By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A federal safety agency investigating an August blast at a U.S. Steel plant near Pittsburgh that left two workers dead said it found a series of incomplete, outdated or inadequate procedures and practices that “exposed” employees to the explosion, which happened as workers were flushing a gas valve.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company a total of $118,214 and issued 10 citations.

The blast also injured 11 others, including contractors, according to the Chemical Safety Board, a federal agency investigating the explosion.

U.S. Steel’s Clairton Coke Works in Clairton, Pa., on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Quinn Glabicki/Pittsburgh’s Public Source via AP)

Before the August blast, Clairton Coke Works had a history of accidents and explosions, and some current and former workers there say poor management and underinvestment have exacerbated air pollution and undermined workplace safety, Pittsburgh’s Public Source and The Associated Press have found.

U.S. Steel has said the explosion happened when workers were flushing a gas valve in preparation for routine planned maintenance at the sprawling riverside industrial facility, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere.

The valve ruptured and released combustible coke oven gas, OSHA said.

In the 16-page report dated Monday, OSHA said that U.S. Steel’s written procedures, practices and training to safely maintain equipment and flush the gas valve were incomplete, outdated or inadequate.

Those shortcomings, it said, “exposed” employees to an explosion or explosion hazard when the valve ruptured. Another citation said the U.S. Steel didn’t provide required records within a specified time frame after the explosion.

U.S. Steel, in a statement, said it was reviewing the OSHA report. It did not say whether it agreed or disagreed with the findings, or whether it would dispute them.

“We will continue our dialogue with OSHA and other agencies involved,” it said.

The company has said that safety is a core value and shapes its culture.

OSHA gave U.S. Steel deadlines to fix the perceived shortcomings. The agency lets a company contest the findings in an informal conference.

In a statement, the United Steelworkers’ district director, Bernie Hall, said the union was “grateful to OSHA for thoroughly investigating the tragic incident that cost two lives and impacted many others.”

“We are dedicated to working with management to implement OSHA’s recommendations — especially those that incorporate process safety management — and continue our mission to make our workplaces safer,” Hall said.

Related Articles

Conagra ordered to pay $25 million in lawsuit alleging Pam cooking spray caused lung disease

State Department orders nonprofit libraries to stop processing passport applications

Brazilian au pair gets 10-year sentence for scheme to kill lover’s wife and another man

Sex workers at Nevada brothel fight for the first-ever unionization

Wendy’s closes US restaurants and focuses on value to turn around falling sales

The Chemical Safety Board has said it continues to investigate.

Kurt Barshick, U.S. Steel’s vice president of the Mon Valley Works, said during an October presentation to area residents that workers trapped “3,000 PSI water inside of a valve that’s rated for 50 PSI.” The valve cracked and gas filled the area, Barshick added.

The blast came on top of a string of other accidents at the Clairton plant over time, as well as a long history of legal battles between U.S. Steel and Allegheny County regulators, who regularly accuse the company of flouting environmental rules at the facility.

Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

President Donald Trump’s administration cannot force states to hand over detailed information on people who have applied for or received aid from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, a judge said in a tentative ruling Friday.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney last year blocked the U.S. Department of Agriculture from requiring states to provide the data, including on the immigration status of people who receive benefits and applicants, after 22 states sued over the policy.

The department kept pushing for it, telling states in December that it would stop paying state administrative costs for the program if they didn’t comply. It also issued new protocols for securing the data, which the states rejected.

FILE – The U.S. Department of Agriculture building is seen in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

The federal government said the previous ruling did not apply to its latest demands.

Chesney said during a hearing Friday that she intends to issue an order that says the federal government cannot act on its letters to the states from last year.

The Trump administration contends that the information is needed to stamp out fraud and waste, which it asserts is a major problem in the nation’s biggest food aid program.

The states argued that the Agriculture Department could share the data with immigration enforcement authorities, which they say would be illegal.

Related Articles

Gifts and soup from ‘Uncle Jeffrey’: The Epstein ties that ended Kathy Ruemmler’s run at Goldman

Trump administration urges nations to call for the withdrawal of a UN climate proposal

US lawmakers limp to global security summit trailed by political crises at home

A US shipment of medicine to Venezuela signals a new era of cooperation

Virginia redistricting election will go forward while court considers appeal

SNAP is a major part of the U.S. social safety net, helping about 42 million Americans, about 1 in 8, buy groceries. People in the country illegally are not eligible for benefits.

Most states, including one that sued — Nevada — have complied with the federal government’s request. Kansas has not complied, but also has not joined the lawsuit. All the states involved in the lawsuit, besides Nevada, have Democratic governors.

The administration has not released detailed information on the data submitted by states, but says it shows higher levels of fraud than previously believed.

The battle over SNAP records is one of several areas where the administration has sought to cut off some federal funding to states led by Democrats, often in the name of preventing fraud.

By KEN SWEET

NEW YORK (AP) — Goldman Sachs general counsel Kathy Ruemmler has had a storied legal career. As a federal prosecutor, she helped successfully prosecute Enron executives including Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. She was part of President Barack Obama’s administration, working in various roles for much of his two terms in office, including as White House Counsel.

Related Articles

A judge says she’ll rule that the US still cannot force states to provide data on SNAP recipients

Trump administration urges nations to call for the withdrawal of a UN climate proposal

US lawmakers limp to global security summit trailed by political crises at home

A US shipment of medicine to Venezuela signals a new era of cooperation

Virginia redistricting election will go forward while court considers appeal

She was even briefly considered by President Obama as a candidate for attorney general.

On Thursday, Ruemmler, 54, announced that she plans to resign from the top legal post at Goldman after a trove of emails and correspondence between her and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein showed the two individuals were especially close, years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on sex crimes charges, when he became a registered sex offender.

Ruemmler previously downplayed her relationship with Epstein. She called him a “monster” and said she regretted ever knowing him. Ruemmler has repeatedly described their relationship as professional, citing her job as a private defense attorney before she ever joined Goldman Sachs.

But documents released in recent weeks and reviewed by The Associated Press depict a deeper relationship than had previously been characterized by Ruemmler and Goldman Sachs. These included intimate email exchanges, social plans and gifts that went beyond formal legal work.

Roughly 8,400 documents involved Ruemmler or referenced her. Some correspondence shows that Ruemmler was aware of the extent of the allegations that Epstein had faced involving underage girls in Florida. In some instances, she advised Epstein on how he might go about trying to repair his image and defend himself publicly against new claims of misconduct.

The gifts Epstein gave to Ruemmler have been documented in news reports: the spa treatments, the handbags from Hermes, an Apple Watch, a Fendi coat, among many others. But some of the interactions between Epstein and Ruemmler described throughout their correspondence indicates that Epstein and Ruemmler did not simply have a lawyer-client transactional relationship, as Ruemmler previously attested to.

“It makes him happy to see you happy,” Epstein’s assistant wrote to Ruemmler in 2016, after Epstein prepaid for a spa treatment for her.

In October 2018, Epstein directed one of his assistants to send flowers and chicken soup to Ruemmler because she has “not been feeling well.” It would not be the first time that Epstein would send her a small token of appreciation when she was sick. They talked about dating issues, made jokes about both the wealthy and everyday people, and shared laments about their careers and dating lives.

They would message each other about mundane things like their mutual distaste for seeing babies in business class on flights and would repeatedly plan to have dinner or drinks in various places. Epstein even had Ruemmler as a backup executor of his will at one point.

Setting aside the immense wealth and privilege and Epstein’s legal troubles, many of the emails between the two would look no different from the banter that many Americans would share to in their own text messages, emails or group chats.

“Well, I adore him. It’s like having another older brother!” she wrote in an email in 2015.

During her time in private practice after she left the White House in 2014, Ruemmler received several expensive gifts from Epstein, including luxury handbags and a fur coat. The gifts were given after Epstein had already been convicted of sex crimes in 2008 and was registered as a sex offender. Ruemmler was also involved in Epstein’s legal defense efforts after he was arrested a second time for sex crimes in 2019 and later killed himself in a Manhattan jail.

“So lovely and thoughtful! Thank you to Uncle Jeffrey!!!” Ruemmler wrote to Epstein in 2018.

She later joined Goldman Sachs in 2020 and became the investment bank’s top lawyer in 2021.

The firm’s leadership backed her publicly amid the revelations. But the embarrassing emails raised questions about Ruemmler’s judgment. Historically, Wall Street frowns on gift-giving between clients and bankers or Wall Street lawyers, particularly high-end gifts that could pose a conflict of interest. Goldman Sachs requires its employees to get pre-approval before receiving gifts from or giving them to clients, according to the company’s code of conduct, partly in order to not run afoul of anti-bribery laws.

A document that was included in the U.S. Department of Justice release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, photographed Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026, shows a Metropolitan Correctional Center report with photos of Epstein after a suicide attempt on July 23, 2019. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

Bloomberg News, The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets reported that Goldman’s partners, who are the firm’s most senior and well-regarded members going back to when the investment bank was privately held, had begun to question why the firm was holding Ruemmler in such high regard when other lawyers were just as qualified to hold the top legal job.

In her statement Thursday, Ruemmler said: “Since I joined Goldman Sachs six years ago, it has been my privilege to help oversee the firm’s legal, reputational, and regulatory matters; to enhance our strong risk management processes; and to ensure that we live by our core value of integrity in everything we do. My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’ interests first.”

Goldman CEO David Solomon he respected Ruemmler’s decision to resign. The firm isn’t rushing Ruemmler out the door, saying in a statement that she would wind down her work at the bank “to ensure a smooth transition,” before her last day on June 30.

The AP is reviewing the documents released by the Justice Department in collaboration with journalists from CBS, NBC, MS NOW and CNBC. Journalists from each newsroom are working together to examine the files and share information about what is in them. Each outlet is responsible for its own independent news coverage of the documents.

By DAVE SKRETTA

MILAN (AP) — American figure skating sensation Ilia Malinin fell twice in a disastrous free skate that sent him tumbling all the way off the podium at the Milan Cortina Olympics on Friday night, allowing Mikhail Shaidorov of Kazakhstan to claim a stunning gold medal.

Related Articles

Team Peterson makes history with first women’s Olympic curling win over Canada

Bravo! Act I of the Winter Olympics’ visit to Italy has been filled with drama, catharsis and tears

Eagan’s Peterson sisters among many Olympians who brought kids to Italy

A fugitive on the run for years is arrested when he turns up at the Olympics to watch hockey

Norwegian biathlete wins another Olympic bronze medal, 3 days after confessing his infidelity

The self-styled “Quad God,” who led by a comfortable margin after the short program, merely had to deliver a mediocre performance to add individual gold to his team gold medal. Instead, the 21-year-old Malinin was trying to fight back tears after one of the worst nights of his career, one that left a star-packed crowd inside Milano Ice Arena sitting in stunned silence.

“I blew it,” Malinin said. “That’s honestly the first thing that came to my mind.”

Shaidorov finished with a career-best 291.58 points to give his nation its first gold medal of the Winter Games, while Yuma Kagiyama earned his second consecutive Olympic silver medal and Japanese teammate Shun Sato took bronze.

Then there was Malinin, who fell all the way to eighth place. He finished with 264.49 points, ending a two-plus year unbeaten streak that covered 14 full competitions, including two consecutive world championships that he won with ease.

“Honestly, yeah, I was not expecting that,” he said. “I felt going into this competition I was so ready. I just felt ready going on that ice. I think maybe that might have been the reason, is I was too confident it was going to go well.”

Much of Malinin’s journey in Milan had felt a little bit off.

He was beaten by Kagiyama in the short program of the team event, later acknowledging that the pressure of competing in the Olympics had started to get to him. And he still wasn’t quite his dominant self despite a head-to-head win against Sato in the team free skate, which clinched the second consecutive gold medal for the Americans in the event.

But by the time of his individual short program Tuesday night, Malinin’s fearless swagger and unrivaled spunk was back. He took a five-point lead over Kagiyama and Adam Siao Him Fa of France that seemed insurmountable going into Friday night.

Malinin decided to practice early in the day at U.S. Figure Skating’s alternate training base in Bergamo, just outside of Milan, allowing him to escape the Olympic bubble and avoid having to sit in the arena all night. And he was the picture of calm throughout his warmup, never once falling in all of his practice jumps while wearing his glittering black and gold ensemble.

Then came a performance that might well haunt Malinin for the rest of his career.

He opened with a quad flip, one of a record-tying seven in his planned program, then appeared to be going after the quad axel only he has ever landed in competition, but had to bail out. He recovered to land a quad lutz — and then the problems really began.

Malinin only doubled a planned quad loop, throwing his timing off. He fell on a quad lutz, preventing him from doing the second half of the quad lutz-triple toe loop combination that would have earned him big points. And in his final jumping pass, which was supposed to be a high-scoring quad salchow-triple axel, Malinin only could muster a double salchow — and he fell on that.

By the time the music stopped, Malinin was left trying to mask the sorrow for a crowd that included Nathan Chen, the 2022 Olympic champion; seven-time Olympic gold medal gymnast Simone Biles; actor Jeff Goldblum and his wife, Emilie.

Shaidorov was just as shocked as everyone as the realization hit that he had won the gold medal.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics