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The Senate is returning to Washington on Tuesday to vote on $95 billion in war aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, taking the final steps in Congress to send the legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk after months of delays and contentious internal debate over how involved the United States should be abroad.

The $61 billion for Ukraine comes as the war-torn country desperately needs new firepower and as Russian President Vladimir Putin has stepped up his attacks. Soldiers have struggled to hold the front lines as Russia has seized the momentum on the battlefield and forced Ukraine to cede significant territory.

President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Monday the U.S. will soon send badly needed air defense weaponry. The House approved the package Saturday in a series of four votes, sending it back to the Senate for final approval.

“The President has assured me that the package will be approved quickly and that it will be powerful, strengthening our air defense as well as long-range and artillery capabilities,” Zelenskyy said in a post on X.

SEE MORE: Where did all the US aid to Ukraine go?

The legislation also would send $26 billion in wartime assistance to Israel and humanitarian relief to citizens of Gaza, and $8 billion to counter China in Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific. In an effort to gain more votes, Republicans in the House majority also added a bill to the package that could ban the social media app TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owners do not sell their stake within a year. The foreign aid portion of the bill is similar to what the Senate passed in February with some minor changes and additions, including the TikTok bill and a stipulation that $9 billion of the economic assistance to Ukraine is in the form of “forgivable loans.”

The package has had broad congressional support since President Biden first requested the money last summer. But congressional leaders had to navigate strong opposition from a growing number of conservatives who question U.S. involvement in foreign wars and argue that Congress should be focused instead on the surge of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The growing fault line in the GOP between those conservatives who are skeptical of the aid and the more traditional, “Reagan-era” Republicans who strongly support it may prove to be career-defining for the two top Republican leaders. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, who has made the Ukraine aid a top priority, said last month that he would step down from leadership after becoming increasingly distanced from many in his conference on the issue and others. House Speaker Mike Johnson, who put the bills on the floor after praying for guidance, faces threats of an ouster after a majority of Republicans voted against them.

SEE MORE: Exploring the impact and history of US foreign aid

McConnell has made clear that stopping Putin is important enough for him to stake his political capital.

“The national security of the United States depends on the willingness of its leaders to build, sustain, and exercise hard power,” McConnell said after House passage Saturday, adding, “I make no apology for taking these linked threats seriously or for urging the Biden administration and my colleagues in Congress to do the same.”

Johnson said after House passage that “we did our work here, and I think history will judge it well."

The Senate could pass the aid package, now combined back into one bill, as soon as Tuesday afternoon if senators are able to agree on the timing for a vote. If Republicans who oppose the legislation decide to protest and draw out the process, final votes would likely be Wednesday.

The legislation was first passed by the Senate in February on a sweeping 70-29 vote, and it could get even more votes this time after the House added in the loan provisions. The idea for a loan started with former President Donald Trump, who had been opposed to the aid.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a longtime GOP hawk who voted against it in February because it wasn’t paired with legislation to stem migration at the border, praised Johnson after the vote and indicated he will vote for it this time. “The idea that the United States will be safer if we pull the plug on our friends and allies overseas is wrong,” he said on X.

SEE MORE: The long history of US support for Israel

The revised House package also included several Republican priorities that were acceptable to Democrats to get the bill passed. Those include proposals that allow the U.S. to seize frozen Russian central bank assets to rebuild Ukraine; impose sanctions on Iran, Russia, China and criminal organizations that traffic fentanyl; and could eventually ban TikTok in the U.S. if the owner, ByteDance Ltd., doesn’t sell. That bill has wide bipartisan support in the House and Senate.

Opponents in the Senate, like the House, are likely to include some left-wing senators who are opposed to aiding Israel as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has bombarded Gaza and killed thousands of civilians. Vermont Sens. Bernie Sanders, an independent, and Peter Welch, a Democrat, both voted against the package in February.

“This bill provides Netanyahu $10 billion more in unrestricted military aid for his horrific war against the Palestinian people,” Sanders said on X just before that vote. “That is unconscionable.”

At least 5 people have died while crossing the English Channel, according to French media, hours after the U.K. approved the migrant deportation bill.

The Voix du Nord newspaper said the bodies were discovered at the Wimereaux beach in northern France on Tuesday. The rescue operation is ongoing and helicopters and boats have been deployed, according to the regional newspaper.

About 100 migrants have been rescued and placed aboard a French navy ship. They will be taken to the port of Boulogne, the paper said.

This came only hours after British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's latest effort to send some migrants on a one-way ticket to Rwanda finally won approval from Parliament. The U.K. government plans to deport some of those who enter the country illegally as a deterrent to migrants who risk their lives in leaky, inflatable boats in hopes that they will be able to claim asylum once they reach Britain.

Human rights groups have described the legislation as inhumane and cruel. Both the United Nations refugee agency and the Council of Europe called on the U.K. Tuesday to rethink its plans for fears they could damage international cooperation on tackling the global migrant crisis.

Migrants trying to cross the busy English Channel face drownings and sinking among other deadly incidents, often aboard crowded boats.

An estimated 30,000 people made the crossing in 2023, according to U.K. government figures.

Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at New York University and Yale, and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public Monday as some of the most prestigious U.S. universities sought to defuse campus tensions over Israel's war with Hamas.

More than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green were arrested last week, and similar encampments have sprouted up at universities around the country as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.

At New York University, an encampment set up by students swelled to hundreds of protesters throughout the day Monday. The school said it warned the crowd to leave, then called in the police after the scene became disorderly and the university said it learned of reports of “intimidating chants and several antisemitic incidents.” Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officers began making arrests.

“It’s a really outrageous crackdown by the university to allow the police to arrest students on our own campus," said New York University law student Byul Yoon.

“Antisemitism is never OK. That’s absolutely not what we stand for and that’s why there are so many Jewish comrades that are here with us today,” Yoon said

SEE MORE: Columbia University goes virtual amid pro-Palestinian protests

The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel's assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and they point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group's Oct. 7 invasion.

Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia, where the campus gates were locked to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on campus and outside.

U.S. Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina who was visiting Columbia with three other Jewish members of Congress, told reporters after meeting with students from the Jewish Law Students Association that there was “an enormous encampment of people” who had taken up about a third of the green.

“We saw signs indicating that Israel should be destroyed,” she said after leaving the Morningside Heights campus. Columbia announced Monday that courses at the Morningside campus will offer virtual options for students when possible, citing safety as their top priority.

A woman inside the campus gates led about two dozen protesters on the street outside in a chant of, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” — a charged phrase that can mean vastly different things to different groups. A small group of pro-Israel counter demonstrators protested nearby.

University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the school community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on campus.

“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Shafik wrote, noting that students who don’t live on campus should stay away.

Protests have roiled many college campuses since Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. During the ensuing war, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

On Sunday, Elie Buechler, a rabbi for the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to nearly 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it’s safer for them on campus.

The latest developments came ahead of the Monday evening start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary building two blocks from Columbia's campus, said protesters over the weekend were "calling for Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slurs were not students.

“Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that," he said. “There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over into the vilification of Judaism.”

An Arizona judge declared a mistrial Monday in the case of a rancher accused of fatally shooting a Mexican man on his property near the U.S.-Mexico border.

The decision came after jurors failed to reach a unanimous decision after more than two full days of deliberation in trial of George Alan Kelly, 75, who was charged with second-degree murder in the Jan. 30, 2023, shooting of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea.

“Based upon the jury's inability to reach a verdict on any count,” Superior Court Judge Thomas Fink said, “This case is in mistrial.”

The Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office can still decide whether to retry Kelly for any charge, or drop the case all together.

A status hearing was scheduled for next Monday afternoon, when prosecutors could inform the judge if they plan to refile the case. Prosecutors did not immediately respond to emailed requests for additional comment.

Kelly was charged with second-degree murder in killing of Cuen-Buitimea, 48, who lived just south of the border in Nogales, Mexico.

SEE MORE: A day on a ranch along the US-Mexico border

Prosecutors said Kelly recklessly fired nine shots from an AK-47 rifle toward a group of men, including Cuen-Buitimea, about 100 yards away on his cattle ranch. Kelly has said he fired warning shots in the air, but he didn’t shoot directly at anyone.

Court officials took jurors to Kelly’s ranch as well as a section of the border. Fink denied news media requests to tag along.

After Monday's ruling, Consul General Marcos Moreno Baez of the Mexican consulate in Nogales, Arizona, said he would wait with Cuen-Buitimea’s two adult daughters on Monday evening to meet with prosecutors from Santa Cruz County Attorney’s Office to learn about the implications of a mistrial.

“Mexico will continue to follow the case and continue to accompany the family, which wants justice." said Moreno. "We hope for a very fair outcome.”

Kelly's defense attorney Brenna Larkin did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment after the ruling was issued. Larkin had asked Fink to have jurors keep deliberating another day.

Kelly had earlier rejected an agreement with prosecutors that would have reduced the charge to one count of negligent homicide if he pleaded guilty.

SEE MORE: How and why do migrants risk their lives to come to the US?

Kelly was also charged with aggravated assault that day against another person in the group of about eight people, including a man from Honduras who was living in Mexico and who testified during the trial that he had gone into the U.S. that day seeking work.

The other migrants weren’t injured and they all made it back to Mexico.

Cuen-Buitimea lived just south of the border in Nogales, Mexico. He had previously entered the U.S. illegally several times and was deported, most recently in 2016, court records show.

The nearly monthlong trial coincided with a presidential election year that has drawn widespread interest in border security.

Fink had told jurors that if they could not reach a verdict on the second-degree murder charge, they could try for a unanimous decision on a lesser charge of reckless manslaughter or negligent homicide. A second-degree murder conviction would have brought a minimum prison sentence of 10 years.

The jury got the case Thursday afternoon, deliberated briefly that day and then all of Friday and Monday.

Former President Donald Trump's New York hush money trial continues on Tuesday as former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker again takes the witness stand. 

But Pecker's testimony could easily be overshadowed by a hearing taking place outside the presence of the jury. 

Judge Juan Merchan will also hear arguments on whether Trump violated a gag order. Prosecutors claim Trump violated an order by Merchan that limits what Trump can say about the case, including potential witnesses, jurors, and the family of the judge.

In a court filing, prosecutors say Trump violated the gag order multiple times by posting disparaging comments involving potential witness Michael Cohen, who served as a former attorney for Trump. 

"A serial perjurer will try to prove an old misdemeanor against Trump in an embarrassment for the New York legal system," Trump wrote on Truth Social with a link to a New York Post story that had a photo of Cohen, prosecutors said.

The Trump presidential campaign website also had a similar post about Cohen, the filing said.

"Defendant violated those restrictions by making or directing to be made the social media posts and posts on the campaign website described above," the prosecutor's filings said. "The posts unquestionably relate to known witnesses and prospective jurors in this criminal trial. "

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

Trump has claimed that the gag order violates his free speech rights. 

“The gag order has to come off. People are allowed to speak about me, and I have a gag order, just to show you how much more unfair it is," Trump said. 

If Merchan finds that Trump has violated the gag order, he can issue a $1,000 fine per violation. If Merchan says that Trump willfully violated the order, he can put Trump in jail for up to 30 days. 

The gag order hearing will be held before Pecker testifies. His testimony on Monday was cut short after 20 minutes as court adjourned by 12:30 p.m. ET. 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges Trump tried to conceal an "illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election" by trying to cover up extramarital affairs. Bragg claims Trump falsified records to hide payments to Cohen that were meant for porn actress Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, as well as a former a former doorman at Trump Towner.

Prosecutors have alleged that Pecker was involved in the alleged scheme by performing "catch and kill" on stories that could have damaged Trump's reputation. 

Prosecutors said Trump used Cohen to buy the McDougal story from National Enquirer's publisher AMI. Prosecutors say the Trump Organization then paid Cohen in monthly installments and a year-end bonus check. 

Trump faces 34 felony counts for falsifying business records.

After Starbucks fired seven workers who were trying to unionize their Tennessee store, a U.S. government agency obtained a court order forcing the company to rehire them. Now, Starbucks wants the Supreme Court to curb the government's power in such cases.

On Tuesday, justices are scheduled to hear Starbucks' case against the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that protects the right of employees to organize. If the court sides with Starbucks, it could make it tougher for the NLRB to step in when it alleges corporate interference in unionization efforts.

The hearing comes even as the animosity between Starbucks and Workers United, the union organizing its workers, has begun to fade. The two sides announced in February that they would restart talks with the aim of reaching contract agreements this year. Starbucks and union representatives planned to meet Tuesday for their first bargaining session in nearly a year.

Workers at 420 company-owned U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize since late 2021, but none of those stores has secured a labor agreement with Starbucks.

The case before the Supreme Court began in February 2022, when Starbucks fired seven employees who were leading a unionization effort in Memphis, Tennessee. Starbucks argued the employees had violated policy by reopening the store after closing time and inviting non-employees — including a television news crew — to come inside.

The National Labor Relations Board determined the firings constituted an illegal interference with workers' right to organize. The agency found that Starbucks had routinely allowed off-duty employees and non-employees to remain in the store after hours to make drinks or collect belongings.

The NLRB asked a federal district court to intervene and require Starbucks to rehire the workers while the case wound its way through the agency's administrative proceedings. A district court judge agreed with the NLRB and issued a temporary injunction ordering Starbucks to rehire the workers in August 2022. After the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, Starbucks appealed to the Supreme Court.

Five of the seven workers are still employed at the Memphis store, while the other two remain involved with the organizing effort, according to Workers United. The Memphis store voted to unionize in June 2022.

Starbucks said the Supreme Court should intervene because federal appeals courts don't agree on the standards the NLRB must meet when it requests a temporary injunction against a company. Starbucks says temporary injunctions can be a major burden for companies, since the NLRB's administrative process can take years.

Since 1947, the National Labor Relations Act — the law that governs the agency — has allowed courts to grant temporary injunctions requested by the NLRB if it finds them "just and proper." In its review of what transpired at the Starbucks store in Memphis, the Sixth Circuit required the NLRB to establish two things: that it had reasonable cause to believe unfair labor practices occurred and that a restraining order would be a "just and proper" solution.

But other federal appeals courts have required the NLRB to meet a four-factor test when seeking restraining orders, including showing it was likely to prevail in the administrative case and employees would suffer irreparable harm without an injunction.

Starbucks has asked the Supreme Court to establish the four-factor test as the standard all courts must follow when considering NLRB injunction cases.

"This court's intervention is urgently needed," Starbucks wrote in an October court filing. "National employers like Starbucks must defend themselves against years-long injunctions under materially different tests depending on where alleged unfair labor practices occur or where employers reside."

The NLRB says it already considers its likelihood of success before taking a case to court, making whether courts apply two factors or four largely irrelevant. The agency notes that it rarely asks courts for temporary injunctions; in its 2023 fiscal year, it received 19,869 charges of unfair labor practices and authorized the filing of 14 cases seeking temporary injunctions.

"The two-part inquiry undertaken by the Sixth Circuit and other courts ... subjects board petitions to meaningful scrutiny, and does not call for courts merely to 'rubber-stamp' agency requests," the NLRB argued in a filing last month.

Our oceans are full of plastic — an estimated 200 million metric tons, according to The Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving oceans. And around the world, organizations large and small spend endless hours trying to keep us from making the problem worse.

Each plastic bottle, shopping bag or piece of an old toy threatens marine life and habitats. This garbage collects in floating patches in oceans around the world. The largest of them, in the Pacific, is estimated to be three times the size of France.

But it’s the tiny, microscopic plastics that could be an even bigger threat.

Everything from our car tires to our clothes can end up depositing so-called microplastics into the ocean. There, they latch onto corals, blend into marine habitats and get eaten by fish. They’re virtually impossible to remove, and they carry sometimes deadly chemicals. 

Early research shows microplastics could have incredibly harmful effects on humans: lung damage, gut inflammation and autoimmune disruption. Chemicals carried with microplastics are known to cause cancer and organ damage and interfere with the human nervous and reproductive system.

SEE MORE: Starbucks plans to cut down on the plastic in its cold drink cups

Even so, we’re pumping out tons of plastic every year, and there’s so far no end in sight. Stopping the bleeding would require governments to change their policies, and that's proven hard to do.

In Ottawa, the U.N. is hosting the latest in a series of talks to establish a global plastics treaty — a potentially scale-tipping moment in the fight against plastic production. And that has some experts hopeful.

"I have never been more optimistic," said Anja Brandon, associate director of U.S. plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy. "It took decades to get the world to come together to talk about the climate crisis to negotiate some of those first agreements. We're now seeing countries come together at a breakneck pace to try to negotiate a global treaty on plastic pollution."

"There's no going back, and that should motivate us to move quickly," Brandon said.

The U.N. labor organization warned Monday that over 70% of the world's workforce is likely to be exposed to excessive heat during their careers, citing increased concern about exposure to sunlight. It also warned of air pollution, pesticides and other hazards that could lead to health problems including cancer.

In a new report, the International Labor Organization suggested ways that governments can improve their legislation and help cope with the rising effects of climate change on workers.

“It’s clear that climate change is already creating significant additional health hazards for workers,” said Manal Azzi, the organization's team lead on occupational safety and health. “It is essential that we heed these warnings."

The ILO estimates that over 2.4 billion workers — more than 70% of the global workforce — are likely to face excessive heat as part of their jobs at some point, according to the most recent figures available, from 2020. That's up from over 65% in 2000.

The Geneva-based body cited the growing link between climate change and harm to human health, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory troubles and mental health.

It estimates, for example, that 1.6 billion workers are exposed to ultraviolet radiation as part of their jobs, citing nearly 19,000 deaths a year from non-melanoma skin cancer, and ailments as diverse as sunburn, skin blistering and eye damage, cataracts and retina trouble like macular degeneration.

The same number of workers — 1.6 billion — are exposed to workplace air pollution “resulting in up to 860,000 work-related deaths among outdoor workers annually,” it said in a statement.

SEE MORE: Why the government created new tools to show heat forecasts and risk

The report said some subsets of workers are particularly vulnerable, such as firefighters in the United States battling wildfires, which experts say have become bigger and more frequent because of climate change due to high heat and excessively dry conditions.

“Workers are often forgotten when we’re talking about climate change and the health impacts are very severe from death, to millions of sick people because of hazards exacerbated by climate change, but also millions living with chronic diseases," Aziz said.

Some countries have taken action by enacting legislation that calls for regular surveillance of workers regularly exposed to heat, excess sunlight, air pollution and other health risks on the job. In other cases, ILO says collective bargaining agreements between labor and business leaders have helped mitigate the risks.

U.N. agencies and environmental activists have increasingly sought to highlight the link between climate change and human health. Planet Earth tallied a 10th straight month of record monthly temperatures in March, according to the European Union's climate agency.

The World Health Organization estimates that between 2030 and 2050, just a handful of climate-related threats, such as malaria and water insecurity, will claim a quarter of a million additional lives each year.

NASA engineers have completed a promising round of tech support on the Voyager 1 space probe, correcting an issue with one of its computers and moving it closer to being ready to transmit science data again.

In November of 2023, NASA started receiving corrupted data from the probe. 

Engineers determined a small section of memory in one of the probe's computers was faulty. That computer ran the code that prepared data for transmission back to Earth. If it couldn't execute its code properly, Voyager wouldn't be able to send readable data home.

The team determined they would have to move the affected code elsewhere in the computer so the damaged memory wouldn't corrupt it.

SEE MORE: Yes, Jupiter has lightning, and it's green

So began some of the most extreme troubleshooting efforts ever attempted: They would have to perform remote workarounds on a 46-year-old computer that's more than 15 billion miles away — the most distant human-created object in the universe. The time delay between sending a command and seeing the result was nearly two full days.

Because of the limited storage space available, engineers had to break the code into sections that would fit in different storage areas. They also had to make sure the scattered code could be run in full when it came time to transmit data.

On April 22, NASA announced it had completed the delicate work of rearranging the computer code. It says it will now work toward bringing Voyager's abilities to transmit science data back online to continue its original mission.

The mission's sister probe Voyager 2, meanwhile, is still running normally.

A state senator and former broadcast meteorologist was arrested on suspicion of burglary early Monday in the northwestern Minnesota city of Detroit Lakes, police said.

Democratic Sen. Nicole Mitchell, 49, of Woodbury, was being held in the Becker County Jail on suspicion of first-degree burglary. Formal charges were still pending Monday afternoon, Detroit Lakes Police Chief Steve Todd said.

Mitchell did not immediately return a call left on the jail's voicemail system for inmates. It's not clear if she has an attorney who could comment on her behalf. The police chief said he didn't know of one.

Mitchell was arrested while the Senate is on its Passover break. Her arrest comes at an awkward time for Senate Democrats, who hold just a one-seat majority with four weeks left in the legislative session. Her absence would make it difficult to pass any legislation that lacks bipartisan support.

Mitchell worked as a meteorologist with the U.S. military and for KSTP-TV and Minnesota Public Radio before she was elected to the Senate in 2022 from a suburban St. Paul district. She still serves as lieutenant colonel in the Air National Guard, commanding a weather unit, her official profile says. She worked for The Weather Channel earlier in her career, her profile says.

SEE MORE: Former National Enquirer publisher testifies in Trump hush money trial

Dispatchers received a 911 call at 4:45 a.m. from a homeowner about "an active burglary in process at her residence," Todd said in an interview. Officers searched the home and arrested Mitchell, Todd said.

The police chief said he could provide few other details because the case was still under investigation. He said he was waiting to hear back from the county attorney's office, and that a complaint detailing the allegations might not get filed until Tuesday.

Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald did not immediately return a message seeking comment on the case.

Public records and an obituary posted by a Detroit Lakes funeral home show that Mitchell's father, who died last month, and stepmother lived on the same block of the same road in Detroit Lakes as where the senator was arrested. The stepmother did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

Mitchell's arrest took Senate leaders by surprise. The Senate Democratic Caucus said in a statement that it's "aware of the situation and has no comment pending further information."

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mark Johnson, of East Grand Forks, said he was shocked but knew very few details.

"The public expects Legislators to meet a high standard of conduct," Johnson said in a statement. "As information comes out, we expect the consequences to meet the actions, both in the court of law, and in her role at the legislature."

Eva Evans, a TikTok star who created the comedic web series "Club Rat," has died at 29 years old. 

The content creator's sister, Lila Joy, announced the news in an Instagram post Sunday, saying the family had been told the day before that Evans had died.

"After 24 hours, I still find myself in a constant cycle of denial and acceptance, so I know how unbelievable and hard to process this news will be," the post read. "I wish I had Eva here now to refer to because she would have better words and know how to say what I don't."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by lila joy (@lilajoyful)

Comments on the post and across social media soon became flooded with condolences and admiration for the young influencer. 

Actor Julia Fox said in a TikTok video that she considered Evans "like a little sister."

"She was so young, still had so much to do in life, but she lived life to the fullest," Fox said through tears, also mentioning the loss of Kyle Marisa Roth — another TikTok star who died last week. 

TikTok personality Tefi Pessoa commented on Lila Joy's post saying she'd "light a candle for her tonight … I'll tell my grandparents to show her around."

Photographer Ashley Armitage said she "can't imagine a world without Eva" in a comment, and on her page, she said, "The world is less bright and way less funny without her."

A cause of death has not been released.

Evans was known for chronicling her New York City-based life on social media, particularly on TikTok, where she amassed more than 300,000 followers. She also directed and starred in the five-episode series "Club Rat" on Amazon Prime Video last year. It focused on an influencer who "attempts to re-enter the chaotic New York City dating scene after a candid video of her humiliating breakup goes viral," according to its synopsis.

A public celebration of Evans' life will be held Tuesday at Grace Church in downtown Manhattan. Lila Joy said in another Instagram post that she's extending an invitation to "anyone who loved Eva; your presence would mean so much to her and us."

Morgan Wallen is speaking out about an incident at a Nashville bar earlier this month that ended with him in handcuffs. 

The country singer is currently facing multiple charges stemming from his April 7 arrest, which occurred after he threw a chair off the rooftop of Eric Church's six-story Chief's Bar. Those charges include three felony counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct.

An arrest report for Wallen said the chair hit the ground feet away from where some Metro Nashville police officers were standing. Their review of footage showed the 30-year-old "lunging and throwing an object over the roof" while witnesses said he laughed. 

Wallen hadn't said anything about the episode, which took place in the middle of his One Night at a Time world tour, until Friday evening, when he made a post on his X account.

"I didn't feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks," the post read. "I've touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief's. I'm not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility."

I didn't feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I'm not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility.

— morgan wallen (@MorganWallen) April 20, 2024

"I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe," another post read. "Regarding my tour, there will be no change."

The singer is expected to face his charges in Nashville court on May 3. He's also set to play a show at the city's Nissan Stadium that day.

Wallen is one of the biggest names in country music, but this isn't the first time he's faced criticism and controversy over his behavior. 

In 2020, the singer faced charges of public intoxication and disorderly conduct after being kicked out of a Nashville bar. And in 2021 after a video of him using a racial slur came out, he was suspended by his record label and removed from radio airplay. 

But since then, he's seen mass success. Last year, his third studio album "One Thing at a Time" topped the Billboard 200 list for 19 weeks total, and his single "Last Night" set the record for most weeks at No. 1 for any non-collaboration song. 

Their childhood memories are vivid: warnings against drinking or cooking with tap water, enduring long lines for cases of water, washing from buckets filled with heated, bottled water.

But the children of the Flint water crisis — set in motion April 25, 2014, when the city began drawing water from the Flint River — have turned their trauma into advocacy.

They know Flint still struggles: Its population has fallen by about 20,000 in the past decade, leaving abandoned houses frequently targeted by arsonists. More than two-thirds of children live in poverty, and many struggle in school.

But young activists say they want to help make a difference, change how their city is perceived by outsiders — and defy expectations.

“One of the biggest issues about growing up in Flint is that people had already decided and predetermined who we were,” said 22-year-old Cruz Duhart, a member of the Flint Public Health Youth Academy.

“They had ideas about our IQ, about behavioral things, but they never really stopped to speak to us and how we thought about it and the type of traumas that we were going through.”

Sima Gutierrez collects water samples from residents' homes and takes them to the Flint Community Water Lab, where more than 60 high school and college interns have provided free testing for thousands of residents since 2020.

She helps plan public awareness campaigns about topics like gun violence and how racism affects public health as a member of the Flint Public Health Youth Academy.

“I wanted to be surrounded by people who weren’t going to cover up the whole fact that people are still having problems ... to share my life (with) anybody else who’s going through what I’m going through,” said Sima, 16.

A decade ago, she complained about stomach pains when she drank water, but her mom believed it helped Sima’s body flush medication she took for an autoimmune disorder that was causing her hair to fall out in patches and leaving her skin splotchy.

Sima and three of her sisters were found to have elevated lead levels and have been diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; Sima also has a learning difficulty, her mother said.

Residents had been assured the water was safe when many complained of skin rashes and discolored, smelly and foul-tasting water after the city disconnected from Detroit-supplied water to save money.

But a year and a half later, a water expert found high lead levels in the tap water, caused by the city's failure to add anti-corrosion chemicals, which state environmental officials said was unnecessary. A physician also discovered that levels in kids’ blood had doubled.

The potent neurotoxin can damage children’s brains and nervous systems and affect learning, behavior, hearing and speech. There is no safe childhood exposure level, and problems can manifest years later.

Data collected over a decade now show that Flint children have higher rates of ADHD, behavioral and mental health problems and more difficulty learning than those assessed before the water crisis, said Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who flagged rising lead levels in Flint kids’ blood. She said issues such as nutrition, poverty, unemployment and systemic inequalities also could be factors.

But Flint kids are resilient, she said, and have made important contributions to the city's recovery. The Flint Youth Justice League, an advisory board to her Pediatric Public Health Initiative, for example, has offered advice on programs to reduce poverty and connect residents to public services.

“Our young people are amazing,” said Hanna-Attisha. “They are not okay with the status quo and they are demanding that we do better for them and for generations to come.”

SEE MORE: Why do we celebrate Earth Day?

Asia Donald remembers feeling helpless and bewildered when her little sister developed rashes and her mom boiled pot after pot of bottled water for baths.

But a couple years later, she was guiding kids from Newark, New Jersey, as they experienced their own water crisis. Over Zoom meetings, the kids from Flint explained parts per billion, how to test water for lead and how they'd coped with fears.

“They felt the exact same way that I felt when I was ... going through it,” said Asia, 20, one of 18 interns at the Flint Public Health Youth Academy.

They’re paid a monthly stipend to run the academy — writing grants, creating budgets, analyzing data, running meetings and creating public awareness campaigns. They have a biweekly talk show on YouTube, where they’ve discussed everything from mental health to COVID.

Dr. Kent Key, a public health researcher with the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine in Flint, started the academy after studying health disparities in African American communities as part of his doctoral dissertation.

"I felt like everyone had written Flint youth off,” he said. “I did not want (the water crisis) to be a sentence of doom and gloom ... I wanted it to be a catapult to launch the next generation of public health professionals.”

One of the academy's frequent partners is Young, Gifted & Green.

Flint resident Dionna Brown, national director of the organization's youth environmental justice program, plans a two-week summer environmental justice camp in Flint every year. Teens learn about policy, climate justice, sustainability and housing disparities.

Brown became interested in advocacy during a class on environmental inequality at Howard University. Now she plans to become an environmental justice attorney.

“I tell people all the time: I’m a child of the Flint water crisis,” said Brown, who was 14 when it began. “I love my city. And we put the world on notice that you cannot just poison a city and we’ll forget about it.”

The owner and manager of the massive container ship that took down the Francis Scott Key Bridge last month should be held fully liable for the deadly collapse, according to court papers filed Monday on behalf of Baltimore's mayor and city council.

The two companies filed a petition soon after the March 26 collapse asking a court to cap their liability under a pre-Civil War provision of an 1851 maritime law — a routine but important procedure for such cases. A federal court in Maryland will ultimately decide who's responsible and how much they owe in what could become one of the most expensive maritime disasters in history.

Singapore-based Grace Ocean Private Ltd. owns the Dali, the vessel that veered off course and slammed into the bridge. Synergy Marine Pte Ltd., also based in Singapore, is the ship's manager.

In their filing Monday, attorneys for the city accused them of negligence, arguing the companies should have realized the Dali was unfit for its voyage and manned the ship with a competent crew, among other issues.

A spokesperson for the companies said Monday that it would be inappropriate to comment on the pending litigation.

The ship was headed to Sri Lanka when it lost power shortly after leaving Baltimore and struck one of the bridge's support columns, collapsing the span and sending six members of a roadwork crew plunging to their deaths.

"For more than four decades, cargo ships made thousands of trips every year under the Key Bridge without incident," the city's complaint reads. "There was nothing about March 26, 2024 that should have changed that."

SEE MORE: Crews race the clock to remove chunks of fallen Baltimore bridge

FBI agents boarded the stalled ship last week amid a criminal investigation. A separate federal probe by the National Transportation Safety Board will include an inquiry into whether the ship experienced power issues before starting its voyage, officials have said. That investigation will focus generally on the Dali's electrical system.

In their earlier petition, Grace Ocean and Synergy sought to cap their liability at roughly $43.6 million. The petition estimates that the vessel itself is valued at up to $90 million and was owed over $1.1 million in income from freight. The estimate also deducts two major expenses: at least $28 million in repair costs and at least $19.5 million in salvage costs.

Grace Ocean also recently initiated a process requiring owners of the cargo on board to cover some of the salvage costs. The company made a "general average" declaration, which allows a third-party adjuster to determine what each stakeholder should contribute.

Baltimore leaders argue the ship's owner and manager should be held responsible for their role in the disaster, which has halted most maritime traffic through the Port of Baltimore and disrupted an important East Coast trucking route. The economic impacts could be devastating for the Baltimore region, the filing says.

"Petitioners' negligence caused them to destroy the Key Bridge, and singlehandedly shut down the Port of Baltimore, a source of jobs, municipal revenue, and no small amount of pride for the City of Baltimore and its residents," the attorneys wrote.

Lawyers representing victims of the collapse and their families also have pledged to hold the companies accountable and oppose their request for limited liability.

In the meantime, salvage crews are working to remove thousands of tons of collapsed steel and concrete from the Patapsco River. They've opened three temporary channels to allow some vessels to pass through the area, but the port's main shipping channel is expected to remain closed for several more weeks.

A federal jury on Monday said BNSF Railway contributed to the deaths of two people who were exposed to asbestos decades ago when tainted mining material was shipped through a Montana town where thousands have been sickened.

The jury awarded $4 million each in compensatory damages to the estates of the two plaintiffs, who died in 2020. Jurors said asbestos-contaminated vermiculite that spilled in the rail yard in the town of Libby, Montana was a substantial factor in the plaintiffs’ illnesses and death.

Family members of the two victims hugged after the verdict was announced, and attorneys for the plaintiffs said the ruling brought some accountability. One family member told The Associated Press that no amount of money would replace her lost sister.

“I’d rather have her than all the money in the world,” Judith Hemphill said of her sister, Joyce Walder.

The jury did not find that BNSF acted intentionally or with indifference, so no punitive damages were awarded. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. acquired BNSF in 2010, two decades after the W.R. Grace & Co. vermiculite mine near Libby shut down and stopped shipping the contaminated product.

The pollution in Libby has been cleaned up, largely at public expense. Yet the long time frame over which asbestos-related diseases develop means people previously exposed are likely to continue getting sick for years to come, health officials say.

Attorneys for the estates of the two victims — Joyce Walder and Thomas Wells — had argued that the railroad knew the asbestos-tainted vermiculite was dangerous but failed to act. Both died from mesothelioma, a rare lung cancer linked to asbestos exposure.

The case in federal civil court over the two deaths was the first of numerous lawsuits against the Texas-based railroad corporation to reach trial over its past operations in Libby. Current and former residents of the small town near the U.S.-Canada border want BNSF held accountable, accusing it of playing a role in asbestos exposure that health officials say has killed several hundred people and sickened thousands.

“This is good news. This is the first community exposure case that will hold the railroad accountable for what they’ve done,” said Mark Lanier, an attorney for Walder and Hemphill's estates.

BNSF attorney Chad Knight declined to comment after the verdict. He told jurors last week the railroad's employees didn’t know the vermiculite was filled with hazardous microscopic asbestos fibers.

“In the '50s, '60s and '70s no one in the public suspected there might be health concerns,” Knight said Friday.

The railroad’s experts also suggested during the trial that the plaintiffs could have been exposed to asbestos elsewhere.

SEE MORE: Asbestos victim's last words aired in BNSF Railway wrongful death suit

The railroad said it was obliged under law to ship the vermiculite, which was used in insulation and for other commercial purposes, and that W.R. Grace employees had concealed the health hazards from the railroad.

U.S. District Judge Brian Morris had instructed the jury it could only find the railroad negligent based on its actions in the Libby Railyard, not for hauling the vermiculite.

BNSF was formed in 1995 from the merger of Burlington Northern railroad, which operated in Libby for decades, and the Santa Fe Pacific Corporation.

Looming over the proceedings was W.R. Grace, which operated the mountaintop vermiculite mine 7 miles outside of Libby until it closed in 1990. The Maryland-based company played a central role in Libby’s tragedy and has paid significant settlements to victims.

Morris referred to the chemical company as “the elephant in the room” during the BNSF trial and reminded jurors repeatedly that the case was about the railroad’s conduct, not W.R. Grace’s separate liability.

Federal prosecutors in 2005 indicted W. R. Grace and executives from the company on criminal charges over the contamination in Libby. A jury acquitted them following a 2009 trial.

The Environmental Protection Agency descended on Libby after 1999 news reports of illnesses and deaths among mine workers and their families. In 2009 the agency declared in Libby the nation’s first ever public health emergency under the federal Superfund cleanup program.

A second trial against the railroad over the death of a Libby resident is scheduled for May in federal court in Missoula.

Dozens of Yale University students protesting in support of Palestinians were arrested Monday in another show of escalating tensions within campus communities of the nation's top universities.

Daily demonstrations began last week at Yale's Beinecke Plaza to push the university to divest from military weapons manufacturers. Then on Friday, the group, which calls itself Occupy Beinecke, set up an encampment.

But after their third night, some protesters were greeted around 7 a.m. Monday morning by officers "flipping up the entrances" to their tents, student-run news site Yale Daily News reported. Other officers reportedly told students if they didn't leave the plaza immediately they would be arrested, and minutes later, officers began their arrests, the site reported.

While about 300 protesters stood nearby with their arms interlocked, blocking traffic and chanting statements like "Free our prisoners, free them all, Zionism must fall" and "Look your students in the eyes, you're supporting genocide," according to Yale Daily News, police shuttled arrested demonstrators away from the plaza and removed tents, while Yale employees were seen taking down fliers. Within an hour, no protesters remained on the plaza. 

The more than 300 protesters continue to block the intersection. There were more than 40 officers on the scene; they have now almost all entered the Schwarzman Center rotunda and are not allowing students inside. pic.twitter.com/DcS22fqqrs

— Yale Daily News (@yaledailynews) April 22, 2024

At least 47 students were among the 60 people arrested and released on misdemeanor charges of first-degree trespassing, the university said in a statement. It also said the group would be referred for Yale disciplinary action, which could include sanctions like probation or suspension. 

The university said it had notified protesters "numerous times" that police could get involved if they continued to violate the school's policies regarding "occupying outdoor spaces." This included an hourslong discussion Sunday night in which the university said protesters could meet with trustees if they vacated the plaza before the next morning. 

But Occupy Beinecke said Yale only offered to "disseminate already-public" information about their investments in military weapons manufacturing, so "after being given only 10 minutes to decide," the students rejected the offer, choosing to stay at the encampment until their demands were met.

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The group said only one arrest warning was given to protesters Monday morning despite police previously indicating they'd be given three.

"Police also refused to allow arrestees to collect medication and other necessities," Occupy Beinecke wrote on Instagram. "When asked onsite what protesters were doing wrong, police refused to give an answer."

Meanwhile, Yale University President Peter Salovey said in a statement Monday that the decision to arrest came after reports of harmful acts and threatening language coming from the site. He said arrests were made after police gave protesters "several opportunities" to leave voluntarily, but 60 did not.

"We will not tolerate such behavior nor any open violation of Yale policies that interrupts academic and campus operations," his statement read. "So, we acted consistently with the warnings we had given over several days and escorted the protesters from the plaza."

SEE MORE: Columbia University goes virtual amid pro-Palestinian protests

As with many recent disbandments of campus protests, the university says the action was made to protect safety and to fight budding antisemitism, which some Jewish students say has risen with similar demonstrations. But many demonstrators say they have a right to peacefully protest for Palestinian rights and against Zionism, and that those rights have been wronged by administrator action.

Columbia University President Nemat Minouche Shafik testified last week on claims she allowed her school to become a hotbed of hate and antisemitism. She said Monday that the school's classes would move online to "deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps." The message came days after more than 100 of the university's students were arrested for their involvement in a similar encampment. 

Also Monday, hundreds of protesters at New York University told to vacate a campus plaza stood against police, and there were reports of other encampments at Boston-area universities and at the University of Michigan.

The medical records of women will be shielded from criminal investigations if they cross state lines to seek an abortion where it is legal, under a new rule that the Biden administration finalized Monday.

The regulation, which is intended to protect women who live in states where abortion is illegal from prosecution, is almost certain to face legal challenges from anti-abortion advocates and criticism from abortion-rights advocates that it does not go far enough.

“No one should have their medical records used against them, their doctor or their loved one just because they sought or received lawful reproductive health care,” Jennifer Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council, told reporters on Monday.

The new regulation is an update to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, which prohibits medical providers and health insurers from divulging medical information about patients. Typically, however, law enforcement can access those records for investigations.

SEE MORE: Newsom to let Arizona doctors provide reproductive care in California

In states with strict abortion rules, the federal regulation would essentially prohibit state or local officials from gathering medical records related to reproductive health care for a civil, criminal or administrative investigation in a state where abortion remains legal.

In theory, it will provide the most cover to women who leave states with strict bans to seek an abortion from a medical provider in a state that allows it.

“As someone who does see patients who travel from all across the country at our health center in D.C., it's a reality. I've had patients ask ... are there going to be consequences for me when I go home?" said Dr. Serina Floyd, an OB-GYN who provides abortions in Washington.

The new regulation would not protect a woman who orders an abortion pill from her home in a state like Mississippi, where abortion is mostly banned, from a provider in Illinois, where it is legal.

The nation's top health official acknowledged Monday that the regulation has limitations — and may be challenged legally.

“Until we have a national law that reinstitutes Roe v. Wade, we're going to have issues,” Xavier Becerra said. “But that doesn't stop us from doing everything we can to protect every Americans' right to access the care they need.”

A new report by Dutch scientists revealed a very peculiar case: On Feb. 2022, a 72-year-old man with a compromised immune system was admitted to Amsterdam University Medical Center with a COVID-19 infection. The virus in his body proceeded to evolve over the course of 613 days, leading to a highly mutated variant that ultimately killed him.

According to the study, the man, whose identity was not disclosed, suffered from a blood disorder. Despite receiving multiple doses of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, his compromised immune system made him unable to generate a detectable antibody response, allowing the virus to continue to evolve into a "novel immune-evasive variant" that had mutated over 50 times. The man died from his underlying blood disorder after fighting COVID for nearly two years, the scientists from the University of Amsterdam’s Centre for Experimental and Molecular Medicine stated. 

“This case underscores the risk of persistent SARS-CoV-2 infections in immunocompromised individuals as unique SARS-CoV-2 viral variants may emerge due to extensive intra-host evolution," the study authors stated in a press release. "We emphasize the importance of continuing genomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 evolution in immunocompromised individuals with persistent infections given the potential public health threat of possibly introducing viral escape variants into the community.”

While the study notes there have been cases in which people have tested positive for COVID-19 for hundreds of days, this case is the longest reported by far. Furthermore, researchers say the rare variant found in this patient hasn't been reported in anyone else, but emphasize the need for more study to protect the public from potential new variants.

The researchers say they plan to further present this study at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases Global Congress in Barcelona, Spain, starting this weekend.   

SEE MORE: White House expands its global pandemic prevention efforts

What was good for Luke Skywalker is good for all of us now that one of the unsung heroes of the Star Wars universe will be landing on store shelves across the galaxy.

The blue milk served up first in “Star Wars: A New Hope,” the film that launched the juggernaut, has become an actual real, live thing accessible to almost all of us — at least those of us who can't get a glass of it at Disney World's Star Wars attraction. 

Dairy brands including Kemps and TruMoo launched the blue milk from outer space, metaphorically, onto store shelves on April 17 ahead of the unofficial Star Wars Day, May 4. 

The colorful beverage is actually low-fat, vanilla-flavored milk with special packaging featuring an image of Skywalker mid-lightsaber battle with Darth Vader. 

You can find out which of your local stores have the galactic goodness on tap at TruMoo’s website.  

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

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Uber is piloting a new rider verification process in 15 U.S. cities that it says will build trust and reliability for riders and drivers alike.

Verified riders will get a blue checkmark that displays by their account in the Uber app, which is meant to reassure Uber drivers that riders are who they say they are.

Uber says it will be "cross-checking a rider’s account information provided during signup against third-party databases," which may automatically grant verification to users if there's already enough information available.

Riders may otherwise be prompted to submit a government identification to make sure information is accurate.

Drivers will see the checkmark alongside the rider's first name and itinerary when they start a trip.

SEE MORE: Man fatally shoots Uber driver after both were targeted by scam calls

"Strengthening rider verification has been a top request from drivers across the country," Uber's head of safety Roger Kaiser said in a statement. "This new verification process and verified rider badge are important steps to help provide drivers with more peace of mind while they are out on the road."

Verification won't be required to take Uber trips, but the company warns that not having verification may cause delays or slower service, since drivers may choose to prioritize verified passengers.

Uber plans to expand the program to more cities in the next few months.

Tuesday night will bring the rise of the Pink Moon! That nickname is the one given to the April full moon, which officially arrives over North America on April 23 at 6:49 p.m. ET, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory, with peak illumination expected an hour later. 

But don’t fret about seeing the moon at that exact time, as it will appear full through that Wednesday night.

While the April full moon is most commonly known as the "Pink Moon," that name has nothing to do with the color of the moon itself. This full moon has other nicknames, too, all of which originate from a variety of cultures.

This full moon also coincides with a lesser-known meteor shower, and patient, sharp-eyed observers may get to spot both lunar events in the same night.

Why is the April full moon called the Pink Moon? 

The full moon names we use today originate from Native American, colonial American and other sources, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac. 

Most full moon names relate to what’s happening in nature when they occur, and the pink moon is no exception.

April’s full moon was given its name by the Algonquin people because of the wildflowers that pop up during the month. The bright pink flowers of creeping phlox, a wildflower native to eastern North America, bloom every spring around the time the Pink Moon appears.

But Pink isn’t the only name April’s full moon goes by. The Old Farmer’s Almanac states that some Algonquins — whose massive territory covered much of today’s eastern Canada and America’s Eastern Seaboard — also called this full moon the Breaking Ice Moon, referring to when the ice begins to melt.

Similarly, the Dakotas, based in the central U.S. and Canada, called April’s full moon the Sprouting Grass Moon. It’s also called the Egg Moon, referring to the time of year when birds begin to lay their eggs, by the Cheyenne tribe of the Great Plains.

The April full moon has significance for various religious groups as well. In the Hebrew calendar, April’s full moon is the Passover moon. For Hindus, the full moon corresponds with the celebration of Hanuman Jayanti, a festival marking the birth of the deity Hanuman. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka commemorates this moon with a national Buddhist holiday called Bak Poya, celebrating a visit the Buddha made to that country.

When are the Lyrid and Eta Aquariids meteor showers? 

Your chances of spotting meteors shooting across the night sky begin to drop as the days get longer and the nights become shorter during the spring months — but that doesn’t mean your chances are zero.

In the next few weeks, the Lyrid meteor shower and the Eta Aquariids will excite sky-watchers.

The Lyrid meteor shower will peak beginning in the late evening on April 21 and last until dawn on April 22. This meteor shower typically only produces 10 to 15 meteors per hour, and it will be a struggle to see any meteors this year, according to EarthSky. A bright, nearly full moon will make it more difficult to spot any meteors flying across the night sky, but perceptive viewers should be able to spot a few while the Pink Moon shines.

A couple weeks after the Lyrids, the Eta Aquariids will offer a better chance of spotting more meteors, especially for anyone who lives in the southern half of the U.S. The peak for this meteor show will be before dawn on May 5 and 6. On those days, only a sliver of the moon will obstruct your view, and vigilant viewers should be able to see anywhere between 10 and 20 meteors per hour.

When you’re watching for meteors, remember to get far away from any city lights and arrive early to give your eyes time to adjust to the night sky.

This story was originally published by Jason Meyers at Simplemost.com.

As data shows heat-related deaths are becoming more frequent across the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention partnered with the National Weather Service to launch new tools that show you when current heat levels in your city could harm your health. 

The first tool is the CDC’s HeatRisk Dashboard, designed for the general public. You can enter your zip code to get personalized information about the heat risk in your city or county. The mobile-friendly dashboard includes information about the daily air quality, how to protect your health in high heat and what activities may or may not be safe depending on the heat risk for that day. 

The dashboard also includes information from the National Weather Service’s new feature, the HeatRisk Forecast Tool. Created with state and local health officials in mind, the tool displays a seven-day heat forecast across the country with a color-coded numerical index that identifies heat-related impacts from little or no risk up to extreme heat risk. 

The National Weather Service said the HeatRisk Forecast Tool is calculated using several factors, including how unusual the heat is for the time of the year, the duration of the heat in both daytime and nighttime temperatures and if those temperatures pose an elevated risk of heat-related impacts based on data from the CDC.

SEE MORE: New report shows that US is warming faster than the rest of the world

The CDC said the HeatRisk Forecast Tool can potentially help jurisdictions plan responses to extreme heat forecasts. 

Lastly, the CDC developed new guidance to help clinicians keep at-risk individuals safe when temperatures rise, including points on how heat can harm physical and mental health and how medications can impact a person’s heat tolerance. 

“If the HeatRisk in a patient’s location is ‘moderate,’ for example, then a clinician can reference the CDC guidance for condition-specific heat action plans that contain steps to help keep the patient safe,” the CDC explained in a press release. 

Over two-thirds of the country was under a heat alert last year due to rising temperatures. The CDC said it found the number of daily visits to emergency departments across the U.S. due to heat-related illnesses peaked in 2023. 

Since “heat-related” is not something noted on death certificates and there could be other contributing factors, it is hard to calculate just how many deaths in the U.S. are related to extreme heat conditions. However, the Environmental Protection Agency said some statistics estimate more than 1,300 deaths per year are due to extreme heat. 

The CDC said heat-related deaths are preventable, which is why they worked with the National Weather Service to develop the new tools that can help keep citizens safe and aware. 

SEE MORE: More than 500,000 stroke deaths are linked to extreme temperatures

Ten Republican members of Congress, all representing New York State in the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote a letter on Monday asking Columbia University's president to resign, saying, "anarchy had engulfed the campus."

It came on the same day that four Democratic Jewish members of Congress walked through the university's campus, as tensions there remain high.

A makeshift tent city now stands within the main quad at Columbia University, where pro-Palestinian student protesters are literally holding their ground.

Last week, the New York Police Department arrested more than 100 people on Columbia's campus at the request of the university's administration.

On Monday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul visited the campus.

"I've never seen a level of protest that is so person-to-person," said Gov. Hochul. "People need to find their humanity, have the conversations, talk to each other, understand different points of view because that's what college students should be doing."

In a Monday news conference, the NYPD said that so far there are no reports of any physical harm, though they say some Jewish students have reported harassment.

"We have received reports that students have been, Israeli students, were walking on campus, had their flags taken away from them, snatched out of their hands," said NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry. "We also received reports that the Israeli students, there were some hateful things that were said towards them."

The Ivy League institution made the decision that all classes would go virtual on Monday.

All of it comes after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik testified before a House hearing on Capitol Hill last week, focusing on antisemitism on campus.

"Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who wanted to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country," Shafik said. 

That includes new protests springing up on Monday on the campuses of New York University and Yale, where 50 people were arrested that morning.

Harvard is temporarily closing the university's famed 25-acre Harvard Yard this week and prohibiting anyone from setting up tents there.

In the meantime, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots football team is an alum of Columbia University and is one of the school's biggest donors: The Jewish student center bears his name. He said in a statement released through his Foundation to Combat Antisemitism that he'll be withholding donations until, "corrective action is taken."

Editor's note: In the interest of transparency, Scripps News Correspondent Maya Rodriguez is an alumna of Columbia University.

SEE MORE: Columbia University goes virtual amid pro-Palestinian protests

A new $12 billion rail system connecting Nevada to Southern California is officially breaking ground.

Brightline West's 218-mile system will run within the median of Interstate 15 with zero grade crossings. The route will have stops in Las Vegas as well as Victor Valley, Hesperia and Rancho Cucamonga, California. 

The project is touted as the first true high-speed passenger rail line in the nation, designed to reach speeds of 186 mph, comparable to Japan's Shinkansen bullet trains.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement that the project, expected to start boarding passengers by 2028, is predicted to bring "thousands of union jobs, new connections to better economic opportunity, less congestion on the roads, and less pollution in the air."

Brightline, whose sister company already operates a fast train between Miami and Orlando in Florida, received $6.5 billion in backing from the Biden administration, including a $3 billion grant from federal infrastructure funds and approval to sell another $2.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds. The company won federal authorization in 2020 to sell $1 billion in similar bonds.

"This is a historic project and a proud moment," said Brightline Holdings founder and Chairperson Wes Edens in a statement. "Today is long overdue."

SEE MORE: Would high-speed rail work in the US?

The Las Vegas station will be located near the iconic Las Vegas Strip, on a 110-acre property north of Blue Diamond Road between I-15 and Las Vegas Boulevard. The 80,000-square-foot site provides convenient access to the Harry Reid International Airport, the Las Vegas Convention Center and the Raiders' Allegiant Stadium.

The Victor Valley Station in Apple Valley will be located on a 300-acre parcel southeast of Dale Evans Parkway and the I-15 interchange. The 20,000-square-foot station is intended to offer a future connection to the High Desert Corridor and California High Speed Rail.

The Hesperia Station will be located within the I-15 median at the I-15/Joshua Street interchange and will function primarily as a local rail service for residents in the High Desert on select southbound morning and northbound evening weekday trains.

The Rancho Cucamonga Station will be located on a 5-acre property at the northwest corner of Milliken Avenue and Azusa Court near Ontario International Airport. The 80,000-square-foot station will be co-located with existing multi-modal transportation options including California Metrolink, for seamless connectivity to Downtown Los Angeles and other locations in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties.

This story was originally published on Scripps News Las Vegas. It was published here with additional reporting from The Associated Press.

Jodi Barber has shared her son Jerrod’s story for more than a decade. He died in 2010 from a prescription overdose. He had an opioid in his system so dangerous that most of its formulations have been pulled from shelves since.

“It was preventable. That’s my big word. That’s my big message of the day. It was preventable. All these deaths are preventable,” said Barber.

She has since devoted much of her time to advocacy and education. Also, in the years since, tens of thousands more opioid overdose deaths have been largely driven by fentanyl.

The opioid drug overdose rate is increasing a little less than 3% year over year, according to the Biden administration. In 2023, part of an $8 billion package on overdose prevention included getting the drug reversal nasal spray Narcan out to the public.

Narcan, or the nasal spray naloxone, remains the standard opioid reversal drug. Sheriff's departments in at least three states have begun using another overdose reversal nasal spray called Opvee, or nalmefene. The FDA approved the drug for children over 12 and adults for health care and community use in 2023. 

In a study comparing the two opioid reversal drugs, researchers found a smaller dose of Opvee reversed a major overdose symptom, “respiratory depression” or failing breathing in five minutes on patients given a synthetic opioid. The research was funded by the drugmaker Opiant Pharmaceuticals with additional funding from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Body cam video from Deputy Allie Michaels with the Oakland County Sheriff in Michigan obtained by Scripps Station WXYZ shows how effective the drug is. Michaels tears open a pack of Obvi ready to administer it without a single second to lose, followed by chest compressions on a 30-year-old woman. 

“At two minutes and 27 seconds — no joke. I felt what I thought was a breath,” said Michaels. “That doesn’t happen with anything else I’ve ever used or administered. I administered a second dose after the 2.5 minutes, and about a minute later, this female took a deep breath, sat up and looked around and asked why we were all there.”

Opvee stays in the body’s system longer than naloxone, and may carry more side effects — including a higher chance of opioid withdrawal symptoms. Opvee is available by prescription and Narcan is available over the counter. Each drug costs under $100. 

Barber hopes the costs won’t stop the sprays from getting to those who may need them. “I can’t tell you honestly how many times I’ve shared my story, and I’ll never stop crying about it,” she said. “We need all these reversal agents. Not just Narcan, but we need all of the reversal agents to be available for the first responders.”

A new study looks at weight loss plateaus and how weight loss drugs and gastric bypass surgery can impact them.

The study analyzes how those who are dieting generally reach a weight loss plateau after about a year, on average.

It happens when the body starts trying to make up for lost calories.

"It’s almost like your body has this set point where, once we reach that with weight loss, it resists. It's almost like a survival function," said Dr. Frank Chae, a bariatric surgeon and medical director of bariatric surgery at Sky Ridge Medical Center.

The more weight you lose, the stronger your appetite becomes.

SEE MORE: The politics behind insurance companies covering weight-loss drugs

But researcher Kevin Hall with the National Institutes of Health published a study Monday that found weight loss drugs can delay the plateau.

"That’s where things like semaglutide injections and gastric bypass can push that patient forward," Dr. Chae said.

The results of Hall‘s study showed that weight loss drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic, and Zepbound added an extra year on average of weight loss before hitting the plateau, as compared to the average of just restricting calories.

Weight loss surgery, like gastric bypass, had the greatest results in helping delay the plateau for participants by adding another year on average on top of that before hitting a plateau.

But semaglutide can be pricey and hard to find given the high demand.

"The medications are a good tool, but it is not a cure. You have to keep injecting this indefinitely, and the drug companies really don't know what the long-term, meaning years later, what the long-term effects are. I know we’re collecting that data right now," Dr. Chae said.

He explained that the findings of this study reinforced what he’s seeing in the clinical world.

Nearly 1 in 3 adults are overweight in the United States, according to 2017–2018 data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

About 9.2% of adults have severe obesity.

"Obesity is a disease, this is not a lifestyle or willpower issue," Dr. Chae said.

"It is a disease process that needs to be treated, and not just about where’s your discipline or eating less, it's about attacking the obesity hormones that semaglutide injections and gastric bypass does very well," he said.

@scrippsnews A new study looks at how weight loss drugs (ie: #Ozempic) and weigh loss surgery (ie: gastric bypass) can improve weight loss plateaus. While #dieting, people reach their weight loss plateau at around a year on average. #Semaglutide can extend that for about another year. #weightloss #healthtok ♬ original sound - Scripps News

Grindr, a popular dating app geared toward gay and bisexual men, is facing a lawsuit that alleges users’ private information, including HIV status, was shared with third parties without their consent. 

The law firm behind the claim, U.K.-based Austen Hays, said it is filing the class action lawsuit at London’s High Court on Monday because it believes Grindr violated the U.K.’s data protection laws. 

The lawsuit alleges Grindr, which is based in the United States, processed and shared data relating to users’ ethnicities, sex lives, sexual orientations and HIV test dates with advertising companies like Localytics and Apptimize for the third parties to use in creating targeted ads. 

Austen Hays also claims that those third parties potentially passed on the sensitive data to fourth parties.

Nearly 700 users have already signed on to the claim, but the law firm said thousands of others may join. The alleged breaches took place between 2018 and 2020, said Austen Hays. 

In a statement provided to Scripps News, a spokesperson for Grindr said the company is committed to protecting users' data and complying with privacy regulations. 

“Grindr has never shared user-reported health information for ‘commercial purposes’ and has never monetized such information,” the spokesperson continued. “We intend to respond vigorously to this claim, which appears to be based on a mischaracterization of practices from more than four years ago, prior to early 2020.”

SEE MORE: House passes bill that could lead to ban of TikTok

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is introducing a new law that will allow doctors from Arizona to extend reproductive health care services within California. 

During an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside with Jen Psaki” on Sunday, Newsom said that his state will be "providing doctors from Arizona the ability to come into California through emergency legislation we’ll introduce with our Women’s Caucus this week to address the crisis at hand."

The news comes after the recent decision by the Arizona Supreme Court to uphold a law dating back to 1864 that bans most abortions. Newsom says he hopes his legislation will go into effect on May 1 before Arizona starts enforcing their law, which could take effect no later than June 8.

According to Newsom: “160,000 women had to leave their states last year to access reproductive care, the fact that now you have AGs, like the Alabama AG, that want to incarcerate, up to five years to life, those women that are aided and abetted, not just the women but those that support the women ... It's chilling and goes well beyond just the issue of women's reproductive care; it goes to access to contraception, voting rights, civil rights, LGBTQ rights.”

Although Newsom didn't provide further details on the content or exact timing of the emergency legislation, a spokesperson from his office told NPR that Newsom's administration is working with the offices of Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes before finalizing it. 

SEE MORE: Tensions rise as Arizona lawmakers debate abortion ban

A Colorado woman is recovering after spending several hours pinned underneath her crashed truck. A good Samaritan is being credited with possibly saving her life.

Rachael Hammack, 27, was driving home from work last Tuesday around 2:30 a.m. when the crash happened in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. The truck she was driving veered off the road, rolled multiple times, and came to a rest on a field next to a golf course, 100 yards from the roadway and hidden from view.

Several hours later that same morning, Steve Abraham, a superintendent at the course, came upon the crash scene. He approached the vehicle and saw Hammack with her legs pinned and her body stuck in a barbed wire fence.

“I was getting the barbed wire kind of away from her body," said Abraham. "I had to cut her hair out because she was stuck in there.”

Abraham and several of his co-workers assisted Hammack while they waited for first responders to arrive. Paramedics took Hammack to a nearby hospital, where she was placed in a medically induced coma.

"They got her out in about seven minutes," said Abraham. "But because no one noticed her, she was stuck there for around four hours."

Hammack's boyfriend, Eben Jones, found out about her crash the next day and notified her parents. Sam and Thomas Hammack live in South Carolina and flew to Denver to be by their daughter's side.

“All I could think is I need to get to my girl," said Sam Hammack.

Rachael Hammack underwent surgery last Friday. She suffered a broken pelvis, a broken nose and a fractured vertebrae. She also received a large laceration on her head. Although she is still in and out of consciousness, Hammack is expected to recover.

"I know she's strong and that she'll come through so I'm just trying my best to stay positive," said Jones.

Hammack's friends have set up a GoFundMe, to help pay for her medical expenses.

This story was originally published by Sam Peña at Scripps News Denver.

Internet retailer Wayfair announced that it plans to open its first brick-and-mortar location next month in a suburb outside Chicago. 

Wayfair said it will open a 150,000-square-foot store in Wilmette, Illinois on May 23. The location will have furniture, home decor, housewares and home improvement products. 

There will also be an on-site restaurant known as The Porch. 

"Get ready to shop, explore, and be inspired like never before," Wayfair said. 

The location will have a design studio, Wayfair said. 

At 150,000 square feet, the first location will be about half the size of a typical Ikea store despite having similar offerings. Ikea, however, has said it plans to open numerous small-format stores across the U.S. that are much smaller than their typical locations. 

Wayfair is not the only internet-based retailer that has tried to transition to in-person shopping. Amazon opened its Amazon Style stores in 2022, featuring some of its popular clothing items. However, its foray into in-person shopping was brief as the stores were shuttered by the end of 2023. 

SEE MORE: Amazon will soon offer its smart grocery carts to other retail stores

Wayfair has undergone some workforce changes in 2024. 

In January, Wayfair announced it would cut 13% of its global workforce, including 19% of its corporate workers, as sales took a nosedive following the pandemic. The cuts impact 1,650 employees.

The furniture and home goods retailer said annualized sales doubled from $9 billion to $18 billion during the pandemic. But that surge was temporary, and its stock value has since plummeted to its lowest level in seven years. 

The world’s top anti-doping regulator said after reviewing a television documentary and newspaper reports that it stands by its decision to clear 23 Chinese swimmers to compete at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021 despite testing positive for a banned heart medication.

The World Anti-Doping Agency issued a statement following the release Sunday of a documentary on the cases by German broadcaster ARD.

In an earlier statement following initial newspaper reports, WADA said it agreed with Chinese authorities and ruled the swimmers’ samples had been contaminated. The contamination was accepted to have been in the kitchen of a hotel where the Chinese team stayed.

The New York Times reported Chinese anti-doping authorities found the results of the tests were Adverse Analytical Findings, but cleared the swimmers without any penalties.

Chinese swimmers went on to win three gold medals in Tokyo, where the United States took silver in two of those races and Britain was second in the other.

"Following WADA's review of the documentary, the agency still stands firmly by the results of its scientific investigation and legal decision concerning the case," WADA said in the statement Sunday. "We are equally confident that WADA's independent Intelligence and Investigations Department followed up on all allegations received, which were not corroborated by any evidence; and thus, did not meet WADA threshold to open an investigation."

WADA said based on available scientific evidence and intelligence, "which was gathered, assessed and tested by experts in the pharmacology of trimetazidine (TMZ); and, by anti-doping experts," it had no basis under the global anti-doping code to challenge the Chinese agency's findings of environmental contamination.

The drug at the center of this case was also the medication that led to the suspension of Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.

In that case, WADA moved quickly to sanction Valieva upon learning about her positive test.

SEE MORE: Doping-friendly 'Enhanced Games' seeks to rival the Olympics

China's star swimmer Sun Yang also tested positive for TMZ and served a three-month ban in 2014. That case also was kept quiet by Chinese and swim authorities and provoked criticism from opponents when he won at the world championships the next year. Sun was later banned for breaking doping rules in a high-profile case WADA did pursue.

WADA said its position in the latest Chinese case was also accepted by World Aquatics, which governs international swimming.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin on Monday described the media reports as "disinformation and a misrepresentation," and affirmed WADA's decision.

Wang said China's anti-doping authorities investigated the incident and found the positive results were due to "the ingestion of contaminated food by the relevant athletes without knowledge of the contaminated food, and the Chinese swimmers involved were not at fault or negligent, which did not constitute a doping violation."

However, anti-doping rules in Olympic sports do require a provisional suspension — which the Chinese swimmers avoided — when athletes test positive for TMZ.

"I want to emphasize," Wang said, "that the Chinese government has maintained a firm stance of zero tolerance towards doping, strictly abides by the WADA Code, resolutely safeguards the physical and mental health of athletes, maintains fair play in sports competitions, and contributes positively to the global efforts in the crackdown on doping."

WADA scheduled a news conference in Montreal for later Monday, saying its president, Witold Banka, and director general Olivier Niggli would be among the officials on hand to answer questions, also its top prosecuting lawyer and head of investigations.

The 30-member Chinese swim team won six medals in Tokyo, including three golds. Zhang Yufei won the women's 200 meters butterfly title ahead of Regan Smith of the United States, and silver in the 100 butterfly where American Torri Huske was out of the medals in fourth.

Zhang and Yang Junxuan were part of the 4x200 freestyle relay team that took gold, edging the Americans including seven-time Olympic champion Katie Ledecky. Canada was fourth.

"Doping can deprive clean athletes of hard-earned moments they deserve such as standing on the podium and the life-changing opportunities that may follow," Swimming Canada said Sunday in a statement.

In the men's 200 medley in Tokyo, Wang Shun beat silver medalist Duncan Scott, the British star who refused to share a medal podium with Sun Yang at the 2019 world championships.

Many of the athletes still compete for China and are expected to swim at the Paris Olympics that start in July.

In its initial statement, WADA responded to what it called "some misleading and potentially defamatory media coverage this week" and explained the process it undertook upon learning about the positive tests.

The global drug-fighting organization said it also had been given a tip by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency as early as 2020 — before this case arose — about allegations of doping cover-ups in China but that USADA never followed up with evidence.

USADA CEO Travis Tygart called the news of the Chinese positive tests "crushing."

"It's even more devastating to learn the World Anti-Doping Agency and the Chinese Anti-Doping Agency secretly, until now, swept these positives under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world," Tygart said.

The case underscores what many view as a flaw in the global anti-doping system — that a country's own anti-doping organization is often the first line of defense in catching drug cheats and those organizations have different levels of motivation to fulfill that role.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture published genetic data from avian flu virus samples after scientists criticized the government agency for not having more public information to help them assess the risk of the ongoing outbreak. 

STAT News, a health news website produced by The Boston Globe, reported that calls for the U.S. government to release more information about the bird flu virus, known as H5N1, increased after it was first reported that a dairy cow herd in Texas had tested positive for the pathogen in March. 

While it’s not unusual for the bird flu to infect various mammals that have been exposed to infected birds, it is the first time it has been found in cattle, officials said. However, it does not appear to be as rapidly progressing and fatal in cattle as it is in birds. 

The USDA believes that dairy cows are contracting the virus from exposure to wild birds, but it has not ruled out cow-to-cow spread. 

Concerns about the bird flu have grown in recent months as it has continued to decimate bird populations across the country and spread to more mammal species, including an extremely rare case of it infecting a human who was working on the Texas dairy farm where the first cattle outbreak was recorded. 

Despite the rare occurrence, the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization consider the public risk to be low, and the USDA said it does not believe there are changes to the virus that have made it more transmissible to humans. 

Texas health officials said the patient only reported having eye redness and is being treated with an antiviral drug. 

SEE MORE: Person in Texas diagnosed with bird flu after contact with cows

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, which is maintaining the resources about the outbreak, released 239 genetic sequences of H5N1 samples taken from chickens, dairy cattle, a blackbird, a grackle, a cat, a raccoon and a skunk on Sunday. 

“APHIS routinely publishes influenza genetic sequence data on GISAID (the Global Initiative on Sharing Avian Influenza Data); however, in the interest of public transparency and ensuring the scientific community has access to this information as quickly as possible to encourage disease research and development to benefit the U.S. dairy industry, APHIS is also rapidly sharing raw sequence data to the National Institute of Health’s National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information,” the agency said. 

The department had previously shared genetic sequences from the Texas dairy farm outbreak, but now 32 herds in eight states have confirmed cases of the virus. Still, the USDA is not mandating dairy producers test their herds and instead has been encouraging them to look out for symptoms and contact state veterinarians if there are signs. 

The CDC also published the genome sequence analysis from a specimen collected from the infected dairy farm worker in Texas at the beginning of April for scientists to access and analyze. 

So far, there haven’t been any notable impacts on the dairy industry or national milk supply because of the virus outbreak, according to the USDA. But the same can’t be said for the commercial poultry industry. 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and CDC continue to encourage consumers to drink pasteurized milk, which is heat-treated to eliminate pathogens, and the farms where cattle have tested positive for the virus have been barred from selling milk. 

There have not been any cases of the virus found in beef cattle, so there are no concerns about meat supply and safety in regards to the bird flu, the USDA said. 

SEE MORE: Bird flu is spreading to more farm animals. Are milk and eggs safe?

The dysfunction continues at the Ohio Statehouse as a legal technicality may prevent President Joe Biden from being on the November ballot. But a Republican legislative leader has offered to help, assuring that the Democrat will get on the ballot. 

However, would the lawmakers actually pass a bill to fix the obscure law? And do the Democrats have a case for court? Our legal expert said no.

Ohio requires parties to confirm their presidential candidates 90 days before the November election, which would be Aug. 7. But President Biden won’t be the official nominee until the Democratic National Convention, which is on Aug. 19.

Senate and House Minority Leaders Nickie Antonio and Allison Russo were seemingly unaware of this, and plenty of other lawmakers on each side of the aisle also didn't know. Secretary of State Frank LaRose didn’t remind the Democrats until April.

Still, they remain positive.

"I’m 100% confident that Joe Biden is going to be on the ballot in Ohio," Russo said.

But they are scrambling.

"I'm not going to comment on what the DNC may or may not do," she added. "They're exploring all the potential options."

SEE MORE: Third-party candidates could swing 2024 election

Attorney General Dave Yost just shot down the party's plan to allow for a "provisional" certification of President Biden. But Case Western Reserve University constitutional law professor Jonathan Entin said that in most other states, this would be an easy fix.

"The obvious solution is for the legislature to get rid of the 90-day deadline," Entin said.

The little-known law was passed in a major omnibus bill in 2010. In 2012 and 2020, exemptions were passed for those years — impacting both parties. In 2016, both the DNC and the RNC held their conventions before the deadline.

This is simply an "arbitrary" deadline, Entin added. It may slightly reduce the number of early voting days, but not significantly.

To accomplish this, the Republican supermajority, one that is already fractured and has significant infighting that has led to the fewest amount of bills passed in a General Assembly in decades, would need to pass an emergency bill in the next few months — all to help the Democrats.

Senate President Matt Huffman previously took a hands-off approach.

"It's a Democratic problem," the Republican said. "There should have to be a Democratic solution."

However, five days later, he seemed more willing to help — even adding that he didn't know about the law, either.

"We're certainly going to try to accommodate getting it resolved," Huffman said.

SEE MORE: White House hopefuls rally for voter support and fundraising

"For folks who say, 'Well, we can keep Joe Biden off the ballot' — that's wrong," he added. "You're not going to be able to look at the current president of the United States and a major political candidate, and just say 'We got a law, you didn't know about it, ha ha.'"

But Huffman suggested the Democrats should not try legislative fixes, because it would be faster if the Democratic National Committee could just announce President Biden as their nominee ahead of time. That, or the Democrats could take legal action.

"It's likely that if a state law, whether it's this one or state action like Colorado and Maine, that will keep a candidate of a major political party off the ballot, then ultimately, a federal court — and perhaps the United States Supreme Court — would move in and do something about that," Huffman said, referencing the March decision from the U.S. Supreme Court putting Trump back on the ballot after the states removed him for "engaging in an insurrection" under the U.S. Constitution's 14th amendment.

Entin doesn't think this is a strong argument.

"The idea that a federal court is going to come in and say, 'And therefore this deadline is somehow unconstitutional,' I think is optimistic," he said.

There is also another case from 1983 from the U.S. Supreme Court where the justices struck down Ohio's very early deadline for getting a party on the ballot. This law made minor parties submit earlier than the GOP or Democratic party.

The professor said he also doesn't like this one.

"The 1983 Supreme Court decision dealt with a law that discriminated against minor parties," Entin added. "I think the basic problem is this doesn't discriminate against anybody."

He called it a "foolish law." But because it applies to all parties — not just Democrats — admits the case would be difficult to argue.

"Neither one of those [cases] necessarily supports the idea that Biden has to go on the Ohio presidential ballot this year," Entin said. "I hope that the folks involved have a fallback position because I wouldn't bet the farm on that legal strategy working."

Still, the Democrats stay hopeful.

"At the end of the day, we should all be supporting fair and free elections, right?" Antonio said.

SEE MORE: Inside the Race: GOP fundraising in March, issues impacting campaigns

"What seems to be going on reflects yet again how dysfunctional the Ohio government is," Entin said. "There's plenty of faults to be laid on just about everybody."

You can fault the Democrats for not knowing the law, the entire legislative leadership for being uncooperative and constantly bickering and LaRose for "waiting until virtually the last minute to raise the issue," the professor added. 

"If we had responsible public officials, none of this would matter," he said.

Entin added that the lawmakers can't even manage to pass bipartisan bills, so there is no way they will pass one benefiting the minority party.

"I can't say that I'm surprised, but I think that we should all be disturbed that there, apparently, is no movement in the state legislature to change the law," he said.

Huffman said the Republicans are waiting on the Democrats to propose something. The Democrats won't say if they are working on a bill.

Just get together and pass a bipartisan bill amending the law, the expert said, exasperated.

"It's hard to imagine that anybody could go broke underestimating the irresponsibility of Ohio officials dealing with this situation," Entin sighed.

This story was originally published by Morgan Trau at Scripps News Cleveland.

A new study by the University of Michigan made an alarming discovery that a student’s last name can affect their grades. 

When graded alphabetically, students with last names at the end of the alphabet were given lower grades than those whose surnames were at the start of the list.

That means a student with the last name Anderson was more likely to get graded higher than a student with the last name Smith.

Researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed 30 million of the school’s own grading records when it noticed the pattern. The school said that Canvas — the most widely used online learning management system — has a default setting to list students alphabetically by last name.

Researchers also found that those with last names that appeared at the end of the list were given remarks that were “more negative and less polite” on their assignments.

“We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make the grading fair and accurate but even for me it was really surprising,” said Jun Li, associate professor of technology and operations at U-M’s Ross School of Business, and an author on the study.

“It didn’t occur to us until we looked at the data and realized that sequence makes a difference,” Li said. 

The study authors noted that while this was the case at Michigan, it can be generalized across schools because institutions use similar learning management systems that have the same design flaw of categorizing students alphabetically by surname.

The research found that students with last names from A to E scored 0.3 percentage points higher compared to when they were graded randomly, and those with surnames at the end of the alphabet scored 0.3 percentage points lower — creating a 0.6-point gap. Though this may seem small, the study noted that the disparity does impact grade point averages, and thus, possible career paths.

Notably, for a small group of graders that grade assignments from Z to A, those with last names at the end of the alphabet showed higher marks because their names appeared at the top.

“Our conclusion is this may be something that happened unconsciously by the graders that’s actually creating a real social impact,” said Helen Wang, a study author and doctoral student from the school’s Ross School of Business.

Another study author, Jiaxin Pei from Michigan’s School of Information, weighed in on their theory.

“We kind of suspect that fatigue is one of the major factors that is driving this effect, because when you’re working on something for a long period of time, you get tired and then you start to lose your attention and your cognitive abilities are dropping,” Pei said. 

The researchers note there is an option to randomize the lists when grading, but alphabetical is the default setting in systems like Canvas. 

A simple fix could be to change the default settings in grading systems to randomize the order in which students appear. Other options, researchers said, are to higher more graders to distribute the workload, and to train graders to be aware of the biases. 

For the first time since 2012, all five Spice Girls sang and danced together.

No, it wasn’t a concert, but it was a major event: Victoria Beckham — Posh Spice — just turned 50.

At her celebrity-studded birthday party in London this weekend, Beckham’s former bandmates Melanie Brown (Scary Spice), Emma Bunton (Baby Spice), Geri Halliwell (Ginger Spice) and Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) danced together to their 1997 hit “Stop,” which Beckham’s husband David caught on video.

“Best night ever! Happy Birthday to me! I love you all so much!” Beckham wrote alongside the video in a post on her Instagram with the hashtag “#SpiceUpYourLife.”

A fan uploaded the 12-second clip to YouTube, where you can watch the Girls performing the choreography to the catchy earworm:

The Spice Girls formed in 1994 when the five women responded to an advertisement for a girl group, then quickly took the world by storm with their chart-topping pop hits including “Wannabe,” “Say You’ll Be There,” “2 Become 1,” “Who Do You Think You Are,” “Spice Up Your Life” and “Viva Forever.”

The group released two albums and a movie, 1997’s “Spice World,” before Halliwell left the group in 1998. The remaining four released one more album before splitting up in 2001. They’ve reconvened in the years since for tours in 2007, a performance at the London Olympics closing ceremony in 2012 and a European tour in 2019 sans Beckham, making it all the more special that the first time the five have “performed” together since 2012 was at her birthday.

There have been whispers of another true reunion in the intervening years, most recently just last month when “Scary Spice” Melanie Brown — better known to fans as Mel B — appeared on “Today with Hoda & Jenna” to promote her memoir, “Brutally Honest.”

“This is going to be really good,” Brown said when asked about what’s next for the Spice Girls, “The fans are going to be really happy about it.”

In the years since Spice Girls mania, Beckham has become a fashion designer and grown her family with her husband, who is a former professional English football player. The couple shares four children: sons Brooklyn, Romeo and Cruz and daughter Harper.

This story was originally published by Simplemost.

Clothing retailer Express announced on Monday that it is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will close 95 of its locations throughout the U.S.

The company said those locations would begin having clearance sales Tuesday. 

Additionally, Express announced that all five of its UpWest stores will close. 

Express said a consortium led by WHP Global plans to buy a majority stake in the retailer as part of the bankruptcy process. 

Express said that it has received $35 million in new financing from existing lenders, in addition to $49 million it received from the Internal Revenue Service through CARES Act funding. 

SEE MORE: Has Aldi found the solution to self-checkout's woes?

“We continue to make meaningful progress refining our product assortments, driving demand, connecting with customers and strengthening our operations,” said Stewart Glendinning, Express CEO. “We are taking an important step that will strengthen our financial position and enable Express to continue advancing our business initiatives. WHP has been a strong partner to the Company since 2023, and the proposed transaction will provide us additional financial resources, better position the business for profitable growth and maximize value for our stakeholders.”

Express said remaining locations will keep their existing hours of operation. Gift cards will continue to be honored and there will be no changes to the company's return policy. 

Express operates over 500 locations throughout the U.S., including nearly 200 outlet stores. 

Following is the list of stores closing, according to the company's bankruptcy filing. 

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up a Biden administration appeal over the regulation of difficult-to-trace ghost guns that had been struck down by lower courts.

The justices by a 5-4 vote had previously intervened to keep the regulation in effect during the legal fight. Ghost guns, which lack serial numbers, have been turning up at crime scenes with increasing regularity.

The regulation, which took effect in 2022, changed the definition of a firearm under federal law to include unfinished parts, like the frame of a handgun or the receiver of a long gun, so they can be tracked more easily. Those parts must be licensed and include serial numbers. Manufacturers must also run background checks before a sale, as they do with other commercially made firearms.

The requirement applies regardless of how the firearm was made, meaning it includes ghost guns made from individual parts or kits or by 3D printers. The rule does not prohibit people from buying a kit or any type of firearm.

SEE MORE: New report details illegal gun trafficking trends in the US

The Justice Department had told the court that local law enforcement agencies seized more than 19,000 ghost guns at crime scenes in 2021, a more than tenfold increase in just five years.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, in Fort Worth, Texas, struck down the rule last year, concluding that it exceeded the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ authority. O’Connor wrote that the definition of a firearm in federal law does not cover all the parts of a gun. Congress could change the law, he wrote.

A panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals made up of three appointees of then-President Donald Trump largely upheld O'Connor's ruling.

The Supreme Court allowed the regulation to remain in effect while the lawsuit continues. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the court’s three liberal members to form the majority. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas would have kept the regulation on hold during the appeals process.

Barrett, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were appointed by Trump.

Arguments won't take place before the fall.

Columbia University in New York is holding classes virtually Monday in response to the ongoing pro-Palestinian protests that continue to engulf the Ivy League campus. University officials said the move was in an effort to "deescalate the rancor" over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and address security concerns on campus as the Jewish holiday of Passover begins.

"I understand that many are experiencing deep moral distress and want Columbia to help alleviate this by taking action," University President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik said in a statement. "We should be having serious conversations about how Columbia can contribute. There will be many views across our diverse community about how best to do this and that is as it should be. But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view."

SEE MORE: Columbia president rebuts claims she let school become hotbed of hate

Protests broke out on Columbia's Manhattan campus last week as Shafik was set to testify at a Congressional hearing regarding the university's response to antisemitism and what phrases used by activists would be considered harassment. But what began as a protest calling for Columbia to divest from financial interests in corporations tied to Israel ended in clashes with police. 

Authorities began arresting dozens of protesters Thursday after an encampment had formed on the university's South Lawn. Columbia said the group of over 100 people were notified "numerous times" that they would be suspended if they did not vacate the area, and said the participants were trespassing after the university's president ordered they be removed.

SEE MORE: Why pro-Palestinian demonstrations are popping up on college campuses

Divisive tensions have gripped American universities large and small since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel that sparked the war. 

Dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale on Monday for trespassing. 

Social media, combined with the social justice movements of the past several years, may be helping supporters of Palestinians organize in ways never seen before.

At Columbia, Shafik said a group of campus officials will come together and discuss ways to bring "this crisis" to an end.

"That includes continuing discussions with the student protestors and identifying actions we can take as a community to enable us to peacefully complete the term and return to respectful engagement with each other," said Shafik.

However, the division is not just a problem impacting student relations on campus. It's impacting the university's finances, too.

Robert Kraft — a Columbia University graduate — is founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and owner of the NFL's New England Patriots. As one of Columbia's largest donors, Kraft announced Tuesday that he will no longer be giving any money to his alma mater until more is done to quell the protests.

"I am no longer confident that Columbia can protect its students and staff and I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken," Kraft said in a statement. "It is my hope that Columbia and its leadership will stand up to this hate by ending these protests immediately and will work to earn back the respect and trust of the many of us who have lost faith in the institution."

Kraft served as a trustee to Columbia from 1992 to 2004 and has donated more than $18 million to the university, according to his foundation. That includes more than $9 million to build the Kraft Center and the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life on the Columbia University campus.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has issued a nationwide alert that ground beef sold throughout the U.S. might be contaminated with E. coli. 

The USDA said the ground beef was produced on March 28, 2024, and has a use or freeze-by date of April 22, 2024. The USDA noted that the affected products would have “EST. 960A” inside the USDA mark of inspection.

Officials said there have not been any reports of illnesses. The USDA said the contamination was found by the beef's producers while conducting an inventory of product that was on hold because it was found positive for E. coli O157:H7.

"FSIS is concerned that some product may be in consumers’ and food service institutions’ freezers. Consumers who have purchased these products are urged not to consume them and food service institutions are urged not to serve these products," the USDA said. "These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase."

A full list of affected products is available on the USDA's website. 

SEE MORE: Petition demands USDA action after lead is detected in Lunchables

The USDA said that the products were not placed under a recall because they are no longer available for purchase. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said symptoms typically appear three to four days after consumption. The symptoms typically last up to a week. The symptoms include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea (often bloody) and vomiting, the CDC added.

Cooking ground beef to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit will kill off E. coli, the CDC said. 

Electric car sales have been making significant strides since 2020.  

Last year alone, sales of electric cars shot up 60% year-over-year, according to MarketWatch data. 

And as more companies fulfill the demand for eco-friendly vehicles, some electric and hybrid cars are standing out among the rest.

U.S. News & World Report — a recognized authority in rankings and consumer advice — came out with its list of best hybrid and electric vehicles for 2024. 

For the third year in a row, the 2024 Lucid Air took the top spot for best luxury electric car. 

Best electric car that isn’t a luxury vehicle went to the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6.

Hyundai led with the most awards, also winning best electric SUV, with the 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5, and best hybrid SUV with the 2024 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid.

The best hybrid car went to the 2024 Toyota Camry Hybrid, and the 2024 Lexus NX Hybrid was crowned best luxury hybrid.

Notably absent from the winners list was Tesla, which is interesting given its popularity in the U.S.

Tesla made up more than half of the electric vehicle market share in the U.S. between January and October of last year, with 56.3%, according to MarketWatch. Hyundai, on the other hand, only made up 4.8% of the electric vehicle market share.

For its rankings, U.S. News evaluated 96 luxury and affordable electric and hybrid cars, trucks and SUVs for quality, efficiency and value.

Top-ranked electric and hybrid vehicles:

Best Luxury Electric Car: 2024 Lucid Air 

Best Luxury Electric SUV: 2024 Volvo XC40 Recharge 

Best Electric SUV: 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 5 

Best Electric Car: 2024 Hyundai Ioniq 6 

Best Electric Truck: 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning 

Best Luxury Plug-In Hybrid: 2024 Volvo S60 Recharge

Best Plug-In Hybrid: 2024 Kia Sportage Plug-In Hybrid

Best Hybrid Car: 2024 Toyota Camry Hybrid 

Best Hybrid SUV: 2024 Hyundai Tucson Hybrid 

Best Luxury Hybrid: 2024 Lexus NX Hybrid 

At age 15, Miles Russell became the youngest golfer ever to make the cut of a Korn Ferry Tour event as he went toe-to-toe with dozens of golfers vying to earn a spot on the PGA Tour. 

Russell finished in the top 25 of last weekend's LECOM Suncoast Classic in Florida. He was among 10 golfers who finished at 14 under, six strokes behind the winner Tim Widing. The nine others who finished 14 under earned a paycheck of over $10,000. 

But because Russell is an amateur, his payday was $0. 

Although he is ineligible to join the Korn Ferry Tour until he is 18, his performance will allow him to gain entry into another event. Russell qualifies for next week's Veritex Bank Championship in the Dallas area. 

SEE MORE: The history of the famous Masters green jacket

"It was an awesome week. It was a blast," Russell told reporters. "Especially for my first one, you may get a couple weird looks, like, 'Who's the little kid on the range?' But, you know, everybody was so nice and so helpful with everything."

The Korn Ferry Tour feeds into the PGA Tour. The top 30 golfers on the Korn Ferry Tour each year gain entry into the PGA Tour the following season. Golfers who win three tournaments in the same season can get automatically promoted to the PGA Tour that year. 

Russell's performance garnered attention from one of golf's top luminaries. 

"This is an amazing accomplishment. It’s great to see a young lefty playing such incredible golf," six-time major champion Phil Mickelson wrote on X.

Russell entered the tournament as ranked No. 1 by the American Junior Golf Association. He won such tournaments last year as the Junior PGA Championship and the Junior Players Championship. 

Police in Los Angeles arrested a suspect following a break-in at the home of Mayor Karen Bass on Sunday morning, officials said.

Bass and her family were not harmed when a suspect gained access to Getty House, the LA mayor's official residence on Irving Boulevard.

“Around 6:40 AM this morning an individual smashed a window to gain entry into the Getty House while occupied,” the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement on social media, adding that police responded and took a suspect into custody without incident.

“Mayor Bass and her family were not injured and are safe. The Mayor is grateful to LAPD for responding and arresting the suspect," her office said in a statement.

SEE MORE: Annual count of homeless residents begins in Los Angeles

The LAPD did not immediately release the name or other information about the suspect and said an investigation is ongoing.

Bass served as a Democratic member of Congress from 2011 until her election as the city’s 43rd mayor in 2022. The former state Assembly leader is the first woman and second Black person to hold the post, after former Mayor Tom Bradley, who held the position from 1973 to 1993.

The head of Israeli military intelligence resigned on Monday over the failures surrounding Hamas' unprecedented Oct. 7 attack, the military said, becoming the first senior figure to step down over his role in the deadliest assault in Israel's history.

Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva's resignation could set the stage for more resignations among Israel's top security brass over Hamas' attack, when militants blasted through Israel's border defenses, rampaged through Israeli communities unchallenged for hours and killed 1,200 people, most civilians, while taking roughly 250 hostages into Gaza. That attack set off the war against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

“The intelligence directorate under my command did not live up to the task we were entrusted with. I carry that black day with me ever since, day after day, night after night. I will carry the horrible pain of the war with me forever,” Haliva wrote in his resignation letter, which was provided by the military.

SEE MORE: Israel reportedly had knowledge of Hamas attack over a year ago

Haliva, as well as other military and security leaders, were widely expected to resign in response to the glaring failures that led up to Oct. 7 and the scale of its ferocity.

But the timing of the resignations has been unclear because Israel is still fighting Hamas in Gaza and battling the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in the north. Tensions with Iran are also at a high following attacks between the two enemies. Some military experts have said resignations at a time when Israel is engaged on multiple fronts is irresponsible and could be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

Shortly after the attack, Haliva had publicly said that he shouldered blame for not preventing the assault as the head of the military department responsible for providing the government and the military with intelligence warnings and daily alerts.

While Haliva and others have accepted blame for failing to stop the attack, others have stopped short, most notably Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has said he will answer tough questions about his role but has not outright acknowledged direct responsibility for allowing the attack to unfold. He has also not indicated that he will step down, although a growing protest movement is demanding elections be held soon.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid welcomed the resignation, saying it was “justified and dignified.”

“It would be appropriate for Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the same,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

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

The Hamas attack, which came on a Jewish holiday, caught Israel and its vaunted security establishment entirely off guard. Israelis' sense of faith in their military — seen by most Jews as one of the country's most trustworthy institutions — was shattered in the face of Hamas' onslaught. The resignation could help restore some of that trust.

The attack set off the devastating war that has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the local health ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but it says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.

The fighting has devastated Gaza’s two largest cities, and driven 80% of the territory’s population to flee to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave. The war has sparked a humanitarian catastrophe that has drawn warnings of imminent famine.

The attack also sent shock waves through the region. Beyond Hezbollah and Iran, tensions have rocked the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as well as cities and towns within Israel itself.

On Monday, Israeli police said that a car had slammed into pedestrians in Jerusalem, wounding three lightly, and security camera video showed two men exiting the car with a rifle before the fleeing the scene. Police later said they arrested the two men.

Scroll through your recent text messages and emails and you'll probably come across an impersonation scam, sometimes called imposter scams.

If you are not familiar with the term, it is where scammers claim to be with a company or service you do business with.

What's most alarming is the agency impersonated the most is one that stops by your home almost every day of the week, according to a new report.

Ann Loreaux almost fell victim. She is an avid shopper, and gets several packages a week delivered to her Victorian home.

"I order a ton of things," she said. "Sometimes I don't know what's coming."

So when she received a text message from the U.S. Postal Service about a problem with a recent delivery, she paid attention.

"It stated that my package was delayed due to an incorrect address," she said. "And it had the logo, and it looked very official."

She was about to respond with her address and other information, when she had second thoughts.

"And then, in the back of my mind, I heard your voice," she said, "warning me so many times about scammers."

SEE MORE: Man gets dozens of unwanted Amazon deliveries every month

Which businesses and services are targeted the most

The U.S. Postal Service was the top impersonated organization of 2023, according to the Better Business Bureau.

Its new report, based on complaints to the BBB, shows the following services and companies are most impersonated:

- USPS

- Amazon

- Publishers Clearing House

- GeekSquad

- Norton AntiVirus

Last year, the Federal Trade Commission received more than 330,000 reports of business impersonation scams, and nearly 160,000 government impersonation scams, often pretending to be with the Internal Revenue Service or other government agencies.

And while scams that start with a phone call are going down, the FTC says fraud in the form of email and text messages are going up.

Another trend to watch out for: fake subscription renewals where criminals phish for your info by posing as a recognized company.

Melanie McGovern of the Better Business Bureau says Netflix users may get a message saying "your subscription has expired, and that puts people in a panic." Instead, the BBB says go directly to your account to check your renewal status.

And always keep track of deliveries and auto-renewal payments.

As for USPS, the Postal Inspection Service states on its website that USPS will not send customers text messages or emails unless you sign up for a tracking request.

Loreaux says these messages can be very convincing. 

"I think a lot of people would click on it without even a second thought," she said.

The Supreme Court wrestled with major questions about the growing issue of homelessness on Monday as it considered whether cities can punish people for sleeping outside when shelter space is lacking.

It's the most significant case before the high court in decades on the issue, and comes as record numbers of people are without a permanent place to live in the United States.

The case started in the rural Oregon town of Grants Pass, which began fining people $295 for sleeping outside as the cost of housing escalated and tents sprung up in the city’s public parks. The San Francisco-based U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the law on the basis that banning camping in places without enough shelter beds amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

The justices appeared to be leaning toward a narrow ruling in the case after hearing arguments that showed the stark terms of the debate over homelessness in Western states like California, which is home to one-third of the country's homeless population.

Sleeping is a biological necessity, and people may be forced to do it outside if they can't get housing or there's no space in shelters, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said.

“Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this? Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleeping?" she said.

Solving homelessness is a complicated issue, said Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He questioned whether ticketing people for camping helps if there aren't enough shelter beds to hold everyone, but also raised concerns about federal courts “micromanaging” policy.

SEE MORE: Homelessness reached a record in 2023, and it could get worse

Other conservative justices asked how far Eighth Amendment legal protections should extend as cities struggle with managing homeless encampments that can be dangerous and unsanitary.

“How about if there are no public bathroom facilities, do people have an Eighth Amendment right to defecate and urinate outdoors?” said Justice Neil Gorsuch.

Other public-health laws cover that situation, Justice Department attorney Edwin Kneedler said. He argued people shouldn’t be punished just for sleeping outside, but said the ruling striking down the Grants Pass law should be tossed out because the court didn't do enough to determine if people are “involuntarily homeless.”

Gorsuch and other justices also raised the possibility that other aspects of state or federal law could help sort through the issue, potentially without setting sweeping new legal precedent.

The question is an urgent one in the West, where a cross-section of Democratic and Republican officials contend that the 9th Circuit's rulings on camping bans make it difficult for them to manage encampments. The appeals court has jurisdiction over nine states in the West.

Advocacy groups, on the other hand, argued that allowing cities to punish people who need a place to sleep will criminalize homelessness and ultimately make the crisis worse as the cost of housing increases.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court Monday morning to advocate for more affordable housing, holding silver thermal blankets and signs like “housing not handcuffs.”

Homelessness in the United States grew a dramatic 12% last year to its highest reported level, as soaring rents and a decline in coronavirus pandemic assistance combined to put housing out of reach for more people.

More than 650,000 people are estimated to be homeless, the most since the country began using the yearly point-in-time survey in 2007. Nearly half of them sleep outside. Older adults, LGBTQ+ people and people of color are disproportionately affected, advocates said.

In Oregon, a lack of mental health and addiction resources has also helped fuel the crisis. The state has some of the highest rates of homelessness and drug addiction in the nation, and ranks near the bottom in access to treatment, federal data shows.

The court is expected to decide the case by the end of June.

Manhattan prosecutors began presenting their case against former President Donald Trump to the jury on Monday. 

After the two sides gave their opening statements, questioning got underway in the first-ever trial of a former president as Trump faces 34 felony counts in a New York court for falsifying business records. The trial opened last week with jury selection.

The prosecution called on former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker as its first witness.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges Trump tried to conceal an "illegal scheme to influence the 2016 presidential election" by trying to cover up extramarital affairs. Bragg claims Trump falsified records to hide payments to attorney Michael Cohen that were meant for porn actress Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, as well as a former a former doorman at Trump Towner.

On Monday, Matthew Colangelo, Bragg's senior counsel, outlined evidence that Trump, through Cohen, used a "catch and kill" scheme. Prosecutors said Trump used Cohen to buy the McDougal story from National Enquirer's publisher AMI. Prosecutors say the Trump Organization then paid Cohen in monthly installments and a year-end bonus check. 

Colangelo then read a transcript of when Trump was caught on a hot microphone talking about groping women to "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush. Colangelo said Trump "bragged about sexual assault," which caused Trump to shake his head.

In addition to Pecker, Colangelo said prosecutors will question McDougal's lawyer Keith Davidson. 

Prior to Pecker taking the stand, both sides gave opening statements — with Trump attorney Todd Blanche insisting the payments made to Cohen were not illegal. 

“President Trump is innocent," Blanche said. "President Trump did not commit any crimes. He is in some ways, larger than life. But he is also here in this courtroom doing what any of us would do. Defending himself.”

After Monday's hearing, Trump described the nature of the payments to Cohen as "a legal expense."

Blanche said that Cohen lied under oath about the nature of the payments, which prompted an objection from the prosecution that was sustained. 

"You cannot make a serious decision about President Trump by relying on the words of Michael Cohen," Blanche said.

After the two sides gave opening statements, Pecker briefly took the stand before court adjourned for the day. He was asked whether he had the final say over publishing decisions, to which he replied yes. 

SEE MORE: Trump loses bid to halt lawsuits over Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection

The 12-member jury consists of seven men and five women. They emerged after Judge Juan Merchan dismissed dozens of potential jurors who said they could not be fair and impartial. Six alternates were also selected in case any of the 12 jurors are dismissed. 

The charges Trump faces in New York are considered a Class E felony, the lowest among felony counts in New York. The charges are arguably the least serious among the four criminal cases Trump faces.

Trump has tried to delay this trial numerous times. 

The former president has made numerous accusations that Merchan is biased against him. He has lashed out on social media over the case, which has prompted a hearing this week on whether Trump violated a gag order limiting what he can say publicly about the case. 

Trump has tried to balance his trial calendar with remaining on the campaign trail as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Over the weekend, the Trump campaign had to cancel his rally in North Carolina due to strong storms. 

The trial resumes Tuesday as prosecutors continue their questioning of Pecker. 

It's been a little over two months since the 2024 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees were announced. On Sunday night during "American Idol," the Rock Hall announced who made the cut.

The inductees this year are:

Performer Category: 

-Mary J. Blige 

-Cher 

-Dave Matthews Band 

-Foreigner 

-Peter Frampton 

-Kool & The Gang 

-Ozzy Osbourne 

- A Tribe Called Quest 

Musical Influence Award: 

-Alexis Korner 

-John Mayall 

- Big Mama Thornton 

Musical Excellence Award: 

- Jimmy Buffett 

- MC5 

- Dionne Warwick 

- Norman Whitfield 

Ahmet Ertegun Award: 

- Suzanne de Passe 

“Rock & Roll is an ever-evolving amalgam of sounds that impacts culture and moves generations,” said John Sykes, chairman of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. “This diverse group of inductees each broke down musical barriers and influenced countless artists that followed in their footsteps.” 

Mariah Carey, Jane's Addiction, Lenny Kravitz, Sade and Sinéad O'Connor were among those who were nominated in February but not selected.

The Rock Hall says an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination to be considered. 

The induction ceremony will take place Oct. 19.

Passover is a major Jewish holiday, celebrated over seven or eight days each year, commemorating the exodus of ancient Israelites from slavery in Egypt, as recounted in the Bible. To many Jews, it symbolizes freedom and the birth of a Jewish nation.

This year, for many Jews, the holiday’s mood will be somber due to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and the rise of antisemitic incidents elsewhere.

When is Passover this year?

Passover, known as Pesach in Hebrew, begins on April 22. By tradition, it will be celebrated for seven days in Israel and for eight days by some Jews in the rest of the world.

What are key Passover rituals and traditions?

For many Jews, Passover is a time to reunite with family and recount the exodus from Egypt at a meal called the Seder. Observant Jews avoid grains known as chametz, a reminder of the unleavened bread the Israelites ate when they fled Egypt quickly with no time for dough to rise. Cracker-like matzo is OK to eat; most breads, pastas, cakes and cookies are off-limits.

What's different this year?

For many Israelis, it’s hard to celebrate an occasion focused on freedom when some of their compatriots are still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. The hostages’ plight has reverberated worldwide, with some families in the Jewish diaspora asking rabbis to give them additional prayers for this year’s Seder. Others have created a new Haggadah, the book read during the Seder, to reflect current realities.

Many Seder tables, in Israel and elsewhere, are expected to have empty seats, representing those killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7, as well as soldiers unable to return home for Passover.

There’s also intense concern, in some countries, about a recent rise in antisemitic incidents.

The U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League says it tallied 8,873 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment and vandalism across the country in 2023—up 140% from 2022—with most of the incidents occurring after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. 

On Wednesday, the ADL and other Jewish organizations participated in a “Passover Without Fear” webinar, with FBI Director Christopher Wray and several security experts offering guidance on keeping the Passover season safe, secure and as welcoming as possible.

The event was hosted by the Secure Community Network, which provides security and safety resources to hundreds of Jewish organizations and institutions across North America.

“It is not a time for panic, but it is a time for continued vigilance," said Wray, adding that the FBI was particularly concerned about the threat posed by “lone actors.”

What are rabbis and scholars saying?

“The Seder is supposed to help us to relive past slavery and liberation from Egypt and to learn its lessons, but in 2024 it must also ask contemporary questions about the confusing and traumatic present and, most important, generate hope for the future," said Noam Zion, emeritus member of the faculty of Jewish studies at the Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

“At the Seder, we make a point of eating bitter herbs to recall the difficulties of the past, and also drink wine and eat the foods of freedom. It is a mix—a meal filled with discussion that confronts the challenges of being a Jew throughout history and of being a Jew today.” Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, a major U.S.-based Jewish organization.

“What a challenging time it is right now for the Jewish people. We feel so alone... There is so much cynicism in the world, so much hopelessness. We need Passover now more than ever. It’s a story that ends in freedom and joy," said Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

As the popular lottery slogan goes, you’ve got to be in it to win it. And a Midwestern dad named Brant Edgington very nearly wasn’t.

He had stepped into the Baker’s grocery store in Fremont, Nebraska, to pick up a salad for his lunch and figured he’d spend a few extra dollars on a Mega Millions lottery ticket. Several days later, he learned he’d won a $1 million prize.

“I don’t play all that often,” he said after his win, according to a Nebraska Lottery press announcement. “As a single parent, baloney is more important, financially.”

The odds of winning $1 million playing the multi-state Mega Millions game are 1 in 12,607,306, so that’s a reasonable point!

Though he is not an avid lottery player, Edgington says he does get in when the jackpot gets high. However, he wasn’t planning on buying a ticket at all that day. But as he waited in line at the store while a customer ahead of him cashed in some scratch-off tickets, he decided to play.

The following Saturday, Edgington was back at the store and checked to see if he’d won. The Check-a-Ticket scanner wasn’t working for him, so he asked a clerk to see if he’d hit the jackpot.

“They disappeared for a minute,” he said. “Then a different lady came up with her and they just stared at me. She told me, ‘Don’t pass out when I tell you this … ’”

He claimed his prize on April 5, and hopefully he’s a little less worried about buying baloney for his kids now.

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

SEE MORE: Man hits lottery win on a whim after getting $5 'side hustle' tip

Forecasters are warning of what could be a busy wildfire season in the United States this year.

As temperatures begin to warm and parts of the country get less rain through spring and summer, the U.S. Forest Service announced it will change its strategy for the firefights likely to come. 

“Our historical traditional approach of overwhelming mass and bringing a whole lot of resources together to battle and to try to manipulate mother nature and wildfire isn't sustainable,” said Alex Robertson, Acting Director of Fire and Aviation at the U.S. Forest Service.  

Robertson said as wildfires continue to burn more acreage and last longer, the agency will dispatch resources and personnel differently, so the most well-trained first responders are battling the most complex fires. 

The agency’s new strategy is also aimed at better protecting first responders from physical dangers and the mental and emotional exhaustion that come with the job. 

“We know we have to prioritize,” said Robertson. “We have to work together to ensure that we're putting our resources in the most efficient, safest place to ensure that we're protecting values at risk. Those values are obviously are our responders.” 

The U.S. Forest Service hopes to hire over 11,300 firefighters this year. The agency will also offer training to allow more teams to be ready for bigger disasters. It is also hoping to retain more permanent, over-seasonal, firefighter positions to ensure there is adequate staffing to respond to emergencies. 

SEE MORE: As climate warms, wildfires could make air more deadly, study says

While there is no official start to wildfire season, 2024 has already seen blockbuster fires across the country. Through March of this year, nearly 2,700 square miles of U.S. acreage have been charred. Texas’ recent Smokehouse Creek Fire was its largest wildfire in state history and scorched over one million acres of Texas land, burning hundreds of homes and killing livestock. 

Climate scientist Scott Denning said he believes the problem is one-fold. “Climate change. The main effect of climate change on fires is that it's hot. Not that hard to understand—anybody who's ever had to water their lawn they know that in hot weather, you have to put more water on than in cooler weather, and that's true for our wild lands as well,” said Denning. 

With more heat, the water evaporates from the soil, the vegetation dries out, it becomes drought-stressed, and it's much easier to burn. Fires will tend to spread in a way that they aren't used to. 

The U.S. Forest Service said that, for that reason, preparation for what’s likely to come starts now. “We have to be better at treating the landscape and preparing it for wildfire, so those fires even in warmer, drier conditions aren't as difficult to control, or to manipulate, or as destructive as what we've seen,” said Robertson. “Then there's the third tenant, which is preparing communities for wildfires, and that's the home hardening. That’s the recognition that we're not going to be able to stop all fire.” 

The U.S. Forest Service is also offering updated training for those managing fire emergencies and is working on plans to streamline the administrative component of how the agency interacts with the communities where wildfires occur. 

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Terry Anderson, the globe-trotting Associated Press correspondent who became one of America's longest-held hostages after he was snatched from a street in war-torn Lebanon in 1985 and held for nearly seven years, has died at 76.

Anderson, who chronicled his abduction and torturous imprisonment by Islamic militants in his best-selling 1993 memoir "Den of Lions," died on Sunday in at his home in Greenwood Lake, New York, said his daughter, Sulome Anderson.

The cause of death was unknown, though his daughter said Anderson recently had heart surgery.

After returning to the United States in 1991, Anderson led a peripatetic life, giving public speeches, teaching journalism at several prominent universities and, at various times, operating a blues bar, Cajun restaurant, horse ranch and gourmet restaurant.

He also struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, won millions of dollars in frozen Iranian assets after a federal court concluded that country played a role in his capture, then lost most of it to bad investments. He filed for bankruptcy in 2009.

Upon retiring from the University of Florida in 2015, Anderson settled on a small horse farm in a quiet, rural section of northern Virginia he had discovered while camping with friends. `

"I live in the country and it's reasonably good weather and quiet out here and a nice place, so I'm doing all right," he said with a chuckle during a 2018 interview with The Associated Press.

In 1985 he became one of several Westerners abducted by members of the Shia Muslim group Hezbollah during a time of war that had plunged Lebanon into chaos.

After his release, he returned to a hero's welcome at AP's New York headquarters.

As the AP's chief Middle East correspondent, Anderson had been reporting for several years on the rising violence gripping Lebanon as the country fought a war with Israel, while Iran funded militant groups trying to topple its government.

On March 16, 1985, a day off, he had taken a break to play tennis with former AP photographer Don Mell and was dropping Mell off at his home when gun-toting kidnappers dragged him from his car.

He was likely targeted, he said, because he was one of the few Westerners still in Lebanon and because his role as a journalist aroused suspicion among members of Hezbollah.

"Because in their terms, people who go around asking questions in awkward and dangerous places have to be spies," he told the Virginia newspaper The Review of Orange County in 2018.

What followed was nearly seven years of brutality during which he was beaten, chained to a wall, threatened with death, often had guns held to his head and often was kept in solitary confinement for long periods of time.

Anderson was the longest held of several Western hostages Hezbollah abducted over the years, including Terry Waite, the former envoy to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had arrived to try to negotiate his release.

By his and other hostages' accounts, he was also their most hostile prisoner, constantly demanding better food and treatment, arguing religion and politics with his captors, and teaching other hostages sign language and where to hide messages so they could communicate privately.

He managed to retain a quick wit and biting sense of humor during his long ordeal. On his last day in Beirut he called the leader of his kidnappers into his room to tell him he'd just heard an erroneous radio report saying he'd been freed and was in Syria.

"I said, 'Mahmound, listen to this, I'm not here. I'm gone, babes. I'm on my way to Damascus.' And we both laughed," he told Giovanna DellÓrto, author of "AP Foreign Correspondents in Action: World War II to the Present."

He learned later his release was delayed when a third party who his kidnappers planned to turn him over to left for a tryst with his mistress and they had to find someone else.

Anderson's humor often hid the PTSD he acknowledged suffering for years afterward.

"The AP got a couple of British experts in hostage decompression, clinical psychiatrists, to counsel my wife and myself and they were very useful," he said in 2018. "But one of the problems I had was I did not recognize sufficiently the damage that had been done.

"So, when people ask me, you know, 'Are you over it?' Well, I don't know. No, not really. It's there. I don't think about it much these days, it's not central to my life. But it's there."

At the time of his abduction, Anderson was engaged to be married and his future wife was six months pregnant with their daughter, Sulome.

The couple married soon after his release but divorced a few years later, and although they remained on friendly terms Anderson and his daughter were estranged for years.

"I love my dad very much. My dad has always loved me. I just didn't know that because he wasn't able to show it to me.," Sulome Anderson told the AP in 2017.

Father and daughter reconciled after the publication of her critically acclaimed 2017 book, "The Hostage's Daughter," in which she told of traveling to Lebanon to confront and eventually forgive one of her father's kidnappers.

"I think she did some extraordinary things, went on a very difficult personal journey, but also accomplished a pretty important piece of journalism doing it," Anderson said. "She's now a better journalist than I ever was."

Terry Alan Anderson was born Oct. 27, 1947. He spent his early childhood years in the small Lake Erie town of Vermillion, Ohio, where his father was a police officer.

After graduating from high school, he turned down a scholarship to the University of Michigan in favor of enlisting in the Marines, where he rose to the rank of staff sergeant while seeing combat during the Vietnam War.

After returning home, he enrolled at Iowa State University where he graduated with a double major in journalism and political science and soon after went to work for the AP. He reported from Kentucky, Japan and South Africa before arriving in Lebanon in 1982, just as the country was descending into chaos.

"Actually, it was the most fascinating job I've ever had in my life," he told The Review. "It was intense. War's going on — it was very dangerous in Beirut. Vicious civil war, and I lasted about three years before I got kidnapped."

Anderson was married and divorced three times. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by another daughter, Gabrielle Anderson, from his first marriage.

A tram accident at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles injured 15 people Saturday night, authorities and the company said.

Los Angeles County Fire Department units were dispatched to the theme park on Lankershim Boulevard shortly after 9 p.m., the department said in a social media post.

The victims taken to area hospitals had minor injuries, the department said.

A Universal Studios Hollywood spokesperson emailed a statement to The Associated Press confirming there were "multiple minor injuries" from an accident involving a tram at the theme park.

The details of the accident were not immediately available.

The California Highway Patrol will lead the investigation, the fire department said.

SEE MORE: Disney to roll out $2 billion plan to reinvent Anaheim theme park

An adorable video shows two bear cubs climbing a gondola tower at Steamboat Ski Resort in Colorado on Friday.

The baby bears were practicing their climbing skills using the lift tower of Wild Blue Gondola before mama bear seemed to have enough and made them climb back down. 

You can see the cubs climb up the tower and safely back down in the nearly three-minute clip.

The video below is courtesy of Sharon Spiegel and shared with Scripps News Denver by Steamboat Radio on their Facebook page:

In the video, guests are absolutely astounded by how effortlessly these bears scale the structure with their claws. 

"I did not think they would do that,"  you hear a person say,  while another adds, "This is insane!"

Suddenly, a voice comes over the intercom, possibly from security or management, announcing  "The bears are climbing the tower," followed by another voice encouraging,  "you better be taking videos."

And captured the moment they did, and we couldn't be more thankful for it!

This story was originally published by Robert Garrison at Scripps News Denver.

SEE MORE: Bear cub in rehab after people seen pulling it from tree for pictures

Carpets of yellow, orange and gold flowers are beginning to cover Southern California's vast deserts, the Bay Area's dramatic bluffs and even near Los Angeles International Airport.

But do they add up to a "superbloom"? There is no single definition of the event, but so far this year's blooms haven't been as vibrant or abundant as those that took over swaths of California last spring following drought-busting rains. This year, too, the state received ample winter rains.

After especially wet winters, bursts of color may appear in the spring, drawing droves of visitors to California and other parts of the Southwest to glimpse the flowering fields and pose for pictures.

Here are some key facts about the natural spectacle:

What's a superbloom?

Scientists don't agree on any one definition. Across California and Arizona, there are stretches of desert that can quickly transform into dense fields of wildflowers, since seeds lie dormant in the soil and then germinate and blossom at around the same time.

A recent study found that such widespread blooms, which have been visible by satellite imagery in some years, take place after seasons with greater than 30% average precipitation, said Naomi Fraga, director of conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden, east of Los Angeles.

Does this year count? 

No, according to Fraga. That's because there isn't a huge diversity in the flowers that have blossomed in places like California's Death Valley.

This year's blooms aren't as large or as dense as wildflowers in past years, she said.

"When I think of superblooms, I think of a bloom that is so extraordinary, that's a once-in-a-lifetime event," Fraga said, adding that the wildflower display this year "still makes a beautiful show."

Last spring, in early April visitors to Southern California's Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve were treated to dazzling orange displays of the state flower. But around the same time this year, the fields were absent of the orange blooms, with the reserve's officials posting that the window for an impressive show was becoming "increasingly narrow."

In Death Valley, one of the driest places on earth, stretches of desert are dotted with gold thanks to sunflowers that emerged after an especially wet winter and spring.

Whether that constitutes a superbloom is "really in the eye of the beholder," said Evan Meyer, executive director of the California-based nonprofit Theodore Payne Foundation, which works to preserve California's native plants.

When does it happen?

April is typically the peak month for spring wildflowers, but in high-elevation places, they can continue to blossom later into the spring.

Superblooms generally refer to low-elevation desert regions, Fraga said.

"It's much more geographic than seasonal," Meyer said. "Spring in the mountains hasn't started, and in the low desert, it's past its peak."

When temperatures rise in the desert, the flowers can quickly dry out.

How does climate change affect the superbloom?

Experts say it might be too soon to tell.

Climate change is making precipitation patterns more erratic, but the effects on wildflowers could play out over decades or even centuries, Fraga said since seeds stay dormant in the soil for long periods of time.

Southern California received heavy rain last summer, unlike its usually dry summers, which she said probably stimulated flowers to germinate out of season. Winter temperatures also were higher than average, so many of them were able to stay in bloom through the spring season.

"That made for a very unusual bloom," Fraga said.

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Eight people were shot including two men who were killed at an unsanctioned public party in a Memphis city park Saturday night, police said.

Officers responded at 7:19 p.m. to a reported shooting, Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn Davis said during a news conference at the scene.

Two men were pronounced dead at the scene, Davis said.

The six surviving victims were transported to area hospitals and one was in critical condition at Regional One Health in Memphis, police said.

The shooting occurred at a block party in Orange Mound Park, which Davis said included an estimated 200 to 300 attendees but did not appear to have been issued a city permit.

At least two people are believed to have fired weapons during the shooting and police were examining video footage as part of the ongoing investigation, Davis said. There were no immediate arrests.

"In light of recent events, we stand together to denounce these senseless acts of violence," Davis said.

The Memphis police initially reported there were 16 people shot but revised the number in a social media post, noting the error appeared to have been a result of "several victims being reported multiple times."

An 8-year-old girl and her 5-year-old brother were killed Saturday afternoon when a vehicle crashed into a building during a children's birthday party at a boat club located south of Detroit. 

Fifteen others were injured in the crash, including three children and six adults, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. The incident happened around 3 p.m. at Swan Boat Club on Brancheau Road. 

Nine of the victims were transported to the hospital via ambulance or medical helicopter, said Monroe County Sheriff Troy Goodnough. 

Officials said a 66-year-old woman crashed into the building, stopping about 25 feet inside. Goodnough said the woman was taken into custody for operating while intoxicated causing death and additional charges are likely. 

Goodnough said first responders described the scene as "extremely chaotic with high level of emotions."

The investigation into the deadly crash is ongoing. 

This story was originally published by Scripps News Detroit. 

Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said Sunday, as the United States was on track to approve billions of dollars of additional military aid to its close ally.

Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere. It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive to the city on the border with Egypt despite international calls for restraint, including from the U.S.

The House of Representatives approved a $26 billion aid package on Saturday that includes around $9 billion in humanitarian assistance for Gaza.

The first strike killed a man, his wife and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. The woman was pregnant and the doctors managed to save the baby, the hospital said.

The second strike killed 17 children and two women, all from the same extended family, according to hospital records. First responders were still searching the rubble. An airstrike in Rafah the night before killed nine people, including six children.

SEE MORE: House passes critical aid package for Ukraine, Israel, other US allies

The Israel-Hamas war has killed over 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, devastated Gaza's two largest cities and left a swath of destruction across the territory. Around 80% of the population have fled their homes to other parts of the besieged coastal enclave, which experts say is on the brink of famine.

The conflict, now in its seventh month, has sparked regional unrest pitting Israel and the U.S. against Iran and allied militant groups across the Middle East. Israel and Iran traded fire directly earlier this month, raising fears of all-out war between the longtime foes.

Tensions have also spiked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israeli troops killed two Palestinians who the military says attacked a checkpoint with a knife and a gun near the southern West Bank town of Hebron early Sunday. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the two killed were 18 and 19 years old, from the same family. No Israeli forces were wounded, the army said.

The Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service meanwhile said it has recovered a total of 14 bodies from an Israeli raid in the Nur Shams urban refugee camp in the West Bank that began late Thursday. Those killed include three militants from the Islamic Jihad group and a 15-year-old boy. The military says it killed 10 militants in the camp and arrested eight suspects. Nine Israeli soldiers and officers were wounded.

In a separate incident in the West Bank, an Israeli man was wounded in an explosion Sunday, the Magen David Adom rescue service said. A video circulating online shows a man approaching a Palestinian flag that had been planted in a field. When he kicks it, it appears to trigger an explosive device.

At least 469 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Most have been killed during Israeli military arrest raids, which often trigger gunbattles, or in violent protests.

The war in Gaza was sparked by an unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. Israel says militants are still holding around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others.

Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call for new elections to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a deal with Hamas to release the hostages. Netanyahu has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all the hostages are returned.

The war has killed at least 34,097 Palestinians and wounded another 76,980, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says at least two-thirds have been children and women. It also says the real toll is likely higher as many bodies are stuck beneath the rubble left by airstrikes or are in areas that are unreachable for medics.

Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the militants fight in dense, residential neighborhoods, but the military rarely comments on individual strikes, which often kill women and children. The military says it has killed over 13,000 Hamas fighters, without providing evidence.

A knife attack on a crowded party boat at a New York City pier Saturday resulted in the hospitalization of three people, police said.

A 911 call came in around 5 p.m. reporting the assault along the East River near 58th Street and the Brooklyn Army Terminal warehouse, Detective Sophia Mason said.

The victims were said to be a 32-year-old man with a stab wound to the torso, a 40-year-old man with stab wounds to the chest and abdomen and a 28-year-old man who was hit in the head with a bottle.

They were taken to the NYU Langone Hospital and were in stable condition, Mason said. There were no arrests as of Saturday evening, and the investigation was ongoing.

Around 3,000 people were aboard the vessel, the Cornucopia Majesty, at the time, according to police.

SEE MORE: Staff and shoppers return to Sydney mall 6 days after mass stabbings

The United Auto Workers' overwhelming election victory at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee is giving the union hope that it can make broader inroads in the South, the least unionized part of the country.

The UAW won a stunning 73% of the vote at VW after losing elections in 2014 and 2019. It was the union's first win in a Southern assembly plant owned by a foreign automaker.

Union President Shawn Fain said the pundits all told him that the UAW couldn't win in the South.

"But you all said, 'Watch this,' " he told a cheering group of VW organizers at a union hall in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on Friday night, when the UAW victory was clear. "You guys are leading the way. We’re going to carry this fight on to Mercedes and everywhere else."

However, the UAW is likely to face a tougher test as it tries to represent workers at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A five-day election is scheduled to start May 13, where the union’s campaign has already become heated.

The UAW has accused the German carmaker of violating U.S. and German labor laws with aggressive anti-union tactics, which the company denies.

SEE MORE: Volkswagen union vote leads effort to test UAW's power

"They are going to have a much harder road in work sites where they are going to face aggressive management resistance and even community resistance than they faced in Chattanooga," said Harry Katz, a labor-relations professor at Cornell University. "VW management did not aggressively seek to avoid unionization. Mercedes is going to be a good test. It's the deeper South."

Late last year, the UAW announced a drive to represent nearly 150,000 workers at non-union factories largely in the South. The union is targeting U.S. plants run by Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Volkswagen, Mercedes, BMW and Volvo, along with factories operated by electric-vehicle makers Tesla, Rivian and Lucid.

The union's last defeat at VW in Chattanooga came at a low-water mark — in the middle of a federal investigation into bribery and embezzlement under a previous president.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies the UAW, said the union flipped the script by installing new leadership, touting the rich contracts it won last year from Detroit automakers after strikes at targeted factories, and exploiting a climate that is now more favorable to unions. He said the union was also adept at translating signed pro-union authorization cards into votes — partly by pushing for a quick election.

"Now the public and media eyes are going to be on Chattanooga and how quickly the UAW can translate this into a contract," he said. If the union can't quickly get a good contract, it risks losing some of the momentum it gained with Friday's election win, he said.

Unions in other industries are already moving ahead with organizing campaigns in the South and trying to learn from the UAW's playbook.

The Association of Flight Attendants, which has tried and failed to win over cabin crews at Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines, hopes to collect enough signatures to force another election at Delta by year end. The union's president, Sara Nelson, said she was not surprised at the UAW win after strikes that led to record contracts last year.

"I've been talking about this for a long time — that strikes and taking on the boss is going to spur organizing, and that's exactly what we saw here," Nelson said.

Nelson is trying to secure an industry-leading contract at United Airlines that she can use to court Delta crews. In the meantime, crews at startup Breeze Airways, many of whom live in the South, will vote next month whether to join her union.

The White House issued a statement from President Joe Biden congratulating the UAW. Biden — who joined a UAW picket line in Michigan during the union's strike against Ford, GM and Stellantis plants last year — praised the success of unions representing autoworkers, Hollywood actors and writers, health care workers and others in gaining better contracts.

"Together, these union wins have helped raise wages and demonstrate once again that the middle-class built America and that unions are still building and expanding the middle class for all workers," Biden said.

Biden criticized six Southern Republican governors, including Bill Lee of Tennessee, who told autoworkers this week that voting for union representation would jeopardize jobs.

Sharon Block, a law professor at Harvard University who worked for the Biden administration on labor and other issues, said the governors' warning rang hollow after nonunion Tesla revealed that it plans to lay off 10% of its workers after disappointing sales results. She said VW workers saw the governors' open letter as "an empty threat and a cynical ploy," and they ignored it.

"Workers for a long time have been told that you can't organize in the South. And many workers, even not in the South, may work in industries where they've been told for a long time you can't organize," Block said. "What the UAW showed last night is that we need to go and rethink all those negative statements."

Tufts University called him a major intellectual figure globally with his research on the philosophy of mind, science and particularly on evolutionary biology. He was one of the most widely read and debated American philosophers of his time. 

Daniel C. Dennett died on Friday in Portland, Maine at 82. 

The American Philosophical Association released a statement saying the organization was saddened by his death. Dennett was the president of their Eastern Division from 2000-2001. 

He served in a career with Tufts University for more than 50 years. 

Born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 28, 1942, his father was a diplomat and a scholar of Islamic history. His mother was a teacher. 

Dennett would go on to live a storied life filled with academic endeavors and successes, graduating from Harvard University in 1963 with a B.A. in philosophy, and then pursuing his graduate studies at the University of Oxford. 

The New York Times reported that his death at Maine Medical Center was due to complications with interstitial lung disease, according to a message from his wife Susan Bell Dennett. They lived in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the paper said. 

Dennett was a faculty member at the University of California, Irvine from the mid-1960s until 1971. 

He was convinced that the only way to have a productive philosophical debate about the mind was by being informed by science. He also believed this was the approach to sorting out debates on how the mind relates to the physical occurrences in the body. 

Dennett also delved into the fields of neuroscience, artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology, and in 1993 he worked with a team at MIT to attempt the construction of an intelligent — possibly sentient — robot they named Cog. 

Dennett was a prolific writer throughout his career with noteable works that included books on his theories on consciousness. 

Consciousness Explained in 1991 and Darwin's Dangerous Idea in 1995 looked at the theory that natural selection accounted for the evolution of the brain and human consciousness. In a paper he wrote called "Where Am I?" he tells a story of how the brain and body could find itself separated and looks at how that might play out in the real and physical world. 

Dennett believed that random chance played a significant role in decision making. He believed that it was more powerful in that regard that even passions, reasoning or motives. 

At least 18 books have been written about Dennett and his work and he has appeared in a list of documentaries, including 1993's A Glorious Accident, Tufts wrote. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987 and received multiple Guggenheim awards along with a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

He is survived by his wife Susan. The two were married for over 60 years. They have a son named Peter and a daughter named Andrea. Dennett is also survived by his six grandchildren and his two sisters. 

A military court found U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Bryce Pedicini guilty of attempted espionage after he is accused of sharing classified defense information with a foreign government.  

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service said Pedicini was also convicted for attempted violation of a lawful general order and for failure to obey a lawful order. NCIS said in their release that a seven-day trial found Pedicini — who previously served on a guided-missile destroyer in Japan — guilty at a general court martial on Friday.  

SEE MORE: American reporter Evan Gershkovich marks one year in Russian jail

NCIS Director Omar Lopez said, "This guilty verdict holds Mr. Pedicini to account for his betrayal of his country and fellow service members."

Lopez said, "Adversaries of the United States are unrelenting in their attempts to degrade our military superiority."

The military court said Pedicini's sentencing would be determined by a military judge, scheduled for a hearing on May 7. 

An unidentified person who posed as a Japanese defense researcher is said to have contacted Pedicini through Facebook on Oct. 24, 2022 offering money for details on U.S. military capabilities and strategies. 

Court records said Pedicini worked with "everything from radars, fire control systems and computer systems, to the Navy's most advanced missile system, Aegis," Stars and Stripes reported. 

Navy Chief Bryce Pedicini has no comment for me as he leaves the close of his espionage trial on Naval Base San Diego. Prosecutors allege he sold sensitive military info to a stranger on the internet for cash. Defense says the case has holes & evidence is missing. ⁦@10News⁩ pic.twitter.com/CajDNY2meE

— Austin Grabish (@AustinGrabish) April 17, 2024

The individual, who was identified as a woman, reportedly convinced Pedicini to send classified materials on a ballistic missile system, according to Prosecutor Leah O'Brien. 

Pedicini is said to have received an initial payment of $50, and then another for $1,000 for the documents. Scripps News San Diego reported that Pedicini's defense attorneys argued that he was just copying and pasting material from Google. Prosecutors said he used a burner phone and the discreet messaging app Telegram to hide his communications. 

Pedicini made no comment to Scripps News San Diego who were waiting for him as he left a courtroom at the Naval Base San Diego on April 16 after a hearing in the case. 

Saturday, April 20, 2024 marks 25 years since the horrific tragedy unfolded at Columbine High School that left 12 students and one teacher dead. 

A vigil was held Friday to mark the milestone, though it was smaller than gatherings of years past. 

The Columbine Memorial, located in Clements Park in Colorado, has been a place for visitors from across the country to remember the events of that day and reflect since its dedication on September 21, 2007. 

Rick Townsend, the father of victim Lauren Townsend, serves as President of the Columbine Memorial Foundation and described the features of the memorial.

“The Ring of Remembrance has a plaque for each of the victims that died,” said Townsend. 

On display along The Ring of Remembrance are individual remembrances of each victim provided by families or through the words of the students.

“This is kind of the central point of the memorial,” added Townsend. 

The Ring of Remembrance surrounds a big ribbon with the words ‘Never Forgotten’ displayed on the memorial grounds.

Outside of the victim tributes, a Wall of Healing runs along the outer wall where quotes on plaques can be read of first responders, students, teachers, and other community members.

There is a water feature that runs during the warmer months near the memorial’s entrance.

“And to top it all off, there's a walkway that goes all the way around the little hills here to a viewpoint where you can look over the mountains,” said Townsend.

Today, the Columbine Memorial requires upgrades, including a new more reliable lighting system to make it easier to read the inscriptions as well as other much-needed improvements.

Scripps News Denver has created a campaign where anyone can securely donate to help ensure the Columbine Memorial will have a lasting impact for future generations.

Below are the inscriptions on the memorial wall for each victim of the senseless tragedy. 

Cassie René Bernall

“Our Cassie had an engaging laugh, beautiful long blonde hair, clear blue eyes and a big warm smile that she generously shared. Her loves were music, snowboarding with her brother Chris, photography, travel and youth group. Seeking to be an obstetrician, she dreamed of bringing new life into this world.

Cassie truly longed to know what heaven would be like and she strived to know the Lord whom she would meet there. Her heart’s desire was 'just to live for Christ.' Weeks before her death she expressed her anxiousness to see heaven, stating that she could 'hardly wait to get there.'

When asked how we would ever live without her, Cassie simply replied 'Wouldn’t you be happy for me? You know I’d be in a better place!'

Cassie lost her life because of her belief in God. Although her dreams of ushering in new life tragically ended, her stand continues to encourage many to seek new life through Christ. We miss her immensely, but know she’s in that better place. - Phil 3:10-11”

Steven Curnow

"Steven Curnow, at 14, was a quiet, thoughtful, generous and forgiving young man. He never held a grudge and was quick to offer help, encouragement, forgiveness and friendship to family, classmates, and soccer teammates.

Steve loved reading, watching adventure movies and playing soccer. When Steve realized he was not skilled enough to make the high school soccer team his dream of playing professional soccer was gone, but he never lost his love for the game. He continued to play on his recreational soccer team and was also a referee.

Steve wanted to pursue his dream of becoming a naval aviator. He had found a love of flying during his first plane trip, a family vacation to England. The plane hit some pretty rough turbulence, dropping altitude, tossing side-to-side and shuddering. Talking on the plane suddenly stopped with many of the passengers becoming white knuckled and tightening their grips on the arms of the seats. Ten-year-old Steve’s reaction was 'Wow! That was cool; let’s do it again!!'

Steve, you are forever in our hearts. Soar high, and fly straight. We love you!

Dad, Mom, and Nancy"

Corey DePooter

"Corey was a young man who was full of life. He was a person that you would want to spend time with. He loved to talk and could have long conversations on the subjects he was passionate about. With his sense of humor Corey could have a whole room laughing.

Corey was an outdoorsman at heart. Every free hour he had he spent fishing. He loved the mountains, camping with his family, hunting, golfing, and fly fishing at Yellowstone.

Corey had just turned seventeen and was excited about his future. He was working at a golf course to save up for his first car. His goal was to become an officer in the Marine Corps. Corey looked forward to becoming a husband and a father and sharing his faith with his children.

Corey cherished his family, his friends, and his life."

Kelley Ann Fleming

Kelly's memorial inscription is taken from a poem she wrote in 1998.

"A writer and a poet, a gentle soul who walked among us.

CAN THAT BE?

I step outside, what did I hear?

I heard the whispers,

And the cries of the people’s fear.

The loneliness of wisdom,

Can that be?

The sad, sad, sorrow that I see,

That is past in the trees.

Is it true, can it be real?

Can I let them know how I really feel?

The things I have seen,

The things that I have felt.

The feelings of sorrow

That I hope will soon melt:

Wherever I looked,

Wherever I turned.

I see shadows all through the night.

I put my head down and said a little prayer,

To tell the Lord the sad, sad, sorrow,

And the lonely cries that I have heard.

After a minute of silence, of wisdom

I looked up slowly.

I saw a thing that I have never seen.

I saw a light and asked myself can that be?

Was it real or was it a dream?

I didn’t know but hopefully

It will come to me.

It was bright and I was scared.

I didn’t know what or if I should see

I looked and then it came to me.

It was a dream.

When I was turning to walk away

I heard a voice.

Written by Kelly in 1998. Her first draft; final draft published in Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul III"

Matthew Kechter

"Matthew, a gift from God

As the sun rises, the eagle soars, and the wind whispers, we will remember you. Memories are moments of time strung together, but in these moments of reflection we will see the kindness in your eyes, hear your sweet chuckles of laughter, and feel the love for others in your heart.

We will always remember your fondness for the outdoors, your passion for sports and your dedication to academic success. Your broad and proud grin after you caught your first trout will never be forgotten. You loved to compete and strive for the best in all sports that you played. You loved to win, yet your sense of fairness and integrity always prevailed.

Academically you shined so very bright. Never forgotten will be the moment when you were listening to music, watching a football game and working on your Algebra. 

When questioned about the distractions, using your Forrest Gump voice and replied, 'I have a 4.0, and that is all I am going to say about that.' Known as the go-to-guy for homework help you always found time to lend a hand. 

More importantly, you brought joy to those around you with a kind work or a gentle smile Your devotion to family and friends will serve as our inspiration to follow as we journey through life. You possessed such profound empathy for someone so young. You were so wise, loving and thoughtful.

'I am with you always.' Matthew 28:20'"

Daniel Mauser

"It is not easy to sum up the life of a son and brother. To his parents he was a first born gift with spiritual dimensions that caused us to seek a deeper life. To his sister Christine, he was a fun companion but also one who was willing to share his wisdom and knowledge. 

To his sister Madeline he will be the brother who was never known, but whose presence will always be felt. To others he will be an inspiration for how he tackled his own weaknesses and often overcame them in surprising ways.

We remember Daniel as a boy with a gentle spirit and a shy grin. Often charming and sometimes intense,; he was just coming into his own. He still saw the world through largely innocent eyes. 

He was an inquisitive and occasionally maddening adolescent who would challenge you to examine your assumptions about most everything.

In the most profound sense, however, Daniel was one who, despite difficulties, knew the ineffable sweetness of life and it was part of him. It was our great blessing to have had him as a member of our family."

Daniel Lee Rohrbough

"March 2, 1984 – April 20, 1999

What will the world miss?

A precious gift from God with an engaging smile and beautiful blue eyes that would light up the room, sensitive and caring, always quick with a comforting hug. A funny kid with an infectious laugh and a quick come back, so full of questions and wanting to know how things work. Family was important to you and always included in your life. Just beginning your journey with so much to learn, yet you taught us so much. 

We miss you.

-----

'Dad, I have a question.'

Why?

My son in a Nation that legalized the killing of innocent children in the womb; in a County where authorities would lie and cover up what they knew and what they did, in a Godless school system your life was taken…Dan, I’m sorry.

“I love you dad, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

7:00 p.m., April 19, 1999

'There is no peace,' says the Lord, 'for the wicked.' Isaiah 48:22"

Rachel Joy Scott

"Her middle name described her; she was a Joy! Her beauty reflected her kindness and compassion. A month before her death she wrote: 'I have this theory that if one person can go out of their way to show compassion, then it will start a chain reaction of the same. People will never know how far a little kindness can go.'

Rachel had a sense of destiny and purpose. She also had a premonition her life would be short. She wrote: 'Just passing by, just coming though, not staying long. I always knew this home I have will never last.' The day she died she told a teacher: 'I’m going to have an impact on the world.'

In her diary she wrote: 'I won’t be labeled as average.'

Her faith in God was expressed in a prayer she wrote:

'I want to serve you; I want to be used by you to help others.'

Her final words were testimony to her life.

When asked if she believed in God, she replied, 'You know I do!'

William “Dave” Sanders

"Born in Illinois, as a child he liked Davy Crockett, little league baseball and loved the sound of a bouncing basketball. Dave’s young life was mentored by his high school basketball coach. 

He played basketball and ran cross-country in college then began his career as a business teacher and coach. Dave encouraged students, family members and friends to become better people through kindness and encouragement. 

He inspired many people to achieve their dreams and his spirit lives on in everyone who loved him or knew him. Know that he loves you all and is with you always.

He will always be only one thought away when we need strength and comfort. We have a lifetime filled with memories of a man we are so proud to have known. So, remember Dave for how he lived; not how he died.

We are grateful for his final words: 'Tell my girls I love them,' we love you too."

Isaiah Eamon Shoels

"The love of God was first in Isaiah’s life. The love for his parents, Vonda and Michael, was the highlight of his life. His close relationship with his Grandmother Bessie showed in his respect for others. 

He loved sports, playing and joking with his family, and was taught to love others no matter how they treated him. 

Isaiah died in a room filled with hate and darkness. 

He now lives in a beautiful heavenly room filled with light and beauty. He would want you to look up and see the light, to put away the guns, hate, prejudice and pride, and see the great light that is love. 

He is one of the beautiful flowers God has picked for his Heavenly Garden, to shine and to be an everlasting light.

Isaiah, we will always miss you. We will always love you. With love from your Family and friends.

Stop doing wrong, learn to do right. —Isaiah 1:15-17

Maintain justice and do what is right. —Isaiah 56:1-2

Those who walk uprightly enter into peace. —Isaiah 57:1-2"

John Tomlin

"Born September 1, John Tomlin was a young man with a broad smile and bright eyes. As a kid he loved cars, baseball, family and God. 

As a teen he added Chevy trucks and the Green Bay Packers to that list and his love for Jesus developed in him a strong set of Christian morals.

John had a gentle disposition that parents and girlfriends dream of; the kind that didn’t need a heavy hand of discipline and that made him an old-fashioned gentleman on dates. 

But his sunny disposition could not keep him from entering what many teens enter; a dark tunnel of loneliness where God seemed far away.

John didn’t stay long in that tunnel. 

Seven months before his death he reconnected with God and rediscovered the joy of his faith. That faith sustained John with courage and strength to face evil during the last moments of his life in the Columbine High School library. 

In heaven now, John fully understands the truth of the words written long ago: 'You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.' 1 John 4:4"

Lauren Townsend

"Excerpts from Lauren’s Diary

A woman in the middle of a field of flowers kissing Jesus’ wounds. I didn’t think I could draw such a beautiful picture I did tonight. It took me only two hours. I think something was guiding me other than just my hand. That is my dream. 

When I die, I want to wake up in a field of flowers and see Jesus sitting there smiling, happy to see me, holding my hand. Then I want to kiss his wounds. 

Maybe it sounds corny, but I can’t even describe how happy I would be if I could do that. Then I would hug him, he’d kiss me on the forehead, and we would just sit there hugging in the sun with the wind blowing in our hair. 

The wind is God because God is everywhere. Just that moment is worth living many lives for.

I feel so peaceful, calm, and joyful; like I am on the verge of enlightenment. There is so much more going on here than we realize. I do think humanity is losing touch with itself and their relationship with their surroundings. 

Unfortunately it usually takes a huge trauma to get people to realize what is important and I feel that is what is going to happen to wake up everyone to get in touch with their spiritual sides. I am not afraid of death, for it is only a transition."

For, in the end all there is, is love.

Kyle Albert Velasquez

"A young man, who as a child struggled with developmental delays and learning disabilities, he knew his limitations, yet wanted to be like every other kid. He was just beginning to really like who he was. 

Kyle taught those who loved him so much about unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, perseverance, and acceptance. He was a true friend to those who chose to take the time to know him. 

He loved his brother Daniel, and family cats, ice cream, pizza, and riding his bike. He spent his time at home with his family, watching sports with dad and going to the library with mom. 

Kyle had been a student at Columbine only three months and was just beginning to spread his wings. The world around him was beginning to open up for a young boy who had struggled through school and life. But, through all his delays and difficulties he always smiled, forgave and saw the GOOD in those around him.

Kyle was and is very much loved. He will always be missed and never forgotten."

This story was originally published by Jeff Anastasio at Scripps News Denver.

The House passed a $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies in a rare Saturday session after months of failures to reach an agreement on both sides of the aisle. 

Legislation also passed that would ban TikTok in the United States if the social media platform's China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year. 

The weekend scene presented a striking display of congressional action after months of dysfunction and stalemate fueled by Republicans, who hold the majority but are deeply split over foreign aid, particularly for Ukraine as it fights Russia's invasion. Speaker Mike Johnson, putting his job on the line, is relying on Democratic support to ensure the military and humanitarian package is approved, and help flows to the U.S. allies.

There was a series of votes on three aid bills, for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific, as well as a fourth that contains several other foreign policy proposals, including a clampdown on the popular social media platform TikTok.

The aid package is largely the same as the bipartisan package put together by the Senate months ago, but splitting it into separate bills allowed lawmakers to individually support some aid and not others. 

On Friday, the House voted on procedural rules for these bills, getting more Democratic votes than it did Republican votes which is unusual for it being a Republican majority. 

The bills will now head to the Senate, where passage in the coming days is nearly assured. President Joe Biden has promised to sign it immediately.

Passage through the House would have cleared away the biggest hurdle to Biden's funding request, first made in October as Ukraine's military supplies began to run low. The GOP-controlled House, skeptical of U.S. support for Ukraine, struggled for months over what to do, first demanding that any assistance be tied to policy changes at the U.S.-Mexico border, only to immediately reject a bipartisan Senate offer along those very lines.

Reaching an endgame has been an excruciating lift for Johnson that has tested both his resolve and his support among Republicans, with a small but growing number now openly urging his removal from the speaker's office. Yet congressional leaders cast the votes at a turning point in history — an urgent sacrifice as U.S. allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to Asia.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the legislation is "an important investment in America's future. By providing approximately $50 billion that will flow directly into our defense industrial base, this bill will create good American jobs in more than 30 states even as it reinforces U.S. long-term security."

“The only thing that has kept terrorists and tyrants at bay is the perception of a strong America, that we would stand strong,” Johnson said this week. “And we will. I think that Congress is going to show that. This is a very important message that we are going to send the world."

Still, Congress has seen a stream of world leaders visit in recent months, from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, all but pleading with lawmakers to approve the aid. Globally, the delay left many questioning America's commitment to its allies.

If TikTok's China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year, legislation passed on Saturday by the House would force a ban on the popular social media platform in the United States. 

There was a series of votes on Saturday to decide on three aid bills, for Ukraine, Israel and the Indo-Pacific. 

In the language being voted on over the weekend was a fourth piece of legislation that contains multiple other foreign policy proposals, including a clampdown ByteDance, owner of the popular social media platform TikTok.

Lawmakers were trying to fast-track the efforts to push through a ban by merging the legislation with foreign aid, and it seemed to work as support appeared to increase fast, with a final vote to pass it in the early afternoon on Saturday.

The bill is framed as a national security bill, and it's in the name of national security that lawmakers want to decouple TikTok from China. The national security bill tackles issues related to Russia, China and Iran, including new sanctions against all three countries. 

The bill also allows the U.S. government to seize Russian assets and send that funding to Ukraine, targets criminal organizations trafficking fentanyl, and forces TikTok's parent company to sell the app or face a ban in the U.S.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin released a statement Saturday writing, "We have seen yet again that the troubles of our times will only worsen without strong, steady U.S. leadership to advance our core security interests."

SEE MORE: TikTok to start banning 'problematic' content from its For You feed

Republican House leaders revealed the plan this week to slip in the crackdown on TikTok — seen by some as unconventional in Washington — and move the bill as a whole forward to President Joe Biden's desk after it sat stalled in the Senate, the Washington Post reported. 

The bill, which had appeared more likely than not to pass — including with the TikTok restrictions — could be signed into law as soon as next week, the Associated Press reported. But, not all lawmakers remained confident that the app would go away, especially anytime soon. 

The latest version of the measure will now head to the Senate after a compromise was reached. 

President Biden said Saturday, "I urge the Senate to quickly send this package to my desk so that I can sign it into law."

This year, a record-breaking number of elections will take place around the world. The State Department’s Global Engagement Center has plans to help U.S. allies prevent Russian and Chinese disinformation from influencing voters. But the federal agency itself is in the midst of a quiet battle for survival.

The agency was established with a bipartisan bill that was introduced in 2016 by Republican former Sen. Rob Portman and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy. But eight years later, some Republicans accuse the GEC of suppressing conservative speech and want to block funding.

“We really are fighting the information war. And there is an information war going on in this world,” said Special Envoy James Rubin, who leads the center, which is tasked with exposing and countering foreign disinformation.

“We have a few dozen people with a relatively small budget, and we're up against a Chinese and a Russian disinformation budget that's billions of dollars,” Rubin said.

With a budget of about $61 million, the center recently exposed how Russia is flooding Africa and Latin America with conspiracy theories and how China is secretly influencing foreign news outlets.

Rubin said the Chinese have taken some lessons from the Russian playbook. 

“They have started to use bots on the internet. They have started to repeat each other's narratives and then use artificial means to exaggerate the extent to which people are believing particular narratives," he said. "So, there is no question that Russia, which has been doing disinformation for hundreds of years, has brought some unfortunate lessons to the Chinese.”

SEE MORE: House passes legislation that could lead to a TikTok ban

But some Republican lawmakers accuse the GEC of mission creep and using taxpayer dollars to undermine the speech of conservatives. Rubin said the accusations would concern him “no matter where they are coming from.”

In a lawsuit, two conservative news outlets, the Federalist and the Daily Wire, accuse the center of orchestrating “one of the most audacious, manipulative, secretive, and gravest abuses of power and infringements of First Amendment rights.” They argue that the GEC funded a project for an organization called the Global Disinformation Index, which, a year later, named their outlets as high risk for purveying disinformation, ultimately hurting their ad revenue and circulation.

The special envoy, a former journalist, suggests the GEC is prepared to make some changes to the grants it gives so that lawmakers do not cut off crucial funding.

“We didn't provide money to anybody to make any judgment about conservative viewpoints. But I'm a realist,” Rubin says. “I live in a world where Congress has to fund us. And if Congress is prepared to work with us and get the GEC reauthorized, I don't see any reason why we would want to fund an organization that they hate so much.”

Rubin says that he, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the White House are working hard to get the center reauthorized. It comes after efforts to get the GEC reauthorized earlier this year failed when Republicans objected to including it in the Senate’s Ukraine supplemental military aid package.

Sen. Chris Murphy, who helped write legislation establishing the GEC, is “actively looking” for other avenues that would allow Congress to reauthorize it, an aide to Murphy told Scripps News.

An end to the GEC’s mission would not only benefit Russia and China, said Rubin, it could also harm relationships that took years to build with other countries who the U.S. partners with to disarm foreign disinformation.

SEE MORE: Apple pulls WhatsApp and Threads from App Store in China

On this edition of “Inside the Race Weekend,” Politico White House Reporter Adam Cancryn and Politico White House and Washington Reporter Daniel Lippman join Scripps News Political Director Andrew Rafferty and host, Joe St. George to discuss Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign as a third party candidate and how his family has publicly supported President Joe Biden. 

After its midnight deadline, the Senate voted early Saturday to reauthorize a key U.S. surveillance law after divisions over whether the FBI should be restricted from using the program to search for Americans' data nearly forced the statute to lapse.

The legislation approved 60-34 with bipartisan support would extend for two years the program known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It now goes to President Joe Biden's desk to become law. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden "will swiftly sign the bill."

"In the nick of time, we are reauthorizing FISA right before it expires at midnight," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said when voting on final passage began 15 minutes before the deadline. "All day long, we persisted and we persisted in trying to reach a breakthrough and in the end, we have succeeded."

U.S. officials have said the surveillance tool, first authorized in 2008 and renewed several times since then, is crucial in disrupting terror attacks, cyber intrusions, and foreign espionage and has also produced intelligence that the U.S. has relied on for specific operations, such as the 2022 killing of al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

"If you miss a key piece of intelligence, you may miss some event overseas or put troops in harm's way," Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said. "You may miss a plot to harm the country here, domestically, or somewhere else. So in this particular case, there's real-life implications."

The proposal would renew the program, which permits the U.S. government to collect without a warrant the communications of non-Americans located outside the country to gather foreign intelligence. The reauthorization faced a long and bumpy road to final passage Friday after months of clashes between privacy advocates and national security hawks pushed consideration of the legislation to the brink of expiration.

Though the spy program was technically set to expire at midnight, the Biden administration had said it expected its authority to collect intelligence to remain operational for at least another year, thanks to an opinion earlier this month from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which receives surveillance applications.

Still, officials had said that court approval shouldn't be a substitute for congressional authorization, especially since communications companies could cease cooperation with the government if the program is allowed to lapse.

House before the law was set to expire, U.S. officials were already scrambling after two major U.S. communication providers said they would stop complying with orders through the surveillance program, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Attorney General Merrick Garland praised the reauthorization and reiterated how "indispensable" the tool is to the Justice Department.

"This reauthorization of Section 702 gives the United States the authority to continue to collect foreign intelligence information about non-U.S. persons located outside the United States, while at the same time codifying important reforms the Justice Department has adopted to ensure the protection of Americans' privacy and civil liberties," Garland said in a statement Saturday.

SEE MORE: House votes on Israel, Ukraine aid could affect Speaker Johnson's job

But despite the Biden administration's urging and classified briefings to senators this week on the crucial role they say the spy program plays in protecting national security, a group of progressive and conservative lawmakers who were agitating for further changes had refused to accept the version of the bill the House sent over last week.

The lawmakers had demanded that Majority Leader Chuck Schumer allow votes on amendments to the legislation that would seek to address what they see as civil liberty loopholes in the bill. In the end, Schumer was able to cut a deal that would allow critics to receive floor votes on their amendments in exchange for speeding up the process for passage.

The six amendments ultimately failed to garner the necessary support on the floor to be included in the final passage.

One of the major changes detractors had proposed centered around restricting the FBI's access to information about Americans through the program. Though the surveillance tool only targets non-Americans in other countries, it also collects communications of Americans when they are in contact with those targeted foreigners. Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the chamber, had been pushing a proposal that would require U.S. officials to get a warrant before accessing American communications.

"If the government wants to spy on my private communications or the private communications of any American, they should be required to get approval from a judge, just as our Founding Fathers intended in writing the Constitution," Durbin said.

In the past year, U.S. officials have revealed a series of abuses and mistakes by FBI analysts in improperly querying the intelligence repository for information about Americans or others in the U.S., including a member of Congress and participants in the racial justice protests of 2020 and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

But members on both the House and Senate intelligence committees as well as the Justice Department warned requiring a warrant would severely handicap officials from quickly responding to imminent national security threats.

"I think that is a risk that we cannot afford to take with the vast array of challenges our nation faces around the world," Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Friday.

Dutch authorities say the popular city Amsterdam is overrun with tourism. They want to curb it by halting new hotel construction and reducing annual hotel stay numbers there. 

New local council rules in Amsterdam would stop properties from raising the limits on numbers of beds and would only allow new hotels to be built if another property closes, Euronews reported.

Celebrations in the city like the recent one for King's Day can bring is big tourist numbers, but they can also bring in littering, increased pickpocketing, alcohol consumption in the streets and noise, Amsterdam's city council said. 

Efforts to control tourism numbers are meant to make residents of the city more comfortable. 

SEE MORE: Nordic countries top happiest places on Earth, while US drops on list

City authorities have also decided to cut the number of riverboat cruises allowed to enter the capital, from about 2,300 that were docked there in 2023 to about 1,150 by 2028, Euronews reported. 

Travel publications like Travel Pulse said certain seasons can bring in an overwhelming influx of visitors to the city, which is known for liberal drug policies and its Red-Light district.

In 2023 the World Economic Forum published a report looking at the problem of over-tourism around the globe. In it, leaders spoke about a spike in excessive tourism after the deep lull brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

In cities like Barcelona, an energy of anti-tourism sentiment has permeated among residents. The WEF described the surge of tourism as "rapid" and "unyielding."

Governments have been encouraged to be decisive and firm about how they develop policies to response to issues of high tourist demand, the WEF said in the report. 

Meet Messi. His handlers say "he was clearly born to work for the TSA," and said when he wasn't screening passengers he enjoyed watching airplanes and playing in the grass at the popular Gravelly Point field, near D.C.'s Reagan National Airport. 

This good boy is now retiring from service with the Transportation Security Administration as one of hundreds of the canines that train each year to work as passenger screening agents at U.S. airports.

Messi and dogs like him spend about 16 weeks learning how to adapt to the hustle and bustle of busy airports, and to meet their handlers, with whom they'll form deep work bonds.  

SEE MORE: Dozens of animals rescued from Maryland house fire

The TSA says there are more than 1,000 canine handler teams that deploy to support screening and security operations around the country. Some of them, like Messi, are trained as explosion detection dogs at Joint Base San Antonio - Lackland in San Antonio, Texas. 

After a busy day Messi would enjoy playing with a tennis ball. 

Now he will enjoy a life of fun and rest, and can play with his toys at any time, and not just after a day of sniffing around for traces of explosive materials, the TSA said. 

As part of his retirement party, Messi had his "Do Not Pet" patch removed from his harness, officially marking the end of his professional career. He also received a pet-friendly cup cake to celebrate. 

The TSA said his handler Peter chose to adopt him in his retirement so they don't have to be separated after the bond they've formed. 

TikTok will let you mess up once, maybe even a couple times, but repeating your mistakes a little too often is going to cost you.

The social media platform announced Wednesday it's updating its standards for what's allowed on the algorithmically-generated For You feed, which provides users a personalized experience with videos and creators the app believes they would like. 

But come May 17, those who create content the company considers "fine if seen occasionally but problematic if viewed in clusters" won't be eligible to be on it, making their account temporarily ineligible from being on the FYF. TikTok will also make their content harder to find in search, thereby reducing a person's ability to reach a larger audience in multiple ways.

In its announcement, TikTok specified some types of "repetitive content patterns" it will start interrupting to ensure they're viewed less often. Those include "dieting, extreme fitness, sexual suggestiveness, sadness (such as statements of hopelessness, or sharing sad quotes), and overgeneralized mental health information (such as a quiz that claims to diagnose someone)."

Its policy also makes any TikTok users under the age of 16 ineligible from reaching the FYF at any time.

SEE MORE: What is the 'Oatzempic' trend, and are its social media claims true?

Creators who go against TikTok's FYF standards will be given a warning strike on their first violation, but the next will be an actual strike, which can add up to a permanent ban, the app's head of operations and trust and safety, Adam Presser, said in another TikTok blog post.

If users think a mistake has been made in revoking their FYF eligibility or account suspension, they'll be able to appeal, but zero-tolerance policies like age violations or incitement to violence won't get reminders or appeals, Presser wrote.

And if you're now worried you might be close to being banned from the app right now without knowing it, future you won't have to worry. TikTok is rolling out an "Account Check" feature that will allow users to "quickly audit" their last 30 posts to see if they're in danger of any strikes from violations. 

TikTok also released Wednesday a Creator Code of Conduct, which it says will take effect in the coming weeks. Presser said it includes standards the company expects creators involved in its features and campaigns to follow "on and off-platform." 

"We believe that being a part of these programs is an opportunity that comes with additional responsibilities, and this code will also help provide creators with additional reassurance that other participants are meeting these standards too," Presser wrote. 

The revised standards come as TikTok has increasingly come under scrutiny for how it protects its users, particularly younger ones, from harmful content and its effects. 

In November, an Amnesty International investigation found TikTok's FYF draws young people into "rabbit holes" of potentially dangerous content, "including videos that romanticize and encourage depressive thinking, self-harm and suicide." This, its report said, risks worsening existing mental health challenges.

The policy shift also comes as Congress considers a potential nationwide ban of the app unless it separates from its Chinese parent company ByteDance. Some lawmakers fear TikTok could become a national security issue if ByteDance had to divest its data on American users because of Chinese law. The bill still needs to clear the Senate.

In a sign of how a future might look in which robots and humans move about in our world, a U.S. company said it would upgrade its humanoid robot with a new model that was designed to have more real-world commercial and industrial applications. 

Boston Dynamics said in a statement its hydraulic Atlas robot model would be retired and replaced with a new fully electric Atlas robot "designed for real-world applications."

The company said it began putting research and development resources into humanoid robots around 10 years ago, and has seen other players come onto the scene in that time. Boston Dynamics said it will work with Hyundai to test new applications for its Atlas model. 

A spokesperson for the company said the now-retired humanoid robot would be put in their office lobby museum with other robots that were decommissioned, the New York Times reported. 

SEE MORE: 4-legged robot to help deter wildlife strikes at Alaska airport

The company posted a video online this week showing some of the incredible movement capabilities that the Atlas model had in some of their tests — including some of the dramatic failures it experienced at times.

"For almost a decade, Atlas has sparked our imagination, inspired the next generations of roboticists, and leapt over technical barriers in the field," the company said. "Now it's time for our hydraulic Atlas robot to kick back and relax. Take a look back at everything we've accomplished with the Atlas platform to date."

The image of a world where robots become more advanced is exciting for some, and not so much for others. Stanford noted in a brief history of robotics that some have historically perceived robots to be "dangerous technological ventures that will someday lead to the demise of the human race."

Boston Dynamics, for its part, publishes a code of ethics that states its robots should be trustworthy, must remain unweaponized and must not violate existing civil rights or privacy laws.

Fentanyl's silent toll

The U.S. Government calls fentanyl the most dangerous drug threat the United States has ever faced. For the past year we've been investigating the silent toll it's been taking on this country's most vulnerable: Our children.

When we discovered a kindergartener overdosed on fentanyl in her own California classroom, we started digging into the shocking case. And the further we probed, the more we learned of problems that could be leaving other children at risk.

Protecting children from fentanyl

When Addison Mott started to show signs that she was sick in her classroom, no one immediately recognized that she had been exposed to fentanyl, and when she first got to the hospital, she wasn't tested for it. That's something we found multiple times in the hundreds of fentanyl cases we reviewed in the last year. Now some states are requiring hospitals to screen for fentanyl every time they run a standard test for drugs.

The troubled past of the V-22 Osprey

It's been called the most controversial U.S. military aircraft ever built. The Osprey is often considered a marvel of technology, but it has claimed the lives of more than 60 U.S. service members in 30 years. 

After a crash in Japan that killed eight airmen last year, the Osprey was grounded by the military. But this past march it was cleared to fly again — despite lingering questions about its safety.

SEE MORE: Stolen mail and East Palestine's diaspora | Scripps News Investigates

It's a case that started in a public park in southern Oregon, and now it's going in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. The decision the justices make could impact how homelessness is handled across the country — including whether to give law enforcement the ability to cite or arrest people for sleeping on public property.

Every Thursday morning, Cassy Leach and her fellow volunteers, many of them health care workers, drive food, clothes and supplies between different parks in the southern Oregon town of Grants Pass, a 50-minute drive north of the California border.

"We follow up with people individually and do case management services and meet them where they're at to provide resources," she said.

The goal: use food and conversation to build trust with unhoused people that will lead them to accept services like health care, addiction treatment and housing.

Leach explained what motivated her: "These people live a mile from me and the fact that they don't have running water, where they're camped at. The bathrooms are closed down. Being able to take care of a wound is darn near impossible with no water."

Brian Simmons is a real estate agent who's lived in Grants Pass for the last 30 years. Over the last few years, potential clients have been asking more and more about the town's unsheltered population who have taken refuge in cars and tents, spread throughout 20 public parks. 

"I don't know if there was any real point where it all of a sudden became an issue. It seems like it was just a very slow evolution to get to where we're at today," he said. "That's one of the more common questions I get is like, 'Hey, how is the homeless population really? Is it, is it really that big of a problem?'"

Now in the town of 40,000 people, the homelessness crisis is the focus of a Supreme Court case — Grants Pass v. Johnson. In it, the unhoused plaintiff says the way the city treated homeless people in its parks was unconstitutional. Arguments in the Supreme Court are scheduled for Monday, and depending on the outcome, law enforcement across the country could be allowed to use the law to punish unhoused people for sleeping on public lands. 

That's something that the Oregon Law Center, which represents the plaintiff, says could make the homeless crisis in America more dire. 

"Do we want to live in communities where we all help each other to try to find a safe place to live? Or do we want to live in a community where we punish and arrest and jail the victims of our failed housing policies because they have nowhere else to go?" said Ed Johnson, the director of litigation at the Oregon Law Center which is representing the homeless.

Currently, the 2018 9th Circuit Court decision Martin v. Boise found that while camping on public property can be made illegal, citing or arresting people for sleeping on public property equates to cruel and unusual punishment if they have nowhere else to go. 

Leaders from both sides of the political spectrum say this decision has taken a crucial tool away from municipalities where homelessness issues are increasing faster than resources can handle.

Aaron Hisel, a former police officer, is now an attorney representing the city.

"Some of the most rewarding days as a cop were the times where somebody came back to the station a year later and said, 'I just wanted you to know I've been clean since the day you arrested me. You saved my life.' And we're removing those levers from the system," he said.

Shayna Mueller, 35, lives with her dog in a tent in Grants Pass, bouncing between public parks. On the day we spoke, she was told by police to move within 72 hours to another park. This happens twice a week.

"We have nowhere else to go. We are here because we have to be here," she said.

Grants Pass does have a privately run shelter, but it has limited beds, doesn't allow dogs and requires daily attendance at religious services.

Mueller says, "I want to have a job. I want to have things just like everybody else. But it's just so hard and expensive and everything."

SEE MORE: DC charity helps those who are homeless get housing

The United Auto Workers’ ambitious drive to expand its reach to nonunion factories across the South and elsewhere is facing a key test Friday night as workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, finish voting on whether to join the union.

The UAW’s ranks in the auto industry have dwindled over the years as foreign-based companies with nonunion U.S. plants have sold increasingly more vehicles.

Twice in recent years, workers at the Chattanooga plant have rejected union membership. Most recently, they handed the UAW a narrow defeat in 2019 as federal prosecutors were breaking up a bribery-and-embezzlement scandal at the union.

But this time, the UAW is operating under new leadership, directly elected by its members for the first time and basking in a successful confrontation with Detroit's major automakers. The union's pugnacious new president, Shawn Fain, was elected on a platform of cleaning up after the scandal and turning more confrontational with automakers. An emboldened Fain, backed by President Joe Biden, led the union in a series of strikes last fall against Detroit’s automakers that resulted in lucrative new contracts.

The new contracts raised union wages by a substantial one-third, arming Fain and his organizers with enticing new offers to present to workers at Volkswagen and other companies.

“I’m very confident,” said Isaac Meadows, an assembly line worker in Chattanooga who helped lead the union organizing drive at the 3.8 million-square-foot plant, which manufactures Atlas SUVs and ID.4 electric vehicles. “The excitement is really high right now. We’ve put a lot of work into it, a lot of face-to-face conversations with co-workers from our volunteer committee.”

Volkswagen says it is neutral on the issue of whether the plant should be unionized. But in a presentation for reporters this week, the company listed examples of how it pays and treats its Chattanooga workers well.

Six Southern governors, including Tennessee's Bill Lee, warned the workers in a joint statement this week that joining the UAW could cost them their jobs and threaten the region's economic progress.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit who studies the UAW, said there is a good chance that this election could bring the union a historic victory. Public opinion, Masters said, is now generally more aligned with unions than it was in the past.

To approve membership, though, the workers in Chattanooga will have to look past the warnings that joining the union, with the accompanying higher wages, would lead to job losses. Since the UAW's new contracts were signed in the fall with General Motors, Ford and Stellantis, all three companies have cut a relatively small number of factory positions. But Ford CEO Jim Farley has said that his company will have to rethink where it builds future vehicles because of the strike.

“While the UAW's reputation has improved as a result of new leadership and contracts, it's still associated with a decline in the auto industry,” Masters said.

SEE MORE: Postal Service expands employee safety efforts amid thefts, robberies

Shortly after the Detroit contracts were ratified, Volkswagen and other nonunion companies handed their workers big pay raises. Fain characterized those wage increases as the “UAW bump" and asserted that they were intended to keep the union out of the plants.

Last fall, Volkswagen raised production worker pay by 11%, lifting top base wages to $32.40 per hour, or just over $67,000 per year. The average production worker makes about $60,000 a year, excluding benefits and an attendance bonus. VW said its pay exceeds the median household income for the Chattanooga area, which was $54,480 last May, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

But under the UAW contracts, top production workers at GM, for instance, now earn $36 an hour, or about $75,000 a year excluding benefits and profit sharing, which ranged from $10,400 at Ford to $13,860 at Stellantis this year. By the end of the contract in 2028, top-scale GM workers would make over $89,000.

Zach Costello, a worker who trains new employees at the Volkswagen plant, said pay shouldn't be benchmarked against typical wages in the Chattanooga area.

“How about we decide what we're worth, and we get paid what we're worth?” he asked.

VW asserts that its factories are safer than the industry average, based on data reported to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And the company contends that it considers workers’ preferences in scheduling. It noted that it recently agreed to change the day that third-shift workers start their week so that they have Fridays and Saturdays off.

But Meadows, whose job involves preparing vehicles for the assembly line after the auto bodies are painted, said the company adds overtime or sends workers home early whenever it wants.

“People are just kind of fed up with it,” he said.

VW, he argued, doesn't report all injuries to the government, instead often blaming pre-existing conditions that a worker might have. The union has filed complaints of unfair labor practices, including allegations that the company barred workers from discussing unions during work time and restricted the distribution of union materials.

Volkswagen disputed the union's allegations and said it properly reports injuries and supports the workers' right to vote on union representation.

If the union prevails in the vote at the VW plant, it would mark the first time that the UAW has represented workers at a foreign-owned automaking plant in the South. It would not, however, be the first union auto assembly plant in the South. The UAW represents workers at two Ford assembly plants in Kentucky and two GM factories in Tennessee and Texas, as well as some heavy-truck manufacturing plants.

SEE MORE: Southern governors pressure autoworkers against voting for unions

Dick Van Dyke is vying for a historic Daytime Emmy at age 98.

The actor was nominated Friday as guest performer in a daytime drama series for his part as amnesiac Timothy Robicheaux on Peacock's "Days of Our Lives."

Van Dyke is the oldest Daytime Emmy nominee. Producer Norman Lear was 100 when he received his final Primetime Emmy nomination in 2022 and died the next year.

Among those Van Dyke is up against is Australian actor Guy Pearce of Amazon Freevee's "Neighbours."

Van Dyke has won four Primetime Emmys, including three in the 1960s for his classic comedy series "The Dick Van Dyke Show."

Actor-singer Selena Gomez is nominated in the culinary series category for her Food Network special "Selena + Chef: Home for the Holidays." Also nominated in that category is Food Network's "Valerie's Home Cooking," the show hosted by actor Valerie Bertinelli that ended last year.

SEE MORE: Quinta Brunson becomes 1st Black woman to win this Emmy in 41 years

CBS is ending "The Talk" after its 15th season later this year. The show's Akbar Gbajabiamila, Amanda Kloots, Natalie Morales, Jerry O'Connell and Sheryl Underwood were nominated for daytime talk series host.

The lead actress nominees are: Tamara Braun of "Days of Our Lives," Finola Hughes and Cynthia Watros of "General Hospital," Katherine Kelly Lang and Annika Noelle of "The Bold and the Beautiful" and Michelle Stafford of "The Young and the Restless."

The lead actor nominees are: Eric Braeden of "The Young and the Restless," Scott Clifton, Thorsten Kaye and John McCook of "The Bold and the Beautiful" and Eric Martsolf of "Days of Our Lives."

The Daytime Emmys will be presented June 7 in Los Angeles and air live on CBS. The show is returning to its usual schedule after being postponed until last December because of strikes by Hollywood actors and writers. The hosts and Lifetime Achievement honorees will be announced later.

Staring down a decision so consequential it could alter the course of history — but also end his own career — House Speaker Mike Johnson prayed for guidance.

A conservative Christian, the speaker wrestled over whether to lead the House in approving $95 billion in desperately needed war-time aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, which many in his own Republican majority opposed — some so strongly they would try to boot him from office.

Or, he could do nothing, halting the flow of U.S. aid and potentially saving his own job but ensuring his place as the House speaker who led America’s retreat from the global stage and left Ukraine to fend for itself as it loses ground against the Russian invasion.

As Johnson met with colleagues late into the night this week at the speaker's office, they prayed on it.

“And then he told me the next day: I want to be on the right side of history,” said Rep. Michael McCaul, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Not quite six months on the job, Johnson’s leadership will help determine if the U.S. is able to hold its standing as what the speaker has called a “beacon of light” for the world, or if the military and humanitarian aid is left to crumble at a pivotal moment for the country, its allies and the speaker’s own livelihood. Voting is expected this weekend.

“He's learning," said Newt Gingrich, the former Republican House speaker.

Gingrich praised Johnson for not being cowed by the hard-right Republicans seeking to remove him from office, and instead reaching into his own deep well of beliefs as a Ronald Reagan-era Republican with an expansive view of the role of the U.S., its allies and his own speakership to make a decision.

“This is the U.S. House. This is not a political playground,” Gingrich said. "We’re talking about real history, we’re talking about whether Russia potentially occupies Ukraine.”

Johnson tumbled into the speaker's office last fall, a relative unknown who emerged only after a chaotic internal party search to replace Kevin McCarthy, who was the first speaker in U.S. history to be booted from office.

Almost an accidental speaker, Johnson had no training and little time to prepare. One of his main accomplishments was helping to lead Donald Trump’s failed legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

From the start, the question hanging over the fourth-term Louisiana lawmaker was apparent: Would Johnson become a speaker with a firm grasp of the gavel, utilizing the power of the office that is second in the line of succession to the president?

Or would the House speaker, who portrays himself as a “servant leader” in the Christian tradition, be beholden to the unruly, essentially ungovernable Republican majority, many aligned with former President Trump?

“This is a Churchill or Chamberlain moment,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, referring to British leaders from the World War II era.

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

After months of dithering delays over the Ukraine aid, Johnson appeared this week determined to move past the populist far-right flank, and rely on Democrats to push the package forward, highly unusual in the deeply polarized House.

He had met recently with Trump, who objects to much overseas aid and has invited Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” in Ukraine, presenting his plan and avoiding public criticism from the former president.

Trump also gave Johnson a needed nod of support by panning the effort from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the presidential hopeful’s strongest allies in Congress, to evict the speaker.

In return, Johnson told Trump he could be the “most consequential president yet” if he is returned to the White House.

At the same time, Johnson has been speaking privately with President Biden, who gave Johnson a boost by quickly endorsing his foreign aid plan.

Still, what used to be considered the way Congress worked, the shared commitment to bipartisan compromise, has become such a political liability that more Republicans, including Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Paul Gosar of Arizona, said they would join Greene's effort to oust Johnson. Some others said he should simply resign.

“I don’t think he’s being courageous. I think he’s fallen right in line with the swamp," said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., a hardliner who voted to oust McCarthy and is considering the same for Johnson.

During his short term as speaker, Johnson has made a practice of convening lawmakers behind closed doors at his Capitol office for what are often long meetings. What some view as maddening sessions of endless arguing, shrinking the power of the speakership, others appreciate as him listening to lawmakers.

As crowds of spring tourists ushered past his office this week, Johnson holed up with lawmakers. One meeting dragged until midnight. The next day he displayed an unusual resolve.

"History judges us for what we do," Johnson said during an impromptu press conference in Statuary Hall.

“I could make a selfish decision and do something that’s different, but I'm doing here what I believe to be the right thing,” he said.

Johnson disclosed that his son is headed to the Naval Academy this fall.

“To put it bluntly, I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys,” he said.

“This is a live-fire exercise for me, as it is for so many American families. This is not a game. This is not a joke.”

With the threat of his removal intensifying, Johnson said he would "let the chips fall where they may” on his own job.

On Friday, an overwhelming majority of the House, more than 300 lawmakers, more Democrats than Republicans, voted to push the package toward passage.

Rep. Steve Womack, R-Ark., said of Johnson: “I, for one, am just very proud of what we would all refer to as a profile in courage in the face of these kinds of threats.”

But Democrats said they were baffled and saddened it took Johnson so long to do what they see as the right thing.

“This is a profile in delay,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

Some Democrats are saying that, unlike their refusal to help McCarthy stay in office, they would vote to save Johnson's job — if he wants it.

A growing list of Republican House speakers, starting with Gingrich, were chased from office or, like John Boehner and Paul Ryan, simply exited early.

We know NASA mostly for launching rockets and humans into outer space, but for about 60 years the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has also played a vital role in understanding the spaceship humans call home-planet Earth.

Data from NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite will provide insight into ocean health, air quality, and the effects of a changing climate.

In the lead-up to Earth Day, which falls on April 22, NASA officials in Washington on Friday documented how climate change is affecting the planet, this time using data from a program that watches for changes in the ocean and the air from space. Earth Day draws attention to negative effects human activity has on the environment and asks people to focus on things they can do to better care for the planet.

"That is our home, our planet. It's the only planet we have and we want to keep it," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Nelson, along with two officials from NASA's Earth Science division, showed some of the first pictures from the agency's PACE satellite. PACE stands for plankton, aerosol, cloud and ocean ecosystem. The instrument records data from all of the elements that make up the acronym to offer information on how humanity is affecting Earth's climate.

Nelson, a former astronaut and a U.S. senator serving Florida, added his time viewing the blue planet from space above made him become "more of an environmentalist when I went into space."

According to NASA, the PACE satellite is located about 250 miles above Earth and was launched into orbit back in February. "We have an unprecedented view of the Earth," said Tom Wagner, associate director of earth action for the Earth Science Division at NASA. 

Instruments on board will "collect data to help researchers better understand how the ocean and atmosphere exchange carbon dioxide, measure atmospheric variables associated with air quality and climate, and monitor ocean health by studying phytoplankton — tiny plants and algae."

Climate change is affecting Earth's oceans in many ways — from sea level rise to marine heat waves to a loss of biodiversity. NASA says PACE allows researchers to study those effects on phytoplankton, which play a key role in the global carbon cycle by absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converting it into their cellular material. The tiny organisms are the base of larger aquatic and global ecosystems. "Some of the tiniest things that have the greatest impact," said Karen St. Germain, the director of NASA Earth Science.

Research has connected human activity, like industrial scale farming, to algae blooms. Where the Mississippi empties into the Gulf of Mexico, run-off from silt laden with phosphorous substrates from plant fertilizers causes areas to bloom full of algae, but the effect is that hyper-blooms eat up oxygen in the water, causing what oceanographers call "dead zones," areas in which fish and other wildlife can't exist.

PACE can observe the effects wildfire and pollutants that make up particulate matter and aerosols have on the climate. It also looks at key variables in cloud formation and can examine how the ocean affects topography.

NASA says the observations improve monitoring of ocean health, air quality, and climate change."That's why we are trying to offer NASA's expertise and the other agencies of the federal government to give us the information that we need in order so that we can be better stewards of what we have," Nelson said.

PACE data is open to scientists around the world to research, and perhaps better understand humanity's impact on Earth.

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

As the nation prepares for trillions of red-eyed bugs known as periodical cicadas to emerge, it's worth noting that they're not just annoying, noisy pests — if prepared properly, they can also be tasty to eat.

Blocks away from such French Quarter fine-dining stalwarts as Antoine's and Brennan's, the Audubon Insectarium in New Orleans has long served up an array of alternative, insect-based treats at its "Bug Appetit" cafe overlooking the Mississippi River. "Cinnamon Bug Crunch," chili-fried waxworms, and crispy, cajun-spiced crickets are among the menu items.

Periodical cicadas stay buried for years, until they surface and take over a landscape. Depending on the variety, the emergence happens every 13 or 17 years. This year two groups are expected to emerge at the same time averaging around 1 million per acre over hundreds of millions of acres across parts of 16 states in the Midwest and South.

They emerge when the ground warms to 64 degrees (17.8 degrees Celsius), which is happening earlier than it used to because of climate change, entomologists said. The bugs are brown at first but darken as they mature.

Recently, Zack Lemann, the Insectarium's curator of animal collections, has been working up cicada dishes that may become part of the menu. He donned a chef's smock this week to show a couple of them off, including a green salad with apple, almonds, blueberry vinaigrette — and roasted cicadas. Fried cicada nymphs were dressed on top with a warm mixture of creole mustard and soy sauce.

"I do dragonflies in a similar manner," Lemann said as he used tweezers to plop nymphs into a container of flour before cooking them in hot oil.

SEE MORE: Do cicadas bite? Prepare for spring's incoming swarm with these tips

Depending on the type and the way they are prepared, cooked cicadas taste similar to toasted seeds or nuts. The Insectarium isn't the first to promote the idea of eating them. Over the years, they have appeared on a smattering of menus and in cookbooks, including titles like "Cicada-Licious" from the University of Maryland in 2004.

"Every culture has things that they love to eat and, maybe, things that are taboo or things that people just sort of, wrinkle their nose and frown their brow at," Lemann said. "And there's no reason to do that with insects when you look at the nutritional value, their quality on the plate, how they taste, the environmental benefits of harvesting insects instead of dealing with livestock."

Lemann has been working to make sure the Bug Appetit cafe has legal clearance to serve wild-caught cicadas while he works on lining up sources for the bugs. He expects this spring's unusual emergence of two huge broods of cicadas to heighten interest in insects in general, and in the Insectarium — even though the affected area doesn't include southeast Louisiana.

"I can't imagine, given the fact that periodical cicadas are national news, that we won't have guests both local and from outside New Orleans asking us about that," said Lemann. "Which is another reason I hope to have enough to serve it at least a few times to people."

Three months after moving in with her new husband, Gypsy Rose Blanchard has formally filed for divorce and moved in with her parents.

Court TV obtained a copy of the divorce petition, filed by Gypsy Rose, who had legally changed her last name after marrying Ryan Anderson. The two married while Blanchard was serving time in prison for murdering her mother. She was released after serving less than 10 years in prison on Dec. 28, 2023.

SEE MORE: Reports: Gypsy Rose Blanchard splits from husband, leaves social media

The divorce petition lists the couple's wedding date as July 21, 2022, and says they were married in Livingston County, Missouri, which is where the Chillicothe Correctional Center is located. While the two lived together after her release, the filing says that the couple separated on March 25, and have lived apart since then.

Blanchard reportedly posted an announcement about the split to her private Facebook page, saying that she had decided to move in with her parents.

In her filing, Blanchard says that the couple has no children and that she is not pregnant, and requests that the court order Ryan to pay her spousal support, "because the Petitioner is in need and the Defendant has an ability to pay and she is not at fault in the dissolution of the marriage." 

The petition further states that Ryan "is not entitled to final spousal support as he is at fault in the dissolution of the marriage," but offers no further detail about the reasons for the split.

Blanchard requested a restraining order in her filing, which the court granted. The restraining order does not suggest any physical violence, but rather is focused on the couple's finances and prohibits either party from hiding or disposing of assets before the case is settled.

It's unclear what assets the couple may have. 

Before her release from prison, Blanchard wrote a memoir which she self-published upon her release, called "Released: Conversations on the Eve of Freedom." She was also the focus of the Lifetime docuseries, "The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard."

Despite joining social media and posting prolifically immediately after her release, Blanchard deleted all of her public social media accounts before filing for divorce. 

People magazine has reported Blanchard has been seen recently with her ex-fiancé, with whom she got matching tattoos.

This story was originally published by Lauren Silver at Court TV. 

From TV's "Law and Order: SVU" to O.J.'s infamous white Bronco chase, Americans have been watching police chases for years. But federal data shows more people were killed in 2022 in police pursuits than during any year on record.

There were 577 deaths nationwide, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That's a 40% jump compared to 2019.

"It's 577 too many," according to Daryl Washington. 

Washington is representing the family of Andre Craig, a 57-year-old Fort Worth, Texas, man who was killed during a high-speed police chase.

"Andre wasn't doing anything wrong. I mean, Andre was driving and he was abiding by the laws, it was the officer who violated the law," Washington said. 

Craig was not involved in the chase — a Fort Worth police officer ran a red light in pursuit of a stolen vehicle and collided with Craig's car.

Washington has filed a wrongful death suit in reaction to the accident, but he says he still doesn't have access to Fort Worth's full pursuit policy.

The Fort Worth PD is fighting in court to keep parts of the policy under wraps, claiming that releasing it could give criminals an upper hand.

Washington says, "The excuses and the justifications that they're giving is deflection, I think they don't want to come out and say, 'You know what, the way we've been doing this is bad.'"

The policies for police pursuits vary from department to department, but in a new report the Police Executive Research Forum says chases should be "rare" and only used for a "limited and serious set of circumstances."

Washington agrees.

"It should be life or death," he said. "If we talk about a stolen vehicle, that's not worth somebody's life, because that's gonna get replaced, or that car is going to be found. We can't ever bring somebody's life back."

Fort Worth police told Scripps News in an email they have wrapped up their investigation into the incident and will be submitting their findings to the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office "in short order."

SEE MORE: Supreme Court rejects appeal from BLM activist over protest lawsuit

It was supposed to be a typical post-sports dinner: Aspen Lamfers headed over to a Wendy's in her Michigan city and ate a hamburger, chicken nuggets and French fries after her team's softball practice. Today, that meal Aspen ate at 11 years old has continued to leave its mark, and her family is taking legal action because of it.

In a lawsuit filed against Wendy's parent company, Meritage Hospitality Group, Aspen's family alleges the Wendy's in Jenison gave her a STEC infection, which occurs when a person eats something contaminated by certain E. coli. A week after her first onset of symptoms, Aspen was diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, a rare complication from STEC infection that can be life-threatening. 

She was soon diagnosed with Stage 3 acute kidney injury/failure, acute encephalopathy — meaning neurological damage — and hyperglycemia from pancreas damage. She had seizures, transient paralysis on her left side, consistent vomiting and other challenges as a result, the lawsuit said. 

Records included in the complaint assert that the Wendy's location knew it was in violation of multiple health codes that led Aspen to contract the STEC infection and worsening symptoms thereafter. One Ottawa County Health Department inspection listed in the complaint occurred days before Aspen ate there on Aug. 1, 2022, and lists 17 citations, including moldy food, dirty utensils, undated produce and ineffective sanitizing solutions. 

Aspen's mom, who is listed as the plaintiff in the suit, claims this amounts to Wendy's being negligent in keeping its restaurant safe for customers, leaving her daughter to have permanent impairments. 

The suit says Aspen has continued to have erratic blood sugar levels since her hospital discharge, causing her to now be diagnosed as diabetic. She's also been diagnosed with focal epilepsy and has had seizures after missing just one dose of anti-seizure medication, which her mom states will affect her future ability to have children as taking the medicine while pregnant can cause serious birth defects. 

Aspen has also continued to be on blood pressure medication due to persistent hypertension, she'll likely have weakness on her left-side for the rest of her life and she has lasting cognitive deficits that have caused a significant decline in her academic abilities. Before her infection, the suit states Aspen scored in the 70th percentile for math on a state assessment test. After, she scored in the 9th percentile.

The Lamfers are asking Wendy's for $20 million to recover all the damages they have incurred since Aspen became infected, including past and future "extreme pain and suffering," health complications, "loss of earning capacity" and "loss of life expectancy." 

As of now, the family's attorney says Wendy's hasn't been cooperative with any of the family's claims, with or without the law being involved.

"Aspen's life has been forever changed because of this blatant disregard for the health and safety of the public. Despite our best efforts, Meritage Hospitality Group has been unwilling or unable to engage in any effort to resolve Aspen's claims without litigation," Tom Worsfold told Scripps News.

Wendy's hasn't responded to Scripps News' request for comment as of Friday afternoon. 

The case is related to a known E. coli outbreak that the CDC linked to Wendy's restaurants in several states in 2022. 

The federal agency said more than 80% of sick people who public health officials interviewed had reported eating at a Wendy's restaurant before getting sick, many of them eating sandwiches with romaine lettuce. To note, Aspen Lamfers did not eat lettuce at the Jenison Wendy's.

SEE MORE: Wendy's Pulls Lettuce From Sandwiches Amid E. Coli Outbreak

However, these interviews didn't lead officials to track down which ingredient caused the outbreak, and there wasn't enough information collected before the outbreak ended to determine the source either, the CDC said.

Data shows 109 people were sickened in the outbreak, but the CDC says the actual number is likely higher due to many people not testing for E. coli and/or recovering without medical care. Of the 109 people, 67 lived in Michigan, as do the Lamfers.

The family's lawsuit states the OCHD connected an unusual increase in STEC infections in local hospitals to the Jenison Wendy's 11 days after Aspen ate there, the same day she was diagnosed with HUS. 

The connection prompted the health department to investigate and perform another inspection in which they found employees not washing their hands or changing their gloves, a can of Raid pesticide in the kitchen, containers used to store raw beef filled with dirty water and more. 

"The large number of violations indicate that food safety is at risk, as they are cited throughout the facility and relate to most aspects of food preparation and service," the inspection note states.

After the health department's visit, the Jenison Wendy's "voluntarily shut down due to illness complaints and potential outbreak" of E. coli infections, the lawsuit says. Less than a week later, it reopened under new management, a day after Aspen had to have her body iced to reduce a sky-high fever.

The rights of LGBTQ+ students will be protected by federal law and victims of campus sexual assault will gain new safeguards under rules finalized Friday by the Biden administration.

The new provisions are part of a revised Title IX regulation issued by the Education Department, fulfilling a campaign pledge by President Joe Biden. He had promised to dismantle rules created by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who added new protections for students accused of sexual misconduct.

Notably absent from Biden’s policy, however, is any mention of transgender athletes.

The administration originally planned to include a new policy forbidding schools from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes, but that provision was put on hold. The delay is widely seen as a political maneuver during an election year in which Republicans have rallied around bans on transgender athletes in girls' sports.

Instead, President Biden is officially undoing sexual assault rules put in place by his predecessor and current election-year opponent, former President Donald Trump. The final policy drew praise from victims' advocates, while Republicans said it erodes the rights of accused students.

The new rule makes “crystal clear that everyone can access schools that are safe, welcoming and that respect their rights," Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said.

“No one should face bullying or discrimination just because of who they are, who they love,” Cardona told reporters. “Sadly, this happens all too often.”

President Biden's regulation is meant to clarify schools’ obligations under Title IX, the 1972 sex discrimination law originally passed to address women’s rights. It applies to colleges and elementary and high schools that receive federal money. The update is to take effect in August.

Among the biggest changes is new recognition that Title IX protects LGBTQ+ students — a source of deep conflict with Republicans.

The 1972 law doesn’t directly address the issue, but the new rules clarify that Title IX also forbids discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBTQ+ students who face discrimination will be entitled to a response from their school under Title IX, and those failed by their schools can seek recourse from the federal government.

Many Republicans say Congress never intended such protections under Title IX. A federal judge previously blocked Biden administration guidance to the same effect after 20 Republican-led states challenged the policy.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said the new regulation threatens decades of advancement for women and girls.

“This final rule dumps kerosene on the already raging fire that is Democrats’ contemptuous culture war that aims to radically redefine sex and gender,” Foxx said in a statement.

In the last few years, many Republican-controlled states have adopted laws restricting the rights of transgender children, including banning gender-affirming medical care for minors. And at least 11 states restrict which bathrooms and locker rooms transgender students can use, banning them from using facilities that align with their gender identity.

But the rule makes clear that treating transgender students differently from their classmates is discrimination, putting the state bathroom restrictions in jeopardy, said Francicso M. Negron Jr., an attorney who specializes in education law.

The revision was proposed nearly two years ago but has been slowed by a comment period that drew 240,000 responses, a record for the Education Department.

Many of the changes are meant to ensure that schools and colleges respond to complaints of sexual misconduct. In general, the rules widen the type of misconduct that institutions are required to address, and it grants more protections to students who bring accusations.

Chief among the changes is a wider definition of sexual harassment. Schools now must address any unwelcome sex-based conduct that is so “severe or pervasive” that it limits a student's equal access to an education.

Under the DeVos rules, conduct had to be “severe, pervasive and objectively offensive," a higher bar that pushed some types of misconduct outside the purview of Title IX.

SEE MORE: Vatican condemns gender-affirming surgery, surrogacy and gender theory

Colleges will no longer be required to hold live hearings to allow students to cross-examine one another through representatives — a signature provision from the DeVos rules.

Live hearings are allowed under the Biden rules, but they're optional and carry new limits. Students must be able to participate from hearings remotely, for example, and schools must bar questions that are “unclear or harassing.”

As an alternative to live hearings, college officials can interview students separately, allowing each student to suggest questions and get a recording of the responses.

Those hearings were a major point of contention with victims' advocates, who said it forced sexual assault survivors to face their attackers and discouraged people from reporting assaults. Supporters said it gave accused students a fair process to question their accusers, arguing that universities had become too quick to rule against accused students.

Victims' advocates applauded the changes and urged colleges to implement them quickly.

“After years of pressure from students and survivors of sexual violence, the Biden Administration’s Title IX update will make schools safer and more accessible for young people, many of whom experienced irreparable harm while they fought for protection and support,” said Emma Grasso Levine, a senior manager at the group Know Your IX.

Despite the focus on safeguards for victims, the new rules preserve certain protections for accused students.

All students must have equal access to present evidence and witnesses under the new policy, and all students must have equal access to evidence. All students will be allowed to bring an advisor to campus hearings, and colleges must have an appeals process.

In general, accused students won't be able to be disciplined until after they're found responsible for misconduct, although the regulation allows for “emergency” removals if it's deemed a matter of campus safety.

The American Council on Education, which represents higher education institutions, praised the new guidelines. But the group criticized the Aug. 1 compliance deadline. The timeline "disregards the difficulties inherent in making these changes on our nation’s campuses in such a short period of time,” ACE said in a statement.

The latest overhaul continues a back-and-forth political battle as presidential administrations repeatedly rewrite the rules around campus sexual misconduct.

DeVos criticized the new rule, writing on social media site X that it amounts to “ an assault on women and girls." She said the new procedures for handling sexual assault accusations mark a return to "days where sexual misconduct was sent to campus kangaroo courts, not resolved in a way that actually sought justice,” she wrote.

The DeVos rules were themselves an overhaul of an Obama-era policy that was intended to force colleges to take accusations of campus sexual assault more seriously. Now, after years of nearly constant changes, some colleges have been pushing for a political middle ground to end the whiplash. 

Several of you have commented on the new shows we've recently launched in our lineup, including "Trump on Trial," airing weeknights at 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Our team takes you beyond the legalese of each proceeding as former President Trump faces the first of four criminal trials.

It's an unprecedented moment in American history, one we thought deserved a thorough lens of balanced analysis and in-depth, fact-based reporting. Based on your calls, though, the program's focus has been polarizing.

Bruce in Maryland says: "I feel like the more time you give to Trump with his picture plastered in front of us, the more help he gets at the polls. And I don't think that's very fair-minded of Scripps."

"I understand you're starting a new show tonight, 'Trump on Trial,'" an anonymous caller said. "I suggest you start another one called 'Where in the World is Joe Biden?' And once again, I hear nothing about his son getting ready to go to trial. So you're keeping that all quiet."

But we have been regularly reporting on Hunter Biden and his legal troubles — and we will continue to closely follow those developments.

We stand by our decision to devote a half-hour each night to cover developments in Mr. Trump's court proceedings. We believe a former president and a major party nominee to be our next president facing 91 criminal charges warrants not only our attention, but fair-minded coverage as well.

SEE MORE: Viewer Spotlight: Our commitment to balanced political coverage

In addition to "Trump on Trial," we recently premiered a new weekday show at noon Eastern Time called "Scripps News on the Scene," taking you to breaking news and captivating live events across the county.

"I just wanted to tell you I've been glued to the TV since that new show 'On the Scene' started," said Cheryl, from Oklahoma.

"I really appreciate 'On the Scene,'" said Helen, from Missouri. "I just love how it goes from one story to another story and keeps right on top of everything. So I just wanted to say thank you, Scripps."

Your comments, kind or critical, inform what we do each and every day here at Scripps News. So let us know how we're doing and give us a call anytime on our toll-free Scripps News Viewer Hotline.

Automaker Tesla issued a recall for nearly 4,000 of its 2024 Cybertrucks after the company said accelerator pedals could become stuck and cause a crash if the vehicles accelerate unintentionally. 

The company didn't immediately post the recall on its news page, but as Barrons reported on Friday, Tesla stock dropped for the sixth straight day after the Cybertruck recall news hit headlines. 

At least 3,878 Cybertrucks were included in the recall, the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration said, according to Reuters. 

Scripps News reached out to the NHTSA for further comment on the matter, but didn't immediately receive a response. 

SEE MORE: Southern governors pressure autoworkers against voting for unions

The Wall Street Journal reported that soap used during the assembly process might have caused an issue with the pedals, causing them to stick and accelerate, the recall report said. 

WSJ reported recently that new Cybertruck buyers had their delivery dates pushed back without a reason given by the company. 

The NHTSA said it was not aware of any deaths, injuries or crashes associated with the problems listed in this latest recall. The voluntary recall includes Cybertrucks manufactured from November 2023 to April 2024. The company, led by billionaire Elon Musk, said it would repair or replace the accelerator pedal assembly in the trucks for free if owners contact Tesla and give the recall number SB-24-33-003, The Associated Press reported. 

The Alaska Department of Transportation has hired a unique candidate for a very important job — keeping wildlife off the airport runways so planes can take off and land safely.

Aurora, a four-legged robotic animal created by Boston Dynamics, will patrol the Fairbanks International Airport for wildlife to both reduce collisions with aircraft and collect data on the animals.

“The purpose of Aurora is to help mitigate wildlife on the airfield and we have several tools that we already utilize to do just that thing. Aurora is just one additional tool,” said Zak Mitchell, the communications manager at Fairbanks International Airport in Fairbanks, Alaska.

“When she arrives here, the first year is going to be measuring her efficiency, measuring her effectiveness and whether or not the data that she’s collecting is accurate,” Mitchell said.

Aurora will be outfitted with a covering that mimics a fox, as well as one that mimics a coyote.

@scrippsnews Check this out! This four-legged #robot will be tested in Fairbanks, #Alaska as a way to help keep animals off the runway for the safety of both planes and #wildlife. Thousands of wildlife-aircraft strikes are reported to the Federal Aviation Administration every year. #aviationtiktok #wildlifeoftiktok ♬ original sound - Scripps News

“They’re natural predators for birds so we’d dress Aurora up using those skins and see how effective she is in getting them off the airfield,” Mitchell said.

Aurora will always have a handler and will also be used in coordination with wildlife biologists.

More than 270,000 wildlife strikes with civil aircraft were reported in the country between 1990 and 2022, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

A quick search of the wildlife strike database available on the FAA’s website shows more than 19,000 entries for the year of 2023. A total of 93 happened in the state of Alaska.

While most wildlife-aircraft strikes involve birds, other animals are also recorded.

Mitchell said Aurora — which is equipped with a camera — can also collect data on larger animals like a moose, for example, that may walk onto the airfield.

“She’s not going to be used every single day because again there's this assimilation that happens with animals that they’re like ‘Oh OK, well I see that all the time’,” Mitchell explained.

According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, bird and other wildlife strikes to aircraft cause more than $900 million in damage to aircraft annually.

The $70,000 robot was purchased with a grant.

“The money to pay for that is a USDA grant so that was pursued through Statewide Aviation and Fairbanks International Airport,” Mitchell said.

Aurora should arrive in Fairbanks in June. Mitchell said they hope to officially launch the robot in 2025 after some testing.

“I do believe that we might be the first, so that's really exciting too. Because that is expectation setting, that is setting standards, and we’re leading the charge in science and technology in that regard,” Mitchell said.

SEE MORE: Bird strikes happening more while flying, but FAA may have a solution

On any given night in the U.S., an estimated 650,000 people are experiencing homelessness, and the nation's capital has the highest rate in the country, with 73 out of every 10,000 people being unhoused. The Supreme Court is considering a case that could allow cities to make sleeping outside a crime. But advocates say pushing the homeless out of the city limits doesn't help them get back on their feet. So what does?

Amanda Chesney is the executive director of housing and homeless services for Catholic Charities, one of the nonprofits contracted to provide services in Washington, D.C. Across the region, they help shelter 1,200 people every night.

"In the district, there are a good amount of choices available for folks experiencing homelessness. But it can be tough to navigate. And there can be a wait," Chesney said. "It is not a one-size-fits-all. I think the most successful intervention is the opposite of one-size-fits-all."

Wilson Robertson is a lifelong Washington, D.C., resident, and he knows that wait firsthand. He spent eight or nine months staying at the New York Avenue Men's shelter.

He said, "When I first got in there, it was kind of hard for me to get adjusted because who would think that they would be in a predicament like that after all these years? And I felt ashamed. I felt depressed."

SEE MORE: Homeless residents in a suburb of Seattle struggle with camping ban

While experiencing homelessness in the fall of 2020, Robertson suffered a stroke. He then became one of the hundreds to be housed in empty hotels in Washington, D.C. That program provided over 400 rooms per night at its peak, and Chesney said it was very successful. Beyond just providing an increased capacity, they were able to bring multiple services together in one location.

"We were working as a team — the housing-focused case manager, the behavioral health specialists, the medical team, all in one house. Powerful," Chesney explained. "I'm sure it was expensive, but it was really, really effective."

While he was staying in the hotel, Robertson's case manager helped him get a housing voucher and find an apartment he could move into. 

"I could not believe it. And once it's starting to settle in, I say, 'Well, Wilson, looks like you will be here for a while,' and then everything come to fruition," he recalled.

He lived in the apartment for a while before adding any personal touches. But not everyone needs permanent supportive housing, and Chesney says good case management starts with asking the right questions and listening.

"One of the things that the case manager has to do is sort of triage the level of need, and assess: What can we get you today, this week, this month? If you could get 500 bucks a month to help with groceries or rent, would that give you a place to stay? In a lot of cases, yeah, it would. OK, great."

The needs for every community will be different. Chesney thinks the district needs more behavioral health and substance abuse support. But for every community, funding is critical and it's something she says states can't do alone.

"Ending homelessness is a systems-level problem," said Chesney. "There's no state or local jurisdiction that can fund what's needed on their own. Absolutely none. The federal government has to pick it up and prioritize it."

At 64 years old, Robertson is working on his education and hopes to find a job. He said having stable housing gives him peace of mind he's never had before.

A new rapid blood test that can reportedly detect brain injuries like concussions in just minutes has cleared a major hurdle toward becoming widely available for use in the U.S.

Health care company Abbott Laboratories announced that its i-STAT TBI cartridge has been granted approval by the Food and Drug Administration and can now be used by clinicians to evaluate patients with suspected mild traumatic brain injury. Abbott says the test requires a small sample of a patient's blood to be inserted into the cartridge, and then it produces lab-quality results in just 15 minutes.

According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 5 million people visit urgent care centers each year with traumatic brain-related injuries. And for decades, the process of detecting head trauma in patients has primarily been based on subjective doctor assessments or required blood samples to be sent off to a lab for processing and testing. 

However, Abbott claims its new rapid blood test is an important step forward in providing patients with quick results right at their bedside, and eventually at places like sporting events where head injuries are more common.

SEE MORE: How the NFL is working to prevent concussions and protect players

"With the help of this whole blood test, we can quickly and objectively determine whether or not a patient needs a CT scan or additional evaluation, right at the point of care," said Dr. Geoffrey Manley, chief of neurosurgery at the University of California San Francisco. "It's an incredibly helpful tool that advances the treatment of traumatic brain injury." 

For now, the test is only approved for use on patients 18 years or older in places like hospitals and emergency departments. But Abbott hopes to eventually make the tests widely available to people of all ages anywhere they are seeking care for head trauma.

"When you look at all the other diseases, or other organs in the body, they all have blood tests to help assess what's happening," said Dr. Beth McQuiston, medical director in Abbott's diagnostics business. "Now, we have a whole blood test that can help assess the brain right at the patient's bedside — expanding access to more health providers and therefore patients."

Apple said it had removed Meta’s WhatsApp messaging app and its Threads social media app from the App Store in China to comply with orders from Chinese authorities.

The apps were removed from the store on Friday after Chinese officials cited unspecified national security concerns. Their removal comes amid elevated tensions between the U.S. and China over trade, technology and national security.

The U.S. has threatened to ban TikTok over national security concerns. But while TikTok, owned by Chinese technology firm ByteDance, is used by millions in the U.S., apps like WhatsApp and Threads are not commonly used in China.

Instead, the messaging app WeChat, owned by Chinese company Tencent, reigns supreme.

SEE MORE: New bill would force TikTok to divest from China, or face US ban

Other Meta apps, including Facebook, Instagram and Messenger remained available for download, although use of such foreign apps is blocked in China due to its “Great Firewall” network of filters that restrict use of foreign websites such as Google and Facebook.

“The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered the removal of these apps from the China storefront based on their national security concerns,” Apple said in a statement.

“We are obligated to follow the laws in the countries where we operate, even when we disagree,” Apple said.

A spokesman for Meta referred to “Apple for comment.”

Apple, previously the world’s top smartphone maker, recently lost the top spot to Korean rival Samsung Electronics. The U.S. firm has run into headwinds in China, one of its top three markets, with sales slumping after Chinese government agencies and employees of state-owned companies were ordered not to bring Apple devices to work.

Apple has been diversifying its manufacturing bases outside China.

SEE MORE: Most Americans think TikTok is a national security threat, poll finds

Its CEO Tim Cook has been visiting Southeast Asia this week, traveling to Hanoi and Jakarta before wrapping up his travels in Singapore. On Friday he met with Singapore’s deputy prime minister, Lawrence Wong, where they “discussed the partnership between Singapore and Apple, and Apple’s continued commitment to doing business in Singapore.”

Apple pledged to invest over $250 million to expand its campus in the city-state.

Earlier this week, Cook met with Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh in Hanoi, pledging to increase spending on Vietnamese suppliers.

He also met with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Cook later told reporters that they talked about Widodo's desire to promote manufacturing in Indonesia, and said that this was something that Apple would “look at".

As Jews around the world prepare to celebrate Passover, the families of hostages held in Gaza are calling on the world to help rescue their loved ones. 

"This is not a monolithic, homogeneous group of people," said Rachel Goldberg, whose son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7. "These are people who are from 25 different nations. And I would like to ask, Where are the leaders of those specific 25 nations that have civilians, have citizens who are being held still in Gaza?"

Goldberg was one of several parents who were part of a virtual press conference on Friday, noting that it's been nearly 200 days since their loved ones were taken captive. 

More than 130 hostages are unaccounted for in Gaza; several of them are believed to be Americans. Israeli and U.S. officials have been unable to verify their conditions.

"We just don't have the ability to know the individual condition of any one hostage," White House national security spokesman John Kirby said this week. "So, we're obviously doing the best we can to try to gain as much information as we can."

SEE MORE: No deaths or injuries reported after Israel strike on Iran

Several of the families spoke highly of the Biden administration's continued communication about the progress to get the hostages released. 

Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui was taken from his kibbutz on Oct. 7, noted that the families have been critical of the Israeli government but added that there was a recent breakthrough when Israel proposed a deal to Hamas that would see the release of the hostages in exchange for Palestinians who have been incarcerated in Israel. 

Dekel-Chen said Hamas is the one that should be intensely scrutinized for not accepting the deal.

"I think the world's frustration has to be at this point not on the Netanyahu government as much as on Hamas," he said.

Dekel-Chen added that Hamas should be forced to answer why it keeps rejecting proposals for a cease-fire to return the hostages. 

"What is the world community willing to do to get Hamas to get to the answer that is not 'No'?" he said.

Hamas said it rejected the deal because it wants a permanent cease-fire and Israeli troops to leave Gaza. Netanyahu has refused to withdraw from Gaza until Hamas is eliminated.

The stalemate leaves the families in limbo, hoping for a resolution — for them and the people of Gaza.

"We're completely aware and feel the need for relief for the citizens of Gaza. They're our neighbors, and one day perhaps there can be peace," Dekel-Chen said. "What we also know is that Hamas and Islamic Jihad are the perpetrators of the massacre on October 7. They are the reason for us all having to gather here and for the immense suffering that our region has experienced. 

SEE MORE: US vetoes resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine

A bipartisan group of lawmakers proposed legislation that would require the Internal Revenue Service to provide more details to taxpayers when automatically correcting a tax return. 

According to the IRS, the agency can automatically fix a return due to a simple math error, or if a form is forgotten. 

"The IRS will correct the math error while processing the tax return and notify the taxpayer by mail. The agency will send a letter requesting any missing forms or schedules," the IRS said. 

However, the lawmakers, who include two Republicans and two Democrats, say the IRS needs to be clearer when explaining why they made these changes. The lawmakers say the bill would have greater benefit to non-English speaking and low-income Americans. 

“Filing your taxes can get confusing — and sometimes, mistakes happen,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts. “And when they do, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to decipher confusing, intimidating, and financially-impactful letters from the IRS. It’s time to improve procedures and notices that correct these errors so that hardworking Americans can get the money they’re entitled to and get back to their daily lives.” 

SEE MORE: What happens if you missed the deadline to file your taxes?

The IRS MATH Act would require the IRS to identify the line item the IRS is changing, explain the reason for the change and clearly list the taxpayer’s required response date. The time to challenge the IRS' correction would remain 60 days. 

"The IRS is confusing enough,” said Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisina. “If there’s a mistake on a tax return, the IRS needs to explain it in plain English and there must be clear lines of communication. Taxpayers should have every opportunity to keep their hard-earned income.”

The bill has not yet been assigned to committee. 

A warming climate could cause more wildfires, and those wildfires could cause the air quality to worsen, a new study finds. 

Multiple universities participated in research published this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, which found that climate change will fuel additional wildfires that could cost Americans more money and potentially their lives. 

Rather than examining the direct impacts caused by wildfires, this study examines how reduced air quality affects the U.S. 

Air quality is gauged by measuring the prevalence of fine particles, generally 2.5 µm or smaller, in the air. When wildfires burn, the number of fine particles in the air increases. 

The research estimates these additional and larger wildfires would cause 27,800 excess deaths per year by 2050 under a high warming scenario, a 76% increase from estimated 2011-2020 levels. 

SEE MORE: Heat-related emergency room visits surged in 2023, CDC says

The research found climate-induced smoke deaths could result in annual damages of $244 billion through the middle of the century.

"Our projections of smoke PM2.5 and mortality effects can support climate science, health, and policy research to better understand drivers and consequences of smoke PM2.5 under climate change, and help inform policy priorities to address their negative impacts," the study's authors wrote. "Our estimates suggest that health costs due to climate-induced smoke PM2.5 could be among the most damaging consequences of climate change in the US. Based on our results, designing and implementing policies to reduce wildfire smoke and protect vulnerable communities has the potential to deliver substantial health benefits now and in the coming decades."

The World Health Organization said the particulates caused by wildfire smoke can cause numerous adverse health effects. 

"PM2.5 from wildfire smoke is associated with premature deaths in the general population, and can cause and exacerbate diseases of the lungs, heart, brain/nervous system, skin, gut, kidney, eyes, nose and liver," the World Health Organization said. "It has also been shown to lead to cognitive impairment and memory loss. Firefighters and emergency response workers are also greatly impacted by injuries, burns and smoke inhalation, particularly at high concentrations."

The authors noted that the study has numerous limitations. One unknown includes where people will decide to live. Living near wildfire-prone areas could cause additional excess deaths, the study warns. 

A Maryland high school student has been charged after police discovered his plans to commit a school shooting.

The student, 18-year-old Alex Ye, whose legal name is Andrea, was arrested Wednesday following discovery of a 129-page manifesto detailing how he would carry out the shooting. According to police, the document also stated that he contemplated targeting an elementary school and that he wanted "to be famous."

A search warrant retrieved by the Montgomery County Police Department led to internet searches, drawings and documents related to threats of mass violence. Police say that security at Montgomery County Public Schools will increase, specifically at Wootton High School.

Ye is currently in custody at Montgomery County Central Booking where he awaits a bond hearing.

This story was originally published by Dominick Philippe-Auguste at Scripps News Baltimore.

The Federal Aviation Administration and United Airlines have launched investigations after a video reportedly showed an "unauthorized person" in the flight deck during a Colorado Rockies flight. The Wall Street Journal was the first to report the incident.

The FAA and United Airlines did not confirm details of the incident. However, a video posted to social media appears to show the team's hitting coach sitting in the cockpit during the flight.

SEE MORE: United plane engine catches fire midflight, passengers fear for lives

In a statement, United Airlines said it is aware of a video "which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged." 

"We’re deeply disturbed by what we see in that video, which appears to show an unauthorized person in the flight deck at cruise altitude while the autopilot was engaged," United said. "As a clear violation of our safety and operational policies, we’ve reported the incident to the FAA and have withheld the pilots from service while we conduct an investigation." 

In a statement, the FAA said it is investigating the event and "does not comment on the details of open investigations." Flight deck access is restricted to specific individuals under federal regulations. Scripps News Denver reached out to the Rockies for comment but has not heard back.

This story was originally published by Sydney Isenberg at Scripps News Denver.

Netflix has seen a spike in new members in the last year after it implemented changes to limit password sharing.

According to new financial data released by the company, Netflix had 82.7 million subscribers in the U.S. and Canada as of the end of March, which was up from 74.4 million a year earlier. 

With average revenue per subscriber increasing by over $1 in the last year, the company raked in $4.2 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2024, an increase from $3.6 billion in the first quarter of 2023. 

In a call with investors, Netflix Co-CEO Gregory Peters said that engagement might be lower due to fewer people sharing a subscription, but the company expects to continue gaining subscribers. 

"Due to the work that we've been doing on password sharing, essentially cutting off some viewers who are not payers, and therefore, we're going to lose some viewing associated with that," Peters said. "So when you see our next engagement report, you are going to see some impact to our overall absolute view hours as a result of that. But despite that impact and despite the general pressure from strong competition, we think our engagement remains healthy. You can see it in terms of the Nielsen ratings and our modest growth in TV time in the United States."

SEE MORE: Disney+ will start its password-sharing crackdown this summer

Although Netflix has seen increased competition over the years in the streaming business, a growing number of consumers are gravitating toward streaming platforms. According to Netflix, 38.5% of U.S. TV viewership is streaming, which is up from 34% a year earlier. In March, 8.1% of all TV viewership was on Netflix's platform. 

Netflix said it hopes new live events will grow its subscriber base. The company plans to stream a live bout this summer between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. The platform also will become the home to WWE Monday Night Raw in 2025. 

"We're going to continue to try a lot of new things," said Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos. "But the core of it is, do our members love it? And judging from the early excitement around the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight, there's going to be a lot of people waking up in the middle of the night all over the world to watch this fight in real time.

Netflix developed three different price points. Its least expensive plan, which includes ads, is $6.99. The next tier is $15.49 a month, while the premium plan is $22.99 a month. The two top tiers allow customers to add another subscriber for $7.99 a month. 

Nestle adds sugar to baby formulas and other foods for young children while keeping sugar content lower for the same products in wealthier nations, a new report from the Swiss-based advocacy group Public Eye claims.

In its report titled "How Nestle gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries," Public Eye tested several different products for their added sugar content. Public Eye expressed concerns that added sugar in these products was contributing to an increase in childhood obesity in these developing nations. 

In one example cited, Public Eye compared the added sugar content in Cerelac, a cookie-flavored cereal intended for babies 6 months and older. While Cerelac had no added sugar in products marketed in the U.K. and Germany, Public Eye said products in Thailand had 6 grams of sugar per serving. Cerelac also had 5.2 grams per sugar per serving in Ethiopia, and 4 grams of sugar per serving in South Africa. 

Similarly, the report noted that added sugar was significantly higher in Nido powdered milk sold in Panama and Nicaragua. 

A Nestle spokesperson responded to Public Eye's claims. 

"We apply the same nutrition, health and wellness principles everywhere which are aligned with international guidelines and regulations," a Nestle spokesperson said. "This includes compliance with labeling requirements and thresholds on carbohydrate content, which encompasses sugars. We communicate transparently about our products to consumers and always declare the total sugar content of the product

"Slight variations in recipes across countries depend on several factors, including regulations, consumer trends, and availability of local ingredients, which can result in offerings with lower or no added sugars. This does not compromise the nutritional value of our products adapted to infants and young children. For example, our range of cereals in Europe comes with and without added sugars. The same applies to several markets across Asia, Latin America and North America, where no-added sugar options are also available to consumers."

SEE MORE: What is the 'Oatzempic' trend, and are its social media claims true?

It should be noted that the products that don't have added sugar may still contain natural sugars, like ones found in milk and fruit. According to the University of California San Diego's School of Medicine, natural sugars are digested more slowly and help keep the metabolism stable. Natural sugars also tend to carry more nutrients like potassium and vitamin C.

The World Health Organization has noted a rise in the number of children who are overweight and obese. The WHO said 37 million children worldwide under the age of 5 were overweight in 2022, and over 390 million children and adolescents ages 5–19 were overweight in 2022. 

The WHO said that while just 2% of children in 1990 were considered obese, that number grew to 8% worldwide in 2022. 

The number of children under age 5 who are overweight in Africa has increased by nearly 23% between 2000 and 2022, the WHO said. 

The American Academy of Pediatrics says children over age 2 should be limited to 25 grams of sugar per day. The organization says, "Avoid serving food and drinks with added sugar to children under 2 years of age."

It was all going as expected.

Taylor Swift dropped her new album "The Tortured Poets Department" at midnight, with 16 songs and a bonus track whose titles were previously announced.

But Swifties were in for a big surprise waking up Friday morning.

In true Tay fashion, the pop star had something up her sleeve.

At 2 a.m. ET, Swift announced a surprise double album, "The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology," with another album's worth of songs added to the original list.

"It's a 2 a.m. surprise: The Tortured Poets Department is a secret DOUBLE album️," said Swift on Instagram. 

"I'd written so much tortured poetry in the past two years and wanted to share it all with you, so here's the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn't mine anymore … it's all yours," she said.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Taylor Swift (@taylorswift)

Swifties have come to learn nothing is an accident with their favorite pop star, and this case was no different. 

Fans have been adding up the clues, known as "Easter eggs," with some even speculating about the meaning behind the number two. 

In her Grammys acceptance speech earlier this year, Taylor announced Tortured Poets and its April 19 release date, notably emphasizing the number two as she threw up two fingers. The gesture was widely dissected by fans online, with many speculating that meant her "Reputation (Taylor's Version)" was also on the way.

Little did they know it meant a double album.

A mysterious pop-up had also emerged in Los Angeles this week ahead of the singer's album release, sending fans on a journey to decode all the clues. Notably, in one part of the installation, a clock was set to 2:00.

Songs like "The Black Dog," "imgonnagetyouback" and "How Did It End?" were among those added to the mega album. 

"So High School," another of the unexpected tracks, is seemingly about boyfriend Travis Kelce. It features lyrics like "you know how to ball, I know Aristotle," a nod to Kelce's career as a Kansas City Chiefs player. She also sings, "you knew what you wanted, and boy, you got it." Kelce first put himself out there when he tried to send Tay a friendship bracelet — which are big in Swiftie culture — with his phone number on it during an "Eras Tour" concert. He publicly shared his unsuccessful attempt at getting her the bracelet, and said he invited her to see him play at that very same stadium in Kansas City.

Swift's album also reflects on her breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn, with songs like "So Long London." The pair dated for six years before breaking up a year ago.

'The Tortured Poets Department: The Anthology' full track list:

1. Fortnight (feat. Post Malone)

2. The Tortured Poets Department

3. My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys

4. Down Bad

5. So Long, London

6. But Daddy I Love Him

7. Fresh Out the Slammer

8. Florida!!! (feat. Florence + The Machine)

9. Guilty as Sin?

10. Who’s Afraid of Little Old Me?

11. I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)

12. loml

13. I Can Do It With a Broken Heart

14. The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived

15. The Alchemy

16. Clara Bow

17. The Black Dog

18. imgonnagetyouback

19. The Albatross

20. Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus

21. How Did It End?

22. So High School

23. I Hate It Here

24. thanK you alMee

25. I Look in People's Windows

26. The Prophecy

27. Cassandra

28. Peter

29. The Bolter

30. Robin

31. The Manuscript

Three people are facing charges after a 5-year-old Indiana girl died due to severe neglect.

Kinsleigh Welty was taken to a hospital after officers found her unresponsive in her home on April 9. She was pronounced dead at Riley Hospital in Indianapolis.

Her mother, 29-year-old Toni McClure, was arrested on charges of murder and child neglect resulting in death. McClure’s boyfriend, 27-year-old Ryan Smith, is charged with child neglect resulting in death. Days later, police also arrested the child’s grandmother, 53-year-old Tammy Halsey, on charges of neglect.

Police said Kinsleigh was kept in a closet that had small handprints of what appeared to be feces on the door. There was also soiled clothing and a strong smell of urine. The malnourished child had sunken eyes and feces on her feet and in her hair when she was found. She also had what appeared to be lice crawling on her face, according to court documents obtained by Scripps News Indianapolis. Hospital officials said Kinsleigh was so malnourished, she weighed more at 2-and-a-half years old than she did at 5. 

Authorities said McClure has a history with the Department of Child Services. Kinsleigh’s grandparents, Tricia and Brian Welty, told Scripps News Indianapolis the warning signs of the child’s failing health were reported but said DCS let them down and they want accountability.

“We just don’t want her death to be in vain. We want change. We don’t want any more kids to have to die because of the failure of the system,” Tricia Welty said. “She was in our home, and she was safe, but she was handed back to her abuser and she’s not here anymore.”

The Weltys say Kinsleigh temporarily lived with them twice after other reports of mistreatment. In 2018, McClure was formally charged with neglect when Kinsleigh was just a baby.

The officer said the home was in one of the worst conditions he’d ever seen and noted a three-week-old child who appeared to be malnourished. The family says it was Kinsleigh, and McClure served 21 days in jail for that case.

“When she came to us the second time, she was bruised from head to toe. She had chunks of hair missing throughout her whole head and she was given back. She already tried to starve her to death when she was three weeks old and they gave her back,” the Weltys said.

Following a welfare check in 2021, the grandparents said they were fearful Kinsleigh would die.

“I pleaded with DCS before that court case and my concerns about every bit of it were ignored,” Tricia Welty said.

According to police reports, just before Kinsleigh died, DCS was at the house after McClure’s newborn tested positive for THC. Kinsleigh did not test positive.

McClure allegedly said Kinsleigh frequently expressed that she wanted more food or that she was thirsty but had a desire for her to be out of her life. The Weltys want DCS to improve its reunification process.

“The child’s safety should be the priority. It shouldn’t be getting them back to the parent if that person isn’t right. They failed her.” Tricia Welty said.

Scripps News Indianapolis has reached out to DCS over the past few days for comments, but a law that took effect in 2019 prevents the agency from releasing records on a child’s death until after the criminal case is resolved.

This story was originally published by Scripps News Indianapolis and Court TV.

Donald Trump lost a bid Thursday to pause a string of lawsuits accusing him of inciting the U.S. Capitol attack, while the former president fights his 2020 election interference criminal case in Washington.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington denied defense lawyers' request to put the civil cases seeking to hold Trump responsible for the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on hold while the criminal case accusing him of conspiring to overturn his election defeat to President Joe Biden plays out.

It’s the latest legal setback for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, whose trial in a separate criminal case related to hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign began this week with jury selection in New York.

SEE MORE: 12 jurors have been seated in Donald Trump's hush money trial

The lawsuits brought by Democratic lawmakers and police officers who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 seek civil damages for harm they say they suffered during the attack, which aimed to stop Congress' certification of President Biden's victory.

Trump has claimed he can’t be sued over the riot that left dozens of police officers injured, arguing that his words during a rally before the storming of the Capitol addressed “matters of public concern” and fell within the scope of absolute presidential immunity.

Washington's federal appeals court ruled in December that the lawsuits can move forward, rejecting Trump's sweeping claims that presidential immunity shields him from liability. The court, however, said Trump can continue to fight, as the cases proceed, to try to prove that his actions were taken in his official capacity as president.

SEE MORE: Supreme Court hears debate over charges against Trump, Jan. 6 rioters

In court papers filed last month, Trump's lawyers told the judge that “basic fairness to criminal defendants” warrants pausing the civil cases until after the 2020 election criminal case is resolved. They argued that allowing the lawsuits to proceed could force Trump to “prematurely telegraph" his defense strategies in the criminal case.

Mehta, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, said the public has an interest in the prompt resolution of the civil lawsuits in addition to the criminal case. And the judge said “appropriate safeguards” can be put in place to allow for the lawsuits to advance without infringing on Trump's Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments next week on Trump’s claim that he is immune from criminal prosecution in the election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith. The ruling will determine whether Trump will have to stand trial in the case accusing him of a sprawling conspiracy to stay in power after Americans voted him out of office.

A man fishing before sunrise Thursday made a gruesome discovery at the Appomattox River in Colonial Heights, Virginia.

He found a woman's body.

"I was sitting there just enjoying the evening ... no phone, no radio ... I’d been there a half hour, 45 minutes," the man, whose identity we've protected, told Scripps News Richmond. "I was putting a piece of bait on a hook and I was sitting there and I heard 'pow!'  So I put my hand over my headlamp [and thought], what the heck just happened?"

A second noise followed.

"After the gunshot was what sounded to be a large object splash in the water," he said.

Then he spotted something along the riverbank.

"A few seconds later, a set of headlights slowly made their way through the parking lot and just kind of eased on out from the park," the fisherman shared.

He then packed up his gear and made his way back to the dock.

"I was uncertain what I was getting ready to get into," he admitted. "I turned the lightbar on and I seen a colorful object. All I seen was clothes."

Colonial Heights Police arrived at about 5 a.m. and, with the help of the Virginia State Police dive team, recovered a woman's body.

The body was taken to the medical examiner's office for identification.

"I didn’t hear any commotion while I was sitting there [before the shooting]," the fisherman said."I will go back, yeah, but it’s going to take some time. It will be a little while."

Anyone with information was asked to call Crime Solvers at 804-748-0660.

This story was originally published by Wayne Covil at Scripps News Richmond.