By MIKE SCHNEIDER

The Trump administration is eliminating four out of the six locations that had been slated for a practice test to try out new methods for the 2030 census, raising concerns that the U.S. Census Bureau might not learn enough about communities that have been traditionally difficult to count.

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The test, which started Monday, will be conducted only in Huntsville, Alabama, and Spartanburg, South Carolina, according to a notice submitted by the Commerce Department that will be formally published on Tuesday. The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau.

Four other sites — Colorado Springs, Colorado, tribal lands in Arizona, western North Carolina and western Texas — originally were included when the Census Bureau announced the locations in 2024.

The bureau didn’t respond to an emailed inquiry on Monday about the reasons for the reduced number of sites. In a statement on its website, it said it “remains committed to conducting the most accurate count in history for the 2030 Census and looks forward to the continued partnership with local communities.”

Mark Mather, an associate vice president at the Population Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan research group, said limiting the test to just two metro areas in the South would be “a step backward.”

“The Census Bureau would be essentially flying blind into communities that need testing most — tribal lands, rural areas with limited connectivity and places with historically low response rates,” Mather said. “You can’t fix what you don’t test.”

The test is supposed to give the statistical agency the chance to learn how to better tally populations that were undercounted in the 2020 census and improve methods that will be used in 2030. It also allows it to test its messaging and its ability to process data as it’s being gathered.

Among the new methods being tested for 2030 is the use of U.S. Postal Service workers to conduct tasks previously done by census workers.

FILE – People walk past posters encouraging participation in the 2020 Census in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, April 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

The original six test sites had been picked for a variety of reasons, including a desire to include rural areas where some residents don’t receive mail or have little or no internet service. Others, including tribal land, fast-growing locations with new construction, and dorms, care facilities and military barracks had been picked because their residents are traditionally hard to count.

Ahead of the last census in 2020, the only start-to-finish test of the head count was held in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2018. Plans for other tests were canceled because of a lack of funding from Congress.

The once-a-decade head count determines how many congressional seats and Electoral College votes each state gets. It also guides the distribution of $2.8 trillion in annual federal spending.

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform Bluesky: @mikeysid.bsky.social.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Census Bureau at https://apnews.com/hub/us-census-bureau.

It’s been one year since William “Ike” Eickholt was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in a ditch near Ravenna Trail in Hastings.

The Washington County Sheriff’s Office is hoping the anniversary of Eickholt’s murder, a $1,000 reward and the release of body-worn camera video footage and crime-scene photos will generate additional tips.

Eickholt, 74, of Denmark Township, died around 9:30 a.m. Feb. 2, 2025; no one has been arrested in connection with the killing.

Eickholt was found on the side of the road on Feb. 2 in the 1300 block of Ravenna Trail, a “very frequently traveled road to Treasure Island Casino and there are many people who go through that area at all times of the day,” Detective Chad Schlichte of the Hastings Police Department said in a video posted on social media to bring attention to Eickholt’s case.

“I think somebody out there could have seen something,” Schlichte said. “He was just laying in the ditch with items of trash and things like that. It’s very uncommon for this area.”

Eickholt had been reported missing the day before when investigators responded to multiple vehicle fires at his property at 13536 St. Croix Trail S. in Denmark Township, the southern tip of Washington County.

When Washington County Deputy Shane Thorston responded to the fire, he found “four big pools of blood at the end of the driveway,” he said in the video. Thorsten said he knew they were not from a minor injury.

Targeted for gender expression?

Friends said Eickholt had been living in his truck since his one-story house was left uninhabitable after a fire on July 30, 2024.

After Eickholt was found dead, Mitch Carmody, a friend of his since 2023, expressed concern that Eickholt was a victim of violence, targeted for his gender expression.

Eickholt, who liked to wear women’s clothing, was a recognizable figure in southern Washington County, Hastings and Prescott, Wis. He regularly walked on St. Croix Trail and often hung his wardrobe on the trees at the end of his driveway, Carmody said.

Carmody said he was hopes the video generates answers. “I’m relieved by what a wonderful job the Washington County Sheriff’s Office did,” he said. “I thought maybe they’d forgotten us or the case was cold, but it was a wonderful thing.”

Eickholt was a regular at many Prescott businesses, including the BP gas station, Dairy Queen Grill & Chill and Ptacek’s IGA grocery store. He was last seen on Jan. 31, 2025, at the Holiday gas station on Point Douglas Drive in Hastings.

William “Ike” Eickholt was last seen on Jan. 31, 2025, at the Holiday gas station on Point Douglas Drive in Hastings. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

“There weren’t any signs of distress, no obvious danger, just Ike going about his day,” said Washington County Sheriff’s Office Detective Cooper Valeseno.

Eickholt’s death is “unsettling for a lot of people in the community, especially for the shock of what happened,” Schlichte said. “It just would be nice to not only get closure for the family, but also the closure for the people in the Washington County area that he lived by, but also the people in this town, too.”

Eickholt’s family, who called Eickholt “Bill,” shared a letter with authorities after his death.

“Bill was a kind person who would say ‘hello’ even if he didn’t know you,” the letter states. “He was a trusting individual who believed that all people were good. He loved nature and liked to walk and take in the beauty of his community. Bill had a dog for most of his life and loved to pheasant hunt. Bill was a free spirit and would not cause harm to anyone.”

“Someone saw Ike that night,” Valeseno said. “Someone knows how he got to Ravenna Trail in Hastings from his driveway. He was a human being. He had family and friends. He had routines, interests, and a life. The community deserves answers.”

Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest or conviction.

Anyone with information about the death of William “Ike’ Eickholt is asked to call the Washington County Sheriff’s Office at 651-430-7850.

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By MARCIA DUNN

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA ran into exasperating fuel leaks during a make-or-break test of its new moon rocket Monday, calling into question how soon astronauts could take off for a trip around the moon.

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The leaks — reminiscent of the rocket’s delayed debut three years ago — sprang just a couple hours into the daylong fueling operation at Kennedy Space Center.

Launch controllers began loading the 322-foot rocket with super-cold hydrogen and oxygen at midday. More than 700,000 gallons had to flow into the tanks and remain on board for several hours, mimicking the final stages of an actual countdown.

But excessive hydrogen quickly built up near the bottom of the rocket. Hydrogen loading was halted at least twice as the launch team scrambled to work around the problem using techniques developed during the previous Space Launch System countdown in 2022. That first test flight was plagued by hydrogen leaks before finally soaring without a crew.

The four astronauts assigned to the mission — three Americans and one Canadian — monitored the critical dress rehearsal from nearly 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) away in Houston, home to Johnson Space Center. They have been in quarantine for the past 1½ weeks, awaiting the practice countdown’s outcome.

Monday’s fueling demo will determine when they can blast off on the first lunar voyage by a crew in more than half a century.

At best, NASA could launch commander Reid Wiseman and his crew to the moon no sooner than Sunday. The rocket must be flying by Feb. 11 or the mission will be called off until March. The space agency only has a few days in any given month to launch the rocket, and the extreme cold already has shortened February’s launch window by two days.

Running behind because of the bitter cold snap, the countdown clocks began ticking Saturday night, giving launch controllers the chance to go through all the motions and deal with any lingering rocket problems. The clocks were set to stop a half-minute before reaching zero, just before engine ignition.

The nearly 10-day mission will send the astronauts past the moon, around the mysterious far side and then straight back to Earth, with the goal of testing the capsule’s life support and other vital systems. The crew will not go into lunar orbit or attempt to land.

NASA last sent astronauts to the moon during the 1960s and 1970s Apollo program. The new Artemis program aims for a more sustained lunar presence, with Wiseman’s crew setting the stage for future moon landings by other astronauts.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JON GAMBRELL and SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Turkey is attempting to bring both the U.S. and Iranian officials to the negotiating table, possibly by the end of the week, in hopes of easing the threat of U.S. military action against Iran.

Neither the U.S. nor Iran has confirmed whether they plan to take part in any negotiations. Two Turkish officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media, said Turkey is trying to organize a meeting between U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian leaders. The meeting could take place as soon as the end of the week, one of the officials said.

The military has moved the USS Abraham Lincoln and several guided-missile destroyers into the Middle East, but it remains unclear whether President Donald Trump will decide to use force against the Iranian government, as he has suggested he might do in retribution for their devastating crackdown on last month’s protests.

“Trump is trying to calibrate a response to Iran’s mass killing of protesters that punishes Iranian leaders without also embroiling the United States in a new, open-ended conflict in the region,” the New York-based Soufan Center think tank said Monday.

An Arab diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting has not been confirmed said there had been discussions about Turkey hosting a high-level meeting to bring Arab and Muslim countries together with the United States and Iran.

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Turkey’s role

Trump also has sought to pressure Iran to make a deal that would constrain its nuclear program. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Witkoff met multiple times last year in negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program in Rome and Oman, but never finalized a deal. On June 13, Israel launched attacks on Iran that sparked a 12-day war between the countries, effectively halting those talks. The U.S. bombed three Iranian nuclear sites during the war.

Baghaei of the Iranian Foreign Ministry declined to give any specifics about the possibility of talks in Ankara. The U.S. didn’t immediately comment on the possible talks.

Witkoff is expected to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli security officials on Tuesday, according to a White House official who was not authorized to comment publicly about the talks and spoke on condition of anonymity. He will travel to Abu Dhabi later in the week for Russia-Ukraine talks, the official said.

EU sanctions

Also on Monday, Iran said it had summoned all European Union ambassadors in the country to protest the bloc’s listing of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as a terror group.

The 27-nation bloc agreed to list the Guard as a terror group last week over its part in the crackdown on nationwide protests in January that killed thousands of people and saw tens of thousands of others detained.

Other countries, including the U.S. and Canada, have previously designated the Guard as a terrorist organization. While the move is largely symbolic, it adds to the economic pressure squeezing Iran.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told journalists that the ambassadors had begun to be summoned on Sunday and that process went into Monday.

“We think that in coming days, a decision will be made about a reciprocal action,” Baghaei said.

Iran’s parliamentary speaker said Sunday that the Islamic Republic now considers all EU militaries to be terrorist groups, citing a 2019 law. The European Commission, the bloc’s executive branch, said it was keeping diplomatic channels open with Tehran, despite the tensions, and urged restraint from military action.

The Guard emerged from Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution as a force meant to protect the Shiite cleric-overseen government and was later enshrined in its constitution. It operates in parallel with the regular armed forces and has expanded into private enterprise, allowing it to thrive.

The Guard’s Basij force likely was key in putting down the demonstrations, starting in earnest from Jan. 8, when authorities cut off the internet and international telephone calls for the nation of 85 million people. Videos that have come out of Iran via Starlink satellite dishes and other means show men likely belonging to its forces shooting and beating protesters.

On Monday, the U.K. government joined a number of countries that sanctioned Iran’s interior minister, who oversees the country’s police, and nine other Iranians for their alleged role in facilitating the crackdown. They were subjected to immediate asset freezes and travel bans.

Strait of Hormuz drill

Baghaei also said an exercise by the Guard in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all of the global oil trade passes, was “ongoing based on its timetable.”

Iran warned ships last week that a drill would be carried out on Sunday and Monday, but prior to Baghaei’s comments hadn’t acknowledged it taking place. The U.S. military’s Central Command issued a strong warning to Iran not to harass its warships and aircraft or impede commercial vessels moving through the strait.

Satellite photos taken Sunday by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press showed small vessels moving at speed in the strait between Iran’s Qeshm and Hengam islands, some distance away from the corridor commercial vessels take. The Guard relies on a fleet of small, fast-attack ships in the strait.

Asked whether Iran could face a war, Baghaei told the public “don’t worry at all.” He declined to discuss whether Trump set a deadline for Iran to respond to Washington’s demands regarding the protests and Iran’s nuclear program.

State television host

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency reported on Monday that prosecutors in Tehran filed charges against the head of state television’s Ofogh channel, as well as producers and the host of a program who mocked those killed in the crackdown.

The program, which aired Saturday, saw the host reference allegations made abroad about Iran hiding bodies of the dead in freezers to bring out as victims if the U.S. attacks the country. The host asked viewers a multiple-choice question about where Iran would hide the bodies, listing things like ice cream freezers and supermarket refrigerators.

The crackdown on the demonstrations killed at least 6,848 people, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, which has been accurate in other rounds of unrest in Iran. It fears more may be dead. The AP has been unable to independently assess the death toll. An additional 49,930 people have been arrested, the Human Rights Activists News Agency said.

As of Jan. 21, Iran’s government put the death toll at a far lower 3,117, saying 2,427 were civilians and security forces, labeling the rest “terrorists.” In the past, Iran’s theocracy has undercounted or not reported fatalities from unrest. However, the country’s presidency published a list of names Sunday it said belonged to 2,986 of those killed, something it hasn’t done in past protests.

Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Sam McNeil in Brussels, Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington, Melanie Lidman in Tel Aviv, Israel, and Sylvia Hui in London contributed to this report.