By KATHY McCORMACK, Associated Press

It’s the ultimate homecoming photo — a smiling family rushing to reunite with a U.S. Air Force officer in 1973 who spent years as a POW in North Vietnam, his oldest daughter sprinting ahead with her arms outstretched, both feet off the ground.

“Burst of Joy,” the iconic black-and-white image capturing the Stirm family at Travis Air Force Base in California, was published in newspapers throughout the nation. Taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder, it won a Pulitzer Prize and has continued to resonate through the years, a symbol of the end of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

On Veterans Day, former Lt. Col. Robert Stirm, seen in the photo in uniform with his back to the camera, died at an assisted living facility in Fairfield, California, his daughter, Lorrie Stirm Kitching, confirmed Thursday. He was 92.

“It’s right in my front foyer,” Kitching, 68, of Mountain View, said of the photo. She was 15 when that moment of her running to hug her father that St. Patrick’s Day was forever preserved.

“Just the feelings of that and the intensity of the feeling will never leave me,” Kitching told the AP in an interview. “It is so deep in my heart, and the joy and the relief that we had our dad back again. It was just truly a very moving reunion for our family, and that feeling has never left me. It’s the same feeling every time I see that picture.

“And every day, how grateful I am that my father was one of the lucky ones and returned home,” she added. That was really a gift.”

Stirm was shot down over North Vietnam

Stirm, a decorated pilot, was serving with the 333rd Tactical Fighter Squadron at Takhli Royal Thai Air Force in Thailand in 1967. During a bombing mission over North Vietnam that Oct. 27, his F-105 Thunderbird was hit and he was shot three times while parachuting. He was captured immediately upon landing.

He was held captive for 1,966 days in five different POW camps in Hanoi and North Vietnam, including the notorious “Hanoi Hilton,” known for torturing and starving its captives, primarily American pilots shot down during bombing raids. Its most famous prisoner was the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who also was shot down in 1967.

McCain and Stirm had known each other. They shared a wall in solitary confinement and communicated through a tapping code.

“John McCain tapped in this joke. First time Dad laughed in jail,” Kitching said. “I just wish I knew what that joke was,” she said. “I’m sure it was something very ribald.”

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Photo represented heartbreak for Stirm

Stirm, who was 39 when the photo was taken told the AP 20 years later that he had several copies of it, but didn’t display it in his house. He had been handed a “Dear John” letter from his wife, Loretta, by a chaplain upon his release.

“I have changed drastically — forced into a situation where I finally had to grow up,” the letter read in part. “Bob, I feel sure that in your heart you know we can’t make it together — and it doesn’t make sense to be unhappy when you can do something about it. Life is too short.”

Stirm said the photo “brought a lot of notoriety and publicity to me and, unfortunately, the legal situation that I was going to be faced with, and it was kind of unwelcomed.”

The couple divorced a year after Stirm returned from Vietnam and both remarried within six months.

They came together for weddings and other family events. Loretta Adams died in 2010, of cancer. She was 74.

“It hurt really deeply,” Kitching said. “She told him she wanted to make the marriage work. But she was being up front and honest. So every story has two sides, and I know very well just how difficult it is to understand the two sides.”

Stirm retired from the Air Force in 1977 after 25 years of service. He joined Ferry Steel Products, a business his grandfather started in San Francisco. He also had worked as a corporate pilot.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — While President Donald Trump has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans’ concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, “We hear you” and “there’s a lot more work to do.”

But the American people need to have “a little bit of patience,” Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News.

The vice president’s remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this month’s off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.

Vance said the Trump administration has “made incredible progress” in tackling cost-of-living concerns as they worked to undo policies from former President Joe Biden.

“As much progress as we’ve made, it’s going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming. We believe that we’re on the front end of it,” Vance said.

Trump, whose tariffs have contributed to higher prices for many goods, has insisted that prices are down, pointing to gas and egg prices specifically. The president has said Democrats’ arguments about affordability during the election were “a con job,” and saying “I don’t want to hear about the affordability, because right now, we’re much less.” However, in recent days he has shifted his response, acknowledging that there is room for consumer prices to drop further.

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Vance addresses Republican infighting

Vance was asked about recent high-profile rifts within Trump’s Make America Great Again coalition. Trump broke with one of his most loyal backers, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, over her complaints he was spending too much time on foreign policy and had dragged his feet on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump also has been reluctant to disavow white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, touching off turmoil on the right.

Vance did not directly address the recent infighting, but said he thinks the debates within the party are healthy. “It’s totally reasonable for the people who make up this coalition to argue,” about issues, said Vance, who often publicly engages in online debates on his X account.

But Trump’s MAGA coalition needs to remember, “that we have a lot more in common than we do not in common” and that supporters are up against “a radical leftist movement.”

“Have our debates — but focus on the enemy, so that we can win victories that matter for the American people,” Vance said.

The vice president and former senator said Republicans have to keep their coalition united, especially heading into next year’s midterm elections that determine control of Congress.

He said the working class voters who elected Trump to the White House don’t necessarily turn out to vote in midterm elections and said Republicans need to motivate them.

“I think that’s one of the lessons that we learned in Virginia and New Jersey is that when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, you’ve got to give people something to actually believe in, something to be inspired by, to get out there and vote,” Vance said. “They’re not going to vote just because you have an ‘R’ next to your name.”

By WAFAA SHURAFA

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza (AP) — A pair of Israeli strikes in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis early Thursday killed five people, hospital officials said, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory over a roughly 12-hour period to 33. The strikes have been some of the deadliest since Oct. 10 when a U.S.-brokered ceasefire took effect.

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The renewed escalation came after Israel said that its soldiers had come under fire in Khan Younis on Wednesday. Israel said that no soldiers were killed and that the military responded with strikes.

Four Israeli airstrikes on tents sheltering displaced people in Khan Younis late Wednesday and early Thursday killed 17 people, including five women and five children, according to officials at Nasser Hospital.

In Gaza City, two airstrikes on a building killed 16 people, including seven children and three women, according to officials at the Al-Shifa hospital in the northern part of the city where the bodies were taken.

Hamas condemned the Israeli strikes as a “shocking massacre.” In a statement, Hamas denied firing toward Israeli troops.

Palestinians mourn loved ones

At Nasser Hospital, scores of people gathered to offer funeral prayers for those who were killed in the Israeli strikes. Women wailed in mourning over the bodies of loved ones wrapped in white burial shrouds.

Among the mourners was Abir Abu Moustapha, who lost her three children, ages 1, 11 and 12, and her husband in an Israeli strike on Wednesday that hit their tent. She squatted beside their bodies as they were prepared for burial.

Sabri Abu Sabt bids farewell to his granddaughter, Ayloul, who was killed in an Israeli army strike, during her funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

“My children are gone. What can I say? And my husband, my most precious. May God have mercy on them,” Abu Moustapha said. “How was it my children’s fault that they had to die? Why was it their fault that they died in front of my eyes?”

Ceasefire again under pressure

Hospital officials said that the bodies came from both sides of a line established in last month’s ceasefire. The boundary splits Gaza in two, leaving the border zone under Israeli military control while the area beyond it is meant to serve as a safe zone.

The strikes came shortly after the U.N. Security Council gave its backing to U.S. President Donald Trump’s blueprint to secure and govern Gaza. The plan empowers an international force to provide security in Gaza, approves a transitional authority and envisions a possible future path to an independent Palestinian state.

But there are still questions over how the plan will be implemented, especially after Hamas rejected it. The group said that the force’s mandate. which includes disarmament, “strips it of its neutrality, and turns it into a party to the conflict in favor of the occupation.”

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

Israeli strikes have decreased since the ceasefire agreement took effect, though they haven’t stopped entirely.

Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants, reported more than 300 deaths since the truce began. 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 killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 people in the attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which 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.

Mourners pray over the bodies Palestinians killed in an Israeli army strike, during their funeral at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

The remains of 25 hostages have been returned to Israel since the ceasefire began. There are still three more in Gaza that need to be recovered and handed over. Hamas returned 20 living hostages to Israel on Oct. 13.

Israel targets Hezbollah

The Gaza strikes coincided with a barrage of Israeli airstrikes in southern Lebanon on Wednesday on what the Israeli military said said were Hezbollah sites in the country, including weapons storage facilities. A day earlier, an Israeli airstrike killed 13 people in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ein el-Hilweh, the deadliest of Israeli attacks on Lebanon since a ceasefire in the Israel-Hezbollah war a year ago.

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

Palestinians inspect the ruins a day after an Israeli strike on a building in Gaza City, Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

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. The state-run National News Agency said that the school bus happened to be passing near the car that was hit.

Israel’s military later said that it killed a Hezbollah operative in the drone strike.

Find more of AP’s Israel-Hamas coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By STEPHANIE LIECHTENSTEIN

VIENNA (AP) — The U.N. atomic watchdog on Thursday demanded that Iran fully cooperate with the agency and provide “precise information” about its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium, as well as grant its inspectors access to Iranian nuclear sites.

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The development sets the stage for a likely further escalation between the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran, which has reacted strongly to similar moves by the watchdog in the past.

Nineteen countries on the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-member board of governors voted for the resolution at the IAEA’s headquarters in Vienna, according to diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the outcome of the closed-doors vote.

Russia, China and Niger opposed it, while 12 countries abstained and one did not vote.

The resolution — put forward by France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States — says Iran must provide the IAEA with the latest information on its nuclear stockpile, “without delay.” A draft was seen by The Associated Press.

After the strikes in June

Since Israel and the United States struck Iran’s nuclear sites during the 12-day war in June, Iran has not given IAEA inspectors access to nuclear sites that were affected by the strikes — even though Tehran is legally obliged to cooperate with the watchdog under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The agency also has been unable to verify the status of the stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium since the June bombing, according to a confidential IAEA report seen by the AP last week.

According to the IAEA, Iran maintains a stockpile of 972 pounds of uranium enriched up to 60% purity — a short, technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%.

That stockpile could allow Iran to build as many as 10 nuclear bombs, should it decide to weaponize its program, IAEA director general Rafael Grossi warned in a recent interview with the AP. He added that it doesn’t mean that Iran has such a weapon.

Such highly enriched nuclear material should normally be verified every month, according to the IAEA’s guidelines.

Iran slams the decision

Talking to reporters outside the IAEA boardroom, Iran’s Ambassador to the IAEA Reza Najafi denounced Thursday’s resolution and said that it was designed to “exert undue pressure on Iran” and propagate a “false and misleading narrative of the present situation.”

FILE -A national flag of Iran waves in front of the building of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna, Austria, Dec. 17, 2021. (AP Photo/Michael Gruber, File)

He described the authors of the resolution as “deaf and visionless” and said that they maintain “an arrogant and self-assured posture” by presuming that Iran is “obliged to continue its routine cooperation with the agency even under bombardment.”

Najafi said that Iran considers the current situation “far from normal,” given that safeguarded facilities in Iran that contain “dangerous nuclear material” have been attacked.

Najafi said that Iran is “fully prepared for meaningful and constructive engagement” but at present, “the authors of resolutions have chosen a different course, under the mistaken belief that the pressure and threat will yield results.”

Responding to questions from journalist, Najafi said Iran will announce its response at a later stage.

Cutting ties

Iran suspended all cooperation with the IAEA after the war with Israel. Grossi then reached an agreement with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Cairo in early September to resume inspections.

But later that month, the U.N. reimposed crushing sanctions on Iran via the so-called snapback mechanism contained in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, drawing an angry response from Tehran and leading it to halt implementation of the Cairo agreement.

The snapback mechanism reactivated six U.N. Security Council resolutions that address Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, reinstate economic sanctions against Iran and contain other restrictions, such as halting all uranium enrichment.

Thursday’s resolution instructed Grossi to report on the implementation of the reinstated restrictions. It also requested that he ensure his reporting “includes information on the verification of Iran’s uranium stockpile, including the locations, quantities, chemical forms, and enrichment levels, and the inventories of centrifuges and related equipment.”

Iran has long insisted its program is peaceful, but the IAEA and Western nations say Tehran had an organized nuclear weapons program up until 2003.

Thursday’s resolution demanded that Iran “acts strictly in accordance” with the so-called Additional Protocol that it signed in 2003 but never ratified.

That protocol grants more powers and oversight to the IAEA, especially when it comes to conducting snap inspections at undeclared nuclear sites.

Iran suspended its implementation of the Additional Protocol in 2021 in response to the United States’ withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal that lifted economic sanctions in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program.

The Associated Press receives support for nuclear security coverage from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and Outrider Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ Additional AP coverage of the nuclear landscape: https://apnews.com/projects/the-new-nuclear-landscape/