Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Liberal Party has won Canada’s federal election, capping a stunning turnaround in fortunes fueled by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to Canada’s economy and sovereignty.

The Liberals are projected to win more of Parliament’s 343 seats than the Conservatives in Monday’s contest. It isn’t clear yet if they will win an outright majority, at least 172, or will need to rely on one or more smaller parties to pass legislation.

Trump’s threats of tariffs and suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state upended the race, as polls showed Pierre Poilievre and his Conservative Party with comfortable leads only months ago.

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This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Catholic Church in Oklahoma wants taxpayers to fund an online charter school that “is faithful to the teachings of Jesus Christ.” The Supreme Court could well approve.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School would be the nation’s first religious charter school. A ruling from the high court allowing public money to flow directly to a religious school almost certainly would lead to others.

Opponents warn it would blur the separation between church and state, sap money from public schools and possibly upend the rules governing charter schools in almost every state.

The court hears arguments Wednesday in one of the term’s most closely watched cases.

The case comes to the court amid efforts, mainly in conservative-led states, to insert religion into public schools. Those include a challenged Louisiana requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted in classrooms and a mandate from Oklahoma’s state schools superintendent that the Bible be placed in public school classrooms.

Conservative justices in recent years have delivered a series of decisions allowing public money to be spent at religious institutions, leading liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor to lament that the court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”

The justices are reviewing an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision last year in which a lopsided majority invalidated a state board’s approval of an application filed jointly by two Catholic dioceses in Oklahoma.

The K-12 online school had planned to start classes for its first 200 enrollees last fall, with part of its mission to evangelize its students in the Catholic faith.

Oklahoma’s high court determined the board’s approval violated the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from making any law “respecting an establishment of religion.”

The state board and the school, backed by an array of Republican-led states and religious and conservative groups, argue that the court decision violates a different part of the First Amendment that protects religious freedom. The Free Exercise Clause has been the basis of the recent Supreme Court decisions.

“A State need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in one of those decisions in 2020. “But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

The case has divided some of the state’s Republican leaders, with Gov. Kevin Stitt and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters supporting the concept of using public funds for religious schools, while Attorney General Gentner Drummond has opposed the idea and sued to overturn the virtual charter school board’s approval of St. Isidore.

A key issue in the case is whether the school is public or private. Charter schools are deemed public in Oklahoma and the other 45 states and the District of Columbia where they operate.

They are free and open to all. Just under 4 million American schoolchildren, about 8%, are enrolled in charter schools.

“Charter schools no doubt offer important educational innovations, but they bear all the classic indicia of public schools,” lawyers for Drummond wrote in a Supreme Court filing.

Those include that they receive state funding, must abide by antidiscrimination laws and must submit to oversight of curriculum and testing. But the schools also are run by independent boards that are not part of local public school systems.

“Charter schools are called public schools, but they’re totally different entities,” said Nicole Garnett, a University of Notre Dame law professor who is a leading proponent of publicly funded religious charter schools. Other Notre Dame professors are part of the St. Isidore legal team.

If the court finds the school is public, or a “state actor,” it could lead to a ruling against St. Isidore. If instead it determines that the school is private, the court is more likely to see this case as it did the earlier ones in which it found discrimination against religious institutions.

That the court even agreed to take on the issue now might suggest that a majority is inclined to side with St. Isidore.

The Oklahoma court is the only one that has ruled on religious charter schools and only eight justices are hearing the case. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself without explanation. Barrett previously taught law at Notre Dame and is close friends with Garnett.

The current court is very familiar with private and, especially, religious education. Six justices attended Catholic schools as children and almost all the children of the justices go or went to private schools, including some religious ones.

Walters, the state schools superintendent, sees the St. Isidore case as “the next frontier” in school choice for parents. He has been an unabashed critic of the separation of church and state and sought to infuse more religion into public schools.

“I see it very clearly, that there’s been a war on Christianity and our schools have been at the epicenter of that,” said Walters, a former high school history teacher elected in 2022 on a platform of fighting “woke ideology” in public schools and banning certain books from school libraries.

“We’re going to give parents more rights in education than anywhere in the country, and that means a free ability to choose the school of your choice, whether it’s a religious education, whether it’s a charter school, public school, home school, all of the above.”

The idea of using public money to fund religious schools is antithetical to the Constitution, said Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

“This is religious public education, fully and directly funded by taxpayers. It’s as abject a violation of religious freedom as they come, because it forces taxpayers to fund the heart of religion, religious education for religion that’s not their own,” Laser said.

A group of Oklahoma parents, faith leaders and a public education nonprofit that also sued to block the school argue that religious charter schools in their state would lead to a drop in funding for rural public schools.

St. Isidore would lead to other religious charter schools, said Erika Wright, a mother whose two school-age children attend a rural school district in Cleveland County. “And all of those schools would be pulling from the same limited pot of money that we have for our current brick-and-mortar schools across the state.”

A decision is expected by early summer.

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Murphy reported from Oklahoma City.

LONDON (AP) — President Donald Trump is pushing Ukraine to cede territory to Russia to end the war, threatening to walk away if a deal becomes too difficult — and causing alarm bells in Europe about how to fill the gap.

Ukraine’s European allies view the war as fundamental to the continent’s security, and pressure is now mounting to find ways to support Kyiv militarily — regardless of whether Trump pulls out.

Trump has repeatedly lashed out at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of prolonging the “killing field” by pushing back on his demand that Ukraine hand over occupied Crimea to Moscow.

Trump’s land-for-peace plan would mark a significant shift in the post-World War II order, ripping up conventions that have long held that borders should not be redrawn by force.

“It took a World War to roll back de jure annexations and 60 million people died,” said François Heisbourg, special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, referring to the pre-war annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany.

“Europeans will not accept it” and Ukraine will not either, he said.

Can Ukraine fight without U.S. support?

Diplomats and experts described various scenarios if the U.S. decides to walk. They range from the U.S. ceasing direct aid to Ukraine — but allowing European nations to pass on critical American intelligence and weapons to Kyiv — to Trump banning transfers of any American technology, including components or software in European weapons.

Any withdrawal of U.S. military aid to Ukraine could create serious difficulties for Europe, analysts and diplomats told The Associated Press. Kyiv’s ability to keep fighting would depend on European political will to muster money and weapons — and how quickly the gaps left by Washington can be filled.

If it were easy, Europe would “already be doing things without America,” said a European diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

Where would the money come from?

No new U.S. aid package for Ukraine has been approved since Trump came into office, even as European nations have collectively provided Ukraine with more aid than Washington, according to the Keil Institute.

Europe has contributed around $157 billion, some $26 billion more than the U.S., although Washington slightly outpaces Europe when it comes to military aid, the Germany-based institute said.

It will be hard, but there are ways Europe can find cash to fund Ukraine — including seizing frozen Russian assets — but “money isn’t what you shoot bullets with,” Heisbourg said.

Europe’s “big mistake” was undertaking major military downsizing following the Cold War and thinking “this war started in February 2022 and not in February 2014,” when Moscow invaded and then annexed Crimea, said Thomas Gomart, director of IFRI, a French international affairs think tank.

Europeans are scrambling to acquire weapons for themselves and for Ukraine, while confronting constraints on production capacity, a fragmented defense industry and a decades-long reliance on the U.S.

Some extra production capacity could come from Ukraine, which has ramped up manufacturing of ammunition and drones since Russia’s invasion. Much harder to replace, experts said, are advanced American weapons, including air defenses.

Can U.S. weapons systems be replaced?

Russia has attacked Ukraine almost nightly since Putin’s forces invaded in February 2022, flooding the skies with missiles and drones, including dummy attack drones to exhaust Ukraine’s limited air defenses. In April, at least 57 people were killed in multiple strikes.

The death toll from the Russian attacks would “inevitably” be higher without the American Patriot air-defense missile systems protecting Ukraine’s skies, said Douglas Barrie, senior fellow for military aerospace at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

The Patriots can track and intercept Russian missiles, including the hypersonic Kinzhal, which Putin has boasted was unstoppable. Kyiv uses them to protect critical infrastructure, including the country’s energy grid.

Earlier this month, Zelenskyy asked to buy 10 Patriots, a request Trump dismissed. “You don’t start a war against someone 20 times your size and then hope that people give you some missiles,” he said, a day after a Russian strike on the Ukrainian city of Sumy killed 35 people.

France and Italy have given Ukraine their Aster SAMP/T air-defense system but the issue is not “quality, it’s quantity,” Barrie said, pointing to the larger U.S. defense industrial base and greater U.S. stockpiles.

Although Trump criticized Putin over the weekend for his missile strikes and suggested imposing more sanctions on Russia, for Europe it remains a wait-and-see game.

The whiplash of Trump’s aggressive foreign policy means nothing is off the cards, experts said.

A worst-case scenario could see a ban on American weapons exports and transfers to Ukraine, which would bar European nations from buying U.S. weapons to give to Kyiv or transferring weapons with American components or software, Barrie said.

That could mean countries, including Germany, that have already given American Patriots to Ukraine would be prohibited from doing so. Such a move would seriously hamper Europe’s ability to support Kyiv and mark a fundamental shift in America’s relationship with its allies.

“It’s one thing for the U.S. to cease to be an ally, it is another for the U.S. to be an enemy,” Heisbourg said, noting that such a step could also damage the U.S. defense sector if weapons purchases were perceived to be unusable on Trump’s political order.

Filling the gap on intelligence sharing

In March, the Trump administration suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine in a bid to force Zelenskyy to accept a truce with Russia. The about weeklong suspension impacted Ukraine’s ability to track and target Russian troops, tanks and ships.

There are certain capabilities, including “higher-end” surveillance and reconnaissance using satellites that “only the United States can provide,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security in Washington.

While the extent of intelligence sharing between the U.S. and Ukraine is not known, experts said it likely shows Kyiv near real-time buildup of Russian troop deployments and helps target long-range strikes.

Ukraine’s allies do not have as much satellite capability as the U.S. but could launch more, or Ukraine could use commercial systems if Trump cuts off intelligence again, experts said. The latter would likely have to come from a European provider — in March, the American satellite imagery company Maxar Technologies confirmed it temporarily suspended access to unclassified satellite images following the administration’s decision to pull intelligence sharing.

Ukraine also needs an alternative to Elon Musk’s satellite network Starlink, which is critical for Ukrainian defensive and civilian communications. European defense companies are discussing creating a satellite alliance but don’t currently have an alternative on the same scale.

Would Ukraine collapse without U.S. support?

If Trump walks away, or if Kyiv rejects a deal and keeps fighting with European support, it won’t necessarily mean “the collapse of Ukraine” although more people will almost certainly die if the U.S. pulls its air defenses and intelligence-sharing capabilities, Heisbourg said.

Trump has jolted European leaders into awareness that they need to take responsibility for their own defense, regardless of who occupies the White House, experts said.

That means European nations need to invest more in defense, work together to scale up military production and build trust to share intelligence.

“This issue is not a question about the next two months or the next two years. This issue is about the next two decades,” Gomart said.

NEW YORK (AP) — Asian shares were mostly higher on Tuesday after U.S. stocks drifted to a mixed, quiet finish ahead of a busy week of corporate earnings and economic data that could bring more bouts of volatility.

U.S. futures edged higher and oil prices fell. Tokyo’s markets were closed for a holiday.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was nearly unchanged at 21,969.67, while the Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% lower, to 3,285.68.

In South Korea, the Kospi jumped 0.7% to 2,565.42. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 also rose 0.9%, to 8,070.60.

Taiwan’s Taiex gained 1%, while the Sensex in India edged less than 0.1% higher.

A recent relative lull in trading has brought a respite from the sharp swings that have rocked markets for weeks, as hopes rose and fell that President Donald Trump may back down on his trade war.

The Trump administration appears to have made little headway in finding a way forward with Beijing, with both sides insisting the other needs to make the first move. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, speaking on CNBC, said he believed China wants a “de-escalation” in the trade war.

“I do have an escalation letter in my back pocke, and we’re very anxious not to have to use itt.”

“Maybe they’ll call me one day,” Bessent told Fox news.

Trump has ordered increases in tariffs on Chinese exports that combined add up to 145%. China has struck back with import duties on U.S. goods of up to 125%, though it has exempted some items.

Many investors believe Trump’s tariffs could cause a recession if left unaltered. Coming into Monday, the S&P 500 had roughly halved its drop that had taken it nearly 20% below its record set earlier this year.

On Monday, the S&P 500 inched up by 0.1%, to 5,528.75, extending its winning streak to a fifth day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.3% to 40,227.59, and the Nasdaq composite slipped 0.1% to 17,366.13.

Mixed trading for some influential tech stocks ahead of their earnings reports this week pulled the S&P 500 back and forth between modest gains and losses for much of Monday.

Amazon fell 0.7%, Microsoft dipped 0.2%, Meta Platforms added 0.4% and Apple rose 0.4%.

Outside of Big Tech, executives from Caterpillar, Exxon Mobil and McDonald’s may also offer clues this week about how they’re seeing economic conditions play out. Several companies across industries have already slashed their estimates for upcoming profit or pulled their forecasts entirely because of uncertainty about what will happen with Trump’s tariffs.

A fear is that Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs may be pushing households and businesses to alter their spending and freeze plans for long-term investment because of how quickly conditions can change, seemingly by the hour.

So far, economic reports seem to show the U.S. economy is still growing, though at a weaker pace. On Wednesday, economists expect a report to say U.S. economic growth slowed to a 0.8% annual rate in the first three months of this year, down from a 2.4% pace at the end of last year.

Most reports so far have focused on data from before Trump’s “Liberation Day” on April 2, when he announced tariffs that could affect imports from countries worldwide. That could raise the stakes for upcoming reports on the U.S. job market, including Friday’s, which will show how many workers employers hired during all of April.

Economists expect it to show a slowdown in hiring down to 125,000 from 228,000 in March.

The most jarring economic data recently have come from surveys showing U.S. consumers are getting much more pessimistic about the economy’s future because of tariffs. The Conference Board’s latest reading on consumer confidence is due on Tuesday.

In the bond market, Treasury yields fell further. They’ve been sinking since an unsettling, unusual spurt higher in yields earlier this month rattled both Wall Street and the U.S. government. That rise had suggested investors worldwide may have been losing faith in the U.S. bond market’s reputation as a safe place to park cash.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury was steady at 4.21% early Tuesday.

In other dealings, benchmark U.S. crude oil lost 54 cents to $61.51 per barrel. Brent crude gave up 51 cents to $64.28 per barrel.

The U.S. dollar bought 142.49 Japanese yen, up from 142.02 yen. The euro slipped to $1.1387 from $1.1422.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — More than 50,000 Los Angeles county workers began a two-day strike Monday evening, closing libraries and disrupting administrative operations across the nation’s most populous county.

The two-day strike was initiated in response to failed negotiations with the county for a new contract after the last one expired in March, according to Service Employees International Union Local 721 leaders.

The union represents more than 55,000 workers including public health professionals, social workers, parks and recreation staff, custodians, clerical workers, and more serving a county of 10 million residents. It will be the first time all of its members go on strike, the union said.

“This is the workforce that got LA County through emergency after emergency: the January wildfires, public health emergencies, mental health emergencies, social service emergencies and more,” said union leader David Green in a statement. “That’s why we have had it with the labor law violations and demand respect for our workers.”

The strike is set to last until 7 p.m. Wednesday. During this time, libraries, some healthcare clinics, beach bathrooms, and public service counters at the Hall of Administration are expected to be closed. Some other services in the medical examiner’s office and public works department may also be affected, .

The union has accused the county of 44 labor law violations during contract negotiations, including surveillance and retaliation against workers engaging in union activity and contracting out positions represented by the union.

LA County says it’s facing “unprecedented stresses” on its budget, including a tentative $4 billion settlement of thousands of childhood sexual assault claims, a projected $2 billion in impacts related to the LA wildfires in January, and the potential loss of hundreds of millions in federal funding.

“We do not want to negotiate ourselves into a structural deficit—which could lead to layoffs and service reductions,” spokesperson Elizabeth Marcellino said in a statement from the chief executive office. “We are trying to strike a balance: fair compensation for our workforce while sustaining services and avoiding layoffs in the midst of some of the worst financial challenges we have ever experienced.”

The city of LA is facing similar financial woes — Mayor Karen Bass’s recently proposed budget includes 1,600 layoffs of city workers amid a nearly $1 billion deficit.

BANGKOK (AP) — They’d watched overnight as the bombardments grew closer, and observed through binoculars as the last U.S. Marines piled into a helicopter on the roof of the embassy to be whisked away from Saigon.

So when the reporters who had stayed behind heard the telltale squeak of the rubber sandals worn by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops in the stairs outside The Associated Press office, they weren’t surprised, and braced themselves for possible detention or arrest.

But when the two young soldiers who entered showed no signs of malice, the journalists just kept reporting.

Offering the men a Coke and day-old cake, Peter Arnett, George Esper and Matt Franjola started asking about their march into Saigon. As the men detailed their route on a bureau map, photographer Sarah Errington emerged from the darkroom and snapped what would become an iconic picture, published around the world.

Fifty years later, Arnett recalled the message he fed into the teletype transmitter to AP headquarters in New York after the improbable scene had played out.

“In my 13 years of covering the Vietnam War, I never dreamed it would end as it did today,” he remembers writing. “A total surrender following a few hours later with a cordial meeting in the AP bureau with an armed and battle-garbed North Vietnamese officer with his aide over warm Coke and pastries? That is how the Vietnamese war ended for me today.”

The message never made it: After a day of carrying alerts and stories on the fall of Saigon and the end of a 20-year war that saw more than 58,000 Americans killed and many times that number of Vietnamese, the wire had been cut.

The fall of Saigon ended an era

The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975 was the end of an era for the AP in Vietnam. Arnett left in May, and then Franjola was expelled, followed by Esper, and the bureau wouldn’t be reestablished until 1993.

The AP opened its first office in Saigon in 1950 as the fight for independence from France by Viet Minh forces under communist leader Ho Chi Minh intensified.

The Viet Minh’s decisive victory over the U.S.-supported French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 marked the end of French Indochina and sparked major changes in the region with the partitioning of Vietnam into Communist North Vietnam and U.S.-aligned South Vietnam. The official U.S. military engagement began in 1955 and slowly escalated.

Malcolm Browne took over as AP bureau chief in Saigon in November 1961 and was joined in June 1962 by Arnett and photo chief Horst Faas.

The trio soon won consecutive Pulitzer Prizes: Browne in 1964, Faas in 1965 and Arnett in 1966 — the first of five the AP would receive for its coverage from Vietnam.

Four AP photographers were killed covering the war, and at least 16 other AP journalists were injured, some multiple times, as they reported from the front lines, seeking to record the news as completely and accurately as possible.

From the start, a lot of the reporting contradicted the official version from Washington, revealing a deeper American commitment than admitted, a lack of measurable success against the Viet Cong guerillas, and a broad dislike of the ineffective and corrupt American-backed South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, Arnett said.

That prompted managers in New York to wonder why the Saigon staffers’ stories were sometimes “180 degrees” different from those AP reporters wrote from press conferences at the U.S. State Department, the Pentagon and the White House, he recalled.

“We had a strategic advantage because we were 12,000 miles away from our administration critics, with our boots on the ground,” said Arnett, 90, who lives in California today. “Within a year, our reporting was vindicated.”

At the height of the war there were roughly 30 staffers assigned to the bureau, divided between news, photos and administration, and the AP made regular use of freelancers as well, usually photographers. It was a diverse group that included people from 11 different countries, including many local Vietnamese.

During upticks in the fighting, staffers would rotate in from from other bureaus to help.

When the U.S. government took umbrage with AP’s coverage in 1966 and claimed its staffers were young and inexperienced, AP’s General Manager Wes Gallagher penned a salty reply, noting their combined decades as reporters.

“Three covered World War II and Korea. Two, Pulitzer Prize winners Peter Arnett and Horst Faas, have been in Vietnam four years each, which is longer than Ambassador (Henry Cabot) Lodge, General (William) Westmoreland and nine-tenths of the Americans over there,” Gallagher wrote.

In an attempt to manage the news reports out of Vietnam, the U.S. established a daily news conference in Saigon to feed information to the growing American press corps. They came to be colloquially known as the “Five O’clock Follies” because, as Esper reflected, “they were such a joke.”

Esper said in a 2005 interview that sometimes he’d show up to evening briefings the same day he had covered a battle firsthand and was left puzzled by the official version.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Is this the same battle I just witnessed?’” said Esper, who died in 2012. “So there was some confrontation at the ‘follies’ because we would question the briefer’s reports, and they also withheld tremendous amounts of information.”

Esper said it helped that Gallagher took a personal hand in Vietnam coverage, frequently calling and visiting in support of his journalists.

“He took a lot of heat from the Pentagon, from the White House, but he never faltered,” Esper said. “He always said to us: ‘I support you 100%. You know the press is under scrutiny, just make sure you’re accurate, just make sure your stories are fair and balanced,’ and we did.”

Reporting from the streets and rooftops

In 1969, the American commitment in Vietnam had grown to more than a half million troops, before being drawn down to a handful after the 1973 Paris Peace Accords in which U.S. President Richard Nixon agreed to a withdrawal, leaving the South Vietnamese to fend for themselves.

By 1975, the AP’s bureau had shrunk as well, and as the North Vietnamese Army and its allied Viet Cong guerrilla force in the south pushed toward Saigon, most staff members were evacuated.

Arnett, Esper and Franjola volunteered to stay behind, anxious to see through to the end what they had committed so many years of their lives to covering — and conspiring to ignore New York if any of their managers got the jitters and ordered them to leave at the last minute.

“I saw it from the beginning, I wanted to see the end,” Esper said. “I was a bit apprehensive and frightened, but I knew that if I left, the rest of my life I would have been second guessing myself.”

On April 30, 1975, the monsoon rains had arrived and Arnett watched in the early morning hours from the slippery roof of the AP’s building as helicopters evacuated Americans and selected Vietnamese from the embassy four blocks away.

After catching a few hours of sleep, he awoke at 6:30 a.m. to the loud voices of looters on the streets. An hour later, from the rooftop of his hotel, he watched through binoculars as a small group of U.S. Marines that had accidentally been left behind clambered aboard a Sea Knight helicopter from the roof of the embassy — the last American evacuees.

He called it in to Esper in the office, and the story was in newsrooms around the world before the helicopter had cleared the coast.

Franjola and Arnett then took to the streets to see what was going on, while Esper manned the desk. When they got to the U.S. Embassy, a mob of people were grinning and laughing as they looted the building — a sharp contrast to the desperation of people the day before hoping to be evacuated.

“On a pile of wet documents and broken furniture on the back lawn, we find the heavy bronze plaque engraved with the names of the five American soldiers who died in the attack on the Embassy in the opening hours of the Tet Offensive in 1968,” Arnett recalled in an email detailing the day’s events. “Together we carry it back to the AP office.”

At 10:24 a.m. Arnett was writing the story of the embassy looting when Esper heard on Saigon Radio that South Vietnam had surrendered and immediately filed an alert.

“Esper rushes to the teleprinter and messages New York, and soon receives the satisfying news that AP is five minutes ahead of UPI with the surrender story,” Arnett said, citing AP’s biggest rival at the time, United Press International. “In war or peace, the wire services place a premium on competition.”

Esper then dashed outside to try and gather some reaction from South Vietnamese soldiers to the news of the capitulation, and came across a police colonel standing by a statue in a main square.

“He was waving his arms, ‘fini, fini,’ you know, ‘it’s all over, we lost,” Esper remembered. “And he was also fingering his holstered pistol and I figured, this guy is really crazy, he will kill me, and after 10 years here with barely a scratch, I’m going to die on this final day.”

Suddenly, the colonel did an about-face, saluted the memorial statue, drew his pistol and shot himself in the head.

Shaken, Esper ran back to the bureau, up the four flights of stairs to the office and punched out a quick story on the incident, his hands trembling as he typed.

Stories flow as Saigon falls

Back on the streets, Franjola, who died in 2015, was nearly sideswiped by a Jeep packed with men brandishing Russian rifles and wearing the black Viet Cong garb. Arnett then saw a convoy of Russian trucks loaded with North Vietnamese soldiers driving down the main street and scrambled back into the office.

“’George,’ I shout, ‘Saigon has fallen. Call New York,’” Arnett said. “I check my watch. It’s 11:43 a.m.”

Over the next few hours, more soldiers, supported by tanks, pushed into the city, engaging in sporadic fighting while the AP reporters kept filing their copy.

It was about 2:30 p.m. when they heard the rubber sandals outside the office, and the two NVA soldiers burst in, one with an AK-47 assault rifle swinging from his shoulder, the other with a Russian pistol holstered on his belt. To their shock, the soldiers were accompanied by Ky Nhan, a freelance photographer who worked for the AP, who proudly announced himself as a longtime member of the Viet Cong.

“I have guaranteed the safety of the AP office,” Arnett recalled the normally reserved photographer saying. “You have no reason to be concerned.”

As Arnett, Esper and Franjola pored over the map with the two NVA soldiers, they chatted through an interpreter about the attack on Saigon, which had been renamed Ho Chi Minh City as soon as it fell.

The interview with the two soldiers turned to the personal, and the young men showed the reporters photos of their families and girlfriends, telling them how much they missed them and wanted to get home.

“I was thinking in my own mind these are North Vietnamese, there are South Vietnamese, Americans — we’re all the same,” Esper said.

“People have girlfriends, they miss them, they have the same fears, the same loneliness, and in my head I’m tallying up the casualties, you know nearly 60,000 Americans dead, a million North Vietnamese fighters dead, 224,000 South Vietnamese military killed, and 2 million civilians killed. And that’s the way the war ended for me.”

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Komor, the retired director of AP Corporate Archives, reported from New York.

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — New York state would ban cellphones in public schools “bell to bell” beginning with the next school year under an agreement announced late Monday by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

“We’ve protected our kids before from cigarettes, alcohol, and drunk driving, and now we’re protecting them from addictive technology designed to hijack their attention,” Hochul said in announcing the plan as part of a tentative budget agreement with state lawmakers.

Hochul, a Democrat, did not immediately detail plans for the ban. Her office has previously said that schools would have some flexibility over how to implement it, with districts deciding how to store students’ devices during the school day. There would be exemptions for students who need access for medical reasons, to help with learning disabilities or because they don’t speak fluent English, she has said.

If approved, New York would join at least eight states — California, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina and Virginia — that have enacted measures banning or restricting students’ use of cellphones in schools. Nationally, most schools say they prohibit cellphone use except for academic purposes, but educators say the rules are difficult to enforce when students are allowed to have the devices in hallways and at lunch.

“Bell-to-bell” bans like the one Hochul described are meant to remove the distraction altogether by restricting access during school hours, often over the objection of parents who say they want to be able to reach their kids during emergency situations.

New York City, which has the largest school district in the country, last year abandoned discussions for a cellphone ban because of parent concerns.

Lawmakers are expected to begin voting on the $254 billion state budget this week.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A long-dormant Nevada law requiring parents or guardians to be notified before a minor can have an abortion will not take effect this week following a federal judge’s ruling.

The 1985 law has never before been enforced in Nevada because of court rulings that found it was unconstitutional based on Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that made abortion access a constitutional right for a half century.

The ban on the Nevada’s law was set to expire Wednesday under a recent federal court order citing the 2022 reversal of Roe, but abortion rights activists appealed. That led U.S. District Judge Anne Traum to issue an order Friday saying the law won’t take effect yet to give Planned Parenthood time to ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to keep the law unenforceable while it challenges it.

If Planned Parenthood doesn’t file its request with the appellate court within seven days of Traum’s order, she said the law can be enforced in Nevada. The Associated Press sent emails Monday seeking comment from attorneys for Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood has argued that the 40-year-old law, despite the reversal of Roe, remains “unconstitutionally vague” and that it violates minors’ rights to due process and equal protection.

Abortions in Nevada are legal until 24 weeks, with exceptions to save a mother’s life or to protect her health. In November, a ballot question to enshrine Nevada’s abortion rights in the state constitution received its first nod of approval from voters, who must also approve the measure in 2026 in order to amend the constitution.

Parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion is required in 36 states, according to KFF, a nonprofit that researches health care issues. Some states require only parental notification, as is the case with Nevada’s law, while other states also require consent.

Nevada’s law also allows a minor to get a court order authorizing an abortion without first notifying parents or guardians.

CHATHAM, Ill. (AP) — Four people were killed when a car smashed through a building Monday in Chatham, Illinois, police said.

Chatham Police Department Deputy Chief Scott Tarter said police responded at about 3:20 p.m. to calls about a vehicle driving into a building during an after-school program. The vehicle hit three people outside the building, continued through the building and hit another person before exiting the other side.

The driver, who was uninjured, was the sole occupant of the vehicle, and was taken to a hospital for evaluation, Tater said.

Chatham is a small town of about 15,000 people just outside Springfield, Illinois.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida businessman charged with kidnapping and killing his estranged wife in Spain was found dead from an apparent suicide Monday morning in a South Florida federal prison, his defense attorney said.

David Knezevich, 37, was awaiting trial at the Federal Detention Center in Miami. He was charged last year with kidnapping and killing 40-year-old Ana Hedao Knezevich, who went missing in a case that has drawn international media attention.

Knezevich’s attorney, Jayne Weintraub, said she learned that he was found dead in his cell but didn’t offer any details about how he died.

“The defense team is devastated to learn of this news,” Weintraub said. “We sincerely hope that an appropriate and prompt investigation will be conducted.”

Ana Knezevich disappeared from her Madrid apartment in February 2024, five weeks after she had moved there. Her body still hasn’t been found.

A man in a motorcycle helmet was seen sneaking into her apartment building and disabling a security camera, and was later seen wheeling out a suitcase.

Prosecutors say they have strong evidence Knezevich was the man in the helmet. They say he flew to Turkey from Miami six days before Ana’s disappearance, then immediately traveled to his native Serbia, where he rented a car. Security video captured Knezevich at a Madrid hardware store the same day his wife disappeared, and his rental car had been driven 4,800 miles (7,700 kilometers) when it was returned five weeks later, officials said.

The couple was in the middle of a contentious divorce while fighting over millions of dollars in properties, according to prosecutors. They had been married for 13 years.

Weintraub has said the split was amicable and the financial arrangements were being worked out.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Louisiana man who has spent nearly three decades on death row has had his conviction overturned by a district judge following a review of forensic analysis that the inmate’s legal team argued was based on “junk science.”

Jimmie Duncan was originally convicted of first-degree murder in 1998 after being accused by prosecutors of raping and drowning his girlfriend’s toddler in a bathtub.

Prosecutors relied on bite mark analysis and an autopsy performed by two experts — later linked to wrongful convictions — whom Duncan’s legal team described as discredited “charlatans.” Duncan has long maintained his innocence.

Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Sharp threw out Duncan’s first-degree murder conviction in a ruling issued last week — first reported by Verite News. The judge heard expert testimony that the bite mark analysis was “not scientifically defensible” and that death appeared to be the result of “accidental drowning.”

The judge also received evidence that a jailhouse informant had recanted his testimony and that Duncan received ineffective counsel during his trial.

Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew can choose to appeal, seek a retrial with new evidence and testimony or accept the ruling, leading to Duncan’s release. Tew declined to comment, and a representative from his office said prosecutors are “assessing options in this case.”

Duncan’s legal team declined to comment, but wrote in court filings that “this case has all the hallmarks of wrongful conviction.”

Why is bite mark analysis considered a “junk science”?

Dozens of people have been wrongfully convicted, arrested or charged based on faulty bite mark evidence, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit focused on exonerating wrongful convictions.

Mississippi-based forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne examined the body of Duncan’s girlfriend’s daughter, Haley Oliveaux.

Duncan’s legal team stated in court filings that the pair’s analysis has in the past been linked to at least 10 wrongful convictions, calling it “unreliable.”

A video recording of the examination shows West “forcibly pushing a mold of Mr. Duncan’s teeth into the child’s body — creating the bite marks” later used to convict him, a court-filing from Duncan’s legal team stated. A state-appointed expert, unaware of this method, testified during trial that the bite marks on the body matched Duncan’s.

Dr. Adam Freeman, an expert forensic dentist called by Duncan’s legal team to testify at a hearing last September, said the assumptions underlying bite mark analysis are “no longer valid” and are the product of “junk science”, court filings show.

Hayne told jurors during the murder trial that Duncan anally raped and forcibly drowned Oliveaux. But expert witnesses called by Duncan’s legal team argued that advances in forensic science show that the rashes and injuries on Oliveaux were not caused by abuse. They pointed out that a sexual assault testing kit also came back negative and no blood was found.

Expert witnesses at September’s hearing also criticized Hayne’s analysis as “sloppy” and “inadequate.” While Hayne once performed the majority of the autopsies in Mississippi, his work has been repeatedly attacked in court as being error-ridden and unscientific.

Hayne died in 2020, ProPublica reported. West did not return calls to phone numbers affiliated with him. He has previously said that DNA testing has made bite mark analysis obsolete, but has defended his testimony in other cases that led to overturned convictions in murder cases.

Louisiana Legislature debates restricting post-conviction relief

Louisiana lawmakers are currently considering a bill to overhaul the state’s post-conviction relief process, a legal avenue Duncan used to bring new evidence before a judge after all appeals were exhausted.

The proposed bill would shorten the timeline for prisoners seeking post-conviction relief. They would have to file a petition within one year after the “judgment of conviction and sentence has become final,” based on the bill’s language.

Attorney General Liz Murrill declined to comment on Duncan’s case. She testified in a committee hearing last week that under the current system there are too many delays, and as a result, victims’ families may wait decades for justice to be served.

Murrill said the post-conviction process has allowed “endless and repetitive” appeals to continue to be filed, especially in capital punishment cases: “We are still trying to get victims justice and get their family members justice.”

Those opposed to the bill fear that it could increase the odds that innocent people will have to serve out sentences or be executed for crimes they did not commit. Since 1989, at least 11 people sentenced to death in Louisiana have been exonerated, according to the National Exoneration Registry, a database tracking wrongful convictions.

“The state of Louisiana is reckless with the lives of human beings,” said Samantha Kennedy, executive director of the advocacy group Promise of Justice Initiative. “The state’s ever-worsening track record for death convictions reveals its tremendous incompetence, indifference, and even malice.”

There are 55 people on death row in Louisiana. After a 15-year hiatus, Louisiana carried out its first execution in March.

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X at @jack_brook96.

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico and the United States said Monday they had reached an agreement that involves Mexico immediately sending more water from their shared Rio Grande basin to Texas farmers after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened tariffs and sanctions earlier this month.

“Mexico has committed to make an immediate transfer of water from international reservoirs and increase the U.S. share of the flow in six of Mexico’s Rio Grande tributaries through the end of the current five-year water cycle,” U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

Bruce thanked Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum for her involvement in facilitating cross-border cooperation.

The countries’ joint statement Monday, while lacking specific details of the agreement, said both countries had agreed that the 1944 treaty regulating how the water is shared was still beneficial for both countries and not in need of renegotiation.

Under the treaty, Mexico must deliver 1,750,000 acre-feet of water to the U.S. from six tributaries every five years, or an average of 350,000 every year. An acre-foot is the amount of water needed to cover 1 acre of land to a depth of 1 foot.

But Mexico is at a high risk of not meeting that deadline as the end of the current cycle approaches in October.

The treaty allows Mexico to run a water debt in the first four years of each cycle, if it can make it up in the fifth.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america