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

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford and its strike group to deploy to the U.S. Southern Command region to “bolster U.S. capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said on social media.

The USS Ford, which has five destroyers in its strike group, is now deployed to the Mediterranean Sea. One of its destroyers is in the Arabian Sea and another is in the Red Sea, a person familiar with the operation told The Associated Press. As of Friday, the aircraft carrier was in port in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations, would not say how long it would take for the strike group to arrive in the waters off South America or if all five destroyers would make the journey.

Deploying an aircraft carrier will surge major additional resources to a region that has already seen an unusually large U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean Sea and the waters off Venezuela. The latest deployment and the quickening pace of the U.S. strikes, including one Friday, raised new speculation about how far the Trump administration may go in operations it says are targeted at drug trafficking, including whether it could try to topple Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He faces charges of narcoterrorism in the U.S.

How Hispanics' views of Trump have changed since January, according to a new AP-NORC poll

President Donald Trump's favorability has fallen among Hispanic adults since the beginning of the year, a new AP-NORC poll shows, a potential warning sign from a key constituency that helped secure his victory in the 2024 election.

The October survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 25% of Hispanic adults have a “somewhat” or “very” favorable view of Trump, down from 44% in an AP-NORC poll conducted just before the Republican took office for the second time. The percentage of Hispanic adults who say the country is going in the wrong direction has also increased slightly over the past few months, from 63% in March to 73% now.

The shift could spell trouble for Republicans looking to cement support with this group in future elections. Many Hispanic voters were motivated by economic concerns in last year's election, and the new poll shows that despite Trump's promises of economic revitalization, Hispanic adults continue to feel higher financial stress than Americans overall. Hispanic voters made up 10% of the electorate in 2024, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of interviews with registered voters, and the number of eligible Hispanic voters has been growing rapidly in recent decades.

Alejandro Ochoa, 30, is a warehouse worker in Adelanto, California. He identifies as a Republican and voted for Trump last year, but he’s now unhappy with the president. He criticized some of Trump’s budget cuts, adding that the cost of groceries is too high and buying a home is still unattainable for him.

“He was kind of relying on essentially the nostalgia of, ‘Hey, remember, before COVID? Things weren’t as expensive,’” Ochoa said. “But now it’s like, OK, you’re in office. I’m still getting done dirty at the grocery store. I’m still spending an insane amount of money. I’m trying to cut corners where I can, but that bill is still insanely expensive.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James pleads not guilty in mortgage fraud case pushed by Trump

NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — New York Attorney General Letitia James accused the Trump administration of using the justice system as a “tool of revenge” after she pleaded not guilty Friday in a federal mortgage fraud case the president pressed the Justice Department to bring.

James’ first court appearance in Virginia sets the stage for a high-stakes legal battle between the Republican administration and a longtime Democratic Trump foe who angered him with a major civil fraud case she brought against him. She's accused of lying on mortgage papers to get favorable loan terms when purchasing a modest house in Norfolk, where she has family.

James is the third Trump adversary to appear before a judge this month on federal charges, amplifying concerns that the president is using the government's law enforcement powers to seek retribution for his own legal troubles. Justice Department leaders have defended the cases and argue the Biden administration — which brought two indictments against him — was the one that weaponized the justice system.

The attorney general left the courthouse smiling to cheers from dozens of waiting supporters, who chanted, “We stand with Tish!” The indictment charging her with bank fraud and making false statements to a financial institution, she declared, was about “a justice system which has been used as a tool of revenge … and a weapon against those individuals who simply did their job and who stood up for the rule of law.”

“My faith is strong, and I have this belief in the justice system and the rule of law, and I have a belief in America,” James said, adding, “There’s no fear today.”

As Israel returns bodies, Palestinians face a grisly search through corpses for lost loved ones

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — In photos, Wahiba Shabat immediately recognized her son’s body. A mother’s heart knows, she said. But when she finally saw his decomposed corpse, she wasn't sure.

Israel had handed over her son's body naked, his hands tied behind his back with a zip tie. Scars around his ankles indicated he’d been bound there too, Shabat said. His jaw was broken, with caked blood in his mouth. She had to feel around for a scar on the back of his head to confirm it was him.

The body of Mahmoud Shabat was among the remains of 195 Palestinians released by Israel over the past 10 days. Their handover is part of an ongoing exchange of the dead, as Hamas gradually returns the remains of 28 hostages under the Gaza ceasefire deal that also brought the release of all living hostages and some 2,000 Palestinians from Israeli prisons.

Families flocked to Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, where the bodies were taken, trying to find out whether loved ones missing for much of the war are among them.

The Israeli military told The Associated Press that all bodies returned so far are those of combatants. AP couldn't verify the claim, based on examining photos of bodies and speaking to doctors, experts and families. Several relatives who identified bodies, including Shabat's, said they weren't fighters.

How a 2018 Supreme Court decision paved the way for meteoric growth in legal sports betting

WASHINGTON (AP) — A 2018 Supreme Court decision opened the floodgates to legalized sports-betting industry, now worth billions of dollars a year, even as it recognized that the decision was controversial.

That high-court ruling is back in the spotlight after the arrests on Thursday of more than 30 people, including an NBA player and coach, in two cases alleging sprawling criminal schemes to rake in millions by rigging sports bets and poker games involving Mafia families.

The court's ruling struck down a 1992 federal law, the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, that had barred betting on football, basketball, baseball and other sports in most states.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion that the way Congress went about the gambling ban, barring states from authorizing sports betting, violated the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, which protects the power of states.

“The legalization of sports gambling requires an important policy choice, but the choice is not ours to make,” Alito wrote. The court’s “job is to interpret the law Congress has enacted and decide whether it is consistent with the Constitution. PASPA is not.”

Inspector Clouseau? The mystery man in an AP photo after the Louvre jewel heist creates a buzz

PARIS (AP) — It was shortly after the stunning heist of the crown jewels at the Louvre when Paris-based Associated Press photographer Thibault Camus caught in his frame a dapperly dressed young man walking by uniformed French police officers, their car blocking one of the museum gates.

Instinctively, he took the shot.

It wasn't a particularly great photo, with someone's shoulder obscuring part of the foreground, Camus told himself.

But it did the job — showing French police sealing off the world's most-visited museum after the brazen daylight robbery last Sunday.

Plus, Camus figured, the guy walking past the officers was unusually well dressed, in a coat, a jacket and tie and wearing a fedora, adding a touch of Paris couture to the scene.

National Guard deployments in DC and Portland, Oregon, are focus of court hearings

No National Guard troops are expected to be deployed in Portland, Oregon, for at least several days, after a temporary federal appeals court decision Friday. Meanwhile, a judge in Washington, D.C., is weighing whether to pull more than 2,000 troops off the streets of the nation's capital.

The developments are the latest in a head-spinning array of lawsuits and overlapping rulings prompted by Trump’s push to send the military into Democratic-run cities despite fierce resistance from mayors and governors. Troop deployment remains blocked in the Chicago area, where all sides are waiting to see if the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes to allow it.

Here’s what to know about the latest legal efforts to block or deploy the Guard in various cities.

A federal appeals court on Friday paused a decision issued by a three-judge panel earlier in the week that could have allowed President Donald Trump to deploy 200 Oregon National Guard troops, ostensibly to protect federal property in Portland.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said it needs until 5 p.m. Tuesday to decide whether to reconsider the panel’s decision, and the panel's decision won't take effect until then.

Tennessee explosives plant blast that killed 16 people was a chain reaction felt 20 miles away

McEWEN, Tenn. (AP) — A massive blast at a Tennessee explosives plant that killed 16 people, leveled the building and was felt more than 20 miles away began in an area where workers used kettles to produce a mixture of explosives and set off other explosives stored nearby, authorities said Friday.

Investigators still haven't been able to identify the remains of two of the people killed in the Oct. 10 explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems factory in Bucksnort, an unincorporated community about 60 miles (97 kilometers) southwest of Nashville, officials said at a news conference.

The delicate investigation at the site of the plant has concluded, but determining a cause could take months more, said Brice McCracken, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ special agent in charge at the National Center for Explosives Training and Research. In addition to locating victims' remains, the on-site work involved removing and disposing of explosives that didn't detonate in the blast.

The next phase centers on ATF labs and testing facilities, where investigators will try to determine what triggered the explosion, said Jamey VanVliet, ATF special agent in charge in the Nashville division.

“Those results don’t come quickly,” VanVliet said. "They come through time, care, and precision. And that’s what this community deserves: answers that are proven, not guessed."

Trump ends trade talks with Canada over tariffs ad that Ontario premier now says he'll phase out

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump announced he’s ending “all trade negotiations” with Canada because of a television ad sponsored by one of its provinces that used the words of former President Ronald Reagan to criticize U.S. tariffs — prompting the province's leader to later pull the ad.

The post on Trump’s social media site Thursday night ratcheted up tensions with the U.S.'s northern neighbor after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he plans to double his country’s exports to countries outside the U.S. because of the threat posed by Trump’s tariffs. White House officials said Trump's reaction was a culmination of the administration's long, pent-up frustration about Canada’s strategy in trade talks.

Later Friday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, whose province had sponsored the ad, said it would be taken down.

Ford said after talking with Prime Minister Mark Carney he’s decided to pause the advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume. Ford said they’ve achieved their goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.

“Our intention was always to initiate a conversation about the kind of economy that Americans want to build and the impact of tariffs on workers and businesses," Ford said. “We’ve achieved our goal, having reached U.S. audiences at the highest levels.”

Tropical Storm Melissa stationary in the Caribbean as 4 deaths reported and huge rains expected

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Tropical Storm Melissa was nearly stationary in the central Caribbean on Friday as forecasters warned it could strengthen and swipe Jamaica as a powerful hurricane and dump a staggering amount of rain — up to 35 inches (89 centimeters) — on southwest Haiti, where they warned of catastrophic flooding and landslides.

The erratic storm was expected to drop copious rain on Jamaica and the southern regions of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. At least three people were killed in Haiti, and one person was killed and one reported missing in Dominican Republic.

“These heavy rains are just going to sit over one area for several days,” said Jamie Rhome, deputy director at the U.S. National Hurricane Center.

The storm was located about 190 miles (310 kilometers) southeast of Kingston, Jamaica, and about 225 miles (360 kilometers) southwest of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph (100 kph) and was moving north at 2 mph (4 kph), the U.S. center said.

A hurricane watch and a tropical storm warning were in effect for Jamaica and Haiti's southwest peninsula.