AP News in Brief at 6:04 p.m. EDT

Trump says US and Iranian officials met Tuesday, shortly after warning he may ‘annihilate’ Iran

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump said U.S. and Iranian officials met on Tuesday, an unexpected engagement that came even as he threatened in his address to the U.N. General Assembly that he may “annihilate” the Islamic Republic if a deal isn’t reached soon to end the nearly seven-month war.

Trump told reporters that his chief envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, met with the Iranian officials on the sidelines of the annual gathering of world leaders but he offered few details about how the discussions transpired or the substance of the exchange.

“It was a very good meeting,” Trump said. The president later added that the Iranian officials were “not the highest level, but it’s something.”

The engagement comes after months of U.S.-Iran communications languishing following the collapse of a short-lived ceasefire that was brokered in June. U.S. and Iranian negotiators met separately with Qatari and Pakistani mediators in Doha in early July for indirect talks.

Earlier Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Trump is open to meeting with Iran’s president, Masoud Pezeshkian, while he’s in New York for the General Assembly.

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FACT FOCUS: Trump made multiple false and misleading claims in front of the UN General Assembly

President Donald Trump made myriad false and misleading claims during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, many of which he has repeated frequently throughout his second term in the White House.

They covered topics such as U.S. munitions supply, drug seizures, oil and the economy.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

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CLAIM: “We have more munitions than we could ever possibly even think of using, and we’re building them at levels that we have never done before.”

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UN leaders’ meeting convenes with secretary-general calling for ‘world built on interdependence’

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pleaded for “a world built on interdependence” as he made his final address Tuesday to a yearly gathering of world leaders convening to face a formidable menu of challenges — from climate change and war to inequality and artificial intelligence.

The U.N. leader has long implored leaders not to give up on cooperation and shared decision-making in the face of accelerating global challenges and increasing great-powers competition. Tuesday’s message at the U.N. General Assembly took on additional urgency because he leaves office at the end of this year.

“The fault lines in our world are widening,” he said, citing raging wars, risingtemperatures and artificial intelligence, among other matters. Instead of letting the future continue to veer toward fragmentation, transactionalism and mistrust, he called for “a world built on interdependence – and sustained by a dense web of economic, political, social and technological connections.”

His speech opened the main portion of the world’s biggest diplomatic meeting of the year. Leaders from the U.N.’s 193 member countries address each other and the international community and air their hopes, plans and grievances.

Guterres also rebuked might-makes-right thinking, telling superpowers to recognize “that their power isn’t so super.” Recent years have made it clear that “military power alone cannot secure peace,” he said.

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Trump signs US-Denmark-Greenland agreement to bolster Arctic security after prolonged tensions

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an agreement with Denmark and Greenland aimed at strengthening Arctic and North Atlantic security, paving the way for more U.S. bases in Greenland and easing tensions over his repeated calls for the vast island to become part of the United States.

The signing on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York comes days after Trump announced the deal to bolster the U.S. military presence on Greenland but keep it under Danish control. The agreement would still apply if Greenland eventually chooses independence.

“This is tremendous for Europe and for the United States and for everybody,” Trump said just before the agreement was signed. “And for Greenland, it’s going to be incredible.”

Trump has expressed his desire to acquire Greenland since as long ago as 2019 and, during his second term, issued threats to seize the semiautonomous territory from Denmark, a NATO ally. On Tuesday, he did not respond to questions about whether a U.S. acquisition of Greenland was off the table.

Officials from the U.S., Greenland and Denmark negotiated for months behind the scenes, searching for solutions to address some of Trump’s security concerns about the mineral-rich island.

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Trump administration to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees over fraud claims

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President JD Vance and other Trump administration officials said Tuesday they plan to remove 760,000 Affordable Care Act enrollees from public healthcare exchanges, alleging that the individuals were fraudulently enrolled in the program, or simply do not exist.

Vance said the discovery and canceled subsidy payments for hundreds of thousands of people from the exchanges, part of an administration-wide crackdown on fraud, would result in $2.2 billion in cost savings.

“We’re actually making sure that the people receiving Obamacare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them,” said Vance, who leads a government task force to eliminate fraud. He was flanked by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, and other administration officials.

Vance said the cancellation of approximately 315,000 enrollments covering 760,000 people was done in part because the government was not checking whether people enrolled were eligible. Vance said another 419,000 enrollments will get additional verification to make sure they are eligible for the benefit.

The Trump administration also announced a six-month suspension on new agents or brokers who sign up enrollees for healthcare coverage, who officials say commit a disproportionate amount of the fraud they uncovered.

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Hayden Panettiere died from an overdose involving fentanyl. She had just gone to rehab, coroner says

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) — Actor Hayden Panettiere died from an accidental overdose of several drugs, including fentanyl, and had been in rehab just weeks before, according to a coroner’s report obtained by The Associated Press.

Panettiere, 36, was found unresponsive in an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, on Aug. 16. Her on-and-off boyfriend Brian Hickerson and his brother Zach Hickerson were at the home.

A combination of fentanyl and its chemical byproduct, as well as the anti-anxiety medication alprazolam, a muscle relaxer and a drug used to treat major depression and other serious mental health disorders, was found in Panettiere’s system, according to a statement from the Greenville County Coroner’s Office.

A more detailed report released to the AP said a senior deputy coroner who came to the Airbnb apartment to investigate Panettiere’s death found blue pressed pills and a straw on a table that would later test positive for fentanyl. A white powdery substance was found in her suitcase in a sunglasses case, according to the report.

When the investigator called Panettiere’s father, he said she planned to spend her birthday five days later in Greenville, then head to Ukraine to visit her daughter.

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Nolan Wells’ family pushes back after grand jury finds no cause for charges in his July death

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A grand jury determined that there wasn’t evidence to warrant charges in the death of Nolan Wells, a Black college student whose body was found after a July 4 boating trip and party on an island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Wells’ family swiftly pushed back on the findings.

District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath, who has overseen the investigation into the 18-year-old’s death, announced the grand jury’s findings late Monday, after months of intense speculation about how Wells went missing from the bustling party and why the friends who ferried him to Horn Island left without him.

The grand jury found no evidence of criminal conduct and said that based on various factors, including the position and condition of Wells’ body when found two days after he was last seen, his death was “consistent with drowning.” Although the state medical examiner’s office’s autopsy results haven’t been made public, the grand jury report said that it and a separate autopsy conducted by a forensic pathologist hired by Wells’ family found bruising on the back of his head but couldn’t determine the cause of death.

Wells’ mother, Christine Wonsley, said at a news conference Tuesday that she didn’t understand how the grand jury concluded that her son had accidentally drowned given the autopsy findings.

“How can a jury come to the conclusion of drowning, despite knowing that there was trauma to his body, and despite hearing many inconsistencies?” she said.

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Man shot by ICE in Texas is back in detention after leaving hospital, attorney says

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Venezuelan man shot by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Texas was back in a federal detention center Tuesday after being taken to a hospital for a second time with a bullet still lodged in his back, according to his attorney.

A federal judge also ordered Wilber Rafael Garces Perez, who was shot Sunday in Austin, to appear in court next week following a lawsuit that sought to stop his removal from the U.S.

Kate Lincoln-Goldfinch, Perez’s attorney, said in a video posted to social media Tuesday that the 28-year-old man was “still in a lot of pain.”

Perez was being held at a federal detention facility in the remote South Texas town of Pearsall, according to Texas Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, who has joined others in his party in sharply criticizing the shooting that occurred amid a surge in ICE enforcement during President Donald Trump’s second term. The violent encounter has also sparked protests in Austin, including a gathering outside the Texas Capitol on Monday night.

Perez was making a DoorDash delivery Sunday afternoon when ICE officers in an unmarked truck sideswiped his car twice, Lincoln-Goldfinch has said. He was shot and taken to a hospital, then released into ICE custody with a bullet still in his back. Perez went back to the hospital Monday evening after complaining of pain and was taken back into ICE custody around midnight, Lincoln-Goldfinch said.

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Hurricane Polo churns off Mexico’s Pacific coast as ‘one of the strongest storms ever’

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Hurricane Polo grew into one of the most powerful Pacific cyclones in decades on Tuesday, and it was expected to skirt Mexico’s southwestern coast as a Category 5 hurricane.

Polo was an “extremely dangerous” storm with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph (290 kph), the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said in an update from a NOAA Hurricane Hunter aircraft that was sent into the cyclone.

It was the third Category 5 hurricane of the Pacific season, following Genevieve and Lowell earlier this year. Category 5 is the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson scale, reflecting that a storm has maximum sustained winds exceeding 157 mph (253 kph).

Polo was centered 210 miles (338 kilometers) south of Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and nearly stationary over the Pacific Ocean at midday. The hurricane center update said Polo was expected to travel in a generally west-northwestward direction over the next several days.

The hurricane set residents of Mexico’s Pacific coast on edge once again after being walloped by powerful cyclones a number of times in recent years. Beaches emptied out and dark clouds swirled above choppy seas, while Mexican authorities temporarily suspended classes in a number of areas on Tuesday.

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‘Looksmaxxing’ influencer known as ‘Clavicular’ is charged with rape in Massachusetts

BOSTON (AP) — The social media influencer “Clavicular,” who gained a following promoting the online “looksmaxxing” trend, has been charged in Massachusetts with raping a 17-year-old girl who told police she became heavily intoxicated after he gave her alcohol at his family’s Cape Cod home.

Braden Peters, 20, is charged with rape, administering a substance for sexual intercourse and procuring alcohol for a person under 21 in the alleged May 23, 2025, assault in Chatham, according to court records. A clerk-magistrate found probable cause for the charges on Sept. 4, and a criminal complaint was issued Sept. 8.

An email and text message were sent to Peters’ publicist seeking comment Tuesday. Peters, who lives in Florida and is not in custody, is scheduled to be arraigned in Massachusetts on Oct. 14.

“We are not commenting at this time since the proper authorities are handling this,” said Andrew Moss, one of the teen’s attorneys.

The accuser told Chatham police that she and Peters began messaging on Instagram and that he later paid her to appear in “looksmaxxing” videos he streamed online. She said Peters knew she was 17 but that he told her to tell his viewers that she was 18 and that vodka he gave her was water, according to a police report.