By KEN SWEET, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — President Trump nominated Stuart Levenbach as the next director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, using a legal maneuver to keep his budget director Russell Vought as acting director of the bureau while the Trump administration continues on its plan to shut down the consumer financial protection agency.

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Levenbach is currently an associate director inside the Office of Management and Budget, handling issues related to natural resources, energy, science and water issues. Levenbach’s resume shows significant experience dealing with science and natural resources issues, acting as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during Trump’s first term.

Levenbach’s nomination is not meant to go through to confirmation, an administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters. Under the Vacancies Act, Vought can only act as acting director for 210 days, but now that Trump has nominated someone to the position, that clock has been suspended until the Senate approves or denies Levenbach’s confirmation as director. Vought is Levenbach’s boss.

The CFPB has been nonfunctional much of the year. Many of its employees have been ordered not to work, and the only major work the bureau is doing is unwinding the regulations and rules it put into place during Trump’s first term and during the Biden administration.

While in the acting director role, Vought has signaled that he wishes to dismantle, or vastly diminish, the bureau.

The latest blow to the bureau came earlier this month, when the White House said it does not plan to withdraw any funds from the Federal Reserve, which is where the bureau gets its funding, to fund the bureau past Dec. 31. The White House and the Justice Department used a legal interpretation of the law that created the bureau, the Dodd-Frank Act, that the Fed must be profitable in order to fund the CFPB’s operations. Several judges have rejected this argument when it was brought up by companies, but it’s never been the position of the government until this year that the CFPB requires the Fed to be profitable to have operating funds.

“Donald Trump’s sending the Senate a new nominee to lead the CFPB looks like nothing more than a front for Russ Vought to stay on as Acting Director indefinitely as he tries to illegally close down the agency,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, in a statement.

The bureau was created after the 2008 financial crisis as part of the Dodd-Frank Act, a law passed to overhaul the financial system and require banks to hold more capital to avoid another financial crisis. The CFPB was created to be a independent advocate for consumers to help them avoid bad actors in the financial system.

By ILLIA NOVIKOV

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A large Russian drone and missile barrage on Ukraine’s western city of Ternopil killed at least 25 people, including three children, authorities said Wednesday, as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy went to Turkey in search of diplomatic support for his fight against Russia’s invasion.

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The nighttime attack hit two nine-story apartment blocks in Ternopil, located around 120 miles from the Polish border, according to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko. At least 73 people, including 15 children, were injured, emergency services said.

At least 19 among those killed were burned alive, including three children aged 5, 7 and 16, Klymenko said. Two dozen people are still unaccounted for, he said on national television, and rescuers expect to work at least two more days to complete the search of rubble.

Russia fired 476 strike and decoy drones, as well as 48 missiles of various types, at Ukrainian targets overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. The bombardment included 47 cruise missiles, with air defenses intercepting all but six of them, the air force said. Western-supplied F-16 and Mirage-2000 jets intercepted at least 10 cruise missiles, it said.

“Every brazen attack against ordinary life indicates that the pressure on Russia (to stop the war) is insufficient,” Zelenskyy wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

Zelenskyy meets with Turkish president

Zelenskyy met with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara later Wednesday as part of his efforts to diplomatically isolate Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring more international pressure to bear on him. Putin has so far resisted making compromises, despite U.S. pressure.

In brief statements to the press, Zelenskyy and Erdogan expressed their commitment to finding a peaceful settlement. Turkey is a key broker in the Black Sea region, preserving relations with both Ukraine and Russia.

“We count on the strength of Turkish diplomacy, on (how) it’s understood in Moscow,” Zelensky said.

Zelenskyy said before the talks that he had seen “some positions and signals from the United States” about the war. He didn’t elaborate but tough new American sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, devised to push Putin to the negotiating table, are due to take effect on Friday.

A senior Turkish official initially said that U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff would join Zelenskyy in Turkey, but backtracked later in the day and said Witkoff wouldn’t be coming. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity Tuesday because he wasn’t allowed to speak publicly about the arrangements.

An Army official confirmed Wednesday that U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll is in Ukraine for negotiations. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss sensitive travel plans, said that Driscoll is accompanied by Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George and Gen. Chris Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa.

Romania and Poland scramble fighter jets

Ternopil sits in a part of relatively peaceful western Ukraine, where many people from the east and south moved to as they fled danger along the front line.

Almost 50 people were injured in Russian strikes on three other Ukrainian regions.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said it attacked Ukrainian energy facilities and military-industrial targets, including long-range drone depots, in retaliation against strikes by Kyiv on Russian territory.

Two Eurofighter Typhoon jets and two F-16s were scrambled in Romania when a drone entered the NATO member’s airspace during the Russian attacks, Romania’s Ministry of National Defense said.

The Polish military said that Polish and allied aircraft were deployed in the middle of the night as a preventive measure. Poland’s Rzeszów and Lublin airports were closed temporarily to prioritize military aviation, the Polish Air Navigation Services Agency said.

In northeastern Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Russian drones injured 46 people, including two girls, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, wrote on Telegram. Drones hit several city districts, at least 16 residential buildings, an ambulance station, school and other civilian infrastructure, he said.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Ukraine fired four American-supplied ATACMS missiles at the Russian city of Voronezh on Tuesday. All four were shot down, the ministry said, but the debris damaged a private house, an orphanage and a gerontology center. There were no casualties, the ministry said.

Ukraine’s General Staff on Tuesday reported firing ATACMS missiles at Russia without offering details.

Associated Press writer Stephen McGrath in Leamington Spa, England, contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

In St. Paul, two parks-based nonprofits are poised for a merger.

The St. Paul Parks Conservancy, which launched in 2008 to promote the city’s park system, will effectively absorb the Great River Passage Conservancy, which was established in 2018 to advocate for better public access to the Mississippi River. On Jan. 1, the two boards will merge while retaining key staff, including Parks Conservancy executive director Michael-jon Pease and Great River Passage interim executive director Jodi Massey, though their titles will change.

Massey noted that about half of the city’s parklands sit along the river itself. Members of both organizations “felt like there was just a lot of overlap in the work that we were doing,” she said, and “confusion in the marketplace about who you come to if you have concerns about parks. (That led to) a really wonderful conversation with our board members and it felt like a really good fit.”

The new organization will retain the name St. Paul Parks Conservancy and be led by Pease, its president and chief parks champion. Shari Blindt will serve as director of Parks and Play, and Massey will remain director of Great River Passage.

Over the past five years, the Parks Conservancy has raised $5 million toward citywide parks initiatives, from the revitalization of Rice Park and the opening of downtown Pedro Park to a field project at the new North End Community Center. An Equal Play Initiative has aimed to add sport courts and replace outdated equipment in neighborhood playgrounds. There’s even a conservancy-sponsored coloring book about the city’s parks.

The Great River Passage Conservancy has focused on more long-term projects, advocating for a Mississippi River Learning Center near Watergate Marina, a 1.5-mile downtown river balcony, and an East Side River District spanning 1,000 acres.

The Great River Passage Conservancy grew out of a Mississippi River master plan adopted by the city in 2013.

“That’s a long time ago,” Massey said, though “the desire to be connected to the river hasn’t changed.”

The merged organization will operate on a budget of $1.4 million for 2026 and maintain the equivalent of three and a half staffers. Pease said the two organizations contracted strategic coaching consultants about the mechanics of a merger, and “they’d never had one that was this straightforward and this simple.”

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By HUSSEIN MALLA, BASSEM MROUE and WAFAA SHURAFA, Associated Press

SIDON, Lebanon (AP) — The Israeli military carried out multiple barrages of airstrikes in southern Lebanon Wednesday on what it said were Hezbollah weapons storage facilities after a drone strike earlier in the day killed one person and wounded several others, including students on a bus.

The new wave of strikes came as tensions between Israel and fighters are escalating. An airstrike Tuesday night killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, the deadliest of Israeli attacks since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 21 Palestinians.

Israel claims Hezbollah is regrouping

The Israeli military warned Wednesday afternoon it would strike targets in several villages in southern Lebanon, describing them as Hezbollah infrastructure, and called on people to move away from the locations. More than an hour later, the strikes began in the villages of Shehour and Deir Kifa. There was no immediate word on casualties.

Israel’s military said Hezbollah was working to reestablish itself and rebuild its capacity in southern Lebanon, without providing evidence. It said the weapons’ facilities targeted were embedded among civilians and violated understandings between Israel and Lebanon. Israel agreed to a ceasefire and withdraw from southern Lebanon last year and Lebanon agreed to quell Hezbollah activity in the area.

Earlier Wednesday, an Israeli airstrike on a car in the southern Lebanese village of Tiri killed one person and wounded 11, including students aboard a nearby bus, the Lebanese Health Ministry and state media said.

State-run National News Agency said the school bus happened to be passing near the car that was hit. The bus driver and several students were wounded, the report said.

The Israeli military later said it killed a Hezbollah operative in the drone strike.

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In Ein el-Hilweh refugee camp, just outside the port city of Sidon, life appeared normal Wednesday, but Lebanese authorities prevented journalists from entering. At the scene of the strike, paramedics searched for human remains around a wall that was stained with blood. Several cars were burnt and broken glass and debris littered the ground.

The Israeli military said it struck a Hamas training compound that was being used to prepare an attack against Israel and its army. It added that the Israeli army would continue to act against Hamas wherever it operates.

Hamas condemned the attack and denied in a statement that the sports playground that was hit was its training compound.

Palestinian factions in Lebanon’s 12 refugee camps earlier this year began handing over their weapons to the Lebanese state. The government has said that it will also work on disarming Hezbollah, but Hezbollah has rejected it as long as Israel continues to occupy several hills along the border and carries out almost daily strikes.

The U.S. has recently increased pressure on Lebanon to work harder on disarming Hezbollah and canceled a planned trip to Washington this week by Lebanese army commander Gen. Rudolph Haikal.

A senior Lebanese army officer told The Associated Press that U.S. officials were angered by an army statement on Sunday that blamed Israel for destabilizing Lebanon and blocking the Lebanese military deployment in south Lebanon. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war began Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel, after Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas. Israel launched a widespread bombardment of Lebanon two months ago that severely weakened Hezbollah, followed by a ground invasion.

That war, the most recent of several conflicts involving Hezbollah over the past four decades, killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon, including hundreds of civilians, and caused an estimated $11 billion worth of destruction, according to the World Bank. In Israel, 127 people died, including 80 soldiers.

Israeli strikes kill 21 in Gaza

Hospitals in Gaza said at least 21 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes Wednesday on both sides of the yellow line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits the enclave in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.

Officials at al-Ahli, Shifa, Nasser and Kuwaiti hospitals reported they received the bodies of those killed from Gaza City, Khan Younis and the Muwasi area, the southern Gaza displacement camp. An Israeli strike also killed one person in Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood outside the safe zone where Israeli forces remain deployed.

The Israeli military said its strikes responded to fighters who had opened fire on Israeli forces in Khan Younis earlier in the day. It said no soldiers were killed.

Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect on Oct. 10, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, though they have not stopped entirely. The ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, has reported 280 deaths since the truce began, an average of more than seven per day. Each side has accused the other of violating its terms, which include increasing the flow of aid into Gaza and returning hostages — dead or alive — to Israel.

The deaths are among the more than 69,000 Palestinians killed since Israel launched its sweeping offensive more than two years ago in response to Hamas-led fighters abducting 251 people and killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that triggered the war. Gaza’s Health Ministry, part of the Hamas-run government and staffed by medical professionals, maintains detailed records seen as a reliable estimate by the U.N. and many independent experts.

Mroue reported from Beirut. Shurafa reported from Deir al-Balah, Gaza Strip. Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel contributed to this report.