Third time's the charm?

With the midterm elections almost upon us, the 2016 guessing game is kicking into high gear. And in the latest iteration, The Washington Post reports Sunday that Mitt Romney is quietly emerging as a top GOP campaign surrogate this year and thus raising speculation that he will throw his hat into the ring once more.

Despite Romney's insistence he won't run again, his loaded schedule has his old backers "yearning for him to give it a go and arguing that he would be a stronger candidate than last time."

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R), whom Romney recently endorsed for reelection, said in an interview that Romney remains the GOP's best hope of winning back the White House.

Asked whether he and other Republican officials are coalescing around Romney as a 2016 favorite, Mead said: "There is a movement afoot. . . . I'd tell him, 'Governor Romney, people here in Wyoming and around the country would encourage you to take another look at it.'" [The Washington Post]

The Romney 2016 speculation has percolated since last year, though it's gained momentum of late as other potential GOP candidates fizzled or became embroiled in scandal. A few admittedly early polls have found Romney running competitively in a GOP primary too, further fueling speculation he would be a formidable candidate should he run again. Jon Terbush

By passing the National Defense Authorization Act on Monday evening, the Senate voted to reimpose the ban on Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE.

The defense spending bill was passed by a vote of 85-10, and must still be reconciled with the House version. U.S. lawmakers consider ZTE a national security threat, and are concerned that its equipment could be used to spy on the U.S. and carry out cyberattacks. In April, the Commerce Department enacted a seven-year-ban on American companies doing business with ZTE, but President Trump in May tweeted that he was working to keep ZTE afloat because "too many jobs in China" were being lost.

A provision of the National Defense Authorization Act would prohibit the U.S. government from buying or subsidizing equipment from ZTE and another Chinese telecom company, Huawei, among other penalties. Catherine Garcia

Rapper XXXTentacion was shot and killed Monday afternoon outside of a motorcycle dealership in South Florida. He was 20.

The Broward County Sheriff's Office confirmed XXXTentacion's death. Witnesses said the rapper, whose real name was Jahseh Onfroy, was leaving the dealership when a gunman ran up to his vehicle and shot him.

XXXTentacion's second album, ?, was released in March and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. He had been under house arrest while awaiting trial for domestic violence, but a judge let him out so he could go on tour, TMZ reports. Catherine Garcia

The horrors of the Trump administration's decision to separate immigrant families at the border can be hard to fathom, even as images and descriptions of the detention facilities circulate the web. On Monday, ProPublica published alarming audio from a facility where children had just been separated from their parents, illustrating the trauma and desperation inflicted by the practice.

In the excruciating recording, children sob and wail for their parents, begging to contact their family members and desperately trying to figure out what's going to happen to them. ProPublica reports that the children are between 4 and 10 years old, and were only separated from their parents for about 24 hours at the time of the audio, which was recorded last week. As many as 30,000 children could be detained by August if the Trump administration continues to separate families at its current pace, a senior administration official said.

The "zero tolerance" policy announced in April by Attorney General Jeff Sessions has led to hundreds of children being held in facilities where they spend most of the day in cages awaiting placement with temporary foster families or to be picked up by a family member who is legally authorized to live in the U.S.

It's a difficult listen, but the recording demonstrates just how painful these separations are for children and families fleeing violence and instability in their home countries. Listen to the devastating audio below, via ProPublica. Summer Meza

Big news for Waterloo fans.

No, the second Mamma Mia! movie was not leaked a month early. Napoleon's famous hat from his just-as-famous losing battle was sold at auction for the equivalent of $325,000 Monday, exactly 203 years after his crushing surrender, BBC reports.

It's a small price to pay to emulate the French style icon, whose bicorne hat elongated his actually-not-short stature and made sure he could be seen in battle. This hat is one of only 19 in existence, though Napoleon owned about 120 until he was exiled, per BBC. One from the Battle of Marengo sold for around $2.2 million in 2014, yet this Waterloo exclusive was only expected to fetch around $46,000.

Why you wouldn't pay at least as much just to make ABBA references is a mystery. Kathryn Krawczyk

The Los Angeles Times is locally owned for the first time in nearly 20 years, after Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong took ownership of the newspaper Monday, reports CNN Money.

Soon-Shiong acquired the Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and the rest of the California News Group from Tronc for $500 million, telling employees in a memo that he hopes to make the Times competitive with The New York Times and The Washington Post. "I've not gone into this transaction from a financial basis at all," he wrote. "There's an opportunity to make a major impact on the nation."

In his optimistic note, Soon-Shiong told Times employees that he considered "fake news" to be "a cancer of our times," and forecasted positive growth for the paper because of his dedication to "the essential role of journalism."

The Times was previously owned by Tronc, the Chicago-based newspaper group, but the company announced its intention to sell the Los Angeles paper back in February. Soon-Shiong is a surgeon and part-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, and he has also expressed interest in buying other regional papers around the country like the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, and the New York Daily News, reports NPR. Read more at CNN Money. Summer Meza

England was looking to settle for a 1-1 draw with Tunisia, the top-ranked African team, on Monday in the World Cup group stage. But instead, Tottenham striker Harry Kane headed Harry Maguire's corner kick past Tunisia's Farouk Ben Mustapha in the first minute of stoppage time, ending the match 2-1.

Kane was also responsible for England's first goal in the 11th minute, and Tunisia's Ferjani Sassi scored the equalizing goal on a penalty in the 33rd minute. With his stoppage-time goal, Kane became the first English player since Gary Lineker in 1990 to score multiple goals in a World Cup game, ESPN reports.

The win gives England an important 3 points, with the Three Lions next facing Group G rival Panama on June 24. Jeva Lange

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told the Office of Government Ethics that he had divested from foreign companies, then kept his holdings for months, a Forbes investigation published Monday found.

Ross kept his stakes in a company co-owned by the Chinese government, a shipping firm linked to the Kremlin, and a Cyprus bank that is entangled in the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. He pledged to rid himself of all possible conflicts of interest, but he and his family continued to do business with foreign companies affected by Ross' decisions as a government official.

After Forbes contacted him asking about his holdings, Ross said through a spokesperson that his financial disclosures would soon more accurately reflect his holdings. Soon after Ross learned that damaging stories would be published in the fall, the commerce secretary shorted stock in the Kremlin-linked company, setting himself up for more profit.

"The secretary did not lie," said the spokesperson, emphasizing that Ross did eventually divest. However, Forbes reports that Ross may have broken one policy by misrepresenting his finances in a sworn statement. He has reportedly amended that statement since then. Read more about Ross' tangled financial web at Forbes. Summer Meza