LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal officials and Los Angeles police planned a news conference on Wednesday to announce a “significant development” related to the criminal investigation into last January’s deadly Palisades Fire.

The fire that erupted on Jan. 7 killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,000 homes and buildings in the Pacific Palisades, a wealthy coastal neighborhood of LA.

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Attending the 9 a.m. news conference will be Acting United States Attorney Bill Essayli, LA Police Chief Jim McDonnell, and Special Agent in Charge Kenny Cooper of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. No details were provided ahead of time.

Investigators still haven’t determined the cause of that blaze or the Eaton Fire, which broke out the same day in the community of Altadena and killed 18 people.

Both fires burned for days, reducing entire neighborhoods to rubble and ash.

An outside review released in September found that a lack of resources and outdated policies for sending emergency alerts led to delayed evacuation warnings.

The report commissioned by Los Angeles County supervisors said a series of weaknesses, including “outdated policies, inconsistent practices and communications vulnerabilities,” hampered the county’s response.

By FATIMA HUSSEIN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The global economy is holding up better than expected despite major shocks such as President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but the head of the International Monetary Fund says that resilience may not last.

“Buckle up,” Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a speech at a think tank Wednesday. “Uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay.”

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Her comments at the Milken Institute come on a day when gold prices hit $4,000 an ounce for the first time as investors seek safe haven from a weaker dollar and geopolitical uncertainty and before the IMF and World Bank hold their annual meetings next week in Washington. Trump’s trade penalties are expected to be in sharp focus when global finance leaders and central bankers gather.

The worldwide economy is forecast to grow by 3% this year, and Georgieva is citing a number of factors for why it may not slip below that: Countries have put in place decisive economic policies, the private sector has adapted and the tariffs have proved less severe than originally feared.

“But before anyone heaves a big sigh of relief, please hear this: Global resilience has not yet been fully tested. And there are worrying signs the test may come. Just look at the surging global demand for gold,” she said.

On Trump’s tariffs, she says “the full effect is still to unfold. In the U.S., margin compression could give way to more price pass-through, raising inflation with implications for monetary policy and growth.”

The Republican administration imposed import taxes on nearly all U.S. trading partners in April, including Canada, Mexico, Brazil, China and even the tiny African nation of Lesotho. “We’re the king of being screwed by tariffs,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office during a meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

While the U.S. has announced some trade frameworks with nations such as the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the tariffs have created uncertainty worldwide.

“Elsewhere, a flood of goods previously destined for the U.S. market could trigger a second round of tariff hikes,” Georgieva said.

The Supreme Court next month will hear arguments about whether Trump has the authority to impose some of his tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

In her wide-ranging remarks, Georgieva pointed to youth discontent around the world as many young people foresee a future where they earn less than their parents.

“The young are taking their disappointment to the streets from Lima to Rabat, from Paris to Nairobi, from Kathmandu to Jakarta, all are demanding better opportunities,” she said. “And here in the U.S., the chances of growing up to earn more than your parents keeps falling and here too, discontent has been evident — and it has helped precipitate the policy revolution that is now unfolding, reshaping trade, immigration and many international frameworks.”

She also called for greater internal trade in Asia, more business friendly changes in Africa and more competitiveness in Europe.

For the United States, Georgieva urged the government to address the federal debt and to encourage household saving.

The national debt is the total amount of money that the federal government owes to its creditors. The federal debt has increased from $380 billion in 1925 to $37.64 trillion in 2025, according to Treasury Department data.

The Congressional Budget Office reported in July that Trump’s new tax and spending law will add $3.4 trillion to that total through 2034.

The IMF is a 191-country lending organization that seeks to promote global growth and financial stability and to reduce poverty.

By JEFFREY COLLINS, Associated Press

BISHOPVILLE, S.C. (AP) — When J.D. Stevens flips on the lights in the shed by his South Carolina home, he feels the presence of his dad, who died nearly a decade ago. He also sees hundreds of thousands of buttons.

They are sewn onto the original button suit on the mannequin that started it all. Nearby is the Chevrolet Chevette covered in buttons of all colors, big and small. There’s a walk-in outhouse with a toilet covered in buttons and a piano with buttons everywhere but the keys. There’s a button-covered hearse not too far from the coffin where white buttons stand out from all the rest, spelling out “BUTTON KING.”

Dalton Stevens started on the road to become the Button King one night in 1983 while battling insomnia and, after retiring, a feeling of worthlessness and withdrawal from the world. He got an epiphany to start sewing buttons onto a denim suit because, as he said, “television went off at two in the morning back then.”

Fame in the 1980s, thanks to Johnny Carson

Back in the 1980s, one didn’t trend to the top overnight. Once Stevens finished the original button suit, a tiny newspaper in Bishopville wrote a story. Then the local TV station did its own package. Stevens kept sewing and gluing buttons and once he finished covering the entire Chevette there was a second local TV story picked up by that fledgling all-news network CNN.

National attention grew after he was featured in magazines. One day the phone rang in his Bishopville home. It was “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Carson made it a point not to see Stevens in 1987 before he walked onto the stage, wearing a suit covered in 16,333 buttons — everywhere but the butt and the back of the thighs. Carson laughed at the sight. Stevens then sang a little ditty while playing his 3,005-button guitar.

“If you like the color of my clothes, would you give me buttons instead of a rose,” Stevens sang with his South Carolina twang. “Buttons can be square or round. They keep my pants from falling down.”

The Button King on the talk show circuit

Carson gave Stevens the honor of staying over a commercial break. Then Stevens made the king of late night roar with laughter at a joke about his three ex-wives.

“Once you make it to the Johnny Carson show one time, that’s about as big as you can get without being in the movies. That was high for an old country boy like me,” Stevens told South Carolina Educational Television in an early 2000s interview.

Life was never the same. He was on talk shows hosted by David Letterman, Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford and Geraldo Rivera.

Stevens and his button suit made trips to Japan and Canada. The appearances kept rolling in for two decades. Stevens’ fame lasted long enough for an eponymous website to pop up. It has since disappeared.

The Button King’s museum in South Carolina

Eventually the Button King finished all his folk art pieces and needed a place to store them. With his family’s help he built a shed on his land and called it the “S.C. Button Museum.”

From the start, it’s been open to the public 24/7. After Stevens died in 2016 his son kept his promise to keep the museum open.

“It makes me feel good because it’s daddy’s stuff, you know.” J.D. Stevens said, remembering a couple who visited from Pennsylvania and smiled while looking around the small shed.

Nine years after the Button King died, people still visit.

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J.D. Stevens will greet them if he’s home. If not, they can just flip on the lights themselves and look around. The guest book shows about a dozen visitors over the past month.

It’s almost exactly as the Button King left it — all the way down to the board with nails where he hung 25 buttons at a time to keep count and plan his art projects. The buttons aren’t as vibrant as they once were. And the Stevens family has added extra buttons to the walls as decoration. But it is mostly the same.

One item is missing though — the second casket Stevens made.

He’s buried in that one beside his wife, Ruby, who died eight years before him.

“He was an entertainer, you know,” J.D. Stevens said. “He liked to entertain people except for that period where he had withdrawn, but he loved to make people laugh and so when he saw somebody smiled and it was on.”

By MICHAEL CASEY, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — Joan B. Kennedy, the former wife of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy who endured a long and troubled marriage marked by family tragedies, her husband’s infidelities and her own struggles with alcoholism and mental health, died on Wednesday. She was 89.

The former Joan Bennett was a model and classically-trained pianist when she married Ted Kennedy in 1958. Their lives would change unimaginably over the next decade and a half. Brother-in-law John F. Kennedy was elected president in 1960 and assassinated three years later. Brother-in-law Robert F. Kennedy served as attorney general under JFK, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1964 and assassinated while seeking the presidency.

Her husband was elected to the U.S. Senate and became among the country’s most respected legislators despite initial misgivings that he was capitalizing on his family connections. But Ted Kennedy also lived through scandals of his own making. In 1969, the car he was driving plunged off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, killing his young female passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kennedy, who swam to safety and waited hours before alerting police, later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. Chappaquiddick shadowed him for the rest of his life, weighing against his own chances for the presidency.

Joan Kennedy had three children with her husband, but also had miscarriages, including one shortly after the Chappaquiddick accident. She stood by her husband through the scandal, but their estrangement was nearly impossible to hide by the time of his unsuccessful effort to defeat President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries. They had been separated by then, and would later divorce. One bumper sticker from the campaign read “Vote for Jimmy Carter, Free Joan Kennedy.”

Her love of piano would be a trademark for much of her life. She was known for opening her husband’s campaign rallies with a piano serenade and, after they divorced, touring with orchestras around the world. Her family said she would combine her masterful playing with a message about the transformational potential of the arts and the need for equitable arts education.

In a 1992 Associated Press interview, she recalled playing piano for brother-in-law Bobby when he ran for president in 1968. “He took me with him and encouraged me,” she said. “He had a theme, ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ the Woody Guthrie song. I’d play that on the piano and everybody would come in, feeling really great about everything.”

“It seems like a long time ago, but it’s part of my memories,” she said softly.

In a statement, former Rep. Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island praised his mother for her courage and talent.

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“Besides being a loving mother, talented musician, and instrumental partner to my father as he launched his successful political career, Mom was a power of example to millions of people with mental health conditions,” his statement said. “She will be missed not just by the entire Kennedy Family, but by the arts community in the City of Boston and the many people whose lives that she touched.”

She also became one of the first women to publicly acknowledge her struggles with alcoholism and depression.

“I will always admire my mother for the way that she faced up to her challenges with grace, courage, humility, and honesty,” Ted Kennedy Jr. said in a statement. “She taught me how to be more truthful with myself and how careful listening is a more powerful communication skill than public speaking.”