Israel struck targets in Iran with missiles on Thursday night, according to multiple reports citing anonymous U.S. officials.

Iran's semi-official FARS news agency reported at least one explosion in the vicinity of an airport in the city of Isfahan. The cause of the explosion was not immediately known.

Flights were diverted around western Iran early on Friday, without immediate explanation. Air defense batteries had activated across multiple provinces.

The targets were not nuclear in nature, according to anonymous U.S. officials who spoke to CNN. Iran's state news agency IRNA said Thursday that the country's nuclear facilities were "secure."

Scripps News has not yet independently verified the new developments.

Israel had promised to retaliate for Iran's Saturday attack, in which Iran launched hundreds of drones and additional volleys of cruise missiles from multiple locations in Iran and in other countries against targets in Israel.

Israel did not give additional details at the time about the nature of its potential response.

The U.S., the United Kingdom, France and other allied nations helped Israel defend itself against Iran's strike. Israel says nearly all the drones and missiles were intercepted. A 7-year-old girl was injured in the attack.

On Wednesday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed recommendations from allies to use restraint in Israel's response to Iran's attack. 

“I want to be clear: We will make our decisions ourselves. The state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to defend itself,” Netanyahu said.

Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told CNN on Thursday if Israel takes any military action against his country Iran's response will be “immediate and at a maximum level."

This is a breaking news story. Stay with Scripps News for additional updates.

SEE MORE: Netanyahu says Israel will decide how to respond to Iran's attack

The daughter of U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar said on Thursday she was suspended from Barnard College after "standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide."

In a message written on X, Isra Hirsi wrote that she had just received a notification that she was one of three students who were suspended by the university that is both an independently incorporated educational institution and an official college of Columbia University, according to the university's website. 

Hirsi said on X that she is a member of the student organization Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and an organizer with Apartheid Divest, and said she had not received any disciplinary warnings for the three years she has attended the university. 

Earlier on Thursday campus authorities at Columbia University were instructed to remove an encampment that had formed on its property on the Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan before dawn on Wednesday, with people protesting in support of Palestinians amid the latest Israel-Hamas war. 

The students demanded that the university divest from corporate financial interests with ties to Israel. The protests came just a day after Columbia University's President Nemat Shafik stood firm in her testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the university's response to antisemitism and what phrases used by activists would be considered harassment.

SEE MORE: Police detain pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University

Hirsi wrote on Thursday, "those of us in Gaza Solidarity Encampment will not be intimidated. we will stand resolute until our demands are met. our demands include divestment from companies complicit in genocide."

It did not appear as of Thursday evening that U.S. Rep. Omar had released a public statement on the matter on social media or through official channels. 

Columbia University said in a notice that "all university students participating in the encampment" were notified that they would be suspended, and said the participants were trespassing after the university's president ordered that they be removed. 

Police officers were seen in riot gear putting individuals in the back of detention vehicles, with some protesters wearing keffiyehs in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. Dozens were arrested and at least 50 tents were removed from Columbia University property, the New York Times reported. 

In a pinned message on her X page, Rep. Omar wrote on Oct. 7, "We need to call for deescalation and ceasefire. I will keep advocating for peace and justice throughout the Middle East."

Starbucks has redesigned its single-use cold drink cups to cut down on plastic waste.

The chain says its cold drinks are surging in popularity; they now account for some 75% of Starbucks' drink sales annually.

This has caused an associated increase in plastic use, so Starbucks has reworked the design of the cups so that they use as much as 20% less plastic.

Now, Starbucks claims, the cups involve less energy and emissions to manufacture, and will help avert more than 13.5 million pounds of plastic waste that would otherwise go to landfills.

Updated cups are expected to roll out in its stores by the end of April.

SEE MORE: Starbucks adds spicy drinks and cold foam to its menu

While the new cups are only meant to be used once before they're recycled, Starbucks has said it wants to make all of its packaging either reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030.

Starbucks wants to start testing an in-house reusable cup system in some markets, which would let consumers pay a deposit for a cup they could reuse at Starbucks stores and later return when it was worn out.

Starbucks this year also started filling personal drink cups during drive-up and mobile service, building on an option that was already available to people who came to the counter.

It's clear Amazon exists in a separate (grocery) lane from most of the marketplace, but it doesn't intend to stay that way.

The company said Tuesday it's begun expanding its Dash Cart to third-party grocers in addition to all of its Amazon Fresh Stores and select Whole Foods Market locations. 

For now, one McKeever's Market and four Price Chopper stores in the Kansas City area have started testing the checkout-free technology, making them the first grocers outside of Amazon and its affiliates — it acquired Whole Foods in 2017 — to do so. And Amazon plans to make the smart carts available in more stores soon, its blog post said.

Amazon first launched its Dash Cart in 2020 only in Amazon Fresh stores. Two years and a redesign later, it introduced the product to select Whole Foods locations, and now another two years later, it's adding more clients to its roster.

The company says the carts — along with its other checkout-free services like Just Walk Out and Amazon One — help make a customers' shopping experience "measurably better" using computer vision, sensor fusion and generative AI. 

These technologies allow customers to weigh and scan as they shop, showing a real-time receipt on a screen that includes all the items in the cart. The company said this particularly helps those who make big weekly shopping trips stick to their budget while offering them personalized shopping recommendations and maps to better navigate their store.

When the customer is done shopping, they leave the store through the Amazon Dash Cart lane, and their receipt should be in their email before they're finished loading the groceries in their car.

The simple process and impressive technology are the same the company used in its Just Walk Out service, which the company recently pulled from all of its U.S. Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market stores.

The cashierless-checkout technology allows customers to enter a store, grab what they need and walk out, charging them automatically upon exit using cameras and other sensors to tally up their items. It was first used in Amazon's Go stores before the company expanded it to third-party retailers like airports, sports stadiums and entertainment venues in 2020. 

It appears Amazon wants to put that service in a separate aisle from its carts — pun intended — with Dash Carts intended for larger grocery stores giving customers longer receipts, and Just Walk Out being used in small-format stores with "mission-driven" customers. 

Even though Amazon has reduced how many of its own stores use Just Walk Out, the company said in its blog post that the technology will be in more than double the number of third-party stores it's currently in by the end of the year. 

The expansion of both technologies comes weeks after reports circulated claiming Amazon's Just Walk Out was run by more than 1,000 people in India who watched videos to ensure checkouts were working properly, according to one claim from Gizmodo. 

Amazon clarified this in the recent post too, saying "machine learning algorithms" run the technology without "any specific knowledge about the person" but that humans do label and annotate "real shopping data."

"The erroneous reports that Just Walk Out technology relies on human reviewers watching from afar is untrue," the post read. "Associates don't watch live video of shoppers to generate receipts — that's taken care of automatically by the computer vision algorithms. This is no different than any other AI system that places a high value on accuracy, where human reviewers are common."

Virginia Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine called a "near crash" at Ronald Reagan National Airport on Thursday morning a "horrifying example" of the effects of efforts to undermine slot and perimeter rules. They called the runway where the incident happened "overburdened" and "the busiest in the country." 

On Thursday morning at around 7:40 a.m. ET, Southwest Flight 2937 and JetBlue Flight 1554 almost collided as air traffic controllers frantically told the planes to stop, as later heard in audio of the incident.

According to flight monitoring sites, the Southwest flight was around 65 feet away from entering a runway where the JetBlue plane sat around 300 feet away. 

The Virginia lawmakers released a visualization with audio of the incident where an air traffic controller can be heard yelling "Southwest 2937 STOP!"

Another controller is heard intervening saying, "JetBlue 1554, do you have room to get around the Southwest [plane]? ... Or even double back onto runway 4 full lane?"

The plane then told the controller he could make a left on the A runway and move out of the way. 

The FAA confirmed to Scripps News that the agency would investigate the incident and that information it has is preliminary, saying JetBlue Flight 1554 was starting its takeoff roll on the same runway when the incident happened. 

SEE MORE: Boeing under scrutiny again as whistleblowers testify before Senate

In the statement from Sens. Warner and Kaine on Thursday, they said "we fear that adding more flights could put passenger safety at serious jeopardy. We are thankful there was no loss of life or injuries, but this close call is unacceptable and we must ensure even near misses never occur again. To state the obvious: Passenger safety should be a higher priority than whether some lawmakers have a direct flight home from DCA."

The senators say they have repeatedly opposed changes to slot and perimeter rules, which they say govern the amount of flights safely allowed to operate out of Reagan National Airport. 

In February, Sen. Kaine's office released a statement calling the Senate Commerce Committee's actions to introduce a provision to change slot and perimeter rules "unsafe." 

Sen. Kaine called the decision "profoundly reckless" and said the Senate Commerce Committee is "gambling with the safety of everyone who uses" the airport. 

The Republican-majority House of Representatives could vote on a $95 billion package for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific as early as Saturday. It is the same amount that was requested by the Biden administration months ago — and that package now has the president's support. 

How did we get here?

Weeks ago, the Senate passed a foreign aid package that would have helped Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and Pacific allies, and provided humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

And for weeks on the House of Representatives side, there were questions as to whether or not that bill would ever come up for a vote. 

Within the last several days, we finally got direction from Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, who said the House would vote on the different issues individually.

The White House has since backed the proposal.

But each of the bills still has to get out of the House Rules Committee, which has led to new tensions on Capitol Hill.

A number of conservatives do not want a Ukraine bill passed in the House until serious border changes are made.

"The Republican speaker is hinging his entire ability to stay speaker on sending 60 more billion dollars to Ukraine," said Georgia's Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. "I can't think of a worse betrayal ever to happen in United States history."

"I think that [Johnson] views the Ukraine issue very differently than when we do. We're worried about America's border. He seems to be more worried about Ukraine," said Florida's Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz. "I think a motion to vacate is something that could put the conference in peril. And [Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert] and I — we're working to avoid that. Our goal is to avoid a motion to vacate."

SEE MORE: House's Ukraine, Israel aid package gains Biden's support

The future of Johnson's speakership

A big question remains: If Speaker Johnson allows these bills to pass in the House in the coming days, could they jeopardize his role?

Some Democrats have hinted that they would support Johnson in continued speakership if he were able to pass new aid bills — but Democratic leaders including New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries have warned the party not to commit support until they see more concrete legislative results.

An Oklahoma judge ordered public defenders to represent four members of an anti-government group who appeared in court Wednesday on charges of kidnapping and killing two Kansas women.

The judge also entered not-guilty pleas and denied bail for Tifany Adams, 54, and her boyfriend, Tad Cullum, 43, both of Keyes, Oklahoma, as well as Cole and Cora Twombly of Texhoma, Oklahoma.

Texas County Associate District Judge Clark Jett assigned the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System to represent all four defendants, OIDS Executive Director Tim Laughlin told The Associated Press. Laughlin declined to comment about any details of the case or the defendants, citing his agency's policy.

"The reason we don't comment is to protect our clients' privileges and our clients' interest throughout the trial process," Laughlin said.

All four are charged with first-degree murder, kidnapping and conspiracy in the killing of 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley of Hugoton, Kansas, who disappeared on March 30 while driving to Oklahoma to pick up Butler's children and attend a birthday party.

During an interview with investigators, Adams, the children's grandmother, admitted she was responsible for the deaths of Butler and Kelley, according to a prosecutor's motion for the defendants to be held without bond.

SEE MORE: 2 bodies found amid arrests over missing preacher's wife and friend

"Adams, Cullum, Cora and Cole have resources sufficient to organize and execute a complex murder," OSBI Lt. Amie Gates wrote in an affidavit. "Therefore, they also have the resources to flee if given the opportunity."

Adam and Cullum also own numerous firearms, and Cullum had a rifle, ammunition, body armor and a "go-bag" prepared at his home, the affidavit says.

Authorities say Adams and Butler were in the middle of a bitter custody battle. Kelley, a pastor's wife, went along with Butler as a court-approved observer to supervise the visit. They never showed up for the party, setting off a two week search that ended with the two couples' arrests on Saturday and the discovery of the bodies on Sunday.

Arrest affidavits painted a gruesome picture of the scene where the women's car was found, not far from the rural highway intersection where Butler had arranged to pick up her son and daughter from Adams. Investigators found blood on the road and Butler's glasses near a broken hammer.

According to a witness who spoke to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents, all four suspects were part of "an anti-government group that had a religious affiliation." The affidavits said they called themselves "God's Misfits" and held regular meetings at the home of the Twomblys and another couple who Adams said watched the children the day the women disappeared.

Relatives of Tad Cullum and the Twomblys have not returned phone messages seeking comment. Tifany Adams' stepmother, Elise Adams, said she had no information to share.

Through mysterious social media posts, a pop-up installation in Los Angeles, and a real-life scavenger hunt across the world, pop star Taylor Swift is summoning her community of fans — better known as "Swifties"— for her latest album entitled “The Tortured Poets Department.”

"What we see now as Taylor — this unprecedented artist of today — is the byproduct or the result of having invested so much time in her community over the years," said marketing expert Marcus Collins. "People feel like 'I'm talking to my friend, like Taylor, that's my girl!'"

Collins is the author of the bestselling book "For the Culture," a marketing professor at the University of Michigan and the former digital strategist for Beyoncé. He says that Swift has "unique relationships with her fans" that feels more personal, especially as the singer-songwriter drops clues, Easter eggs and pieces of songwriting lore specifically for the fans that love piecing it all together.

"More than just 'artist to fan,' but it's almost 'community member to community member,'" described Collins. 

The market research company QuestionPro says Swifties spent about $1,300 per "Eras Tour" show in 2023, with 91% of those surveyed saying they’d go again. 

Experts say fans like Swifties help drive the live-events industry and boost local economies around the country. The U.S. Travel Association estimates that the total economic impact of the Eras Tour was $10 billion.

"If history is any indication, wherever she takes us, we're going to be walking shoulder-to-shoulder with her," said Collins. "I think that's going to be well-received and perhaps be sort of the next chapter of the Taylor Swift saga."

SEE MORE: Taylor Swift's music returns to TikTok despite feud with UMG

Employee safety is top of mind as U.S. Postal Service officials are offering rewards leading to evidence following a series of letter-carrier robberies and thefts. 

This week the United States Postal Inspection Service announced a $150,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a suspect who is accused of robbing a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier in late March in Arlington, Texas. 

On Thursday the USPIS released an image and information as they work to arrest another suspect accused of stealing mail and parcels in New York. Postal officials are offering up to $100,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest and conviction in that case. 

SEE MORE: Stamps are about to get more expensive again

In March, USPS announced a nationwide campaign to combat postal crime and to protect postal service employees. Officials said arrests for robberies against letter carriers were up 73% year over year in that statement. 

Postal officials said they have conducted over 5,500 mail theft and violent crime prevention activities across the United States since the launch of their Project Safe Delivery initiative. USPS said it completed its second law enforcement surge in San Francisco in February as part of those efforts. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said, "We have been unrelenting in our pursuit of criminals."

But a union representing letter carriers said the USPS isn't taking crimes against postal employees seriously enough after a federal district court handed down a 30-day prison sentence for a suspect charged with armed robbery against a San Francisco letter carrier, Federal News Network reported.

In early January USPIS said at around 4:54 p.m. a USPS letter carrier was robbed in Rochester, New York, and the agency was offering a $150,000 reward for anyone who had information leading to an arrest and conviction. Several arrests had been made as robbery investigations were ongoing throughout Monroe County, where Rochester is located. 

In March Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Rep. Greg Landsman of Ohio introduced bipartisan legislation to address a rise in violent crime against USPS employees, especially focused on letter carriers. 

The Protect our Letter Carriers Act (H.R. 7629) would also look to address the issue of outdated collection boxes and arrow keys. 

U.S. Postal Service arrow keys offer universal access to mailboxes and it's against federal law for any unauthorized individual to be in possession of one. Nationwide there has been a spate of robberies by criminals targeting postal workers to get these keys. 

In 2021, 132 arrow keys were stolen from mail carriers.  

That number had more than tripled to 418 by 2023, according to numbers Scripps News obtained from the Postal Inspection Service after filing a public records request.

The system used to determine financial aid packages for millions of college students got revamped, but the transition has been anything but smooth, with glitches in calculations for federal Pell grants and setbacks in the rollout for the FAFSA, or Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

Around this time of year, high school seniors bound for college and active college students should be weighing financial offers from those schools.

But those decisions are delayed.

Vanessa Mendiola would like to know where she's headed this fall.

"I've applied to University of Texas-San Antonio, Lamar University, University of North Texas, Texas A&M, Kingsville," Mendiola, an 18-year-old senior at Houston's YES Prep Southside Secondary Charter School, told Scripps News. Those institutions are among the college acceptances Mendiola is considering, but with a big catch: She hasn't gotten any news of the financial aid she needs to pay for school.

"It makes me frustrated not knowing where I'm going to end up," said Mendiola.

Her college counselors share her frustration; they field questions every day from anxious students and parents, many of whom are first-generation college-bound seniors.

Roberto Treviño, managing director of college initiatives at the YES Prep charter school system, said roughly 80% or more of the outgoing 1644 high school seniors at YES plan on going to a university or a community college, but need financial aid to make those ambitions possible.

"The irony is that this FAFSA is literally called the better FAFSA, and I think long-term-wise, it will be better. But this year, it's far from that," Treviño said.

The same uncertainty about tuition assistance goes for Texas Southern University junior Logan Jackson.

"It's really important because it basically pays for most of my education," Jackson said.

The 21-year-old told Scripps News she struggled with changes to this year's FAFSA.

"I know one of the delays was actually being able to do it. Like some people were like, 'Okay, it's not working. It's down. Then it's back up," Jackson said.

FAFSA is administered by the U.S. Department of Education. The forms help colleges calculate federal Pell grants and financial aid packages for students.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2020 mandating that department officials simplify the byzantine application by requiring fewer questions. The law also enables FAFSA to pull tax information directly from the IRS, and allows parents without Social Security numbers to fill out the form. The changes also expanded eligibility for Pell grants for low-income students.

But the update meant to widen financial aid access took months longer than expected. Other glitches in the student aid index to calculate Pell grants put the process back even further.

SEE MORE: FAFSA fumble: Millions still waiting for financial aid letters

Latisha Addison, the executive director for student financial success at the historically Black Texas Southern University, said Congress had the right intentions to fix the FAFSA process but says her department at Texas Southern University is dealing with the fallout of the botched rollout.

"I do believe that was released prematurely, but the overall good of it, it can't go unnoticed. We can't take away the fact that this is going to be beneficial to more students," Addison said.

Addison added that financial aid programs help the vast majority of Texas Southern undergraduates pay for their education.

"I think we're probably set in about 90, 95% of our students receive some type of financial aid," Addison said.

The setbacks are causing delays for millions of college-bound high school seniors as well as already active college students.

Janiya Ross, a continuing senior student at the University of Houston, is perplexed by the lateness. "Now it's like we're scrounging for money; how much is it gonna cost?" Ross said.

Freshman education major Vanessa Manzanares said the delays cause anxiety.

"It's like really stressful not to know if I'm going to be able to afford college next year, especially."

The offers for the next academic year can't come soon enough for UH student Janoah Agudelo.

"As college students, we gotta know, like, where the money's going to be because we have to pay certain things off, you know, bills," Agudelo said.

Another factor causing concern among universities and groups that look at student data is that FAFSA applications for next year's term are down.

The National College Attainment Network is a nonprofit dedicated to helping students prepare for, apply to, and succeed in college. NCAN also maintains a database tracking FAFSA submissions.

"We are, at this point, very significantly below where we were last year," said NCAN senior policy director Catherine Brown. "Twenty-five percent fewer high school students have submitted the FAFSA compared with this time last year. That's about 500,000 fewer students. And when it comes to completions, we're at more like 40%," Brown said.

When colleges do get the data, financial aid offices will have to deal with a bottleneck of applications.

"Once the floodgates open in two weeks, we'll be processing full-time," said Frank Gomez, associate director of federal processing at UH's Financial Aid and Scholarships Office. "We'll be processing tens of thousands of applications."

The University of Houston has close to 36,000 undergraduates, and around 40% of the student body receives some form of financial aid, said Gomez. He expects to work long hours when the data comes his way in May, when he expects the FAFSA forms to arrive.

Mendiola says she may already be done with high school by the time she knows her fall plans.

"We don't know what to do in this type of situation, but just wait patiently," Mendiola said.

The U.S. Department of Education acknowledged the slow rollout and the glitches that had to be addressed, but added that the 2024–2025 changes amount to the most significant overhaul of the form since it was created. Adding to that, the effort includes over 20 systems, some of which have not been updated in close to 50 years. The federal agency mounted a public awareness campaign this week to encourage more high school seniors and active students to submit their FAFSA forms.

The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution on Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for the state of Palestine.

The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two abstentions.

The resolution would have recommended that the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized the state of Palestine, so its admission would have been approved.

Before the vote, U.S. deputy State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said the United States has “been very clear consistently that premature actions in New York — even with the best intentions — will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian people.”

This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and it comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict at center stage.

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first delivered the Palestinian Authority’s application for U.N. membership to then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in 2011. That initial bid failed because the Palestinians didn’t get the required minimum support of nine of the Security Council’s 15 members.

Under the U.N. Charter, the Security Council must recommend membership to the 193-member General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, for a final vote.

After the Palestinians’ initial bid for full U.N. membership was rejected, they went to the General Assembly and by more than a two-thirds majority succeeded in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in November 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join the U.N. and other international organizations, including the International Criminal Court.

Google has fired 28 employees in the aftermath of protests over technology that the internet company is supplying to the Israeli government amid the Gaza war, further escalating tensions surrounding a hot-button deal.

The firings confirmed by Google late Wednesday came a day after nine employees were arrested during sit-in protests at offices in New York and Sunnyvale, California, after the company called police.

The dissent roiling Google centers on “Project Nimbus,” a $1.2 billion contract signed in 2021 that calls upon Google and Amazon to provide the Israeli government with cloud computing and artificial intelligence services.

The protests are being organized primarily by a group called No Tech For Apartheid. Google says Nimbus isn't being deployed in weaponry or intelligence gathering.

In a statement, Google attributed the firing of the 28 employees to “completely unacceptable behavior” that prevented some workers from doing their jobs and created a threatening atmosphere. The Mountain View, California, company added it is still investigating what happened during the protests, implying more workers could still be fired.

SEE MORE: Police detain pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University

In a blog post, No Tech For Apartheid accused Google of lying about what happened inside its offices during what it described as a “peaceful sit-in" that received overwhelming support from other workers who weren't participating in the protest.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” No Tech For Apartheid asserted.

The contract raising the ire of some Google workers runs within the company's cloud computing division that is overseen by a former Oracle executive, Thomas Kurian.

Under Kurian's leadership, cloud computing has emerged as one of Google's fastest-growing divisions, with revenue of $33 billion last year, a 26% increase from 2022. A wide range of private-sector companies also buy Google's cloud computing services, in addition to governments around the world.

Google workers have periodically staged angry protests over other deals the company has been working on and have also raised ethical concerns about the way it is developing artificial intelligence.

One of the previous employee uprisings resulted in Google deciding in 2018 to end a contract with the U.S. defense department called “Project Maven” that involved helping the armed forces analyze military videos.

But Google has continued to thrive, despite the internal misgivings about the way it is making some of its money. Its revenue mostly comes through digital advertising sold through an internet empire that depends on its dominant search engine as its main pillar.

Google's parent company, Alphabet Inc., posted a $74 billion profit last year and now employs about 182,000 workers worldwide — about 83,000 more people than in 2018 when it abandoned Project Maven.

SEE MORE: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block traffic to Chicago O'Hare Airport

As spring temperatures increase, so does the anticipation — or anxiety, depending who you talk to — about this year's rare, extra-large emergence of periodical cicadas.

Two different broods, Brood XIX and Brood XII, will make their way out of the ground at the same time, ready to mingle, mate and ultimately die in the span of a few weeks. Because of their respective 13- and 17-year life cycles, it's been well over 200 years since these two groups arrived together. 

Entomologists are pumped, but the general public ... much less so. If you live near one of the zones where the cicadas will emerge together, you may be bracing yourself for a nightmarish onslaught of rather large, loud, flying insects.

But don't fear! Periodical cicadas come in peace. In fact, they've been here all along, living underground for years as they peacefully feed on tree and plant liquids.

Nevertheless, you probably have some questions, especially if you've never encountered these natural wonders in such large numbers.

First off, the one on everyone's mind:

Do cicadas bite?

Unless you're a tree or a plant, the answer is a solid "no."

"Their mouths have no mandibles — or jaws — and they have no physical characteristics like a stinger with which to defend themselves," Timothy Best, a board-certified entomologist and technical manager at Terminix, told Prevention.

Their mouths are like a straw; they can't chomp. So if a cicada tried to bite you in an attempt to extract life-giving nutrients, it simply couldn't.

What if my dog eats a cicada?

A cicada or two is no big deal. They're not poisonous or venomous. After they die, however, their bodies are rather crispy, which may entice your pets into sneaking a sample.

Just don't let your pup (or your cat) go too far with this gross snack. Too many cicadas can cause stomach trouble, sometimes serious.

"In most cases, your dog will be fine after eating a few cicadas," Dr. Jerry Klein, chief veterinary officer of the American Kennel Club, said on the AKC website. "However, dogs that gorge on the large, crunchy insects will find the exoskeleton difficult to digest and can suffer serious consequences."

Don't let your dog feast on the critters. But if they do get away with it, watch out for signs of gastrointestinal distress, and call the vet if anything seems worrisome. (The same goes for cats, too.)

SEE MORE: Map shows where billions of cicadas will soon emerge in the US

Will cicadas kill my plants?

No — but with caveats.

While cicada nymphs are content to sip on the juices from plant roots, there is some evidence that adults — the big ones that will be flying around soon — may nibble on the occasional bit of plant or tree material.

But the real trouble comes from egg-laying female cicadas. They create small slits in woody tree branches and lay their eggs inside. Too many slits on a young branch can weaken it to the point of breaking, and with billions of cicadas looking to lay eggs, that's a problem.

If you're worried about any young trees on your property, you can cover the branches with fine-mesh mosquito netting to send mama cicadas elsewhere. Older trees should be fine.

Will pesticide keep cicadas away?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, pesticides won't do much to dissuade cicadas. There are simply too many of them — we're talking trillions of insects here. The few you kill or ward off from your yard won't make a bit of difference.

Not only that, pesticides could inadvertently harm birds or other animals that eat cicadas. People and pets can also be exposed to dangerous chemicals. It's best to avoid putting down pesticides.

So, good luck out there, everyone. Whatever you do, remember that you're witnessing a historic natural event, and it will all be over in a matter of weeks.

Who knows? You might even miss the cicadas when they're gone.

Rev up the Zamboni, the NHL is officially coming to Salt Lake City!

The NHL's Board of Governors approved the relocation of the Arizona Coyotes to northern Utah Thursday, with the team set to take the ice next season. The move was the final step in a process that began making headlines last week.

Team owner Ryan Smith used just 7 words to welcome the NHL to Utah, posting, "The NHL is here! Utah let's go!" to social media.

The @NHL is here! Utah let’s go! https://t.co/VwfWS2mkS9

— Ryan Smith (@RyanQualtrics) April 18, 2024

While expected, especially after the league's executive committee approved the move Tuesday, the stamp of approval by NHL owners opens a new era for hockey in the Beehive State as Utah welcomes another professional sports franchise.

“As everyone knows, Utah is a vibrant and thriving state, and we are thrilled to be a part of it,” said NHL Commissioner.

The Smith Entertainment Group will take the reins of a Coyotes team that continually had trouble finding a permanent home in Arizona, and ended its season Wednesday without making the playoffs.

“We are committed to building a Stanley Cup-contending team and are thrilled to welcome incredible players, coaches, staff, and their families to Utah," said Ryan and Ashley Smith. "Today is a great day for Utah, for hockey, and for building a legacy that will have a lasting impact for generations to come."

With a possible new arena in downtown Salt Lake City still a few years away, the NHL team will initially share the Delta Center with the Utah Jazz, also owned by the Smiths.

As with most Utahns, Gov. Spencer Cox was enthusiastic about the announcement on bringing the highest level of pro hockey to the state.

“Utah is once again at the center of the sports world as we welcome the NHL to Utah," he said in a statement. "Thanks to Ryan and Ashley Smith, Salt Lake City just keeps getting better and better. The whole state will benefit from this new franchise and we couldn’t be more excited by this announcement.”

The Coyotes brand will remain with now-former Arizona owner Alex Meruelo, with the Utah team set for a complete rebrand encompassing a nickname and franchise colors.

This story was originally published by Jeff Tavss at Scripps News Salt Lake City.

Saturday will mark 25 years since Columbine High School, just outside Denver, Colorado, became synonymous with a national tragedy. Twelve students and one teacher were killed in a mass shooting that gripped the nation. 

Tom Mouser, who lost his son Daniel in the massacre, appeared at the U.S. Capitol this week to remind lawmakers in Washington that there is more work to be done to prevent school shootings. 

Data compiled by Education Week found that there were 38 school shootings in the U.S. that resulted in injuries or deaths in 2023. 

"I came here this week to remind the nation of the lives that were lost," he said. 

The Biden administration recently announced a new rule that would close the so-called gun show loophole, which for years did not require background checks in some transactions outside of gun stores.

"It took 25 years to get here," Mouser said. "We cannot wait another 25 years to get significant gun safety legislation."

SEE MORE: New Biden administration rule aims to end gun show 'loophole'

Any serious debate about additional gun reform at the national level is not expected to happen until after the November election — at the earliest.

Reforms are happening, however, at the state level. In New York, there is even an active debate over how frequently lockdown drills should happen and how the drills should be conducted. 

New York state law requires four lockdown drills a year, one of the highest mandates in the country. New York Assemblywoman Jo Ann Simon told Scripps News that she believes the number is too high. 

"There has been more trauma caused to children because of the lockdown drills they are forced to practice," she said. "Sometimes there is somebody who is role-playing an intruder. There had been one where they played sounds of guns going off."

As lawmakers navigate the issues, Mouser wants them to think of the victims.

"It's important for people to know that for the people who lived through gun violence, the story is never over," he said. 

The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention says an outbreak of salmonella has been traced to a brand of organic basil sold at Trader Joe's stores.

The affected product is sold as Infinite Herbs brand organic basil, which comes in 2.5-ounce clamshell-style containers.

Seven people who later became sick are thought to have purchased the basil from Trader Joe's.

Overall, the CDC says the salmonella outbreak has caused 17 separate illnesses and put one person in the hospital.

The affected basil was sold at Trader Joe's locations in 29 states and in Washington, D.C. The chain has removed the product from its offerings.

Infinite Herbs, the company that provided the crop, is expected to make a voluntary recall of affected products.

SEE MORE: 8.2 million bags of Tide, Gain, Ariel, others recalled for injury risk

The CDC urges consumers not to eat any basil that may be contaminated. It says they should discard or return the product to Trader Joe's stores, wash potentially contaminated surfaces with hot soap and water and contact health care providers if symptoms of salmonella illness appear.

Salmonella can cause diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps in humans. Severe infection may also cause vomiting and symptoms of dehydration, and may put the very young or very old at risk of significant illness that requires hospitalization.

Symptoms typically appear between six hours and six days after eating contaminated foods. Most people recover within a week without special treatment.

A wildlife rehabilitation group were worried they were dealing with two dying vultures when they came upon the birds "unable to balance" and "passing out," they said in a post to social media. But, it turns out they were just drunk after "dumpster diving," the group said. 

A Place Called Hope posted a message calling the vultures "the dynamic duo" after they found the birds just before last Monday's eclipse on April 8 "literally drunk," the group said. 

The birds were said to be unable to stand up and workers initially thought they were "actively dying."

SEE MORE: 'Elusive creature' captured on camera by wildlife officials

Rescuers said they ran every test they had, but they still couldn't figure out why they couldn't fly, until later assessing that they must have consumed an intoxicating substance while foraging through rubbish for food. 

After the confusion, the scenario became a bit more of a laughing matter, and A Place Called Hope posted images of the birds appearing to recover comfortably secure in blankets and sheltered. 

It was unclear if they were experiencing any hangover, but the group said they must have decided to celebrate the eclipse a day early. Rescue workers said that drunk vultures are not easy patients, and they said they weren't sure if the birds learned any lessons in the end. "Birds don't let other birds fly drunk," they said. 

New York police began arresting pro-Palestinian protesters on Thursday after Columbia University said an encampment formed before dawn on Wednesday on the South Lawn of the university's Morningside Heights campus in Manhattan. 

Just before 4 p.m. ET on Thursday the university said facilities and operations crew members would ensure items left behind by people at the encampment would be "carefully stored" and not discarded." 

Reports said dozens were arrested and at least 50 tents were removed from the area. 

The New York Times said officers began detaining students just before 1:30 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, a day after university officials testified before Congress on antisemitism. 

Columbia University said the group of over 100 people were notified "numerous times," verbally and in writing, that they were not permitted by university security and leadership to be in the area they were occupying. 

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

The university said in a notice that "all university students participating in the encampment" were notified that they would be suspended, and said the participants were trespassing after the university's president ordered they be removed. 

Police officers were seen in riot gear putting individuals in the back of detention vehicles, with some protesters wearing keffiyehs in a show of solidarity with Palestinians. 

The protesters were demonstrating in opposition to the current Israel-Hamas war. They are urging the university to divest from financial interests in corporations tied to Israel. 

On Wednesday Columbia University's President Nemat Shafik stood firm in her testimony on Capitol Hill regarding the university's response to antisemitism and what phrases used by activists would be considered harassment. 

Republican Rep. Lisa McClain from Michigan asked if "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" or if "long live intifada" are considered antisemitic in Shafik's mind. 

"I hear them as such, some people don't," Shafik responded. 

Just days after being selected No. 1 overall in the WNBA draft, Indiana Fever rookie Caitlin Clark is reportedly on the brink of closing a massive, eight-figure endorsement deal with Nike.

Industry sources did not disclose the exact amount the lucrative deal could be worth, but told The Athletic that it's expected to include a signature Caitlin Clark shoe line. 

Clark was already endorsed by Nike in college, but the deal expired at the conclusion of her record-breaking senior year season with the Iowa Hawkeyes. Now it appears Nike moved quickly to keep Clark on board after she also reportedly received offers from Adidas and Under Armour.

SEE MORE: Caitlin Clark offered $5M to join Ice Cube's BIG3 basketball league

This all comes on the heels of controversy surrounding Clark's WNBA salary. According to the league's collective bargaining agreement, the basketball phenom is slated to earn about $338,000 over the course of her four-year rookie contract — just pennies on the dollar compared to the $55 million contract given to last year's No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. 

But beyond salary discrepancies, there's no denying the indelible impact Clark has that's transforming women's sports as a whole. 

From drawing the largest women's basketball regular season television audience of the past 25 years, to seeing her rookie jersey fly off store shelves, Clark has made it difficult to ignore the girls. And sponsors are finally starting to catch on, in hopes of profiting from this growing fandom.

If you're excited to kick back and drink a cold one on a hot summer day, well, we have some bad news for you. 

A new report from the Brewers Association found that even though the number of craft breweries kept growing, craft beer production declined in 2023.

The report says that in 2023, small and independent brewers collectively made 23.4 million barrels of beer, down 1.0% from 2022, and the overall beer market volume decreased by 5.1%.

“2023 was another competitive and challenging year for small and independent brewers,” said Bart Watson of the Brewers Association in a press release.

But the good news? Well, according to the association the number of breweries grew to an "all-time high" with 9,812 operating breweries in the U.S., up from 9,730 in 2022.

“Nevertheless, even as growth has downshifted, small brewers have proved quite resilient, as seen in the increase in number of breweries, relatively low closing rates, and gains in onsite sales and jobs,” said Watson.

"Driven by the growing number of breweries and a continued shift to hospitality-focused business models, craft brewers directly employed 191,421 people in 2023, a 1.1% increase from 2022," the report read. 

The top five craft breweries in the U.S., according to the association, are:

 • D. G. Yuengling and Son Inc. in Pottsville, Pennsylvania.

 • Boston Beer Co. in Boston, Massachusetts and Milton, Delaware

 • Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. in Chico, California. 

 • Duvel Moortgat USA in Paso Robles, California, Kansas City, Missouri and Cooperstown, New York.

 • Gambrinus in Shiner, Texas and Berkeley, California. 

More than a dozen members of the Kennedy family endorsed President Joe Biden Thursday in a strong show of opposition toward the campaign of their relative Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The independent candidate's kin have been vocal about their political differences with him in the past, but the group had yet to make such a formal declaration of dissent as they did at the president's campaign event in Philadelphia. 

RFK Jr.'s siblings were among those who showed their support for the Democratic front-runner, whom Kerry Kennedy — RFK Jr.'s sister, former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's daughter and former President John F. Kennedy's niece — called her "hero."

"We want to make crystal clear our feeling that the best way forward for America is to reelect Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to four more years," Kerry Kennedy said at the campaign event. "President Biden has been a champion for all the rights and freedoms that my father and uncle stood for. That's why nearly every single grandchild of Joe and Rose Kennedy supports Joe Biden." 

SEE MORE: RFK Jr. apologizes to Kennedy family for Super Bowl ad he promoted

RFK Jr. began as a Democratic challenger to President Biden before transitioning to run as an independent. This may be why the third-party candidate has been seen as more of an opponent of the incumbent than the Republican front-runner former President Donald Trump, who has recently said he'd vote for "RFK Jr. every single time over Biden" if he were a Democrat.

Neither President Biden nor Kerry Kennedy mentioned RFK Jr. during the event Thursday. The latter even suggested her relative didn't have a chance in the race, stating "there are only two candidates with any chance of winning the presidency," while the president focused his remarks on his GOP competitor.

"Donald Trump's vision is one of anger, hate, revenge and retribution. He embraces the insurrectionists of January the 6th. He's running on it," the president said during his third consecutive day of appearances in Pennsylvania. "Look, your family, the Kennedy family, has endured such violence. Denying Jan. 6 and whitewashing what happened is absolutely outrageous."

Meanwhile, RFK Jr. said his family's public stand falls in line with "family tradition" of being politically active.

"We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other," he wrote in a post on X. "My campaign, which many of my family members are working on and supportive of, is about healing America — healing our economy, our chronic disease crisis, our middle class, our environment and our standing in the world as a peaceful nation."

I hear some of my family will be endorsing President Biden today. I am pleased they are politically active — it’s a family tradition. We are divided in our opinions but united in our love for each other.

I hold this as a possibility for America too. Can we disagree without…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 18, 2024

The latest polling data from Decision Desk HQ, which Scripps News uses to track polling results, and The Hill shows RFK Jr. polling about 7% while Trump and President Biden sit around 42% each. This trajectory has placed the longshot candidate in a position as a potential spoiler come Election Day, now under seven months away.

Actor Olivia Munn is getting more candid about her breast cancer journey. 

Since her diagnosis a year ago, Munn has endured four surgeries, a double mastectomy and is being put through medically induced menopause, she said in People magazine's cover story. 

"I'm basically on a treatment of suppressing all of my hormones. So I will go into menopause, and I will shut down all of the hormones in my tissues, and my ovaries, everything that's shut down," she told People. 

"[That's] more problems, but I figured as a woman, I can't escape menopause, so I'd rather just bring it on now," she said "I can tackle it head on." 

The decision made with her doctors to induce menopause came after Munn's double mastectomy. The actress said seeing herself for the first time after that procedure was a "shock to my system." 

"Nothing could prepare me for what it would feel like. What it would look like. How I would handle it emotionally. It was a lot tougher than I expected," said Munn. 

At the same time, Munn expressed gratitude for the ability to have a double mastectomy and for the opportunity to fight. She is focused on staying present. 

"For the first time in my life, I'm not thinking about the past, and I'm not thinking about the future. I'm just thinking about today," Munn said. 

"I'm really happy that I can just be here today — right now," she said. 

Before Munn's diagnosis, her mammogram had come back clear and she had also around that time tested negative for the BRCA cancer gene.

But then a gynecologist recommended she figure out her lifetime breast cancer score. Her doctor used a free online assessment tool to calculate Munn's score. Anything above 20% is considered high risk, and minutes later, Munn found out she scored an alarming 37.3%. This prompted further testing.

An MRI and subsequent ultrasound led to Munn's diagnosis of bilateral breast cancer, after luminal B, a rare and aggressive cancer, was found in both breasts, according to People. 

Now, Munn's mission is to raise awareness about breast cancer. Her 2-year-old son helps keep her strong. 

"When I'm with him, it's the only time my brain doesn't think about being sick. I'm just so happy with him. And it puts a lot of stuff into perspective. Because if my body changes, I'm still his mom. If I have hot flashes, I'm still his mom. If I lose my hair, I'm still his mom. That's really what matters the most to me. I get to be here for him," she said. 

Each year in the U.S., about 240,000 women and 2,100 men are diagnosed with breast cancer, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

SEE MORE: Olivia Munn diagnosed with breast cancer, had double mastectomy

New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data indicates that heat-related emergency room visits increased in 2023 in numerous regions throughout the U.S.

The CDC noted that extreme heat events are becoming more frequent and intense as much of the U.S. experienced record-breaking warmth last summer. The CDC said that populations are more exposed than ever before to extremely high temperatures for longer periods. 

The CDC said there were a total of 119,605 visits to the emergency room at U.S. hospitals involving heat-related illnesses in 2023. Of those, 92% occurred from May-September. Males were far more likely to seek treatment for heat illnesses than females. 

Data showed heat-related incidents accounted for 20% more emergency room visits in 2023 compared to the average of the five previous years. 

The CDC said that there were 271 emergency room visits involving heat illnesses per 100,000 male emergency room visits in 2023. Out 100,000 female emergency room visits, there were 104 such cases. 

SEE MORE: Climate change could depress global income by almost 20%, study shows

The CDC said the highest risk was in some Southern states, such as Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. 

CDC researchers said that those who work outside and are unable to escape the heat are most vulnerable. 

"Effective implementation of heat mitigation strategies is associated with social determinants of health," the CDC said. "For example, even in areas with high rates of air conditioning, such as the South and southeastern United States, persons exposed to extreme heat might have limited or no access to cooling spaces." 

The study comes as numerous multinational agencies have sounded the alarm on surging temperatures in the last year. 

"Heat-related illness will continue to be a significant public health concern as climate change results in longer, hotter, and more frequent episodes of extreme heat," the CDC said. "By monitoring heat-related health impacts, public health agencies can detect trends in health care utilization rates, identify subpopulations at increased risk, and guide public health actions tailored to specific heat exposure levels."

A Polish man has been arrested on allegations of being ready to help Russia’s military intelligence in an alleged plot to assassinate Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Polish prosecutors said Thursday.

The office of Poland’s National Prosecutor said in a statement that the man, identified only as Pawel K., was accused of being prepared to pass airport security information to Russian agents and that he was arrested in Poland on Wednesday.

SEE MORE: Ukraine's Zelenskyy rules out a cease-fire with Russia

The man was seeking contact with Russians directly involved in the war in Ukraine and was expected to pass on detailed information about the Rzeszow-Jasionka airport in south-eastern Poland, near the border with Ukraine, which is the gateway for international military and humanitarian supplies for Ukraine. The airport is under the control of U.S. troops.

If convicted, the man could face up to eight years in prison, the statement said.

European Union member Poland has been a staunch supporter of neighboring Ukraine and Zelenskyy in fending off Russia’s aggression of more than two years.

The sons of two Beatles have “come together” to release a song.

Sean Ono Lennon, son of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and James McCartney, son of Linda and Paul McCartney, released their single, “Primrose Hill,” on April 12. The tune is named after a north London park with gorgeous views of the city.

In an Instagram post, McCartney intimated that the collaboration may be the first of many. “Today I am so very excited to share my latest song co-written by my good friend @sean_ono_lennon,” he wrote. “With the release of this song it feels like we’re really getting the ball rolling and I am so excited to continue to share music with you.”

What does Paul McCartney think about his son teaming up with Sean Ono Lennon? In a Facebook post, he urges fans to check out the new song and sends “lots of love to Sean Ono Lennon.”

Both sons are established musicians in their own right. Lennon has been a member of alt-rock bands like Cibo Matto, The Ghost of a Saber Tooth Tiger and The Claypool Lennon Delirium. He has also worked as a film score composer.

James McCartney, an indie folk-rock singer-songwriter, has released a number of solo albums, including 2016’s “The Blackberry Train.”

“Primrose Hill” has a melodic folk-rock feel that nods to their dads without feeling too dated. Fans of Ed Sheeran or Joe Keery will definitely appreciate the acoustic guitars and soft vocals.

You can listen to “Primrose Hill” below:

In a post on Instagram a few weeks ago, James McCartney hinted at his inspiration for the song.

“I had a vision as a child in Scotland, on what was a lovely summers day,” he wrote. “Letting go, I saw my true love and saviour in my mind’s eye. ‘Primrose Hill’ is about getting the ball rolling with me & finding this person.”

This story was originally published by Jennifer Graham Kizer at Simplemost.

Human infections from rat urine are on the rise in New York City. 

The NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a health advisory, saying there were 24 reported cases of human leptospirosis in the city in 2023 — which is the highest number in a single year. 

Human leptospirosis is a zoonotic disease caused by bacteria of the genus Leptospira, according to NYC’s health department. The health department says infected animals — like rats — excrete the bacteria through their urine, which can survive in warm, moist environments for weeks. The disease can be transmitted to people coming in direct contact with the urine — or urine-contaminated soil, water or food. 

So far in 2024, there have been six reported cases of human leptospirosis. 

The average number of cases per year in NYC was about 15 between 2021 and 2023. Before that, the average was three cases per year for the period between 2001 and 2020, demonstrating a significant shift. 

Symptoms of human leptospirosis include high fever, headache, chills, aches, vomiting, jaundice, diarrhea, stomach pain and rash, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Many of the symptoms may be mistaken for something else. 

Leptospirosis may occur in two phases, where a person with symptoms such as a headache, chills and fever may recover and then become ill again, the CDC says. If the person does become sick again, the second phase is usually more severe, where they may develop kidney or liver failure, or meningitis.  

Illness can last from a few days to three weeks. But if left untreated, recovery could take months. 

The disease is treated with antibiotics. 

Should a person develop leptospirosis in NYC, they must report it to the city's health department, per the city’s health code.

Notably, these infections can happen anywhere, and from species other than rats.

A love of animals perhaps went too far after dozens were trapped inside a Maryland home when it caught fire this week.

It was around 9 a.m. Tuesday when Shelia Elliott walked onto her front porch in Taneytown like usual. Except this time something was different across the street.

"I saw black smoke coming out of the window, and called 911," said Elliott. “I heard all the animals barking and yelping. The cops did finally get here. Everyone's yelling, trying to get doors and windows open."

At that point, another emergency call was made, this time to the Humane Society of Carroll County.

"So we removed 32 dogs, there were approximately five cats, six parakeets, there were chickens and chinchillas, two hedgehogs, one rat, and two mice," said Karen Baker, Humane Society of Carroll County executive director.

With all of them living under one roof, Baker said it was a traumatizing experience for the animals.

"Of course, just the fear of the smoke and noise from the fire department and having strangers come in and remove them, that can be pretty scary," said Baker.

SEE MORE: 5 dogs reunited with Indiana soldiers who helped rescue them

"They didn't want to come out because some of them apparently had never been out," Elliott added. "So the daylight and outside was scary."

Neighbors said they knew a few animals lived there, but not this many. 

"We would see three, four, sometimes five in the yard," said Elliott. "But never that many dogs, and we usually seen the same dogs in the yard."

Now the Humane Society is faced with the obstacle of getting these animals a healthy, happier new life.

"We recognize that they are going to need a safe place and a soft place to land and we are working on everything we can do to make that easier for them," said Baker.

But that's something she said doesn't come cheap.

"Spay, neuter, a lot of them will need dental, the core vaccines and microchips, de-wormers and normal medications," said Baker. "[It] is an exorbitant amount of money.”

With a long road to recovery, any kind of donation or help is needed.

“Having great compassion for the owners that have just lost everything and having compassion for the animals that need reassurance that life is going to be great from here on out,” said Elliott.

You can visit the Humane Society of Carroll County's website to make a donation. 

This story was originally published by Ashley McDowell at Scripps News Baltimore.

In recent months, numerous examples have emerged of retailers curtailing self-checkouts due to a rise in theft and errors. 

Perhaps grocery chain Aldi has found the solution.

This week, Aldi joined Grabango in launching ALDIgo checkout-free shopping at a suburban Chicago store. Grabango said its technology "uses computer vision to identify and keep track of every item in the store," which allows shoppers to leave without waiting in line or scanning items.

The technology was implemented in the Aurora, Illinois, Aldi store without any changes to the grocery's layout. 

The companies say customers fill their carts like normal, and when they are done, can use an app or a pay station as they exit. 

“The launch of ALDIgo is a pivotal moment for the grocery industry,” said Will Glaser, CEO of Grabango. “Although more challenging, it was important to us to launch this technology in a typical store and not one purpose-built for us. Aldi is one of the most innovative retailers in the world, and we are honored to partner with them to give their shoppers an exciting new way to shop the store.”

Aldi claims to be the first major grocery chain to implement the technology. The company said a traditional cashier will remain an option for customers not interested in using ALDIgo. 

“It’s exciting to see a checkout-free capability live in one of our stores, said Eric Traxler, vice president of IT at Aldi. “Aldi is continuously looking for new ways to be innovative and provide a best-in-class experience for our shoppers, and ALDIgo is a great example of that in action.”

Amazon has implemented a similar technology called Just Walk Out for smaller stores. The technology allows customers to buy smaller items, such as candy and soft drinks, without scanning. 

"Just Walk Out technology detects when a shopper’s hand interacts with a product on the shelf. When that happens, machine learning algorithms make sure the correct item is added to the shopper’s virtual cart — all without any specific knowledge about the person," Amazon said. 

SEE MORE: These 10 grocery stores top the list for value, consumers say

There has been growing debate on the value of self-checkouts. Earlier this year, a study in the Journal of Business Research by researchers from Drexel University and the University of San Diego indicated that self-checkouts can damage customer loyalty. 

The study found that as customers are forced to scan more items, their checkout experience becomes less rewarding. The researchers also said that customers experienced negative consequences with larger orders, such as the extra effort to bag purchases. 

The research comes as some stores have opted to roll back self-checkout over concerns of financial losses. In 2023, Costco began policing its self-checkout lanes to catch nonmembers shopping in the store. 

Last month, Target said customers will now be limited to 10 items for self-checkout. With fewer transactions being eligible for self-checkouts, Target says it will open more traditional checkout lanes. 

The U.S. and U.K. on Thursday imposed a new round of sanctions on Iran as concern grows that Tehran’s unprecedented attack on Israel could fuel a wider war in the Middle East.

Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control targeted 16 people and two entities in Iran that produce engines that power the drones used in the April 13 attack on Israel. OFAC also sanctioned five firms involved in steel production and three subsidiaries of Iranian automaker Bahman Group — which is accused of materially supporting Iran's military and other sanctioned groups. A representative from Bahman was not immediately available for comment.

Additionally, the U.K. is targeting several Iranian military organizations, individuals and entities involved in Iran’s drone and ballistic missile industries.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that he had directed U.S. Treasury “to continue to impose sanctions that further degrade Iran’s military industries.”

SEE MORE: UN appeals for $2.8 billion for new Palestinian aid

“Let it be clear to all those who enable or support Iran’s attacks,” he said, “we will not hesitate to take all necessary action to hold you accountable.”

In addition to Treasury's sanctions, the U.S. Commerce Department is imposing new controls to restrict Iran’s access to basic commercial grade microelectronics, which apply to items manufactured outside the U.S. that are produced using U.S. technology.

The actions come after U.S. officials earlier this week warned that they were readying new sanctions in response to Iran’s activity in the region and to prevent future attacks. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been quickly pushing forward legislation that would financially punish the Islamic Republic and its leaders.

Iran’s attack on Israel early Sunday came in response to what it says was an Israeli strike on Iran’s consulate in Syria earlier this month. Israel’s military chief said Monday that his country will respond to the Iranian attack, while world leaders caution against retaliation, trying to avoid a spiral of violence.

European Union leaders also vowed on Wednesday to ramp up sanctions on Iran, targeting its drone and missile deliveries to proxies in Gaza, Yemen and Lebanon.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the existing EU sanctions regime would be strengthened and expanded to punish Tehran and help prevent future attacks on Israel. At the same time, he said, Israel needed to exercise restraint.

“I don’t want to exaggerate, but we are on the edge of a war, a regional war in the Middle East, which will be sending shockwaves to the rest of the world, and in particular to Europe,” he warned. “So stop it.”

SEE MORE: Congress moving on bipartisan action to punish Iran for Israel attack

Accused quadruple murderer Bryan Kohberger maintains he was “out driving” the night four University of Idaho students were killed.

Kohberger, through his attorneys, submitted his alibi Wednesday. A previous court order gave the defense an April 17 deadline to submit the alibi.

Kohberger is accused in the Nov. 2022 deaths of four University of Idaho students. The bodies of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found in an off-campus rental home.

He’s charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary, which the judge entered not guilty pleas to after Kohberger chose to stand silent at his arraignment last year.

SEE MORE: Prosecution proposes summer trial for suspected killer Bryan Kohberger

Court documents obtained by Court TV state:

“Mr. Kohberger was out driving in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022; as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars. He drove throughout the area south of Pullman, Washington, west of Moscow, Idaho including Wawawai Park.”

The document also states Kohberger intends to offer expert testimony to show that his cellphone was not in the area, meaning his vehicle “could not be the vehicle captured on video along the Moscow-Pullman highway near Floyd’s Cannabis shop.”

Kohberger’s defense describes him as “an avid runner and hiker.” They claim Kohberger’s cellphone data supports his tendency to take “nighttime drives.”

Last week, the case was back in court regarding the defense’s survey of prospective jurors. Lawyers met to argue whether the survey violates the court’s non-dissemination order that has kept much of the evidence under seal and prohibited either side from making statements about the case outside of the courtroom. The judge is expected to rule on whether the defense can continue its survey.

Kohberger’s case is due back in court June 27 for a hearing on the Change of Venue Motion.

This story was originally published by Ivy Brown at Court TV.

A new study from University of Michigan Poverty Solutions showed that Detroit's Black homeowners gained $2.8 billion in home value during the span from 2014 to 2022. 

The net value of these homes increased 80% during this timeframe, outpacing the national average of 70% during the period. 

The study analyzed what impact the city's municipal bankruptcy would have on communities and whether growth would be equitably distributed. 

“There has been a huge shift for the better in Detroit’s home values, driven largely by the improvements being made in neighborhoods. My fellow Realtors and I have been seeing this shift for years. Black-owned homes are rising in value, and Black families are gaining the most family wealth,” said Ken Scott, past president of the Greater Detroit Realtist Association. "And while home values have risen dramatically, there is a lot of growth yet to come. Detroit homes are beautiful and dollar-for-dollar still a great value.”

Most notably, communities with the lowest values had the highest increase. Housing values in Detroit's poorest communities increased nearly 300% from 2014 to 2022. 

In Detroit's Condon neighborhood, the average home sale in 2014 was $7,500. By 2022, it was $71,000. 

City officials credited programs such as removing 25,000 vacant homes, renovating 15,00 salvageable homes, selling 25,000 vacant lots to adjacent homeowners and other initiatives for boosting property values and cutting foreclosures. 

SEE MORE: These 10 cities are the best for first-time home buyers, data finds

However, as property values surge, buying a home in these communities will also become less affordable. 

Scripps News Detroit asked numerous Detroit residents whether the city has enough affordable housing. They gave mixed answers. 

“Right now we’re being kind of pushed out. You have very few low-income or medium-income places. The rent is going steady up every month, every year," Janet Moss said.

But Nickolas Huff, who moved from San Francisco to Detroit, noted how much more affordable living in the Michigan city is. 

“You got options, right, depending on your budget and how big you need for living space. I think there are a ton of options down here," he said.

With their stout bodies (1 to 1 ½ inches long!) and loud buzzing, cicadas are hard to miss. And in a few weeks’ time, residents of quite a few U.S. states will be seeing quite a few of them.

In what entomologists call a dual emergence, two different groups (aka broods) of cicadas are completing the underground phase of their life cycle and coming above ground to mate.

Brood XIII cicadas are on a 17-year cycle, and Brood XIX cicadas are on a 13-year cycle, so they usually don’t emerge at the same time. But they do emerge together once every 221 years. The last time it happened was 1803, and the next time it’s happening is as soon as a few weeks from now.

Exactly when they come above ground may vary depending on the warmth of the location. We can expect them sometime in May or early June in more northern locations, but in some Southern states it may be late April.

Regardless, this means that literally trillions of cicadas will be appearing almost at once. And that leads us to ask a trillion-dollar question: How long do cicadas live above ground?

How long do cicadas live above ground?

Periodical cicadas live either 13 or 17 years, and the vast majority of cicadas’ lifespans are spent underground. Once they emerge, they stick around for just a matter of weeks. How many weeks depends on the weather conditions for mating.

The more Southern group, Brood XIX, is anticipated to emerge in late April to mid May, while the Midwest group, Brood XIII, is expected to appear from mid-May into June, according to the experts at University of Missouri Extension.

“Once cicadas emerge from the soil, they will immediately find a suitable place in which to molt to transform into adults,” Nancy Troyano, Ph.D., a board-certified entomologist, told Prevention. During this brief molting period, the wingless juveniles (or “nymphs”) shed their skin, and they develop wings and a hard exoskeleton. For the next several days, they’ll stay put in trees or other vegetation as they wait for this process to be completed.

About a week after they emerge, the males fly into tree canopies and begin to chirp their high-pitched mating song to the females. If you live in an area with cicadas, you’ve probably heard them. Males have relatively hollow abdomens, which amplify their calls like an echo chamber.

Females respond to the males’ call by flicking their wings. Once they’ve mated, they lay their eggs in small openings in tree branches, George Washington University entomologist John Lill told Reuters.

The adult cicadas die after reproducing. The average time they’re above ground is about a month — but the timing can vary. According to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, adults live just three to four weeks total above the ground, while National Geographic puts that number at about five weeks. Meanwhile, the eggs develop for about six to seven weeks until they hatch. The nymphs then drop from the trees and burrow into the ground, and the cycle begins again.

Where periodical cicadas will emerge in 2024

One important fact to keep in mind is that these two broods will emerge in different geographic areas, with one group in certain Midwestern states and the other in the South and in different parts of the Midwest. As the 2024 cicada map shows, there may be just a small overlap in a section of north-central Illinois, but not by much.

Here are the states where residents can expect to hear periodical cicadas this year — though you might still hear annual cicadas where you live, just like you do every summer:

- Alabama

- Arkansas

- Georgia

- Illinois

- Indiana

- Iowa

- Kentucky

- Louisiana

- Michigan

- Mississippi

- Missouri

- North Carolina

- Oklahoma

- South Carolina

- Tennessee

- Wisconsin

- Virginia

So, how long will you be seeing and hearing these noisy insects? No more than seven weeks, and probably fewer than that.

This story was originally published on Simplemost.

SEE MORE: Map shows where billions of cicadas will soon emerge in the US

An Oklahoma man was arrested Wednesday after authorities accused him of throwing a pipe bomb at the Massachusetts headquarters of a group called The Satanic Temple.

The Salem-based group says on its website that it campaigns for secularism and individual liberties, and that its members don’t actually worship Satan.

Sean Patrick Palmer, 49, of Perkins, Oklahoma, has been charged with using an explosive to damage a building following an attack last week on the headquarters, which is also used as an art gallery.

Several phone numbers associated with Palmer were out of service Wednesday, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts said they didn't yet have the name of any lawyer representing him. He is due to make an initial court appearance in Oklahoma on Thursday. If found guilty, he could face up to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

Surveillance cameras showed a man walk up to the building soon after 4 a.m. on April 8 wearing a face covering, tactical vest and gloves, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI. The man then ignited an improvised explosive device, threw it at the main entrance then ran away. The bomb partially detonated, resulting in some minor fire damage, authorities said.

The bomb appeared to be made from a piece of plastic pipe, authorities said, and they were able to extract a DNA sample from a single hair on the bomb.

The Attorney's Office said investigators found a six-page note in a flowerbed near the attack addressed to “Dear Satanist” and urged repentance. Authorities said Palmer had posted similar comments on social media.

The Attorney’s Office also said surveillance footage showed a black Volvo registered to Palmer driving erratically in the area before and after the incident, and it said Palmer had recently bought some PVC pipe from a home improvement store in Oklahoma.

The Satanic Temple says on its website that it doesn't believe in the existence of Satan or the supernatural. The group could not immediately be reached for comment.

According to new data released by Consumer Reports, most of the fruits and vegetables we eat have low levels of pesticides. Still, analysts said "pesticides posed significant risks in 20% of the foods" they examined. 

Consumer Reports said significant levels of pesticides were found in bell peppers, blueberries, green beans, potatoes and strawberries. 

More specifically, very high levels of pesticides were found in domestic bell peppers, blueberries (fresh and frozen) and potatoes. Among imports, very high levels of pesticides were found in blueberries (frozen), celery, collard greens, green beans, potatoes and strawberries (fresh and frozen). 

Consumer Reports noted elevated levels of pesticides in U.S.-grown green beans, hot peppers, kale, mustard greens, spinach, frozen strawberries and watermelon. Among imports, elevated pesticide levels were indicated in bell peppers, fresh blueberries, hot peppers and kale. 

The only organic food that raised concerns was imported green beans. 

SEE MORE: Old farming methods draw interest as climate, environment demand them

Consumer Reports said it conducted 30,000 fruit and vegetable tests. It said that organophosphates, and a similar type of pesticide called carbamates, were responsible for most of the risk to consumers. 

“That not only means that most of the produce Americans consume has low levels of pesticide risk, but it makes trying to solve the problem much more manageable, by letting regulators and growers know exactly what they need to concentrate on,” Brian Ronholm, head of food policy at Consumer Reports, said in the report.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, "When people are exposed over a long period of time to smaller amounts of these pesticides, they may feel tired or weak, irritable, depressed, or forgetful." 

Consumer Reports says the public should consider whether purchasing organic produce is worth the extra cost. 

“That’s why, while we think it’s always worth considering organic produce, it’s most important for the handful of fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest pesticide risk,” James E. Rogers, who oversees food safety at Consumer Report, says in the report. 

The Food and Drug Administration says pesticides are "one strategy that farmers use to protect plants from pests, such as insects, fungi, and weeds."

The FDA said it tests domestic and imported produce for 800 types of pesticide residues. In a 2021 report, the FDA said that 96.7% of domestic and 89.3% of import foods were compliant with federal standards. No residues were found in 35% of domestic and 44.5% of import samples.

@scrippsnews Pesticides pose ’significant risks’ in 20% of produce, according to a report released Thursday. Here’s are the fruits and vegetables you should pay attention to. #pesticidesinfood #pesticides #food ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Dialing 911 was not working for people in some parts of the country Wednesday night, with several states reporting emergency line outages.

An accidentally cut fiber line in Missouri caused 911 outages in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota on Wednesday night, investigators said. In a separate unrelated incident, parts of Texas experienced trouble with 911 service that appeared to be related to wireless carrier outages in the area.

In Kansas City, Missouri, workers were installing a light pole when they accidentally cut a fiber line maintained by Lumen Technologies. That connection provided 911 links for emergency services in Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. The accidental outage lasted about 2 1/2 hours, officials said on Thursday.

In Texas, officials said 911 service interruptions were due to unrelated technical difficulties with a cellular carrier.

Federal regulators were investigating both incidents.

Late on Thursday afternoon, the Honolulu Police Department reported that their 911 system was "currently not working," but reported that it was working again shortly after. They also did not specify what the issue was. 

The South Dakota Department of Public Safety posted Wednesday night that it was “aware of a 911 service interruption throughout the state.” It said texting 911 was still operating in most parts of the state, and that residents could still contact local authorities at police non-emergency lines for emergency services. About an hour later, South Dakota’s public safety department said service had been restored and that its 911 line was fully operational.

Las Vegas was also affected.

“URGENT: there is a 911 outage impacting your ability to contact us right now,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department posted Wednesday night. It urged people to call from a mobile device, saying they could view phone numbers dialing in and would immediately call back. Authorities had said calls from a landline would not go through or show up. Officials had no estimate on when service would be restored. They updated the public about two hours later saying the 911 line was back up and running normally.

Police in Del Rio, Texas, which is in the southwestern part of the state, flagged 911 outages Wednesday night as well. 

“We are aware of an outage with a major cellular carrier affecting the ability to reach 911. This issue is with the carrier and not the City of Del Rio systems,” said the Del Rio Police Department in a Facebook post. 

Police urged residents to use a landline or another carrier if a mobile device couldn’t get through to 911.

Officials in Sarpy County, Nebraska, were seeing a similar trend with certain wireless carriers having issues. Authorities posted on X Wednesday night that 911 was not working “for some wireless carriers,” and issued an alternate line to call for emergencies. About three hours later, the county posted that the issue had been resolved.

Indonesian authorities closed an airport and residents left homes near an erupting volcano Thursday due to the dangers of spreading ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami.

Mount Ruang on the northern side of Sulawesi Island had at least five large eruptions Wednesday, causing the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation to issue its highest-level alert, indicating an active eruption.

The crater emitted white-gray smoke continuously during the day Thursday, reaching more than 1,600 feet above the peak. People have been ordered to stay miles away from the 2,378-foot mountain and more than 11,000 people living in the affected area were told to leave. So far, at least 800 have done so.

An international airport in Manado city was temporarily closed Thursday as volcanic ash was spewed into the air.

“We have to close flight operations at Sam Ratulangi Airport due to the spread of volcanic ash, which could endanger flight safety,” said Ambar Suryoko, head of the regional airport authority.

Eruptions Wednesday evening spewed volcanic ash approximately 70,000 feet into the atmosphere, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. The bureau said in a statement Thursday it was tracking and forecasting the ash dispersion.

Indonesia's volcanology center noted the risks from the volcanic eruption include the possibility that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami. In December 2018, Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano island erupted and collapsed, losing around 3/4 its volume and triggering a powerful tsunami that killed more than 400 people. An 1871 eruption at Mount Ruang also triggered a tsunami.

SEE MORE: More bodies found after surprise eruption of Indonesia's Mount Marapi

Tagulandang Island, east of the Ruang volcano, could be at risk if a collapse occurred. Its residents were among those being told to evacuate.

“People who live in the Tagulandang Island area and are within a 6-kilometer radius must be immediately evacuated to a safe place outside the 6-kilometer radius," Abdul Muhari, spokesperson of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said Thursday. “And especially those who live near the coast should be aware of the potential for incandescent rocks to erupt, hot clouds and tsunami waves that could be triggered by the collapse of a volcanic body into the sea.”

The agency said residents will be relocated to Manado, the nearest city, on Sulawesi island — a six-hour journey by boat.

Indonesia, an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.

Iran's attack against Israel over the weekend has spurred a flurry of bipartisan legislative action in Congress, uniting lawmakers against the country even as the risk of a larger regional war looms.

Several measures introduced and passed in the House and Senate seek to both publicly condemn Iran and punish the Islamic Republic financially. Lawmakers have denounced Iran's actions, which came in response to a suspected Israeli strike weeks earlier on an Iranian consular building in Syria that killed two Iranian generals.

“The world is on fire, and history will judge us for our action,” said Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, during a news conference Tuesday.

The swift, bipartisan condemnation of Iran has put on sharp display the durability of American support for Israel, even amid growing partisan division over how the country is handling its more than six-month war with Hamas.

The House passed nearly a dozen bills by Wednesday that would, among other things, issue a slate of new sanctions and other financial restrictions against Iran and its leaders. Other legislation looks to prevent current Iranian officials sanctioned from evading those penalties and urge the European Union to “expeditiously” designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization as the U.S. has already done.

On the other side of the Capitol, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday advanced five bills, including ones that targeted Iran for its human rights record and would require sanctions on ports and refineries that receive and process Iranian oil.

“Iran’s direct attack on Israel this week underscores the need to further cut off the Iranian regime’s key revenue streams,” Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire said in a statement. "I urge my colleagues in the Senate to support this bill — which has already passed the House — so that we can send it to President Biden’s desk immediately.”

SEE MORE: What key recent events led to Iran's assault on Israel?

A number of the bills had passed the House weeks before Hamas' deadly attack on Israel in October but have been stalled in the Senate committee. An Israeli offensive in Gaza has since caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,000 people, according to local health officials. Israel's conduct of the war has revealed the depth of unease among U.S. lawmakers as concerns over the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza have caused even some of President Joe Biden's closest allies to threaten conditioning future aid to Israel.

Congressional Democrats have been reluctant to challenge President Biden's handling of the ongoing conflict and related regional tensions that have taken shape, mindful that criticism could further weaken President Biden in his reelection campaign against former President Donald Trump.

But the attack on Saturday has proven to consolidate public support for the Biden administration's quick response as it ordered U.S. forces to help Israel down “nearly all” the 300 drones and missiles that were headed its way.

It also comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., released legislation Wednesday that would provide $95 billion in aid collectively to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The aid package had been held up for months over Republican opposition to continuing wartime funding for Ukraine as it battles Russia. Iran's attack on Israel added urgency to Johnson's plans to bring the issue to the floor for a vote.

While the measures targeting Iran have received overwhelming support — with the series of House bills mostly passing with at least 300 votes — there has been a quiet but growing dissent among progressive Democratic lawmakers in both chambers, who warn that legislative efforts could risk further escalation in the Middle East.

“Following last weekend’s unprecedented response by Iran to Israel’s attack on its consulate, the Republican Majority is explicitly leveraging a series of bills to further escalate tensions in the Middle East," Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement Tuesday. “This is a blatant attempt to distract from their own incompetence.”

The strike on Saturday marked the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. Israel has vowed to retaliate against Iran, risking further expanding the shadow war between the two foes into a direct conflict.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent, condemned Iran's attack in a statement but called on his colleagues to respond cautiously. He warned that further U.S. action against Iran could lead to a dangerous escalation that could drag America into a war in the Middle East.

“Cooler heads must now prevail to ensure peace in the region and security for Israel,” Sanders said.

SEE MORE: Netanyahu says Israel will decide how to respond to Iran's attack

Twelve jurors have been selected for Donald Trump's New York hush money trial. 

Earlier in Thursday's proceedings, there were some speed bumps in jury selection as Judge Juan Merchan dismissed two of the seven jurors previously seated. Despite this, eventually, a total of 12 jurors were seated, including seven men and five women. While one alternate juror was also seated, the court is still in need of five additional alternate jurors, who are expected to be selected on Friday. 

Jurors' names will be kept confidential. 

Juror No. 2 was dismissed after she called the court expressing concerns about whether she could be fair and impartial. 

She said that she “definitely has concerns now," including about what has been reported about her publicly. She said friends, colleagues and family told her that she had been identified as a potential juror. The identities of jurors are supposed to remain confidential. 

But some details, such as the woman's occupation, were known publicly. 

Merchan said that the case lost a good juror, which had Josh Steinglass, a member of the prosecution, asking whether jurors should be required to provide job info. Trump's legal team objected to the suggestion. 

Merchan said he agreed with Trump's defense that prospective jurors' information is important. He directed the press not to report answers given by potential jurors. 

On jurors' questionnaires, they are asked about their current and previous employers. Those answers will be redacted, Merchan said. 

Later Thursday morning, Merchan dismissed juror No. 4 after questions arose over answers provided about whether they or anyone close to them had ever been arrested. Steinglass said that prosecutors discovered an article stating that the juror was arrested for "tearing down political advertisements." They also discovered that the juror's wife was previously involved in a corruption inquiry. 

The decision to dismiss the juror came after a lengthy discussion between prosecutors, Trump's defense and Merchan. 

SEE MORE: 1 in 3 Americans think Trump acted illegally in hush money case

The jury consists of people of varying ages and socioeconomic statuses. Two of the jurors have law degrees, one is a teacher, and another is a recent college graduate who now works for Disney. Another works in sales. 

On Thursday, 96 jurors were brought in for questioning. Of those, 48 were immediately excused because they said they could not be fair. An additional nine potential jurors were dismissed for other reasons. 

The jurors' questionnaire included questions about whether they or a relative have worked for Trump, supported groups such as QAnon and Proud Boys, follow Trump on social media, donated to his campaign or attended a Trump rally.  

Meanwhile, the defense wanted to know who the first three witnesses are for the prosecution, but the district attorney says that while sharing that information is a courtesy they usually extend, they don't trust the former president to not share the witness list, even when the defense has stated that he won't. Merchan agreed with the district attorney and denied the request to share that information with Trump. 

Trump faces 34 felony counts in a New York court for falsifying business records. 

Following the proceedings on Thursday, Trump spoke to journalists outside the court and continued his rhetoric that the trial is "very unfair" and that the case is "ridiculous." 

The courtroom was closed on Wednesday, giving Trump a day off from the trial. He spent Wednesday meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda. According to a readout from the Trump campaign, the two discussed defense spending among NATO nations and the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

The trial is expected to start Monday with opening statements, but there will be half-days on Monday and Tuesday for Passover.

A new report measuring the economic effects of climate change says we may expect global income to be 19% lower than it would be without global warming over the next 25 years.

The new research, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, analyzed 40 years of climate-driven effects on global GDP to project what continued climate change would mean for future economic growth. It found that compared to a theoretical future without these climate effects, "the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices."

The effects of global warming are expected to depress global income by about $38 trillion every year through 2049. An average U.S. or German income could drop by 11%, for example, while a French income may drop by 13%.

This drop may not be obvious across the board, however, since the expected overall growth in global GDP is likely to still translate to individual income growth in many if not most cases.

SEE MORE: Washington declares drought emergency after 'exceptionally dry' winter

Researchers say the biggest economic threat is most likely to come not from the damage of individual extreme events like hurricanes or wildfires, but from the slow upward creep of average temperatures, which can have broad effects on labor output or crop yields.

"The overall impacts are still mainly driven by average warming, overall temperature increases," study lead author Max Kotz told The Associated Press. "Those temperature increases drive the most damages in the future because they're really the most unprecedented compared to what we've experienced historically."

Poorer countries will see greater declines in their average incomes than richer ones, the study shows. In general, latitudes near the equator will see the most severe impacts, while certain regions near the poles may see an average benefit.

SEE MORE: White House commits $830 million to new climate resilience projects

The projected damage is considered "committed," meaning it's based on historical emissions that cannot be reversed and on the plausible trajectories for the next 25 years of future emissions.

The projected economic damage is already higher than the estimated cost of a global mitigation effort that could keep worldwide warming below a 2-degrees-Celsius threshold. But the researchers say working to limit the damage still makes economic sense — especially in the latter half of the century, when the effects of climate change are projected to become much more apparent.

"Damage estimates diverge strongly across emission scenarios after 2049, conveying the clear benefits of mitigation from a purely economic point of view that have been emphasized in previous studies," the research team wrote.

SEE MORE: Heat stress safety concerns prompt shift in farmworker treatment

Automaker Ford has issued a significant recall of about 456,000 vehicles that include its 2022-2023 Maverick pickup trucks and its 2021–2024 model Bronco Sport SUVs.

The company said that there is a power loss risk with the cars, urging drivers to comply with the recall because of the possibility the engine may lose power while driving. 

According to Consumer Reports, a power loss while operating the vehicles could cause serious safety issues including drivers not having the ability to keep up with fast-moving traffic, which could cause a crash.  

SEE MORE: Consumers warned to stop using e-bike batteries that could catch fire

Consumer reports said there have been 917 warranty claims and no confirmed injuries or crashes related to the problem outlined in the recall. 

In a recall report, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said an insufficient calibration strategy for detecting sudden battery degradations could be part of the problem. 

Customers are asked to take their vehicles to a dealer to have them recalibrate the vehicles involved in the recall at no cost. As of Wednesday, there was no software update available, according to a Ford spokesperson who spoke to The Associated Press. 

One user on the website Bronco Sport Forum asked if drivers would be able to "safely coast to a stop" during a power loss "or will the vehicle lock" its wheels. It was unclear, as the driver said they had not found anything addressing the issue in the manual. 

A woman in Illinois has filed a lawsuit against U.S. retail giant Target accusing the company of allegedly collecting and storing an array of customer data without asking for permission. 

A report on the lawsuit, filed in Cook County Circuit Court accuses Target of possibly violating Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act, saying that the company grabbed data from customers including facial recognition information and other biometric data, according to the court filing published by Fox 32. 

Scripps News reached out to Target for comment on the litigation but did not immediately receive a reply. 

SEE MORE: Supreme Court makes suing for job discrimination over transfers easier

According to the court filing, lawyers said that the company "does not notify customers of this fact prior to store entry, nor does it obtain consent" before stores collect and store biometric data on its customers. 

The lawsuit says Target failed to comply with state laws requiring the company to inform customers of data collection, which requires written consent. 

Last year privacy concerns were raised after multiple retailers began introducing palm-scanning technology as a way to pay for goods and services. 

Sanchari Das, a cybersecurity and privacy expert said, "Biometric authentication has been there for a long time." 

Regarding biometric information, Das added, "People have to be all the more careful how it is implemented and how it is stored, and that is something that users don't know."

A Minnesota toddler who fell from a South Dakota hotel's third-floor window has died.

Kathryn and Alex Hein of Lakefield, Minnesota, wrote in a Facebook post that their 1-year-old son, Madden, died Monday, two days after falling at Club House Hotel & Suites in Sioux Falls.

"It is with heavy hearts to say that our sweet baby boy Madden gained his angel wings late on April 15th," the couple wrote. "We miss him so much and we are having a hard time processing this all."

The parents also wrote that the boy is "going into organ donation. His organs are going to help so many other people. Our little boy is a real-life superhero."

Police are investigating the boy's death, but a Sioux Falls Police Department spokesman, Officer Sam Clemens, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that there is "nothing to lead us to believe it was anything other than a tragic accident."

Alex Hein is a middle school social studies teacher and a high school basketball coach. Kathryn Hein is a kindergarten teacher and helps coach volleyball. The couple also have a 3-year-old daughter and are expecting another child in August, the Star Tribune reported.

A GoFundMe for the family has raised more than $67,500 as of Tuesday evening. 

SEE MORE: Mom shares tragic story of son's death after swallowing screw

Arizona House Republicans have blocked another attempt to vote on the repeal of the Civil War-era abortion ban in the state.

On Wednesday, the House voted and blocked the motion by a 30-30 roll call. The same thing happened last week.

SEE MORE: Chile's Decades-Old Abortion Ban Might Finally Be Lifted

"Extremist Republicans in the Legislature have failed again to do the right thing. In just one week living under this new reality, women, doctors, and health care providers have already begun to feel the devastating effects of living under a total abortion ban. We cannot go on like this," Gov. Katie Hobbs said moments after the failed vote. 

She said, "I will continue to call on the legislature to do its job and repeal this law. In the meantime, I remain committed to protecting the freedoms of every single Arizonan, and I am working to make sure women are able to access the care they need."

On April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a Civil War-era abortion ban.

"To date, our legislature has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorized, elective abortion," the court's opinion read.

The 4-2 ruling makes nearly all abortions in Arizona illegal, with the exception of cases in which the procedure is needed to save the mother's life. It also supersedes a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, which was passed into law in 2022, before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade.

After the constitutional right to an abortion was overturned, Arizona still had a law on the books from 1864 that banned nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest.

Republicans attempted to revive the Civil War-era legislation but faced opposition from abortion-rights advocates, including Planned Parenthood Arizona, which was a plaintiff in this case.

This story was originally published by Scripps News Phoenix. 

A pregnant passenger aboard Disney Fantasy had to be airlifted from the cruise ship after experiencing health complications. 

The U.S. Coast Guard said the cruise line requested medevac services with its San Juan, Puerto Rico, sector Monday morning due to the 35-year-old woman requiring "a higher level of medical care ashore." Soon after, a Coast Guard MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter and an HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircraft from Miami made their way toward the ship's spot in the Atlantic Ocean, 180 miles northwest of Aguadilla, Puerto Rico.

Video shows the aircraft approaching above the ship before a rescuer lowers down onto it by rope. The Coast Guard said that was the Jayhawk crew's "rescue swimmer," who prepared a "rescue basket and litter to safely hoist the patient and cruise ship doctor" aboard the chopper.

Seven people can be seen in the footage carrying the patient on a stretcher toward an area where one team member attached her and the cot to a hanging rope. She was then lifted to the helicopter door and brought safely inside.

Emergency medical personnel local to San Juan, Puerto Rico, met the Coast Guard aircrew and the patient at the city's Fernando Luis Ribas Dominicci Airport, then transported the woman to a local hospital, the military body said.

SEE MORE: Carnival ship catches fire at sea, part of funnel collapses on deck

"Our crew was able to quickly, safely and efficiently execute a long-range MEDEVAC for the patient to receive the higher level of care she required," said Lt. Cmdr. Todd Stephens. "This case demonstrates the value of good crew resource management and the capabilities of our Jayhawk helicopter."

"The competency displayed by the Disney Fantasy crew and the Coast Guard personnel and units involved made all the difference," said Ensign Michael Riccio, Coast Guard Sector San Juan operations unit leader for the case.

The woman's name and the reason for her medical emergency were not made clear as of Tuesday evening. 

Disney Cruise Lines' website states it has a doctor and nurse on call 24/7 in the event of medical emergencies onboard, while a daily clinic is available for non-emergent care.

It also says pregnant women are permitted to sail with the company, but those who are past their 24th week or who will enter their 24th week during the voyage cannot be permitted passage due to safety concerns.

"Neither a doctor's medical statement nor a waiver of liability will be accepted," the website states. "In addition, Disney Cruise Line cannot be held responsible or liable for any complications relating to pregnancy at any stage."

America's largest plane manufacturer, once a shining standard of engineering and safety, was again under scrutiny Wednesday beneath the lights of a Senate hearing room.

In a nearly two-hour hearing, whistleblowers alleged continued manufacturing missteps at the company and even a "coverup" of important documents related to the blowout of a door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight earlier this year.

One current and one former Boeing engineer joined a former Federal Aviation Administration engineer and an aviation safety consultant to tell lawmakers Boeing's safety culture still falls short of a safe standard. 

Sam Salehpour, a current Boeing quality engineer, said he's concerned about what he characterized as safety lapses in the company's 787 and 777 programs.

"Since 2013, there have been serious issues on the 787 program, not properly closing thousands of gaps in its assembly of the fuselage," Salehpour said.

Those same concerns caused a halt to 787 Dreamliner deliveries in 2020 and 2021 before the FAA approved a fix.

On its website Wednesday, Boeing directed visitors to a page on "787 Quality Information." There, the company wrote, "Claims about the structural integrity of the 787 are inaccurate." The page also noted that testing on the plane "simulated up to 165,000 cycles of pressurization, about 3.75 times the aircraft's designed lifespan, with no findings of airframe fatigue."

In his testimony Wednesday, Salehpour detailed instances of employees forcing misaligned plane parts together. "I literally saw people jumping on the pieces of the airplane to get them to align," he said.

"If his claims are valid, then the potential risk is sort of a long-term risk," David Slotnick, senior aviation business reporter with The Points Guy, said. "It's not like the plane is going to fall apart in the middle of the sky tomorrow. It's more of a scenario where the planes might not last as long as expected, [and] any kind of fatigue that was happening to the structures would be caught during normal maintenance or normal inspections."

SEE MORE: Whistleblower says Boeing's 787 Dreamliner is flawed

Ed Pierson, a prominent Boeing whistleblower and former employee of the company, leveled an accusation of a "coverup" at Boeing of documents related to the Alaska Airlines flight that lost a door plug midflight in January.

The investigation into that incident has so far indicated the door plug that blew out was removed and re-installed at a Boeing facility in September 2023. The National Transportation Safety Board said Wednesday that it still has not received any documentation from Boeing about that work. The NTSB Chair told lawmakers last week that Boeing indicated that said documentation does not exist.

"I'm not gonna sugarcoat this," Pierson said Wednesday. "This is a criminal cover-up. Records do, in fact, exist. I know this because I've personally passed them to the FBI."

Scripps News reached out to the FBI and the NTSB to respond on Wednesday. The FBI declined to comment. The NTSB said it had "not received any such documentation from Boeing or any other entity. Those who have information or documentation that may be relevant to the NTSB's investigation into this accident are encouraged to reach out to investigators."

Scripps News also reached out to Pierson to inquire about whether he's tried to give the NTSB the documentation he says he has. He had not responded Wednesday evening.

Pierson also alleged the NTSB was not a truly "independent" authority, relying too heavily on Boeing and the FAA for information germane to their investigations. In response, the NTSB said, "The NTSB leverages its limited resources by designating organizations as parties that can provide technical information during the fact-gathering phase of the investigation. Once the fact-gathering is completed and the factual record is established, the role of any given party in the investigation is concluded. Parties are excluded from the analysis and report-writing phase of all NTSB investigations."

Boeing says it is in the process of implementing recommendations from an FAA panel that, over the last year, audited the company's safety culture. It also told Scripps News it has seen a 500% increase in employee reports through its internal whistleblowing portal, "which signals progress toward a robust reporting culture that is not fearful of retaliation," they said.

For its part, the FAA has a relatively new administrator, Mike Whitaker. In an interview with Scripps News in January, just before the Alaska Airlines blowout, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said Whitaker was working with her to change the agency's approach to pilot mental health care. Slotnick thinks that the same attitude extends to the safety oversight of Boeing.

"I think the FAA that we see today is a very different organization," he said. "The FAA is adamant that it thoroughly investigates every whistleblower complaint. You know, their track record suggests that's exactly true."

The United Nations appealed for $2.8 billion on Tuesday to provide desperately needed aid to 3 million Palestinians, stressing that tackling looming famine in war-torn Gaza requires not only food but sanitation, water and health facilities.

Andrea De Domenico, the head of the U.N. humanitarian office for Gaza and the West Bank, told reporters that “massive operations” are required to restore those services and meet minimum standards — and this can’t be done during military operations.

He pointed to the destruction of hospitals, water and sanitation facilities, homes, roads and schools, adding that “there is not a single university that is standing in Gaza.”

De Domenico said Israel's recently-ended second major military operation at Shifa Hospital, Gaza's largest medical facility, was so destructive the facility has been forced to shut down. As an example, he questioned what the military objective was in shooting an MRI scanner that examines parts of the body and can detect cancers.

He said his team has been dealing with “a scene of terror” at the hospital, with U.N. and Palestinian colleagues helping people try to recognize family members from shoes or clothes on “the remnants of corpses.”

Israel promised to open more border crossings into Gaza and increase the flow of aid into Gaza after its drone strikes killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen who were delivering food into the territory on April 1.

SEE MORE: Israel dismisses 2 officers over deadly strikes on aid workers in Gaza

The killings were condemned by Israel’s closest allies and heightened criticism of Israel’s conduct in the 6-month-old war with Hamas, sparked by the extremist group's surprise attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led some 250 others to be taken hostage. The Israeli offensive in Gaza aimed at destroying Hamas has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,800 people, according to local health officials.

De Domenico said there are signs of Israel’s “good intention” to get more humanitarian assistance into Gaza, citing the opening of a crossing to the north, which faces the most serious threat of famine, and the opening of bakeries there.

But the U.N. keeps pushing Israel to do more, he said.

De Domenico pointed to Israeli denials and delays on U.N. requests for aid convoys to enter Gaza.

He said 41% of U.N. requests that required going through Israeli checkpoints were denied during the week from April 6-12, and last week a convoy from the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF and the U.N. World Food Program was caught in crossfire in an area that was supposed to be safe.

De Domenico said convoys often spend hours at checkpoints and are only cleared in the afternoon, too late to make deliveries and return safely in daylight hours. He said the Israelis know this is how the U.N. operates, and delays allow them to say “we’re not blindly denying you” while controlling what happens.

“We continue to engage with them and our objective is really to solve the issue and deliver aid,” he said.

According to the international community’s authority on determining the severity of hunger crises, famine is imminent in northern Gaza where 70% of people are experiencing catastrophic hunger. And its recent report warned that escalating the war could push half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people to the brink of starvation.

De Domenico said the U.N. appeal was scaled back from $4 billion because of difficulties in getting aid into Gaza — and most importantly getting it to the people who need it most.

He said 90% of the $2.8 billion being sought for the rest of the year is for Gaza and 10% is for the West Bank, which has seen an upsurge in violence and settler attacks.

Eight months after deadly wildfires ravaged Maui, Hawaiian officials have released some of the findings from an independent investigation. 

The state's attorney general, Anne Lopez, released the first phase of information on Wednesday, and it looked at the events that transpired over the 72 hours after the fire started.

Four hundred pages of weather reports, topography maps, interviews and social media posts lay out an incredibly detailed timeline of the deadly Lahaina fire that killed 101 people last summer.

Rebecca Lauricella explained how she still feels broken after losing her home to the Lahaina fire last August. 

"Everyone is accountable, so why isn’t our government agency being accountable?” said Lauricella.

The report on the fire was prepared in conjunction with the Fire Safety Research Institute, and it lays out the timeline of the fire and the factors that made it so deadly, including high winds and low humidity, among other factors, but it does not delve into why it happened nor blame first responders, a common critique among locals after the fire.   

“We are grossly understaffed, undertrained, underequipped," said Lauricella, who is a former fire marshal and employee for Maui’s Emergency Management Agency. She knows the inner workings of how the response came together, and the pain of what she says are some of its shortcomings.

"There’s nothing that could’ve prepared the highest level of training and preparation for what I saw," said Lauricella.

Less than a year after the fire, Lauricella says she’s not seeing enough help for the rebuilding of Lahaina and the recovery of her community’s mental health. 

Going forward, the report states that “questions linger about the adequacy of warning systems, evacuation planning, and the preparedness of communities for such fire events.” 

Answers to those questions may be revealed in phase two of the attorney general's office's investigation, which is expected to be released later this year. 

SEE MORE: Senate hearings examine response to increasing wildfire threat

Travis Kelce has played games on TV his whole professional career, and now he's gearing up to join a whole new type of play. 

For his first TV series gig, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end will host game show "Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?" for Amazon Prime Video, a spinoff of the Fox game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?"

The 20-episode project will feature Kelce leading a classroom of his fellow industry folks to try to help an adult contestant answer 11 questions from an elementary-level curriculum. But the celebrities aren't the contestant's competition; they're the player's lifeline — and possibly a person they can "cheat" off of, a press release announcing the show said. 

The final question comes from the 6th-grade level, and a correct answer will get the contestant a $100,000 prize.

"I grew up loving game shows, and I'm excited to be following in the footsteps of so many TV icons by hosting my very first one with 'Are You Smarter Than a Celebrity?'" Kelce said in a statement, per Prime. "I'm just happy to be on the hosting side of the equation here and excited to see how these famous faces keep up."

The series will be produced by MGM Alternative, a division of Amazon MGM Studios, and will stream in more than 240 countries and territories. 

SEE MORE: Kelce Jam music fest to feature big acts. But what about Taylor Swift?

And it'll have some pretty big shoes to fill. The original series — co-created by MGM Alternative's general manager Barry Poznick — premiered to a record-breaking 27 million viewers in 2007 and still holds the title for No. 1 game-show premiere in broadcast TV history, per Prime. In total, its run garnered more than 800 million viewers during 3,000 globally distributed episodes, which wrapped in 2011. 

"Replacing the kids with celebrities gives us more laughs and surprises, like a roast, as contestants cheat off their famous classmates," Poznick said in a statement. "And now, with the ultimate class clown, Travis Kelce, hosting, viewers should expect the unexpected!"

Previous leads for the show include Jeff Foxworthy as the original Fox host and for its one-season revival in 2015. John Cena also hosted a single season for a 2019 reboot on Nickelodeon.

But Kelce isn't going into hosting or TV blind. The three-time Super Bowl champion co-hosts a top-charting podcast with his brother, recently retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, and has "Saturday Night Live" hosting experience under his belt. Plus in 2016, he starred in a reality dating series, "Catching Kelce."

He's also been widening his resume with other non-football ventures recently, like a music festival called "Kelce Jam" that the Chiefs' star is putting on April 28 in Kansas City. Plus, he's producing an upcoming documentary about artist Jean-Michel Basquiat called "King Pleasure."

Police in Brazil say a woman attempted to fraudulently complete a loan approval process by bringing her dead uncle into a bank branch in a wheelchair and trying to make it appear that he was signing documents. 

Authorities in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro said the woman — 42-year-old Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes — was seen on security camera footage wheeling 68-year-old Paulo Roberto Braga into the bank from a parking structure to try and use his identity to finalize documents in person for the loan, CNN Brazil reported. 

According to police accounts reported on by Reuters, Nunes told a bank worker that her uncle wanted to take out a loan for the equivalent of about $3,250.

She was seen in video holding a pen and moving the man's hand around with no response from the man. 

According to reports, Nunes was witnessed saying, "Uncle are you listening? You need to sign." She reportedly told bank workers that he doesn't speak much, and was heard saying she might take him to a hospital. 

Agencia Brasil reported that the incident happened in Bangu, a city just over three hours by car from the popular tourist areas of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Bank workers became suspicious when the woman began talking into the ear of the pale limp man's body. 

The corpse was later taken to a morgue. 

The woman's lawyer argued that Braga died while at the bank, but police say he died before he arrived. 

SEE MORE: California woman dies after falling down cliff while hiking in Arizona

More than 2.4 million viewers tuned in to Monday's WNBA draft. Viewership was up more than 300% from last year, with more people watching the WNBA draft than this year's NHL and MLB drafts combined. 

Despite the surge in viewership, the WNBA still lags far behind the NBA in terms of revenue and player compensation.

Iowa's Caitlin Clark, who went first overall to the Indiana fever, will make north of $76,000 in her first year, with incremental increases over 4 years.

For comparison, last year's No. 1 NBA draft Victor Wembanyama is bringing in $12 million for his rookie year. 

On Wednesday, Scripps News spoke with Terri Carmichael Jackson, Executive Director of the WNBA Players Association, about compensation, comparison with the NBA and the near future of the WNBA as it reaches a new audience.

Player salaries

"To everybody who's been paying attention to professional women's basketball, to everybody who's been paying attention to the [WNBA] and the high level of talent there knows that it has always been an issue — not just now," Jackson said. "But because we have these rock stars that are coming in that are so well known from their collegiate play, people are paying attention again, or paying attention still. Whatever it is, I'm happy. I'm here for it."

How WNBA revenue is shared

"Previously revenue share was tied to ticket sales, and the teams weren't really incentivized to make ticket sales happen," Jackson said. "And they didn't really have the staff. Many teams didn't really have the staff that they needed to sell those ticket packages. So now we have in our 2020 [collective bargaining agreement], a revenue-share provision that ties it to the success of this league at the league level, at the highest level. And so when we see the league doing well and we see them bringing in additional corporate partners — which this commissioner has done and done well — when we see them bring in additional broadcast deals, the opportunity to trigger that revenue share becomes that much closer, and we're very close."

Collective bargaining

"This 2020 CBA doesn't expire until 2027. However, there's an opportunity for the players or the league to opt out. And that decision has to be made this year after this season by November 1st. If the players vote to opt out after our review of the state of the business and our recommendation to them, they must do so in writing. If the league looks to opt out, they must do so in writing. Either side has inform the other side of its decision by November 1st. So a lot goes into that decision-making. There's a lot of review, there's a lot of discussion. We've convened our CBA committee already to have those conversations going into that vote at the end of the season."

Player travel accommodations

"As I have said every year since we went into negotiations for the 2020 CBA and coming out of those negotiations every year, every offseason, we look to engage the league in a conversation that is thoughtful, that talks about phasing in chartered travel in a reasonable way." Jackson said. "Never — and I want to say this to your audience and to everybody to kind of spread this word and clear up this misconception — never have these players asked for a full season of travel. We know how expensive it is. We're mindful of the business. They are responsible and they are mindful of this legacy that they're looking to protect and to build on. But what they want is for their employers, for the league and for the teams to pay attention to their health and safety. That's what the travel issue is always all about: Their safety, their health, their ability to recover."

SEE MORE: Serena Williams says she's 'super interested' in owning a WNBA team

Thousands of autoworkers at a Chattanooga, Tennessee Volkswagen plant began voting to unionize this week in a test to see if the most recent winning streak of the United Automobile Workers union might continue, spelling possible big changes ahead for the industry in the United States. 

In March workers at the Tennessee plant requested to vote in a first test of the UAW's power to organize there, and in other automobile plants across the country. 

On Tuesday, Gov. Bill Lee joined five other southern governors trying to convince workers that voting to unionize would put their jobs at risk. Around 4,300 workers at the Tennessee VW plant started voting the next day, with results expected to be counted by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday night. 

Forty-eight-year-old Kelcey Smith, who has been at the Chattanooga VW plant for a year, told the New York Times, "The energy is high. I think we are going to nail it."

In February, UAW announced a $40 million "commitment to organizing auto and battery workers" that would span two years of campaigning. UAW's international executive board voted to commit the significant funding to help organize the many new workers anticipated at battery and auto plants.

More than a dozen nonunion auto plants have been eyed by UAW including plants operated by Hyundai, Mercedes, Volkswagen, Kia, Toyota and Honda. 

SEE MORE: President Biden heads to Pittsburgh, calls for higher steel tariffs

Reuters reported that it would be the third time 4,300 employees at the Chattanooga VW plant have been under unionize efforts guided by UAW and committees. The plant assembles VW's ID.4 electric SUV. 

The latest UAW efforts are seen as a push to gain more public support for unions and have more plants outside of the Detroit-owned automakers unionize. The UAW is also working under the support of the Biden administration after President Joe Biden walked with United Auto Workers last year in a picket line calling for higher pay. 

President Biden told the workers on the 12th day of their strike, "You deserve what you earned and you earned a hell of a lot more than what you're getting paid now."

Summer is right around the corner, and some parents are facing an uphill battle trying to schedule their kids for summer camp.

Parents say they wait for the programs to open and it's a race to enroll their kids, and sometimes these programs are full within minutes.

"It's summertime and it might even be too late to get into camps now," said Alexis Dezaro, a mother of three kids.

Dezaro said she has been struggling to find a summer camp for her three kids. She's facing two problems: high costs, and space availability.

"We signed up for the financial help for an overnight camp for a week," Dezaro said. "And to do that, you still had to pay a deposit."

Dezaro has seen summer camp programs in her price range fully booked.

But she's not alone, Stories have spread around the country with some parents saying they've seen camps fill up within minutes of opening for registration.

Diane Lange, the youth enrichment coordinator for Parker Recreation Center in Parker, Colorado, said even when programs don't fill up that quickly parents still must act fast.

"We open our camps for registration on March first," Lange said. "A lot of people are caught off guard because the camp doesn't start until June. And they think, 'Hh my gosh, I have until June to register,' but you don't."

SEE MORE: Is penmanship still important? Why kids should still practice writing

According to the nonprofit American Camp Association, the average cost of summer camp is around $87 a day, with overnight camp tuition at about $173 a day.

The American Camp Association reports in 2023 there were more than 15,000 camps across the country with around 26 million kids attending.

Tom Rosenberg, the CEO of ACA, said demand since the pandemic has jumped.

"It's really about increased demand and day camps in particular are trying to expand their programs to accommodate more young people," Rosenberg said. "But there's a limit to how fast they can expand, and to build or expand overnight camps takes time."

Lange said parents shouldn't stop trying because there's likely some space available if you're flexible.

"Some are half-day camps, some are full-day camps," Lange said.

ACA said they have tools on their website to help people find available camps nearby.

But Rosenberg wants people to know to start planning their summer camp decisions as early as December.

A group of researchers at Cornell University said they have figured out why canned wine, aka the new boxed wine, sometimes has a rotten egg smell. 

Gavin Sacks and Julie Goddard, professors in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, led a team to solve the malodorous mystery after several winemakers approached Sacks asking for help. 

In a Cornell Chronicle article, Sacks said, “The initial focus was defining what the problem compounds were, what was causing corrosion and off aromas, and why was this happening in wines, but not in sodas? Why doesn’t Coca-Cola have a problem?”

It came down to a compound. When the “molecular” form of sulfur dioxide, which winemakers routinely use as an antioxidant and antimicrobial, interacted with the aluminum can it produced hydrogen sulfide — the source of the unpleasant smell. The research, which has now been published in the American Journal of Enology and Viticulture, began with a series of experiments to characterize the chemical makeup of commercial wines. Then the researchers stored samples in a variety of cans with different coatings for up to eight months, while incubating others. 

The team determined using a smaller amount of sulfur dioxide in the wine produced and using thicker epoxy liners in the cans could help eliminate the foul scent. 

SEE MORE: Restaurant offers free wine to diners who lock up their phones

California is about to be on bo time! Bojangles, a fast-food chain known for its Southern-style biscuits and chicken, is expanding to the West Coast for the first time. 

The North Carolina-based restaurant franchise has largely kept to the East Coast since it was founded in 1977. 

However, Bojangles announced Monday it has entered an agreement with an entrepreneur to bring 30 restaurants to Los Angeles County as early as 2025. 

Bojangles has over 800 locations as it looks to expand more. In March, the company announced plans to open 20 locations in Phoenix, Arizona as part of its westward expansion. 

Prior to that, the chain had only gone as far west as Texas from its Carolina roots. 

The menu features freshly made biscuits, breakfast sandwiches typically served all day, fried chicken, sweet tea and a variety of sides including mac and cheese, green beans, dirty rice, cajun pinto beans and “bo-tato” rounds.

The company said while it works with Poulet Brothers, LLC to open the restaurants in Los Angeles, they are open to more franchising opportunities in other “prime areas” of California. 

Bojangles said it encourages a potential franchisee to open a minimum of 5 to 10 locations in a particular market. 

Your move, San Diego, Bay Area and Sacramento.

SEE MORE: California fast food workers now make $20 minimum wage

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday his country would be the one to decide whether and how to respond to Iran’s major air assault earlier this week, brushing off calls for restraint from close allies.

Israel has vowed to respond to Iran’s unprecedented attack without saying when or how, leaving the region bracing for further escalation after months of unrest linked to the ongoing war in Gaza.

Israel’s allies have been urging Israel since the attack to hold back on any response that could spiral. These calls were repeated on Wednesday during visits by the British and German foreign ministers.

The diplomatic pressures came as Iran’s president warned that even the “tiniest” invasion of its territory would bring a “massive and harsh” response. Violence meanwhile surged on Wednesday between Israel and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant Hezbollah group, which fired a volley of rockets and drones on northern Israel. The attack wounded at least 14 Israeli soldiers, six seriously, the army said. The military said it struck Hezbollah targets deep inside Lebanon in response.

Speaking to a meeting of his Cabinet, Netanyahu said he met Wednesday with both visiting foreign ministers and thanked them for their countries’ support. But he said Israel would make the call on its own on how to respond despite “all sorts of suggestions and advice” coming from Israel’s allies, some of whom — including the United States, the United Kingdom and France — helped Israel repel Iran’s drone and missile assault.

“I want to be clear: we will make our decisions ourselves. The state of Israel will do whatever is necessary to defend itself,” Netanyahu said.

Despite the tough rhetoric, Israel appears unlikely to attack Iran directly without at least the support of its top ally, the U.S. But it could resort to more covert methods such as targeting senior Iranian commanders or Iran-backed groups in other countries, or launching a cyber attack.

SEE MORE: What key recent events led to Iran's assault on Israel?

It’s unclear how Iran would then respond, given the heightened tensions — any miscalculation by either side risks setting off a regional war.

President Joe Biden’s administration on Tuesday announced new sanctions on Iran and has worked to coordinate a global rebuke of the attack while urging all sides to de-escalate. U.S. officials said earlier this week that Biden told Netanyahu that Washington would not participate in any offensive action against Iran.

Over the weekend, Iran launched hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel in response to an apparent Israeli strike on Iran’s Embassy compound in Syria on April 1 that killed 12 people, including two Iranian generals.

Israel says it and its partners successfully intercepted nearly all the missiles and drones. A 7-year-old girl was wounded in the attack, which did not cause any deaths or major damage.

Israel and Iran have waged a shadow war for decades, but the strike over the weekend was the first direct Iranian military attack on Israel.

With tensions surging, Israel’s allies have reinforced a message of restraint. British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock each appealed for calm while on separate visits to the region.

Cameron said “it’s clear the Israelis are making a decision to act” against Iran, but he hoped they would do so “in a way that is smart as well as tough and also does as little as possible to escalate this conflict.” He spoke after meeting with Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, whose office is mainly ceremonial.

Baerbock said Germany stands “in full solidarity with Israel” but called on it to exercise restraint.

“Everyone must now act prudently and responsibly. I’m not talking about giving in. I’m talking about prudent restraint, which is nothing less than strength,” she told reporters. “Because Israel has already shown strength with its defensive victory at the weekend.”

The ministers said they would push for further international sanctions on Iran.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi warned Israel against any retaliation as he addressed an annual army parade, which had been relocated to a barracks from its usual route and was not carried live on state TV — possibly because of fears that it could be targeted.

In remarks carried by Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Raisi said the weekend attack was limited, and that if Iran had wanted to carry out a bigger attack, “nothing would remain from the Zionist regime.”

Regional tensions have soared since the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel launched by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Palestinian militant groups supported by Iran. The attack killed some 1,200 Israelis, and the militants took around 250 hostages. Israel responded with one of the deadliest and most destructive military onslaughts in recent history, killing nearly 34,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, who do not distinguish between combatants and civilians in their count but say most of the dead are women and children.

Israel has withdrawn most of its forces from Gaza after major offensives that left its two biggest cities — Gaza City and Khan Younis — in ruins. But Israeli officials say the war is not over and that they plan to send ground forces into the southernmost Gaza city of Rafah, where more than half the territory’s population of 2.3 million people have sought refuge from fighting elsewhere.

Hamas is still holding around 130 hostages, a quarter of whom are believed to be dead, and international efforts to broker a cease-fire and hostage release have made little progress.

Hezbollah, another close Iran ally, has traded fire with Israel along the border on a near-daily basis since the war began, in a low-intensity conflict that risks igniting all-out war. Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have also launched attacks, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, portraying it as a blockade of Israel.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday made it easier for workers who are transferred from one job to another against their will to pursue job discrimination claims under federal civil rights law, even when they are not demoted or docked pay.

Workers only have to show that the transfer resulted in some, but not necessarily significant, harm to prove their claims, Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the court.

The justices unanimously revived a sex discrimination lawsuit filed by a St. Louis police sergeant after she was forcibly transferred, but retained her rank and pay.

Sgt. Jaytonya Muldrow had worked for nine years in a plainclothes position in the department's intelligence division before a new commander reassigned her to a uniformed position in which she supervised patrol officers. The new commander wanted a male officer in the intelligence job and sometimes called Muldrow "Mrs." instead of "sergeant," Kagan wrote.

Muldrow sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and national origin. Lower courts had dismissed Muldrow's claim, concluding that she had not suffered a significant job disadvantage.

"Today, we disapprove that approach," Kagan wrote. "Although an employee must show some harm from a forced transfer to prevail in a Title VII suit, she need not show that the injury satisfies a significance test."

SEE MORE: Women making gains in the workforce, but gender gap still exists

Kagan noted that many cases will come out differently under the lower bar the Supreme Court adopted Wednesday. She pointed to cases in which people lost discrimination suits, including those of an engineer whose new job site was a 14-by-22-foot wind tunnel, a shipping worker reassigned to exclusively nighttime work and a school principal who was forced into a new administrative role that was not based in a school.

Although the outcome was unanimous, Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas each wrote separate opinions noting some level of disagreement with the majority's rationale in ruling for Muldrow.

Madeline Meth, a lawyer for Muldrow, said her client will be thrilled with the outcome. Meth, who teaches at Boston University's law school, said the decision is a big win for workers because the court made "clear that employers can't decide the who, what, when, where and why of a job based on race and gender."

The decision revives Muldrow's lawsuit, which now returns to lower courts. Muldrow contends that, because of sex discrimination, she was moved to a less prestigious job, which was primarily administrative and often required weekend work, and she lost her take-home city car.

"If those allegations are proved," Kagan wrote, "she was left worse off several times over."

The case is Muldrow v. St.Louis, 22-193.

One of Hawaii’s most dangerous and off-limits hikes will be permanently removed, the City and County of Honolulu announced last week. 

The Ha‘ikū Stairs, referred to as the Stairway to Heaven, is made up of nearly 4,000 treacherous, steel steps across the Koolau Mountain Range on the island of Oahu.

The city said the stairs were originally built by the U.S. military during World War II but have been closed to the public — and illegal to hike — since 1987. But that hasn’t stopped adrenaline-seekers from trespassing across private property to take in the famous hike. 

The city and county unanimously passed a resolution to remove the stairs in 2021, citing complaints about the regular disturbances from people who were trying to access the trail. 

Residents in Haiku Valley reported hikers blocking driveways and narrow roads with their parked cars, leaving trash on private property, using homeowners' water hoses to wash off or fill up drinking water, “relieving themselves” in the street and causing loud noises early in the morning as they set off to see the sunrise from the stairs. 

The resolution said calls to Honolulu police concerning the stairs have increased over the years, and one officer was assaulted by a trespassing hiker in 2021. 

Hikers have also been blamed for introducing an invasive species into the area surrounding the stairs. 

In the resolution, the city council said a “managed approach” would not be effective since the stairs have become a more popular attraction thanks to social media. 

The project to remove the stairs is expected to take six months and over $2 million. 

Contractors will work with a biologist to protect native species, prevent erosion and re-vegetate the area as each section of the stairs is removed, the city said.  

“This was a decision, when we came into office, that was long overdue. Over the course of many months, in meeting with the people involved and the discovery that we put into it, I can promise you that this was not a capricious decision,” Honolulu Mayor Rick Blangiardi said during the announcement. “This decision that was made was predicated upon our respect for the people who live in and around the entrance to the stairs, our respect for our ʻāina, and our respect for both the future and the past history of the culture of the Haʻikū community.”

SEE MORE: Visitors seen on video destroying ancient rock formations at Lake Mead

The U.S. government has reportedly come to a settlement agreement for a payout to a group of around 100 of Larry Nassar's sexual assault victims. 

According to multiple reports citing those familiar with the settlement, the U.S. Justice Department agreed to pay around $100 million to victims of former national women’s gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, the Wall Street Journal and USA Today reported.  

According to the victims, the FBI failed to take seriously multiple reports of Nassar's abuse.

Scripps News has reached out to the Department of Justice about the agreement but did not immediately receive a response. 

The agreement between the government and victims had not been finalized by Wednesday afternoon, a source told USA Today. 

SEE MORE: Larry Nassar was stabbed after he made lewd comment watching Wimbledon

In a 2021 report, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General said that it found that "senior officials in the FBI Indianapolis Field Office failed to respond to allegations of sexual abuse of athletes by former USA Gymnastics physician Lawrence Gerard Nassar with the urgency that the allegations required."

If finalized, the latest reported payout agreement was expected to not only resolve remaining legal claims, according to a report — but it was also expected to reportedly bring liability payouts in the wake of the judgment against Nassar to almost $1 billion. 

In 2018 Nassar was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison on multiple criminal sexual abuse charges, Scripps News reported. 

In a bout of what he called "unfortunateness," former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce recalled losing his Super Bowl LII ring during the "New Heights" live show in Cincinnati. 

Kelce said the ring was used during the "Lombaby Games" portion of the show, which was held at the University of Cincinnati's Fifth Third Arena. The "Lombaby Games" consisted of college athletes facing off against academics in a series of games, including one in which contestants searched in pools filled with Skyline Chili 3-ways for Jason's Super Bowl ring, along with other decoy rings.

"I legitimately lost my Super Bowl ring in this event," Kelce said during Wednesday's episode of "New Heights." "They could not find it."

The 36-year-old said he had one of the podcast's interns search the pool of chili with a shovel the following day, but the ring was never located. They also tried a metal detector, but unbeknownst to them, Skyline Chili has trace amounts of iron in it, meaning the metal detector was worthless. 

Kelce assumes the ring is "now in a landfill somewhere in the Cincinnati Tri-State area" after they ended up throwing away the remnants. 

SEE MORE: Jason Kelce announces official retirement after 13-year Eagles career

Travis Kelce, who co-hosts the podcast with his brother, sarcastically asked Jason what he expected to happen

"I thought that we'd just go in the pool and get the ring afterwards," Jason responded. 

Travis didn't have many words for his brother other than calling him an "imbecile."

"It's just a hunk of metal, I'll just have another one made I think," Jason said. "They can do that right?" 

Jason and Travis also reminisced on just how disgusting — and smelly — the challenge, aptly titled "Jason Lost His Ring," was, with Jason saying videos don't do it justice. 

"I love Skyline Chili," Jason said after admitting to having it twice over the weekend. "This chili had been sitting out for like some time period." 

"It smelled so bad in that part of the arena," Travis added. "It was disgusting." 

This story was originally published by Molly Schramm at Scripps News Cincinnati.

SEE MORE: Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes are opening a restaurant together

A woman has died after falling down a cliff while hiking with her family in Arizona.

According to the Yavapai County Sheriff's Office, 40-year-old Zynad Joseph was with her husband and child when she fell 140 feet off the cliff on Bear Mountain trail. A group of hikers were able to get to Joseph and attempt to help her but she did not survive.

SEE MORE: Missing hiker found dead with his dog alive by his side

Rescue crews and a helicopter assisted in getting to Joseph, but she was pronounced dead at the scene. YCSO says the family is from California and was renting a home on Airbnb in the area at the time.

The woman's husband and child were airlifted off the trail but were unharmed. YCSO is still investigating the cause of the woman's fall and is asking Anyone who witnessed the incident to call 928-771-3260.

This story was originally published by Clayton Klapper at Scripps News Phoenix.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he strongly supports a proposal from House Speaker Mike Johnson to provide aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

Republican Speaker Johnson, facing a choice between losing his job and funding Ukraine, notified lawmakers earlier that he would forge ahead for votes on the package later this week. Shortly after Johnson released the funding proposals, President Biden offered his support for the package.

"The House must pass the package this week, and the Senate should quickly follow," the Democratic president said. "I will sign this into law immediately to send a message to the world: We stand with our friends, and we won't let Iran or Russia succeed."

After agonizing over how to proceed on the package for days, Johnson notified GOP lawmakers Wednesday that he would push to hold votes on three funding packages for Ukraine, Israel and allies in the Indo-Pacific, as well as several other foreign policy proposals in a fourth bill.

Johnson is proposing that economic assistance for Kyiv be structured as forgivable loans, along with greater oversight on military funding, but the decision to support Ukraine at all has angered populist conservatives in the House and given new energy to a threat to remove him from the speaker's office.

The bills "will fund America's national security interests and allies in Israel, the Indo-Pacific, and Ukraine," Johnson wrote in a text message to members, which was shared by two Republican lawmakers.

The votes on the package are expected Saturday evening, Johnson said. But he faces a treacherous path to get there.

The speaker will need Democratic support on the procedural maneuvers to advance his complex plan of holding separate votes on each of the aid packages.

The top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, said in a statement that the three funding proposals for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan "mirror" a $95 billion foreign aid package that the Senate passed in February.

Crucial to Democratic support, the House proposal kept intact roughly $9 billion in humanitarian aid for civilians in Gaza and other conflict zones.

Meanwhile, the threat to oust Johnson from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican of Georgia, gained support this week. One other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, said he was joining Greene and called for Johnson to resign. Other GOP lawmakers have openly complained about Johnson's leadership.

"You are seriously out of step with Republicans by continuing to pass bills dependent on Democrats," Greene wrote on the social platform X. "Everyone sees through this."

SEE MORE: Speaker Mike Johnson says he will push for aid to Israel and Ukraine

In an effort to satisfy conservatives, Johnson said he would hold a separate vote on a border security package that contains most of a bill that was already passed by House Republicans last year. That bill has already been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, and conservatives quickly denounced the plan to hold a separate vote on it as insufficient. Rep. Chip Roy of Texas called the strategy a "complete failure."

The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus posted on X that Johnson had was "surrendering the last opportunity we have to combat the border crisis."

As part of the foreign aid push, Johnson also said House members would have an opportunity to vote on a raft of foreign policy proposals, including allowing the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets, placing sanctions on Iran, Russia and China, and potentially banning the video app TikTok if its China-based owner doesn't sell its stake.

The precarious effort to pass the foreign aid comes as lawmakers who are focused on national security warn that the House must act after waiting for nearly two months for Johnson to bring up the foreign aid.

In the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Turner, and top Democrat, Rep. Jim Himes, issued a joint statement Tuesday saying that they had been informed in a classified briefing that there was a "critical need" to provide funding for Ukraine this week.

"The United States must stand against Putin's war of aggression now as Ukraine's situation on the ground is critical," the lawmakers said in a statement.

In a separate hearing on Wednesday, Pentagon leaders testified that Ukraine and Israel both desperately need military weapons.

"We're already seeing things on the battlefield begin to shift a bit in Russia's favor," said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

The House's version of the aid bill pushes the Biden administration to provide long-range ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile Systems) to Ukraine, which could be used to target Russian supply lines.

The U.S. has resisted sending those weapons out of concerns Moscow would consider them escalatory, since they could reach deeper into Russia and Russian-held territory. The House legislation would also allow the president to decline to send the ATACMS if it is against national security interests, but Congress would have to be notified.

The House bill would also redouble the oversight of aid and equipment sent to Kyiv, including in-person monitoring requirements.

Still, there was a growing acknowledgment in Washington that Johnson could soon be out of the speaker's office.

"This is a chance to do the right thing," Rep. Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican, said this week. "If you pay for it, you'll be known in history as the man who did the right thing even though it cost him a job."

Notorious drug lord Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán wrote a letter to a New York judge claiming he hasn't been able to get phone calls or have visitors while incarcerated in a maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado. 

The Associated Press reported that Judge Brian M. Cogan replied to Guzmán's letter, writing that "the Bureau of Prisons became solely responsible" for overseeing his life sentence.

In the letters, obtained by the AP, Guzman called it "unprecedented discrimination" and said he is being punished further by not being allowed to speak to his children. Guzmán claimed it has been seven months since his last phone call with his children. 

His phone calls are being monitored by the FBI, which prison officials say was not responding to them to allow the calls to take place. 

In 2019 the Department of Justice said Guzman was sentenced to life in prison "plus 30 years," by Cogan, which was to "run consecutive to the life sentence for being a principal leader of a continuing criminal enterprise."

Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera was the head of the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as  the Sinaloa Cartel, the DOJ said. 

SEE MORE: How cartels are changing the U.S.-Mexico political landscape

Last year the wife of "El Chapo," Emma Coronel Aispuro, was freed from prison after serving a three-year sentence for money laundering and drug trafficking charges. 

Aispuro pleaded guilty in 2021 to federal charges connected to Guzmán's crimes and her involvement with the Sinaloa cartel. 

NBA YoungBoy, also known as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, a rapper with millions of followers, was arrested Tuesday in Utah on multiple offenses including possession of a controlled substance and possession of a dangerous weapon while serving a house arrest sentence.

The Cache County Sheriff's Office reported that multiple agencies, including the FBI, the Secret Service and a SWAT team conducted a search warrant at the 24-year-old's residence located north of Salt Lake City. 

Additional charges for the artist, whose real name is Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, included a pattern of unlawful activity, identity fraud and forgery, according to jail records.

According to Utah code, a pattern of unlawful activity refers to "engaging in conduct which constitutes the commission of at least three episodes of unlawful activity."

No bail has been set yet.

Reports indicate the rapper was in Utah under house arrest after he was accused of federal gun and other charges.

Local media in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he is originally from, reported his lawyers had argued that moving Gaulden to Utah would keep him out of trouble while he awaits a trial.

In December 2023, a federal judge reportedly lessened Gaulden's house arrest conditions to allow him access to mental health treatment.

Also in 2023, the rapper made headlines when he announced his intention to be baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Further information about Gaulden's most recent Cache County arrest was not made available, with officials only saying an "ongoing investigation into criminal conduct" is underway.

This story was originally published by Melanie Porter at Scripps News Salt Lake City. 

Two years ago, Democrats repeatedly and forcefully warned Republicans and Gov. Ron DeSantis that a new law making it easier to challenge school books was so broadly worded that it would create havoc across the state.

Now they can say, “I told you so."

DeSantis backtracked on the 2022 law on Tuesday when he signed a bill narrowing its focus. He blamed liberal activists for abusing the law, not the citizens whose objections to certain books account for the majority of book removals from school libraries and classrooms.

“The idea that someone can use the parents rights and the curriculum transparency to start objecting to every single book to try to make a mockery of this is just wrong,” DeSantis said the day before the bill signing. “That’s performative. That’s political.”

Coincidentally, PEN America, a group that fights book bans, issued a report Tuesday saying Florida is responsible for 72% of the books that have been pulled from the nation's schools in the first half of the current school year.

The organization said liberal activists are not the ones who should be blamed for abusing the law.

“The majority of books that we see being removed are books that talk about LBTQ+ identities, that include characters of color, that talk about race and racism, that include depictions of sexual experiences in the most broadest interpretation of that understanding,” said Kasey Meehan, PEN America's Freedom to Read program director.

SEE MORE: Book bans in schools reach record high, report finds

Those challenges are being made by conservative individuals and groups such as Moms for Liberty, Meehan said.

The original law allowed any person — parent or not, district resident or not — to challenge books as often as they wanted. Once challenged, a book has to be pulled from shelves until the school district resolves the complaint. The new law limits people who don't have students in a school district to one challenge per month.

The PEN America report says Florida is responsible for 3,135 of the 4,349 school book bans in the United States so far this school year. Just this week in conservative Clay County, one person challenged 40 books, Meehan said.

Before dropping out of the Republican presidential primary, DeSantis campaigned heavily on his education platform, including the law giving people more power to challenge books.

“It’s just a big mess that DeSantis created and now he’s trying to disown it, but I don’t know if he’ll be able to distance himself from this because he campaigned on it so hard,” said House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell.

It's not the only example of the tough-talking governor having to make adjustments to ideology he championed while seeking the White House.

He also has made concessions in the settlement of several lawsuits involving the state and Walt Disney World. The dispute between them erupted in 2022 after the company spoke out against a DeSantis-backed law that opponents dubbed “Don't Say Gay.” The law bans classroom lessons on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The Associated Press asked DeSantis' office for examples of liberal activists abusing the law and it provided one: Chaz Stevens, a South Florida resident who has often lampooned government. Stevens raised challenges in dozens of school districts over the Bible, dictionaries and thesauruses.

The change to the law “ensures that book challenges are limited for individuals, like Chaz, who do not have children with access to the school district’s materials," DeSantis spokeswoman Julia Friedland said in an email. She didn't reply to follow-up emails requesting more examples.

Stevens, who 11 years ago made national news when he installed a Festivus pole made out of beer cans across from a nativity scene displayed in the Capitol, was delighted DeSantis' office singled him out.

Two bodies recovered in a rural county of Oklahoma are confirmed to be that of a missing preacher’s wife and her friend. 

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said the chief medical examiner positively identified the deceased as 27-year-old Veronica Butler and 39-year-old Jilian Kelley. 

Both women were from Kansas and had been missing since March 30. 

“Our thoughts and prayers are with their loved ones, along with everyone throughout their community,” the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said in a statement on Facebook. 

Authorities said Butler and Kelley had been driving in Oklahoma last month to pick up Butler’s children from a birthday party when the two failed to show up. The vehicle they had been traveling in was found abandoned near Highway 95 and Road L in Texas County. Police had said there was evidence to indicate foul play. 

On Saturday, four people — 43-year-old Tad Bert Cullum, 54-year-old Tifany Machel Adams, 50-year-old Cole Earl Twombly and 44-year-old Cora Twombly — were arrested and charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, and one count of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree, in connection with the case. 

It was one day later that two bodies were recovered, followed by a positive identification on Monday. 

Adams, who was arrested alongside her boyfriend, Cullum, was the grandmother of Butler’s two children — her son was their father, according to The Associated Press. Butler had been on her way to a supervised visit with the kids, with Kelley as her approved supervisor.  

The family had been in a custody battle over the children, with Adams taking issue with Butler’s visits, according to AP. Butler’s attorney told investigators their client was likely to be granted more time, including unsupervised visitation, at a hearing in April. 

AP said all four people arrested were part of an anti-government group in Oklahoma known as “God’s Misfits.” 

Washington state has declared a drought emergency, with the exception of three cities.

On Tuesday, officials from the Washington State Department of Ecology announced the declaration of a drought emergency for the majority of Washington State, citing an "exceptionally dry" winter that resulted in low snowpack and forecasts indicating continued dry conditions. 

“As our climate continues to change, we’re increasingly seeing our winters bring more rain and less snow,” said Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in a press release. “We depend on that winter snowpack to meet the needs of Washington’s farmers, fish, and communities during the dry summer months. And this year, it’s just not at the level we’re accustomed to and rely on.”

The emergency declaration allows officials to use $4.5 million in drought response grants for public entities to tackle the effects of the current drought.

The Department of Ecology says there are some exceptions for Seattle, Tacoma and Everett as utilities in these larger cities have reservoir storage and already implemented strategies that make them more resilient to drought. 

The state's drought declaration in 2023 was set to end on June 30 this year. This new declaration will extend until next year.

Attention, Washington! We are declaring a drought emergency for most of the state. This declaration allows us to distribute drought emergency grants and process emergency water right permits and transfers.

Learn more here: https://t.co/wCrP5ykeEo

— WA Department of Ecology (@EcologyWA) April 16, 2024

The Senate voted Wednesday to declare both articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas "unconstitutional," therefore concluding the trial.

Shortly after Senate President Pro-Tem Sen. Patty Murray swore in the senators as jurors, the Senate swiftly proceeded to vote on the impeachment articles. In a 51-48 decision, the Senate deemed the first article, "Willful and Systemic Refusal to Comply with the Law," as unconstitutional. Subsequently, with a vote of 51-49, the Senate declared the second article, "Breach of Public Trust," unconstitutional as well.

Following both votes, the Senate continued to vote along party lines (51-49) to adjourn the impeachment trial despite Republican objections.

"Today’s decision by the Senate to reject House Republicans’ baseless attacks on Secretary Mayorkas proves definitively that there was no evidence or Constitutional grounds to justify impeachment," said DHS spokesperson Mia Ehrenberg in a statement following the votes. "It’s time for Congressional Republicans to support the Department’s vital mission instead of wasting time playing political games and standing in the way of commonsense, bipartisan border reforms.”

In February, the House of Representatives voted along party lines to impeach Mayorkas, accusing him of failing to comply with federal immigration laws and secure the border, as House Republicans sought to hold him accountable for the influx of migrants at the southern border.

The articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate on Tuesday, effectively starting the trial. 

But just like expected, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moved to dismiss this trial very swiftly.

Given the Democrats' majority in the U.S. Senate and the requirement of 67 senators to vote for conviction in an impeachment trial, it's no surprise that Mayorkas was not found guilty or removed from office.

In a joint statement with other Republican party leaders, House Speaker Mike Johnson scolded Senate Democrats or not holding a full trial. 

"The American people will hold Senate Democrats accountable for this shameful display," the statement says.

SEE MORE: House GOP walks articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to Senate

The NBA announced that Jontay Porter, a center who signed a two-way contract with the Toronto Raptors, has been permanently banned from the league after an investigation found he was involved in a gambling scheme, which included him placing a bet on the Raptors. 

The league alleged that Porter provided confidential information to sports bettors, limited his own participation in one or more games for betting purposes, and bet on NBA games. The NBA claimed Porter disclosed confidential information about his own health status prior to the Raptors' March 20 game to an individual he knew to be an NBA bettor. The league said the bettor placed an $80,000 bet that he would underperform March 20, which ended up having an over $1 million payout. 

The league said that Porter claimed that he was feeling ill, which caused him to only play three minutes that night. The NBA said that due to "unusual betting activity," the payout was not given. 

The league said the unusual gambling activity involving Porter was brought to the NBA's attention following the March 20 game. 

SEE MORE: Shohei Ohtani's interpreter charged with bank fraud in betting case

The league also said that Porter placed 13 bets involving the NBA using an "associate's online betting account." None of the bets involved games Porter played in, but one of the bets did involve the Raptors. The league said Porter made $54,094 in bets and after $76,059 of winnings, he netted $21,965.

"There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter's blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. "While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players. Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game."

Porter's suspension comes as sports betting becomes more prevalent in the U.S. According to the American Gaming Association, there was a 32.1% increase in sports betting revenue in the first two months of the year compared to 2023. 

Meow Wolf, the company known for its immersive and interactive art displays, is planning to lay off 165 employees company-wide, according to an internal memo sent Monday.

The company confirmed the cuts to Scripps News Denver, saying the move impacts 111 employees across the exhibitions and corporate team as well as 54 bargaining unit positions in Las Vegas, Nevada. Meow Wolf also has locations in Texas, Colorado and New Mexico.

SEE MORE: Las Vegas Meow Wolf exhibit adds mystery to the mundane

"When we opened our first exhibitions, we were inventing an operating model from scratch. Over the past three years, we’ve developed a better understanding of our guests and what we need to staff and support our exhibitions in order to make the most of the growth opportunities ahead, including our Houston location that opens later this year," Meow Wolf CEO Jose Tolosa said in a statement. "Saying goodbye to friends and colleagues who have been a big part of Meow Wolf’s success to date will not be easy. We are grateful for their contributions, both creatively and to our community. And we are committed to supporting everyone through this transition as we move forward.”

Meow Wolf expects the layoffs to cut business expenses by 10%. Meanwhile, the company is moving forward with its newest location in Houston, which is expected to open later this year.

This story was originally published by Sydney Isenberg at Scripps News Denver.

A restaurant in northern Italy is offering a free bottle of wine to diners who agree to do a digital detox while enjoying their dinner. 

Al Condominio, located in Verona, said each couple who comes in and allows staff to lock their phones in a drawer for the duration of their meal will get a free bottle of Maia Pinot Noir. The couple will have to show their server the key to the lockbox as proof to receive the special deal. 

If it’s a larger group of guests, the offer will apply to one bottle per four people, the restaurant said on its website. 

Restaurant owner Angelo Lella told The Guardian the purpose of the digital detox promotion is to encourage diners to spark more conversation instead of glancing at their phones. 

“Technology is becoming a problem — there is no need to look at your phone every five seconds, but for many people it is like a drug … This way they have an opportunity to put it aside and drink some good wine,” he said to The Guardian. 

Customers will also have a chance to win a free meal at the restaurant, which just opened in March, if they leave a good review. 

Lella told The Guardian the response has been very positive and most of their customers opt to lock up their phones and enjoy the free wine. 

SEE MORE: 2024 could be the year to travel as airfare prices are declining

People with electric bikes are being warned to stop using certain batteries that could catch fire.  

The Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a public safety notice about Unit Pack Power (UPP) e-bike batteries, saying they could overheat and cause serious injury or death. 

The CPSC said there were 13 reported incidents in the U.S. of batteries overheating. Seven of those cases reported fire and substantial property damage. There were also battery fires in the U.K. 

The UPP batteries under the warning have model numbers U004 and U004-1. 

The products were sold between 2018 and 2024 at a number of online retailers like Amazon, AliExpress, eBay, DHgate and Walmart, in addition to UPP’s website.  

While the batteries should be disposed of, the CPSC emphasized they should not be thrown in the trash. The CPSC said consumers should follow state and local ordinances for recalled or defective lithium batteries when discarding them, because the batteries could be hazardous. 

E-bike owners should always be present when their bike is charging and should not leave it charging while sleeping. The bikes should only be charged with the charger sent from the manufacturer. 

Anyone wanting to report an incident with a UPP battery can do so on the CPSC website. 

SEE MORE: Lithium-ion battery sparks another deadly fire. How to avoid the risks

Kim Woodard knows nearly every road in Orange County, North Carolina, by heart. It's no easy task considering the county encompasses an area the size of Los Angeles. 

Woodard is an EMT for Orange County and has logged hundreds of thousands of miles behind the wheel of an ambulance over the last 20 years.

Recently, Woodard and her colleagues have been sounding their own kind of alarm: highlighting the problems with aging ambulance vehicles.

"The older the ambulance gets, the more small problems it creates," Woodard said as she switched on emergency lights inside her ambulance as she responded to a call.

Orange County has 16 ambulances, and half of them need to be replaced. They're breaking down more often, meaning crews are spending hours each month transferring their equipment from one vehicle to the next.

As the director of Emergency Services for Orange County, Kirby Saunders has the money he needs to buy new ambulances. However, he's been told it could take two years before a new ambulance is ready to hit the road.

SEE MORE: Scripps News Investigates: The deadly toll of a US ambulance shortage

A nearly yearlong Scripps News investigation discovered a severe shortage in ambulance chassis, essentially the skeletal frame ambulances are constructed on. The shortage has left communities like Orange County waiting years for these vital first-response vehicles. 

Last year, Scripps News uncovered how automakers like Ford and General Motors started using those chassis and other components for vehicles like pickup trucks at the start of the pandemic. That meant companies that built ambulances faced shortages. 

Experts note that consumer pickup trucks are typically more lucrative for automakers to sell.

"I think there could've been more support from the federal government level to ensure the prioritization of critical public safety resources in the community," Saunders said.

Four months after Scripps News first revealed the alarming scope of the problem, some members of Congress are taking notice.

Glenn Thompson, Republican member of the House Representatives, said he was alarmed by the report, adding that he is concerned about aging ambulances on the road.

"They're not state of the art," the Pennsylvania representative said. "They don't have all the bells and whistles and provide life-saving care that could be provided."

Scripps News pressed Thompson for answers about why Congress hasn't taken action to fix the problem. He said that he doesn't believe it's lawmakers' job to force automakers to prioritize public safety over consumer pickup trucks.

"It's pretty tough to tie the hands of manufacturers and dictate you have to sell more to this type of vehicle or that type of vehicle," he added.

SEE MORE: Pickup truck sales pique interest for some in US auto industry

As ambulance manufacturers continue to wait on automakers for the parts they need, the shortage of ambulances only continues to get more dire for American communities. 

Scripps News pulled numbers from the National Emergency Medical Services Information System, a Department of Transportation database containing details of nearly every ambulance activation in the United States. The data from 2021 showed there were 13,540 mechanical failures reported that prevented ambulances from responding to potential emergencies. That number increased to 14,905 in 2022.

Scripps News has also learned some ambulances are on the road with over 500,000 miles on them.

Saunders currently has eight ambulances with more than 150,000 miles on them. By June, he expects 10 of his ambulances will have over 150,000 miles, increasing the likelihood of the vehicles breaking down. 

In addition to the concern about immediate public safety, Saunders is concerned about the long-term impacts.

"I have no doubt it decreases morale and confidence," he said. 

The British government's plan for a landmark smoking ban that aims to stop young people from ever smoking cleared its first hurdle in Parliament on Tuesday despite vocal opposition from within Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party.

The bill, a key policy announced by Sunak last year, would make it illegal to sell tobacco products to anyone born after Jan. 1, 2009. If passed, the bill will give Britain some of the toughest anti-smoking measures in the world. Authorities say it will create modern Britain’s “first smoke-free generation.”

Under the Tobacco and Vapes Bill, children turning 15 this year or younger will never be legally sold tobacco. Once implemented — officials are aiming for 2027 — the legal age of sale that people in England can buy cigarettes will be raised by one year, every year until it is eventually illegal for the whole population.

The bill also includes measures to crack down on youth vaping, such as banning the sale of cheap disposable vapes and restricting their flavors to prevent children from becoming addicted to nicotine.

SEE MORE: Will the Biden administration approve a ban on menthol cigarettes?

It is currently illegal for anyone to sell cigarettes or tobacco products and vapes to people under 18 years old throughout the U.K.

During the bill’s second reading late Tuesday, 383 lawmakers voted in favor while 67 opposed it after an afternoon of debate. Although the bill was widely praised by health experts and had the support of the opposition Labour Party, Sunak faced rebellion from more libertarian-minded members of his party, who criticized the proposals as “unconservative.”

Opponents, such as the smokers' rights lobbying group FOREST, said the move risks creating a black market and will “treat future generations of adults like kids.” Prominent voices within the Conservative Party, including two of Sunak's predecessors Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, said the plans went against conservative values by limiting people's personal freedoms.

The bill was a “virtue-signaling piece of legislation about protecting adults from themselves in the future," Truss told Parliament during Tuesday's debate.

Other high-profile Tories, including business secretary Kemi Badenoch, a Cabinet minister, also opposed the bill or abstained.

Conservative lawmakers were granted a free vote, meaning they could vote with their personal conscience rather than follow the official party line.

The plans were believed to have been inspired by similar policies proposed by New Zealand under former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but the country's new coalition government repealed the bill earlier this year.

The government said that smoking won’t be criminalized, and the phased changes mean that anyone who can legally buy cigarettes now won’t be prevented from doing so in the future.

The number of people who smoke in the U.K. has declined by two-thirds since the 1970s, but some 6.4 million people in the country — or about 13% of the population — still smoke, according to official figures.

Team USA has unveiled its men's basketball roster that will represent the red, white and blue at the Paris Olympics this summer. Some are already comparing it to the "Dream Team" that won gold in 1992. 

Here's a look at the star-studded group, as well as the NBA team they play for:

LeBron James (Los Angeles Lakers)

Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors)

Kevin Durant (Phoenix Suns)

Joel Embiid (Philadelphia 76ers)

Anthony Davis (Los Angeles Lakers)

Devin Booker (Phoenix Suns)

Anthony Edwards (Minnesota Timberwolves)

Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics)

Bam Adebayo (Miami Heat)

Tyrese Haliburton (Indiana Pacers)

Jrue Holiday (Boston Celtics)

Kawhi Leonard (Los Angeles Clippers)

SEE MORE: Nike US women's Olympic uniforms slammed for being revealing, sexist

James and Durant have the most experience of anyone on the team as they will be representing the U.S. for a fourth time. However, it's Durant who is looking to make history as the first basketball player to win a fourth gold medal. 

Durant also made the team in 2012, 2016 and 2020, bringing home gold all three times. James, meanwhile, won a bronze medal with Team USA in 2004 and gold in 2008 and 2012.

Five other players also have previous Olympics experience: Booker, Tatum, Holiday and Adebayo, who won gold for Team USA at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics; and Davis, who was on the 2012 team that also brought home the gold.

Meanwhile, this will mark the first Olympics appearance for five others on the roster, including Curry — a four-time NBA Champion and two-time MVP award winner. But he'll have a close ally with him this summer as Warriors head coach Steve Kerr will lead the squad into Paris.

Team USA is looking to win a fifth straight Olympic gold medal, but a tough road lies ahead for a group that could face some of its toughest competition ever. The U.S. will tip off group stage play against Serbia on July 28, followed by a match against South Sudan on July 31. 

The knockout phase of the men's tournament is currently slated to begin on Aug. 6 with the gold medal game set for Aug. 10. All of the games will be broadcast by NBC and streamed live on Peacock.

A new poll released by the Associated Press and NORC at the University of Chicago indicates that more than 1 in 3 Americans believe former President Donald Trump acted illegally amid allegations that he falsified business records to cover up a relationship with a woman who said he had an affair with her.

According to the poll, 35% said he acted illegally, while an additional 31% said he acted immorally but not illegally. The poll found that 14% of Americans think he did nothing wrong. 

The results showed a strong partisan divide. Among Democrats, 62% believe he acted illegally, while just 6% of Republicans think he did. Just 2% of Democrats think Trump did nothing wrong, while 28% of Republicans agreed. 

Out of the four criminal cases Trump is involved in, the New York hush money case seems to be the least convincing, based on the AP-NORC's poll. 

SEE MORE: First 7 jurors selected in Trump's hush money trial

In the case involving classified documents being found in Trump's Florida residence, 47% believe Trump acted illegally. The same percentage of Americans also believe Trump acted illegally in his alleged attempt to overturn the election results in Georgia. 

The poll also showed 45% of Americans believe Trump violated the law in his alleged efforts to thwart the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

The poll showed that 50% of Americans think Trump would be unfit for office if convicted of a crime. 

Of those who think Trump did not commit any crimes, 80% believe he would still be fit for office. 

The surveys come as numerous national polls of a tight race between Trump and President Joe Biden in this year's presidential election. 

Trump faces 34 felony counts in a New York court for falsifying business records. Jury selection in that case began Monday.

A judge has recommended that the conviction and death sentence of Melissa Lucio, a Texas woman whose execution was delayed in 2022 amid growing doubts she fatally beat her 2-year-old daughter, should be overturned amid findings that evidence in her murder trial was suppressed.

Senior State District Judge Arturo Nelson on Friday approved an agreement between prosecutors and Lucio’s attorneys that found the suppressed evidence, including witness statements from Lucio’s children and a report by Child Protective Services, would have corroborated Lucio’s defense that her daughter Mariah died of a head injury sustained in an accidental fall down a steep staircase two days before her death.

“She would not have been convicted in light of the suppressed evidence,” according to the 33-page agreement between the office of Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz and Lucio’s attorneys.

Nelson’s recommendation has been sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final decision on whether Lucio’s conviction and death sentence are overturned. There was no timetable for a ruling by the appeals court. Lucio’s case has become a cause célèbre among people, including Kim Kardashian.

SEE MORE: Missouri man executed for killing his cousin and her husband in 2006

“We hope and pray the Court of Criminal Appeals will agree with the District Attorney, the defense, and Judge Nelson and our mother can come home to her family. It’s been 17 years that we have been without her. We love her and miss her and can’t wait to hug her,” Lucio’s children said in a statement Monday.

The agreement on findings in Lucio’s case had remained in limbo for 16 months before another judge, Gabriela Garcia. On April 5, Lucio’s lawyers and Saenz had issued a joint public statement in which they discussed that the findings were still under review by Garcia.

On April 10, Missy Medary, the presiding judge for the Fifth Administrative Judicial Region in South Texas, assigned Nelson to address the pending findings in the case. Nelson, who is a retired judge and had presided over Lucio’s 2008 trial, approved the findings two days later.

Garcia's court had requested that Nelson be assigned “to address the pending findings and conclusions as he was the trial judge in the case and has direct knowledge of the trial,” Emily Jirovec, an administrative assistant with the Fifth Administrative Judicial Region, said in an email Tuesday.

Lucio, 55, had been set for lethal injection in April 2022 for the 2007 death of her daughter in Harlingen, a city of about 71,000 in Texas’ southern tip. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted her lethal injection two days before her scheduled execution so Lucio’s claims that new evidence would exonerate her could be reviewed.

Before the agreed findings approved by Nelson, prosecutors had long maintained Mariah was the victim of abuse and noted her body was covered in bruises.

Lucio’s case has garnered support from Kardashian and a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody.

“Melissa Lucio has been in jail for more than a decade and a half, which is an unimaginable injustice, but one that can at least be undone,” Moody said in a post Tuesday on the social platform X.

The desert nation of the United Arab Emirates attempted to dry out Wednesday from the heaviest rain ever recorded there after a deluge flooded out Dubai International Airport, disrupting flights through the world's busiest airfield for international travel.

The state-run WAM news agency called the rain Tuesday "a historic weather event" that surpassed "anything documented since the start of data collection in 1949." That's before the discovery of crude oil in this energy-rich nation then part of a British protectorate known as the Trucial States.

Rain also fell in Bahrain, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. However, the rains were acute across the UAE.

One possible contributor may have been "cloud seeding," in which small planes operated by the government fly through clouds burning special salt flares. Those flares can increase precipitation.

Several reports quoted meteorologists at the National Center for Meteorology as saying they flew six or seven cloud-seeding flights before the rains. Flight-tracking data analyzed by The Associated Press showed one aircraft affiliated with the UAE's cloud-seeding efforts flew around the country Monday.

The National, an English-language, state-linked newspaper in Abu Dhabi, quoted an anonymous official at the center on Wednesday as saying no cloud seeding took place on Tuesday, without acknowledging any earlier flights.

The center did not respond to questions Wednesday from the AP.

The UAE, which heavily relies on energy-hungry desalination plants to provide water, conducts cloud seeding in part to increase its dwindling, limited groundwater.

Scientists also say climate change in general is responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires around the world. Dubai hosted the United Nations' COP28 climate talks just last year. Rising temperatures and other effects of global warming long have been viewed as a threat to life in the already-baking region.

SEE MORE: 2023 poised to become hottest year on record

The rains began late Monday, soaking the sands and roadways of Dubai with some 0.79 inches of rain, according to meteorological data collected at Dubai International Airport. The storms intensified around 9 a.m. local Tuesday and continued throughout the day, dumping more rain and hail onto the overwhelmed city.

By the end of Tuesday, more than 5.59 inches of rainfall had soaked Dubai over 24 hours. An average year sees 3.73 inches of rain at Dubai International Airport, a hub for the long-haul carrier Emirates.

At the airport, standing water lapped on taxiways as aircraft landed. Arrivals were halted Tuesday night, and passengers struggled to reach terminals through the floodwater covering surrounding roads.

One couple, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to speak freely in a country with strict laws that criminalize critical speech, called the situation at the airport "absolute carnage."

"You cannot get a taxi. There's people sleeping in the Metro station. There's people sleeping in the airport," the man said Wednesday.

They ended up getting a taxi to near their home some 18 miles away, but floodwater on the road stopped them. A bystander helped them over a highway barrier with their carry-on luggage, the bottles of gin they picked up from duty-free clinking away.

Dubai International Airport acknowledged Wednesday morning that the flooding had left "limited transportation options" and affected flights as aircraft crews couldn't reach the airfield.

"Recovery will take some time," the airport said on the social platform X.

Emirates said the airline had halted check-in for passengers departing from Dubai itself from 8 a.m. until midnight Wednesday as it tried to clear the airport of transit passengers — many of whom had been sleeping where they could in its cavernous terminals.

Passengers on FlyDubai, Emirates' low-cost sister airline, also faced disruptions.

Paul Griffiths, the airport's CEO, acknowledged continued issues with flooding Wednesday morning, saying every place an aircraft could be safely parked was taken. Some aircraft had been diverted to Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central, the city-state's second airfield.

"It remains an incredibly challenging time. In living memory, I don't think anyone has ever seen conditions like it," Griffiths told the state-owned talk radio station Dubai Eye. "We are in uncharted territory, but I can assure everyone we are working as hard as we possibly can to make sure our customers and staff are looked after."

Egypt's national carrier, EgyptAir, also temporarily suspended flights between Cairo and Dubai due to the bad weather.

Schools across the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, largely shut ahead of the storm and government employees were largely working remotely if able. Many workers stayed home as well, though some ventured out, with the unfortunate stalling out their vehicles in deeper-than-expected water covering spots on some roads. That included parts of the Sheikh Zayed Road, a 12-lane highway through downtown Dubai.

Authorities sent tanker trucks out into the streets and highways to pump away the water. Water poured into some homes, forcing people to bail out their houses.

The country's hereditary rulers offered no overall damage or injury information for the nation, as some slept in their flooded vehicles Tuesday night. In Ras al-Khaimah, the country's northernmost emirate, police said one 70-year-old man died when his vehicle was swept away by floodwater.

Khatm al-Shakla, an area near Al Ain in Abu Dhabi, saw 10 inches of rain Tuesday, the most anywhere in the country, officials said.

Authorities canceled school and the government instituted remote work again for Wednesday. Dubai later closed schools for the rest of the week.

Rain is unusual in the UAE, an arid, Arabian Peninsula nation, but occurs periodically during the cooler winter months. Many roads and other areas lack drainage given the lack of regular rainfall, causing flooding.

Meanwhile in neighboring Oman, a sultanate that rests on the eastern edge of the Arabian Peninsula, at least 19 people were killed in heavy rains in recent days, according to a statement Wednesday from the country's National Committee for Emergency Management. That includes some 10 schoolchildren swept away in a vehicle with an adult, which saw condolences come into the country from rulers across the region.

A 25-year-old man was arrested Monday after breaking into a family home in Arizona over the weekend, according to Phoenix police.

Officials said Abdullahi Aroni broke into a home Sunday around 11 p.m.

Aroni was found inside the 4-year-old boy's room when the mother entered the room and confronted him.

According to police, Aroni attacked both the mother and father of the child. A physical fight began between the suspect and the father until the two exited the home into the backyard.

After the fight ended, Aroni jumped a wall and ran away.

A search warrant was served on his home, where Aroni was arrested. Police said evidence was found linking him to the incident.

He faces sexual conduct with a minor, burglary and multiple counts of assault charges, according to police.

An investigation remains ongoing.

This story was originally published by Scripps News Phoenix.

A voting technology company targeted by bogus fraud claims related to the 2020 presidential election settled a defamation lawsuit Tuesday against a conservative news outlet.

The settlement between Florida-based Smartmatic and One America News Network is the latest development in a larger legal pushback by voting equipment companies that became ensnared in wild conspiracy theories falsely claiming they had flipped votes and cost former President Donald Trump reelection.

In a statement, the company said it had "resolved its litigation with OANN through a confidential settlement.” The dismissal of its lawsuit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. Chip Babcock, a Houston-based attorney representing the news outlet, confirmed the case had been resolved but said he was unable to disclose any of the settlement terms.

Smartmatic was an odd target for the conspiracy theorists because use of its voting technology and software was so limited. It was used only in Los Angeles County, a Democratic stronghold in a state that was not a presidential battleground and where Trump did not contest his loss.

SEE MORE: Former Pres. Trump wanted to seize voting machines after election

But the company has for years also provided voting services in Venezuela, and that created a springboard for phony claims that a foreign company was involved in a vast conspiracy to flip the election from Trump to Democrat Joe Biden. Smartmatic also has active lawsuits against Fox News and the conservative outlet Newsmax over similar complaints. Fox has said it had a First Amendment right to air claims about an election that were being promoted by prominent figures.

Last year, on the eve of a trial, Fox News agreed to pay $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by a much larger voting technology company, Dominion Voting Systems, which claimed the network and its hosts spread false claims that its equipment helped rig the election against Trump. Dominion has other defamation lawsuits that remain active, including one against One America News Network.

The conspiracy theories relating to voting equipment and software are among the lies about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election won by Biden. Numerous reviews, audits and recounts in the presidential swing states where Trump contested his loss have affirmed Biden's victory, and there has been no evidence of widespread fraud. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is facing federal and state charges related to his attempts to overturn the results.

The makers of the weight loss drug tirzepatide, which is branded commercially as Zepbound, announced Wednesday the results of a Phase 3 study showing that the drug was effective in treating sleep apnea. 

Eli Lilly said that 10- and 15-milligram injections of Zepbound "significantly reduced the apnea-hypopnea index" among those who have obesity and moderate-to-severe obstructive sleep apnea. 

Among those in one drug study, it led to an average apnea-hypopnea index reduction of 27.4 events per hour compared to a reduction of 4.8 events per hour for those on a placebo. In a second study, Zepbound led to an average apnea-hypopnea index reduction of 30.4 events per hour compared to a reduction of six events per hour for those on a placebo. Both studies followed patients for a year. 

Those who have at least 30 apnea-hypopnea index events per hour of sleep are considered to have severe obstructive sleep apnea, while those who have 15-30 events per hour have moderate obstructive sleep apnea. 

SEE MORE: Weight loss medicine may also reduce blood pressure, study finds

Eli Lilly said there was nearly a 20% reduction in weight among those in the trials.

The company said it plans to submit its findings to the Food and Drug Administration and other global regulatory agencies beginning mid-year.

"OSA (obstructive sleep apnea) impacts 80 million adults in the U.S., with more than 20 million living with moderate-to-severe OSA. However, 85% of OSA cases go undiagnosed and therefore untreated," said Dr. Jeff Emmick, senior vice president of product development with Eli Lilly. "Addressing this unmet need head-on is critical, and while there are pharmaceutical treatments for the excessive sleepiness associated with OSA, tirzepatide has the potential to be the first pharmaceutical treatment for the underlying disease."

According to the National Council on Aging, obstructive sleep apnea occurs when the upper airway becomes blocked during sleep, interfering with breathing. Older people, men and people who are overweight are more likely to have sleep apnea. 

The organization estimates that 33 million Americans use a CPAP machine to treat sleep apnea. 

Eli Lilly says that Zepbound uses hormone receptors to help people who are considered obese or overweight lose weight and keep it off. 

Eli Lilly said those who took the highest dosage of Zepbound lost an average of 48 pounds after 72 weeks, while those taking the drug's lowest dosage lost an average of 34 pounds. Those given a placebo lost seven pounds after 72 weeks, the company said. 

However, these weight loss drugs do have side effects. Eli Lilly noted that Zepbound can be related to numerous adverse gastrointestinal reactions.

Eli Lilly says Zepbound has a list price of $1,059 per monthly dose. The company says those with insurance may be eligible to pay as low as $25 for a one-month or three-month prescription. Those forced to pay out of pocket may be eligible to pay as low as $550 for a one-month prescription. 

An Arizona woman who accused former major league pitcher Trevor Bauer of sexual assault has been charged with defrauding the baseball player.

An indictment unsealed Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court charges the woman with fraud and theft by extortion, both felonies, but doesn't provide specific details about the alleged crimes. It says Bauer and one other person were defrauded in a scheme that potentially spanned several years.

The Associated Press does not typically identify people who say they have been victims of sexual assault unless they come forward publicly.

The woman sued Bauer in December 2022, accusing him of rape two years earlier that she said resulted in pregnancy in late 2020.

Court records on Tuesday afternoon didn’t list an attorney for the woman in the fraud case, and the lawyer representing her in her lawsuit didn’t immediately respond to a phone message seeking additional comment.

Bauer was never arrested or charged. He countersued, saying he had one consensual sexual encounter with the woman in 2020 and then accused her of faking the pregnancy to extort money from him.

His attorneys have said that the woman made several million-dollar demands against him.

Bauer said he ultimately paid $8,761 for expenses he believed to be related to the woman’s reported pregnancy and its subsequent termination.

The woman later said that she ultimately decided not to terminate the pregnancy, but had a miscarriage.

She is scheduled to be arraigned on the criminal charges next Friday.

In a recorded video statement released Tuesday, Bauer said he is innocent.

“What else do I have to do to prove that this entire situation has been a massive lie? This is insane,” he said. “At what point do I get to go back to work and continue earning a living?”

Bauer has been trying to revive his major league career after serving a suspension for violating the league’s domestic violence, sexual assault and child abuse policy. He was suspended after another woman accused him of beating and sexually abusing her — an accusation the pitcher also denied.

He was released by the Los Angeles Dodgers in January 2023 and played last year with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Japan’s Pacific League. He signed a deal this spring to pitch five games for Mexico’s Diablos Rojos and made his first appearance in a spring exhibition against the New York Yankees.

SEE MORE: LA pitcher on administrative leave after sexual assault accusation

An Ohio man who authorities say fatally shot an Uber driver who he thought was trying to rob him after scam phone calls deceived them both has been indicted on a murder charge.

William Brock, 81, also faces counts of kidnapping and felonious assault in the indictment handed up Monday by a Clark County grand jury.

Court documents did not list an attorney for him, and a telephone number for Brock could not be located. He has pleaded not guilty and could face a life sentence if convicted on the murder charge.

The shooting occurred March 25 at Brock's home in South Charleston. Officers from the county sheriff's office responded there after Brock called 911 and said he had shot someone who was trying to rob him.

SEE MORE: 'This was demonic': Sheriff details killing of Uber Eats driver

Brock had received scam calls from someone pretending to be an officer from the local court who eventually began making threats and demanding money, authorities said. The victim, Loletha Hall, 61, was an Uber driver who had been told to retrieve a package from Brock’s home, a request authorities say was possibly made by the same scam caller or an accomplice.

Hall had no knowledge of the calls made to Brock, authorities said. When she arrived at the home and got out of her car, Brock pulled out a gun and demanded she tell him who had made the threatening calls. He also took Hall's cellphone and would not let her leave.

When Hall tried to get away, Brock shot her once, authorities said, then shot her two more times as they discussed the situation. Brock somehow sustained a minor head injury during the confrontation and he called 911 shortly after he fired the third shot.

Hall was taken to a hospital but later died there from her wounds.

Brock initially was charged with murder because authorities said Hall did not pose an active threat when she was shot. His next court hearing is scheduled for Monday.

The original scam calls to Brock and Hall remain under investigation, authorities said, and it’s not clear yet if the calls were placed by the same person.

President Joe Biden touted support for union workers while promising American ownership of U.S. Steel and potential higher tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, during an economy-focused blitz through the battleground state of Pennsylvania. 

President Biden, who calls himself the most pro-union president in American history, reaffirmed support for domestic ownership of U.S. Steel as it faces potential acquisition by Nippon Steel. He made remarks Wednesday at the Pittsburgh headquarters of United Steelworkers, a group that has endorsed him.  

“American-owned, American-operated by American Union steelworkers, the best in the world. And it's, that's going to happen, I promise you,” President Biden said of the deal under review. 

While the administration seeks to protect workers and industry, President Biden also called for the tripling of tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports pending the findings of the United States Trade Representative’s Section 301 review. He directed work with Mexico to prevent tariff evasion and announced the United States Trade Representative will investigate China’s trade practices in shipbuilding, following a petition from labor groups including the USW.  

“Chinese steel companies produce a lot more steel than China needs and end up dumping extra steel on the global markets at unfairly low prices. And the prices are unfairly low because China's steel companies don't need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government has subsidized them so heavily. They're not competing, they're cheating. And we've seen the damage here in America,” President Biden said.  

SEE MORE: Biden's 2025 budget plan details vision for potential second term

The actions come as President Biden has sought to stabilize relations with China. The president said he was not concerned new tariffs would hurt his relationship with PRC president Xi Jinping.  

Navigating policy and politics, President Biden underscored the steps to compete with China as he highlighted his broader economic agenda aimed at boosting American manufacturing and jobs, while drawing a deeper contrast to former President Donald Trump.  

“Taken together, these are strategic and targeted actions that are going to protect American workers and ensure fair competition. Meanwhile, my predecessor and the MAGA Republicans want across-the-board tariffs on all imports from all countries that could badly hurt American consumers,” President Biden said.  

The stop in Pittsburgh marks a continuation of President Biden’s three-stop swing through Pennsylvania, a state where the campaign has touted early investment and attention while former President Donald Trump spent time in a New York courtroom the same week in a case centered on alleged hush money payments. The Biden-Harris Campaign also rolled out a six figure ad blitz framing President Biden as pro-labor. 

“Since taking office, Joe Biden has caved to China and left American workers behind. Now, after four years of failure, he’s following President Trump’s lead on tariffs. Americans deserve leadership, not lip service — and it’s clear that we need President Trump back in office to deliver stronger trade deals that put America First,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley. 

But President Biden, touting a higher GDP and lower trade deficit with China, said Trump “simply doesn’t get it."  

President Biden made clear he was seeking fair competition, not conflict, with China.  

“There are many points in which the U.S. and China have friction in the commercial space, whether it's around overcapacity, or around the high tech transfer of knowledge that might end up supporting China's military or data security,"  said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "These are all being evaluated. I think that the U.S. needs to pursue a balanced approach. There is not a one-size-fits-all to all of these. And there is value to the U.S. from having a commercial relationship with China. But it would be better if it was a much fairer relationship. And I think that's what the Biden administration is trying to achieve here."

While the Biden administration has worked to share a positive economic message, President Biden has also faced concerns regarding inflation. A senior administration official maintained the actions would not increase inflation and were not about elections, noting that imports of steel from China make up about 0.6% of U.S. steel demand.  

“I think the overall effect will be relatively small. U.S. imports of steel and aluminum from China have dropped in the wake of the tariffs that were put in place during the Trump administration," Kennedy said. "And they don't account for a large share of overall U.S. imports. And so I do think there are probably going to be some importers that do use these products, who are going to complain, and they will point to the likelihood of higher prices in these areas, and perhaps access to certain types of steel and aluminum, which have been important for them. But I think from a macroeconomic perspective, the effect is going to be almost negligible from the perspective of folks like you and me."

President Biden is next expected in Philadelphia.  

SEE MORE: Biden welcomes Japan's prime minister in show of unity to China

The president of Columbia University took a firm stand against antisemitism Wednesday as she parried accusations from Republicans who see the New York campus as a hotbed of bias, but she hedged on whether certain phrases invoked by some supporters of Palestinians rise to harassment.

Nemat Shafik had the benefit of hindsight and months of preparation as she faced a congressional hearing on the Ivy League school's response to antisemitism and conflicts on campus following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. She arrived on Capitol Hill four months after a similar hearing that led to the resignations of two Ivy League presidents.

From the start, she took a more decisive stance than the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, who gave lawyerly answers when asked if calls for the genocide of Jews would violate school policies.

When asked the same question, Shafik and three other Columbia leaders responded unequivocally, yes. But Shafik waffled on specific phrases.

Rep. Lisa McClain, a Republican from Michigan, asked her if phrases such as "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free " or "long live intifada" are antisemitic.

"I hear them as such, some people don't," Shafik said.

McClain posed the same question to David Schizer, who leads an antisemitism task force at Columbia. He responded that such phrases are antisemitic.

It was a shaky moment for an Ivy League president who otherwise dodged the gotcha moments that turned the previous hearing into a frenzy for Republicans, who cast elite schools as antisemitic havens.

SEE MORE: Harvard president resigns following controversies

Shafik acknowledged a rise in antisemitism since October but said campus leaders have been working tirelessly to protect students. Rebutting accusations that she has been soft on violators, Shafik said 15 students were suspended and six are on probation for violating new rules restricting campus demonstrations.

"These are more disciplinary actions than taken probably in the last decade at Columbia," she said. "And I promise you, from the messages I'm hearing from students, they are getting the message that violations will have consequences."

In another heated exchange, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and a driving force behind the hearings, grilled Shafik on faculty and staff who have expressed support for Hamas or opposition to Israel. She asked about Mohamed Abdou, an Arab studies professor who expressed support for Hamas on social media after Oct. 7.

Shafik said she shared "repugnance" over Abdou's comments, adding that he will be terminated.

"He is grading his students' papers and will never teach at Columbia again," she said.

Stefanik said she heard that Abdou attended a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the Columbia campus Wednesday morning, in apparent violation of the school's new rules.

"Mr. Abdou is not grading papers right now," Stefanik said. "He's on campus at the unsanctioned and anti-Israel, antisemitic event that is being supported by pro-Hamas activists on campus."

Some Columbia students who support Palestinians were frustrated they were not allowed into the hearing.

Speaking to reporters, Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota who is Muslim, criticized the decision to keep the students out.

"This is not an honest conversation that we are having today in this committee," Omar said. "The fact that these young people came from Columbia to be at this hearing to have their voices heard and are not being allowed is, I think, a disservice to our democracy."

Shafik was originally asked to testify at the House Education and Workforce Committee's hearing in December, but she declined due to scheduling conflicts.

Although she acknowledged antisemitism on campus, she argued that the "vast majority" of demonstrations have been peaceful and said she has held more than 200 meetings on the matter since becoming president.

Her vision clashes with one presented by Republicans in Congress and some Jewish students who say antisemitism has gone unchecked at Columbia, citing a Jewish student who was beaten on campus while putting up posters of Israeli hostages, and protesters who yelled chants that some consider a call for the genocide of Jews.

"We've seen far too little, far too late done to counter that and protect students and staff," said Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and committee chair.

SEE MORE: USC cuts pro-Palestinian valedictorian's speech over safety concerns

"Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best and, at worst, has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against Jewish people."

Foxx and Stefanik appeared with Jewish students from Columbia who said they have been threatened and physically confronted. They described a student who had Star of David necklaces torn off while walking to class and taunts from students who said "the Holocaust wasn't that special."

Stefanik said Republicans will hold Columbia accountable for failing to protect students.

"Despite claims otherwise, Columbia's leadership refuses to enforce their own policies and condemn Jewish hatred on campus, creating a breeding ground for antisemitism and a hotbed of support for terrorism from radicalized faculty and students," she said.

The December hearing featured the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose lawyerly responses drew fierce backlash and fueled weeks of controversy.

During a heated line of questioning in December, Stefanik asked the presidents to answer whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate each university's code of conduct.

Liz Magill, then-president of Penn, and Claudine Gay, then-president of Harvard, both said it would depend on the specifics of the situation. MIT president Sally Kornbluth said she had not heard any calling for the genocide of Jews on MIT's campus, and that speech "targeted at individuals, not making public statements," would be considered harassment.

Almost immediately, the careful responses from the university presidents drew criticism from donors, alumni and politicians. Magill resigned soon after the hearing and Gay stepped down in January following accusations of plagiarism.

In an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday, Shafik emphasized the delicate balance between protecting free speech and fostering a safe environment for students on campus.

"Calling for the genocide of a people — whether they are Israelis or Palestinians, Jews, Muslims or anyone else — has no place in a university community," Shafik wrote. "Such words are outside the bounds of legitimate debate and unimaginably harmful."

Usually, free stuff is a good thing. And most of us love opening our door to find a box from Amazon outside.

Imagine getting box after box after box, and finding them filled with things you didn't order, and really don't want.

That's what has happened to one Ohio man.

Another day means another delivery at Rob Goodloe's house. He gets several Amazon boxes each week.

"But I did not order these," he said.

It's a hassle since Goodloe is a disabled veteran who struggles to move the boxes.

"This is a cropped long-sleeved woman's workout top," he said. "I am also getting patio chair cushions and a lot of fabric-related items."

SEE MORE: That text message about your unpaid tolls may be a scam

'Brushing' scam on steroids

Goodloe could be a victim of what's known as "brushing."  In his case, however, he said it appears to be on steroids.

According to the Better Business Bureau, companies that are usually foreign, third-party sellers send inexpensive items using an address they discovered online.

The company's intention, in some cases, is to write a glowing review of the merchandise, using your name, the BBB says. Sure, it's free. And you are not required to return it.

Melanie McGovern of the BBB cautions that "the biggest concern the consumer should have is who has my information? Why am I getting this stuff?"

McGovern said it's bad news for other consumers too, because fake reviews could sway your purchasing decisions.

"We know reviews are really important in the marketplace," she said, "That people wanna know what your interaction is with that company, that product, that service. Fake reviews take that level playing field and skew it."

Signs of a brushing scam include:

- No return address on the package

- No receipt

- Receiving a random mix of products

If this happens to you, the BBB says:

- Report the shipment to the retailer, such as Amazon or Walmart

- File a complaint with the BBB.

McGovern also recommends you change passwords and do a credit check. Amazon lists additional suggestions on its site.

We contacted Amazon and asked if it would honor Goodloe's request to block all deliveries to his house. An Amazon spokeswoman told us the company is investigating and trying to find the best way to stop the deliveries.

"I will ship my stuff to my mom's and go pick it up," he said.

Until then, he's donating all the unwanted clothing, cushions and fabric to Goodwill.

 Professional sports teams from across the country have brought forth a series of new sports stadium proposals and requests for renovations. Some plans have faced pushback — but in Utah, support for plans to construct a new hockey arena is enticing the Arizona Coyotes to move to Utah from the desert state.   

The Coyotes arrived in Arizona in 1996 and called three arenas home, with the latest being the Arizona State University Mullet Stadium, the National Hockey League’s smallest arena. In 2023, the team lacked voter support to build an entertainment district in Tempe, leaving the team unsure about their future in the Grand Canyon State.  

Marc Ganis, the President of Sportscorp Limited, said it’s rare for a professional sports team to move from its existing market, but adds that the Coyotes have been a franchise with deep rooted problems and over the years they’ve struggled to find a permanent home.  

“I would expect that team to relocate, they've been at this for a very long time,” Ganis said. 

The news of the potential relocation announcement marked a dreadful reality for hockey fans and the growth of the sport among youth.  

“I think it would hurt hockey immensely here if they leave,” Steve Wright said. “I think it would still grow and thrive to a certain extent, but I think that growths going to be stifled.” 

 In late March, Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, signed into law SB 272 and HB 562. 

SB 272 helps build an NHL arena by allowing the city to raise sales tax to help provide funding towards the downtown sports facility.

The owner of the Utah Jazz has been trying to lure an NHL team. 

HB 562 would help revitalize Utah State Fairpark and provide $900 million for a new baseball stadium. The city does not currently have a Major League Baseball team.  

SEE MORE: Oakland A's to play in Sacramento before final move to Las Vegas

In the last ten years, at least 24 sports stadiums were built or renovated.  

“I think we're in, in the middle of a potential construction boom,” Smith College Economics Professor Andrew Zimbalist said.  

He said the first sports stadium wave happened in the 1950s, followed by the 1990s, and now the 2020s.  

“It should go on probably for the for the rest of this decade,” Zimbalist said. “All this is about is maximizing revenue for the team owner.” 

The Arizona Diamondbacks are seeking funding to repair Chase Field. The Major League Baseball team opened its doors in 1998 and is the fourth oldest park in the national league. 

The team released a statement to Scripps News.  

"Approaching its 30th year, Chase Field requires extensive upgrades for a modernized fan and player experience, encompassing renovations to infrastructure, public areas, and facilities to accommodate Major League Baseball as well as growing global events and concerts," the team wrote. "Our fans' affinity for Chase Field is one driving factor behind ownership’s willingness to invest hundreds of millions in stadium renovations and our dedication to continuing to work together with state, city, and county officials to secure a sustainable public/private solution well before our lease ends in 2027."

Last year, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed off on a $500 million spending plan to repair and upgrade the Milwaukee Brewers stadium.  

In June of 2023, the Buffalo Bills broke ground on a new stadium and the Tennessee Titans followed in February of this year.

SEE MORE: Sale of Baltimore Orioles unanimously approved by MLB owners

In December of 2023, voters approved a 1% sales tax over the next six years to build a new arena for the Oklahoma City Thunder. It’s estimated to cost at least $900 million.   

In New York City, officials approved a plan for a $780 million soccer stadium. 

The Chicago Bears and the Chicago White Sox have proposed plans for a new stadium but have faced resistance. 

In Virginia, Governor Glenn Youngkin introduced a $2 billion plan for a “world class entertainment district” to lure the Washington Wizards and the Washington Capitals. The proposal was killed by opposition.  

In Missouri, voters rejected a sales tax to help build a stadium for the Kansas City Royals and a renovation for the Chiefs. 

Whether the stadium is publicly or privately funded, Zimbalist said tax payers nearly always help foot the enormous construction tab.  

“Always it's the case that taxpayers are going to be paying for something, some part of it, but sometimes they pay for the lion's share and sometimes they pay a fairly modest proportion,” Zimbalist said.  

Several of the proposals brought forth by teams include futuristic designs, VIP sections, tech savvy stadiums, entertainment districts with shopping, restaurants, hotels, and gambling areas. While the designs can create excitement, Zimbalist highlights the importance of remaining realistic and ensuring the plans are possible, adding that the devil is in the details.  

“The plan itself could just be a wild dream,” Zimbalist said.   

The undertaking of stadium construction combined with recent trends of inflated construction costs can lead to additional expenses that exceed the estimated cost of the plan.  

“It used to be a lot cheaper to build sports facilities, you could build a really terrific sports facility 20, 25 years ago for $300 million, now that number is frankly closer to $3 billion,” Ganis said.  

While some sports fans support helping pay for a new stadium or arena some believe the owners should pay for the entire cost of a new sports facility.  

“I think it should be shared,” Wright said.  

“Leave the taxpayers out of this, owners, you guys got to figure this out,” Jake Jessup said.  

Sports teams pitching new proposals often tout the plan will help create jobs and attract new tourists, but Zimbalist warns that the economic impacts are limited.  

“Economic Research on the impact of stadiums and teams coming to a city suggests that the city should not count on there being increased revenues; it simply doesn't happen very often," he said.

According to Ganis and Zimbalist, the major winner of a new stadium are the players and the owners when scrutinizing finances.   

Michael MacCambridge, the author of The Big Time: How the 1970s Transformed Sports in America, argues that sometimes the value a team brings to a city and its fans is difficult to quantify.  

“I think that there is always an argument about what sort of value a baseball team or a football team brings to a community and the fact that it's hard to quantify financially doesn't mean that it isn't real,” MacCambridge, said.  

In Arizona, as Coyotes fans grapple with the new reality, many are chalking up the loss as one that’s going to hurt the growth of the sport.  

“A lot of the hockey programs out here are supported by the Coyotes to the extent that some of them are ex-players or even coaches,” Wright said.  

The Coyotes may be playing their last game on Wednesday against the Edmonton Oilers.  

Former U.S. Sen. and two-term Florida Gov. Bob Graham, who gained national prominence as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and as an early critic of the Iraq war, has died. He was 87.

Graham's family announced the death Tuesday in a statement posted on X by his daughter Gwen Graham.

Graham, who served three terms in the Senate, made an unsuccessful bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, emphasizing his opposition to the Iraq invasion.

But his bid was delayed by heart surgery in January 2003 and he was never able to gain enough traction with voters to catch up, bowing out that October. He didn’t seek re-election in 2004 and was replaced by Republican Mel Martinez.

Graham was a man of many quirks. He perfected the “workdays” political gimmick of spending a day doing various jobs from horse stall mucker to FBI agent and kept a meticulous diary, noting almost everyone he spoke with, everything he ate, the TV shows he watched and even his golf scores.

But he closed the notebooks to the media during his short-lived presidential bid on the advice of his campaign that was concerned coverage of the contents could become a distraction or potentially embarrass the candidate.

Graham said the notebooks were a working tool for him and that he was reluctant to describe his emotions or personal feelings in them.

“I review them for calls to be made, memos to be dictated, meetings I want to follow up on and things people promise to do,” he said.

Graham was among the earliest opponents of the Iraq war, saying it diverted America’s focus on the battle against terrorism centered in Afghanistan. He was also critical of President George W. Bush for failing to have an occupation plan in Iraq after the U.S. military threw out Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Graham said Bush took the United States into the war by exaggerating claims of the danger presented by the Iraqi weapons of destruction that were never found. He said Bush distorted intelligence data and argued it was more serious than the sexual misconduct issues that led the U.S. House to impeach President Clinton in the late 1990s. It led him to launch his short, abortive presidential bid.

“The quagmire in Iraq is a distraction that the Bush administration, and the Bush administration alone, has created,” Graham said in 2003.

SEE MORE: Robert MacNeil, creator and first anchor of PBS 'NewsHour,' dies at 93

During his 18 years in Washington, Graham worked well with colleagues from both parties, particularly Florida Republican Connie Mack during their dozen years together in the Senate.

As a politician, few were better. Florida voters hardly considered him the wealthy Harvard-educated attorney that he was.

Graham’s political career spanned five decades, beginning with his election to the Florida House of Representatives in 1966.

He won a state Senate seat in 1970 and then was elected governor in 1978. He was re-elected in 1982. Four years later, he won the first of three terms in the U.S. Senate when he ousted incumbent Republican Paula Hawkins.

Graham remained widely popular with Florida voters — winning re-election by wide margins in 1992 and 1998 when he carried 63 of 67 counties.

Even when in Washington, Graham never took his eye off the state and the leadership in Tallahassee.

When Gov. Jeb Bush and the Republican-controlled Legislature eliminated the Board of Regents in 2001, Graham saw it as a move to politicize the state university system. He led a successful petition drive the next year for a state constitutional amendment that created the Board of Governors to assume the regents’ role.

Daniel Robert Graham was born Nov. 9, 1936, in Coral Gables where his father, Ernest “Cap” Graham, had moved from South Dakota and established a large dairy operation. Young Bob milked cows, built fences and scooped manure as a teenager. One of his half-brothers, Phillip Graham, was publisher of The Washington Post and Newsweek until he committed suicide in 1963, just a year after Bob Graham’s graduation from Harvard Law.

Graham was president of the student body at Miami Senior High School and attended the University of Florida, graduating in 1959.

In 1966 he was elected to the Florida Legislature, where he focused largely on education and health care issues.

But Graham got off to a shaky start as Florida’s chief executive, and was dubbed “Gov. Jello” for some early indecisiveness. He shook that label through his handling of several serious crises.

As governor he also signed numerous death warrants, founded the Save the Manatee Club with entertainer Jimmy Buffett and led efforts to establish several environmental programs.

Graham pushed through a bond program to buy beaches and barrier islands threatened by development and also started the Save Our Everglades program to protect the state’s water supply, wetlands and endangered species.

Graham also was known for his 408 “workdays,” including stints as a housewife, boxing ring announcer, flight attendant and arson investigator. They grew out of a teaching stint as a member of the Florida Senate’s Education Committee and then morphed into a campaign gimmick that helped him relate to the average voter.

“This has been a very important part of my development as a public official, my learning at a very human level what the people of Florida expect, what they want, what their aspirations are and then trying to interpret that and make it policy that will improve their lives” said Graham in 2004 as he completed his final job as a Christmas gift wrapper.

After leaving public life in 2005, Graham spent much of his time at a public policy center named after him at the University of Florida and pushing the Legislature to require more civics classes in the state’s public schools.

Graham was one of five members selected for an independent commission by President Barack Obama in June 2010 to investigate a massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that threatened sea life and beaches along several southeastern Gulf states.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with a decorated veteran of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in a protracted fight with the government over 12 months of G.I. Bill educational benefits.

The court ruled 7-2 that the Department of Veterans Affairs improperly calculated the educational benefits for James Rudisill, a retired Army captain who lives in northern Virginia.

Rudisill, who's now an FBI agent, is in a category of veterans who earned credit under two versions of the G.I. Bill. One version applied to people who served before the Sept. 11, 2001, attack. Congress passed new legislation after Sept. 11.

But Rudisill served both before and after the attack, including tours in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Each program gives veterans 36 months of benefits, and there's a 48-month cap. Rudisill thought he had 10 months of benefits remaining under the old program, plus another year in the new system. But the VA denied the additional year.

Rudisill said the decision forced him to give up his plan to attend Yale Divinity School, be ordained as an Episcopal priest and reenter the Army as a chaplain.

His lawyers said the decision could affect roughly 1.7 million veterans, but the VA disputed that the number is “anything close” to 1.7 million, noting that his lawyers didn't identify any other cases that presented the same issue.

SEE MORE: Supreme Court hears debate over charges against Trump, Jan. 6 rioters

The University of Southern California canceled a commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian who has publicly supported Palestinians, citing security concerns for the rare decision that has been praised by several pro-Israel groups and lambasted by free speech advocates and the country's largest Muslim civil rights organization.

Andrew T. Guzman, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs for the private university in Los Angeles, said in a statement Monday that debate over the selection of valedictorian Asna Tabassum to give the May 10 commencement speech took on an "alarming tenor." Her speech would have presented "substantial" security risks for the event that draws 65,000 people to campus, he said.

While Guzman did not specify whether there had been threats, he said "we cannot ignore the fact that similar risks have led to harassment and even violence at other campuses."

"The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement," Guzman wrote.

The Israel-Hamas war has presented a challenge for colleges under pressure to preserve free speech and open debate. Campuses are expected to be particularly tested as commencement speeches get underway across the United States.

Universities should resist canceling events that could be perceived as censorship, especially one as high-profile as a commencement speech, said Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney with the national Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE. But, if they do, schools must be transparent and specify security concerns "not only as a matter of integrity" but also to warn the public for their own safety, he said.

He expressed concern about other schools buckling to pressure and eroding free speech.

"This is kind of an opening salvo of commencement season," he said. "It seems to be a pretty clear example of a university canceling an event and censoring a student because of opposition to student views, especially on social media regarding the Gaza conflict."

SEE MORE: US will not participate in any potential Israeli counterattack on Iran

Tabassum, who is graduating with a major in biomedical engineering and a minor in resistance to genocide, said she was blindsided by the decision, in a statement provided Tuesday by the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. University officials on Monday told her that the school had the resources to take appropriate safety measures but they were concerned about their image, she said.

"Anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all," she said, adding though that she was not aware of any specific threats against her or the university.

"I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice," she said. "I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university — my home for four years — has abandoned me."

In his statement, Guzman asserted that the decision was solely about safety and came after consulting the "expert campus safety team." USC's associate senior vice president of safety and risk assurance, Erroll G. Southers, is an expert in school violence prevention and a former FBI agent who is also president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the Los Angeles Police Department.

"To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech," Guzman wrote. "There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period."

The university announced its decision the same day pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked roadways in Illinois, California, New York and the Pacific Northwest, temporarily shutting down travel into some of the nation's most heavily used airports, onto the Golden Gate and Brooklyn bridges and on a busy West Coast highway to demand an immediate cease-fire in the war.

SEE MORE: Pro-Palestinian demonstrators block traffic to Chicago O'Hare Airport

University campuses have been a hotbed of protest activity surrounding the Israel-Hamas war, which began following Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel's responding assault on Gaza has killed as many as 33,800 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The organization EndJewHatred issued a press release Monday night praising USC's decision to cancel the speech.

"Ms. Tabassum's speech as valedictorian was anticipated to be harmful to Jewish students and even potentially agitate anti-Jewish activists," the organization said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the cancellation.

"USC cannot hide its cowardly decision behind a disingenuous concern for 'security,'" the organization's executive director, Hussam Ayloush, said in a statement.

Tabassum, describing herself as a first-generation South Asian-American Muslim, said her speech aimed to inspire hope in troubled times.

"By canceling my speech, USC is only caving to fear and rewarding hatred," she said.

She said she loves her school and noted that her minor, resistance to genocide "is anchored by the Shoah Foundation," the USC-headquartered project founded by Steven Spielberg to document and preserve the stories of Holocaust survivors.

"As your class Valedictorian, I implore my USC classmates to think outside the box— to work towards a world where cries for equality and human dignity are not manipulated to be expressions of hatred," she said. "I challenge us to respond to ideological discomfort with dialogue and learning, not bigotry and censorship. And I urge us to see past our deepest fears and recognize the need to support justice for all people, including the Palestinian people."

On the eve of a vote on union representation at Volkswagen's Tennessee factory, Gov. Bill Lee and five other southern governors are telling workers that voting for a union will put jobs in jeopardy.

About 4,300 workers at VW's plant in Chattanooga will start voting Wednesday on representation by the United Auto Workers union. Vote totals are expected to be tabulated Friday night by the National Labor Relations Board.

The union election is the first test of the UAW's efforts to organize nonunion auto factories nationwide following its success winning big raises last fall after going on strike against Detroit automakers Ford, General Motors and Jeep maker Stellantis.

The governors said in a statement Tuesday that they have worked to bring good-paying jobs to their states.

“We are seeing in the fallout of the Detroit Three strike with those automakers rethinking investments and cutting jobs,” the statement said. “Putting businesses in our states in that position is the last thing we want to do.”

Lee said in a statement that Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have signed on to the statement. The offices of Abbott, Ivey, Kemp and Reeves confirmed their involvement, and McMaster posted the statement on his website.

The governors said they want to continue to grow manufacturing in their states, but a successful union drive will “stop this growth in its tracks, to the detriment of American workers.”

The UAW declined comment.

SEE MORE: UAW endorses Biden as field narrows in 2024 race for the White House

After a series of strikes against Detroit automakers last year, UAW President Shawn Fain said it would simultaneously target more than a dozen nonunion auto plants including those run by Tesla, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, Kia, Toyota, Honda, and others.

The drive covers nearly 150,000 workers at factories largely in the South, where the union thus far has had little success in recruiting new members.

Earlier this month a majority of workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, filed papers with the NLRB to vote on UAW representation.

The UAW pacts with Detroit automakers include 25% pay raises by the time the contracts end in April of 2028. With cost-of-living increases, workers will see about 33% in raises for a top assembly wage of $42 per hour, or more than $87,000 per year, plus thousands in annual profit sharing.

VW said Tuesday that its workers can make over $60,000 per year not including an 8% attendance bonus. The company says it pays above the median household income in the area.

Volkswagen has said it respects the workers’ right to a democratic process and to determine who should represent their interests. “We will fully support an NLRB vote so every team member has a chance to vote in privacy in this important decision,” the company said.

Some workers at the VW plant, who make Atlas SUVs and ID.4 electric vehicles, said they want more of a say in schedules, benefits, pay and more.

The union has come close to representing workers at the VW plant in two previous elections. In 2014 and 2019, workers narrowly rejected a factorywide union under the UAW.

SEE MORE: Why is union support so important in politics?

Worldwide wind power capacity surged a record 50% over the last calendar year, according to a new report that tracks global generation capacity.

The Global Wind Energy Council reports that 2023 saw 117 gigawatts of new wind power brought online, the highest annual rate of growth on record.

Fifty-four countries contributed to the new expansion, with China alone accounting for 65% of the total. The U.S., Brazil and Germany were the countries with the next-highest shares of the total, with 5%, 4% and 3% respectively.

Total global power generated through wind now stands at 1,021 gigawatts.

GWEC expects new wind power to grow at more than 9% over the next four years. Growth will also continue through 2030, the group says, thanks to wind-friendly national policies and increased momentum for offshore wind projects.

But the rate of new projects will have to grow further still to meet power goals set out at COP28, where delegates made a pledge to triple renewable power capacity worldwide by 2030.

"It’s great to see wind industry growth picking up, and we are proud of reaching a new annual record," said GWEC CEO Ben Backwell. "However much more needs to be done to unlock growth."

SEE MORE: New York's first offshore wind farm may be the future of energy

In 2023, wind power accounted for a little over 10% of the overall U.S. energy mix, or roughly 425,000 gigawatts. In January, the U.S. Energy Information Administration projected that wind would grow by about 11% through 2025. 

Its growth is expected to be steady compared to the sharp climb of new solar installation, which provides less than 4% of U.S. energy now but is expected to jump by 75% through 2025.

The term "jelly roll" was once only known for being a sweet, sponge cake dessert you'd probably find at your grandma's house. Then came the musician Jelly Roll, and now the term isn't only a food; it's a person, too. But there's a third jelly roll wanting in on the list — a list they claim they started decades ago.

See, Jellyroll is also the name of a wedding band from Pennsylvania that says the Grammy-nominated country singer under the same stage name but in two words has infringed upon its trademark of the moniker.

In a lawsuit filed against Jelly Roll — whose real name is Jason DeFord — on April 8, the creator of the Jellyroll band, Kurt L. Titchenell, states his band has been using the name since 1980 but first registered it as a performing musical group with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2010, most recently renewing the registration in 2019 to last until 2029 at the earliest.

Now Titchenell says DeFord must stop using the name by law, claiming his alleged infringement on the band's trademark has caused consumer confusion and deception leading him to financial injury and harm, the suit states.

According to a Philadelphia wedding band website run by Titchenell, Jellyroll started in 1980 as a "group of guys who really enjoyed playing music" that soon took over the city's club scene. They eventually started booking private events, including "luxury weddings," and became one of the "hottest bands in the Philly area," the site states.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jellyroll • BVTLive (@jellyroll_bvtlive)

Each year, the band performs at more than 120 events in the Northeast, but the site states they've performed across the country over the years, including two performances at the White House at former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush's invitations. 

Titchenell stresses that the band's name recognition has played a part in its success. The suit alleges a search for Jellyroll online would have returned results related to the band before DeFord came onto the scene as Jelly Roll. Now, Titchenell claims his group is as many as 18 to 20 references behind the country singer. 

In February, the plaintiff sent a cease-and-desist letter to DeFord, whose counsel allegedly "inquired as to whether defendant really was in competition with plaintiff," the suit says. And now that Jelly Roll's upcoming Beautifully Broken Tour has appearances planned in the Northeast, including Philadelphia, Titchenell says DeFord's "unapologetic continuing infringing acts" will cause further issues, such as confusion as to which "Jellyroll" will be at certain events.

"Defendant's unauthorized use of plaintiff's mark Jelly Roll in interstate commerce, and especially in the Northeast of the U.S. in connection with live musical performances … is causing, has already caused, and will continue to cause … actual confusion, mistake, and deception," the suit states, seeking injunctive relief against the country singer.

DeFord has said in interviews that his stage name stems from a nickname his mom gave him as a child, telling CBS in January that she still calls him "Jelly."

SEE MORE: Country singer Jelly Roll testifies at Senate hearing on fentanyl bill

Though he launched his career under the moniker in the early 2000s, Jelly Roll's stardom didn't really take off until May 2022, when he got his first No. 1 radio hit with the rock song "Dead Man Walking." 

In January of 2023, his country song "Son of a Sinner" went No. 1, and the next month he made history by sitting at No. 1 on Billboard's Emerging Artists chart for a 25th week.

Later in 2023, Jelly Roll won New Artist of the Year at the 2023 CMA Awards and snagged all three CMT Music Awards that he was nominated for. In 2024, he was nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards. 

But his life outside of music has also put him under the spotlight, notably for how his life has changed since spending time in jail for aggravated robbery and drug dealing (a "troubled past" that Titchenell says in his lawsuit has further harmed his image as Jellyroll).

Earlier this year, DeFord testified before Congress in support of anti-fentanyl legislation and reflected on how his past landed him there. 

"I was a part of the problem. I am here now, standing as a man that wants to be a part of the solution," he said before a Senate committee.

If you've noticed that airfare prices seem a bit more affordable lately, it's because they're on a downward trend.

According to data released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation, the average domestic airfare for 2023 was $382, making it 3.1% lower than the inflation-adjusted average fare of $394 in 2022; and it's 36.4% lower than the peak fare of $600 recorded in 2000.

The news comes while costs continue to rise in most other sectors — yet the desire to travel continues to increase.

"In the first quarter 2023, passenger demand increased with U.S. airlines reporting 75.4 million originating passengers, up 138.8% from 31.6 million passengers in the fourth quarter of 2020," DOT said in the press release. "U.S. passenger airlines collected 74.2% of total operating revenue of $39.2 billion from passenger fares during the first three months of 2023, down from 88.5% in 1990."

As for the numbers for this year, Nerdwallet reports that airfares dropped by 7.1% in March compared to the same month in 2023, and since 2019 before the start of the pandemic, airfares have only gone up by 2.6%.

While the prices are a bit lower, airlines like Delta are still benefiting from the traveling boom. Delta's first-quarter earnings report highlighted a $37 million profit fueled by the strong demand, and the airline says they expect the trend to continue throughout the summer.

SEE MORE: Best airlines, top tips for smooth air travel with your pets

A leading psychology group is renewing its warnings about the dangers of social media for kids and teens in a new report Tuesday, pushing for legislators and tech companies to fix design features they call “inherently unsafe."

The report says tech companies and legislators have made “few meaningful changes” since the APA issued a health advisory last year, warning about social media’s impact on adolescents’ social, educational, psychological, and neurological development.

The U.S. Surgeon general says kids and teens who use social media for more than 3 hours a day are doubly at risk for having mental health issues, like anxiety or depression, and said teens spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on social media.

“The region that makes us very excited about getting attention from our peers develops first around 10, 11, 12 — unfortunately, the time when a lot of kids get a device,” Mitch Prinstein, the APA’s chief science officer, told Scripps News. “And the part that helps us resist following every impulse, kind of the brain’s brakes, that doesn't fully develop until our mid-20s.”

The report says features like infinite scrolling, likes, follower counts, and push notifications are “inherently unsafe” for kids and their developing brains.  Because kids are so hypersensitive to praise and attention at that age, they APA says they’re more influenced by social feedback such as likes and follower count, which studies have shown can make teens anxious and depressed, and cause more emotional distress.

The APA also wrote that push notifications “capitalize” on kids' “sensitivity to distraction,” and can drastically impact the amount of sleep kids get during puberty.

“I can say that as long as the platforms are designed to increase kids' time spent on social media as a primary objective, that means that we're not spending enough time on making sure that what they see is appropriate [or] that how long they spend is still preserving the recommended number of hours of sleep for adaptive brain development,” Prinstein said.

While the report didn’t mention specific social media sites, Prinstein also urged companies to build time limits in the apps, and called for hateful and discriminatory content to be taken down from apps entirely.

“I am very concerned about folks who are part of the design of social media who now admit they won't let their own kids anywhere near it. I think that's a really important message for all parents to know and to prompt policymakers to work fast,” he said.

Lawmakers have introduced multiple bipartisan bills directed at stopping child exploitation online, from blocking harmful content about eating disorders and suicide, to allowing some victims of exploitation to sue companies in civil court.

In October, antitrust and tech scholar Tim Wu estimated Congress has held around 40 hearings on children and social media since 2017. Meanwhile, Politico reports congress has only passed one online-related child safety law in the past decade, and that was only specific to sex trafficking.

Prinstein says it’s important to remember kids are learning how to interpret what they see all around them, including social media. The report notes that just because a child is a certain age, that doesn’t mean they’re ready to be online. Prinstein recommends only letting children download apps once they "understand that not everything they see is real" and know "how to resist comparing themselves with others.”

The APA website has a list of ways to start the conversation about safe social media use with children. Prinstein says, they may even thank you for it. “We actually had a class of kids in their early 20s who said that they really wish their parents had not given them a device at the age of 12, even though they had asked for one,” he said. “[What] we're hearing from kids is that when parents do set these limits that actually provides some relief.”

Scripps News reached out to X, formerly known as Twitter, and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp. Only Snap, which runs Snapchat, responded to our requests for comments, and said through a spokesperson “the app doesn’t offer public comparison metrics when you talk with your friends and our content platform is moderated, which means we don’t allow unvetted content to reach lots of people.”

SEE MORE: Instagram testing tools to block nude direct messages

The White House plans to expand coordination and support to 50 countries in a new worldwide effort to spot and stop pandemic risks.

The Biden administration will work with other countries on a new effort to improve infectious disease testing and surveillance before outbreaks can threaten to become global pandemics.

The partnership is meant to deliver national defense benefits for America and its global interests.

But the White House notes that "The most effective way to mitigate the impact of health security threats is to prevent, detect and contain them at their source. The Strategy focuses on working with countries around the world to ensure they are better able to prevent, detect, and respond to global health security threats."

The new expansion will reach more countries in Africa and Asia, where it will work to reduce the burden on health systems and workers that comes not just from COVID-19, but also from ongoing outbreaks of mpox, Ebola, cholera, polio, dengue, and malaria.

SEE MORE: Newest COVID shots are 54% effective in preventing symptoms, CDC finds

Multiple U.S. agencies will lend their support, including the U.S. State Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The new U.S. effort is not meant to replace other international agreements, such as the pandemic response accord in the works at the World Health Organization. A senior administration official said the U.S. program would go forward regardless of other global mitigation efforts.

Dubbed "DisneylandForward," the Walt Disney Company's roughly $2 billion project re-imagines its Anaheim, California theme park complex with new attractions, shops, restaurants and hotels. 

The company says the updated theme park will create "new magic" for the city of Anaheim, promising new jobs and more than $202 million in additional tax revenue. In exchange, the House of Mouse isn't asking for public funds or even an expansion in the city, but relaxed zoning rules and a proposal to privatize roads near the park. 

"We've set the gold standard, I think, in collaboration and outreach," said Joe Haupt, consultant for the DisneylandForward project at a public hearing earlier this year with Anaheim City Council. 

Disney says its investments would go towards more than 13,000 new jobs, $85 million for traffic and road improvements, $8 million to improve city parks, and more than $30 million to fund affordable housing projects. 

While many residents in Anaheim are excited for the investments into the community, others have been leery of Disney's promises. 

"I'm very concerned about the claims that the project will not displace significant numbers of people, or that the $30 million investment to housing is sufficient to address the adverse effects presented by this project," said Anaheim resident Carolina Mendez at a public hearing in February.

For tourists, Disneyland hasn't yet announced specific plans or renderings, but the company has used examples of its theme parks around the world as possibilities. The company also told reporters recently that cutting edge developments like the HoloTile — which allows for people to walk through virtual reality settings — may be a part of the updated theme park. 

SEE MORE: Disney opens its first 'Frozen'-themed attraction

The mayor of Atlantic City and his wife, who serves as the superintendent of the school district, are facing charges after investigators say they abused their daughter, with one incident leaving the victim unconscious.

The charges Marty and La'Quetta Small face include endangering the welfare of a child, simple assault and aggravated assault for what prosecutors say were "multiple occasions" of abuse in December 2023 and January 2024.

Prosecutors listed a number of disturbing incidents that led to the charges, including one in which Marty allegedly used a broom to beat his teenage daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness.

In another incident, it is alleged that Marty Small, during an argument with his daughter, continuously threatened to hurt her by "earth slamming: her down the stairs, grabbing her head and throwing her to the ground, and "smack[ing] the weave" out of her head.

Investigators said that on one occasion, Marty punched his daughter's legs repeatedly, causing bruising.

La'Quetta is accused of punching her daughter in the chest and mouth, as well as dragging her daughter by the hair and hitting her with a belt.

The charges were filed two weeks after police served five search warrants at the family’s home. Days after the search, on April 1, the mayor addressed the media, saying, "Though she has a doctorate and I have a master's degree, there's no book, no course that we took in college to show you how to be a parent. And more importantly, how to deal with the struggles of raising teenagers."

An affidavit obtained by The Associated Press revealed that several incidents of the alleged abuse were recorded, apparently without the parents' knowledge. Prosecutors reference an incident allegedly witnessed by the teenager's grandmother, who is quoted as saying, "A little punch in the eye ain’t gonna stop her."

Marty was elected mayor of Atlantic City in 2019 and was sworn in for four years in 2022 after winning 70% of the vote. La'Quetta, who has worked in the Atlantic City Public School District since 2003, was appointed to a 4 1/2-year term as superintendent of the district on Jan. 1, 2022. Court TV has reached out to the school district for a comment.

In a statement to Court TV, Marty's attorney characterized the charges as "attempting to second guess parental decisions" and specified that the complaints were issued on summonses, meaning that the couple was not arrested and no bail was set. "Mayor Marty Small remains the Mayor in the City of Atlantic City and will continue to faithfully perform all his duties as Mayor. And he and his wife LaQuetta and their two children remain a close and loving and intact family. Mayor Small and Superintendent LaQuetta Small are completely innocent of any wrongdoing and will ultimately be vindicated."

This story was originally published by Lauren Silver on Court TV.

Move over solar eclipse, it’s time for another celestial phenomenon to take center stage. The oldest known meteor shower, the Lyrids, is peaking this week.

The sharp peak falls between April 20 and April 22, according to EarthSky.org, but you may start seeing some flashes across the night sky any night this week. 

According to NASA, the best view in the Northern Hemisphere of the shower is after moonset and before dawn. Lie flat on your back with your feet facing east and wait about 30 minutes for your eyes to adjust in the dark to start seeing the meteors. 

Meteor showers happen at regular intervals as the Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet, NASA said. They are usually named after a star or constellation that is close to where the meteors appear in the sky. 

The Lyrids, named for the nearby constellation Lyra, have been observed for 2,700 years, according to NASA. 

NASA said the most well-known meteor shower is likely the Perseids, which usually peak in August of each year. And while the Lyrids are not as plentiful as Perseids, NASA said as many as 100 meteors can be seen per hour. 

The Lyrid meteor shower is composed of pieces of debris from the comet Thatcher, named for Alfred E. Thatcher who discovered it in 1861, according to EarthSky.org. 

SEE MORE: What was that red spot at the bottom of the moon during the eclipse?

President Joe Biden’s latest plan for student loan cancellation is moving forward as a proposed regulation, offering him a fresh chance to deliver on a campaign promise and energize young voters ahead of the November election.

The Education Department on Tuesday filed paperwork for a new regulation that would deliver the cancellation that President Biden announced last week. It still has to go through a 30-day public comment period and another review before it can be finalized.

It’s a more targeted proposal than the one the U.S. Supreme Court struck down last year. The new plan uses a different legal basis and seeks to cancel or reduce loans for more than 25 million Americans.

Conservative opponents, who see it as an unfair burden for taxpayers who didn’t attend college, have threatened to challenge it in court.

The Democratic president highlighted the plan during a trip to Wisconsin last week, saying it would provide “life-changing” relief. He laid out five categories of people who would be eligible for help.

The new paperwork filed by the Education Department includes four of those categories, while a separate proposal will be filed later addressing how people facing various kinds of hardship can get relief.

The broadest forgiveness category would help borrowers who owe more than they originally borrowed because of runaway interest. It would eliminate up to $20,000 in interest for anyone in that situation, while those with annual incomes below $120,000 and enrolled in income-driven repayment plans would get all their interest erased with no maximum limit. It would be done automatically.

Another category would cancel loans for people who have been paying back their undergraduate student loans for at least 20 years, and those who have been paying graduate loans at least 25 years.

It would automatically cancel loans for those who went to colleges or programs considered to have low financial value. Borrowers would be eligible for cancellation if they attended a program that leaves graduates with earnings no better than those with a high school diploma, for example, or programs that leave graduates with large shares of debt compared with their incomes.

SEE MORE: Biden admin. announces another round of student loan cancellation

Borrowers who are eligible for other federal forgiveness programs but haven’t applied would also get loans erased. Federal education officials would use existing data to identify those people and offer relief. It’s intended to reach those who don’t know about other programs or have been deterred by complicated application processes.

The proposal was hashed out over the course of several hearings as part of a federal rules process that gathers advice from outside experts. The plan was drafted with the help of students, college officials, state officials, borrower advocates and loan servicers.

During that process, advocates pushed for a fifth category of forgiveness for people who have different kinds of hardship that prevent them from being able to repay their loans. The Education Department said it's still working on the details of that rule, with a separate proposal to come “in the coming months.”

The department said the hardship proposal will offer cancellation to borrowers who are at high risk of defaulting on their loans along with those who face other hardships, including high medical and caregiving expenses. That proposal will mirror one agreed upon by outside experts during the rulemaking process, the agency said.

It usually takes months for a proposed rule to be finalized, and months more before it can take effect. The Biden administration said it plans to start implementing some parts of the new proposal as soon as this fall, using the education secretary's authority to implement rules early in certain cases.

Republicans are staunchly opposed to any broad student loan cancellation, saying it’s an unfair bailout for people who went to college.

“Where is the relief for the guy who didn't go to college but is working to pay off the loan on the truck he takes to work?” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. "What about the woman who paid off her student loans but is now struggling to afford her mortgage? Instead the Biden administration is sticking these Americans with the bill of someone else's student debt.

Two coalitions of Republican states have sued the Biden administration to block a separate repayment plan that offers an accelerated path to loan forgiveness.

The White House says it’s confident the new plan is on solid legal ground, saying the Higher Education Act gives the education secretary the power to waive student loans in certain cases.

Now, this is one of those stories that you've got to see to believe.

An elephant was running loose on a busy Montana street Tuesday after it temporarily escaped from a traveling circus.

Butte Civic Center manager Bill Melvin confirmed an elephant temporarily got loose from the Jordan World Circus that’s in town in the civic center. Melvin said the elephant’s handlers were washing the female elephant outside the civic center when a passing vehicle backfired and spooked the animal.

The elephant ran across a busy Harrison Avenue, stopping traffic while a handler ran after it. The spooked animal was soon safely corralled back at the civic center without injury, according to Melvin.

Cellphone video taken by Brittany McGinnis shows the elephant running across Harrison Avenue with someone running alongside it and through the parking lot of the Town Pump gas station.

The city of Butte lies in Southwest Montana, between Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks.

This story was originally published by John Emeigh at Scripps News Butte. 

SEE MORE: Busch Gardens welcomes the cutest endangered Bornean orangutan