Watson, 27, signed a three-year deal with the Rams. He was a seventh-round pick by the Chiefs in 2022. In his four seasons in Kansas City, he recorded 24 pass breakups and three interceptions, as well as four sacks.

At 6-foot-2 and 197 pounds, Watson provides the kind of big body the Rams need at outside cornerback to match up with physical receivers, an archetype that gave the Rams fits in 2025.

He is the second big acquisition the Rams have made at cornerback in the past week, joining former Chiefs teammate Trent McDuffie, whom the Rams traded four draft picks for and signed to the most lucrative contract extension for a cornerback in history.

Outside cornerback was a major need for the Rams entering the offseason with three contributors entering the free-agent market and Darious Williams retiring. But with the moves to acquire Watson and McDuffie to pair with returner Emmanuel Forbes, the Rams have remade the room.

Because it cooks all day, it’s handy to get some of the prep done ahead. You can prepare the recipe through step 2 the night before. Refrigerate the browned beef and the onion mixture in separate containers. In the morning, transfer the beef and onion mixture to the slow cooker and proceed with step 3.

Don’t scrimp on the parsnips. They are a key element to making the dish delicious.

Slow Cooker Guiness Beef Stew

Yield: 6 to 8 servings

INGREDIENTS

4 pounds boneless beef chuck stew meat, see cook’s notes

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons vegetable oil, divided use

2 onions, chopped

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1 1/2 cups Guinness Draught, divided use

1 tablespoon light brown sugar

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

2 bay leaves

5 carrots, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks

1 pound parsnips, peeled, cut into 1-inch chunks

1 1/2 pounds baby red potatoes, scrubbed

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves

Cook’s notes: Make sure to buy large chunks of stew meat. Trim meat of excess fat, as necessary, and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces.

DIRECTIONS

1. Pat beef dry with paper towels and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat 2 teaspoons oil in large deep skillet over medium-high heat until almost smoking. Cook half of beef until browned on all sides, about 8 minutes. Transfer to large slow cooker and repeat with 2 teaspoons oil and remaining beef. Transfer second batch of beef to slow cooker.

2. Add remaining 2 teaspoons oil, onions and 1/4 teaspoon salt to skillet and cook until onions are lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add broth, 1 1/4 cup stout, sugar, thyme, chocolate, and bay leaves and bring to boil, using wooden spoon to scrape up browned bits. Transfer to slow cooker.

3. Add carrots, parsnips and potatoes to slow cooker. Cover and cook on low until meat is tender, 9 to 10 hours (or cook on high for 6 to 7 hours). Set slow cooker to high. Mix flour and remaining 1/4 cup Guinness, stirring until smooth. Using a ladle, scoop up about 1/2 cup of broth and stir into flour mixture. Stir mixture into stew using a silicone spatula or gently using a wooden spoon. Cook, covered, on high power until sauce thickens slightly, about 15 minutes. Stir in parsley. Taste and add salt and pepper as needed. Discard bay leaves. Serve.

Source: America’s Test Kitchen

Award-winning food writer Cathy Thomas has written three cookbooks, including “50 Best Plants on the Planet.” Follow her at CathyThomasCooks.com.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — When his parents were about his age, they bought their first home. But for 27-year-old Brian Torres Suazo, that milestone feels like a distant dream, despite a secure job with union wages and down payment assistance.

Torres Suazo expects to continue sharing an apartment with roommates for the foreseeable future, kept on the sidelines of homeownership by stubbornly high costs, even in cities once known for their affordability, such as his native Las Vegas.

He’s not alone. In a restless electorate frustrated by high prices, the cost of housing stands out. Democrats are pushing to channel this anger into support for their quest to chip away at Republicans’ unified control of Washington, maintaining their focus on economic concerns even when war with Iran dominates the news.

Their path cuts through Nevada, a perennial swing state won by Republican Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election and now home to closely contested U.S. House races.

“I would be paying more — a lot more — in mortgage than I am for rent right now,” said Torres Suazo, a food runner on the Las Vegas Strip. Sometimes he feels like politicians aren’t listening to people like him. “It’d be nice if more people that knew what it’s like to work for a living could be in those rooms to make decisions,” he added.

Housing affordability isn’t just a coastal concern

In all directions from the Strip, tract homes with sharp-angled roofs and earthy paint schemes sprout from the desert by the dozen. Streets to nowhere snake through the dirt, ready for future homes. Wooden signs dot roadsides advertising homes from the $300,000s for a townhome to over $1 million for big houses in the most desirable suburban neighborhoods.

Housing costs have long been a potent political issue in pricey metropolitan areas like New York and San Francisco, but now the issue is popping up virtually everywhere.

During the coronavirus pandemic, white-collar workers newly empowered to work remotely cashed out their equity in high-priced cities and bid up prices across Sun Belt cities like Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas, and Charlotte, North Carolina. At the same time, near-zero interest rates drove a wave of refinancing that gave existing homeowners mortgage payments that now seem impossibly low.

Almost 40 million people visited Las Vegas last year, and gamblers wagered $14 billion at Clark County casinos, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. The steady flow of people and cash attracts dreamers and strivers with the promise of a good job and an affordable home.

The population of Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, grew 17% to 2.4 million between 2014 and 2024. The country as a whole grew 6% over that period.

“If you ask locals who grew up here, some of them feel that housing is out of reach for them,” said Las Vegas real estate agent Tony Clifford. “You talk to somebody from out of state – Northwest, West, California – we’re still so cheap compared to them.”

Home prices and mortgage rates have ticked down from historic highs in much of the country, and real estate agents say Las Vegas is now considered a buyer’s market. Houses are staying on the market longer, and more sellers are accepting discounted offers or offering concessions, such as covering closing costs. But monthly mortgage payments are still much higher than they were before the pandemic.

In Las Vegas, resale home prices rose 53% between December 2019 and the same month last year, according to the Case-Shiller index. The index tracks homes that have previously sold, excluding new construction, which makes up more than a quarter of the Las Vegas market.

In Las Vegas, the median home sale price rose 65% between the first quarter of 2020 and the same period last year, reaching $393,000, according to Federal Reserve data. It ticked down to $379,000 during the fourth quarter last year.

Nationally, 30-year mortgage rates followed a similar trend, bottoming out at 2.65% nationally in 2021 before peaking in 2023 at nearly 8%. They’ve settled around 6% this quarter.

Still, even with rates and prices stabilizing, they remain higher than they were before the pandemic. The median resale house at the prevailing interest rates with 20% down would cost $2,300 per month in December 2025, double the figure from December 2019.

Big investors are buying up houses

Large investors own about 11% of single-family home rentals in Las Vegas, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution, compared with about 3% nationally.

They’re increasingly becoming bipartisan targets as they buy and rent out single-family homes, though economists generally discount the benefits of constraining them. Trump and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, the leading Democratic candidate for governor, are both among a growing cadre of officials calling for limits on corporate homeownership.

“People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a social media post in January, calling for Congress to ban large institutional investors from buying houses. He’s also pressured the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and proposed extending mortgage terms to 50 years, privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and allowing homebuyers to tap retirement or Education Savings Accounts for a down payment.

Ford’s housing plan, released last month, also calls for banning algorithmic pricing of rents, tackling regulatory barriers that block or slow new construction and seeking to unlock federal land for homebuilding. The federal government owns 84% of the land in Nevada.

Nevada’s Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is one of the most vulnerable incumbent state leaders in the country, has tried to address the problem, announcing last month that his administration has approved $64 million to boost a dozen housing development projects, mostly in the Las Vegas and Reno areas, along with assistance for homebuyers.

The midterms may hinge on affordability

Democrats are making affordability the central plank of their pitch to voters in November, arguing that Trump has failed in his campaign promise to bring prices back down despite Republican control of Congress. They believe anxiety over the cost of living has been a major factor in their victories in a series of off-year elections, including the races for governor of New Jersey and Virginia as well as special elections down the ballot.

Many Americans say Trump is focusing on the wrong priorities, according to multiple surveys, including a January AP-NORC poll, and they largely think Trump is neglecting the issue of costs at home.

Trump was reelected in large part because of economic concerns, but recent polling shows that the bulk of Americans aren’t seeing benefits from his policies yet, and most don’t think he’s paying enough attention to the issue.

A large share of registered voters see the economy as one of the top issues facing the country, and a recent New York Times poll found that about half of registered voters say Trump’s policies have made life for most Americans “less affordable.”

The issue will remain salient in November even as the Iran war raises interest in foreign policy, said Democratic strategist Paul Begala, one of the architects of Bill Clinton’s 1992 strategy that emphasized domestic economic concerns during a time of global upheaval from the first Gulf War and the fall of the Soviet Union.

“Trump’s refusal to raise the minimum wage, and his willingness to raise the cost of health care, electricity, hamburger, and now gas, is a two-edged sword that will cut down a large number of congressional Republicans,” Begala said.

Housing is a thorny political issue. Rooted homeowners like high prices that inflate their net worth, at least on paper, a reality that Trump has nodded to repeatedly this year, assuring homeowners he wants to keep their values high.

But those prices become handcuffs if they want to move on but are priced out of the bigger homes or better neighborhoods they’re eying.

Michele Niemeyer feels trapped in the condo she bought for more than $500,000 just off the Strip. The homeowners association fee just went up to $686 a month, straining her budget, and the value of her unit has plummeted. But the neighborhoods that were in her budget when she bought the condo are now out of reach.

“I want to move,” Niemeyer said. “I just don’t know where.”

World leaders have tried and failed to curb climate change by appealing to nations to act for the common good. Now, the Iran war and its costly energy crunch have some experts wondering if selfishness and nationalism may be a more likely way to save the planet, by boosting support for homegrown renewables over imported fossil fuels.

Bombed refineries, disrupted shipping channels for oil and liquefied natural gas and skyrocketing fuel prices should point even the most reluctant leaders to a cleaner fossil free future, hope some experts.

But others are dismissive, noting the same speculation emerged, and then quickly flopped, as recently as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That prompted some European nations to replace gas with even dirtier coal.

“Just wishful thinking,” said Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who tracks global emissions of carbon dioxide.

The head of the United Nations will argue otherwise on Monday.

“The turmoil we are witnessing today in the Middle East makes it evident that we are facing a global energy system largely tied to fossil fuels — where supply is concentrated in a few regions and every conflict risks sending shock waves through the global economy,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in an email to The Associated Press. “In past oil shocks, countries had little choice but to absorb the pain. Now they have an exit ramp.

“Homegrown renewable energy has never been cheaper, more accessible, or more scalable,” Guterres said. “The resources of the clean energy era cannot be blockaded or weaponized.”

Going alone versus together

Annual U.N. climate conferences aimed at global cooperation have accomplished little. The most recent meeting in Brazil, known as COP30, ended with a statement that didn’t even mention the words “fossil fuels,” much less include a timeline to reduce their use. Guterres said then that he “cannot pretend that COP30 has delivered everything that is needed.” Under President Donald Trump, whose attack on Iran has sparked new energy concerns, the U.S. didn’t even participate in the Brazil meeting.

Even though renewable energy use and new installations are soaring globally, outpacing fossil fuel growth, the world continues to increase its fossil fuel use every year with emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and methane rising to new highs year after. That’s driving atmospheric warming that increases costly and deadly extreme weather, including dangerous heat, around the world.

“The bottom line is that for at least another five years and maybe longer, emissions reduction will in fact be dealt with largely unilaterally,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton climate and international affairs professor. “If countries see the Israel-U.S.-Iran war as a further reason to head for the exits on fossil fuels by loosening domestic opposition to the necessary policies, that will be accomplished unilaterally at the domestic level.”

A moment of opportunity may be here

Caroline Baxter, director of the Converging Risks Lab at the Council on Strategic Risks in Washington, said there has already been a “dramatic slowdown” in the movement of fossil fuels to various ports due to the conflict. And for countries like Japan or South Korea that depend on tankers arriving in their ports to deliver energy, this is a really big deal, she said.

Baxter said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if some shift to green energy because of the conflict, if only because renewable energy offers more stability than fossil fuels do.

“I think there is an opportunity, rightly or wrongly, for countries to really turn inward and try to power themselves in a way that cuts off their dependence on other nations for that source,” said Baxter, who was U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for force education and training from 2021 to 2024 under the Biden administration.

Baxter said if she’s right and if “everyone does it in their backyard,” it will limit future climate change “without the thorny diplomatic negotiations and the glad-handing and the machinations behind closed doors” of international climate conferences.

The war will lead to more solar panels and heat pumps installed in coming months, said energy analyst Ana Maria Jaller-Makarewicz, of IEEFA Europe.

A reality check from Ukraine: ‘Exactly the wrong lesson’

More skeptical analysts point to the Russian invasion of Ukraine a few years ago, which put a massive kink in Europe’s natural gas supply, yet didn’t change the world’s fossil fuel dependence. Politicians often pivot to other fossil fuels to address war-oriented energy insecurity, such as coal, which releases even higher amounts of heat-trapping gases.

“We have seen this at the European level where actors post-2022 slowly wanted to move away from the energy transition which is exactly the wrong lesson,” said war studies lecturer Pauline Heinrichs at King’s College in the United Kingdom.

Just as Europe did then, many countries, like China and India — already the world’s No. 1 and No. 3 carbon-emitting countries — could turn to more coal use, said Ohio University’s Geoff Dabelko, an expert on climate and conflict, and University of St. Andrews’ Neta Crawford, author of “The Pentagon, Climate Change, and War: Charting the Rise and Fall of U.S. Military Emissions.”

War and militaries pollute the air

Whatever happens with nations’ energy choices, the war itself will spike emissions.

Even before it began, reports showed that the world’s militaries are responsible for 5.5% of Earth’s heat-trapping emissions each year, more than any country except China, the United States and India.

Crawford, co-founder of the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, said fighter jets consuming vast quantities of fuel, releasing carbon dioxide and other pollutants, is just one example.

“The consequences of war on emissions will far exceed any incremental offset in emissions due to increased enthusiasm for a green transition,” she said.

Borenstein reported from Washington and McDermott from Providence, Rhode Island.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

“It’s really kind of special. They were actual dishes served at the Queen Mary. We went back to the archives and found decades of historical menus and recipes and the chef and culinary team really took a deep dive,” said Kirt Finley, the executive director of food and beverage for the Queen Mary.

The ship’s upscale spot Chelsea Chowder House and Bar has just debuted a new menu dubbed Dining Through the Decades, which is made up of dishes dug out from the vessel’s nearly century-old history.

“When you’re dining off the menu it’s basically a meal you would have gotten aback in the 30s,” Finley said. “We found some dishes that could meet the modern palate and then we went back and found some culinary practices that they used on the ship and we duplicated them as close as possible.”

The items on the flashback menu include a potage soup made with cream, potatoes, carrots and leeks plus a lamb chop tourangelle with scalloped potato and succotash and a classic dessert known as an Ice Box Cake and even a salad that was meticulously recreated.

“We recreated the Delmonico Salad, which is a pretty straight forward salad, however we went back and we found the actual recipe for the dressing that goes on it and we duplicated that in the same sort of style they made,” he said.

Finley said the rotating menu will reflect other decades with the new menus items popping up throughout the year in the kitchen.

For passengers who want a quicker service option minus the culinary history the ship is also offering a new quick service coffee, tea, ice cream and pastry spot named Jubilee, which is located outside Promenade Cafe in the Promenade Lounge. It joins the Midship Market, a fast-service, grab-and-go concept that serves custom flatbreads, sliced-to-order sandwiches and the Rivet burger, which is a burger wrapped in a bun. Think of  a panini-style burger.

“Basically it’s a hamburger that’s encapsulated in the bun. So we make the burger in a burger press and it seals the burger and sauce inside the bun so it’s really mess free,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Congress responds to President Donald Trump’s attack on Iran, lawmakers who served on the front lines of Iraq and Afghanistan are making their voices heard in a war debate that has taken on intensely personal meaning.

Many admit mixed feelings, taking satisfaction in seeing vengeance taken on the leadership of an Iranian regime that has targeted U.S. service members for decades, yet fearful that another generation of soldiers could soon face the same combat experiences that they did.

“Do I take gratification? You know there’s the Marine side of me: Yeah, of course,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego, whose company suffered some of the heaviest losses on the U.S. side during the Iraq War. “I know they killed a lot of American soldiers, American Marines. But do I also understand that I have a responsibility not to let my lust for revenge drive my country into another war?”

Experiences in the post 9/11 wars are also coloring the decisions of the Trump administration, given that top officials, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, were once deployed to Iraq.

Gallego, like others on Capitol Hill, leaned heavily on his firsthand experience of fighting in the wars after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as he assessed the Iran conflict. Lawmakers wore bracelets etched with the names of friends killed in battle, told stories of coming under attack from Iran-backed militant groups and reflected on their own life-changing injuries suffered during combat.

Veteran lawmakers are wary of war

While the initial votes on Iran saw Congress divide mostly along party lines, with Republicans backing Trump’s actions and Democrats warning of an extended conflict, veterans in both parties share deep reservations about entering the conflict.

“As somebody who knows a lot of friends that didn’t come home and a lot of Gold Star families, that’s why the week before the attack, I was actually one of the ones that was talking about caution and why we needed to avoid at all costs getting into another long, drawn-out Middle Eastern war,” said Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, a former Navy SEAL who left college to enlist the week after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Crane said his concerns were partially assuaged by briefings from the Trump administration that indicated to him the president is not planning a drawn-out war. He voted against a war powers resolution that would have halted attacks on Iran unless Trump got congressional approval.

But Crane said wars are never straightforward. “I’ve been on military operations that did not go to plan many times, and so I understand the nature,” he said, adding that he was calling for the Trump administration to approach the conflict with “humility and caution.”

Gallego and other Democrats worried that it was too late for that approach. They paid tribute to the six U.S. military members who were killed in a drone strike in Kuwait and worried that there could soon be more American casualties.

“War is dirty, and mistakes happen,” Gallego said. The longer the conflict drags on, he added, the more chance there will be for U.S. military members to be killed. He said he saw that in Iraq when friends would be killed by seemingly random shots from enemy combatants.

Still, many Republicans argued that it was necessary to attack Iran to stop a regime that for decades has helped train and arm militant groups throughout the Middle East. Republican Rep. Brian Mast, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, led the debate on the House floor against the war powers resolution.

Mast, who served as an Army bomb disposal expert, now uses prosthetic legs after receiving catastrophic injuries from an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan. “Me especially, many of my other colleagues, no one wants to see our military go into combat or war,” he said.

Then he added, “But Iran’s terror, which has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans, it has to stop.”

Trying to push soldiers to forefront of war debate

Important questions loom for Congress as the conflict with Iran unfolds and spreads to other parts of the Middle East. The price for the operation is already likely running into the billions of dollars, likely forcing the Trump administration to soon seek billions in funding from Congress. The outbreak of war has also scrambled global alliances and the future of U.S. foreign policy.

Shadowing it all is the potential of another drawn-out conflict. Lawmakers said they owe it to their fallen comrades to ensure that doesn’t happen.

“To me, it’s to speak out. It’s to say another generation should not go fight in an open-ended, ill-conceived regime change war in the Middle East,” said Democratic Rep. Pat Ryan, his hand moving to a bracelet etched with the names of friends who were killed during his two Army combat tours in Iraq.

Others remembered how frustrated they became with Washington during their service, especially as soldiers tried to fight with insufficiently armored vehicles and not enough troops.

“I know what it was like to be on the very end of the receiving line of the decisions made in Washington,” said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow, who entered the Army as a private before being promoted to a captain and deployed to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Crow said that front-line soldiers often suffered “because people stopped asking tough questions. People stopped being held accountable. Congress stopped voting on it.”

Another veteran, Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, said that was one of the reasons she sought a congressional seat in the first place. As a Blackhawk helicopter pilot with the Illinois National Guard, Duckworth lost her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq.

“I ran for Congress so that when the drums of war started beating once again, I’d be in a position to make sure that our elected officials fully considered the true cost of the war,” she said. “Not just in dollars and cents but in human lives.”

The parade starts at Pier and Hermosa avenues and wends its way around downtown to Pier Plaza, where there will be live music and dance performances. Three stages will be set up along the way to provide information.

More than 70 businesses, civic groups, equestrians, car clubs and residents are expected to participate in the 2026 parade, which is 0.7 miles long. It’s expected to last 60-90 minutes. Learn more: hbchamber.net/parade-participants/

Led by associate professor of communications Gayle Jansen Brisbane, it was the university’s second such trip after 26 students went to the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics. The success of the Paris trip helped secure support from the university to send another group to Milan and Cortina.

As with the trip to France, Jansen Brisbane, a former sports broadcaster with 20 years of experience in television news, was joined by visiting professor Bob Young, a journalism faculty associate at Arizona State University and former sports writer for the Arizona Republic.

Although the trip took place during the spring semester, it drew strong interest, with nearly 60 students applying for 22 spots. Jansen Brisbane said students pursuing CSUF’s sports media certificate received priority.

“We emphasized ones that were really interested in sports media and that also had a variety of skill sets in social media, digital and broadcast,” Jansen Brisbane said.

During the nearly three-week trip, students completed one or more courses, including multimedia journalism, sports broadcast journalism and digital reporting. Jansen Brisbane structured the stay to include both host cities, allowing students to be in Milan, where indoor events such as figure skating and ice hockey were held, as well as in the mountain resort town of Cortina in northern Italy’s Dolomites, where snow-based events such as alpine skiing, luge and skeleton were held.

While in Italy, the students produced a number of digital and broadcast packages, social media campaigns and editorial stories that shared insight into the cities, people and culture surrounding the Games. The students were not granted Olympic media credentials, so the challenge was to find creative ways of storytelling.

“I told them, you need to find the stories that are not right in front of you,” Jansen Brisbane said. “You’ve got to dig and you’ve got to tell the stories of what’s happening in the city and how it’s affecting the city. … As they got there and they started getting to know the city and talking to people, then the stories just really flowed.”

As part of their Olympic experience, the students produced “Live from Milan” in partnership with Titan TV on Feb. 20, marking the first international broadcast for CSUF’s student-run channel.

From in front of the Politecnico di Milano, the students introduced several packages they produced, including pieces on Italian food and culture, the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena and the picturesque town of Cortina.

Back on campus, communications students Jayden Fernandez and Sergio Gonzalez, both of whom attended the Paris trip, hosted the show from the Titan TV news desk.

“It’s pretty unprecedented for universities to send cohorts of 20 students to cover the Olympics halfway across the globe,” said Jason M. Shepard, dean of the College of Communications, “and so the opportunities that this gives to them is life-changing.”

In Milan, senior Sophia Marine, shared her package in which she interviewed hip-hop artist Flavor Flav, who attended the Games as the official hype man and sponsor for the U.S. bobsled and skeleton teams. Marine also highlighted how the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer has become an advocate for female athletes, including reintroducing his song with Public Enemy, “He Got Game,” into “She Got Game.”

Marine, who will graduate in May with a bachelor’s degree in communications and a sports media certificate, has a passion for social media content creation and photography with the goal of working in sports media. The opportunity to participate in this trip provided practical experience and strengthened her decision to pursue a career in the field.

“I wouldn’t change this experience for the world,” Marine said. “It was just such an awesome experience, and I’m grateful that Cal State Fullerton and (Jansen Brisbane) even put on this program for us.”

Another package featured during the live show was by student David Martinez, who interviewed Jordan Mendoza, a CSUF Daily Titan alumnus who was in Milan covering Olympic figure skating for USA Today. The piece served as an example of the professional opportunities available to students in CSUF’s communications program.

“Learning really occurs through hands-on opportunities like through programs like these,” Shepard said. “This is a place where they are really developing their multimedia skills in so many ways. It really is a world-class opportunity.”

For many students, including Marine, traveling to Milan was their first trip abroad. Despite the cold weather and the Games’ spread-out venues, the students embraced all the experience had to offer. Jansen Brisbane is already looking ahead to LA28 and how CSUF can continue providing these opportunities to communications students.

“It’s a big thing when you’re trying to make your own mark and the university is also helping you do that at the same time,” Marine said. “I’m just grateful for the professors, the school and this opportunity.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Uber launched a feature Monday to allow both women riders and drivers across the U.S. to be matched with other women for trips, expanding a pilot program aimed at addressing concerns about the safety of its riding-hailing platform.

The new feature is being rolled out nationwide despite an ongoing class action lawsuit against the policy in California, filed by Uber drivers who argue that it is discriminatory against men. Rival ride-hailing company Lyft is also facing a discrimination lawsuit over a similar offering that it introduced nationwide in 2024.

The feature, announced in a blog post, allows women to request a female driver through an option on the app called “Women Drivers.” Passengers can opt for another ride if the wait for a woman is too long, and they can also reserve a trip with a woman driver in advance. A third option allows female users to set a preference for a woman driver in their app settings, which would increase the chances of being matched with a female driver, though it would not guarantee it. Uber is also allowing its teen account users to request women drivers.

Uber’s women drivers can set the app’s preferences to request trips with female riders, and they can turn off that preference at anytime.

Uber, based in San Francisco, says about one-fifth of its drivers in the U.S. are women, thought the ratio varies by city.

Two California Uber drivers filed a class-action lawsuit against Uber in November, arguing that its Women Preferences feature violates California’s Unruh Act, which prohibits sex discrimination by business enterprises. The lawsuit charges that the feature gives its minority female drivers access to the entire pool of passengers, while leaving its majority male drivers to compete for a smaller pool of passengers. The lawsuit also argues that Uber’s policy “reinforces the gender stereotype that men are more dangerous than women.”

Uber filed a motion to compel arbitration in the case, citing an agreement the plaintiffs signed when joining the app as drivers. In the motion, Uber disputed that its new feature violates the Unruh Act, saying it “serves a strong and recognized public policy interest in enhancing safety.”

“This feature is a common sense solution to a long-standing request from both women Drivers and Riders who told Uber they would feel more comfortable and safer if they could choose to ride with another woman,” the company said in the court filing.

Two Lyft drivers have filed a similar lawsuit against that company against its “Women+Connect” feature, which allows women and nonbinary riders to match with drivers of the same identification.

Uber piloted the “Women Preferences” feature in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit last summer and expanded it to 26 U.S. cities in November. The company first launched a version of the feature in Saudi Arabia in 2019 following the country’s landmark law granting women the right to drive. It now offers similar options in 40 other countries, including Canada and Mexico.

Both Uber and Lyft have for years faced criticism over their safety records, including thousands of reports of sexual assaults from both passengers and drivers. In February, federal jury found Uber to be legally responsible in a 2023 case of sexual assault and the company was ordered to pay $8.5 million to an Arizona woman who said she was raped by one of its drivers.

Uber maintains that because its drivers are contractors and not employees, it’s not liable for their misconduct. But Uber says has taken multiple steps in efforts to improve safety, including teaming up with Lyft in 2021 to create a database of drivers ousted from their ride-hailing services for complaints over sexual assault and other crimes.

Uber says sexual assault reports have decreased over the years. According to reports from Uber, 5,981 incidents of sexual assault were reported in U.S. rides between 2017 and 2018 — compared to 2,717 between 2021 and 2022 (the latest years with data available), which the platform says represented 0.0001% of total trips nationwide.

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Anthropic is suing the Trump administration, asking federal courts to reverse the Pentagon’s decision designating the artificial intelligence company a “ supply chain risk ” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

Anthropic filed two separate lawsuits Monday, one in California federal court and another in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., each challenging different aspects of the Pentagon’s actions against the company.

The Pentagon last week formally designated the San Francisco tech company a supply chain risk after an unusually public dispute over how its AI chatbot Claude could be used in warfare.

“These actions are unprecedented and unlawful,” Anthropic’s lawsuit says. “The Constitution does not allow the government to wield its enormous power to punish a company for its protected speech. No federal statute authorizes the actions taken here. Anthropic turns to the judiciary as a last resort to vindicate its rights and halt the Executive’s unlawful campaign of retaliation.”

The Defense Department declined to comment Monday, citing a policy of not commenting on matters in litigation.

Anthropic said it sought to restrict its technology from being used for two high-level usages: mass surveillance of Americans and fully autonomous weapons. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other officials publicly insisted the company must accept “all lawful uses” of Claude and threatened punishment if Anthropic did not comply.

Designating the company a supply chain risk cuts off Anthropic’s defense work using an authority that was designed to prevent foreign adversaries from harming national security systems. It was the first time the federal government is known to have used the designation against a U.S. company.

President Donald Trump also said he would order federal agencies to stop using Claude, though he gave the Pentagon six months to phase out a product that’s deeply embedded in classified military systems, including those used in the Iran war.

Anthropic’s lawsuit also names other federal agencies, including the departments of Treasury and State, after officials ordered employees to stop using Anthropic’s services.

Even as it fights the Pentagon’s actions, Anthropic has sought to convince businesses and other government agencies that the Trump administration’s penalty is a narrow one that only affects military contractors when they are using Claude in work for the Department of Defense.

Making that distinction clear is crucial for the privately held Anthropic because most of its projected $14 billion in revenue this year comes from businesses and government agencies that are using Claude for computer coding and other tasks. More than 500 customers are paying Anthropic at least $1 million annually for Claude, according to a recent investment announcement valued the company at $380 billion.

Anthropic said in a statement Monday that “seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners.”