PITTSBURGH — Aaron Rodgers and Mike Tomlin are taking their bromance to the next level.

The four-time NFL MVP ended months of “will he or won’t he” speculation by informing Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers he plans to join the team for the 2025 season, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Thursday. The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because Rodgers has not yet signed a contract.

The Steelers and the 41-year-old Rodgers had been circling each other for months. Rodgers even visited the team’s facility in late March, driving in undercover in a nondescript sedan wearing a hat and sunglasses.

While there were plenty of nice words from both sides in the aftermath, Rodgers didn’t rush to put pen to paper, telling “The Pat McAfee Show” in April that his attention was focused on helping people in his inner circle who were “battling some difficult stuff” and that he didn’t want to decide until he knew he could fully commit.

With mandatory minicamp coming next week, Rodgers apparently finds himself in a place where he can give the Steelers his full attention.

Rodgers joins a team that has been stuck in a transitional period at quarterback since Ben Roethlisberger retired after the 2021 season. Either Rodgers or Mason Rudolph — who returned to Pittsburgh on a two-year deal in March — will likely be Pittsburgh’s fifth different Week 1 quarterback in as many seasons.

The Steelers have stayed competitive, up to a point anyway, amid the constant churn at the most important position on the field. Pittsburgh has reached the playoffs four times in the last five seasons, only to be quickly escorted out of the postseason in lopsided fashion each time.

Justin Fields and Russell Wilson — who combined to lead the Steelers to a 10-7 record and a playoff berth last season — ended up in New York. Fields will replace Rodgers with the Jets after agreeing to a two-year deal. Wilson is heading to the Giants on a one-year contract.

Those deals left Rodgers and the Steelers without any other reasonable options. Both sides have their reasons for consummating what is essentially a marriage of convenience.

Rodgers hopes to author a happier ending to his Hall of Fame career after two eventful, if underwhelming, seasons with the Jets. While Rodgers is hardly a long-term solution in Pittsburgh, he is the best option left after the Steelers chose not to use one of their higher picks in April’s draft on a quarterback, instead taking a late-round flyer on former Ohio State star Will Howard.

The union brings Rodgers and Tomlin — the longest-tenured head coach in major professional North American sports — together after years of what is the football equivalent of flirting.

They’ve long held each other in high esteem and have enjoyed a handful of memorable on-field interactions that went viral. Last fall, they playfully nodded at each other as a sign of respect after Tomlin was forced to burn a timeout when Rodgers tried a quick snap that would have ended with the Steelers being penalized for having too many men on the field.

Pittsburgh is hoping Rodgers has enough left physically to go with a football IQ that remains elite. He was solid if not spectacular last season in New York, throwing for 28 touchdowns against 11 interceptions.

Yet his play on the field often took a back seat to the drama off it as the Jets cycled through coaches and limped to a 5-12 record, with Rodgers spending much of his time in New York defending comments he made on platforms like “The Pat McAfee Show.”

The Steelers are no strangers to drama. If there’s been one constant since the team’s last Super Bowl appearance — a loss to Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers in February 2011 — it’s the ability to employ talented, if mercurial players.

The list runs the gamut, from Roethlisberger to Antonio Brown to Le’Veon Bell to JuJu Smith-Schuster to George Pickens, traded to Dallas last month.

Pittsburgh has retooled a bit in the offseason, including acquiring two-time Pro Bowl wide receiver DK Metcalf from Seattle. The Steelers quickly signed him to a new five-year deal to bring some stability (and hopefully maturity) to a wide receiver room that’s lacked both.

The one thing Pittsburgh hadn’t done was do the same at the most important position on the field. Tomlin and team president Art Rooney II both kept the door open for Fields and Wilson to return, only to stand by idly when Fields bolted for the Jets and make no serious attempt to retain Wilson.

While the Steelers did bring back Rudolph, a season removed from leading them on an improbable run to the playoffs, he is considered a backup.

The field of experienced players available eventually winnowed down to Rodgers.

His arrival is a stopgap, one that Pittsburgh hopes will keep it competitive until a long-term solution arrives, most likely in the 2026 draft. Until then, Rodgers and the Steelers will try to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation of their own making.

___

AP Pro Football Writer Rob Maaddi contributed to this report.

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By MARCIA DUNN, AP Aerospace Writer

A private lunar lander from Japan descended toward a touchdown on the moon Friday, but flight controllers lost contact with the spacecraft and were unsure of its fate.

The Tokyo-based company ispace said its lander dropped out of lunar orbit as planned. But there was no immediate word on the outcome, following the hourlong descent.

As the tension mounted, the company’s livestream of the attempted landing came to an abrupt end. “We haven’t been able to confirm,” one of the commentators said in Japanese, but Mission Control “will continuously attempt to communicate with the lander.”

The encore came two years after the company’s first moonshot ended in a crash landing, giving rise to the name Resilience for its successor lander. Resilience holds a rover with a shovel to gather lunar dirt as well as a Swedish artist’s toy-size red house for placement on the moon’s dusty surface.

This image taken from video shows flight controllers at ispace Mission Control in Tokyo awaiting confirmation of their private lunar lander touching down on the moon Friday, June 6, 2025. (ispace via AP)

Long the province of governments, the moon became a target of private outfits in 2019, with more flops than wins along the way.

Launched in January from Florida on a long, roundabout journey, Resilience entered lunar orbit last month. It shared a SpaceX ride with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost, which reached the moon faster and became the first private entity to successfully land there in March.

Another U.S. company, Intuitive Machines, arrived at the moon a few days after Firefly. But the tall, spindly lander face-planted in a crater near the moon’s south pole and was declared dead within hours.

Resilience was targeting the top of the moon, a less forbidding place than the shadowy bottom. The ispace team chose a flat area with few boulders in Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a long and narrow region full of craters and ancient lava flows that stretches across the near side’s northern tier.

Plans had called for the 7.5-foot (2.3-meter) Resilience to beam back pictures within hours and for the lander to lower the piggybacking rover onto the lunar surface.

Made of carbon fiber-reinforced plastic with four wheels, ispace’s European-built rover — named Tenacious — sports a high-definition camera to scout out the area and a shovel to scoop up some lunar dirt for NASA.

The rover, weighing just 11 pounds (5 kilograms), will stick close to the lander, going in circles at a speed of less than one inch (a couple centimeters) per second. It’s capable of venturing up to two-thirds of a mile (1 kilometer) from the lander and should be operational throughout the two-week mission, the period of daylight.

Besides science and tech experiments, there’s an artistic touch.

The rover holds a tiny, Swedish-style red cottage with white trim and a green door, dubbed the Moonhouse by creator Mikael Genberg, for placement on the lunar surface.

Takeshi Hakamada, CEO and founder of ispace, considers the latest moonshot “merely a steppingstone,” with its next, much bigger lander launching by 2027 with NASA involvement, and even more to follow.

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Minutes before the attempted landing, Hakamada assured everyone that ispace had learned from its first failed mission. “Engineers did everything they possibly could” to ensure success this time, he said.

Chief financial officer Jumpei Nozaki promised to continue the lunar quest regardless of what happens. A third lander is already in work for a 2027 launch, he said.

Ispace, like other businesses, does not have “infinite funds” and cannot afford repeated failures, Jeremy Fix, chief engineer for ispace’s U.S. subsidiary, said at a conference last month.

While not divulging the cost of the current mission, company officials said it’s less than the first one which exceeded $100 million.

Two other U.S. companies are aiming for moon landings by year’s end: Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin and Astrobotic Technology. Astrobotic’s first lunar lander missed the moon altogether in 2024 and came crashing back through Earth’s atmosphere.

For decades, governments competed to get to the moon. Only five countries have pulled off successful robotic lunar landings: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. Of those, only the U.S. has landed people on the moon: 12 NASA astronauts from 1969 through 1972.

NASA expects to send four astronauts around the moon next year. That would be followed a year or more later by the first lunar landing by a crew in more than a half-century, with SpaceX’s Starship providing the lift from lunar orbit all the way down to the surface. China also has moon landing plans for its own astronauts by 2030.

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.

BEIRUT (AP) — The Israeli military struck several sites in Beirut’s southern suburbs that it said held underground facilities used by Hezbollah for drone production Thursday, on the eve of the Eid al-Adha holiday.

The strikes marked the first time in more than a month that Israel had struck on the outskirts of the capital and the fourth time since a US-brokered ceasefire agreement ended the latest war between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in November.

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Israel posted a warning ahead of the strikes on X, formerly known as Twitter, announcing that it would hit eight buildings at four locations.

Israel has continued to carry out near-daily strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon since the ceasefire, which Lebanon has said are in violation of the agreement. Israeli officials say the strikes are intended to prevent Hezbollah from regrouping after a war that took out much of its senior leadership and arsenal.

The Israeli army said in a statement that Hezbollah was “working to produce thousands of drones under the guidance and financing of Iranian terrorist groups.”

Hezbollah “used drones extensively in its attacks against the State of Israel and is working to expand its drone industry and production in preparation for the next war,” the army statement said.

There was no immediate statement from Hezbollah.

A Hezbollah official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly denied that there were drone production facilities at the targeted locations.

“In the (ceasefire) agreement, there is a mechanism for investigating if there is a complaint,” the official said. “Israel in general, and Netanyahu in particular, wants to continue the war in the region.”

The conflict killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, while the Lebanese government said in April that Israeli strikes had killed another 190 people and wounded 485 wounded since the ceasefire.

There has been increasing pressure on Hezbollah – both domestic and international – to give up its remaining arsenal, but officials with the group have said they will not do so until Israel stops its airstrikes and withdraws from five points it is still occupying along the border in southern Lebanon.

By AMANDA SEITZ and MIKE STOBBE

WASHINGTON (AP) — There was a notable absence last week when U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a 58-second video that the government would no longer endorse the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children or pregnant women.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the person who typically signs off on federal vaccine recommendations — was nowhere to be seen.

The CDC, a $9.2 billion-a-year agency tasked with reviewing life-saving vaccines, monitoring diseases and watching for budding threats to Americans’ health, is without a clear leader.

“I’ve been disappointed that we haven’t had an aggressive director since — February, March, April, May — fighting for the resources that CDC needs,” said Dr. Robert Redfield, who served as CDC director under the first Trump administration and supported Kennedy’s nomination as the nation’s health secretary.

$9.2 billion-a-year agency without leader as nomination awaits

The leadership vacuum at a foremost federal public health agency has existed for months, after President Donald Trump suddenly withdrew his first pick for CDC director in March. A hearing for his new nominee — the agency’s former acting director Susan Monarez — has not been scheduled because she has not submitted all the paperwork necessary to proceed, according to a spokesman for Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who will oversee the nomination.

HHS did not answer written questions about Monarez’s nomination, her current role at the CDC or her salary. An employee directory lists Monarez, a longtime government employee, as a staffer for the NIH under the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Redfield described Kennedy as “very supportive” of Monarez’s nomination.

Instead, a lawyer and political appointee with no medical experience is “carrying out some of the duties” of director at the agency that for seven decades has been led by someone with a medical degree.

Matthew Buzzelli, who is also the chief of staff at the CDC, is “surrounded by highly qualified medical professionals and advisors to help fulfill these duties as appropriate,” Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson said in a statement.

Adding to the confusion was an employee-wide email sent last week that thanked “new acting directors who shave stepped up to the plate.” The email, signed by Monarez, listed her as the acting director. It was was sent just days after Kennedy said at a Senate hearing that Monarez had been replaced by Buzzelli.

The lack of a confirmed director will be a problem if a public health emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic or a rapid uptick in measles cases hits, said Michael Osterholm, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota.

“CDC is a crisis, waiting for a crisis to happen,” said Osterholm. “At this point, I couldn’t tell you for the life of me who was going to pull what trigger in a crisis situation.”

An acting director rarely seen, and stalled decisions

At CDC headquarters in Atlanta, employees say Monarez was rarely heard from between late January – when she was appointed acting director – and late March, when Trump nominated her.

She also has not held any of the “all hands” meetings that were customary under previous CDC chiefs, according to several staffers.

One employee, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and fears being fired if identified said Monarez has been almost invisible since her nomination, adding that her absence has been cited by other leaders as an excuse for delaying action.

The situation already has led to confusion.

In April, a 15-member CDC advisory panel of outside experts met to discuss vaccine policy. The panel makes recommendations to the CDC Director, who routinely signs off on them. But it was unclear during the meeting who would be reviewing the panel’s recommendations, which included the expansion of RSV vaccinations for adults and a new combination shot as another option to protect teens against meningitis.

HHS officials said the recommendations were going to Buzzelli, but then weeks passed with no decision. A month after the meeting ended, the CDC posted on a web site that Kennedy had signed off on recommendations for travelers against chikungunya, a viral disease transmitted to humans by mosquitos. But there continues to be no word about a decision about the other vaccine recommendations.

Controversial COVID-19 vaccine recommendations bypassed CDC panel

The problem was accentuated again last week, when Kennedy rolled out recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine saying they were no longer recommended for healthy children or pregnant women, even though expectant mothers are considered a high-risk group if they contract the virus. Kennedy made the surprise announcement without input from the CDC advisory panel that has historically made recommendations on the nation’s vaccine schedule. The CDC days later posted revised guidance that said healthy kids and pregnant women may get the shots.

Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said CDC staff were consulted on the recommendations, but would not provide staffer’s names or titles. He also did not provide the specific data or research that Kennedy reviewed to reach his conclusion on the new COVID-19 recommendations, just weeks after he said that he did not think “people should be taking medical advice” from him.

“As Secretary Kennedy said, there is a clear lack of data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Nixon said in a statement.

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Research shows that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness, mechanical ventilation and death, when they contract COVID-19 infections. During the height of the pandemic, deaths of women during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth soared to their highest level in 50 years. Vaccinations also have been recommended for pregnant women because it passes immunity to newborns who are too young for vaccines and also vulnerable to infections. Nixon did not address a written question about recommendations for pregnant women.

Kennedy’s decision to bypass the the advisory panel and announce new COVID-19 recommendations on his own prompted a key CDC official who works with the committee – Dr. Lakshmi Panagiotakopoulos – to announce her resignation last Friday.

“My career in public health and vaccinology started with a deep-seated desire to help the most vulnerable members of our population, and that is not something I am able to continue doing in this role,” she wrote in an email seen by an Associated Press reporter.

Signs are mounting that the CDC has been “sidelined” from key decision-making under Kennedy’s watch, said Dr. Anand Parekh, the chief medical adviser for The Bipartisan Policy Center.

“It’s difficult to ascertain how we will reverse the chronic disease epidemic or be prepared for myriad public health emergencies without a strong CDC and visible, empowered director,” Parekh said. “It’s also worth noting that every community in the country is served by a local or state public health department that depends on the scientific expertise of the CDC and the leadership of the CDC director.”