By LISA MASCARO and BEN FINLEY, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon’s watchdog found that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth put U.S. personnel and their mission at risk when he used the Signal messaging app to convey sensitive information about a military strike against Houthi militants in Yemen, two people familiar with the findings said Wednesday.

Hegseth, however, has the ability to declassify material and the report did not find he did so improperly, according to one of the people familiar with the report’s findings who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the information. CNN first reported the initial findings.

The review by the Pentagon inspector general’s office was delivered to lawmakers, who were able to review the report in a classified facility at the Capitol. A partially redacted version of the report was expected to be released publicly later this week.

The findings ramp up the pressure on the former Fox News Channel host after lawmakers had called for the independent inquiry into his use of the commercially available app. Lawmakers also just opened investigations into a news report that a follow-up strike on an alleged drug-smuggling boat in the Caribbean Ocean in September killed survivors after Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody.”

Hegseth defended the strike as emerging in the “fog of war,” saying he didn’t see any survivors but also “didn’t stick around” for the rest of the mission and that the admiral in charge “made the right call” in ordering the second strike. He also did not admit fault following the revelations that he discussed sensitive military plans on Signal, asserting that the information was unclassified.

Journalist was added to a chat where sensitive plans were shared

In at least two separate Signal chats, Hegseth provided the exact timings of warplane launches and when bombs would drop — before the men and women carrying out those attacks on behalf of the United States were airborne.

Hegseth’s use of the app came to light when a journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was inadvertently added to a Signal text chain by then-national security adviser Mike Waltz. It included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and others, brought together to discuss March 15 military operations against the Iran-backed Houthis.

Hegseth had created another Signal chat with 13 people that included his wife and brother where he shared similar details of the same strike, The Associated Press reported.

Signal is encrypted but is not authorized for carrying classified information and is not part of the Defense Department’s secure communications network.

Hegseth has said none of the information shared in the chats was classified. Multiple current and former military officials told the AP there was no way details with that specificity, especially before a strike took place, would have been OK to share on an unsecured device.

Lawmakers had called for inspector general to investigate

The revelations sparked intense scrutiny, with Democratic lawmakers and a small number of Republicans saying Hegseth posting the information to the Signal chats before the military jets had reached their targets potentially put those pilots’ lives at risk. They said lower-ranking members of the military would have been fired for such a lapse.

The inspector general opened its investigation into Hegseth at the request of the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and the committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island.

Some veterans and military families also raised concerns, citing the strict security protocols they must follow to protect sensitive information.

It all ties back to the campaign against Yemen’s Houthis

The Houthi rebels had started launching missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in late 2023 in what their leadership had described as an effort to end Israel’s offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Their campaign greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees $1 trillion of goods move through it annually.

The U.S.-led campaign against the Houthis in 2024 turned into the most intense running sea battle the Navy had faced since World War II.

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A ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war had begun in January before falling apart in March. The U.S. then launched a broad assault against the Houthis that ended weeks later when Trump said they pledged to stop attacking ships. The latest Gaza ceasefire began in October.

Following the disclosure of Hegseth’s Signal chat that included the Atlantic’s editor, the magazine released the entire thread in late March. Hegseth had posted multiple details about an impending strike, using military language and laying out when a “strike window” starts, where a “target terrorist” was located, the time elements around the attack and when various weapons and aircraft would be used in the strike. He mentioned that the U.S. was “currently clean” on operational security.

Hegseth told Fox News Channel in April that what he shared over Signal was “informal, unclassified coordinations, for media coordinations and other things.”

During a congressional hearing in June, Hegseth was pressed multiple times by lawmakers over whether he shared classified information and if he should face accountability if he did.

Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat and Marine veteran, asked Hegseth whether he would hold himself accountable if the inspector general found that he placed classified information on Signal.

Hegseth would not directly say, only noting that he serves “at the pleasure of the president.”

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee has subpoenaed former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith for a closed-door interview later this month even though he had earlier volunteered to appear for an open hearing about his prosecutions of President Donald Trump.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the committee’s Republican chairman, directed Smith in a letter dated Wednesday to appear for a private deposition on Dec. 17 as part of the panel’s investigations into the prosecutor’s work.

“Due to your service as Special Counsel, the Committee believes that you possess information that is vital to its oversight of this matter,” Jordan wrote. He also asked Smith to produce records to the committee in addition to his testimony.

A lawyer for Smith, Peter Koski, said in a statement that Smith had offered nearly six weeks ago to appear before the committee in an open hearing but would nonetheless appear as requested for the deposition.

“We are disappointed that offer was rejected, and that the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics,” Koski said. “Jack looks forward to meeting with the committee later this month to discuss his work and clarify the various misconceptions about his investigation.”

Smith was appointed in 2022 to oversee the Justice Department investigations into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss and his hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Smith’s team filed charges in both investigations.

Smith abandoned the cases after Trump was elected to the White House again last year, citing Justice Department legal opinions that prohibit the indictment of a sitting president.

Republicans who control Congress have sought interviews with members of Smith’s team and in recent weeks have seized on revelations that the team, as part of its investigation, had analyzed the phone records of select GOP lawmakers from on and around Jan. 6, 2021, when pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to halt the certification of the Republican president’s election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

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Smith’s legal team has noted that the records that investigators obtained did not include the contents of the conversations but instead merely captured incoming and outgoing call numbers, the times the calls were placed and how long they lasted.

“Mr. Smith’s actions as Special Counsel were consistent with the decisions of a prosecutor who has devoted his career to following the facts and the law, without fear or favor and without regard for the political consequences,” Smith’s lawyers wrote to lawmakers in October.

“His investigative decisions were similarly motivated, and the subpoena for toll records was entirely proper, lawful, and consistent with established Department of Justice policy. While Mr. Smith’s prosecutions of President Trump have predictably been politicized by others, politics never influenced his decision making,” they added.

Follow the AP’s coverage of former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith at https://apnews.com/hub/jack-smith.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called Somali immigrants living in the United States “garbage” and wants them to leave, claiming without evidence that “they contribute nothing.”

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The crude language came Tuesday after a person familiar with the planning said federal authorities were preparing an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota primarily focusing on Somali immigrants living unlawfully in the United States. Almost 58% of the Somalis in Minnesota were born in the U.S. And of the foreign-born Somalis there, 87% are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Here’s a look at Somalia, which is also one of the countries where the Trump administration this week paused all immigration applications. The country’s prime minister, asked at a public event Wednesday about Trump’s statements, did not comment.

Over three decades of war

Somalis have been fleeing the Horn of Africa nation for decades, ever since the fall of dictator Siad Barre led to clashes between warlords, wider civil war and the rise of the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group.

The widespread insecurity has sent millions of Somalis fleeing within the country or into neighboring ones. Many waited for years in remote refugee camps in places like Kenya before a chance to immigrate to the U.S. or elsewhere. Many others remain in those camps.

Inside Somalia, the current threat remains primarily from al-Shabab, which holds some rural areas and periodically targets the capital, Mogadishu, with devastating attacks. A truck bombing in the heart of Mogadishu in 2017 killed well over 100 people. Another in 2019 killed dozens more. Targets have also included the presidential palace and hotels.

For decades, there was no U.S. Embassy in Somalia because of the insecurity. The embassy returned in 2019, locating itself in a highly fortified seaside compound around the Mogadishu airport where other diplomatic or humanitarian offices are found.

FILE – A woman and a child hold hands as they walk down a street in the predominantly Somali neighborhood of Cedar-Riverside in Minneapolis on Thursday, May 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski, File)

Somalia’s fragile federal government in recent years has been involved in what its president has called “total war” against al-Shabab. But the extremist group remains resilient amid the country’s complex clan dynamics, with some arms coming in from the Middle East via the Gulf of Aden.

The overall instability in Somalia helped to create the phenomenon of Somali pirates, who earlier this month hijacked a commercial vessel on the Indian Ocean for the first time in a year and a half, raising fears about a resurgence.

For many, a struggle to survive

While Mogadishu has shown some signs of a revival, often driven by Somali returnees bringing investment and ideas, much of the country’s population of about 19 million faces grim circumstances. The widespread insecurity has long limited rebuilding and investment.

Somalia continues to have one of the world’s weakest health care systems, according to the World Health Organization and other partners. And now longtime donors like the United States and Britain have been pulling back, especially with the Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development this year.

A catch of tuna lies on the ground in Mogadishu, Somalia Thursday, Nov. 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh)

The Associated Press recently visited rare public hospitals remaining in Mogadishu that some Somalis must trek for days to reach for care. Many rural areas have little assistance. The ones under the control of al-Shabab may have none.

A harsh and changing climate

As Africa stands to suffer the most from climate change, Somalia is one of the most visible examples.

Droughts periodically kill thousands of people along with the camels and other livestock that help keep communities and economies alive. Floods rip through river valleys. Indian Ocean cyclones roar onto the coastline, the longest in Africa. From time to time, locusts devour landscapes’ vegetation.

“In Somalia, climate change and conflict are increasingly intertwined,” the International Crisis Group has noted, pointing out that al-Shabab’s fighters use access to water as another means to “tax” residents in vulnerable communities. In some cases during the most recent yearslong drought, al-Shabab destroyed water infrastructure, infuriating communities.

HONG KONG (AP) — The death toll of Hong Kong’s high-rise apartment blaze rose to 159 on Wednesday, as authorities arrested six people on suspicion of deactivating some fire alarms during maintenance work at the housing complex.

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The youngest person who died in the fire was a 1-year-old, police said. The oldest was 97.

Police said they have completed a search for bodies inside all seven of the eight high-rise residential towers ravaged in the fire that first broke out a week ago and took more than 40 hours to be extinguished. About 30 people were still reported missing.

“We have not finished our work yet,” Commissioner of Police Joe Chow told reporters, adding that officials found suspected human bones in different apartments and would attempt DNA testing to identify them.

Officials will also continue to search through piles of fallen bamboo scaffolding to check if any remains or bodies were buried there, he said.

The deadly blaze broke out at Wang Fuk Court, in the northern suburban district of Tai Po, which was undergoing a monthslong renovation project with buildings covered by bamboo scaffolding and green netting.

The city’s anti-corruption body and police said Tuesday that they had arrested 15 people, including directors at construction companies, as authorities probe corruption and negligence in relation to the renovation work.

Police said Wednesday that six others, from a fire service installation contractor, were arrested. They were believed to have deactivated some fire alarms at the housing complex during the renovation works, according to police, and were suspected of making false statements to the fire services department.

Residents at Wang Fuk Court and officials have previously said that some fire alarms in the buildings failed to sound when the blaze broke out, though it was not immediately clear how widespread that problem was within the complex.

Authorities also pointed to substandard plastic nylon netting covering scaffoldings erected outside the towers at Wang Fuk Court, and foam boards installed on windows, for contributing to the fire’s rapid spread to seven of the eight buildings at the complex.

On Wednesday, government officials ordered the removal of all external scaffolding nets from up to hundreds of buildings across the city that are undergoing major renovation or maintenance work. The materials will need to be tested before they are allowed to be installed again.

The removal was triggered by initial findings at two housing complexes in the territory where fire safety inspection reports for scaffolding nets were suspected to have been falsified, said Chris Tang, Hong Kong’s Secretary for Security. Police are investigating the companies that they believe could have provided the test reports, including the Binzhou Inspection and Testing Center in China.

The initial cause of the fire was still under investigation.

Nineteen bodies among the 159 were still unidentified, police said. Ten migrants who worked as domestic helpers at the housing complex, including nine from Indonesia and one from the Philippines, as well as one firefighter, were among those killed.