By MIKE STOBBE and NICKY FORSTER

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. flu season is starting slowly, and it’s unclear if it will be as bad as last winter’s, but some health experts are worried as U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data posted Friday shows a new version of the virus has emerged.

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An early analysis suggests current vaccines may still be somewhat effective against the new version of the flu, which has been the main driver of recent infections, CDC data shows.

Some scientists and medical professionals are more worried about disappointing vaccination rates, a main reason why flu hospitalizations and deaths were unusually bad during last year’s flu season — one of the deadliest this century.

“I think we’re going to see a really severe season,” said Asefeh Faraz Covelli of the George Washington University School of Nursing.

Last winter, the overall flu hospitalization rate was the highest seen since the H1N1 flu pandemic 15 years ago. Flu was the underlying or a contributing cause of more than 18,000 deaths, and one seven-day stretch early this year saw more than 1,800 deaths — the highest one-week spike in at least a decade. Child flu deaths also were far higher than usual.

CDC data posted Friday showed low flu activity so far, with only one state — Louisiana — reporting moderate activity. Most of the reported infections have been in children, said the CDC’s Alicia Budd, who tracks flu infections for the Atlanta-based agency.

Most also have been a new version of the type A H3N2 virus that historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. That type is responsible for most flu infections so far this year, and more than half have been a new subclade K variant that is different from the strain this year’s flu shots were built to fight.

A preliminary analysis from the United Kingdom suggests the shots do provide at least partial protection, although it will take some time for scientists to know exactly how effective they are. Experts say any protection that softens the blow of a flu infection is important to get.

Flu seasons tend to get bad between December and February, and illnesses likely will accelerate as people travel and gather for Thanksgiving, Covelli said.

“I think it’s going to start picking up here,” she said. “This is the ideal time to get vaccinated.”

Researchers this year have been facing an unusual struggle to get a handle on how respiratory infection and vaccination rates have been trending.

They usually rely on the CDC for data, but a recent government shutdown halted data collection and reporting just as respiratory infections started ramping up.

Meanwhile, government efforts to promote disease-preventing shots have been more limited since U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was put in charge of the CDC and other federal health agencies. Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccine activist, has fostered uncertainty about the safety of vaccines, including flu shots that contained a preservative called thimerosal.

Indeed, vaccination rates against COVID-19 clearly continue to plummet, with about 6% of children and 14% of adults up to date on their shots, according to other CDC data posted Friday. Each figure is about 3 percentage points less than it was at this point last fall.

For the flu, vaccination trends are a little muddier. Some sources have suggested flu vaccinations are down. Over two million fewer flu shots were given at U.S. pharmacies through the end of October compared to last year, according to data from IQVIA, a health information and research company.

But the latest CDC data indicates that for children, the vaccination rate this year is about the same as it was at this point last fall, at 34%. And the vaccination rate for adults is up a few percentage points to about 37%, according to the CDC data, which relies on survey information.

It is early in the season and too early to know if the increase will be sustained or what is causing it, CDC officials said.

As of the beginning of November, the U.S. flu hospitalization rate is about the same as it was at the same point in 2024. Hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and another respiratory virus, RSV, are lower so far this season, according to another set of CDC data.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JIM GOMEZ

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police and other law enforcement teams were deployed to arrest 18 suspects in a corruption scandal involving flood control projects that has sparked huge protests and forced implicated congressional leaders to step down, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and other officials said Friday.

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Marcos has been scrambling to quell public outrage over the massive corruption, which has been blamed for substandard, defective or non-existent flood control projects in a poverty-stricken country, long prone to deadly typhoons, floodings and extreme weather in tropical Asia.

The warrants were issued by the Sandiganbayan, a special anti-corruption court, against Zaldy Co, who has resigned from the House of Representatives and fled to an unspecified country, and 17 others, including government engineers and executives of Sunwest Corp., a construction firm, over irregularities in a flood control project in Oriental Mindoro province.

Government prosecutors have recommended no bail for the suspects because of the scope of the irregularities in the river dike project, worth 289 million pesos ($4.8 million).

“They will be arrested, presented to the court and made to answer to the law,” Marcos said in a video message where he thanked the public for its patience. “There will be no special treatment, and nobody would be spared.”

Interior Secretary Jonvic Remulla and the National Bureau of Investigation said law enforcement teams have been deployed to arrest the suspects. The Interpol would be asked to help track and arrest Co through a Red Notice if he’s still out of the country, Remulla said, adding that the former lawmaker was last spotted in Japan a few days ago.

An immigration order has been issued to prevent the suspects in the Philippines from leaving the country, officials said.

Last week, Marcos said many of at least 37 powerful senators, members of Congress and wealthy construction executives implicated in the corruption scandal would be in jail by Christmas.

A man takes a picture of a Rolls-Royce luxury vehicle that is auctioned after it was seized from a wealthy couple accused in massive flood-control project corruptions at the Bureau of Customs in Manila, Philippines on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Ombudsman Jesus Crispin Remulla, a key prosecutor in charge of fighting government corruption, told The Associated Press that at least five former and incumbent senators were under investigation for allegedly pocketing huge kickbacks in the faulty flood control projects. Among them is former Senate President Chiz Escudero, who has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

Those implicated include lawmakers opposed to and allied with Marcos, including Rep. Martin Romualdez, the president’s cousin and key ally, who has denied any involvement but has stepped down as House of Representatives speaker. Sen. Bong Go, a key ally of former President Rodrigo Duterte, has also come under suspicion but has denied any wrongdoing.

Duterte was arrested in March and detained by the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands for alleged crimes against humanity over his deadly anti-drugs crackdowns.

He is a harsh critic of Marcos and father of the incumbent vice president, Sara Duterte, who has said that the president should also be held accountable and jailed for signing into law the 2025 national budget that carried appropriations for irregular infrastructure projects.

Aides have defended Marcos from allegations linking him to the irregularities, saying that he first raised alarm over them in July in his annual state of the nation address before Congress.

At least 9,855 flood control projects worth more than 545 billion pesos ($9 billion) that were supposed to have been undertaken since Marcos took office in mid-2022 are under investigation. In September, Finance Secretary Ralph Recto told legislators that up to 118.5 billion pesos ($2 billion) for flood control projects may have been lost to corruption since 2023.

The two had called each other “fascist” and “communist,” but when President Donald Trump and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani faced reporters in the Oval Office on Friday, they were just two iconoclastic New York politicians who were all smiles.

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The much-anticipated face-to-face showed how the politicians’ shared love of New York City — and no doubt some political calculus — could paper over months of insults. Both men used a plainspoken, wry approach tailor-made for the age of social media to make their points, and each left the meeting with something he needed.

Here are some takeaways from the appearance.

Republicans lose their punching bag — at least for now

Trump’s party had been queueing up a 2026 campaign warning that the Democratic Party is getting taken over by people like Mamdani, a 34-year-old Muslim and self-described democratic socialist who may not play as well west of the Hudson River. But Trump swatted all that down.

“The better he does, the happier I am,” Trump, a native New Yorker, said of Mamdani.

Trump denied a charge by Elise Stefanik, the Republican candidate for New York governor and one of his political allies, that Mamdani, a longtime critic of Israel, is a “jihadist,” saying, “I just met with a man who’s a very rational person” and adding that they both wanted peace in the Middle East.

Trump said he’d happily live in Mamdani’s New York, countering conservative suggestions that rich New Yorkers should flee the city. He praised Mamdani’s decision to keep New York’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, noting she was a friend of the president’s daughter Ivanka. And he demurred when asked about Mamdani’s democratic socialism, saying instead that the two had many similar ideas. He noted — and Mamdani emphasized repeatedly — that they’d both run for office on affordability.

It was an inconvenient defense of democratic socialism on the very day that House Republicans muscled through a resolution condemning socialism with the express intent of embarassing their rivals over the mayor-elect. Trump even threw in some praise of another Republican punching bag, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, also a democratic socialist.

“Bernie Sanders and I agreed on much more than people thought,” Trump said. He added proudly that Mamdani was wowed by a painting of iconic Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt — yet another GOP bugbear — in the Oval Office.

Trump, struggling amid mounting dissatisfaction in his first year back in office, may see an advantage in lashing his star to that of the latest avatar of affordability.

Of course, both Trump and Mamdani are experts at the 21st century art of political brawling and Trump is notoriously mercurial, so the detente may be short-lived. But it’s notable while it’s here.

Mamdani’s visit lets Trump talk about affordability

For the past few weeks, Trump has struggled to address voters’ concerns about inflation, suggesting that prices are already down and any claims otherwise are a “con job by the Democrats.” But Mamdani stomped his competition in the mayoral election by focusing relentlessly on the cost of rent, groceries and other basic needs — a successful strategy that White House officials noticed as they think about next year’s midterms.

The president leaned into that message in their White House meeting, saying he sees his efforts as complementary. He said that just like Mamdani, he too wants to build more housing. The president didn’t lay out any new policies as he repeated his claims that inflation has dropped under his watch.

“Anything I do is going to be good for New York if I can get prices down,” Trump said. “The new word is affordability. Another word is just groceries. You know, it’s sort of an old-fashioned word, but it’s very accurate. And they’re coming down. They’re coming down.”

The challenge for Trump is whether voters trust that he’s genuinely addressing inflation. The consumer price index has jumped to an annual rate of 3% compared to 2.3% in April, when the president rolled out his “Liberation Day” import taxes.

A confidence boost for Mamdani — with implications for his agenda

Throughout his campaign, Mamdani’s opponents claimed his far-left politics and relative inexperience would make him an easy target for Trump. Friday’s meeting will likely quiet those concerns — at least for now. Trump seemed thoroughly impressed with Mamdani, describing him as “a very rational man” who “wants to see New York be great again.”

“We had some interesting conversations and some of his ideas are the same that I have,” Trump added.

For his part, Mamdani struck a delicate balance: flattering Trump in broad terms, while avoiding sensitive subjects or concessions that could enrage his base. He noted repeatedly that many of his own voters were former Democrats who switched over to Trump in the previous election — a line the president seemed to like.

The backing of the president could help the mayor-elect avoid a National Guard deployment in New York, which Trump previously threatened as a likely outcome of his election victory. Trump also indicated that federal funding cuts could be off the table — a move that would give Mamdani a much better shot at achieving his ambitious agenda, which requires raising revenue for programs like universal free childcare.

“I want him to do a great job and will help him do a great job,” Trump said.

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By MARK SHERMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Texas on Friday asked the Supreme Court for an emergency order to be allowed to use a congressional redistricting plan pushed by President Donald Trump that is favorable to Republicans in the 2026 elections despite a lower court ruling that it likely discriminates on the basis of race.

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The state is calling on the high court to intervene to avoid confusion as congressional primary elections approach in March. The justices have blocked past lower-court rulings in congressional redistricting cases, most recently in Alabama and Louisiana, that came several months before elections.

Texas redrew its congressional map in the summer as part of Trump’s efforts to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in next year’s elections, touching off a nationwide redistricting battle. The new redistricting map was engineered to give Republicans five additional House seats, but a panel of federal judges in El Paso ruled 2-1 Tuesday that the civil rights groups that challenged the map on behalf of Black and Hispanic voters were likely to win their case.

If the ruling holds for now, Texas could be forced to hold elections next year using the map drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature in 2021 based on the 2020 census.

Texas was the first state to meet Trump’s demands in what has become an expanding national battle over redistricting. Republicans drew the state’s new map to give the GOP five additional seats, and Missouri and North Carolina followed with new maps adding an additional Republican seat each. To counter those moves, California voters approved a ballot initiative to give Democrats an additional five seats there.

The redrawn maps are facing court challenges in California, Missouri and North Carolina.

The Supreme Court is separately considering a case from Louisiana which could further limit race-based districts under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It’s not entirely clear how the current round of redistricting would be affected by the outcome in the Louisiana case.