You can display the Full post on your Blog Page
LONDON (AP) — King Charles III is stripping his brother Prince Andrew of his remaining titles and evicting him from his royal residence, Buckingham Palace said.
In a statement, the palace said Andrew will be known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and not as a prince.
The move follows revelations about Andrew’s relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
This is a developing story; check back for updates.
By JOHN SEEWER, Associated Press
Go ahead and roll your eyes. Shrug your shoulders. Or maybe just juggle your hands in the air.
Dictionary.com’s word of the year isn’t even really a word. It’s the viral term “6-7” that kids and teenagers can’t stop repeating and laughing about and parents and teachers can’t make any sense of.
The word — if you can call it that — exploded in popularity over the summer. It’s more of an inside joke with an unclear meaning, driven by social media.
Dictionary.com says its annual selection is a linguistic time capsule reflecting social trends and events. But the site admitted it too is a bit confused by “6-7.”
“Don’t worry, because we’re all still trying to figure out exactly what it means,” the site said in its announcement this week.
It all seems to trace back to rapper Skrilla’s song from 2024 called “Doot Doot (6-7).”
That song started appearing in TikTok videos with basketball players, including the NBA’s LaMelo Ball who stands 6-foot-7.
Then a boy, now known as “The 6-7 Kid,” shouted the ubiquitous phrase while another kid next to him juggled his hands in a video that went viral this year.
That’s all it took.
The real answer is no one knows.
And sometimes it depends on who’s on the receiving end of “6-7.”
Even how to write “6-7” is up for debate — is it “6 7” or “six seven?”
According to Dictionary.com, the phrase could mean “so-so,” or “maybe this, maybe that” when combined with the juggling hands gesture.
Merriam-Webster calls it a “a nonsensical expression used especially by teens and tweens.”
Some simply use it to frustrate adults when being questioned.
“It’s meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical. In other words, it has all the hallmarks of brainrot,” Dictionary.com said. “Still, it remains meaningful to the people who use it because of the connection it fosters.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs seeks speedy appeals court hearing while he serves a 4-year sentence
How tiny drones inspired by bats could save lives in dark and stormy conditions
The International Space Station marks 25 years of nonstop human presence in orbit
American farmers welcome China’s promise to buy their soybean but this deal doesn’t solve everything
Justice Department strips Jan. 6 references from court paper and punishes prosecutors who filed it
Parents and teachers have created their own videos trying to explain the sensation.
Some offer tips on how to stop their kids from repeating it all day long. Others suggest embracing it — even making “6-7” Halloween costumes — so it will become uncool.
Teachers have banned it. Influencers and child psychologists have tried to make sense of it.
It’s even spilled over into the NFL as a way to celebrate big plays.
Dictionary.com says it looks for words that influence how we talk with each other and communicate online.
The site scoured search engines, headlines and social media trends in making its choice. Online searches for “6-7” took off dramatically over the summer, it said, and haven’t slowed, growing by six times since June.
“The Word of the Year isn’t just about popular usage; it reveals the stories we tell about ourselves and how we’ve changed over the year,” the site said.
The Twins have officially answered one big offseason question, naming Derek Shelton the 15th manager in club history on Thursday morning, a decision which concludes a month-long search for Rocco Baldelli’s replacement.
In Shelton, president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey said in a statement, the Twins found someone who is “genuinely driven to take on the challenge of bringing winning baseball back to Minnesota.”
“We’ve seen firsthand the trust and respect he earns from players and how he helps them reach their best,” Falvey said in the statement. “His journey, through both the successes and the tough stretches, has given him real perspective as a leader. That balance and his connection to what this place means to people will serve our players and staff well as we work to build something lasting for our fans and for Minnesota.”
The Twins will hold an press conference to introduce Shelton on Tuesday afternoon at Target Field, but for now, here are five things to know about the new Twins manager:
It appears the Twins front office was looking for a familiar face, and Shelton certainly fits that mold.
Shelton, 55, got his first major league coaching opportunity in Cleveland, taking over as the hitting coach during the middle of the 2005 season. He remained in that role through the 2009 season. Concurrently, Twins president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey was charting his own path in Cleveland beginning as an intern in 2007 and rising all the way up to assistant general manager.
Falvey was hired by the Twins in October 2016 and brought Shelton over as bench coach a year later to work alongside then-manager Paul Molitor.
“It’s an exciting day for us to find somebody who can impact our culture, our coaching staff and, most importantly, our players,” Falvey told reporters in 2017 upon hiring Shelton as bench coach. “We searched throughout baseball and talked to a number of people around the game about this position. Derek’s name came up very early on, and as we got deeper and deeper, it became clear he was the best fit for our organization.”
A year later, after the Twins parted ways with Molitor, Shelton was a finalist for the manager job, which eventually went to his good friend, Baldelli. Shelton agreed to stay on as bench coach under Baldelli, serving as a guidepost for the rookie manager. After a 101-win season, Shelton got his first managing gig in Pittsburgh.
At the beginning of the process, Falvey pledged that the Twins would be “open minded,” in their search as they sought a “good partner,” who “is invested in the Twins and wants to be a part of this organization top to bottom.”
The Twins interviewed a mix of people for the job, some, but not all, with prior major-league managerial experience. Shelton is the first Twins hire with previous major league managerial experience since Gene Mauch in the mid-1970s. Shelton went 306-440 (.410) in nearly five and a half seasons in Pittsburgh, where the Pirates consistently fielded a team with a bottom-five payroll. He was dismissed in early May after beginning last season 12-26.
At the time of his dismissal, Pirates general manager Ben Cherington called Shelton “an incredibly smart, curious and driven baseball leader.”
Shelton grew up in Illinois with a father, Ron, who himself had a minor league career before going into coaching. He played baseball at Southern Illinois before spending two seasons as a minor league catcher in the New York Yankees organization, where he was teammates with future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera.
Shelton’s playing days were cut short by an elbow injury, but by his late 20s he was already a coach in New York’s minor league system. From coaching, he became a minor league manager before eventually working his way to the major league level in 2005.
Shelton was the hitting coach in Cleveland (2005-09) before leaving to take the same job with the Tampa Bay Rays, which he held through the 2016 season. He then spent one season as the Toronto Blue Jays’ quality control coach before landing in Minnesota for the first time.
When Joe Mauer finished his career by getting behind the plate to catch one last major league pitch, it was because of a conversation between Shelton and then-bullpen coach Nate Damman.
Mauer hadn’t appeared behind the plate since 2013 because of concussion issues that forced him over to first base. But on that day in 2018, in the final game of his career, the future Hall of Fame player took his familiar position one last time to catch a single pitch, a fitting and memorable send-off for the hometown star.
It was an emotional moment for everyone in the ballpark, but none more so than Mauer, who acknowledged the crowd and then wiped tears from his eyes before catching an outside pitch from Matt Belisle and departing the game.
“I have a lot of emotions going on right now and today I don’t think could have gone any better to script,” Mauer told reporters that day.
Shelton took over as the Rays’ hitting coach in 2010, Baldelli’s final year as a player. After his retirement, Baldelli remained in the organization and eventually joined the coaching staff in 2015. The two coached together in Tampa Bay for two seasons before Shelton moved on to Toronto.
They linked up once again after Baldelli was hired by the Twins, spending one more season together in 2019.
“There’s a few people that I think all of us in the game kind of think about when you talk about your growth as a baseball person, and I would say Shelty is on that short list of people for me,” Baldelli said in 2023.
In the years that followed, the two often had fun jabbing each other. Shelton, in particular, liked to poke fun at the fact that Baldelli was often ranked near the top of writer Craig Calcaterra’s “Most Handsome Managers” list. In April 2021 with the Pittsburgh Pirates in town to play the Twins, Shelton showed up wearing a custom shirt with Baldelli’s face on it that read, “Hi, I’m Rocco, the best looking manager in baseball, and I approve this message.”
A couple of years later, Baldelli couldn’t hide his glee when telling reporters that Shelton had fallen off a boat while on a fishing trip.
“Shelty apparently purified himself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka off the side of a boat,” Baldelli said, referencing Prince’s famous line in the movie “Purple Rain.”
In response, Shelton vowed that Baldelli would never, ever see evidence.
“There is video and you know who will never get that video? Rocco Baldelli,” Shelton said. “He will never get the video because if the video was there, it would be on the scoreboard.”
Blue Jays’ first World Series teams got major boost of St. Paul DNA
Twins to hire Derek Shelton as next manager
How can the Twins rebuild the roster they tore down?
Charley Walters: Torii Hunter talked to Twins about managerial job but wasn’t interviewed
North St. Paul’s Louie Varland: Journey to World Series ‘a crazy, fun ride’
By Michael Smith, Alicia A. Caldwell, Myles Miller, Bloomberg News
The federal government is supercharging its use of local cops to hunt down immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally as part of an unprecedented effort to fulfill President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to deport millions of people.
Democrats test a new playbook in Tuesday’s election: Less talk of Trump, more focus on economy
Justice Department strips Jan. 6 references from court paper and punishes prosecutors who filed it
Democratic senators demand answers on ICE’s use of full-body restraints on deportation flights
Trump no-show at big Asian economic forum may risk US reputation in region
Trump sets 7,500 annual limit for refugees entering US. It’ll be mostly white South Africans
Some 10,500 local police, county sheriffs, state troopers, university law enforcement and even lottery investigators have been signed up to stop, arrest and detain undocumented immigrants. Nationwide data reviewed by Bloomberg show these officers, across 40 states, nabbed almost 3,000 people since Trump took office through the end of July. Florida keeps its own tally under the same program, and its deputized cops have arrested another 2,500 people since then.
Combined, that’s a small fraction of the total number of immigration arrests this year, but almost double the amount that deputized cops made in 2024 under President Joe Biden’s watch.
Local law enforcement usually doesn’t have the authority to enforce immigration rules, but a nearly 30-year-old program called 287(g) allows the federal government to grant immigration arrest power to agencies that sign on. Trump has overseen a dramatic expansion at the start of his second term, with the number of accords surging seven-fold to almost 1,100 by September.
It’s “a force multiplier,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement Deputy Director Madison Sheahan said in an interview.
But among the local law-enforcement agencies, some have been much more enthusiastic participants than others. About three-fourths of the 330 participating police forces in Florida, by far the largest ICE partner after Gov. Ron DeSantis pushed through a law requiring them to sign up, have made zero arrests months into their partnerships, the state’s data show. Officials frequently say that it isn’t a priority for officers focused on fighting violent crime, thwarting robberies and improving community relations.
In greater Miami, which has one of the largest concentrations of Latino immigrants in America, police and sheriff’s departments have made about two dozen immigration arrests since August.
“We have other priorities in this community that I’m focused on, and immigration is not one of them,” Gregory Tony, the Democratic sheriff of Broward County, north of Miami, said at a county budget committee meeting in June. “It’s not within our purview, it’s not within our responsibility, and I won’t participate in it.”
Tony’s comments led Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier to threaten to remove the sheriff from office, citing the state law that requires police to use “best efforts to support” federal immigration agents. As of Oct. 27, Tony’s deputies had made zero immigration arrests. Uthmeier declined to comment.
Over the decades, just a handful of local law-enforcement agencies cut 287(g) deals with ICE, according to the American Immigration Council. But Trump has hugely expanded these agreements to supplement roughly 65,000 ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents with additional forces.
St. Johns County Sheriff Robert Hardwick, who polices a 40-mile stretch of I-95 around St. Augustine, Florida, says his officers now routinely question people’s immigration status when they get pulled over someone for speeding or other infraction. He already has 66 of his sheriff’s officers trained and deputized by ICE, and is adding another 45.
This year his deputies have arrested about 700 people on immigration charges, mainly during vehicle stops, expanding a years-long practice of running a check for federal immigration violations when they suspected someone may be undocumented, he said.
“So to take this enforcement on as a sheriff when our new president took office was easy because we were kind of already doing it, holding people accountable,” Hardwick said in an interview. But now, he says, there’s much more support from the federal government.
It’s part of the president’s growing toolkit for his immigration crackdown. Even amid court challenges, Trump has deployed thousands of active duty military troops, along with combat vehicles and more than 100 Coast Guard boats, to the border, where crossings have plummeted. He’s also sought to deploy National Guard troops in major cities — including Los Angeles — though many of those efforts have been legally blocked or scaled back.
In the interior of the country, ICE recorded more than 196,000 arrests between Jan. 20 and Sept. 20, according to data posted by the agency. During that same time, ICE has deported about 180,000 people.
Police chiefs and sheriffs who have criticized the 287(g) agreements often point to the complexities of immigration law, limited training for their officers and the legal liabilities they could create.
Allegations of racial profiling have dogged previous iterations of the program. A Justice Department report in 2011 concluded sheriff’s officials in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, had engaged in profiling to target and arrest Latino residents.
Florida’s push for immigration arrests may have led to mistakes, according to court records and interviews with immigration lawyers.
Juan Carlos Lopez-Gomez, a 21-year-old U.S. citizen, was headed from his home in Georgia to a carpet installation job in Tallahassee with two co-workers on April 16. Soon after crossing into Florida, a state trooper pulled over their vehicle for speeding and questioned their immigration status.
“I told him I was born here, showed them my license, my Social Security card, but he didn’t believe me,” Lopez-Gomez said in an interview in Spanish. The trooper handcuffed and arrested Lopez-Gomez for allegedly violating a Florida law against entering the state as an illegal alien, records show. It was the same law a federal judge had blocked as unconstitutional two weeks before.
A county judge threw out the case after Lopez-Gomez’s mother showed up with his birth certificate, but said only ICE could get him out of jail, Lopez-Gomez said. He spent 38 hours locked up before an ICE agent reviewed his documents and let him go. He says he is considering filing a lawsuit for unlawful arrest.
“I still don’t understand why they did that to me,” Lopez-Gomez said from his home in Cairo, Georgia. “Every day I leave the house scared they will try to deport me again – the anxiety gets the best of me.”
The Florida Highway Patrol declined to comment.
DeSantis has aggressively gone after towns and sheriffs perceived as resisting working with ICE.
Fort Myers, a town on the Gulf Coast, backed down from refusing to sign a deal with ICE after Uthmeier threatened to remove city commissioners from office for violating state law.
A few miles west of downtown Miami in Doral, a heavily Latino city where Trump owns a golf course, Police Chief Edwin Lopez has no plans to order his officers to hunt for undocumented immigrants even though the department plans to sign a 287(g) agreement.
“I do a lot of educating the community and let them know that the police department is here to protect and serve,” Lopez, the son of Cuban immigrants, said in an interview. “We’re not necessarily arbitrarily requesting or asking questions in terms of immigration status.”
Among the state agencies that has made immigration arrests is the Florida Lottery’s security division. The force of roughly a dozen officers is charged with securing lottery drawings, investigating fake tickets and running background checks on retailers. But on April 24, it signed a 287(g) agreement, and it has since made 10 immigration arrests. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment.
One major incentive for law-enforcement agencies to sign the 287(g) agreements is the promise of a cash infusion. ICE is now offering to fully reimburse salary and benefits and part of the overtime for each trained 287(g) officer, and to pay quarterly bonuses of as much as $1,000 if certain arrest targets are met.
The money hasn’t always worked.
Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux turned down a request from ICE to join the 287(g) program that came with a promise of $25 million in reimbursements for salaries and operational costs.
“Our officers are focused on serving our city by answering 911 calls and aggressively fighting violent crime,” Comeaux said in a statement. “Federal authorities have a different mission with the same importance.”
In Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the nation’s wealthiest suburbs, Sheriff Mike Chapman has an agreement to hold inmates flagged by ICE until federal officers can take custody.
But he isn’t going to order his deputies to become immigration agents. He wants them to focus on local safety and community engagement.
“People may not like what we’re doing, but they trust us,” he said in an interview. “They realize it’s important to keep them safe, and that’s what we’re about.”
Some cops just don’t know what to do with their partnership with ICE, like Sheriff K. Zane Hopkins in Nebraska’s Banner County. His desolate 745-square-mile rectangle in the southwest part of the state has fewer than 700 residents, making it home to “more cows than people.”
Hopkins, a Republican elected in 2023, signed a 287(g) agreement in part because Banner somehow ended up on the Department of Homeland Security’s list of so-called “sanctuary” counties, which restrict local police from assisting federal immigration agents. Signing up with ICE was an effort to help clear up any misconceptions. But a traffic stop that involves an immigration issue, he said, can keep him or his sole deputy occupied for an hour or more.
Hopkins recalls two traffic stops since 2023 that involved a driver suspected of being in violation of federal immigration laws, and both times ICE agents opted not to respond. The county is a nearly seven-hour drive from Nebraska’s lone ICE office in Omaha.
“We are not actively going out and looking for people.” Hopkins said of immigration enforcement. “If we do it, we do it as part of our daily duties. I’m not super worried about trying to enforce it and I’m not going to chase reimbursement.”
—With assistance from Fabiola Zerpa and Phil Kuntz.
©2025 Bloomberg News. Visit at bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.