By JAKE OFFENHARTZ

NEW YORK (AP) — Detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was allowed to hold his one-month-old son for the first time Thursday after a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to keep the father and infant separated by a plexiglass barrier.

The visit came ahead of a scheduled immigration hearing for Khalil, a legal permanent resident and Columbia University graduate who has been detained in a Louisiana jail since March 8.

He was first person to be arrested under President Donald Trump’s promised crackdown on protesters against the war in Gaza and is one of the few who has remained in custody as his case winds its way through both immigration and federal court.

His request to attend his son’s April 21 birth was denied last month by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The question of whether Khalil would be permitted to hold his newborn child or forced to meet him through a barrier had sparked days of legal fighting, triggering claims by Khalil’s attorneys that he is being subject to political retaliation by the government.

On Wednesday night, a federal judge in New Jersey, Michael Farbiarz, intervened, allowing the meeting to go forward Thursday morning, according to Khalil’s attorneys.

The judge’s order came after federal officials said this week they would oppose his attorney’s effort to secure what’s known as “contact visit” between Khalil, his wife Noor Abdalla and their son Deen.

Instead, they said Khalil could be allowed a “non-contact” visit, meaning he would be separated from his wife and son by a plastic divider and not allowed to touch them.

“Granting Khalil this relief of family visitation would effectively grant him a privilege that no other detainee receives,” Justice Department officials wrote in a court filing on Wednesday. “Allowing Dr. Abdalla and a newborn to attend a legal meeting would turn a legal visitation into a family one.”

Brian Acuna, acting director of the ICE field office in New Orleans, said in an accompanying affidavit that it would be “unsafe to allow Mr. Khalil’s wife and newborn child into a secured part of the facility.”

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In their own legal filings, Khalil’s attorneys described the government’s refusal to grant the visit as “further evidence of the retaliatory motive behind Mr. Khalil’s arrest and faraway detention,” adding that his wife and son were “the farthest thing from a security risk.”

They noted that Abdalla had traveled nearly 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) to the remote detention center in hopes of introducing their son to his father.

“This is not just heartless,” Abdalla said of the government’s position. “It is deliberate violence, the calculated cruelty of a government that tears families apart without remorse. And I cannot ignore the echoes of this pain in the stories of Palestinian families, torn apart by Israeli military prisons and bombs, denied dignity, denied life.”

Farbiarz is currently considering Khalil’s petition for release as he appeals a Louisiana immigration judge’s ruling that he can be deported from the country.

Federal authorities have not accused Khalil of a crime, but have sought to deport him on the basis that his prominent role in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza may have undermined U.S. foreign policy interests.

Khalil is scheduled to appear before that immigration judge, Jamee Comans, for a routine hearing on Thursday. Attorneys for Khalil said it was unclear whether the baby would be permitted to attend the hearing.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP) — The civil war in Myanmar, maritime disputes in the South China Sea and U.S. tariff hikes will top the agenda of a two-day Southeast Asian summit next week, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said.

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The meeting in Malaysia, the current chair of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, on Monday will be followed by a summit on Tuesday with Chinese Premier Li Qiang and leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The GCC already has strong links with the U.S. and “wants to be close to China too,” Anwar said. “We want to have that synergy to enhance trade investments, more effective collaboration,” Anwar said in a media briefing late Wednesday.

ASEAN countries, many which rely on exports to the U.S., have been hit by U.S. tariffs ranging from 10% to 49%. U.S. President Donald Trump last month announced a 90-day pause on the tariffs, prompting countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to swiftly begin trade negotiations with Washington.

Anwar said the U.S. has promised to review Malaysia’s case “sympathetically.” He said ASEAN is also working together to see how it can negotiate with the U.S. as a bloc. At the same time, he said that ASEAN must build its economic resilience by deepening links with other partners such as China, India and the European Union.

Anwar said the U.S.-China rivalry would not split the bloc as the region continues to engage both superpowers. He also downplayed territorial disputes between ASEAN members and China in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety, and Myanmar’s conflict since the 2021 military takeover.

Anwar met last month with Myanmar military chief Gen. Ming Aung Hlaing in Bangkok and held virtual talks with the opposition National Unity Government. Even though the talks were focused on humanitarian aid following a devastating earthquake in March that killed more than 3,700 people, Anwar said he hopes they could eventually push a peace process forward.

Min Aung Hlaing has been barred from attending ASEAN meetings after the military refused to comply with ASEAN’s peace plan, which includes delivery of humanitarian aid and negotiations. Opponents and critics of the military government say aid is not freely allowed into areas not under the army’s control, and accuse the army of violating its self-declared ceasefire with dozens of airstrikes.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pope, on Thursday made his first American bishop appointment as he named Bishop Michael Pham as bishop of San Diego, California.

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Pham, 58, is currently an auxiliary bishop in the diocese. He fills the vacancy created when Pope Francis named Cardinal Robert McElroy archbishop of Washington D.C. earlier this year.

Pham, who was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, was ordained a priest in the San Diego diocese in 1999 and was made a bishop in 2023. He was in charge of programming for the dioceses’ ethnic groups and as of March had been the main diocesan administrator. The diocese of San Diego counts about 1.3 million Catholics in a total population of about 3.5 million people, according to the U.S. Catholic bishops conference.

Prior to his election May 8, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost headed the Vatican’s bishops office and in that capacity would have reviewed and vetted Pham’s file.

Pope Leo XIV holds his first weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, May 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

In another appointment Thursday, Leo named a nun as the No. 2 in the Vatican’s congregation for religious orders, a possible sign that he plans to continue Francis’ efforts to promote more women to decision-making roles in the Vatican.

Sister Tiziana Merletti, the former head of the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, is a canon lawyer and now reports to Sister Simona Brambilla, whom Francis in January appointed as the first-ever woman to head a major Holy See office.

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 ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. climbed this week to its highest level since mid-February, a setback for home shoppers that threatens to slow sales further this spring homebuying season.

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The rate increased to 6.86% from 6.81% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 6.94%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose. The average rate ticked up to 6.01% from 5.92% last week. It’s down from 6.24% a year ago, Freddie Mac said.

Mortgage rates are influenced by several factors, including global demand for U.S. Treasurys, the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy decisions and bond market investors’ expectations about the economy and inflation.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage has remained relatively close to its high so far this year of just above 7%, which it set in mid-January. The average rate’s low point so far was five weeks ago, when it briefly dropped to 6.62%. It’s now at its highest level since Feb. 13, when it averaged 6.87%.

The elevated mortgage rates, which can add hundreds of dollars a month in costs for borrowers, have discouraged home shoppers, leading to a lackluster start to the spring homebuying season, even as the inventory of homes on the market is up sharply from last year. Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell last month to the slowest pace for the month of April going back to 2009.

The recent rise in mortgage rates reflects moves in the 10-year Treasury yield, which lenders use as a guide to pricing home loans.

The yield, which had mostly fallen this year after climbing to around 4.8% in mid-January, surged last month to 4.5% amid a sell-off of government bonds, triggered by investor anxiety over the Trump administration’s trade war.

The yield eased, then climbed above 4.5% last week after the U.S. and China agreed to a 90-day truce in their trade dispute. That raised expectations that the Federal Reserve won’t have to cut interest rates as deeply as expected this year in order to shield the economy from the damage of tariffs.

Long-term bond yields surged again this week after Moody’s lowered its credit rating for the U.S. over concerns about swelling federal government debt.

The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.56% in midday trading Thursday after the House of Representatives approved a bill that would cut taxes and could add trillions of dollars to the U.S. debt.