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Renting is taking off in the suburbs as homeownership remains out of reach for many would-be buyers.

Between 2018 and 2023, rentership surged by at least 5 percentage points in 11 out of 20 suburbs surrounding the largest U.S. metro areas, according to a recent analysis by Point2Homes, a rental market research company.

During the same period, 15 suburbs went from being predominantly composed of homeowners to majority-renter communities. The trend spans fast-growing Sun Belt metros like Dallas, Houston and Miami as well as Northeastern cities like Boston and Philadelphia.

In five of those top 20 metro areas — Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, Tampa and Baltimore — the suburbs are gaining renters faster than the urban centers they surround, Point2Homes found. The share of residents who rent surged in the Dallas suburbs by 17.6% from 2018 to 2023, while that rate rose just 7.9% in the city itself — with the nearby suburbs of Frisco, McKinney and Grand Prairie each gaining over 5,000 renter households apiece during that period.

Back in 2018, it was harder to buy a home in Dallas County, where most of the city sits, than it was in the metro area’s more suburban counties, like those including Frisco, McKinney and Grand Prairie — suburbs where the ranks of renters have swelled faster than virtually anywhere else, Point2Homes found. That’s no longer the case: Homebuying is now more difficult in the suburban counties surrounding Dallas than it is in Dallas County itself, the NBC News Home Buyer Index shows.

Housing affordability is a nationwide problem spanning cities and suburbs alike.

Mortgage costs have risen sharply since the pandemic, pricing out many prospective buyers in all sorts of in-demand areas. Average interest rates on the popular 30-year fixed home loan currently hover just under 7%, levels not seen since before the 2008 financial crisis. In a market this tough, some housing experts say the proliferation of rental properties has helped keep suburban lifestyles accessible to people who otherwise couldn’t afford them.

“You have your own land, you have kids or you have a dog, and you want that space,” said N. Edward Coulson, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the director of its Center for Real Estate. “They get all that amenity from having a single-family home.”

Mark, a suburbanite just outside Chicago who asked to be identified by his first name to avoid professional blowback for weighing in on hot-button housing issues, said the type of property he has rented for three years is out of budget for him to buy. He estimated many comparable properties in the area would cost 30% more in monthly housing payments than his current rent, and he’s considering leaving the area so he can purchase someplace else.

“If I want to stay here, it’s basically not tenable,” Mark said.

Andrew Decker, a renter in Lake Villa, Illinois, halfway between Chicago and Milwaukee, said he and his family would love to buy the property where they live now, which he said was offered to him for $340,000.

“We would like to make it our forever home if we could afford it, but it’s just so expensive,” Decker said. “If they were to come at me and tell me that, ‘Hey, you can buy this house for 200 grand today,’ I’d pull the trigger tomorrow. I wouldn’t even hesitate. But 340’s crazy.”

Tara Raghuveer, who runs the tenant advocacy group Tenant Union Federation, said affordability issues that have fueled the suburban rental boom threaten to push people farther from urban cores.

“As people are moved out of the city, they’re further from transportation, they might be further from employment, they might be living in homes that are not necessarily connected to other people like them, which impacts things like child care, Social Security,” Raghuveer said.

Landlords, however, tout the benefits that come from renting in the ’burbs.

“The ability to have one payment that covers all your expenses generally — you don’t have to deal with the mortgage payment and the home insurance and maybe the HOA and then a lot of maintenance expense, so on — has been something that for a lot of people has been worth it,” said George Ratiu, vice president of research at the National Apartment Association trade group, which represents rental operators.

Developers have also been building different types of properties for suburban tenants, including multifamily complexes. Jay Parsons, a housing economist and host of “The Rent Roll” podcast, points to the rise of “suburban downtowns,” partly fueled by the pandemic-era shift to remote work. These mixed-use developments are typically aimed at offering younger families a balance between urban convenience and suburban amenities, he said.

“You can still be close to your job. You can be close to nice restaurants and shops but live in a suburban area where you’re still using a car, and you still have probably a rent that’s more affordable than living in most downtowns,” Parsons said.

Coulson doesn’t expect the appeal of the suburbs to fade anytime soon, which could prop up prices in many of them for buyers and renters alike.

“If you work downtown, it’s still an advantage to live downtown, but it’s not as great an advantage” as it used to be, he said, now that remote work remains commonplace — despite an ongoing drumbeat of return-to-office mandates. “What that does is also raise the cost of living in the suburbs, because now more people want to live in the suburbs.”

“That’s a dynamic that’s going to have to work itself out a little bit more before we know the final impact on suburban versus downtown pricing,” he said.

An Air India plane with 242 people on board crashed Thursday near a major international airport in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, the airline and the country’s government said.

Air India, the country’s flagship carrier, said in a post on X that Flight 171 from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick had been “involved in an incident” and that it was “ascertaining the details and will share further updates at the earliest.”

The flight was scheduled to depart at 1:10 p.m. local time (3:40 a.m. ET). Reuters reported that 242 people were on board and cited police in adding that the plane crashed into a civilian area.

“Shocked and devastated to learn about the flight crash in Ahmedabad,” said Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu, India’s civil aviation minister said in a post on X. “I am personally monitoring the situation and have directed all aviation and emergency response agencies to take swift and coordinated action.”

“Rescue teams have been mobilised, and all efforts are being made to ensure medical aid and relief support are being rushed to the site,” he added. “My thoughts and prayers are with all those on board and their families.”

London’s Gatwick airport confirmed the crash in a post on X. “We can confirm that flight AI171 that crashed on departure from Ahmedabad Airport today was due to land at London Gatwick at 18:25,” it said.

The aircraft involved is a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, according to flight tracking site Flightradar24, which said it received the last signal from the aircraft just seconds after takeoff.

This is a developing story. Please check back for further updates.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Seven Arkansas families filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging an upcoming state requirement that public school classrooms have posted copies of the Ten Commandments, saying the new law will violate their constitutional rights.

The federal lawsuit challenges a measure Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed into law earlier this year, similar to a requirement enacted by Louisiana and one that Texas’ governor has said he’ll sign.

The Arkansas law takes effect in August and requires the Ten Commandments to be prominently displayed in public school classrooms and libraries.

“Permanently posting the Ten Commandments in every classroom and library — rendering them unavoidable — unconstitutionally pressures students into religious observance, veneration, and adoption of the state’s favored religious scripture,” the lawsuit said.

The suit was filed on behalf of the families by the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and the Freedom from Religion Foundation. The lawsuit names four school districts in northwest Arkansas — Fayetteville, Bentonville, Siloam Springs and Springdale — as defendants.

A spokesperson for Fayetteville schools said the district would not comment on pending litigation, while the other three districts did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A spokesperson for Attorney General Tim Griffin said his office was reviewing the lawsuit and considering options.

Attorneys for the families, who are Jewish, Unitarian Universalist or nonreligious, said they planned to ask the federal judge in Fayetteville for a preliminary injunction blocking the law’s enforcement. The attorneys say the law violates longstanding Supreme Court precedent and the families’ First Amendment rights.

“By imposing a Christian-centric translation of the Ten Commandments on our children for nearly every hour of every day of their public-school education, this law will infringe on our rights as parents and create an unwelcoming and religiously coercive school environment for our children,” Samantha Stinson, one of the plaintiffs, said in a news release.

Louisiana was the first state to enact such a requirement, and a federal judge blocked the measure before it was to take effect Jan 1. Proponents of Louisiana’s law say that ruling only applies to the five school boards listed in the suit, but The Associated Press is unaware of any posters being displayed in schools as the litigation continues.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran and the United States will hold a sixth round of negotiations over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program this Sunday in Oman, the sultanate’s foreign minister said Thursday, as regional tensions have spiked in recent days.

The announcement by Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi comes as the U.S. is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest.

Meanwhile, there have been warnings that ships could be targeted in regional waters over the tensions.

Al-Busaidi made the announcement on the social platform X.

“I am pleased to confirm the 6th round of Iran US talks will be held in Muscat this Sunday the 15th,” he wrote.

Iran had been saying for days that there would be talks, but Oman, which is serving as the mediator, had not confirmed them until now.

There was no immediate comment from the U.S.

Reaching a deal is one of several diplomatic priorities being juggled by U.S. President Donald Trump and his trusted friend and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. An accord could see the U.S. lift some of its crushing economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for it drastically limiting or ending its enrichment of uranium.

But a failure to get a deal could see tensions further spike in a Middle East on edge over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Iran’s economy, long ailing, could enter a free fall that could worsen the simmering unrest at home. Israel or the U.S. might carry out long-threatened airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities. And Tehran may decide to fully end its cooperation with the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog and rush toward a bomb.

Iran and the U.S. have held previous talks in Muscat and Rome.

Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man arrested by the government and sent to an El Salvador prison in error and then returned to the United States last week, argue in a court filing Wednesday that he man should be freed from jail pending trial.

“Mr. Abrego Garcia asks the Court for what he has been denied the past several months — due process,” attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote in a memorandum opposing prosecutor’s efforts to keep him detained.

Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States on Friday to face federal charges that he was involved in a scheme to transport people in the United States who are not legally able to be in the country. He was in federal custody Wednesday night.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued in Wednesday’s memo that he is not a flight risk, as prosecutors have argued. His attorneys say legal standards to keep him detained have not been met.

“The government isn’t even entitled to a detention hearing in this case — much less detention. Mr. Abrego Garcia should be released,” his attorneys wrote.

An arraignment and detention hearing is scheduled for Friday in Tennessee.

Abrego Garcia, 29, was arrested in Maryland on March 12, and the Department of Homeland Security claimed he was a member of the gang MS-13, which he denied.

The government then deported him Abrego Garcia to El Salvador where he was imprisoned in the Center for Terrorism Confinement — despite an immigration judge’s previous order that he not be sent to El Salvador.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the United States, which administration officials resisted.

The Trump administration then asked El Salvador to return Abrego Garcia to the United States last week to face human smuggling charges filed in Tennessee.

The case became a high-profile battle over whether the Trump administration was bound to return Abrego Garcia under the federal judge’s order. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said at the White House in April that he would not return Abrego Garcia.

The matter went to the Supreme Court, which disputed the language of “effectuate” in the judge’s order but ruled that the Trump administration was required to “facilitate” the return of Abrego Garcia.

The two-count federal indictment unsealed in Tennessee charges Abrego Garcia with one count each of conspiracy to unlawfully transport illegal aliens for financial gain and unlawful transportation of illegal aliens for financial gain.

The indictment alleges that from about 2016 to 2025, he and others conspired to bring migrants illegally to the United States from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Ecuador and elsewhere, through Mexico and across the Texas-Mexico border.

Abrego Garcia and a co-conspirator “ordinarily picked up the undocumented aliens in Houston, Texas area” after they had crossed the border, the indictment alleges.

The pair then would transport “the undocumented aliens from Texas to other parts of the United States to further the aliens’ unlawful presence in the United States,” the indictment says.

Chris Newman, an attorney who represents Abrego Garcia’s family, said last week that the Trump administration for months engaged in “a campaign of disinformation, defamation against Kilmar and his family.”

Israel is considering taking military action against Iran — most likely without U.S. support — in the coming days, even as President Donald Trump is in advanced discussions with Tehran about a diplomatic deal to curtail its nuclear program, according to five people with knowledge of the situation.

Israel has become more serious about a unilateral strike on Iran as the negotiations between the United States and Iran appear closer to a preliminary or framework agreement that includes provisions about uranium enrichment that Israel views as unacceptable.

A unilateral strike or action by Israel against Iran would be a dramatic break with the Trump administration, which has argued against such a step.

The Trump administration is awaiting a response from Iran about a proposed framework of a nuclear deal, and Trump has publicly said Tehran has become more hard-line in its negotiations.

The notion of a new front in a simmering conflict has prompted the Trump administration to order all embassies within striking distance of Iranian missiles, aircraft and other assets (including missions in the Middle East, Northern Africa and Eastern Europe) to send cables with assessments about danger and about measures to mitigate risks to Americans and U.S. infrastructure, according to two sources familiar.

U.S. and other officials are on alert awaiting the possibility of Israel’s striking Iran, the officials said.

The White House has not briefed senior lawmakers on the issue, according to that aide and a U.S. official.

One major concern is Iran’s retaliating against U.S. personnel or assets in the region for any action.

Israel, which relies on intelligence or other direct and logistical assistance from the United States, may be in a position to take unilateral action against Tehran, the source familiar said. The sources familiar and officials were not aware of any planned U.S. involvement in the possible action. The United States could support with aerial refueling or intelligence sharing rather than kinetic support, but the sources and officials were not aware of plans for that, either, at this point.

U.S. officials have announced that the voluntary departure of nonessential employees from the region. And the Defense Department announced the voluntary departure of military families from locations all across the U.S. Central Command area of operations.

The CENTCOM commander, Gen. Erik Kurilla, was due to testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday, but the hearing was postponed late Wednesday without explanation. A source familiar said Kurilla had to focus on this unfolding situation.

Another possible factor: Iran is rebuilding its strategic air defenses, and manned strikes will soon be exponentially more dangerous for Israeli pilots. In October, Israel damaged nearly every one of Iran’s strategic air defense systems (mainly S-300s), but much of the damage was to the radars or other parts that can be rebuilt. It’s possible Israel’s window for manned strikes, without being threatened by Iran’s coordinated strategic air defenses, is closing.

While Israel would most likely prefer U.S. military and intelligence support for strikes — especially against Iranian nuclear facilities — it showed in October that it can do a lot alone.

Michael Knights of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said the evacuation of nonessential staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq will send a message to Tehran that Trump will not necessarily hold Israel back from launching a threatened attack on Iran.

“It’s about trying to get Iran to respect the president’s wishes,” Knights said.

Iran has failed to meet a two-month deadline Trump set to reach an agreement on the country’s nuclear activities, and he is frustrated, he said.

Both Knights and a source with knowledge of the matter said it was unclear whether Israel would undertake a limited military strike now or wait until nuclear negotiations played out further.

Trump has expressed growing frustration over Iran’s stance at recent indirect talks, portraying Tehran as inflexible and slow-moving.

“They’re just asking for things that you can’t do. They don’t want to give up what they have to give up,” Trump told reporters Monday. “They seek enrichment. We can’t have enrichment.”

The Indiana Pacers didn’t need one of their signature improbable comebacks to win Game 3 of the NBA Finals. And because of it, the Oklahoma City Thunder, once the heavy favorite to claim the league championship, will now need a rally of their own to keep their title hopes alive.

During a bravura fourth quarter Wednesday in Indianapolis, the Pacers unleashed their best defense of the series and hustle on offense to force Oklahoma City into uncharacteristic mistakes and earn a 116-107 win and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series.

NBA history suggests that the significance of this victory is hard to overstate: The team that wins Game 3 of an NBA Finals tied 1-1 goes on to win the series 80.5% of the time.

Game 4 is Friday in Indianapolis.

Oklahoma City scored only 18 points in the fourth quarter while making only six of its 17 shots, and it was outscored by 14 points in the game’s decisive final 12 minutes. Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the league’s Most Valuable Player, was held to just 1-of-3 shooting over that span largely under the harassing defense of Pacers forward Pascal Siakam.

Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 24 points but needed 20 shots, and he committed six turnovers.

Indiana is 24-3 this season when it holds opponents to fewer than 110 points — including 14-0 at home.

“It wasn’t all bad,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said. “But we definitely have to play our style and impose our will for more of the 48 minutes if we want to come on the road and get a win.”

Tyrese Haliburton scored 22 points with 11 assists and nine rebounds in a performance that was drastically more aggressive than three days earlier in a series-tying loss in Oklahoma City.

Yet the Pacers’ hero Wednesday was reserve Bennedict Mathurin, who failed to play even a single second during the opening quarter yet went on to score 27 points over his next 22 minutes. It was the highest-scoring performance by a reserve in the Finals since 2011, and his offensive outburst helped Indiana’s reserves outscore Oklahoma City’s 49-18.

At halftime, holding a 64-60 lead, Indiana looked like a different team from the one that returned from Oklahoma City with a 1-1 split.

It had scored more points in transition — one of the secrets of the team’s postseason success — in just two quarters than it had scored in either of the two previous games. Indiana finished with 17 fast-break points, nearly tying its total from the first two games of the series.

And the Pacers’ reserves had scored 30 points by halftime, which was not only nearly half the team’s total but also 19 more than Oklahoma City’s own bench, the same unit that had decisively swung Game 2 in the Thunder’s favor.

Indiana point guard TJ McConnell and Mathurin were primarily responsible for that turnaround by the Pacers’ bench. Shortly after they entered, the Pacers trailed by eight points, but McConnell had soon pestered the Thunder into three steals, including two in the backcourt. After turning up the pressure with each steal, McConnell gestured to his home crowd to turn up the noise.

And after having made five shots total in the first two games of the series, Mathurin made five of his six shots in the first half alone of Game 3.

“This is the kind of team that we are,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. “We need everybody to be ready. It’s not always going to be exactly the same guys that are stepping up with scoring and stuff like that. But this is how we got to do it, and we got to do it as a team. And we’ve got to make it as hard as possible on them.”

Their play earned Indiana a halftime lead. Yet Indiana’s poor finish to the third quarter, scoring just five points over the final five minutes, earned it an uphill challenge, and a five-point deficit, entering the final quarter. Oklahoma City’s vulnerability — perhaps its only one — was its lack of playoff experience, and it made the series’ return to Indiana a critical opportunity for the Pacers.

Oklahoma City indeed displayed unexpected flaws. Its 19 turnovers were its most of these playoffs.

Yet despite their youth, the Thunder at times also showed steely resolve. Rather than become rattled by playing on the road, Thunder All-Star Jalen Williams, in only his third season, led Oklahoma City out of tight jams with both his scoring and his passing late in the third quarter, and his layup with seven minutes to play in the fourth quarter helped erase what had been a four-point Indiana lead.

But Indiana, so good at comebacks throughout this postseason, played superbly in the final minutes in building and protecting its lead.

“I was proud of the way we bounced back from a rough ending to the third quarter,” Carlisle said. “That was something that could have shaken us up a lot.”

First with five minutes to play, and again just 35 seconds later, the Pacers grabbed two offensive rebounds that turned into four points when the Thunder failed to box out. Breakdowns like that helped Indiana extend its lead to eight with 3:20 to play.

“They really outplayed us in the fourth,” Daigneault said.

The Thunder have already faced a similar position in these playoffs, when they lost two of the first three games against Denver in the second round and ultimately came back to win the series.

DENVER — A Colorado funeral homeowner who pleaded guilty to leaving a woman’s corpse in the back of a hearse for over a year and improperly stashing the cremated remains of at least 30 people has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, the Denver District Attorney’s Office announced.

Miles Harford, 34, pleaded guilty in April to one felony count of abuse of a corpse and one misdemeanor count of theft. He faced other counts, including forgery and theft, that were dismissed as part of his plea agreement.

His 18-month sentence is the maximum sentence under Colorado law for the charges.

“Nothing will ever undo the terrible pain that Miles Harford caused so many families, but it is our hope that this sentence will provide the family and friends of the deceased with some measure of justice,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Monday. “Harford systematically and shockingly violated his professional and moral obligations, and, for that, he is now being held accountable.”

Harford was arrested last year after the body of a woman named Christina Rosales, who died of Alzheimer’s at age 63, was found in the back of his hearse, covered in blankets. Her remains had been there for about 18 months. Authorities said he had provided the Rosales family with the cremated remains of a different person that he misrepresented as Rosales.

Police also found the cremated remains of other people stashed in boxes throughout Harford’s rental property, including in the crawlspace.

Prosecutors said he treated the bodies and remains “in a way that would outrage normal family sensibilities.”

Harford’s sentencing follows years of other gruesome funeral home cases in Colorado, including one where the owners were accused of storing nearly 200 bodies in a decrepit building and giving families fake cremated remains.

WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials say troops who cheered and jeered Tuesday at President Donald Trump’s political statements at a rally at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, did not violate military regulations, but a former military legal officer said they did just that.

During the speech, uniformed soldiers yelled in support of Trump’s political statements and booed former President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Do you think this crowd would have showed up for Biden? I don’t think so,” Trump said to boos about Biden.

Trump made other comments about Newsom and about Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, where protests against the administration’s crackdown on immigrants have been taking place and where Trump has ordered thousands of National Guard members and active-duty Marines deployed in response. Other Trump comments about the “fake news media,” transgender people, protesters in California and flag-burning also drew boos from the uniformed military members in attendance.

Trump is known for his rallies at which he goes after and pokes fun at political enemies and other issues, but typically he makes those remarks at political events, not on U.S. military bases.

Such overt political activity on a base is the prerogative of the commander in chief. But military leaders would typically frown upon troops’ reacting the way they did as inconsistent with military good order and discipline, and, according to one expert, it is a violation of military regulations found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, or UCMJ.

Presidents of both parties often use troops as political props and put them and their commanders in difficult positions by doing so, but Trump’s speech took that to a new level, said Geoffrey DeWeese, a retired judge advocate general who is now an attorney with Mark S. Zaid PC. (Zaid has represented whistleblowers on both sides of the aisle, including one who filed a complaint about Trump’s call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in 2019 that led to Trump’s impeachment, and he was one of the people whose security clearances Trump revoked this year.)

“It’s a sad tradition to use the military as a backdrop for political purposes,” DeWeese said. “To actively attack another president or a sitting governor and incite the crowd to boo, that’s a step in a dangerous direction, that really says we want to politicize the military, that sends a bad message.”

DeWeese said there were likely to have been violations of the UCMJ.

“I would be cringing if I was a senior officer and it happened under my watch,” he said.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said repeatedly that he wants to take politics out of the military by removing diversity, equity and inclusion programs and banning service by transgender service members.

Kori Schake, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who worked at the State Department and the National Security Council under former President George W. Bush and at the Pentagon under former President George H.W. Bush, said in an email that commanders at Fort Bragg should have done a better job preparing troops there.

“It’s terrible,” she wrote. “It’s predictably bad behavior by the President to try and score political points in a military setting, and it’s a command failure by leaders at Ft Bragg not to prepare soldiers for that bad behavior and counsel them not to participate.”

The Pentagon said in a statement that there had been no violation of the UCMJ and suggested the media was against policies that Trump has championed.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also alleged in a statement that the media “cheered on the Biden administration” and its policies regarding the Defense Department “when they forced drag queen performances on military bases, promoted service members on the basis of race and sex in violation of federal law, and fired troops who refused an experimental vaccine.”

“Believe me, no one needs to be encouraged to boo the media,” Parnell said. “Look no further than this query, which is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ruin the lives of young soldiers.”

On Wednesday, Army officials at Fort Bragg addressed the sale of some MAGA merchandise at the event, which was planned in cooperation with a nonpartisan organization, American 250.

“The Army remains committed to its core values and apolitical service to the nation,” Col. Mary Ricks, a spokeswoman for the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps at Bragg, said in a statement. “The Army does not endorse political merchandise or the views it represents. The vendor’s presence is under review to determine how it was permitted and to prevent similar circumstances in the future.”

The Army’s own new field manual, published recently, says the apolitical nature of being a U.S. soldier is what contributes to the public trust.

The Army “as an institution must be nonpartisan and appear so, too,” says the new field manual, “The Army: A Primer to Our Profession of Arms.”

“Being nonpartisan means not favoring any specific political party or group. Nonpartisanship assures the public that our Army will always serve the Constitution and our people loyally and responsively.”

U.S. troops can participate in political functions, just not while on duty or in uniform, the book says.

“As a private citizen you are encouraged to participate in our democratic process, but as a soldier you must be mindful of how your actions may affect the reputation and perceived trustworthiness of our Army as an institution,” it says.

Ananda Lewis, a former MTV VJ, has died at the age of 52.

Lakshmi Emory, whom Lewis once described as a “phenomenal sister” in a birthday message, shared news of her death in a June 11 Facebook post.

“She’s free, and in His heavenly arms,” she wrote next to a black-and-white photo of Lewis. “Lord, rest her soul.”

Emory did not share additional details, including Lewis’ cause of death.

Lewis was an MTV staple in the late ‘90s, hosting “Total Request Live” and video countdown show“Hot Zone.” She also hosted her own talk show “The Ananda Lewis Show” in 2001.

Lewis was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in 2019, but later revealed that she opted against the double mastectomy doctors recommended at the time.

In a January 2025 op-ed for Essence, Lewis shared that she tried alternative methods to monitor her breast cancer, including cuting out alcohol, sugar, monthly ultrasounds, high-dose vitamin C IVs, hyperbaric chamber sessions and qigong exercise, among others.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she discovered that her tumor had grown and underwent genetically targeted fractionated chemotherapy, which is a treatment that destroys cancer cells without harming healthy ones, according to Cleveland Clinic.

However, a PET scan done in October 2023 confirmed that her cancer had progressed to Stage 4 cancer. This time, she shared that she underwent treatment at an integrative facility.

While Lewis had previously said she regretted refusing to undergo mammograms out of fear of radiation exposure, she urged the importance of women getting informed and learning about prevention.

In her 2025 Essence piece, she wrote, “Going into 2025, I would say to women: Do everything in your power to avoid my story becoming yours. If I had known what I know now 10 years ago, perhaps I wouldn’t have ended up here.”

Adding, “I encourage people to look at the information and studies that exist. Seek them out, learn from them and apply the changes to your life, so that you can continue to thrive and live as long as you can.”