By JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — Keir Starmer has never had a bad word to say in public about Donald Trump.

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That is not being reciprocated now as the American president lambasts the British prime minister over his reluctance to join the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The dispute is roiling a relationship that Starmer worked hard to forge, and further straining trans-Atlantic ties frayed by Trump’s “America first” foreign policy and transactional approach to international relations.

“This was the most solid relationship of all. And now we have very strong relationships with other countries in Europe,” Trump told British tabloid The Sun in an interview published Tuesday.

“I mean, France has been great. They’ve all been great,” Trump said. “The U.K. has been much different from others.”

“It’s very sad to see that the relationship is obviously not what it was,” he said.

Starmer initially blocked American planes from using British bases for the attacks on Iran that started on Saturday. He later agreed to let the United States use bases in England and on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to strike Iran’s ballistic missiles and their storage sites, but not to hit other targets.

Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer issues a statement at 10 Downing Street, London, on the latest developments in the Middle East, Saturday Feb. 28, 2026. (Jonathan Brady/Pool via AP)

Even after the British base at Akrotiri in Cyprus was hit by an Iran-made drone over the weekend, Starmer said that the United Kingdom “will not join offensive action.” He said Tuesday that a Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Dragon, and helicopters with counter-drone capabilities were being sent to the region as part of “defensive operations.”

The British leader has offered a rare, though implicit, rebuke of the U.S. president, saying Monday that the U.K. government doesn’t believe in “regime change from the skies.”

“Any U.K. actions must always have a lawful basis and a viable, thought-through plan,” Starmer told lawmakers in the House of Commons on Monday.

“President Trump has expressed his disagreement with our decision not to get involved in the initial strikes, but it is my duty to judge what is in Britain’s national interest,” Starmer added.

President Donald Trump speaks about Iran before a Medal of Honor ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The Financial Times called it Starmer’s “Love Actually moment” — a reference to the 2003 movie scene in which a British prime minister played by Hugh Grant stands up to a bullying U.S. president played by Billy Bob Thornton.

Friction between the two leaders has been building for months. Trump’s threat to take over Greenland was denounced by Starmer and other European leaders earlier this year. Recently, Trump has condemned Britain’s agreement to hand over the Chagos Islands, home to the Diego Garcia base, to Mauritius, despite his administration earlier backing the deal.

Peter Ricketts, a former head of the U.K. Foreign Office, told The Observer newspaper that under Trump, “the Americans have effectively given up on any effort to be consistent with international law.”

That is a red line for the law-abiding Starmer, a barrister and former chief prosecutor for England and Wales.

The spat is a setback for Starmer’s efforts to woo Trump since the president’s return to office in 2025. The British government rolled out the red carpet to the president for a state visit as the guest of King Charles III, and Starmer consistently has praised Trump’s efforts — so far unsuccessful — to broker an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.

The Iran war has also divided European leaders, who fall along a spectrum from condemnation to support.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said that he unreservedly approves of Trump’s decision to attack Iran and kill its supreme leader, and called the war crucial for Europe’s security.

The U.K., France and Germany jointly said that they weren’t involved in the strikes, but were prepared to enable “necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the strikes as “unjustifiable” and “dangerous.”

Polling suggests many Britons are skeptical of the U.S. justification for war. But politicians to the right of Starmer’s Labour Party slammed the prime minister for not joining the offensive. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said that her party “stands behind America taking this necessary action against state-sponsored terror.”

Foreign Office Minister Stephen Doughty denied the U.S.-U.K. “special relationship” was on the ropes.

“Our relationship with the United States is strong,” he said Tuesday in the House of Commons. “It has endured, it continues to endure, and it will endure into the future on both the economic and the security fronts.”

By MAYA SWEEDLER and ROBERT YOON

WASHINGTON (AP) — So, who won?

That’s a question The Associated Press has answered many thousands of times in U.S. elections held since shortly after the news organization was founded nearly 180 years ago.

Declaring a winner involves a careful and thorough analysis of the latest available vote tallies and a variety of other election data. The ultimate goal is to determine whether there is any circumstance in which the trailing candidate can catch up to the candidate who is leading the race. If not, then the leading candidate has won.

Here’s a look at the AP’s role and its process for determining the outcome of elections, also known as calling a race:

Why AP calls races

The United States does not have a nationwide body that collects and releases election results. Elections are administered locally, by thousands of offices, following standards set by the states. In many cases, the states themselves do not even offer up-to-date tracking of election results.

The AP fills this gap by compiling vote results and declaring winners in elections, providing critical information in the period between Election Day and the official certification of results, which typically takes weeks.

Collecting the vote

The AP’s vote count brings together information that otherwise might not be available online for days or weeks after an election or is scattered across hundreds of local websites. Without national standards or consistent expectations across states, it also ensures the data is in a standard format, uses standard terms and undergoes rigorous quality control.

The AP hires vote count reporters who work with local election officials to collect results directly from counties or precincts where votes are first counted. These reporters submit them, by phone or electronically, as soon as the results are available. If any of the results are available from state or county websites, the AP will gather the results from there, too.

In many cases, counties will update vote totals as they count ballots throughout the night. The AP is continually updating its count as these results are released. In a general election, the AP will make as many as 21,000 vote updates per hour.

Analyzing the vote

As votes are coming in, the AP will analyze races to determine the winners.

One key piece that the AP considers is how many ballots are uncounted and from what areas. In cases in which official or exact tallies of the outstanding vote are unavailable, the AP estimates the turnout in every race based on several factors and uses that estimate to track how much of the vote has been counted and how much remains.

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The AP also tries to determine how ballots counted so far were cast and the types of vote, such as mail ballots or ballots cast in person on Election Day, that remain.

That is because the method that voters choose can be correlated to the party they voted for. Since voting by mail became highly politicized in the 2020 election, Democrats have been more likely to vote by mail, while Republicans have been more likely to vote in person on Election Day.

In many states, it is possible to know which votes will be counted first, based on past elections or plans announced by election officials. In others, votes are clearly marked by type when released.

This helps to determine if an early lead is expected to shrink or grow. For example, if a state first counts votes cast in person on Election Day, followed by mail-in votes, that suggests that an early Republican lead may narrow as more mail ballots are tabulated. But if mail ballots are counted first, an early Republican lead could be the first sign of a comfortable victory.

Calling races

In almost all cases, races can be called well before all votes have been counted. The AP’s team of election journalists and analysts will call a race as soon as a clear winner can be determined.

In competitive races, AP analysts may need to wait until additional votes are tallied or to confirm specific information about how many ballots are left to count.

Competitive races in which votes are actively being tabulated — for example, in states that count a large number of votes after election night — might be considered “too early to call.” A race may be “too close to call” if a race is so close that there is no clear winner even once all ballots except for provisional and late-arriving absentee ballots have been counted.

The AP’s race calls are not predictions and are not based on speculation. They are declarations based on an analysis of vote results and other election data that one candidate has emerged as the winner and that no other candidate in the race will be able to overtake the winner once all the votes have been counted.

Follow along as the AP tabulates votes and calls races. Check out results pages and notes from the AP Decision Team.

By DEEPA BHARATH

Holi, widely known as the Hindu festival of colors, is a joyful annual celebration at the advent of spring with cultural and religious significance.

Typically observed in March in India, Nepal, other South Asian countries and across the diaspora, the festival celebrates love and signifies a time of rebirth and rejuvenation — a time to embrace the positive and let go of negative energy.

For one of Holi’s most well-known traditions, celebrants clad in all white, come out to the street and throw colored powders at each other, leaving behind a kaleidoscope of pigments and joy. Festivities with music, dancing and food ensue.

Holi is celebrated at the end of winter and the beginning of spring, on the last full moon day of the Hindu luni-solar calendar month of Falgun. The date of the festival varies depending on the lunar cycle. Typically, it falls in March, and will be celebrated this year on March 4.

Holi has its origins in Hindu mythology and lore

In many parts of India, people light large bonfires the night before the festival to signify the destruction of evil and victory of good. Different mythological tales point to the reason behind this observance.

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In one story, the king, Hiranyakashipu, ordered everyone in his kingdom to worship him and was irked when his own son Prahlad, a devotee of Lord Vishnu, disobeyed his command. So, he ordered his sister Holika who was immune from fire to take the child, Prahlad, into a bonfire while holding him in her lap. However, when the pyre was lit, the boy’s devotion to Lord Vishnu protected him and left him unscathed while Holika, despite her immunity, burned to death.

In another southern India tradition, the event is known as Kama Dahanam to commemorate Lord Shiva burning Kamadeva, the god of love, with his third eye. It symbolizes the destruction of lust and other earthly attachments for a higher spiritual purpose, preceding the joy of colors.

Some also consider Holi a reference to Lord Krishna and his love for his beloved, Radha, and his cosmic play with his consorts and devotees called “gopikas,” who are also revered for their unconditional love and devotion to Krishna.

How is the festival of colors celebrated?

On the day of Holi, entire streets and towns are filled with people who throw colored powder in the air. Some fling balloons filled with colored water from rooftops and others use squirt guns. For one day, it’s all fair game. Cries of “Holi hai!” which means “It’s Holi!” can be heard on the streets. Holi has also been romanticized and popularized over the decades in Bollywood films.

The colors seen during Holi symbolize different things. Blue represents the color of Lord Krishna’s skin while green symbolizes spring and rebirth. Red symbolizes marriage or fertility while both red and yellow — commonly used in ritual and ceremony — symbolize auspiciousness.

An array of special foods are part of the celebration, with the most popular food during Holi being “gujia,” a flaky, deep-fried sweet pastry stuffed with milk curd, nuts and dried fruits. Holi parties also feature “thandai,” a cold drink prepared with a mix of almonds, fennel seeds, rose petals, poppy seeds, saffron, milk and sugar.

Holi is celebrated in the diaspora with worship and social gatherings

In North America and in any country with a Hindu population, people of Indian descent celebrate Holi with Bollywood parties and parades, as well as a host of public and private gatherings. Several U.S. temples will observe Holika Dahan this year on Feb. 2 or Feb. 3 to coincide with the full moon day and a total lunar eclipse, which is rare.

It is also common for Hindu temples and community centers in the U.S to organize cultural programs, friendly cricket matches and other festivities around the holiday.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By AMY TAXIN, CLAIRE GALOFARO, SAFIYAH RIDDLE and ED WHITE

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Many in the Iranian American diaspora spent several days glued to their televisions, watching the news of U.S. and Israeli bombs falling on Iran, some clinging to hope it might bring a brighter future to their homeland but terrified their relatives will suffer in a new Middle East war with no certain end.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who ruled Iran for decades while violently crushing dissent, was killed early in the attack. In the United States, many celebrated, some popped Champagne, some downed shots of tequila, some took to the streets to cheer the toppling of a ruler they considered a tyrant.

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“We are happy, we are happy that he is gone and he can’t kill our innocent people anymore,” said Ava Farhadi, 33, an electrical engineer in Indiana. In January, Farhadi’s family participated in protests against their government, which were met with a brutal crackdown. While her immediate family was unhurt, Farhadi said, friends and close loved ones were among the thousands killed when security forces opened fire on peaceful protesters.

Many said they are worried for their families still there and for what the future holds.

Roozbeh Farahanipour, a Los Angeles restaurant owner who was jailed and tortured following the 1999 student protests in Iran, said he’s felt a swirl of emotions.

He celebrated when he heard Khamenei was killed in the initial U.S. and Israeli strikes. “I open a bottle of Champagne and drink it up,” he said. “That was a happy moment but we are looking at what happens next.”

Deaths have mounted as the bombardment continued into Monday, claiming U.S. service members and Iran civilians. Farahanipour said he mourns for them.

Between 400,000 and 620,000 people of Iranian ancestry live in the U.S., according to the University of California Los Angeles, the vast majority of them in California. Farahanipour’s restaurant is in a part of Los Angeles nicknamed Tehrangeles — the heart of the Iranian diaspora in the U.S. — where Iranian flags hang outside shops selling everything from books to rugs.

The area commonly known as “Little Tehran” or “Tehrangeles” is seen at the Westwood Court along Westwood Boulevard, the heart of the largest Iranian diaspora community in the United States, in Los Angeles, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

‘We want democracy’

Nearby, Todd Khodadadi, the 47-year-old owner of Tochal Market, said he and his family lived under the regime in Iran until they fled more than two decades ago and started over in the U.S.

Khodadadi said he’s been glued to news apps and group chats with friends in Iran. Even as bombs rained down, the weekend’s violence still doesn’t compare to the scale and severity of what Iranians have suffered for years on end, he said, surrounded in his store by boxes of date-filled pastries and rice cookies affixed with stickers reading “Free Iran.”

“The people in Iran, they live in hell,” he said. “We want democracy, we don’t want one person sitting in one chair for decades and decades and control everything.”

It has been difficult for many to communicate with their loved ones still in their homeland. Phone and internet connections aren’t reliable.

“It’s eerie, it’s very eerie to see these terrible scenes of Iranians crying over dead relatives and their destroyed homes,” said Shahed Ghoreishi, 34, a foreign policy analyst whose parents fled Iran and still has many relatives there. “And you’re like, wait, does my family live on that street? How close are they to that bomb? Then you try to geolocate where your family lives and where the bombs are dropping on TV at the same time.”

His mother told him she hasn’t slept because she can’t reach her sister, who recently had back surgery. The Iranian people were already suffering shortages of food and medicine because of strict sanctions imposed on the country and Ghoreishi worries not only that they could be killed by the bombardment, but also that they won’t be able to access life-sustaining necessities as the war drags on.

Ghoreishi, who was fired from his role at the U.S. State Department last year after some questioned his loyalty to the administration’s policies in the Middle East, said he doesn’t see how this will end with lasting change for the Iranian people.

“I don’t see a clear strategy and I see a lot of violence, and those two things make me pessimistic for this moment,” he said.

He hopes that he’s wrong. So does Mahdis Keshavarz, 49, who fled Iran as a child and works now in social justice advocacy in Los Angeles.

Customers talk inside the Taste of Tehran restaurant at the area known Little Tehran” or “Tehrangeles,” the heart of the largest Iranian diaspora community in the United States, in Los Angeles, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

‘My people deserve to be happy’

“My people deserve to be happy, and I understand fully why they would be happy and hopeful for a tyrant to be out of commission,” she said. “We have dreamed of the day where we would be rid of them so that we can have the homeland and the peace we all deserve.”

Keshavarz still has many loved ones in Iran, and says she’s worried “day and night” for them. In war, she said, ordinary people always pay the highest price.

To her, this moment recalls the region’s long history of intractable wars that cost hundreds of thousands of lives but failed to deliver on promises of democratic stability, sometimes creating power vacuums filled by rulers just as bad or worse.

She cannot see now how this time will be any different.

“This is where I hope I’m wrong,” she said. “I hope that a month from now, or two weeks from now, that joy remains because there is something positive that comes out of this. Because at the moment I don’t see it.”

Many said they hope that the Trump administration has a more solid plan for a transition than is clear right now.

Roya Boroumand’s father helped form the National Movement of the Iranian Resistance, one of the first opposition parties fighting for democracy. He was stabbed to death in the lobby of his Paris apartment by agents of the Islamic Republic in 1991. Boroumand said that those celebrating should remember the sacrifices that people of previous generations have made to advance human rights in the country — and recognize how much work is required to realize those rights now that the regime has been weakened.

Farid, who gave only his first name, from Iran, works at Jordan Market, a Middle Eastern and Persian market along Westwood Boulevard, in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, pauses next to The Lion and Sun flags, the pre-revolution Iranian national flag, at the heart of the largest Iranian diaspora community in the United States, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

‘You can’t just bomb your way out of a totalitarian regime’

“You can’t just bomb your way out of a totalitarian regime,” said Boroumand, who co-founded the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation in 2001 to promote human rights in Iran. She emphasized that any military operation needs to be supplemented by significant structural and economic transformation led by Iranian civilians.

“This is the time to make sure what needs to happen happens so that what we have endured for the past 45-60 years doesn’t happen again,” she said.

Some others said they saw no other way to forge a better path forward than to cut off the regime at its head.

“In Iran we cannot accept that murderers can control the country. When they start to kill people just because of their voices, there is no choice but to start a war,” said Soheila Boojari, 47, a native of Iran and engineer in suburban Detroit, who took to the streets this weekend to celebrate the strikes. “I don’t want a war for any people. I am very worried about my family there. But who can help us?”

At Colbeh, a Persian restaurant in Great Neck, New York, staff downed shots of tequila Saturday night to celebrate the attacks. Restaurant partner Pejman Touby said he walked over the mountains at age 12 to escape Iran in 1984.

“A lot of our employees came out of Iran the same way. We left everything we had there,” Touby, 53, said. “We had shots in honor of the U.S. government, Israel government for standing on their word and doing whatever they can to get rid of this evil regime.”

Many said they are hopeful that maybe, soon, they can return to Iran to see the family they left behind decades ago.

A giant The Lion and Sun flag, the pre-revolution Iranian national flag, decorates the exterior of Damoka rug store along Westwood Boulevard, in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, at the heart of the largest Iranian diaspora community in the United States, Monday, March 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Gita Zarnegar, a 63-year-old psychoanalyst, said she and her Jewish family left Iran in 1979 when the regime took over.

“I’m elated that my country of origin is going to be free from 47 years of enslavement to a tyrannical and cruel regime that took away people’s freedom and liberty,” she said.

She will visit as soon as it is safe enough, she said.

“I will be the first person on that plane.”

Associated Press reporter Krysta Fauria contributed from Los Angeles. Galofaro reported from Louisville, Kentucky, Riddle from New York and White from Detroit.