By ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press

Sean “Diddy” Combs has asked a judge to throw out his guilty verdicts on prostitution-related counts or grant him a new trial, saying such convictions are without precedent.

“This conviction stands alone, but it shouldn’t stand at all,” the Wednesday filing said.

Combs’ lawyers argue that his two felony convictions were a unique misapplication of the federal Mann Act, which bars interstate commerce related to prostitution.

“To our knowledge, Mr. Combs is the only person ever convicted of violating the statute for conduct anything like this,” a Wednesday filing from Combs legal team said.

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Combs, 55, was convicted in a New York federal court of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters, while he was acquitted of more serious charges. He could get up to a decade in prison at his sentencing set for Oct. 3.

His lawyers argued that none of the elements normally used for Mann Act convictions, including profiting from sex work or coercion, were present here.

“It is undisputed that he had no commercial motive and that all involved were adults,” The filing said. “The men chose to travel and engage in the activity voluntarily. The verdict confirms the women were not vulnerable or exploited or trafficked or sexually assaulted.”

The lawyers said that Combs, “at most, paid to engage in voyeurism as part of a ‘swingers’ lifestyle” and argued that “does not constitute ‘prostitution’ under a properly limited definition of the statutory term.”

Combs was acquitted of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, charges could have put one of hip-hop’s celebrated figures in prison for life.

The new motion asks Judge Arun Subramanian to vacate the jury’s verdict, or to order a new trial whose evidence is limited to matters related to the Mann Act counts, because of “severe spillover prejudice from reams of inflammatory evidence” related to the more serious counts.

Prosecutors insisted during the eight-week trial that Combs had coerced, threatened and sometimes viciously forced two ex-girlfriends to have sex with male sex workers to satisfy his sexual urges. They cited multiple acts of violence he carried out against them as proof that they had no say.

A day earlier, Combs’ team asked the judge to free him on a $50 million bond while he awaits sentencing in October after a jury found him not guilty of the most serious federal charges he faced earlier this month.

His lawyer argued that conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are dangerous, noting that others convicted of similar prostitution-related offenses were typically released before sentencing.

Subramanian previously denied a request that Combs be released on bail while he awaits sentencing, citing a now-infamous video of Combs beating a former girlfriend and photographs showing injuries to another ex-girlfriend.

The judge has not yet ruled on either of this week’s motions.

By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV decided Thursday to declare St. John Henry Newman a “doctor” of the church, bestowing one of the Catholic Church’s highest honors on the deeply influential 19th century Anglican convert who remains a unifying figure among conservatives and progressives.

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The Vatican said Leo confirmed the opinion of the Vatican’s saint-making office during an audience with its prefect, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, and would make the decision official soon.

The designation, which has been in the works for years, is one of the most significant decisions of Leo’s young papacy and also carries a personal meaning. Newman was strongly influenced by St. Augustine of Hippo, the inspiration of the pope’s Augustinian religious order, and Leo’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, made Newman a Catholic cardinal in 1879 after his conversion.

A theologian and poet, Newman is best known for his writings and sermons on the development of doctrine, truth and the nature of a university. He is admired by Catholics and Anglicans alike because he followed his conscience at great personal cost. When he defected from the Church of England to the Catholic Church in 1845, he lost friends, work and even family ties, believing the truth he was searching for could only be found in the Catholic faith.

“Newman was one of the great theologians of the 19th century,” said the Episcopal Bishop of Long Island, Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin. “He was unique in having shaped both Anglicans and Roman Catholics. No one in recent history can match that achievement.”

The title of doctor is reserved for people whose writings have greatly served the universal Catholic Church. Only three-dozen people have been given the title, including the 5th century St. Augustine, St. Francis de Sales and St. Teresa of Avila.

Unifying figure

Newman experts said the decision to add the British theologian to their ranks was deeply significant, given Newman’s contribution to Christian understanding of conscience and education — and his near-universal appeal to progressives and conservatives alike.

Jack Valero, who was spokesman for Newman’s 2010 beatification and 2019 canonization ceremonies, said he had never come across anyone who had a problem with him. If back then Newman was the perfect unifying figure for a polarized church, he is even more so now, for a new pope who has made unity a core priority of his pontificate, Valero said.

“You know, I look at Pope Leo and I hear him say, ‘We need unity, we need peace,’ and so on and I think, ‘Here’s the man who’s going to make it happen,’” he said.

The first American pope vowed during his May 18 installation Mass that he would work to heal divisions in the church so that it could become a force for peace.

Leo has also repeatedly affirmed his identity as an Augustinian. Many scholars have long considered Newman to be the Augustine of the modern era, no easy feat considering the tough Vatican criteria for declaring a church doctor.

The Vatican considers among other things the candidate’s holiness in life, the eminence of his or her doctrinal and theological teaching and their enduring influence on the church. That has has meant that there have been only 37 doctors, and only one other (St. Teresa of Avila) who lived in the last 600 years, noted Mike Moreland, professor of law and religion at Leo’s alma mater, Villanova University.

But Newman “kind of meets these criteria that the doctors of the church are held to represent,” he said in an interview.

Newman’s conversion

Anglicans split from Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment. In the centuries that followed, Catholics were fined, discriminated against and killed for their faith.

Newman was one of the founders of the so-called Oxford Movement of the 1830s, which sought to revive certain Roman Catholic doctrines in the Church of England by looking back to the traditions of the earliest Christian church.

But he gave up a brilliant academic career at Oxford University and the pulpit of the university church to convert to Catholicism. As a Catholic, he became one of the most influential theologians of the era, bringing elements of the Anglican church into his new faith tradition. He died in Britain in 1890.

Newman’s path to being declared a doctor in the Catholic Church has been exceptionally quick. Pope Benedict XVI beatified him during a visit to Britain in 2010 and Pope Francis made him a saint in 2019, with then-Prince Charles in attendance.

Francis was then on the receiving end of a concerted push by English-speaking bishops, in particular, to make him a doctor.

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 ALEXA ST. JOHN, Associated Press

The U.S. Department of Defense will now continue sharing key data collected by three weather satellites that help forecasters track hurricanes. Meteorologists and scientists had warned of risks to accurate and timely storm tracking without the information when officials made plans to stop providing it beyond the end of this month.

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Defense officials had planned to cut off distribution of microwave data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, jointly run with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, by the end of June. At the time, NOAA said the cutoff was said “to mitigate a significant cybersecurity risk” while the U.S. Navy said the program didn’t meet “information technology modernization requirements.” The discontinuation was postponed for one month.

In a notice on Wednesday, officials said there would be no interruption at all.

The Navy said in a statement that its Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center “had planned to phase out the data” as part of modernization efforts. “But after feedback from government partners, officials found a way to meet modernization goals while keeping the data flowing until the sensor fails or the program formally ends in September 2026.”

The data is used by scientists, researchers and forecasters, including meteorologists at the National Hurricane Center. It gives crucial information about storms that can’t be gleaned from conventional visible or infrared satellites.

“This satellite data enables hurricane forecasters and their computer models to peer inside a hurricane’s structure, offering vital insight,” said Union of Concerned Scientists science fellow Marc Alessi. “Make no mistake: this data not only improves hurricane forecasting accuracy, but could make the difference between whether communities evacuate or not ahead of an approaching hurricane.”

Other microwave data would have been available with this cutoff, but only about half as much, experts said — increasing the chance that forecasters would miss certain aspects of storms.

A spokesperson for NOAA said the agency will continue to have access to the data for the program’s lifespan and noted that it is just one data set “in a robust suite of hurricane forecasting and modeling tools” that the National Weather Service has at its disposal to “ensure the gold-standard weather forecasting the American people deserve.”

The news had initially raised scientific eyebrows amid hurricane season, which usually peaks from mid-August to mid-October. Climate change, worsened by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal, have driven storms to become more frequent, severe and deadly.

“The last-minute reprieve has hurricane forecasters breathing a sigh of relief,” said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist for Yale Climate Connections. “Loss of the microwave satellite data would have made it far more likely that timely warnings of dangerous and potentially deadly episodes of hurricane rapid intensification events being delayed by up to 12 hours.”

He added the restoration of the data is also good news for scientists tracking Arctic sea ice loss. Images and microwave satellite data can estimate how much of the ocean is covered by ice, according to NOAA.

NOAA and the NWS have been the subject of several cuts throughout President Donald Trump’s second term.

Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.

Read more of AP’s climate coverage at http://www.apnews.com/climate-and-environment

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates inched down again last year and the share of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Thursday.

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The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.1%, up from 3.7% the year before. It’s the third record-breaking year in a row for the exemption rate, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons.

Meanwhile, 92.5% of 2024-25 kindergartners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the vaccination rate was 95% — the level that makes it unlikely that a single infection will spark a disease cluster or outbreak.

The vaccination numbers were posted as the U.S. experiences its worst year for measles spread in more than three decades, with more than 1,300 cases so far.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention traditionally releases the vaccination coverage data in its flagship publication, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. CDC officials usually speak to the trends and possible explanations, and stress the importance of vaccinations. This year, the agency quietly posted the data online and — when asked about it — emailed a statement.

“The decision to vaccinate is a personal one. Parents should consult their health care providers on options for their families,” the statement said, adding; “Vaccination remains the most effective way to protect children from serious diseases like measles and whooping cough, which can lead to hospitalization and long-term health complications.”

Public health officials focus on vaccination rates for kindergartners because schools can be cauldrons for germs and launching pads for community outbreaks.

For years, those rates were high, thanks largely to school attendance mandates that required key vaccinations. All U.S. states and territories require that children attending child care centers and schools be vaccinated against a number of diseases, including, measles, mumps, polio, tetanus, whooping cough and chickenpox.

All states allow exemptions for children with medical conditions that prevent them from receiving certain vaccines. And most also permit exemptions for religious or other nonmedical reasons.

In the last decade, the percentage of kindergartners with medical exemptions has held steady, at about 0.2%. But the percentage with nonmedical exemptions has risen.

The rates can be influenced by policies that make it harder or easier to obtain exemptions, and by local attitudes among families and doctors about the need to get children vaccinated. Online misinformation and the political divide that emerged around COVID-19 vaccines have led more parents to question routine childhood vaccinations, experts say.

According to the CDC data, 15.4% of kindergartners had an exemption to one or more vaccines in Idaho in the last school year. But fewer than 0.5% did in Connecticut.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.