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EVIAN-LES-BAINS, France (AP) — The naval mission for the Strait of Hormuz that U.S. allies are proposing as a follow-up to a deal to end the Iran war would aim to reassure crews and shipping insurers that vessels can safely navigate the narrow waterway again, by removing any explosive mines and potentially providing military escorts. France and Britain have been working on the plans for months. French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea back in March when the war was raging, saying warships could escort tankers and container ships through the maritime chokepoint when the conflict dies down. U.S. President Donald Trump told Macron on Monday at the Group of Seven summit that he doesn’t see a need for “much help” because the strait is “going to be open” thanks to the tentative deal with Iran. “But I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have a ship or two up here from a few countries. You’d be a great country to do it,” Trump told the French leader. Here’s a closer look at the envisioned mission that U.S. allies are pitching to speed the return of oil and gas supplies: In a statement welcoming the framework deal that would extend the U.S.-Iran tentative ceasefire and lead to the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. allies said they “are committed to playing our part” to urgently reopen the waterway “with unconditional and unrestricted freedom of navigation.” The statement was issued by France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Italy, later joined by Canada — all members, with the United States, of the G7 club of nations. They proposed “a strictly defensive and independent mission to reassure commercial shipping and conduct mine clearance operations.” France’s nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, is already in the region. Macron dispatched it first to the eastern Mediterranean in early March and then onward through the Suez Canal to the Arabian Sea. Other nations deployed in the region that could quickly help include the Netherlands, Italy and the U.K., Macron said. The French leader told Trump that French fighter aircraft could take part in observation missions over the vital waterway as soon as Tuesday, followed “within 48 hours” by frigates “and within two to three days, the aircraft carrier.” “Of course, all this supposes that it is desired and requested,” Macron said. “Perhaps it will not be wanted and perhaps it will not be necessary. But in any case, it reflects our willingness to help.” Mine-clearing vessels would aim to rid the waterway of those underwater dangers for shipping that can be rocket-propelled, cabled or sit on the seabed and be triggered by sound, movement or light. Trump said mines have been found and that efforts to locate others continue but that the strait “is already partially opened.” The U.K.’s Royal Navy has made a point of showing off the specialist expertise it could offer, welcoming reporters aboard a vessel, the RFA Lyme Bay, as it waited off the coast of Gibraltar last month to be deployed. French, American, British and other naval crews already have experience of escorting civilian ships through hostile fire in the region. They previously defended cargo vessels through attacks in the Red Sea carried out by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. French frigates used machine guns, cannons and sophisticated air-defense missiles to fend off Houthi strikes. The French frigate Alsace downed three ballistic missiles in the Red Sea in 2024 as it was escorting a container ship. The ship’s commander at the time, Capt. Jérôme Henry, told the AP that being on the receiving end of the potentially deadly strikes was unnerving and exhausting. The sea battles also took a toll on U.S. Navy ships and personnel. If deployed in the Strait of Hormuz, naval crews would be hoping for fewer dangers if the ceasefire holds. But with Iran still believed to be armed with stocks of missiles, drones and other weaponry, warships’ defensive systems could be used to fend off any attacks if the ceasefire breaks down. “Once there is a ceasefire, the need for a naval mission is significantly reduced,” said Max Bergmann, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “A U.K.-French naval presence will no doubt have some security benefits. It might raise the stakes for Iran to rekindle the war; it demonstrates European commitment to Gulf states; and it might reassure shipping and insurance companies,” he said. “But we should not overstate its utility.” Joint French-British planning for the mission has involved nations as far afield as Australia, South Korea and Japan, Bahrain and Qatar in the Gulf, Canada, and more than a dozen in Europe. A meeting of defense ministers and other representatives that France and Britain convened last month about the plans brought together 38 countries. ___ Associated Press writer Sylvie Corbet in Evian-Les-Bains contributed. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW YORK (AP) — A tentative deal to end the Iran war makes it reasonable to ask how soon prices will drop for gasoline, groceries, airline tickets and other items that got more expensive during the conflict. Not so fast, experts say. Even after oil starts flowing again from the Middle East, it could take a while for consumers to see a difference at local fuel pumps, supermarkets and other places they shop, according to economists and industry analysts. Fighting over the Strait of Hormuz disrupted not only supplies of crude and refined fuel but also the supply chains for fertilizer, food and even footwear. Businesses expect higher costs to linger, which means their customers might need to prepare for that too. “It is not clear, despite three months of war, that anything has been achieved that makes the American consumer better off,” Brett House, an economist who teaches at Columbia Business School, said. “In fact, by almost any measure, not just the American consumer, but the world, is worse off as a result of this attack.” If the deal between the U.S. and Iran holds, here’s how experts see the war’s effects receding — or not — in the weeks ahead: Following news of the tentative agreement, oil prices fell Monday to about $80 for a barrel of U.S. benchmark crude. That compares to $67-per-barrel before the war and the price of over $120 a barrel reached earlier in the conflict. Refineries typically pay for crude oil a month or more in advance, so even after oil prices drop, they won’t immediately be processing cheaper products. “The tendency of gasoline prices to fall slowly is partly because the raw material takes weeks to work through the system until it’s delivered to consumers,” said Michael Lynch, a distinguished fellow at the nonpartisan Energy Policy Research Foundation. In places without enough refining capacity to meet their needs, such as the West Coast of the U.S., gas prices will take longer to drop, said Mark Barteau, a professor of chemical engineering and chemistry at Texas A&M University. In some Asian and African countries that rely more on oil from the Middle East, the supply shock led to school and government office closures and instructions to work from home, according to the International Energy Agency. “The bottom line is that getting back to ‘normal’ will be a lengthy process involving many parties and countries,” Barteau said. “Getting an agreement between the U.S. and Iran to open the strait is just the beginning.” Industry experts have spent months warning that even if the war ended, travelers should not expect airfares to go down immediately. Airlines typically buy fuel in advance, adjust their schedules gradually and price tickets based heavily on demand, meaning lower oil and jet fuel prices can take weeks or months to get factored into the cost of commercial flights. “I think it’s unlikely that we’re going to see a retreat or reduction in the cost of flying at any point this summer,” Columbia’s House said. Fuel surcharges that some airlines outside the U.S. added are one of the first areas where passengers might get a reprieve, said Gordon Ho, a professor at the University of Southern California’s business school. “Consumers are going to say, ‘Wait a minute, why are you still charging me a fuel surcharge?’” Ho said. Reopening the strait is unlikely to deliver instant relief at the grocery store, according to David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University. Fuel accounts for roughly 15% to 30% of the total cost of food, according to the Independent Grocers Alliance, a grouping of 7,500 global supermarkets. But it can take months for an energy shock like the one caused by the Iran war to wind through the food supply chain and raise grocery prices. And once prices go up, it takes them a long time to come back down, especially when the future is unpredictable, Ortega said. “We’re likely still looking at inflationary pressure on food in the coming months,” Ortega said. “There’s still a good deal of uncertainty about how the reopening will unfold, and it will take time for fuel, diesel and retail fertilizer prices to come back down.” Rabobank, which is based in the Netherlands, said it expected war-related food price inflation to peak sometime next year in Europe. In the U.S., grocery prices are expected to rise 3.2% this year, which compares to a historical average of 2.6%, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Reopening the Strait of Hormuz would also be a welcome change for farmers and the production of food globally. Roughly 30% of the world’s fertilizer passed through the waterway before the war began. Prices soared as the supply was effectively cut off, and shipments probably will take a long time to return to pre-war levels. The consequences of the shortage facing farmers now may only intensify down the road, regardless. Many farmers around the world are going through planting seasons without the fertilizer they need or paying sky-high prices for both fertilizer and fuel needed to produce and transport their products. The World Food Program of the United Nations expects this to have a “devastating impact” on crop yields — and consequently, food prices and the availability of food — for months to come. U.S. retailers that sell shoes were encouraged to see falling gasoline prices, hoping they would mean Americans have more money to spend on back-to-school shopping, said Andy Polk, senior vice president of the Footwear Distributors and Retailers of America trade group. However, shoe companies anticipate their own costs staying higher for the foreseeable future, Polk said. The group’s members keep a two- to three-month inventory of finished products, but their next orders may include suppliers charging more for materials, he said. Most of the footwear sold in the U.S. is imported, and Polk said he expects shipping costs to remain higher for the rest of 2026 and 2027. U.S. tariffs imposed last year have made it more difficult for shoe sellers to absorb higher costs or pass them on customers, he said. In May, footwear prices were 5.2% higher than the same month a year earlier, according to government figures. Judah Levine, head of research at the freight booking platform Freightos, said the Straight of Hormuz closure has affected about 2% to 3 % of the total volume of container ships that are used for global shipping, but higher oil prices and disruption have impacted the shipping industry more broadly. Josh Steinitz, chief strategy officer of the business logistics platform ShipStation Global, said consumers might notice higher shipping costs and more out-of-stock items online until the end of the year. “I think fuel surcharges, which then flow into shipping costs, which then get passed along to consumers, are still going to be with us for quite sometime from many of the major carriers,” Steinitz said. ___ Associated Press writers Cathy Bussewitz, Anne D’Innocenzio, and Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York, Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit and Rio Yamat in Las Vegas contributed to this report. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

Steve Harvey believes his decades of success as an entertainer, motivational speaker and author are blessings from God and connections to his philanthropy. “The more God trusts you, the more he will bless you, but he has to trust you with what he’s going to give,” Harvey told The Associated Press after a recent appearance at the Social Innovation Summit in Atlanta. “And a part of what he is going to give to you is going to require that you take a portion of it and return the favor.” Zeev Klein, CEO of Landmark Ventures and founder and curator of the Social Innovation Summit, said Harvey’s message is an important one at a time when we face so many urgent challenges. “Steve has an extraordinary ability to meet the moment with honesty, empathy, and clarity,” Klein said. “He doesn’t just speak to an audience, he connects people in a way that moves conversations forward.” The longtime host of “Family Feud” and star of numerous movies and TV shows, Harvey takes giving back very seriously, especially through The Steve & Marjorie Harvey Foundation, which he started with his wife. And he has made sure that his children also take philanthropy very seriously. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. I think I got that from my mother. She always raised me to believe that God blesses you to become a blessing. You have to give to people without expecting anything in return. It’s your job. When you give to somebody you don’t have the right to make the determination what they need it for. (People say,) “He ain’t gonna do nothing but buy some beer. He ain’t gonna do nothing but get drunk. He gonna get high.” That ain’t your business, right? If you do it with the intent to help, the reward is given back to you. People who don’t know what it is like to be without, they come from a different perspective. They don’t know what it is to grovel. So, we have to start developing some type of understanding with one another. OK, you may not have grown up poor, but suppose you learn what a lot of poor people go through? That would eventually have an effect on you if you were human. But when you don’t listen to them, you don’t want to hear their story, then you keep acting as though you’ve been rich the whole time. That’s the problem we have today. Most decent parents want their children to live better than them. My father wanted me to have a better life than him. They didn’t want me to struggle like they did. I did that for my kids. None of my kids really had to grow up poor. Each one of my children had a room with a bathroom in it. Each one had their own desk and computer. I gave them a lot. And sometimes I overdid it, especially the girls. Lord, I just don’t know how to tell my daughters, “No.” That’s my problem. But I taught them: You don’t have the right to think you are better than anybody else. You just hit the jackpot, I’m your daddy. That’s your black card. You really don’t deserve nothing you have. I taught them all this: “Justice is when you get what you deserve. Mercy is when you don’t get what your deserve. But grace is when get what don’t you deserve.” My children were born into grace. They didn’t have to work to have. I did all of that. That’s how I raised them and that’s why they have good heads on their shoulders. It’s funny you asked me that because I’ve had to change the messaging over the years. It’s a different boy that comes to this camp now. And I guess the only way I can tell it to you is just that it’s a softer boy that’s being raised now. We used to go right into the tough stuff. Now we gotta ease them off the bus. I gotta get up on the bus and give them a little speech. Over the years, we’ve had to taper this so much. It’s a softer camp now. But for the five days I got them, we still show them how life really works. You don’t get participation trophies in life. If you miss the promotion in corporate America, they don’t just give you the check anyway. _____ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — For eight years, the United States has waged economic war on China, slapping big taxes on Chinese products before they enter America. But the campaign hasn’t dented China’s industrial prowess. The world’s second biggest economy is exporting more products than ever. It’s just redirecting them away from the U.S. tariff wall and toward more open markets in Europe and elsewhere in Asia. The shift in Chinese trade risks creating a European sequel to the China Shock that wiped out hundreds of thousands of factory jobs in the American heartland in the 2000s and contributed to the political upheaval that put Donald Trump in the White House twice. Despite U.S. sanctions, China last year notched a record global trade surplus — an astonishing $1.2 trillion. Earlier this year, French President Emmanuel Macron warned that Chinese exports are “literally killing a large part of the European industry’’ and admitted that Europe was “slow to see that.’’ The Europeans are clear-eyed now. China’s trade practices will be near the top of the agenda this week as leaders of the G7 rich democracies gather in Évian-les-Bains, France. In briefings last week, French officials indicated that they hope to come out of the summit with a plan to tackle the China threat. One possibility is that the European Union and others will build a higher tariff wall of their own against Chinese imports. Currently, the EU imposes relatively low tariffs on China under World Trade Organization rules — though it hits specific Chinese products with higher ones (up to 35% on electric vehicles, for example). “China’s export surge, unless its leaders rein it in, will provoke a protectionist wave against Chinese imports worldwide,’’ said Maurice Obstfeld, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. “All the more so if the current disruptions around the Iran war persist and cause a sharper global slowdown.’’ Economist Taylor Wang at HSBC warned this month that a China-EU trade dispute could threaten Chinese exports; Europe accounted for a big share of China’s exports of electric vehicles, solar panels and lithium-ion batteries. The Europeans also hope to persuade Trump to stop targeting U.S. allies like the European Union and Canada with punitive tariffs and to start working with them instead to counter China. The first China Shock started around 2001 when the Chinese joined the World Trade Organization and gained low-tariff access to the lucrative markets of the United States and Europe. In the United States, many factories couldn’t compete with low-cost Chinese textiles, furniture, electronics and other manufactured goods. Economists David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David Dorn of the University of Zurich and Gordon Hanson, now at Harvard, found that competition from China had led to the loss of 2.4 million American jobs. China Shock 2.0, as it’s come to be known, is playing out differently. The first time around China was still emerging as a major player in global commerce. Now it dominates world trade and manufacturing. China accounted for just 4% of global goods exports in 2000. Now its share is 16% — the highest in the world — making Beijing’s trade policies far more consequential. China has also upped its game, exporting sophisticated products like EVs and batteries, advanced machinery, software, scientific instruments and putting it in direct competition with the richest countries in the world. For example, Chinese exports now compete with nearly 58% of the exports from the 21 European countries that share the euro currency, up from 46% in 2000, according to a paper last month by researchers at the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “The second China shock is characterized by its companies running the board on manufacturing exports — from low-tech, low-wage to high-tech high value-added industries,” said economist Eswar Prasad of Cornell University. “This is directly hitting advanced economies where it now hurts the most″ — high tech industries such as EVs and high-end robotics that many countries “had been counting on for a manufacturing revival.’’ Germany has been hit hard. German companies once grew fat on exports to China but the situation has reversed: China now sells more goods to Germany than it buys. And German companies are struggling to compete with the Chinese rivals in industrial machinery, construction equipment, cars and chemicals – all mainstays of Germany’s export-oriented economy. Partly because of the competition from China, Germany’s economy has stagnated, shrinking in 2023 and 2024 and growing just 0.2% last year. The United States is less vulnerable than it was in the 2000s. Trump’s tariffs have kept out a lot of Chinese products. Exports of Chinese goods to the United States dropped 37% from January through April this year, versus the same period of 2025, the U.S. Commerce Department reports. The United States is also in a stronger economic position because it produces its own energy — unlike the EU and Japan — and is enjoying a boom in productivity and investment in artificial intelligence. Despite Trump’s tariffs and diminished sales to the United States, China is benefiting from soaring demand for its low-cost EVs and from AI investment, which generates sales of Chinese electrical components and machinery for data centers. Exports from China to the 27-nation EU climbed 16.4% in January to May from a year earlier. For France, that meant that its trade deficit with China, according to Beijing’s customs statistics, rose to $5.3 billion from $3.3 billion a year earlier. Economists say China’s policies encourage factories to overproduce and consumers to underspend. For example, state-run Chinese banks pay low interest rates to savers but offer cheap loans to government-owned manufacturers. A flimsy social safety net pressures Chinese families to save, not spend, to build a financial buffer against old age and medical problems. Obstfeld said the policies are partly meant to keep factories busy and workers employed. “The result is an excess domestic supply of manufactured products, which must be exported abroad,’’ he said. So low-priced Chinese products flood world markets and threaten to put European and other factories out of business. Beijing also has encouraged companies to compete ruthlessly against each other at home. “The rest of the world is ill prepared to compete with these apex predators,’’ Autor and Hanson wrote in a New York Times column last year. China has repeatedly promised to rein in overproduction and encourage consumer spending – as the United States and other countries have urged for decades. That would make its economy less reliant on exports and its consumers better off. It would also give U.S. and European an expanding market to sell into. “The leadership has long said this is a goal,’’ Obstfeld said, “but they have been slow to act as if they mean it.’’ “Beijing has been relying on the rest of the world to address its overcapacity problem,” said former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler, now senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “However, this unsustainable situation may soon change if the EU and others take steps to halt Chinese imports, following the U.S. lead.’’ ___ AP Business Writer Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong, AP Chief Correspondent John Leicester and Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed. Kurtenbach reported from Bangkok and McHugh from Frankfurt, Germany Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — For decades, a U.S. Air Force base in Southern California’s Mojave Desert has been a hotbed of some of the most innovative flight research in the U.S. From a test pilot breaking the sound barrier to a space shuttle touching down, aviation history has often been made at Edwards Air Force Base, about 100 miles (161 km) north of Los Angeles. There has also been tragedy, like the one that unfolded Monday when a B-52 bomber crashed shortly after takeoff at the base and burst into flames, killing all eight people aboard. Here’s a closer look at Edwards Air Force Base and some of its notable moments: Within months of officials establishing a permanent base to train combat flight crews at the vast desert site, it made history. In 1942, test pilot Bob Stanley flew the U.S.’s first jet-powered aircraft. He took off from the base’s dry lake bed that served as a naturally long runway, which was vital for the first-generation turbojet engines known for “flaming out,” according to the base. Five years later, the site was where Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager pushed an orange, bullet-shaped Bell X-1 rocket plane to a speed of Mach 1.05 and broke the sound barrier, achieving a major aviation milestone. His feat was kept secret for about a year when the world thought the British had broken the sound barrier first. In 1981, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen landed on that same dry lake bed, making history as the first orbiting space vehicle to leave Earth using rocket power and come back on an aircraft’s wings. Described as an “irreplaceable national asset,” these days Edwards Air Force Base remains at the center of a significant portion of the U.S. Air Force’s aircraft test and development efforts. All Air Force aircraft are tested there, along with some Navy and Army aircraft, according to the base. “Arguably, more major milestones in flight have occurred at this base than anywhere else in the world,” according to the base. It’s run by the 412th Test Wing, which also conducts developmental testing of Air Force weapons systems, software and components before purchase by the service as well as throughout their life span. In 2025, Boeing sent a B-52 to Edwards with a new, modernized radar system. A test team planned to conduct ground and flight test activities on the aircraft throughout 2026 to feed a production decision, the Air Force said in a 2025 news release. The modern Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar system replaced the aircraft’s antiquated radar for efficacy. It was unclear if that was the same aircraft involved in Monday’s crash. The B-52 bomber crashed during a routine test mission on Monday, according to military officials. The aircraft was supporting the “radar modernization program,” Col. James Hayes, the deputy commander for the 412 test wing at Edwards, said at a news conference. The people on board included government contractors and uniformed military. There were two employees of aircraft manufacturer Boeing, the company confirmed. It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. An investigation is underway. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com