By ELAINE KURTENBACH, Associated Press Business Writer

BANGKOK (AP) — Hooters, the U.S.-based restaurant chain known for chicken wings and “Hooters Girls” skimpy wait-staff outfits, has filed for bankruptcy protection.

HOA Restaurant Group filed the motion for Chapter 11 protection Monday in the North Texas Bankruptcy Court in Dallas.

The company ran into financial woes as its debts mounted, but it says it intends to stay open and resolve its troubles within months. A group of the company’s original founders that own almost a third of Hooters’ U.S. locations, including about half of its biggest volume restaurants, plans to buy and operate more of the outlets, Hooters said in a news release.

LAS VEGAS – FEBRUARY 02: Bartender Bernie De Guzman serves drinks at the Hooters Restaurant during the grand opening of the Hooters Casino Hotel February 2, 2006 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The property, on the site of what used to be the Hotel San Remo, features 696 rooms, several bars and restaurants, including Dan Marino’s Fine Food & Spirits, and 250 Hooters Girls working as cocktail servers, bartenders and dealers in the 30,000 square-foot casino and the Hooters Restaurant. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“Our renowned Hooters restaurants are here to stay and we are taking action to strengthen our business to better serve our valued customers over the long term,” the company said in a notice on its website.

Hooters, based in Atlanta, Georgia, was founded in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983. Trouble had been brewing for a while.

Hooters had sponsored the No. 9 NASCAR car driven by Chase Elliott since 2017, but last year, Hendrick Motorsports ended its ties to the longtime sponsor because it was not meeting its financial commitments.

Its business strategy has faced challenges over the years, including lawsuits over its hiring of only “Hooters Girls” to serve customers.

Last year it agreed to pay $250,000 and provide other relief to settle a race and color discrimination lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against a Hooters outlet in Greensboro, North Carolina.

In 2022, the restaurant refuted claims it was shutting down and rebranding due to changing customer tastes.

In 2019, the Hooters hotel-casino off the Las Vegas Strip was sold to an Indian hotel company and rebranded as the OYO Hotel and Casino.

In 2017, the company tried opening a restaurant that didn’t feature wait-staff in tight tops, as a test of a different approach to its original concept.

By HALLIE GOLDEN, Associated Press

From France to Iceland to the United States, April Fools’ Day will be celebrated on Tuesday with practical jokes and elaborate hoaxes, so make sure to triple check viral posts and don’t leave your back open to any stray sticky notes.

The jokesters’ custom has been around for hundreds of years, although its exact birth is difficult to pinpoint. These days, depending on your location, it could be marked with a fish secretly pinned to someone’s back or a whoopee cushion or even news reports of flying penguins (yes, that actually happened).

In the U.S., the pranks are typically followed by screams of “April Fools!” to make sure all are aware that they were the unsuspecting recipient of a practical joke.

Here are some thing to know about April Fools’ Day and its history:

Where did April Fools’ Day come from?

There are plenty of theories about where this day of pranks and hoaxes came from. It’s not clear exactly which one might be true. But what is clear is that April Fools’ Day has roots stretching back hundreds of years.

One idea is that it dates back to France in 1564, when King Charles IX moved the New Year celebration from its weeklong observance beginning March 25 to a celebration on Jan. 1, according to the Library of Congress. Those who forgot or were never told about the change were mocked. Although the library notes that the true history of the New Year is more complicated, as different parts of the country observed it on different days.

A similar theory ties April Fools’ Day to the 1582 change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, according to the library. But it explains that this type of origin story has been used to explain several holidays and may be more of a “migratory legend.”

And then there’s the theory that it could be connected to the March 21 vernal equinox, which is known as a day when people are tricked by unexpected weather changes, according to Encyclopedia Britannica.

Whatever its origin, the first time there was clear documented reference to the day was in 1561 when the Flemish writer Eduard De Dene wrote in his poem about a nobleman sending his servant on pointless tasks, according to the Library of Congress. The servant soon realizes that he has been “sent on ‘fool’s errands’ because it’s April 1,” the library states.

What are some of the most famous April Fools’ Day pranks?

In 2021, then-first lady Jill Biden pretended to be a flight attendant on an airplane traveling from California to Washington. She wore a “Jasmine” nametag and passed out Dove ice cream bars while wearing a black mask, black pantsuit and wig. A few minutes later, “Jasmine” reemerged without the wig — revealing herself to be Jill Biden, laughing and proclaiming, “April Fools!”

Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin became known for announcing outlandish ideas every April Fools’ Day soon after starting their company more than a quarter century ago. One year, Google posted a job opening for a Copernicus research center on the moon. Another year, the company said it planned to roll out a “scratch and sniff” feature on its search engine.

In 1992, NPR ‘s “Talk of the Nation” program announced that former-President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974, would be running for president, according to the Museum of Hoaxes. A comedian had impersonated Nixon to say, “I never did anything wrong, and I won’t do it again.”

Outside of the U.S., one of the most notable pranks involved the BBC World Service in 1980 declaring that Big Ben would become a digital clock and renamed Digital Dave, according to the UK Parliament.

How is April Fools’ Day celebrated around the world?

From Scotland to Iceland to the U.S., the day is honored in a wide array of ways.

In France, the day is known as poisson d’avril, or “April Fish,” and has long had a fish-themed pranking tradition. In modern times, it’s become more of a day for children to relish in attaching paper fish to their friends’ backs, Atlas Obscura says.

In Scotland, April Fools’ has a history of being a two-day event. April 1 is known as “Gowkie Day” or “Hunt the Gowk,” explained Encyclopedia Britannica. Gowk is a term used to describe a fool. On April 2, the celebration may become more physical, with children attaching “kick me” signs to people’s backs.

The day is also celebrated in Iceland, with the aim being to get people to “hlaupa apríl,” or “make an April run.” In other words, to trick someone in a way that makes them travel to a different location. News agencies have also been known to participate in pranking people. In 2014, for example, Iceland Review ran a story with the headline, “Google Signs Deal with Iceland,” saying the fake news was part of “a long-standing tradition of the Icelandic media.”

By MIKE CATALINI, Associated Press

New Jersey Democratic Sen. Cory Booker carried an all-night speech in protest of President Donald Trump’s agenda into Tuesday morning.

Booker took to the Senate floor on Monday evening saying he would remain there as long as he was “physically able.” He was still on the floor more than 12 hours later.

“These are not normal times in our nation,” Booker said at the start of his speech. “And they should not be treated as such in the United States Senate. The threats to the American people and American democracy are grave and urgent, and we all must do more to stand against them.”

Booker railed against cuts to Social Security offices and spoke to concerns that broader cuts to the social safety net could be coming, though Republican lawmakers say the program won’t be touched.

Donning and doffing reading glasses, Booker read what he said were letters from constituents. One writer was alarmed by the Republican president’s talk of annexing Greenland and Canada and a “looming constitutional crisis.”

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“I hear you. I see you, and I’m standing here in part because of letters like yours,” Booker said.

On Tuesday morning, Booker got some help from Democratic colleagues, who gave him a break from speaking to ask him a question. Booker said he would yield for questions but would not give up the Senate floor.

According to the Senate’s website, the record for the longest individual speech belongs to Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who filibustered for 24 hours and 18 minutes against the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Booker, 55, is serving his second term in the Senate. He was an unsuccessful presidential candidate in 2020, when he launched his campaign from the steps of his home in Newark. He dropped out after struggling to gain a foothold in a packed field, falling short of a threshold to meet in a January 2020 debate.

Before taking to the national political stage, Booker was considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, serving as mayor of Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, from 2006 to 2013. A Rhodes Scholar and graduate of Stanford University and Yale Law, he started his career as an attorney for nonprofits. He served on the Newark City Council before becoming the city’s mayor.

He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2013 during a special election held after the death of incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg. He won his first full-term in 2014 and then reelection in 2020.

Booker was at the helm in Newark when Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced a $100 million donation to improve the city’s schools in 2010. Roughly a decade ago, Zuckerberg told the AP a major lesson from Newark being applied in later donations was to make sure the desires of the public are considered.

Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J.

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — There are just two Planned Parenthood clinics in South Carolina, but every year they take hundreds of low-income patients who need things like contraception, cancer screenings and pregnancy testing.

The organization has long been at the center of the debate over abortion, but its clinics across the U.S. also provide a range of other services. In South Carolina, Medicaid patients often seek out Planned Parenthood because they often have difficulty finding a doctor who accepts the publicly funded insurance.

A case coming before the Supreme Court from South Carolina on Wednesday could upend that option. That’s because the state’s Republican governor, Henry McMaster, is pushing to block any public health care dollars from going to Planned Parenthood.

Federal law already prohibits Medicaid money from going to pay for abortions, with very limited exceptions, and South Carolina now bans almost all abortions around six weeks after conception.

“This case is not about abortion. This case is about general health care,” said Katherine Farris, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood South Atlantic.

Still, Republican leaders in conservative-led states have long said that no public health care dollars should go to an organization that provides abortions, and states should instead be able to direct that money as they choose. A few states already have cut Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood and more could follow if South Carolina prevails.

“The people in this state do not want their tax money to go to that organization,” McMaster said.

The Trump administration is joining South Carolina for the arguments on Wednesday, which are playing out against the backdrop of a wider push by abortion opponents to defund Planned Parenthood.

Health care advocates, meanwhile, say the effects of the case transcend abortion. The legal question at its center is whether Medicaid patients can sue over their legal right to choose their own qualified provider.

The American Cancer Society and other public-health groups say in court papers that lawsuits are the only real way that patients can assert those rights. Losing the ability to go to court would hurt their access to care, especially in rural areas.

“If no one is able to enforce the statute or no one’s willing to enforce the statute at the federal level, then it’s a right on paper only,” said Julian Polaris, a lawyer who regularly advises state Medicaid programs and health care providers. States could also move to restrict access to treatments like gender-affirming care if the court sides with South Carolina, he said.

One in five American women of reproductive age is now enrolled in the Medicaid program, said Heidi Allen, an associate professor at Columbia University. This means that finding providers who can offer quality family planning services — a requirement for Medicaid — is crucial for meeting the needs of those patients.

“It’s concerning that states would eliminate a site of care for politically motivated reasons, “Allen said.

The case stretches back to 2018, before the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion, when McMaster first moved to cut Planned Parenthood funding in a fulfillment of a campaign promise. He signed an executive order removing Planned Parenthood from a list of providers for things like birth control, and sexually transmitted disease testing.

“There are plenty of good organizations that provide maternal health advice, counseling and care and we need more of those,” McMaster said last week.

His order was blocked in court, but since then judges have ruled in favor of similar moves in Texas and Missouri, said John Bursch, an attorney for the conservative group Alliance Defending Freedom.

“At the highest level, this case is about whether states have the flexibility to direct Medicaid moneys to best benefit low-income women and families,” he said.

He acknowledged that a win for South Carolina could curtail other Medicaid lawsuits, but suggested that could be good for the program overall because it would mean less money going to legal fees. There is also an administrative appeals process available, he said.

“No one is losing their access to health care clinics,” Busch said. If the state is allowed to cut off Planned Parenthood, Medicaid patients could go to one of 200 other publicly funded health care clinics in the state, he said.

In South Carolina, $90,000 in Medicaid funding goes to Planned Parenthood every year — a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the state’s total Medicaid spending.

Most counties in the state have already been federally designated as having too few primary care providers, said Amalia Luxardo, CEO of the South Carolina-based Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network. Fourteen of the state’s counties have no practicing OB-GYN physicians and five other counties have just one, she said, meaning many women already have to travel longer distances to find the right provider.

Planned Parenthood has flexible hours and can get appointments scheduled quickly, factors that bring in patients from around the state, she said.

“We are already in a health care crisis,” said Luxardo, whose group has filed court briefs supporting Planned Parenthood. “And when decisions like these negatively impact our constituents, the crisis is going to only increase.”

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, S.C., and Kimberlee Kruesi in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.