WASHINGTON (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that federal law enforcement is investigating a social media post made by former FBI Director James Comey that she and other Republicans claim is a call for violence against President Donald Trump.

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In an Instagram post earlier in the day, Comey wrote “cool shell formation on my beach walk” under a picture of seashells that appeared to form the shapes for “86 47.”

Numerous Trump administration officials, including Noem, claimed that Comey was advocating for the assassination of Trump, the 47th president. “DHS and Secret Service is investigating this threat and will respond appropriately,” Noem wrote.

The post has since been deleted. Comey subsequently wrote, “I posted earlier a picture of some shells I saw today on a beach walk, which I assumed were a political message. I didn’t realize some folks associate those numbers with violence.

“It never occurred to me,” Comey added, “but I oppose violence of any kind so I took the post down.”

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary used by The Associated Press, says 86 is slang meaning “to throw out,” “to get rid of” or “to refuse service to.” It notes: “Among the most recent senses adopted is a logical extension of the previous ones, with the meaning of ‘to kill.’ We do not enter this sense, due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

Comey’s original post sparked outrage among conservatives on social media, with Donald Trump Jr. accusing Comey of calling for his father’s killing.

Current FBI Director Kash Patel said he was aware of the post and was conferring with the Secret Service and its director.

James Blair, White House deputy chief of staff for legislative, political and public affairs, noted that the post came at a delicate time given that Trump is traveling in the Middle East.

“This is a Clarion Call from Jim Comey to terrorists & hostile regimes to kill the President of the United States as he travels in the Middle East,” Blair wrote on X.

Comey, who was FBI director from 2013 to 2017, was fired by Trump during the president’s first term amid the bureau’s probe into allegations of ties between Russian officials and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Comey wrote about his career in the best-selling memoir “A Higher Loyalty.”

He is now a crime fiction writer and is promoting his latest book, “FDR Drive,” which is being released on Tuesday.

By EDITH M. LEDERER

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations on Thursday forecast slower global economic growth this year and next, pointing to the impact of the surge in U.S. tariffs and increasing trade tensions.

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U.N. economists also cited the volatile geopolitical landscape and threats of rising production costs, supply chain disruptions and financial turbulence.

“These days, there’s so much uncertainty in the air,” said Shantanu Mukherjee, director of the Economic Analysis and Policy Division at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

“It’s been a nervous time for the global economy,” he told reporters while launching the midyear forecast. “In January this year, we were expecting two years of stable — if subpar — growth, and since then, prospects have diminished, accompanied by significant volatility across various dimensions.”

The U.N. is now forecasting global economic growth of 2.4% this year and 2.5% next year — a drop of 0.4 percentage point each year from its projections in January. Last year, the global economy grew 2.9%.

Mukherjee said the slowing is affecting most countries and regions, but among the most severely hit are the poorest and least developed countries, whose growth prospects have fallen from 4.6% to 4.1% just since January.

“That translates into a loss of billions in economic output for the most disadvantaged of countries,” which are home to over half the global population living in extreme poverty, he said.

The world’s developed and developing countries also are projected to suffer, according to the U.N. report.

Economic growth in the United States is now projected to drop significantly, from 2.8% last year to 1.6% this year, it said, noting that higher tariffs and policy uncertainty are expected to weigh on private investment and consumption.

China’s growth is expected to slow to 4.6% this year from 5% in 2024 as a result of subdued consumer sentiment, disruptions in its export-oriented manufacturing companies, and continuing challenges in its property sector, the report said.

The European Union’s growth is forecast to remain the same this year as it was last year — just 1%, the report said, citing weaker net exports and higher trade barriers. The United Kingdom’s economic growth of 1.1% last year is projected to fall to 0.9%.

Weakening trade, slowing investments and falling commodity prices are also forecast to erode growth in other major developing economies, including Brazil, Mexico and South Africa.

India will remain one of the world’s fastest-growing large economies, but the U.N. forecast said its growth is expected to drop from 7.1% in 2024 to 6.3% this year.

The U.N.’s global economic growth forecast is lower than the International Monetary Fund’s.

On a more positive note, Mukherjee said the U.N. is expecting that bilateral negotiations will lead to lower tariffs, although he said they won’t return to the levels before U.S. President Donald Trump’s February announcement.

Nonetheless, Mukherjee said, resolving uncertainties would help individuals and businesses move forward with economic decisions and that would have a positive impact on the global economy.

An emergency alert for Lakeville was sent to a wider area than intended Thursday, setting off alarms on cellphones — including for St. Paul residents.

Dakota 911 Executive Director Heidi Hieserich said “an error” was “made in selecting the location. This caused the notification to extend beyond the intended range and go county wide.”

As for St. Paul residents receiving the alert, Hieserich said “sometimes there can be overreach due to the involvement of cellular towers relaying the message.”

Lakeville police were in the area southeast of 190th Street and Highview Avenue searching for a suspect who ran away from a stolen vehicle, the police department posted on X (formerly Twitter) at 2:40 p.m. They told people who live in the area to stay inside their homes and call 911 to report anything suspicious.

An emergency alert, saying the “shelter in place is clear,” was received on phones at 4:08 p.m. Lakeville police posted they’d done “an extensive search” and hadn’t located the suspect.

In an update, police said they took the suspect into custody in the 19200 block of Harappa Avenue shortly before 5 p.m. “after an observant resident contacted police.”

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By MICHAEL HILL

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — For decades, a carveout in New York’s child labor laws allowed kids as young as 11 to legally partake in the time-honored tradition of a paper route.

Flipping papers into suburban hedges, bicycling through snow squalls, dodging dogs and getting stiffed for tips became a rite of passage for generations of youths.

But a change to the law quietly made via the state budget this month makes clear the job is now not allowed for anyone under 14 years old. The move was first reported by Politico.

The change comes even though paper boys and girls have mostly gone the way of phone booths, mimeograph machines and their urban “newsie” forebears who shouted “Extra! Extra!” on street corners.

While many teens used to take on paper routes as after-school jobs, that became rarer decades ago as more daily newspapers switched to early morning deliveries. Newspapers are now increasingly online and tend to rely on adults with cars to make home deliveries, according to industry watchers.

“The need for a workforce of kids to go throwing newspapers on stoops is just a thing of the past,” said attorney Allan Bloom, an employment law expert with the Proskauer firm.

Lawmakers made the change as part of a broader update of child labor laws. Bloom likened it to a “cleanup” as lawmakers streamlined the process for employing minors and increased penalties for violating child labor laws.

Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association, said she was not aware of any newspapers in New York using youth carriers.

Christopher Page recalled buying his first guitar on earnings from a paper route started in the late ’70s in suburban Clifton Park, north of Albany.

“I just had a 10-speed that I destroyed,” said Page. “It was truly rain or shine, I’m out there riding the bike. Or even in the winter, I would still ride the bike in the snow through all the potholes and the ice.”

When dogs chased him on his bike, Page would ward them off with his shoulder bag full of newspapers.

At age 13, Jon Sorensen delivered the Syracuse Herald-American on Sunday with his 11-year old brother in the Finger Lakes town of Owasco from the back of their mother’s Chevy station wagon.

“That was back when papers were papers — a lot of sections and a lot of weight,” recalled Sorensen, now 68 and Kennedy’s partner. “I can remember trudging through the snow. … I don’t think I ever dropped one, because if you did you had to be heading back to the car and pick up another copy.”

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Sorensen stayed in the newspaper business as an adult, covering state government and politics for papers including New York Daily News and The Buffalo News.

“The hardest part of the job wasn’t delivering the paper, it was collecting,” Sorensen recalled. “It wasn’t always easy to get people to pay up.”