KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysia’s transport ministry said Wednesday that a private firm will resume a deep-sea hunt for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 later this month, more than a decade after the jet vanished without a trace.

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The search will be carried out by Texas-based marine robotics firm Ocean Infinity, which signed a new “no-find, no-fee” contract with Malaysia’s government in March.

It is unclear if the company has new evidence of the plane’s location. Ocean Infinity CEO Oliver Punkett reportedly said last year that the company had improved its technology since 2018, when the firm made its first seabed search operation under a similar deal and found nothing. Punkett has said the firm is working with many experts to analyze data and had narrowed the search area to the most likely site.

Earlier this year the firm restarted the seabed search operation at a new 5,800-square-mile site in the Indian Ocean after Malaysia’s government gave it the greenlight, but the search was halted in April due to bad weather.

Ocean Infinity will be paid $70 million only if wreckage is discovered.

The Boeing 777 plane disappeared from radar shortly after taking off on March 8, 2014, carrying 239 people, mostly Chinese nationals, on a flight from Malaysia’s capital, Kuala Lumpur, to Beijing. Satellite data showed the plane turned from its flight path and headed south to the far-southern Indian Ocean, where it is believed to have crashed.

An expensive multinational search failed to turn up any clues to its location, although debris washed ashore on the east African coast and Indian Ocean islands. Apart from those small fragments, no bodies or wreckage have ever been found.

FILE – A family member of passengers on board of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 holds a flower during the tenth annual remembrance event at a shopping mall, in Subang Jaya, on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, March 3, 2024. (AP Photo/FL Wong, File)

Malaysia’s transport ministry said in a brief statement Wednesday that Ocean Infinity will search intermittently from Dec. 30 for a total of 55 days, in targeted areas believed to have the highest likelihood of finding the missing aircraft.

“The latest development underscores the government of Malaysia’s commitment in providing closure to the families affected by this tragedy,” it said.

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian said, “We … appreciate the efforts made by the Malaysian side.”

Ocean Infinity declined to comment on the search Wednesday in response to an Associated Press email requesting details.

Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu in Beijing contributed.

Afton State Park will be closed Tuesday-Thursday next week for a special deer hunt, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced.

The park will close to all visitors beginning 6 p.m. Monday.

The controlled hunt will be done with muzzleloader firearms and only antlerless deer will be targeted. The hunt is intended to prevent deer overpopulation.

“When deer populations grow too large, they over browse on native plants and young trees, making it harder for forests to regenerate,” said Mark Cleveland, Parks and Trails natural resource policy and program coordinator. “Dense deer herds also create conditions where diseases spread more easily. Special deer hunts in state parks and recreation areas are one of the tools we use to protect natural resources and keep ecosystems healthy.”

Nontoxic ammunition has been required for special hunts in state parks and recreation areas since 2023. Nontoxic ammunition protects other animals from ingesting lead when feeding on dead deer.

Other state parks that will be closed for upcoming hunts include Lake Maria State Park, Friday-Sunday, Dec. 5-7; St. Croix, Sibley, Sakatah Lake and Rice Lake, Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 6-7; and Nerstrand Big Woods, Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 6-7 and Friday-Sunday, Dec. 19-21.

Several Minnesota state parks will have limited access in the coming weeks. Under the limited access, parks remain open to visitors but certain areas may be restricted or designated for hunters only. In some cases, sections of the park will remain open to the public while other sections are open exclusively for hunting.

Crow Wing State Park and Jay Cooke have limited access Saturday-Wednesday, Dec. 6-10. Lake Bemidji has limited access Friday-Sunday, Dec. 5-7. Myre-Big Island has limited access Saturday-Sunday, Dec. 6-7. And Kilen Wood has limited access Dec. 27-Jan. 4.

The DNR encourages anyone planning a trip to check out park alerts and notices at mndnr.gov/park-list.

Permit deadlines to participate in special hunts have passed. For more information about specific park hunts, visit mndnr.gov/parkhunts.

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Minnesota’s housing network is scrambling to adjust to the federal government’s new grant stipulations in housing and homeless programs.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced changes Nov. 14 in its annual Notice of Funding Opportunity for Continuums of Care (CoC). Among them were a cap on permanent housing funding at 30%, requiring treatment in programs, and a ban on any program that recognizes transgender individuals.

Co-Coordinator Patty Beech-Dziuk, who has been with the CoC since it started in the 1990s, said changing priorities with different administrations are expected, but that these shifts are particularly “drastic.”

“Our homeless response system has been built over like 40 years, through Republican and Democratic administrations,” she said. “We’ve made different shifts over the years, but trying to make this drastic of a shift in whatever it is, five or six weeks, it’s just incredibly challenging.”

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, this particular NOFO could cause 3,930 people to lose housing in Minnesota and a loss of $26,595,473 in funding. In Minnesota, 48% of permanent housing beds are currently funded by the CoC program.

Regional impacts

Cara Oakland, CoC co-coordinator with Beech-Dziuk, said 67% of the northeast region’s CoC funding goes toward permanent housing, and under the new restrictions, the northeast region could only submit up to 30% of their total funding and requests permanent housing for 2026.

“Figuring out how to move a permanent housing project to transitional housing in hopes that you can maintain any amount of funding … It’s really difficult, and it’s nearly impossible to figure that out in, essentially, we got four weeks from HUD to figure out what projects get funded and how to rank them,” Oakland said.

Carla Solem, CoC coordinator for the west-central region, said housing projects starting in 2024 served 190 individuals and 79 households — 97 adults and 93 children under age 18.

Currently, 77% of the west-central region’s annual funding goes to permanent housing and 74 of the 79 households were in permanent housing.

Among those supported by the funding, 71 had a mental health disorder and 24 had a physical disability, Solem said. Forty-six of the individuals in the west-central CoC region had experienced domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, stalking and/or human trafficking, and 78 were considered chronically homeless.

Oakland said the northeast region serves similar populations, including veterans.

She said the people served by the programs might not get access to housing otherwise.

“For our region, it’s not about the quantity of people, but the vulnerabilities of the populations that are being served and the risk to them returning to homelessness when these projects are forced to close because of HUD’s changes,” Oakland said.

Shifting priorities

One of the stipulations from HUD in its new Notice of Funding Opportunity goes against the “housing first” strategy — providing housing without requiring preconditions like sobriety or treatment compliance.

Oakland said that from her time in the field, she knows it’s not effective to “force someone into treatment when they are not ready and willing to go.”

“That’s why HUD has pushed ‘housing first’ for so long, because housing first works and it’s proven to work,” she said. “You get them stable and connected to their basic needs, and then you can work on that next step.”

Sen. Lindsey Port, DFL-Burnsville, agreed and said the “cost of pulling housing-first providers in favor of transitory beds will be in human lives.”

“The changes to these Housing and Urban Development grant requirements are a depraved new low — one that will knock down thousands of Minnesotans who are beginning to climb out of homelessness,” she said. “Housing first and harm reduction are proven methods of helping people overcome some of the most difficult challenges a human can face; yet with a stroke of a pen, hundreds of programs that provide these services are cut off from the funds that make their work possible.”

Litigation and uncertainty ahead

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued HUD on Nov. 25 with a coalition of Democratic attorneys general, but Beech-Dziuk said CoC can’t wait until the litigation plays out to apply for grants in the coming year.

“We’re watching it, but we’re also working diligently to meet HUD’s requirements,” she said. “HUD has real specific timelines so that there’s a fair funding process locally … We’re doing all that. And then if something happens with that lawsuit, we will adjust.”

Beech-Dziuk said she’s worried about the northeast region’s ability to backfill in the same way that others, like Duluth or Hennepin County, could.

“Duluth has its own Community Development Block Grant,” she said. “They have some local and county money they devote to addressing homelessness. I mean, the number of people that are homeless is also bigger, but they have a wider variety, where, like, small towns and rural counties and tribes don’t have a lot of the same resources to address homelessness.”

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By MEG KINNARD and JOEY CAPPELLETTI

Republicans held onto a reliably conservative U.S. House district in Tennessee’s special election, but only after a late burst of national spending and high-profile campaigning helped them secure a margin less than half of last year’s race.

Even with that victory, the outcome contributed to a gloomy outlook for the party going into the 2026 midterms that will determine control of Congress. Republicans will need to defend much more vulnerable seats if they have any hope of keeping their House majority, while Democrats are capitalizing on President Donald Trump’s unpopularity and the public’s persistent frustration with the economy.

“The danger signs are there, and we shouldn’t have had to spend that kind of money to hold that kind of seat,” said Jason Roe, a national Republican strategist working on battleground races next year.

He said that “Democratic enthusiasm is dramatically higher than Republican enthusiasm.”

Republican Matt Van Epps, a military veteran and former state general services commissioner, defeated Democratic state Rep. Aftyn Behn by 9 percentage points on Tuesday for the seat vacated by Republican Mark Green, who retired over the summer. Green had won reelection in 2024 by 21 percentage points.

Special elections provide a limited window into the mood of voters and take place under far different conditions than regular campaign cycles. But some Republicans are acknowledging the warning signs, especially after Democrats had convincing victories in New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere last month.

Tennessee was the fifth House special election this year, and Democratic candidates have outperformed Kamala Harris’ showing in the 2024 presidential race by an average of 16 percentage points in the same districts.

“We could have lost this district,” U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Fox News after The Associated Press called the race for Van Epps. Cruz said his party must “set out the alarm bells” because next year is “going to be a turnout election and the left will show up.”

Trump dismisses affordability concerns

Although inflation has dropped since Democratic President Joe Biden was in office, Behn focused her campaign on the lingering concerns about prices.

Trump has played down the affordability issue, saying during a Cabinet meeting Tuesday that it was “a con job” by his political opponents.

“There’s this fake narrative that the Democrats talk about, affordability,” he said. “They just say the word. It doesn’t mean anything to anybody, they just say it.”

Roe viewed things differently. He said the Tennessee race had “better be a wake-up call that we’ve got to address the affordability problem, and the president denying that affordability is a political issue is not helpful.”

Maintaining House control is crucial for Trump, who fears a repeat of his first term, when Democrats flipped the House and launched an impeachment inquiry. The Republican president has been leaning on GOP-led states to redraw congressional maps to improve the party’s chances.

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Trump campaigned for Van Epps, boosting him during the primary with an endorsement and participating in two tele-rallies during the general election.

The Republican National Committee also deployed staffers and partnered with state officials to get voters to the polls. MAGA Inc., the super political action committee that had gone dark since supporting Trump in 2024, reemerged to back Van Epps with about $1.7 million.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., visited the Nashville-area district on Monday.

“When you’re in a deep red district, sometimes people assume that the Republican, the conservative will win,” he said Tuesday. “And you cannot assume that, because anything can happen.”

Chip Saltsman, a political strategist and former Tennessee Republican Party chair, said his party had brought in its heaviest hitters simply because there were not other competing contests, not because Republicans feared a loss.

“It’s the only election going on. Why wouldn’t the speaker come?” he asked. “There was one race, and you would expect everybody to do everything they could.”

Democrats see promise despite loss

The House Majority PAC put $1 million behind Behn. After she lost, Democratic national party chair said Behn’s performance was “a flashing warning sign for Republicans heading into the midterms” in 2026.

Behn said her campaign had “inspired an entire country.”

“Let’s keep going,” she urged voters after her loss. “We’re not done. Not now, not ever.”

Although Democrats were optimistic, the result contributed to some murmuring within the party about the best path forward as it grasps for a path back to power in Washington.

Among special elections this year, the shift in Behn’s direction was the second smallest, providing an opening for some factions that believe more moderate candidates would fare better.

“Each time we nominate a far-left candidate in a swing district who declares themselves to be radical and alienates the voters in the middle who deliver majorities, we set back that cause,” said a statement from Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at Third Way, a centrist Democrat think tank.

Republicans tried to turn Behn’s own words against her in television ads, such as when she described herself as a “radical” or claimed to be “bullying” immigration agents and state police officers. Also cited were comments Behn made about Nashville years ago, when she said, “I hate this city,” and complained about bachelorette parties.

Several high-profile progressive leaders, including U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., had rallied for Behn in the campaign’s final days.

Associated Press writer Maya Sweedler contributed to this report.