It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the incredible music of Amy Grant. With three Christmas albums to her credit, the award-winning singer has become synonymous with the holiday. Her annual Christmas tours are one of the biggest draws of the season, especially when she shares the stage with her famous husband, Vince Gill.

The couple, who were each married to someone else when they first met, knew that they had something special when they first stepped into the studio together in 1993 to sing “House of Love.”

“I think that a part of me loved him instantly,” Grant says. “I felt like I knew him instantly. I was so moved by him as a human being that I went up behind him and just hugged him as hard as I could while he was singing. I just said, ‘I just needed to hug you all night.’”

The feeling was mutual as Gill wrote his song “Whenever You Come Around,” for Grant.

“This is a song that was inspired by a smile that I saw for the first time on the face of a woman that I’d never met. That was Amy Grant back in 1993. I was so inspired, moved by the sight of that smile, that I came home and wrote this song,” Gill said.

For seven years after their meeting, the couple fought their feelings for each other and remained faithful to their spouses. But, ultimately both would end up divorced, and in 2000, Vince Gill and Amy Grant married.

In one of the few video clips of the two together before they married, Vince joins Amy to sing her wildly popular Christmas hit “Tennessee Christmas” during a 1993 Christmas with Vince Gill concert in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the chemistry is undeniable. See for yourself in the video below.

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In 2016 a tribute concert called “The Life & Songs of Kris Kristofferson” was held in Nashville to honor Kris Kristofferson’s colorful legacy and line of work. Eric Church, Willie Nelson, Emmy Lou Harris, and Rosanne Cash were just a few of the artists playing that night. That being so, all performances were phenomenal. However, Reba McEntire’s performance of “Me and Bobby McGee” became one of the more notable performances of that night.

Kristofferson and McEntire’s relationship goes far back, and it shows as Reba took to Instagram to pay tribute to the artist following his death on September 28. Reba wrote, “What a gentleman, kind soul, and a lover of words” and “Rest in peace, Kris.” Given their history, Reba’s performance at the tribute concert aimed to honor her longtime friend and musical counterpart.

Kris Kristofferson’s “Me and Bobby McGee”

Reba’s selection to perform Kristofferson’s hit song wasn’t random. Instead, Reba’s motives were incredibly deliberate and sharp. She said on CMT, “It’s been a favorite of mine for many, many years” and “It’s just a gypsy song, and I’ve just always really thought myself a gypsy.” Furthermore, she closed out her statement by simply saying, “I love that song.”

It seems both Kristofferson and the fans in the audience did as well, given that Reba’s performance was a complete transformation of the song. Kristofferson’s version was slow and cerebral, and Reba’s was fast-paced, heart-nosed, and aggressively encompassed both rock ‘n’ roll and country. Despite completely changing the song, Reba still paid tribute to the late Kristofferson with her passionate performance and kind words.

Reba and Kristofferson’s Duet

In addition to Reba’s major changes, she also made it into a duet. Of course, the duet was with Kristofferson, but by doing so she seemingly got his stamp of approval and gave fans exactly what they wanted. Even if you’re a Kristofferson pursuit and hate re-imagined versions of his songs, you can’t help but see the fun of this cover.

Lastly and given his recent passing, it’s quite heartwarming to see how highly regarded Kris Kristofferson was in country music through his tribute show. Furthermore, to see him with Reba reminds fans of his jubilant and contagiously fun personality. In light of this dismal music news, this video will surely lift one’s spirits amid the tragic passing of Kris Kristofferson.

On October 19, 2022, Adam Lambert and Jennifer Hudson had a heartwarming reunion on her talk show, bringing back fond memories of their days on American Idol. The two powerhouse vocalists were joined by Michael Orland, their former pianist from the show, setting the stage for a spontaneous musical moment.

With their combined talent, it was the perfect chance to treat the audience to a captivating duet that left everyone in awe.

Without any prior rehearsal or experience in opera, Adam Lambert and Jennifer Hudson gathered around the piano and surprised the audience with a stunning rendition of the classic aria “Nessun Dorma.” Their impromptu performance stunned the crowd, showcasing their vocal prowess and ability to tackle even the most challenging pieces.

Their performance continued with a fun twist. Both Adam Lambert and Jennifer Hudson reminisced about their first auditions on American Idol—Jennifer sang an Aretha Franklin song, and Adam went with a Queen hit.

To mix things up, they decided to swap artists. Jennifer took on Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” hitting higher notes with each line. Meanwhile, Adam showed his soulful side by performing Aretha Franklin’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”

The audience couldn’t contain their excitement as the singers delivered flawless performances as they cheered and applauded. Online reactions were equally enthusiastic, with viewers expressing awe over both artists’ impressive vocal abilities and range.

One fan commented, “Jennifer Hudson has a beautiful talent!! And Adam … there’s really no voice that compares. Always so gorgeous.”

Another added, “Two all time great singers, a rock singer and an R&B singer doing opera with no rehearsal and having to pick up the key as it is being played. And they can do that?!! Wow.”

President-elect Donald Trump said he will not try to replace Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, whose term runs through May 2026.

In an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker, Trump said, “I don’t,” when asked if he plans to cut short the central bank chief’s term.

“The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, said he will not leave his post even if you ask him to. Will you try to replace Jerome Powell?” Welker asked during the interview at Trump Tower in New York City.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t see it,” Trump replied. “But, I don’t — I think if I told him to, he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn’t. But if I told him to, he would.”

Welker followed up, “You don’t have plans to do that right now?”

“No, I don’t,” Trump said.

Trump appointed Powell, a Republican and a former private equity executive, as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in February 2018. Soon after, during a dispute about interest rates, Trump floated removing him.

The two clashed several times during Trump’s first term, with Trump threatening to fire him on repeated occasions. In 2022, President Joe Biden reappointed Powell to a second four-year term.

Powell has offered a sharp “no” to recent questions over whether he would leave his post early to allow Trump to pick a replacement sooner. He has also said he does not believe Trump can fire him. “Not permitted under the law,” Powell said at a postelection news conference.

The relationship between Trump and Powell will be closely watched as Trump returns to office. Trump lashed out at Powell during his first term, arguing that he was not moving quickly enough to ease monetary policy.

Trump swiped at Powell again in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic, telling reporters that he had the “right to remove” Powell from the post and criticizing what he said were “a lot of bad decisions, in my opinion.”

Trump has lately argued that the president should have the power to weigh in on interest rate decisions, which are made by the Fed.

“I don’t think I should be allowed to order it, but I think I have the right to put in comments as to whether the interest rates should go up or down,” Trump said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the Economic Club of Chicago in October.

Years before the music producer shot and killed Lana Clarkson at his home in 2003 — for which he was sentenced to 19 years to life in prison, where he died — Spector pulled a gun on the “If I Could Turn Back Time” singer when she confronted him for releasing music she recorded without her permission.

He knew “he couldn’t pull that shit with me,” Cher told Yahoo Entertainment of the 1974 incident.

Cher had known Spector for years, having first met him in 1962 when she was 16. She detailed in her new book — Cher: The Memoir, Part One — that after leaving Sonny Bono, she was hoping to take her solo music to a new level and she reconnected with the “Wall of Sound” creator. At the time, Spector was producing John Lennon’s Rock ‘N’ Roll — a cover album with songs from the late ’50s and early ’60s — and asked Cher and Harry Nilsson to sing background on it.

When they got to the studio, the former Beatle was storming out after a disagreement with Spector. Not wanting to waste thei time, Spector asked Cher and Nilsson to lay down vocals for a Martha and the Vandellas song called “A Love Like Yours” that Lennon could listen to later and learn from. It wasn’t supposed to be released because Cher and Nilsson were under contract with different record companies.

Fast forward a few weeks when Cher got a call from her label saying Spector illegally released the recording in Europe, which was a violation of her contract. Her friend drove her to Spector’s L.A. home to confront him. She said she greeted him with a hug but asked what he was thinking because it was clearly in violation of her contract. She said Spector became agitated and told her that he could do whatever he wanted.

Cher claimed Spector then picked up a revolver she hadn’t noticed on a pool table and twirled it on his fingers. Furious, she said she unleashed a verbal tirade on him, warning him not to mess with her or her music again. She said Spector apologized and she got the heck out of there. In the car, she recalled the troubling scene to her friend but felt he did it for show, not to hurt her.

Asked if she had ever told that story before putting it in her book, Cher said, “Well, to friends, but not to people. What would I do — just go around telling that story?”

The reason he stood down, in her mind, was “because I knew him when he was young and when he was kind of crazy,” she said. “I think he was 21 or 22 and I was close to him in the strangest kind of way because I didn’t take shit from him. I just didn’t.”

Cher met Spector, who was a self-made millionaire by age 21, for the first time through an early boyfriend, Nino Tempo, a singer and musician who worked for Spector at Gold Star Studios. From day one, when they were first introduced in 1962, she didn’t take his crap.

“I met him with his best friend [Tempo] and the first thing he said to me [in French] was: ‘Would you go to bed with me?’” she recalled.

Cher said Spector didn’t think she’d understand his uncouth proposition or have an answer, but she shot back — also in French — “Yes, for money.’ And from then on, we had this really strange relationship.”

Their lives intersected again soon after when Cher started dating Bono that same year. He worked on Spector’s production team and would bring Cher to the studio with him and she never put up with Spector’s nonsense.

“Sonny used to get so upset because he’d say, ‘Please, please, don’t do this. He’s my boss,’” Cher said. “But it didn’t stop me.”

Spector ultimately gave Cher her first musical break. When singer Darlene Love missed a recording session in 1963 when her car broke down, Spector asked Cher to fill in as a background singer. It was her first time stepping up to a mic, and while she almost fainted, she became a regular backup singer for him after that. She went on to become a Grammy, Emmy and Oscar winner.

In February 2003, Clarkson — a model and actress with bit parts in Scarface and Fast Times at Ridgemont High — was fatally shot at Spector’s home.

A nightclub hostess at the House of Blues in L.A., she met the producer and agreed to go to his mansion in the L.A. suburb of Alhambra for a drink. An hour later, at 5 a.m., Spector’s limo driver said he heard a gunshot and saw Spector exit the house holding a gun. Spector allegedly told the driver: “I think I just shot her.” Clarkson’s body was found in the foyer of Spector’s home.

Spector later told authorities it was accidental suicide, but he was charged with second-degree murder. He went on trial twice — there was a hung jury in 2007 — and was found guilty in 2009. Both trials included testimony from other women who claimed he threatened them with guns, including veteran music talent coordinator Dianne Ogden, who said he chased her around his house with an Uzi. She ran for her life, to her car, and never saw him again.

Spector maintained his innocence in Clarkson’s death until he died in 2021.

Spector was also accused of abuse by his second wife, singer Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes. She wrote in her 1990 memoir that Spector kept a gold coffin in their basement and told her he would kill her if she tried to leave him. She claimed he kept her locked away in their mansion, subjecting her to psychological abuse, but she escaped barefoot in 1972 with the help of her mother.

“I knew that if I didn’t leave at that time, I was going to die there,” she wrote.

A Goodreads user who appears to be Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old who was arrested and charged with murder and other felonies in connection with the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. gave a 4-star rating to the manifesto of Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber.

The review from January 2024 was written by a user with the profile name “Luigi (lnmangione)” and the same photo that Mangione used in other social media profiles.

Kaczynski, convicted of a series of mail bombings between 1978 and 1995 that killed 3 and injured 23, was a “mathematics prodigy” begins the 8-paragraph review of the manifesto, “Industrial Society and Its Future.”

The review concludes with a 4-paragraph quote the reviewer said he’d found online that ends: “’Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”

The review said Kaczynski’s manifesto examined “the question of 21st century quality of life.”

“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out,” the reviewer says.

“He was a violent individual − rightfully imprisoned − who maimed innocent people,” Mangione wrote. “While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”

The four-paragraph passage the reviewer says he found “online” includes the following: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.”

New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Monday that Mangione had been detained by police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, carrying a 3D-printed gun, a silencer, and documents indicating “some ill will toward corporate America.”

According to a Reddit post, a person with the username “Bosspotatoness” wrote the quotes in a post on Jan. 22, 2023, in response to a question from a now-deleted user. The user — whose name has now been deleted from the original post — shared a YouTube video and asked if anyone in the Reddit group r/climate had read anything on Kaczynski and what their thoughts were. The video has also now been deleted.

On Monday, “Bosspotatoness” edited the January 2023 post to add that the quotes had come up Monday in news stories about Mangione: “Guess if I wasn’t on a watchlist before I sure am now. Last thing I expected to see on my lunch break but I’m flattered!”

USA TODAY has reached out to the user for comment.

The unnamed writer quoted in Mangione’s review of The Unabomber Manifesto had antipathy to spare.

“Peaceful protest is outright ignored, economic protest isn’t possible in the current system, so how long until we recognize that violence against those who lead us to such destruction is justified as self-defense,” the passage reads.

“These companies don’t care about you, or your kids, or your grandkids,” the quote continued. “They have zero qualms about burning down the planet for a buck, so why should we have any qualms about burning them down to survive?”

A man suspected in the brazen Manhattan killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was arrested and charged with murder Monday after a quick-thinking McDonald’s customer in Pennsylvania recognized him from a surveillance photo and police officers found a gun, mask and writings linking him to the ambush.

The chance sighting at the restaurant in Altoona led to a dramatic break in a challenging but fast-moving investigation that captivated the public in the five days since the shooting that shook the business world.

Luigi Nicholas Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, had a gun believed to be the one used in last Wednesday’s shooting of Brian Thompson, as well as writings suggesting anger with corporate America, police said.

Late Monday, Manhattan prosecutors filed murder and other charges against Mangione, according to an online court docket. He remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police.

Mangione was sitting in the rear of the McDonald’s wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop computer, court documents said. A customer saw him and an employee called 911, said Kaz Daughtry, an NYPD deputy commissioner.

Altoona Police Officer Tyler Frye said he and his partner recognized the suspect immediately when he pulled down his mask. “We just didn’t think twice about it. We knew that was our guy,” he said.

When one of the officers asked if he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” according to a criminal complaint based on their accounts of the arrest.

In his backpack, police found a black, 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed black silencer, the complaint said. Such ghost guns can be assembled at home from parts without a serial number, making them difficult to trace. The pistol had a metal slide and plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel.

He was taken into custody at about 9:15 a.m., police said.

Mangione had clothing and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter and a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said.

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and a last known address in Honolulu.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media late Monday by his cousin, Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”

Mangione was arraigned and ordered held without bail during a brief court hearing. Asked if he needed a public defender, he asked if he could “answer that at a future date.” He eventually will be extradited to New York to face charges in connection with Thompson’s death, Kenny said.

Police found a three-page document with writings suggesting that Mangione had “ill will toward corporate America,” Kenny said.

The handwritten document “speaks to both his motivation and mindset,” Tisch said.

A law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the document included a line in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone.

“To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” the document said, according to the official.

It also had a line that said, “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”

Mangione also had a passport and $10,000 in cash — $2,000 of it in foreign currency, authorities said. Mangione, who said Hawaii was his most recent address, disputed the amount.

Thompson, 50, was killed last Wednesday as he walked alone to a hotel, where UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, was holding its annual investor conference, police said.

UnitedHealth Group thanked law enforcement in a statement. “Our hope is that today’s apprehension brings some relief to Brian’s family, friends, colleagues and the many others affected by this unspeakable tragedy,” a company spokesperson said.

The shooting shook U.S. businesses and the health insurance industry in particular, causing companies to rethink security plans and delete photos of executives from their websites.

Mangione attended an elite Baltimore prep school, graduating as valedictorian in 2016, according to the school’s website. He went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a school spokesperson said.

One of his cousins is a Maryland state legislator and his family bought a country club north of Baltimore in the 1980s. On Monday, police blocked off an entrance to the property, which public records link to the suspect’s parents. A swarm of reporters and photographers gathered outside.

Mangione went from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh after the shooting, and likely “was in a variety of locations across the state,” said Lt. Col. George Bivens of the Pennsylvania State Police said.

“Based on everything we have seen, he was very careful with trying to stay low profile, avoid cameras — not all that successfully in some cases, but that was certainly the effort he was making,” Bivens said.

In the days since the shooting, police turned to the public for help by releasing a collection of nine photos and video — including footage of the attack, as well as images of the suspect at a Starbucks beforehand.

Photos taken in the lobby of a hostel on Manhattan’s Upper West Side showed the suspect grinning after removing his mask, police said.

On Monday, police credited news outlets for disseminating the images and the tipster for recognizing the suspect and calling authorities.

Investigators earlier suggested the gunman may have been a disgruntled employee or client of the insurer. Ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics.

The gunman concealed his identity with a mask during the shooting yet left a trail of evidence, including a backpack he ditched in Central Park, a cellphone found in a pedestrian plaza and a water bottle and protein bar wrapper that police say he bought at Starbucks minutes before the attack.

On Friday, police said the killer had left the city soon after the shooting. Retracing the gunman’s steps using surveillance video, investigators say the shooter rode into Central Park on a bicycle and emerged from the park without his backpack. He made his way to a bus station that offers commuter service to New Jersey and routes to the East Coast, police said.

Sisak and Attanasio reported from New York. Associated Press writers Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale in Pennsylvania; Lea Skene, in Baltimore; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed to this report.

Kane Brown was brought to tears during an emotional performance with his wife, Katelyn Brown. The touching moment occurred when they sang their hit duet together, and the overwhelming connection they shared on stage moved Kane deeply. Fans were also moved by the raw, heartfelt display of emotion between the couple.

‘This just makes me tear up, the way he looks at her,’ one fan commented

The love between Kane Brown and his wife, Katelyn, is apparent to fans of the country singer. However, Kane was brought to tears while singing on stage with her in an emotional video—and viewers can’t get over how perfect they are together.

On Friday, April 12, the Kane Brown family’s official Instagram account shared a video of Kane and Katelyn performing “Thank God.” The couple sang together on stage during the Kansas City, Mo., stop on his In the Air tour on April 11.

“I’m tearing up just watching Kane tear up ,” the text overlaid on the video reads.

In the comments, fans couldn’t agree more. One person wrote, “I adore watching these 2. You can feel their love shine through.”

Another Instagram user commented, “This just makes me tear up, the way he looks at her,” while someone else declared, “They are seriously adorable! The cutest little family. Power couple!”

Yet another person pointed out, “The way they never take their eyes off each other the whole time they perform is the most beautiful thing to see in person  so happy I got to experience that in NJ  .”

Kane and Katelyn previously opened up about “Thank God” during a sit-down with CMT.

“When he brought ‘Thank God’ home, it was kind of undeniable,” Katelyn said of hearing the song for the first time. “I felt, ‘Oh my gosh, we have to do this one.’ I felt like it was made for us.”

To that, Kane sweetly replied, “You were made for me.”

 At glittering ballrooms in the Mideast this weekend, discussions of the wars and chaos gripping the region gave way to one central question: What’s going to happen when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month?

Summits in both Bahrain and Qatar, neighboring Persian Gulf autocracies with a long history of a brothers’ rivalry, saw Trump discussed in open sessions, hushed chatter and pull-aside meetings among politicians, diplomats and uniformed military officers.

The reasons for the conversations are many. Chief among them is the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip, with over 44,000 Palestinians killed, and the tenuous ceasefire holding in Lebanon. Israel’s conduct in the wars, sparked by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people and saw 250 others taken hostage, enraged the wider Arab world.

President Joe Biden’s tight embrace of Israel in the time since has alienated many. Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal, a prominent royal who led the kingdom’s intelligence service for more than two decades and served as ambassador to the U.S. and Britain, referred directly to Trump’s own online messages about the wars.

“Friendly countries in the region are hoping that Mr. Trump pursues what he started before — to bring PEACE with capital letters to the Middle East,” the prince told the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Manama Dialogue in Bahrain.

“The Gulf countries, including my country, Saudi Arabia, are willing to walk with you, Mr. President, to achieve this noble order. It is time for America under your presidency to change the course of this troubled region.”

Prince Turki underlined the standard Saudi call for a peace that requires a two-state solution for the decadeslong Israeli-Palestinian crisis to end, with a Palestinian capital in east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip and the West Bank based on 1967 borders fully under Palestinian control. But Trump in 2020 in his first term unveiled a peace plan that sided heavily with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line nationalist vision for the region and pushed aside many of the Palestinians’ core demands.

Biden’s administration, meanwhile, made no headway on the conflict prior to the Hamas attack. Barbara A. Leaf, the top Mideast official at the U.S. State Department, described the Hamas assault as having “plunged the region into renewed conflict” in brief remarks at a side event in Bahrain.

At the Doha Forum in Qatar, Norway’s Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide referred to the Mideast before the Oct. 7 attack as “not a stable, lasting situation — it was like a minefield.” Despite that, Trump’s experience reaching diplomatic recognition deals for Israel with both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates might make a larger Mideast peace deal possible, Barth Eide said.

“I think the message now from this region is that that is perfectly doable. There might actually be a major deal, but it has to happen with Palestine,” he said. “It’s not one conflict, but there is a root conflict that connects to all of them, which is the absence of a solution to the Palestinian question.”

That extends all the way to Yemen, where the Houthi rebels who have held the country’s capital for over a decade now have gained acclaim in the Arab world for their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden over the wars. Trump listed the Houthis as a foreign terrorist group, something rescinded by the Biden administration over their assessment it halted needed aid from getting into Yemen.

“I think in Yemen the upcoming Trump administration is most likely going to implement heavy sanctions,” said analyst Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert. “That may push the Houthis to retaliate. … The idea that (sanctions) alone will pressure the Houthis to commit to peace and cease fire in the Red Sea — I don’t think that will happen.”

Then there’s Iran’s nuclear program, which the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency warned Friday in Bahrain was poised to “quite dramatically” increase its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium.

Yet Iranian officials and the public have been openly musing whether Trump might strike a deal with Iran — even as he was the one who unilaterally withdrew America from Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that saw it get sanctions relief in exchange for greatly limiting its program.

And finally, there’s the Gulf states themselves. Some attendees at the two summits discussed their flight plans for trying to attend both. That would have been impossible during the yearslong Qatar crisis, which saw Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE cut ties and boycott Qatar from 2017 until January 2021.

The crisis began after Trump’s first foreign trip as president to Saudi Arabia.

The debut 12-team College Football Playoff field is set, but not without a late dose of controversy.

SMU earned an at-large bid ahead of Alabama after losing 34-31 to Clemson in the ACC championship game. Trailing 31-14 entering the fourth quarter, the Mustangs went on a 17-0 run to tie the game with 16 seconds left. The Tigers drilled a 56-yard field goal as time expired to earn an automatic playoff bid.

That was the lone source of debate in what is otherwise a predictable bracket. The top four seeds, as expected, were No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 Georgia, No. 3 Boise State and No. 4 Arizona State. Those teams will host the winning teams from the opening round in the quarterfinals.

The at-large teams are No. 5 seed Texas, No. 6 Penn State, No. 7 Notre Dame, No. 8 Ohio State, No. 9 Tennessee, No. 10 Indiana and No. 11 SMU. Clemson comes in at No. 12 as the fifth conference champion.

SMU and Alabama lead the winners and losers from the final playoff rankings:

Winners

SMU

There’s reason to think SMU would’ve been left out in favor of Alabama had Clemson maintained the 17-point lead it held at halftime and again in the third quarter of the ACC title game. A convincing loss to the Tigers would’ve forced the committee to look closer at the Mustangs’ résumé of wins compared to Alabama. But the late comeback and competitive defeat were enough to bolster SMU’s case. And it’s not like the Mustangs are backdooring into the 12-team field; they beat six bowl teams in the regular season and lost by a field goal to a pair of ranked opponents. But SMU will be in the crosshairs as the final at-large team in the playoff.

The ACC

Clemson’s win will give the ACC two teams in the playoff, a fairly remarkable development given where the league stood in the postseason picture as recently as last weekend. While Miami lost twice in November to fall out of the race, that SMU and Clemson made the field gives the ACC a solid argument for being seen as the third-best league in the Power Four, behind the SEC and Big Ten and ahead of the Big 12.

Arizona State

Another team that came out of nowhere to reach the playoff, Arizona State will benefit enormously from Clemson’s win by earning a bye into the quarterfinals as one of the top four conference champions. As the No. 4 seed, the Sun Devils will meet the winner of Clemson and Texas. They have won six in a row and eight of nine to end the regular season, including ranked wins against Iowa State, Kansas State and Brigham Young.

Texas

Despite losing the SEC championship to Georgia, the Longhorns were able to land in the coveted No. 5 spot as the top-ranked at-large team. That gives Texas manageable matchups against Clemson in the opening round and then, with a win, against Arizona State in the quarterfinals. Penn State also benefits from earning the No. 6 seed, since that pits the Nittany Lions against SMU and potentially Boise State.

Losers

Alabama

The Crimson Tide were the first team left out of the field after slumping to three losses in coach Kalen DeBoer. Those losses, including an ugly 21-point defeat to Oklahoma last month, overshadowed Alabama’s high-quality wins against Georgia, South Carolina, LSU and Missouri. In the end, the Tide’s week-to-week unpredictability and inability to seal the deal in November cost them dearly in the comparison with SMU.

South Carolina and Mississippi

Both three-loss contenders had strong cases for the playoff: South Carolina was the hottest team in the SEC in the second half of the regular season and Ole Miss often looked like one of the best teams in the entire FBS. For the Gamecocks, losses to the Crimson Tide and Rebels were impossible to overcome even as they ended the year on a six-game winning streak. For the Rebels, an unforgivable loss to Florida cost them a chance at making the playoff and likely hosting an opening-round matchup.

Miami

That SMU made the playoff despite losing to Clemson makes will be hard for Miami to swallow because the Hurricanes were set to meet the Mustangs before losing to Syracuse in the season finale. Given how the committee came down in the comparison between SMU and Alabama, the Hurricanes would’ve had a very strong case for an at-large bid had they reached the ACC title game with one loss and then lost to the Mustangs. Miami ended up as the second team out of the field after the Tide.