President Donald Trump on Monday signed an executive order asking drugmakers to voluntarily reduce the prices of key medicines in the United States.

But the order cites no obvious legal authority to mandate lower prices. The order said the administration would consider taking regulatory actions or importing drugs from other countries in the future if drugmakers do not comply.

It was something of a win for the pharmaceutical industry, which had been bracing for a policy that would be much more damaging to its interests.

Last week, Trump hyped a coming announcement that was “as big as it gets.” And on Sunday evening, he teed up the order in a Truth Social post, writing that he would link U.S. drug prices to those in peer countries under a “most favored nation” pricing model — a policy he attempted unsuccessfully in his first term for a small set of drugs in Medicare.

His executive order Monday does not do that. Pharmaceutical stocks rose Monday on the news.

Trump’s executive order came just hours after House Republicans offered an expansive set of health care policy changes that would cut around $700 billion from Medicaid and the Obamacare marketplaces over a decade and would cause an estimated 8.6 million Americans to become uninsured. Congress declined to include any provisions to directly limit drug prices in that package.

Newark airport strained by low staffing Monday

As few as three air traffic controllers were scheduled to work Monday evening at the facility guiding planes to and from Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration said, far fewer than the target of 14 controllers for most of those hours.

The staffing crisis added strain to an already troubled aviation system, with flights to Newark delayed by as much as seven hours Monday.

The FAA said in a statement to The New York Times that it had at least three controllers scheduled every hour Monday evening at a Philadelphia facility that manages Newark’s air traffic. But four people familiar with problems at the airport said that the number of fully certified controllers on duty was at times one or two.

Staffing shortages affected flights at the airport for much of the day, forcing the FAA to hold up incoming flights from taking off. The delays primarily affected flights coming to Newark from the contiguous United States and parts of Canada, and lasted an average of more than an hour and 40 minutes and up to almost seven hours, according to an FAA advisory.

Newsom urges banning homeless camps

Gov. Gavin Newsom escalated California’s push to eradicate homeless encampments Monday, calling on hundreds of cities, towns and counties to effectively ban tent camps on sidewalks, bike paths, parklands and other types of public property.

Newsom’s administration has raised and spent tens of billions of dollars on programs to bring homeless people into housing and to emphasize treatment. But his move Monday marks a tougher approach to one of the more visible aspects of the homelessness crisis. The governor has created a template for a local ordinance that municipalities can adopt to outlaw encampments and clear existing ones.

California is home to about half of the nation’s unsheltered homeless population, a visible byproduct of the temperate climate and the state’s brutal housing crisis. Last year, a record 187,000 people were homeless in the state, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. Two-thirds were living unsheltered.

Biden treated for ‘small nodule’ on his prostate

Former President Joe Biden spent Friday at a hospital in Philadelphia after a “small nodule” was discovered on his prostate that required “further evaluation,” according to a spokesperson.

It is common for a man of Biden’s age — he is 82 — to experience prostate issues, and his spokesperson declined to elaborate on any additional details about his care.

Biden left office as the oldest serving president in U.S. history. He was dogged throughout his presidency by concerns about his age and his health, which ultimately led him to abandon his reelection campaign.

Combs sex-trafficking trial begins in N.Y.

Federal prosecutors on Monday presented one of America’s most influential music moguls as a violent, serial sexual predator, accusing Sean Combs at the start of his trial in a Manhattan court of coercing women into drug-fueled sex marathons with prostitutes and using his vast wealth to try to cover it up.

In lurid detail, Emily A. Johnson, a prosecutor, portrayed Combs in her opening statement as a man who ordered the performance of sex acts and “called himself the king.”

“To the public, he was Puff Daddy or Diddy,” Johnson said. “A cultural icon, a businessman — larger than life. But there was another side to him, a side that ran a criminal enterprise.”

One of the government’s first witnesses was a man who said he had been paid as much as $6,000 to engage in sexual encounters with Combs’ girlfriend, Casandra Ventura, while the music mogul watched.

3 rock climbers die in Washington state fall

Three rock climbers were killed over the weekend and another was seriously injured when they fell nearly 200 feet while descending a steep gully in the North Cascades mountains in Washington state, authorities said.

The four men, whose names have not been released, were rappelling down a sheer rock face near the North Early Winters Spire when they fell. It was unclear what caused the accident, although authorities believe it may have been the result of an equipment failure, said Undersheriff David Yarnell of the Okanogan County Sheriff Office.

The climbers who were killed, ages 36, 47 and 63, were declared dead at the scene, the sheriff’s office said in a statement. The fourth climber, whose age was unavailable, was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, Yarnell said. His condition was not immediately available Monday.

Yeshiva University retracts gay club’s OK

Two months after Yeshiva University said it would recognize an LGBTQ+ student club on campus, bringing a yearslong legal battle to an end, the school has reversed course and banned the organization.

The school said the club, called Hareni, had violated both Jewish principles and the legal settlement. But lawyers for the students said it was leaders at the school, a Modern Orthodox Jewish institution with campuses in Manhattan and the Bronx, who had violated the agreement with hostile religious rhetoric.

In a letter to the community Friday, the university repeated an argument it made unsuccessfully in state court in 2022, saying its undergraduate programs are “fundamentally religious.”

Starmer’s rental home hit by arson fire

Counterterror police are investigating a fire that broke out in the early hours of Monday at a north London home owned and rented out to tenants by Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer.

After winning last year’s general election, Starmer moved into the prime ministerial residence at 10 Downing St. and, according to official records, leased his four bedroom family home in Kentish Town.

Police said that “as a precaution and due to the property having previous connections with a high-profile public figure, officers from the Met’s Counter Terrorism Command are leading the investigation into this fire. Enquiries are ongoing to establish the potential cause of the fire.”

PKK says it’s ending Turkish insurgency

The Kurdish militant group PKK announced Monday that it is disbanding and renouncing armed conflict as part of a new peace initiative with Turkey, ending four decades of hostilities.

The decision by the PKK, or Kurdistan Workers’ Party, promises to end one of the longest insurgencies in the Middle East and could have significant impact in Turkey, Syria and Iraq.

It was announced by the Firat News Agency, a media outlet close to the group, days after the PKK convened a party congress in northern Iraq.

FDA approves 3 new ‘natural’ food colorings

The Food and Drug Administration announced Friday that it had approved three new “natural” food colorings to be used in foods and drinks such as candies, smoothies, potato chips and breakfast cereals.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has implied these dyes are safer alternatives to synthetic dyes, such as Blue No. 1 and Blue No. 2, which limited research has linked to behavioral issues in some children.

There’s a “pretty good body of literature” suggesting that these three new color additives — called Galdieria extract blue, butterfly pea flower extract and calcium phosphate — should be safe, especially in the small amounts used to dye foods, said Jamie K. Alan, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University.

— News service reports