By DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — As Missouri launches sports betting Monday, people will be able to wager on how many points a particular athlete will score in a game — so long as it doesn’t involve a Missouri college or university.

Advertisements for sports betting apps are seen in downtown Kansas City, Mo., Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

The restriction on ” proposition bets,” though less sweeping than in some states, highlights an area of rising concern as legal sports betting spreads to its 39th state in a steady expansion since the Supreme Court cleared the way for it in 2018.

In the weeks leading up to Missouri’s betting debut, one scandal after another has rocked the sports world. Two Cleveland Guardians pitchers were charged with taking bribes to throw certain pitches. An NBA player was arrested over an alleged scheme to provide inside information to gamblers. And the NCAA revoked the eligibility of six men’s college basketball players accused of manipulating their performance in games.

All centered around the outcome of prop bets, a popular type of wager often focused on what individual players will do in a game — like achieving a certain number of strikeouts in baseball, racking up a certain amount of points and rebounds in basketball, or surpassing a particular passing yardage in football.

For bettors, a lot can ride on one player, putting those athletes at risk of threats or enticements to rig their performance.

A growing proposition in sports betting

Sports betting operators took in over $11 billion through the first three-quarters of this year, up more than 13% from the same span last year, according to the American Gaming Association, which represents the industry.

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Though national data is lacking about the prevalence of prop bets, they are “an increasingly popular way in which to provide for engagement for any type of fan,” said Joe Maloney, the association’s senior vice president of strategic communications.

West Virginia, which was among the first to allow sports betting after the court ruling, now is collecting a trove of data from the industry. During a roughly one-month period this summer, prop bets comprised more than half of all wagers made through one of the largest sports betting platforms, said Brad Humphreys, an economics professor and director of the Center for Gaming Research and Development at West Virginia University.

Additionally, he said, almost all bets involved parlays, where two or more wagers are grouped together under the umbrella of a larger bet. To win, a person must be right on each prong in the bet, making the odds of success longer and the potential payout larger.

Because prop bets “speed up the ability to make multiple bets,” they carry a higher risk of developing addictive behavior for some bettors, said Rachel Volberg, a research professor of epidemiology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who has spent decades studying gambling.

Most states provide some money for problem gambling services. Missouri’s new sports betting program allots at least $5 million annually for that purpose.

No national standard for prop bets

Prop bets on professional athletes are currently allowed in every state that has legalized sports betting, though legislation proposed in New Jersey would ban them. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has urged state regulators to end player-specific micro betting and told The Associated Press recently he regrets signing the law that legalized sports gambling in his state.

States have widely differing rules for bets on college athletes. More than a dozen states place no limits on collegiate prop bets while an equal number prohibit all such bets. Other states fall somewhere in between. Missouri is one of over a half-dozen states with a prop bet prohibition pertaining only to games involving college teams from their states.

Missouri’s restriction was included in a constitutional amendment authorizing sports betting that won narrow voter approval last year after a state-record $43 million campaign funded almost entirely by DraftKings and FanDuel, the two predominant sports betting sites.

Advertisements for sports betting apps are seen in downtown Kansas City, Mo., Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

“We thought this was a good middle ground that had worked in other states and that would uphold the integrity of the games here,” said Jack Cardetti, a spokesperson for the Sports Betting Alliance, an industry group that supported Missouri’s amendment.

A blanket ban on prop bets likely would drive people to illegal and unregulated sportsbooks, placing bettors at greater risk and making it harder to flag problems, the Sports Betting Alliance said.

Others doubt that Missouri’s narrowly tailored prop bet restrictions will have much impact in an Internet-connected society where people can easily bet on athletes playing anywhere in the U.S.

“That’s going to be a Band-Aid on a dam that’s breaking here,” said Nathan Novemsky, a professor of marketing and psychology at Yale University, “because folks will just make those bets on other teams.”

Placing a bet with no drive time

The Missouri Gaming Commission has three employees focused on regulating sports betting and is looking to hire a fourth, said commission chair Jan Zimmerman.

But the job of detecting fraudulent bets falls largely to sports betting operators working with sports leagues and law enforcement agencies. After the recent indictment of two Guardians pitchers, Major League Baseball announced an agreement with leading sportsbooks to cap bets on individual pitches at $200 and exclude them from parlays.

The criminal charges, player penalties and policy changes involving prop bets are “a demonstration that the market is really working as intended,” Maloney said.

The scandals aren’t deterring some Missouri residents who have been eagerly waiting for sports wagering.

Brett Koenig, who lives in suburban St. Louis, has occasionally crossed the Mississippi River into Illinois to legally bet on sports. Others who live in the Kansas City area have driven across the border into Kansas, pulling over at the first exit to place bets from smartphones. The drive allows bettors to get around geolocation technology that blocks bets from people in states where it’s not legal.

Koenig said he plans to bet on Monday night’s NFL game without leaving his home. He might place some type of prop bet, if he likes the odds.

“It’s something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time,” said Koenig, who used social media to push for legalized sports betting. “I’m ecstatic to have the opportunity to do it, and to not have to drive 45 minutes across the river.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he’ll release the results of his MRI test that he received in October.

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“If you want to have it released, I’ll release it,” the Republican president said Sunday during an exchange with reporters as he traveled back to Washington from Florida.

He said the results of the MRI were “perfect.”

The White House has declined to detail why Trump had an MRI during his physical in October or on what part of his body.

The press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, has said that the president received “advanced imaging” at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center “as part of his routine physical examination” and that the results showed Trump remains in “exceptional physical health.”

Trump added Sunday that he has “no idea” on what part of his body he got the MRI.

“It was just an MRI,” he said. “What part of the body? It wasn’t the brain because I took a cognitive test and I aced it.”

LONDON (AP) — Airbus said that most of its fleet of 6,000 A320 passenger jets have received an update to fix a software glitch that could have affected flight controls.

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Travelers had faced minor disruptions heading into the weekend as airlines around the world scrambled to push the software updates out to the widely used commercial jetliner. Airbus warned of the problem Friday with U.S. millions of passengers in transit for the Thanksgiving holiday, the busiest travel time in the United States.

The European planemaker said in an update Monday that the “vast majority” of the short-haul passenger jets in service “have now received the necessary modifications.”

“We are working with our airline customers to support the modification of less than 100 remaining aircraft to ensure they can be returned to service,” Toulouse, France-based Airbus said.

“Airbus apologises for any challenges and delays caused to passengers and airlines by this event,” it said.

Airbus said it discovered that “intense solar radiation” could corrupt data that’s critical to the functioning of flight controls.

The problem is suspected of contributing to a sudden drop in altitude of a JetBlue planefrom Cancun, Mexico, to Newark, New Jersey on Oct. 30, that injured at least 15 passengers, some of them transported to hospitals for medical care.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency required airlines to address the issue with the software update. More than 500 U.S.-registered aircraft were impacted, including jets flown by American Airlines and Delta.

Japan’s All Nippon Airways, Air India and Germany’s Lufthansa were also affected. The Airbus A320 family of single-aisle aircraft is the primary competitor to Boeing’s 737.

By DASHA LITVINOVA and ISOBEL KOSHIW, Associated Press

Diplomats face an uphill battle to reconcile Russian and Ukrainian “red lines” as a renewed U.S.-led push to end the war gathers steam, with Ukrainian officials attending talks in the U.S. over the weekend and Washington officials expected in Moscow early this week.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan became public last month, sparking alarm that it was too favorable to Moscow. It was revised following talks in Geneva between the U.S. and Ukraine a week ago.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said the revised plan could be “workable.” Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a possible “basis” for a future peace agreement. Trump said Sunday “there’s a good chance we can make a deal.”

Still, officials on both sides indicated a long road ahead as key sticking points — over whether Kyiv should cede land to Moscow and how to ensure Ukraine’s future security — appear unresolved.

Here is where things stand and what to expect this week:

U.S. holds talks with Kyiv then Moscow

Trump representatives met the Ukrainian officials over the weekend and plan to meet with the Russians in coming days.

Ukraine’s national security council head Rustem Umerov, the head of Ukraine’s armed forces Andrii Hnatov, presidential adviser Oleksandr Bevz and others met with U.S. officials for about four hours on Sunday. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the session was productive but more work remains. Umerov praised the U.S. for its support but offered no details.

Zelenskyy’s former chief of staff and former lead negotiator for Ukraine, Andrii Yermak, resigned Friday amid a corruption scandal and is no longer part of the negotiating team. It was only a week ago that Rubio met with Yermak in Geneva, resulting in a revised peace plan.

Trump said last week that he would send his envoy Steve Witkoff to Russia. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Monday that Putin will meet Witkoff on Tuesday afternoon.

FILE – Starting from the right, U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev, and Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, attend talks with Putin at the Kremlin, in Moscow, on April 25, 2025. (Kristina Kormilitsyna, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

Trump suggested he could eventually meet with Putin and Zelenskyy, but not until there has been more progress.

Witkoff’s role in the peace efforts came under scrutiny last week following a report that he coached Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, on how Russia’s leader should pitch Trump on the Ukraine peace plan. Both Moscow and Washington downplayed the significance of the revelations.

Where the two sides stand

Eager to please Trump, Kyiv and Moscow have ostensibly welcomed the peace plan and the push to end the war. But Russia has continued attacking Ukraine and reiterated its maximalist demands, indicating a deal is still a ways off.

Putin implied last week that he will fight as a long as it takes to achieve his goals, saying that he will stop only when Ukrainian troops withdraw from all four Ukrainian regions that Russia illegally annexed in 2022 and still doesn’t fully control. “If they don’t withdraw, we’ll achieve this by force. That’s all,” he said.

FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff shake hands during their meeting at the Kremlin, in Moscow, on Aug. 6, 2025. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

The plan, Putin said, “could form the basis for future agreements,” but it is in no way final and requires “a serious discussion.”

Zelenskyy has refrained from talking about individual points, opting instead to thank Trump profusely for his efforts and emphasizing the need for Europe – whose interests are more closely aligned with Ukraine’s – to be involved. He also has stressed the importance of robust security guarantees for Ukraine.

The first version of the plan granted some core Russian demands that Ukraine considers nonstarters, such as ceding land to Moscow that it doesn’t yet occupy and renouncing its bid to become a member of NATO.

Zelenskyy has said repeatedly that giving up territory is not an option. One of the Ukrainian negotiators, Bevz, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Ukraine’s president wanted to discuss the territory issue with Trump directly. Yermak then told The Atlantic in an interview on Thursday that Zelenskyy would not sign over the land.

Zelenskyy also maintains that NATO membership is the cheapest way to guarantee Ukraine’s security, and NATO’s 32 member countries said last year that Ukraine is on an “irreversible” path to membership. Since he took office, Trump has made it clear that NATO membership is off the table.

Moscow, in turn, has bristled at any suggestion of a Western peacekeeping force on the ground in Ukraine, and stressed that keeping Ukraine out of NATO and NATO out of Ukraine was one of the core goals of the war.

Putin seems to have time on his side

Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has been under pressure at home.

Yermak’s resignation was a major blow for Zelenskyy, although neither the president nor Yermak have been accused of wrongdoing by investigators.

“Russia really wants Ukraine to make mistakes. There won’t be mistakes on our side,” Zelenskyy said. “Our work continues, our struggle continues. We don’t have a right not to push it to the end.”

An activist with Ukraine’s nongovernmental Anti-Corruption Center, Valeriia Radchenko, said letting go of Yermak was the right decision and would open a “window of opportunity for reform.”

Putin, meanwhile, seeks to project confidence, boasting of Russia’s advances on the battlefield.

The Russian leader “feels more confident than ever about the battlefield situation and is convinced that he can wait until Kyiv finally accepts that it cannot win and must negotiate on Russia’s well-known terms,” Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia and Eurasia Center wrote on X. “If the Americans can help move things in that direction — fine. If not, he knows how to proceed anyway. That is the current Kremlin logic.”

Europe’s conundrum

NATO and the EU are holding several meetings this week focused on Ukraine.

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Zelenskyy is holding talks with French President Emmanuel Macro n in Paris on Monday. In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte is hosting Ukrainian Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal and EU defense and foreign ministers are gathering to discuss European military support for Ukraine and Europe’s defense readiness.

On Wednesday, NATO foreign ministers will gather again in Brussels.

The main issue for the EU right now is what to do with the frozen Russian assets in Belgium that the Trump peace plan in its initial version sought to use for post-war investment in Ukraine.

Those funds are central to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s strategy to ensure continued help for Ukraine while also maintaining pressure on Russia. But Belgium’s prime minister is holding out, worried about the legal implications of tapping the frozen assets for Ukraine, the impact that could have on the euro — and of Russian retaliation.

The diplomacy set in motion by Trump’s peace plan “painfully exposed” Europe’s weakness, Nigel Gould-Davies of the International Institute for Strategic Studies wrote in a recent commentary.

“Despite being the main source of Ukraine’s economic and military support, it is marginal to the diplomacy of the war and has done little more than offer amendments to America’s draft peace plan,” Gould-Davies wrote.