By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — AstraZeneca on Friday became the second major pharmaceutical manufacturer to announce it had agreed to lower the cost of prescription drugs for Medicaid under a deal struck with the Trump administration that avoided its threats of steep tariffs.

President Donald Trump made the announcement in the Oval Office with AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot, who said that during tough negotiations to reach a deal, Trump and his team of officials had “really kept me up at night.”

Under the agreement, AstraZeneca will charge most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid, while guaranteeing such pricing on newly launched drugs, Trump said. That involves matching the lowest price offered in other developed nations.

“For many years, Americans have paid the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, by far,” Trump said, adding that the new deal may cut prices to “the lowest price anywhere in the world. That’s what we get.”

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AstraZeneca’s deal follows a similar agreement Pfizer announced late last month. Advocates have generally praised the administration’s efforts to cut drug prices, though some have expressed concerns that too much onus is being placed on the manufacturers to lower costs without implementing U.S. policy safeguards to ensure such outcomes.

Both agreements, however, build on an executive order Trump signed in May that set a deadline for drugmakers to electively lower prices or face new limits on what the government will pay. Trump had suggested that a series of deals with drug companies would subsequently be coming.

“The tariffs were a big reason he came here,” Trump said of Soriot.

Cambridge, United Kingdom-based AstraZeneca makes a range of cancer treatments. Its products include the lung cancer drug Tagrisso; Lynparza, an oral treatment for ovarian cancer, and Calquence, which treats chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

Those drugs brought in a total of more than $7.5 billion in U.S. sales last year.

AstraZeneca announced Thursday that it would spend $4.5 billion on a new manufacturing plant near Charlottesville, Virginia, and its Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, spoke during Friday’s Oval Office announcement to cheer groundbreaking on the new facility.

The drugmaker said that project was the centerpiece of $50 billion in investments the company plans to make in the U.S. by 2030.

AstraZeneca said it plans to reach $80 billion in total revenue by then, half of which will be generated in the United States.

Trump predicted the investment’s could lead to 3,600 jobs domestically “just to begin with.”

One of the AstraZeneca drugs was already subject to price reductions due to a Medicare negotiating strategy implemented under President Biden. Still, Trump insisted that Democrats shouldn’t “get credit” and suggested the party’s key leaders may try.

The announcements came months after AstraZeneca said it was scrapping plans to expand a vaccine manufacturing plant in its home country. The company blamed several factors, including reduced government financial support.

The Trump administration has put up a landing page for its new website, TrumpRX.gov, where people will be able to buy drugs directly from manufacturers, according to officials. Both Pfizer and AstraZeneca will offer medications through the site, according to the administration.

The website’s landing page features two very large pictures of Trump and a promise that the site is “Coming Soon” in January 2026.

It says at the bottom of the page that the site was “Designed in DC by The National Design Studio,” the new government website design hub that Trump created by executive order in August, which is being led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia.

Associated Press writers Tom Murphy and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

The setting of a “post-apocalyptic dystopia” has become such a staple of modern literature – and the resultant cinematic adaptations – that your public library could reserve a room for books that fit the form.

When American playwright Jose Rivera wrote “Marisol” in 1992, it may have looked like it could be shelved in that room. But the author leaned upon another literary tradition, that of Latin American magical realism, in his tale of how a civil war in heaven was pulling guardian angels from their duties and plunging New York City into unrecognizable chaos.

While you may feel as if there’s enough chaos in your life right now, don’t let that keep you from attending a performance of “Marisol,” which is opening Penumbra Theatre’s season in a co-production with Teatro del Pueblo. Rivera’s writing is well worth experiencing, and what’s on stage at Penumbra is an imaginative and deeply absorbing staging, which, despite its darkness, offers a sense of hope and faith in humanity.

Directed by Sarah Bellamy, the production can bear the tone of a nightmare while also inspiring laughter with what comes out of the mouths of its wildly offbeat characters. Played out on Maruti Evans’ fascinating set full of steel mesh and funhouse mirrors and enhanced by the haunting projections of Miko Simmons, it’s a triumph of design that’s at its most compelling when it finds the realism embedded in this quite surreal tale.

James Craven plays a homeless man in Penumbra Theatre and Teatro del Pueblo’s production of “Marisol,” Jose Rivera’s apocalyptic drama about a woman trying to survive in a seemingly collapsing world. It plays at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul through Nov. 2, 2025. (Caroline Yang / Penumbra Theatre)

The title character (played by Kay Mercedes) works for a Manhattan textbook publisher, but lives in a rough part of the Bronx, and it’s not long before we witness her enduring violent threats on a subway train and at her apartment door. In both cases, the danger is swept away by her leather-jacketed guardian angel (a visibly world-weary Vinecia Coleman), who then alerts Marisol that she’s relinquishing her duties of protecting her in order to help lead an insurrection in heaven against a senile and failing god.

Everything goes sideways from there. Marisol is forced to deal with the romantic obsession of a friend’s mentally ill brother, that friend’s disappearance, and being plunged into a landscape that’s less a dystopia than an apocalypse in process. The moon has disappeared, the sun’s in the wrong part of the sky, food is inedible, and men are bearing children. Sad to say, Rivera’s prophecy of violently aggressive “patriots” setting fire to homeless people seems to have come true.

If all that sounds daunting, be assured that Penumbra and Teatro del Pueblo’s production and, especially, Rivera’s arresting voice make this a very rewarding experience. It’s a tricky story to pull off convincingly, but the six-person cast does so, making each character memorable.

Director Bellamy wisely chooses to emphasize naturalism in the portrayals, making it all the more discomfiting when reality goes off the rails. James Craven is a standout as a wheelchair-bound homeless man, while Paul LaNave is compelling as a couple of daunting villains and the obsessive brother who undergoes a startling transformation.

If Mercedes’ Marisol were less melodramatic and more in tune with the naturalism of her castmates, this could be a truly masterful staging. But, as it is, this dystopian odyssey is well worth taking.

Penumbra Theatre and Teatro del Pueblo’s ‘Marisol’

When: Through Nov. 2

Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul

Tickets: $45-$20, available at 651-224-3180 or penumbratheatre.org

Capsule: While dark and discomfiting, it’s also a deeply compelling experience.

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When you think of veteran leaders on a hockey team, a guy in his 30s with a beard and the battle scars of 600-plus nights in the NHL trenches comes to mind. The Minnesota Wild have more than one of those, personified by the likes of Zach Bogosian and Ryan Hartman, who fit the part, right down to the beard.

Minnesota Wild’s Brock Faber (7) looks to pass during the second period of an NHL hockey game against the St. Louis Blues Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025, in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)

On a Wild roster featuring an abundance of youth in the likes of David Jiricek (60 regular season NHL games on his resume entering this season), Liam Ohgren (29), Daemon Hunt (13), Zeev Buium (0), Danila Yurov (0) and Hunter Haight (0), the Minnesota coaches are looking to a younger leadership group, much closer in age to the newbies, to offer friendship in the room and advice on the ice.

Among those coach John Hynes is leaning on to lead the way for his six-pack of newcomers are top-line forwards Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi, each of them 24, and defenseman Brock Faber, who turned 23 this year but is rapidly approaching 200 NHL games in the regular season and playoffs.

“Brock’s a young guy, but he has had great experience and is a little bit mature beyond his years,” Hynes said, following the season-opening blowout win in St. Louis. “I’d say the same thing for Boldy and Rossi. They’re two young guys, but they’ve played important roles for our team.”

While the experience of longtime NHL fixtures like captain Jared Spurgeon and two-time Stanley Cup winner Vladimir Tarasenko cannot be discounted, Hynes’ trio of younger leaders is expected to be vital this season as injures and other moves force more players from the Iowa Wild into the NHL lineup.

“All three of them, even though they’re under 24, because they have strong experience … their focus level, their maturity as people and I think in life helps,” Hynes said. “Because they’re so close in age with some of those young guys as well.”

For Boldy, it was just four years ago that he was a NHL rookie. So he still has fresh memories of those exciting and stressful first games in the spotlight of the world’s top hockey league and can relate to what teammates like Ohgren, who sits next to Boldy in the team locker room, are facing.

Just a few years ago, players like Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Foligno – then in their 20s – were in the “young mentor” role for newbies like Boldy.

“I feel like we’re still in that position, but obviously not very far removed,” said Boldy, who had a goal and two assists in the 5-0 win over the Blues on Thursday. “A lot of the same guys from my first year are still here, and I think how good they were when I came in, making me feel comfortable and confident. I think that’s something we tried to help everyone else with.”

Haight was one of the last cuts from training camp, but his trip to Iowa was a down-and-back, as the Wild recalled him almost immediately when it became clear that veteran Nico Sturm would not be healthy enough to start the season centering the fourth line.

In his NHL debut on Thursday, with a number of family members and friends from around London, Ontario, in attendance, Haight logged 10 minutes of ice time, recorded two hits, and won five of the eight faceoffs he took.

Even when they were sending him down to the minors initially, the Wild leadership’s message to Haight was that he was on the cusp of being a contributor at the NHL level.

“It was that I was right there, and just to keep working and keep doing what I’m doing,” Haight recalled. “Because it’s working and it’s catching eyes, and I’ve just got to go up from there.”

After leaving Boston College for the pro ranks, Boldy logged two dozen games in Iowa before getting called up to “the show.” Now in the role of mentor instead of mentee, he knows the fragile confidence level some players have, and what veterans in his position can best provide.

“It’s stressful. There’s a lot going on. You can’t get too low or too high, I think that’s the biggest thing,” Boldy said. “Everything comes. Points come, goals come. You’re going to get put on the ice a lot more when you’re doing the right things, and that’s usually when you’re not thinking about the other stuff.”

With youth on one end, seasoned veterans on the other end, and a young leadership group in, the Wild head into their home opener, and the 80 games beyond, believing that they have a mix that will mean another playoff trip, and more, in 2025-26.

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Love winter? The St. Paul Winter Carnival is still seeking candidates for Aurora, Queen of the Snows for 2026.

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The application process is currently underway ahead of the upcoming carnival, which will be held Jan. 22-Feb. 1.

To apply for this volunteer role, you don’t need to live in St. Paul, but you do have to be at least 21 years old by Jan. 15, 2026.

Candidates must submit an online application, including a resume, by 11:59 p.m. on Nov. 1.

The Winter Carnival’s cast of characters, including King Boreas, spend the 10 days of the festival making appearances and playacting the battle between winter and spring; they continue to make appearances throughout their yearlong reign.

Apply and get more info on the queen — and other roles in the Winter Carnival legend — at wintercarnival.com/p/traditions–the-legend/become-a-legend-character.