Trump extends TikTok ban deadline for a third time

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order to keep TikTok running in the U.S. for another 90 days to give his administration more time to broker a deal to bring the social media platform under American ownership. It is the third time Trump has extended the deadline. The first one was through an executive order on Jan. 20, his first day in office, after the platform went dark briefly when a national ban took effect. The second was in April when White House officials believed they were nearing a deal to spin off TikTok into a new company with U.S. ownership that fell apart after China backed out following Trump’s tariff announcement.

Study: Early humans survived in a range of extreme environments before global migration

WASHINGTON (AP) — Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published Wednesday in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. “Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany.

Flooding and rock slides close heavily damaged I-40 section in Smoky Mountains

HARTFORD, Tenn. (AP) — Heavy rain, flooding and a rock slide have again closed a section of the major cross country highway Interstate 40 along its narrow corridor through the Great Smoky Mountains. Engineers say they expect the road to be closed at least two weeks. The slide and flood happened Wednesday afternoon around mile marker 450 in Tennessee, just to the west of the state line with North Carolina. The damaged section is part of 12 miles of I-40 in North Carolina and Tennessee that was washed away or heavily damaged by flooding that roared through the Pigeon River gorge during Hurricane Helene in late September. Crews reopened one narrow lane in each direction in March.

Trump’s latest judicial pick is someone that Biden almost nominated

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he plans to tap Chad Meredith, a former state solicitor general in Kentucky, for a federal judgeship in the state. Meredith’s home-state senator, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, opposed the nomination three years ago when he was almost nominated by former President Joe Biden. At the time, Paul said he would not allow the nomination to move forward because it was a “secret deal” between the White House and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. But now, Paul says he will support the nominee. Trump made the announcement in a social media post Wednesday night.