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Former President Donald Trump’s choice for Pennsylvania governor has won his primary, and his Senate pick is locked in an exceedingly close contest as the former president works to expand his hold on the Republican Party.

Trump’s late endorsement helped put the already surging far-right state senator Doug Mastriano over the top Tuesday in the GOP governor’s primary in one of the nation’s premier battleground states.

But Mehmet Oz, the celebrity heart surgeon endorsed by Trump, is locked with former hedge fund manager David McCormick in a race that is too early to call. On the Democratic side, progressive Lt. Gov. John Fetterman easily secured his party's Senate nomination.

In another of the night's closely watched races, progressive John Fetterman easily won Pennsylvania’s Democratic Senate primary, just days after a stroke sent him to the hospital.

U.S. Rep. Ted Budd and former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley have won their respective Senate primaries in North Carolina. Budd on Tuesday won the 14-candidate Republican primary over the likes of former Gov. Pat McCrory and U.S. Rep. Mark Walker.

Beasley was the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, which 11 people sought. Beasley and Budd will compete in November to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Burr. 

Former Oregon House Speaker Tina Kotek has won the Democratic gubernatorial primary governor, beating state Treasurer Tobias Read in a victory for the party’s progressive wing. 

Russia says that nearly 1,000 Ukrainian troops who doggedly defended a giant steelworks in Mariupol have surrendered.

The plant became a symbol of their country’s resistance. The announcement Wednesday comes as the battle for the strategic port city appeared all but over.

Ukraine ordered the fighters to save their lives and said their mission to tie up Russian forces is now complete. But it has not called the column of soldiers walking out of the plant a surrender.

The fighters face an uncertain fate. Ukraine says they hope for a prisoner swap but Russia is vowing to try at least some of them for war crimes.

Both Sweden and Finland have applied to join NATO.

A new report says decisions by Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to pull all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan were the key factors in the collapse of that nation’s military, leading to the Taliban takeover last year. 

The House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is rejecting a request from the Justice Department for access to the committee’s interviews, for now.

Rep. Bennie Thompson says the Justice Department made the request as part of its ongoing criminal investigation into the attack. But Thompson, the committee's chairman, said Tuesday it was “premature” for the committee to share its work at this point because the panel’s probe is ongoing.

The Heat knock off the Celtics, the Magic get the NBA's top draft pick, the Lightning and Avalanche win on ice and Aaron Judge flexes his muscles again. Correspondent Josh Rowntree reports.

President Joe Biden mourned with Buffalo’s grieving families on Tuesday, then exhorted the nation to reject what he angrily labeled the poison of white supremacy.

He said the nation must “reject the lie” of the racist “replacement theory” espoused by the shooter who killed 10 Black people at a supermarket. Biden declared that “evil will not win” in America.

“Replacement theory” is the idea that white people are being intentionally replaced by people of color. It's another manifestation of the bigotry Biden vowed to confront while running for president.

Biden says it was the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and President Donald Trump's ambivalent reaction that drove him to run.

The fall of Mariupol appears at hand as Ukraine is moving to abandon a sprawling steel plant where its soldiers had held out under relentless bombardment for months, which would make it the biggest city to fall into Russian hands.

Much of it, though, has been reduced to rubble. Ukraine estimates some 20,000 civilians have been killed in the Russian assault on Mariupol, a city on the Azov Sea that stands between the Russian mainland and the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014.

Hundreds of Ukrainian fighters have left the Azovstal steel plant and turned themselves over to Russian hands.

House Democrats have unveiled a $28 million emergency spending bill to address the shortage of infant formula in the United States.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, says the bill would help the Food and Drug Administration take important steps to restore the formula supply in a safe and secure manner.

U.S. regulators have authorized a COVID-19 vaccine booster for healthy children ages 5 to 11. Everyone 12 and older already was supposed to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest variants of the coronavirus. 

There were 1.7 million weddings in 2020, a drop of 17% from the year before. The number of U.S. marriages in 2020 was the lowest recorded since 1963.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released an analysis of the data Tuesday.

The pandemic threw many marriage plans into disarray with stay-at-home orders and restrictions on large gatherings. The CDC has not yet released data on marriages in 2021.

Queen Elizabeth II made a surprise appearance at central London’s Paddington station. The 96-year-old monarch has reduced most of her public engagements.

But she appeared Tuesday at the train station and beamed as she unveiled a plaque stating she officially opened the Elizabeth line, named in her honor.

Prince William says he hopes more soccer players will have the confidence to be open about their sexuality after Jake Daniels became the first active player in the English men's professional game to announce he is gay. 

Nearly 43,000 people were killed on U.S. roads last year. That's the highest number in 16 years as Americans returned to the highways after the pandemic forced many to stay at home.

Traffic deaths rose 10.5% over 2020, the largest percentage increase since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began its fatality data collection in 1975.

An outbreak of avian flu is forcing farmers to cull their flocks and leading to concerns about even higher food prices. While it doesn't pose a significant threat to humans, the outbreak is prompting a new wave of some of the same conspiracy theories that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Experts who study misinformation say claims that the avian flu is a bioweapon or an elaborate hoax reflect a deepening distrust of the media and scientific experts.

For poultry farmers and animal health officials in affected states, however, the flu poses a threat that's all too real for both their animals and their local economies.

U.S. retail sales rose 0.9% in April, a solid increase that underscores Americans’ ability to keep ramping up spending even as inflation persists at nearly a 40-year high.

The Commerce Department said Tuesday that the increase was driven by greater sales of cars, electronics, and at restaurants. Even adjusting for inflation, which was 0.3% on a monthly basis in April, sales increased. 

A handful of U.S. hospitals are facing a financial crisis that officials say was caused by the federal government's rules for pandemic relief money.

A trio of hospitals in Alabama, Kansas and New Mexico say they're not getting as much assistance as other hospitals because they're so new they can't prove financial losses from before the pandemic.

In rural southwest Alabama, Thomasville Regional Medical Center says it's in danger of closing after just two years.

Federal health officials say all three hospitals have gotten some money from the CARES Act, and no health providers are getting all their losses reimbursed.

—The Associated Press