By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is banning opinions by professors in the classroom and some books and courses in a crackdown that violates the First Amendment, a law professor at the military school said in a lawsuit Monday seeking class action status.

Tim Bakken filed the lawsuit in Manhattan federal court and named the school and its leaders as defendants. He said he wants to protect free speech and the right to academic freedom at an institution where he has flourished despite his public criticisms of the academy and the U.S. military.

Bakken also noted in the lawsuit that he has a contract with a publisher for a book that is critical of some aspects of West Point and doesn’t want to seek approval from the school’s leadership prior to its publication because “it is very likely such approval will be withheld.”

The lawsuit seeks class action status for West Point’s civilian faculty members, believed to be more than 100 individuals, and a court order to stop restrictions on free speech, along with unspecified damages and legal fees.

Bakken’s lawsuit said the school began to scrutinize faculty speech after a January executive order from President Donald Trump to “carefully review the leadership, curriculum and instructors of the United States Service Academies and other defense academic institutions.”

In February, the military academy at West Point issued a policy preventing faculty members from using the schools’ “affiliation or branding” in connection with any public comments or writings without the academy’s approval, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said the policy was “to control, chill and suppress faculty speech.”

The lawsuit said the academy in the spring withdrew books from its library, removed words and phrases from faculty members’ syllabi, eliminated courses and majors and threatened or punished faculty members for teaching, speaking and writing without prior approval from the school.

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During the summer, the academy removed information about faculty members’ published books, articles, essays and scholarship entries from all faculty members’ webpages on the school’s website, the lawsuit said. It also directed instructors not to express opinions in the classroom, it said.

“As a professor of law, Plaintiff’s inability to express opinions on the subject matter being taught is stifling and disruptive to the educational process,” the lawsuit said. It added that he no longer would be able to express to students whether a major or dissenting opinion is persuasive and why.

The military academy did not immediately return a request for comment.

Bakken, a civilian professor of law in the academy’s Department of Law and Philosophy for the last 25 years, is the longest-serving law professor in West Point’s history and has written extensively, including books, articles and essays, along with appearances on podcasts, radio and television, the lawsuit said.

According to the lawsuit, he traveled with U.S. soldiers to Kabul in 2007 during the war in Afghanistan and created the Department of Law at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.

He seeks class action status for West Point’s faculty and a court order to stop restrictions on free speech.

WASHINGTON — A White House announcement about autism is expected Monday afternoon after President Donald Trump’s weekend comment that “I think we found an answer” to the developmental disorder.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised earlier this year to determine the cause of autism by September. That baffled brain experts who say there is no single cause and that the rhetoric appears to ignore decades of science into the genetic and environmental factors that can play a role.

Here’s what we know about autism.

What is autism?

Autism isn’t a disease. It’s a complex developmental condition better known as autism spectrum disorder that affects different people in different ways.

It can include delays in language, learning or social and emotional skills. For some people, profound autism means being nonverbal and having intellectual disabilities, but the vast majority of people with autism experience far milder effects.

Autism rates have been going up for decades

There are two main reasons. First, the definition of autism broadened as scientists expanded their understanding of its wide range of traits and symptoms. That led to changes in the criteria doctors use to diagnose autism and improvements in screening.

At the same time, parents increasingly sought a diagnosis as autism became better known and schools began offering educational services they hoped could help their kids.

As late as the 1990s, only children with the most profound symptoms were considered to have autism. In the early 2000s, as the definition began changing, the autism rate was estimated to be 1 in 150 children. The latest count found 1 in about 31 children are affected by autism spectrum disorder.

The increase isn’t among the profound cases; it’s an increase in the milder cases that weren’t historically considered autism, said expert Helen Tager-Flusberg of Boston University.

There is no single test for autism, which is diagnosed mostly through developmental and behavioral assessments.

It’s hard to tell if there may be additional factors behind the increase.

What’s the state of autism research?

Science has shown autism is mostly rooted in genetics, with discovery of several hundred genes that play a role. Those genes can be inherited, even if the parent shows no signs of autism, or mutations can occur as the brain is developing and its rapidly dividing cells make mistakes.

Experts say different combinations of genes and other factors can all affect how a fetal brain develops.

What about environmental effects?

Researchers have identified other factors that can interact with genetic vulnerability to increase the risk of autism. They include the age of a child’s father, preterm birth and whether the mother had certain health problems during pregnancy such as fevers, infections or diabetes.

Any concern that measles vaccine — or other vaccines — could be linked to autism has been long debunked, stress scientists and leading advocacy groups for people with autism.

What about Tylenol?

The Washington Post reported Monday that the Trump administration plans to link autism to the use of the painkiller Tylenol, or acetaminophen, in pregnancy.

Some studies have raised the possibility that taking the over-the-counter pain medicine in pregnancy might be associated with a risk of autism, but many others haven’t found a connection, said autism expert David Mandell of the University of Pennsylvania.

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One big caution: Untreated fevers in pregnancy, particularly the first trimester, increase the risk for miscarriages, preterm birth and other problems, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Tylenol’s label advises women to ask their doctor about use in pregnancy, and the society continues to advise that it’s an appropriate option to treat fever and pain during pregnancy.

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.

GENEVA (AP) — A U.N. expert monitoring human rights in Russia said Monday that “repression is escalating,” targeting civilians, journalists and even Ukrainian prisoners of war in an attempt to silence dissent and opposition to the war in Ukraine.

Mariana Katzarova, the U.N. special rapporteur focusing on human rights in Russia, presented her latest report that said Russian authorities have stepped up their use of “criminal prosecution, long-term imprisonment, torture and ill-treatment” to quell opposition to the war ordered by President Vladimir Putin.

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“The repression is escalating … and becoming massive,” Katzarova told journalists before presenting the report to the Human Rights Council, which created her post after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“The masterminds of this repression are employing new elaborate tools against a total impunity for their actions: Torture is also part of this equation, as a tool,” she said.

Her report said that over the one year covered, starting in mid-2024, the number of prosecutions increased, “with at least 3,905 individuals convicted on administrative or criminal charges for peaceful dissent.”

Most recently, Katzarova noted that through July, more than 150 children aged 14 to 17 were added to the federal list of “extremists” and “terrorists,” she reported, adding that some were accused of treason and subjected to torture to extract confessions.

By mid-July, a total of 1,040 individuals and organizations — nearly one-quarter of them journalists — had been designated as “foreign agents,” including 133 added since January.

“Torture and ill-treatment in the Russian Federation remain widespread and systematic, affecting not only Russian citizens but also Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian detainees,” the report said. “At least 258 cases of torture by law enforcement, prison staff, and inmates acting under orders of prison authorities were documented in 2024/25.”

Katzarova recounted how one Ukrainian man captured by Russian troops was interrogated and subjected to electric shocks. Then, a Moscow doctor had to operate on him to save his life.

“The surgery was perfect, but when the guy woke up, he saw that there were extra bandages on his stomach. And this Russian doctor has burned, with the medical tool: ‘Victory! Glory to Russia’ on his stomach,” said Katzarova, a Bulgarian who formerly headed investigations on human rights in Russia for Amnesty International.

The Russian diplomatic mission in Geneva declined to comment, referring to a Russian Foreign Ministry statement earlier this month that stated Moscow “does not recognize the mandate of this illegitimate special procedure” — the post held by Katzarova — “and any form of interaction with it is unacceptable for the Russian Federation.”

By Ryan Behr, Tribune News Service

There is much more to do in Europe than visiting landmarks on a fixed schedule with a tour guide who attempts to sound excited about 14th-century architecture. I am not against taking tours when you go to a foreign country, but I am opposed to having a fixed regimen when traveling. From some experience (I am still in high school), I can attest that having everything planned in advance can take away from the sense of freedom and wonder you get when you enter a country that is different from your own.

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I am just back from a European excursion with my father, having visited together numerous destinations across the northern region of the continent. We began in an unusually sunny Hamburg, Germany, where we stayed for five nights before taking the relaxing five-hour train ride to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. Before long, an issue presented itself: although we had both been to Germany a few times in the last five or so years, I had never seen Denmark, and my father had last been there before I was born. As a result, aside from some brief online searches, we did not have any prior knowledge of activities to do or places to see, aside from the event the trip was essentially planned around: an FC Kobenhavn football (soccer) match.

The feeling of not knowing what we were going to do was actually liberating. It opened up a myriad of possibilities – except for long walks because my dad was suffering from a leg issue that hampered his ability to manage more than a few city blocks a day. That meant my suggested eight-mile walk around the city was out of the question.

When one looks up “Copenhagen pictures” online, almost all the immediate search results are of the port called Nyhavn, literally meaning “new port.” We decided to take the three-minute, two-stop metro ride to get there from our hotel, the Villa Copenhagen. Upon arriving, one is greeted with a multitude of beautiful canal-front buildings ranging in color from a pale yellow and blue to a dark red and brown. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that there were boat tours available, so I directed my father’s attention to them, and we decided to go on the nearest one, which was leaving in bare minutes.

Ships in Nyhavn, the canal district of Copenhagen. (Alan Behr/Alan Behr/TNS)

The canal boats cannot be much more than about six feet tall above the waterline because of the need to travel under low canal bridges. If a boat were just one foot taller, it would likely collide with a bridge and result in some very tedious paperwork.

Upon entering our canal boat, we were greeted by a polite teenaged Danish boy named Emil. He was not only fluent in both Danish and English – the two languages the tours were usually conducted in – but he also, at the request of two German passengers, provided commentary in their language as well. On the boat there were three seating sections. The bow area, which was not covered, consisted of about ten seats; the main section directly behind that was covered on the sides and on top by durable glass, and a third open section at the stern held only a few people, some in wheelchairs. We tried the bow until spray drove us literally indoors.

The Little Mermaid, from a waterborne view. (Alan Behr/Alan Behr/TNS)

Throughout the trip, Emil made the experience very enjoyable by cracking jokes in three languages and keeping the passengers engaged by insightful commentary about all destinations. We traveled through some of the lesser-known districts and got to see Copenhageners through a lens that someone who booked a walking tour might not have had the benefit of seeing. After disembarking and buying an overpriced seafood lunch, we headed towards the famed Tivoli Gardens, which was thankfully only a block away from our base at the Villa Copenhagen, directly opposite the main train station.

The Tivoli Gardens ended up being a delight; my dad and I rode bumper cars, ate cotton candy and got to shoot air guns side-by-side. I beat him at first — before he got one very lucky quadruple-bullseye round and won us two little stuffed bears. (He does not let me forget he learned to shoot while growing up on a ranch.)

Ryan Behr in the shooting gallery of Tivoli Gardens. (Alan Behr/Alan Behr/TNS)

The next day, however, we found ourselves wondering how to spend our time. Being a big fan of New York City FC (the professional soccer club of my hometown), I decided to look up if there were any football games happening near us. It was then when I happened to remember that, courtesy of a bridge over the Oresund Strait, Copenhagen is a short train ride from the city of Malmo, Sweden. Almost as a joke, I looked up whether Malmo’s top football team, Malmo FF, would be playing that evening. To my shock, it turned out that, within hours, they were to play an important game to qualify for a continental competition.

The polular Hojbro Plads (High Bridge Square) in central Copenhagen. (Alan Behr/Alan Behr/TNS)

After putting on warmer clothes, we embarked upon our unexpected jaunt into another country. Upon arriving, we got to observe the immense pride this city of more than 365,000 inhabitants has for its team. Flags with the team badge were all over the busy Mollevangstorget Square, and restaurants there were serving fixed game-day meals to cater to the fans on their way to Eleda Stadion. We managed to find a restaurant owned by one of the around 2,000 Indians in the city and were treated to a tasty and unique dining experience.

After taking the 20-minute cab ride to the stadium, and speaking with a taxi driver about the pride he felt both for his new team as a longtime immigrant, we reached the stadium with ample time to do some merch shopping. Arriving at our seats just before the start of the game, my newly bought Malmo FF scarf in hand, I noted that Malmo’s ultras, or hard-core supporters, were very impressive. I saw a seemingly endless swarm of flags, drums, pyro and jerseys and scarves with the team logo, the supporters singing, chanting and cheering in unison. I loved that some of their chants were taken from the same South American team songs from which NYCFC fans get theirs, so I knew some of the words. They also sang a team song to the tune of The Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B”; my father and I had a good laugh at when we recognized the familiar tune.

FC Kobenhavn vs. Odense Boldklub, Parken. (Alan Behr/Alan Behr/TNS)

Following a win by Malmo FF, I chatted with some fans who were eager to profess their love for their club; what stuck out to me was the immense pride and passion this city has for its football team.

A few days later, after much anticipation, came the main event: FC Kobenhavn vs. Odense in the almost 40,000-seat Parken Stadium, just twenty minutes away from our hotel. My first brush with Danish club fans happened right in front of the map in the metro station. I was asking a man, whose name I later found out was Arne, for directions, but he seemed as lost as I did. I then saw the scarf he was wearing: it was of the rival team, Odense! We eventually found our way, and alongside his Scottish friend, Craig, boarded the crowded train and talked for the whole ride about U.S. Major League Soccer, why my dad and I were there, why we should support Odense (so insisted Arne), how Odense had a rivalry with Copenhagen because the capital’s citizens supposedly look down upon those who live elsewhere — and why we should support Odense (so insisted Arne).

Because Parken is almost twice as large in terms of capacity than the stadium in Malmo, I had high expectations for the enthusiasm of the local team’s ultras. Throughout the game, however, I found myself secretly rooting for the other team, as I felt connected to the city of Odense because of that one very kind man who had shown the heart to talk to me alongside a Scotsman for an entire train ride. For me, wherever in the world I have visited so far and seen games, that connection among supporters is what football is all about.

(Ryan Behr is a junior at Columbia Prep in New York City who often travels abroad with his dad.)

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