American employers unexpectedly cut 92,000 jobs last month, a sign that the labor market remains under strain. The unemployment rate blipped up to 4.4%. The Labor Department reported Friday that hiring deteriorated from January, when companies, nonprofits and government agencies added 126,000 jobs. The job market  had been expected to rebound this year from a lackluster 2025 when the economy, buffeted by President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff policies and the lingering effects of high interest rates, generated just 15,000 a month.

The calls to 911 poured in from staff at Camp East Montana, the nation's largest U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, in its first months of operation in El Paso, Texas. The emergencies included repeated suicide attempts by detainees, seizures, injuries from fights and a pregnant woman in pain. Data from more than a hundred 911 calls obtained by The Associated Press, interviews with detainees and court filings offer a portrait of overcrowding, medical neglect, malnutrition and emotional distress. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson rejected claims of subprime conditions, saying detainees receive food, water and medical treatment in a facility that's regularly cleaned.

Officials say Iran’s retaliatory attacks in the Middle East over strikes from Israel and the U.S. have left some of America’s partners in the Gulf frustrated over a lack of notice or adequate defense. The mostly private frustration comes as Pentagon officials conceded this week they’re struggling to stop waves of drones launched by Iran, leaving some U.S. targets in the Gulf region vulnerable. The Gulf countries have emerged as targets for Iran, well within the range of Iran’s short-range missiles and filled with targets, including American troops, businesses, tourist locations and energy facilities. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing a confidential diplomatic matter.

Sri Lanka is bringing more than 200 sailors from an Iranian ship ashore after the vessel sought assistance near the Indian Ocean island nation. Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the country took control of the vessel after it reported an engine failure and that the decision followed talks with Iranian officials and the ship’s captain. The episode highlights how the conflict involving Iran is extending beyond the Middle East into the Indian Ocean, placing strategically located Sri Lanka in a delicate position as it balances humanitarian obligations and maritime law. The move involving the IRIS Bushehr came after the U.S. sank the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka’s coast Wednesday.

The legal team for Hong Kong pro-democracy ex-publisher Jimmy Lai says he will not appeal the national security conviction for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Lai was found guilty in December of conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and conspiring with others to publish seditious articles. His Hong Kong legal team told The Associated Press about the decision Friday but would not comment on the reason for not appealing. Lai was one of the first prominent figures to be arrested under the security law in 2020. After the sentencing, Lai's children said a possible visit by U.S. President Donald Trump to Beijing later this month could be crucial in securing the release of their father.

After James Talarico won the Democratic Senate nomination in Texas, Republicans are racing to paint him as too progressive. Conservatives started flooding social media with old clips highlighting his comments on gender, immigration and race. Republican strategists believe they can use his comments as fodder for attack ads in the general election. On Wednesday, Talarico warned supporters that powerful elites will smear him because they find him threatening. Although Talarico gained prominence through viral videos, Republicans hope to use years of on-camera musings against him.

The Trump administration’s campaign to end “wokeness” in the military is reshaping its relationship with U.S. higher education. The Pentagon has been breaking off longstanding ties with prestigious universities that have trained generals and admirals while building new bonds with Christian schools and big public universities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth forged ahead with his realignment last week, expelling more than a dozen elite colleges from a military fellowship that serves as a pipeline to the upper ranks of leadership. Hegseth has homed in on graduate-level programs while preserving a broader program that covers tuition for nearly 200,000 service members.

This is the weekend when clocks move ahead, causing angst, lost sleep and health issues for many. Over the last decade, at least 19 states have passed laws to let them stay in daylight saving time if the federal government allows it. And some are giving serious consideration to staying in standard time — if their neighbors are willing to make the same move. There's not a clear consensus on what to do when every solution will still leave millions of Americans in the dark later in the morning or earlier in the evening than they would like for a chunk of the year.

Three former U.S. presidents, Grammy-winning artists, clergy and elected officials are expected to attend a Chicago celebration of life Friday for the late Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. The event honoring the protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate follows memorial services that drew large crowds in Chicago and South Carolina, where the civil rights leader was born. The Chicago celebration is expected to be the largest. Former Democratic U.S. presidents Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton plan to attend. That's according to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, the organization that Jackson founded.

A Wisconsin teenager who killed his parents and stole their money to fund his plan to kill President Donald Trump has been sentenced to life in prison. Waukesha County Circuit Judge Ralph Ramirez sentenced 18-year-old Nikita Casap on Thursday to two life terms with no possibility of parole in connection with the shooting deaths of his mother and stepfather last year. According to investigators, after he killed the couple fled across the country in his stepfather's SUV with $14,000 in cash, jewelry and passports. Investigators said he wrote a manifesto calling for Trump's assassination and was in touch with others, including someone who spoke Russian, about his plan to kill Trump and flee to Ukraine.

A Wisconsin man who allegedly told police he tried to set fire to a Republican congressman’s office last year because he was angry that the lawmaker backed a bill requiring TikTok’s Chinese owner to sell off its U.S. operations has been sentenced to seven years in prison. Court records show that in addition to the prison time, Fond du Lac County Circuit Judge Tricia Walker sentenced 20-year-old Caiden Stachowicz on Thursday to seven years of extended supervision. Stachowicz, of Menasha, pleaded no contest to an arson charge in November. His attorney, Danielle Gorsuch, said Stachowicz was suffering from a mental health crisis.

The Justice Department has released additional Jeffrey Epstein files involving uncorroborated accusations made by a woman against President Donald Trump that the department said had been mistakenly withheld during an earlier review. The department said last week that it was reviewing to determine if any records were improperly withheld after several news organizations reported that the massive tranche of records that had been made public didn’t include files documenting a series of interviews conducted in 2019 with a woman who made an allegation against Trump. The department said those files had been “incorrectly coded as duplicative,” and therefore were inadvertently not published along with the millions of other Epstein files.

Police say the mother of two girls found buried inside suitcases in Cleveland has been charged with two counts of murder. Aliyah Henderson, 28, is accused of killing Mila Chatman and Amor Wilson. Their remains were recovered after a dog walker led authorities to the suitcases four days earlier. Chatman’s father, DeShaun Chatman, said Thursday he had been looking for Mila for five years before investigators told him late Wednesday she was dead. Chatman said he sought emergency custody five times and had tried to locate Mila through a child welfare agency, but those efforts were unsuccessful because he did not know where they were living.