crews rescued one person found under the rubble of a destroyed house.

Ukraine’s largest private energy company, DTEK, said on X on Saturday evening that the Russian attack caused “extensive power outages” in Kyiv, saying that hundreds of thousands of customers remained without power.

Security guarantees prioritized

Zelenskyy told reporters he would aim to ensure there were “ as few unresolved issues as possible ” in talks with Trump, while respecting Ukraine’s red lines.

Speaking by audio note in a Whatsapp chat with journalists, Zelenskyy said he would prioritize discussing security guarantees for Ukraine. He has said that in the draft peace plan, the U.S. has committed to providing guarantees that mirror the NATO alliance’s Article 5, which means an attack on Ukraine would trigger a collective military response from the U.S. and its allies.

But key details must be worked out in a bilateral agreement.

Territorial concessions are the most sensitive of issues the two leaders will discuss.

Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, Rob Gillies in Toronto and Volodymyr Yurchuk in Kyiv contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

More than 17 million Californians have health insurance through their job, according to a survey released in November by the health information group KFF. The average cost of premium payments for an employee’s family plan rose 24% to $28,400 a year, the survey found. Meanwhile, the national inflation rate was 12%, and wages grew by 14%, KFF wrote.

Health insurance premiums have risen year after year for decades. But costs spiked after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, driven by industry consolidation, increasing use of Ozempic and similar weight-loss drugs and other factors, according to KFF. Together, these forces are putting pressure on families and businesses, while some major health insurance providers in California continue to post profits.

“People are paying more and more, it’s taking up more and more of their family budgets, and they’re getting less,” said Miranda Dietz, who leads UC Berkeley Labor Center’s health program.

Along with rising premiums, more California employees also face increasing out-of-pocket costs. Workers bear indirect costs, too, Dietz said. As businesses spend more on health plans, they spend less on wages and other benefits, she said. She cited a study that concluded the average family with employer-sponsored health insurance would have earned nearly $9,000 more in 2019 if the cost of care hadn’t increased disproportionately since the late 1980s.

Under the Affordable Care Act, businesses with at least 50 full-time equivalent employees must offer health insurance coverage that meets affordability and care requirements, or face fines. Workers and businesses split the cost, and in practice, businesses shoulder most of the burden: employers pay about three-quarters of a family plan premium, on average, and about 85% of single plans, according to KFF.

At the independent bookstore Booksmith in San Francisco’s storied Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, owner Christin Evans said four of her employees qualify for health benefits. She said she covers the full cost of her workers’ Kaiser Permanente care — one of her “top expenses” of doing business.

Her costs are rising, she said, by about 17% — to $3,250 each month in 2026 from $2,776 in 2025. Last year, premiums rose 7.5%, she said.

“Many small business owners will likely decide to cut benefit offerings and reduce wages,” said Bianca Blomquist, director of the advocacy group Small Business Majority California, in an email. “While some entrepreneurs may even close up shop and go work for someone else, mainly so they can access quality health insurance.”

Faced with high health insurance costs, owners could be unable to make other investments in their businesses, she said.

Matthew Rae, associate director of KFF’s health care marketplace program, led the California survey. Between January and July 2025, KFF oversaw interviews with 460 employee benefit managers at companies based in California or with workers here.

In an interview, Rae pinned part of the cost spike on the pandemic, which officially ended in May 2023. During the worst days of the pandemic, in 2020 and 2021, insurance costs grew slowly as patients delayed serious care, he said.

Then “pent-up” need for care arrived, inflation nationally drove up prices and health care workers fought for better pay and benefits, Rae said.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law in 2023 setting separate minimum wages for health care employees, which reached $24 per hour at hospitals with 10,000 or more full-time employees this year. (The state’s general minimum wage is $16.50 per hour.)

Meanwhile, more Californians began using expensive GLP-1s such as Ozempic or Wegovy to manage diabetes and lose weight, Rae said. The hospital industry became more consolidated nationally, he said, which contributes to rising costs by reducing competition. More than 400 hospital and health system mergers were announced from 2018 to 2023, KFF said.

Meanwhile, some of California’s biggest insurers are posting profits.

An analysis by the Center for Media and Democracy, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit watchdog, found Kaiser Permanente put $27 billion into reserves in the last four years. The Oakland-based health giant reports several billion dollars of profit each quarter. Elevance Health, the publicly-traded parent company of Anthem Blue Cross, reported $1.2 billion in profit in the third quarter of 2025, up from $1 billion the year prior, the Wall Street Journal reported.

While health plan premiums rose for workers and employers over the past three years, the quality of the insurance declined. The KFF survey found that 75% of workers now have a deductible, up from 68% three years ago.

According to the UC Berkeley Labor Center, less than half of Californians in the private sector had a deductible 20 years ago. Rae said that it can strain workers and their families.

“There’s a lot of worry about the affordability of plans for even people who are working,” or who have a family member who is, Rae said. “You’re pushing people past their assets, because the deductibles are too high.”

At the same time, changes are happening outside of the employer-based health insurance market. The new KFF data arrived in November as public health experts and patients began to brace for a big shake-up in the individual health insurance market: the expiration of Affordable Care Act tax credits that have benefited enrollees since 2021. In California, monthly premiums for those plans will double on average, according to Covered California, the state’s Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Self-employed freelancers and contractors, in particular, can expect major price spikes when the credits expire at the end of December. But small business owners and their workers make up half of all Affordable Care Act enrollees nationally, said Blomquist, of the small business advocacy group.

To celebrate, the president wants to offer free admissions that day to the country’s national parks, a self-serving gesture, no doubt, but one that is no surprise for a man who spent much of his adult life plastering his name on the sides of buildings, airplanes and casino hotels.

But that is not a real problem. The public should take every opportunity to take full advantage of the vast offerings of the National Park Service.

The problem is that the free admission benefit is being removed next year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, a blatant swipe at African Americans and the nation’s civil rights history.

“The raw & rank racism here stinks to high heaven,” Cornell William Brooks, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and a former NAACP president, wrote on social media about the new policy.

Other days of free park admission in 2026 are Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Constitution Day, Veterans Day, President Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday (Oct. 27) and the anniversary of the creation of the Park Service (Aug. 25).

The new free-admission policy takes effect Jan. 1 and was one of several changes announced by the National Park Service late last month.

Another announced change was higher admission fees for international visitors, an “America-first entry fee policy” that would charge international tourists up to an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days reserved for Americans.

Foreign tourists will also see prices for their annual park passes rise to $250, while U.S. residents will continue to be charged $80.

“These policies ensure that US taxpayers, who already support the National Park System, continue to enjoy affordable access, while international visitors contribute their fair share to maintaining and improving our parks for future generations,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Could there be anything more petty than a president punishing foreign tourists? It’s a wonder he didn’t raise the fees for Black people, too.

The MLK Day and Juneteenth snubs are only the latest attacks on Blacks and people of color.

Since his first day in office again, Trump has tried to dismantle diversity across the federal government, downplaying the nation’s racist history while whitewashing the civil rights victories of Black Americans.

Trump doesn’t even try to disguise his contempt anymore.

After years of dancing around whether or not he called Haiti and other Third World hotspots “s—hole countries,” Trump leaned into the phrase and did it again.

“Remember I said that to the senators?” Trump said recently during a speech in Pennsylvania. “Our country was going to hell. And we had a meeting, and I say, ‘Why is it we only take people from s—hole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden, just a few? Let us have a few from Denmark. Do you mind sending us a few people? Do you mind?’”

Welcome to the National Park Service. Please have your passports out for inspection.

The new entry fee policy will also be a logistical nightmare for Park Service staff. Screening visitors for nationality will only make lines longer, and increase foreign resentment.

And, I don’t like the ideal of having to prove I’m a citizen every time I want to visit the Lincoln Memorial.

Other countries, including Egypt, Thailand and Cambodia, also charge higher entry fees for international tourists to visit national parks and attractions.

But this is America. Do we really want to be like them?

Leonard Greene is a New York Daily News columnist. ©2025 New York Daily News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

The trick is using a debating tactic known as Gish galloping, named after American creationist Duane Gish. It refers to rapid-style speech where one interlocutor bombards the other with a stream of facts and stats that become increasingly difficult to pick apart.

When language models like GPT-4o were told to try persuading someone about health care funding or immigration policy by focusing “on facts and information,” they’d generate around 25 claims during a 10-minute interaction. That’s according to researchers from Oxford University and the London School of Economics who tested 19 language models on nearly 80,000 participants, in what may be the largest and most systematic investigation of AI persuasion to date.

The bots became far more persuasive, according to the findings published in the journal Science. A similar paper in Nature found that chatbots overall were 10 times more effective than TV ads and other traditional media in changing someone’s opinion about a political candidate. But the Science paper found a disturbing tradeoff: When chatbots were prompted to overwhelm users with information, their factual accuracy declined, to 62% from 78% in the case of GPT-4.

Rapid-fire debating has become something of a phenomenon on YouTube over the last few years, typified by influencers like Ben Shapiro and Steven Bonnell. It produces dramatic arguments that have made politics more engaging and accessible for younger voters, but also foment increased radicalism and spread misinformation with their focus on entertainment value and “gotcha” moments.

Could Gish-galloping AI make things worse? It depends whether anyone manages to get propaganda bots talking to people. A campaign advisor for an environmentalist group or political candidate can’t simply change ChatGPT itself, now used by about 900 million people weekly. But they can fine-tune the underlying language model and integrate it onto a website — like a customer service bot — or conduct a text or WhatsApp campaign where they ping voters and lure them into conversation.

A moderately resourced campaign could probably set this up in a few weeks with computing costs of around $50,000. But they may struggle to get voters or the public to have a prolonged conversation with their bot. The Science study showed that a 200-word static statement from AI wasn’t particularly persuasive — it was the 10-minute conversation that took around seven turns that had the real impact, and a lasting one too. When researchers checked if people’s minds had still changed a month later, they had.

The UK researchers warn that anyone who wants to push an ideological idea, create political unrest or destabilize political systems could use a closed or (even cheaper) open-source model to start persuading people. And they’ve demonstrated the disarming power of AI to do so. But note that they had to pay people to join their persuasion study. Let’s hope deploying such bots via websites and text messages, outside the main gateways controlled by the likes of OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, won’t get the bad actors very far in distorting the political discourse.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology. A former reporter for the Wall Street Journal and Forbes, she is author of “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT and the Race That Will Change the World.” ©2025 Bloomberg. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

Also in the release was a photograph of a woman’s lower leg and foot on what appears to be a bed, with a paperback copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” visible in the background. The 1955 novel centers on a middle-aged man’s sexual obsession with a 12-year-old girl. Epstein, a serial sexual abuser, famously nicknamed one of his private planes “The Lolita Express.” And we are to believe that some of the globe’s brightest minds could not put the dots together?

Donald Trump, who once described himself as “a very stable genius,” included.

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York magazine in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Choosing silence

Later, the two had a public falling out, and Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing. Great. But denial after the fact is only one side of this story. The other is harder to digest: Either the self-proclaimed “very stable genius” spent nearly two decades around Epstein without recognizing what was happening in plain sight — or he recognized it and chose silence. Neither explanation reflects on intelligence as much as it does on character. No wonder Trump’s defenders keep raising the most overused word in American politics today: hoax.

“Once again, House Democrats are selectively releasing cherry-picked photos with random redactions to try and create a false narrative,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “Here’s the reality: Democrats like Stacey Plaskett and Hakeem Jeffries were soliciting money and meetings from Epstein after he was a convicted sex offender. The Democrat hoax against President Trump has been repeatedly debunked, and the Trump administration has done more for Epstein’s victims than Democrats ever have by repeatedly calling for transparency, releasing thousands of pages of documents and calling for further investigations into Epstein’s Democrat friends.”

Jackson has a point.

Democrats were cherry-picking which photos to release, even if many of the men pictured were aligned with progressives. That includes the president, who was a Democrat when he and Epstein were running together in New York in the 2000s. Trump didn’t register as a Republican until 2009. Now whether the choice of photos and timing was designed to shield political friends or weaponize against perceived enemies isn’t clear. What is clear is that it doesn’t take a genius to see that none of this is a hoax.

The victims are real. The flight logs are real. The millions that flowed into Epstein’s bank account have wire transfer confirmation numbers that can be traced. What Democrats are doing with the information is politics as usual. And you don’t want politics to dictate who gets justice and who gets vilified.

Right and wrong

Whatever the politicians’ intentions, Americans can decide how to react to the disclosures. And what the men around Epstein did with the information they gathered on his jet or his island fits squarely at the heart of the national conversation about masculinity. What kind of men could allow such abuse to continue?

I’m not saying the intelligent men in Epstein’s ecosystem did something criminal, but the lack of whistleblowing before his arrest raises questions about their fortitude for right and wrong. And the Trump White House trying to characterize this conversation as a partisan witch hunt — a hoax — is an ineffective strategy because the pattern with their use of that word is so clear.

We saw what happened on Jan. 6, and Trump tells us the investigation is a hoax. We hear the recording of him pressuring Georgia officials to find votes, and he tells us the investigation is a hoax. Trump campaigned on affordability issues — the cost of bacon, no taxes on tips — but now that he’s in office such talk is a hoax by Democrats. As if we don’t know the price of groceries in real time. Ten years ago, Trump told us he had proof that President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. We’re still waiting.

In his book, “Art of the Deal,” Trump framed his lies as “truthful hyperbole” but by now we should understand for him hyperbole matters more than truth — and his felony convictions confirm that some of his claims were indeed simply false.

So if there is a hoax, it is the notion that none of the brilliant men whom Epstein kept in his orbit had any idea what was going on.

LZ Granderson is an columnist for the Los Angeles Times. ©2025 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.

For three days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Valera in the metal-clad room on the sixth floor above the courtroom, according to a declaration he submitted to a judge. There were no beds, and the lights remained on at all hours. Detainees were forced to share a single toilet against the wall.

“They treated us like animals,” the 47-year-old Peruvian man told Bay Area News Group.

On Christmas Eve, five months after Velera’s arrest, a federal judge in San Jose temporarily barred ICE from making arrests at immigration courts across Northern California. Bay Area immigration advocates sued to halt the arrests, which they argue force those seeking refuge in the United States to choose between skipping their court dates, thereby increasing their chances of deportation, or attending the proceedings and risking detention.

“This ruling is a critical step in ensuring that immigrants can safely pursue their immigration cases without fear of arrest,” Jordan Wells, an attorney for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge P. Casey Pitts applies to ICE’s San Francisco area of responsibility, encompassing Northern and Central California, as far south as Bakersfield, and Hawaii. Pitts found advocates raised credible claims that the arrests have a chilling effect on court attendance and undermine the immigration court system. 

He ordered the ruling remain in place until a final judgment is entered in the case. It’s unclear when the lawsuit could be resolved.

This year, there have been at least 75 documented immigration court arrests in San Francisco, including Valera, and at least 39 in Sacramento, advocates said in an October court filing. It was unclear how many people have been arrested at the Bay Area’s other immigration court in Concord.

Attorneys for ICE argue that a January directive allowing the courthouse arrests nationwide is legal “operational guidance” authorized by the Trump administration. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

Under President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, ICE arrests have surged, often topping 1,000 a day, according to data from UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. About a third of those arrested this year had no criminal record, according to analyses of the data by NPR and other news organizations.

“We are making America safe again and putting the American people first,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement earlier this month. “We have secured the border, taken the fight to cartels, and arrested thousands upon thousands of criminal illegal aliens.”

Valera, who has asked a court to grant him asylum, came to the United States three years ago, leaving behind his wife and young sons after fleeing criminal groups that he says threatened his life in his home country. Valera said he obtained a work permit and that he has cooperated with immigration officials while applying for asylum to remain in the U.S.

But after walking out of his immigration hearing on July 25, ICE immediately apprehended him. Soon after being taken to the holding cell, Valera said he began to feel half of his body going numb. Handcuffed to a stretcher, he spent the next day under observation at a hospital in San Francisco.

After being taken back to the cell, Valera said he received only small burritos and a chocolate bar at each meal. He and other detainees did their best to keep the area clean, but a small trash can in the corner quickly overflowed. The air conditioning ran constantly, and the men slept huddled together in the cell.

“They made us sleep on the floor in handcuffs,” Valera said.

Now, agents overseeing the San Francisco cells must provide detainees beds, clean clothes, basic hygiene products, medically necessary diets and to dim lights during sleeping hours, among other requirements, following a November injunction secured by advocates in the courthouse arrest case. 

ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the cell conditions. But government attorneys told the court the agency is complying with the injunction.

From San Francisco, Valera was transferred to a holding cell in Oakland before being flown to a larger detention facility in Arizona. A judge ordered his release about a week later, determining he had been unlawfully detained, attorneys said.

Valera was dropped off at a bus station and used his own money to buy a ticket back to San Francisco for the next day. He booked a motel room, where he took his first shower since his arrest about two weeks earlier.

Despite the ordeal, Valera, who currently rents a space in a home in Daly City, said he plans to continue his asylum case in hopes of making a better life for himself in the U.S. He wants to one day bring his family to join him.

“There are people who have gone through things that are far worse than what I went through, and I don’t wish that on anybody,” he said. “It’s very traumatic, to be honest, and I hope one day this all ends, that it goes back to normal, and that they don’t treat us that way. You come to work, not to commit crimes.”

Borello Asset Management had initially submitted an application under the Builder’s Remedy process in 2023, aiming to transform the .72-acre lot at 1000 S. De Anza Blvd. into a seven-story, 118-unit complex. To make way for the housing project, the developer will demolish a 2,658-square-foot commercial building that was once home to Mori Kitchen, which closed in 2023.

“The current use of the property — a single-story commercial building currently vacant, surrounded by a sea of paved parking — (is) an inefficient use of land that does not benefit anybody,” said Erik Schoennauer, a land-use consultant representing the developer. “Redeveloping the property makes sense for the neighborhood and for the city. The proposed multi-family apartment building is consistent with the pattern of development throughout the city’s urban village areas and along the major commercial corridors.”

Borello had submitted its preliminary development application in June 2023, when the city’s housing element was still not in compliance with state requirements.

This allowed the developer to take advantage of the Builder’s Remedy process, which locks in any policies, ordinances, fees, and standards in effect at the time the application was submitted. It also forced city staff to evaluate the project as if it met the General Plan land-use designation and the zoning district’s requirements. The only way a local government could reject an eligible Builder’s Remedy project was if it could show a specific, adverse impact on public health and safety.

City project manager Alec Atienza said the project site was in a zoning district that would not allow housing unless it was 100% deed-restricted, affordable, or the applicant used another state law to allow development.

The complex will include 44 studios, 42 one-bedroom apartments and 32 two-bedroom apartments.

Twenty-four of the units will be available at 80% of the area’s median income. In 2025, the area median income for a single person was $136,650.

An environmental impact report completed in the summer estimated that construction could begin in early 2026, with the project taking about 14 months to complete.

The project received some pushback from residents, who expressed concerns about construction noise and vibration affecting nearby homes.

“If the ground sinks or settles due to excessive vibrations or from the activity of lots of heavy equipment and machinery, the integrity of the post-tension slab at Ventana could be compromised, leading to potential catastrophic structural failures,” Ventana Place Homeowners Association President Becky Bender said. “The ramifications would not only endanger the lives of Ventana Place residents, but also result in astronomical, multi-million dollar repair costs that may not even fully restore the structure.”

Bender also requested, to no avail, that the developer scale down the project to fit the character of the existing neighborhood.

Schoennauer addressed the construction concerns, noting that the environmental report included requirements to limit noise impacts and stating that it was implausible that the construction vibrations would affect the townhome buildings.

While Borello’s project will stick out a little more than the existing buildings, Schoennauer said, the city’s General Plan intended for more intense use along commercial corridors in the long run.

“The city’s plan is that a street like De Anza will be all seven stories someday,” Schoennauer said. “That’s the plan adopted by the City Council for decades, so our project, just because it’s one of the earliest ones, is not out of place.”

Since returning to the White House in January, President Donald Trump has overturned decades of U.S. trade policy — building a wall of tariffs around what used to be a wide open economy.

His double-digit taxes on imports from almost every country have disrupted global commerce and strained the budgets of consumers and businesses worldwide. They have also raised tens of billions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury.

Trump has argued that his steep new import taxes are necessary to bring back wealth that was “stolen” from the U.S. He says they will narrow America’s decades-old trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the country. But upending the global supply chain has proven costly for households facing rising prices. And the erratic way the president rolled out his tariffs — announcing them, then suspending or altering them before conjuring up new ones — made 2025 one of the most turbulent economic years in recent memory.

Here’s a look at the impact of Trump’s tariffs over the last year, in four charts.

Effective US tariff rate

A key number for the overall impact of tariffs on U.S. consumers and businesses is the “effective” tariff rate — which, unlike headline figures imposed by Trump for specific trade actions, provides an average based on the actual imports coming into the country.

In 2025, per data from the Yale Budget Lab, the effective U.S. tariff rate peaked in April. But it’s still far higher than the average seen at the start of the year. Before finalizing shifts in consumption, November’s effective tariff rate was nearly 17% — seven times greater than January’s average and the highest seen since 1935.

Tariff revenue vs America’s trade deficit

Among selling points to justify his tariffs, Trump has repeatedly said they would reduce America’s longstanding trade deficit and bring revenue into the Treasury.

Trump’s higher tariffs are certainly raising money. They’ve raked in more than $236 billion this year through November — much more than in years past. But they still account for just a fraction of the federal government’s total revenue. And they haven’t raised nearly enough to justify the president’s claim that tariff revenue could replace federal income taxes — or allow for windfall dividend checks for Americans.

The U.S. trade deficit, meanwhile, has fallen significantly since the start of the year. The trade gap peaked to a monthly record of $136.4 billion in March, as consumers and businesses hurried to import foreign products before Trump could impose his tariffs on them. The trade gap narrowed to $52.8 billion in September, the latest month for which data is available. But the year-to-date deficit was still running 17% ahead of January-September 2024.

Import shifts with America’s biggest trading partners

Trump’s 2025 tariffs hit nearly every country in the world — including America’s biggest trading partners. But his policies have had the biggest impact on U.S. trade with China, once the biggest source of American imports and now No. 3 behind Canada and Mexico. U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports now come to 47.5%, according to calculations by Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The value of goods coming into the U.S. from China fell nearly 25% during the first three-quarters of the year. Imports from Canada also dropped. But the value of products from Mexico, Vietnam and Taiwan grew year-to-date.

Market swings

For investors, the most volatile moments on the stock market this year arrived amid some of the most volatile moments for Trump’s tariffs.

The S&P 500, an index for the biggest public companies in the U.S., saw its biggest daily and weekly swings in April — and largest monthly losses and gains in March and June, respectively.

Need a recap of how Trump’s trade actions unfolded in 2025? See a timeline here.

California lawmakers made major changes to the state’s car-buying rules this year, including a controversial rewrite of the state law that allows buyers to get their money back if they are sold a defective vehicle and a right to return a used vehicle within three days.

After an intense lobbying push this year from automobile companies, dealers and consumer groups, more legislative battles over California vehicle purchases could follow in 2026. Sky-high car prices show no signs of falling, and a Republican-led Congress and the Trump administration have sought to thwart Newsom’s goal of having 100% of new cars sold in California be zero-emission by 2035.

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Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat representing the El Segundo area, said he expects California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature will likely push back against national Republicans’ attack on California’s vehicle policies in some form next year, though he said it wasn’t yet clear how.

“We’re very committed to this path, so stay tuned, but clean air is a priority for our state,” said Allen, who chairs the Senate’s Select Committee on Transitioning to a Zero-Emission Energy Future.

In the meantime, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Allen’s Senate Bill 766, creating a first-in-the-nation policy that allows a buyer to return a used vehicle for a full refund within three days if the purchase price was less than $50,000. Dealers can charge a restocking fee.

The law, which takes effect in October, also contains other protections for buyers intended to prevent them from getting suckered.

The law also prohibits dealers from charging for add-ons that have no benefit to the buyer, such as free oil changes for electric vehicles — which don’t need oil changes.

“That is a huge deal,” said Rosemary Shahan of Consumers for Auto Reliability and Safety, which championed the bill. “It’s historic. It’s going to make cars more affordable.”

Allen said he came up with the idea for the bill after shopping for a used car in 2024. He said he wanted to see what it was like trying to buy a used car in California and didn’t tell the various dealerships he visited that he was a state senator.

“I was kind of shocked by the hustle and the extent to which prices were quoted online and that ended up not really being truthful,” he said.

He ended up buying a 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E, an electric vehicle.

Newsom blocked document fee increase

Most bills take effect immediately the year after they are signed, but lawmakers delayed the implementation of Allen’s bill until October to give dealers time to change their paperwork, amend their contracts and change their signs to meet the new law’s requirements.

Brian Maas, president of the California New Car Dealers Association, said the law should make buying a used car more transparent and easier for consumers.

“The bill certainly is a net positive in terms of more transparency about the total price and advertising,” he said.

But he said the new law “clearly imposed more responsibility on dealers,” which is why Maas said his group was extremely frustrated Newsom vetoed its bill that would have allowed dealers to raise document-processing fees by $175.

Senate Bill 791 would have raised the fees dealers can charge to process Department of Motor Vehicles and other paperwork from the current cap of $85 to up to 1% of the purchase price, capped at $260.

Maas said dealers were frustrated by Newsom’s veto message which said the fee increase wasn’t necessary because the state had imposed “no new state requirements” on car dealers.

Maas said it was “especially frustrating that the veto message somewhat cavalierly said there are no new state requirements when the governor signed just such requirements a week earlier.”

Before the veto, SB 791 passed the Legislature overwhelmingly and with bipartisan support. The California New Car Dealers Association has donated at least $3 million to legislators since 2015, according to the Digital Democracy database.

Maas said there are so many forms car buyers must fill out, almost all of them stemming from a law the Legislature passed, they’re getting to be like click-through agreements on websites that everyone just agrees to without actually reading.

“You shove form after form after form in front of consumers,” he said. “Consumers just tune it out, turn it off, and say, ‘You know what? I just want to know what my monthly payment is, what’s the interest rate, what the total price of the car is. And then let’s go. Why do I have to sit in here for a half hour or an hour and fill out all these forms?’ ”

Consumers face a watered-down lemon law

Newsom also signed Senate Bill 26, a bill that allows car manufacturers to opt out of changes to the state’s lemon law that gives consumers a right to get their money back if they buy a defective vehicle — sometimes referred to as a “lemon.”

The result is that California car buyers have different legal protections under the state’s lemon law depending on which brand they buy.

The bill Newsom signed was in response to a law lawmakers hastily passed at the end of the 2024 legislative session, watering down the state’s 55-year-old landmark lemon law. Some

auto companies, namely GM and Ford, were being sued so often for allegedly selling so many lemons that state courts were clogged with lawsuits.

The companies and some attorney groups persuaded lawmakers and Newsom to pass legislation in 2024 that shrank the length of time a car buyer could sue under the lemon law to just six years instead of the entire life of a vehicle’s warranty

Last year’s legislation also puts more onus on car owners to initiate claims, not auto companies.

But other companies that don’t get sued as often for selling defective vehicles, such as Toyota and Honda, opposed the rule change. Those companies said the new law didn’t give them time to prepare their best defense

Newsom ended up reluctantly signing the 2024 bill, but he urged the Legislature to come back with a new bill in 2025 that would allow companies to opt out of the changes. SB 26 passed overwhelmingly and Newsom signed it.

Meanwhile, several car companies, including Ford and GM and dozens of RV and motorcycle manufacturers, opted in to the 2024 law this year.

Toyota and Honda, as expected, did not.

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday that he will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida over the weekend.

Zelenskyy told journalists that the two leaders will discuss security guarantees for Ukraine during Sunday’s talks, and that the 20-point plan under discussion “is about 90% ready.”

An “economic agreement” also will be discussed, Zelenskyy said, but added that he was unable to confirm “whether anything will be finalized by the end.”

The Ukrainian side will also raise “territorial issues”, he said. Moscow has insisted that Ukraine relinquish the remaining territory it still holds in the Donbas — an ultimatum that Ukraine has rejected. Russia has captured most of Luhansk and about 70% of Donetsk — the two areas that make up the Donbas.

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine “would like the Europeans to be involved,” but doubted whether it would be possible at short notice.

“We must, without doubt, find some format in the near future in which not only Ukraine and the U.S. are present, but Europe is represented as well,” he said.

The announced meeting is the latest development in an extensive U.S.-led diplomatic push to end the nearly four-year Russia-Ukraine war, but efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.

Zelenskyy’s comments came after he said Thursday that he had a “good conversation” with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday that the Kremlin had already been in contact with U.S. representatives since Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev recently met with U.S. envoys in Florida.

“It was agreed upon to continue the dialogue,” he said.

Trump is engaged in a diplomatic push to end Russia’s all-out war, which began on Feb. 24, 2022, but his efforts have run into sharply conflicting demands by Moscow and Kyiv.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that he would be willing to withdraw troops from Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland as part of a plan to end the war, if Russia also pulls back and the area becomes a demilitarized zone monitored by international forces.

Though Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that there had been “slow but steady progress” in the peace talks, Russia has given no indication that it will agree to any kind of withdrawal from land it has seized.

On the ground, two people were killed and six more wounded Friday when a guided aerial bomb hit a busy road and set cars aflame in Ukraine’s second biggest city, Kharkiv, mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram.

One person was killed and three others were wounded when a guided aerial bomb hit a house in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, while six people were wounded in a missile strike on the city of Uman, local officials said Friday.

Russian drone attacks on the city of Mykolaiv and its suburbs overnight into Friday left part of the city without power. Energy and port infrastructure were damaged by drones in the city of Odesa on the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, Ukraine said that it struck a major Russian oil refinery on Thursday using U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

Ukraine’s General Staff said that its forces hit the Novoshakhtinsk refinery in Russia’s Rostov region.

“Multiple explosions were recorded. The target was hit,” it wrote on Telegram.

Rostov regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said that a firefighter was wounded when extinguishing the fire.

Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries aim to deprive Moscow of the oil export revenue it needs to pursue its full-scale invasion. Russia wants to cripple the Ukraine’s power grid, seeking to deny civilians access to heat, light and running water in what Ukrainian officials say is an attempt to “weaponize winter.”

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine