BOISE, Idaho — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Friday that a facility for a branch of Qatar’s armed forces will be built at the Mountain Home Air Force Base south of Boise.
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“Today, we’re signing a letter of acceptance to build a Qatar Emiri Air Force facility at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. “The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality, interoperability.”
Hegseth added that it’s “just another example of our partnership,” while seated next to the Qatari Minister of Defense Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani. The announcement came during a news conference addressing the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, where he thanked Qatar for the “substantial role” they played.
“I want to thank you for that historic peace,” Hegseth told Al Thani.
Pilots from the Qatar Emiri Air Force, and their F-15s, will join a base that already houses members of the Republic of Singapore Air Force, who have trained and lived in the quiet town outside of Boise since 2009.
The possibility of Friday’s move was announced years ago, and in 2022 the Air Force honed in on Mountain Home as the location to house 300 personnel, including a 170 Qatari trainees and 130 U.S. Air Force active duty personnel and contractors, the Idaho Statesman reported.
It’s unclear whether the specifics from that contract remain the same. The Statesman reached out to the Mountain Home Air Force Base, the Governor’s Office and the White House for more information.
U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, praised the news on social media.
“This development is beneficial for training, enhances our partnership with America’s allies, and strengthens national security,” Simpson wrote on X.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Two young Republican groups have challenged statistical methods used to produce the results of the 2020 census, four years after the numbers were released, as the GOP continues its growing attack on the numbers from the last U.S. head count.
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The legal challenge, filed in a Florida federal court, targets the U.S. population figures that determine how many congressional seats each state gets. It comes as President Donald Trump has been pressuring Republican-led state legislatures to redraw their congressional districts to benefit the GOP ahead of next year’s elections.
Census and redistricting expert Jeffrey Wice said Friday that the Florida lawsuit was part of that strategy to keep the House of Representatives under Republican control.
“Clearly, this is part of that agenda to use the courts and state legislatures in any way they can to retain congressional power,” said Wice, a New York Law School professor. “It’s not a very great step forward.”
The University of South Florida College Republicans, the Pinellas County Young Republicans and two individuals on Tuesday filed a request for a three-judge panel to hear their lawsuit, as is required for cases involving the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states, known as apportionment. The request on Thursday was referred to the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs didn’t respond to an emailed question about the lawsuit, and neither did the Census Bureau or the U.S. Commerce Department, which oversees the bureau.
Some GOP elected officials in recent months have been calling for a mid-decade redo of the once-a-decade head count of every U.S. resident. In August, Trump instructed the Commerce Department to have the Census Bureau start work on a new census that would exclude immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently blamed the Census Bureau for “shortchanging” Florida, saying the nation’s third most populous state deserved an extra seat in the House. Florida gained one additional House seat after the 2020 census, raising its total to 28. Unlike other states, Florida barely provided any resources for mobilizing residents to fill out census forms, and DeSantis brushed off early calls to form a state committee aimed at mobilizing participation.
In a letter to the Commerce Department this week, Sen. Jim Banks, R-Indiana, blamed one of the statistical methods for producing inaccurate totals and demanded the release of a file containing original, unaltered census data.
“The Biden (administration) used a shady ‘privacy’ formula that scrambled the data and miscounted 14 states,” Banks wrote in a social media post. “It included illegal immigrants and handed Democrats extra seats. Americans deserve a fair count and I’m fighting to fix it.”
Although the 2020 census numbers were released during the first months of Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, the execution and final planning for the head count, including the decision to use the statistical methods, took place during Trump’s first term. The 14th Amendment says that “the whole number of persons in each state” are to be counted for the numbers used for apportionment, and the Census Bureau has interpreted that to mean anybody residing in the U.S., regardless of legal status. Federal courts have repeatedly supported that interpretation.
The methods that the lawsuit challenged were “differential privacy” and “imputation” for group quarters, which include college dorms, nursing homes and other places where people live together under one roof. Differential privacy adds intentional errors to the data to obscure the identity of any given participant in the 2020 census while still providing statistically valid information. Imputation is a process of using other information to fill in data about people when census-takers can’t reach anyone at a particular address.
The 2020 census faced unprecedented obstacles from the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes and wildfires, social unrest and efforts by the Trump administration to end the count early. Group quarters such as college dorms and nursing homes were especially challenging since campuses closed and care facilities restricted access in an effort to halt the spread of COVID-19.
The lawsuit describes imputation as a form of statistical sampling, which is prohibited for apportionment. But Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues, said Friday that “imputation is not sampling” and that differential privacy didn’t affect state population counts used to apportion congressional seats.
“Accuracy is the overarching goal,” Lowenthal said. “I’m not sure why there is a concerted effort among Republicans to diminish the accuracy of the census.”
PARIS (AP) — After a week of intense political turmoil, French President Emmanuel Macron is set to appoint a new prime minister Friday in his latest bid to break the political deadlock that has gripped the country for more than a year, as France struggles with mounting economic challenges and ballooning debt.
The appointment is widely seen as the president’s last chance to revive his second term, which runs until 2027. With no majority in the National Assembly to push through his agenda, Macron faces increasingly fierce criticism, even from within his own camp, and has little room to maneuver.
Outgoing Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu abruptly resigned Monday, only hours after unveiling a new Cabinet that drew opposition from a key coalition partner. The shock resignation prompted calls for Macron to step down or dissolve parliament again. But they remained unanswered, with the president instead announcing on Wednesday that he would name a successor to Lecornu within 48 hours.
Political party leaders who met for more than two hours with Macron, at his request, on Friday emerged from the talks saying they weren’t certain what step the French leader would take next and that if he does name a prime minister, who it would be. Some cautioned that another prime minister picked from the ranks of Macron’s fragile centrist camp risks being disavowed by Parliament’s powerful lower house, prolonging the crisis.
“How can one expect that all this will end well?” said Marine Tondelier, leader of The Ecologists party. “The impression we get is that the more alone he is, the more rigid he becomes.”
Head of Les Republicains political party Laurent Wauquiez, left, and Bruno Retailleau, head of the Conservative Party Les Republicains and outgoing Interior Minister leave after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
From left, French Green Party leader Marine Tondelier, French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, French socialist party secretary general Olivier Faure, Stephane Peu, member of French Communist Party, Boris Vallaud, president of the socialist parliament members at the National Assembly, and Cyrielle Chatelain, member of French Green Party arrive for a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French socialist party secretary general Olivier Faure, left, and Boris Vallaud, president of the socialist parliament members at the National Assembly speak to medias after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Former French Prime minister Gabriel Attal leaves after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
French socialist party secretary general Olivier Faure, left, and Boris Vallaud, president of the socialist parliament members at the National Assembly speak to medias after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
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Head of Les Republicains political party Laurent Wauquiez, left, and Bruno Retailleau, head of the Conservative Party Les Republicains and outgoing Interior Minister leave after a meeting with French president Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace, in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Over the past year, Macron’s successive minority governments have collapsed in quick succession, leaving the European Union’s second-largest economy mired in political paralysis as France is faced with a debt crisis. At the end of the first quarter of 2025, France’s public debt stood at 3.346 trillion euros ($3.9 trillion), or 114% of gross domestic product.
France’s poverty rate also reached 15.4% in 2023, its highest level since records began in 1996, according to the latest data available from the national statistics institute.
The economic and political struggles are worrying financial markets, ratings agencies and the European Commission, which has been pushing France to comply with EU rules limiting debt.
Uncertainty surrounds the choice of the next PM
Macron, a centrist, could break with his habit and pick a figure from the left, which formed a coalition in the 2024 legislative elections. But left-wing opposition leaders said after the talks with Macron that he doesn’t appear to be leaning in that direction.
The two biggest opposition parties in the National Assembly — the far-right National Rally and the far-left France Unbowed party — weren’t invited to the discussions. The National Rally wants Macron to hold fresh legislative elections and France Unbowed wants him to resign.
Macron could also opt for a technocratic government in an attempt to sidestep partisan deadlock. He also has the option of re-appointing Lecornu, who has said that he’s not seeking the job but who remains a loyal ally and spent weeks before his resignation trying to build consensus around a budget.
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Lecornu argued earlier this week that Macron’s centrist bloc, its allies, and parts of the opposition could still clump together into a working government. “There’s a majority that can govern,” he said. “I feel that a path is still possible. It is difficult.”
In any case, the new prime minister will have to seek compromises to avoid an immediate vote of no confidence and may even be forced to abandon an extremely unpopular pension reform that was one of Macron’s signature policies in his second presidential term. Rammed through parliament without a vote in 2023 despite mass protests, it gradually raises the retirement age from 62 to 64. Opposition parties want it to be scrapped.
The political deadlock stems from Macron’s shock decision in June 2024 to dissolve the National Assembly. The snap elections produced a hung parliament, with no bloc able to command a majority in the 577-seat chamber. The gridlock has unnerved investors, infuriated voters, and stalled efforts to curb France’s spiraling deficit and public debt.
Without stable support, Macron’s governments have stumbled from one crisis to the next, collapsing as they sought backing for unpopular spending cuts. Lecornu’s resignation, just 14 hours after announcing his Cabinet, underscored the fragility of the president’s coalition amid deep political and personal rivalries.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian drone and missile strikes wounded at least 20 people in Kyiv, damaged residential buildings and caused blackouts across swaths of Ukraine early Friday, authorities said. A child also was killed in separate attacks in the southeast of the country.
In the heart of the Ukrainian capital, rescue crews pulled more than 20 people out of a 17-story apartment building as flames engulfed the sixth and seventh floors. Five people were hospitalized, while others received first aid at the scene, authorities said.
“Everyone was sleeping and suddenly there was such a sharp sound; it was clear that something was flying. I managed to pull the blanket over my head, and then the strike hit — it blew out the windows, and the glass flew almost all the way to the door,” 61-year-old resident Tetiana Lemishevska told The Associated Press.
Paramedics evacuate an injured woman after a Russian strike on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Emergency services personnel work to extinguish a fire following a Russian attack in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
Rescuers carry an injured woman into an ambulance after a Russian strike on a residential neighborhood in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
A rescuer helps an injured man after a Russian strike on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
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Paramedics evacuate an injured woman after a Russian strike on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Oct. 10, 2025. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)
“The fire was on the sixth or seventh floor at first, and the flames went up quickly and spread to other floors. So all the people who could left the building without knowing how it would end,” she said.
The Russian strikes targeted civilian and energy infrastructure as Ukraine prepared for falling winter temperatures, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.
Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko also described the attack as “one of the largest concentrated strikes” against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.
Ukraine’s national energy operator, Ukrenergo, reported power outages in Kyiv and the wider region, as well as in the Sumy, Kharkiv, Poltava, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Cherkasy regions.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said that Friday’s attack knocked out power on both sides of the city, divided by the Dnipro River, while Ukraine’s biggest electricity operator, DTEK, said that repair work was already underway on multiple damaged thermal plants.
Russia’s Defense Ministry on Friday said the strikes had targeted energy facilities supplying Ukraine’s military. It did not give details of those facilities, but said Russian forces used Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and strike drones against them.
The energy sector has been a key battleground since Russia launched its all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.
Each year, Russia has tried to cripple the Ukrainian power grid before the bitter winter season, apparently hoping to erode public morale. Ukraine’s winter temperatures run from late October through March, with January and February the coldest months.
Ukraine’s air force said Friday that the latest Russian barrage included 465 strike and decoy drones, as well as 32 missiles of various types. Air defenses intercepted or jammed 405 drones and 15 missiles, it said.
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In the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region, residential areas and energy sites were pounded with attack drones, missiles and guided bombs, killing a 7-year-old boy and wounding his parents and others, military administration officials said. A hydroelectric plant in the area was taken offline as a precaution, they said.
Associated Press journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko contributed to this report.
