In Russian culture, New Year’s Day is an important holiday, celebrated with music and fireworks throughout the country. When he met with the Minnesota media via Zoom on Tuesday, new Wild forward Vladimir Tarasenko recalled a special New Year’s Day he spent in the State of Hockey a few years ago, wearing the colors of the enemy.

On a bitterly cold first day of 2022, Tarasenko scored one of the St. Louis Blues’ goals in a 6-4 win over the Wild at Target Field in Minneapolis, in the first NHL Winter Classic played in Minnesota. Laughing in the face of weather that was well below zero at the opening faceoff, the Blues arrived at the ballpark in beachwear.

“That night was very cold,” Tarasenko recalled. “It’s one of the first times me and my family were able to celebrate New Year’s Eve outside of our home. The game was crazy, and I remember it was very cold. But also, I played a lot against the Wild in a lot of playoff series. What I remember was every game was very hard. In their home building, crazy fans, always a full stadium. It was very hard to play.”

Of the quartet of goals mustered by the Wild that frigid night, Kirill Kaprizov scored one and assisted on two others. Tarasenko said Tuesday that he and his new teammate had already spoken by phone a few times since the trade that brought Tarasenko to Minnesota was announced on Monday.

“I heard a lot of good things from Kirill when I talked with him about the team and the group,” said Tarasenko, who is 33 and coming off one of the quieter offensive seasons of his career. “I also like the style of hockey the team plays. I talked to my family and thanks to Bill (Guerin) for the trust. I will come and try to help the team in any way possible.”

A marquee player with the Blues for a decade, including their 2019 run to the franchise’s first Stanley Cup, Tarasenko won a second NHL title with Florida in 2024, then found himself in a bottom-six role with a middling Red Wings team that made an in-season coaching change and finished outside of the Eastern Conference playoff picture last season.

With Minnesota, he is expected to play a more prominent role. Tarasenko noted that with Detroit’s season ending in mid-April, he has had a longer offseason for one of the rare times in his career.

“I feel very confident. I have a lot of time this summer … so much time to prepare this summer and get some rest, physically and mentally, as well,” he said. “Whatever’s happened the last two years, me and my family have no regrets. We’re looking forward to the next chapter. Like I said, we’re excited and I always believe in myself.”

In making the trade with Detroit, sending future considerations to the Red Wings in return — which essentially means Tarasenko’s addition was free — Guerin talked about the player’s Stanley Cup rings and bringing that championship experience to a Wild locker room that, when healthy, they feel is not far off from the ability to make a deep playoff run.

“There’s a lot of small things that are important if you play on a winning team,” Tarasenko said. “A lot of it goes with confidence. When I come to the team, I’ll do whatever I can to help.”

Tarasenko wore number 91 with the Blues, Rangers and Senators, before donning 10 in Florida and 11 last season with Detroit.

Vladimir Tarasenko #11 of the Detroit Red Wings skates against the New York Islanders at UBS Arena on Oct. 22, 2024 in Elmont, New York. (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

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By COLLIN BINKLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The University of Pennsylvania has agreed to ban transgender women from its women’s sports teams to resolve a federal civil rights case that found the school violated the rights of female athletes.

The U.S. Education Department announced the voluntary agreement Tuesday. The case focused on Lia Thomas, the transgender swimmer who last competed for the Ivy League school in Philadelphia in 2022, when she became the first openly transgender athlete to win a Division I title.

It’s part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to remove transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

Under the agreement, Penn agreed to restore all individual Division I swimming records and titles to female athletes who lost out to Thomas, the Education Department said. Penn also agreed to send a personalized apology letter to each of those swimmers.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether Thomas would be stripped of her awards and honors at Penn.

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The university must also announce that it “will not allow males to compete in female athletic programs” and it must adopt “biology-based” definitions of male and female, the department said.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon called it a victory for women and girls.

“The Department commends UPenn for rectifying its past harms against women and girls, and we will continue to fight relentlessly to restore Title IX’s proper application and enforce it to the fullest extent of the law,” McMahon said in a statement.

The Education Department opened its investigation in February and concluded in April that Penn had violated Title IX, a 1972 law forbidding sex discrimination in education. Such findings have almost always been resolved through voluntary agreements. If Penn had fought the finding, the department could have moved to refer the case to the Justice Department or pursued a separate process to cut the school’s federal funding.

In February, the Education Department asked the NCAA and the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFSHSA, to restore titles, awards and records it says have been “misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories.”

The most obvious target at the college level was in women’s swimming, where Thomas won the national title in the 500-yard freestyle in 2022.

The NCAA has updated its record books when recruiting and other violations have stripped titles from certain schools, but the organization, like the NFSHSA, has not responded to the federal government’s request. Determining which events had a transgender athlete participating years later would be challenging.

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.

By KEN SWEET, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Navy Federal Credit Union will no longer have to refund $80 million to servicemen and women for illegally charging them overdraft fees on their accounts, after the President Donald Trump-led Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved to dismiss the case.

It’s the latest example of how the Trump-led CFPB is undoing much of the work it did under President Biden, even in instances where the bad actors agreed to provide redress and compensation to victims.

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The case dates from late 2024 and deals with an issue known as “authorized positive overdraft fees,” which happen when a bank initially approves a debit card transaction but later charges the customer a overdraft fee when that earlier transaction settles, typically a couple of days later, and there’s insufficient funds in the customer’s bank account. Navy Federal was found to authorize these types of overdraft fees between 2017 and 2022, later stopping the practice and refunding some customers who were impacted.

Under its previous settlement, Navy Federal would have needed to pay a $15 million fine to the CFPB and refund $80 million in illegally paid overdraft fees. At the time, Navy Federal said it “fully cooperated with the CFPB’s investigation and we will continue to comply with all applicable laws and regulations, just as we always have and as we believe we did here.”

The CFPB gave little reason for withdrawing the consent order. Under Russell Vought, the president’s budget director who is also the acting head of the bureau, the bureau has withdrawn roughly half a dozen consent orders and ended other settlements the bureau previously reached with financial services companies. The withdrawn order says that Navy Federal consented to have the order withdrawn.

A spokesperson for Navy Federal did not immediately respond to comment on whether the credit union planned to keep refunding its customers, despite no longer having to do so.

Navy Federal is, by far, the largest credit union in the country with roughly 14 million members and $180 billion in assets. If Navy Federal were considered a traditional bank, it would be the 24th largest bank in the country by assets.

By SAMUEL PETREQUIN and JOSEPH WILSON

PARIS (AP) — Barcelona recorded its hottest June in over a century, the summit of Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors and hundreds of French schools shut on Tuesday as Europe sizzled in its first major heat wave of the summer.

Health warnings remained in effect in several European countries. The worst was felt in southern Europe while punishing temperatures were forecast to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in Paris and to stay unusually high in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Men jump into the water on a hot day in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, July 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)

The abnormally hot weather “is exposing millions of Europeans to high heat stress” with temperatures in June more typical of July and August, said Samantha Burgess of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. This June is likely to be among the five hottest on record, it said.

Barcelona’s Fabra Observatory reported an average temperature for last month of 26 C (78 F), breaking records since books were started in 1914. The previous hottest average for June was 25.6 C in 2003. The same weather station said that a single-day high of 37.9 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) for June was recorded Monday.

Hot Mediterranean soup

Barcelona is usually spared the worst heat in Spain, thanks to its location between hills and the Mediterranean in Spain’s northeastern corner. But most of the country has been gripped by the extreme heat.

“We are seeing these temperatures because we are experiencing a very intense heat wave that has come early in the summer and that is clearly linked to global warming,” Ramón Pascual, a delegate for Spain’s weather service in Barcelona, told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

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Pascual added that the inhabitants of the Mediterranean region are not being helped by the rising sea temperatures, which greatly reduces any cooling effects of a nearby body of water. Spain’s weather service said that recent surface temperatures for the Mediterranean near the Balearic Islands are between 5-6 degrees Celsius higher than average.

“With water surface temperatures from 26-30 Celsius (78-86 F), it is difficult for our nights to be refreshing,” he said.

Spain’s national average for June of 23.6 degrees Celsius (74 degrees Fahrenheit) was 0.8 C hotter than the previous hottest June in 2017. It was also the first time that June was hotter than the average temperatures for both July and August.

Spain also saw a new high mark for June established on Saturday when 46 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded in the southern province of Huelva.

The streets were scorching as well in Spain’s capital, with Madrid forecast to reach 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit), as people tried to keep cool by drinking refrigerated drinks and sticking to the shade. But the hot nights offered little relief.

“Today is very bad, but yesterday wasn’t any better. So we’re just surviving,” said Miguel Sopera, 63. “At night it’s impossible due to the terrible heat.”

France suffocates

In France, the national weather agency Météo-France placed several departments under the highest red alert, with the Paris region particularly hard hit. More than 1,300 schools in the country were partially or fully closed.

Visitors to the Eiffel Tower without tickets were told to postpone their visits as the summit of the city’s landmark was closed until Thursday. The operators said the closure was “to ensure everyone’s comfort and safety.”

Climate experts warn that future summers are likely to be hotter than any recorded to date. By 2100, France could be up to 4 degrees Celsius (39 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees Celsius expected every year and extreme heat spikes potentially reaching 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit).

Man dies in Italy

Farther south, 17 of Italy’s 27 major cities were experiencing a heat wave, according to the health ministry.

There were torrential rains in Italy’s north on Monday and parts of Bardonecchia near Turin were covered in sludge after the Frejus river burst its banks.

People use umbrellas in hot weather to shelter from the sun while walking past the Colosseum, in Rome, Monday, June 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Near Bologna, one of the cities under a heat alert Tuesday, the 46-year-old owner of a construction company collapsed and died while repaving a school parking lot, state-run RAI reported. An autopsy was being conducted to determine the cause, but heat was suspected.

The Netherlands is sweating

In the Dutch town of Soest, first responders said they were bringing a firehose to an early evening water gun fight.

“Bring your water pistol and swimming clothes with you, because you’re guaranteed to get soaked!” the firefighters said in an Instagram post.

Portugal’s record

The Portuguese weather service issued a statement Monday night confirming the highest single temperature ever recorded in mainland Portugal for the month of June at 46.6 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) on June 29 in the town of Mora, west of Lisbon. The prior record was 44.9 degrees Celsius (112 degrees Fahrenheit) in 2017.

Wildfires in Turkey

Firefighters across Turkey tried to contain wildfires that have forced the evacuation of some 50,000 residents for the third consecutive day.

Relieving animals in Prague

Temperatures were expected to reach 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by Wednesday in large parts of the Czech Republic, including the capital.

The Prague zoo distributed up to 10 metric tons of ice daily across the park, with especial attention given to polar bears native to the Arctic.

Zoo director Miroslav Bobek said twin brother bears Aleut and Gregor looked pleased when they found parts of their open-air enclosure covered with a thick layer of ice Tuesday morning. They rolled on their backs and discovered frozen pieces of squid.

Wilson reported from Barcelona, Spain. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless in London, Barry Hatton in Lisbon, Portugal, Iain Sullivan in Madrid, Mike Corder in The Netherlands, Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey, Karel Janicek in Prague and David Biller in Rome contributed to this report.