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

Trump said later Friday that he won't apologize for the post: “I didn't make a mistake,” he said.

The Republican president’s Thursday night post was blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. A rare admission of a misstep by the White House, the deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously.

The post was part of a flurry of overnight activity on Trump's Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and Trump's first-term attorney general finding no evidence of systemic fraud.

Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries.

Accused militant is taken into custody in the deadly 2012 Benghazi attack

WASHINGTON (AP) — An alleged participant in the deadly 2012 attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, has been taken into custody to face prosecution for the rampage that killed four Americans and emerged as a divisive political issue, the Justice Department said Friday.

Zubayar Al-Bakoush, identified by officials as a member of an extremist militia in Libya, had been wanted by the United States for more than a decade. He is accused in a newly unsealed indictment of joining a mob that crashed the front gates of the diplomatic mission with assault rifles and explosives, setting off hours of violence that also included deadly fires.

Al-Bakoush arrived early Friday at an airfield in Virginia after what FBI Director Kash Patel described as a “transfer of custody” and will face charges in Washington, including murder, attempted murder, arson and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Al-Bakoush, 58, appeared Friday afternoon in federal court in Washington, wearing a gray hoodie and using a wheelchair. He did not enter a plea and answered routine questions from a federal magistrate through an interpreter who appeared remotely. He was ordered detained until a hearing tentatively set for next week.

“I have complete trust in the court and the jury,” Al-Bakoush said through the interpreter. He added that he has “complete confidence” there will be justice in his case.

Iran and US hold indirect talks in Oman. America's military leader in the Mideast joins the talks

MUSCAT, Oman (AP) — Iran and the United States held indirect talks in Oman on Friday, negotiations that appeared to return to the starting point on how to approach discussions over Tehran’s nuclear program. But for the first time, America brought its top military commander in the Middle East to the table.

The presence of U.S. Navy Adm. Brad Cooper, head of the military’s Central Command, in his dress uniform at the talks in Muscat, the Omani capital, served as a reminder that the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other warships were now off the coast of Iran in the Arabian Sea.

President Donald Trump said the United States had “very good” talks on Iran and said more were planned for early next week. But he kept up the pressure, warning that if the country didn’t make a deal over its nuclear program, “the consequences are very steep.”

“Iran looks like they want to make a deal very badly — as they should,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he headed to his Florida golf club late Friday. He suggested Iran was willing to “do more” than in previous talks but did not give details.

Asked how long he was willing to wait for a deal, Trump said: “We have plenty of time. If you remember Venezuela, we waited around for a while. We’re in no rush." The Trump administration built up a huge military presence in the Caribbean Sea in the months before a U.S. raid captured then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January.

US stocks soar to their best day since May as the Dow tops 50,000 and bitcoin stops plunging

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market roared back on Friday, as technology stocks recovered much of their losses from earlier in the week and bitcoin halted its plunge, at least for now.

The S&P 500 rallied 2% for its best day since May. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 1,206 points, or 2.5%, and topped the 50,000 level for the first time, while the Nasdaq composite leaped 2.2%.

Chip companies helped drive the widespread rally, and Nvidia jumped 7.8% to trim its loss for the week, which came into the day at just over 10%. Broadcom climbed 7.1% and erased its drop for the week.

They were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500, and they benefited from hopes for continued spending by customers diving into artificial-intelligence technology. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, said late Thursday it expects to spend about $200 billion on investments this year to take advantage of “seminal opportunities like AI, chips, robotics, and low earth orbit satellites.”

Such immense spending, similar to what Alphabet announced a day earlier, is creating concerns of its own, though. The question is whether all those dollars will create big enough profits to make the investments worth it. With doubt remaining about that, Amazon’s stock dropped 5.6%.

UK police search two properties linked to Peter Mandelson as part of Epstein probe

LONDON (AP) — British police on Friday searched two properties linked to ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson as part of a probe into potential misconduct stemming from his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Hayley Sewart said that “officers from the Met’s Central Specialist Crime team are in the process of carrying out search warrants at two addresses, one in the Wiltshire area, and another in the Camden area.

“The searches are related to an ongoing investigation into misconduct in public office offenses, involving a 72-year-old man.”

Mandelson, 72, has homes in Wiltshire in Western England and the Camden area of London.

Two people believed to be police officers were seen entering Mandelson's London home near Regents Park on Friday afternoon.

The Milan Cortina Olympics officially open with a multi-site ceremony for a spread-out Winter Games

MILAN (AP) — Featuring tributes to da Vinci and Dante, Puccini and Pausini, Armani and Fellini, pasta and vino, and other iconic tastes of Italian culture — plus Mariah Carey hitting all the high notes in “Nel Blu Dipinto Di Blu” aka “Volare” — an unprecedented four-site, dual-cauldron opening ceremony got the Milan Cortina Olympics officially started Friday.

Allowing athletes to participate in the Parade of Nations at the mountain locales for the most spread-out Winter Games in history created what perhaps was an unintended consequence: Zero competitors from any of the first five countries announced actually showed up at the main hub, Milan’s San Siro soccer stadium.

While signs bearing the names of Greece — which always leads the procession as the birthplace of the Olympics — Albania, Andorra, Saudi Arabia and Argentina were carried into the home of Serie A soccer titans AC Milan and Inter Milan, there were no athletes from those places around. Instead, they were participating at simultaneous festivities held at Cortina d’Ampezzo in the heart of the Dolomites, Livigno in the Alps, and Predazzo in the autonomous province of Trento.

The first country with athletes at San Siro was Armenia — and their entrance drew raucous cheers from a crowd filled with 61,000 ticket-holders plus others.

Later, a smattering of boos met Israel’s four representatives at the Milan ceremony. There have been some calls for Israel to be banned from the Olympics over the war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’ deadly attack in October 2023.

US births dropped last year, suggesting the 2024 uptick was short-lived

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. births fell a little in 2025, according to newly posted provisional data.

Slightly over 3.6 million births have been reported through birth certificates, or about 24,000 fewer than in 2024. The decline seems to confirm predictions by some experts, who doubted a slight increase in births in 2024 marked the start of an upward trend.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its provisional birth data late last week, filling in two months of missing data and offering the first good look at last year's tally.

The posted numbers account for nearly all of the babies born in 2025, according to the CDC. Data is still being compiled and analyzed, but the final tally might only add “a few thousand additional births,” said Robert Anderson, who oversees birth and death tracking at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics.

Experts say people are marrying later and also worry about their ability to have the money, health insurance and other resources needed to raise children in a stable environment.

Judge orders Trump administration to bring back 3 families deported to Honduras, other countries

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A judge says the federal government must return three families hurt by the first Trump administration's policy of separating parents from the children at the border, saying their deportations in recent months relied on “lies, deception and coercion."

The order, issued Thursday, found the deported families should have been allowed to remain in the United States under terms of a legal settlement over the Trump administration's separation of about 6,000 children from their parents at the border in 2018. Each mother had permission to remain in the U.S. until 2027 under humanitarian parole.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego said the administration also had to pay for their return travel costs.

One woman and her three children, including a 6-year-old U.S. citizen, were deported to Honduras in July after being ordered to check in with ICE at least 11 times over two months, which, she said, caused her to lose her job.

Sabraw rejected the government’s argument that the family left the U.S. voluntarily. The woman said ICE officers visited her home and asked her sign a document agreeing to leave but she refused.

Actor Timothy Busfield indicted in New Mexico on 4 counts of sexual contact with a child

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — “West Wing” and “Field of Dreams” actor Timothy Busfield has been indicted by a grand jury on four counts of criminal sexual contact with a child under age 13, a New Mexico prosecutor announced Friday.

The allegations are tied to Busfield's work as a director on the set of the TV series “The Cleaning Lady” from 2022 to 2024.

Busfield has denied the allegations, initially filed in court by police, and a defense attorney on Friday said he would “fight these charges at every stage.”

Bernalillo County District Attorney Sam Bregman announced the indictment in a social media post.

Busfield had turned himself in to authorities in January on related charges by police and was released from jail by a judge who found no pattern of criminal conduct or similar allegations involving children in Busfield's past. The grand jury indictment allows the case against Busfield to proceed toward possible trial without a preliminary courtroom hearing on evidence.

Colorado funeral home owner who abused nearly 200 corpses gets 40 years, decried as a 'monster'

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — A Colorado funeral home owner who stashed 189 decomposing bodies in a building over four years and gave grieving families fake ashes was sentenced to 40 years in state prison Friday.

During the sentencing hearing, family members told Judge Eric Bentley they have had recurring nightmares about decomposing flesh and maggots since learning what happened to their loved ones.

They called defendant Jon Hallford a “monster” and urged the judge to give him the maximum sentence of 50 years.

Bentley told Hallford he caused “unspeakable and incomprehensible” harm.

“It is my personal belief that every one of us, every human being, is basically good at the core, but we live in a world that tests that belief every day, and Mr. Hallford your crimes are testing that belief,” Bentley said.