By JON GAMBRELL

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Two Iranian-backed militias in the Mideast are signaling their willingness to launch new attacks, likely trying to back Iran, as officials acknowledged the arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier to the region Monday. President Donald Trump ordered the carriers to move to the Middle East as he threatened military action over its crackdown on nationwide protests.

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Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels on Monday hinted they were ready to resume attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. That came just after Iraq’s Kataib Hezbollah paramilitary group, long supported by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, issued a direct threat late Sunday toward any attack targeting Iran, warning a “total war” in the region would be a result.

The statements came as the entire region is mired in a tense waiting game to see if Trump will strike. Kataib Hezbollah sat out from Israel’s 12-day war on Iran in June that saw the United States bomb Iranian nuclear sites, while the Houthis fired missiles at Israel during that period.

The hesitancy to get fully involved shows the disarray still affecting Iran’s self-described “Axis of Resistance” after facing attacks from Israel during its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

US carrier arrives in region

The threats came as the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other guided missile destroyers in its strike group arrived in the region to “promote regional security and stability,” U.S. Central Command said Monday on social media.

Trump has said the ships are being moved “just in case” he decides to take action against Iran. He has already laid out two red lines for attack — the killing of peaceful protesters and Tehran conducting mass executions of those it has arrested in a massive crackdown over the demonstrations.

A senior Iranian military official who spoke anonymously on Iran’s state TV dismissed the American threat as “an exaggeration” and noted that Iran had increased its military presence in response. The official added that the Lincoln’s presence was not a deterrent but an accessible target.

Threats from Iraq, Yemen, while Hezbollah stays mum

Iran projected its power across the Mideast through the “Axis of Resistance,” a network of proxy militant groups in Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, and other places. It was also seen as a defensive buffer, intended to keep conflict away from Iranian borders. But it has collapsed after Israel targeted Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon and others during the Gaza war. Meanwhile, rebels in 2024 overthrew Syria’s Bashar Assad after a yearslong, bloody war in which Iran backed his rule.

The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one of Iran’s staunchest allies, refused to say how it planned to react in the case of a possible attack.

“During the past two months, several parties have asked me a clear and frank question: If Israel and America go to war against Iran, will Hezbollah intervene or not?” Hezbollah leader Sheikh Naim Kassem said via a video address to thousands of supporters gathered in Beirut’s southern suburbs for a rally backing Iran.

He said the group is preparing for “possible aggression and is determined to defend” against it. But as to how it would act, he said, “these details will be determined by the battle and we will determine them according to the interests that are present.”

Iraqi and Yemeni militant groups were much more forthright in their threats, which were interpreted as support for Iran. A short video by the Houthis included images of a ship on fire, with the caption: “Soon.” It later aired footage Monday from its January 2024 attack in the Gulf of Aden on the Marshall Islands-flagged tanker Marlin Luanda, one of over 100 ships attacked as part of a campaign the Houthis said pressured Israel over its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthis halted their fire after a ceasefire in Gaza, though they’ve repeatedly warned they could resume fire if needed.

Meanwhile, Ahmad “Abu Hussein” al-Hamidawi of Kataib Hezbollah issued his own threat in a statement.

“We affirm to the enemies that the war on the (Islamic) Republic will not be a picnic; rather, you will taste the bitterest forms of death, and nothing will remain of you in our region,” he said.

The United Arab Emirates announced on Monday that it would not allow its airspace, territory or territorial waters to be used for military action against Iran. The UAE said it would stress dialogue and diplomatic resolutions.

Iran warns America not to attack

Iranian Defense Ministry spokesperson Gen. Reza Talaei-Nik renewed warnings Monday to both Israel and the U.S., saying any attack would “be met with a response that is more painful and more decisive than in the past.” Iranian state TV quoted Talaei-Nik as saying that threats required Iran “to maintain full and comprehensive preparedness.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei separately told journalists: “Regional countries fully know that any security breach in the region will not affect Iran only. The lack of security is contagious.”

Iran over the weekend unveiled a new banner in Tehran’s Enghelab Square threatening the Lincoln, showing an aircraft carrier strewn with bodies and streaked with blood with the warning: “If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.” However, Iran is still reeling from the 12-day war in June in which its air defense systems were broadly destroyed, top military leaders killed, and its nuclear enrichment sites bombed by the U.S.

Two girls, not wearing the legally required headscarves, walk past a billboard depicting a damaged U.S. aircraft carrier with disabled fighter jets on its deck and a sign reading in Farsi and English, “If you sow the wind, you’ll reap the whirlwind,” at Enqelab-e-Eslami (Islamic Revolution) Square in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

As a sign of concern over its airspace, Iran issued a notice to pilots Sunday that banned small private aircraft from flying in the country, with carve-outs for the oil industry and emergency medical flights.

Many Western airlines have started to avoid Iranian airspace entirely due to the tensions, though Gulf Arab carriers flying to Moscow still rely on the route. Iranian air defense troops in 2020 shot down a Ukrainian commercial airliner, killing 176 people on board.

Death toll rises from protest crackdown

The protests in Iran began on Dec. 28, sparked by the fall of the Iranian currency, the rial, and quickly spread across the country. They were met by a violent crackdown by Iran’s theocracy, the scale of which is only starting to become clear as the country has faced more than two-week internet blackout — the most comprehensive in its history.

The U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency on Monday put the death toll at 5,973, with the number expected to increase. It says more than 41,813 people have been arrested.

The group’s figures have been accurate in previous unrest and rely on a network of activists in Iran to verify deaths. That death toll exceeds that of any other round of protest or unrest there in decades, and recalls the chaos surrounding Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify the toll.

Iran’s government has put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, and labeled the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest.

Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.

This story has been corrected to note that the Houthis fired missiles on Israel during the 12-day war last June.

By The Associated Press

The commander of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minneapolis is leaving the city after federal agents fatally shot two people in less than three weeks.

Gregory Bovino had been the go-to architect for the large-scale immigration crackdowns ordered by Trump and the public face of his administration’s city-by-city sweeps. The Border Patrol chief led agents in Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans before he headed to Minnesota in December for what the Department of Homeland Security called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.

He’s also been heavily criticized for his norm-breaking tactics.

Here’s what to know about Bovino’s career, methods and approach:

Smashing car windows

Bovino revels in breaking norms. Agents have smashed car windows, blown open a door to a house and patrolled the fabled MacArthur Park in Los Angeles on horseback.

Smashing windows when a driver refuses to open and is subject to arrest is “a safer tactic than letting someone drive away and then getting in a high-speed pursuit,” he said.

Blasting the door off a home in Huntington Park, California, to search for a man accused of ramming a Border Patrol vehicle days earlier was a “very, very prudent, thoughtful application of tactics,” said Bovino, who joined that early-morning raid. “I don’t want to surround a house for hours and hours and hours and then create another riot.”

Bovino often appears in tactical gear, as he did outside California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s news conference on congressional redistricting in August.

Agents rappel from helicopter in Chicago

In Chicago, agents stormed an apartment complex by helicopter, deploying chemical agents near a public school and handcuffed a Chicago City Council member at a hospital.

Agents rappelled down to the apartment building from a Black Hawk helicopter. Authorities said they were targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, but only two of the 37 immigrants arrested were gang members. The others were in the country illegally, they said, including some with criminal histories. One U.S. citizen was arrested on an outstanding narcotics warrant.

Activists, residents and leaders said the combative tactics sparked violence and fueled neighborhood tensions in the nation’s third-largest city.

Bovino also drew a rare public rebuke from a federal judge who said he misled the court about the threats posed by protesters and deployed tear gas and pepper balls without justification during a chaotic confrontation downtown.

Vowing a ‘turn and burn’ approach

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency primarily responsible for interior immigration enforcement since its was created in 2003, has historically made arrests in the streets after lengthy investigations of individual targets, including surveillance that an official once likened to watching paint dry. Officials rarely have judicial warrants to enter a home, causing them to wait outside.

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It is not a pace that will lead to the mass deportations Trump has promised.

“We’re going to turn and burn to that next target and the next and the next and the next, and we’re not going to stop,” he said in an interview in a seventh-floor conference room of the federal building in West Los Angeles, where an unused office wing served as a sparsely furnished temporary base.

In an internal memo obtained this month by The Associated Press, ICE leadership stated administrative warrants were now sufficient for federal officers to forcibly enter people’s homes if there’s a final order of removal.

Almost forced to retire in 2023

Bovino was one of 20 regional Border Patrol chiefs around the country when he was relieved of his command leading leading the agency’s sector in El Centro, California.

He blamed an online profile picture of him posing with an M4 assault rifle; social media posts that were considered inappropriate; and sworn congressional testimony that he and other sector chiefs gave on the state of the border during a record surge of migrants.

Thirty minutes after his second congressional hearing, Bovino said, he was removed from his position and asked, “Are you going to retire now?”

He didn’t retire. The change in administration from President Joe Biden to Trump in 2025 turned Bovino into a MAGA-world hero. The profile photo with the assault rifle was back online and by the summer, he was leading immigration enforcement in Los Angeles, where the Trump administration launched its first sustained blitz of a U.S. city.

Deporting people who ‘skip the line’

Bovino joined the Border Patrol in 1996 and is nearing the agency’s mandatory retirement age of 57. He eventually plans to return home to North Carolina to harvest apples.

He served as Border Patrol chief in El Centro, California, long a relatively quiet part of the southern border that has become even quieter as illegal crossings have plummeted to their lowest levels in six decades.

His media savvy is on display each summer when Border Patrol sector chiefs hold news conferences to warn against illegal crossings. In 2021, Bovino led journalists in swimming across the All-American Canal, whose deceptively swift current and smooth concrete lining result in migrant deaths every year. In 2023, he locked reporters in a vehicle trunk, saying he wanted them to appreciate the dangers firsthand.

While administration officials like to say they are deporting the “worst of the worst,” Bovino embraces arrests of hard-working people with deep roots in the country. He said they “skip the line” ahead of people waiting to enter the country legally.

“The folks undercutting American businesses, is that right?” he said. “Absolutely not. That’s why we have immigration laws in the first place, and that’s why I’m here.”

‘Not afraid to push the envelope’

ICE has led interior immigration enforcement since it was created in 2003, but the Border Patrol has been around much longer. Bovino’s sense of mission never strayed from the Border Patrol’s roots. When assigned to lead a station in Blythe, California, he pitched his boss, Paul Beeson, on raiding the airport and bus stations in Las Vegas.

The 2010 operation was supposed to last three days but got called off after the first hour yielded dozens of arrests and unleashed a furious reaction from then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat.

“He’s not afraid to push the envelope, very articulate, leads from the front,” said Beeson, who, as a sector chief, selected Bovino to lead stations in Blythe and in Imperial Beach, California.

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said Tuesday it’s stepping in to make sure Google gives rival AI companies and search engines access to Gemini AI services and data as required by the bloc’s flagship digital rulebook.

The executive arm of the 27-nation bloc said it was opening up so-called “ specification proceedings ” to ensure that Google complies with the sweeping Digital Markets Act, which requires Big Tech companies to give smaller players equal access to hardware and software features.

Brussels said part of the proceedings will specify how Google should give third-party AI companies “equally effective access to the same features” available through its own services.

The EU will also look at whether Google is giving competing search engines fair and reasonable access to Google Search data. This will include whether AI chatbot providers are eligible to access to the data.

The proceedings fall short of an investigation and must wrap up in six months with draft measures that Brussels will impose on Google.

Clare Kelly, Google’s senior competition counsel, said she was concerned about the reasons behind the procedure.

“Android is open by design, and we’re already licensing Search data to competitors under the DMA,” Kelly said in a statement. “However, we are concerned that further rules which are often driven by competitor grievances rather than the interest of consumers, will compromise user privacy, security, and innovation.”

Teresa Ribera, who oversees competition affairs as executive vice president of the European Commission, says it seeks to “maximize the potential and the benefits of this profound technological shift by making sure the playing field is open and fair, not tilted in favor of the largest few.”

The move adds EU pressure on Google, which is facing antitrust scrutiny after the bloc’s regulators last year started investigating whether the company gave itself an unfair advantage through the use of online content for its AI models and services.

By PAUL WISEMAN, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has strong-armed many of America’s biggest trading partners into pledging trillions of dollars of investment in the United States. But a study out Tuesday raises doubts about whether the money will actually materialize and questions how it would be spent if it did.

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“How realistic are these commitments?’’ write Gregory Auclair and Adnan Mazarei of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a nonpartisan think tank that supports free trade. “The short answer is that they are clouded with uncertainty.’’

They looked at more than $5 trillion in investment commitments made last year by the European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Trump used the threat of punitive tariffs – import taxes – to pry concessions out of those trading partners, including the investment pledges.

The White House has published an even higher investment figure – $9.6 trillion – that includes public and private investment commitments from other countries. Trump himself, never one to undersell his achievements, has put the number far higher — $17 trillion or $18 trillion — though Auclair and Mazarei note that “the basis for his claim is not clear.’’

All the numbers are huge. Total private investment in the United States was most recently running at a $5.4 trillion annual pace. In 2024, the last year for which figures are available, total foreign direct investment in the United States amounted to $151 billion. Direct investment includes money sunk into such things as factories and offices but not financial investments like stocks and bonds.

“The pledged amounts are large,’’ Auclair and Mazarei write, “but their time horizon varies, and the metrics for measuring and thus verifying the pledges are generally unclear.’’ They note, for example, that the European Union’s pledge to invest $600 billion in the United States “carries no legally binding commitment.’’

The report also finds that some countries would strain to meet their pledges. For the Gulf countries, “the commitments are large relative to their financial resources,” the researchers write.

“Saudi Arabia appears capable of meeting its targets, with some difficulty.’’ The United Arab Emirates and Qatar would find it even harder and might have to finance the investments by borrowing. “In all three cases, the commitments are nonbinding, and investments from these countries could fall well below headline numbers,’’ they write.

Moreover, “these agreements have been reached under duress,’’ Mazarei, a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund, said in an interview. “It’s not necessarily being done willingly.’’

So trading partners could look for ways to escape their commitments – especially if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs Trump used to negotiate the one-sided agreements. A ruling is expected as early as February. “Other countries may find a way to wiggle out,’’ Mazarei said.

Still, the Trump administration can turn to alternative tariffs if the justices rule the current tariffs illegal.

“President Trump agreed to lower tariffs on countries we have trade deals with in exchange for investment commitments and other concessions,’’ White House spokesman Kush Desai said. “The president reserves the right to revisit tariff rates if other countries renege on their commitments, and anyone who doubts President Trump’s willingness to put his money where his mouth is should ask Nicolas Maduro and Iran for their thoughts.”

U.S. troops overthrew and arrested Venezuelan President Maduro early this month, and Trump ordered the United States to join Israel in bombing Iran last year.

Auclair and Mazarei agree that the investment Trump lands could end up creating jobs, spurring economic growth and making supply chains more secure by bringing production to America.

Trump, they note, is in some ways taking a similar approach to Biden, using government “industrial policy’’ to encourage more manufacturing in the United States.

But Biden tapped taxpayer dollars to finance infrastructure projects and incentives for companies to invest in green technology and semiconductors. Trump is using the tariff threat to get foreign countries – and their companies – to pick up the tab. And he has dropped the push to encourage clean energy, focusing instead on promoting fossil fuels.

In their report, the Peterson researchers worry about how the investment decisions would get made and whether they would reflect sound economics. “This approach may yield real investments and jobs,’’ they write, “but it raises familiar industrial policy concerns: opaque projection selection, weak accountability, and the risk that political criteria crowd out economic efficiency.’’