By MATTHIAS SCHRADER and STEFANIE DAZIO, Associated Press

MUNICH (AP) — German police closed the Oktoberfest fairgrounds Wednesday morning following a bomb threat from the suspected perpetrator of an explosion in northern Munich, city officials said.

At least one person’s death was believed to be connected to the explosion at a residential building early Wednesday, which Munich police said was deliberately set on fire and part of a domestic dispute.

It was not immediately clear whether the deceased was the suspected perpetrator or someone else. Another person, who was not considered to be a danger to the public, remained missing.

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Specialized teams were called to the scene to defuse booby traps in the building, police said. Photos from the area also showed a burned-out van.

Officials discovered the bomb threat to Oktoberfest in a letter from the alleged perpetrator. Police searched the fairgrounds for other explosive devices and asked workers to leave the area. Authorities said the festival will be closed at least until 5 p.m. local time Wednesday.

This year’s Oktoberfest began on Sept. 20 and ends Oct. 5. The world’s largest beer festival usually attracts up to 6 million visitors.

In 1980, Oktoberfest was the target of a deadly neo-Nazi attack. The bombing on the evening of Sept. 26, 1980, claimed 13 lives, including that of three children and the attacker, student Gundolf Koehler, a supporter of a banned far-right group. More than 200 people were wounded.

Dazio reported from Berlin.

By JOHN HANNA, Associated Press

A panel of federal judges will begin Wednesday to consider whether Texas can use a redrawn congressional map that boosts Republicans and has launched a widening redistricting battle ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The case in an El Paso courtroom is the first test of Texas’ new map, which was quickly redrawn this summer to give Republicans five more seats at the urging of President Donald Trump in an effort to preserve the slim Republican U.S. House majority.

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Civil rights groups and dozens of Black and Hispanic voters joined the lawsuit, saying the new map intentionally reduces minority voters’ influence. Their lawsuit argues that the new district lines represent racial gerrymandering prohibited by the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution.

Texas Republican lawmakers and state leaders deny these claims, saying the map is a legal partisan gerrymander.

The hearing is expected to last more than a week. It is unclear how quickly the judges will issue a ruling.

The new map eliminated five of the state’s nine “coalition” districts, where no minority group has a majority but together they outnumber non-Hispanic white voters.

“Race and party have folded onto each other,” said Keith Gaddie, a Texas Christian University political science professor who has testified as an expert witness in redistricting cases over the past 25 years. “What could be seen as being racial gerrymandering could just be partisan gerrymandering.”

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit partisan gerrymandering.

Texas says critics cloak partisan fears in rhetoric about race

The new Texas map is designed to give Republicans 30 of the state’s 38 House seats, up from 25 now.

FILE – Texas state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt, D-Austin, right, listens as Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, speaks in favor of a bill before a vote on a redrawn U.S. congressional map during a special session in the Senate Chamber at the Texas Capitol in Austin, Texas, Aug. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

The state’s attorneys argue that Texas officials’ persistent statements about their partisan motives show they weren’t engaged in illegal racial gerrymandering but were in a “political arms-race,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office said in a recent court filing.

The move in Texas has subsequently led some other states — Republican-led as well as those led by Democrats — to respond with some redistricting plans of their own in a scramble to try to dominate the midterm elections.

California countered by putting a proposed map on the ballot in November to pick up five Democratic seats. Missouri redrew its lines last month to give the GOP an extra seat.

In court filings, Paxton’s office argued that Republicans are offsetting past Democratic gerrymanders, and the Texas map’s critics “seek to use race as a foil to kneecap Texas’s efforts to even the playing field.”

“Whenever they do not get what they want, they cry racism,” its filing said.

Making a case involves detailed election analysis

The case will be heard by a panel of three judges, one each appointed by Trump, and Presidents Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan.

Attorneys for groups and voters challenging the map aim to show that a trial is likely to prove the new lines deny minority voters opportunities to elect candidates of their choosing.

“States have to follow rules when they redistrict,” said Nina Perales, an attorney representing some the voters and groups, including the League of United Latin American Citizens. “They provide essentially the buffer guards to protect the democratic process.”

The judges are likely to hear a detailed analysis of voting patterns.

“The minority community has to be what’s called politically cohesive, which tends to mean that members of that community overwhelmingly tend to prefer the same candidates in elections,” said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University.

Critics see new, ‘sham’ minority districts

The new map decreased the total number of congressional districts in which minorities comprise a majority of voting-age citizens from 16 to 14.

Republicans argue the map is better for minority voters. While five “coalition” districts are eliminated, there’s a new, eighth Hispanic-majority district, and two new Black-majority districts.

Critics consider each of those new districts a “sham,” arguing that the majority is so slim that white voters, who tend to turn out in larger percentages, will control election results.

“There is growing animus against African-American and other communities who have historically been disenfranchised,” said Derrick Johnson, the NAACP’s national president. “This is consistent with the current climate and culture germinating from the White House.”

Critics also argued that the 2021 map itself didn’t have enough minority districts. For example, Perales said, Houston has enough Hispanic voters for two such districts, and the new map has one.

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press

BAGHDAD (AP) — The U.S. military has begun drawing down its mission in Iraq under an agreement inked with the Iraqi government last year, officials said Wednesday.

Washington and Baghdad agreed last year to wind down the military mission in Iraq of an American-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group by September 2025, with U.S. forces departing some bases where they have stationed troops during a two-decade-long military presence in the country.

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Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement Wednesday that the U.S. “will reduce its military mission in Iraq,” reflecting “our combined success in fighting ISIS.”

The move “marks an effort to transition to a lasting U.S.-Iraq security partnership in accordance with U.S. national interests, the Iraqi Constitution, and the U.S.-Iraq Strategic Framework Agreement,” he said.

The statement added that Washington will maintain close coordination with Baghdad and coalition partners to ensure a “responsible transition.”

It did not give details on the number of troops that have withdrawn to date or when the drawdown would be completed.

A senior Iraqi security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly, said the U.S. withdrawal began weeks ago from Baghdad and from Ain al-Asad base in western Iraq.

“Only a very small number of advisers remain within the Joint Operations Command,” the official said.

He added that some forces have redeployed to the city of Irbil in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, while others have left the country entirely, and that there is no accurate count of those who have withdrawn yet.

The official said the drawdown is proceeding according to agreed-upon schedules.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told The Associated Press in an interview in July that the U.S. and Iraq will meet by the end of the year to “arrange the bilateral security relationship” between the two countries.

By ANNIE MA, Associated Press Education Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Already diminished by cuts by the Trump administration, the U.S. Education Department will see more of its work come to a halt due to the government shutdown.

The department says many of its core operations will continue in the shutdown kicking off Wednesday. Federal financial aid will keep flowing, and student loan payments will still be due. But investigations into civil rights complaints will stop, and the department will not issue new federal grants. About 87% of its workforce will be furloughed, according to a department contingency plan.

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Since he took office, President Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the Education Department, saying it has been overrun by liberal thinking. Agency leaders have been making plans to parcel out its operations to other departments, and in July the Supreme Court upheld mass layoffs that halved the department’s staff.

In a shutdown, the Republican administration has suggested federal agencies could see more positions eliminated entirely. In past shutdowns, furloughed employees were brought back once Congress restored federal funding. This time, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget has threatened the mass firing of federal workers.

Appearing before the House Appropriations Committee in May, Education Secretary Linda McMahon suggested this year’s layoffs had made her department lean — even too lean in some cases. Some staffers were brought back, she said, after officials found that the cuts went too deep.

“You hope that you’re just cutting fat. Sometimes you cut a little muscle, and you realize it as you’re continuing your programs, and you can bring people back to do that,” McMahon said. The department had about 4,100 employees when Trump took office in January. It now has about 2,500.

Here is what the department does and how a shutdown is expected to affect that work.

Federal student loans

One of the department’s major roles is management of the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio. Student aid will be largely unaffected in the short term, according to the department’s shutdown contingency plan. Pell Grants and federal loans will continue to be disbursed, and student loan borrowers must continue making payments on their debts.

About 9.9 million students receive some form of federal aid, spread across some 5,400 colleges, according to the department. Within the Office of Federal Student Aid, the department plans to furlough 632 of the 747 employees during the shutdown, although it didn’t say which ones. For most student loan issues, borrowers work with loan servicers hired by the department rather than directly with FSA staff.

The department will also continue to process the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which is a key piece of how colleges and universities provide aid packages to incoming students. Certain employees involved with rulemaking around changes to student loans, part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed by Republicans, also will be kept on to meet deadlines set by legislation.

Money for schools

While American schools are funded primarily by state and local money, the Education Department serves as a conduit for billions of dollars of federal aid going to state and local education agencies. During the shutdown, the department will cease new grantmaking activity and pause its advisory and regulatory role to schools and grant recipients.

But because most federal grants to schools were made over the summer, the department says it would expect minimal disruption to school districts and other grant recipients. Title I money, which goes to schools with high concentrations of students in poverty, plus funding for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act would continue during a shutdown.

Not all federal education money arrives ahead of the school year, however. One example is Impact Aid, a program that bolsters school budgets in areas where federal land management or other activities, such as military installations, reduce the amount of taxable land to generate revenue for the district. These schools likely will see disruptions in payments. More than 1,200 districts receive that aid across all 50 states, according to a national association that represents those schools.

If the shutdown lasts longer than a week, the department says it would revise its contingency plan to prevent significant disruptions to school districts.

Civil rights investigations

Under the shutdown, the department will stop its investigations into schools and universities over alleged civil rights violations.

Since the mass layoffs in March, the office has operated under a significantly reduced footprint. The department’s civil rights branch lost about half of its staff. The cuts raised questions about whether the office would be able to shrink a backlog of complaints from students who allege they have experienced discrimination on the basis of race, sex or disability status.

The department’s own data has shown a decline in resolving civil rights cases, while new complaints from families have increased. During the shutdown, work on the pending cases will stop.

AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

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.