By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — World leaders begin convening Monday at one of the most volatile moments in the United Nations’ 80-year history, and the challenges they face are as dire as ever if not more so: unyielding wars in Gaza and Ukraine, escalating changes in the U.S. approach to the world, hungry people everywhere and technologies that are advancing faster than the understanding of how to manage them.

The United Nations itself, which emerged from World War II’s rubble on the premise that nations would work together to tackle political, social and financial issues, is in crisis itself. As Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week: “International cooperation is straining under pressures unseen in our lifetimes.”

Yet the annual high-level gathering at the U.N. General Assembly will bring presidents, prime ministers and monarchs from about 150 of the 193 U.N. member nations to U.N. headquarters. The secretary-general says it is an opportunity that can’t be missed — even in the most challenging of moments.

“We are gathering in turbulent — even uncharted — waters,” Guterres said. He pointed to, among other specters, “our planet overheating, new technologies racing ahead without guardrails, inequalities widening by the hour.”

They gather for a better world, but can they build it?

Guterres said he will use the more than 150 one-on-one meetings he has with leaders and ministers to urge that they speak to each other, bridge divides, reduce risks and find solutions — to conflicts, to keep the planet from increased warming, to put guardrails on fast-expanding artificial intelligence, and to find funding for lagging U.N. goals for 2030 including ending poverty in all countries and ensuring quality education for every child.

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He said leaders must make progress, not merely engage in “posturing and promises.”

But U.N. watchers say that in a deeply polarized world, with no prospects of ceasefires in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, whether the high-level meeting makes any progress remains a big question mark.

Richard Gowan, U.N. director for the International Crisis Group, said he is confident three topics will dominate high-level week – U.S. President Donald Trump’s first appearance in his second term, the horrific situation in Gaza, and what’s next for the United Nations as it grapples with major funding and staff cuts, mainly due to the cutoff in U.S. payments to its regular and peacekeeping budgets.

Gowan said he expects the nearly two-year war in Gaza to be the central issue, as Israel launches a major offensive in Gaza City forcing thousands to flee and following a report by independent experts commissioned by the U.N. Human Rights Council that accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. Israel rejected the allegation, calling the report “distorted and false.”

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, has stressed that “Palestine is going to be the huge elephant in this session of the General Assembly.”

It will be front and center on Monday at a high-level meeting co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia on implementing a two-state solution to the nearly eight-decade Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the spotlight will be even brighter because the Trump administration refused to give a U.S. visa to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to speak at that meeting and the General Assembly.

On Friday, the General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution enabling Abbas to speak by video — as it did in 2022 for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy following Russia’s invasion. This year Zelenskyy will be attending in person, and the Security Council is expected to meet on Ukraine on Tuesday.

The assembly voted overwhelmingly earlier this month to support a two-state solution and urge Israel to commit to a Palestinian state. Hours before that vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “there will be no Palestinian state.”

More than 145 countries already recognize Palestine as a state, and Mansour told The Associated Press on Sunday that “it’s going to be 10 more” announcing their recognition at Monday afternoon’s meeting. High-level week is also expected to see a Security Council meeting on Gaza, possibly Tuesday afternoon.

Lots of thorny issues are on the docket

The high-level meeting starts Tuesday morning in the vast General Assembly chamber. Trump will speak that day shortly after Guterres’ opening “state of the world” speech.

Gowan said there is “hope” that Trump will come in a positive mood, touting the international accomplishments that the president says merit the Nobel Peace Prize. Also on the docket: Trump’s financial approach to the larger world. “Obviously, most leaders are going to be focusing on what he has to say about tariffs,” Gowan said, but also about Russia and China.

Other speakers to watch are interim Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa, making his debut on the international stage following the ouster of former strongman Bashar Assad in December, and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian.

The Iranian leader will be in New York days after the Security Council decided not to permanently lift U.N. sanctions on his country over its escalating nuclear program, but it gave Tehran and key European powers France, Germany and the United Kingdom until midnight Sept. 27 to agree to a delay. That’s when the sanctions will automatically “snapback” unless a deal is reached.

High-level week will also see numerous meetings on tackling climate change; on the more than two-year war in Sudan started by rival military and paramilitary generals that has sparked the world’s worst displacement crisis; on Somalia, which is home to the extremist group Al-Shabab; and on Haiti, where gangs control over 90% of the capital and have expanded into the countryside .

An event on Monday will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Beijing women’s conference, which adopted a platform to achieve gender equality. The United Nations says that goal is growing more distant and Guterres has said it is 300 years away on the current track.

One of Guterres’ major aims this year: to generate support for his plans to reform the United Nations and make it more responsive to the world as it is in 2025. Because of funding cuts by the U.S. and others, the U.N. announced last week that its regular operating budget for 2026 needs to be cut by 15% to $3,2 billion along with a 19% cut in that budget’s staff positions. — 2,681 posts.

Gowan said he doesn’t see the United States or other countries running away from the United Nations. But he stressed that it is going through “an extraordinarily difficult period” and will have to shrink and change.

“The U.N.’s resonance on peace and security issues is unquestionably not what it was,” he said, “but I think that the organization will continue to muddle through.”

Edith M. Lederer has covered international affairs for The Associated Press for more than half a century.

By Kate Ruder, KFF Health News

When Judith Miller had routine blood work done in July, she got a phone alert the same day that her lab results were posted online. So, when her doctor messaged her the next day that her overall tests were fine, Miller wrote back to ask about the elevated carbon dioxide and low anion gap listed in the report.

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While the 76-year-old Milwaukee resident waited to hear back, Miller did something patients increasingly do when they can’t reach their health care team. She put her test results into Claude and asked the AI assistant to evaluate the data.

“Claude helped give me a clear understanding of the abnormalities,” Miller said. The generative AI model didn’t report anything alarming, so she wasn’t anxious while waiting to hear back from her doctor, she said.

Patients have unprecedented access to their medical records, often through online patient portals such as MyChart, because federal law requires health organizations to immediately release electronic health information, such as notes on doctor visits and test results. A study published in 2023 found that 96% of patients surveyed want immediate access to their records, even if their provider hasn’t reviewed them.

And many patients are using large language models, or LLMs, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, to interpret their records. That help comes with some risk, though. Physicians and patient advocates warn that AI chatbots can produce wrong answers and that sensitive medical information might not remain private.

Yet, most adults are cautious about AI and health. Fifty-six percent of those who use or interact with AI are not confident that information provided by AI chatbots is accurate, according to a 2024 KFF poll. KFF is a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.

“LLMs are theoretically very powerful and they can give great advice, but they can also give truly terrible advice depending on how they’re prompted,” said Adam Rodman, an internist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Massachusetts and the chair of a steering group on generative AI at Harvard Medical School.

Justin Honce, a neuroradiologist at UCHealth in Colorado, said it can be very difficult for patients who are not medically trained to know whether AI chatbots make mistakes.

“Ultimately, it’s just the need for caution overall with LLMs. With the latest models, these concerns are continuing to get less and less of an issue but have not been entirely resolved,” Honce said.

Rodman has seen a surge in AI use among his patients in the past six months. In one case, a patient took a screenshot of his hospital lab results on MyChart then uploaded them to ChatGPT to prepare questions ahead of his appointment. Rodman said he welcomes patients’ showing him how they use AI, and that their research creates an opportunity for discussion.

Roughly 1 in 7 adults over 50 use AI to receive health information, according to a recent poll from the University of Michigan, while 1 in 4 adults under age 30 do so, according to the KFF poll.

Using the internet to advocate for better care for oneself isn’t new. Patients have traditionally used websites such as WebMD, PubMed, or Google to search for the latest research and have sought advice from other patients on social media platforms like Facebook or Reddit. But AI chatbots’ ability to generate personalized recommendations or second opinions in seconds is novel.

Liz Salmi, communications and patient initiatives director at OpenNotes, an academic lab at Beth Israel Deaconess that advocates for transparency in health care, had wondered how good AI is at interpretation, specifically for patients.

In a proof-of-concept study published this year, Salmi and colleagues analyzed the accuracy of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini responses to patients’ questions about a clinical note. All three AI models performed well, but how patients framed their questions mattered, Salmi said. For example, telling the AI chatbot to take on the persona of a clinician and asking it one question at a time improved the accuracy of its responses.

Privacy is a concern, Salmi said, so it’s critical to remove personal information like your name or Social Security number from prompts. Data goes directly to tech companies that have developed AI models, Rodman said, adding that he is not aware of any that comply with federal privacy law or consider patient safety. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, warned on a podcast last month about putting personal information into ChatGPT.

“Many people who are new to using large language models might not know about hallucinations,” Salmi said, referring to a response that may appear sensible but is inaccurate. For example, OpenAI’s Whisper, an AI-assisted transcription tool used in hospitals, introduced an imaginary medical treatment into a transcript, according to a report by The Associated Press.

Using generative AI demands a new type of digital health literacy that includes asking questions in a particular way, verifying responses with other AI models, talking to your health care team, and protecting your privacy online, said Salmi and Dave deBronkart, a cancer survivor and patient advocate who writes a blog devoted to patients’ use of AI.

Patients aren’t the only ones using AI to explain test results. Stanford Health Care has launched an AI assistant that helps its physicians draft interpretations of clinical tests and lab results to send to patients. Colorado researchers studied the accuracy of ChatGPT-generated summaries of 30 radiology reports, along with four patients’ satisfaction with them. Of the 118 valid responses from patients, 108 indicated the ChatGPT summaries clarified details about the original report.

But ChatGPT sometimes overemphasized or underemphasized findings, and a small but significant number of responses indicated patients were more confused after reading the summaries, said Honce, who participated in the preprint study.

Meanwhile, after four weeks and a couple of follow-up messages from Miller in MyChart, Miller’s doctor ordered a repeat of her blood work and an additional test that Miller suggested. The results came back normal. Miller was relieved and said she was better informed because of her AI inquiries.

“It’s a very important tool in that regard,” Miller said. “It helps me organize my questions and do my research and level the playing field.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By ALAN SUDERMAN, Associated Press Business Writer

President Donald Trump said prominent billionaires – including media mogul Rupert Murdoch and tech founder Michael Dell – could be part of a deal in which the U.S. will take control of the social video platform TikTok.

Trump namedropped the 94-year-old Murdoch and his son Lachlan Murdoch, the head of Fox News and News Corp, as part of a group of possible participants in a deal during an interview recorded Friday and aired Sunday on Fox News.

“I think they’re going to be in the group. A couple of others. Really great people, very prominent people,” Trump said. “And they’re also American patriots, you know, they love this country. I think they’re going to do a really good job.”

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Trump’s disclosure of the potential involvement of the Murdochs and Dell, the founder and CEO of Dell Technologies, is the latest twist in a fast-moving potential deal to keep TikTok operating in the U.S.

Trump also said Sunday that tech giant Oracle founder and Chairman Larry Ellison was part of the same group. His involvement had been previously disclosed. On Saturday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Oracle would be responsible for the app’s data and security and that Americans will control six of the seven seats for a planned board.

Much is still unknown about the actual deal in the works. Trump discussed the TikTok deal with China’s Xi Jinping in a lengthy phone call on Friday. Chinese and U.S. officials have until Dec. 16 to hash out the details, following the latest deadline extension by the Trump administration.

TikTok is a hugely popular app currently owned by a Chinese company, ByteDance. American officials have warned the algorithm TikTok uses to shape what users see is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to push content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect.

Congress passed legislation calling for a TikTok ban to go into effect in January, but Trump has repeatedly signed orders that have allowed TikTok to keep operating in the United States as his administration tries to reach an agreement for the social media company’s parent company to sell its U.S. operations.

On Sunday, Trump said that he was “a little prejudiced” about TikTok because he credited the app for helping him connect with young voters. Trump said slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk encouraged the president to use the app.

Representatives for Ellison, Dell and the Murdochs could not immediately be reached for comment.

Trump filed a lawsuit against Murdoch and one of his newspapers, The Wall Street Journal, in July after it published a story reporting on the president’s ties to wealthy financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

By DAVID FISCHER, Associated Press

FORT PIERCE, Fla. (AP) — Ryan Routh texted his three adult children and his fiancee separately to tell them he loved them, according to cellphone records, shortly before authorities say he was spotted by a U.S. Secret Service agent, who identified Routh as the man who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump at his Florida golf course.

Later that same day, Routh called his fiancee from the Palm Beach County jail to tell her about his arrest, but she already knew. “Everybody knows, it’s been hours,” the woman can be heard saying on a recording of the call. “The whole world knows.”

This courtroom sketch shows Secret Service agent Robert Fercano holding up the weapon found in the bushes during opening statements in the trial of Ryan Routh, who is charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last year at a golf course in South Florida, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (Lothar Speer via AP)

Routh is representing himself in federal court after being charged with trying kill Trump and is set to present his defense Monday, calling just three witnesses.

Seasoned prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida rested their case Friday afternoon after spending seven days questioning 38 witnesses in an attempt to make sure Routh spends the rest of his life in prison.

Prosecutors have said Routh spent weeks plotting to kill Trump before aiming a rifle through shrubbery as Trump played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club.

Routh has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations.

He told U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon on Friday that he only needs half a day or so to present his defense. He has indicated that he plans to call a firearms expert and two character witnesses. He hasn’t said whether he plans to testify himself.

Cannon signed off on Routh’s request to represent himself following two hearings in July. Routh told the judge that his court-appointed federal public defenders were diligent, but they didn’t listen to him and were afraid of him.

“How are they supposed to represent me and say I’m not a dangerous person when they don’t believe that?” Routh said in July.

This courtroom sketch shows lead government prosecutor John Shipley speaking during the opening statements of the during the trial of Ryan Routh, who is charged with attempting to assassinate Donald Trump last year at a golf course in South Florida, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025, in Fort Pierce, Fla. (Lothar Speer via AP)

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that criminal defendants have a right to represent themselves in court proceedings, as long as they can show a judge they are competent to waive their right to be defended by an attorney. Routh’s former defense attorneys have served as standby counsel since Routh took over his own defense and have been present during trial the past two weeks.

Cannon said attorneys should be prepared to deliver their closing arguments Tuesday, giving each side one hour and 45 minutes. Jurors will begin deliberating after that. Cannon had initially blocked off more than three weeks for the trial at the Fort Pierce federal courthouse, but Routh’s relatively short cross-examinations have led to a quicker pace than anticipated.

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Recounting the alleged attack at the golf course, a Secret Service agent testified last week that he spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and flee without firing a shot, the agent said.

Law enforcement obtained help from a witness who testified that he saw a person fleeing the area after hearing gunshots. The witness was then flown in a police helicopter to a nearby interstate where Routh was arrested, and the witness said he confirmed it was the person he had seen.

Just nine weeks earlier, Trump had survived an attempt on his life while campaigning in Pennsylvania. That gunman had fired eight shots, with one bullet grazing Trump’s ear. The gunman was then fatally shot by a Secret Service counter sniper.

Routh was a North Carolina construction worker who in recent years had moved to Hawaii. A self-styled mercenary leader, Routh spoke out to anyone who would listen about his dangerous, sometimes violent plans to insert himself into conflicts around the world, witnesses have told The Associated Press.

In the early days of the war in Ukraine, Routh tried to recruit soldiers from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan to fight the Russians. In his native Greensboro, North Carolina, he was arrested in 2002 for eluding a traffic stop and barricading himself from officers with a fully automatic machine gun and a “weapon of mass destruction,” which turned out to be an explosive with a 10-inch fuse, police said.

In 2010, police searched a warehouse Routh owned and found more than 100 stolen items, from power tools and building supplies to kayaks and spa tubs. In both felony cases, judges gave Routh either probation or a suspended sentence.

In addition to the federal charges, Routh also has pleaded not guilty to state charges of terrorism and attempted murder.