By JANIE HAR

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A Northern California man caught a plump canary rockfish he says weighed in at 10.25 pounds, likely setting state and world records.

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Mendocino County fisherman Brendan Walsh, 26, said he caught the fish Tuesday off the coast of Albion, about 150 miles north of San Francisco.

Walsh was headed back with his father Will Walsh after catching a few yellowtail on a cold and rainy day when he decided to make one last stop at a deeper spot. That’s where the younger Walsh landed the canary rockfish.

“It was a fluke,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Canary rockfish can grow up to 2.5 feet in length and weigh 10 lbs., according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Walsh says the ones he usually catches are small and scrawny, clocking in around 3 lbs.

Walsh said the fish he caught this week was 2.25 feet long.

This photo, provided by Deirdre Lamb, shows a 10.25 lbs. canary rockfish caught by Mendocino County fisherman Brendan Walsh, of the coast of Albion, about 150 miles north of San Francisco on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (Deidre Lamb via AP)

He submitted the catch to the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, which tracks angling and diving records. The current state record-holding fish weighed in at 9 lbs. and was caught last November, also in Mendocino County.

The department has a form and instructions for submitting a possible record catch, including the names and phone numbers of witnesses. Applicants are asked to contact the department for the nearest environmental scientist who can identify the catch.

Walsh said they weighed the fish at an authorized fish market nearby and a state fish and wildlife scientist who works in the area came over to sign off on the paperwork.

Walsh has also submitted his catch to the International Game Fish Association in Florida, where the world record holding 10-pound canary rockfish was caught in 1986. He says larger fish may have been caught but never submitted for record consideration.

The game fish association did not respond Friday to a request for comment.

After spending Tuesday making sure they had taken the right measurements to document the catch, Walsh’s mother, Deirdre Lamb, fried the rockfish with garlic and butter to eat on Wednesday.

The rockfish was delicious, he said.

Travelers who wish to enter Canada through remote areas of northern Minnesota will soon be required to report to designated telephone reporting sites.

The Canada Border Services Agency announced Friday that it is ending its Remote Area Border Crossing permit program as of Sept. 14, 2026.

The permits, issued on an annual basis, allowed preapproved U.S. and Canadian residents to cross the border without stopping at a customs checkpoint while traversing backwoods areas such as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park.

The permits program has been in limbo for several years. First, it was suspended during the COVID-19 pandemic, when all nonessential travel was halted between the two countries. And then Canadian officials initiated a pause on applications in September 2024 while initiating a formal review of the program.

The agency said in a statement Friday that it “operates in a constantly evolving environment and regularly evaluates programs and operations to ensure a strong and efficient border.”

Active permits, which were set to expire Dec. 31, will be automatically extended to Sept. 14 in order “to ensure a smooth transition.” After that, travelers hoping to cross remote lakes and rivers to fish, camp, hike, snowmobile or partake in other activities will be required to visit a port of entry or a new telephone reporting site.

“It is a measure that will also more closely align with how travelers report to U.S. Customs and Border Protection when entering the U.S. in remote areas,” Canadian border officials said in the statement.

Impacted areas include the Lake Superior shore, waterways through to and including Lake of the Woods, and the Northwest Angle. The Sault Ste. Marie upper lock system and Cockburn Island, on the Michigan-Ontario border, are also impacted.

The uncertain future of the program has been a concern for small businesses, such as northern Minnesota outfitters, which rely on RABC permits to take clients across the border, as well as cabin owners who frequently cross in remote locations.

U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber, R-Hermantown, in January took Canadian officials to task for what he called “inconsistent and contradictory information which has only confused the public.”

Some of the current staffed border crossings in Northern Minnesota area at Roseau, Warroad, Baudette, International Falls and Grand Portage in Minnesota.

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The Border Services Agency said new telephone sites will be added to serve the areas currently covered by remote permits. It remains unclear how many sites will be established, and where.

Those decisions will be made “in the coming months in consultation with Indigenous communities, local businesses and law enforcement partners,” the agency said.

By SALLY HO

U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday that nine drugmakers have agreed to lower the cost of their prescription drugs in the U.S.

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Pharmaceutical companies Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, Boehringer Ingelheim, Genentech, Gilead Sciences, GSK, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi will now rein in Medicaid drug prices to match what they charged in other developed countries.

As part of the deal, new drugs made by those companies will also be charged at the so-called “most-favored-nation” pricing across the country on any newly launched medications for all, including commercial and cash pay markets as well as Medicare and Medicaid.

Drug prices for patients in the U.S. can depend on a number of factors, including the competition a treatment faces and insurance coverage. Most people have coverage through work, the individual insurance market or government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, which shield them from much of the cost.

Patients in Medicaid, the state and federally funded program for people with low incomes, already pay a nominal co-payment of a few dollars to fill their prescriptions, but lower prices could help state budgets that fund the programs.

Lower drug prices also will help patients who have no insurance coverage and little leverage to negotiate better deals on what they pay. But even steep discounts of 50% found through the administration’s website could still leave patients paying hundreds of dollars a month for some prescriptions.

William Padula, a pharmaceutical and health economics professor at USC, said Medicaid already has the most favorable drug rates which in some cases will be close to what the “most-favored-nation” price is so it remains to be seen what other impacts it could have, such as more research and development.

“It can’t be bad. I don’t see much downside but it’s hard to judge what the upside is,” Padula said.

And while it is significant that Trump was able to get big drugmakers to the table to negotiate lower prices, it will take years to gage how effective this initiative is in terms of more people obtaining more of the medicines they need.

“It’s good for their stock and it’s good for their future” research and development, Padula said of the pharmaceutical companies. “It’s clearly influential but will all this add up to a major effect? Nothing really matters here unless our health gets better as a country.”

Trump administration officials said the drugmakers will also sell pharmacy-ready medicines on the TrumpRx platform, which is set to launch in January and will allow people to buy drugs directly from manufacturers.

Companies such as Merck, GSK and Bristol Myers Squibb also agreed to donate significant supplies of active pharmaceutical ingredients to a national reserve and to formulate and distribute them into medications such as antibiotics, rescue inhalers and blood thinners as needed in an emergency.

The New Jersey-based Bristol Myers Squibb further announced that it will be giving for free to the Medicaid program its signature blood thinner prescribed to reduce the risk of blood clots and stroke. Known as Eliquis, it is the company’s top prescribed drug as well as being one of Medicaid’s most widely-used medicines.

Padula said the donations — which encompass some of the world’s most critical medicines — are a significant step toward health equity and an acknowledgement that the drugmakers can afford to seek profits elsewhere in their operations. Eliquis already has been one of the most profitable drugs ever made.

“It’s a thoughtful health equity move that they can afford given that it’s been such a blockbuster,” Padula said of the Eliquis donation.

Other major drugmakers including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, EMD Serono, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly struck similar deals with the Trump administration earlier this year.

Though individual terms were not disclosed, the administration has now negotiated lower drug prices with 14 companies since Trump publicly sent letters to executives at 17 pharmaceutical companies about the issue, noting that U.S. prices for brand-name drugs can be up to three times higher than averages elsewhere.

Trump said he effectively threatened the pharmaceutical companies with 10% tariffs to get them to “do the right thing.”

ST. PAUL — Gov. Tim Walz and Minnesota Department of Human Services officials on Friday, Dec. 19, said the administration and agency don’t have evidence to suggest fraud could reach $9 billion.

On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced six new defendants in the latest wave of charges for Medicaid fraud in the state, also providing an update on its estimate of the scope of the state’s fraud — about $9 billion.

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First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson said that according to the federal Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services, an audit of 14 “high risk” state Medicaid programs found that the claims since 2018 of those 14 programs totaled out at $18 billion.

Thompson said based on what his office has investigated so far, he’d expect “about half or more” of the $18 billion in claims to be fraudulent. However, state officials said on Friday that they don’t have any information to suggest $9 billion, but they didn’t say it was incorrect.

“I wouldn’t say it’s wrong. I mean, we do the same thing at the Department of Human Services. We look at billing data, we look for red flags,” DHS Inspector General James Clark said Friday. “What I’m saying is I haven’t seen any evidence or information to suggest that there’s $9 billion worth of Medicaid fraud.”

Walz called the number “speculation,” and said they’re using that number without the proof behind it. He and DHS officials invited proof from the U.S. Attorney’s Office; Clark said he’s previously asked for proof of such figures and hasn’t received it.

“To extrapolate what that number is for sensationalism or to make statements about it, it doesn’t really help us,” Walz said Friday during an unrelated news conference at the Capitol. “It doesn’t get us to where we need. I just need their help to prosecute this. I need their help to help us get a realistic perception on this.”

John Connolly, deputy commissioner and Medicaid director at DHS, said the evidence he has indicates “tens of millions of dollars” in fraud. That estimate is specific to Medicaid fraud and does not include other state agencies, such as the Department of Education, which oversaw Feeding Our Future fraud estimated at $250 million.

“We don’t have evidence in hand to suggest that we have $9 billion in fraud and these benefits over the last seven years,” Connolly said. “And if there is evidence, we need it so that we can stop payment. That’s a very alarming number. And so if there is evidence, credible allegations of fraud. We need that information to take action now.”

Connolly also added a few pieces of context and noted that of the 18 billion, $6 billion ran through a managed care organization. $10 billion was subject to electronic visit verification.

“That basically means that a worker that goes to provide services in someone’s home is as basically indicating with a timestamp when they arrive, when they left, what service they provided who they are and who received the service,” Connolly said.

He added that $11 billion was authorized by a county case manager — which he said means care was authorized according to clinical need, “an assessment, a care plan,” with a dollar amount also being authorized by a case manager.

Walz said that while he is grateful for the U.S. attorney’s work in prosecuting, he called out the office for not mentioning on Thursday what the state has done.

“What they didn’t tell you yesterday is that June, I was given the authority to stop payments … The folks they were talking about on the housing stability stabilization grant, we stopped payment on them in July and turned the case over to law enforcement to prosecute,” Walz said. “They didn’t come in here and find that. They didn’t come in here and stop payments. They can’t do that. But what they didn’t tell you is, we’re partners in this.”

Throughout the fall and winter, the state has issued pauses on enrollees and licenses for new providers in some of the Medicaid programs on top of halting payments to programs with suspected fraudulent activity. Clark said yesterday he expects that effort from DHS to continue.

Walz also expressed concern about providers within the programs that are providing legitimate services.

“They just said the entire program. Well, that is not the case, and this becomes problematic because we’re already hearing it, and we’re very conscious to it, those programs that, the vast majority that provided incredible services, are now being put at a disadvantage because we’re not able to get them out,” he said.

The fight against fraud has taken a particularly partisan turn at the Capitol in recent weeks. During the session, lawmakers and Walz were previously able to find common ground on several proposals — including the bill that authorized the state to halt payments.

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On Wednesday, DFL members of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy Committee questioned Chair Kristin Robbins, R-Maple Grove, about sharing fraud tips received through a tip line the Republican-led committee set up.

“We have not because there is no trust, as you might understand,” Robbins said. “This fraud has been perpetuated on your watch, and the whistleblowers who reach out to us within the department are terrified, and they feel that they’ve been retaliated against already.”

Robbins said she has been forwarding information from the tip line to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the FBI and the Office of Legislative Auditor, but hasn’t shared information with DFL colleagues or DHS. She said she’ll “consider it.”

“Nobody in the legislature on the Republican side is interested in solving this,” Walz said. “My God, it would be the worst thing in the world for them if this is solved like we’re doing it here early this year, because then what are they going to run on?”