By ALEX VEIGA, AP Business Writer

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage in the U.S. climbed to its highest level in eight weeks, a setback for home shoppers in the midst of the spring homebuying season.

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The rate rose to 6.83% from 6.62% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.1%.

Borrowing costs on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages, popular with homeowners refinancing their home loans, also rose. The average rate increased to 6.03% from 5.82% last week. It’s still down from 6.39% 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 for future inflation.

The average rate on a 30-year mortgage loosely follows 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, spiked last week to 4.5% amid a sell-off in government bonds triggered by investor anxiety over the potential fallout from the Trump administration’s escalating tariff war.

The 10-year Treasury yield was at 4.32% in midday trading Thursday.

By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal officials are circulating a draft budget proposal that would make dramatic additional cuts to federal health programs and serve as a roadmap for more mass firings.

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Though it’s preliminary, the document gives an indication of the Trump administration’s priorities as it prepares its 2026 fiscal year budget proposal to Congress. The document indicates plans to deepen job and funding reductions across much of the federal government.

The budget of the Food and Drug Administration would be cut by nearly half a billion dollars, to $6.5 billion, in part by eliminating some longtime agency responsibilities and shifting them to states.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s core budget would be slashed from more than $9 billion to about $5 billion, with a number of programs eliminated and some transferred into a proposed new agency to be called the Administration for a Healthy America.

The proposal was first reported by The Washington Post. The Associated Press saw a copy of the 64-page document, dated April 10, which has been circulating among some health officials.

A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services spokesman did not immediately respond to an AP request for comment Thursday.

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

By JON GAMBRELL and AMIR VAHDAT, Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Talks between Iran and the United States over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program are “in a very crucial” stage, the head of the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said Thursday while on a visit to the Islamic Republic.

The comments by Rafael Mariano Grossi of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Tehran included an acknowledgment his agency likely would be key in verifying compliance by Iran should a deal be reached. Iran and the U.S. will meet again Saturday in Rome for a new round of talks after last weekend’s first meeting in Oman.

Grossi’s visit also coincided with Saudi Arabia’s defense minister, Prince Khalid bin Salman, visiting Tehran as the highest-ranking official from the kingdom to visit Iran since the two countries reached a Chinese-mediated détente in 2023. That’s as Saudi Arabia tries to end its decadelong war against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen — even as a new, intense campaign of U.S. airstrikes targets them.

In this photo released by the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, left, shakes hands with head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran Mohammad Eslami, at the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran via AP)

The stakes of the negotiations Saturday and the wider geopolitical tensions in the Mideast couldn’t be higher, particularly as the Israel-Hamas war rages on in the Gaza Strip. U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly has threatened to unleash airstrikes targeting Iran’s nuclear program if a deal isn’t reached. Iranian officials increasingly warn that they could pursue a nuclear weapon with their stockpile of uranium enriched to near weapons-grade levels.

Grossi visits during ‘crucial’ Iran-US talks

Grossi arrived in Iran on Wednesday night and met with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who now is in Moscow for separate talks likely over the negotiations. On Thursday, Grossi met with Mohammad Eslami, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, then later toured a hall featuring some of Iran’s civilian nuclear projects.

“We know that we are in a very crucial, I would say, stage of this important negotiation, so I want to concentrate on the positive,” Grossi told Iranian media. “There is a possibility of a good outcome. Nothing is guaranteed. We need to make sure that we put all of the elements in place … in order to get to this agreement.”

He added: “We know we don’t have much time. So this is why I’m here. This is why I’m in contact with the United States as well.”

Asked about Trump’s threats to attack Iran, Grossi urged people to “concentrate on our objective.”

“Once we get to our objective, all of these things will evaporate because there will be no reason for concern,” he said.

For his part, Eslami said Iran expected the IAEA to “maintain impartiality and act professionally,” a report from the state-run IRNA news agency said.

Since the nuclear deal’s collapse in 2018 with Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the U.S. from the accord, Iran has abandoned all limits on its program, and enriches uranium to up to 60% purity — near weapons-grade levels of 90%.

Surveillance cameras installed by the IAEA have been disrupted, while Iran has barred some of the Vienna-based agency’s most experienced inspectors. Iranian officials also have increasingly threatened that they could pursue atomic weapons, something the West and the IAEA have been worried about for years since Tehran abandoned an organized weapons program in 2003.

Despite tensions between Iran and the agency, its access has not been entirely revoked. But Grossi acknowledged in a French newspaper interview that “Iran has enough material to build not one but several bombs.”

“It’s like a jigsaw puzzle; they’ve got the pieces and one day they might be able to put them together,” he told Le Monde. “There’s still a long way to go before that happens. But they’re not far off, admittedly.”

Saudi prince becomes kingdom’s highest-level visitor to Tehran in decades

Prince Khalid bin Salman, the son of King Salman and the brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, arrived in Tehran on Thursday. Iran’s joint chief of staff, Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, greeted the prince on his arrival and an honor guard played for the two men.

Prince Khalid, a fighter pilot, has become the first Saudi defense minister to visit Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He’s also the highest-ranking Saudi royal to visit in decades. The last was King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who did so as crown prince in 1997 for an Organization of Islamic Cooperation meeting held in Tehran.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency, announcing the prince’s arrival, said his trip would include “a number of meetings to discuss bilateral relations between the two countries and issues of common interest,” without elaborating.

The visit is significant, particularly given the decades of enmity between the two countries. Saudi Arabia has been for years trying to get a peace deal agreed to with the Houthis. A de facto ceasefire broadly has halted hostilities in the war, though the Houthis increasingly have threatened both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates amid the U.S. airstrikes.

Vahdat reported from Tehran, Iran. Associated Press writer Stephanie Liechtenstein in Vienna contributed to this report.

By ANNIE MA, JOCELYN GECKER and COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration has escalated its ongoing battle with Harvard, threatening to revoke the university’s ability to host international students as the president called for withdrawing Harvard’s tax-exempt status.

The Department of Homeland Security ordered Harvard late Tuesday to turn over “detailed records” of its foreign student visa holders’ “illegal and violent activities” by April 30. International students make up 27% of the campus.

The department also said it was canceling two grants to the school totaling $2.7 million.

Visitors stop at the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard at Harvard University, Tuesday, April 15, 2025, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The moves deepen the crackdown on Harvard, which on Monday became the first university to openly defy the administration’s demands related to activism on campus, antisemitism and diversity. The federal government has already frozen more than $2 billion in grants and contracts to the Ivy League institution.

Trump suggested Tuesday on social media that Harvard should lose its tax-exempt status “if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’”

The hold on federal money for research at Harvard marked the seventh time the administration has taken such a step at one of the nation’s most elite colleges. The government is attempting to force compliance with Trump’s political agenda at schools he accuses of pushing “woke” policies and allowing antisemitism to fester.

In a letter to Harvard on Friday, Trump’s administration called for broad government and leadership reforms at the university, plus changes to its admissions policies. It also demanded that the university audit views of diversity on campus and stop recognizing some student clubs.

Harvard President Alan Garber said Monday that the university would not bend to the government’s demands. Later that day, the White House announced the freeze of more than $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in contracts.

Conservative strategist Christopher Rufo said the government should respond to Harvard’s defiance by cutting all federal money and stripping nonprofit status at Harvard and other Ivies that defy federal orders. Rufo urged the government to use the same tools it used during the Civil Rights Movement to force desegregation.

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“Trump needs to follow through on his threat to defund one of the Ivy League universities,” Rufo said on social media Tuesday. “Cut the funding and watch the university implode.”

Rufo said Harvard has discriminated against white and Asian American students, citing events such as graduation celebrations specific to certain ethnic groups, along with a 2021 theater performance exclusively “for Black-identifying audience members.”

For the Trump administration, Harvard presents the first major hurdle in its attempt to force change at universities that Republicans say have become hotbeds of liberalism and antisemitism.

Trump’s campaign started at Columbia University, which initially agreed to several demands from the Trump administration but took a more emboldened tone after Harvard’s defiance. Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman, said in a campus message Monday that some of the demands “are not subject to negotiation” and that she read of Harvard’s rejection with “great interest.”

Trump has targeted schools accused of tolerating antisemitism amid a wave of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses. Some of the government’s demands touch directly on that activism, calling on Harvard to impose tougher discipline on protesters and to screen international students for those who are “hostile to the American values.”

The Associated Press’ education 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.