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

The Trump administration has said it was reducing levels in Europe by about 5,000 troops, and U.S. officials confirmed about 4,000 service members were no longer deploying to Poland. Trump’s social media announcement raises more uncertainty for European allies that have been blindsided by the changes as the administration has complained about NATO members not shouldering enough of the burden of their own defense and failing to do more to support the Iran war.

“Based on the successful Election of the now President of Poland, Karol Nawrocki, who I was proud to Endorse, and our relationship with him, I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland," Trump said on Truth Social.

Trump and the Pentagon have said in recent weeks that they were drawing down at least 5,000 troops in Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the U.S. was being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and criticized what he called a lack of strategy in the war.

Trump then told reporters at the beginning of the month that the U.S. would be "cutting a lot further than 5,000.”

UK police renew call for witnesses as they broaden inquiry into former Prince Andrew

LONDON (AP) — British police appealed for witnesses Friday as they sought to broaden their investigation into potential offenses by the former Prince Andrew, including sexual misconduct.

Thames Valley Police issued the statement as it updated reporters on its investigation into allegations of misconduct in public office by the former prince, now known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. The force covers the area west of London where Mountbatten-Windsor lived for many years.

Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on Feb. 19 and held for hours as police questioned him about the allegations, linked to his friendship with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The arrest was an extraordinary move in a country where authorities once sought to shield the royal family from embarrassment.

Mountbatten-Windsor has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Police previously said they were “assessing” reports that Mountbatten-Windsor sent trade reports to Epstein in 2010 when the then-prince was Britain’s special envoy for international trade. Those reports were based on correspondence between the two men that became public when the U.S. Justice Department released millions of pages of documents from its investigation into Epstein.

Rubio embarks on another mission to ease tensions with allies during NATO meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his latest mission to assuage nervous U.S. allies in Europe about the Trump administration’s intentions with NATO or at least put a friendlier face on whipsawing changes and uncertainty about American troop reductions.

Rubio will attend a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Sweden on Friday — the same day senior Pentagon officials are expected to brief the 32-nation alliance on plans for the U.S. military’s commitment to European defense at the alliance’s headquarters in Brussels.

The meeting of diplomats, which precedes a NATO leaders’ summit in Turkey in July, comes amid great uncertainty over how the war in Iran will play out and whether stalled U.S. efforts to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict will resume. Resentment also still simmers on the continent over President Donald Trump’s criticism of allies and his interest in taking over Greenland, a territory of NATO ally Denmark.

Rubio has often been called on to offer a calmer, less antagonistic presence from the Trump administration at meetings like these. He has been dispatched on several such missions this year, including the Munich Security Conference in February and, more recently, to Italy, where he met with Italian officials and Pope Leo XIV after Trump criticized the American pontiff for his stances on crime and the Iran war.

On his departure to the meeting in Helsingborg, Sweden, Rubio declined to discuss any further changes to the American military presence in Europe, including a possible reduction in the number of troops that the U.S. will commit under the NATO Force Model, which is a contingency plan for European defense in the event of serious security concerns.

NATO allies bewildered by Trump's about-face on US troop moves in Europe

HELSINGBORG, Sweden (AP) — NATO allies and defense officials expressed bewilderment on Friday at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to send 5,000 U.S. troops to Poland just weeks after he had ordered 5,000 troops to be pulled out of Europe.

“It is confusing indeed, and not always easy to navigate,” Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told reporters at a meeting she was hosting of her NATO counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

U.S. defense officials were also confused. “We just spent the better part of two weeks reacting to the first announcement. We don’t know what this means either,” said one of two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military matters.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said “I am pleased to announce that the United States will be sending an additional 5,000 Troops to Poland.” He said this was due to his strong ties with Polish President Karol Nawrocki, whom Trump endorsed in elections last year.

The apparent change of mind came after weeks of conflicting statements from Trump and his administration about reducing — not increasing — the American military footprint in Europe.

World shares track Wall Street gains and oil prices climb on uncertainty over the Iran war

HONG KONG (AP) — World shares advanced Friday, with Tokyo's benchmark logging a record high close following modest gains on Wall Street, while oil prices rose in the absence of signs of progress toward ending the Iran war.

U.S. futures edged more than 0.3% higher.

In early European trading, Britain's FTSE 100 was up 0.4% at 10,489.09. France's CAC 40 gained 0.5% to 8,124.02, while Germany's DAX climbed 0.7% to 24,779.16.

In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 2.7% to 63,339.07, besting a record high close just over a week earlier. A report showed inflation hitting a four-year low in April, at 1.4%, despite higher prices for oil and gas due to the war.

South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.4% to 7,847.71.

Backlash to Trump's $1.8B settlement fund delays GOP immigration bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans abruptly left Washington on Thursday without voting on a roughly $70 billion bill to fund immigration enforcement agencies, frustrated with the White House and at an impasse over whether to try to block a new $1.776 billion settlement fund to compensate Trump allies who believe they have been politically prosecuted.

Republicans had already abandoned part of the bill that provided $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party. But the settlement announced by the Justice Department this week prompted even more questions, spurring a push to limit the taxpayer dollars that some feared could go to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

A tense meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche on Thursday morning to discuss the settlement only heightened the frustration among senators. Soon after it ended, Republican leaders announced that they would not vote on the immigration enforcement measure until they returned from a Memorial Day recess the week of June 1, which was Trump's self-imposed deadline for them to pass it.

Blanche “had an appreciation for the depth of feeling” among GOP senators, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said afterward as a growing number of them spoke out against the idea.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former GOP leader, called the settlement “utterly stupid, morally wrong.”

Rubio doubtful of diplomacy with Cuba as Trump raises new threat of military action

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and America's top diplomat on Thursday again raised the specter of U.S. military intervention in Cuba, a renewed threat that takes on greater weight a day after the administration announced criminal charges against the island's former leader, Raúl Castro.

Trump said previous U.S. presidents have considered intervening in Cuba for decades but that “it looks like I’ll be the one that does it.”

“Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years, doing something,” Trump told reporters when asked about Cuba during an environmental event in the Oval Office. “And, it looks like I’ll be the one that does it. So, I would be happy to do it.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters separately that Cuba has been a national security threat for years because of its ties to U.S. adversaries and that Trump is intent on addressing it.

Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who has long taken a hard-line against Cuba’s socialist leadership, said the Trump administration wants to resolve differences with Cuba peacefully but is doubtful the U.S. can reach a diplomatic resolution with the island's current government.

Facing intense internal pressure, DNC releases postelection autopsy that criticizes Kamala Harris

NEW YORK (AP) — Kamala Harris “wrote off rural America" during the 2024 presidential campaign and failed to attack Donald Trump with sufficient “negative firepower," according to a long-awaited post-election autopsy released Thursday by the Democratic National Committee.

But the document's key findings, the focus of much mystery over the last year, were almost an afterthought among Democratic officials who expressed deep frustration with DNC chair Ken Martin 's handling of the situation and the direction of the party's political machine.

Martin shared the 192-page report only after facing intense internal pressure from Democratic operatives. He originally promised to release the autopsy even before taking over the committee last year, only to keep it under wraps because he worried it would interfere with Democrats' focus on the November midterms.

“I didn’t want to create a distraction,” Martin wrote on Substack. “Ironically, in doing so, I ended up creating an even bigger distraction. And for that, I sincerely apologize.”

He said the report was withheld because it “was not ready for primetime,” and the DNC covered the document with annotations and disclaimers saying it was incomplete and unsubstantiated.

Sudan's war has left thousands missing. Many are buried in unmarked graves

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — It was a classic husband's phone call. He was done for the day and would stop at the market before coming home. But he was returning from war, not work.

Fahmy al-Fateh never made it home. His wife, Azaher Abdallah, started calling friends and family, then turned to his colleagues in Sudan 's army. Her husband was last seen leaving a military base in the capital, Khartoum, on a motorcycle. That was over a year ago.

Now the couple's 3-year-old son shouts at every passing motorcycle, thinking it's his father, Abdallah said.

“He was the most precious thing in my life," she said, sobbing and burying her face in her hands. “I would feel more at peace if I knew something. It’s better than not knowing what happened to him, whether he's alive or dead.”

Her husband is one of more than 8,000 people who have gone missing during Sudan's three years of war, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. The conflict has torn families apart. People have been separated while fleeing, or gone missing during fighting. Others are quietly detained, leaving friends and relatives in agony trying to learn their fate.

2-time NASCAR champ Kyle Busch dies at 41 after being hospitalized with a 'severe illness'

CONCORD, N.C. (AP) — Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup Series champion who won more races than anyone across NASCAR’s three national series, has died. He was 41.

The Busch Family, Richard Childress Racing and NASCAR issued a joint statement Thursday saying Busch died after being hospitalized. No cause of death was given.

Busch’s family said earlier Thursday that he was hospitalized with a “severe illness,” three days before he was to compete in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Busch was testing in the Chevrolet racing simulator in Concord on Wednesday when he became unresponsive and was transported to a hospital in Charlotte, several people familiar with the situation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because details have not been disclosed by Busch’s team or family.

Busch was the younger brother of Kurt Busch, a NASCAR Hall of Famer. He’s survived by wife Samantha and children Brexton and Lennix.