内容摘要：Merz, whose election earlier this month was seen as a reemergence of Germany’s status as a diplomatic and economic heavyweight, brought up U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s comments at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. Vance, “in his own very special way,” confronted what Europeans stand for, Merz said.

Merz, whose election earlier this month was seen as a reemergence of Germany’s status as a diplomatic and economic heavyweight, brought up U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s comments at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year. Vance, “in his own very special way,” confronted what Europeans stand for, Merz said.

For years, anti-abortion activists and Republican state lawmakers have worked toto petition a judge to access the procedure in Florida, which bans most abortions

, before many women even know they are pregnant.The appeals panel flagged the case as “a question of great public importance” for the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in 2024 that a privacy clause in the Florida ConstitutionThe three-judge panel sided with arguments made by state Attorney General James Uthmeier and ruled against a 17-year-old girl who is nearly six weeks pregnant and seeking an abortion without the knowledge or consent of her father.

The appeals court affirmed a lower court ruling that the girl, who is only identified as Jane Doe, lacks the “requisite maturity” to make the decision without a parent or legal guardian involved.The opinion said the decision was based on her lack of “emotional development and stability, her credibility and demeanor as a witness, her ability to accept responsibility, and her ability to assess the immediate and long-range consequences of her choices.”

___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative.

is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.Applications for jobless benefits fell by 2,000 to 227,000 for the week ending May 17, the Labor Department said Thursday. That’s pretty close to the 230,000 new applications analysts forecast.

Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and have mostly bounced around a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since COVID-19 ravaged the economy and wiped out millions of jobs five years ago.Even though President Donald Trump has

or dialed down many of his tariff threats, concerns remain about a global economic slowdown that could upend the U.S. labor market, which has been a pillar of the American economy for years.The U.S. and China last week agreed to a