By MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Trump administration Tuesday designated the Barrio 18 gang as a foreign terrorist organization, joining other Latin American criminal groups receiving the designation in recent months.

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Barrio 18, largely based in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, originated in the United States as a street gang in Los Angeles created by young Salvadoran immigrants as a way to protect themselves. When many of their members were deported from the U.S. to El Salvador, the gang expanded and gained power across Central America, where it continues to terrorize communities.

In recent years, the gang has been dealt a powerful blow by El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, who has waged war on the country’s gangs, imprisoning more than 1% of El Salvador’s population for alleged gang ties with little evidence or access to due process. That has sharply dropped crime rates in El Salvador, but also fueled accusations of mass human rights abuses by the government.

In a statement on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the designation “further demonstrates the Trump administration’s unwavering commitment to dismantling cartels and gangs and ensuring the safety of the American people.”

Bukele has long referred to members of the gang as “terrorists” and even built a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center. It was that same lockup where 200 Venezuelan deportees were held earlier this year as part of an agreement with Trump.

On Tuesday, Trump thanked Bukele, an ally, on the stage of the United Nations General Assembly “for the successful and professional job they have done in receiving and jailing so many criminals that entered our country.”

Bukele’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It’s unclear what the designation would mean for law enforcement in the region. The Trump administration has ruffled feathers in Latin America as it has drastically expanded military actions by firing on boats in the Caribbean that it alleges were carrying drugs to the U.S. A number of people have been killed in those strikes.

Barrio 18 joins its rival, the Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and a number of Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, in holding the foreign terrorist organization designation.

The designation has long been applied to groups that are more political in nature. While the Latin American groups have sown terror in the populations they lord over, they also are largely not political in nature and instead focus their efforts on raking in money through drug trafficking, extortion and other illegal activities.

Jason Gale, Bloomberg News

President Donald Trump’s call for pregnant women to avoid Tylenol is drawing sharp criticism from researchers who say the advice ignores decades of evidence and could endanger mothers and babies.

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At a White House event Monday, Trump linked acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, to autism and encouraged women to tough out fevers. The remarks, made alongside health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a longtime critic of mainstream medicine — rattled doctors and drugmakers.

Mady Hornig, a New York physician-scientist who has studied pregnancy-related risk factors for autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for 25 years, said the White House’s message misrepresents the science around acetaminophen, which is also known as paracetamol in Europe and elsewhere.

“It seemed like they had indicated that there was evidence that prolonging a fever is a good thing,” Hornig, a visiting scientist at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Northwell Health, said in an interview. “It’s astonishing misinformation.”

Trump and Kennedy have both sought to challenge health guidance and practices, sometimes relying on cherry-picked evidence. The U.S. leader also has a record of promoting unfounded medical theories.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists called the latest advice on acetaminophen “irresponsible,” while the American Academy of Pediatrics also said misrepresenting science does a “disservice” to autistic people. The U.K.’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said there’s no evidence that paracetamol causes autism and said it remains safe during pregnancy.

Genetic risk

Hornig’s research, based on the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study of over 100,000 families, found that moderate or high fevers in pregnancy were linked to elevated autism risk, especially in the second trimester.

“We found that there was about a 40% increased risk of autism without acetaminophen,” she said. “That went down substantially with the use of acetaminophen.”

She stressed that fever itself, not a single drug, is a key factor.

“It’s clear that unmitigated fever, particularly where it is of a moderate level or higher, is something that has an impact on offspring to increase risk of autism,” she said. “To allow women to have even a modest fever during pregnancy, which in and of itself can potentially cause damage and is associated in many studies with risk, is very worrisome.”

In preliminary, unpublished work, Hornig’s team also saw hints that acetaminophen taken for pain may carry different risks. “There seems to be some pattern that suggested that for pain, it may not be the drug to use,” she added, though she cautioned the findings need more study.

A small number of women reported using ibuprofen for fever during pregnancy. None of their children developed autism, though Hornig stressed the numbers were too small to draw conclusions.

The findings underscore what scientists have long said: autism doesn’t have a single cause. Genetics, timing and environment all interact, Hornig said, citing factors such as parental age gaps, exposure to wildfire smoke and heavy metals, seasonal immune shifts and infections that trigger fever.

“The idea that it’s going to be a singular cause is really kind of foolhardy, and it doesn’t go along with the things that we know,” she said.

Hornig also urged more precision in research. Common genetic differences in enzymes that help break down acetaminophen may influence how safely a pregnant woman can metabolize the drug. Some labs are testing newborns’ meconium for toxic byproducts of acetaminophen metabolism — a potential biomarker that could guide safer choices in the future.

“Our future generations deserve a personalized approach that looks at genetic risk, environmental exposures, and safer alternatives,” she said.

For now, she said, context matters. Acetaminophen remains widely recommended because aspirin carries a risk of Reye’s syndrome and ibuprofen isn’t considered safe later in pregnancy. But Hornig warned that discouraging treatment altogether — especially with respiratory viruses like flu and Covid-19 still circulating — could leave women vulnerable.

Vaccination before and during pregnancy, when indicated, remains one of the best safeguards against infections that trigger fever, she added.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Minnesota Wild fans disappointed in the on-ice impact made by Yakov Trenin last season were certainly not alone.

With his second Wild training camp underway, Trenin himself admits he was a disappointment, scoring seven goals and adding eight assists in 76 games – numbers that landed him on the fourth line for Minnesota’s first-round playoff series.

“No excuse. I’m fully responsible for my game, and I didn’t perform,” said Trenin, who signed a four-year, $14 million free-agent contract in 2024. “Try to bounce back this season.”

Those efforts included summer workouts that leave him noticeably slimmer, in some of the best shape of his career for the 28-year-old Russian.

“I obviously wasn’t happy with my last season and tried some different practices during the summer,” he said. “I worked with a power skating coach, tried to lose some weight to see how my body’s going to respond during the season. It’s stupid to do the same thing over and over again and hope for different results.”

The bright spot in Trenin’s first Wild season came in the playoffs, where he had a pair of assists and played a hard-charging brand of hockey.

“It’s more his style of game, I think, going on the forecheck,” said Marco Rossi, who centered Trenin’s line in the playoffs. “He’s physically really strong and wants to be forward on the forecheck.”

If the preseason opener was any indication, the offseason efforts are paying off. Trenin scored the Wild’s first and last goals in a 3-2 overtime win in Winnipeg,

He was one of the veterans who made the trip to Dallas for the second game of the preseason on Tuesday night.

Hynes has noticed Trenin’s revamped body, as well as a different attitude in the early days of camp.

“One of the big things in camp is you want to be able to build confidence as an individual player,” Hynes said. “For (Trenin) himself, I think it was important. Even though it is (preseason), he did score a couple goals, I thought he played really well. His line was very effective in the game, and he was a big part of that.”

As one of a quartet of Russian speakers on the team, Trenin has also taken rookie Danilla Yurov under his wing, serving as a guide for the ways of the NHL and a translator for the coach’s instructions when language is a barrier.

“I think he really just tried to deliver on his free-agent contract. That’s what guys do. They want to earn their money, and I think he got caught in that,” Wild general manager Bill Guerin of Trenin’s first year in Minnesota. “By the end of the year, I think he was just more comfortable (in knowing) ‘OK, this is my game. This is how I’m going to have success.’

“And when he played that way, he was really impactful for us,” Guerin said. “So hopefully that’s still kind of fresh in his mind, and he can kind of just pick up where he left off and be that imposing force on the forecheck and protect pucks and get to the net.”

Buium progressing

Summer was a nice break for Wild rookie defenseman Zeev Buium. Between this time last year and May 2025, he played a full season for the University of Denver, won a World Junior gold medal, won a World Championship gold medal in May and, in the midst of it all, signed his first pro contract and made his Wild debut in Vegas during the NHL playoffs.

He came back to TRIA Rink rested and ready to go, then suffered a setback almost immediately when he took a puck off the hand on the first day of training camp. That kept him out of practice for a few days. Although he did not make the trip to Texas for the Wild’s second preseason game, he was back practicing with the team on Tuesday.

“I didn’t think anything of it, then it just kind of swelled up. But everything’s good,” Buium said.

Hynes hinted that Buium might be ready to go for the Wild’s preseason home game Thursday versus Dallas.

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PEMBROKE, Maine (AP) — A bull moose that fell into an abandoned well in Maine was pulled to safety during an elaborate five hour rescue.

The operation happened Wednesday after Cole Brown, whose family owned the forested land in northern Maine, spotted a pair of antlers. He heard a noise and initially thought it was turkeys but, upon, closer inspect, realized it was something a lot bigger.

“He walks over and, through the thick alders and bushes, he saw the antlers, just the antlers peeking out,” said Delaney Gardner, Brown’s stepsister who videotaped the rescue. “He knew that an animal of the size, he was going to need some back up just in case it was, you know, injured or just stuck there.”

The family alerted the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. They sent a biologist who sedated the moose and then wardens put straps on the animal. Using an excavator provided by the family, they gingerly lifted the moose out of the 9-foot deep well.

“Once the sedation wore off, the moose took off running, no worse for wear other than perhaps his bruised ego,” the agency said on its Facebook page.

Gardner said the successful rescue left her with a mix of “relief and happiness.”

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“This is a majestic giant animal in such a precarious situation,” she said. “So to be able to see everyone come together in all these different ways that they needed to was absolutely incredible. And then seeing it work out was just so satisfying and heartwarming.”

Gardner said the family didn’t know the well — which is likely decades old — was on their 100 acres of land until the moose fell into it. Since then, they have capped the well and are considering their options, including digging it out and utilizing it since it there may a water source nearby.

“For now it’s covered and no more animals or people will be falling into it,” she said.