Rory McIlroy let his putter fly high, put his head in his hands and dropped to his knees as fans celebrated wildly at Augusta National. McIlroy's sheer relief was laid bare as he ended his long wait to win the…

Jahmyr Gibbs and the Detroit Lions have beaten the Dallas Cowboys to help their playoff chances. Gibbs ran three touchdowns in Thursday night's 44-30 win. Gibbs' final score was a 13-yarder with 2:19 left that sealed a much-needed win for the Lions. Detroit avoided losing consecutive games for the first time in more than than three years. The Cowboys had surged into postseason contention with a three-game winning streak. But against the Lions, the NFL’s top-ranked offense had to lean on powerful kicker Brandon Aubrey too much, and Dallas’ revitalized defense was humbled.

Federal border agents have descended on a Hispanic enclave just outside New Orleans and local business owners are suffering. The city of Kenner has the highest concentration of Hispanic residents in Louisiana and has been a target of a Department of Homeland Security immigration crackdown, seeking to make 5,000 arrests, that began Wednesday. DHS said it has already made dozens of arrests, including some individuals with violent criminal regards, but only released limited information about who has been detained. Kenner resident Carmela Diaz has shuttered her taco restaurant because employees and clients are afraid to leave their homes.

Police have recovered a James Bond-inspired Fabergé pendant after six days of waiting for it to exit a suspect's gastrointestinal tract. New Zealand Police said the pendant was retrieved without medical intervention Thursday night. They released a photo showing the pendant and chain and the jewelry's 33,000 New Zealand dollar price tag intact. Police arrested the suspect inside an Auckland jewelry store Nov. 28 shortly after the alleged theft and had been watching him ever since waiting for the jewelry to reemerge. The pendant made of green enamel and gold and encrusted with diamonds and sapphires was inspired by the plot of the 1983 film “Octopussy.”

December’s supermoon, a phenomenon when the moon is closest to Earth, making it appear larger and brighter, is the last of three in a row in 2025. This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

From the election of Zohran Mamdani to the intrigue surrounding the jewel heist at the Louvre, keeping up with this year’s news also left some Americans struggling with pronunciations. That’s put both the name of New York City’s incoming mayor and the famed Paris museum on a list of the most mispronounced words in 2025. The list of words that news anchors, politicians and other public figures in the U.S. struggled with the most was released Thursday. It was compiled by the language-learning company Babbel and closed-captioning company The Captioning Group.

U.S. Southern Command says it has conducted another strike against a small boat in the eastern Pacific Ocean, following a pause of almost three weeks. It is the 22nd strike the U.S. military has carried out against boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that the Trump administration claimed were trafficking drugs. There were four casualties in Thursday’s strike, according to the social media post, bringing the death toll of the campaign to at least 87 people. In a video that accompanied the announcement, a small boat can be seen moving across the water before it is suddenly consumed by a large explosion. The video then zooms out to show the boat covered in flames and billowing smoke.

Democratic Governor Tim Walz has denounced former President Donald Trump for his comments about Minnesota’s Somali community. Trump has called the community “garbage” and labeled the state a “hellhole.” Walz said Thursday these remarks slandered all Minnesotans and were unprecedented for a U.S. president. Republican legislative leaders stopped short of condemning Trump, instead criticizing Walz for not preventing fraud in social service programs. Trump’s comments followed a conservative news outlet's misleading claims about fraud involving Somali Americans. Federal authorities have prepared an immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota targeting a small fraction of Somalis living unlawfully in the U.S. Most foreign-born Somalis in the state are naturalized U.S. citizens.

The Supreme Court is allowing the challenged Texas congressional redistricting plan to be used in next year’s election, despite a lower-court ruling that the map likely discriminates on the basis of race. The map is favorable to Republicans and was pushed by President Donald Trump. The justices acted Thursday on an emergency request from Texas for quick action because qualifying in the new districts already has begun, with primary elections in March. The Supreme Court’s order puts the 2-1 ruling blocking the map on hold at least until after the high court issues a final decision in the case. The effort to preserve a slim Republican majority in the House in 2026 touched off a nationwide redistricting battle.

President Donald Trump has added a new architectural firm to his $300 million ballroom construction project at the White House. A White House spokesperson said Thursday that the firm, Shalom Baranes of Washington, D.C., was needed because the project is moving into a new stage. Earlier Thursday, the Trump-appointed chairman of a federal commission with jurisdiction over construction to federal buildings said he expected the White House to submit the ballroom plans this month for review. The new firm has worked on the Pentagon and Treasury buildings, among other federal properties. The initial firm, McCrery Architects, remains as a consultant.

The Navy has released investigative reports into four mishaps that all involve the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman while it was dispatched to counterattacks on shipping by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. The four reports cover a friendly fire incident in December 2024 that saw the cruiser USS Gettysburg shoot at two fighter jets from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, downing one, as well as the Truman’s collision with a merchant vessel and the loss of two more multimillion-dollar jets aboard the carrier to mishaps earlier this year.

The playing surfaces at every NFL stadium will have to meet new enhanced standards set through lab and field testing by the start of the 2028 season. NFL field director Nick Pappas detailed the plans for the program on Thursday that will provide each team “a library of approved and accredited NFL fields” before the start of next season. Any new field will immediately have to meet those standards and all teams will have two years to achieve it, whether they are grass, synthetic or a hybrid. The fields undergo extensive testing, approved by a joint committee with the NFLPA. The goal is to ensure consistent playability and reduce injury risk. Despite player preferences for grass, the NFL has no plans to mandate it, citing no significant injury differences between surface types.

RoboCop has found a permanent home in Detroit — all 11 feet and 3,500 pounds of him. A statue of the crime-fighting movie character has been welcomed by fans since it began standing guard over Detroit Wednesday afternoon in the Motor City's Eastern Market area. Jim Toscano says streams of people have driven by his FREE AGE film production company where the bronze mold-cast statue is bolted into concrete. “RoboCop” developed a cult following after it hit theaters in 1987. It was set in a crime-ridden near-future Detroit. The city's homicide numbers have now dropped below mid-1960s levels, and the statue was erected without objection from city officials.

Trump administration officials overseeing the latest immigration crackdown are aiming to arrest 5,000 immigrants in New Orleans and across Louisiana. They say they are targeting immigrants with violent criminal pasts. But some local leaders in New Orleans say that’s an unrealistic goal. That many arrests would surpass the number tallied during a two-month enforcement blitz this fall around Chicago, a region with a much bigger immigrant population. The president of the City Council in New Orleans says he can’t see any way how a sweep of New Orleans would result in the arrests of 5,000 criminals.

The Trump administration has instructed U.S. embassies and consulates around the world to prioritize visa applications from foreigners wishing to visit the United States to either invest in America or attend the 2026 World Cup, 2028 Olympics and other major sporting events. The administration also has added new criteria for highly skilled foreign workers seeking a particular visa. The new rules would deny entry to applicants deemed to have directed or participated in the censorship of American citizens on social media through content moderation initiatives that have sprung up throughout Europe and elsewhere to combat extremist speech. The steps were outlined in cables sent this week to all U.S. diplomatic missions and obtained by The Associated Press.