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  • NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February

    NASA’s new moon rocket heads to the pad ahead of astronaut launch as early as February

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s giant new moon rocket headed to the launch pad Saturday in preparation for astronauts’ first lunar fly-around in more than half a century.

    The out-and-back trip could blast off as early as February.

    The 322-foot rocket began its 1 mph creep from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building at daybreak. The four-mile trek could take until nightfall.

    Thousands of space center workers and their families gathered in the predawn chill to witness the long-awaited event, delayed for years. They huddled together ahead of the Space Launch System rocket’s exit from the building, built in the 1960s to accommodate the Saturn V rockets that sent 24 astronauts to the moon during the Apollo program. The cheering crowd was led by NASA’s new administrator Jared Isaacman and all four astronauts assigned to the mission.

    “What a great day to be here,” said Reid Wiseman, the crew commander. “It is awe-inspiring.”

    Weighing in at 11 million pounds, the Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule on top made the move aboard a massive transporter that was used during the Apollo and shuttle eras. It was upgraded for the SLS rocket’s extra heft.

    The first and only other SLS launch — which sent an empty Orion capsule into orbit around the moon — took place back in November 2022.

    “This one feels a lot different, putting crew on the rocket and taking the crew around the moon,” NASA’s John Honeycutt said on the eve of the rocket’s rollout.

    Heat shield damage and other capsule problems during the initial test flight required extensive analyses and tests, pushing back this first crew moonshot until now. The astronauts won’t orbit the moon or even land on it. That giant leap will take come on the third flight in the Artemis lineup a few years from now.

    Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover and Christina Koch — longtime NASA astronauts with spaceflight experience — will be joined on the 10-day mission by Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen, a former fighter pilot awaiting his first rocket ride.

    They will be the first people to fly to the moon since Apollo 17’s Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt closed out the triumphant lunar-landing program in 1972. Twelve astronauts strolled the lunar surface, beginning with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in 1969. Only four moonwalkers are still alive; Aldrin, the oldest, turns 96 on Tuesday.

    “They are so fired up that we are headed back to the moon,” Wiseman said. “They just want to see humans as far away from Earth as possible discovering the unknown.”

    NASA is waiting to conduct a fueling test of the SLS rocket on the pad in early February before confirming a launch date.

    “We’ve, I think, zero intention of communicating an actual launch date” until completing the fueling demo, Isaacman told reporters.

    The space agency has only five days to launch in the first half of February before bumping into March.

  • EU, spurred by Trump, to sign mega free-trade deal with South America

    EU, spurred by Trump, to sign mega free-trade deal with South America

    BRUSSELS — The European Union’s leaders are set to sign a landmark trade agreement with South American nations to create what they have trumpeted as the world’s largest free-trade zone.

    This deal is more than 25 years in the making. But its culmination comes at a time when the EU is moving with a new, urgent sense of purpose, as President Donald Trump upends long-standing alliances and the norms of global trade.

    The EU voted this month, despite stiff opposition from some of its 27 nations, to approve the deal with the trade bloc known as Mercosur, which includes South America’s two biggest economies, Brazil and Argentina, along with Paraguay and Uruguay. EU leaders are headed to Paraguay on Saturday for a signing ceremony, after years of negotiations on the pact, which will cut tariffs on an array of signature products from Argentine beef to German cars.

    Along with Trump’s tariff blitz, his administration’s wavering interest in being responsible for European security and general disdain for the EU have spurred a push to “diversify” and “de-risk” from the United States. In other words, Europe is looking for other friends and hedging its bets.

    As jilted U.S. allies like Europe and Canada close ranks against Washington, the EU has sped up trade talks with Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates and other countries. In the fall, the EU inked a trade accord with Indonesia and now hopes to clinch a big one with India.

    European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, head of the E.U.’s executive branch, has declared that Europe is charting its own course. “Only if we are economically strong, we can secure our independence,” she said before the trip to South America.

    European officials have emphasized the contrast between forming a free-trade zone of more than 700 million people and Washington imposing tariffs and threatening military power, as well as suspending cooperation not only on trade but also on climate, health and international aid.

    With South America balancing its interests vis-à-vis the United States and China, EU leaders have also cast the Mercosur deal as a way for the EU to assert itself as a global player — and a steady hand in troubled times.

    Still, Europe’s push to branch out from the U.S., its biggest export market for goods, has also created friction. The bloc has grappled with its own strained relationship with Beijing and economic competition from China. And securing the backing of all 27 EU member countries in trade negotiations is tough, given occasionally conflicting national priorities.

    The European Parliament must now ratify the Mercosur treaty, which could take months, and opponents, especially in France and Poland, are threatening to sink the deal.

    The accord has long faced opposition over environmental protection and deforestation concerns. In particular, farmers and beef and poultry producers also argue that the influx of cheaper goods from South America, with looser production standards, would dent their livelihoods.

    France, Poland, and Italy had sought to block or water down the deal over worries from farmers, a powerful lobby and economic pillar. But Trump’s tariffs and domestic political turmoil in France may have left Paris, historically an EU heavyweight, with little sway.

    For France’s EU neighbors, the state of international politics seems to have outweighed the traditional preference for consensus. “Other member states were of the view that we cannot really delay this much further, that there would be a huge loss of credibility for the European Union if it cannot go ahead at this time,” said Ignacio García Bercero, a former EU trade negotiator and senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based research institute.

    The Mercosur deal long predates Trump, Bercero said. “Now it is clear, however, that in the current geopolitical context, concluding this type of agreement is more important than ever,” he added. “When we are facing a very disruptive situation, not only with the United States, but also China, it becomes more important than ever to consolidate your trade agreements, to expand your alliances.”

    As the E.U.’s 27 heads of state and government debated the deal in December, European farmers rumbled into Brussels on tractors to protest. French farmers did the same on the streets of Paris this week, blocking roads near the Eiffel Tower, and have pledged to clog the streets again next week in Strasbourg.

    Other industries, however, are keen to tap into the South American market, such as carmakers in Germany, which have been buffeted by Chinese competition and U.S. tariffs.

    The European Commission made 11th-hour concessions, including billions in agricultural aid, which brought Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni onside and ultimately secured a majority for the political green light last week.

    The commission, which says it addressed grievances with safeguards and quotas on South American imports, will focus now on winning the support of the European Parliament, according to trade spokesman Olof Gill. Gill described the deal as “a geopolitical signal,” adding that the commission has “built in every necessary protection for our farmers.”

    European Council President António Costa, who is also attending the ceremony in Paraguay on Saturday, pledged in a statement that the deal would not only benefit European businesses but also “boost the EU’s sovereignty and strategic autonomy.”

    Confronted with Trump’s tariffs, EU leaders so far have averted a spiraling confrontation by signing a skeletal trade deal last year. Still, they have tried to show that they can lead in maintaining open and orderly global markets despite America’s protectionism.

    While Brussels has boasted that the Mercosur accord will create the largest free trade zone of its kind, economists expect only a limited boost for the EU economy. EU exports to Mercosur countries stood at around 55 billion euros in 2023, while exports to the U.S. in 2023 were over 500 billion euros.

    The deal will probably bring some benefits, by lifting barriers and encouraging higher EU exports, though its “overall economic impact remains modest,” analysts at ING, the global bank headquartered in Amsterdam, wrote this week. Even so, they added, the “true value of the deal goes beyond simple economics.”

    “It sends strong signals to the U.S. and China” that the EU is serious about curbing reliance, the ING analysis said, and it could create momentum to finalize other languishing talks, including with India: “For the EU, this is not just about trade — it’s about securing strategic resources and counterbalancing global competitors.”

    If ratified, the agreement would deepen EU ties to a region in which China is the largest trading partner and which the Trump administration has declared to be a U.S. sphere of dominance. Just this month, Trump ordered strikes on Venezuela, which borders Brazil, and U.S. forces captured President Nicolás Maduro.

    Venezuela was suspended from Mercosur about 10 years ago over trade and human rights commitments. Bolivia, which recently joined, can eventually join the EU trade deal.

  • Trump’s Twin Cities immigration crackdown has made chaos and tension the new normal

    Trump’s Twin Cities immigration crackdown has made chaos and tension the new normal

    MINNEAPOLIS — Work starts around sunrise for many of the federal officers carrying out the immigration crackdown in and around the Twin Cities, with hundreds of people in tactical gear emerging from a bland office building near the main airport.

    Within minutes, hulking SUVs, pickup trucks, and minivans begin leaving, forming the unmarked convoys that have quickly become feared and common sights in the streets of Minneapolis, St. Paul, and their suburbs.

    Protesters also arrive early, braving the cold to stand across the street from the fenced-in federal compound, which houses an immigration court and government offices. “Go home!” they shout as convoys roar past. “ICE out!”

    Things often turn uglier after nightfall, when the convoys return and the protesters sometimes grow angrier, shaking fences, and occasionally smacking passing cars. Eventually, the federal officers march toward them, firing tear gas and flash grenades before hauling away at least a few people.

    “We’re not going anywhere!” a woman shouted on a recent morning. “We’re here until you leave.”

    This is the daily rhythm of Operation Metro Surge, the Trump administration’s latest and biggest crackdown yet, with more than 2,000 officers taking part. The surge has pitted city and state officials against the federal government, sparked daily clashes between activists and immigration officers in the deeply liberal cities, and left a mother of three dead.

    The crackdown is barely noticeable in some areas, particularly in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods, and suburbs, where convoys and tear gas are rare. And even in neighborhoods where masked immigration officers are common, they often move with ghostlike quickness, making arrests and disappearing before protesters can gather in force.

    Still, the surge can be felt across broad swaths of the Twin Cities area, which is home to more than 3 million people.

    “We don’t use the word ‘invasion’ lightly,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, told reporters this week, noting that his police force has just 600 officers. “What we are seeing is thousands — plural, thousands — of federal agents coming into our city.”

    Those agents have an outsized presence in a small city.

    It can take hours to drive across Los Angeles and Chicago, both targets of Trump administration crackdowns. It can take 15 minutes to cross Minneapolis.

    So as worry ripples through the region, children are skipping school or learning remotely, families are avoiding religious services and many businesses, especially in immigrant neighborhoods, have closed temporarily.

    Drive down Lake Street, an immigrant hub since the days when newcomers came to Minneapolis from Norway and Sweden, and the sidewalks now seem crowded only with activists standing watch, ready to blow warning whistles at the first sign of a convoy.

    At La Michoacana Purepecha, where customers can order ice cream, chocolate covered bananas, and pork rinds, the door is locked and staff let in people one at a time. Nearby, at Taqueria Los Ocampo, a sign in English and Spanish says the restaurant is temporarily closed because of “current conditions.”

    A dozen blocks away at the Karmel Mall, where the city’s large Somali community goes for everything from food and coffee to tax preparation, signs on the doors warn, “No ICE enter without court order.”

    The shadow of George Floyd

    It’s been nearly six years since George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, but the scars from that killing remain raw.

    Floyd was killed just blocks from where an Immigration and Citizenship Enforcement officer shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, during a Jan. 7 confrontation after she stopped to help neighbors during an enforcement operation. Federal officials say the officer fired in self-defense after Good “weaponized” her vehicle. City and state officials dismiss those explanations and point to multiple bystander videos of the confrontation.

    For Twin Cities residents, the crackdown can feel overwhelming.

    “Enough is enough,” said Johan Baumeister, who came to the scene of Good’s death soon after the shooting to lay flowers.

    He said he didn’t want to see the violent protests that shook Minneapolis after Floyd’s death, causing billions of dollars in damage. But this city has a long history of activism and protests, and he had no doubt there would be more.

    “I think they’ll see Minneapolis show our rage again,” he predicted.

    He was right.

    In the days since, there have been repeated confrontations between activists and immigration officers. Most amounted to little more than shouted insults and taunting, with destruction mostly limited to broken windows, graffiti, and some badly damaged federal vehicles.

    But angry clashes now flare regularly across the Twin Cities. Some protesters clearly want to provoke the federal officers, throwing snowballs at them or screaming obscenities through bullhorns from just a couple feet away. The serious force, though, comes from immigration officers, who have broken car windows, pepper-sprayed protesters and warned observers not to follow them through the streets. Immigrants and citizens have been yanked from cars and homes and detained, sometimes for days. And most clashes end in tear gas.

    Drivers in Minneapolis or St. Paul can now stumble across intersections blocked by men in body armor and gas masks, with helicopters clattering overhead and the air filled with the shriek of protesters’ whistles.

    Shovel your neighbor’s walk

    In a state that prides itself on its decency, there’s something particularly Minnesotan about the protests,

    Soon after Good was shot, Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat and regular Trump target, repeatedly said he was angry but also urged people to find ways to help their communities.

    “It might be shoveling your neighbor’s walk,” he said. “It might mean being at a food bank. It might be pausing to talk to someone you haven’t talked to before.”

    He and other leaders have pleaded with protesters to remain peaceful, warning that the White House was looking for a chance to crack down harder.

    And when protests do become clashes, residents will often spill from their homes, handing out bottled water so people can flush tear gas from their eyes.

    Residents stand watch at schools to warn immigrant parents if convoys approach while they’re picking up their children. They take care packages to people too afraid to go out, and arrange rides for them to work and doctor’s visits.

    On Thursday, in the basement of a Lutheran church in St. Paul, the group Open Market MN assembled food packs for more than a hundred families staying home. Colin Anderson, the group’s outreach director, said the group has seen a surge in requests.

    Sometimes, people don’t even understand what has happened to them.

    Like Christian Molina from suburban Coon Rapids, who was driving through a Minneapolis neighborhood on a recent day, taking his car to a mechanic, when immigration officers began following him. He wonders if it’s because he looks Hispanic.

    They turned on their siren, but Molina kept driving, unsure who they were.

    Eventually, the officers sped up, hit his rear bumper and both cars stopped. Two emerged and asked Molina for his papers. He refused, saying he’d wait for the police. Crowds began to gather, and a clash soon broke out, ending with tear gas.

    So the officers left.

    They left behind an angry, worried man who suddenly owned a sedan with a mangled rear fender.

    Long after the officers were gone he had one final question.

    “Who’s going to pay for my car?”

  • Why U.S. cities are reverting 1-way streets back to their original 2-way design

    Why U.S. cities are reverting 1-way streets back to their original 2-way design

    Excessive speeding was so common on parallel one-way streets passing a massive electronics plant that Indianapolis residents used to refer to the pair as a “racetrack” akin to the city’s famous Motor Speedway a few miles west.

    Originally two-way thoroughfares, Michigan and New York streets switched to opposite one-way routes in the 1970s to help thousands of RCA workers swiftly travel to and from their shifts building televisions or pressing vinyl records. But after the RCA plant closed in 1995, the suddenly barren roads grew even more enticing for lead-footed drivers — until last year, when city officials finally converted them back to two-way streets.

    “The opening and conversion of those streets has just been transformative for how people think about that corridor,” said James Taylor, who runs a nearby community center.

    Embracing the oft-repeated slogan that “paint is cheap,” transportation planners across the U.S. — particularly in midsize cities — have been turning their unidirectional streets back to multidirectional ones. They view the step as one of the easiest ways to improve safety and make downtowns more alluring to shoppers, restaurant patrons and would-be residents.

    A street design U-turn

    Dave Amos, an assistant professor of city and regional planning at California Polytechnic State University, said almost no major streets in the U.S. originated as one-way routes. Two-way streets were the standard, before mass migration to the suburbs prioritized faster commutes over downtown walkability.

    “One-way streets are designed for moving cars quickly and efficiently,” Amos said. “So when you have that as your goal, pedestrians and cyclists almost by design are secondary, which makes them more vulnerable.”

    But the propensity to speed isn’t the only reason one-way streets are viewed as less safe.

    Wade Walker, an engineer with Kittelson & Associates who has worked on street conversion projects in Lakeland, Fla., Lynchburg, Va.;, and Chattanooga, Tenn., said there is a misperception that one-way streets are safer because people on foot only have to look one direction to see the incoming traffic. The confusion arises when one-way streets combine with two-way streets to form a city grid, he said.

    Pedestrians crossing a signalized intersection of two-way streets can expect to encounter vehicles in a certain sequence: those turning left on green, traveling straight, and turning right on red. But when one-way streets are included, there are 16 potential sequences depending on the type and direction of the roads that intersect, Walker said.

    “It’s not the number of conflicts, it’s the way those conflicts occur,” he said.

    One way to divide a community

    Louisville, Ky., about two hours south of Indianapolis, has been restoring one-way streets to their original two-way footprints. The state is leading an ongoing project to reconvert a stretch along Main Street that passes such landmarks as the Louisville Slugger Museum, the KFC Yum! Center arena, and a minor-league baseball stadium.

    One of the city’s biggest redesigns is happening this year in the predominantly Black western part of the city, where many roads changed to one-way routes in the 1970s to feed a new interstate bridge over the Ohio River. However, it decimated neighborhoods and cut off the once-thriving community from downtown.

    “All those mom-and-pop shops and local businesses over time kind of faded because that connectivity got taken away,” said Michael King, the city’s assistant director of transportation planning. “It just feels more like, ‘This is a road to get me through here pretty quickly.’”

    Within three years after some of Chattanooga’s two-way streets were transformed into unidirectional ones, business vacancies skyrocketed and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga became “landlocked” to prevent students from having to cross a dangerous road, Walker said.

    In 2022, almost two decades after the road was redesigned, he returned to find the college campus had expanded across it and business construction had surged.

    Converting streets and skeptics

    When Lynchburg, Va., launched a long-discussed plan to change its downtown Main Street back to two ways, Rodney Taylor voiced concerns that it would doom his restaurant by blocking delivery vehicles. After the city completed the section in 2021, he acknowledged the fears were unfounded.

    “An important thing to do is to admit when you’re wrong,” he said. “And I was just flat-out wrong.”

    Many residents also changed their tune in Austin, Texas, when the city began reconverting some of the one-way streets in its urban core, said Adam Greenfield, executive director with Safe Streets Austin.

    “It just worked,” said Greenfield, who is now lobbying the city to do away with all its one-way streets. “That’s what you’ll find with these conversions — they’ll be done and then instantly people will be like, ‘Why didn’t we do this 20 years ago?’”

    After Chicago went the opposite direction last year and suddenly changed some of its two-way streets to one-way in the busy West Loop restaurant district, a politician representing an adjacent area got numerous calls from confused constituents.

    “Even if this was the right move to make these streets one-way, it certainly doesn’t make sense to not ask the opinion of the neighbors,” Alderman Bill Conway said.

    Opportunity in Indianapolis

    Now that Indianapolis has finished the redesigns for Michigan and New York streets, there are 10 other conversions on tap next, said Mark St. John, chief engineer for the city’s Department of Public Works. The total cost for those projects is estimated at $60 million, with around $25 million of that from a 2023 federal grant.

    James Taylor, who runs the community center near the old RCA plant, said it is too early to know the full impact. Some business owners, however, have signaled construction plans along the redesigned streets, which Taylor says still feel a little strange.

    “I’ve been driving around that neighborhood for 30 years,” he said. “It’s all kind of familiar, but you’re coming at it from a whole different perspective.”

  • Abigail Spanberger becomes Virginia’s 1st female governor in historic inauguration

    Abigail Spanberger becomes Virginia’s 1st female governor in historic inauguration

    RICHMOND, Va. — Abigail Davis Spanberger, a former Democratic member of Congress and undercover operative for the CIA, became Virginia’s 75th governor Saturday as the first woman chosen to lead a state that waited until 1952 to ratify the federal amendment giving women the right to vote.

    “We will not agree on everything,” Spanberger said. “But I speak from personal experience when I say we do not have to see eye-to-eye on every issue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder on others.”

    Spanberger, 46, won a 15-point victory last fall after promising to address the rising consumer costs, job insecurity, and lack of access to healthcare that she blamed on policies enacted in Washington and by the Republican administration of President Donald Trump.

    But Spanberger also ran on a record of bipartisanship during her three terms in Congress representing a conservative district, with a reputation for pragmatism that pulled her to the political center at a time of increasing partisan division. Her sweeping win in a swing state drew national attention from Democrats searching for a message that could resonate broadly in the 2026 midterm elections and beyond.

    She set a theme of unity for Saturday’s inauguration, which began at noon on the steps of the State Capitol in Richmond — a spot where suffragists demonstrated for the vote more than a century ago.

    Thousands assembled on risers — many wearing clear plastic rain ponchos handed out by staffers. Spanberger wore a long coat and gloves in suffragette-white.

    The crowd chanted “Abby! Abby!” and “We love you Abigail!” as she took the lectern.

    “The history and the gravity of this moment are not lost on me,” Spanberger told a crowd of several thousand who cheered heavily at a mention of suffrage. “I maintain an abiding sense of gratitude to those who worked generation after generation to ensure women could be among those casting ballots, but who could only dream of a day like today.”

    The chilly, occasionally drizzly day held a series of historic firsts. Former state Sen. Ghazala Hashmi was sworn in as the first Muslim and first person of Indian descent to serve as lieutenant governor, taking the oath of office on the Koran. Former state Del. Jay Jones took office as the first Black person elected Virginia attorney general, holding his young son as he was inaugurated.

    Politically, the group marks a sharp left turn from the Republican executive branch that governed in Virginia over the past four years. Outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) gave Spanberger the keys to the Executive Mansion on Saturday morning, and in his final speech to the legislature earlier in the week, he urged Democrats to maintain his business-friendly policies and to establish a relationship with the Trump administration.

    But Virginia Democrats wield the consolidated power to set any agenda they want. A blue “tsunami” in last fall’s elections — as House Speaker Don Scott (D., Portsmouth) put it — gave the party a 64-36 majority in the House of Delegates to go with a 21-19 majority they already hold in the state Senate. Democratic leaders have pledged to govern with restraint and to stay focused on an affordability agenda, and the national party is touting the state — and Spanberger — as a standard-bearer ahead of this fall’s congressional midterms.

    “I know many of you are worried about the recklessness coming out of Washington. You are worried about policies that are hurting our communities,” Spanberger said. She blamed “an administration,” without mentioning Trump, for “gilding buildings” while the social safety net erodes, prices go up and communities live in fear. The crowd grew loud when she said everyday Virginians should drive policy, “not kings or aristocrats or oligarchs.” But she acknowledged that not all Virginians see the same root problems.

    “I know that some who are here today or watching from home may disagree with the litany of challenges and hardships I laid out,” she said. “Your perspective may differ from mine, but that does not preclude from us working together where we may find common cause.”

    Spanberger pledged to work to lower the cost of housing and energy, reduce gun violence, and improve education. Though she mentioned her predecessor — who, by tradition, left before her speech — only to thank him for his service, Spanberger drew one of her sharpest contrasts to Youngkin by invoking immigration. The Republican has played enthusiastic cheerleader for the hardline policies of the Trump administration, and Spanberger drew loud cheers when she spoke directly to immigrants.

    “And in Virginia, our hardworking, law-abiding immigrant neighbors will know that when we say that we will focus on the security and safety of all of our neighbors,’ we mean them too,” Spanberger said.

    She invoked leaders of the past who called for unity in troubled times, such as Patrick Henry — the first governor of Virginia — who warned in 1799: “United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

    That, Spanberger said, “is the charge we must answer again today.” Saying Virginians must put aside differences to find solutions for the future, she asked: “What will you do to help us author this next chapter?”

    D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, another Democrat with a national profile, attended their neighboring governor’s inauguration. “I’m just going to be there to watch history being made,” Moore said in an interview this week. He added that he looks for a “new era of cooperation” between the two states, with shared concerns around issues such as transportation, energy, and “protecting our federal workers.” He leapt to his feet in applause when her speech concluded.

    Prominent national Democrats also attended, including Spanberger’s long-time friend New Jersey Gov.-elect Mikie Sherill (D), House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) and Sen. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.).

    Virginia’s incoming leaders were busy even before inauguration day, with Jones on Friday dismissing top lawyers at George Mason University and the Virginia Military Institute — universities where Democrats have accused Youngkin and outgoing Attorney General Jason Miyares of politicizing the boards and kowtowing to efforts by the Trump administration to enforce a conservative ideology.

    Spanberger sought resignations from board members at the University of Virginia and has pledged to make appointments there as soon as she takes office. She was expected to take those actions and sign a series of executive orders kicking off her agenda later Saturday.

    Spanberger has cast her election as a victory for a long line of women who have broken barriers in Virginia — including her Republican opponent last year, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, who in 2021 became the first woman elected to that role. Just as Virginia delayed ratifying the 19th Amendment for 32 years after it passed in 1920, Spanberger’s mother spent years lobbying the state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. It did so in 2020 under the leadership of its first female Speaker of the House of Delegates, Eileen Filler-Corn (D., Fairfax).

    As Spanberger told the crowd that her mother put herself through nursing school and “worked a heck of a lot more than just full-time,” her mother blew her a kiss. The governor’s three daughters joined her to take the oath; one helped a group of Girl Scouts lead the Pledge of Allegiance.

    After being sworn in before spectators facing the Capitol, Spanberger was set to watch a traditional parade and attend an inaugural ball in the evening.

  • AP: Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has been on DEA’s radar for years

    AP: Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez has been on DEA’s radar for years

    WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump announced the audacious capture of Nicolás Maduro to face drug trafficking charges in the U.S., he portrayed the strongman’s vice president and longtime aide as America’s preferred partner to stabilize Venezuela amid a scourge of drugs, corruption, and economic mayhem.

    Left unspoken was the cloud of suspicion that long surrounded Delcy Rodríguez before she became acting president of the beleaguered nation earlier this month.

    In fact, Rodríguez has been on the radar of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for years and in 2022 was even labeled a “priority target,” a designation DEA reserves for suspects believed to have a “significant impact” on the drug trade, according to records obtained by The Associated Press and more than a half dozen current and former U.S. law enforcement officials.

    The DEA has amassed a detailed intelligence file on Rodríguez dating to at least 2018, the records show, cataloging her known associates and allegations ranging from drug trafficking to gold smuggling. One confidential informant told the DEA in early 2021 that Rodríguez was using hotels in the Caribbean resort of Isla Margarita “as a front to launder money,” the records show. As recently as last year she was linked to Maduro’s alleged bag man, Alex Saab, whom U.S. authorities arrested in 2020 on money laundering charges.

    The U.S. government has never publicly accused Rodríguez of any criminal wrongdoing. Notably for Maduro’s inner circle, she’s not among the more than a dozen current Venezuelan officials charged with drug trafficking alongside the ousted president.

    Rodríguez’s name has surfaced in nearly a dozen DEA investigations, several of which remain ongoing, involving agents in field offices from Paraguay and Ecuador to Phoenix and New York, the AP learned. The AP could not determine the specific focus of each investigation.

    Three current and former DEA agents who reviewed the records at the request of AP said they indicate an intense interest in Rodríguez throughout much of her tenure as vice president, which began in 2018. They were not authorized to discuss DEA investigations and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

    The records reviewed by AP do not make clear why Rodríguez was elevated to a “priority target,” a designation that requires extensive documentation to justify additional investigative resources. The agency has hundreds of priority targets at any given moment, and having the label does not necessarily lead to being charged criminally.

    “She was on the rise, so it’s not surprising that she might become a high-priority target with her role,” said Kurt Lunkenheimer, a former federal prosecutor in Miami who has handled multiple cases related to Venezuela. “The issue is when people talk about you and you become a high-priority target, there’s a difference between that and evidence supporting an indictment.”

    Venezuela’s Communications Ministry did not respond to emails seeking comment.

    The DEA and U.S. Justice Department also did not respond to requests for comment. Asked whether the president trusts Rodríguez, the White House referred AP to Trump’s earlier remarks on a “very good talk” he had with the acting president Wednesday, one day before she met in Caracas with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

    Almost immediately after Maduro’s capture, Trump started heaping praise on Rodríguez — this past week referring to her as a “terrific person — in close contact with officials in Washington, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

    The DEA’s interest in Rodríguez comes even as Trump has sought to install her as the steward of American interests to navigate a volatile post-Maduro Venezuela, said Steve Dudley, co-director of InSight Crime, a think tank focused on organized crime in the Americas.

    “The current Venezuela government is a criminal-hybrid regime. The only way you reach a position of power in the regime is by, at the very least, abetting criminal activities,” said Dudley, who has investigated Venezuela for years. “This isn’t a bug in the system. This is the system.”

    Those sentiments were echoed by opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who met with Trump at the White House Thursday in a bid to push for more U.S. support for Venezuelan democracy.

    “The American justice system has sufficient information about her,” said Machado, referring to Rodríguez. “Her profile is quite clear.”

    Rodríguez, 56, worked her way to the apex of power in Venezuela as a loyal aide to Maduro, with whom she shares a deep-seated leftist bent stemming from her socialist father’s death in police custody when she was only 7 years old. Despite blaming the U.S. for her father’s death, she steadily worked while foreign minister and later vice president to court American investment during the first Trump administration, hiring lobbyists close to Trump and even ordering the state oil company to make a $500,000 donation to his inaugural committee.

    The charm offensive flopped when Trump, urged on by Rubio, pressured Maduro to hold free and fair elections. In September 2018, the White House sanctioned Rodríguez, describing her as key to Maduro’s grip on power and ability to “solidify his authoritarian rule.” She was also sanctioned earlier by the European Union.

    But those allegations focused on her threat to Venezuela’s democracy, not any alleged involvement in corruption.

    “Venezuela is a failed state that supports terrorism, corruption, human rights abuses, and drug trafficking at the highest echelons. There is nothing political about this analysis,” said Rob Zachariasiewicz, a longtime former DEA agent who led investigations into top Venezuelan officials and is now a managing partner at Elicius Intelligence, a specialist investigations firm. “Delcy Rodríguez has been part of this criminal enterprise.”

    The DEA records seen by AP provide an unprecedented glimpse into the agency’s interest in Rodríguez. Much of it was driven by the agency’s elite Special Operations Division, the same Virginia-based unit that worked with prosecutors in Manhattan to indict Maduro.

    One of the records cites an unnamed confidential informant linking Rodríguez to hotels in Margarita Island that are allegedly used as a front to launder money. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the information.

    The U.S. has long considered the resort island, northeast of the Venezuelan mainland, a strategic hub for drug trafficking routes to the Caribbean and Europe. Numerous traffickers have been arrested or taken haven there over the years, including representatives of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzman’s Sinaloa cartel.

    The records also indicate the feds were looking at Rodríguez’s involvement in government contracts awarded to Maduro’s ally Saab — investigations that remain ongoing even after President Joe Biden pardoned him in 2023 as part of a prisoner swap for Americans imprisoned in Venezuela.

    The Colombian businessman rose to become one of Venezuela’s top fixers as U.S. sanctions cut off its access to hard currency and Western banks. He was arrested in 2020 on federal charges of money laundering while traveling from Venezuela to Iran to negotiate oil deals helping both countries circumvent sanctions.

    The DEA records also indicate agents’ interest in Rodríguez’s possible involvement in allegedly corrupt deals between the government and Omar Nassif-Sruji, the brother of her longtime romantic partner, Yussef Nassif. Nassif-Sruji and Nassif did not respond to emails and text messages seeking comment.

    Companies registered by the two brothers in Hong Kong received more than $650 million in Venezuelan government contracts between 2017 and 2019 to import food and dialysis medicine, according to copies of the contracts obtained in 2021 by Venezuelan investigative journalism outlet Armando.info.

    Taken together, the DEA investigations underscore how power has long been exercised in Venezuela, which is ranked as the world’s third most corrupt country by Transparency International. For Rodríguez, they also represent something of a razor-sharp sword over her head, breathing life to Trump’s threat soon after Maduro’s ouster that she would “pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro” if she didn’t fall in line. The president added that he wanted her to provide the U.S. “total access” to the country’s vast oil reserves and other natural resources.

    “Just being a leader in a highly corrupted regime for over a decade makes it logical that she is a priority target for investigation,” said David Smilde, a Tulane University professor who has studied Venezuela for three decades. “She surely knows this, and it gives the U.S. government leverage over her. She may fear that if she does not do as the Trump administration demands, she could end up with an indictment like Maduro.”

  • Iran’s leader calls Trump a ‘criminal’ for backing protests and blames demonstrators for deaths

    Iran’s leader calls Trump a ‘criminal’ for backing protests and blames demonstrators for deaths

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday branded U.S. President Donald Trump a “criminal” for supporting protesters in Iran, and blamed demonstrators for causing thousands of deaths.

    In a speech broadcast by state television, Khamenei said the protests had left “several thousand” people dead — the first indication from an Iranian leader of the extent of the casualties from the wave of protests that began Dec. 28 and led to a bloody crackdown.

    “In this revolt, the U.S. president made remarks in person, encouraged seditious people to go ahead and said: ‘We do support you, we do support you militarily,’” said Khamenei, who has final say on all state matters. He reiterated an accusation that the U.S. seeks domination over Iran’s economic and political resources.

    “We do consider the U.S. president a criminal, because of casualties and damages, because of accusations against the Iranian nation,” he said. He described the protesters as “foot soldiers” of the United States and said they had destroyed mosques and educational centers. “Through hurting people, they killed several thousand of them,” he said.

    In response, Trump called for an end to Khamenei’s nearly 40-year reign.

    “The man is a sick man who should run his country properly and stop killing people,” Trump told Politico in an interview Saturday. “His country is the worst place to live anywhere in the world because of poor leadership.”

    “It’s time to look for new leadership in Iran,” he added.

    Trump had sounded a conciliatory tone

    His comments come a day after Trump sounded a conciliatory tone, saying that “Iran canceled the hanging of over 800 people,” and adding that “I greatly respect the fact that they canceled.” He did not clarify whom he spoke to in Iran to confirm the state of any planned executions. His comments were a sign he may be backing away from a military strike.

    The official IRNA news agency reported that Tehran Prosecutor Gen. Ali Salehi, referring to Trump’s remarks about the cancellation of the death sentence of 800 protesters, said: “Trump always makes futile and irrelevant statements. Our attitude is severe, preventive, and fast.” He did not elaborate.

    In recent days, Trump had told protesting Iranians that ” help is on the way ” and that his administration would “act accordingly” if the killing of demonstrators continued or if Iranian authorities executed detained protesters.

    In his speech, Khamenei said rioters were armed with live ammunition that was imported from abroad, without naming any countries.

    “We do not plan, we do not take the country toward war. But we do not release domestic offenders, worse than domestic offenders, there are international offenders. We do not let them alone either,” he said, and urged officials to pursue the cases.

    An uneasy calm

    Iran has returned to an uneasy calm after harsh repression of protests that began Dec. 28 over Iran’s ailing economy. The crackdown has left at least 3,095 people dead, according to the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, exceeding that of any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalling the chaos surrounding the 1979 revolution.

    The agency has been accurate throughout the years of demonstrations, relying on a network of activists inside Iran that confirms all reported fatalities. The AP has been unable to independently confirm the toll.

    Iranian officials have repeatedly accused the United States and Israel of fomenting unrest in the country. On Friday, Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accused the U.S. and Israel of meddling in the unrest.

    Reports of limited internet access briefly restored

    There have been no signs of protests for days in Tehran, where shopping and street life have returned to outward normality, and Iranian state media has not reported on any new unrest.

    During the protests, authorities blocked all internet access on Jan. 8. On Saturday, text messaging and very limited internet services began functioning again briefly in parts of Iran, witnesses said.

    Cellphone text messaging began operating overnight, while users were able to access local websites through a domestic internet service. Some also reported limited access to international internet services via use of a virtual private network, or VPN.

    The extent of access and what was behind it wasn’t immediately clear. It was possible that officials were turning on some systems for the start of the Iranian working week, as the outage has affected businesses, particularly banks in the country trying to handle transactions.

    Internet traffic monitoring service Cloudflare and internet access advocacy group NetBlocks reported very slight increases in connectivity Saturday morning, while Iran’s semiofficial Mehr news agency also reported limited internet access. It did not offer an explanation.

    No new protests reported

    A call by Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi for protesters to take to the streets again from Saturday to Monday did not appear to have been heeded by Saturday afternoon.

    Pahlavi, whose father was overthrown by Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, enjoys support from die-hard monarchists in the diaspora but has struggled to gain wider appeal within Iran. However, that has not stopped him from presenting himself as the transitional leader of Iran if the government were to fall.

  • Israel objects to U.S. announcement of leaders who will help oversee next steps in Gaza

    Israel objects to U.S. announcement of leaders who will help oversee next steps in Gaza

    NAHARIYA, Israel — Israel’s government is objecting to the White House announcement of leaders who will play a role in overseeing next steps in Gaza as the ceasefire moves into its challenging second phase.

    The rare criticism from Israel of its close ally in Washington said the Gaza executive committee “was not coordinated with Israel and is contrary to its policy,” without details. Saturday’s statement also said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the foreign ministry to contact Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

    The committee announced by the White House on Friday includes no Israeli official but has an Israeli businessman, billionaire Yakir Gabay. Other members announced so far include two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s closest confidants, a former British prime minister, a U.S. general and representatives of several Middle Eastern governments.

    The White House has said the executive committee will carry out the vision of a Trump-led “Board of Peace,” whose members have not yet been named. The White House also announced the members of a new Palestinian committee to run Gaza’s day to day affairs, with oversight from the executive committee.

    The executive committee’s members include Rubio, Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan, World Bank President Ajay Banga and Trump’s Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gabriel.

    Committee members also include a diplomat from Qatar, an intelligence chief from Egypt and Turkey’s foreign minister — all countries have been ceasefire mediators — as well as a Cabinet minister for the United Arab Emirates.

    Turkey has a strained relationship with Israel but good relations with Hamas and could play an important role in persuading the group to yield power and disarm. Hamas has said it will dissolve its government in Gaza once the new Palestinian committee takes office, but it has shown no sign that it will dismantle its military wing or security forces.

    Netanyahu’s office didn’t respond Saturday to questions about its objections regarding the executive committee.

    Minutes after its statement, Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir in a statement backed Netanyahu and urged him to order the military to prepare to return to war. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, another far-right Netanyahu ally, said on social media that “the countries that kept Hamas alive cannot be the ones that replace it.”

    The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest militant group after Hamas, in a statement Saturday also expressed dissatisfaction with the makeup of the Gaza executive committee and claimed it reflected Israeli “specifications.”

    The Trump administration on Wednesday said the U.S.-drafted ceasefire plan for Gaza was now moving into its second phase, which includes the new Palestinian committee in Gaza, deployment of an international security force, disarmament of Hamas and reconstruction of the war-battered territory.

    The ceasefire in the deadliest war ever fought between Israel and Hamas took effect on Oct. 10. The first phase focused on the return of all remaining hostages in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian detainees, along with a surge in humanitarian aid and a partial withdrawal of Israeli forces in Gaza.

    The war began with the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, that killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took over 250 hostage. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 71,400 Palestinians, including over 460 since this ceasefire began, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

    The ministry, part of the Hamas-run government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

  • Trump says 8 European countries will be charged a 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

    Trump says 8 European countries will be charged a 10% tariff for opposing US control of Greenland

    President Donald Trump said Saturday that he would charge a 10% import tax starting in February on goods from eight European nations because of their opposition to American control of Greenland, setting up a potentially dangerous test of U.S. partnerships in Europe.

    Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands. and Finland would face the tariff, Trump said in a social media post while at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. The rate would climb to 25% on June 1 if no deal was in place for “the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland” by the United States, he said.

    The Republican president appeared to indicate that he was using the tariffs as leverage to force talks with Denmark and other European countries over the status of Greenland, a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark that he regards as critical to U.S. national security.

    “The United States of America is immediately open to negotiation with Denmark and/or any of these Countries that have put so much at risk, despite all that we have done for them,” Trump said on Truth Social.

    The tariff threat could mark a problematic rupture between Trump and America’s longtime NATO partners, further straining an alliance that dates to 1949 and provides a collective degree of security to Europe and North America. Trump has repeatedly tried to use trade penalties to bend allies and rivals alike to his will, generating investment commitments from some nations and pushback from others, notably China.

    Trump is scheduled to travel on Tuesday to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he likely will run into the European leaders he just threatened with tariffs that would start in little more than two weeks.

    There are immediate questions about how the White House could try to implement the threatened tariffs because the European Union is a single economic zone in terms of trading, according to a European diplomat who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity. It was unclear, too, how Trump could act under U.S. law, though he could cite emergency economic powers that are currently subject to a U.S. Supreme Court challenge.

    Trump has long said he thinks the U.S. should own the strategically located and mineral-rich island, which has a population of about 57,000 and whose defense is provided by Denmark. He intensified his calls a day after the military operation to oust Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro earlier this month.

    The president indicated the tariffs were retaliation for what appeared to be the deployment of symbolic levels of troops from the European countries to Greenland, which he has said was essential for the “Golden Dome” missile defense system for the U.S., He also has argued that Russia and China might try to take over the island.

    The U.S. already has access to Greenland under a 1951 defense agreement. Since 1945, the American military presence in Greenland has decreased from thousands of soldiers over 17 bases and installations to 200 at the remote Pituffik Space Base in the northwest of the island, the Danish foreign minister has said. That base supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.

    Resistance has steadily built in Europe to Trump’s ambitions even as several countries on the continent agreed to his 15% tariffs last year in order to preserve an economic and security relationship with Washington.

    ‘Important for the whole world’

    Earlier Saturday, hundreds of people in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, braved near-freezing temperatures, rain and icy streets to march in a rally in support of their own self-governance.

    Tillie Martinussen, a former member of Greenland’s parliament, said the push to preserve NATO and Greenland’s autonomy were more important than facing tariffs, though she added that she was not dismissing the potential economic impact.

    “This is a fight for freedom,” she said. ”It’s for NATO, it’s for everything the Western Hemisphere has been fighting for since World War II.”

    Thousands of people also marched through Copenhagen, many of them carrying Greenland’s flag. Some held signs with slogans such as “Make America Smart Again” and “Hands Off.”

    “This is important for the whole world,” Danish protester Elise Riechie told The Associated Press as she held Danish and Greenlandic flags. “There are many small countries. None of them are for sale.”

    The rallies occurred hours after a bipartisan delegation of U.S. lawmakers, while visiting Copenhagen, sought to reassure Denmark and Greenland of their support.

    NATO training exercises

    Danish Maj. Gen. Søren Andersen, leader of the Joint Arctic Command, told the AP that Denmark does not expect the U.S. military to attack Greenland, or any other NATO ally, and that European troops were recently deployed to Nuuk for Arctic defense training.

    He said the goal is not to send a message to the Trump administration, even through the White House has not ruled out taking the territory by force.

    “I will not go into the political part, but I will say that I would never expect a NATO country to attack another NATO country,” he said from aboard a Danish military vessel docked in Nuuk. “For us, for me, it’s not about signaling. It is actually about training military units, working together with allies.”

    The Danish military organized a planning meeting Friday in Greenland with NATO allies, including the U.S., to discuss Arctic security on the alliance’s northern flank in the face of a potential Russian threat. The Americans were also invited to participate in Operation Arctic Endurance in Greenland in the coming days, Andersen said.

    In his 2½ years as a commander in Greenland, Andersen said that he hasn’t seen any Chinese or Russian combat vessels or warships, despite Trump saying that they were off the island’s coast.

    But in the unlikely event of American troops using force on Danish soil, Andersen confirmed that Danish soldiers have an obligation to fight back.

    ‘Almost no better’ ally

    Trump has contended that China and Russia have their own designs on Greenland and its vast untapped reserves of critical minerals. He said recently that anything less than the Arctic island being in U.S. hands would be “unacceptable.”

    The president has seen tariffs as a tool to get what he wants without having to resort to military actions. At the White House on Friday, he recounted how he had threatened European allies with tariffs on pharmaceuticals and he teased the possibility of doing so again.

    “I may do that for Greenland, too,” Trump said.

    Earlier in the week, the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland met in Washington with Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, and secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

    That session did not resolve the deep differences, but it did produce an agreement to set up a working group — on whose purpose Denmark and the White House then offered sharply diverging public views.

    European leaders have said that it is only for Denmark and Greenland to decide on matters concerning the territory, and Denmark said this week that it was increasing its military presence in Greenland in cooperation with allies.

    “There is almost no better ally to the United States than Denmark,” said Sen. Chris Coons, (D., Del.), while visiting Copenhagen with other members of Congress. “If we do things that cause Danes to question whether we can be counted on as a NATO ally, why would any other country seek to be our ally or believe in our representations?”

  • Dear Abby | Young girl’s presence at playground raises serious questions

    DEAR ABBY: To help out his parents, I pick up my grandson from daycare two days a week. I recently started taking him to a local park for about 45 minutes before I take him home. I’m physically active and climb the slides, chase him around and play with him. He loves our time together.

    Over the last two weeks, there has been a little 6-year-old girl at the park who seems to be on her own. Her parents, I assume, are in the parking lot. They are not in the park play area.

    The time we are there is the same time school gets out, so I’m sure she goes there every day after school. She has attached herself to us and wants me to go down the slide with her, push her on the swings and chase her constantly, and she asks me to watch her do this or that. Whatever we are doing, she is right there.

    She is cute and sweet, but she is taking my time away from my grandson. Also, my grandson is annoyed at someone else demanding my time which also distracts me from keeping a close eye on him. There isn’t another park we can go to that is nearby, and he loves this particular one. The girl is always there when we go. At first, I tried to include her in our play but that made it worse because she wanted more attention.

    I am a retired teacher, so I understand she is craving attention from an adult, but she’s really impeding on our play time together. How do I politely ask her to leave us alone?

    — DISTRACTED GRANDMA IN FLORIDA

    DEAR GRANDMA: You are assuming that the little girl HAS a parent in the parking lot. The next time you see her, ask her who is there with her — mom, dad, aunt, caregiver? If you do, you can either meet the person and explain the problem or realize that no responsible adult is looking after her. If this is the case, for heaven’s sake, report it to the school or CPS because leaving her all alone is child endangerment.

    ** ** **

    DEAR ABBY: I am a 66-year-old woman who has worked full time for 47 years, in addition to raising two children and maintaining a home. I will be retiring in three months because, honestly, I’m tired of the rat race.

    I’m single and don’t have a boyfriend. I have plenty of friends and family, but I’m increasingly nervous about what I’ll do with my spare time. I know I should feel happy and grateful that I’m able to retire, but at the same time, I’m having anxiety over this freedom. Have you any suggestions to offer?

    — STOPPING SOON IN TEXAS

    DEAR STOPPING: Start making a list of what your interests are. Your retirement years could offer you the chance to travel and see the wonders this country has to offer. You could take adult education classes at a nearby college or university. You might like to volunteer some time on projects or charities in your community. Or you could just hang out with friends. How you choose to spend your free time is entirely up to you and limited only by your imagination.