Roughly 210 households in Whitewater Township, about 22 miles west-northwest of Cincinnati in an area near the city airport and the Kentucky state line, were under evacuation orders, officials said Tuesday night. Other residents were under shelter-in-place recommendations, they said at a news conference.

Colorless, odorless gas spewing from the tanker at State Route 128 and U.S. Route 50 was reported to first responders shortly after 1 p.m., Chief Mike Siefke of the Little Miami Joint Fire and Rescue District said during a pair of news conferences.

Authorities determined the chemical is styrene, he said. It’s used in the production of plastic, rubber, fiberglass and other structural material.

The chemical can irritate the respiratory system, cause headaches and disorient those who breathe it, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Long-term exposure has been associated with some forms of cancer, the CDC says, but it’s not known as a direct killer.

The threat for the community 22 miles east-northeast of Cincinnati is that the rail car tank has been heating up and will explode if it continues, Siefke said. Firefighters were dousing the container with water in an attempt to reverse its temperature rise, he said.

“This will be a long, long event,” Siefke said.

Environmental officials were taking parts-per-million measurements in the community in an attempt to determine the leak’s impact, the fire chief said.

Some residents may have sought treatment for unknown ailments, but the number of patients and exact nature of their potential injuries was unconfirmed, he said.

Area public schools, the Three Rivers Local School District, shut down instruction early on Tuesday and canceled instruction and all activities scheduled for Wednesday, according to the district website.

It wasn’t yet clear who owns the rail car or its cargo, officials said Tuesday night. A spokesperson for Central Railroad of Indiana said in a statement it was cooperating with first responders.

State Route 128 and U.S. Route 50, which takes motorists from coast to coast, were shut down in both directions near the incident site, according to the Ohio Department of Transportation.

Whitewater Township and Hamilton County officials said the situation will likely remain static overnight as they await input from environmental agencies.

“We’re waiting for the partners that are mitigating this to come up with a strategy,” Hamilton County Director of Communications Andrew Knapp said.

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Marcellus Williams, 55, was convicted in the 1998 killing of Lisha Gayle, who was stabbed during the burglary of her suburban St. Louis home.

Williams was put to death despite questions his attorneys raised over jury selection at his trial and the handling of evidence in the case. His clemency petition focused heavily on how Gayle’s relatives wanted Williams’ sentence commuted to life without the possibility of parole.

“The family defines closure as Marcellus being allowed to live,” the petition stated. “Marcellus’ execution is not necessary.”

As Williams lay awaiting execution, he appeared to converse with a spiritual adviser seated next to him. Williams wiggled his feet underneath a white sheet that was pulled up to his neck and moved his head slightly while his spiritual advisor continued to talk. Then Williams’ chest heaved about a half dozen times, and he showed no further movement.

Williams’ son and two attorneys watched from another room. No one was present on behalf of the victim’s family.

The Department of Corrections released a brief statement that Williams had written ahead of time, saying: “All Praise Be to Allah In Every Situation!!!”

Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said he hoped the execution brings finality to a case that “languished for decades, revictimizing Ms. Gayle’s family over and over again.”

“No juror nor judge has ever found Williams’ innocence claim to be credible,” Parson said in a statement.

The NAACP had been among those urging Parson to cancel the execution.

“Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.

It was the third time Williams faced execution. He got reprieves in 2015 and 2017, but his last-ditch efforts this time were futile. Parson and the state Supreme Court rejected his appeals in quick succession Monday, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene hours before he was put to death.

Last month, Gayle’s relatives gave their blessings to an agreement between the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office and Williams’ attorneys to commute the sentence to life in prison. But acting on an appeal from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office, the state Supreme Court nullified the agreement.

Williams was among death row inmates in five states who were scheduled to be put to death in the span of a week — an unusually high number that defies a yearslong decline in the use and support of the death penalty in the U.S. The first was carried out Friday in South Carolina. Texas was also slated to execute a prisoner on Tuesday evening.

Gayle, 42, was a social worker and former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter. Prosecutors at Williams’ trial said he broke into her home on Aug. 11, 1998, heard the shower running and found a large butcher knife. Gayle was stabbed 43 times when she came downstairs. Her purse and her husband’s laptop were stolen.

Authorities said Williams stole a jacket to conceal blood on his shirt. His girlfriend asked him why he would wear a jacket on a hot day. She said she later saw the purse and laptop in his car and that Williams sold the computer a day or two later.

Prosecutors also cited testimony from Henry Cole, who shared a cell with Williams in 1999 while Williams was jailed on unrelated charges. Cole told prosecutors that Williams confessed to the killing and provided details about it.

Williams’ attorneys responded that the girlfriend and Cole were both convicted of felonies and wanted a $10,000 reward. They said that fingerprints, a bloody shoeprint, hair and other evidence at the crime scene didn’t match Williams’.

A crime scene investigator had testified the killer wore gloves.

Questions about DNA evidence also led St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell to request a hearing challenging Williams’ guilt. But days before the Aug. 21 hearing, new testing showed that DNA on the knife belonged to members of the prosecutor’s office who handled it without gloves after the original crime lab tests.

Without DNA evidence pointing to any alternative suspect, Midwest Innocence Project attorneys reached a compromise with the prosecutor’s office: Williams would enter a new, no-contest plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a new sentence of life in prison without parole. A no-contest plea isn’t an admission of guilt but is treated as such for the purpose of sentencing.

Judge Bruce Hilton signed off, as did Gayle’s family. But Bailey appealed, and the state Supreme Court blocked the agreement and ordered Hilton to proceed with an evidentiary hearing, which took place last month.

Hilton ruled on Sept. 12 that the first-degree murder conviction and death sentence would stand, noting that Williams’ arguments all had been previously rejected. That decision was upheld Monday by the state Supreme Court.

Attorneys for Williams, who was Black, also challenged the fairness of his trial, particularly the fact that only one of the 12 jurors was Black. Tricia Bushnell of the Midwest Innocence Project said the prosecutor in the case, Keith Larner, removed six of seven Black prospective jurors.

Larner testified at the August hearing that he struck one potential Black juror partly because he looked too much like Williams — a statement that Williams’ attorneys asserted showed improper racial bias.

Larner contended that the jury selection process was fair.

Williams was the third Missouri inmate put to death this year and the 100th since the state resumed use of the death penalty in 1989.

___

AP writer Mark Sherman contributed from Washington. Salter reported from O’Fallon, Missouri.

After a dose of online speculation, the company confirmed to TODAY.com on Sept. 24 that it would be discontinuing Coca-Cola Spiced — the flavor that made its debut earlier this year. The soda, which combined raspberry and a “blend of warm spiced flavors,” is one of a few on the brand’s slate that folks online have seen disappear from store shelves.

“We’re always looking at what our consumers like and adjusting our range of products,” a spokesperson from The Coca-Cola Company tells TODAY.com over email. “As part of this strategy, we’re planning to phase out Coca-Cola Spiced to introduce an exciting new flavor in 2025.”

Spiced was first introduced in February and, in a March press release, was dubbed “a permanent addition to the lineup in North America.” Now, seven months later, the flavor is being retired — but it’s not the only one.

Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla was also discontinued late last year. The company confirmed the flavor’s demise back in March with a post on X that said it had been discontinued and was only available while supplies last.

“I think @CocaCola discontinued cherry Vanilla Coke in the bottle,” wrote a different X user on Sept. 1, tagging the company. “I haven’t seen it in months.”

“We decided to discontinue Coca-Cola Cherry Vanilla due to consumers’ taste preferences and lifestyles constantly changing,” the brand wrote on X on Sept. 4. “As a Total Beverage Company, we are always searching for ways to evolve our product portfolio to bring consumers the beverages they want.”

Though some social media users missed the initial announcement by a few months, it doesn’t compare to the folks still asking if Diet Coke with Splenda is still around, even though it was discontinued years ago and is marked as out of stock on sites like Walmart. 

“@CocaCola do you all have Diet Coke with Splenda still?” asked one X user on Sept. 4. “I’m allergic to aspartame 🥺.”

“Unfortunately, Diet Coke with Splenda has been discontinued,” Coca-Cola replied. “We’re sorry for any disappointment.”

As expected, people online were unhappy to learn these flavors have metaphorically gone flat.

“this is a national tragedy are you proud of yourself,” wrote one X user.

“Congrats on making me switch to pepsi,” said another. “This was a huge fail on your part @CocaCola.”

One more even called it a “Massive L.”

But not everyone was so choked up by the discontinuations. One not-so-sad redditor wrote “Bye, Felicia!” when they heard about the Spice supply drying up. Another chimed in to say, “Yeah people didn’t really like it.” Plenty of other redditors suggested reviving other flavors in its place.

Coca-Cola has been busy these past few years releasing a slew of unique and limited-time flavors. 

In 2022, these included Dreamworld, a soda meant to evoke “technicolor tastes and surrealism of the subconscious,” and the gaming-inspired Byte, “inspired by the playfulness of pixels.” In 2023, the brand released Coca-Cola Move with Rosalía which was “transformation flavored.” 

This past August, the brand partnered with Oreo to release two items: The Oreo Coca-Cola Sandwich Cookie, which is red and black and contains Coca-Cola syrup, as well as the limited-edition Coca-Cola Oreo Zero Sugar drink, which features “flavorful hints” inspired by the chocolate and creme of an Oreo cookie.

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Woodson’s 95-year-old widow, Joann, was presented Tuesday with the Distinguished Service Cross he was awarded posthumously for his extraordinary heroism. Generations of Woodson’s family packed the audience, many of them wearing T-shirts with his photo and the words “1944 D-Day US Army Medic” on the front.

“It’s been a long, long road … to get to this day,” Woodson’s son, Steve, told the crowd. “My father, if he could have been here today, would have been humbled.”

The award, the second-highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of the Army, marked an important milestone in a yearslong campaign by his widow, supporters in the military and Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen for greater recognition of Woodson’s efforts that day.

Ultimately, they would like to see him honored with the Medal of Honor, the highest military decoration that can be awarded by the U.S. government and one long denied to Black troops who served in World War II.

Van Hollen, who first heard Woodson’s story when Joann Woodson reached out to his office nearly a decade ago, told the crowd that Woodson’s “valor stood out.” He said there was only one thing that stood between Woodson and the country’s highest military honor and that was “the color of his skin.”

“Righting this wrong matters. It matters for Waverly Woodson and his family, and it matters for our entire country because we are a stronger, more united country when we remember all of our history and when we honor all of our heroes,” Van Hollen told the audience, which included troops from Woodson’s unit, the First Army.

Woodson, who died in 2005, received the award just days before the 80th anniversary of Allied troops’ landing in Normandy, France. First Army troops took the Distinguished Service Cross with them to France in June and in an intimate ceremony laid the medal in the sands of Omaha Beach, where a 21-year-old Woodson had come ashore decades earlier.

At a time when the U.S. military was still segregated by race, about 2,000 African American troops are believed to have taken part in the invasion that proved to be a turning point in pushing back the Nazis and eventually ending World War II.

On June 6, 1944, Woodson’s unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, was responsible for setting up balloons to deter enemy planes. Two shells hit his landing craft, and he was wounded before even getting to the beach.

After the vessel lost power, it was pushed toward the shore by the tide, and Woodson likely had to wade ashore under intense enemy fire.

He spoke to the AP in 1994 about that day.

“The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88mm guns. “They were murder. Of our 26 Navy personnel, there was only one left. They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Then they started with the mortar shells.”

For the next 30 hours, Woodson treated 200 wounded men — all while small arms and artillery fire pummeled the beach. Eventually, he collapsed from his injuries and blood loss, according to accounts of his service. At the time, he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Like many World War II veterans, Woodson didn’t talk much about his experiences during the war or what it was like to be in the middle of some of the most intense combat U.S. troops saw, his son said.

Speaking after the ceremony to The Associated Press, Steve Woodson said it wasn’t until 50 years after the invasion and his father had returned from an anniversary ceremony in France that he started to share memories of that day.

Woodson told his son one particular story that remained with him of a soldier who had been blown in half but was still alive and calling for God. There was little Woodson could do except console him until the soldier died.

“That troubled him through all of his life,” Steve Woodson said.

In an era of intense racial discrimination, not a single one of the 1.2 million Black Americans who served in the military during World War II was awarded the Medal of Honor. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the Army commissioned a study to analyze whether Black troops had been unjustly overlooked.

Ultimately, seven Black World War II troops were awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

At the time, Woodson was considered for the award and he was interviewed. But, officials wrote, his decoration case file couldn’t be found, and his personnel records were destroyed in a 1973 fire at a military records facility.

Woodson’s supporters believe not just that he is worthy of the Medal of Honor but that there was a recommendation at the time to award it to him that has been lost.

U.S. First Army historian Capt. Kevin Braafladt has made it his mission to research Woodson’s D-Day role and he’d combed through an estimated 415 feet of army records in the search for the truth. Even after the ceremony Tuesday, that search would continue for Braafladt, who was planning to go Wednesday to see another collection at the Library of Congress. He said he became interested in Woodson’s story when he realized how he was overlooked because of the bureaucracy and racism at the time.

“It really touched me,” Braafladt said. “There was an opportunity here to fix something that was wrong in the past.”

Favre told a congressional hearing Tuesday that he had been recently diagnosed. There are nearly 90,000 new Parkinson’s cases each year in the U.S., according to the Parkinson’s Foundation.

Here are some questions and answers about the disease:

What is Parkinson’s?

Parkinson’s is a neurologic disease that robs people of control over their movements. It typically starts with tremors, and is characterized by slow movement, a shuffling gait, stiff limbs, balance problems and slurred speech.

Who gets it?

About 1 million Americans are living with Parkinson’s, and 10 million people worldwide, the foundation estimates. It usually appears after age 60, although sometimes it can develop before age 50.

What causes it?

The exact cause isn’t known but Parkinson’s develops when cells that produce one of the brain’s chemical messengers, called dopamine, begin to deteriorate and die. Dopamine transports signals to parts of the brain that control movement. Parkinson’s symptoms appear after enough dopamine-producing cells die that there’s too little of this neurotransmitter in the brain.

According to the foundation, most experts believe genetic and environmental factors are behind the disease. Dozens of gene mutations linked to Parkinson’s have been discovered and genetics account for 10 to 15% of all Parkinson’s, the group says. Other factors suspected of increasing the risk include head injuries, exposure to pesticides and herbicides and where you live. Favre said on a radio show in 2022 that he estimates he may have experienced “thousands” of concussions in his two decades in the NFL.

Is there a cure?

There is no cure but there are treatments, including medications that affect dopamine levels and a surgically implanted tremor-blocking device. Patients also can benefit from physical and occupational therapy.

What’s the prognosis?

Symptoms worsen over time, usually slowly. The severity of symptoms, and how quickly they progress, varies widely between patients. In advanced cases, people may be unable to walk or care for themselves. They also can suffer from depression, as well as memory and thinking problems.

While Parkinson’s itself isn’t considered fatal, people can die from complications of the disease, including lung problems as muscle weakness impedes the ability to cough and to swallow.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The indictment, unsealed Tuesday, alleges that Ryan Wesley Routh “did intentionally attempt to kill Former President of the United States Donald J. Trump, a major Presidential candidate” when he was camped out near where Trump was golfing on Sept. 15 in West Palm Beach, Florida. The charges carries a maximum penalty of life in prison if convicted.

It also added two other charges: possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer.

Routh had previously been charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.

The case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, the Trump nominee who dismissed the criminal classified documents against the former president earlier this year.

The Justice Department said the a grand jury in Miami returned the indictment with the additional charges late Tuesday afternoon.

The indictment comes one day after Trump issued a statement accusing the Justice Department of “downplaying” the alleged assassination plot against him this month and suggesting state officials in Florida take over the case.

“The Kamala Harris/Joe Biden Department of Justice and FBI are mishandling and downplaying the second assassination attempt on my life since July. The charges brought against the maniac assassin are a slap on the wrist,” Trump said in a statement Monday, alleging they have a conflict of interest “since they have been obsessed with ‘Getting Trump’ for so long.”

Federal prosecutors had indicated during Routh’s court appearance Monday that other charges were coming. Among the additional evidence they said they’d collected was a handwritten note from Routh addressed to “The World” that said, “This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you.”

Routh, 58, of Hawaii, has been ordered held without bail pending trial. He has not yet been arraigned.

In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “Violence targeting public officials endangers everything our country stands for, and the Department of Justice will use every available tool to hold Ryan Routh accountable.”

“This must stop,” Garland said.

Trump was the victim of an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., in July. The gunman was killed by Secret Service after opening fire on Trump, with a bullet hitting his right ear, at a campaign rally.

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The Haitian Bridge Alliance made the move after inaction by the local prosecutor, said their attorney, Subodh Chandra of the Cleveland-based Chandra Law Firm.

During Trump’s presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, the former president amplified false, anti-immigrant rumors circulating online at the time that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were abducting and eating pets. Trump specifically mentioned Springfield, Ohio, the town at the center of the claims, saying that immigrants were taking over the city.

“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” he said.

Harris responded by calling Trump “extreme,” while ABC debate moderator David Muir corrected Trump, pointing out that city officials refuted the claims as unsubstantiated and untrue.

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Trump’s comments echoed claims earlier made by Vance, who currently represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, and other Republicans. The claims attracted attention when Vance posted on social media that his office has “received many inquiries” about Haitian migrants abducting pets. Vance later acknowledged it was possible “all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

In the days and weeks after the rumors drew widespread attention, more than 30 bomb threats were directed at Springfield’s local government buildings and schools, prompting closures, the assignment of additional law enforcement protection and security cameras. Some of the city’s Haitian residents also said they feared for their safety as public vitriol grew, and Mayor Rob Rue received death threats.

The 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants who have arrived in Springfield over the past several years, in many cases after being recruited to local jobs, have been granted Temporary Protected Status to be in the U.S. legally.

Trump and Vance are charged with disrupting public services, making false alarms, telecommunications harassment, aggravated menacing and complicity. The filing asks the Clark County Municipal Court to affirm that there is probable cause and issue arrest warrants against Trump and Vance.

“If it were anyone else other than Trump and Vance who had done what they’ve done — wreak havoc on Springfield, resulting in bomb threats, evacuated and closed government buildings and schools, threats to the mayor and his family — they would have been arrested by now,” Chandra said. “They are not above the law.”

Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump-Vance campaign, said, “President Trump is rightfully highlighting the failed immigration system that (Vice President) Kamala Harris has overseen, bringing thousands of illegal immigrants pouring into communities like Springfield and many others across the country.”

Charges brought by private citizens are rare, but not unheard of, in Ohio. Examples might be a grocery store charging a customer for a bounced check. State law requires a hearing to take place before the affidavit can move forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, none had been scheduled.

Thalia Graves said in the lawsuit filed in federal court in New York that she only learned of the alleged recording decades later, in November 2023, after the R&B singer Cassie sued Combs, alleging that he had subjected her to years of abuse, including severe beatings and rape, while they had dated. The singer, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, settled the suit with Combs in a day without disclosing the terms. Combs denied any wrongdoing.

Graves is seeking a jury trial. It appears to be the first lawsuit Combs has faced since he was indicted last week by federal authorities in New York on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. He has pleaded not guilty and was denied bail. His representatives did not immediately reply to a request for comment Tuesday.

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In addition to Combs, Graves’ suit names Joseph Sherman, who, according to the suit, was known as “Big Joe,” and was for a time, Combs’ bodyguard and head of security. Sherman said Tuesday that he did not know or rape Graves and that he was not employed by Combs at the time of the alleged assault.

Graves met Combs in or around late 1999 or early 2000 through her then-boyfriend, who was an executive at Combs’ record label, Bad Boy, and had a close personal relationship with the hip-hop mogul, the suit says. Graves frequently visited her boyfriend, who is not identified in the complaint, at the Bad Boy studio in New York City and attended events hosted at Combs’ residences, the suit says.

According to the suit, in the summer of 2001, Combs called Graves, who was 25 at the time, and asked her to meet to discuss her boyfriend’s performance issues.

“Her boyfriend was determined to climb up the ladder at Combs’ records label and as his romantic partner, Plaintiff was committed to helping him,” the suit says, so she agreed to meet with Combs.

Combs and Joseph Sherman, who was behind the wheel of an SUV, picked Graves up from her mother’s home in Queens, the suit says. It alleges Combs, who was in the backseat, offered her a glass of wine that she accepted and that later caused her “to feel lightheaded, dizzy, and physically weak.” They drove her to the Bad Boy studio in Manhattan and as she exited the SUV, the lawsuit says, she felt odd and found it difficult to walk. The suit alleges Combs led her to a couch in a private room in the studio, where she lost consciousness. 

When she regained consciousness, she was naked, and her hands had been tied behind her back with what felt like a plastic grocery bag, the suit says. After she shouted for help, Sherman lifted her up from the couch and forcefully slammed her face down on a pool table, according to the suit. Shortly thereafter, Combs entered the room naked, the suit says. 

Combs applied lubricant to himself and then raped her as she screamed out in pain, the suit alleges. It says Graves, who is 4 foot 11 and weighed 103 pounds at the time, “was unable to move, totally overpowered physically, in addition to being drugged and bound.” She then lost consciousness again, according to the suit. When she regained consciousness, the suit alleges Sherman slapped her in the face and sexually assaulted her. She again lost consciousness, the suit says.

When she next awoke, she was on the couch terrified, naked and alone in the room, so she quickly got dressed and fled, the suit says.

According to the suit, Graves called a livery driver she knew who drove her to a hospital and tried to convince her to report the alleged rape and to get a rape kit, but she was unable to leave the car, as she was “shaking and crying hysterically” and “terrified of what Combs would do to her and her family if she reported him.”

She was also involved in a contentious divorce and custody battle at the time and feared that reporting the alleged rape would cause her to lose custody of her young child, the suit says. Her boyfriend, who was still employed by Combs, also allegedly discouraged her from disclosing the alleged assault, the suit says, and told her that it could negatively affect his career.

Graves said she sustained injuries, including bruising on her wrists and face, as well as burning in her vagina and anus and prolonged anal bleeding and hemorrhoids. She has relocated multiple times throughout the years to stay away from Combs, who, along with Sherman, has threatened her multiple times to stay silent, the suit alleges. Graves never went to police because she was afraid Combs and Sherman would follow through on their threats, the suit says.

In late November, Graves’ former boyfriend revealed to her for the first time that, years earlier, Combs and Sherman had showed him “and a group of men — some of whom were also employed by Combs’ companies and/or their related entities — the video” of her being raped, the suit alleges. Her former boyfriend reported that he and the other men watched the alleged recording on a handheld camera while at the Bad Boy studio in New York City, the suit says.

And in the years since, the suit says, both Combs and Sherman contacted her and warned her to stay silent and threatened repercussions, including that she could lose custody of her son if she ever disclosed the alleged assault.

According to the suit, Graves suffers from severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and has experienced suicidal ideation and intrusive thoughts, and has attempted to end her life.

“Plaintiff lives in constant fear,” the suit says. “She struggles with hypervigilance and experiences anxiety and panic attacks in social settings, preferring to be alone. Her need to hide to feel safe has strained her relationships with friends and family.”

Sherman, who denies the allegations in Graves’ lawsuit, said he was employed by Combs from 1998 to 1999, years before the alleged assault would have taken place. He said he provided security to Combs and other Bad Boy artists, such as Total, Carl Thomas and 112. He said he has never been alone with Combs and hasn’t seen him in 25 years.

Graves’ attorneys include Gloria Allred, a women’s rights attorney who represented several of singer R. Kelly’s accusers.

At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, Graves said the worst pain she has experienced is shame and guilt.

“Being blamed, questioned and threatened has often made me feel worthless, isolated and sometimes responsible for what happened to me,” Graves said through tears, as Allred consoled her.

Combs has faced a wave of sexual abuse allegations in civil lawsuits since Ventura sued him. Ventura signed to Combs’ label in 2005, and the two dated on and off for many years. Her suit said Combs plied her with drugs and forced her to have sex with a series of male prostitutes in what Combs called “freak offs” and what the government has described as “elaborate and produced sex performances” that sometimes lasted days and at times were recorded. Freak offs are at the heart of the sex trafficking case. 

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Amber Bay, director of administration for the company that owned the doomed Titan submersible, insisted Tuesday that the company would not “conduct dives that would be risky just to meet a need.”

But she agreed that the company wanted to deliver for those who paid $250,000 and were encouraged to participate as “mission specialists.”

“There definitely was an urgency to deliver on what we had offered and a dedication and perseverance towards that goal,” she told a Coast Guard panel.

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023.

The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

On Tuesday, Bay pushed back at earlier testimony from Antonella Wilby, a former OceanGate contractor who said Bay told her “you don’t seem to have an explorer mindset” after she raised safety concerns. Bay said Wilby’s concerns were noted at the time and treated with respect, and said she wasn’t involved in engineering or operations.

She later broke down in tears when discussing the tragedy, which was personal, because she knew the victims.

“I had the privilege of knowing the explorers lives who were lost,” Bay said through tears. “And there’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of them, their families and the loss.”

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Earlier in the hearings, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

On Tuesday, submersible pilot and designer Karl Stanley of the Roatan Institute of Deepsea Exploration testified to provide perspective about deep-sea submersible operations and safety. He said the phenomenon of “billionaires courting scientists” has upset the economics of the industry.

Stanley also said he viewed OceanGate’s characterization of paid passengers as “mission specialists” to be an attempt to avoid accountability.

“It’s clearly a dodge with trying to get around U.S. regulations with passengers,” Stanley said.

Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, said during testimony Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.

“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” he said.

The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

The 1988 Summer Olympics sabre champion awoke on September 10 to discover his prized possession missing. He is now offering to pass it on to the thief in his will if it is returned.

“For two weeks, I can’t calm down and be happy, because everything reminds me of my stolen Olympic gold medal,” Csongrádi told Hungary’s Sportal website. “I would give everything to the culprit, just bring back the worthless object that means nothing to him. Drop it in the mailbox, and if you want, I won’t leave it to a museum in my will, I’ll bequeath it to him.”

Csongrádi, 65, recounted the experience, saying he was sleeping when the thief broke in to his home and acquired the treasure.

He said the medal was securely placed in a cupboard “not visible” and “wrapped several times.” The burglar took a long time to shuffle through different drawers and doors and only left when Csongrádi yelled at home.

“I don’t know what you can do with something that’s a simple metal coating, so it’s not worth much in these markets. I just want my gold medal back,” Csongrádi added. “He could have taken other important things, but for some reason that was all he was interested in.”

The news was first dropped by Tamás Kovács, the former national team captain of the fencing team, in Hungarian on his Facebook page.

Translated to English, the post read: “Dear FB friends! Late on Tuesday night, the house of Olympic champion swordsman László Csongrádi was broken into and, among other things, the thief stole the Seoul Olympic gold medal, which has the words ‘Men’s saber team’ engraved on its rim! I ask my Facebook friends to share it, in case the news reaches medal collectors, market vendors, etc., because it is likely that he wants to exchange the stolen medal for money, which only means a lot to Laci Csongrádi, who contributed to the Olympic gold medal with her excellent fencing, when They beat the Soviet national team 4:8. The police started an investigation!!! Thanks in advance for sharing!”

The post has since been taken down.

Csongrádi won the gold medal in the team sabre competition at the 1988 in Seoul alongside György Nébald, Bence Szabó, Imre Bujdosó and Imre Gedővári

The incident occurred just a few days before Harris is scheduled to visit Arizona as she campaigns for president.

“We can confirm that on 9/23/24, what appears to be damage from gunfire at … a DNC Campaign Office, was discovered,” said the Tempe Police Department in a statement to NBC News on Tuesday.

The office is shared by staff for the Arizona Democratic Party, the Harris campaign, and Senate and House campaigns, to boost turnout for the party in November. 

Sean McEnerney, the coordinated campaign manager for the state Democratic Party, also confirmed the incident in a statement.

“Overnight, several shots were fired into our Tempe Democratic Party coordinated campaign office,” McEnerney said. No one was present or injured at the office, he confirmed.

Local NBC affiliate KPNX previously reported the office had been damaged by gunfire.

Harris is returning to the state Friday, her first trip there since her packed rally in Glendale on Aug. 9. At that rally, she tackled immigration head-on, outlining proposals to increase border security and create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. On this trip, Harris is considering making a stop at the border, according to two people familiar with her schedule. Her campaign declined to comment on that possibility.

The coordinated campaign office in Tempe is one of 18 field offices for the Harris campaign in Arizona, according to Patty Socarras, the state Democratic Party’s communications director.

Tempe, a college town home to Arizona State University, will be critical if Democrats hope to win the state in November. Student enrollment at ASU was about 57,000 in 2023, a group that could prove a key constituency in a state that President Joe Biden won by only about 10,000 votes in 2020.

On Aug. 28, the Harris campaign held a campaign event in Tempe featuring Democratic Florida Rep. Maxwell Frost. The 27-year-old congressman rose to political prominence by focusing on gun control issues, and he made gun violence a cornerstone of his speech to ASU students while stumping on behalf of the Harris campaign this summer. 

“We still have to work at ending gun violence,” said Frost, who recounted the Parkland school shooting in his home state back in 2017. “We can work at creating a community where people don’t feel the need to use a gun to solve their problems in the first place.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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An analysis of data from more than 8,000 adults in the U.S. revealed that 14% had low iron blood levels, a condition known as absolute iron deficiency, while 15% had the right iron levels but their bodies couldn’t use the essential mineral properly, known as functional iron deficiency, according to the report published Tuesday in JAMA Network Open.

Doctors don’t typically screen adults for iron deficiency, which is why the condition has been overlooked in many people.

The researchers weren’t surprised at the results, however. There had been hints in other studies suggesting iron deficiency might be more widespread than doctors assume. 

“This is a common yet underappreciated public health problem,” said study co-author Leo Buckley, a clinical pharmacology specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. “What’s unique about our study is we were looking at regular people who would not otherwise have been screened or tested.” 

Hematologist Dr. Andrew Eisenberger, an associate professor of medicine at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, said that while iron deficiency “is almost never life-threatening, it’s a tremendous quality of life thing.”

“Tens of millions of people in the U.S. are basically running on fumes either because there isn’t enough fuel in the tank or because the tank isn’t connecting to the engine well,” said Eisenberger, who was not involved with the new research. “In our society we are hardwired to be at peak performance. With this tremendous prevalence of iron deficiency, so many people can’t do their best.”

He hopes the study raises awareness among doctors and patients of how common the problem is.

Although doctors frequently screen for anemia — where a person has too few red blood cells due to low levels of iron — in routine blood tests, people can have enough red blood cells but still have an iron deficiency that leads to symptoms. 

“This is an incredibly preventable disease,” Eisenberger said. “So many people come to me who have had this problem for years and years and years, but their doctors have missed it, ignored it or just didn’t know what to do about it. People suffer tremendously. It’s one of the most satisfying things to take care of because people’s quality of life markedly improves.”

For the new study, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers examined health information from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected between 2017 and 2021 from 8,021 adults. The average age of the participants was 48. 

None of the participants had a health condition that is typically associated with iron deficiency, such as anemia, kidney disease, heart failure and pregnancy.

Even with the high numbers of people in the study with iron issues, Buckley doesn’t believe everyone should be screened. He suggests that doctors focus on people with iron deficiency symptoms, such as fatigue and brain fog, and those at high risk for deficiency, such as pregnant women.

Who is at risk for low iron?

The biggest risk factor for iron deficiency is being female.

Pregnant women are especially at risk. “The average pregnant woman needs 1,000 to 1,500 milligrams of additional iron,” Eisenberger said, adding that many women don’t have their iron levels checked till late in pregnancy. “At that point, there’s not enough time to fix it before the woman delivers and the fetus has spent the entire pregnancy with not enough iron.”

Low iron levels in a pregnant woman have been associated with long-term cognitive impairment in children, small size at birth and early delivery, Eisenberger said.

Postpartum women are also at risk of iron deficiency, said Dr. Johanna Contreras, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at the Mount Sinai Fuster Heart Hospital in New York City.

Moreover, bleeding during menstruation can leave women and girls iron depleted, especially among those who have heavy periods. That’s because the lost blood takes large amounts of iron with it.

The rates of iron deficiency between men and women are more similar after the age of menopause, experts said.

Both women and men can develop functional iron deficiency if they have an inflammatory condition, such as rheumatoid arthritis, said Dr. Hossein Ardehali, director of the Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute – Center for Molecular Cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

Sources of nutritional iron

Certain types of diets, such as vegetarian and vegan, can also leave people short on iron, said Ardehali, who was not involved with the new study.

The best food source of iron is red meat, which contains heme, Ardehali said, adding that it can be hard to get enough iron in a diet without meat.  

According to Ardehali, other than meat, good dietary sources of iron include:

• Seafood
• Shellfish
• Beans
• Dark green leafy vegetables like spinach
• Raisins
• Apricots
• Iron-fortified foods, such as cereals 

Research has yet to prove these kinds of iron deficiency can lead to serious long-term health consequences. There are other possible risks.

“Severe anemia can lead people to pass out and hit their heads, have a stroke, or have a heart attack,” Eisenberger said. “This is exceptionally rare. Usually people are so worn down they come to the ER or their doctor’s office before this happens.”

While not the cause, iron deficiency can be a sign of some serious health problems, such as bleeding in the digestive tract, or even colorectal cancer, Ardehali said.

In general, “functional iron deficiency can be a marker for bad health, such as heart failure,” he added.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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The former president was talking about imposing tariffs and other steps he’d take to bolster U.S. manufacturing in Savannah, Georgia, when he veered off topic. He began arguing that he won the recent debate with Harris, despite GOP claims the moderators were against him.

“She didn’t say anything except lies, like bloodbath, like Charlottestown,” Trump said.

He didn’t acknowledge the error, but quickly added that he was “finishing this topic. Because they’ll say, ‘Oh, he fell into a trap” — when in fact, he’d already made a conspicuous mistake.

Decision 2024 Sep 22

Trump says he won't run again in four years if he loses November election

Kamala Harris Sep 21

Harris accepts invitation for second potential debate in October

Trump was trying to refer to the deadly 2017 violence in Charlottesville between white supremacists and anti-racist protesters. Trump has faced years of criticism from Harris and other top Democrats when he blamed “both sides” for what occurred.

In April, Trump argued that what happened in Charlottesville was “nothing” compared to pro-Palestinian protests then occurring on college campuses around the country, and he has continued to try and minimize it while campaigning for a second term.

But what happened in Charlottesville has nonetheless become a defining moment of Trump’s presidency, and was the reason President Joe Biden cites for deciding to run against him in 2020.

Hundreds of white nationalists descended on the city on Aug. 11 and Aug. 12, 2017. Clashes between them and anti-racism protesters broke out both days, prompting authorities to order the second day’s crowds to disperse. It was after that announcement that a man rammed his car into a peaceful group of counter-protesters. One woman died; 35 others were injured.

Congressional leaders from both parties and members of the Cash family were among the several hundred guests who gathered Tuesday for the unveiling of the statue. They shared their memories of a man who grew up on an Arkansas cotton farm and turned a love of music into a decades-long career that gave voice to the struggles and triumphs of everyday Americans.

“Some may ask: Why should a musician have a statue here in the halls of the great American republic?” Speaker Mike Johnson said at unveiling ceremony. “The answer is pretty simple. It’s because America is about more than laws and politics.”

Each state selects two statues to place within the Capitol. The Cash statue is the second new figure Arkansas has sent to replace two existing images that had represented the state at the U.S. Capitol for more than 100 years. Another statue depicting civil rights leader Daisy Bates was unveiled at the Capitol earlier this year. Bates mentored the nine Black children who desegregated Little Rock Central High School in 1957.

The state’s legislature in 2019 voted to replace Arkansas’ two prior statues, which depicted little-known figures from the 18th and 19th centuries, with Bates and Cash.

Known as the “The Man in Black,” Cash was a vivid storyteller who sang with a deep voice songs like “I Walk The Line,” “Ring of Fire,” “Jackson” and “A Boy Named Sue.” The statue depicts the singer with a guitar slung across his back and a Bible in his hand. Little Rock sculptor Kevin Kresse created the statue.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said artistic creativity is an important part of the country’s growth, and Cash’s “substance” and “swagger” inspired generations of artists from every genre imaginable. He quoted singers such as Bob Dylan and Snoop Dogg about Cash’s impact.

“He called Johnny Cash a real American gangster. That a compliment from Snoop Doggy Dog,” Jeffries said as the audience laughed. “What a life, what a legend, what a legacy.”

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders led a group of Arkansas lawmakers at the ceremony. She said she grew up in a musical family where “after God and country, came Johnny Cash.” She noted how Cash struggled with addiction but went on to perform for prisoners and held a deep religious faith. She described him as a “hymn-singing Christian” who also experienced difficult times.

“When so much in today’s world is fake, Johnny Cash was very real,” Sanders said.

Cash’s daughter, Rosanne Cash, said her father would have viewed the statue “as the ultimate” honor in his life. She said her father’s hard upbringing instilled in him a strong work ethic and that he loved the idea of America as a place of dreams and refuge.

“This man was a living redemption story,” Rosanne Cash said. “He encountered darkness and met it with love.”

Cash was born in Kingsland, a tiny town about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Little Rock. He died in 2003 at age 71. His achievements include 90 million records sold worldwide spanning country, rock, blues, folk and gospel. He is among the few artists inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Cash’s statue will be the newest added to the Capitol since one from North Carolina depicting the Rev. Billy Graham was unveiled in May.

___

Associated Press staff writer Andrew DeMillo reported from Little Rock.

The child, who was not named by authorities, posted “a hoax threat to social media with the intent of causing alarm or panic,” the Kerrville Police Department said in a statement.

The department said it was aware of social media posts threatening to carry out a shooting at Hal Peterson Middle School on Tuesday and “immediately initiated a thorough investigation into these threats.”

School resource officers, working with district officials, began investigating and found that the 10-year-old made the social media posts as a hoax.

Police said “no valid threat to Hal Peterson Middle School existed.”

The school said in a Facebook post that counselors had been in classes over the last week to introduce the “See Something Say Something” campaign, an initiative that encourages people to report suspicious activity.

Kerrville police said that making a school shooting threat is a felony offense and every threat will be taken seriously. Law enforcement agencies across the country have put out similar warnings with one sheriff’s office in Volusia County, Florida, releasing the mugshots and “perp walk” videos of arrested students.

“The legal consequences for people who make threats, including juveniles, can be severe and permanent,” Kerrville police said. “We strongly urge parents to speak with their children about the seriousness of making threats, or posting information to social media that reference violence to our schools. Remind your children that school threats are a felony and will have serious consequences.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday sued Visa, the world’s biggest payments network, saying it propped up an illegal monopoly over debit payments by imposing “exclusionary” agreements on partners and smothering upstart firms.

Visa’s moves over the years have resulted in American consumers and merchants paying billions of dollars in additional fees, according to the DOJ, which filed a civil antitrust suit in New York for “monopolization” and other unlawful conduct.

“We allege that Visa has unlawfully amassed the power to extract fees that far exceed what it could charge in a competitive market,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a DOJ release.

“Merchants and banks pass along those costs to consumers, either by raising prices or reducing quality or service,” Garland said. “As a result, Visa’s unlawful conduct affects not just the price of one thing – but the price of nearly everything.”

Visa and its smaller rival MasterCard have surged in the past two decades, reaching a combined market cap of roughly $1 trillion, as consumers tapped credit and debit cards for store purchases and e-commerce instead of paper money. They are essentially toll collectors, shuffling payments between the merchants’ banks and cardholders.

More than 60% of debit transactions in the U.S. run over Visa rails, helping it charge more than $7 billion annually in processing fees, according to the DOJ complaint.

But the payment networks’ dominance has increasingly attracted attention from regulators and retailers.

In 2020, the DOJ filed an antitrust suit to block Visa from acquiring fintech company Plaid; the companies initially said they would fight the action, but soon abandoned the $5.3 billion deal.

In March, Visa and Mastercard agreed to limit their fees and let merchants charge customers for using credit cards, a deal retailers said was worth $30 billion in savings over a half decade. A federal judge later rejected the deal, saying the networks could afford to pay for a “substantially greater” settlement.

“Visa wields its dominance, enormous scale, and centrality to the debit ecosystem to impose a web of exclusionary agreements on merchants and banks,” the DOJ said in its release. “These agreements penalize Visa’s customers who route transactions to a different debit network or alternative payment system.”

 This story is developing. Please check back for updates.

The windows are tinted and the blinds are closed in her home in Hartford, Wisconsin. A special film to block UV light covers her parents’ car windows.

Adeline was born with a severe type of porphyria — a group of blood disorders that impact the skin or nervous system, and affect about 200,000 Americans, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

The girl’s skin is hypersensitive to the sun. When exposed to UV light, it blisters painfully, leading to a risk of infection and scarring. Until a cure is found, she must hide from the sun for life.

Adeline’s parents were shocked when she was diagnosed at 18 months old.

“It was a complete gut punch,” Kurt Tonhaeuser, 60, tells TODAY.com. “We were just a mess emotionally.”

“It’s very isolating for her,” adds Megan Dunn, 46. “She makes it well known to us that she hates the disease. … She wants to be normal, and she wants to go outside and play like the other kids.”

Adeline got to do just that recently when she attended Sun Escape, a sun-proof camp for photosensitive children where all activities take place indoors or in the evening.

Mystery symptoms as baby

Adeline’s family had never heard of porphyria and had no reason to worry about her health at first. Dunn’s pregnancy was normal, and the baby seemed fine.

But when Tonhaeuser changed Adeline’s diaper, he noticed her urine had a reddish color. She lost her toenails and had what looked like an insect bite on the back of her leg that wouldn’t go away. Blisters appeared on her hands, arms and feet — any body part that wasn’t covered by clothing.

Her pediatrician diagnosed her with hand, foot and mouth disease, a viral infection; and impetigo, a bacterial skin infection.

But a pediatric dermatologist quickly suspected porphyria. Tests showed Adeline had an incredibly rare type called congenital erythropoietic porphyria, with only about 200 cases reported worldwide, according to the National Organization for Rare Disorders.

It’s a genetic disorder in which Adeline inherited a gene variant carried by both her parents, though they themselves don’t have the disease.

The mutation leads chemicals in her body, called porphyrins, to build up in her skin, bone marrow, teeth and bones, and when they interact with sunlight, painful blisters appear, the United Porphyrias Association notes.

Other symptoms include reddish urine, brownish-colored teeth, nail loss and excessive hair growth. Researchers believe the vampire myth may have originated with the disorder.

Playing outside is too risky

Adeline’s parents say they were lucky to receive a diagnosis early so they could start protecting her at a very young age, preventing the blister outbreaks and the infection and scarring that can follow.

They modified their house to be a fortress against UV light, worked with her school to make similar accommodations in her classroom, and they dress the second grader from head to toe in protective clothing. If the girl needs to go outside briefly during the day, she must also wear a full-face mask.

Indoors, she uses sunscreen on her face for a bit of extra protection.

“As long as Adeline stays covered and has zero exposure to any UV or outside light, then she will not have any reactions,” Dunn says.

“As far as playing during the day, no. We just don’t let her outside. it’s just too risky. It gets more difficult as she gets older because naturally, she sees her siblings outside and she wants to be out there,” Tonhaeuser adds.

“The isolation, sometimes I get to worry about that with her.”

At school, she must use an indoor recess room. Field trips are out of the question. So are beach vacations or daytime sports matches. It was a treat when her brother played his first nighttime soccer game and she was able to attend, Tonhaeuser says, breaking down with emotion.

Last summer, for the first time since Adeline was diagnosed as a toddler, she had a severe outbreak of blisters — likely because she snuck out a few times during the day to play with her siblings, her parents say.

It was painful and scared her, so she’s now much more careful and aware of the consequences, they note.

Night camp

In May, Adeline got to be a regular kid when she and her family attended the Sun Escape camp at Victory Junction in North Carolina. The event was specifically designed for children sensitive to sunlight, with activities like zip lining at night.

She loved horseback riding in an indoor arena lit up by lamps with incandescent bulbs, fishing at night and meeting other kids who must take the same precautions as she does.

“That was like a no worry weekend,” Dunn says. “She had such a blast.”

The annual camp is a joint project by the United Porphyrias Association and Shadow Jumpers, a nonprofit that helps people with photosensitive conditions founded by Craig Leppert, who has erythropoietic protoporphyria.

His condition means pain “similar to that of accidentally cutting yourself with a knife mixed with accidentally burning yourself on a stove” after about 15 minutes of sun exposure, he says. No medication eases the pain, and the affected area swells.

“I often tell people I would rather break a bone than get a bad reaction from the sun,” Leppert, 33, who works in the TV industry and lives in Los Angeles, tells TODAY.com.

He named his organization after the nickname his parents gave him when he would jump from shadow to shadow as a child to hide from the sun.

Leppert understands the isolation children like Adeline can feel, so the camp was a passion project. It’s free to attend for the kids and their families, and their travel costs are reimbursed.

“It was truly one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life,” Leppert says. “A fulfilling and joyful life is possible for families and children with these conditions; we just need to be open to thinking outside the box a bit.”

Vitamin D and blood draws

Doctors have told Adeline’s parents she should be fine as she grows older as long as she’s always protected from the sun.

She must take vitamin D supplements to make up for the lack of sunlight.

She also gets a blood draw every six months to monitor her health, including her liver and iron levels, which can be affected by the disease.

The girl may undergo a bone marrow transplant in the future, but it’s not recommended for now, Dunn says. In patients like Adeline, where the excess porphyrins are produced in the bone marrow, the healthy donor marrow might correct the problem.

“We just keep going. You can’t look back. We just keep moving forward,” her mom adds. “I think she’s rocking it. We really just have to continue to build her up. She’s very confident and I want her to stay that way.”

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The “Sarco” capsule, which has never been used before, is designed to allow a person sitting in a reclining seat inside to push a button that injects nitrogen gas into the sealed chamber. The person is then supposed to fall asleep and die by suffocation in a few minutes.

Prosecutors in Schaffhausen canton were informed by a law firm that an “assisted suicide” involving the Sarco had taken place Monday near a forest cabin in Merishausen, regional police said in a statement. They said “several people” were taken into custody and prosecutors opened an investigation on suspicion of incitement and accessory to suicide.

Swiss law allows assisted suicide so long as the person takes his or her life with no “external assistance” and those who help the person die do not do so for “any self-serving motive,” according to a government website.

Unlike some other countries, including the Netherlands, Switzerland does not allow euthanasia, which involves health care practitioners killing patients with a lethal injection at their request and in specific circumstances.

Switzerland is among the only countries in the world where foreigners can travel to legally end their lives, and has a number of organizations that are dedicated to helping people kill themselves.

Some lawmakers in Switzerland have argued that the law is unclear and have sought to close what they call legal loopholes.

Dutch newspaper Volkskrant reported Tuesday that police had detained one of its photographers who wanted to take pictures of the use of the Sarco. It said Schaffhausen police had indicated the photographer was being held at a police station but declined to give a further explanation.

The newspaper declined to comment further when contacted by the AP.

Exit International, an assisted suicide group based in the Netherlands, has said it is behind the 3D-printed device that cost over $1 million to develop.

In a statement, the group said a 64-year-old woman from the U.S. Midwest — it did not specify further — who had suffered from “severe immune compromise” had died Monday afternoon near the German border using the Sarco device.

It said Florian Willet, co-president of The Last Resort, a Swiss affiliate of Exit International, was the only person present and described her death as “peaceful, fast and dignified.”

Dr. Philip Nitschke, an Australian-born trained doctor behind Exit International, has previously told the AP that his organization received advice from lawyers in Switzerland that use of the Sarco would be legal in the country.

In the Exit International statement on Tuesday, Nitschke said he was “pleased that the Sarco had performed exactly as it had been designed … to provide an elective, non-drug, peaceful death at the time of the person’s choosing.”

On Monday, Health Minister Elisabeth Baume-Schneider was asked in Swiss parliament about the legal conditions for the use of the Sarco capsule, and suggested its use would not be legal.

“On one hand, it does not fulfill the demands of the product safety law, and as such, must not be brought into circulation,” she said. “On the other hand, the corresponding use of nitrogen is not compatible with the article on purpose in the chemicals law.”

In July, Swiss newspaper Blick reported that Peter Sticher, a state prosecutor in Schaffhausen, wrote to Exit International’s lawyers saying any operator of the suicide capsule could face criminal proceedings if it was used there — and any conviction could bring up to five years in prison.

Prosecutors in other Swiss regions have also indicated that use of the suicide capsule could lead to prosecution.

Over the summer, a 54-year-old U.S. woman with multiple health ailments had planned to be the first person to use the device, but those plans were abandoned.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.

___

Associated Press writers Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.

A Miami Beach officer said he went into “dad mode” when he found a 2-year-old girl wandering alone in a building on Ocean Drive while her parents were allegedly out partying.

A picture captured the moment Officer Brandon Miller, of the Miami Beach Police Department, comforted the toddler he found screaming and searching for her parents at around 3 a.m. on Sept. 10.

“The little girl was just in her pamper and swimsuit top, completely soaked when we found her,” Miller said. “The person we received the call from actually works security across from the building and he said he could just hear her screaming, screaming, ‘Mama, papa.'”

Police body camera footage released Tuesday showed Miller and other officers responding to the building where the girl was found.

“Where’s mommy?” the officers ask the girl in the footage. “You’re ok, we’re here to help you, ok?”

At one point, Miller picks the girl up in his arms as officers begin searching the complex for the girl’s family.

“You alright?” he asks before the girl gives him a high-five.

Police said the couple was out clubbing and left the 2-year-old, as well as her 12, 11 and 5-year-old brothers alone, sleeping in the apartment they rented, for over four hours.

All four children were taken to the Department of Children and Families. The parents were arrested and then appeared in court, charged with child neglect.

Lentz and Hurd insisted they are good parents, saying the 12-year-old was supposed to be awake watching the younger three. They called this a horror story and a tragic mistake.

“It was a small, tragic mistake that I’m really hurt about and I don’t know what to do,” Lentz said. “We’ve been doing a lot of crying, a lot of crying, every time we see pictures we cry.”

While police searched for her parents, Miller comforted the toddler.

“I have a 2 and a 3-year-old at home and I guess I went into dad mode. I saw her, I thought about my son. I thought about my daughter,” he said.

Lentz and Hurd are desperate to get their children back.

“We are really good parents, we are good people, we don’t leave our children, this is not a regular thing for us,” Hurd said.

The judge said both parents are allowed to see their children while they’re in DCF custody. The couple is expected back in court in next month.

“I understand you want to come to Miami Beach on vacation, you want to have fun, but if you have your kids, obviously they take priority,” Miller said.

Favre, a retired NFL quarterback who played for the Green Bay Packers from 1992-2007, revealed the news Tuesday morning while appearing before a Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee hearing on welfare abuses. He is currently being sued by the state Mississippi over the receipt of funds, via speaking fees, that had been intended for poor women and children. He’s also been accused of improperly using his political connections to redirect welfare funds to his alma mater.

In his opening statement before the committee Tuesday, Favre claimed he was the victim of unscrupulous public officials and said he never knew he was receiving welfare funds.

“Sadly, I also lost an investment in a company that I believed was developing a breakthrough concussion drug I thought would help others, and I’m sure you’ll understand why it’s too late for me because I’ve recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s,” Favre said. “This is also a cause dear to my heart. Recently, the doctor, running the company pleaded guilty to taking TANF money for his own use.”

Favre has previously said in interviews that he suffers from memory loss likely due to repeated head injuries over the course of his career. The Parkinson’s diagnosis had not previously been disclosed.

Favre was invited to speak before the congressional committee by Chairman Republican Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri as part of a hearing that examines how states are falling short on using welfare to help families in need.

Favre repaid just over $1 million in state welfare money he accepted for speeches where he didn’t appear. It was unclear, however, how much Favre would say during the hearing because a Mississippi judge in 2023 put a gag order on him and others as part of the suit.

Favre has repeatedly denied knowing that the money came from welfare funds, though text messages obtained during discovery show otherwise, plaintiffs allege.

Brett Favre and the Mississippi Welfare Funds Scandal

Mississippi has ranked among the poorest states in the U.S. for decades, but only a fraction of its federal welfare money has been going to families. Instead, the Mississippi Department of Human Services allowed well-connected people to waste tens of millions of welfare dollars from 2016 to 2019, according to Mississippi Auditor Shad White and state and federal prosecutors.

Favre is not facing any criminal charges, but he is among more than three dozen defendants in a civil lawsuit the state filed in 2022. The suit demands repayment of money that was misspent through TANF.

White, a Republican, said in 2020 that Favre had improperly received $1.1 million in speaking fees from a nonprofit organization that spent welfare with approval from the state Department of Human Services. White said Favre did not show up for the speeches. Although Favre repaid the $1.1 million, he still owes nearly $730,000 in interest, White said.

The TANF money was to go toward a volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi. Favre agreed to lead fundraising efforts for the facility at his alma mater, where his daughter started playing on the volleyball team in 2017.

A nonprofit group called the Mississippi Community Education Center made two payments of welfare money to Favre Enterprises, the athlete’s business: $500,000 in December 2017 and $600,000 in June 2018.

Court records show that on Dec. 27, 2017, Favre texted the center’s director, Nancy New: “Nancy Santa came today and dropped some money off (two smiling emojis) thank you my goodness thank you.”

“Yes he did,” New responded. “He felt you had been pretty good this year!”

New pleaded guilty in April 2022 to charges of misspending welfare money, as did her son Zachary New, who helped run the nonprofit. They await sentencing and have agreed to testify against others.

Favre said he didn’t know the payments he received came from welfare funds and noted his charity had provided millions of dollars to poor kids in his home state of Mississippi and Wisconsin, where he played most of his career with the Green Bay Packers.

The union complained that Boeing publicized its latest offer to 33,000 striking workers without first bargaining with union negotiators.

“Boeing does not get to decide when or if you vote,” leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers district 751 told members Monday night.

“The company has refused to meet for further discussion; therefore, we will not be voting” on Friday, as Boeing insisted.

news Sep 13

Boeing warns strike will ‘jeopardize' recovery, hurt aircraft production

Boeing Co Sep 21

Boeing machinists on picket lines prepare for lengthy strike: ‘I can last as long as it takes'

Boeing said that after two days of talks last week with federal mediators failed to produce an agreement, “we presented a best and final offer that made significant improvements and addresses feedback from the union and our employees.”

The new offer is more generous than the one that was overwhelmingly rejected earlier this month. The company said the offer includes pay raises of 30% over four years, up from 25% in the first proposal. The union originally demanded 40% over three years.

The new offer — and labeling it a final one — demonstrates Boeing’s eagerness to end the strike that began Sept. 13. The company introduced rolling furloughs of non-unionized employees last week to cut costs during the strike.

The strikers face their own financial pressure to return to work. They received their final paychecks last week and will lose company-provided health insurance at the end of the month, according to Boeing.

The company said its new offer is contingent on members of the machinists’ union in the Pacific Northwest ratifying the contract by late Friday night, when the strike will be a little over two weeks old.

The union, which represents factory workers who assemble some of the company’s best-selling planes, waited several hours before pushing back Monday night.

“This proposal does not go far enough to address your concerns, and Boeing has missed the mark with this proposal,” the union told members. The group added that it will survey members about the new offer.

Boeing’s latest offer includes upfront pay raises of 12% plus three annual raises of 6% each.

It would double the size of ratification bonuses to $6,000. It also would keep annual bonuses based on productivity. In the rejected contract, Boeing sought to replace those payouts with new contributions to retirement accounts.

Boeing said average annual pay for machinists would rise from $75,608 now to $111,155 at the end of the four-year contract.

The new offer would not restore a traditional pension plan that Boeing eliminated about a decade ago. Striking workers cited pay and pensions as reasons why they voted 94.6% against the company’s previous offer.

Boeing also renewed a promise to build its next new airline plane in the Seattle area — if that project starts in the next four years. That was a key provision for union leaders, who recommended adoption of the original contract offer, but one that seemed less persuasive to rank-and-file members.

The strike is likely already starting to reduce Boeing’s ability to generate cash. The company gets much of its cash when it delivers new planes, but the strike has shut down production of 737s, 777s and 767s. Work on 787s continues with nonunion workers in South Carolina.

On Friday, Boeing began requiring thousands of managers and nonunion employees to take one week off without pay every four weeks under the temporary rolling furloughs. It also has announced a hiring freeze, reduced business travel and decreased spending on suppliers.

The money-saving measures are expected to last as long as the strike continues.

Jørgensen will appear before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions during a livestreamed hearing Tuesday starting at 10 a.m. ET.

The head of the committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has been vocal about his frustrations over how much Novo Nordisk charges Americans for both Ozempic (used to treat type 2 diabetes) and Wegovy (approved for weight loss).

“In general, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Same exact medicine sold in Canada, Europe is a fraction of what it is in the United States,” Sanders said in an interview Monday. “The result of that is that hundreds of thousands of people in this country who desperately need this product will not be able to afford it.” 

A previously released committee report showed that the cost of Wegovy is significantly less in European countries — from $140 a month in Germany to $92 a month in the United Kingdom. Americans pay about $1,349 a month for the exact same drug.

“It is clear that Novo Nordisk is ripping off the American people,” Sanders told NBC News in June.

In a statement Monday, Novo Nordisk defended its pricing structure.

“We appreciate that it is frustrating that each country has its own healthcare system, but making isolated and limited comparisons ignores” a “fundamental fact,” the company said. “Unfortunately, even when we lower our prices, too often patients in the United States don’t receive the savings — this is a problem.” 

A Department of Health and Human Services report in February found that in 2022, prices of all drugs in the U.S. — both brand name and generic — were nearly three time as high as in other wealthy countries.

The company also stated that Ozempic’s net price has gone down by 40% since it was introduced in the U.S. Wegovy, too, is “following a similar trajectory.” The net price is how much money a drug company makes from a drug after rebates and discounts.

In an interview with NBC News last month, Jørgensen defended the costs of both drugs by saying that it was actually saving taxpayer money by reducing health care costs associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes.

“If you look at just the cost of obesity in the U.S., it’s a disease that costs Americans more than $400 billion a year,” he said. “We are actually providing products that’s actually helping take that cost burden off.”

Sanders has also said that other pharmaceutical companies have claimed that they could make generic versions of Ozempic and Wegovy, which contain the same active ingredient, semaglutide, at a fraction of the cost. He has declined to name the companies.

Novo Nordisk holds the patent on semaglutide, so other companies aren’t able to make a generic version. That leaves Novo Nordisk — and ultimately Jørgensen — to answer questions about the price of its blockbuster drugs.

Berkeley Lovelace Jr. and Jane Weaver contributed

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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A new study shows that some members of the species Octopus cyanea maraud around the seafloor in hunting groups with fish, which sometimes include several fish species at once.

The research, published in the journal Nature on Monday, even suggests that the famously intelligent animals organized the hunting groups’ decisions, including what they should prey upon.

What’s more, the researchers witnessed the cephalopod species — often called the big blue or day octopus — punching companion fish, apparently to keep them on task and contributing to the collective effort.

Octopuses have often been thought to avoid other members of their species and prowl solo using camouflage. But the study suggests that some octopuses have surprisingly rich social lives — a finding that opens a new window into the marvels of undersea life. It’s an indication that at least one octopus species has characteristics and markers of intelligence that scientists once considered common only in vertebrates.

“I think sociality, or at least attention to social information, is way more deep-rooted in the evolutionary tree than we might think,” said Eduardo Sampaio, a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior and the lead author of the research.

“We are very similar to these animals,” he added. “In terms of sentience, they are at a very close level or closer than we think toward us.”

To understand the inner details of octopus lives, researchers dived for about a month at a reef off the coast of Eilat, Israel, and tracked 13 octopuses for a total of 120 hours using several cameras. The team followed the octopuses for 13 hunts, during which they observed groups of between two and 10 fish working with each octopus.

These hunting groups typically included several species of reef fish, such as grouper and goatfish. The octopuses did not appear to lead the groups, but they did punch at fish to enforce social order — most often at blacktip groupers.

“The ones that get more punched are the main exploiters of the group. These are the ambush predators, the ones that don’t move, don’t look for prey,” Sampaio said.

Octopuses would also punch fish to keep the group moving.

“If the group is very still and everyone is around the octopus, it starts punching, but if the group is moving along the habitat, this means that they’re looking for prey, so the octopus is happy. It doesn’t punch anyone,” Sampaio said.

The researchers think fish benefit from such hunting groups because an octopus can reach into crevices where prey hides and root out lunch. The octopus benefits, they believe, because it can simply follow the fish to food, rather than perform what the researchers call speculative hunting.

“For the octopus, it’s also an advantage because it doesn’t need to sample or go around the environment,” Sampaio said. “You can just look at the fish.”

After shooting their video, the researchers fed all of their hunting scenes into software that creates a three-dimensional representation, then used another program to track each animal and log its position in relation to others. The data allowed the researcher to measure how close the creatures remained to one another and which creatures anchored or pulled the group in one direction or another.

The data showed that a particular fish species, the blue goatfish, would roam off and lead the hunting groups in that direction, but the group of fish would linger if the octopus didn’t immediately follow.

The goatfish “are the ones exploring the environment and finding prey,” Sampaio explained. “The octopus is the decider of the group.”

The researchers did not see evidence that the creatures shared prey. All the species involved are generalists that eat crustaceans, fish and mollusks, but whoever was able to catch the prey got a meal.

Questions remain, however, including whether certain octopuses recognize or prefer to hunt with a favorite fish companion.

“Is there a recognition of the individual?” Sampaio said. “Do I want to follow the blue goatfish or do I want to follow Martha because I’ve hunted with Martha before?”

It’s also not clear if this social hunting behavior is something octopuses learn or if it’s innate.

“In my intuition, I think it’s something they learn, because the smaller octopuses seem to have a higher difficulty to collaborate with fish than the large ones,” Sampaio said.

Jonathan Birch, a professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics who studies animal sentience but was not involved in the new research, said he was impressed by the hours of video evidence the scientists collected and their careful coding of the video to quantify the relationships between the creatures.

“It’s an important step beyond what you get in nature documentaries, where individual behavior will get filmed,” Birch said.

He also appreciated that the study’s observations were made outside a laboratory setting, where a lot of animal cognition research takes place. Octopuses can be difficult to study outside their natural setting. “They just seem to be so much more expressive in the wild and be capable of so much more,” he said.

Some scientists subscribe to a theory of evolution called the social brain hypothesis, which says that primates and other animals evolved large brains to process social information and collaborate with others.

“Octopuses were seen as a problem case because they are intelligent and yet solitary, it was assumed, so researchers puzzled for a long time about what’s going on there,” Birch said.

That left two possibilities: Either octopuses indicated that there were paths to intelligence outside of social information, or scientists were missing a hidden piece of octopus lifestyles that fit the social intelligence theory.

“This study seems to shift the balance a bit towards that second theory,” Birch said. “For at least one species of octopus, there is quite a rich social life of a kind.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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• New Zealand scientists discover new ‘spookfish’ living deep in the Pacific

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Scientists said Tuesday they had discovered a new species of ghost shark that lives exclusively in the waters off Australia and New Zealand.

The Australasian Narrow-nosed Spookfish was found during research surveys in the Chatham Rise, an area of ocean floor to the east of New Zealand, according to the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) based in Auckland.

Ghost sharks, also known as chimaeras, are a group of cartilaginous fish closely related to sharks and rays. The newly discovered species has several distinctive features, including a long and narrow snout, broad pectoral fins, scale-free skin, and beak-like teeth.

They are largely confined to the ocean floor up to 2,600 meters (8,530 feet) deep, feeding off crustaceans such as shrimp and molluscs.

It was given the scientific name of Harriotta avia by NIWA Fisheries scientist Brit Finucci, in memory of her grandmother.

Previously, it was considered to be part of a single globally distributed species. But research later showed that it is genetically and morphologically different to its cousins.  

“Ghost sharks always surprise me!” Finucci told NBC News on Tuesday. “It just goes to show how little we know about our oceans, particularly the deep sea.”

Ghost sharks are “poorly studied” because of their remote living environment and cryptic nature, she said. This long-nosed spookfish was better researched among its kind as it is often observed on research surveys and is caught incidentally in commercial fisheries, Finucci said.

However, we still don’t know their lifespan, population size or role in the ecosystem, Finucci noted. “There’s still a lot to learn about ghost sharks!”

It had been suspected that this species may be different to those in other regions, but it took time to collect enough information to confirm that, Finucci said.

“We are still describing new species on a regular basis, and sometimes these discoveries have been right under our noses the whole time,” she said.

This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:

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• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs moved to same section of New York City jail housing as Sam Bankman-Fried

Sean “Diddy” Combs, who was arrested last week on allegations of sex trafficking and racketeering, is being housed in the same living space of a federal detention center in Brooklyn, New York, as disgraced former crypto exec Sam Bankman-Fried, three sources familiar with the matter tell NBC New York.

Combs and SBF, as Fried is commonly known, are both being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

The sources describe the unit as a barrack-style area currently housing about 18-20 inmates. These inmates range from high profile defendants, like Combs, to cooperators — inmates who may require special protection. 

The area is separate from the overall general population unit, but is common/shared living space, sources tell NBC New York.

Combs was denied bail last week as he awaits trial on the federal charges. The music mogul has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. He has remained in custody in New York City since his arrest Sept. 16 at his Manhattan hotel by federal agents.

Sean "Diddy" Combs Sep 18

Inside the New York City jail where Diddy is locked up: Violence, squalor and death

Sean "Diddy" Combs Sep 18

Sean ‘Diddy' Combs denied bail, judge cites possibility of witness tampering

“To his credit Mr. Combs has been nothing but cooperative with this investigation and he voluntarily relocated to New York last week in anticipation of these charges. Please reserve your judgment until you have all the facts,” a statement from his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo read at the time. “These are the acts of an innocent man with nothing to hide, and he looks forward to clearing his name in court.”

A spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said: “For privacy, safety, and security reasons the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) does not provide information about conditions of confinement, including housing assignments or internal security practices for any particular incarcerated individual. “

Bankman-Fried, 32, was found guilty of fraud in Nov. 2023 and sentenced to 25 years in prison by a judge in March 2024.

U.S. prosecutors accused Bankman-Fried and other top executives of looting customer accounts on the crypto exchange FTX to make risky investments, make millions of dollars of illegal political donations, bribe Chinese officials and buy luxury real estate in the Caribbean.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

“We can report now that the individual who scratched a slur onto another person is no longer enrolled at the College,” the private college said Sunday in a joint statement with the family of the victim, announcing its investigation of the on-campus incident, which happened at a gathering of men’s swim team members on Sept. 6.

The incident was first reported Wednesday by the student publication The Gettysburgian. A spokesperson for the college confirmed it, saying the accused and the victim were suspended from the swim team pending the outcome of an investigation.

The next day, college President Bob Iuliano decried the racist incident in a letter to the campus community.

“There is no place on this campus for words or actions that demean, degrade, or marginalize based on one’s identity and history,” Iuliano wrote. The victim’s family said in a statement The Gettysburgian published Friday that the incident happened at an informal gathering of swim team members on campus, where the no-longer-enrolled student is alleged to have used a box cutter to carve the N-word into the victim’s chest.

The victim’s family said that he was the only person of color at the gathering and that the alleged perpetrator was a trusted friend of his. It used the word “etch” to describe the transgression, calling it a “hate crime.”

The family, which said it wanted to keep the victim’s and its own identity private, decried the incident, saying letters of complaints about discrimination, harassment and “lack of due process” have been sent to state and local NAACP organizations, as well as to the Pennsylvania Commission on Human Relations.

Those entities, as well as spokespeople for the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Monday night.

The family said it’s aware it has the option of pushing for criminal prosecution, though prosecutors are free to pursue an investigation and a possible case regardless of a third party’s participation.

It hasn’t been made clear why the victim was suspended. The family said in its statement that the student was “dismissed,” not suspended, from participation.

College spokesperson Jamie Yates indicated the school is limited in what it can say until the investigation is complete but noted that the family’s joint statement with the college Sunday says the two parties have agreed to ongoing “conversations … about how most constructively to move forward.”

The Division III men’s swim team appears to be accustomed to more provincial headlines, including stories this year about how seven members were named to the All-Centennial Conference team or how four members were named to the Division III Academic All-District team, qualified by 3.5 or higher grade-point averages.

The college removed the team roster amid national attention, fearing for the safety of the student-athletes suddenly exposed to the national news cycle, Yates said by email.

Iuliano, the college’s president, defended the team’s culture and leadership Monday, saying its captains should be praised for reporting the incident to coaches.

“The student conduct investigation affirmed that the incident is not a byproduct of an unhealthy athletic team culture or a reflection on the team itself; rather, we see in the captains the measure of what it means to be a Gettysburgian by their notification to their coaches,” he said in the message to the campus community.

Iuliano said he hopes the storied college — founded nearly three decades before the Civil War, which made the town of Gettysburg famous, by a man who would both decry slavery as a national “sin” and come to own slaves through marriage before he freed some when he moved north — could learn a lesson from this month’s events.

He said he has asked the college’s chief diversity officer to lead an inquiry that should conclude with “concrete actions” to prevent such a thing in the future.

“We know there are lessons to be learned — lessons that must take into account our collective history,” Iuliano wrote Monday. “We know that those lessons won’t reveal themselves on their own.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The U.S. obesity rate is about 40%, according to a 2021-2023 survey of about 6,000 people. Nearly 1 in 10 of those surveyed reported severe obesity, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found. Women were nearly twice as likely as men to report severe obesity.

The overall obesity rate appeared to tick down vs. the 2017-2020 survey, but the change wasn’t considered statistically significant; the numbers are small enough that there’s mathematical chance they didn’t truly decline.

That means it’s too soon to know whether new treatments for obesity, including blockbuster weight-loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound, can help ease the epidemic of the chronic disease linked to a host of health problems, according to Dr. Samuel Emmerich, the CDC public health officer who led the latest study.

“We simply can’t see down to that detailed level to prescription medication use and compare that to changes in obesity prevalence,” Emmerich said. “Hopefully that is something we can see in the future.”

Most telling though, the results that show that the overall obesity rate in the U.S. has not changed significantly in a decade, even as the rate of severe obesity climbed from nearly 8% in the 2013-2014 survey to nearly 10% in the most recent one. Before that, obesity had increased rapidly in the U.S. since the 1990s, federal surveys showed.

Measures of obesity and severe obesity are determined according to body mass index, a calculation based on height and weight. People with a BMI of 30 are considered to have obesity; those with a BMI of 40 or higher have severe obesity. BMI is regarded as a flawed tool but remains widely used by doctors to screen for obesity.

“Seeing increases in severe obesity is even more alarming because that’s the level of obesity that’s most highly associated with some of the highest levels of cardiovascular disease and diabetes and lower quality of life,” said Solveig Cunningham, an Emory University global health professor who specializes in obesity.

Cunningham, who was not involved in the new study, said it’s not clear why rates of severe obesity are going up, or why they were higher among women. Factors could include the effects of hormones, the impact of childbearing or other causes that require further study, she said.

The new study also found that obesity rates varied by education. Almost 32% of people with a bachelor’s degree or higher reported having obesity, compared with about 45% of those with some college or a high school diploma or less.

The new report follows the release earlier this month of data from U.S. states and territories that showed that in 2023, the rate of obesity ranged widely by place, from a high of more than 41% of adults in West Virginia to a low of less than 24% of adults in Washington, D.C. Rates were highest in the Midwest and the South.

All U.S. states and territories posted obesity rates higher than 20%. In 23 states, more than 1 in 3 adults had obesity, the data showed. Before 2013, no state had a rate that high, said Dr. Alyson Goodman, who leads a CDC team focused on population health.

Color-coded U.S. maps tracking the change have gradually shifted from green and yellow, the hues associated with lower obesity rates, to orange and dark red, linked to higher prevalence.

“Sometimes, when you look at all that red, it’s really discouraging,” Goodman said.

But, she added, recent emphasis on understanding obesity as a metabolic disease and new interventions, such as the new class of weight-loss drugs, gives her hope.

The key is preventing obesity in the first place, starting in early childhood, Cunningham said. Even when people develop obesity, preventing additional weight gain should be the goal.

“It’s really hard to get obesity to reverse at the individual level and at the population level,” Cunningham said. “I guess it’s not surprising that we’re not seeing downward shifts in the prevalence of obesity.”

Rafa Nieves was 16 years old when he signed his first professional contract with the Detroit Tigers.

“All I wanted was to play baseball,” Nieves said. “I was just excited. This was a dream come true. Yeah, there’s some money involved, but, you know, coming from Venezuela, a third world country, at 16 years old, like, any sum of money is life-changing money. The signing bonus was around $100,000.”

Nieves went from being one of the best players in his home country to the “bottom of the barrel,” he says.

“The main goal is to make it to the major leagues, which only a very small percentage of players that even sign and make it to the pros make it to the big leagues.” Nieves said. “You just have to buckle up and find that consistency and that dedication. You have to stay motivated to work hard every day and try to stay healthy. Make sure that, you know, you put in the work.”

Nieves spent the next few years playing for the Detroit Tigers organization until 19, when a lower back injury sidelined his baseball career and the unexpected death of his father flipped his world upside down.

“I totally lost focus on my priorities, lost focus on on my goals,” said Nieves. “It was a perfect storm. I lost the motivation, the focus, everything. And then I got hurt, and then the team released me.”

Nieves went on to sign with the New York Yankees organization, but his game continued to suffer. “I was playing hurt,” he said. “I didn’t do really well. And everything like, I don’t know, I kind of, like, baseball became a second thought. I was in a dark place. Losing my dad was heartbreaking for me.”

Nieves spoke to NBC’s Bísness School about how he turned that grief into a successful nightlife career before pivoting to the sports agency world. The answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Bísness School: You decide to close the door on your baseball career chapter around 2002, and you have to make money somehow. So what do you do next to make a living?

Rafa Nieves: I remember, things in Venezuela were getting socially, economically and politically a little [challenging]. I decided to go to South Florida. I had friends that were going to University of Miami and Florida International University. I had a community there, so I wouldn’t be alone. And then eventually I had a cousin of mine who lived in Miami Beach, and her husband was a manager at the Loews Hotel, a luxury hotel on Collins Avenue. And she helped me get a job through him, as a front desk agent, just to pay the bills. And that led to me learning the hospitality industry. I went from working the front desk to also helping the concierge desk. And I realized that’s where the money was.

BS: You start building relationships with restaurants, lounges and nightclubs. When VIP guests come and ask for recommendations, you tell them where to go and earn a commission off that?

RN: Nobody was doing this in South Beach, so we did. Within two weeks we had a crazy amount of VIP bottle service tables that we were selling at these clubs. And eventually that led to working full-time at the nightclubs.

BS: One day in 2011, you’re in your living room in Miami, watching the MTV Video Music Awards. And you have an “aha” moment. Can you explain what you saw on TV?

RN: I met my wife in 2009. We were dating for two years. She lived here in California, and I lived in Florida. I knew that I wanted to marry her, and I was getting ready to propose. And if we got married, I’d have to leave Miami. I’d have to move to California, because she had a daughter. So I’m thinking, well, you know, what am I going to do career-wise if I move to Los Angeles? All these relationships and all this network that I built here in Miami is useless if I move somewhere else. And also, I remember a lot of people in my nightlife told me, like, if you’re going to get married, you need to get out of this industry. I remember the night of the VMAs, I was sitting on the couch with my girlfriend, now wife, and we were watching the VMAs. I remember vividly: I was watching Usher perform. And I said, well, I have two sets of skills. I have a background in baseball, what I’d done my whole life, even though I don’t, you know, use it anymore. But now I have a background also in hospitality, which is customer service and babysitting VIPs at the nightclub. And then it was like a light bulb went on in my head. What I do in nightlife is similar to what agents do, helping manage high-net-worth, high-maintenance people.

Watch the full conversation with Rafa Nieves to learn how he went from professional baseball player to professional agent, what he wrote in the cold email that got him his first job and how he landed at one of the most respected sports agencies.

Biden used his wide-ranging address to speak to the need to end the Middle East conflict and the 17-month-old civil war in Sudan and to highlight U.S. and Western allies’ support for Kyiv since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. He also raised concern over artificial intelligence and its potential to be used for repression.

His appearance before the international body also offers Biden one of his last high-profile opportunities as president to make the case to keep up robust support for Ukraine, which could be in doubt if former President Donald Trump, who has scoffed at the cost of the war, defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in November. Biden insisted that despite global conflicts, he remains hopeful for the future.

“I’ve seen a remarkable sweep of history,” Biden said. “I know many look at the world today and see difficulties and react with despair, but I do not.”

“We are stronger than we think” when the world acts together, he added.

Biden came to office promising to rejuvenate U.S. relations around the world and to extract the U.S. from “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq that consumed American foreign policy over the last 20 years.

“I was determined to end it, and I did,” Biden said of the Afghanistan exit, calling it a “hard decision but the right decision.” He acknowledged that it was “accompanied by tragedy” with the deaths of 13 American troops and hundreds of Afghans in a suicide bombing during the chaotic withdrawal.

But his foreign policy legacy may ultimately be shaped by his administration’s response to two of the biggest conflicts in Europe and the Middle East since World War II.

“There will always be forces that pull our countries apart,” Biden said, rejecting “a desire to retreat from the world and go it alone.” He said, “Our task, our test, is to make sure that the forces holding us together are stronger than the forces pulling us apart.”

The Pentagon announced Monday that it was sending a small number of additional U.S. troops to the Middle East to supplement the roughly 40,000 already in the region, because of the rising tensions. All the while, the White House insists Israel and Hezbollah still have time to step back and de-escalate.

“Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest,” Biden said, and despite escalating violence, a diplomatic solution is the only path to peace.

Biden had a hopeful outlook for the Middle East when he addressed the U.N. just a year ago. In that speech, Biden spoke of a “sustainable, integrated Middle East” coming into view.

At the time, economic relations between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors were improving with implementation of the Abraham Accords that Israel signed with Bahrain, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.

Biden’s team helped resolve a long-running Israel-Lebanon maritime dispute that had held back gas exploration in the region. And Israel-Saudi normalization talks were progressing, a game-changing alignment for the region if a deal could be landed.

“I suffer from an oxymoron: Irish optimism,” Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when they met on the sidelines of last year’s U.N. gathering. He added, “If you and I, 10 years ago, were talking about normalization with Saudi Arabia … I think we’d look at each other like, ‘Who’s been drinking what?’”

Eighteen days later, Biden’s Middle East hopes came crashing down. Hamas militants stormed into Israel killing 1,200, taking some 250 hostage, and spurring a bloody war that has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians in Gaza and led the region into a complicated downward spiral.

Now, the conflict is threatening to metastasize into a multi-front war and leave a lasting scar on Biden’s presidential legacy.

Israel and Hezbollah traded strikes again Tuesday as the death toll from a massive Israeli bombardment climbed to nearly 560 people and thousands fled from southern Lebanon. It’s the deadliest barrage since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war.

Israel has urged residents of southern Lebanon to evacuate from homes and other buildings where it claimed Hezbollah has stored weapons, saying the military would conduct “extensive strikes” against the militant group.

Hezbollah, meanwhile, has launched dozens of rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in retaliation for strikes last week that killed a top commander and dozens of fighters. Dozens were also killed last week and hundreds more wounded after hundreds of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah militants exploded, a sophisticated attack that was widely believed to have been carried out by Israel.

Israel’s leadership launched its counterattacks at a time of growing impatience with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah’s persistent launching of missiles and drones across the Israel-Lebanon border after Hamas started the war with its brazen attack on Oct. 7.

Biden reiterated his call on the parties to agree to a cease-fire and hostage release deal, saying it’s time to “end this war” — even as hopes for such a deal are fading as the conflict drags on.

Biden, in his address, called for the sustainment of Western support for Ukraine in its war with Russia. Biden helped galvanize an international coalition to back Ukraine with weapons and economic aid in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s February 2022 assault on Ukraine.

“We cannot grow weary,” Biden said. “We cannot look away.”

Biden has managed to keep up American support in the face of rising skepticism from some Republican lawmakers — and Trump — about the cost of the conflict.

At the same time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pressing Biden to loosen restrictions on the use of Western-supplied long-range missiles so that Ukrainian forces can hit deeper in Russia.

So far Zelenskyy has not persuaded the Pentagon or White House to loosen those restrictions. The Defense Department has emphasized that Ukraine can already hit Moscow with Ukrainian-produced drones, and there is hesitation on the strategic implications of a U.S.-made missile potentially striking the Russian capital.

Putin has warned that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its NATO allies if they allow Ukraine to use the long-range weapons.

Biden and Harris are scheduled to hold separate meetings with Zelenskyy in Washington on Thursday. Ukrainian officials were also trying to arrange a meeting for Zelenskyy with Trump this week.

The president also sounded an alarm about the rapid advances in artificial intelligence development, particularly around disinformation, respect for human life and the potential exploitation by totalitarian powers. He told the world leaders, “There may well be no greater test of our leadership than how we deal with A.I.”

“We must make certain that the awesome capabilities of A.I. will be used to uplift and empower everyday people, not to give dictators more powerful shackles on the human spirit,” he added.

Later, he held a bilateral meeting with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and joined other world leaders in an event highlighting their partnership to combat the production and distribution of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which drive tens of thousands of deaths in the U.S. annually alone.

Biden struck a wistful tone in his remarks, peppering his speech with references to his first time attending the General Assembly more than 50 years ago, and quoting Irish poetry.

Biden held up his decision to step aside up as an instructive moment as he addressed a gathering that has no small share of totalitarian and nondemocratic leaders.

“Some things are more important than staying in power,” Biden said. “It’s your people that matter the most. Never forget, we are here to serve the people. Not the other way around.”

Miller reported from Washington. AP writer Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

With the two sides on the brink of all-out war, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets into Israel on Tuesday, targeting an explosives factory and sending families into bomb shelters.

Families that fled southern Lebanon flocked to Beirut and the coastal city of Sidon, sleeping in schools turned into shelters, as well as in cars, parks and along the beach. Some sought to leave the country, causing a traffic jam at the border with Syria.

Issa Baydoun fled the village of Shihine when it was bombed and drove to Beirut with his extended family. They slept in vehicles on the side of the road because the shelters were full.

“We struggled a lot on the road just to get here,” said Baydoun, who rejected Israel’s contention that it hit only military targets. “We evacuated our homes because Israel is targeting civilians and attacking them.”

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Volunteers cooked meals for displaced families at an empty Beirut gas station that first became a hub for relief after a devastating port explosion in 2020.

Israel said late Tuesday that fighter jets carried out “extensive strikes” on Hezbollah weapons and rocket launchers across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa region to the north.

Asked about the duration of Israel’s operations in Lebanon, military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a news conference that it aims to keep them “as short as possible, that’s why we’re attacking with great force. At the same time, we must be prepared for it to take longer.”

Tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have steadily escalated over the last 11 months. Hezbollah has been firing rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza and its ally Hamas, a fellow Iran-backed militant group.

Israel has responded with increasingly heavy airstrikes and the targeted killing of Hezbollah commanders while threatening a wider operation.

Israel said a strike in Beirut Tuesday had killed Ibrahim Kobeisi, who it said was a top Hezbollah commander with the group’s rocket and missile unit. Military officials said Kobeisi was responsible for launches towards Israel and planned a 2000 attack in which three Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and killed. Hezbollah later confirmed his death.

It was the latest in a string of assassinations and setbacks for Hezbollah, the strongest political and military actor in Lebanon and widely considered the top paramilitary force in the Arab world.

Lebanon’s Health Ministry said six people were killed and 15 were wounded in the strike in a southern Beirut suburb, an area where Hezbollah has a strong presence. The country’s National News Agency said the attack destroyed three floors of a six-story apartment building.

The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees in Lebanon said one of its staffers and her young son were among those killed Monday in the Bekaa region, while a cleaner under contract was killed in a strike in the south.

Hezbollah said its missile attacks Tuesday targeted eight sites in Israel, including an explosives factory in Zichron Yaakov, 37 miles from the border. It fired 300 rockets, injuring six soldiers and civilians, most of them lightly, according to Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman.

The renewed exchange came after Monday’s barrages racked up the highest death toll in any single day in Lebanon since Israel and Hezbollah fought a bruising monthlong war in 2006.

On Tuesday, mourners carried 11 bodies through the streets of the Lebanese village of Saksakieh, some 25 miles north of the Lebanon-Israel border, including those of four women, an infant and a 7-year-old girl. All were killed in Israel’s bombardment of the village Monday.

Some of the bodies were draped in Hezbollah flags, others wrapped in black clothes. A wreath of flowers was placed on top of the smallest one.

Mohammad Halal, father of 7-year-old Joury Halal, said his daughter was an “innocent child martyr.”

“She is a martyr for the sake of the south and Palestine,” Halal said and defiantly stated his allegiance to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Israel said it targeted sites where Hezbollah had stored weapons. Data from American fire-tracking satellites analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press showed the wide range of Israeli airstrikes aimed at southern Lebanon, covering an area of over 650 square miles.

NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System typically is used to track U.S. wildfires, but can also be used to track the flashes and burning that follow airstrikes. Data from Monday showed significant fires across southern Lebanon and in the Bekaa Valley.

The Lebanese Health Ministry said at least 564 people have been killed in Israeli strikes since Monday, including 50 children and 94 women, and that more than 1,800 have been wounded — a staggering toll for a country still reeling from a deadly attack on communication devices last week.

Nearly a year of fighting between Hezbollah and Israel had displaced tens of thousands of people on both sides of the border before this week’s escalation. Israel has vowed to do whatever it takes to ensure its citizens can return to their homes in the north, while Hezbollah has said it will keep up its rocket attacks until there is a cease-fire in Gaza, which appears increasingly remote.

The Israeli military says it has no immediate plans for a ground invasion but is prepared for one. It has moved thousands of troops who had been serving in Gaza to the northern border. It says Hezbollah has some 150,000 rockets and missiles, including some capable of striking anywhere in Israel, and that the group has fired some 9,000 rockets and drones since last October.

Israel said its warplanes struck 1,600 Hezbollah targets Monday, destroying cruise missiles, long- and short-range rockets and attack drones, including weapons concealed in private homes.

Monday’s escalation came after a particularly heavy exchange of fire Sunday, when Hezbollah launched around 150 rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

Last week, thousands of communications devices used mainly by Hezbollah members exploded in different parts of Lebanon, killing 39 people and wounding nearly 3,000, many of them civilians. Lebanon blamed Israel, but Israel did not confirm or deny responsibility.

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Hurricane warnings were issued for the northwestern Florida coastline and part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Hurricane watches were issued for parts of western Cuba and Florida, including Tampa Bay, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. A tropical storm warning was issued for parts of Cuba and Florida’s southwestern coastline, including the Florida Keys.

The storm was 150 miles south of the western tip of Cuba, had sustained winds of 50 mph and was moving northwest at 12 mph. It was expected to strengthen into Hurricane Helene on Wednesday as it approached the Gulf Coast and could become a major hurricane Thursday.

In the U.S., federal authorities are positioning generators, food and water, along with search-and-rescue and power restoration teams, as President Joe Biden declared an emergency in Florida.

Ahead of the storm’s arrival on the state’s Gulf Coast as soon as late Thursday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis increased the counties included in the high-risk area Tuesday from 41 to 61.

The tropical storm prompted NASA and SpaceX to bump Thursday’s planned astronaut launch to at least Saturday. And Florida A&M University postponed its upcoming college football game against Alabama A&M.

Because the storm is so massive, it is important not to look just at where it is tracking, warned Larry Kelly, a specialist at the hurricane center, as around 10 Florida counties urged or ordered evacuations.

“It’s going to be a very large system with impacts across all of Florida,” he said. “Stay up to date with the latest forecast and heed your local officials.”

Hal Summers, a restaurant worker in Mexico Beach, Florida, needed no reminding after he barely survived Hurricane Michael in 2018. DeSantis has said Helene is reminiscent of that Category 5 hurricane, which rapidly intensified and caught residents off guard before plowing a destructive path across the western Florida Panhandle.

When it hit, Summers waded with his cat in his arms as waters began rising rapidly in his parents’ house. Their house and his home were destroyed.

“That was such a traumatic experience that that is not the place I needed to be for myself,” he said Tuesday as he evacuated with a friend to Marianna, a town farther inland.

If Tropical Storm Helene follows the same paths as two previous hurricanes that hit Florida in the past year or so, the state will have a quicker recovery and won’t take as big an economic hit, Florida’s chief financial officer said Tuesday.

That’s because Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida in August 2023, and Hurricane Debby, which came ashore last August, took down vulnerable structures and trees which would have caused debris, said Jimmy Patronis, Florida’s chief financial officer.

Helene is expected to move over deep, warm waters, fueling its intensification. People in regions under watches and warnings should be prepared to lose power and should have enough food and water for at least three days, forecasters warned.

Helene, the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, could strengthen into a major Category 3 hurricane — with winds of at least 111 mph — before approaching the northeastern Gulf Coast. Since 2000, eight major hurricanes have made landfall in Florida, according to Philip Klotzbach, a Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

Given the anticipated large size, storm surge, wind and rain will extend far from the center of the expected storm, especially on the eastern side. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency. And states as far inland as Tennessee, Kentucky and Indiana could see rainfall associated with the storm.

A storm surge warning was in effect for Florida’s Tampa Bay, Charlotte Harbor, and from Indian Pass south to Flamingo. Florida and Georgia’s eastern coasts, from Palm Beach to the Savannah River, were under a tropical storm watch.

A tropical storm warning for Grand Cayman was dropped. Authorities urged people to stay indoors as the storm moved away and said crews would soon fan out to assess damage.

The sun shone Tuesday in Tarpon Springs, Florida, but residents already filled sandbags as they braced for potential flooding.

Officials in the Cayman Islands closed schools, airports and government offices as strong winds knocked out power in some areas of Grand Cayman, while heavy rain and waves as high as 10 feet unleashed flooding.

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Many in Cuba worried about the storm, whose tentacles are expected to reach the capital of Havana, which is struggling with a severe shortage of water, piles of uncollected garbage and chronic power outages.

Helene is expected to slip between Cuba and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula early Wednesday and then head north across the Gulf of Mexico.

Up to 8 inches of rain is forecast for western Cuba and the Cayman Islands with isolated totals of 12 inches. Up to 6 inches of rain is expected for the eastern Yucatan, with isolated totals of more than 8 inches.

Heavy rainfall also was forecast for the southeastern U.S. starting Wednesday, threatening flash and river flooding, according to the National Hurricane Center. Up to 8 inches of rain was forecast for the region, with isolated totals of 12 inches.

A storm surge of up to 15 feet was forecast from Ochlockonee River, Florida, to Chassahowitzka, and up to 10 feet from Chassahowitzka to Anclote River and from Indian Pass to Ochlockonee River.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to Nov. 30. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average Atlantic hurricane season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures. It forecast 17 to 25 named storms, with four to seven major hurricanes of Category 3 or higher.

In the Pacific, former Hurricane John killed two people after it barreled into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, blowing tin roofs off houses, triggering mudslides and toppling scores of trees, officials said Tuesday.

If carried out as planned, the executions in Alabama, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas will mark the first time in more than 20 years — since July 2003 — that five were held in seven days, according to the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, which takes no position on capital punishment but has criticized the way states carry out executions.

The first execution was carried out on Friday in South Carolina, and if the other four scheduled this week proceed, the United States will have reached 1,600 executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976, said Robin Maher, the center’s executive director.

“Two on a single day is unusual, and four on two days in the same week is also very unusual,” Maher said.

Here are some things to know about executions set this week across the country.

How did 5 executions get set for a 1-week span?

Experts say five executions being scheduled within one week is simply an anomaly that resulted from courts or elected officials in individual states setting dates around the same time after inmates exhausted their appeals.

“I’m not aware of any reason other than coincidence,” said Eric Berger, a law professor at the University of Nebraska with expertise in the death penalty and lethal injection.

Berger said some factors can result in a backlog of executions, such as a state’s inability to obtain the lethal drugs necessary to carry them out, which happened in South Carolina, or a moratorium that resulted from botched executions, like what happened in Oklahoma.

South Carolina

The first of the five executions took place on Friday when South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death for the 1997 killing of a convenience store clerk during a robbery. It was South Carolina’s first execution in 13 years, an unintended delay caused by the inability of state prison officials to obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections. To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using a single sedative, pentobarbital.

Alabama

Alabama on Thursday is preparing to carry out the nation’s second execution ever using nitrogen gas after becoming the first state to use the new procedure in January. Alan Miller is set to die by the process in which a mask is placed over the inmate’s head that forces the inmate to inhale pure nitrogen. Miller, who was given a reprieve in 2022 after his execution was called off when officials were unable to connect an intravenous line, was sentenced to die after being convicted of killing three men during back-to-back workplace shootings in 1999.

Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas

On Tuesday, Texas is scheduled to execute Travis Mullis, a man with a long history of mental illness who has repeatedly sought to waive his right to appeal his death sentence. Mullis was sentenced to death for killing his 3-month-old son in January 2008. Mullis’ attorneys did not plan to file any appeals to try and stay his lethal injection.

Also on Tuesday in Missouri, Marcellus Williams is set to receive a lethal injection for the 1998 stabbing death of a woman in the St. Louis suburb of University City. Williams’ attorneys argued on Monday that the state Supreme Court should halt his execution over alleged procedural errors in jury selection and the prosecution’s alleged mishandling of the murder weapon. But the state’s high court rejected those arguments, and Gov. Mike Parson denied Williams’ clemency request, paving the way for his execution to proceed.

In Oklahoma, Emmanuel Littlejohn is set to receive a lethal injection on Thursday after being sentenced to die for his role in the 1992 shooting death of a convenience store owner during a robbery. Littlejohn has admitted to his role in the robbery, but claims he did not fire the fatal shot. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board voted 3-2 last month to recommend Gov. Kevin Stitt spare Littlejohn’s life, but the governor has yet to make a clemency decision.

Across the country, including in some of the nation’s presidential swing states, new or recently altered state laws are changing how Americans will vote, tally ballots, and administer and certify November’s election.

It can be a challenge to keep track of these 11th-hour changes, especially since state election processes already vary so widely. Even more changes are looming in some states, with Election Day on Nov. 5 now just weeks away. Several states already have started sending out mail ballots, and in some states, voters have begun casting ballots in person.

“Last-minute changes to election rules — whether from a state legislature, an election authority or a court — can lead to confusion for voters and election officials,” Megan Bellamy, vice president of law and policy for the Voting Rights Lab, said in an email response. “Election season is underway. Lawmakers, administrative bodies and courts must recognize that.”

Here’s a look at some of the election processes that are new or have been recently modified.

New hand-counting requirements

Georgia and Arizona will both require election workers to hand-count ballots at polling sites on Election Day. Election officials say it could delay the reporting of results.

The Georgia State Election Board passed its new rule on Friday. It requires that the number of ballots — not the number of votes — be counted by hand at each polling place by three separate poll workers until all three counts are the same.

Georgia voters make selections on touch-screen voting machines that print out paper ballots. Those ballots include a list of the selections so voters can verify their accuracy and a QR code that is read by a scanner to tally the votes.

Proponents say the new hand-count rule is needed to make sure the number of paper ballots matches the electronic tallies on scanners, check-in computers and voting machines. The three workers will have to count the ballots in piles of 50, and the poll manager needs to explain and fix, if possible, any discrepancies, as well as document them.

The rule goes against the advice of the state attorney general’s office, the secretary of state’s office and an association of county election officials. Critics worry it could delay the reporting of election night results, undermining public confidence in the process.

A similar change to state law this year in Arizona is also likely to cause delayed results in the swing state this fall. It requires counties to hand count ballot envelopes that are dropped off at polling centers on Election Day before the ballots are tabulated.

After the July primary, Maricopa County Elections spokesperson Jennifer Liewer said the new step resulted in a roughly 30-minute delay in reporting the county’s results, and said the impact could be greater in the general election “if we have hundreds of thousands of ballots dropped off.”

Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, estimates between 625,000 and 730,000 voters will drop off their ballots on Nov. 5.

JP Martin, a spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a Democrat, said in an email that the ballot counting mandate will “require considerable time, particularly since poll workers have already completed a 12-15-hour shift.”

Changes for early and mailed ballots

Chaos and disinformation about mail-in ballots and drop boxes have prompted partisan disagreements — and new rules — in several states over how these accessible voting methods should be used.

In Wisconsin, the then-conservative majority state Supreme Court outlawed drop boxes in 2022. But a new liberal majority on the court made them legal again in July. Some communities opened them for the state’s August primary, but more will be in use for November.

Their use in Wisconsin is voluntary and some conservative towns have opted against using drop boxes, citing security concerns. The state’s two most heavily Democratic cities, Milwaukee and Madison, used them in August and will again in November.

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, issued a directive to county election boards in August that said only a voter can drop their personal ballot in a drop box. Anyone who assists someone else must return that ballot inside the county board office and complete an attestation form.

In Pennsylvania, a court battle is pending at the state Supreme Court that could decide whether counties must count provisional ballots cast by voters whose mail-in ballots were rejected for relatively minor mistakes, such as not inserting the ballot into an inner secrecy envelope. Practices vary by county and state law is silent on it. Republicans have argued that nothing in state law explicitly allows a voter to cast a provisional ballot in place of a rejected mail-in ballot.

Separately, the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court earlier this month threw out a case on a technicality after a lower court had ruled that rejecting mail-in ballots for “meaningless and inconsequential paperwork errors” — such as a missing handwritten date — violates the constitutional right to vote. As a result, counties are expected to continue the practice of disqualifying those ballots. Some counties — primarily Democratic ones — strive to help voters fix those errors or cast a provisional ballot instead.

This is the first presidential election since Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature made a series of changes to mail balloting in 2021. While those aren’t recent changes, their impact could be significant this year in a state that traditionally has had robust interest in voting by mail. One change makes a voter’s request for a mail ballot valid only for the next general election, rather than two general election cycles, meaning voters will have to reapply. Requesting a mail ballot also now requires a driver’s license number, state ID number or last four digits of a Social Security number.

Verifying a voter’s identity

In North Carolina, the State Board of Elections last month voted that students and staff at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill could show digital identifications on their smartphones to qualify to vote under the state’s recently implemented photo voter ID law.

It marked the first such digital ID the board has approved. Republican groups sued, contending that state law only allows physical cards.

A trial judge last week refused to block its use. Republicans have since filed an appeal notice. Only mobile IDs issued by UNC-Chapel Hill on Apple phones have been approved for use.

In Arkansas, a federal appeals court decision last week reinstated a rule that bans electronic signatures for voter registration. The state Board of Election Commissioners approved the rule in April, saying the state’s constitution allows only certain agencies, and not elections officials, to accept electronic signatures. Under the rule, voters will have to register by signing their name with a pen.

It was adopted after nonprofit group Get Loud Arkansas helped register voters using electronic signatures. The board said the rule was needed to create uniformity across the state.

The board’s director asked county clerks to identify any registration documents submitted using electronic signatures after the appeals court decision and make every effort to contact the voters as soon as possible to give them the chance to correct their application.

After the votes are in

Election administration doesn’t stop when the polls close, and a few states will have new processes in the post-election period.

The same Georgia election board that ordered counties to hand count the number of paper ballots had just weeks earlier passed new rules related to certification of the vote. One change provides for a “reasonable inquiry” before county election officials certify results, without defining what that means. Another allows county election officials “to examine all election-related documentation created during the conduct of elections.”

Democrats have sued to block the new rules, saying they could be used by local officials who want to refuse certification if they don’t like the election results.

In New Hampshire, Gov. Chris Sununu signed legislation in July that establishes postelection audits. It took effect in time for New Hampshire’s late state primary on Sept. 10 and will apply to general elections.

The audits allow the secretary of state’s office to check that electronic vote-counting equipment functioned properly. Ten polling locations were chosen at random.

The audit of electronic ballot counting devices was determined successful by the appointed audit team, with all results within expected margins.

In Nebraska, former President Donald Trump’s allies were pushing for the state to change how it allocates electoral votes to prevent Vice President Kamala Harris from potentially claiming one of them by carrying the state’s congressional district for the Omaha area. But that effort appears doomed because a Republican state senator said he wouldn’t support it, denying backers the two-thirds majority they would need to get it through the Legislature and into law before the Nov. 5 election.

“After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change,” state Sen. Mike McDonnell of Omaha said Monday.

Maine is the only other state that allocates Electoral College votes by congressional district.

___

Associated Press statehouse reporters across the country contributed to this report.

It came ashore near the town of Punta Maldonado late Monday night as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (190 kph). John’s rapid intensification made authorities rush to keep pace and warn people of its potential destruction.

“Seek higher ground, protect yourselves and do not forget that life is the most important thing; material things can be replaced. We are here,” Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador wrote on the social media platform X.

By early Tuesday, John had weakened to a Category 2 hurricanes with 100 mph (160 kph) maximum sustained winds, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center. It was expected to batter Punta Maldonado and the nearby tourist hubs Acapulco and Puerto Escondido before being weakened over the high terrain inland.

The center said before landfall that “life-threatening” storm surges and flash floods were already ravaging the Pacific coast near Oaxaca.

The unexpected surge in strength caught scientists, authorities and residents of the area by surprise, something AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Matt Benz attributed to warmer oceans, which add fuel to the hurricanes.

As a result, surprise surges in hurricanes’ strength have become increasingly common, Benz said.

“These are storms that we haven’t really experienced before,” he said. “Rapid intensification has occurred more frequently in modern times as opposed to back in the historical record. So that’s telling us there’s something going on there.”

Residents were tense in Oaxaca’s coastal cities as the forecast shifted and authorities responded.

Laura Velázquez, the federal coordinator of civil protection, told residents of Pacific coastal cities they should evacuate their homes and head to shelters in order to “protect theirs and their family’s lives.”

“It’s very important that all citizens in the coastal zone … take preventive measures,” Velázquez said.

Ana Aldai, a 33-year-old employee of a restaurant on the shores of the tourist hub Puerto Escondido, said businesses in the area began closing after authorities ordered the suspension of all work on the area’s main beaches.

The governments of Guerrero and Oaxaca states said classes would be suspended in a number of coastal zones on Tuesday.

Oaxaca’s governor said the state government had evacuated 3,000 people and set up 80 shelters. It also said it sent out 1,000 military and state personnel to address the emergency.

Videos on social media from Puerto Escondido showed flip-flop-clad tourists walking through heavy rain and fishermen pulling their boats out of the water. Strong rains in previous days have already left some roads in the region in a precarious position.

Aldai said she was “a little bit distressed” because notice from authorities came quickly. “There was no opportunity to make the necessary purchases. That also distresses us,” she said.

Benz, the meteorologist, expressed concern that the storm could slow once it hits land, leaving the storm hovering over the coastal zone, which could cause even greater damage.

The hurricane is bleak news for the region, which last year was walloped by Otis, a similar rapidly intensifying hurricane.

Otis devastated the resort city of Acapulco, where residents had little warning of the strength of what was about to hit them. One of the most rapidly intensifying hurricanes ever seen, scientists at the time said it was a product of changing climate conditions.

Otis blew out power in the city for days, left bodies scattered on the coast and desperate family members searching for lost loved ones. Much of the city was left in a state of lawlessness and thousands scavenged in stores, scrambled for food and water.

The government of López Obrador received harsh criticism for its slow response to Otis, but authorities have since pledged to pick up their speed.

President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum said her government planned to work on improving an early alert system, similar to what the country has with earthquakes.

Through Thursday, John is expected to produce 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of rain across coastal areas of Chiapas state with more in isolated areas. In areas along and near the Oaxaca coast to southeast Guerrero, between 25 and 50 centimeters (10 and 20 inches) of rain with isolated higher totals can be expected through Thursday.

“You’re going to feel the impacts of the storm probably for the next couple of weeks to a couple of months,” meteorologist Benz added.

Warren Jones Crazybull, 64, of Sandpoint, made at least nine threatening phone calls to Trump’s home on July 31, according to a criminal complaint and affidavit that was first reported Monday by Forbes.

Mar-a-Lago security received a phone call from a phone number with the caller ID “Warren Jones,” and Crazybull made several statements, including “Find Trump…I am coming down to Bedminster tomorrow. I am going to down him personally and kill him,” the court filings said.

Bedminster, New Jersey, is the location of a Trump National Golf Club.

Mar-a-Lago security told the Secret Service that eight additional phone calls making threats were received from the same number, the court documents said.

A Facebook page alleged to belong to Crazybull included more threats of violence toward Trump while also referring to Jeffrey Epstein, “John John Kennedy Jr” and a “shadow government.”

He was arrested Aug. 1 and indicted Aug. 20 in federal court in Idaho. He pleaded not guilty to one count of making threats against a former president.

A trial is scheduled for Oct. 28.

Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung blamed Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats for the threats.

“Kamala Harris and liberal Democrats are the ones who are deranged,” Cheung said in a statement Monday. “There have been two heinous assassination attempts on President Trump, and their violent rhetoric are directly to blame.”

Cheung called on Harris and Democrats to apologize.

“If the Democrats and Kamala Harris do not come out and apologize for their hateful rhetoric and tone down their attacks that have stoked the flames of violence, they are explicitly advocating for and inciting more bloodshed against President Trump,” Cheung said.

The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harris has condemned acts of political violence involving Trump.

“As we gather the facts, I will be clear: I condemn political violence. We all must do our part to ensure that this incident does not lead to more violence,” she said in a statement shortly after the apparent assassination attempt in West Palm Beach. “I am thankful that former President Trump is safe.”

According to the affidavit, Secret Service agents confirmed Crazybull’s identity through phone records and by comparing the voice on the threatening calls recorded by a Mar-a-Lago security employee with Crazybull’s voice on a video posted on his Facebook page.

The Secret Service determined his location using T-Mobile phone data, which located him in Montana, according to the filing.

An agent said in the affidavit that Crazybull appeared as if his thought processes were racing and confused and that he seemed “paranoid” in an interview with the Secret Service.

Crazybull said that he would not try to kill Trump but that he would “not let” him become president again, the affidavit said.

The calls described in the court documents were made about two weeks after the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, when a gunman shot Trump in his ear during a campaign rally.

Since then, a Florida man was arrested in connection with an incident at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Court documents in that case indicate that the man alleged to be behind the plot — Ryan Wesley Routh — described it as an “assassination attempt” in a letter. A judge in Florida ruled Monday that he would be held pending trial.

A Secret Service official said Monday that Trump’s security was being increased following “recent events.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The board of directors at SIGA Technologies terminated Dr. Jay Varma effective immediately, “other than for cause,” according to a Monday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

Varma was the company’s executive vice president and chief medical officer, the filing says. He was also on its board of directors.

A company spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. A spokesman for Varma would not comment.

The policies adopted in New York City while Varma was former mayor Bill de Blasio’s senior public health adviser, and an architect of the city’s vaccine strategy, attracted national attention after Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving was banned from playing basketball in New York City when he refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19.

Varma acknowledged the prohibited gatherings after a conservative podcaster posted video last week of what appeared to be hidden camera recordings that showed Varma describing them.

In a previous statement released by his spokesman, Varma did not dispute the authenticity of the videos but said they were secretly recorded, “spliced, diced and taken out of context.” The spokesman would not say how they were taken out of context.

In the recordings, Varma could be heard describing a “sex party” that he attended at a hotel with his wife and eight to 10 others in August 2020, and an indoor dance bash in July 2021 attended by more than 200 people.

Varma could be heard describing the first event as “just being naked with friends.”

At the time of the second event, New York state had increased the limit on outdoor gatherings from 200 to 500 people. Varma’s spokesman previously said he was a part-time City Hall consultant at the time and all participants were vaccinated.

“I served in City Hall between April 2020 — May 2021,” Varma said in the statement. “During that time, I participated in two private gatherings. I take responsibility for not using the best judgment at the time.”

Corky Siemaszko contributed.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The erstwhile retail giant renowned for its Blue Light Specials — featuring a flashing blue orb affixed to a pole enticing shoppers to a flash sale — is shuttering its last full-scale store in mainland United States.

The store, located in swank Bridgehampton, New York, on Long Island, is slated to close Oct. 20, according to Denise Rivera, an employee who answered the phone at the store late Monday. The manager wasn’t available, she said.

That will leave only a small Kmart store in Miami. It has a handful of stores in Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Transformco, the company that bought the assets of Sears and Kmart out of the bankruptcy of Sears Holdings in 2019, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.

In its heyday, there were more than 2,000 Kmarts in the U.S.

Struggling to compete with Walmart’s low prices and Target’s trendier offerings, Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002 — becoming the largest U.S. retailer to take that step — and announced it would close more than 250 stores.

A few years later, hedge fund executive Edward Lampert combined Sears and Kmart and pledged to return them to their former greatness. But the 2008 recession and the rising dominance of Amazon contributed in derailing that mission. Sears filed for Chapter 11 in 2018 and now has just a handful of stores left in the U.S., where it once had thousands.

Biden reflected on the underdog story the team, which represents both New York and New Jersey, carried through its 2023 season. Gotham’s squad went from last in the league to defeating all its naysayers in a single year.

“You never gave up, and you kept the faith, as my mother would say,” Biden said. “You retool the roster, hired a new coach, something clicked. And after a tough season, you’re the final team to make the playoffs. The saying goes, winners simply win.”

He also noted that last year’s NSWL final set a league record with 25,011 fans attending the championship game at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego.

“I think it’s fair to say everyone — everyone — watches women’s sports,” Biden said.

Biden then welcomed to the stage former U.S. women’s national soccer team star Ali Krieger, who played with Gotham until her retirement last year. He noted that he was the vice president the last time he saw Krieger, who had been part of the 2015 Women’s World Cup championship team.

Krieger spoke on behalf of her teammates, who she said were “deeply honored” to be the first in the NWSL to be invited to the White House for such an achievement.

“Reflecting on my career, I recall times when women’s soccer lacked coverage and support,” Krieger said. “Our progress since those days has been remarkable, from our humble beginnings to becoming champions. Both Gotham and the NWSL have seen tremendous growth with more fans, greater engagement and increased recognition.”

The work, however, is far from over, Krieger added. Every time the players touch the field, Krieger said, they keep in mind the young girls who dream of a future in sports.

Though Gotham FC is the first NSWL team to reach the White House, it is not the only women’s soccer team to be invited. Two other now-defunct leagues have been formed in the U.S. since 2000— the Women’s United Soccer Association and the Women’s Professional Soccer league.

Former President Barack Obama invited the Sky Blue FC with the WPS league to the White House in 2010, which was the New York and New Jersey team at the time. The league shut down two years later.

The NWSL has been praised for its investment in the sport, increasing viewership both in stadiums and through broadcast partnerships. In June, the NSWL reported that attendance was up 42 percent year-over-year by the league’s 12th season.

Its players’ union recently negotiated a new collective bargaining agreement that gave more control to athletes about where they play, eliminate the draft and give free agency to all players. The contract also doubles the league-minimum salary while expanding parental leave and child care benefits for players.

“This moment is not just about titles or trophies, it’s about paving the way for them being the first is historic, but it’s even more important that we ensure we are not the last,” Krieger said.

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The three men, Jason Carlson, 49, Sherell Allen, 48, and Luke Anaya, 41, are now in custody, facing charges including attempted murder, assault, false imprisonment and kidnapping, court records show.

The 45-year-old man told deputies he’d lived in the house in Jefferson County, just west of Denver, for only a few weeks when he overheard his three housemates talking about attacking him at about 2 a.m. on Sept. 15, the court records said.

The man tried to barricade the door, but the three busted it down, shooting him with rock salt loaded into “Airsoft-type firearms,” assaulting him and stepping on his neck until he went unconscious, the man told law enforcement.

The man said he was tortured for 14 hours before two other people showed up to the home and helped him. He was taken to a hospital.

Carlson, Allen and Anaya face cash bails between $150,000 to $300,000, and are being represented by the public defenders office, which does not comment on cases.

Carlson and Allen are due in court on Oct. 15, and Anaya on Tuesday.

Trump allies have pushed for a special legislative session intended for the Republican-controlled legislature to change Nebraska to a winner-take-all system instead of awarding electoral votes by congressional district.

“After deep consideration, it is clear to me that right now, 43 days from Election Day, is not the moment to make this change,” state Sen. Mike McDonnell wrote in a letter obtained by NBC News.

Nebraska GOP state Sen. Loren Lippincott, who sponsored the bill to move the state to a winner-take-all system, indicated Monday that McDonnell’s position means a special session to move the legislation is not expected this fall.

In response to questions about McDonnell’s statement, Lippincott emailed NBC News a draft of his weekly op-ed in local newspapers, which reads: “Governor Pillen did not want to call a special session unless he had assurances from 33 senators they would vote yes on the bill. That effort did not bear fruit. There will be no special session to address Winner Take All. I will be carrying this bill, again, next legislative session.”

Lippincott clarified via email that he has not heard directly from Pillen, but he expects the governor to weigh in later this week.

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“The time is clicking and and I don’t see a road forward for this, just based on what the governor said,” said Nebraska state Sen. Merv Riepe, a Republican who discussed the effort with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Trump last week.

Riepe told NBC News he had initially had concerns himself about changing the law so close to the election but said he would not stand in the way of fellow Republicans making the change.

Riepe said the initial change of Nebraska’s electoral college system in 1992 was made in hopes of having more media exposure and money spent in Omaha on presidential races. “I’ve heard some senators say, ‘well, let’s just wait and do it next year,’” he said. “And you’re kind of like, ‘are you nuts?’ It will mean nothing, because then you’re talking about waiting until ‘28. So it’s fundamentally, get it done now or don’t worry about it so much.”

McDonnell represents an Omaha-area state Senate district and is reportedly weighing a run for Omaha mayor. A former Democrat, he switched parties in April, becoming a Republican, after state Democrats censured him.

The developments appear to cap months of deliberations over whether Nebraska lawmakers could change the way the state apportions its electoral votes in a way that would benefit Trump.

Nebraska allocates its electoral votes by congressional district, and the swing district around Omaha has twice gone to Democrats in recent years, giving them one electoral vote from an otherwise ruby-red state.

But if lawmakers changed that to a winner-take-all model, Trump would be all but certain to win all of Nebraska’s electoral votes.

And there’s a plausible scenario in which that could determine who becomes the next president.

For example, if Vice President Kamala Harris were to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but lose every other swing state, she and Trump would be tied at 269 Electoral College votes under a winner-take-all setup in Nebraska with Trump winning the state. 

In that scenario, the race would be thrown to the U.S. House, where each state delegation would get one vote for president. Republicans hold a majority of delegations and are favored to retain it, even though the House majority could change hands after the November election.

However, if Nebraska did not change its apportionment mode and if Harris were to win Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin but lose every other swing state, she would win the presidential election with 270 electoral votes.

Nebraska Democrats lauded McDonnell’s announcement.

“Nebraska has a long and proud tradition of independence, and our electoral system reflects that by ensuring that the outcome of our elections truly represents the will of the people without interference,” Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb said.

“Senator McDonnell is standing strong against tremendous pressure from out-of-state interests to protect Nebraskans’ voice in our democracy. In this election and those to come, Nebraskans will continue to lead the way by electing leaders at every level who stand up for the people and respect our spirit of independence,” Kleeb added.

Last week, Graham, a Trump ally, met with Pillen and about two dozen Republican legislators to discuss how the state allocates its electoral votes, according to a source with direct knowledge of the trip.

Graham, acting on behalf of the Trump campaign, was working to encourage Pillen to call a special legislative session at which lawmakers could consider changing the state’s apportionment of electoral votes, the source told NBC News.

Proponents of the winner-take-all model would need 33 votes in the state Senate to overcome a filibuster to move forward with the change. While the state’s unicameral legislature is technically nonpartisan, Republicans do have a 33-seat majority thanks to McDonnell’s recent party flip. But that narrow margin means Republicans can’t move forward without him.

Pillen has said that he has not yet “received the concrete and public indication that 33 [state] senators would vote” for the winner-take-all system.

State lawmakers told the Nebraska Examiner last week that they estimated that the change had the support of 30 or 31 state senators, meaning they remained two to three votes short. McDonnell had been one of them. State Sen. Merv Riepe had been thought to be another. The Washington Post reported last week that Riepe now supports the change to a winner-take-all system.

The newfound interest in Nebraska’s Electoral College votes comes months after Republicans tried, and failed, to make the change this spring. Back then, a pressure campaign backed by Pillen, Trump and pro-Trump influencer Charlie Kirk fell short on procedural grounds, as it lacked support from enough senators to overcome a filibuster.

Ever since the state changed the way it allocated its Electoral College votes more than 30 years ago, lawmakers have repeatedly tried to change back to awarding all of Nebraska’s votes to the statewide winner. An effort to do so passed in 1995, but it was vetoed by the governor. Another effort fell just one vote short in 2016.

Maine is the only other state that does not have a winner-take-all system for electoral votes. But while Maine Democrats have discussed switching its system in response if Nebraska made a change, they appear to have run out of time to make a counter-move for 2024.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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He mostly minds his own business, leaves late at night, and comes back home early in the morning without bothering anyone, Bob Nesler and Susan Nesler said.

“He does leave piles of scat,” Bob Nesler said. “That’s about my biggest complaint.”

And that’s to be expected, as a black bear is living in the crawlspace under the Neslers’ home in the San Gabriel Valley foothills.

Bear sightings in the community on the southern edge of Angeles National Forest are not uncommon, which helps explain why the Neslers are not overly concerned about the bear they have named “Junior.”

The Neslers have been in contact with wildlife officials but said they only want “Junior” removed if it can be done humanely.

They’ve captured several photos on a motion-activated camera installed by California Fish and Wildlife agents that show what appears to be the face of an older large black bear. One video showed the bear lumbering down North Sunnyside Avenue on a cool September day.

“He comes in, apparently, around 5, 5:30 in the morning and leaves late at night,” Susan Nesler said. “He hasn’t caused any problems for us, other than we need to get him to leave, for safety’s sake.”

Fish and wildlife agents were in the neighborhood Monday.

“We would wait for the bear to leave the crawlspace,” said Kevin Howells, of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. “And then, I would work with the homeowner to maybe get that space boarded up with something more robust.”

Black bears, which can have different color coats, like to feed on plants, insects, nuts, berries and whatever else they think of as edible — such as the contents of trash bins. If food is scarce in their natural habitat, bears are likely to forage elsewhere, bringing them into Southern California foothill neighborhoods.

California’s black bear population has been on the rise over the last two decades, growing from an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 in the early 1980s to between 25,000 and 30,000 — and that’s a conservative estimate, according to the state department of fish and wildlife.

Black bears, recognized by their small, narrow heads and small ears, have coats that range in color from tan or brown to black. Females grow up to about 200 pounds and males can be a hefty 350 pounds with some giants weighing in at more than 600 pounds.

About half of the state’s bear population can be found in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and areas to the north and west. Only an estimated 10 percent of the black bear population inhabits central western and southwestern California.

Although its on the state flag, the fearsome grizzly bear no longer can be found in the California wild. The last grizzly bear observed in California was shot in the early 1920s.

Jill Biden made the announcement at this year’s Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting in New York, moments before the organization honored President Joe Biden with the 2024 Clinton Global Citizen Award.

“He’s provided a playbook for getting things done,” former President Bill Clinton, said as he presented the award. “We honor him today, not just for what he’s accomplished, but for the way he has done it.”

President Biden, standing next to his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Clinton Foundation Vice Chair Chelsea Clinton, joked, “This is what you call being trapped.”

In his short remarks, he then called Jill Biden’s announcement one of the most substantial of his administration.

The additional government spending will mainly come from the Department of Defense, which provides medical care to more than 230,000 active duty military women and nearly 2 million military retirees, as well as their family members. The research will focus on why these women experience endocrine, hematological and other immunity-related disorders twice as often as men.

“Women are really hungry for this kind of information,” Jill Biden said. “We don’t have the answers.”

Another change will take effect next week, with a new policy that includes women’s health at every step of the research funded by Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs, which funded 751 grants last year to study Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, lupus, orthopedic and musculoskeletal injuries, and various cancers.

The commitment was among the largest of the more than 100 expected at the two-day meeting of political, business and philanthropic leaders gathering to address some of the world’s most pressing issues. The Clintons have set this year’s theme as “What’s Working,” a way to look for potential solutions and effective programs in tumultuous times.

“You don’t look at a problem and say, ‘That’s impossible,” Bill Clinton said in his opening remarks. “You don’t just throw up your hands. You roll up your sleeves.”

An example of that strategy came from the announcement that a wide-ranging group of 15 nonprofits, humanitarian aid organizations and other funders will join forces to address the humanitarian crisis in Sudan following more than a year of conflict.

The Coalition for Mutual Aid in Sudan – which includes The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Giving, Global Fund for Women, and The Unitarian Universalist Service Committee — will donate at least $2 million to mutual aid groups in the country by the end of the year. It also pledged to raise another $4.5 million for those groups within the next two years.

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Patricia McIlreavy, president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, which has been representing the coalition, said that, while much more aid is needed, the collaboration and problem-solving of the group is an important step forward.

“It gets us started,” McIlreavy told The Associated Press. “And it models the behavior you want to see from others. If you wait until it’s the perfect opportunity, you’ve missed many of the opportunities that were good enough.”

World Food Program director Cindy McCain said earlier this month that “ Sudan’s nearly a forgotten crisis ” and that 25 million people there already face acute hunger. Last week, the top United Nations humanitarian official said fighting is escalating in the conflict that began in April 2023 when long-simmering tensions between Sudan’s military and paramilitary leaders broke out in the capital Khartoum and spread to other regions. The U.N. says more than 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 injured.

“With ongoing impediments to a large-scale international aid response, Sudanese community groups have become the primary frontline responders and are currently the most effective means of reaching millions on the brink of starvation,” Patricia McIlreavy, president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, said in a prepared statement on behalf of the coalition. “With so many lives on the line, the imperative to support local aid efforts in Sudan has never been more urgent.”

The Center for Disaster Philanthropy says more than 12 million people have been forced from their homes in Sudan, creating what is now the world’s largest displacement and hunger crisis. The danger from the conflict has prevented most international aid agencies from delivering supplies to those in need.

Greg Milne, the Clinton Global Initiative CEO who convened a panel in April to raise awareness and support for the Sudanese people, said the new coalition is an example of what bringing organizations from varied sectors can do.

“We know strong, diverse partnerships can help address often overlooked and even dire challenges, and develop unexpected and innovative solutions,” he said.

Philanthropic leaders, including Bill Gates, World Central Kitchen founder Jose Andres, Open Society Foundations President Binaifer Nowrojee, and Rockefeller Foundation President Raj Shah will share information about their work during CGI, as will Prince Harry, who will discuss the launch of The Archewell Foundation Parents’ Network, which supports parents of children harmed online. In his Tuesday appearance, the Duke of Sussex will also address his work with the World Health Organization and others to reduce violence against children, an issue he and his wife Meghan outlined on a recent trip to Colombia.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Kosovo President Vjosa Osmani Sadriu, and Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics are set to address the conference, as are CEOs from Pfizer, Mastercard, IKEA, Pinterest, Sanofi and Chobani.

_____

The trend is gaining traction in Australia and Europe, says Dale Whelehan, CEO of 4 Day Week Global, which coaches companies through the months-long process of shortening their employees’ work hours. Japan launched a campaign in August encouraging employers to trim work schedules to four days.

American companies haven’t adopted four-day weeks as broadly, but that could change. Eight percent of full-time employees polled by Gallup in 2022 said they work four days a week, up from 5% in 2020.

The Associated Press spoke with Whelehan about the reasons why companies might want to consider the change. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Why should organizations switch to a four-day workweek?

A: The bigger question is, why shouldn’t they? There’s a lot of evidence to suggest we need to do something fundamentally different in the way we work. We have issues of burnout. We have a recruitment and retention crisis in many industries. We have increased stress within our workforce, leading to health issues, issues with work-life balance, work-family conflict. We have people sitting in cars for long periods, contributing to a climate crisis. We have certain parts of the population that are able to work longer hours and therefore be rewarded for that, creating further inequity within our societies. Lastly, we look at the implications that stress actually has on long-term health. We know that it’s linked to issues like cardiovascular disease, to cancer, to diabetes. So stress is something not to be taken lightly, and it’s only rising in our world of work.

Q: Why is the 40-hour workweek so common?

To understand where we are now, let’s take a step back into pre-industrial times. My granddad was a farmer, worked seven days a week and was required on-site all the time. It was a lot of long hours, but also he had a lot of autonomy.

By the time my dad entered the workforce, he was a technician in a mechanical role. And he was expected to produce products on a large scale. As a result he wasn’t given the rewards from farming, but was given a salary. That change from my grandfather’s time to my dad’s brought about the birth of a discipline known as management. And management, led by Frederick Taylor, was looking at the relationship between fatigue and performance. A lot of scientific studies were done to try to understand that relationship, leading to the need for a five-day week as opposed to a six-day week. By the time I entered into the workforce, we no longer had a very physical, laborious workforce. It’s highly cognitive and highly emotional.

The fundamental physiological difference is that our brain as a muscle can’t withstand the same level of hours of work as our muscles in our body might be able to. So it’s that mismatch between an outdated work structure of 40 hours, rooted in very physical labor, and what is now a highly cognitive workforce.

Q: How can companies increase revenue while employees work fewer hours?

A: The reduction of working time brings about productivity gains by people having naturally more time to rest and recover, allowing them to come back into a new week more engaged and well-rested. That’s one way in which you see productivity gains. The second is the fundamental shift that organizations undergo while transitioning to a four-day week.

When we work with organizations, we use what’s called a 100-80-100 principle. So 100% pay for 80% time for 100% output. We ask organizations to design their trials in that sort of philosophy: How can you keep your business at the same level or improve while working less? The fundamental change we see is, let’s move away from thinking about productivity as how much time it takes to get something done, versus focusing on what outcomes we know drive businesses forward.

Q: How does a four-day workweek support equity?

A: Disproportionately high amounts of part-time workers are female. As a result, women typically take a reduction in pay. That’s despite the fact that, based on the evidence that we’ve seen in trials, those part-time workers are producing the same output as their five-day-week counterparts.

In four-day week trials, everyone embarks on the journey. So we see men taking on greater levels of responsibilities in household or parenting responsibilities.

The alternative situation is women take part-time work, reduce their pay. Men have to work longer hours at a higher salaries and more stressful jobs in order to make up the deficit. … It just creates this vicious cycle.

Q: What kinds of work could potentially be dropped to increase productivity?

A: Meetings. We are addicted to meetings. It’s just gotten worse and worse since the pandemic. I think a lot of that comes from a culture of indecisiveness. There’s a sense of not wanting to make decisions, and therefore delaying the process or involving many people in the process so that everyone has a responsibility, and thus no one has responsibility. And that is not good when it comes to the greater issue of productivity.

Victims’ relatives recounted in pained testimony the lives gunman Ahmad Alissa destroyed in the 2021 attack in the college town of Boulder.

“To the person that’s done this, we hope that you suffer for the rest of your life. You are a coward,” said Nikolena Stanisic, whose only sibling, Neven, was killed. “I hope this haunts the defendant until the end of time. The defendant deserves the absolute worst.”

She recalled going out to ice cream with her brother the night before he was shot and how he would sometimes help her with bills. Their household — once filled with talk and laughter — is now mostly silent, she told the court.

Defense attorneys did not dispute that Alissa, who has schizophrenia, fatally shot 10 people including a police officer. But the defense argued he was insane at the time of the attack and couldn’t tell right from wrong.

In addition to 10 counts of first-degree murder, the jury found Alissa guilty on 38 charges of attempted murder, one count of assault, and six counts of possessing illegal, large-capacity magazines.

Judge Ingrid Bakke sentenced him to 10 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

“This was not about mental illness. This was about brutal, intentional violence,” District Attorney Michael Dougherty said.

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Alissa and his attorneys declined an opportunity to speak during his sentencing.

The courtroom was packed largely with victims’ families and police officers, including those who were shot at by Alissa. Several members of Alissa’s family sat just behind him.

Alissa started shooting immediately after getting out of his car in a King Soopers store parking lot in March 2021. He killed most of the victims in just over a minute and surrendered after an officer shot him in the leg.

The daughter of killed Officer Eric Talley lamented the life milestones they would not be able to share. Madeline Talley and her mother said they would not hold onto bitterness, extending their forgiveness to Alissa.

“He taught me to believe that God brings good out of evil,” Madeline Talley said of her father.

Others weren’t ready to forgive. Robert Olds — whose niece, Rikki, was killed — said Alissa’s family should have been held criminally responsible because their “ignorance, inattentiveness and inaction” led directly to the attack.

Alissa did not visibly react as the guilty verdicts were read. During the sentencing part of the hearing, he looked at times toward the victims’ relatives as they spoke, but for much of the time sat hunched over, talking to his attorney or writing.

Prosecutors had to prove Alissa was sane. They argued he didn’t fire randomly and showed an ability to make decisions by pursuing people who were running and trying to hide from him. He twice passed by a 91-year-old man who continued to shop, unaware of the shooting.

He came armed with steel-piercing bullets and illegal magazines that can hold 30 rounds of ammunition, which prosecutors said showed he took deliberate steps to make the attack as deadly as possible.

Several members of Alissa’s family, who immigrated to the United States from Syria, testified that he had become withdrawn and spoke less a few years before the shooting. He later began acting paranoid and showed signs of hearing voices, they said, and his condition worsened after he got COVID-19 in late 2020.

Alissa was diagnosed with schizophrenia after the attack, and experts said the behaviors described by relatives are consistent with the onset of the disease.

State forensic psychologists who evaluated Alissa concluded he was sane during the shooting. The defense did not have to provide any evidence in the case and did not present any experts to say that Alissa was insane.

Despite the fact that he heard voices, the state psychologists said, Alissa did not experience delusions. They said his fear that he could be jailed or killed by police revealed Alissa knew his actions were wrong.

Alissa repeatedly told the psychologists that he heard voices, including “killing voices” right before the shooting. But Alissa failed during about six hours of interviews to provide more details about the voices or whether they were saying anything specific, forensic psychologist B. Thomas Gray testified.

Mental illness is not the same thing as insanity. Colorado law defines insanity as having a mental disease so severe that it’s impossible for a person to tell right from wrong.

Family members of the victims attended the two-week trial and watched graphic surveillance and police body camera video. Survivors testified about how they fled and in some cases helped others to safety.

Prosecutors did not offer any motive for the shooting. Alissa initially searched online for public places to attack in Boulder, including bars and restaurants, then a day before the shooting focused his research on large stores.

On the day of the attack, he drove from his home in the Denver suburb of Arvada and pulled into the first supermarket in Boulder that he encountered. He shot three victims in the parking lot before entering the store.

An emergency room doctor said she crawled onto a shelf and hid among bags of potato chips. A pharmacist who took cover testified that she heard Alissa say, “This is fun” at least three times as he went through the store firing his semi-automatic pistol that resembled an AR-15 rifle.

Alissa’s mother told the court that she thought her son was “sick.” His father testified that he thought Alissa was possessed by a djin, or evil spirit, but did not seek any treatment for his son because it would have been shameful for the family.

Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement justice had been served. “Loved ones, friends, and neighbors were taken from us far too soon by an act of pure evil,” he said.

Stefany Serna is not without worries: a slowing local economy, saving up for the future, and a cost of living that seems to be endlessly increasing.

But a major concern for many other Miami-area residents — paying for housing — does not keep Serna, who works at a high-end steakhouse in Coral Gables, up at night.

Thanks to an informal connection to her landlord, the costs for the home she shares with her partner are below market prices.

“We lucked out with the rent,” Serna said.

It’s emblematic of an advantage many in Miami’s large Cuban population enjoy. Miami-Dade County’s average household size is about 2.8, compared with the national rate of 2.5. While that may seem like a small difference, it reflects a greater tendency among Cuban Americans to live in multigenerational households, thereby providing larger informal support networks.

Serna said Miami Springs, a small upper-middle-class city just north of Miami International Airport, is a place where everyone more or less knows each other.

Although she’d never been formally introduced to the landlord, she recognized him and his wife from having worked in local restaurants.

“The town is small, and when you grow up here like we did as well as his wife and him, you see the same people,” Serna said.

Primary source of income: Serna made about $55,000 in salary from waiting tables last year, but that figure does not include tips, which help cushion their household’s spending.

She said her salary has gone up every year, in part through building sweat equity at the establishment.

“It’s me being able to sell — being a server versus just an ‘order taker,’” Serna said. “It helps if you get into knowing the menu and are able to offer suggestions, knowing wine.”

Unfortunately, her skills have run headlong into economic realities: Miami’s economy is experiencing a noticeable slowdown following a boom during the initial phase of the pandemic. Miami-Dade’s unemployment rate has surged from 1.4% in January to 3.1% in July — an acceleration that has only previously occurred during recessions.

“Right now, it’s not looking so hot,” Serna said.

Living situation: Serna and her partner, both in their 30s, pay $2,250 for their two-bed, one-bath home. According to Zillow, the average market rent for such a two-bedroom in Miami Springs is $2,800. The couple is hoping to save up to get married, buy a house and start a family.

But, driven by housing costs, inflation in Miami since the onset of Covid-19 has soared above the national rate, with costs climbing more than 28% compared with about 22% for the U.S.

Today, Miami is ranked as the sixth-least-affordable market in the U.S., and the least affordable on the East Coast.

Among the changes Serna and her partner have made to their budget to increase savings: switching toilet-paper brands; easing off of coffee and buying more goods in bulk; and cooking at home more.

“It’s just different little things, just trying to help with whatever income we have coming into the house,” she said.

Economic outlook: A local real estate broker specializing in food and beverage spaces has quipped that Miami is currently experiencing “restaurant Armageddon” amid a wave of high-profile closures.

Serna has seen it firsthand, saying her restaurant “is not making any money right now.” Management, she said, is pulling back on shifts and reducing its operating schedule. While some of that is seasonal, Serna has wondered what other factors might be driving patrons to stay away, including whether the upcoming presidential election is causing them to pull back on more discretionary higher-end spending.

“I’m feeling the strain right now and desperate to get to November,” she said. “There’s something about the holidays that makes people spend money.”

Serna and her partner say they have contemplated moving due to the economic situation, but that this would be a last, and painful, resort.

“I don’t want to — both of our parents are here. This is our village,” she said. “But I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay here because I can’t afford it in the long run.”

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• This undergrad rings up groceries and Big Macs to stay in college
• Balancing a fixed income with inflation, a Georgia retiree feels stuck
• Graduating debt-free with a job, this 23-year-old social worker still sees buying a house as out of reach

The skyscraper-like corn is a part of rural America as much as cavernous red barns and placid cows.

But soon, that towering corn might become a miniature of its former self, replaced by stalks only half as tall as the green giants that have dominated fields for so long.

“As you drive across the Midwest, maybe in the next seven, eight, 10 years, you’re going to see a lot of this out there,” said Cameron Sorgenfrey, an eastern Iowa farmer who has been growing newly developed short corn for several years, sometimes prompting puzzled looks from neighboring farmers. “I think this is going to change agriculture in the Midwest.”

The short corn developed by Bayer Crop Science is being tested on about 30,000 acres in the Midwest with the promise of offering farmers a variety that can withstand powerful windstorms that could become more frequent due to climate change. The corn’s smaller stature and sturdier base enable it to withstand winds of up to 50 mph — researchers hover over fields with a helicopter to see how the plants handle the wind.

The smaller plants also let farmers plant at greater density, so they can grow more corn on the same amount of land, increasing their profits. That is especially helpful as farmers have endured several years of low prices that are forecast to continue.

The smaller stalks could also lead to less water use at a time of growing drought concerns.

U.S. farmers grow corn on about 90 million acres (36 million hectares) each year, usually making it the nation’s largest crop, so it’s hard to overstate the importance of a potential large-scale shift to smaller-stature corn, said Dior Kelley, an assistant professor at Iowa State University who is researching different paths for growing shorter corn. Last year, U.S. farmers grew more than 400 tons (363 metric tonnes) of corn, most of which was used for animal feed, the fuel additive ethanol, or exported to other countries.

“It is huge. It’s a big, fundamental shift,” Kelley said.

Researchers have long focused on developing plants that could grow the most corn but recently there has been equal emphasis on other traits, such as making the plant more drought-tolerant or able to withstand high temperatures. Although there already were efforts to grow shorter corn, the demand for innovations by private companies such as Bayer and academic scientists soared after an intense windstorm — called a derecho — plowed through the Midwest in August 2020.

The storm killed four people and caused $11 billion in damage, with the greatest destruction in a wide strip of eastern Iowa, where winds exceeded 100 mph. In cities such as Cedar Rapids, the wind toppled thousands of trees but the damage to a corn crop only weeks from harvest was especially stunning.

“It looked like someone had come through with a machete and cut all of our corn down,” Kelley said.

Or as Sorgenfrey, the Iowa farmer who endured the derecho put it, “Most of my corn looked like it had been steamrolled.”

Although Kelley is excited about the potential of short corn, she said farmers need to be aware that cobs that grow closer to the soil could be more vulnerable to diseases or mold. Short plants also could be susceptible to a problem called lodging, when the corn tilts over after something like a heavy rain and then grows along the ground, Kelley said.

Brian Leake, a Bayer spokesman, said the company has been developing short corn for more than 20 years. Other companies such as Stine Seed and Corteva also have been working for a decade or longer to offer short-corn varieties.

While the big goal has been developing corn that can withstand high winds, researchers also note that a shorter stalk makes it easier for farmers to get into fields with equipment for tasks such as spreading fungicide or seeding the ground with a future cover crop.

Bayer expects to ramp up its production in 2027, and Leake said he hopes that by later in this decade, farmers will be growing short corn everywhere.

“We see the opportunity of this being the new normal across both the U.S. and other parts of the world,” he said.

Levi Strauss summoned the Beyhive on Monday after teasing a potential collaboration with Beyoncé in a post on Instagram.

The brand’s shares briefly popped after the update and were last up about 1% Monday.

The post included an image of a woman wearing a cowboy hat and riding a horse with the caption “INTRODUCING: A New Chapter.” Aside from the allusions to Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter,” Levi’s also tagged the superstar’s account in the post, fueling buzz from her fanbase, known as the Beyhive.

Beyoncé’s country album, released earlier this year, features a song titled “LEVII’S JEANS.”

Denim has been experiencing something of a boost of late, with brands such as American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch calling out the trend as helping to revitalize sales.

Levi’s second-quarter earnings in June missed Wall Street’s sales expectations, but the brand’s leadership has maintained that the future of denim is bright. CEO Michelle Gass told analysts at the time that the growth in denim’s popularity has never been higher, particularly with clothing items other than pants, such as denim skirts or dresses.

Representatives for Levi’s did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the potential Beyoncé collaboration.

Hezbollah’s leader vowed to retaliate, and on Friday the militant group launched a wave of rockets into northern Israel. Later in the day, the commander of Hezbollah’s most elite unit was killed in a strike in Beirut that killed dozens more people.

The cross-border attacks ramped up early Sunday, with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite group that is Lebanon’s most powerful armed force, launching more than 100 rockets deeper into northern Israel, with some landing near the city of Haifa. Israel launched hundreds of strikes on Lebanon.

Then, on Monday, Israel launched a series of strikes that killed more than 270 Lebanese, the deadliest attack since the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. Israel warned residents in southern and eastern Lebanon to leave their homes ahead of a spreading air campaign against Hezbollah.

US & World

Middle East Sep 23

US sending more troops to the Middle East as violence rises between Israel and Hezbollah

Israel-Hamas War Sep 23

Lebanon sees deadliest day of conflict since 2006 as Israeli strikes kill 492

Israel Sep 22

Hezbollah fires over 100 rockets from Lebanon into Israel as tensions escalate in Middle East

Many fear the escalating violence could lead to an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, which would further destabilize a region already shaken by the fighting in Gaza. Both sides have said they don’t want that to happen, even as they have defiantly warned of heavier attacks.

Israel and Hezbollah have launched repeated strikes against each other since the Gaza war began, but both sides have pulled back when the spiral of reprisals appeared on the verge of getting out of control, under heavy pressure from the U.S. and its allies. But in recent weeks, Israeli leaders have warned of a possible bigger military operation to stop attacks from Lebanon to allow hundreds of thousands of Israelis displaced by the fighting to return to homes near the border.

Here are some things to know about the situation:

What were the latest strikes?

More than 1,000 Lebanese were injured in Monday’s deadly strikes and thousands more fled southern Lebanon. Israel said it was targeting Hezbollah weapons sites, and had hit some 800 targets. Lebanon’s health minister said hospitals, medical centers and ambulances had been struck.

The Israeli military warned residents to immediately leave areas where Hezbollah is storing weapons. The Lebanese media said the evacuation warning was repeated in text messages.

Hezbollah said it had fired dozens of rockets toward Israel, including at military bases, and officials said a series of air-raid sirens were ringing out in northern Israel warning of rocket attacks.

On Friday, an Israeli airstrike brought down a high-rise building in Beirut’s southern suburbs, killing Ibrahim Akil, the commander of Hezbollah’s elite Radwan unit, and other top unit leaders. Israel said Akil led the group’s campaign of rocket, drone and other fire into northern Israel. At least 45 people were killed in that attack and more than 60 wounded.

That strike came after the shock of the electronic device bombings, in which thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah detonated on Tuesday and Wednesday. At least 37 people were killed, including two children, and around 3,000 were wounded. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its involvement.

Analysts say that attack had little effect on Hezbollah’s manpower, but could disrupt its communications and force it to take tighter security measures.

What is the situation on the border?

The Israel-Lebanon border has seen almost daily exchanges since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7. Before Monday, the exchanges had killed around 600 people in Lebanon – mostly fighters but also about 100 civilians — and about 50 soldiers and civilians in Israel. It has also forced hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate homes near the border in both Israel and Lebanon.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah promised to retaliate for the electronic device bombings. But Hezbollah also has proved wary of further stoking the crisis. The group faces a difficult balance of stretching the rules of engagement by hitting deeper into Israel in response to its brazen attacks, while at the same time trying to avoid the kind of large-scale attacks on civilian areas that can trigger a full-scale war that it could be blamed for.

Hezbollah says its attacks against Israel are in support of Hamas. Last week, Nasrallah said the barrages won’t end — and Israelis won’t be able to return to homes in the north — until Israel’s campaign in Gaza ends.

What is Israel planning?

Israeli officials say they haven’t yet made an official decision to expand military operations against Hezbollah – and haven’t said publicly what those operations might be. Last week, though, the head of Israel’s Northern Command was quoted in local media as advocating for a ground invasion of Lebanon.

Meanwhile, as fighting in Gaza has slowed, Israel has increased its forces along the Lebanese border, including the arrival of a powerful army division believed to include thousands of troops.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant last week declared the start of a “new phase” of the war as Israel turns its focus toward Hezbollah.

“The center of gravity is shifting to the north,” he said.

A U.N.-brokered truce to the 2006 war called on Hezbollah to pull back 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the border, but it has refused, accusing Israel of also failing to carry out some provisions. Israel is now demanding Hezbollah withdraw eight to 10 kilometers (five to six miles) from the border – the range of Hezbollah’s anti-tank guided missiles.

The monthlong 2006 war, triggered when Hezbollah fighters kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, included heavy Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon and Beirut and a ground invasion into the south. The strategy, Israeli commanders later said, was to inflict maximum damage in areas where Hezbollah operated to deter them from launching attacks.

But Israel could have a more ambitious goal this time: to seize a buffer zone in south Lebanon to push back Hezbollah fighters from the border. A fight to hold territory threatens a longer, even more destructive and destabilizing war – recalling Israel’s 1982-2000 occupation of southern Lebanon.

In the News

Middle East Sep 17

Hundreds of pagers exploded in Lebanon and Syria in a deadly attack. Here's what we know.

Lebanon Sep 18

Who made the exploding pagers? A messy global trail emerges behind deadly Lebanon blasts

Lebanon Sep 18

A wave of deadly walkie-talkie explosions sweeps Lebanon day after widespread pager attack

What would be the impact of a full-blown war?

The fear is that a new war could be even worse than the one in 2006, which was traumatic enough for both sides to serve as a deterrent ever since.

The fighting then killed hundreds of Hezbollah fighters and an estimated 1,100 Lebanese civilians and left large swaths of the south and even parts of Beirut in ruins. More than 120 Israeli soldiers were killed and hundreds wounded. Hezbollah missile fire on Israeli cities killed dozens of civilians.

Israel estimates that Hezbollah now possesses about 150,000 rockets and missiles, some of which are precision-guided, putting the entire country within range. Israel has beefed up air defenses, but it’s unclear whether it can defend against the intense barrages of a new war.

Israel has vowed it could turn all of southern Lebanon into a battle zone, saying Hezbollah has embedded rockets, weapons and forces along the border. And in the heightened rhetoric of the past months, Israeli politicians have spoken of inflicting the same damage in Lebanon that the military has wreaked in Gaza.

The Mercury News reported Friday that Albino’s niece in Oakland — with assistance from police, the FBI and the Justice Department — located her uncle living on the East Coast.

Albino, a father and grandfather, is a retired firefighter and Marine Corps veteran who served in Vietnam, according to his niece, 63-year-old Alida Alequin. She found Albino and reunited him with his California family in June.

On Feb. 21, 1951, a woman lured the 6-year-old Albino from the West Oakland park where he had been playing with his older brother and promised the Puerto Rico-born boy in Spanish that she would buy him candy.

Instead, the woman kidnapped the child, flying him to the East Coast where he ended up with a couple who raised him as if he were their own son, the news group reported. Officials and family members didn’t say where on the East Coast he lives.

For more than 70 years Albino remained missing, but he was always in the hearts of his family and his photo hung at relatives’ houses, his niece said. His mother died in 2005 but never gave up hope that her son was alive.

Oakland police acknowledged that Alequin’s efforts “played an integral role in finding her uncle” and that “the outcome of this story is what we strive for.”

In an interview with the news group, she said her uncle “hugged me and said, ‘Thank you for finding me’ and gave me a kiss on the cheek.”

Oakland Tribune articles from the time reported police, soldiers from a local army base, the Coast Guard and other city employees joined a massive search for the missing boy. San Francisco Bay and other waterways were also searched, according to the articles. His brother, Roger Albino, was interrogated several times by investigators but stood by his story about a woman with a bandana around her head taking his brother.

The first notion that her uncle might be still alive came in 2020 when, “just for fun,” Alequin said, she took an online DNA test. It showed a 22% match with a man who eventually turned out to be her uncle. A further search at the time yielded no answers or any response from him, she said.

In early 2024, she and her daughters began searching again. On a visit to the Oakland Public Library, she looked at microfilm of Tribune articles — including one that had a picture of Luis and Roger — which convinced her that she was on the right track. She went to the Oakland police the same day.

Investigators eventually agreed the new lead was substantial, and a new missing persons case was opened. Oakland police said last week that the missing persons case is closed, but they and the FBI consider the kidnapping a still-open investigation.

Luis was located on the East Coast and provided a DNA sample, as did his sister, Alequin’s mom.

On June 20, investigators went to her mother’s home, Alequin said, and told them both that her uncle had been found.

“We didn’t start crying until after the investigators left,” Alequin said. “I grabbed my mom’s hands and said, ‘We found him.’ I was ecstatic.”

On June 24, with the assistance of the FBI, Luis came to Oakland with members of his family and met with Alequin, her mother and other relatives. The next day Alequin drove her mother and her newfound uncle to Roger’s home in Stanislaus County, California.

“They grabbed each other and had a really tight, long hug. They sat down and just talked,” she said, discussing the day of the kidnapping, their military service and more.

Luis returned to the East Coast but came back again in July for a three-week visit. It was the last time he saw Roger, who died in August.

Alequin said her uncle did not want to talk to the media.

“I was always determined to find him, and who knows, with my story out there, it could help other families going through the same thing,” Alequin said. “I would say, don’t give up.”

The 21-year-old Michigan State defensive back needed a moment in the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home he shares with five younger siblings. He has a lot on his plate, more than most college students and certainly more than most student-athletes.

His mother, Gala Gilliam, died of breast cancer a month ago and without a father in the family’s life, Smith has become the head of the household while studying criminal justice and playing major college football. He became the legal guardian for four siblings on Sept. 11.

“My cards were given to me,” Smith said softly with a steely gaze, standing on a small porch behind the home as the sun set on a recent evening. “I didn’t choose my deck of cards.”

His 19-year-old sister, Aleion, is in charge while he is gone for about 12 hours most days to be a student and athlete. Appreciating her selfless sacrifice, Smith said he hopes to help her find a way to start taking classes next semester while juggling her role with the family.

Smith looks and sounds determined to help his siblings be happy, healthy and safe. His teammates watch in awe.

“I couldn’t even begin to imagine if I was in his situation,” linebacker Jordan Hall said. “He’s in a tough spot, but he is one of the strongest guys I have ever known.”

The family

Smith grew up in in Detroit, recalling how he was homeless at times and hopped from house to house to find places to sleep. He was a three-star prospect at River Rouge High School and attended the University of Cincinnati for two years.

After Smith’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022 during his sophomore season with the Bearcats, he transferred last year to be closer to home. The life lessons from his mom continued.

When Smith, holding his 2-year-old sister, arrived at a recent fundraiser, each of his other siblings introduced themselves to people there to support the family and shook their hands while making eye contact.

“That’s from my mom,” he said.

She was trying to prepare him for what was to come before she died Aug. 19. She was 41.

“She used to tell me everything: ‘Get hard’ and all of that,” he recalled. “And I see why she was under a lot of stress.”

Smith keeps notes on his phone to help manage busy days that start before dawn, when he is up to make sure his two sisters and three brothers are awake before he leaves for school. Smith gets a lift from a teammate or a ride-hailing service to make the 4-mile trip to campus for therapy on his surgically repaired shoulders and meetings with the football team before going to classes and practice.

His eldest sister gets their 16-, 15- and 11-year-old brothers — Armond, Avaugn and Arial — ready for school. There are two varieties of Cap’n Crunch atop the refrigerator in a kitchen that didn’t have a table or chairs during a recent visit.

The school-age brothers rely on a ride-hailing company to get them to school and back while their oldest sister cares for their toddler sister, Amaira.

“Me and my sister got to work together to keep this all afloat,” he said. “While I’m in college sports, she’s got to be able to take care of everything that I can’t do, like pick up where I left off, while I’m taking care of business.”

He and the siblings he is now responsible for at least have a home thanks in part to a GoFundMe campaign.

Student caregivers

While Smith’s story is unusual in college sports — the NCAA does not track the number of athletes whose day-to-day activities include caring for a dependent — a 2020 study from the National Center for Education Statistics found 19.5% of undergraduate college students had a dependent and 5.5% of them were responsible for non-child dependents. Other research shows student-caregivers are disproportionately from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups.

Ray Ray McElrathbey was a 19-year-old freshman at Clemson in 2006 when he took over custody of his 10-year-old brother because of his mother’s drug problems and his father’s gambling addiction. Initially, they lived solely off McElrathbey’s scholarship and later the NCAA approved a plan where donations were administered by a local bank and distributed to Ray and Fahmarr. His story was the subject of “Safety,” a Disney movie.

When McElrathbey was a child and saw “Angels in the Outfield,” it inspired him because he felt there were other children out there like him. These days, he does speaking engagements and shares his message of hope with young people.

“Just kind to speak to those kids in a similar situation like I was growing up and have them have something to inspire them is the greatest gift,” he said.

Tufts University professor Emma Armstrong-Carter, who has done research on children caregivers, said these young people show amazing strength and don’t want to be pitied.

“Isn’t it incredible that these young people are able to overcome so many challenges and support their families in ways that are necessary and meaningful?” Armstrong-Carter said. “There’s a need for more institutional support to help them thrive.”

Smith and his family are able to afford renting a house in the state capital, paying for utilities, bills, food and ride-hailing services thanks to waves of financial support. The GoFundMe effort has raised more than $60,000, and he makes some money through name, image and likeness deals. Michigan State has helped through a student assistance fund. Two fundraisers were hosted at a McDonald’s in Lansing and an IHOP in Livonia set up by former Michigan State football players Jason Strayhorn and Sedrick Irvin and promoted on their “This is Sparta MSU” podcast.

Road trips are part of the calendar and the Spartans don’t play two home games in a row until the end of the season in November, though two bye weekends will give Smith more time at home.

One of his mother’s close friends, Yolanda Wilson, whose son, Nick Marsh, is a standout freshman receiver and former high school teammate, has been a source of support.

“I’m going to be there no matter what,” she said. “That’s a promise I made to their mother. And they have everybody here backing them up. So, it’s going to be a hard transition as it is, but we’re going to be that tight-knit community and have their back.”

The love is not lost on Smith.

“Me and my family are very happy, very appreciative and grateful,” he said. “There’s a lot of love Spartan Nation has shown us these past few months. It’s been a rough time, but to be able to take some of the stress off of my shoulders and show me a lot of love is a blessing and has warmed my heart.”

When Smith gave The Associated Press access to his home one recent evening, three siblings were upstairs in their bedrooms while a teenage brother was napping on a sectional couch in a living room without a TV or table. His toddler sister giggled between drinks from a sippy cup.

“It just puts a smile on my face to see them happy,” he said while watching video clips from practice on his phone.

Smith’s sadness comes and goes, but he knows his mother would want him to carry on.

“I can feel her living through me,” he said. “Almost like I hear her voice telling me how proud she is of me.”

___

AP Sports Writer Pete Iacobelli contributed.