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SAN ANTONIO (AP) – Basketball Hall of Famer Gregg Popovich has been away from the team because he suffered a mild stroke earlier this month, the San Antonio Spurs announced Wednesday.

Popovich is in his 29th season as coach of the Spurs and there is no timetable for his return to the sideline, the team said. The stroke happened on Nov. 2 at the team’s arena, and Popovich is expected to make a full recovery.

The 75-year-old Popovich, the NBA’s all-time win leader who has led the Spurs to five championships and USA Basketball to a gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has already started a rehabilitation program, the team said.

“During this time, the organization is grateful to the extended community for providing privacy and space to the Popovich family,” the Spurs said in a release.

Assistant coach Mitch Johnson has been the acting head coach in Popovich’s absence. The Spurs play at home Wednesday against Washington, and that will be the seventh straight game where Johnson will be filling in for Popovich.

“Mitch has been great,” Spurs rookie Stephon Castle said Wednesday, before the team announced the details about Popovich’s health. “Even when Pop was here, he’s always had a voice in our huddles and in our locker room. Our philosophies haven’t been changed.”

A stroke happens when blood flow to part of the brain is blocked or if a blood vessel in the brain bursts. That deprives the brain of oxygen which can cause brain damage that can lead to difficulty thinking, talking and walking, or even death. Strokes may lead to difficulty speaking, paralysis or loss of movement in certain muscles, memory loss and more.

It is unknown if Popovich is dealing with any aftereffects of the stroke.

Stroke was the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more than half a million Americans have a stroke every year.

The Spurs were playing the Minnesota Timberwolves at home on Nov. 2, and Popovich’s medical episode occurred there in the hours before that game. Johnson took over for that night’s contest, which the Spurs won, after the team said Popovich was not feeling well.

Johnson and Popovich spoke the following day. The Spurs had not released much in the way of details since, prior to Wednesday’s announcement about the stroke.

“Right now, his health is the No. 1 priority,” Johnson said on Nov. 4, adding, “He’s in good spirits. He’ll be OK. He is OK. And we can’t wait to have him back.”

Popovich is one of only three coaches to win the NBA coach of the year award three times, Don Nelson and Pat Riley being the others. He’s one of five coaches with at least five NBA titles; Phil Jackson (11), Red Auerbach (9), John Kundla (5) and Riley (5) are the others.

Popovich has been part of the Spurs for nearly 35 years. He was an assistant coach from 1988 through 1992, then returned to the club on May 31, 1994, as its executive vice president for basketball operations and general manager. He made the decision to fire coach Bob Hill and appoint himself coach on Dec. 10, 1996.

He’s been the Spurs’ sideline boss ever since.

Popovich’s 29-year run with the Spurs is a span the likes of which has been nearly unmatched in U.S. major pro sports history.

Connie Mack managed the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 years, George Halas coached the Chicago Bears for 40 years and John McGraw managed the New York Giants for 31 years. Those three tenures — all wrapping up well over a half-century ago — are the only ones exceeding Popovich’s run with the Spurs; his 29-year era in San Antonio to this point matches the tenures that Dallas Cowboys’ Tom Landry and the Green Bay Packers’ Curly Lambeau had in those jobs.

TEXAS – The Religion News Service says that gathering in Baltimore on Tuesday (Nov. 12), just a week after former President Donald Trump won reelection, leaders of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops promised to defend immigrants and poor people in the coming years. “As the successors of the Apostles and vicars of Christ in our dioceses, we never backpedal or renounce the clear teaching of the Gospel. We proclaim it in and out of season,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the conference, who also leads the Archdiocese for the Military Services. Broglio’s comments expanded on an appearance last week on the Catholic media network EWTN, where the archbishop said the majority of Catholics had supported Trump due to concern for the “dignity of the human person.” In Baltimore Broglio made clear that human dignity should be protected “from womb to tomb,” saying the bishops were committed “to see Christ in those who are most in need, to defend and lift up the poor, and to encourage immigration reform, while we continue to care for those in need who cross our borders.”

Cautioning that the bishops “certainly do not encourage illegal immigration,” he said, to applause from his fellow bishops, “we will all have to stand before the throne of grace and hear the Lord ask us if we saw him in the hungry, thirsty, naked, homeless, stranger, or sick and responded to his needs.” At a press conference, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, current chair of the migration committee, said that while the conference was waiting to see how Trump’s campaign rhetoric will materialize as policy, the conference would speak out for migrants in the event of mass deportations. “We will raise our voice loudly if those basic protections for people that have been a part of our country from its very beginning are not being respected,” Seitz said, referring to both legal and human rights. “This is going to be a test for our nation. Are we in fact a nation based on law, on the most fundamental laws about the rights of the human person?” When asked how he would respond if Trump followed through on suggestions about involving the military in mass deportations, Broglio said he had a responsibility to “ensure pastoral care” for the military. “Unfortunately, the way the military is set up, you cannot conscientiously object to a policy or to a certain war, you have to conscientiously object to war in general, and so that doesn’t really provide an avenue out of the service,” Broglio said.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports the fate of the booming renewable energy industry in Texas during President-elect Donald Trump’s second term depends largely on how his administration treats President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Roughly $154 billion in clean energy investments have been announced since passage of the IRA in 2022, with about 80% targeted for Republican districts. That includes $4.5 billion of announced investment and more than 22,000 announced jobs in Texas, according to data from Utah State University and research firm Atlas Public Policy. As a result, most experts don’t expect a complete repeal of the monumental climate bill. Still, modifications are possible, and Texas could be among the most impacted, given that it not only has the most renewable resources in the country but also a huge pipeline of pending clean energy projects.

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 supercharged the buildout of clean energy across the country, providing tax credits and other incentives as part of the Biden administration’s effort to fight climate change. Trump has vowed to “rescind all unspent funds” under the bill. Project 2025, a conservative policy playbook Trump has repeatedly disavowed but was created by some of his allies, has called for legislation fully repealing Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. Yet because so much money has flowed into conservative states, if Republicans modify the law they would likely to take a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer to it, said Maheep Mandloi, director of clean energy equity research at the investment firm Mizuho Securities. He cited 18 House Republicans who wrote a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., in August urging him to maintain some of the IRA. Joseph Osha, an analyst at the investment bank Guggenheim Securities focused on renewables, said he’ll be watching how Republicans do the math to extend Trump’s 2017 tax law, much of which is due to expire next year. If Republicans want to claim victory on tax cuts more than they want to take credit for the IRA’s investments and jobs, the Biden administration’s bonus tax credits for clean energy development could be on the chopping block, including those tied to sourcing materials from domestic manufacturers and investing in communities whose economics depended on fossil fuels.

NEW YORK (AP) – U.S. stocks are drifting near their records after the latest inflation update boosted hopes that more help for the economy will arrive next month from another cut to interest rates. The S&P 500 was up 0.1% in early trading Wednesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 62 points, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.1%. Stocks got support from easing yields in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.38% from 4.43% late Tuesday. It sank after a report said the inflation that U.S. consumers felt last month was exactly as economists expected.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – Dozens of soldiers and police fanned out across a neighborhood on a recent night in the Turks & Caicos Islands just days after the archipelago reported a record 40 killings this year.

They were on the hunt for criminals and illegal weapons fueling a surge of violence across the Caribbean as authorities struggle to control a stream of firearms smuggled in from the U.S.

Half an hour into the Oct. 30 operation, one driver tried to run authorities off the road as he tossed a handgun into the bushes.

“Rest assured, we remain committed to disrupting the flow of illicit guns,” Police Superintendent Jason James said hours later.

But the flow is too strong, with illegal firearms blamed for an increase or a record number of killings in a growing number of Caribbean islands this year, including Trinidad and Tobago and the Bahamas.

No Caribbean nation manufactures firearms or ammunition or imports them on a large scale, but they account for half of the world’s top 10 highest national murder rates, according to a statement from U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

In a letter sent to U.S. legislators in late September, New York’s attorney general and 13 other colleagues across the U.S. demanded new measures to stop the flow of guns, noting that 90% of weapons used in the Caribbean were bought in the U.S. and smuggled into the region.

“American-made guns are flowing into Caribbean nations and communities and fueling violence, chaos, and senseless tragedies throughout the region,” wrote New York Attorney General Letitia James.

In mid-2023, the U.S. government appointed its first coordinator for Caribbean firearms prosecutions to help curb weapon smuggling from the U.S. to the region, with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives already tracing firearms seized in the Caribbean.

Last year, 266 firearms seized in the Bahamas were submitted to ATF, along with 234 firearms from Jamaica, 162 from the Dominican Republic and 143 from Trinidad and Tobago, according to the agency’s most recent data.

The majority are handguns, followed by semiautomatic pistols.

The information gleaned from recovered weapons can help authorities in the U.S. determine where and when they were bought, triggering a domestic firearms trafficking investigation.

But it’s a struggle to stop the flow of weapons, with smugglers disassembling them and hiding their parts in sea-bound containers.

“As much as you try to harden the infrastructure at the official ports, it is essentially like trying to plug a sift,” said Michael Jones, executive director of the Implementation Agency for Crime and Security at Caricom, a Caribbean trade bloc.