Chief Executive Masatoshi Kumagai and other GMO executives bowed deeply repeatedly, as is the custom here, at a news conference in Tokyo.

GMO confirmed that unauthorized access to its cloud service called Onamae.com Desktop Cloud resulted in leaked information and transactions customers didn’t recall making, affecting dozens of securities firms and other businesses. It said there were more than 26,000 cases.

“I offer my deepest felt apologies,” Kumagai said, stressing the company took the problem seriously.

Tokyo-based GMO offers various internet services related to cybersecurity, online marketing and infrastructure systems, and support for robotics and artificial intelligence.

Kumagai, who founded the company in 1991, acknowledged GMO had been warned internally about a systemic weakness to such attacks, but failed to take proper action.

He apologized for recent social media posts, including a photo of him smiling, that he said may have hurt victims’ feelings. Kumagai is taking a 30% pay cut for three months, while other top executives are taking smaller pay cuts.

GMO promised to compensate for the losses and to pay 5,000 yen ($30) to all its customers to express “goodwill.” It will also switch to a new security system.

Recent Japanese media reports carried interviews with several people who said huge amounts of money went missing from a GMO service, although they had not initiated the transactions.

The problems at GMO have brought to light Japan’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which some experts warn have been brushed off for years and lack a sense of crisis.

The troubles at GMO come at a time of growing concern over cybersecurity.

Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, said Friday that hackers stole more than $6 billion in what appears to be the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. Blockchain firms have pointed to the attack coming from a North Korean hacking unit.

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has promised to beef up Japan’s cybersecurity measures. The government has declined to comment on the GMO case, including possible suspects.

GMO acknowledged the attackers had deployed ransomware and said it refused to pay.

The company is offering $1 million for information that leads to identifying and arresting the attackers. It has set up a “GMO Cybercrime Bounty” site, where people can submit information in English, Japanese or Chinese. It said that as of last week, it had received more than 400 submissions.

At the news conference, the company’s first since the security problems surfaced, Kumagai spoke passionately and tearfully about how he and his employees were working hard to deliver the joys of the internet and other technology to customers.

The impact of the cyberattacks on GMO’s financial results is still unclear. GMO stocks, which have fluctuated over the past year, declined after news of the cyberattacks surfaced. The news conference started after trading closed in Tokyo. Its shares have fallen 17.5% so far this year.

___

Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama

Source

The 53-year-old is one of a handful of residents left in Kozatske, a riverside village located in the kill zone of Ukraine’s Kherson region less than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) from a Russian-controlled area.

“I really want silence,” Diadiuk said, fighting back tears as she stood on an empty street lined with abandoned houses. “And I want to see the people who left, all of them. People left for both sides.”

Diadiuk’s life has been reduced to basic survival: rainwater to drink, firewood gathered around town for heat, a radio she tries to tune in to for news, and the remnants of humanitarian aid that had not reached her in two years until the brief ceasefire that ended Sunday night just days after it began. Going out means dodging every kind of weapon, including mines scattered everywhere. The neighbors she mentions are more often the dead than the few still living nearby.

A team from The Associated Press gained rare access to a so-called red zone to see firsthand what life in the kill zone looks like, a visit made possible only because of a brief, localized ceasefire tied to the humanitarian aid mission in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky.

Oleshky has drawn the world’s attention, but civilians are trapped in many more places on both sides of the front line. During the mission, Ukrainian regional officials, police, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society and volunteers, with the facilitation of civil-military cooperation specialists, used the rare window of time to reach people on their side of the river, some of them cut off for nearly two years.

In all, 180 people were evacuated from riverside communities and the city of Kherson, including 23 children, the regional administration said. About 140,000 people remain in the Ukrainian-held part of the Kherson region.

Before the war, the whole region, now nearly 70% under Russian control, had about 1 million residents. The riverside is designated a red zone, the highest level of military danger. With the ceasefire over, residents will again face drones, artillery, glide bombs and airdropped mines. Still, many refuse to leave. Some cannot afford to start over, and others will not abandon the places where they grew up.

Life is grim in the kill zone

On the road to Diadiuk’s village, burned-out cars sit abandoned where they were hit, alongside wrecked ground robots that Ukrainians try sending down roads too dangerous for people. A relic of peacetime still stands on that road: “Thank you for keeping the roadside clean.”

In the village, many houses are reduced to burned walls. Glide bombs have left craters, and the tail fins of shells stick out of the asphalt like flowers. Mines dropped from drones lie everywhere, some petal-shaped, others improvised and wrapped in foil or plastic, so every step must be taken with care. Thick vegetation swallows the ruins of empty houses.

What Diadiuk finds hardest to bear is the howling of the dogs left behind in the houses, surviving much as she is. “Even for the sake of these, I can’t leave them,” she says, pointing to two thin dogs that never stray far from her. But she shares what little food she has with other dogs as well.

Isolated and forced to fight for survival every day, she has lost track of time. “I turn on my phone only to see what day it is,” she says. She charges it with solar panels.

Diadiuk collects rainwater, strains it through gauze, treats it with chlorine and boils it. “The water here is more or less all right,” she says. “There are a lot of dead lying in the houses, so it’s good water only in a manner of speaking.”

Why people stay

The village’s ordeal began in the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion, when it was occupied. After Ukrainian forces liberated it, Kozatske gradually came under siege by drones as the war turned increasingly technological.

“Before, I’d just open the door and walk out,” said Oleksii Shavokin, 54, who lives a little farther down the street. “Now I open it a crack, stick my ear out and listen to the sky.”

His house burned down in early 2023 after a mortar attack, he said, but he patched it up and stays on there. He lives off old humanitarian aid and eggs from the hens he still keeps. “I ration my food so it lasts. I’m used to it,” he said. “Now I eat once a day, in the evening, and that’s quite enough.” He has lost 30 kilograms (66 pounds) from a weight of close to 100 kilograms (220 pounds).

Many of the people he knew were killed by strikes, and others left. He decided to stay.

“I value life, but where’s the guarantee a car won’t hit me somewhere else?” Shavokin said. “Wherever it’s written for you, that’s where you’ll lose your life, or go on living. And still, I hope this all ends soon.”

Leaving is a gut-wrenching choice

Many residents who stay do not know where they would go and fear they would be left to fend for themselves, said Oleh Tarabaka, head of the Nova Kakhovka city military administration. He was part of the team that tried to persuade Diadiuk and Shavokin to leave.

But it is difficult, he said. Many have lived there their whole lives and fear that once they leave, they will have nothing to live on. Not everyone has someone to go to. Some have no relatives.

“If there hadn’t been a period of quiet, we simply wouldn’t have gotten people out,” Tarabaka said. “We wouldn’t have been able to drive in here.”

What residents are living through goes beyond survival, Tarabaka said, adding that perhaps no word has yet been invented to describe it.

Some, however, can be persuaded to leave. That was the case for Yevhen and his mother, Antonina, who declined to give their last names for security reasons.

One of the military officials turned to Yevhen. “Just make the right decision, the decision of a man and a son,” a Ukrainian soldier from the 42nd brigade who was part of the evacuation group told him.

Eventually, they agreed.

All the way through her bombed-out town, Antonina wailed and wept, not wanting to leave. Her cries echoed through the empty streets.

Dozens evacuated from Kherson city

The temporary truce allowed the Red Cross to evacuate far more people than usual from Kherson city. Normally, every route and every stage must be planned around the constant threat of drones and other weapons.

“Right now, some streets and places in Kherson are a kill zone too. It’s simply impossible to slip through there. The risk is very, very high,” said Mykola Taranenko, commander of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society’s rapid response team in the Kherson region.

His team usually evacuates about 10 people a week, but during the ceasefire week, it took out 32.

Among those evacuated were Volodymyr and Kateryna Yakuba, both 77, who divorced more than 20 years ago but left the city together. Their daughter arranged the evacuation, and they are going to stay with her in Odesa.

“We need to get out before the cold sets in,” Kateryna said, adding about the ceasefire: “I don’t know how we would have gotten out otherwise.”

“It’s scary to leave home,” her voice trembled. “You don’t know if you’ll come back, or if there will be anything to come back to.”

___

Associated Press journalists Vasilisa Stepanenko and Evgeniy Maloletka contributed to this report.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Source

As residents and policymakers in the United States and Europe fight the facilities that power artificial intelligence, President Javier Milei is pitching Argentina as a haven, promising a hands-off approach to draw foreign investment his crisis-prone country needs.

Like his ally, U.S. President Donald Trump, Milei frequently posts AI-generated images on social media. He has proposed creating “nonhuman corporations” run entirely by AI agents.

“We are not going to regulate artificial intelligence,” Milei told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington last month. “We are going to leave it free.”

Visitor logs obtained by The Associated Press show a steady stream of tech figures meeting with Milei and his aides in recent months, from venture capitalist Peter Thiel to representatives of OpenAI, Amazon, Google, Oracle and data center companies. Foreign Ministry records show that data center developer Crusoe, which helped build OpenAI’s flagship campus in Texas, sought talks this year with Argentine energy officials about U.S. government-backed investments.

Milei’s hopes rest as much on geography as on ideology. Patagonia offers vast, open plains where noisy server farms can be built far from population centers, a chilly climate to cool the machines, powerful winds to generate electricity and one of the world’s largest shale deposits in Vaca Muerta to fuel power plants.

“In densely populated parts of the U.S. and Europe, there’s a lot of fighting over access to the grid and who should get the electricity,” said Marta Zlotkowska, head of international development at Green Capital, a Polish renewable energy company that plans to build a $3 billion data center in Patagonia to lease to big tech firms for AI computing, though it has yet to secure a customer.

“We compared potential locations for the project around the world and Argentina — well, Patagonia — came out on top in every category,” she said.

Patagonia’s AI promise

For Argentina’s energy industry, already booming as the Iran war hikes oil prices, data centers represent a tantalizing new market. Pampa Energía, one of the country’s biggest power companies, has announced plans to supply immense amounts of gas-fired power to a data center near Vaca Muerta and is seeking developers.

“Being at the end of the world used to be a disadvantage,” said Rubén Etcheverry, a top official in Neuquén, the Patagonian province home to Vaca Muerta. “But today, faced with energy shortages and rising costs, investors are looking at us.”

To win over companies wary of Argentina’s chronic economic instability, Milei is pushing an incentive scheme that would slash the corporate income tax rate to 15% from 25% for projects of at least $1 billion in AI and other emerging industries. The measure is awaiting Senate approval.

The payoff for Argentines remains unclear. Data centers employ relatively few people. Milei’s proposed incentives don’t require companies to reserve computing capacity for local consumption or to disclose their energy and water use.

“We’re not talking about data centers designed to strengthen Argentine technological sovereignty,” said Alan Rocha Varsanyi, a researcher at Observatorio Petrolero Sur, an Argentine environmental group. “The computing capacity will be exported wherever OpenAI or the other companies need it.”

Blueprints, not yet bulldozers

For all Milei’s hype, Argentina lags behind in the race to become a regional data center hub, as its neighbors tout cheap land, renewable power and expanding fiber-optic connections to U.S. tech giants.

Milei insists his calls for unfettered AI give Argentina an edge at a time when the European Union and a growing number of U.S. states have adopted new regulations. Critics warn he is pushing to deploy AI in Argentina without safeguards against risks ranging from mass surveillance to cyberattacks.

“Without rules, Argentina will become a laboratory — like when companies go to developing countries to test strange drugs they can’t test in major developed countries,” said Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba.

Milei may hear similar concerns next week when Pope Leo XIV, who has warned of AI’s threats to humanity, visits Argentina on his Latin American tour.

Even some in Milei’s own government acknowledge that his anti-regulation stance complicates efforts to build a clear legal framework, with one senior official not authorized to brief media saying companies are waiting for Argentina to settle rules on training AI with copyrighted works and sending personal data abroad.

Some investors are holding back until next year’s potentially tight presidential election, worried that if Milei loses, the next government could unravel his free-market reforms.

“One of our major challenges is getting foreign investors to understand that Argentina remains a friendly place for investment under different political parties,” said Andrés Arbeletche, cabinet coordination secretary for Chubut, a Patagonian province courting several AI mega-projects.

Farms of servers and sheep

In remote ranching outposts across the treeless plateau of Chubut province, life revolves around tending flocks on steppes and shearing sheep in sheds. With the wool industry in decline after decades of drought, overgrazing and soaring production costs, some ranchers are betting on a different kind of shed — filled not with fleece but with blinking racks of servers.

“Sheep farmers are looking very hard at what alternatives can be found to bring in more income,” said Francisco Sáenz, an agricultural engineer and fourth-generation sheep farmer whose family is among 14 landowners who have leased a combined 130,000 hectares (about 321,000 acres) to Green Capital for its planned data center. The ranchers expect to keep grazing sheep alongside their colossal future neighbor.

Construction isn’t expected to begin until around 2028. If operated continuously at its projected peak demand, the finished campus would use about 2.7 times as much electricity in a year as the entire city of Buenos Aires consumed in 2025, according to an AP calculation.

Green Capital promises to generate all its own electricity from wind turbines, solar farms and gas-fired generators rather than strain Argentina’s congested grid. Provincial officials are counting on the project to deliver billions of dollars in investment, highly skilled jobs and a market for surplus wind power.

“For us, it is all a benefit, and we give nothing up,” Arbeletche said.

But some residents of Trelew, a dust-blown city near the proposed site, say they have no way to judge those assurances. Environmental studies are still underway, permits are pending and the company hasn’t specified how much water the project would need or how much of its power would come from gas.

“There’s just so little information,” said Cristina Gibón, 46, who fears the environmental toll of data centers. “Maybe we’ll have water until we’re old. But afterward, our children will still be here, and they won’t have those resources.”

Worries like hers are feeding a wider backlash against Milei’s courtship of Big Tech. In Trelew, a small group of residents has rallied online and in the main square under the banner “Trelew Free of Data Centers.” In Congress, where lawmakers recently accused Milei of selling off the country at a hearing on billionaire Peter Thiel’s interests in Argentina, the opposition has forced the president to gut a bill easing restrictions on foreign land ownership and has stalled his plan to let AI agents control companies.

Back on his family’s farm, Sáenz sees a familiar Argentine reflex.

“Whenever a foreign company wants to make a major investment in Argentina, there’s a lot of criticism. Many people’s first reaction is to say, ‘No, they’re terrible people coming from the outside to take our resources,’” he said. “I’m not saying big companies are the best thing ever. I’m just saying that when I look at other countries, I see stable economies.”

Source

The Kyoto, Japan-based company said it had net income of 7 cents per share.

The industrial components supplier posted revenue of $3.47 billion in the period.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on KYOAY at https://www.zacks.com/ap/KYOAY

Source

On a per-share basis, the Dublin Airport, Ireland-based company said it had net income of $3.54.

The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of $3.49 per share.

The airline posted revenue of $6.56 billion in the period, also exceeding Street forecasts. Three analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $6.47 billion.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on RYAAY at https://www.zacks.com/ap/RYAAY

Source

U.S. futures advanced after U.S. stocks fell Friday to their worst day since June as investors dumped technology- and artificial intelligence-related stocks.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 gave up early gains, slipping 0.3% to 63,081.86 as some major technology companies fell.

Shares of OpenAI investor SoftBank Group dropped 1.6%. Japanese memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings plunged 15.8% as its earnings forecasts disappointed some analysts and investors.

South Korea’s benchmark Kospi index rose 2.2% to 5,859.08. Samsung Electronics added 1.8%, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix jumped 3.8%.

Technology stocks have been volatile as investors worry that the AI buildup may prove to be a bubble.

Apple is due to report its latest earnings results later in the day. Last week, earnings reports from Google parent Alphabet Inc. and Amazon rattled markets and raised fresh questions over whether their massive AI-related spending will bring profitable returns as quickly as hoped.

While recent developments do not necessarily mean that the AI boom is beginning to unravel, the debate is entering another phase, Sunil Tirumalai at UBS Global Research wrote in a recent note.

Investors have become “distinctly more nervous about a handful of companies with weaker balance sheets or bigger financial commitments,” he said, rather than the technology sector as a whole.

“Some cracks have appeared,” said Tirumalai. “Increasingly, the question will be whether all the money being spent on it can generate adequate financial returns.”

Over the past month, the Nikkei 225 has fallen more than 7% and the Kospi dropped more than 16%.

Taiwan’s Taiex was 0.7% lower, with leading chipmaker TSMC, or Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., shedding 1.7%.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng gained 0.5% to 23,411.49. The Shanghai Composite index was up 1.1% to 3,638.03, despite China reporting over the weekend that its factory activity returned to contraction territory in October indicating that the economic momentum may have slowed.

China’s central bank and its securities regulatory body met with financial institutions Monday to discuss ways to support the markets, according to Chinese media reports. The Shanghai Composite index has fallen 14.6% in the past year.

In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.6% to 8,856.50.

India’s Sensex rose 1.3%.

On Friday, Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 fell 1.8% and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite declined 2.9%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 1.1%.

Investors are watching for the outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections. Voters across the political spectrum have shown increasing concerns about AI and data centers, along with inflation and other key issues.

Oil prices dropped more than 2% early Monday, with Brent crude, the international standard, down 2.8% to $110.24 per barrel. Benchmark U.S. crude gave up 3.1%, to $100.85 a barrel.

Iran’s top diplomat said in an interview shared on his Telegram channel over the weekend that Iranian negotiators were in Qatar for talks on a proposal that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz within two days if the U.S. meets several conditions. However, he said no direct talks were being held with the U.S.

The final outcome of the diplomatic efforts to avoid a return to all-out war depends on answers provided by the United States to the “Iranian questions,” he said.

In other dealings early Monday, the U.S. dollar rose to 157.83 Japanese yen from 157.49 yen. The euro was trading at $1.1186, up from $1.1160.

Source

The Dallas-based company said it had a loss of 7 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for one-time gains and costs, were 6 cents per share.

The independent oil and gas company posted revenue of $409.9 million in the period.

_____

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on KOS at https://www.zacks.com/ap/KOS

Source

Video recorded by people inside their cars captured the terrifying moment the Bahamas-bound aircraft plunged from the sky before striking near the Palm Beach County roadway and exploding. Flames flickered around chunks of pavement lining a crater as people milled about, expressing shock that it landed only feet from homes and inches from passing vehicles. Thick black smoke engulfed the crash site.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on X that the Learjet 60 crashed in Palm Beach County at 12:50 p.m. and called it a “horrific tragedy.” The Federal Aviation Administration is sending a team to support the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation, he said.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there were no immediate reports of anyone on the ground injured or killed.

“It was a cataclysmic plane crash,” DeSantis told reporters at the scene. “It looked like a missile going down and left a big crater on the side of the road.”

Rain pounded the region on Sunday. A flood watch due to excessive rainfall was in effect through Monday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

The aircraft had departed Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas and was headed to the Bahamas, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Authorities did not immediately say what caused the jet to go down or who was on it.

The plane was heading east at 35,000 feet (about 11 kilometers) when pilots reported turbulence, icing and precipitation and requested to climb another 2,000 feet (about 610 meters).

Moments later, the plane entered a steep dive, first 10,000 feet per minute, then 20,000 feet per minute and up to 30,000 feet per minute, speeding the plane beyond its design limits, according to air traffic control recordings and flight tracking data.

A pilot declared an emergency and issued distress calls. The plane banked sharply to the right before it smashed into the ground.

Minutes before the crash, the pilot reported ice accumulating on the jet and turbulence that was jolting it by as much as 700 feet (213 meters), according to air traffic control recordings captured by LiveATC.net.

“We have light, clear ice that is manageable and moderate turbulence,” the pilot told controllers.

But the situation rapidly deteriorated. After encountering precipitation and requesting to climb, the pilot declared an emergency as the aircraft began losing altitude at an alarming rate.

“We’re descending 8,000 – mayday, mayday – we’re descending 10,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed.

“We are in an overspeed condition descending 20,000 feet per minute,” the pilot radioed, before delivering a devastating acknowledgment of what was about to happen. “We’re going to crash into the ground.”

Jim Reynolds, a spokesperson for Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, said the jet was a private aircraft. He could not immediately provide details about who was on the flight.

Steve Arroyo, an aviation safety expert, said icing and turbulence could have been factors in the crash and may have caused the plane to stall while it was cruising at 34,000 feet (10,363 meters).

There are many potential factors and the NTSB will consider all of them, including how the pilot responded to the icing and turbulence reported over the radio. But investigators won’t rule anything out at this early stage, he said.

The NTSB said investigators were expected to arrive at the crash site on Sunday and Monday. A media briefing is scheduled for Monday in West Palm Beach.

Palm Beach County authorities were evacuating about 600 people from a nearby mobile home community while federal officials investigate the crash. The road will be closed until further notice, county officials said.

The crash occurred in Greenacres, Florida, according to Palm Beach County sheriff’s officials. The city of 45,000 people is about 7 miles (11 kilometers) southwest of West Palm Beach.

___

Taxin reported from Santa Ana, California. AP Transportation Writer Josh Funk contributed from Gretna, Nebraska.

Source

Officials in Pagosa Springs, a town of more than 2,000 in the Rockies located near ski resorts and known for its hot springs, warned of potentially “catastrophic flooding” as the San Juan River was forecast to crest at more than 20 feet (6.1 meters) late Sunday night.

“To put the forecast into perspective, during the devastating 1911 flood that wiped out most of what existed as the town of Pagosa at that time, the San Juan River crested at approximately 17.8 feet (5.4 meters),” the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. “This is a potentially catastrophic flood event.”

By sundown Sunday, the river’s crest had reached about 14 feet (4.2 meters), according to Vicky Schaffer, a spokesperson for the county. Roads in and out of the town were closed and residents who weren’t under evacuation orders were urged to stay home.

Communities in northern New Mexico and central Arizona, meanwhile, also issued mandatory evacuations while the rains forced the closure of several highways.

In the picturesque town of Sedona, Arizona, officials ordered residents near Oak Creek to leave immediately as floodwaters trapped multiple people in their homes.

Arizona expects months’ worth of rain in a couple of days

Nearby Yavapai County and the community of Camp Verde issued similar evacuation orders for residents living near swollen rivers and creeks.

More than 100 miles (160 kilometers) southeast of Sedona, officials in Gila County ordered the total evacuation of Gisela, a community of several hundred residents along Tonto Creek. The wet conditions even produced flash floods, river flooding and swift boat rescues in Tucson, some 230 miles (370 kilometers) south of Sedona.

“We are getting two or three months of rain in a span of a couple of days,” said Aaron Hardin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tucson.

Rain fell nearly nonstop Sunday in Flagstaff, Arizona, flooding local roads and overwhelming storm drains. Authorities were searching for a man who slipped and fell into fast-moving floodwaters “and was not seen resurfacing,” according to a police statement Sunday evening.

Outside Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, people filled plastic bags with sand to try to prevent further flooding inside. Luke Willson said water got into the garage, the basement and underneath the church building, as well as in an office where the computers are. “The pumps are pumping, but they’re not pumping fast enough,” he said.

To the southeast, in the Pinetop-Lakeside area of central Arizona, “manhole covers are popping up all over” and residents reported sewage backing up into homes because of flooding, the region’s sanitary district said in a statement.

The latest round of soaking rains started Saturday evening and was expected to saturate the region through Monday. The weather service estimates as much as 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain could fall across the region, fueled by a series of Pacific storm systems.

The weather service issued flood warnings and watches for nearly all of Arizona and parts of southern Utah, southwestern Colorado and western New Mexico, in addition to part of southern Nevada. That includes the sparsely populated Four Corners region where the states meet.

The weather service office for Salt Lake City said previous storms already soaked places like Zion and Capitol Reef National Parks, warning that could worsen flooding and “backcountry roads will likely become impassable from this excessive runoff.”

Roads into Colorado tourist town closed

Officials in Pagosa Springs said anyone in low-lying areas along the San Juan, Rio Blanco, Navajo and Piedra rivers should head to a designated shelter at a local church.

They advised residents not to wait to leave their homes as emergency crews may be extremely limited during the worst of the storm. The highway entering town also was closed to inbound traffic, and residents were advised to avoid contact with the San Juan River after sewage was discharged into it.

Katie German, owner and chef of Bruin Coffee in Pagosa Springs, said downtown had been evacuated and that there was street flooding. German said she was most worried about the one bridge into town washing out and trucks carrying everything from food to fuel not having a way in.

Town officials had just lifted an evacuation order from flooding last week only to reimpose it Saturday with the San Juan forecast to crest Sunday night at 21.9 feet (6.7 meters).

“I’m worried about my business, worried about my employees, definitely worried for everybody in this town,” German said.

Officials in La Plata County, west of Pagosa Springs, said all public roads were closed due to the flooding.

Evacuations were also ordered in nearby Durango, Colorado, where the Animas River was rising quickly.

Sedona officials rescue residents trapped in homes

In Sedona, longtime resident Michelle Grimm worried about her community after viewing the rushing waters of Oak Creek rising perilously close to the underside of a pedestrian bridge near the center of town.

“I went out at eight this morning and I saw the bridge and I was like, ‘Oh, we’re in trouble,’” she said as she sheltered in place in her home Sunday.

“I’ve never seen them rescuing people with helicopters out of neighborhoods,” Grimm said.

A video shared by the Sedona fire department showed powerful floodwaters inundating vehicles and rushing past homes and other structures. Other videos and photos shared on social media showed people standing on a pedestrian bridge taking photos and videos as churning, brown waters rushed underneath.

By Sunday afternoon, the drenching rains had largely subsided in the Sedona area.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs said state air rescue crews were assisting with rooftop evacuations and state transportation crews were helping clear debris.

No injuries or deaths had so far been reported, and nearly 20 homes had residents who needed emergency assistance to relocate, said David McAtee, spokesperson for Yavapai County.

—-

Marcelo reported from New York; Casey from Boston; and Weber from Los Angeles.

Source

Their careers and possibly their freedom are at stake in the jury trial expected to unfold over the next month in Brooklyn federal court. Several professional baseball players, including catchers and baseball executives, are among witnesses expected to testify.

Clase, the Guardians’ former closer, and Ortiz, a starter, have pleaded not guilty to conspiracy charges and are on nondisciplinary leave from the club without pay while their fate is determined.

According to an indictment, the pitchers accepted several thousand dollars in payoffs to help two gamblers from their native Dominican Republic win at least $460,000 on in-game prop bets on the speed and outcome of certain pitches.

Prosecutors allege that Clase began providing the bettors with information about his pitches in 2023 and recruited Ortiz into the scheme in 2025. Lawyers for Ortiz unsuccessfully sought to have Ortiz tried separately from Clase.

Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto said at a conference Friday that she hopes to complete jury selection quickly enough that lawyers can deliver relatively short opening statements in the afternoon.

Clase, 28, is a three-time All-Star and two-time American League Reliever of the Year who had completed his fourth season of a $20 million, five-year contract when charges against the pitchers were revealed in November 2025.

Ortiz, 27, had earned $782,600 as a starting pitcher for the Guardians during the 2025 season.

The pitchers have been charged with wire fraud conspiracy, honest services wire fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and conspiracy to influence sporting contests by bribery.

Defense lawyers are expected to argue that the pitchers did not collude with gamblers and instead were varying the placement of pitches strategically to fool batters.

On Friday, the judge ruled that prosecutors cannot show the jury proof that Clase owed $500,000 in U.S. taxes because they had only provided the evidence to defense lawyers several days earlier and long after a deadline had passed to turn over evidence to their adversaries.

A prosecutor had argued that the government wanted to put the evidence in the trial to offset any claim by Clase’s lawyers that he had no incentive to collude with gamblers because he had several million dollars in financial accounts in the Dominican Republic.

Major League Baseball and the Guardians have both said they’ve fully cooperated with authorities. MLB has said it contacted federal law enforcement when it began investigating unusual betting activity.

Source