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

The redesigned mega rocket made its debut two days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced he’s taking the company public. It blasted off from the southern tip of Texas, carrying 20 mock Starlink satellites that were released midway through the hourlong spaceflight that stretched halfway around the world.

The spacecraft reached its final destination — the Indian Ocean — despite some engine trouble, before erupting in flames upon impact. That last part was not unexpected, according to SpaceX.

Musk called it “an epic” launch and landing.

“You scored a goal for humanity,” he told his team via X.

40,000 people under evacuation orders for a chemical tank leak in Southern California

Authorities in Southern California on Friday were racing to figure out how to prevent the explosion of a storage tank that has been leaking a hazardous chemical used to make plastic parts, as some 40,000 people were under evacuation orders in the area.

A storage tank holding between 6,000 and 7,000 gallons (22,700 and 26,500 liters) of methyl methacrylate overheated Thursday and began venting vapors into the air at an aerospace plastics facility in Garden Grove, a city in Orange County, the local fire authority said.

The tank could fail and crack, releasing the chemical onto the ground, or it could explode, Orange County Fire Authority Division Chief Craig Covey said Friday.

“This thing is going to fail, and we don’t know when,” Covey said. “We’re doing our best to figure out when or how we can prevent it.”

Officials ordered residents in Garden Grove to leave and expanded evacuation orders Friday to some residents of five other Orange County cities — Cypress, Stanton, Anaheim, Buena Park and Westminster — after being unable to stop the leak overnight on the tank at GKN Aerospace, which makes parts for commercial and military aircraft.

Behavior of teen in mosque shooting led police to seize family guns a year before attack

One of the teenagers who killed three people at a San Diego mosque this week was flagged to law enforcement last year for exhibiting alarming behavior and idolizing Nazis, prompting police to confiscate his father's guns, according to court records.

The officers who conducted a welfare check at the home of Caleb Vazquez wrote that he was “involved in suspicious behavior idolizing nazis and mass shooters,” and obtained a court order on Jan. 29, 2025, to remove 26 guns under a 2014 California law allowing the confiscation of firearms from people considered dangerous.

Vazquez's father initially denied police entry into his home when they requested to see how he was storing his weapons.

Vazquez’s parents had voluntarily removed the guns from the house and placed them in a secure storage facility days earlier, according to an affidavit signed by Marco Vazquez, the father.

Authorities have said Vazquez, 18, met Cain Clark, 17, online, where they both were radicalized. Police haven't shared more details about how they knew each other, or specified whose weapons were used in the shooting.

Ugandans rue link to Bundibugyo, the Ebola virus type named after a district of cocoa farmers

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Boon-dee-BOO-joh.

Before it became the somewhat easy-to-mispronounce name of a rare type of Ebola virus, Bundibugyo is a mountainous district in western Uganda that even some locals would struggle to pinpoint on a map.

It's home to roughly 200,000 people. Many are cocoa farmers who search for whatever cultivable land they can find in the impossibly steep landscape of hills and valleys marking Uganda’s border with Congo. As an example of the classic village idyll, Bundibugyo is a beautiful place.

Yet it now trends for an unpleasant reason, making some Ugandans rue Bundibugyo's association with the current Ebola outbreak, which has infected hundreds of people in eastern Congo. There are 160 suspected Ebola deaths in two provinces.

The Ugandan district's connection to the Bundibugyo virus stems from an Ebola outbreak there nearly two decades ago that was flagged as a new species of Ebola, a viral disease that usually manifests as hemorrhagic fever.

Pope Leo meets families of youth lost to illegal toxic waste dumping in Italy's 'Land of Fires'

ACERRA, Italy (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Saturday greeted one by one families who lost loved ones to illegal toxic dumping in an area near Naples, as many paused to share photographs and other mementos of children and young people who have died or are battling cancer — illnesses tied to a multi-billion criminal racket run by the mafia.

Leo's visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo’s commitment to carry on his predecessor’s environmental agenda.

“I have come first of all to gather the tears of those who have lost loved ones, killed by environmental pollution caused by unscrupulous people and organizations who for too long were able to act with impunity,” Leo said in remarks to family members and local clergy inside Acerra's cathedral.

The pontiff recalled that the area now dubbed the Land of Fires was once called “Campania felix,” Latin for blessed or fruitful countryside, "capable for enchanting for its fertility, its produce and its culture, like a hymn to life.

"And yet — here is death, of the land and of men,'' the pope said.

How South African scientists identified hantavirus on a cruise ship thousands of miles away

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — When South African infectious disease specialist Lucille Blumberg checked her email on the morning of May 1, while the country was celebrating the Labor Day holiday, an urgent message caught her attention.

A U.K.-based colleague had written about a passenger from a cruise ship sailing thousands of miles away in the Atlantic Ocean who had been evacuated and admitted to a Johannesburg hospital with suspected pneumonia. Others aboard the vessel were also sick.

The colleague, who monitors diseases in remote British overseas territories in the South Atlantic Ocean, asked Blumberg to follow up on the passenger, who had been evacuated from the ship in one of the territories, Ascension Island.

Blumberg and other experts at South Africa’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases were suddenly thrown into the race to identify the cause of an outbreak aboard the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius.

“Even though it was a public holiday, we moved, we moved really fast," Blumberg told The Associated Press. "It was busy. There were many conversations. There were online discussions, and there was laboratory testing happening at the time.”

1 person has died after blast at New York City shipyard that also injured 36 people, officials say.

NEW YORK (AP) — One person has died after a fire and two explosions Friday at a New York City shipyard, officials say.

Officials said 36 people were injured, most of them firefighters and other first responders, and one civilian died at the scene.

A firefighter and a fire marshal were inside the structure when a second explosion happened, and both were seriously injured by the shock wave from the blast.

“This was a complex, fast-developing emergency situation,” New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani said during a news conference Friday evening.

Multiple people called the fire department around 3:30 p.m., reporting smoke and two workers trapped in the basement of a 150-foot by 150-foot (46 meters by 46 meters) metal structure at the back of the shipyard, Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said.

Rubio arrives in India ahead of Quad talks as US tries to reset strained ties

NEW DELHI (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in India on Saturday ahead of a meeting next week with his counterparts from India, Australia, and Japan, members of the Indo-Pacific strategic alliance known as the Quad.

Rubio's first official trip to India comes as Washington seeks to stabilize relations with New Delhi after ties soured over President Donald Trump’s tariff policies, which raised duties on several Indian exports.

Much of Rubio’s four-day visit, however, will focus on a multi-city tour, along with a gala reception in New Delhi marking the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence.

“There’s a lot to work on with India, they’re a great ally and partner. We do a lot of good work with them so this is an important trip,” Rubio said ahead of his visit to India.

Rubio arrived in eastern city of Kolkata early Saturday where he is later scheduled to visit Mother House, the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity, founded by Mother Teresa. In coming days, he will also visit northern cities of Agra and Jaipur, known for iconic monuments and palaces.

Coal mine explosion in China kills 90 people, state media say

BEIJING (AP) — A gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s northern Shanxi province killed at least 90 people, state media said on Saturday, in the country’s deadliest mining accident in recent years.

Official news agency Xinhua said the accident at Changzhi city’s Liushenyu coal mine happened on Friday evening. Around 247 workers were on duty at the time.

Nine miners were still unaccounted for as of Saturday afternoon, Xinhua said, and more than 120 people were hospitalized.

The cause of the explosion was under investigation, Xinhua reported, and rescue work is pressing on with hundreds of rescuers and medical personnel sent to the site. Among the injured, many were hurt by toxic gas, according to state media CCTV.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for an all-out effort to rescue the missing, reported Xinhua.

Judge dismisses criminal charges against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A federal judge on Friday dismissed a human smuggling case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia, finding that the Justice Department’s pursuit of criminal charges was designed to punish him for challenging his mistaken deportation to El Salvador last year.

The ruling amounted to an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that under President Donald Trump has repeatedly been accused of targeting defendants for political purposes. The Trump administration touted the charges against Abrego Garcia last year at a press conference in which then-Attorney General Pam Bondi declared, “This is what American justice looks like.”

“The evidence before this court sadly reflects an abuse of prosecuting power,” U.S. District Judge Waverly Crenshaw, in Nashville, Tenn., said in his ruling granting Abrego Garcia’s motion to dismiss for “selective or vindictive prosecution.” Without Abrego Garcia’s “successful lawsuit challenging his removal to El Salvador, the government would not have brought this prosecution."

Abrego Garcia’s deportation became an embarrassment for Trump officials when they were ordered to return him to the U.S. In his motion to dismiss, Abrego Garcia claimed that both the timing of the criminal charges and inflammatory statements about him by top Trump officials demonstrated that the prosecution was vindictive.

Despite the win in criminal court, his future in the United States is uncertain. Barred from deporting him to El Salvador, administration officials have threatened to deport him to a series of African countries, most recently Liberia.