By MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he’s directing the Pentagon and other government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials and UFOs because of “tremendous interest.”

Trump made the announcement in a social media post hours after he accused former President Barack Obama of disclosing “classified information” when Obama recently suggested in a podcast interview that aliens were real.

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Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t know if they’re real or not,” and said of Obama, “I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.”

In a post on his social media platform Thursday night, Trump said he was directing government agencies to release files related “to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters.”

Obama, who made his comments in a podcast appearance over the weekend, later clarified that he had not seen evidence that aliens “have made contact with us,” but said, “statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Trump told reporters Thursday that when it came to the prospect of extraterrestrial visitors: “I don’t have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.”

Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump suggested this week that he was ready to speak about it, however, when she said on a podcast that the president had a speech prepared to deliver on aliens that he would give at the “right time.”

That was news to the White House. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded with a laugh when she was asked about it Wednesday and told reporters, “A speech on aliens would be news to me.”

Public interest in unidentified flying objects and the possibility of the government hiding secrets of extraterrestrial life remerged in the public consciousness after a group of former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unknown objects to The New York Times and Politico in 2017. The renewed scrutiny prompted Congress to hold the first hearings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though officials said that the objects, which appeared to be green triangles floating above a Navy ship, were likely drones.

Since then the Pentagon has promised more transparency on the topic. In July 2022 it created the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, which was intended to be a central place to collect reports of all military UFO encounters, taking over from a department task force.

In 2023, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of AARO at the time, told reporters he didn’t have any evidence “of any program having ever existed as a to do any sort of reverse engineering of any sort of extraterrestrial (unidentified aerial phenomena).”

The information that has been made public shows that the vast majority of UFO reports made by the military go unsolved but the ones that are identified are largely benign in nature.

An 18-page unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 said service members had made 485 reports of unidentified phenomena in the past year but 118 cases were found to be “prosaic objects such as various types of balloons, birds, and unmanned aerial systems.”

“It is important to underscore that, to date, AARO has discovered no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology,” the report stressed.

Associated Press writers Konstantin Toropin and Steve Peoples contributed to this report.

By PHIL MARCELLO

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s largest nursing strike in decades is poised to end after more than 4,000 nurses seeking better staffing and job security at NewYork-Presbyterian reached a tentative contract agreement with management early Friday.

The New York State Nurses Association said union negotiators and administrators at the last of three major hospital systems hit by the more than monthlong walkout approved a tentative deal but did not disclose details.

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The proposal now goes to union members for a vote. If ratified, nurses would return to work as early as next week.

“We are pleased to have reached a tentative settlement with NYSNA, through the mediator, that reflects our tremendous respect for our nurses — the settlement is still subject to ratification,” NewYork-Presbyterian spokesperson Angela Karafazli said in a statement.

The roughly 4,200 nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian had been the last remaining on the picket line during bitterly cold temperatures in what their union said was the largest and longest walkout of nurses in the city’s history.

“For a month and a half, through some of the harshest weather this city has seen in years, nurses at NYP showed this city that they won’t make any compromises to patient care,” NYSNA president Nancy Hagans said. “The wins of our private sector nurses will improve care for patients, and their perseverance and endurance have shown people worldwide the power of NYSNA nurses.”

Some 10,500 nurses in the Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals ratified new three-year contracts on Feb. 11. The union said the Montefiore and Mount Sinai deals included pay raises of more than 12% over three years.

That deal also maintained nurses’ health benefits with no additional out-of-pocket costs and included new protections against workplace violence, particularly for transgender and immigrant nurses and patients, and introduced safeguards against the use of artificial intelligence in hospitals.

NewYork-Presbyterian nurses rejected the proposals in the Feb. 11 deal.

The strike began Jan. 12 at three of the city’s largest and most prestigious private health systems.

Hospitals hired legions of temporary nurses to fill in staffing gaps during a demanding flu season, raising concerns among some of the hospital system’s most vulnerable patients and their families.

During a bumpy, contentious negotiation, hospitals complained the union’s demands were unreasonable and exorbitant. Nurses countered that top hospital executives make millions of dollars a year while saddling nurses with unmanageable workloads.

An arbitrator this month awarded nearly $400,000 to some nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian’s Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital for having to work while short-staffed in 2023 and 2024, the union said, heralding the decision as evidence of the problems that prompted the strike. NewYork-Presbyterian responded that “safe staffing is always a priority” and that it has hired hundreds of nurses in the last three years.

The strike did not affect every hospital in the NewYork-Presbyterian, Mount Sinai and Montefiore systems, and nurses at city-run hospitals did not participate. Other private hospitals also reached last-minute deals with the union.

Associated Press reporters Jennifer Peltz in New York and Bruce Shipkowski in Trenton, New Jersey, contributed.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER and MATT OTT, AP Economics Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. economic growth slowed in the final three months of last year, dragged down by the six-week shutdown of the federal government and a pullback in consumer spending.

The nation’s gross domestic product — the output of goods and services — increased at a 1.4% annual rate in the fourth quarter, the Commerce Department reported Friday, down from 4.4% in the July-September quarter and 3.8% in the quarter before that.

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Consumer spending rose just 2.4%, a significant slowdown from the third quarter’s healthy 3.5% gain.

The report also underscores an odd aspect of the U.S. economy: It is growing steadily, but without creating many jobs. Growth was a fairly healthy 2.2% in 2025, yet a government report last week showed that employers added less than 200,000 jobs last year — the fewest since COVID struck in 2020.

Economists point to several possible reasons for the gap: The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has sharply slowed population growth, reducing the number of people available to take jobs. It’s one reason that the unemployment rate rose only slightly — to 4.3% from 4% — last year, even with the nearly non-existent hiring.

Some businesses may also be holding back on adding jobs out of uncertainty about whether artificial intelligence will enable them to produce more without finding new employees. And the cost of tariffs has reduced many companies’ profits, possibly leading them to cut back on hiring.

The economy is also unusual right now because growth is solid, inflation has slowed a bit, and unemployment is low, but surveys show that Americans are generally gloomy about the economy. In January, a measure of consumer confidence fell to its lowest level since 2014, yet consumers have kept spending, propelling growth.

Some of that spending may be disproportionately driven by upper-income consumers, in a phenomenon known as the “K-shaped” economy. Yet data from many large banks suggests lower-income consumers are still raising their spending, even if by not as much.

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — A key inflation gauge accelerated in December to the fastest pace in nearly a year, showing how prices are still rising more quickly than most Americans would prefer — and faster than the Federal Reserve’s target of 2% a year.

Prices rose 0.4% in December from the previous month, up from 0.2% in November, the Commerce Department said Friday in a report that was delayed by the six-week government shutdown last fall. The monthly increase was the highest since last February. Compared with a year ago, inflation rose 2.9% in December, up from 2.8% in November. That is the largest yearly increase since March 2024.

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Core prices — which exclude the volatile food and energy categories — also rose 0.4% in December from the previous month, up from 0.2% in November. That is also the highest since last February. Core prices jumped 3% in December from a year ago, faster than November’s 2.8% increase.

The figures show that inflation remains elevated, though it’s down from a peak of near 7% in 2022. With many prices still rising more quickly than they did before the pandemic, the report points to a key reason that many Americans remain unhappy with the economy, even as unemployment remains low and growth is solid.

The report covers what is known as the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, which the Federal Reserve prefers over the better-known consumer price index. The CPI cooled noticeably in January, the government said last week.

But the reason the PCE index is running higher than the consumer price index is because it puts much less weight on some areas where price growth has sharply cooled, such as apartment rents and car prices.

Friday’s report also showed that consumers kept spending at a solid clip in December, when spending rose 0.4% from the previous month, the same as in November.

In December, prices climbed for furniture, clothing, and groceries. Gas prices fell, but the cost of electricity rose and natural gas costs soared 3.7% just in December from the previous month.

The Fed’s interest-rate setting committee met in late January and agreed to keep its short-term rate unchanged at about 3.6% despite repeated demands from President Donald Trump to reduce it. According to minutes from the meeting released Wednesday, most officials want to see inflation fall closer to the Fed’s target before supporting further rate cuts.