ROME (AP) — The Italian soccer federation became the latest in a growing list of nations to withdraw its support for embattled FIFA President Gianni Infantino.
The FIGC issued a statement on Wednesday saying it would no longer back Infantino's bid for reelection in March because of “the recent initiatives promoted by the FIFA president concerning governance and the development of international competitions.”
Infantino has come under increasing pressure to step down over his now-aborted plan to sell stakes in soccer’s biggest tournament, the World Cup, to private equity investors. Three of the sport’s continental confederations accused him of “deception” and European soccer body UEFA threatened a boycott of FIFA competitions.
“We will continue to work alongside UEFA and the other European federations to promote a vision of soccer based on merit, solidarity, sustainability, and the centrality of fans,” FIGC President Giovanni Malagò said.
“We identify with a model of dialogue, listening, and shared responsibility that has, until now, allowed soccer to grow, innovate and at the same time defend its founding principles.”
Romania followed suit on Wednesday, with the soccer federation's executive committee voting not support Infantino for a new mandate.
“FIFA needs today a new leader who can produce consensus and unity, inspire trust and who has the ability to bring us all together,” FRF President Răzvan Burleanu said at the end of the meeting.
The soccer federations in England, Wales and Ireland withdrew their support for Infantino’s reelection earlier this month, while Norway has called on him to step down as well as issuing a statement with five other Nordic countries — Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland and the Faeroe Islands — to say they had “lost confidence” in his leadership.
Infantino has been FIFA president since 2016 and, until the backlash over his proposals, seemed sure to be reelected unopposed next year in Morocco. FIFA has set a Nov. 18 deadline for challengers to nominate.
Some of FIFA’s 211 member federations are supporting Infantino, including 2030 World Cup co-host Morocco as well as Qatar, where he lived before the emirate hosted the 2022 World Cup, and Lebanon, which gave him citizenship this year. Saudi Arabia, the 2034 host, has not publicly backed Infantino despite his close political ties to the kingdom.
See AP’s full soccer coverage here
FILE - FIFA President Gianni Infantino gestures as he meets the media at the FIFA World Cup closing press conference in Doha, Qatar, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)
FILE - Giovanni Malago' smiles after being elected President of the Italian Soccer Federation (FIGC), in Rome, Monday June 22, 2026. (Alfredo Falcone/LaPresse via AP, File)
Canada is striking back at the United States with retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment, as the trade war between the once-friendly neighbors escalates.
Sen. Darline Graham won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother, Lindsey Graham, on South Carolina’s general election ballot, notching another win for President Donald Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice. And Justice Department lawyers told a court that if Trump’s name does not appear somewhere on the Kennedy Center, then the cultural center may be “required to be taken down.”
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The Trump administration is arguing that a separate injunction needs to be immediately rescinded in light of the high court’s ruling in the previous Democratic state lawsuit. It also had succeeded in a third case filed in May in the District of Columbia, convincing a judge that it was too early to prevent its implementation of the executive order.
All previous challenges were filed before the administration published its mail ballot rule Friday night. The rule says that if states want their mail ballots delivered, they will need federal approval of the design of their envelopes and must give the Postal Service a list of voters eligible to receive them.
“Across the country, states are already deep into preparations for the 2026 elections. Now, at the last moment, the federal government is attempting to meddle in those preparations and potentially threaten countless Americans’ right to vote,” New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of 25 Democratic attorneys general filing the lawsuit, said in a statement. “USPS has no authority to decide who can and cannot vote by mail.”
The action, filed by about two dozen states against the U.S. Postal Service, marked a new phase in the high-stakes litigation just two days after the Supreme Court ruled against them in a separate case.
The justices did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order seeking to limit mail voting in this year’s midterm elections — instead, a majority found the Democratic lawsuit premature.
But that was before the Republican administration issued a rule governing U.S. Postal Service delivery of mail ballots. Election officials warn it will be impossible to implement in the days before the first wave of mail ballots are sent out next week.
The trial kicked off last week in Oakland, California, where a jury was to determine whether Meta contributed to the youth mental health crisis by deliberately designing features that addict children to its platforms and hiding them from the public. The states also argued that Meta violated federal laws by routinely collecting data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, defended Meta’s record and progress on child safety and privacy as he began his testimony late Tuesday. Meta then settled before CEO Mark Zuckerberg was to testify.
Meta said in a blog post that it was “building on our longstanding efforts to empower parents and support teens.”
“Ensuring teens have a safe and productive experience on our platforms is an absolute imperative for Meta,” the company said. “We want to get this right for parents and teens, and that’s why we partnered with state attorneys general to set a new industry standard.”
The company urged its rivals to adopt similar safety measures.
The agreement is worth $353 million in Virginia alone and is one of the biggest in state consumer protection history, Attorney General Jay Jones said in a statement.
“For years, Meta intentionally deceived the public about the addictive and harmful design features that have wreaked havoc on youth mental health,” Jones said. The settlement “will put an end to these dangerous practices and deliver meaningful relief that will protect children from online harm.”
The president during his interview with Glenn Beck was asked about recent reporting in The Atlantic and elsewhere questioning whether the Iranian supreme leader is still alive.
Motjaba Khamenei was anointed supreme leader after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the opening moments of the U.S.-Israel bombardment of Iran on Feb. 28.
The younger Khamenei was also badly injured in the opening strikes and has remained out of public view since his elevation nearly six months ago.
“He was very seriously wounded. But I don’t think he’s dead,” Trump said. “And if he is, they’re putting on a pretty good show,” Trump added, noting that Iranian officials reference “going back to talk to him all the time, you know, to get a final blessing on things.”
The president and Glenn Beck, a rancher as well as a conservative pundit, were having a freewheeling discussion on beef processing when Beck complained that a handful of companies control the U.S. industry and inflate prices.
“Is that just a question of regulation, do you think?” the president asked. He also asked Beck which agency is “controlling those regulations — the Department of Agriculture?”
Trump, who has been under intense pressure to reduce beef prices and recently angered U.S. suppliers by relaxing tariffs on beef imports, called the industry a “monopoly” as Beck claimed inspection standards prevent more processors from entering the market.
“I’m surprised the ranchers and the farmers haven’t done it, because they’re smart as hell,” Trump said. “That’s been going on a long time … before I got here.”
“This is a very big thing you just told, because you just gave me a very good idea,” Trump said, without elaborating.
The president said on Glenn Beck’s radio show that John Ratcliffe’s unannounced trip to Russia was “sort of semi-routine.”
Trump repeated that he wants to see the Russia-Ukraine war to end, and he indicated that he’s followed the rampant speculation about who Ratcliffe has been meeting with and why. But the president downplayed the significance of Ratcliffe going to Moscow.
“I hate to disappoint people,” he said.
Meta has agreed to pay $17 billion and add child-safety measures to its Facebook and Instagram platforms to end a landmark trial over teen social media addiction and settle claims filed by 47 states, their attorneys general announced Wednesday.
California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey were among 29 states that sued the tech giant in 2023. This deal cuts short a federal trial that was expected to put CEO Mark Zuckerberg take the stand before a jury.
The agreement is worth $353 million in Virginia alone, but the total is just a fraction of the company’s 2025 revenue of $201 billion.
The president kept up his complaints about Canada, which is now embroiled in a full-scale trade war with the U.S.
Speaking on Glenn Beck’s radio show on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claim that Canada was one of the worst countries to deal with and that it had taken advantage of the U.S. when it comes to trade and tariffs. “I just said, we’re taking them on,” Trump said.
“She was a nice person,” Trump said Wednesday during a live radio interview with conservative personality Glenn Beck.
Trump also said Parton, who died Tuesday of cancer at age 80, was ‘amazing’ and not “a very political person.”
He said his decision to order U.S. flags on federal property to fly at half-staff for a week in Parton’s honor was a “natural thing” to do.
The snowballing opposition to data centers across the United States has transformed the midterm election landscape and has Trump defending the world’s richest companies.
Few people had even heard of a data center before the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power. Now Oracle, Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft expect to plunge more than $700 billion into data centers in the U.S. this year alone.
Trump continues to stick up for data centers, even as politicians from both parties run from them and many communities try to block them. His administration is pushing to help tech giants build and connect data centers to power plants and high-voltage power lines.
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Republicans as well as Democrats are turning data centers into a punching bag.
The president says AI development is key to competing against China, and Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said a federal pause on data center construction might be a “dangerous prospect.” But most registered voters oppose building a data center in their area, according to a July Fox News poll, including 60% of Republicans and 53% of MAGA voters.
Many Democratic leaders and candidates have withdrawn support for data centers. Now even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has announced a halt on approval of new data centers until audits determine their impact on the state’s electrical grid.
Trump says tech companies “can use a little public relations help,” but he says data centers bring “jobs and lots of money and lower taxes.”
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An inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve was unchanged last month, in the latest sign that many Americans are still struggling with higher costs.
The Commerce Department’s Wednesday report showed that prices rose 3.7% in July compared with a year earlier. Inflation has worsened since the Iran war began in late February, when it stood at 2.9%. It remains noticeably above the Fed’s target of 2%.
Stubbornly high prices are shaping up to be a key issue in the midterm elections, particularly as the Iran war keeps gas prices high, Trump is threatening new tariffs on Canada and China, and spending on AI infrastructure has pushed up the cost of computers, gaming consoles, and semiconductors.
The U.S. and Canada have ramped up their trade war with steep new tit-for-tat tariffs, but analysts are betting the longtime allies will eventually strike a deal to end a conflict neither side really wants. “If there is political will, there is an off ramp,’’ said former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler.
The prospects for compromise appear bleak right now with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney reacting to Trump’s new 50% U.S. tariffs on certain Canadian goods by taxing about $20 billion in American products including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment.
“You’re at war when you get attacked. We got attacked,’′ Carney, who came to power last year on the promise that he’d stand up to Trump.
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Three U.S. Secret Service officials were placed on administrative leave Tuesday, pending the outcome of an investigation by the agency’s professional standards office.
The three were operating in non-law-enforcement capacities and were being investigated for potential misconduct, the agency’s public information office reported. However, the cause for the action remained unclear as the Office of Professional Responsibility was beginning its review.
The Secret Service has been under scrutiny as Trump has been the subject of at least three assassination plots in the past two years. In April, police said an armed man breached security at the Washington Hilton during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which Trump was attending.
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Justice Department attorneys argued that if Trump’s name does not appear somewhere on the Kennedy Center, then the money from donors for renovations would shrivel up and the “decrepit, dilapidated” cultural center may be “required to be taken down.”
That came from a court filing late Monday on the long-running saga over whether the president’s name can be added to the cultural institution and venue meant to honor John F. Kennedy after his assassination. The original attempt to add “Donald J. Trump” on the building’s facade was halted by the court in May following a lawsuit from Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center.
The center’s Trump-aligned board of trustees then voted again this month to get the president’s name back on the cultural institution in a different way: by appending “Renovated and Restored By President Donald J. Trump” under the title on the building’s facade. Another phrase, “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund” would be a possible addition, as well as renaming the plaza in front of the Kennedy Center to honor the president.
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U.S. Sen. Darline Graham won the Republican nomination to replace her late brother on South Carolina’s general election ballot, notching another win for President Donald Trump after he threw his support behind the political novice.
Graham defeated U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman in Tuesday’s special Republican primary runoff, two weeks after they were the top two finishers in a 10-way primary.
Despite being a political unknown, Graham bested some of South Carolina’s top political names in the special election spun up after Lindsey Graham’s sudden death last month. She was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to serve out the remaining months of her late brother’s current term and swiftly won an endorsement from Trump, who encouraged her to enter the race for a full term and campaigned for her in the state last week.
Graham will face Democratic nominee Annie Andrews in November.
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Canada struck back at the United States on Tuesday with retaliatory tariffs on about $20 billion worth of American goods, including steel, dairy products, appliances and farm equipment, as the trade war between the once-friendly neighbors escalated sharply.
The confrontation threatened one of the world’s largest trading relationships and further strained ties between the United States and a country long considered one of its closest allies. A prolonged dispute could raise costs for American businesses and consumers less than 2½ months before the midterm elections.
The new tariffs extended well beyond industrial goods, hitting everyday purchases such as seafood, cheese, clothing, cosmetics and toilet paper, with some facing duties as high as 50%.
“We did not choose this conflict, but when our economic integration is used as a weapon rather than the foundation for a win-win partnership, we need to stand up,” Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne said in French, calling the situation “an unprecedented challenge imposed on Canada.”
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The Supreme Court is seen on the morning after the conservative majority sided with the Trump administration in a case over President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins speaks with reporters at the White House, Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
FILE - President Donald Trump, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping arrive a state dinner at the Great Hall of the People May 14, 2026, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney speaks as he announces a $11.3 billion contract for icebreakers at the Davie shipyard in Levis, Quebec, Monday, Aug. 24, 2026. Quebec Premier Christine Frechette, right, looks on. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press via AP)
Steel coils, which will be made into roofing, siding and HVAC products, are seen in the manufacturing plant at Ideal Roofing in Ottawa, on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press via AP)
