60-year-old Dennis Darwin Perry was arrested Thursday and is charged with premeditated first-degree murder.

Body found under pier

Officers responded shortly before 10 p.m. Wednesday to the 500 block of Beach Proper N — the area beneath the pier — following a report of a stabbing. A witness called police after seeing a fight between two men and later returning to find one of them unresponsive.

Officers located the body of a man beneath the pier with multiple stab wounds and cuts across his body. The victim was later identified as Stephen James Beegle, 38, using a Georgia driver’s license.

Witness account

A female witness was found with Perry near trash cans on the boardwalk at 2nd Avenue N and agreed to speak with detectives.

She told officers that she had been under the pier throughout the day with several individuals, including Beegle — whom she referred to as “big boy” — along with three other people. She said the group had been drinking since around 2 p.m. after two men reportedly stole alcohol from a nearby Walgreens.

According to the witness, Beegle was heavily intoxicated and at some point, began touching Perry’s male friend in a sexual manner. She said the friend warned Beegle to stop or he “would do what he had to do.” When Beegle continued, Perry intervened, told Beegle to stop and pulled out a large knife before the argument temporarily settled.

The witness told detectives Beegle again began touching Perry’s friend prompting a physical fight between the two. She said Perry then approached from behind and began slashing Beegle’s legs with the knife. After the attack the friend allegedly told Perry, “We’re just going to leave him right there,” and told Perry to get away from the witness.

Surveillance video captures movements

Detectives reviewed footage from city cameras and the Jacksonville Beach Fishing Pier’s public live stream on YouTube. The video footage showed Perry’s movements in the minutes surrounding the stabbing.

According to the arrest report, at 9:23 p.m. Perry exited the boardwalk at 2nd Avenue N and entered the dunes, where a backpack had been left. Three minutes later, at 9:26 p.m., he was seen walking under the pier with what appeared to be a knife pulled from his shorts. At 9:27 p.m., he exited from under the pier. By 9:32 p.m., surveillance showed him going behind trash cans and into the dunes — the same area where the knife was later recovered.

Knife, backpack recovered in dunes

Detectives recovered a black backpack in the dunes near a cluster of small palm trees. Inside the bag were pill bottles bearing the name Dennis Perry, clothing, toiletry items, glasses and a large black knife sheath.

A large knife was found approximately 2 feet away, partially buried under shrubbery in the sand. The weapon was logged into evidence and listed in the report as related to the murder charge.

Perry invokes right to attorney

Officers say they observed blood on Perry’s hands and shoes when he was first detained. Perry was read his Miranda rights, signed a waiver and initially agreed to speak with detectives.

During the interview, Perry told detectives he had been drinking under the pier with a group of people whose names he did not know. He said two men nearly got into a fight but someone broke it up. He denied assaulting anyone or pulling a weapon.

When detectives presented him with the surveillance footage and physical evidence, Perry said he wanted to speak with a lawyer. The interview ended at that point.

Perry was determined to be indigent and was appointed a public defender.

The State Department laid out its plans to transfer $725 million as part of its dues to the regular U.N. budget and $125 million toward U.N. peacekeeping operations in Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to notifications sent to lawmakers this month and obtained by The Associated Press.

The U.S. is behind on about $5 billion in dues related to its U.N. membership, with more than $2 billion owed toward the regular budget and $3 billion for peacekeeping operations, the United Nations says.

In February, the Trump administration made a single payment of $160 million shortly after U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned that the institution was facing “imminent financial collapse” unless its financial rules were overhauled or all 193 member nations paid their dues, a message clearly directed at the United States.

President Donald Trump and his allies have spent the past year and a half demanding drastic changes across the U.N., alarming many humanitarian workers and leading to severe reductions in programs and services.

Trump has publicly called out the world body for not living up to its potential. His administration did not pay anything to the United Nations in 2025, and it has withdrawn from U.N. organizations, including the World Health Organization and the cultural agency UNESCO, while pulling funding from dozens of others.

The notices sent Aug. 4 — first reported by Reuters — received some initial pushback from Republicans on Capitol Hill who argued that the appropriations do not fully address the administration’s concerns about what it claims is bloated U.N. staffing and ideological positions that run counter to Trump’s anti-woke agenda.

In particular, a GOP congressional aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because lawmakers have not yet decided how or if to respond to the notifications, said the notifications did not appear to be strong enough on the withholding of U.S. assistance to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

The U.S. mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Amiri reported from New York.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is touting a financial campaign against Tehran, promising an “economic D-Day” against Iran. Trump announced this week that the U.S. would impose an “unprecedented” level of economic warfare and isolation on Iran.

The Latest:

Trump says he’s had many applicants seeking to be White House press secretary

The president told reporters that with Karoline Leavitt’s announced departure at the end of the month, “I have never had so many job applications in my life. They all want that job.”

Trump also had a favorable review of CNN’s conservative commentator Scott Jennings, whose name has been among those suggested as a possible replacement.

“Scott Jennings is good,” Trump said.

Trump says he’ll name companies that donated money to build the ballroom

“I’ll name the companies probably over the next couple of weeks, but I want to ask if they mind, but, and really, most of them have said, ‘You could use my name’ gladly,” Trump said. “So that’s all money, no taxpayer money for the ballroom at all.”

His claim of only private funding for the ballroom is incorrect. Public funds are being used for security aspects of the building. He was asked if he could guarantee that no taxpayer money would pay for construction.

“We’re spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the ballroom, and it’s all from people like me and great companies that are putting it up,” Trump said. “It’s going to be close to $400 million dollars, and it’s all paid for by patriots and patriotic companies, big companies.”

On data centers, Trump says Republican candidates can ‘do what they want’ but he supports building them

As the rapid expansion of data centers fueling the artificial intelligence boom has sparked bipartisan outcry around the country, Trump insists the subject is actually “pretty simple.”

He said you had to “pick the right location” but “what it means for a community is jobs and lots of money and lower taxes.”

The president added that his administration is mandating that data centers supply their own power sources, helping reduce strain on local electric grids and keeping utility rates from rising too sharply.

Asked about the issue becoming a liability for some Republicans in key midterm races, Trump said of his fellow party members: “I want them to do what they want.”

“Some people feel differently,” he said. “If a Republican’s against a data center that’s OK with me.”

Trump says growth will solve $40 trillion national debt

The president told reporters that the record milestone the U.S. passed this week “has been a problem for 35 years” but that “the way you take care of debt is growth.”

Trump’s prescription comes as the U.S. is facing growing costs for the Iran war, social programs like Social Security and Medicare and interest payments on the deficit.

Experts say the debt has already started impacting Americans’ finances, raising costs for borrowing and goods and lowering wages.

Trump responds to cattle producers’ concerns over his imported beef deal

The deal, which would allow 300,000 metric tons of beef to be imported for 90 days at a lower cost, incurred backlash from some rural-state Republicans and cattle producers. When asked about criticism, Trump said the proposal would bring beef prices down “a little bit,” which is “what people want.”

“The ranchers are great; they’re my people. I love the ranchers. They’ve done a fantastic job,” he told reporters. “But they admit that we need a little help, and in order to get the prices down, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Critics of the deal, including the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, have said it will harm the industry in the long term as it slowly recovers from a low cattle herd.

When asked what countries were involved in the agreement, Trump said he didn’t want to say but that “there are a few countries” and that they will “be sending the highest quality beef.”

Trump says Darline Graham ‘was being honest’ when she said she lacked foreign policy expertise

As he boarded the plane to head to Myrtle Beach to rally for Sen. Darline Graham, Trump gave his first public reaction to his chosen South Carolina GOP Senate runoff candidate’s flub earlier in the week.

Trump told reporters Graham “was being honest” when she said Tuesday during a debate that she wasn’t up to speed on national security issues.

“She’s surrounded by very good people, and she said that she’s totally for the military,” Trump said, adding he looked forward to seeing “a very big crowd” in South Carolina.

Graham says she entered the special primary to replace her late brother Lindsey Graham at Trump’s urging. Friday’s rally comes just four days before her runoff against U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.

Trump says he has $850 million political war chest to spend ‘on candidates that I think are good’

Asked about the unprecedented amount of money raised as part of his MAGA, Inc. Super PAC, the president said, “I’ll be spending a lot of that” as well as his own funds on “Republican candidates that I think are good.”

“You add the $850 million, all of the other money that we’ve raised,” he said, “We’re in very good shape.”

Trump’s mountain of money could be enough to lift Republicans during November’s midterm elections, but the president has remained tight-lipped on if and how he’ll spend it before Election Day.

Gov. Henry McMaster says he’s endorsing Sen. Darline Graham in Senate runoff

The South Carolina Republican had so far stayed out of the special Senate primary to replace Lindsey Graham.

But just ahead of a scheduled appearance at Trump’s rally in Myrtle Beach, McMaster — also a Trump ally — posted on social media that the interim senator had “stood for the values that South Carolinians live by, continued Lindsey Graham’s work, and stood firmly with President Trump to advance his America First agenda.”

“I am proud to give my full endorsement to Darline Graham,” McMaster concluded.

Voters choose Tuesday between Graham and U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman. Three days of early voting just wrapped up.

Trump gratified by court decision on ballroom

The president says he is “grateful” for a temporary order by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to continue construction on the $400 million White House ballroom project.

“The Military/Ballroom Complex being built on the hallowed grounds of the White House, which is so vital for National Security, will be THE GREATEST OF ITS KIND!” he posted on Truth Social on Friday.

The temporary order came hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction of the project because Trump didn’t get congressional approval.

More troops are reporting unwanted sexual contact, but numbers still fall, Pentagon says

More U.S. troops are reporting unwanted sexual contact to authorities, but even as more service members are willing to come forward, the prevalence of such incidents still went down overall last year.

That’s according to a Pentagon report released Friday. It says an estimated 33% of active duty personnel who said they experienced unwanted sexual contact in fiscal year 2025 reported it. That compares with 25% in fiscal year 2023.

The findings are based on confidential surveys taken every two years as well as sexual assault reports made to authorities.

The survey says unwanted sexual contact among active duty women fell from an estimated 6.8% to 4.3% during that time.

The number of reported sexual assaults also dipped. The Defense Department said it received a total of 7,998 reports of sexual assault in 2025, a decrease of 197 from 8,195 reports received in 2024.

Trump will travel to Houston to award the Artemis II astronauts after historic spaceflight

The president will be bearing the Congressional Space Medal of Honor for the Artemis II crew, who flew farther than any human has from the Earth and hung a U-turn around the moon, laying the first eyes on the rocky orb’s far side in April.

It was NASA’s first lunar trip since the Apollo era, and a step toward again putting a human back on the moon in just two years. The crew of three Americans and one Canadian flew in NASA’s Orion capsule a maximum distance of 252,756 miles (406,771 kilometers) from Earth.

Trump is set to honor them next week at the Johnson Space Center, said White House spokesperson Liz Huston, who added that “America is leading the world in space exploration.”

Stars and Stripes editor says he has been fired for insubordination

The Pentagon on Friday fired the editor-in-chief of Stars and Stripes, as well as its publisher and a reporter, the editor said. He said he was dismissed for insubordination after an interview he gave that objected to any potential censorship by the U.S. military.

Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of the military newspaper that is partly funded by the Pentagon but has a long legacy of editorial independence, told The Associated Press that he and the others had received notices of separation.

Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” He said he stands by the principle “that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent.”

Earlier this week, publisher Max Lederer announced his retirement effective at the end of September. He too received a separation notice, according to Slavin, as did the Middle East reporter Lara Korte.

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Key White House ally leaving to help with midterms

Trump says Ed Martin, a key ally who has pushed the president’s claims of election fraud, is leaving his administration to help with this November’s midterms and the 2028 election.

“Ed Martin has been with me from the very beginning, and done an incredible job as an Attorney, Director of the Weaponization Working Group, and the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia. Ed is now leaving to go outside to fight Legal Battles,” Trump said in a Truth Social posting. “I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights. Good luck Ed! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”

Martin has been a leading figure in — and cheerleader for — Trump’s campaign to use the Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies, including former FBI director James Comey.

MAHA activists urge Trump to oppose coal power for AI

Nearly 200 activists in Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement are criticizing Trump’s promotion of coal to fuel the rise of artificial intelligence data centers, according to a letter sent Friday.

The letter, signed by at least two former staffers from Kennedy’s 2024 presidential campaign, marks the first major MAHA movement mobilization over fossil fuels and the latest in a series of rifts between the diverse group of activists and the Trump administration over environmental policy.

The letter to Trump, Kennedy and various other Cabinet officials, first obtained by The Associated Press, laments a 2025 executive order that aimed to boost coal to power data centers over pollution concerns and asks the administration to consider renewable options, including solar and geothermal energy.

“We understand the importance of American leadership in artificial intelligence, national security, innovation, and economic growth,” the letter reads. “But American AI leadership should not come at the cost of a more toxic burden for American children.”

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Supreme Court allows work on Trump’s $400M White House ballroom to continue for now

Chief Justice Roberts signed a temporary order on Friday allowing work to continue while the court considers an emergency appeal from the Trump administration.

Lower courts had ordered a halt to the project, finding that it must have congressional approval. That ruling was set to take effect on Friday. Roberts signed the order because he oversees appeals of Washington-based cases.

The case comes before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.

The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the high court’s emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president’s signature policies after fuller review.

The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.

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Vance attacks Democrats for supporting foreign workers

Vice President JD Vance said he and Trump are fighting for American-born workers, while Democrats prefer foreigners.

The Republican vice president outlined a fiery midterm message during an appearance at the Middletown, Ohio, steel plant where his grandfather used to work. Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate and governor joined steelworkers in the crowd.

“Every step of the way, these Democrats have voted for foreign workers and fraudsters over American citizens and hard-paying taxpayers,” Vance said. “Who do these Democrats put first? Everyone else. You know who the Trump administration puts first? Americans.”

Vance noted that he served in the Senate alongside former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is locked in a tight race against Republican Sen. Jon Husted.

“He was a friendly enough guy, but he was a man who claimed to represent this state, but never once raised his voice against Joe Biden’s border crisis or against the inflation that was brought on by Joe Biden underinvesting and trying to destroy American industry,” Vance said.

Ohio Sen. Ber

nie Moreno pledges he will serve only one more term

“I’m going to serve for one more term, and then I’m going to go home because these shouldn’t be jobs forever,” Moreno said at an event in Middletown, Ohio, on Friday before Vance was scheduled to speak.

Moreno, a Republican and Ohio’s first Latino senator, was elected in 2024, when he defeated incumbent Democrat Sherrod Brown.

Moreno is up for reelection in 2030. If he abides by his pledge Friday to serve only one more term, he’d be in office until early 2037.

Moreno’s remark follows an intense period of scrutiny involving his daughter Emily’s former marriage to U.S. Rep. Max Miller. Moreno publicly called Miller unfit to serve.

Spokesperson Reagan McCarthy said Moreno had always said he would serve only two terms.

Brazil’s Lula calls Trump, urges for tariff negotiations

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Trump had an 80-minute phone call on Friday amid pressure from Washington ahead of Brazil’s October elections.

Lula’s presidency said in a statement that the two leaders discussed trade, organized crime and global conflicts. Brazil’s president, who has insisted he has a friendly relationship with Trump, has blamed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio for several recent sanctions against his country, including the revocation of the visa held by Brazil’s ambassador to the U.S.

Lula’s rival in the elections is Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, whose family has long been allied with Trump.

Brazil’s presidency says the two leaders agreed to keep negotiations on tariffs open. The U.S. has imposed new tariffs on Brazilian exports that could add up to 37.5% in some products.

Lula has said that move was politically motivated to help Flávio Bolsonaro, a son of former President Jair Bolsonaro.

Mark Sanford says he’s backing Rep. Ralph Norman in Senate runoff

The former South Carolina governor and congressman said on social media Friday that Norman “holds the best shot at holding the line on government spending, our debt and its accompanying deficits,” all of which are Sanford’s signature issues.

Sanford was the fourth place finisher in the Aug. 11 primary. He applauded Norman’s “experience in legislative circles, matched by a conservative voting record and conservative stands.”

Norman and Sen. Darline Graham face voters in a GOP primary runoff Tuesday to replace the late Sen. Lindsey Graham.

Trump awaits word from Supreme Court in case against his ballroom

The administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court last week to allow the White House to continue building Trump’s $400 million ballroom project while it appeals a lower court’s order to halt the work.

A divided federal appeals court panel ruled earlier this month that construction must stop because Congress hasn’t approved the project. That order to halt construction is set to go into effect Friday.

The Supreme Court has options. It can allow construction to continue while the case plays out. It can also leave the lower court ruling in place — meaning ballroom construction would have to stop — during the litigation.

US Capitol Police clear headquarters for suspicious vehicle

The U.S. Capitol Police briefly evacuated the agency’s Washington headquarters Friday morning and blocked off neighborhood roads when officers spotted what they called a “suspicious” vehicle in the same block as the headquarters.

The evacuation ended and roads reopened quickly after authorities checked out the vehicle without incident. The agency said it was a routine suspicious vehicle check that ended up being nothing.

Roads are closed and a swath of the National Mall is fenced and blocked off and the security level is heightened throughout D.C. because of the weekend’s Freedom 250 Grand Prix. The FBI did not immediately respond to a question about the current threat level in the city.

US and South Korean militaries wrap up drill early

The U.S. and South Korean militaries ended their annual drill six days earlier than initially scheduled Friday in a conciliatory gesture toward North Korea.

Trump had earlier abruptly ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise just before it began Monday. Trump cited what he described as a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

The end of the drill comes after North Korea said such a step isn’t enough to persuade it to return to talks.

On Thursday, North Korea fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently following through with its previous threat to respond to the drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

Trump announces plan aimed at lowering beef prices

In a social media post Friday, the president said his administration will allow more beef to be imported into the U.S. without triggering a higher tariff rate that would otherwise go into effect.

The agreement, Trump said, allows up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be brought into the U.S. for the next 90 days without activating an “out of quota” tariff.

The president said he had a commitment that the beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates, making beef cheaper for American consumers.

Trump did not say who the deal was with or what countries the beef will be imported from. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for more details.

An out-of-quota tariff is a higher tax that goes into effect once a certain quantity of that product enters the U.S.

Trump said the agreement would help rebuild the U.S. beef herd and ultimately help American ranchers. But the American cattle industry has in the past balked at Trump’s plans to import more foreign beef, such as his effort last year to bring in more beef from Argentina.

Trump to stump for Sen. Darline Graham days ahead of South Carolina’s GOP Senate runoff

Trump is scheduled to travel to South Carolina on Friday to make a last-minute appeal for Sen. Darline Graham, his chosen candidate to replace her brother, the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, ahead of a Republican runoff next week.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether Graham or Rep. Ralph Norman will be Republicans’ nominee on the November ballot.

The Myrtle Beach rally is the sort of campaign trail occasion that Trump hasn’t done as much of this year, compared with past midterms, making it a signal of the importance Trump is placing on a win for his pick.

It’s also an opportunity for the president to wade into friendly territory ahead of the midterm elections that leave his party’s control of Congress hanging in the balance. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in decades, its House delegation has only one Democrat and Trump’s own victory in the 2016 presidential primary here helped propel him toward the nomination and ultimately the White House.

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Investigators seek interviews with Trump foes related to Mar-a-Lago search, AP sources say

Justice Department investigators have sought to interview law enforcement officials related to the FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate as part of a Florida-based inquiry aiming to establish a conspiracy against the Republican president, multiple people familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The requests for interviews, made in recent weeks, suggest a conspiracy investigation that had mostly appeared focused on the decade-old question of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is also examining a more contemporary event — the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago that resulted in the FBI seizing top secret documents from the president’s Palm Beach estate.

The requests for voluntary interviews were not made through subpoenas, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation with The Associated Press.

It is not clear when or if prosecutors might seek to bring charges, or for what, but investigating conduct that occurred in Florida might give the Justice Department the legal hook it needs to try to anchor a prosecution in the state.

— Eric Tucker and Alanna Durkin Richer

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World shares are mixed and US futures edge higher, while oil prices slip

World shares were mixed Friday after a retreat on Wall Street as a U.S. Treasury Department plan to boost its government debt buybacks appeared to have only limited capacity to calm markets.

The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were up 0.3%.

The Treasury Department announced Wednesday that it will at least double the size of its planned purchases of longer-term government debt, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled Thursday that the repurchase program could be larger.

The announcement temporarily brought down government bond yields, which have been elevated under concerns about high inflation partly caused by the war in Iran and rising U.S. government debt. Higher yields tend to slow the broader economy because of increased borrowing costs across the financial system and can undercut stock prices.

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Trump warns of ‘economic D-Day’ against Iran, but Tehran is well acquainted with sanctions

Nearing the six-month mark of the Iran war and facing diminishing stockpiles of key weapons, the Trump administration is touting a crushing financial campaign against Tehran, promising an “economic D-Day” against a country that has so far withstood nearly five decades of punishing American sanctions.

With sparse details, Trump announced this week that the U.S. would be imposing an “unprecedented” level of economic warfare and isolation on Iran, aiming to force its leadership to cave to demands to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.

It reflects the dire reality Trump faces with an increasingly unpopular war he can’t seem to end just months before pivotal midterm elections that will decide whether his Republican Party keeps control of Congress. Whether out of desperation or strategy, the president is refocusing America’s might on bringing Iran to its knees through an accelerated sanctions campaign against one of the most economically penalized countries in the world.

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The Cessna's two pilots could not see the gravel airstrip and were flying solely by instruments when the plane crashed about midday Thursday, Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Board’s Alaska region chief, told a virtual news conference.

Regulations required that they abort their first landing attempt because of the lack of visibility, he said, and the plane crashed on its second attempt, about one-third of a mile (0.5 km) from the runway. The runway is surrounded by mountainous terrain on three sides, and the Federal Aviation Administration recommends pilots use GPS and other instruments when they land there.

On board were the pilots, two employees of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and four contractors. The military has not said what work they were performing at the Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site, about 450 miles (725 kilometers) west of Anchorage on Alaska's southwest coast.

The radar site was built in the 1950s as part of a network designed to provide early warning of a missile attack by the Soviet Union. Today, it monitors the skies off the coast in the direction of Russia, North Korea and China.

Those on board were “dedicated professionals carrying out a vital mission in a demanding environment," U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, commander of Alaskan Command, the Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region and Eleventh Air Force, said in a statement Thursday.

“This is a devastating loss for our military family and the communities we serve,” Davis said.

Weather conditions were changing Thursday as heavy fog rolled through the area. An automated observation system not far from the airport reported a low cloud ceiling, fog and visibility of about 10 miles (16 kilometers) in the minutes before the crash, but the next update about 15 minutes after it showed visibility of less than one-quarter mile (0.40 kilometer), according to Carrie Haisley, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service's Alaska sector operations center.

Search teams found the fragmented wreckage after the plane lost contact, Johnson said. The plane was a twin-engine Cessna 441, also known as a Cessna Conquest. Its final flight path was captured by radar at the site, he said.

The airstrip is at a private military site managed by the Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center. It’s part of a network of remote radar sites that tracks aircraft operating in Alaska’s airspace and along its borders, the statement from Alaskan Command said.

The outpost at Cape Newenham closed in 1983 after a new radar was installed, and now the site is visited only occasionally by civilian contractors who perform maintenance on the system.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said the two employees who died were part of a “project delivery team en route to a project site in support of the U.S. Air Force.” The statement did not provide additional details about the work.

NTSB investigators were traveling to the scene Friday.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska posted online that the flight was operated by Security Aviation, an airplane charter company based in Anchorage.

The company did not immediately respond Friday to an email seeking comment.

“I join Alaskans in offering condolences as we learn of the plane crash in Cape Newenham,” Murkowski posted Thursday night. “I’ve traveled extensively with Security Aviation throughout Alaska, and have met many of their experienced pilots."

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Associated Press writer Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, contributed to this report. Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska.

After ending a 22-year wait for the Premier League title, Arsenal showed why it’s favored to repeat as champion by completely dominating Frank Lampard’s side in a game that was one-sided from start to finish.

Kai Havertz, Bukayo Saka and captain Martin Odegaard scored for the Gunners, who spurned chances to pad the scoreline even further.

“The perfect start,” Odegaard said.

For Coventry, it was a rude welcome back to the Premier League after a 25-year absence. Having won the second-tier Championship last season by a wide margin, Lampard’s side simply looked outmatched as it was repeatedly taken apart by a marauding Arsenal.

Tzolis was the only summer signing to start for the host but the left winger showed he could give this attack an added dimension by helping to set up both opening goals.

First he stole possession to feed defender Riccardo Calafiori, who squared the ball for Havertz to slot home in the 15th minute. The Greece international then sent a cross in from the left that goalkeeper Carl Rushworth managed to only push into the path of Saka, who scored into an empty net in the 23rd.

(asterisk)Amazing, he played a brilliant game," Odegaard said of Tzolis. "He has been brilliant all preseason. He’s so lively, it’s hard to defend him. He’s a really intelligent player, he always looks up and finds the right pass.”

Odegaard added the third shortly after the break after his scuffed shot looped in out of reach of Rushworth. The Arsenal captain gave an apologetic shrug as a celebration.

"It was not the best finish but I was there,” Odegaard said.

At the other end, the only time Arsenal goalkeeper David Raya was troubled was when a speculative overhead kick from Loum Tchaouna from outside the box sailed just high of the bar in the 42nd. The visitor's only effort on target came in the 86th, when Jack Rudoni managed only a weak header straight at Raya.

Arsenal introduced its latest signing, England defender Ezri Konsa, before kickoff after he completed a move from Aston Villa earlier Friday.

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

Beef prices have climbed to record highs amid a drop in the number of U.S. cattle, consistent consumer demand and limits on cattle from Mexico, where the animals are facing a flesh-eating pest. The U.S. president has also imposed 50% tariffs on Brazil, a major beef exporter.

Trump remains under pressure to cut costs and address affordability issues ahead of November’s midterms. But ranchers, normally some of the president’s biggest supporters, are enjoying some rare profitable years and worry cheap beef imports will reduce cattle prices — and with it, the incentive to increase herd sizes.

“We all want lower grocery prices, but as I’ve said for months, we cannot do it at the expense of American producers,” Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., said in a statement. “Flooding the market with foreign beef hurts our livestock industry and undermines the long-term solution: growing the U.S. cattle herd to meet demand.”

When asked by reporters Friday evening about criticism of the deal, Trump said, “I love the ranchers; they’ve done a fantastic job. But they admit that we need a little help, and, in order to get the prices down, so that’s what we’re doing.”

Sen. Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., said in a social media post just hours after Trump announced the deal that the president's “heart is in the right place,” but importing beef will “harm our ranching families who feed the nation.”

And Sen. Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., said that while he appreciates the administration's focus on grocery prices, “short term policy shifts do not equal long term solutions.”

The deal, Trump said, allows up to 300,000 metric tons of ground beef to be imported into the U.S. for the next 90 days without activating an “out of quota” tariff, which is a tax that goes into effect once a certain quantity of that product enters the country.

The president said on social media that he had committed to ensuring the imported beef would be sold at 25% below current market rates, making it cheaper for American consumers. Trump didn't specify which countries would import the beef while speaking to reporters Friday, but said “there are a few” and that they'll send the “highest quality beef.” A White House official said the deal is with foreign beef exporters who have agreed to the discount on beef.

“You don’t put America first by putting U.S. cattle producers last,” U.S. Cattlemen's Association President Justin Tupper said in a statement. “This move will weaken our markets and gamble with food safety in the process.”

The president's announcement and other market interventions sacrifice “long-term stability for short term messaging,” Colin Woodall, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, said in a statement.

Glynn Tonsor, a professor at Kansas State University who focuses on the cattle and beef industry, said he would like to see more details about the latest deal but that his immediate assessment was that it wouldn't have a big effect on prices.

That’s because 300,000 metric tons amounts to roughly 3% of what Americans eat yearly, he said. “The relative magnitude we are talking about is pretty small.”

David Anderson, professor of agricultural economics at Texas A&M University, said he was skeptical other countries could redirect so much beef to the U.S. in such a short time period.

“Is that even achievable?” he questioned in a phone interview.

The White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a plan that has yet to be finalized, said the beef in question is lean beef trimmings that are used for ground beef production. Trump plans to sign an executive order formalizing the directive within two weeks, the official said. The administration made a push last year to buy more beef from Argentina to try to bring down prices.

The president said Friday that his plan would help grow the U.S. cattle supply, which is the smallest it's been in decades. Some ranchers and experts said the opposite effect was more likely.

“Imports have been a major contributor to the decline in the U.S. cattle inventory,” said Bill Bullard, the CEO of the R-CALF USA, which represents independent cattle producers. “Using more imports today will exacerbate that decline and will prevent herd expansion.”

___

Associated Press writers Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

A JSO officer caught the driver of a 2018 Audi S5 hitting 100 mph while weaving in and out of lanes on Beach Boulevard near Kernan Boulevard.

The officer immediately pulled the vehicle over. When the officer approached, the driver said he did not know how fast he was going.

“He said that he had recently fixed an issue on the vehicle and did a launch to see how the vehicle ran,” according to the arrest report.

Two passengers were also in the vehicle at the time — a 20-year-old male and a 19-year-old female.

According to the arrest report, the driver had previously received a speeding citation in February.

Officers noted that Beach Boulevard is considered a high-frequency crash area, and that pedestrians frequently cross the roadway outside of designated crosswalks.

“The suspect was operating his vehicle in a dangerous manner with no regard for the safety of his occupants or any other individuals on the roadway,” the report stated.

The 19-year-old was charged with one count of operating a motor vehicle at 100 mph or more, threatening a person or property, which is a second-degree misdemeanor.

Voters will decide Tuesday whether Graham or Rep. Ralph Norman will be Republicans' nominee on the November ballot.

The Myrtle Beach rally is the sort of campaign trail occasion that Trump hasn’t done as much of this year, compared with past midterms, making it a signal of the importance Trump is placing on a win for his pick.

It's also an opportunity for the president to wade into friendly territory ahead of the midterm elections that leave his party’s control of Congress hanging in the balance. South Carolina hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide in decades, its House delegation has only one Democrat and Trump’s own victory in the 2016 presidential primary here helped propel him toward the nomination and ultimately the White House.

In the scramble of a special Republican primary election that was called after Lindsey Graham's sudden death last month, Darline Graham was picked by Gov. Henry McMaster — also a Trump ally — to serve as interim senator and entered the special primary at Trump's urging. The president had said he told McMaster that appointing her would be a “fabulous tribute to Lindsey,” although the governor pointed out that he asked Graham to serve “in the wee hours” after her brother's death, adding that Trump “thought it was a great idea” when he later told him of his pick.

On Friday, hours before he was to appear with Graham and Trump at the Myrtle Beach rally, McMaster weighed in officially on the race to endorse Graham. When he appointed Graham last month, a person familiar with McMaster’s thinking but unauthorized to speak publicly about it said the governor had never contemplated that she would run for the seat herself.

The president pressed “RUN DARLINE, RUN” on social media, and gave her his “Complete and Total Endorsement” before she'd officially announced her campaign. And at every turn on the campaign trail, she's reminded voters of this anointing, as well as her commitment to advancing his priorities if elected. On the eve of the primary two weeks ago, he held a tele-rally for Graham.

Trump also considered Lindsey Graham a close ally and friend, though they ran against each other in 2016 and had their ups and downs, so part of the visit is personal for Trump. He eulogized his longtime golfing partner and wartime consigliere at Washington National Cathedral last month.

Like Trump, Darline Graham has portrayed herself as a political outsider

A political newcomer, Graham has stressed that she's “not a politician,” as she's hurriedly introduced herself to voters across the state. Regularly touting her support for Trump’s policies, as well as his endorsement, she has pointed to her years heading up a state agency, as well as her weeks on the job in the U.S. Senate, as evidence of her readiness.

Saying she’s “answering President Trump’s call to serve,” she has repeatedly said she wants “to fight for President Trump’s agenda” and cited his core goals of border security and passing the SAVE Act voting bill as among her top priorities.

Graham has said she's focused on kitchen table issues like gas prices and household spending rather than international affairs. Earlier this week, after stumbling on an elemental foreign policy question related to U.S. interests in Taiwan, Graham defended herself as “not a polished politician up here.”

Speaking publicly about the gaffe for the first time Friday, before he boarded the plane to fly to South Carolina, Trump told reporters Graham “was being honest” when she said Tuesday during a debate that she wasn’t up to speed on national security issues.

“She’s surrounded by very good people, and she said that she’s totally for the military,” Trump said, adding he looked forward to seeing “a very big crowd” in South Carolina.

Trump's rally will be in Myrtle Beach, a conservative — and growing — area

By meeting voters in Myrtle Beach, both Trump and Darline Graham are aiming to capitalize on a growing part of the state that's known to be deeply conservative, loyal to Trump and full of new residents.

It's also the home district of Rep. Russell Fry, the House ally whose name Trump had floated as an “outstanding” possible replacement for Graham after the senator's death. Elected to the House in 2022 with Trump's help, Fry ousted a five-term GOP congressman who had voted to impeach Trump a year earlier.

Running in the Senate primary, Fry touted his support for and previous backing from the president, but was hampered by the absence of it in this race. Finishing third, he swiftly endorsed Graham, a calculated move for the 41-year-old, two-term congressman, who, dating to the origins of his 2022 election, has seen the ramifications for some Republicans who have crossed Trump.

___

Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://x.com/MegKinnardAP

Lake City Police said the crash happened on Aug. 15 just before 9 p.m. at the busy intersection of West US Highway 90 and NW Centurion Court.

Mya Raulerson died Aug. 19 from injuries suffered in the crash.

Officials said a F-150 was traveling west on US Highway 90 when it struck the passenger side of the Chrysler, which was turning at the intersection. Witnesses said the Ford was traveling at a high speed before the collision.

LCPD said the driver, identified as Jaron Carr, left the scene and he was located a short time later at the Gateway Inn, where he was charged with leaving the scene of a crash involving a death. Officials said he was also driving with a suspended license and active warrants from Missouri and Brevard County.

A woman and another teen died in the crash: Bonnie Jean Welker, 44, of Lake City and Mae Waters, 15, of Lake City.

A family friend set up a GoFundMe for Mya’s mother, Jessica Puls, to help with the unexpected expenses.

“One of every mother’s greatest fears became a heartbreaking reality for my best friend when she lost her beautiful 16-year-old daughter in a tragic accident,” the GoFundMe reads.

Her mother said that her daughter was a light to everyone she came across.

“She’ll always be a light and I just want to hear about how wonderful she was and how many lives she’s touched,” Puls said.

She said losing her daughter is a pain that she’ll never overcome.

A memorial was set up at the crash site, and friends were there on Friday leaving flowers.

Mya’s best friend, Larissa Leek, described her as an amazing person.

“If you ever needed somebody to talk to she’s one of the ones that you could go to, she was very kind, very smart, beautiful very bubbly person, that was my best friend,” Leek said.

The family is planning to hold a celebration of life on Friday at 7 p.m. at Lake DeSoto. Friends, family and community members are invited and everyone is encouraged to wear teal, Mya’s favorite color.

“Her eyes changed colors, they went from green to yellow to blue so that’s why we went with teal it was her favorite color, so I can’t wait to see everybody and I can’t wait to see all of the color today cause I hope she’s lighting up the whole entire country in teal,” Leek said.

Mya’s funeral is set to take place Sunday.

Click here to donate to the family.

Moke was located about 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) southeast of Hilo and was moving west-northwest at 9 mph (15 kph). Maximum sustained winds were around 45 mph (75 kph), according to an advisory from the Miami-based hurricane center.

Like with Hurricane Lala, the Big Island is again expected to bear the brunt of the storm. It battered Hawaii last weekend without making landfall, downing trees and leaving roads covered in mud and rocks.

Rain and heavy winds from Moke are expected to hit the Big Island late Saturday, with the storm continuing to move west across the islands through early Tuesday, said Casey Oswant, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Honolulu.

“There will still be impacts, especially to the windward and southeast sides of the Big Island, but it will probably be a little bit more limited than what we saw with Lala,” she said.

The northeast coast of the Big Island saw the heaviest rainfall from Lala, at 43.54 inches (1.1 meters), according to the weather service. The resulting flooding swept dozens of homes from their foundations and damaged roads and bridges. About 11,630 customers on the Big Island remained without power Friday, according to poweroutage.us.

Rainfall predictions for this weekend for the southeast and windward sides of the Big Island were 5 to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) of rain, with isolated amounts up to 15 inches (38 centimeters), Oswant said. Across the rest of the island chain, 1 to 2 inches (2 to 5 centimeters) of rain was expected to fall, though parts of east Maui could see up to 4 inches (10 centimeters), she said.

There were no coastal watches or warnings in effect Friday morning, but people were urged to closely monitor the storm's progress. The rainfall has the potential to cause dangerous rip currents, life-threatening flooding and mudslides, especially in steep areas and places where the ground remains saturated in Lala's wake, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green and other state officials held a news conference Thursday afternoon to update Lala recovery progress and urge people to prepare for the next storm.

Officials urged people low on emergency supplies to restock up to 14 days of food, medicine and other essentials and closely monitor the storm’s progress.

“There’s definitely tension in the air” at the thought of more rain in communities that floodwaters turned into rivers, said Tiffany Edwards Hunt, a teacher living in Keaau, on the east side of the Big Island. “There were some areas that were completely washed out.”

The Hawaiian Electric utility said it expects nearly all affected customers on the Big Island to have power restored, except for certain remote and severely damaged areas.

Thompson intends to sign with the Miami Heat once he clears waivers, according to a person familiar with the five-time All-Star’s plans. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday because Thompson has yet to reveal that detail publicly. Assuming he is not claimed by another club, Thompson may be able to sign with the Heat as early as Sunday.

The buyout announcement comes after the Mavericks missed the playoffs in both of Thompson’s seasons, which came after Doncic led Dallas to the NBA Finals in 2024.

Thompson joined Dallas in a sign-and-trade with Golden State, giving the Mavericks one of the league's all-time great 3-point shooters to complement Doncic and another high-scoring guard in Kyrie Irving.

But the high hopes for that threesome imploded after the Mavericks sent Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for the oft-injured Anthony Davis in a deal before the trade deadline in 2025. Irving tore the ACL in his left knee a month later and hasn't played since. Davis was traded to the Washington Wizards just before the February trade deadline last season.

The Doncic trade ended up derailing the franchise, although Dallas overcame steep odds to win the draft lottery a few months later. With the No. 1 overall pick, the Mavericks selected Duke star freshman Cooper Flagg, who ended up winning Rookie of the Year and giving the franchise new hope.

The addition of Flagg helped led to Thompson coming off the bench in most games for the first time since his rookie year with Golden State.

The buyout of Thompson is the latest in a major retooling of the Dallas roster. His departure leaves just five players from opening day two years ago, along a new front office in president of basketball operations Masai Ujiri and general manager Mike Schmitz and a new coach in Dusty May, who replaced Jason Kidd.

Thompson won four NBA titles alongside Stephen Curry and Draymond Green with the Warriors. The 36-year-old spent his first 13 seasons with Golden State, although he missed two entire seasons with knee and Achilles injuries.

The five-time All-Star averaged 12.9 points and shot 39% from 3-point range in his two years with the Mavericks. His career marks are 19.6 points per game and 41% shooting from beyond the arc.

Thompson passed Damian Lillard for fourth place on the career 3-point list in January. He has 2,899 3-pointers, trailing Curry, James Harden and Ray Allen.

Thompson missed the playoffs just twice in the 11 seasons he played for the Warriors. He matched that number in his only two seasons with Dallas.

“Klay is one of the great players and competitors of his generation, and we are grateful for everything he brought to the Mavericks organization,” Ujiri said. “We have tremendous respect for Klay and all that he has accomplished throughout his career.”

___

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this story.

___

See AP’s full NBA coverage here

The Infowars founder can only be forced to pay about $6 million, the Texas Third Court of Appeals ruled in a unanimous opinion, citing state laws that limit lawsuit damages.

The ruling does not affect a separate $1.25 billion judgment against Jones in Connecticut, where he was also found liable for defaming and causing emotional distress to relatives of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed in the Newtown shooting.

The punishing financial verdicts against Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems, in recent years have forced him into bankruptcy, led to some of his personal property being put up for auction and led to him leaving his Infowars platform. For decades, he used the platform to push conspiracy theories about the United Nations, the federal government, gun control and more.

Sandy Hook families have yet to collect any money from Jones, who has waged lengthy appeals in state and bankruptcy courts as his company faces liquidation. He remains on air after moving onto new websites and streaming platforms.

Friday's ruling did not throw out the trial court's finding of defamation against Jones. Still, he called it "a gigantic victory for the First Amendment,” and said he will continue to appeal the case to the state Supreme Court to get the remaining damages thrown out.

“I got lawyers who are good constitutional lawyers and they are not backing down,” Jones said.

Jones has already tried to appeal the Connecticut judgment to the U.S. Supreme Court but was denied last year.

The decision by the Texas Third Court of Appeals left intact more than $4.1 million in compensatory damages awarded by a jury to Sandy Hook parents Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis for defamation and emotional distress. But it slashed more than $45 million in additional punitive damages down to $1.5 million to comply with the state's $750,000 cap for each plaintiff.

The court found Heslin and Lewis did not show evidence that the harassment following Jones’ hoax claims rose to a level that would allow them to exceed the cap. It also said the trial judge improperly allowed the parents to seek higher damages after trial.

Mark Bankston, an attorney for Heslin and Lewis in the Texas lawsuit, shrugged off the appeals court ruling as “irrelevant” given that Jones still faces massive financial judgments in Connecticut.

“The families care not at all about this irrelevant ruling which affects only two of the 19 claims they all share. Jones still faces over a billion dollars of liability, so this changes absolutely nothing. All it does is highlight the absurdity of Texas law,” Bankston said.

Newtown families harassed as Jones claimed the massacre was a hoax

Heslin and Lewis’s 6-year-old son Jesse Lewis was among those killed in the Sandy Hook attack. Their lawsuit against Jones and the 2022 verdict marked the first time he was held financially liable for peddling lies about the massacre, claiming it was faked by the government to tighten gun laws.

Jones portrayed the lawsuit as an attack on his First Amendment rights, but conceded during the trial that the shootings were “100% real” and that he was wrong to have lied about them.

At the Texas and Connecticut trials, victims’ relatives testified that Jones’ followers -- believing his claims that the shooting didn’t happen -- subjected them to death and rape threats, in-person harassment and abusive comments on social media. Jones argued there was no proof that linked him to those actions.

Heslin and Lewis told jurors that an apology wouldn’t suffice and initially called on them to make Jones pay more than $150 million for the years of suffering he has put them and other Sandy Hook families through.

Almost immediately after the punitive damages in Texas were announced, Jones' trial attorney predicted the award would be reduced to $1.5 million on appeal.

Christopher Mattei, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, said Friday’s ruling has no bearing on the ongoing lower court proceedings in Texas involving the liquidation of Infowars’ parent company.

The Onion steps in to mock Jones and help frustrated families

Jones and his company have filed for bankruptcy, and those legal proceedings continue. The satirical website The Onion also moved to take over Jones' Infowars platforms and turn his bullhorn of conspiracy theories into parody sites.

Jones gave up the Infowars brand in April and moved to a new location, switching his shows to new websites and posting them on his personal X account. The Onion, meanwhile, has set up its own Infowars webpage on its website, running videos of shows parodying Jones.

A proposed licensing deal that would give The Onion temporary authority to use Infowars’ trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property has been put on hold because the liquidation proceedings have been stayed during Jones’ appeals.

In November 2024, the Chicago-based satirical outlet was named the winner of a bankruptcy court auction of the assets of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, aimed at helping pay some of the defamation judgments. A federal judge overturned the auction results, citing problems with the process and The Onion’s bid.

___ This story has been corrected to show that Jones is still liable for $4.1 million in compensatory damages in addition to $1.5 million in punitive damages.

___ Dave Collins contributed from Hartford, Connecticut.

Work wanted by the White House was taking precedence, including repairs to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and three officials from the park service and Interior Department who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.

The reflecting pool repairs and other projects tied to President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 initiative landed on a separate list for White House priorities, the documents show. Many of the administration-backed projects have advanced, though the reflecting pool repairs were botched.

Meanwhile, almost all of about 1,500 maintenance and other projects on the low priority list as of last month are expected to go undone, the officials said. That will worsen a repair backlog at national parks that doubled over the last decade to more than $24 billion even as visitor numbers surged.

The shelved projects, many already approved, span more than 200 sites and range from roof repairs at Golden Gate National Recreation Area, to computer upgrades at Alaska’s Katmai National Park and bulk purchases of toilet paper and garbage bags at Yellowstone National Park.

Because of their low priority designation and with the fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, it's unknown when they will move forward unless park staff can find a workaround, two of the officials said.

Park service employees “were told to not expect anything on the low priority list to be contracted,” one of the officials said.

“The first priority was White House priorities," the official said. “Anywhere that is 250th-related they would have been diverting resources, some it probably planned but a lot of it pushed by the administration."

The Interior Department said many entries on the low priority list had been “mis-prioritized and were corrected.” It declined to say how many or which ones, or how much parks are spending on projects outside Washington. Agency officials declined to answer questions about the reflecting pool.

Congress has pushed to fix maintenance backlog

The park service has a third list for “high priority" projects that includes more than 2,000 items, many with contracts awarded or in process, the documents show.

“In any year, the National Park Service must prioritize projects most in need,” Interior spokesperson Katie Martin wrote in a statement. “The National Park Service has not only been focused on beautifying the district for the 250th celebrations in our nation’s capital but has also been working on many deferred maintenance projects throughout the country."

The 1,500 low priority projects had a combined cost estimate of more than $400 million.

Maine Independent Sen. Angus King, the ranking member of the Senate's National Parks Subcommittee, said the administration’s pursuits around Washington “are more aesthetic than strictly necessary,” even as they siphon resources from sites elsewhere in the U.S.

“I don’t object to setting priorities,” King said in an interview. “I object to the White House priority list being tacked onto the top of that pyramid.”

He added it could lead to “the deterioration of America’s gems” as things like sanitation upgrades and basic maintenance don't happen.

Congress during both Democratic and Republican presidencies has pushed to address the backlog. The bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act in 2020 included $6.5 billion for maintenance and repairs through 2025. A legislative extension is pending.

Testing the park service's mission

The priority designations came from park service headquarters in Washington, according to documents obtained by AP and one of the unnamed officials.

The park service appears to be moving forward on at least $80 million in White House priorities, including $52 million awarded, the documents indicate. Much of that work was championed by Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, such as the reflecting pool repairs and the rehabilitation of other parks in the capital with an eye toward the 250th celebrations.

Trump announced his plans to paint the Reflecting Pool blue in April, aiming to address longstanding problems at the site before July 4. But the $16 million initiative faced immediate problems, including peeling sealant and a fierce return of green algae.

Not all of the administration's priorities advanced: A $70 million line item for “turf maintenance” over five years at parks in the Washington, D.C., area is among more than $80 million in work marked as “canceled” in the Interior Department data.

The park service’s mission has been tested under Trump as its employees navigate new realities. It lost at least one-quarter of its permanent workforce under Trump.

Remaining employees have been ordered to revise exhibits that Trump said advanced “improper ideology,” and demolish the East Wing of the White House, which is under park stewardship, for the creation of a ballroom. Trump also reduced Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah as Republicans reshape public lands management.

Contracting officers in short supply

Pressure to deliver on administration demands for Freedom 250 was compounded by staffing cuts that made it harder to execute contracts, the unnamed officials said.

Prior to Trump’s second term, the parks had 275 contracting officers. They've since been consolidated into the Interior Department, which nevertheless saw its contracting workforce drop more than 20%, public records show.

About $140 million has been obligated or spent by the park service in Washington, D.C., this year, according to public data. That includes the reflecting pool work and the rehabilitation of fountains across the district.

Interior spokesperson Martin said the Trump administration is eyeing different revenue sources for maintenance including endowments and park pass sales.

Those sales rose more than $2 million, to $16.7 million, in the first quarter of 2026 compared to a year earlier, she said.

An estimated 33% of active duty personnel who said they experienced unwanted sexual contact in fiscal year 2025 reported it, compared with 25% in fiscal year 2023, the report said. The findings are based on confidential surveys taken every two years as well as sexual assault reports made to authorities.

“In other words, about 1 in 3 Service members reported experiencing their sexual assault to a Department authority,” the report said. “This estimate is up from the 1 in 4 Service members estimated to have reported experiencing sexual assault in FY 2023.”

The report marks another year of improving trends in the effort to tackle sexual assault in the military. The Pentagon reports from the previous two years show drops in sexual assault reports as well as the number of service members who said they had experienced unwanted sexual contact. That followed almost a decade of rising numbers of reported assaults, though many say the numbers still are too high.

The Pentagon releases this report every year on the number of sexual assaults reported by or about troops. Because sexual assault is a highly underreported crime, the department does a confidential online survey every two years to get a clearer picture of the problem.

Defense officials have long argued that an increase in reported assaults is a positive trend because so many people are reluctant to report them, both in the military and in society as a whole. Greater reporting, they say, shows there is more confidence in the reporting system and greater comfort with the support for victims.

The number of reported sexual assaults dipped last year from the previous year. The Defense Department said it received a total of 7,998 reports of sexual assault in 2025, a decrease of 197 from 8,195 reports received in 2024.

The latest confidential survey found that unwanted sexual contact among active duty women decreased from an estimated 6.8% in 2023 to 4.3% last year. For men, the prevalence fell from an estimated 1.3% to 1%.

Sexual harassment of active duty women fell from an estimated 24.7% to 17.5% during that time, while it dropped from 5.8% to 4.4% for men, according to the survey.

While the latest Pentagon report suggests the military is making progress on changing the culture of sexual assault and its underreporting in the military, the new figures cover only the first several months of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s time leading the Pentagon.

Since his arrival, Hegseth has not shied away from firing top female leaders and instituting policies and reviews that suggest he may be looking to diminish the role that women can play in the military.

“We get to race at a lot of cool cities, but this one is by far the best that we've ever had, and I can say that very truthfully," Kyle Kirkwood said Friday. "Going by the Capitol building, the views here, all the architecture of all the buildings around here, all the museums, it's stuff that you dream of.

"It's a serious honor and privilege.”

This weekend's Freedom 250 Grand Prix is the second big sporting event staged by President Donald Trump in Washington as part of the nation’s 250th birthday celebration. The first was a UFC fight card on the White House’s South Lawn in June.

IndyCar racing — an open-wheel counterpart to NASCAR — doesn’t have quite the same association with the right-wing “manosphere” or the MAGA movement, but series owner Roger Penske received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Trump in 2019 and led the effort to put together this race in the District of Columbia.

For the drivers, it’s a welcome moment in the spotlight.

“What’s been the coolest part of this week? Honestly, the media covering us,” Kirkwood said. “It’s cool to see IndyCar in this light. We don’t get these opportunities very often outside of the Indy 500, and to have an event that is sought after as much as the 500 is something that’s special.”

Washington has little history with high-level motorsports. In 2002, the parking lot at RFK Stadium on the city's east side was transformed into a course for an American Le Mans Series event.

The Freedom 250 is downtown in one of D.C.'s prime tourist areas. If you're not in a race car, it's not the greatest weekend to be driving around the area given all the road closures, but if the weather holds up, the setting has the potential to be spectacular.

“As a boy from the Netherlands that just got his green card, it is really cool,” said Rinus VeeKay, who has six top-10 finishes this season. “We didn't get too much U.S. history in school ... but learning so much about it here, seeing all the monuments and museums and just how every building kind of has a special purpose here around the city, is very cool. Getting to see the White House, this is stuff you see in movies.”

The White House is not part of the D.C. course, although after Turn 1, the track does include a lengthy straightaway along Pennsylvania Avenue, heading northwest away from the Capitol. Then there's a sharp left turn between the National Archives and the main Justice Department building, followed by a couple quick 90-degree turns as the track navigates the city's grid system.

After a straightaway takes drivers across the National Mall, they turn left onto Independence Avenue, passing the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum. and the Eisenhower Memorial before heading north on 3rd Street to the finish line, which is just west of the Capitol.

“I think it's more exciting when you actually get on the grounds and see what you're about to do. I mean, when is this ever going to happen again?" said Josef Newgarden, a driver for Team Penske. “I hope it's great visibility. That's probably the biggest thing that it could bring to us — is visibility to people that aren't maybe as familiar with IndyCar racing."

IndyCar practice and qualifying are scheduled for Saturday, along with an IROC race. The IndyCar race is Sunday and set for 250 miles (147 laps) — the second-longest street circuit race in IndyCar history.

The 1.7-mile track includes seven turns in all. The Air & Space Museum and National Gallery of Art are both inside the course's perimeter, with a fan zone between them. The track is shorter and has fewer turns than several others on the IndyCar schedule, but it's not much different from the 1.6-mile, nine-turn circuit used in downtown Detroit.

“It’s short and snappy, but you know what? We don't know. We haven't driven on it yet," driver Marcus Armstrong said. “We'll find out tomorrow. It might even be wet tomorrow. There's a lot of crosswalks, a lot of paint on the track, so that could be super slippery.”

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

“She was ordered to hand over her phone at 9 a.m. We said that wasn’t going to happen,” Kirsten Bridegan’s attorney, Doug Clifton, told News4JAX.

Instead, the appellate court granted Clifton’s motion and gave Kirsten Bridegan three business days to file a full request for a stay. If granted, the stay would pause Kite’s order that Bridegan comply with a subpoena from Shanna Gardner’s defense team over her cellphone.

READ: Appeals court grants stay to Kirsten Bridegan

Gardner’s defense team wants access to specific private communications on Bridegan’s phone that they believe could have evidentiary value for Gardner’s murder trial, and Kite has ordered Bridegan to comply with the subpoena.

Gardner, the ex-wife of Bridegan’s late husband, Jared, is one of three defendants charged in Jared’s February 2022 ambush killing.

“There is no case law out there that involves a victim of a crime and specifically a widow whose husband was murdered to have her turn her phone over for the defense,” Clifton said. “Nothing like that has ever happened.”

Kite said she previously reviewed a sealed submission from Gardner’s attorneys and determined that some of the requested information had evidentiary value.

READ: Order to comply with subpoena

Her order limits the scope of the material that may be shared and requires the court to review the communications first. Only substantive information is to be provided to the defense.

But Clifton, who is with Edwards & Ragatz personal injury law firm, said his team does not believe Bridegan should have to turn her phone over at all, even if Kite reviews the material and provides only limited information to Gardner’s defense.

“Our line is that she should not have to hand her phone over at all. She sat for 10 hours of deposition. She answered all of their questions. This is nothing but harassment from those defense attorneys,” Clifton said. “That’s what they do, and they want to harass the victim here, and frankly, that’s what we’re fighting against. And today was a good result.”

Clifton explained that the emergency petition for a stay, which was granted, is just the first step in their appeal. Now they have a few extra days to file a request for a full stay, which could be as much as 30 days, which would allow “a full appellate process” to take place.

Their goal is to get Kite’s order for Bridegan to comply with the subpoena overturned on grounds that it violates her privacy rights.

Clifton has argued that Bridegan is entitled to heightened protection under Florida’s victims’ rights law, commonly known as Marsy’s Law. He said the law protects her from harassment, intimidation and disclosure of information that could reveal confidential details or be used to locate or harass her or her family.

“We want to be heard on the order that demands that she hand her phone over for up to three days,” Clifton said. “She is the victim. She has a constitutional right to privacy and a constitutional right to be heard.”

Gardner’s now-estranged husband, Mario Fernandez, is also charged in the murder, and his trial is currently happening in Duval County court before Judge Kite.

RELATED: Law enforcement testimony continues in trial of Mario Fernandez in murder of Jared Bridegan

She interrupted proceedings in the Fernandez trial at 9:30 a.m. Friday in the middle of testimony after learning that Kirsten Bridegan failed to turn her cellphone over to the court as Kite ordered.

After Kite’s order Thursday morning, Kirsten Bridegan’s attorney, Doug Clifton, filed an emergency motion for a stay, and Gardner’s attorneys responded.

Kite denied the stay motion at 8:30 a.m. Friday, upholding her order for Bridegan to turn her phone over by the 9 a.m. deadline.

Despite Kite’s order, the phone was not turned over to the court, and a noticeably frustrated Kite stopped the Fernandez trial to hold an emergency hearing on the issue.

In that emergency hearing, Gardner’s attorneys asked for Bridegan to be held in contempt of court for refusing to comply with the order, and Kite agreed to hold a hearing at 12:30 p.m. Friday to allow Clifton time to respond.

At the same time, Clifton took the issue to the appeals court, and before the 12:30 p.m. hearing, the appeals court granted Bridegan the short-term stay.

Again, that means her attorneys now have three business days to respond to both the subpoena from Gardner’s team and Kite’s order that Bridegan show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court for failing to comply.

“Our issue with that is she is the widow. She’s the victim. And you’re talking about holding her in contempt?” Clifton said. “So that was appealed. We were asking the Fifth District Court of Appeals to stay everything. So to not have this hearing at 12:30 to allow a few days for more petitions to be filed with the appellate court. That’s what they ruled on. They said, ‘Absolutely.’”

Kite’s order that Bridegan turn over her phone followed a heated dispute over the motion from Gardner’s defense team seeking private messages and other material from Bridegan’s phone and social media accounts that they believe could be relevant to Gardner’s defense.

RELATED: Mario Fernandez’s attorneys question FBI analyst who tracked cellphones from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder

Clifton previously argued the request from Gardner’s attorneys was an overly broad “fishing expedition” and an improper attempt to examine the phone of the widow of a murder victim.

He said a reliable forensic extraction would require imaging the entire phone, potentially exposing private information unrelated to the case.

But Kite has already said in court that she believes imaging the entire phone is a violation of Bridegan’s privacy rights, which is why, she said, she narrowed the scope of what could be retrieved from Bridegan’s accounts.

Clifton asked Kite to reconsider her earlier order requiring Bridegan to provide phone data.

Alternatively, he asked to learn the specific reasons the defense considers the requested information material so they could properly challenge the intrusion into Bridegan’s privacy. Kite overruled the objection, saying Bridegan has no right to know defense strategy.

The parties also disagreed over the vendor who would conduct the forensic examination. Clifton objected to the first defense-selected vendor, arguing that the vendor appeared to be part of Gardner’s legal team and had made misleading statements about its independence.

Gardner’s attorneys on Thursday offered a different third-party vendor option to the court, not connected to the defense team, that they said will be able to extract only the more narrow information the court has allowed. Previous vendors had said that would not be possible.

Gardner is slated to begin jury selection for her September trial after the Fernandez trial has ended. It’s unclear if a stay from the appeals court on Gardner’s subpoena could delay the start of the trial.

If Bridegan’s appeal of Kite’s order fails and she is held in contempt, she could be arrested.

Clifton is representing Kirsten Bridegan in her civil wrongful death lawsuit against Gardner, Fernandez and Henry Tenoon, the alleged gunman who fatally shot her husband.

The incident is raising broader questions about homelessness in the beachside community and whether enough resources exist to help.

Police say officers were called to the Jacksonville Beach Pier around 10 p.m. after a witness reported seeing two homeless men fighting beneath the structure.

When the witness returned, one of the men had been stabbed.

The victim was identified as Stephen Beegle, 38, a former Georgia resident described as homeless. A family member told News4JAX he was a father of two and had a good soul.

Dennis Perry, 60, was taken into custody near the scene and charged with first-degree premeditated murder. He has been booked into the Duval County Jail.

Following the stabbing, News4JAX took a closer look at homelessness in Jacksonville Beach, what resources are available and whether those resources are enough.

Some residents say they have noticed more people experiencing homelessness in the area.

“I’m seeing the homelessness is just picking up more and more I mean, with where the economy is growing,” said Drake Staten, a Jacksonville Beach resident.

But others say that doesn’t change how they see the people themselves.

“Homeless people are people just like us,” said John Miller, a Jacksonville Beach resident.

“They’re minding themselves and smiling,” Miller added.

Mission House is the only day center for people experiencing homelessness in Jacksonville Beach.

Located about a 20-minute walk from the pier, it provides hot meals, clothing, showers and free walk-in medical care.

Executive Director Lucas Seilhymer says the need has grown significantly in recent years.

“In our facility, we’ve seen a large increase in our day services. Two or three years ago we were serving maybe 35 meals, which we do twice a day, seven days a week. As of now, we are seeing 65 per day,” Seilhymer said.

He says the increase is most likely tied to economic instability, high property costs and people struggling to find affordable housing, as well as a ripple effect from cleanup efforts in other areas.

“A lot of that we believe is just a shift as they continue to clean up downtown and the new state law that is in the books. We’re finding that the people have to go somewhere and a lot of them are coming this way,” he said.

Mission House is a day center — not an overnight shelter. The organization says creating a place where people could stay overnight would require a much larger facility and significantly more funding.

For those living on the streets, even knowing where to find help doesn’t always mean finding a place to sleep.

One woman News4JAX spoke with says she has been living on the streets for weeks.

“We have been living on the streets for four weeks without shelter. I’ve realized the resources and programs, but everybody that’s transparent says that it can be six months to a year before there’s placement into a shelter,” she said.

The City of Jacksonville Beach says it takes concerns involving crimes and violations of state and local ordinances seriously and that the safety of residents is its number one priority.

The Jacksonville Beach Police Department regularly patrols the beach and pier area to address criminal activity and enforce the law, which prohibits sleeping on the beach.

Officials say they will continue to monitor the area surrounding the pier and ask residents with concerns to call Jacksonville Beach PD.

To learn more about the nonprofit Mission House, click here.

The temporary order came hours before lower-court rulings would have forced a halt to aboveground construction of the project because Trump didn't get congressional approval.

It will remain in place until the Supreme Court issues a more durable decision, though the one-page document does not detail Roberts' reasoning or indicate when another ruling will be handed down. Roberts signed the order because he oversees emergency appeals of cases filed in the capital.

Ballroom case tests the limits of presidential power

The case is coming before the nation’s highest court as Trump, a Republican, exercises unparalleled assertions of presidential power and increasingly seeks to mold the capital in his own image.

The administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings as he sees fit and that the ballroom project must be completed due to national security concerns.

When Trump first announced the plans for a new ballroom, he did not emphasize national security. He said the project would be funded by private donations, including from himself.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation argues that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. Lawyers for the preservation group accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

A spokesperson for the trust said Friday that the order from Roberts is not a final decision and the group is awaiting further action. The full Supreme Court will likely weigh in next on whether construction can continue for the potentially long duration of the lawsuit.

Trump said his administration is grateful for Friday's decision, writing in a social media post that the project is “under budget and ahead of schedule.”

While litigation plays out, the ballroom is going up quickly

The Trump administration says 65% of the work has already been completed on the planned 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom, where the East Wing stood before the president ordered its demolition.

Crews are working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, on the project, where about $200 million in private donations has been spent or committed, according to court documents filed by the Justice Department.

The work has proceeded against the backdrop of the litigation winding through the courts.

In April, a district court judge ordered a stop to the aboveground construction of the planned ballroom. That ruling was briefly suspended, then upheld by an appeals court panel. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington allowed work to continue only belowground on bunkers and military installations. Leon was nominated by President George W. Bush, a Republican.

Leon's decision was upheld by an appeals court panel, as two judges appointed by Democratic presidents found the project was for Congress to decide and “not a matter for Executive self-help.” A third judge, appointed by Trump, found that the preservationist group challenging the project had no legal standing to sue.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer picked up on that argument, calling the decision halting the work “extraordinary and unlawful.” He said the completion of the project was “vitally required by national security.”

The Trump administration has scored a series of victories on the Supreme Court's emergency docket, though the justices have ruled against some of the president’s signature policies after fuller review.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

Trump said in a social media post that Martin is leaving his role as the Justice Department's pardon attorney to “fight Legal Battles” surrounding this year's midterm elections and the 2028 presidential election.

“I know he will do an outstanding job, ensure Free, Fair, and Honest Elections, and strongly advance our Constitutional Rights,” Trump wrote.

Martin has been a controversial Trump administration figure since his appointment last year as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, where he oversaw the dismissal of Jan. 6 cases after Trump's sweeping pardons. Trump later pulled Martin's nomination for the job over bipartisan concerns about his lack of prosecutorial experience and support for rioters who violently attacked the Capitol.

He then moved to Justice Department headquarters as pardon attorney and director of a group tasked with scrutinizing actions by President Joe Biden's administration that Republicans say unfairly targeted conservatives. Then-Attorney General Pam Bondi also named him a special attorney to help conduct mortgage fraud investigations into Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

He often raised eyebrows during his tenure. In one instance, while conducting his mortgage fraud investigation into James, he sent her a letter urging her to resign from office “as an act of good faith.” He also posed for photos outside her Brooklyn home.

The Justice Department's case against James was dismissed after the judge found that another prosecutor who brought the charges was illegally appointed.

Martin was later sidelined amid clashes with Justice Department leadership and was removed as head of the “Weaponization Working Group,” though he kept his title as pardon attorney.

In a social media post Friday, Attorney General Todd Blanche called Martin a “patriot who loves this nation.” Martin didn't immediately respond to a message Friday, but on his X account he reposted Trump's announcement with the message: “Proud to serve. Fight Fight Fight.”

Before his nomination as D.C. U.S. attorney, Martin was a leader of Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement. He spoke at a rally in Washington on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol and later served on the board of a nonprofit that raised money to support Capitol riot defendants and their families.

Trump’s post is the latest sign of his obsession with voting in the upcoming midterm elections, which will determine control of the U.S. House and Senate for the final two years of his presidency.

His administration has fixated on messaging around noncitizen voting, a rare problem that Trump falsely insists is a widespread source of fraud. His Department of Justice has been trying to gather detailed state voter data to hunt for noncitizens, and he has been pushing Congress to pass a bill that would require documentary proof of citizenship to vote in time for the November elections.

The FBI has obtained voting records or election equipment from the most populous counties in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia and Michigan without saying what it was searching for. Trump also has issued two executive orders seeking to take control of certain election operations, even though the Constitution grants states and Congress the authority to determine election rules.

Democratic state officials have been raising alarms about the possibility of the administration deploying federal immigration agents to polling places or ordering the military to voting locations or election offices, although administration officials have said they have no such plans.

Fernandez is charged with first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony in the deadly February 2022 ambush shooting in Jacksonville Beach that investigators say was carried out by Tenon, who was a tenant at a rental property Fernandez owned on Potomac Avenue in Northwest Jacksonville.

RELATED: Appeals court gives Jared Bridegan’s widow more time to turn over cellphone after order issued

Prosecutors allege Fernandez hired Tenon to kill Bridegan, his wife Shanna Gardner’s ex-husband. Gardner and Bridegan divorced in 2015 and spent years in and out of court in contentious disputes over how to care for the twins they shared.

Prosecutors say Fernandez is Tenon’s only link to Bridegan, a man he had never met. But the defense has argued that the state cannot prove who solicited Tenon or that Fernandez was involved in the shooting.

Tracking cellphones

FBI Agent Bobby Blythe testified in detail on Thursday and Friday about tracking the phones of Tenon and Fernandez on Feb. 16, 2022, the night Bridegan was killed, and on other dates.

Blythe testified that Fernandez’s phone was at or near his home before and after Bridegan’s killing but produced no cellular or timing-advance data from about 7:10 to 8:20 p.m.

The last gunshots that killed Bridegan in Jacksonville Beach were captured on a neighbor’s surveillance camera shortly before 8 p.m.

Blythe acknowledged that he could not determine why the gap occurred or where the phone was, saying it could have resulted from the phone being off, inactive, disconnected or a network issue.

During his cross-examination of Blythe, defense attorney Jesse Dreicer emphasized that the records were only snapshots in time and that Fernandez could have been connected to Wi-Fi, using the phone in ways not reflected in cellular data, or simply not generating records.

Blythe agreed that he did not know whether Fernandez had connected to Wi-Fi at his home and that the absence of records was not necessarily something Fernandez could control.

On the night of the murder, Tenon’s phone and Gmail location data showed him at or near the Potomac Avenue property until roughly 5:49–5:57 p.m., then moving south and east toward Jacksonville Beach, Blythe said.

Activity for both of Tenon’s devices stopped for a period afterward. Blythe said the devices could have been turned off or placed in airplane mode, but he could not state that with certainty.

Blythe said that Jan. 29, 2022, was of particular interest for Tenon’s phone because it followed an unusual path that prosecutors said appeared to be a practice run for the murder.

The phone traveled from the Potomac Avenue area toward St. Johns County and the area near Bridegan’s home and the gymnastics facility where Bridegan’s oldest daughter took lessons. Prosecutors argue Tenon had no logical reason to be there because he had never met Bridegan.

Defense questioning established the cellphone data did not show Fernandez and Tenon were together or place Fernandez at the murder scene.

Blythe explained to the jury that cellphone records can show an approximate location, not an exact one. Tower-and-sector data identifies the general coverage area; timing-advance data can narrow it further, while Google location history is usually the most precise, sometimes within a few meters.

Most of the tracking data for Tenon used Google history from the Gmail account attached to his device.

On redirect, Blythe testified that GPS, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth data stored on a phone could provide more precise location information.

Prosecutors have previously noted that Fernandez’s phone was factory reset before it was seized by authorities 11 months after the homicide.

“You’ll hear from a forensic expert what it means to wipe your phone, what you lose, all the apps, all of the passwords, financial records, banking records, every photograph someone has ever taken on their phone, gone,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler said during her opening statement. “Right after his tenant, ex-tenant, is arrested on unrelated charges.”

That means Blythe did not have access to that potential device-level location data when conducting his analysis.

Searches & cellphone activity

Former ATF intelligence research specialist Lindsey Butler testified Friday about cellphone records, Google account data and other records reviewed during the investigation.

On cross-examination, defense attorney James Hill emphasized that Butler conducted only preliminary analysis and could not determine why gaps appeared in Fernandez’s cellphone records.

Butler testified that Fernandez and Tenon exchanged frequent calls and messages, including a 27-minute call on March 10. Butler said investigators focused on that date because Jacksonville Beach police had released images of the suspected blue Ford F-150 the previous day.

Butler also described more than 5,000 Google Chrome deletions processed the morning of Fernandez’s March 1 police interview, but acknowledged she could not identify what was deleted or connect it to the killing.

“All I can say is that they were processed on the same date of the first interview,” Butler said.

Hill emphasized that cellphone gaps, like the ones Butler had noted for Fernandez’s records around the time of Bridegan’s killing, had multiple possible explanations.

“I can only say that there are gaps,” Butler acknowledged.

JSO Detective David Ostertag later testified that Tenon’s phone listed Fernandez as a contact and contained four messages between them from Jan. 4, 2022. He acknowledged on cross-examination that a person having their landlord’s phone number in their contacts was not unusual.

Ostertag also testified that Fernandez’s phone was factory-reset Aug. 26, 2022, erasing access to earlier photos, texts, searches, social-media data and location information. The phone later contained 35 reactivated user accounts and no post-reset chats with Tenon.

On cross-examination, Ostertag agreed the reset could have been routine, noting Fernandez made a $70.46 purchase at a T-Mobile store that day.

Prosecutors countered that Fernandez continued using the phone after the reset, unlike someone trading it in.

‘Planned ambush’

Prosecutors have described the deadly shooting of Bridegan as a planned ambush.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Stifler told jurors during opening statements.

Bridegan, a 33-year-old Microsoft design manager and father of four, was killed Feb. 16, 2022, after stopping his Volkswagen Atlas SUV on that dark street to remove a tire that prosecutors say was left in the road to lure Bridegan out of the vehicle.

RELATED | Who was Jared Bridegan? A father, a creative builder, a believer — and so much more | 4 years later: A timeline of the Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case

Bridegan, who was driving home to St. Augustine after dropping off the twins at Shanna Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home, was shot twice as his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, sat in the vehicle. Two other bullets struck the SUV, narrowly missing Bexley.

The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, testified about comforting Bexley after her boyfriend found the toddler in the SUV near her father’s body that night.

Prosecutors say Bexley had been alone for about 7 minutes before Cruz and her boyfriend arrived.

In a video shown to jurors, Bexley described to Cruz hearing a “Boom!”

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

RELATED: Jared Bridegan’s widow honored with Back the Blue award for ‘Bexley Boxes’ | 911 calls describe scene of confusion in Sanctuary neighborhood on night of Jared Bridegan’s ambush murder

Key evidence: Where is the gun?

Defense attorneys have questioned lead Jacksonville Beach Police Detective Chris Johns and other investigators about the missing 10mm Glock believed to have been used to kill Bridegan. (The type of weapon was identified because of shell casings left at the scene.)

Agent Kenneth Stengel, who has been an ATF agent since 2008 and a firearms instructor for about two years, testified that 10mm weapons are more rare and that this was the first 10mm firearm he had encountered in his investigations.

Under cross-examination, however, Stengel acknowledged that Glock has produced multiple 10mm models and that investigators found records of six 10mm purchases at one Jacksonville gun store.

But Stengel maintained that the weapon was “not very common” based on his personal experience.

Investigators say the 10mm is significant because John Biggerstaff, a longtime friend of Fernandez, owned a 10mm at one point but could not produce it for detectives after the murder.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Biggerstaff has never been charged with a crime in connection with Bridegan’s murder.)

The state has said Fernandez visited Biggerstaff on Jan. 25, 2022, weeks before the murder, and that investigators found evidence that Biggerstaff searched for information about 10mm firearms on the day of the visit.

Former ATF Agent Butler testified that Biggerstaff’s Google account showed searches for “Glock 20 Gen four” and “10 millimeter Glock pistol” on Jan. 25, 2022. The account also visited a website showing Glock 20 Gen 4 pistols.

Defense attorney Hill noted that Fernandez was not at Biggerstaff’s home when the searches occurred, that no firearm purchase was documented and that the Glock 20 is a different model from the Glock 40 Gen 4 prosecutors allege was used to kill Bridegan.

Earlier, defense attorney Dreicer also suggested Fernandez could have visited Biggerstaff’s home for reasons unrelated to the murder, including their longstanding personal relationship. (Fernandez attended Sandalwood High School with Biggerstaff’s daughter.)

RELATED: He’s the first to face trial in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case. What do we know about Mario Fernandez?

Dreicer also questioned Johns about a video found on Biggerstaff’s phone that showed Fernandez having sex with Biggerstaff’s wife. Johns agreed the Biggerstaffs practiced a consensual “swinger” lifestyle.

The defense argued that Fernandez’s visit to Biggerstaff’s home in January 2022 did not prove he obtained a weapon there.

“What you certainly have no evidence of is that Mr. Biggerstaff gave Mr. Fernandez a 10mm firearm,” Dreicer said in one of many tense exchanges with Johns.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns replied.

“OK. When you say no physical evidence, there is no evidence of that. Correct?” Dreicer asked again.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns repeated.

Stengel testified Thursday that federal records showed Biggerstaff purchased a Glock 10mm on June 8, 2016, but that he had to give up that gun and other weapons after he was convicted of a felony.

Stengel testified that agents interviewed Biggerstaff, his son Juan and another man, but none provided information that led investigators to the location of the 10mm Glock. Investigators have admitted that the murder weapon was never recovered.

But on re-direct, Stifler got Johns to confirm that despite having no physical evidence that Biggerstaff had a 10mm gun at the time of the murder, detectives did have witness statements recorded on wires that led them to continue investigating Biggerstaff as the source of the murder weapon.

In testimony on Friday, FDLE firearms analyst Daniel Hausdorf said that microscopic markings showed four 10 mm cartridge cases recovered at the Bridegan murder scene were fired from the same firearm.

The markings were consistent with a Glock-type firearm, but because no gun was recovered, Hausdorf could not identify the specific model the cartridges were fired from.

Hausdorf said two projectiles also came from the same firearm, while two others were too damaged for comparison. He could not conclusively determine whether the projectiles were 10 mm or .40 caliber, identify which Glock model was used, or say who fired the weapon.

Defense attorneys also emphasized that thousands of Glock firearms are in circulation.

Key evidence: How did they find the blue truck?

Stengel also testified about the discovery of the blue, two-tone Ford F-150 that investigators say was captured on video being used in the killing.

Investigators had scoured the area for months after the shooting, and on Oct. 14, 2022, Stengel and a fellow agent used Google location data from Henry Tenon’s device to locate the truck at the home of Jimmy Jones, who turned out to be a longtime family friend of Tenon.

The truck was visible from the street, and Stengel said Jones was cooperative. Stengel said the truck’s discovery was a major break in the investigation.

Stengel and Johns both admitted on cross-examination that investigators did not search Jones’ home or the rest of the property for the missing firearm.

No DNA sample was taken from Jones, and no additional testing was conducted at the property. Stengel testified that he had no knowledge of any connection between Jones and Fernandez and that Jones was not treated as a suspect.

Johns said the truck was the only evidence recovered there and that investigators had no reason to search the house because records showed the truck arrived months after the homicide and Jones was not considered a suspect.

Dreicer challenged that explanation, noting investigators had not recovered the firearm and had evidence that Tenon had been at the home.

“Other than the fact that the biggest break in the case was found at Jimmy Jones’s house. Other than that, there was no reason to search the house,” Dreicer said.

Stifler made a point of asking Johns on re-direct about not searching Jones’s home. Johns confirmed to her that investigators received information in 2023 that the gun involved in the murder had been destroyed shortly after the shooting, so it would not have been at Jones’s home even if they’d searched for it.

Key evidence: Who was driving the blue truck?

Video evidence shown in court traced the blue, two-tone Ford F-150 through Jacksonville Beach on the night of the killing.

Prosecutors say the truck carried the shooter to the scene of the murder, but that surveillance showed a person running from the area after the shooting while someone else drove away in the truck.

That means two people were there that night, the prosecutors and defense agree.

But they don’t agree on who that might be.

The defense has emphasized that Fernandez was not shown driving the truck or accompanying Tenon.

Investigators acknowledged they could not identify the truck’s driver and that there is a 32-minute gap in the footage when they don’t know where the truck was in Jacksonville Beach that night.

What surveillance video did capture, though, was an unsettling moment outside the Jacksonville Beach Police Department the night of the murder.

A man prosecutors believe was Tenon walked past the station just seconds before Kirsten Bridegan arrived in the family’s SUV after learning her husband had been shot.

Kirsten testified on Monday that she did not recognize the man, and it was unclear whether she had seen the footage before or knew how close she had come to him that night.

Interactive timeline

Potomac property

In his cross-examination of Detective Johns, Dreicer also focused on cellphone and surveillance evidence involving Fernandez’s rental property on Potomac Avenue, where Tenon lived at one point.

Again, Fernandez’s phone was recorded at the property for several hours on Jan. 29, 2022, while Tenon’s phone traveled toward Jacksonville Beach and back in what prosecutors describe as a practice run for the night of the murder.

Dreicer made a point while questioning Johns that there was surveillance video evidence showing it was not unusual for Fernandez to be at the rental property when the renter was not at the home, and that by late January, another man had begun renting the property.

Dreicer pointed to surveillance footage showing Fernandez repeatedly visiting the Potomac property, meeting contractors and carrying construction materials.

He argued the video supported Fernandez’s explanation that he was overseeing legitimate repair and renovation work.

Johns agreed the footage showed Fernandez performing or arranging property work but said it did not establish what happened on the specific day in question: Jan. 29, 2022.

Key evidence: Was there DNA?

Prosecutors presented evidence from a DNA analyst on Wednesday afternoon, who said that Tenon’s DNA was found on the tire used to stop Jared Bridegan’s vehicle.

Investigators say Tenon’s boots, jacket and distinctive gait also matched evidence associated with the shooter.

Fernandez’s DNA was not found on any of the items tested by investigators, the analyst acknowledged.

Detective Johns also acknowledged there was no surveillance, fingerprint, hair or other physical evidence placing Fernandez in Tenon’s blue pickup truck or proving he accompanied Tenon to Jacksonville Beach.

Dreicer made a point of talking about how dirty the inside of the truck was when investigators found it months later, implying that the evidence was not missing because someone had “wiped” the truck.

Key evidence: What were the checks for?

The state has highlighted three checks totaling $10,000 that Fernandez wrote to Tenon after the killing.

Johns testified Tuesday that three business check stubs, which were later matched to three checks Fernandez wrote to Tenon, were found in the blue truck.

The checks were described as payment for landscaping, roof work and a Kickstarter project that the state says didn’t exist.

The checks from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez — were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022.

Prosecutors argue the payments were disguised compensation for the murder.

But the defense says Tenon performed work at Fernandez’s property and that the checks were legitimate.

“Henry Tenon is a worker. Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder, tree work, roof work, landscaping, tile work,” Hill said in his opening statement.

Former ATF Agent Butler also testified that she found no evidence of payments from Fernandez to Tenon before the Feb. 16, 2022, homicide. The only payments she was aware of were the three checks issued after the killing.

She said she could not determine whether the checks were related to the homicide.

“I don’t have information that I can speak to now that these three checks were anything other than what they said on the memo line,” Butler said.

Gene Nichols, an attorney not involved in the case, said the checks are the hinge point of the entire trial.

“I think when it’s all said and done, what does the jury believe about the checks? That’s going to rule a tremendous amount,” he said. “That, to me, is going to be where this hinges — will a jury believe that those checks were written in order to commit murder, or were those checks written for the work that Mr. Hill said they were written for?”

He added that the burden of proof remains high.

“If the jury believes that they were for work that was done, or they take the position that the state didn’t prove that the money was for murder, then that’s going to sway a jury,” Nichols said. “In order to convict him, it’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by all of those jurors.”

What’s the motive?

Prosecutors have pointed to the hostility between the two families as a possible motive for Bridegan’s murder.

Kirsten Bridegan, Jared’s widow, testified Monday that the co-parenting relationship between Jared and Shanna Gardner had deteriorated into constant conflict.

“It was pretty terrible,” Kirsten Bridegan said on the stand. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn’t do phone calls.”

In his initial interview with detectives, which was played in court on Tuesday for about 50 minutes, Fernandez discussed the ongoing conflicts over the twins, describing Jared Bridegan as difficult and “passive-aggressive” and calling him a “keyboard warrior.”

Fernandez also mentioned the family communication in that interview, saying the family was in a group text and had an arrangement to text when they arrived to pick up the kids for date night.

The custody agreement established alternating Wednesday “date nights” for both parents on the week when the children were in the other parent’s home.

Dreicer argued that the schedule for date night was public information and therefore could have been known by people outside the family.

“So the idea that (Wednesday date night) is some personal detail that only the Bridegans would know and only the Gardner-Fernandez residence would know is simply not true. It’s public information. Correct?” Dreicer asked.

“The docket is publicly available,” Johns acknowledged.

Friends testify

On Wednesday and Thursday, friends of Fernandez also testified.

Taylor Kutis described conversations involving Fernandez’s marriage, co-parenting disputes and an obscure “contract” involving his wife’s family.

Under cross-examination, Kutis acknowledged that her recollections were not verbatim, that she kept no notes and that some details came from media reports.

Victor Quiroz, a longtime online gaming friend, testified that Fernandez visited him in North Carolina in March 2022.

Quiroz said Fernandez acted normally and did not discuss the killing. Fernandez mentioned only later that his wife’s former husband had been shot.

Carlos Phuong, a friend of Fernandez since high school, testified on Thursday about Fernandez’s relationship with Gardner and about two phone calls he placed to Fernandez in January 2023, when neither man was aware they were being recorded.

The expletive-laced calls between the two friends were played for the jury.

In the calls, Phuong told Fernandez that media reports were linking Gardner to Jared Bridegan’s death and that Henry Tenon had been arrested. They discussed Tenon’s work on Fernandez’s rental property and possible motives, along with unrelated topics.

Phuong testified that Fernandez made no admission, did not seem evasive and said he had nothing to do with the killing.

Phuong also testified that he never heard Fernandez or Gardner threaten Jared Bridegan or discuss planning his killing.

What’s next?

Fernandez’s murder trial is scheduled to continue through Aug. 28.

Gardner, 39, faces a separate trial in September, while Tenon is scheduled to stand trial in 2027 after withdrawing an earlier guilty plea.

Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.

Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.

Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.

RELATED: Judge orders Jared Bridegan’s widow to turn over cellphone in Shanna Gardner murder case

The case has garnered national attention, and Judge London Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.

As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during jury selection to protect their identities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says a section of the Hart Expressway will be closed for an undetermined amount of time.

A New4JAX crew on the scene observed a JSO patrol car that had flipped over.

We are still working to get more information from JSO.

Traffic is being rerouted onto University Boulevard.

Jacksonville Fire and Rescue says one person was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

This is a developing story.

The S&P 500 rose 0.4% for just its second gain in the six days since setting its all-time high last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 517 points, or 1%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.4%.

Ross Stores helped lead the way and rose 4.4% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Jim Conroy said it saw both an increase in new customers and more interest from existing customers, while the off-price retailer at the same time benefited from refunds on tariffs.

Most U.S. companies have reported bigger profits for the spring than analysts expected, which has helped drive stocks to records recently. Stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term.

Hopes for continued profit growth got a boost from a preliminary report by S&P Global suggesting growth for U.S. business activity hit a 52-month high. But the other big lever that helps set stock prices, interest rates, has been much shakier.

After soaring through the summer and then hesitating following this week’s surprise move by the U.S. Treasury Department to repurchase more U.S. government bonds, yields climbed further on Friday.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.73% from 4.69% late Thursday. It’s back above its level from before the Treasury market made its move, which analysts said at the time would likely have only a temporary effect. The 30-year Treasury yield, which the Fed is also targeting with its bond repurchases, also rose and is near its highest level since 2007.

Contributing to Friday’s gains for bond yields was continued uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow oil tankers to freely exit the Persian Gulf again. That caused oil prices to rise, which affects Treasury yields because they increase worries about inflation.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude oil settled at $92.67, up 0.8%.

Besides inflation, concerns about the fast-rising debt for the U.S. government have also been sending yields upward. Higher yields can slow the economy and undercut prices for all kinds of investments.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s move to try to get longer-term yields lower is bitcoin. Cryptocurrencies often rise when interest rates are lower and more money is flowing through the financial system. Hopes for legislation in Washington to help the crypto industry have also helped it.

Bitcoin has climbed above $77,000 from less than $63,000 a week ago. That helped stocks in the crypto industry lead Wall Street. Robinhood Markets jumped 13.7%, and Coinbase Global gained 8.2%.

The price of gold also climbed and briefly topped $4,690 per ounce from less than $4,440 a week earlier. The Treasury Department’s buyback announcement has helped weaken the U.S. dollar’s value against other currencies, which tends to give gold’s price a boost.

That helped drive stocks of miners higher. Newmont climbed 3.1%, and Freeport-McMoRan jumped 7.6%.

They helped offset a 5.2% drop for OSI Systems, which sells security screening equipment to airports and other specialized electronic systems. It reported weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and CEO Ajay Mehra said it was hurt by “the Middle East conflicts which shifted the timing of certain planned deliveries.”

Boston Beer sank 2.6% after the seller of Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head said its chief financial officer is leaving the company and announced an interim replacement.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 33.21 points to 7,674.37. The Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 517.80 to 53,277.01, and the Nasdaq composite added 113.29 to 26,180.45.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose in much of Asia and Europe. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.2%, and South Korea’s Kospi climbed 0.9% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

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AP Business Writers Chan Ho-him and Michelle Chapman contributed to this report.

Parents and students have been sounding the alarm since the first day of school: broken and failing air conditioning in Duval County classrooms during a heat wave.

On Friday afternoon, Duval County Public Schools addressed those concerns directly.

Jim Culbert, the Chief of Operations and Technology Services for Duval County Public Schools, took questions from the media.

“We hear you,” Culbert said. “We understand your concerns and recognize how important a comfortable learning environment and working environment is for our students and staff.”

Watch the full media conference below.

He said that the district has created a dedicated HVAC service desk of people who are taking calls on A/C and HVAC issues.

“[They’re able to pull the computer screens up and look at those issues in real time, and then dispatch our technicians to those sites based upon, the priority, the tickets...,” Culbert said.

He said this current school year, six of the schools have been selected for a complete A/C systems upgrade based on a list of schools that need the most attention.

“Every year, we’re going to be doing between six and eight schools, complete HVAC, tear out, renovation and replacement,” he said.

He also said every school’s chiller will be evaluated to see if they need to be renovated or replaced. The district also has a plan in place to replace chillers if one malfunctions at a school.

Culbert said that the district prioritizes when an entire school’s system goes down and special needs classrooms.

He also said that the district’s maintenance budget will now increase to $40 million and a large portion of it will be going to the A/C systems. The district also plans to increase the budget by another $10 million next school year.

The problem came to a head Wednesday morning when smoke from a broken air-handler motor forced an early evacuation at Crown Point Elementary School. About 20 students who had already been dropped off were safely relocated to Mandarin Middle School, according to Tatyana Wimberly, DCPS Chief Communications Officer.

RELATED | First Coast High students say some classrooms, cafeteria still hot; DCPS outlines repair plan

But parents say the problem is much bigger than one school.

One Crown Point parent told News4JAX her fourth-grade son has been without air conditioning since the first day of school — last Monday.

“He’s been very uncomfortable. He’s breathing more heavily. He has asthma,” she said. “And it’s been, apparently, in the 90s in their classroom.”

News4JAX has received multiple tips, calls, and emails from parents reporting AC failures across the district — including at Stanton College Prep, Westview K-8, and Riverside High School.

Jacaelah Magee, a junior at Riverside High School, described what it feels like inside her classroom.

“Considering it’s like 100 degrees on a daily basis, I would say like 110, 111,” she said. “It’s like sweating in class. If there’s a bunch of people with fans — electric and folding — it’s really hot to the point it’s unbearable.”

News4JAX asked DCPS about the AC situation at three of the schools parents flagged. The answers were different for each one.

• Westview K-8: A chiller malfunctioned Monday, knocking out air conditioning in several classrooms. District maintenance crews resolved the issue Monday afternoon. ESE and CSS classrooms were not affected.
• Riverside High School: An electrical issue caused the outage. The school says all AC units are now back online and functioning normally. As a proactive measure this past summer, the school replaced the chiller in the impacted building.
• Stanton College Prep: The situation is less resolved. In a letter to families this week, Principal Majova-Seane wrote: “We have been informed that the maintenance team will be making its way to our school to inspect and address our chillers.” As of this week, families were still waiting for that visit.

Even at schools where the district says repairs have been made, some parents say they are not convinced the problem is fully behind them.

Prosecutors then began calling rebuttal witnesses in the trial, which is likely entering its final days. Closing arguments are expected next week.

Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of her children Callan, Dawson and Cora Clancy, who ranged from 8 months to 5 years old. They were found in the basement of the family’s home in coastal Duxbury, Massachusetts. Clancy jumped from a second-story window after strangling the children and remains paralyzed from the waist down.

Prosecutors argue that Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, planned the killings.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.

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Clancy’s lawyer, Kevin Reddington, hasn’t disputed that she killed the children but says she should not be held criminally responsible because she had postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness linked to the stress, sleep deprivation and hormonal changes that follow childbirth.

He sought to bolster that defense by having the jury hear from more of Clancy’s family members, who detailed her worsening mental health and attempts to fix it through psychiatric treatment and medications before the January 2023 killings. The jury also heard from a psychologist and a hospital chaplain who met with Clancy after the killings.

The defense's final witness also testified at the trial of Texas mom Andrea Yates

For his final witness on Friday, Reddington called Dr. Phillip Resnick, a forensic psychiatrist and expert in filicide, or the killing of a child by a parent.

Resnick testified that Clancy was “clearly psychotic” on the day she killed her children and was not in control of her actions.

“It was almost like she was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings,” said Resnick, who testified for the defense in the 2006 trial of Andrea Yates, the Texas mother who drowned her five children in 2001.

Resnick said he spent hours interviewing Clancy four months after the killings and believed she tended to minimize rather than exaggerate her symptoms. He said she suffered from severe depression, showed evidence consistent with bipolar disorder and reported hearing a voice commanding her to kill her children.

Resnick described several categories of filicide, including killings involving abuse. Others involve psychosis or what he calls “altruistic” filicide — a killing committed “out of love rather than hostility.” He said he found Clancy’s case involved both of the latter categories, but he didn’t find evidence of abuse.

Resnick said Clancy had a delusional belief that if social services took the children or if she killed herself, her children would suffer without her, and believed that they would be better off dying with her and going to heaven.

“She believed that she was doing what was right for her children,” he said.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Jennifer Sprague, Resnick acknowledged that Clancy did not disclose thoughts of harming her children to medical providers who asked, but said that was “very common because people fear their children will be taken away.”

“So it’s better to kill them than have them taken away?” Sprague asked.

The judge struck the question.

Prosecutors say Clancy wasn't suffering from psychosis or bipolar disorder

Prosecutors argue that Clancy contrived to get her husband out of the house the day of the killings. They have attempted to show that while she was getting treatment for anxiety, insomnia and depression, she wasn't suffering from psychosis or bipolar disorder.

After the defense rested, prosecutors called forensic psychiatrist Dr. Avram Mack as a rebuttal witness. Mack agreed that Clancy suffered from a major depressive episode but said he found no evidence of mania or hypomania to support a bipolar diagnosis — or of psychosis — leading up to the killings.

Mack said Clancy recounted the killings to him, saying she heard a loud male voice telling her to kill the children so she could kill herself. She recalled strangling the children and saying “go to God” as she did so, he told jurors.

Mack said Clancy was experiencing severe mental illness when she killed her children but that it was a continuation of the depression she had experienced for months in which she was able to control impulses and distinguish right from wrong.

He also said, “There’s no reason that psychosis in and of itself inhibits a person’s ability to know right from wrong.”

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Clancy’s first name was misspelled in the headline of an earlier version of this story. It has been corrected to Lindsay, instead of Lindsey.

Erik Slavin, editor-in-chief of the military newspaper that is partly funded by the Pentagon but has a long legacy of editorial independence, told The Associated Press that he and the others had received notices of separation.

The moves come at a time when the Trump administration, in its second term, has been increasingly aggressive and combative toward the news media — including sharply curtailing Pentagon access for the press corps that covers the Defense Department. Trump or other parts of the executive branch have also, in policy and in the courts, grappled with The Wall Street Journal, The Associated Press and The New York Times — in addition to using the FCC to target broadcast networks.

Slavin said he was being fired “for stating in a CBS interview that hypothetical censorship of news for service members would constitute a red line.” He said he stands by the principle “that Stars and Stripes must remain editorially independent.”

Earlier this week, publisher Max Lederer announced his retirement effective at the end of September. He too received a separation notice, according to Slavin, as did Middle East reporter Lara Korte, who was cited for the same CBS interview as Slavin. Neither Lederer nor Korte immediately responded to requests for comment.

Lederer made his announcement a few weeks after the Pentagon installed a new deputy publisher, an active duty service member, under Lederer at the newspaper without his prior knowledge. Three Democratic senators on Thursday wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, asking why the new deputy — Navy Capt. William Urban — had been installed.

It was unclear whether Urban would now become the new publisher. In an email message to the AP, Urban said, “I am currently the Military Deputy to the Publisher. I can’t comment on what my role will be in the future.”

The retirement of Lederer, who had been at Stars and Stripes for three decades and publisher since 2007, comes as Hegseth’s Pentagon moves to exert editorial control and eliminate what it asserts are “woke distractions.”

Lederer, the second full-time civilian in the position, wrote in a staff memo that it had “become clear that my philosophy of leadership, and my understanding of the value and mission of Stars and Stripes, differ in fundamental ways from the direction the leadership of the Department of Defense has for the organization.”

In April, the Pentagon fired Jacqueline Smith, ombudsman for the newspaper, whose job had been to safeguard editorial independence.

Officials said there were no reports of any serious injuries.

The National Weather Service said a trained spotter reported a tornado in Dover, Delaware, during Thursday's storms. Photos and video on social media show the roof of a motel being blown off and damage to other buildings along Route 13 northeast of downtown.

In Atlantic Beach on Long Island, images posted on social media show a large funnel cloud over the water and small buildings torn apart at a beach club. The weather service confirmed a tornado touched down on the shore, saying it started as a waterspout over the Atlantic Ocean.

Weather service crews were going to view the Delaware and Long Island damage on Friday to determine the strengths and paths of the tornadoes.

Dover Mayor Robin Christiansen said a state of emergency was lifted Friday morning to allow residents and businesses to resume normal activities. Police urged residents to be patient and set aside extra time for travel.

“There is still debris throughout the city, and crews will be out working on cleanup, repairs, and restoring services. You may encounter blocked lanes, utility crews, emergency personnel, and other delays,” police said on social media.

On Long Island, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said first responders rescued people trapped in their vehicles during flooding.

In other parts of New York, flooding caused part of the Long Island Expressway in Queens to close in both directions, according to New York City Emergency Management. Photos on social media showed lines of stopped cars as emergency crews traversed the water.

In Jersey City, New Jersey, emergency crews rescued 69 people trapped in cars that were overtaken by flash flooding, said Mayor James Solomon. Emergency crews used small inflatable boats to reach people who were stranded.

The dead, whose identities are unknown, were among the more than 90 migrants who lost their lives during Spain’s deadliest border crisis three weeks ago. Fueled by misinformation, poverty and a lack of opportunities, more than 72,000 people poured into Ceuta, a Spanish territory that neighbors Morocco.

At a Muslim cemetery in Ceuta, 18 migrants were laid to rest on Friday. An Islamic cleric read prayers and chants praising God while funeral workers worked quickly to lower the white body bags and cover them with soil. More migrants are expected to be buried soon.

The Moroccan Association for Human Rights, a left-leaning nongovernmental organization, called for the burials in Ceuta to be halted until every effort had been made to identify the bodies and repatriate them to Morocco, the country of origin for most of the migrants who made the perilous journey.

Many of those who died drowned or were killed in a stampede to cross a breakwater barrier near a border checkpoint.

In a statement, the NGO asked Morocco's foreign ministry to ensure that “the bodies are returned to the families so they can be buried with dignity.”

It called the burials in Ceuta a “new human tragedy,” adding to the “disaster of displacement and missing persons.”

A spokesperson for Ceuta’s city government said last week the paperwork to repatriate the bodies of the deceased was complete, but that Morocco’s government hadn't accepted it.

Morocco’s foreign ministry didn't respond to questions from The Associated Press about the burials that started on Friday in Ceuta or suggestions that Morocco is blocking the repatriation of identified migrant bodies.

While most of those who crossed into Ceuta in late July returned to Morocco almost immediately, local authorities say that up to 10,000 migrants — including women and children — could still be in the small Spanish city, prolonging a humanitarian crisis as authorities and locals struggle to shelter and attend to them. Spain's national government cites a lower figure of around 5,000 people.

Moroccan and Spanish authorities have blamed social media rumors and human smuggling networks for the deadly event, while migrants cited unemployment and low wages as reasons for why they made the journey.

All of those buried on Friday were men, said Said Mohammed, the cemetery’s acting manager. The graves were marked with numbered stones in case families claim the bodies in the future, he said.

Under Islamic custom, a body is placed in a grave facing Mecca, as was the case with the migrants buried in Ceuta. Just across the sea lay mainland Europe — their desired destination.

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Suman Naishadham reported from Madrid. Akram Oubachir contributed to this report from Casablanca, Morocco.

A 2-1 decision by a panel of the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals halted, for now, a judge's order that would have granted thousands of athletes an extra season of eligibility. But it did nothing to resolve dozens of other lawsuits and court orders piling up across the country that allow players in the same situation to join teams for the upcoming season.

Virtually all these lawsuits involve players who graduated from high school in 2022, whose college eligibility ended last season and who were not included in the NCAA’s controversial new rule — less than two months old — that grants most Division I athletes five years of eligibility over five years but doesn't take effect until next season.

“There's a reason we saw so many state-court lawsuits filed" after the now-paused federal court ruling that came down July 31, said Sam Ehrlich, a former lawyer who now works at Boise State and operates the College Sports Litigation Tracker. “It was a ‘just in case.’ They did it just in case what we just saw happen actually happened.”

Among the many athletes watching this unfold and wondering where it winds up are defensive linemen Kellan Wyatt and Stephan Daley, both members of the national championship team at Indiana last season who decided to return after the lower-court decision. So are former Ole Miss starters Dae’Quan Wright, Zxavian Harris and Wydett Williams, who won a ruling from a Louisiana state court giving them another season of eligibility even though they had signed with NFL teams this summer.

While some players hope to land back at their schools, whatever the impact on the rosters, how that works isn’t at all clear in many cases. The judge in the case involving the Ole Miss players, for example, gave them a week to enter the transfer portal, which for football players is only open in January.

In appealing the state court cases, the NCAA is expected to invoke parts of Friday's ruling, which agreed with NCAA arguments that it was likely to win the case when it's heard in full — probably several months from now — and that the NCAA would suffer more harm than the players if the court didn't pause the order.

The NCAA can also take heart in an Ohio appeals court that paused a similar injunction involving Xavier basketball Filip Borovicanin and others.

But other than those two cases, Ehrlich said, judges across the country "are unanimous that the NCAA is in the wrong” on the five-year eligibility issue when it comes to the Class of 2022.

Plaintiffs' attorney Rob Shelquist issued a statement calling the appeals court ruling procedural and “not a decision on the merits of the athletes’ antitrust claims.”

“We are exploring every available option given the split in the panel’s ruling and remain committed to fighting for these college athletes whose opportunities and eligibility have been unfairly restricted,” he said.

The NCAA’s chief legal officer, Scott Bearby, sent a memo to schools telling them they would not be subject to NCAA punishment for allowing any player to compete between the time the July 31 ruling came down and Friday. But he reiterated that those players are no longer eligible.

Bearby also acknowledged that the NCAA would continue to defend lawsuits around the country — a signal that the NCAA knows Friday’s ruling offers no guarantees of an end to the roster chaos.

“If anything, I do wonder if there’s a part of the NCAA that’s, like, ‘Maybe we’d have been better off not getting the stay because, boy, there’s going to be a lot of lawsuits filed over the next couple of weeks,’” Ehrlich said.

Courts that go beyond filing emergency injunctions and take up the cases in their entirety will have to decide who suffers more harm: Is it players who can't play a fifth year and could lose educational and NIL opportunities? Or incoming freshmen who signed with the idea that they wouldn't be competing against a class of fifth-year seniors?

When the NCAA decided to have the rule kick in next year, it also grappled with that calculation, knowing it couldn't be perfectly fair.

“Fairness is in the eye of the beholder," the NCAA argued in its legal brief in the appeals case. “Countless student-athletes already on campuses, and schools who built their rosters in reliance on the rules the NCAA’s membership wrote and agreed to follow, do not believe it is fair for thousands of formerly ineligible athletes to return to competition at the start of the 2026–27 season."

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David Ford faces charges of grand theft, organized fraud and writing false checks. The Nassau County Sheriff’s Office said he used fraudulent checks to purchase high-value goods from unsuspecting sellers — then vanished.

The case began to unravel in December 2025, when a Nassau County victim reported being swindled after selling four high-end RC cars through Facebook Marketplace for $2,500. The check Ford provided bounced, and the phone number he gave the seller was disconnected shortly after, detectives said.

Investigators traced details from the fraudulent check to a similar case in Knoxville, Tennessee, where they said Ford operated under the alias Thor Chevy Haraldsson.

The Tennessee connection opened the door to a much larger picture. Detectives determined Ford was wanted in multiple jurisdictions, including Tennessee, Colorado and Washington, and that his method was consistent across each case — fraudulent checks, false names and a quick disappearance.

Investigators also found multiple Facebook posts on community pages where users had already begun warning others about Ford and his alleged activities.

Ford was booked into the Nassau County Jail & Detention Center on Aug. 14 and is being held on a bond exceeding $90,000.

Edy Roberto Garcia Santiago, of Toledo Road in Jacksonville, faces a felony charge of fleeing and eluding a law enforcement officer with lights and sirens active, as well as a misdemeanor charge of obstruction without violence. He was held without bond.

The stop

According to the arrest report, a Florida Highway Patrol Trooper was sitting in his vehicle on the right shoulder of SR-A1A southbound near ATP Tour Boulevard when he was contacted by an ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Agent, who was following a silver Ram 1500 with a Florida tag.

As the vehicles passed, the trooper said he observed the Ram 1500 had illegal window tint — verified at 5% — preventing him from seeing inside. Both the deputy and the agent then activated their emergency lights and sirens to initiate a traffic stop.

The chase

According to the report, despite both officers’ emergency equipment being activated, the driver continued southbound and refused to yield. The driver changed lanes, moving from the right travel lane into the left travel lane.

Ruiz initially positioned his patrol vehicle to perform a Precision Immobilization Technique (PIT) maneuver but gave the driver one final opportunity to stop before repositioning behind him. When the driver again failed to yield, the deputy performed the PIT maneuver at approximately 30 mph to prevent the situation from escalating into a high-speed chase, according to the report.

Immigration hold

Both occupants were removed from the vehicle and detained. An immigration status inquiry conducted by Agent Parker revealed Garcia Santiago had a final order of removal issued by an Immigration Judge. As a result, Ruiz released Garcia Santiago to ICE/ERO custody for removal processing rather than transporting him to St. Johns County Jail.

The passenger was also taken into ICE/ERO custody to be reissued a court date.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority said Friday it is imposing a fine of 825 million euros ($964 million) because Uber violated the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The EU’s data privacy rules prohibit fully automated decision-making.

The authority also said Uber failed inform drivers about its automatic decision-making. The violations took place from 2018 to 2022, the agency said.

Uber said it disagreed with the decision and the fine and will file an appeal.

"The (Data Protection Authority) examined historic policies that were discontinued years ago. We take decisions that affect drivers' ability to earn extremely seriously and we’re fully committed to fair treatment. This includes human reviews, robust safeguards, and the opportunity for drivers to appeal our decisions if they believe we made a mistake,” the company said in a written statement.

This is the fourth time the authority has imposed a fine on Uber. The largest was in 2024, when Uber was hit with a 290 million euro ($324 million) fine for allegedly transferring personal details of European drivers to the United States without adequate protection.

Vance has highlighted his Rust Belt roots while trying to boost GOP candidates ahead of the November midterm elections. He has focused on promoting the Trump administration’s economic policies and efforts to try to expand U.S. manufacturing.

As he took the stage at the Cleveland-Cliffs Middletown Works facility, known as Armco Steel when his grandfather James Vance worked there for nearly 40 years, he remarked on sharing the space where the man whose name he shared once stood.

“Papaw was a welder in this place for 40 years, and today his grandson stands here as the vice president of these United States. It’s an amazing thing,” Vance said.

The Middletown event comes as Vance is expected to ramp up his travel schedule with more public events and fundraisers, according to a person familiar with the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Vance says Trump is trying to reverse decades of ‘American decline’

As they've campaigned this year, Vance, more than President Donald Trump, has acknowledged Americans' cost-of-living concerns, seeking to assure voters that the administration is working to reverse high prices, though he didn't offer specifics.

The vice president said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do” and “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy or it’s all going to happen overnight,” but he said Trump was trying to reverse “40 years of American decline.” He pointed to Trump's immigration and trade policies, including his tariffs, as trying to protect jobs like those at the steel plant.

Trump's tariff policies, though, have contributed to the higher costs Americans are facing, as taxes on imports have raised the price of imported products as well as those made domestically, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

With an eye toward Ohio's competitive elections, Vance focused on portraying Democrats today as unrecognizable to the party his grandfather supported for its union associations, calling it the “party of graduate students.”

Vance said his grandfather also thought “way too many politicians were just plain old corrupt.”

“He hated the people who forgot about this town when they should have been fighting for this town,” Vance said.

Vance blamed politicians of both major political parties, saying that for 40 years they espoused policies of free trade and open immigration that led to factory jobs being shipped overseas and an eventual scourge of opioids left behind, which he blamed on “a lot of cartels” and “the fentanyl trade,” which he said came along with “some innocent people” across the border.

Vance has deep ties to the town and the steel plant

In his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance described the steel plant as an economic savior that brought his grandparents from Kentucky's hills into the American middle class. He described how his grandfather would boast upon seeing an old Ford or Chevy that its steel was made by his company.

His grandson's election as vice president of the United States spurred pride in the Midwestern city, though Vance has faced some pushback on his portrayal of it in the book. He said kids “derisively called it ‘Middletucky’” when he was a child because it had so many transplants like his family. He said they brought problems with them from Kentucky, such as drug addiction, “Mountain Dew mouth” and problematic fathers.

In the 2024 election, Trump and Vance won about 62% of the vote in the city's precincts. His mother, Beverly Aikins, and his sister still live in Middletown.

Before he arrived at the steel plant, he first stopped by a pastry shop to buy doughnuts and remind workers there of the “no tax on tips” provision in the tax and spending law Trump signed last year, according to a video posted online by an aide.

After the event, Vance visited a Cincinnati chili restaurant where he served beers and Cincinnati chili-topped dogs with cheese to people gathered inside.

“Nice pour, JD!” someone shouted. “I’ll take a beer back here,” called another.

Ohio has lost its political bellwether status and turned red during the Trump era, but Democrats see a chance to win both the governor’s office and a U.S. Senate seat from Republican hands this year as anti-Trump sentiment buoys their party.

Republican Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to replace Vance in the Senate, is trying to hold on to his seat against a challenge from former Sen. Sherrod Brown, a longtime Ohio politician with a pro-working class message who lost his reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno two years ago.

Brown has capitalized on public opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the campaign and aired ads calling Husted the “face of data centers in Ohio.” The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, warned in a memo this week that backlash to the centers has left Husted vulnerable.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a Vance ally, is the party’s nominee for governor in a race against Democrat Amy Acton. Democrats have not won the Ohio governor’s office in two decades.

Husted and Ramaswamy both spoke before Vance on Friday, as did U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright.

Vance, whose family still keeps a home in Cincinnati where they sometimes spend weekends, was making his first public visit since his fourth child was born in July.

As part of his plans for ramping up his travel schedule, his office announced a trip Monday to Brewer, Maine, where former Republican Gov. Paul LePage is running against Democrat Matt Dunlap, the state auditor, in a competitive House district.

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Price reported from Washington.

Scattered showers and thunderstorms stretch from the Golden Isles to the River in Putnam County. These will weaken and dissipate as they move toward the beaches.

Another round of showers and thunderstorms will develop between 4 - 5 p.m., in and around I-295 and Downtown. These are expected to fade between 5 and 6 p.m. The short-range forecast calls for drier and calmer conditions between 6 - 7 p.m.

All Heat Advisories have expired thanks to the cooling from the showers and thunderstorms. The weather concerns for the evening will be lightning, locally heavy rain and gusty winds.

In the tropics: We are watching two spots in the Atlantic. Neither poses any concerns for us. www.news4jax.com/weather/2026/08/21/weak-atlantic-system-near-bermuda-shows-little-development/

Tonight: Scattered showers and thunderstorms possible through 7 - 8 p.m.

Saturday: Breezy and hot with scattered showers and thunderstorms, 50-70 percent. Morning lows in the 70s to low 80s. Afternoon highs in the 90s inland, upper 80s to low 90s along the beaches. Wind: SW 10-15 mph.

Sunday: Partly cloudy and hot with isolated showers and thunderstorms, 10-30 percent. Morning lows in the 70s with highs in the low to mid 90s inland, upper 80s to 90s along the beaches. Wind: WSW 5 -10 mph.

Looking ahead: A drier start to the week as summer temperatures continue.

Sunrise: 6:58 p.m.

Sunset: 8:01 p.m.

State officials announced the outbreak earlier this week, saying they documented more than three dozen cases in Minnesota and Wisconsin. On Friday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the agency is aware of 55 cases nationally, including four people who have been hospitalized.

The CDC said cases are also reported in Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota and Washington.

Of 34 sick people interviewed, 26 reported eating alfalfa sprouts, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Food poisoning outbreaks tend to be defined by one type of germ, but this outbreak involves people with salmonella and different strains of E. coli.

Shiga toxin-producing E. coli — or STEC — can cause stomach cramps and bloody diarrhea. Infections can lead to a severe complication that involves acute kidney failure.

Salmonella poisoning can cause diarrhea, fever, severe vomiting, dehydration and stomach cramps.

Officials are linking cases to alfalfa sprouts produced by Everything Sprouts, a Minnesota grower, and sold under the Calco and Everything Sprouts brands to restaurants and grocery stores. The company has yet to issue a recall, the FDA said.

Last year, the FDA sent a warning letter to Everything Sprouts, saying inspections the year before identified several points of concern, including a leaking roof that was dropping water onto bean sprouts and workers' smocks.

The Associated Press left messages for Everything Sprouts seeking comment.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

This system could acquire some subtropical or tropical characteristics this weekend while it moves east-southeastward at 10 to 15 mph toward Portugal and northwestern Spain.

The opportunity for tropical or subtropical development should end by Sunday night.

The formation chance through 48 hours is 20 percent and through 7 days is also 20 percent.

The next spot to watch is in the Central Subtropical Atlantic. This weak area of low pressure, located a few hundred miles east-southeast of Bermuda, is producing disorganized showers and thunderstorms.

If this system develops, it is expected to do so slowly as it drifts west-southwestward through Sunday, then turns northward early next week.

The formation chance through 48 hours is 10 percent and the formation chance through 7 days is 20 percent.

The shopping mall strikes, plus two other separate Russian attacks in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, left a total of 21 people dead across Ukraine on Friday, authorities said.

Kryvyi Rih is the hometown of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who described the attack as a double-tap strike, in which an initial wave of drones hit the area, followed by a second wave as rescue workers responded.

“Attacks like these are nothing less than terrorist acts,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. In a video address several hours later, he said Ukraine would respond to the shopping mall attack.

Oleksandr Hanzha, who heads the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said Friday evening that the attack on the mall killed at least 15 people and injured 130, including 23 children.

Kryvyi Rih has been hit multiple times during the more than 4-year-old war, with one of the deadliest occurring in April 2025, when 20 people, including nine children, were killed.

Russia exploits Ukraine’s shortage of defensive systems

Earlier on Friday, a Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s Kharkiv region killed two women, aged 73 and 66, and wounded two others, said regional head Oleh Syniehubov.

Another Russian attack on Friday evening killed four people, including three children, in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, emergency services said.

Ukraine shot down or suppressed 107 out of 135 drones launched by Russia overnight, according to a statement from Ukraine’s air force on Telegram.

Friday’s attacks came just 24 hours after Russia pounded the capital of Kyiv with scores of missiles and drones in a nighttime aerial attack that killed 16 people.

Large-scale Russian strikes have become a regular occurrence this summer. Just over two weeks ago, a Russian attack on Kyiv and its surrounding region killed 17 people, and nine were killed in the city two days before that. The United Nations said last week that Kyiv was one of the hardest hit cities in July, with at least 54 civilians killed and 202 injured.

Moscow’s forces have recently intensified their ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv, exploiting Ukraine’s chronic shortage of U.S.-made Patriot air defense interceptors, the sole weapon in its arsenal able to shoot down the missiles.

Ukrainian drones hit Russian oil refinery

A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and wounded four others when a car was struck Friday in Russia’s Belgorod region near the village of Razumnoye, local officials said, adding that two of the injured were in serious condition.

Earlier, Zelenskyy said a separate Ukrainian drone attack hit an oil refinery in Perm, more than 1,600 kilometers (about 995 miles) from his country’s border. Also struck was the Marinovka military airfield in Russia’s Volgograd region, he said.

The Russian online news outlet Astra reported that the Ukrainian drone had set ablaze a Lukoil-operated oil refinery in Perm. Local officials said damage was recorded at an unidentified “industrial facility.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said its air defenses overnight intercepted 325 Ukrainian drones over 15 Russian regions, as well as Crimea. The peninsula was illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014.

Later Friday, it said its defenses shot down another 211 drones.

Long-range strikes between Russia and Ukraine have escalated as troops continually fail to make significant battlefield progress, analysts say. Troop movements along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (780-mile) front line in eastern and southern Ukraine are severely restricted by large numbers of drones and ground robots that threaten infantry and vehicles.

In the past year, Ukraine has devised and deployed domestically produced long-range drones for strikes deep inside Russia, capturing the attention of governments and defense manufacturers around the world.

Officials in Kyiv aim to make the Russian public feel the war’s consequences and pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into negotiating a peace settlement. Putin has so far shown no sign he intends to stop the invasion.

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

Superintendent Dr. Brennan Asplen showed up to Wednesday’s St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners Special Meeting on his own, wanting to understand firsthand what Florida Senate Bill 686 could mean for a district that has spent years trying to build its way out of a growth problem it didn’t create.

“I just wanted to come today to see it and understand it and try to get out in front of the conversation,” Dr. Brennan Asplen, superintendent of St. Johns County School District said.

SilverLeaf High School finally within reach

For the first time in recent memory, the St. Johns County School District believes it may be able to build a new high school without taking on significant debt. Silverleaf High School — estimated at roughly $100 million — has been in the pipeline for years, and the district is finally in a position to make it happen.

Getting here wasn’t easy. The district pulled back on other planned construction — including a middle school, elementary school and K-8 — freeing up dollars to put toward the high school.

“We kind of pulled back on that a little bit based on the growth has slowed a little bit. Okay. So we’ll just see if to have to see where that goes. We have those on hold right now, but that did help us to put some of those dollars toward the high school which hopefully we won’t have to borrow for the high school which would be amazing and if we do it would just be a very small amount,” Asplen said.

Dr. Asplen says the board has approved the district to move forward on the design and architecture, and the district is preparing a board workshop to walk through the full scope of the project. Construction is expected to take approximately three years.

“Right now it’s around a hundred million dollars,” Asplen said. “But you know how that goes; it could grow to 120 million dollars depending on you know where we are as we go through this design process.”

What SB 686 means for schools

Under Senate Bill 686, which took effect July 1, 2026, developers can seek certification of undeveloped agricultural land for residential development — bypassing much of the traditional local approval process. The board approved two certifications Wednesday that could bring an estimated 15,000 new homes to the area. A third application covering more than 4,400 acres north of Nocatee was continued to Sept. 1.

For the school district, the question isn’t whether growth is coming — it’s how fast.

“It all depends, I think, on how quickly it’s built and how quickly people move in,” Asplen said. “So if it’s as quick as Nocatee occurred, then yes, it would be multiple schools being built at the same time, which would require us to borrow and not have time to save. You know, if there’s a longer time frame and the growth is slow, even though it might still be that many. We’ll be able to save more dollars and borrow less, but I think with that number of homes and those number of families coming in, in St. John’s County, we’ll just continue to be building our schools, yes.”

Planning ahead

Asplen said he plans to take what he learned Wednesday back to his team immediately, but acknowledged key questions around impact fees, proportionate share and infrastructure timelines remain unanswered.

“Yeah, so I’ll take this information back to our team today and discuss about what we know at this point in time, but as you heard today, each of the attorneys said, you know, today is just to approve that it’s going to happen, and then once we can understand what that means for us as far as infrastructure. And impact fees and proportionate share and all those questions that need to be answered, then we’ll get deeper into it to see what we need, when we need it, and then how we can plan that over the next 10 years,” Asplen said.

The comparison to Nocatee came up repeatedly. If the new developments build out at a similar pace, the district would have to adjust.

“This plan sounds like it would be, you know over a 10-year period of time we have growth coming in sort of like Nocatee when Nocatee was built or even the SilverLeaf as it moves forward as it continues to grow,” Asplen said.

“At the end of the day, you know, if we need to build the schools, we need to build schools. And if we need to borrow, we to need to borrow because we’re going to make sure that our students have a student station,” Asplen said.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said Canada has leverage in the talks even as his province weighs restoring U.S. alcohol sales at Prime Minister Mark Carney’s urging to help secure a deal that would avert threatened 50% U.S. tariffs.

“Everybody knows the American president by now, he’s erratic, he’s irresponsible, and he’s not to be trusted. And this is the person that we were supposed to make a deal with, and we’re going to make additional concessions for it. That’s why I say you can't make a good deal with a bad person, because who’s to say it’s not going to be undone?" Kinew said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Kinew’s remarks.

Dominic LeBlanc, the federal minister responsible for Canada-U.S. trade, said the two countries were close to finalizing an agreement after he returned to Washington to meet again with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

“We’re very close. We continue to make progress,” he said, adding that Canadian officials would remain in Washington to keep working on the deal. Trump has called the emerging agreement “very fair” to both sides, while tariffs on about $20 billion worth of Canadian imports have been postponed until 12:01 a.m. Saturday. Neither side has released the full terms.

Despite his criticism of Trump, Kinew said Manitoba may go along with Carney’s request as part of a “Team Canada” approach. But he urged consumers to keep buying Canadian even if U.S. products return to provincial liquor stores. Other provincial leaders, including the premiers of Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia, have publicly backed the direction of Carney’s negotiation.

"I think we should fight. I think Donald Trump is very weak. I think America is weaker around the world today than it was a year ago. He’s about to get slaughtered in the midterms and the cost of living is the number one issue and he’s completely out of touch with the cost of living of Americans,” Kinew said.

Restoring alcohol sales a sticking point

Kinew said he understood Carney’s request to mean that restoring U.S. alcohol sales was effectively necessary to complete the deal. The provincial bans on U.S. alcohol have been a particular irritant for the Trump administration, which has pressed Canada to remove restrictions that sharply reduced American liquor sales.

Provincial governments do not have a veto over the overall Canada-U.S. agreement, but they control measures such as liquor sales and some procurement rules that have become part of the negotiations.

Eight of Canada’s 10 provinces restrict or ban U.S. alcohol — measures imposed in retaliation for Trump’s previous tariffs on Canadian goods and amid anger over his repeated talk of making Canada the 51st U.S. state.

Kinew said Carney strongly pressed premiers to restore U.S. alcohol sales while other details of the agreement were still being finalized. “I wouldn’t say that he was begging us, but what is the step before begging?” Kinew said.

Kinew also said Manitoba could agree to remove formal restrictions on U.S. companies and products, including procurement preferences, while continuing to favor Canadian suppliers in its own purchasing.

Quebec Premier Christine Fréchette, meanwhile, said Carney had answered many of her questions about the emerging agreement but stopped short of endorsing it while the province assesses the economic impact. She said Quebec could restore U.S. alcohol to shelves at the SAQ, the Quebec government corporation that controls most wine and spirits sales in the province, but stressed that the decision would be Quebec’s.

Robert Bothwell, a professor emeritus of Canadian history and international relations at the University of Toronto, said Kinew’s criticism reflects a broader Canadian view of Trump. “Kinew speaks for Canada,” Bothwell said.

Deantre Deyoung, 29, was booked into the Duval County Jail after being transported from the Putnam County Jail on an arrest warrant. He is being held without bond.

According to Facebook posts from The Covenant School of Jacksonville, a Christian school on Bartram Road, Deyoung was the school’s athletic director. In a statement from the school, officials said, “We have been made aware that a former employee has been arrested. Due to the ongoing investigation, we are unable to comment.”

The lewd conduct felony charge Deyoung faces comes from alleged conduct that occurred on multiple occasions between November 2025 and May 2026, according to the redacted report.

School leadership aware before arrest

A school administrator told investigators that Deyoung was instructed to resign immediately and was barred from the school’s premises after learning of the inappropriate communication, the report states. The administrator said she learned about the relationship from another teacher.

Before spring break, Deyoung had been told to cease all communication with the student, according to the report. Despite that directive, he allegedly contacted the administrator on May 24 and acknowledged he had continued communicating with the student anyway.

The administrator also told investigators that Deyoung made an inappropriate remark to a second student at the school, causing that student to feel uncomfortable. No disciplinary records were documented for either incident, the report states.

Instagram messages, grooming behavior cited

Investigators say Deyoung contacted the student on Instagram before the conduct escalated. According to the report, early conversations were non-sexual in nature but became increasingly inappropriate over time.

The report states Deyoung used his position to provide the student with what investigators described as “special treatment” — including bringing her lunches from various restaurants and removing her from class for private one-on-one conversations during school hours. He also allegedly helped her avoid disciplinary issues at school.

Investigators obtained a search warrant for Deyoung’s Instagram account. A review of the account revealed multiple messages exchanged between Deyoung and the student. Some messages sent through Instagram’s “vanish mode” — a feature that causes messages to disappear after being read — were not recoverable. However, the victim had preserved screenshots and recordings of some of those messages, according to the report.

The report notes the suspect and victim used coded language in their messages. Investigators also noted Deyoung used vanish mode specifically when communicating inappropriately.

The exchange, according to investigators, included a discussion about the consequences of being caught and Deyoung’s marriage.

According to the arrest report, the victim also mentioned Deyoung was an employee at River City Science Academy and was asked to resign due to inappropriate behavior.

After reviewing the victim’s statements and Instagram messages, investigators concluded that Deyoung was grooming the student and engaging in romantic conversations with her, according to the report.

Deyoung’s next court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 9.

Khan isn't being held under a government order, but as a “convicted prisoner” serving sentences imposed by courts following judicial proceedings, the Ministry of Information said in a written response to The Associated Press.

The government’s response came hours after Khan’s family and opposition party accused authorities of violating a Supreme Court order by taking him to a government hospital for a medical examination instead of a private hospital designated by the court.

Khan’s sister, Uzma Khan, told a news conference that she was at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences, a government-run hospital in Islamabad, when her brother was brought there overnight.

Khan’s sister said that during a meeting with her, Khan complained that he had been kept in solitary confinement, which she said amounted to mental torture for him. Suhail Afridi, a senior leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, also accused the government of violating the order by taking Khan to the public hospital.

Khan’s personal physician, Dr. Faisal Sultan, said that he had been escorted to Shifa International Hospital, where he waited for Khan until early Friday. Sultan said he was eventually told that Khan had been returned to Adiala prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said earlier Friday that Khan had been returned to prison after doctors examined him and found him medically fit.

The ministry also rejected allegations that Khan was being held in solitary confinement or denied meaningful contact with his family. It said that Khan had received more than 900 visits from family members, lawyers, doctors, political representatives and other approved visitors since his imprisonment in 2023. It said that he also has been allowed weekly meetings with his wife, and telephone, landline and WhatsApp contact with relatives in Pakistan and abroad.

According to the ministry, Khan’s most recent recorded telephone conversation with one of his sons was on March 21. It said that Khan’s sisters had met him as recently as Aug. 18 and 19.

The government said Khan has access to reading material and television, and is allowed home-cooked food and exercise equipment and “maintains a healthy diet.” It said, however, that access to Khan couldn't be used to send political messages from prison.

The ministry rejected allegations of medical neglect, saying Khan had undergone about 30 examinations by specialists and medical boards from institutions including PIMS, Shifa International Hospital, Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital and Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital, in addition to regular examinations by the prison doctor.

The ministry said Uzma Khan had herself acknowledged at Friday’s news conference that her brother was “100% fit,” with blood pressure of 120/80 and his eye condition almost completely healed.

It also disputed descriptions of Khan’s detention conditions, saying he was being held in a seven-cell compound with sleeping, sanitation and exercise facilities, and was provided separately prepared meals that included meat, chicken, fruit, milk, nuts, juices and bottled water.

The government insists that authorities took Khan to the public hospital because of security concerns involving supporters of Khan’s PTI party who had gathered outside Shifa International Hospital or were heading there. He said that Khan was found to be in good health.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered that Khan be examined at Shifa International Hospital by a medical board that included specialists and one of his personal physicians.

Concerns about Khan’s health intensified in late January, after his family said that he had lost about 85% of the vision in his right eye, which the government disputed. Authorities later said that his condition was improving.

The former cricket star turned politician was ousted in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022 and has been imprisoned since 2023 after being convicted in multiple cases.

The letter, signed by at least two former staffers from Kennedy's 2024 presidential campaign, marks the first major MAHA movement mobilization over fossil fuels and the latest in a series of rifts between the diverse group of activists and the Trump administration over environmental policy.

The letter to Trump, Kennedy and various other Cabinet officials, first obtained by The Associated Press, laments a 2025 executive order that aimed to boost coal to power data centers over pollution concerns and asks the administration to consider renewable options, including solar and geothermal energy.

“We understand the importance of American leadership in artificial intelligence, national security, innovation, and economic growth,” the letter reads. “But American AI leadership should not come at the cost of a more toxic burden for American children.”

In response, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers noted that greenhouse gas emissions dropped to a 30-year low during Trump's first term and said Trump “was given a mandate to roll back the radical climate policies that are burning a hole through taxpayers' wallets.”

The agencies receiving the letter didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Prominent MAHA figures behind the letter include Zen Honeycutt, a former Kennedy campaign staffer and founder of the advocacy group Moms Across America, and Charles Eisenstein, a former speechwriter on Kennedy's campaign. Honeycutt said she asked the Kennedy-aligned political action committee MAHA Action to sign onto the letter but did not receive a reply.

Although it may not reflect the views of all MAHA activists, the new line of criticism against one of the administration’s signature policies less than three months before November’s midterm elections could present another challenge for Republicans as they seek to win over the voting bloc in key races.

As health secretary, Kennedy has carried out several policy changes that cater to the MAHA movement, including attempting to scale back childhood vaccine recommendations, a central priority for some activists. He also has sought to remove artificial dyes from food and encouraged Americans to have healthy diets free of ultraprocessed foods.

But many in the MAHA movement, which Trump credits with helping him win back the White House two years ago, say they have grown frustrated with the administration over its embrace of pesticides such as glyphosate and its deregulatory environmental agenda. Some have said they plan to vote on issues over party this fall, raising the political stakes of their increasingly public tensions with the Republican administration.

As president, Trump has enthusiastically embraced what he calls “big, beautiful coal” despite outcry from environmentalists about planet-warming greenhouse gases and toxic chemicals released by coal-fired power plants.

His administration has moved to reverse tighter Biden-era standards on greenhouse gas emissions, which, in addition to their climate impacts, can harm brain development in children and increase rates of heart attacks in adults.

He also has been a vocal advocate for data centers, which power artificial intelligence and cloud computing, framing them as a necessary component of winning the AI race against China.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center,” Trump said this week, “I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous.”

Data centers have become a political flashpoint in this year's elections. Voters across the political spectrum have criticized them for jacking up electricity bills, draining water supplies, and creating unhealthy amounts of air and noise pollution.

Friday's letter asks the administration to require transparent review of data center location and power sourcing decisions, and respect existing environmental review requirements in the permitting process.

Honeycutt said that after Trump's executive order last year, she researched the impact of coal ash on communities and was disturbed by what she found. She said she was also concerned about other aspects of data centers, including their land use and their effects on the people living near them.

“The data center push has been an overwhelmingly negative impact on our communities, and there are many in the MAHA movement that are extremely disappointed about that,” she said. “We vote for those who put health and safety first.”

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Associated Press writer Michael Phillis in Washington contributed to this report.

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under a China-imposed national security law that has effectively crushed the city’s previously thriving pro-democracy movement. They face a maximum prison term of 10 years. The alliance was also found guilty.

The three judges ruled that the alliance’s call to “end one-party dictatorship” aimed to end the ruling Communist Party’s leadership status under the constitution, and that the “end” in the phrase carried the meaning of “overthrowing” and “undermining.”

In the verdict, they wrote that the defendants persisted in the call after the law's introduction, neglecting that it was in breach of the constitution, which states the party's leadership is a defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. That falls within “other unlawful means” under the security law, the judges said.

The defendants “intentionally encouraged supporters of the alliance to wait for the right time to carry out the goal to ‘end one-party dictatorship’ by unlawful means,” they said.

“They did not genuinely believe their words and deeds had not violated the national security law. They just refused to pull back from the brink,” wrote the judges, who insisted they weren't tried because of political views.

Lee and Chow smiled and waved at the public gallery before they left the courtroom. They are expected to be sentenced at a later date. They will plead for lesser sentences next week, one of the judges said.

Trial a barometer for Hong Kong’s civil rights, observers say

The verdict is among the latest involving Hong Kong’s once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, which has largely been dismantled after the security law's introduction in 2020.

For decades, Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigil was the only large-scale public commemoration of the Tiananmen crackdown in China, drawing tens of thousands of people annually. The crackdown remains a political taboo on the mainland, where authorities tightly censor discussion and prohibit public commemorations.

Hong Kong’s greater political freedoms, granted under Beijing’s “one country, two systems” governing framework, allowed the vigil to occur until authorities banned it during the coronavirus pandemic.

Observers said that their trial symbolized the erosion of freedom of expression in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Eric Lai, a senior fellow with the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said that every actor in Hong Kong civil society who assumed that renouncing violence and working within the law would be fine has to revise that assumption.

“Moderation of method offers no protection if the objective itself is held to be unconstitutional,” he said.

During the trial, Lee told the court that their call wasn't about ending the party’s leadership, but about moving toward democracy, letting the people decide who leads them, and that the Communist Party shouldn't enforce “dictatorship.”

In a Patreon post on Thursday, Chow recalled being shackled in handcuffs, and in waist and ankle chains, for trips to court from prison, saying she was walked by correctional service officers “like a dog.”

“Justice lives in the hearts of the people,” she said. “One verdict doesn’t matter much.”

When the trial began in January, codefendant Albert Ho pleaded guilty, which typically could result in a reduced sentence. He will also plead for a lesser sentence next week.

Supporters cast doubt on allegations

After the conviction, Lee’s wife, Elizabeth Tang, told reporters that she was disappointed and angry about the result.

“I feel it's unfair. I feel the judges did not consider our lawyers' opinions and materials,” she said, and that they would decide whether to appeal later.

Chow's mother, Medina Chow Lau Wah-chun, said that she hoped the “environment can be a little healthier” and “flowers and plants of all colors can bloom.”

Dozens of people lined up outside the court under drizzle before the hearing.

Tang Ngok-kwan, a former alliance member, said that police wouldn't let him join the line, if he insisted on bringing along “sensitive” materials, including bookmarks printed with “vindicate June 4.” The date is the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. He decided not to go into the court.

Former vigil goer Margaret Chan, who joined the line at 6 a.m., said that the alliance’s name carried the word “patriotic.”

“Everyone is patriotic. How to incite? Incite others to be patriotic?” she said.

Hong Kong authorities defend the verdict

Hong Kong leader John Lee said that the alliance has long deliberately planted seeds of hatred against the party and the central government in society, and their acts endangered national security.

Steve Li, chief superintendent of the police's national security department, said the case would help with future law enforcement.

“It also lets the public know that it is not that one cannot criticize,” he said. “It is simply that there must be no incitement, and no subversion of state power.”

But others disagreed

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres “has always believed that people should be allowed to speak and protest and demonstrate peacefully without fear of arrest or prosecution,” his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric, told U.N. reporters when asked for Guterres' reaction to the convictions.

Riley Barnes, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said on X that the U.S. condemns the guilty verdict, saying the peaceful vigils sought only to remember the past and honor the lives lost in that assault.

Rosie Winterton, the minister for the Indo-Pacific region at the U.K. Foreign Office, said that the verdict is a further demonstration that even peaceful acts of remembrance in Hong Kong are now treated by the authorities as threats to national security. The European Union said the convictions confirmed the ongoing deterioration of the city's freedom of expression.

Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, were killed in the 1989 crackdown as military tanks rolled into the center of Beijing. The Tiananmen Square crackdown was a pivotal moment in China’s modern history, showing that the market reform that transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy wouldn't be coupled with political liberalization.

After COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the former vigil site in Hong Kong was occupied instead by a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups.

Beijing said the security law was necessary for the city’s stability. Many leading activists have been jailed under the same law, including pro-democracy former media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Under the drastic political changes, the alliance was among dozens of civil society groups dissolved.

At several local marinas, Carefree Boat Club of Jacksonville boats have disappeared. Some say they have also been unable to reach staff or make reservations.

Chuck Martoia said he discovered the problem when he tried to make a reservation for his grandchildren in St. Augustine last week.

He said he couldn’t get an answer from the marina, so he drove there and spoke with a worker.

“He said, ‘Oh yeah, they went bankrupt. They repossessed all their boats yesterday,’” Martoia said.

Martoia said there was no one in the office and no boats at the marina.

The News4JAX I-TEAM has not found any bankruptcy filings for Carefree Boat Club of Jacksonville. Several members, however, told News4JAX they were given similar explanations about the boats being repossessed at local marinas.

An attorney for the Carefree Boat Club network told News4JAX that the network itself is operating as usual and that the affected clubs are independently owned and operated.

The Jacksonville, Fernandina Beach and St. Augustine locations have suspended operations but no other Carefree club has been impacted, according to the attorney.

Correspondence was sent to members last Friday via email saying the network is stable and operations continue across the network.

The network is not a party to membership agreements between customers and their local clubs. Those agreements are with the individual local clubs.

That distinction matters for members who say they are still being charged hundreds of dollars despite being unable to use their local club.

Martoia said he was surprised when he checked his American Express account on Aug. 18 and saw another charge.

“I was surprised on August 18th, yesterday, when I looked at my American Express that they had another $432 on it,” he said.

His wife, Diane Martoia, said the couple had been members for years and did not expect the club to suddenly stop operating.

“We had been with them so long we just didn’t think that they would go under,” she said.

According to the Carefree Boat Club network, billing for network fees for members at clubs that have suspended operations was stopped as of Aug. 14. Members do not need to take any action for that suspension to apply.

However, the network said that suspension applies only to Carefree network fees. It does not suspend monthly membership dues owed to the local clubs under their membership agreements, which can exceed $400 a month.

The network said members’ accounts and reservation accounts remain active and members can make reservations at any Carefree location that remains open. The closest locations to Jacksonville are now in Daytona Beach and St. Marys.

Carefree Boat Club network also said ownership of the network returned to its original founder in March. The network is made up of independently owned and operated clubs that operate under license agreements.

According to public records, Carefree Boat Club of Jacksonville LLC is owned by Nicholas A. Mastroianni III. Mastroianni acquired the entire Carefree Boat Club network as CEO in 2023. The network later returned to its original founder, while Mastroianni appears to have retained ownership of the Jacksonville-area clubs.

News4JAX has reached out to Mastroianni and his attorney, as listed in corporate registration records, for answers about what happened to the local clubs and what it means for members who continue to be charged. We have not yet received a response.

For members like the Martoias, the immediate concern is getting answers and figuring out what happens to the money they have already paid.

Diane said the lack of communication has been particularly frustrating.

“I just feel like he was just dishonest and he just didn’t communicate,” she said.

While Bazaar47 might be a new name, the space is not. Bazaar47 was formerly known as How Bazar and was owned by five local creatives, who used their individual skills to create a unique space for the Gainesville arts community.

Now, the space is solely owned by Laila Fakhoury, one of the original five owners. The announcement of the sole ownership was made on social media July 20. With the change in ownership came a change in name from How Bazar to Bazaar47.

“Being the sole owner of [Bazaar47] means that more of what I was doing in the space is being represented now,” Fakhoury told News4JAX. “I’ve mostly transitioned us into being primarily an event venue and a third place, which were the things that I was really focused on when it was How Bazar.”

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Bazaar47’s Grand Opening will take place during The Big Bazaar Block Party Aug. 22. From 9 p.m. to 1 a.m., SW 2nd Street in Downtown Gainesville will be taken over for the opening celebration. The event will feature vendors, food, and music throughout the Downtown Gainesville city block.

To RSVP for the block party, click here.

The event also features a Red Bull Dance Your Style Showcase and Dance Battle. You can sign up for the dance battle here.

This comes as the Red Bull Dance Your Style National Finals take place in Tampa Sept. 19. You can get tickets for the finals for only $10 using the discount code BAZAAR. The link for tickets is here.

To check out more about Bazaar47 and their upcoming events, visit their website.

The Jacksonville Growth and Affordability Partnership Fund, known as Jax GAP Fund, pairs private investors, philanthropic organizations and a nonprofit lender to fill financing gaps for multifamily projects.

Northern Trust is the lead investor; the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, The Community Foundation for Northeast Florida and Pinnacle Financial Partners are also participating. Self-Help Ventures Fund will manage the lending vehicle.

Officials said the initial capital is designed to work alongside the 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program and other sources to help unlock about $80 million for affordable multifamily development. Because the fund is revolving, loan repayments can be reused for new projects, officials said, stretching the impact of the original investment.

“This is a generational investment,” Council member Rahman Johnson said. “Twenty million dollars matters. But what matters even more is what those dollars can unlock, how many families they can serve and how many times that capital can be recycled and put back to work. We are not simply funding housing. We are building financial infrastructure for affordability.”

The launch comes as the City Council debates the fiscal 2026-27 budget and broader strategies for addressing housing needs. Johnson said the fund shows how public, private, and philanthropic dollars can create housing opportunities.

“Budgets tell us what government is willing to fund. Investments tell us what a community believes is worth building,” Johnson added. “Today, Jacksonville invested in people, possibility and permanence. That isn’t just affordable housing. That is legacy.”

Officials said the fund intends to invest in Jacksonville’s long-term ability to create and sustain affordable housing.

The U.S. carmaker is recalling about 2.98 million China-made and imported EVs including Model 3, Model Y, Model X and Model S over door handle safety risks, according to China’s State Administration for Market Regulation.

The recall, the largest this year according to Chinese media, comes a few months after Chinese authorities said in February that starting next year, it would be banning hidden car door handles that are commonly seen on Tesla electric vehicles and many Chinese EV models.

China has stepped up scrutiny recently on hidden, or flush, car door handles following EV accidents in the country and elsewhere, in which cars’ hidden electronic doors failed and trapped people inside.

In a notice on the Chinese regulator’s website, it cited safety risk. In extreme situations, such as a severe collision that causes an electrical system failure, the car handles could hinder car users from quickly opening the doors to escape, or prevent rescuers outside the car from gaining access, the notice said.

Tesla will perform software updates on the vehicles to mitigate risks, the notice added. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Xiaomi, the Beijing-based Chinese technology giant, is recalling more than 390,000 vehicles. Hangzhou-based Leapmotor is recalling over 370,000 cars. Other Chinese carmakers, including Geely and XPENG are also recalling some vehicles.

The reasons given in each case were similar, mostly relating to issues with their car door handles.

A report published by the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party, said the large-scale recall “serves as a unified safety upgrade” for existing vehicle models ahead of the 2027 implementation of the ban on hidden car door handles.

“For the rapidly evolving NEV (new energy vehicle) industry, competition should be defined not only by the pace of technological innovation but also by the high standards set for safety,” the newspaper said.

____

Fu Ting reported from Washington.

The person spoke Friday to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because details of the agreement — the second sale in the NBA this month — were not being publicized.

The Los Angeles Lakers were flipped by Mark Walter to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at a $12.5 billion valuation in a deal struck last week.

Lore, a New York e-commerce entrepreneur, and partner Alex Rodriguez, the former Major League Baseball star, bought the NBA and WNBA clubs from Minnesota businessman Glen Taylor. That complicated and contentious process lasted more than four years until the $1.5 billion sale got league approval in June 2025.

Lore will retain a limited share and essentially swap roles with Stad, who is the founder of Dragoneer Investment group, a California-based firm focused on technology companies. Rodriguez will remain as a co-owner and continue as the most publicly visible owner of the pro basketball franchises.

Lore's decision to sell his majority stake stems from his focus on his food delivery startup Wonder, according to a second person with knowledge of the situation, speaking on condition of anonymity to the AP because those details were not being made public. Lore has started the process of taking Wonder public.

Lore, Rodriguez and Stad issued a joint statement Friday expressing their commitment to the current leadership in the organization including chief executive officer Matt Caldwell, Timberwolves president of basketball operations Tim Connelly, Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch, and Lynx president of basketball operations and head coach Cheryl Reeve.

“We have been working together for years with a shared goal of building the Timberwolves and Lynx into the best organization in basketball on and off the floor. Our priority is and always will be championships,” the owners said. “Our new agreement, pending league approval, is an evolution of the partnership we have built together and strengthening of our commitment to our team and our culture.”

The two teams currently play at Target Center, which opened in 1990 for the second season of the Timberwolves after they were granted an expansion franchise. Lore and Rodriguez have previously pledged a desire to keeping the teams in downtown Minneapolis, eventually in a new arena.

The Lynx were added to the WNBA as an expansion club in 1999 and have won four championships, with a healthy lead on the rest of the league this season behind star Napheesa Collier and rookie Olivia Miles.

The Timberwolves have never won a title or reached the NBA Finals, with an eight-year run of making the playoffs behind star forward Kevin Garnett their only period of sustained success until recently.

Since drafting Anthony Edwards with the first overall pick in the 2020 draft, hiring Finch in 2021 and Connelly in 2022, the Timberwolves have grown into one of the league's best teams. They reached the Western Conference Finals in 2024 and 2025 and were ousted in the second round by the San Antonio Spurs last season. They acquired point guard LaMelo Ball in one of the NBA's biggest summer trades.

___

An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled Marc Stad's last name.

___

AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed.

___

See AP’s full NBA coverage here

She died Thursday at her home in Kent, Connecticut, Robert Johnson, manager of the property, told The Associated Press. The cause of her death was not disclosed. Johnson said she will be buried next to her late husband at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date.

The daughter of a New York City lawyer, she met Henry Kissinger while working for New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. The couple wed in 1974.

She was described by one profiler as a brainy, Blass-bedecked blonde. She was often seen at high fashion openings and was a strong presence on the New York philanthropy scene.

“Nancy Kissinger can pick up the phone and get right through to the CEO. Nobody keeps her waiting,” philanthropist Judy Peabody said after chairing a successful hospital charity event in 1989.

Michael Bloomberg — the billionaire founder of the Bloomberg financial-news empire, former New York City mayor and a friend of the Kissingers — said in a social media post that Nancy Kissinger “was a powerhouse of ideas and insights that she put to work throughout her life in government and philanthropy — and as Henry’s most valued and trusted advisor.”

He added, “She was the ultimate diplomat — as wise as she was discreet — and I know how completely Henry admired and loved her. Diana and I were fortunate to call her a dear friend, and to see their extraordinary partnership in action over the decades. We will miss her greatly.”

Nancy Kissinger made headlines in 1982 when she tried to throttle a woman who harassed her and her husband with insulting questions at Newark Airport. The couple was going to Boston, where Henry Kissinger was to undergo bypass surgery.

The woman, a leafleter for a group affiliated with politician Lyndon LaRouche, accused Nancy Kissinger of choking both her throat and her free-speech rights. Nancy Kissinger said she only wanted to protect her husband from upset.

A judge acquitted Nancy Kissinger of assault and called her behavior “a spontaneous and somewhat human reaction to an offensive question.”

The Kissingers met in the mid-1960s when he was a consultant for Rockefeller and she was on the staff of Rockefeller's Commission on Critical Choices for America.

Henry Kissinger had joined the Nixon administration and was secretary of state when he and the former Nancy Sharon Maginnes married on March 30, 1974, in a civil ceremony in Arlington, Virginia.

After leaving Washington, they returned to New York and lived in homes in Manhattan and Kent, Connecticut.

The daughter of an Episcopalian Park Avenue lawyer, Nancy Kissinger grew up with two brothers and a horse on an estate in White Plains.

She attended Good Counsel Academy, a Catholic girls school in White Plains, and the exclusive Master's School in Dobbs Ferry, from which she graduated in 1951. She returned to the school to teach history for two years after graduating from Mount Holyoke in 1955.

Graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley followed before she went to work for Rockefeller.

Work Location: Detroit, MI

Description

The Client Experience Manager leads a high-performing team of Client Experience Account Managers and a Digital Solutions Planner to drive client satisfaction, retention, and revenue growth. The Manager is responsible for overseeing all aspects of client support, building scalable processes, and fostering a culture of excellence. This role blends leadership, customer engagement, project management, and data-driven strategy to ensure clients receive exceptional service and measurable results.

Responsibilities

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team that focuses on the client experience through advisement of result-based solutions, execution of campaigns and recommendations for optimization and future growth.
• Develop, implement, and refine workflows that streamline pre- and post-sale processes.
• Establish best practices for client deliverables, including reporting cadence, onboarding, and project management.
• Foster team growth through training on campaign strategy, optimization, and industry trends.
• Track and analyze team KPIs to measure impact and identify areas for improvement.
• Partner with Director of Digital, Digital Sales Strategist and Account Executives to develop and deliver compelling, data-driven presentations using tools like Claritas.
• Support revenue growth by building retention strategies and strengthening client relationships.
• Collaborate with leadership to align client experience strategies with organizational goals.
• Travel for market visits to support client retention and business growth.
• Design and deliver training for Account Executives on Ad Operations processes and data-driven reporting.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, advertising, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• Minimum of 5 years of account management experience, preferably within media or digital advertising.
• Minimum of 2 years of experience managing direct reports.
• Strong project management skills with the ability to juggle multiple priorities and deadlines.
• Excellent presentation and communication skills, both pre- and post-sale.
• Proven ability to think critically, proactively solve problems, and adapt to change.
• Strong digital acumen and understanding of marketing trends.
• Ability to train, coach, and inspire team members and sales partners.
• Detail-oriented team player with excellent interpersonal skills.

Additional Information:

Graham Media Group is an Equal Opportunity Employer. In addition to complying with the requirements of federal law, GMG will comply with applicable state and local laws prohibiting employment discrimination. Any offer of employment is conditional upon the successful completion of a pre-employment drug screening, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks.

Contact

tnguyen@grahammedia.com

Wesam Hamada said her daughter Hind Rajab’s final pleas still haunt her.

“All I remember is her voice pleading, ‘Mama, I’m scared. Mama, I’m hungry. Mama, I’m hurt,’" she said. “Her voice keeps repeating in my ears.”

The widely publicized recording of Hind's January 2024 phone call with her mother and emergency dispatchers made her one of the Israel-Hamas war’s most prominent casualties.

Israel’s military this week admitted to firing at the family’s car as it fled an Israeli invasion and firing toward an ambulance dispatched to help them.

It said it would launch a criminal investigation into its troops’ conduct. All six people in the car and two paramedics were killed. But both Rajab’s family and emergency responders from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society doubt the Israeli investigation can deliver justice.

“Why did the investigation and the acknowledgment of the shooting at Hind’s car and at the paramedics come only after more than two years?” Hamada said in an interview with The Associated Press. “It’s an attempt to distract from what’s happening in Gaza and improve the (Israeli) army’s image to the world. That’s it."

A call to paramedics that was heard around the world

The story of their deaths drew international outcry after the Palestinian Red Crescent Society released recordings of Hind and her 15-year-old cousin Layan Hamada calling for help. It was further amplified by “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” a film that excerpted the recordings and was nominated for an Oscar.

On the recordings, as audible gunfire erupts around them, Hamada asks for help and tells Red Crescent dispatchers that her family had been killed. Seconds later, more gunshots are heard, and Layan’s screaming stops.

Ambulance dispatchers called back and found Hind on the other end of the line. She told them Layan was dead and Israeli tanks were advancing. The Red Crescent sent an ambulance and stayed in contact with Hind until the call dropped.

Hind and five relatives were found dead in the family car 12 days later. The two medics sent to rescue her were also found dead nearby, their ambulance blackened and destroyed.

Israel initially said its troops were not in the area. A U.N. commission of inquiry and an investigation by the research group Forensic Architecture found evidence placing Israeli forces near the car and attributed the attack to them.

Rana Al Faqih, a dispatcher who was in contact with Hind for more than three hours, said the day remains seared in her memory. She tried to calm Hind and eventually patched her mother onto the call.

“I couldn’t physically reach Hind, embrace her or help her feel safe,” she said in an interview at the Red Crescent headquarters in Ramallah, West Bank. “All I had was my voice. My voice was with her, and it might have comforted her.”

Advocates doubt an Israeli investigation can bring accountability

The investigation is one of two criminal probes the military announced Wednesday after reviewing roughly 150 incidents.

Military investigators will now take up the probes and present their findings to military prosecutors. The military advocate general can then decide to keep investigating, indict any soldiers or decline to charge them.

Israeli officials say the country’s justice system can address any violations by its troops. But such investigations rarely lead to indictments. Just 0.17% of incidents reviewed from 2014 and 2022 led to prosecution, according to an analysis by Israeli rights group Yesh Din.

The Belgium-based Hind Rajab Foundation — which campaigns for the arrest of Israeli troops it accuses of war crimes — said in a statement on Wednesday that an Israeli military investigation “should not be mistaken for a genuine step toward justice.”

“Israel’s internal investigations into the criminal conduct of its own soldiers are fundamentally flawed and cannot be regarded as credible mechanisms of accountability,” it said.

A mother says her grief is not unique

The Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel and abducted 251 others. More than 73,400 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive since, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

The ministry, part of the Hamas-led government, does not give a breakdown of civilians and militants but says women and children constitute about half the deaths.

Hamada said her pain since the killing of Hind — who had wanted to become a doctor — was not unique.

“The pain is like the pain of every mother who has lost her child in Gaza,” she said. “You wish she were in front of you, growing up and fulfilling your dreams and her dreams, and then you lose her in the most horrific circumstances.”

__ Ibrahim Hazboun in Jerusalem, and Haitham Hamed in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed reporting.

Maryjean “Mary” Victoria Small, 26, was arrested Aug. 17 and booked into the St. Johns County jail on a $340,000 bond.

What investigators say happened

According to a probable cause affidavit filed by the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office, Small was an independent contractor through Concierge Care and assigned as a caregiver for a 92-year-old woman from approximately January 2025 through July 2026. Investigators say Small used her position of trust to systematically steal money and property from the victim for her own benefit.

According to Small’s arrest report, the victim told investigators she only authorized Small to use her debit card to purchase groceries and necessities. She said she never gave Small permission to make ATM withdrawals, use her financial accounts for personal purchases, establish online banking in her name, transfer funds between accounts, or write checks payable to herself.

Because of her poor eyesight, the victim said Small routinely prepared checks and guided her hand while telling her they were for legitimate expenses — such as utility or telephone bills.

What the records show, according to detectives

Bank records, surveillance video, witness statements, and business records revealed what investigators described as a continuing pattern of unauthorized transactions, according to the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators say financial records identified 63 unauthorized checks payable to Small totaling $82,238.71, which were deposited into Small’s personal bank account at VyStar Credit Union.

ATM surveillance photographs captured Small depositing at least one of those checks. Investigators also say a search warrant served on Uber revealed that the victim’s Wells Fargo debit and credit cards had been added as payment methods to Small’s personal Uber account, with Uber Eats orders delivered to Small’s residence.

Surveillance video from Family Dollar and records from Marshalls showed Small using the victim’s cards to purchase children’s clothing and toys, according to investigators.

Online banking activity

Investigators say an online Wells Fargo banking profile was created in the victim’s name using an email address witnesses confirmed did not belong to her. The victim told investigators she has never owned a computer, does not use electronic devices, and never authorized anyone to open an online banking account in her name.

Banking records documented a $70,000 unauthorized transfer from the victim’s savings account, an additional transfer to a Wells Fargo Platinum account, and a failed attempt to transfer another $70,000. Records also showed a $35,000 transfer occurred after Small allegedly told the victim she was running out of money and needed to move funds to pay bills.

Alleged isolation tactics

According to Small’s arrest warrant, a witness told investigators Small frequently tried to isolate the victim from friends who questioned her finances. The witness said Small became upset when others tried to help the victim with banking and threatened to stop providing care if the victim went to the bank with anyone else.

The witness also told investigators Small warned the victim she could be fined $20,000 if anyone discovered she was paying Small “under the table” — despite the victim never agreeing to such an arrangement.

Charges, bond

In all, investigators say the scheme resulted in approximately $180,321.73 in unauthorized thefts, fraudulent transactions, and transfers from the victim’s financial accounts.

Small faces the following felony charges: theft of $50,000 or more from a person 65 or older, defrauding a person 65 or older of $50,000 or more, illegal use of credit cards, exploitation of an elderly person exceeding $50,000, use of a two-way communication device to facilitate a felony, uttering a false check or bank instrument, and fraudulent use of identification without consent with a victim 60 or older.

Small was ordered to have no contact with the victim.

JFRD says the incident happened around 10:30am at Atlantic Blvd. and Perry Place.

No other details have been released.

Also, Turkey announced it is asking for an international warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for his role in stopping several boats trying to break a naval blockade of Gaza in May, and an Israeli human rights watchdog is warning that settler violence has expanded from rural to urban areas in the West Bank.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East on Friday. Full coverage can be found here.

Palestinian teen killed by Israeli settlers after rock-throwing incident

A 17-year-old Palestinian was killed and another man wounded by Israeli settler gunfire after rocks were thrown Friday in Sa’ir, north of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Health Ministry said.

The ministry identified the teenager as Karim Sanad Raja Shalaldeh. The teenager’s father told The Associated Press at the hospital that Israeli settlers had killed his son.

The Israeli military said soldiers were dispatched to Sa’ir after Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli civilians who were in the area without prior authorization. Some Israelis were injured and a security official opened fire.

Separately, the Palestinian General Authority for Civil Affairs informed the Health Ministry that 58-year-old Fathi Khazem was fatally shot by Israeli forces early Friday in Jenin.

An Israeli army official speaking on condition of anonymity in line with military rules said Khazem attempted to stab an Israeli soldier during an overnight operation. No Israeli soldiers were injured.

The Israeli official said Khazem was the father of Raed Khazem, who shot and killed three people in Tel Aviv in April 2022.

Violence has escalated in the West Bank where at least 87 Palestinians have been killed in almost 1,500 attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers this year, according to Palestinian officials. Three Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in 2026.

— By Koral Saeed in Herzliya, Israel.

Turkey seeks international warrant for Netanyahu over May blockade

Turkey is seeking an international warrant for Netanyahu's arrest over Israel’s interception of an international flotilla that attempted to break a naval blockade of Gaza.

The Interpol red notice sought against Netanyahu and one other Israeli national was tied to an Istanbul court case trying 35 defendants in absentia for alleged “genocide,” other crimes against humanity, torture, unlawful detention and hijacking, Turkish Justice Minister Akin Gurlek said in a statement posted on X.

The charges stem from the Israeli navy’s interception in May of several vessels in international waters off Cyprus days after the flotilla departed from the Turkish port of Marmaris. Some detained activists reported mistreatment.

Turkey is among the most vocal critics of Israel’s government.

Netanyahu responded on social media, calling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan an antisemitic dictator who has “massacred Kurds, harbors Hamas terrorists, occupies half of Cyprus, and jails record numbers of journalists and politicians who oppose him.”

“Erdogan’s pathetic attempt to intimidate the leaders and soldiers of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, will go nowhere,” Netanyahu said Friday.

Rights group says Israeli settler violence heads to established Palestinian cities

An Israeli group that collects information about potential human rights violations against Palestinians says reported incidents of Israeli settler violence have moved from the rural West Bank toward larger, more populated Palestinian cities and towns.

The establishment of new settlements and outposts throughout the West Bank has emboldened extremist settlers, who are now encroaching on larger communities that previously were far from the front lines of settler violence, Yesh Din said in its report released Friday titled “The Next Frontier.”

The uptick in violence corresponds with the Israeli government’s approval of new settlements and the expansion of outposts that it doesn’t authorize but often leaves in place, according to the report.

“As outposts advance deeper into Palestinian territory, violence, harassment and terror follow,” Yesh Din wrote.

Some 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military rule in the West Bank alongside roughly 560,000 Israeli settlers.

Economic woes return to Lebanon

Lebanon’s economy is projected to contract 6.4% this year because the latest Israel-Hezbollah war reversed the economic recovery of the previous year, the World Bank said Friday.

The destruction from the war that started in March and related sharp drop in tourism reversed a 4.2% growth seen in 2025 in Lebanon's economy, the organization said.

The World Bank also predicts a sharp increase in inflation driven by supply disruptions, higher shipping costs, and rising oil prices, which will further reduce purchasing power.

Lebanon's economy has been in crisis since a 2019 banking collapse.

11 countries call Israeli airstrikes in Syria an extreme escalation

The foreign ministers of 11 countries are calling Israel’s airstrikes on a Syrian air base an extreme escalation.

The ministers of Turkey, Algeria, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the Palestinian territories warned that attacks on Syria undermine its reconstruction efforts as well as its attempts to restore security, according to a joint statement released by the Turkish Foreign Ministry.

The Israeli strikes hit the Abu Duhur base early Tuesday, causing damage but no casualties. Netanyahu’s office said Israel targeted the base because Syria was about to breach an agreed “status quo in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.

A Heat Advisory is in effect from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. Friday. Jacksonville will reach a high near 95 degrees, but the combination of heat and humidity could push feels-like temperatures as high as 105. Anyone spending time outdoors should drink plenty of water, take frequent breaks and limit strenuous activity during the hottest part of the afternoon.

Most neighborhoods will begin the day with plenty of sunshine before a few showers and thunderstorms develop after 3 p.m. Rain coverage will remain limited at around 30%, with most storms fading before 9 p.m. Overnight temperatures will only fall into the mid-70s.

The weekend stays hot and unsettled. Saturday will be mostly sunny with a high near 93 and heat index values approaching 103. Scattered showers and thunderstorms become more likely during the afternoon, with rain chances increasing to 60% Saturday evening before tapering overnight.

Sunday brings another mix of sunshine and clouds with a 30% chance of afternoon storms and a high near 94. Even hotter weather returns Monday, with mostly sunny skies and temperatures climbing to around 96.

Highs remain in the mid-90s through the middle of next week. Scattered afternoon showers and thunderstorms return Tuesday and continue Wednesday and Thursday, with daily rain chances between 30% and 40%.

“I was at the hospital. I was there all day, hoping, praying, hoping for a turnaround,” Busch said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show on Friday.

“I said, ‘I got you man. Come on, I got you. I got you. Come on, be strong,’” an emotional Busch added, before a brief pause. “It just wasn’t fair.”

The interview marked Busch’s first comments since Kyle Busch died on May 21 after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming complications. Busch’s death at the age of 41 devastated the racing community and one of NASCAR’s most accomplished families. The borthers were born in Las Vegas.

Kyle Busch won Cup Series championships in 2015 and 2019 for Joe Gibbs Racing, and holds the record in winning 234 combined races across NASCAR’s top three national series. His older brother was a Cup champion in 2004 and inducted this year into the Hall of Fame.

In the interview, Busch outlined how his brother became increasingly ill while practicing in a simulator on May 20. Asked by his crew chief whether he was OK, Busch responded no and he was taken to a hospital by ambulance.

Kyle Busch initially believed he was dealing with a sinus cold while racing at Watkins Glen, New York, on May 10. He continued competing, including winning a Truck Series race at Dover, Delaware, less than a week before he died. Kurt Busch said their father, Tom Busch, chose not to be at the hospital in order to “remember him the way he wanted to remember him.”

“There is no book, there is no outline on what we’re supposed to do right now,” Kurt Busch said, before recalling the on-track chemistry he had with his brother.

“Him and I were carbon copies of each other. We could speak on track without saying a word,” he said. “I miss the words we never spoke to each other, and the vibe that we had on track.”

Busch said he’s now mentoring his nephew, Kyle’s 11-year-old son Brexton, who has taken up racing.

“He’s a prodigy,” Busch said. “He can be a big start in the world of motorsports. He’s 11, but he’s already racing like an 18-year-old.”

As for his brother’s legacy, Busch said the achievements speak for themselves.

“It’s already there. Winningest driver in NASCAR history in all the series,” Busch said.

“The tenacity that he had. It was every day, 24-7, to help people in the latter part of his career, to be a great father like he was,” he added. “It will all shine as time puts different things in spotlights.”

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

Russell took the fight to his series-leading Mercedes teammate Kimi Antonelli as he qualified on pole position for the sprint race at the Dutch Grand Prix. F1 has returned from its midseason break, two weeks after Russell announced he and his partner Carmen Montero Mundt were engaged.

After setting the fastest time Friday, Russell said over the team radio, “Nice one! Must be a bit lighter after that engagement ring.”

Russell previously revealed that “a lot of thought” went into his proposal, including designing the ring itself. “I suddenly got really nervous when I was on one knee,” he added.

Russell snatched top spot by 0.041 of a second from McLaren's Lando Norris, winner of the last race in Hungary, with Charles Leclerc third for Ferrari, 0.014 further back.

Antonelli was fifth and revealed he'd been struggling with damage from a bumpy ride across a gravel trap in the first part of the session. The damage was “a couple of holes in the floor.” His closest championship challenger Lewis Hamilton could manage only seventh for Ferrari.

Pole is a long-awaited boost for Russell

Pole is especially welcome for Russell, who hasn't won since the Austrian Grand Prix in June and was one of the drivers hardest hit by software quirks in how his Mercedes uses its electrical energy.

“It was a tough end to the first half of the year and I'm really happy to come back,” said Russell, who’s 59 points off his 19-year-old teammate Antonelli after a near-stall ruined his race in Hungary last month. “The lap felt really good. It all came together nicely.”

After his joke about shedding the weight of the engagement ring, Russell said he'd also worked to lose the mental baggage of overthinking.

“Confidence level wasn’t exactly at my highest, but just trying to remember that feeling of what I needed from myself and the car and just go in and almost treat it like the first race of the season again and not overthink things,” he said. “That seems to work well for me. It’s very difficult to actually put those words into action.”

Earlier Friday, Antonelli went fastest in the single practice session on a drying, constantly changing track after rain.

The 2026 cars and their formidable electrical power have yet to be tried in serious rain as part of a race weekend. That briefly seemed like it would happen in practice as teams started on intermediate tires, but the track soon dried out. Sprint qualifying was dry.

Dutch GP is unique. Here's why it's leaving

Max Verstappen has committed to Red Bull on a new contract through 2030 but there's no sign of his Dutch home race staying beyond this year.

The 80s rock anthem “The Final Countdown” rang around the venue Thursday as organizers geared up for the sixth and final Dutch GP since returning to the F1 calendar in 2021.

The race is a privately run operation in a calendar packed with races that boast government backing. Citing “risks and responsibilities,” organizers said in 2024 they'd rather “go out on a high" with two more races and no more.

Something else makes the Dutch GP stand out, too. Almost all fans attending are barred from driving to the track because the seaside resort town puts strict rules on traffic. Instead, they must take the train from Amsterdam or — in a uniquely Dutch take on F1 — join the tens of thousands riding bikes to Zandvoort.

Lawson and Tsunoda need to learn fast

Liam Lawson learned only on Monday he was being promoted to the main Red Bull team after Isack Hadjar injured his wrist. Lawson has tried the unfamiliar car only on the simulator so far, in a hastily arranged session Wednesday.

Lawson's promotion means Yuki Tsunoda is back on the grid with Racing Bulls. He hasn't raced under the new-for-2026 regulations at all. Lawson qualified 11th and Tsunoda 12th.

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See AP’s full auto racing coverage here

The contactless payment option will allow customers and members to pay with eligible cards, phones and smartwatches, according to Walmart. The company’s announcement specifically says customers will be able to add eligible Walmart, Sam’s Club and OnePay cards to digital wallets.

Walmart did not identify the initial stores included in the rollout.

The retailer said tap-to-pay also is planned for its fuel stations by mid-2027. The service will be offered alongside existing payment methods, including cash, credit cards and Walmart Pay, which uses the Walmart app to complete transactions and provide access to purchases and receipts.

Sam’s Club members also can continue using Scan & Go, which allows them to scan and pay for items while shopping without using a traditional checkout line.

Walmart has historically promoted its QR code-based Walmart Pay instead of broader contactless payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. The new announcement does not list individual payment platforms by name, but describes support for contactless cards, phones and smartwatches.

At the request of Mayor Nancy Sikes-Kline, city staff have been exploring lighting options designed to highlight the bridge’s historic character. The proposal is expected to go before the City Commission at its Aug. 24 meeting.

A landmark with deep roots

The Bridge of Lions first opened in 1927, with the inaugural automobile crossing on Feb. 26 of that year. Later that same year, marble lion statues — a gift from Dr. Andrew Anderson — were installed, giving the bridge its now-iconic name. The structure was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and remains one of the city’s most recognized landmarks.

What the lighting would look like

The proposed design features warm white accent lighting beneath the bridge and along its columns to enhance the structure’s architectural character.

According to the staff report, the lighting was carefully designed to complement the bridge’s historic nature while minimizing physical changes. Solid cast brass fixtures would be mounted without penetrating the bridge’s historic fabric.

A project years in the making

The city first explored architectural lighting for the Bridge of Lions more than a decade ago, conducting field demonstrations of several concepts on the structure.

Building on that earlier work, the city contracted with Marquis Latimer + Halback, Inc. to prepare conceptual renderings of a refined lighting design.

What comes next

City staff are asking the Commission to review the proposed concepts and provide direction on a preferred design so the project can advance into the design phase.

Once the Commission provides direction and authorization, the selected concept will be presented to the Historic Architectural Review Board (HARB) for review and approval. Coordination with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), including permitting, will follow.

With sparse details, President Donald Trump announced this week that the U.S. would be imposing an “unprecedented” level of economic warfare and isolation on Iran, aiming to force its leadership to cave to demands to end its nuclear program and fully reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz to oil and natural gas tankers.

It reflects the dire reality Trump faces with an increasingly unpopular war he can't seem to end just months before pivotal midterm elections that will decide whether his Republican Party keeps control of Congress. Whether out of desperation or strategy, the president is refocusing America's might on bringing Iran to its knees through an accelerated sanctions campaign against one of the most economically penalized countries in the world.

In response to the threat, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted Friday on X the history of U.S. sanctions against Iran, saying, “We have seen this movie before. Same bull. Different bullies.”

The immediate reaction from Iran hawks has been praise and a call for patience as it plays out, while other analysts warn that Trump is refusing to learn the lessons of his predecessors.

In an interview Thursday on CNBC, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered a small glimpse of what may be ahead, threatening secondary sanctions on nations and companies that conduct business with Iran.

He did not reveal who would be targeted as part of this next phase of the administration’s Operation Economic Fury, which earlier had focused on entities and people who buy oil from or bank with Iran. China and India, however, are major buyers of Iranian oil.

“If you insist on doing business with them, then the U.S. Treasury and U.S. government will put its full might and force against you,” Bessent said. “It’s time for our allies and the rest of the world to make a decision."

Some experts see ‘uncharted waters’ that could force Iran's hand

Despite decades of U.S. sanctions against Iran, the Trump administration is arguing that it’s only a matter of time and that striking the right economic target would get Tehran to its breaking point.

Richard Goldberg, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in Trump's first term, said the consequences of U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear sites last year, the war this year and the American naval blockade on Iranian ports have created the perfect storm for capitulation — one that didn't previously exist.

“I think we’re watching a strategy, whether it takes a short time or a long time, that is very much about fundamentally changing the future of the world by seeing the end of this regime," said Goldberg, who is now at the hawkish Washington think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, or FDD.

“I caution everyone — including myself, who has worked on sanctions, who’s worked on financial warfare — to have the humility to admit that we are in uncharted waters,” he said.

He said the decision this week by the United Arab Emirates — once one of Tehran's most important trading partners — to suspend trade with Iran over an alleged missile attack will only further isolate the government.

Beyond trade in domestically produced goods, the Emiratis had helped the country absorb some of the shocks caused by sanctions through its re-export hub.

Targeting allies and partners comes at a price

With nearly all of Iran's energy, financial and transportation sectors already covered by U.S. sanctions, Trump’s aim appears to be to apply secondary sanctions on countries, including allies and partners, that have not cut all ties with Iran to starve the country of any remaining income it may still be receiving.

In many ways, it is a redux of Trump’s first-term maximum-pressure campaign, which he has ramped up during his second term to include military action.

But as Trump and his allies discovered during his first administration, it can be difficult to enforce secondary sanctions without harming U.S. interests and provoking reciprocal measures. There were numerous instances of the administration granting sanctions waivers to countries, particularly those that rely on Iranian oil for their energy needs.

“Trump’s strategy now rests on targeting Tehran directly by impeding its touch points and access to the formal financial system and international economy,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, senior director of the FDD’s Iran program. “This will require making the Iran issue more important in U.S. bilateral relations with countries in Europe and Asia.”

Iran doesn't see an ‘open door’ at the end of the sanctions campaign

Iranian officials and analysts have accused the Republican president of flip-flopping with his latest pivot to economic pressure against Tehran. Trump has long derided past leaders who used sanctions to limit Iran’s ability to pay for its military and nuclear development.

In a post last week on X, Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, wrote that Washington's pattern of retreating to sanctions when it doesn't want to pursue diplomacy has proven to be futile.

“Iran has demonstrated over decades that it will not be strangled by these exhausted refrains,” he said. “The real risk is that American politicians, clinging to this bad habit, will instead strangle their own remaining chances of a less humiliating exit from a crisis of their own making.”

Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group, said the Trump administration's decision to take its own maximum-pressure policy to new heights with military action seems to ignore years of U.S. foreign-policy lessons that show Iran does not respond well to pressure.

If anything, he says, the latest economic campaign has only “hardened Iran's position.”

“I think (Trump's) blind spot is the fact that the only thing that the Iranian regime views as more dangerous than suffering from U.S. sanctions is surrendering to U.S. terms," Vaez said.

Plus, the past year of start-stop diplomacy has only worsened the already fragile dynamic between the longtime adversaries, Vaez says, adding that Iranian officials' lack of trust in Trump and his mediators has created an untenable foundation.

“They believe that even if they capitulate to U.S. terms under economic duress, Trump would move the goalposts and ask for more,” he said. “And this is really the fundamental problem: Pressure without an open door is an exercise in futility.”

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Fatima Hussein in Washington contributed to this report.

In a judgment Friday, Justice Matthew Nicklin said in a written statement that the payment to Associated Newspapers Ltd. will have to be made by Aug. 28. The payment is at the upper end of expectations and marks a vindication for the journalists at the Daily Mail and a defeat for the losing claimants and their lawyers.

The claimants lost a High Court case in London last month during which they had alleged malpractice, such as the illegal hacking of phones, on the part of Associated Newspapers.

The other high-profile figures behind the case were Doreen Lawrence, the anti‑racism activist whose son Stephen was stabbed to death in 1993 as he waited for a bus; Elton John’s film producer husband David Furnish; actors Sadie Frost and Liz Hurley; and politician Simon Hughes. Lawrence’s costs are expected to be covered by the others.

In excoriating comments accompanying his award, Nicklin said “several features” were important in his decision, including the “speculative” nature of the claims and the failure of the claimants to “voluntarily” withdraw serious allegations that could no longer be backed up.

“The conduct was unreasonable to a high degree,” he said.

Claimants face additional 25-million-pound charge

The publisher has said it incurred more than 34 million pounds during the case. Should it pursue the claimants for the remainder of the costs, and get the necessary legal approval to do so, then Harry and the six others will be liable for a further 25 million pounds or so.

The claimants took out insurance for around half of that total, in line with the budget estimates provided at the outset by the lawyers working for Associated Newspapers.

Though the judge said the costs appeared “excessive,” he said he would not impose a cap that would have limited the claimants' liabilities as it would have been “too broad brushed, would risk unfairness, and would be vulnerable to the charge that it was arbitrary.”

The amount that will be paid could well be determined in the future by costs judges, specialists who assess and determine financial outcomes in civil litigation when parties cannot agree.

David Bailey-Vella, chairman of the Association of Costs Lawyers, said the ruling “could not have gone much worse” for the claimants.

He said the claimants will "surely try again before the costs judges to try and show they relied on Associated’s original budget when buying the insurance and so should not have to pay more.”

Hughes, a former member of the centrist Liberal Democrats, said he was “disappointed and surprised” that Associated Newspapers’ recoverable costs were not limited.

None of the other claimants have yet commented on the judge's decision. They have until Oct. 2 to decide whether to appeal.

Harry and the rest had failed to even win one of 97 claims

The publisher had strongly denied the claims made during the 11-week trial in London earlier this year. In his July 7 judgment, Nicklin said there had been a shortage of evidence to support the 97 claims and found there was a possibility that the reporting came from legitimate sources.

In a statement following the decision, Associated Newspapers said the judgment is a “devastating critique of an attempt to destroy a newspaper and the reputations of its journalists, editors and executives."

“The truth is that these outrageous claims should never have been brought," it said. "That they were pursued raises disturbing questions about the conduct of elements of the legal profession.”

Cost verdict comes days after Harry's bombshell UK return news

The judgment comes two days after it was made public that Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, are moving back to the U.K. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are no longer working royals, decamped to California more than six years ago but will relocate back later this month to live in a nonroyal residence outside London.

Harry's defeat against Associated Newspapers brought an end to a trio of lawsuits accusing tabloid publishers of using unlawful tactics, such as phone hacking or hiring private detectives to dig up dirt on his life.

Harry won a judgment in 2023 that condemned the publishers of the Daily Mirror for “widespread and habitual” phone hacking. Last year, Rupert Murdoch’s flagship U.K. tabloid, The Sun, made an unprecedented apology for intruding on his life for years and agreed to pay substantial damages to settle his privacy invasion lawsuit.

Harry has said his litigation — in which he broke with royal family tradition to seek relief in the courts — was a primary source of his falling out with his father, King Charles III, and brother Prince William.

His grudge with the tabloids runs deep and his legal actions are part of his larger quest to reform the news media that he says damaged his relationships and made him “ paranoid beyond belief.”

He blames the press for the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who was killed in a car crash in 1997 while being pursued by paparazzi in Paris, and for attacks on his wife, Meghan, that led the couple to abandon royal life and move to the United States in 2020.

Scammer posed as credit union representative

On July 21, 2025, a victim received a phone call from someone claiming to represent Community First Credit Union, where she held a bank account. The caller claimed to have found fraudulent activity on her account and asked her to verify her name and date of birth.

The scammer then asked about specific transactions, including a $1,300 pending Zelle transaction the victim could see in her account. He instructed her to change her username and password, then sent a confirmation text with further instructions.

The scammer told the victim she needed to withdraw her money and deposit it into a Chase account — or risk having it stolen. He promised the funds would be returned to her account by midnight.

Victim withdrew $7,000 using Neptune Beach ATM

Having received a fraud alert from the previous week, the victim believed the caller and withdrew $7,000. She deposited the money into a Chase account using an ATM in Neptune Beach.

The scammer then had the victim add a debit card to her Apple Wallet, again promising the money would be back in her account by midnight. When she checked the next morning on July 22, the account was empty and the Apple Wallet had been cleared.

The victim reported the scam to the Neptune Beach Police Department.

Surveillance video captured Caison at Chase Bank

Detectives discovered that within an hour of the victim depositing the money, Caison withdrew the cash from a Chase Bank — all captured on surveillance video. Bank records showed the money was transferred into a co-defendant’s account.

Investigators also revealed that prior to the transaction, Caison worked with an unidentified co-conspirator to launder money from compromised bank accounts into his co-defendant’s account and other financial institutions.

The case was investigated by the Neptune Beach Police Department and Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office and prosecuted by Assistant State Attorneys Joseph Licandro and Fallon Hinkley.

The ban for Paredes — who grabbed Spain's Eric Garcia by the throat and pushed Gavi to the ground — ranks with the FIFA sanctions for Uruguay forward Luis Suárez in 2014 as among the most severe in World Cup history.

Argentina defender Nahuel Molina was handed a seven-game ban while Thiago Almada was given a one-game suspension. FIFA imposed fines of $90,000 on Paredes and Molina, and $30,000 for Almada.

The ban for Paredes is effectively a one-year expulsion from the Argentina team as the FIFA calendar for national team schedules includes 10 games through June 2027.

All of those games could be friendlies with no competitive games currently scheduled.

Spain's Gavi also banned for game vs England

Gavi also was banned for one game, which is a Nations League match for Spain against England at Wembley on Sept. 26.

An Argentina coach, Roberto Ayala, also got a three-game ban and $30,000 fine.

The Argentine Football Association was fined $110,000 for a range of incidents during the World Cup including players carrying a political banner about the Falkland Islands after the semifinal win against England, and discriminatory chants by fans.

AFA also was ordered by FIFA to spend $100,000 on anti-racism projects. Argentina received $34 million in World Cup prize money from FIFA.

Argentina expected to appeal

AFA can appeal the longer sanctions and fines to FIFA, and likely after at the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“The AFA legal department will, in a timely manner, request from FIFA the grounds for the reviewable rulings in order to file appeals with the governing body’s appeal committee, while retaining the future option of appealing to the CAS as a final recourse,” the federation said in a statement.

Suárez and Simunic cases

In 2014, Suárez was banned from all soccer for four months, including for his new club Barcelona, and eight more competition games for Uruguay for biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini in a World Cup group stage game in Brazil.

Paredes' 10-game ban equals that in 2013 for Josip Simunic of Croatia after winning a World Cup qualifying playoff. Simunic used a megaphone to lead fans chanting a slogan used by the country's pro-Nazi regime during World War II.

The on-field clashes at last month's final in East Rutherford, New Jersey — which were charged by FIFA as assault cases — came after Argentina lost a testy final to Spain where it was mostly outplayed and barely created a scoring chance.

Spain forward Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the second period of extra time, after Argentina midfielder Enzo Fernandez was sent off.

FIFA disciplinary judges also ordered Argentina to play its next home game in a stadium limited to 50% of capacity. FIFA deferred a second stadium sanction and a $100,000 for probationary periods.

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AP Sports Writers Ken Maguire in London and Carlos Rodriguez in Mexico City contributed to this report

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See AP’s full soccer coverage here

The attack is the latest in a series of frequent and deadly aerial strikes targeting armed pro-democracy forces and ethnic armed groups in the country. The strikes often cause civilian casualties.

The attack occurred in Swel Le Oh village in Myaung township, about 75 kilometers (45 miles) west of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, according to Nway Oo, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense and Security Organization of Myaung Township, or CDSOM.

Nway Oo said that 14 people, including three women, were killed and 20 others were wounded when a fighter jet dropped a bomb in the compound of the village’s monastery.

A villager who spoke on condition of anonymity, because he feared for his safety, also confirmed the death toll to The Associated Press. The villager said that the fighter jet dropped two bombs 15 minutes apart, with the second bomb damaging a house near the monastery where more than 100 people were on a weeklong retreat during Buddhist Lent.

The villager, whose mother-in-law was killed in the airstrike, said that people fled to a nearby community after cremating bodies of the victims.

BBC’s Burmese-Language service and Myanmar’s media outlets, including Myanmar Now, reported the death toll at between 10 and 14. They also posted photos and videos showing what they said was the aftermath of the strike, with images of bodies.

The military didn't immediately comment. In the past, the army has said that it only attacks legitimate targets of war, accusing the resistance forces of being terrorists.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the army seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, triggering a civil war. After peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are embroiled in conflict.

The military has increasingly used airstrikes to counter opposition forces, including the armed People’s Defense Forces in Sagaing region, a stronghold of armed resistance. The resistance has no effective defense against air attacks.

The monastery attack comes a week after the U.N.-established Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, or IIMM, said that it observed a notable escalation in aerial attacks by the military in the months preceding the elections held in December and January, and that they have continued unabated afterward.

Myanmar’s foreign ministry rejected the IIMM report on Sunday, saying that limited airstrikes and counterterrorism operations solely aim at military targets and were carried out in response to insurgents and terrorist groups in accordance with the rules of engagement, and that the security forces exercise maximum restraint to avoid civilian harm.

No act of Congress mandated the color, with its slight orange tint. Rather, a 1939 conference of transportation officials from all U.S. states (then 48) chose the shade for its visibility as one of the first safety standards. At their peak in the 1980s, the yellow buses took more than 60% of U.S. students to school.

The metal-bodied school bus got its start in rural America. Georgia car dealer Albert Luce designed it to carry cement workers, then marketed it to schools when the company turned it down.

It was impeccable timing as school districts replaced one-room neighborhood schoolhouses with larger ones much farther apart. That consolidation gave rise to the school bus.

“I don’t think you could’ve had one without the other,” says Matt Anderson, head transportation curator at the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation in Dearborn, Michigan, which houses Luce’s 1927 bus.

Decades later, buses helped desegregate schools, hauling Black and white children across the country’s racial divide. The controversial practice has mostly ended, and in much of the United States, schools have grown more segregated, not less.

Carl Fisher drove a metal school bus for two-thirds of its nearly 100-year history. With 66 years behind the wheel, Fisher retired in 2012 as the longest-working driver, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. His first model was a Dodge truck that his dad’s friend converted, adding benches and small stools to haul 20 children in Pleasant Hope, Missouri.

“He put windows in it and everything, really made it nice,” Fisher says.

The basics became industry standard and more safety upgrades followed, including padded seats and a flip-out stop sign.

“It’s the safest form of on-road transportation per passenger, per mile, bar none — without seat belts,” says Brad Beauchamp, who is with the electric vehicles team at Blue Bird, the yellow school bus maker Luce reputedly named after the bird his wife spotted on a fence post.

Due to driver shortages and other factors, a yellow school bus is no longeravailable to take many students to school, putting pressure on families to figure out transportation.

Jim Oppegard, who drove kids for more than two decades in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park, retired at 94 as the oldest school bus driver on record. It's rewarding work, he says.

“You’re helping the kids and helping the overall society,” he says. “You’re doing an important job.”

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Part of a recurring series, “American Objects,” marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. For more American objects, click here. For more stories on the anniversary, click here.

U.S. District Court Judge Nusrat Choudhury, in her Thursday decision, concluded that Michael Jeffries “clearly possesses a rational and factual understanding of the proceedings” and is a “reasonably intelligent person and skilled communicator" following his stay at a federal prison hospital in Butner, North Carolina.

The federal judge on Long Island, New York, said she reviewed testimony and written reports from medical experts and listened to hours of phone calls Jeffries made to his romantic partner, lawyers and others while in custody.

“His presentation and responses in evaluations following his commitment to Butner and his phone calls show that he understands the structure of the criminal legal system, courtroom procedures, the functions of the various participants, the nature and purpose of the proceedings, and key legal concepts,” Choudhury wrote.

Jeffries’ lawyer declined to comment.

“We do not comment on the Judge’s rulings," Brian Bieber wrote in an email. “The case, and all related issues, will be tried inside the courtroom – not in the media.”

Jeffries, 82, is currently free on bond. He's slated to go on trial in late October, alongside two co-defendants, his partner Matthew Smith and staffer James Jacobson. A pretrial hearing is slated for next Thursday.

Jeffries’ lawyers had argued that he required around-the-clock care to deal with the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia and a traumatic brain injury. They had medical experts testify in court that Jeffries’ cognitive issues were “progressive and incurable” and that he would not “regain his competency.”

That prompted Choudhury to order Jeffries to be hospitalized to see if his mental condition would improve. After spending about four months at Butner, federal prison officials in December deemed Jeffries mentally fit to stand trial.

Jeffries, Smith and Jacobson have pleaded not guilty to federal charges, including sex trafficking and interstate prostitution.

Prosecutors say the three used the promise of modeling jobs to lure men to drug-fueled sex parties in New York City, the Hamptons and other locations. The criminal case echoes sexual misconduct accusations made in a civil case and in the media in recent years.

Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after more than two decades. He's credited with transforming the New York retailer, originally founded to sell wilderness gear, into a mainstay of teen mall culture in the early 2000s with its preppy youth aesthetic and sexy marketing.

The incident south of the coastal city of Cuxhaven came to an end as the animal's owner intervened to secure the animal, Cuxhaven police said in a statement.

Passersby noticed the donkey, whose name is Freddy, and a horse were running loose at a roundabout in the town of Holssel. The motorists tried to secure the donkey, which “became very aggressive” and jumped into the van.

The 33-year-old woman who tried to help required hospital treatment, while the motorists sustained minor injuries, the police statement said.

“The reason for the animal’s aggressive reaction is still unclear,” the statement said.

Those losing coverage in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, include people who don't meet the tightening requirements to participate, and, advocates say, some who qualify for the help but are rejected because they miss deadlines or don't have the needed documentation handy. It's too early to tell exactly how many fall into each group.

It's also unclear how many have lost coverage because some state agencies that run the programs are overwhelmed trying to keep up with changes. That was the case in Arizona, which saw the nation's largest enrollment drop.

Tia Fields, who analyzes social safety net policies at the advocacy group Invest in Louisiana, said the main reason she's seeing people lose coverage is not failure to meet work requirements. “A lot of it is administrative paperwork,” she said.

Proponents of welfare reform hope the roll reductions are driven by people earning too much to keep qualifying — a sign that policy changes are behaving as intended for a program they assert is riddled with fraud.

“If there are people that are leaving the welfare rolls because they're working and they're moving forward,” said Rachel Sheffield, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which pushed for stricter requirements for SNAP, “that would be a step forward.”

Arizona has had the steepest decline so far, with a 12-month drop of more than 50%, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which runs SNAP. The decline was more than 20% in Georgia, Louisiana and Nevada — and in Florida, where the Department of Children and Families said in a statement that the decreasing number “is reflective of the state's strong focus on advancing opportunities for Floridians and their families to achieve economic self-sufficiency.”

Eligibility requirements are tightening

SNAP helps more than 1 in 10 people in the U.S. buy food. Most of the beneficiaries have incomes below the poverty line. The monthly benefit, which is delivered on debit cards that can be used only for groceries, is $344 per household on average.

Newly released federal data found SNAP enrollment fell from 42.2 million in May 2025 to 36.6 million in May, a drop of more than 13% in a year. The May data are preliminary and could be revised.

Since 2010, the average number of monthly beneficiaries has been below 40 million for only two years — 2019 and 2020. The rolls started dropping after a recent peak of 43.3 million in October 2024. They've fallen much faster since implementation began last year for Trump’s “one big beautiful bill,” which cut taxes and overhauled social safety net programs.

The expanded SNAP work requirement has now kicked in for most of the country, but it won’t begin in some places until next year.

Many adults 54 and younger without minor children have long been required to work to get SNAP benefits. The new law requires most people who previously had been exempt from requirements to either work, volunteer or go to school to get benefits. It now includes those ages 55 to 64, and those with children ages 14 to 17. Those 65 and older or with children younger than 14 remain exempt, as do those with health limitations. Some other groups that had been exempted from the requirement — including homeless people — no longer are.

In February, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the new requirements and other factors would push SNAP enrollment down over the next decade, falling below 34 million by 2036. But the nonpartisan office did not expect the drop to be as fast as it's been. By May, the number of people receiving the benefits was about as low as it was forecast to go in 2030.

Experts expect another impact when states are required to pay part of the cost of benefits if their rate of payment errors — when recipients receive more or less than they should — is above 6%. Advocates for recipients say states may deny benefits to some people entirely rather than risk errors.

The cost-sharing is scheduled to start in October 2027, though Congress has considered a delay.

Changes have been hard to implement in Arizona

In Arizona, enrollment plummeted by 55% from April 2025 to April 2026 — the biggest drop in the country, with more than 400,000 fewer people getting benefits now.

The state said the drop was driven largely by the state's own struggles putting new federal requirements in place.

“Implementing the federally mandated changes triggered unprecedented call volumes and administrative hurdles, including additional verification requirements, creating real barriers for applicants,” said Brett Bezio, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Economic Security.

Bezio said that hiring more staff members and introducing ways for people to submit their documents online have stemmed the enrollment drop in recent months as the state has reduced the chance for people who qualify to lose benefits.

In Phoenix, LaDiamond Lopez lost her benefits in January, with officials telling her she needed more documentation about her income and household — something that's needed for officials to determine whether enrollees meet work requirements.

She’s been skipping meals and some bill payments to ensure her children have enough to eat.

In her quest to be reinstated, she had previous employers sign forms confirming she no longer worked for them and added her children — ages 3 and 9 — to her apartment lease. She expected payments to resume in August, but she doesn’t know if they’ll last.

“I was approved at the end of May, but now they’re asking me for more documents,” she said. “It’s a panic.”

Other factors could be driving down enrollment

The Heritage Foundation's Sheffield says that some of the drop in SNAP use is likely a natural decline after peaks in the coronavirus pandemic era.

Paco Velez, the president and CEO of Feeding South Florida, said the 22% one-year enrollment drop in Florida is driven partly by immigrants who are in the U.S. legally but fear being targeted by Trump's immigration crackdown if they're seeking government benefits.

Invest in Louisiana's Fields said SNAP enrollment declines have broader consequences. For instance, children in households that receive the benefit can be automatically enrolled in free school lunch programs or in the SNAP for Women, Infants and Children program for low-income mothers, young children and expectant parents if they meet the other criteria.

“What happens when that child can’t pay for lunch?” she asked.

Some food banks have ramped up donations to try to meet a demand that they say has risen as SNAP rolls have declined. But that isn't expected to bridge the gap fully.

“We’re very worried about it because we know that no other organization or program can replicate the scale and success of SNAP,” said Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength. “We know that schools can’t fill this gap. We know that food banks can’t fill this gap.”

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Schuettler is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Mulvihill reported from Haddonfield, New Jersey.

Sinner beat Alexander Zverev last month for his second straight title at the All England Club, but then pulled out of the hard-court tournaments in Montreal and Cincinnati that serve as a warmup for the U.S. Open.

The 25-year-old Italian wrote Friday that he won't be ready when the main draw begins on Aug. 30.

“Even though I have been working hard with my team and my medical staff, we have now had to make the difficult decision that I will not be able to compete at the US Open this year,” Sinner wrote in a post on X.

“We have been back on court in Monte Carlo over the last couple of days and have realized that I still need more time to recover from my right knee issue. I’m obviously very sad and disappointed, as New York has a special place in my heart. I was very much looking forward to coming back and playing in the electric atmosphere in front of the great fans there.”

Sinner was the 2024 U.S. Open champion and lost to Carlos Alcaraz in last year's final.

Alcaraz posted on social media on Thursday that he would be ready to play in New York after he has been out of action since April because of a right wrist injury.

The rivalry between those two has dominated men's tennis in recent years, and they met in the last three Grand Slam finals in 2025. Alcaraz took the most recent one with his four-set victory in New York.

That ended Sinner's title reign after he beat Taylor Fritz in straight sets in the 2024 final.

Sinner is 44-3 with six titles this year. He had a stunning collapse at the French Open, blowing a two-set lead while struggling in the heat in his second-round match against Juan Manuel Cerundolo. He then sat out until Wimbledon, where his victory gave him five Grand Slam titles.

It will be the first time Sinner has missed a Grand Slam tournament since making his major debut at the U.S. Open in 2019.

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See AP’s full tennis coverage here

Those that survived are doing well, fattening up in time not just for fall and hibernation season but … drumroll, please … the very first Fat Marmot Week.

Just like Fat Bear Week, an online contest to vote for Alaskan brown bears plumped up for winter, Fat Marmot Week — beginning Monday — is mostly just for fun, but it also has a serious side: Scientists need to drum up donations for their long-running research into the rodents to keep it going through federal funding cuts.

“In some sense, we’re going to be laughing our way down as the Titanic sinks,” said Dan Blumstein, leader of the project launched decades ago at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado. “Because what else are you going to do?”

But wait. What’s a marmot?

A marmot is a cat-sized, furry ground squirrel that lives in burrows in North America, Europe and Asia. The 15 or so species worldwide include groundhogs, which have their own special day, Feb. 2, in the U.S. and Canada.

In the Rocky Mountains, yellow-bellied marmots are plentiful. Hikers often spot these charismatic creatures perched on boulders or scurrying through wildflowers.

Marmots aren't shy near trails popular with people. Watch out: A bold one might swipe your snack.

Like people, marmots have personalities and are “flexibly social,” meaning some like to intermingle in colonies of up to 30 animals while others prefer solitude, according to Emily Renkey, a master’s program student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

“We kind of understand these marmots just by looking at them sometimes, because we can kind of tell who’s who just by how they behave and how they interact with one another,” said Katie Adler, a UCLA doctoral student.

Some marmots are difficult to study because they are wary of researchers' efforts to trap them using wire boxes baited with an enticing mixture of oats and peanut butter, Renkey said.

“Others, you could trap three or four times in the same morning,” she said.

Marmots are big-time snoozers

While hibernating bears snooze in a state called torpor, allowing them to wake up — or be woken up — every now and then, marmots slip into a far deeper form of hibernation. Their body temperature drops from about that of a human to as low as 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius), not much warmer than their burrows in winter.

“You pick up a hibernating marmot and it’s this fuzzy ball and it feels like a cold rock with fur. It’s completely surreal,” Blumstein said. “They breathe once a minute or two.”

To prepare for winter, the animals do a tremendous amount of fattening. They double their weight to as much as 13 pounds (6 kilograms), then lose all of that bulk during half a year or more of hibernation.

“Marmots come out of the ground really skinny, relative to what they look like now, at least,” Adler said.

A poor snowpack affects more than the ski season

Last winter, scant snowfall and warm temperatures due to global warming deprived many Colorado marmots of an insulating blanket of snow over their burrows. Researchers believe their hibernation quarters got too chilly, causing many to die of cold.

“We had over 160 animals and we ended with 60 at the start of this season,” Blumstein said. “Most of them died because of the lack of snow cover.”

This year’s snowpack was the worst on record in the Upper Colorado River Basin, which includes Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico. Human-caused climate change made the snow drought about 14 times more likely, a new study confirms.

Hundreds of researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory have observed changes including fewer bees and other pollinators, and sagebrush encroaching in valleys once dominated by wildflowers.

Precipitation changes, meanwhile, literally cascade downstream to where farmers and communities need water to survive.

“The snowmelt here impacts the Colorado River which impacts our drinking water," Renkey said. “What happens in these mountains doesn’t stay in these mountains. It impacts all of us.”

Mouseketeers, musketeers and marmoteers

The study in Gothic, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Aspen, is run by researchers from UCLA and the University of Ottawa in Ontario. It was launched in 1962, making it one of the world’s longest-running studies of individual mammals.

The marmot researchers affectionately call themselves “marmoteers.”

“It allows graduate students and other people to come in and suddenly capitalize on this knowledge and ask questions. Without doing all the grunt work,” Blumstein said.

Funding cuts have caused Blumstein’s UCLA department to lose one-third of its graduate students. Fat Marmot Week is one approach to attract interest — and hopefully donations — to keep the work going. Among the rodents on display: Stonehenge, who chirps at mountain bikers; and Citroen, whose mate is a leader of this matriarchal marmot motherland. Voting opens Monday.

The researchers have also been posting marmot videos to the OnlyFans adult content platform. To capitalize on the attention those posts have garnered, a "super fan" created a meme coin, a type of cryptocurrency, called $OnlyMarms, and donates transaction fees to the research program. That alone has raised around $100,000.

The team needs to bank three years of funding — over $200,000 — to ensure marmot research can continue next summer.

“People have to find funding in ways that we’ve never really thought of before,” Adler said. “Like reaching out to the broader community to get people engaged.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Becovic Management Group paid $27 million for The Carling and 11 East apartments in sales that closed Aug. 14, according to deeds recorded Aug. 20 with the Duval County Clerk of Court.

One deed shows that through BMG 11 East LLC, Becovic paid $15.5 million for 11 East. It bought the property from The Vestcor Cos. through VCP-Lynch Building Ltd.

Two more deeds show that Vestcor sold The Carling to BMG Carling LLC in two sales at $5.75 million each, totaling $11.5 million.

These sales were made through VCP-Roosevelt Building Ltd. and VCP-Roosevelt Garage LLC.

“Adding The Carling and 11E to the Becovic Companies portfolio is another step in our commitment to Jacksonville and the revitalization of its key downtown corridor,” said founder and President Muhamed Becovic in an emailed statement Aug. 17.

“Alongside the recent acquisition of the Laura Street Trio, we’re building an ecosystem that brings these engaging buildings back to life while honoring their history.”

“These investments are a reflection of our family’s core values and the legacy we’ve worked to build, reinforcing our mission to invest in Jacksonville and create lasting impact for generations to come,” Becovic said.

Nathan Walter, vice president of strategic development, said it’s been a busy time at Becovic Cos. with the acquisitions.

“We truly understand the responsibility before us: to thoughtfully restore, activate and breathe new life into these historic buildings,” he said. “Our vision is to create a dynamic work, eat, play and live ecosystem that honors their legacy while generating new energy and excitement in downtown Jacksonville.”

Privately held Becovic, based in Indiana, already owns The Residences at Barnett and the Laura Street Trio in Downtown, also on the Downtown Northbank.

The 17-story 11 E. Forsyth St. property was built in 1926. Originally known as The Lynch Building, at one time it was the headquarters for American Heritage Life Insurance Co.

Click here to read the full story on the Jacksonville Daily Record website.

This year, Collector’s Alley, is the new addition. It focuses on all things Geek and collectible while also hosting multiple Lorcana tournaments.

The convention is open to the whole family Friday through Sunday.

www.setattoo.com IG: @jacksonvilletattooconvention

In an Instagram post Thursday, the 39-year-old Simpson said she was diagnosed with Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy (ARVC), a condition that triggered “dangerous heart rhythms that ultimately caused my heart to stop.”

She said the diagnosis means it would be dangerous to return to running.

“That chapter has ended,” she said. “Thankfully, my story hasn't.”

Simpson was pacing a group of girls in a mile run at an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, when she collapsed. She underwent CPR at the track and an automated external defibrillator was also used before medics rushed her to the hospital.

“You might be wondering what would be the right thing to say to me after an event like this,” she wrote. “Please do not say that you're sorry or that you feel bad for me. If it is true in your heart, please tell me you're glad that I'm here. That's how I feel — so glad that I'm still here.”

For about a decade beginning in 2007, Simpson was America's most successful women's 1,500-meter runner. She won worlds in 2011, finished second there twice and won Olympic bronze in Rio in 2016.

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AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports

But Consumer Reports tested popular bathroom cleaners and found that with the right tools, it can be faster, easier, and when you see the results, maybe even satisfying!

Consumer Reports takes bathroom cleaning seriously, even when the job gets gross.

To test toilet brush cleaners in the Consumer Reports Lab, engineer Larry Ciufo created a proprietary mixture that mimics the look and texture of, well... you know.

Then he handed it off to reporter Lisa Fogarty, who says, “It was definitely not pleasant to look at, but it helped us test seven toilet brush cleaners.”

Not glamorous work, but someone had to do it.

The four that performed best have sturdy bristles, reach under the rim with ease, and are comfortable to use.

The Simplehuman crescent-shaped toilet brush came out on top. The brush reaches all areas of the bowl, and its handle magnetically attaches to the holder, but it is pricey!

The Clorox Toilet Bowl Brush came in second in CR’s tests and cost $26 less. And if your grout looks dingy, Consumer Reports staffers tried seven grout cleaners at home to see how effective and easy they were to use.

CR staff found that products like the Goo Gone Grout & Tile Cleaner were effective, easy to use, and not overly smelly.

If scrubbing tubs, tiles, and shower doors feels like hard labor, consider a power scrubber. CR tests found the Leebin and Hoto Power Spin Scrubbers stood out for battery life and ease of use.

For general bathroom cleaning, Mr. Clean Clean Freak is Consumer Reports’ favorite multipurpose cleaner for tackling grime on a variety of surfaces. And for those days when a deep clean is just not happening, cleaning wipes can help for quick touchups.

Sebastian Harbor Marina will occupy the San Sebastian River basin next to the AC Hotel by Marriott St. Augustine and the city’s historic district. The inland facility will put boaters under 2 miles from the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway and roughly 5 miles from the St. Augustine Inlet, with easy walking access to downtown restaurants, shops and attractions.

Work to complete the basin — originally dug in the early 2000s before the Great Recession halted the project — resumed this year under the property’s current owners, the same group behind the nearby hotel. They are investing millions to revitalize the waterfront and finish construction that stopped a generation ago.

John Valdes & Associates Inc. is overseeing the final phase, which includes dredging, upgrades to floating docks, new and reinforced pilings and other infrastructure improvements intended to strengthen the marina against future storms.

When finished, the marina will offer 64 wet slips for boats up to 55 feet and an expected controlling depth of about 7 feet mean low water after dredging. Planned amenities include shore power, potable water, Wi-Fi, gated access and around-the-clock camera monitoring. The facility will also provide modern restrooms and showers, laundry, pump-out stations and a harbormaster office. It will accept monthly and long-term slip tenants as well as transient visitors; live-aboard dockage will not be permitted. Two waterfront apartments adjacent to the docks will be available for short-term stays.

Safe Passage Marina Management LLC will run day-to-day operations. The management team is led by John Valdes, who brings decades of marina construction and operations experience, and Nico Recore, who will serve as general manager after several years working at local marina and waterfront businesses.

“We want Sebastian Harbor Marina to be more than simply a place to dock a boat,” Recore said. He added the marina’s location offers a protected harbor and a chance to introduce visiting boaters to the St. Augustine experience as soon as they step ashore.

Attracting cruising boaters is a key part of the plan. St. Augustine is a common stop along the Intracoastal and a favored port for Great Loop cruisers; the protected basin offers an alternative to exposed anchorages and brings visitors within walking distance of downtown.

Construction and final preparations are underway ahead of the anticipated October 2026 opening. Slip rates are still being set; prospective slip holders and transient guests can join an interest list at sebastianharbormarina.com.

But why the monikers each year? Or at all?

Humans have given names to the world around them for almost as long as language itself has existed, but formal naming practices for storms and other events of national and international importance are a relatively new phenomenon. Names of military operations (“Operation Epic Fury”), hurricanes (Hugo, Andrew, Katrina, etc.), diseases (COVID-19) and even companies need to serve purposes other than just differentiation. They need to tell stories.

“Look around in your home. Who or what has a name? Your family members, your pets. You may even have named certain objects of significance,” says Shannon Murphy, CEO of Nameistry, a firm that helps companies and entrepreneurs develop their brand identities. “If it’s got a name, it has meaning in some way, and it’s going to come up in conversation or other types of communication.”

The World Meteorological Organization, which manages the naming of tropical storms worldwide, says assigning a moniker is “proven to be the fastest way to communicate warnings and raise public awareness and preparedness,” as well as limit confusion when more than one cyclone is moving through. They can also help with research and record-keeping.

Tropical storms the world over are named on a set of pre-agreed alphabetical lists decided by five tropical cyclone regional bodies. Some of these are cyclical, returning to the same lists every few years, starting at "A" with the first storm of the given year; others start a new list every year. Those covering the Atlantic region skip names beginning with Q, U, X, Y and Z because examples are difficult to find.

Until 1979, the United States used only female names, but now it alternates. For example, Amanda’s successor in the Eastern North Pacific storm region is Boris, and residents of the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the North Atlantic region have already seen Arthur and Bertha.

Military operation names have evolved (thanks to Churchill)

While storm names are designed to be memorable and simple, they are not necessarily trying to elicit feelings. Neither were military operation names, which functioned to maintain secrecy and to differentiate one from another until British Prime Minister Winston Churchill changed the nomenclature to suit the broader aims of the allies in World War II.

“In the Second World War, names such as Overlord, Torch or Husky were planning code-names,” says Ruben Stewart, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “Churchill’s intervention in the naming of Operation Overlord,” Stewart said, referring to the Allied push that began with D-Day, “reflected a broader wartime realization that operation names mattered.”

In a 1943 memo to his wartime chief of staff discussing code words to be used during World War II, Churchill argued operation names should not imply a “boastful and overconfident sentiment” or be “frivolous.”

The prime minister added that effort should be made to identify names that “do not suggest the character of the operation or disparage it in any way and do not enable some widow or mother to say that her son was killed in an operation called ‘Bunnyhug’ or ‘Ballyhoo.’”

Subsequent conflicts morphed naming practices, with the U.S. military choosing two-word operation names and the United Kingdom sticking with one. Today, British military code names are automatically generated, but U.S. military operations remain evocative. This means joint operations can end up with different names: The military response to the 1991 Gulf War was famously dubbed “Operation Desert Storm” by the U.S. military, while the British opted for “Operation Granby."

Stewart says the post-Korea/Vietnam and post-Panama periods mattered for setting the tone in U.S. military monikers, with Operation Killer during the Korean War in 1951 causing “obvious public-affairs problems,” while the U.S. invasion of Panama being “Operation Just Cause” showed how an operation name could be "deliberately framed for legitimacy,” he said.

Recent years have brought more colorful monikers

When the U.S. war with Iran began in February, it was dubbed Operation Epic Fury, a name President Donald Trump said he selected from a list of 20. Some have criticized the rise of more bombastic names, including immigration raids titled Catahoula Crunch in Louisiana and Operation Dirtbag in Florida — and the naming of detention facilities like Florida's “Alligator Alcatraz.”

“A name can signal purpose, reassure domestic audiences, sustain coalition legitimacy, deter adversaries and give service personnel a shorthand identity for what they are doing,” Stewart says. “The best names are clear, sober, memorable, culturally safe and politically defensible.”

Getting a name's feel or connotation wrong can have huge consequences, despite it being only a sliver of an operation. The U.S. war on terror after 9/11 was originally Operation Infinite Justice, but it was changed to Operation Enduring Freedom after concerns that U.S. allies in the Middle East would be offended. Muslims believe only God can deliver the concept of infinite justice.

Not all names are designed to last. Twice in the last 25 years, the Atlantic weather region exhausted all the names on its annual list and had to resort to using the Greek alphabet to name storms. Now, Berg says, a supplementary list of names sits at the ready.

In the case of a particularly devastating storm, either by death toll or damage, names can be retired and replaced with new ones. Consideration is given to clarity.

“There have been names that are hard to pronounce, and I think people try to refrain from using those because we want them to roll off the tongue pretty easily,” said Robbie Berg, a warning coordination meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center.

The practice of naming major events is continually evolving

Infamous storms with retired names include Sandy, which struck Jamaica, Cuba and the east coast of the United States in 2012, killing 182 people; and Katrina, which struck the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, killing nearly 1,400. Both caused widespread property devastation. The names won't surface again; they were replaced by Katia and Sara.

Practices also change over time. Historically, diseases and medical conditions were often named after the people who identified them or places they were identified — think of Alzheimer's disease or Ebola — but the World Health Organization now advises against this practice.

“There is a deliberate move away from terms like ‘swine flu’ or ‘Spanish flu,’ which underscores how powerful a name and its associations can be,” Murphy said. “Once it sticks, it’s hard to unstick it.”

There is scant research into the exact impacts of naming. Andrew Charlton-Perez, a meteorologist and head of the School of Mathematical, Physical & Computational Sciences at the University of Reading, called for more studies in the field as the climate brings more frequent and extreme weather events.

“As our climate becomes more extreme,” he said, “there is always the need to think about how to better communicate to avoid harm.”

One possible alternative: crowdsourcing. In Britain and Ireland, people can submit ideas for storm names and try their hand. They might get lucky — depending on which way the wind blows.

The crash happened Tuesday at 10 p.m. at State Road 16 and Downs Corner Road, according to FHP. The victim’s body was not found until nearly 20 hours later, around 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, prompting a road closure that lasted several hours Wednesday night.

What investigators say happened

FHP says an SUV traveling west struck the bumper of the motorized scooter, pushing the rider into the grass and a ditch along the right shoulder of State Road 16. The SUV did not stop and continued driving west.

The scooter rider was pronounced dead at the scene. FHP said he was not wearing a helmet.

The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office posted a public update Wednesday notifying residents of the road closure tied to the crash investigation.

Person of interest identified

FHP told News4Jax that investigators have a person of interest and a vehicle in their possession. The investigation is ongoing.

Community reaction

Several News4Jax readers responded to coverage of the crash. One commenter wrote in part:

“This poor man! I have passed him several times on the way home. I grew up on 16 and locals have always ridden their bikes on SR16, it’s just with the growth, and road construction, and new people — it has become a lot more dangerous.”

U.S. President Donald Trump had earlier abruptly ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise just before it began Monday. Trump cited what he described as a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to support him over the war in Iran.

South Korea's military said the Ulchi Freedom Shield, a command post exercise with the U.S., ended on Friday.

This month's exercise was initially reportedly scheduled to be held in two phases for 11 days in simulation of North Korean attacks — the first part until Friday on defensive operations and the second part until Aug. 27 on counteroffensive operations. North Korea is extremely sensitive to the second phase.

South Korea and the U.S. had also planned to hold 14 joint field training exercises during the Ulchi Freedom Shield period. But they've agreed to halve them as well, according to South Korea's military.

North Korea shrugs off Trump's outreach

Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, brushed aside Trump’s overture on Wednesday, saying that reducing the duration and size of the drills won't change their “provocative, aggressive nature.”

The next day, North Korea fired about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently following through with its previous threat to respond to the U.S.-South Korean drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.

The U.S. Pacific Command said the events didn't pose an immediate threat to U.S. territory or its allies. The command said the U.S. remains committed to the defense of the U.S. homeland and its allies in the region.

Kim Yo Jong's statement dampened hopes for an early resumption of talks between Trump and Kim Jong Un, whose earlier nuclear diplomacy collapsed in 2019. Kim Jong Un has used the diplomatic stalemate to increase his leverage by modernizing his nuclear and missile arsenals and aligning with Russia over its war against Ukraine. Kim Jong Un suggested last year that he won't return to talks unless the U.S. drops its demand for North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for diplomacy.

Kim Yo Jong still used relatively measured language, avoided typical harsh North Korean rhetoric and touched upon what she called an “excellent” relationship between her brother and Trump. This suggests North Korea doesn't want to completely shut the door for future talks and may seek to win bigger U.S. concessions, such as international recognition as a nuclear state and broad sanctions relief.

More nuclear weapons, Russia ties give North Korea greater leverage

With its supply of ammunition and troops to Russia, North Korea is likely receiving economic and military assistance in return, and its expanding ties with Russia provides it with leverage to ask for greater support from China, its biggest trading partner.

“After this strategic play has run its course, Kim may seek further economic and reputational benefits from Washington,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul. “But that will probably be after the U.S. midterm elections when Trump is expected to be in a weaker domestic political position and in search of headline-grabbing foreign policies.”

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said that Kim Yo Jong's statement showed North Korea's position that a personal relationship between her brother and Trump “can't be a factor that moves current North Korean-U.S. relations.” He said Kim Yo Jong likely aimed to head off speculation that Trump's move can restore diplomacy so as not to fully take the blame when it doesn't happen.

Kim Yo Jong denied Trump’s claim that Kim Jong Un had responded to his request for a conversation. When asked by reporters Wednesday if he would be meeting with Kim Jong Un this year, Trump said that “Yeah, I will be.”

The Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of the main military exercises conducted by the U.S. and South Korea annually to enhance their ability to cope with potential North Korean aggression. Its downsizing has caused worries about joint U.S.-South Korean readiness.

Fernandez is charged with first-degree murder and solicitation to commit a capital felony in the February 2022 shooting that left Bridegan dead on a dark Jacksonville Beach street.

Prosecutors allege Fernandez hired Henry Tenon, who was a tenant at a rental property Fernandez owned, to kill Bridegan, his wife Shanna Gardner’s ex-husband. Gardner and Bridegan divorced in 2015, which was followed by years of contentious disputes over the twins they shared.

The defense has argued that prosecutors cannot prove who solicited Tenon or that Fernandez was involved in the shooting.

Prosecutors have described the killing as a planned ambush.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler told jurors during opening statements.

RELATED | Who was Jared Bridegan? A father, a creative builder, a believer — and so much more | 4 years later: A timeline of the Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case

Bridegan, a 33-year-old Microsoft design manager and father of four, was killed Feb. 16, 2022, after stopping his Volkswagen Atlas SUV on that dark street to remove a tire that prosecutors say was left in the road to lure Bridegan out of the vehicle.

Bridegan, who was driving home to St. Augustine after dropping off the twins he shared with Gardner at her Jacksonville Beach home, was shot twice as his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, sat in the vehicle. Two other bullets struck the SUV, narrowly missing Bexley.

The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, testified about comforting Bexley after her boyfriend found the toddler in the SUV near her father’s body that night.

Prosecutors say Bexley had been alone for about 7 minutes before Cruz and her boyfriend arrived.

In a video shown to jurors, Bexley described to Cruz hearing a “Boom!”

RELATED: Jared Bridegan’s widow honored with Back the Blue award for ‘Bexley Boxes’ | 911 calls describe scene of confusion in Sanctuary neighborhood on night of Jared Bridegan’s ambush murder

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

Key evidence: Where is the gun?

Defense attorneys have questioned lead Jacksonville Beach Police Detective Chris Johns and other investigators about the missing 10mm Glock believed to have been used to kill Bridegan. (The type of weapon was identified because of shell casings left at the scene.)

Agent Kenneth Stengel, who has been an ATF agent since 2008 and a firearms instructor for about two years, testified that 10mm weapons are more rare and that this was the first 10mm firearm he had encountered in his investigations.

Under cross-examination, however, Stengel acknowledged that Glock has produced multiple 10mm models and that investigators found records of six 10mm purchases at one Jacksonville gun store.

But Stengel maintained that the weapon was “not very common” based on his personal experience.

Investigators say the 10mm is significant because John Biggerstaff, a longtime friend of Fernandez, owned a 10mm at one point but could not produce it for detectives after the murder.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Biggerstaff has never been charged with a crime in connection with Bridegan’s murder.)

The state has said Fernandez visited Biggerstaff on Jan. 25, 2022, weeks before the murder, and that investigators found evidence that Biggerstaff searched for information about 10mm firearms on the day of the visit.

But defense attorney Jesse Dreicer suggested Fernandez could have visited Biggerstaff’s home for reasons unrelated to the murder, including their longstanding personal relationship. (Fernandez attended Sandalwood High School with Biggerstaff’s daughter.)

RELATED: He’s the first to face trial in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case. What do we know about Mario Fernandez?

Dreicer also questioned Johns about a video found on Biggerstaff’s phone that showed Fernandez having sex with Biggerstaff’s wife. Johns agreed the Biggerstaffs practiced a consensual “swinger” lifestyle.

The defense argued that Fernandez’s visit to Biggerstaff’s home in January 2022 did not prove he obtained a weapon there.

“What you certainly have no evidence of is that Mr. Biggerstaff gave Mr. Fernandez a 10mm firearm,” Dreicer said in one of many tense exchanges with Johns.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns replied.

“OK. When you say no physical evidence, there is no evidence of that. Correct?” Dreicer asked again.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns repeated.

Stengel testified Thursday that federal records showed Biggerstaff purchased a Glock 10mm on June 8, 2016, but that he had to give up that gun and other weapons after he was convicted of a felony.

Stengel testified that agents interviewed Biggerstaff, his son Juan and another man, but none provided information that led investigators to the location of the 10mm Glock. Investigators have admitted that the murder weapon was never recovered.

But on re-direct, Stifler got Johns to confirm that despite having no physical evidence that Biggerstaff had a 10mm gun at the time of the murder, detectives did have witness statements recorded on wires that led them to continue investigating Biggerstaff as the source of the murder weapon.

Key evidence: How did they find the blue truck?

Stengel also testified about the discovery of the blue, two-tone Ford F-150 that investigators say was captured on video being used in the killing.

Investigators had scoured the area for months after the shooting, and on Oct. 14, 2022, Stengel and a fellow agent used Google location data from Henry Tenon’s device to locate the truck at the home of Jimmy Jones, who turned out to be a longtime family friend of Tenon.

The truck was visible from the street, and Stengel said Jones was cooperative. Stengel said the truck’s discovery was a major break in the investigation.

Stengel and Johns both admitted on cross-examination that investigators did not search Jones’ home or the rest of the property for the missing firearm.

No DNA sample was taken from Jones, and no additional testing was conducted at the property. Stengel testified that he had no knowledge of any connection between Jones and Fernandez and that Jones was not treated as a suspect.

Johns said the truck was the only evidence recovered there and that investigators had no reason to search the house because records showed the truck arrived months after the homicide and Jones was not considered a suspect.

Dreicer challenged that explanation, noting investigators had not recovered the firearm and had evidence that Tenon had been at the home.

“Other than the fact that the biggest break in the case was found at Jimmy Jones’s house. Other than that, there was no reason to search the house,” Dreicer said.

Stifler made a point of asking Johns on re-direct about not searching Jones’s home. Johns confirmed to her that investigators received information in 2023 that the gun involved in the murder had been destroyed shortly after the shooting, so it would not have been at Jones’s home even if they’d searched for it.

Key evidence: Who was driving the blue truck?

Video evidence shown in court traced the blue, two-tone Ford F-150 through Jacksonville Beach on the night of the killing.

Prosecutors say the truck carried the shooter to the scene of the murder, but that surveillance showed a person running from the area after the shooting while someone else drove away in the truck.

That means two people were there that night, the prosecutors and defense agree.

But they don’t agree on who that might be.

The defense has emphasized that Fernandez was not shown driving the truck or accompanying Tenon.

Investigators acknowledged they could not identify the truck’s driver and that there is a 32-minute gap in the footage when they don’t know where the truck was in Jacksonville Beach that night.

What surveillance video did capture, though, was an unsettling moment outside the Jacksonville Beach Police Department the night of the murder.

A man prosecutors believe was Tenon walked past the station just seconds before Kirsten Bridegan arrived in the family’s SUV after learning her husband had been shot.

Kirsten testified on Monday that she did not recognize the man, and it was unclear whether she had seen the footage before or knew how close she had come to him that night.

Interactive timeline

Potomac property

In his cross-examination of Johns, Dreicer also focused on cellphone and surveillance evidence involving Fernandez’s rental property on Potomac Avenue, where Tenon lived at one point.

Fernandez’s phone was recorded at the property for several hours on Jan. 29, 2022, while Tenon’s phone traveled toward Jacksonville Beach and back in what prosecutors describe as a practice run for the night of the murder.

FBI Agent Bobby Blythe testified in detail on Thursday about the locations of Tenon’s device on Jan. 29, 2022, describing how it traveled south from the Potomac Avenue house to the area of Bridegan’s home and the gymnastics facility where Bridegan’s oldest daughter took lessons.

Blythe said from there, the phone traveled to Jacksonville Beach to the area where the murder would take place just over two weeks later.

Blythe explained to the jury that cellphone records can show an approximate location, not an exact one. Tower-and-sector data identifies the general coverage area; timing-advance data can narrow it further, while Google location history is usually the most precise, sometimes within a few meters.

Most of the tracking data for Tenon used Google history from the Gmail account attached to his device.

Blythe testified that on Jan. 29, 2022, when Tenon’s device was traveling to Jacksonville Beach and to the area of Bridegan’s home, Fernandez’s phone was at the Potomac home.

Earlier, Dreicer pointed to surveillance footage showing Fernandez repeatedly visiting the Potomac property, meeting contractors and carrying construction materials.

He argued the video supported Fernandez’s explanation that he was overseeing legitimate repair and renovation work.

Detective Johns agreed the footage showed Fernandez performing or arranging property work but said it did not establish what happened on the specific day in question.

Key evidence: Was there DNA?

Prosecutors presented evidence from a DNA analyst on Wednesday afternoon, who said that Tenon’s DNA was found on the tire used to stop Bridegan’s vehicle.

Investigators say Tenon’s boots, jacket and distinctive gait also matched evidence associated with the shooter.

Fernandez’s DNA was not found on any of the items tested by investigators, the analyst acknowledged.

Detective Johns also acknowledged there was no surveillance, fingerprint, hair or other physical evidence placing Fernandez in Tenon’s blue pickup truck or proving he accompanied Tenon to Jacksonville Beach.

Dreicer made a point of talking about how dirty the inside of the truck was when investigators found it months later, implying that the evidence was not missing because someone had “wiped” the truck.

Key evidence: What were the checks for?

The state has highlighted three checks totaling $10,000 that Fernandez wrote to Tenon after the killing.

Johns testified Tuesday that three business check stubs, which were later matched to three checks Fernandez wrote to Tenon, were found in the blue truck.

The checks were described as payment for landscaping, roof work and a Kickstarter project that the state says didn’t exist.

The checks from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez — were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022.

Prosecutors argue the payments were disguised compensation for the murder.

But the defense says Tenon performed work at Fernandez’s property and that the checks were legitimate.

“Henry Tenon is a worker. Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder, tree work, roof work, landscaping, tile work,” defense attorney James Hill said in his opening statement

Gene Nichols, an attorney not involved in the case, said the checks are the hinge point of the entire trial.

“I think when it’s all said and done, what does the jury believe about the checks? That’s going to rule a tremendous amount,” he said. “That, to me, is going to be where this hinges — will a jury believe that those checks were written in order to commit murder, or were those checks written for the work that Mr. Hill said they were written for?”

He added that the burden of proof remains high.

“If the jury believes that they were for work that was done, or they take the position that the state didn’t prove that the money was for murder, then that’s going to sway a jury,” Nichols said. “In order to convict him, it’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by all of those jurors.”

What’s the motive?

Prosecutors have pointed to the hostility between the two families as a possible motive for Bridegan’s murder.

Kirsten Bridegan, Jared’s widow, testified Monday that the co-parenting relationship between Jared and Gardner had deteriorated into constant conflict.

“It was pretty terrible,” Kirsten Bridegan said on the stand. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn’t do phone calls.”

In his initial interview with detectives, which was played in court on Tuesday for about 50 minutes, Fernandez discussed the ongoing conflicts over the twins, describing Jared Bridegan as difficult and “passive-aggressive” and calling him a “keyboard warrior.”

Fernandez also mentioned the family communication in that interview, saying the family was in a group text and had an arrangement to text when they arrived to pick up the kids for date night.

The custody agreement established alternating Wednesday “date nights” for both parents on the week when the children were in the other parent’s home.

Dreicer argued that the schedule for date night was public information and therefore could have been known by people outside the family.

“So the idea that (Wednesday date night) is some personal detail that only the Bridegans would know and only the Gardner-Fernandez residence would know is simply not true. It’s public information. Correct?” Dreicer asked.

“The docket is publicly available,” Johns acknowledged.

Friends testify

On Wednesday and Thursday, friends of Fernandez also testified.

Taylor Kutis described conversations involving Fernandez’s marriage, co-parenting disputes and an obscure “contract” involving his wife’s family.

Under cross-examination, Kutis acknowledged that her recollections were not verbatim, that she kept no notes and that some details came from media reports.

Victor Quiroz, a longtime online gaming friend, testified that Fernandez visited him in North Carolina in March 2022.

Quiroz said Fernandez acted normally and did not discuss the killing. Fernandez mentioned only later that his wife’s former husband had been shot.

Carlos Phuong, a friend of Fernandez since high school, testified on Thursday about Fernandez’s relationship with Gardner and about two phone calls he placed to Fernandez in January 2023, when neither man was aware they were being recorded.

The expletive-laced calls between the two friends were played for the jury.

In the calls, Phuong told Fernandez that media reports were linking Gardner to Jared Bridegan’s death and that Henry Tenon had been arrested. They discussed Tenon’s work on Fernandez’s rental property and possible motives, along with unrelated topics.

Phuong testified that Fernandez made no admission, did not seem evasive and said he had nothing to do with the killing.

Phuong also testified that he never heard Fernandez or Gardner threaten Jared Bridegan or discuss planning his killing.

What’s next?

Fernandez’s murder trial is scheduled to continue through Aug. 28.

Gardner, 39, faces a separate trial in September, while Tenon is scheduled to stand trial in 2027 after withdrawing an earlier guilty plea.

Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.

Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.

Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.

RELATED: Judge orders Jared Bridegan’s widow to turn over cellphone in Shanna Gardner murder case

The case has garnered national attention, and Judge London Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.

As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during jury selection to protect their identities.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The BackBlack initiative has directed more than $12 million toward Black-led nonprofits over the past three years, according to founder Floyd Jones. A GivingTuesday -style campaign that runs in August, the appeal invites online donation platforms to center typically underfunded, Black-led nonprofits. Last year's efforts drew more than 130,000 unique donors, according to Jones, with the majority of their gifts falling under $100.

This year, for the first time, organizers are also leveraging content creators to reach a new audience: Black Gen Zers. The goal is to show that philanthropy belongs to them, too — not just the historically wealthier and predominantly white charitable institutions that tend to dominate narratives about philanthropy.

“Our people have always taken care of our people," Jones said. “I want people to feel empowered.”

The campaign could bring a boost for smaller, Black-led organizations that, according to research released earlier this year, saw no significant changes to their funding after the racial reckoning of 2020. Only a subset of larger nonprofits got temporary increases in the years that followed, according to an analysis by Candid and ABFE.

BackBlack aims to flip that narrative from one of “deficit” to one of abundance. Jones is heartened by the example of Madam C.J. Walker, a Black beauty entrepreneur widely considered America's first female self-made millionaire. She supported Black educational efforts such as Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute and African American branches of the YMCA. She also contributed to the NAACP 's anti-lynching fund shortly before her death in 1919.

Jones doesn't care if today's donors have millions in their bank accounts, though. “It's about doing your best,” he said.

One of BackBlack's partnering creators pointed to the Free African Society. The nondenominational Philadelphia group, founded in 1787 by Black leaders Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, was one of the country's first mutual aid organizations.

“We've always had to pool our money and resources to help each other," said Ernest Crim III, a former schoolteacher who posts Black history videos for his 118,000 Instagram followers.

But, he added, allies must also pitch in — especially in communities that “might not have the sustainable market or income to consistently give.”

Crim is asking followers to support Black nonprofits that work on issues of youth employment. Other participating pages are focused on nonprofits providing sports access, improving health outcomes and ensuring civil rights.

Matching up to $6,000 in donations is For Good, a charitable giving platform that helps move money from more than 20,000 donor-advised funds to over a million nonprofits filtered by ZIP code. GivingTuesday manages BackBlack's data, Jones said. Other partners include online fundraising platforms GiveButter, Every.org, Bonterra and Fundraise Up.

For Good provides back end infrastructure for consumer-based campaigns including YouTube's fundraising pages and Patagonia's point-of-sale donations. The creator-driven donation strategy stemmed from the platform’s success with YouTubers who launch fundraisers for the issues they discuss in their videos.

Grassroots fundraisers face competing headwinds, according to For Good interim president Tamara Mahal. The concentration of wealth has increased the share of high net worth individuals in the donor pool. But, she said, there are more ways than ever to give locally from the bottom up.

She welcomes the BackBlack campaign's efforts to include more small-dollar givers so that nonprofits aren't overly beholden to any one individual benefactor.

“The cause is important in and of itself. Find a nonprofit that’s doing work in your community," she said. “And that will actually help us to diversify.”

Kaci Patterson is the founder of Social Good Solutions, a social impact consulting firm that works with funders to build support for Black-led organizations outside of “trend funding.” She finds that Black Philanthropy Month, celebrated in August, is a reminder that philanthropy is more than just “institutional” giving “held within the walls of wealth and power.”

It was fish fries and chicken dinners, she noted, that funded alternative transportation systems during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Growing up, her own family received groceries from their community during times of hardship.

“That was philanthropy. That was someone else looking at us and investing in us and wanting us to be whole and wanting us to be well," she said. “We've always had this kind of ‘we got us’ philanthropy. Let’s step into that role more confidently."

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The fires are concentrated on Borneo, the world’s third-largest island shared by Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. Indonesia occupies about three-quarters of the island, where more than 5,000 hot spots were recorded by the country's Forestry Ministry.

The blazes have blanketed parts of Kalimantan in choking haze, reducing visibility to just 1 meter to 10 meters (yards) in some areas, according to local media reports. The smoke has contributed to traffic accidents and delayed several flights.

Television footage showed roads, buildings and public facilities obscured by smoke, with motorists forced to drive with headlights on during daylight hours. Residents, including schoolchildren, were seen wearing masks while walking outside.

An intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season have fueled the fires, generating dense smoke that crossed into Malaysia, according to Indonesia’s National Disaster Management Agency.

Malaysia’s eastern state of Sarawak has been among the hardest hit. One district recorded “very unhealthy” air quality Friday, while eight others posted unhealthy readings, prompting the closure of nearly 600 schools and affecting about 200,000 students, the Sarawak government said.

On Borneo, Central Kalimantan Police Chief Iwan Kurniawan said investigators have detained 12 suspects linked to alleged arson and illegal land clearing in the past week.

“Every forest and land fire incident in Central Kalimantan is investigated,” Kurniawan said, adding that authorities were working to determine the causes of the fires and identify those responsible.

Forestry Minister Raja Juli Antoni, who visited fire-hit areas near the provincial capital of Palangka Raya on Wednesday, vowed strict action against offenders.

“Whoever they are, big or small, without exception, anyone who destroys nature and forests will face strict legal action,” Antoni said.

Social media was flooded with complaints from residents describing breathing difficulties and fears of illness.

In total, Indonesia’s Forestry Ministry detected 11,908 hot spots nationwide in the previous 24 hours, up from 6,352 a day earlier.

Forest-monitoring platform Nusantara Atlas said about 182,000 hectares (450,000 acres) burned in July alone, nearly double the area scorched during the first half of the year. The total area burned this year has reached about 285,000 hectares (704,000 acres).

Indonesia regularly experiences transboundary haze during severe fire seasons, particularly when peatlands on Sumatra and Kalimantan burn. Authorities say fires are often started illegally to clear land for plantations or agriculture, periodically blanketing parts of Southeast Asia in hazardous smoke.

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Associated Press writers Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Edna Tarigan in Jakarta, Indonesia, contributed to this report.

The crash happened near Cape Newenham Long Range Radar Site Airport, approximately 450 miles (725 kilometers) west of Anchorage, Alaska.

“This is a devastating loss for our military family and the communities we serve,” U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Davis, commander of Alaskan Command, the Alaskan North American Aerospace Defense Command Region and Eleventh Air Force, said in a statement.

The radar site is managed by the Pacific Air Forces Regional Support Center. It’s part of a network of remote radar sites that tracks aircraft operating in Alaska’s airspace and along its borders, the statement from Alaskan Command said.

The statement did not provide details on the specific work the individuals were doing. It referred to the plane involved as a “civilian-contracted aircraft.”

Davis described those on board as “dedicated professionals carrying out a vital mission in a demanding environment. Our absolute priority right now is providing unwavering support to their families, friends and teammates during this devastating time. We are profoundly grateful for the swift and tireless response of our search and recovery professionals.”

Clint Johnson, the National Transportation Safety Board’s Alaska region chief, said earlier Thursday evening that two pilots and six passengers were on board.

The plane, a Cessna 441, had taken off from the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and was headed to Cape Newenham, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The crash happened about 12:15 p.m. Thursday west of Cape Newenham.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska posted online that the flight was operated by Security Aviation, an airplane charter company based in Anchorage.

An email was sent to the company Friday morning seeking comment.

“I join Alaskans in offering condolences as we learn of the plane crash in Cape Newenham,” Murkowski posted Thursday night. “I’ve traveled extensively with Security Aviation throughout Alaska, and have met many of their experienced pilots. I appreciate the U.S. Coast Guard, NTSB, Alaska State Troopers, and the Rescue Coordination Center for responding to the site. Alaska is praying for those on board, their loved ones, and the team at Security Aviation.”

Officers responded around 3:31 a.m. to Mc Cowan Drive near Blanding Boulevard and Collins Road. The victim is being treated for injuries. The suspect remains unknown.

JSO said several shell casings were recovered, and detectives are processing the scene, interviewing witnesses, searching for surveillance video and following up on leads.

The scene remains active. JSO said the shooting appears isolated, with no current indication it was domestic- or gang-related. Anyone with information should call 904-630-0500, email JSOCRIMETIPS@JAXSHERIFF.ORG, or contact Crime Stoppers at 1-866-845-TIPS.

Geis’ remains were found by a team made up of local volunteers, according to Irfan Arshad Khan, president of the Alpine Club of Pakistan. The expedition was Geis’ first attempt to climb an 8,000-meter (26,247-foot) peak in Pakistan.

Geis, 39, lived in San Antonio, Texas. She announced on social media earlier this year that she was closing her Pilates studio to take “a giant leap of faith into the unknown to see where life goes. I have a sneaking suspicion there will be lots of helmets, harnesses, and crampons involved.”

Her family remembered her in a statement earlier this month as “a bright light who was loved deeply by her family and friends.”

The recovery ended a search that began on July 31 after the expedition, led by renowned climber Nirmal Purja, was swept away by an avalanche on Broad Peak.

Purja, a Nepal-born former British Army soldier widely known as Nims Dai, climbed the world’s 14 highest peaks in a record 189 days in 2019, an achievement featured in the Netflix documentary “14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible.” His record was broken in 2023.

Accidents are common on climbing expeditions in northern Pakistan because of avalanches, falling ice and rock, high altitude and rapidly changing weather.

Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, in an interview this week with The Associated Press, directed his question to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the main architect of the Trump administration’s Cuba policy:

“What are you afraid of? If you are so convinced that the Cuban government is an incompetent government, why do you need to implement almost every two weeks new sanctions?”

The U.S. State Department responded to a request for comment with a quote from Rubio saying new sanctions will continue to be announced every couple of weeks to close off “escape valves that they're trying to create in every mechanism.”

Then on Thursday, the U.S. imposed more economic penalties on Cuban industries, targeting state-owned mining, metal and construction companies.

Cuba has been pushed to the brink by an oil blockade imposed by the United States in January on top of a decades-old embargo, coupled with the escalating sanctions. The moves by President Donald Trump's administration, meant to put pressure on the government by depriving it of funding, have worsened already debilitating blackouts, cut workers off from public transport, crippled infrastructure and deepened shortages in medicine and food in the Caribbean island nation.

Guzmán said the sanctions are the main obstacle to Cuba opening up its economy. He said the impact of the U.S. measures — specifically the shortage of electricity and lack of fuel to run a business or travel — has turned off investors and tourists, a major source of Cuba’s income.

Some companies have pulled out of Cuba, including the Spanish hotel chain Meliá, which relied on tourist revenue and cited “significant operational, legal, economic and financial difficulties" in explaining its decision to leave.

”Literally, the United States has done everything imaginable to try to prevent foreign investors," said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University and a leading expert on U.S.-Cuba relations. ”When they say, `Well, we want to see Cuba open up to foreign investment,’ they’re being disingenuous. ... It's not possible for them to succeed without some kind of sanctions relief.”

The goal of Trump's Republican administration, he said, is "not just to open up Cuba economically but to overthrow the Cuban government — to change the nature of the Cuban political system.”

Cuba announces major economic shift

John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said Cuba had to make changes when it lost its economic lifeline with the U.S. ouster in January of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

“The result is the Cuban government in the last eight months made more commercial, economic and financial changes to the country than they have as a group since the revolution,” he said.

Nonetheless, the Trump administration keeps ratcheting up sanctions, putting more pressure on Cuba, which is responding by making more changes, Kavulich said.

“But from our standpoint, there are two parts missing: One is Cuba implementing by regulation everything that it’s announced, and secondly, the Trump administration allowing U.S. companies to have more access to the Cuban marketplace while these changes are underway,” he said.

The changes announced by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in June aim to significantly shift Cuba’s economy and industry, which have been strictly controlled by the socialist government since the 1959 revolution.

They include more space for private businesses, imports and exports without the state as an intermediary, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks, investment by Cubans abroad and opportunities for fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.

Guzmán said there are opportunities for investments in real estate, solar farms and energy to help ease the country’s electricity shortage, as well as in marinas and the tourism industry.

Christopher Hernandez-Roy, acting director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recalled that the last economic opening under President Barack Obama's Democratic administration “was later throttled by the Cubans themselves, who feared that the opening went too far and appeared to threaten political control.”

Today, he said, it appears the Cubans really do want economic reforms and outside investment. Díaz-Canel’s economic reforms are not impossible, but U.S. sanctions “significantly constrain their prospects for success," Hernandez-Roy said.

He noted the irony that U.S. pressure ”is helping push the Cubans toward greater economic liberalization out of necessity, while simultaneously limiting the resources and access necessary for those reforms to actually improve the economy.”

Rubio says Cuba's leaders ‘don’t know what they're doing'

In late June, after the reforms were announced, the U.S. slapped sanctions on five state companies, three linked to a business conglomerate run by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Best known as GAESA, it is believed to command nearly 40% of Cuba's gross domestic product.

Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Florida whose parents were born in Cuba, did not appear to be impressed by the newly announced economic changes. He last month called Cuba “a failed state” with “a bad economic model.” He said Cuba’s leaders “don’t know what they’re doing” and “don’t know how to fix their economy.”

“I think the challenge that Cuba has faced for the last 15 years is they want to somewhat improve their economy, but they’re afraid that if they improve it too much they’ll lose political control over people,” he said.

The United States is prepared “to do what we can do to effectuate a positive change in Cuba because it directly impacts our national security” since it is only 90 miles (145 kilometers) from the U.S. mainland, Rubio said. “And we want Cuba to be prosperous. We want Cuba to be free.”

The Cuban ambassador said implementing the economic changes would be far easier without the sanctions, if American companies were involved in Cuba and if trade between the two countries was possible.

He said the good news is that talks are taking place between the United States and Cuba. He declined to give details of what he called “very sensitive conversations.”

“But the point here is that even when Cuba is changing a lot," Guzmán said, “the U.S. government keeps the same policy of aggression towards the Cuban people.”

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Follow the AP's coverage of Cuba at https://apnews.com/hub/cuba.

“The Disappearers,” Marlon James

Marlon James’ fantasy series “Dark Star” was a showcase for his extraordinary and boundless imagination. In “The Disappearers,” he returns to his native Jamaica and to the murderous reality of his Booker Prize-winning “A Brief History of Seven Killings.” The new novel, longlisted for the Booker, is framed around the horrifying beating in 1988 of eight gay men who had been rehearsing for a play. James weaves together humor, popular culture, compassion and some very hard experience. “I refuse to believe there is any lesson to be learned from suffering an atrocity,” James writes, “other than always be on guard for the ways people turn on you.” (Sept. 1)

“American Scoundrel,” Kai Bird and Susan Goldmark

Kai Bird is best known as the co-author with Martin J. Sherwin of “American Prometheus,” the biography of nuclear scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer that became the basis for Christopher Nolan’s Oscar winner “Oppenheimer.” In “American Scoundrel,” he and Susan Goldmark (his wife) trace the influence of the late political operator Roy Cohn, from his early years as the top aide to Sen. Joseph McCarthy to his mentorship of a young Donald Trump. “American Scoundrel” draws upon government documents, archival material and dozens of interviews, including, to the authors’ surprise, Trump, who “answered our cold calls on his personal cell on several occasions,” Bird writes in the acknowledgments section. Trump was “gracious, if not exactly forthcoming about his memories” and declined to meet in person, because, he told them, “I’m the president. I’m very busy. I have China calling. I have Russia calling. I cannot do it.” (Sept. 1)

“Switzy,” Emma Cline

Emma Cline has well established her mastery of inhabiting the alienated mind, of dramatizing youthful transience, aspiration and deception, most famously in her celebrated debut, “The Girls.” In “Switzy,” longlisted for the Booker Prize, Cline gives us a retired businessman with failing mental capacity, en route to an assisted dying facility in Zurich. Cline breaks up the story into brief, affectless passages as a once-“Valuable Person” reckons with his memories and concludes that “He had always stayed on the surface. His whole life.” (Sept. 8)

“Music Against the Night,” Yiyun Li

“Music Against the Night” is Yiyun Li's sixth novel, and first book since last year's Pulitzer Prize-winning “Things in Nature Merely Grow,” her unsparing memoir about the suicides of her two sons. Li this time appears to have written a very different narrative — about a late 18th-century piano prodigy whose fame barely outlasted his lifetime and the orphaned wanderer-musician who makes the ill-fated decision to marry him. The novel is a story of music, but also a meditation on “the night,” death — parents, friends, children, everybody. “It is despair that one must not submit to,” Li writes late in the book, adding a dark, Shakespearean warning: “A child's death can never feel neutral to a parent; a child's death is a negation of time, which no longer has now and then, now and again, now and later, only now and now and now and now and now.” (Oct. 13)

“Promise Me, America,” former President Joe Biden

Memoirs are often presidents’ best chance to define their legacy, although readers and critics may have different priorities, whether Richard Nixon and Watergate or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. Joe Biden will understandably want to focus on his defeat of Donald Trump in 2020, the passage of landmark legislation on green energy and the appointment of the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, among other achievements. But the public will likely be seeking answers to more unwanted questions, notably the state of Biden’s health while he was in the White House, the backstory to his disastrous debate against Trump and his decision soon after to call off his reelection campaign. (Nov. 17)

Former President Joe Biden’s “Promise Me, America” stands out not just as a White House memoir — presidential memoirs are events unto themselves — but as a rare high-profile political book over the next few months. Nonfiction sales have slumped in recent years and political books haven’t approached the peaks of President Donald Trump's first term.

“The energy in political books seems to be subdued. I think folks are just ranted out,” says Kristen McLean, an analyst and vice president for client insights at Circana, which tracks retail book sales.

“I think the (news) cycle is moving a bit too quickly for a lot of the very specific political books to catch on,” says Shannon DeVito, Barnes & Noble's senior director of books.

Michael Lewis' “Blockers,” a probe into Trump's second term through the eyes of government workers, may be the only new release to rival the impact of Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's summer bestseller, “Regime Change.” This fall’s notable political offerings otherwise revisit the Biden years, from “Promise Me, America,” to former Middle East envoy Brett McGurk’s “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the Oct. 7 Hostages” to Akbar Shahid Ahmed’s study of Biden’s Gaza war policies, “Crossing the Red Line.”

Even Bob Woodward, who for decades released timely exposés of sitting presidents, is passing on current politics. In “Secrets: A Reporter’s Memoir,” he reflects on presidents and White House sources dating back to the Nixon administration and the Watergate scandal that made him famous..

“Because he's going more into his own life, I expect he'll have a different and broader audience than for his other books,” DeVito says.

A feast of fiction

Novelists Barbara Kingsolver and Hernan Diaz, co-winners three years ago of the Pulitzer Prize, will share honors again as two of the featured authors in a busy season. Kingsolver's “Partita,” about a onetime musical prodigy drawn again to her past, is the first since “Demon Copperhead,” her Pulitzer-winning retelling of Charles Dickens' “David Copperfield.” Meanwhile, Diaz has followed his Pulitzer-winning “Trust” with the dystopian, Dickensian “Ply,” about a young thief in a chaotic future society.

Diaz says he met Kingsolver at the Pulitzer ceremony, where the two drank bourbon and bonded over literature and other common interests.

“I don't think literature is a race or a tennis tournament,” Diaz says. “I think the more good books that are out there, the richer the conversation becomes and the more readers are engaged.”

Fiction sales have been solid in 2026 and will likely remain high if only because the two most prominent romantasy authors, Rebecca Yarros and Sarah J. Maas, have new books coming. Maas is releasing “A Court of Splintered Harmony,” the sixth volume of “A Court of Thorns and Roses,” with the seventh installment scheduled for early next year. Yarros' “Threshing Day” compiles 13 stories featuring characters from her Empyrean series, and her stand-alone “Peculiar Stars” finds protagonist Callista Moran stranded on an island after a sailing accident and discovering unexpected sides to herself.

The new fiction list also features Nobel laureate Jon Fosse's latest, “Vaim Hotel,” and three contenders for the Booker Prize — Marlon James' “The Disappearers,” Emma Cline's “Switzy” and Rebecca Perry's “May We Feed the King.” The book most primed for gossip is Rachel Cusk's “Life of M,” a meta-novel about a movie star who may or may not be based on Natalie Portman. The season's longest-awaited novel is likely Chad Harbach's “The Brightness”: The parallel and intertwining lives of two close friends in their 20s is his first novel since his acclaimed 2011 debut, “The Art of Fielding.”

Min Jin Lee's “American Hagwon” is her first novel since 2017 and her celebrated “Pachinko.” Emily St. John Mandel's “Exit Party” is a story of futuristic breakdown from the author of the futuristic classic “Station Eleven.” Yiyun Li, Edwidge Danticat, Kate Atkinson, Deesha Philyaw, Diane Williams, Laleh Khadivi, R.F. Kuang and Norah Labiner also have fiction coming out.

Fans of Stephen King (and the late Peter Straub) can look forward to “Other Worlds Than These,” the final “Talisman” novel. Alice Hoffman launches a new series with “The Witches of Cambridge” and Brandon Sanderson has begun “Blightfall,” written with Janci Patterson. “The French Illusion” is John Grisham's latest thriller. S.A. Cosby's “Truth to Power” is a Marvel Crime novel featuring superhero/sleuth Luke Cage.

Celebrities share their stories

A trio of Oscar-winning superstars will tell their stories this fall: Sylvester Stallone's “The Steps,” its title a reference to the actor's iconic upward run in “Rocky”; Michael Douglas' “One Helluva Ride,” which the actor and producer has called a corrective to the blurry legends of fame; and Dustin Hoffman's “Look at Me,” promoted by publisher Simon Six as “an intimate memoir about art, ambition, family, friendship, love, aging, and the mysteries of a creative life.”

Gloria Steinem looks back on her early years in “An Unexpected Life” and former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick reflects on his activism in “The Perilous Fight.” Chuck Lorre's “Sitcom” is a memoir from the creator behind “Two and a Half Men” and “The Big Bang Theory.” Eric Dane’s “My Book of Days” comes out just months after the “Grey’s Anatomy” star died from ALS.

Poetry for all times

Ancient poetry seems new again thanks to Christopher Nolan's adaptation of “The Odyssey,” which has placed editions by Emily Wilson and the late Robert Fagles high on bestseller lists. Wilson has a new book out this fall, “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea,” essays that cover everything from Greek tragedy to “slut-shaming” Helen of Troy to the “sly laughter” of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's “WAP.”

In “Cloud Runner,” former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo tries to express what she acknowledges may be inexpressible, the death three years ago of her daughter, Rainy Ortiz: “I have lost my girl./Some things do not belong in words,” Harjo writes. Jennifer Franklin channels the mind of James Joyce’s gifted, ill-fated daughter Lucia in the collection “A Fire in Her Brain.”

New work is also expected from Layli Long Soldier, Tina Chang, Patricia Lockwood, Dalia Taha, Avis Blackbird and Hieu Minh Nguyen. The anthology “Other Legacies” features tributes from Rae Armantrout, Edward Hirsch and other prizewinners to such lesser-known poets as Rachel Loden, Julia de Burgos and Stephen Jonas.

Making history

Another writer enriched by a Nolan movie — Kai Bird, co-author of “American Prometheus,” the biography adapted into “Oppenheimer” — has co-written “American Scoundrel,” the story of lawyer/political fixer/Trump mentor Roy Cohn. In “The Rush,” award winner Nathaniel Philbrick revisits the 19th century quest for gold. The acclaimed science writer James Gleick examines the evolution of communication in “The Telephone: A New History.”

Two books, Timothy W. Ryback's “53 Days” and Victor Sebestyen’s “Weimar Germany,” examine the fall of democracy in 1930s Germany, while other releases warning of contemporary threats include Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s “End Times Fascism” and Pulitzer winner Jill Lepore's “The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State.”

Public radio host Celeste Headlee's “Freedom’s Daughters” is one of many works this fall that center on race and racism. Grandmaster Flash has collaborated with Robert “Scoop” Jackson on a history of rap and hip-hop, “Birth of a Culture,” and Stephanie Phillips' music history “We Were Here” highlights artists from Sister Rosetta Tharpe to Living Colour.

Pulitzer winner Alan Taylor’s “Tower Hill” offers a fresh look at the 1831 rebellion led by the enslaved Nat Turner. In “Renaissance Men,” Harriet A. Washington honors three groundbreaking and overlooked Black physicians in a narrative spanning the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and resonating today.

The two-time Olympic champion released “Gold” with World Athletics on Friday as the anthem of the upcoming meet that boasts a total prize fund of $10 million.

Ultimate Championship will be staged in Budapest from Sept. 11-13 showcasing Olympic, world and Diamond League champions over three evening sessions. Gold medalists in individual events will win $150,000.

The 26-year-old Duplantis has dabbled in music for several years and released his first single, “Bop,” in 2025.

Duplantis, the world-record holder, says he dreams of winning a Grammy.

“Gold” was written by Duplantis with Carl Silvergran and Oscar Chase, and was produced by Chase, the World Athletics announcement said.

“I wrote the song around representing something that’s a lot bigger than yourself,” Duplantis said in the announcement. “I think that’s what we all do when we’re on the track. We represent our family, our team, our coaches, and I love that concept. Music and sports are the two things that bring people together in the best way, and ‘Gold’ is an expression of that.”

The accompanying music video was filmed in the Hungarian capital and includes archival footage of Duplantis as a young athlete.

The Louisiana-born Duplantis told the Olympics channel last year he uses his music “as a way of therapy. I really love to have something else to be able to do, and to kind of take myself away from sports a little bit.”

At the Ultimate Championship, his new song “will be woven into the broadcast and live-event experience, connecting fans in-stadium with audiences around the world,” World Athletics said.

Duplantis is scheduled to perform “Gold” live in-stadium to close out the event.

“The Ultimate is purposefully designed to showcase the talents and passions of our sport’s biggest stars, on and off the track,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said. “Mondo is one of our most recognizable and accomplished athletes, and we could not be more excited that he is the one who created the Ultimate Anthem."

The championship will be a biennial event.

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See full AP coverage of European sports here

“We have virtually given up on many things,” said Ahmad Karimi, 52, a taxi driver and father of two who has been working 15-hour days to make ends meet. “We’re cutting out fruit, we’re cutting out protein, we’ve given up leisure, we even work on weekends."

Nearly six months into the war with the United States and Israel, the Iranian economy is taking a beating under the force of sanctions and a naval blockade that is making it extremely difficult for the country to export oil, its most valuable product.

Whether this intensifying economic pressure will translate anytime soon into military or political concessions from Iran remains to be seen — but some experts are skeptical. Since the war began, Iran has been attacking oil-rich neighbors and U.S. bases in the region, and disrupting shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, its biggest strategic advantage.

Iran is trying to use this retaliatory pressure — which is driving up energy prices globally — to bring the war to an end on the best terms possible. It is pressing for sanctions relief, and seeking enough control over the strait to demand payment from ships passing through to deliver energy and other goods.

The Trump administration — which is stuck fighting over a waterway in a war that was launched to curb Iran's nuclear program — is now promising to deliver even tougher sanctions to try to squeeze the Islamic Republic into submission. But experts say U.S. President Donald Trump may be underestimating how long Iran can hold out.

Iran has been subject to Western sanctions for years and has become deft at partially circumventing them. It has expanded domestic production, used informal cross-border trade networks, bought restricted goods through third countries, and used a shadow fleet to transport its oil.

“Iran’s resistance capacity not only avoids collapse, it also prevents the economic pain from translating into the political pressure and changes that the U.S. expects,” said Hadi Kahalzadeh, an expert on Iran’s economy at Brandeis University.

Iran's economic strains carry an ‘emotional toll’

Tehran’s sprawling Grand Bazaar is regularly packed with shoppers hoping to find more affordable staples than at the country’s grocery stores, where rice is 60% more expensive and beef is 150% more expensive than before the war.

A mother of two from northern Iran posted a photo on X this week after purchasing milk, eggs, toilet paper and a few other items, but no meat. She complained that it cost 89 million rials (about $65).

“Buying basic necessities has become our main priority, and our shopping basket has gotten smaller and more limited,” the 41-year-old told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

“The emotional toll and the pressure we’re under are another story," she said. "Every time we have to say no to our children, every time we have to go back and forth over a decision, whether it’s a class you’d love your children to take or something they really want you to buy for them, it’s genuinely exhausting.”

By the end of the year, inflation in Iran is expected to rise nearly 70%, according to the International Monetary Fund, and the country's economy — devastated by a decade of sanctions before the war — is forecast to shrink by more than 5%.

While gasoline has remained cheap thanks to government subsidies, even that might not last forever as supplies get tighter. A presidential aide told Iranian state television last week that the country is now using more gasoline each day than it produces and may need to raise prices — something that in the past has led to widespread protests.

Iranians turn some anger toward countries behind sanctions

Iran's theocratic leaders were already facing economic discontent before the U.S. and Israel started the war on Feb. 28. Protests had spread across the country at the beginning of the year before they were violently put down, with thousands killed and tens of thousands believed to have been arrested.

Many Iranians have now turned at least some of their economic frustrations toward the countries behind the sanctions and the attacks that have destroyed factories and critical infrastructure and killed scores of civilians, said Hassan Golmoradi, a Tehran-based economist.

“Despite the hardships and difficulties, they have shown considerable patience in putting up with the resulting economic pressures,” Golmoradi said.

Iran’s leaders have said it is a treasonous offense — punishable by death — to take part in anti-government protests.

“They do suffer, but they do not think that by joining violent protests they can achieve something for themselves and their families,” said Mohammad Farzanegan, a professor of Middle Eastern economics at the University of Marburg in Germany.

Trump is threatening tougher sanctions

On Wednesday, Trump vowed on social media to unleash against Iran the “most crushing economic operation ever taken against any country.” He also threatened secondary sanctions on nations and companies that continue to do business with Iran.

The United Arab Emirates, which for years had enabled Iran to circumvent sanctions and receive goods from other countries, announced this week it was suspending all trade with Tehran. Trump had called the leader of the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the day before the announcement.

With the economic struggles, the elected government of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has said it favors a negotiated end to the war. “What concerns us is people’s livelihoods and their economic situation, and we are doing everything we can to deal with it,” he told reporters last week.

But the most powerful force in Iran remains the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has only become stronger after withstanding U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that killed Iran’s top leaders during the war's opening salvos. The Guard is pressing for greater concessions from the U.S., including Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz and financial compensation for the war.

With negotiations to end the war stalled, Iran’s hard-liners believe their country can endure the conflict’s economic pressures longer than their adversaries.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, this month appointed a former Revolutionary Guard commander to head Iran’s powerful Supreme National Security Council, a sign that he favors the hard-line approach.

A taxi driver says something has to give

Official government statistics put Iran’s unemployment rate at 9.1%, though state-affiliated media outlets have said the real figure is most likely many times higher. A Labor Ministry official said last week that by late May, just three months into the war, more than 1 million jobs had been lost.

In a sign that Iran's leaders are at least somewhat concerned about public opinion, the government has refrained from enforcing mandatory hijab regulations as harshly as it had been — a social freedom that has long been sought by many.

But these days many Iranians are focused on how their lifestyles are restricted economically.

Karimi, the taxi driver, said Iran’s leaders will need to do something soon to alleviate the financial pressures he and others are feeling.

“The people won’t be able to continue living like this,” he said. “We’re simply breathing, surviving, and trying to make it from one day to the next.”

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Rising reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The 30-year-old entertainer, whose real name is Andres Felipe Valencia Barrientos, learned on Friday that prosecutors intend to try him for a second time on the charges.

Barrientos underwent an eight-day trial for the same alleged attack last month in the District Court of Western Australia state in Perth.

A jury found him guilty on two charges that he had assaulted the woman, then aged 20, occasioning bodily harm in a Perth hotel room in September 2024.

The jury also found him not guilty of choking her and not guilty of three of six charges of rape.

The jury could not reach majority verdicts of at least 10 out of 12 jurors on the remaining three rape charges.

Prosecutor Danielle Clarke told Judge Linda Black that the alleged victim, who cannot be identified, was willing to testify again at a retrial.

Black was the original trial judge. She told defense and prosecution lawyers on Friday to consider whether they want a new judge to hear the retrial and whether the proceedings should be heard by a jury or by a judge alone.

The Colombian-born entertainer will be sentenced for the assault convictions after his retrial. No date for the trial has been set.

Barrientos has been free on bail since he was charged and was allowed to return to Britain for several months.

He said nothing to reporters as he left the court on Friday.

Barrientos had been touring Australia and had already performed in Sydney and Melbourne before he encountered his victim in Perth. He was arrested several days later in the east coast city of Brisbane, where the tour was to end.

Prosecutors alleged the woman initially agreed to have sex but withdrew her consent because she feared for her safety.

Reese was 9-for-9 from the field, hitting two 3-pointers, for 20 points and had 10 rebounds and eight assists for her WNBA-leading 25th double-double of the season. She had 18 points in the first half.

Reese set a Dream record for field goals without a miss and became the third player in WNBA history with a 20-point double-double on 100% shooting. She's four shy of Alyssa Thomas’ WNBA double-double record of 28 set in 2023.

In addition, she had three offensive rebounds in the first half to break her own WNBA season record of 172 set in 2024.

Rhyne Howard added 26 points and five 3-pointers for Atlanta (23-13), which has won eight straight in the series with Los Angeles. Naz Hillmon had 14 points and Allisha Gray 13.

Cameron Brink scored 14 points off the bench for Los Angeles (12-24), which was eliminated from playoff contention. Rae Burrell added 12 and Nneka Ogwumike had 11.

The Dream led by 42 points and reached the 100-point mark with 8:10 left.

Play was briefly interrupted with 2:59 left in the third quarter after a sex toy was thrown on the court near where Jihyun Park was about to attempt a free throw for Los Angeles.

Up next

Dream: At Phoenix on Saturday.

Sparks: Host Connecticut on Saturday.

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See AP’s full WNBA coverage here

Árpád Selmeci said navigating even a small fishing boat on Hungary's third-largest lake is becoming increasingly difficult as the water level has ebbed to around 20 centimeters (8 inches), well below the 150 centimeters (5 feet) optimal for August. Swimming beaches across the lake, once popular with tourists, have been closed.

Lake Velence’s decline is part of a broader water crisis confronting Hungary as increasingly prolonged droughts and climate change-driven heat waves have pummeled Europe.

“I've lived on Lake Velence since I was a child, and I've never seen the water so low," said Selmeci, 58. "It's terrible. My heart aches every single moment.”

This summer, wildfires scorched the continent from the United Kingdom to Greece, while in Hungary, drought has damaged crop yields, led to drinking water shortages and threatened to shut down the country's only nuclear power plant.

Yet the lack of rainfall linked to human-driven climate change is only part of Hungary's water problem. Experts say the country's long-standing practice of channeling water away from its landscape and draining natural wetlands has left it especially vulnerable as droughts become more frequent and severe.

A legacy of draining away water

Around 99% of Hungary’s lands are currently under severe or extreme drought conditions, according to the national meteorological service, and desertification, a process where vegetation recedes because of high heat and low rainfall, threatens much of the Great Hungarian Plain.

Yet more than a quarter of Hungary consists of low-lying land that naturally retains precipitation, and in past centuries its many rivers and streams made it rich in freshwater resources. However, a 2023 study published in the journal Nature estimated Hungary’s historical wetland loss at more than 80%.

Zsuzsanna Ujj, a biodiversity policy specialist and project coordinator with environmental group Friends of the Earth Hungary, said the country “has not been a good steward of its waters in the last 200 years.”

A major contributor is Hungary's network of more than 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles) of drainage canals — a length that exceeds the circumference of the Earth — which drain accumulated precipitation from fields, wetlands and the soil to make room for agriculture and other enterprises.

The priority on draining land rather than allowing natural flooding cycles to occur has contributed to a consistent drop in the water table and the drying out of wetlands and topsoil. With less water available to evaporate, the air dries out, further reducing the chances of localized precipitation.

Ujj said that Hungary — which is among the most drought-exposed countries in Europe and ranks 16th globally, according to a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — “needs to realign its water management practices, shifting from a drainage-based approach to one focused on water retention.”

Disappearing lakes

The drying out of Hungary isn't limited to streams and wetlands. Lake Garancsi, a small recreational lake around 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of Budapest, was once a popular destination for fishing, swimming and ice skating, and was the setting of the 2001 cult Hungarian comedy “Üvegtigris” (“Glass Tiger").

But the lake, present since the Middle Ages, has shrunk so dramatically in recent years that none of the previous recreational activities are permitted, and most of the former lake bed is now exposed, cracked and dry.

What remains of the water is so shallow and warm that all of the fish and most of the other wildlife have disappeared, and authorities have predicted no water will be left by the end of summer.

Zoltán Mettner, who runs the Glass Tiger bar on the shores of the lake, said conditions have gotten worse every year. After spending years beside the lake, he said looking at it now is “terrible, there’s no other way to put it.”

“It’s sad enough that we’ve let things get this far, and that we couldn’t have taken gradual steps to prevent this lake from being completely destroyed,” he said.

Hungary's government plans a change of course

Hungary's new government has promised to begin taking those steps.

In late June, on the same day the country set a high temperature record of 42 Celsius (107.6 Fahrenheit), Prime Minister Péter Magyar told lawmakers that his government would put water management policies “on new footing,” and launch a comprehensive water conservation program to mitigate the effects of drought.

"Many have said year after year that water shortage will be one of Hungary’s problems and one of the most important strategic issues to be solved. They were right,” Magyar said.

In addition to poor water retention practices, Magyar said that aging water utility infrastructure causes 20-25% of the country’s drinking water to leak out through damaged pipes, costing some 17 billion forints ($54.4 million) annually.

“For years, even the existence of the problem was denied and relativized,” Magyar said. Now, he added, “water retention will be the basic principle of Hungarian water management.”

Danube River at historic lows

Yet implementing such sweeping changes will be time consuming and costly, while Hungary's current water crisis threatens its ability to produce adequate energy.

The Danube, the European Union's longest river which runs through 10 countries from southwestern Germany to the Black Sea, has set successive records this summer for low water levels, threatening to shut down Hungary's only nuclear power plant, which uses water from the river to cool its reactors, for the first time in its 44-year history.

Hungary's government has taken emergency interventions to raise the water level at the Paks plant, including sinking two 80-meter (262-foot) barges just upriver and beginning to install a riverbed sill designed to divert more water toward the plant's pumps.

In such drought conditions, wetlands near rivers like the Danube normally act as a “natural reservoir” for retaining water when weather gets dry, said Ujj, the biodiversity specialist.

The extremely low level of the Danube — as well as the increased chances for more frequent and intense floods — are effects of human-driven climate change that can be partially mitigated through appropriate land use and restoration of wetlands and other natural habitats, she added.

“We do indeed expect water levels to fluctuate more, and we also expect precipitation patterns to become more extreme with drier summers,” she said. "However, restoring wetlands and increasing evaporation in certain areas could help boost precipitation during the summer months.”

Photos and video shared on social media show debris thrown in the air and pummeling rain as a possible tornado touched down at Atlantic Beach on Long Island’s outer barrier. It tore apart a major beach club, leaving broken beach chairs and wood beams littered across the shoreline.

Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said there were no reports of serious injuries or deaths, but there had been damage to property and a search team was making sure no one was trapped in the cabanas. He declared a state of emergency.

“There are reports of people trapped in their vehicles due to flooding in the south shore, and first responders are assisting in their rescue,” he said in a statement.

The Sun and Surf Beach Club said buildings had been significantly damaged and it temporarily closed that club and nearby Silver Point.

The National Weather Service had warned of waterspouts, tornado-like hazards that happen over water, in the area but wasn’t able to immediately confirm a tornado on the beach.

Bryan Ramsey, a meteorologist for the weather service in New York, said the storm was moving East offshore Thursday evening and was expected to taper over the next several hours.

In other parts of New York, flooding caused part of the Long Island Expressway in Queens to close in both directions, according to New York City Emergency Management. Photos on social media showed lines of stopped cars as emergency crews traversed the water.

In Jersey City, New Jersey, emergency crews rescued 69 people trapped in cars that had been overtaken by flash flooding Thursday, said Mayor James Solomon. Emergency crews waded through roads with knee-high water with small inflatable boats to help those stranded.

A likely tornado touched down in Dover, Delaware, and caused significant damage across the city, the police department reported. There were no reports of serious injuries, police said.

“Dover — please take this seriously. Stay home. Stay safe,” the department said on Facebook.

Photos and video online show fallen trees, downed power lines and flooded roads.

The Delaware Electric Cooperative said more than 1,000 customers didn’t have power in the northern part of its service area, but within a few hours most of the outages had been fixed.

Until now, Mexicans deported from the United States were sent almost exclusively back to their country by air and land. Only a handful arrived in other countries.

Some civil organizations believe this change reported in recent days is a way to increase pressure on Mexico, whose government has protested the deaths of 17 Mexicans in immigration custody or during enforcement operations. This also comes as Trump has expanded agreements with allied Latin American countries to conduct joint operations in the region against criminal groups and has increased its security demands to Mexico.

Sent to Central America by plane and Mexico by bus

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo confirmed Wednesday night that, so far this year, 2,284 Mexicans deported from the U.S. have arrived in the country as part of a “transit stopover” before being taken to Mexico as part of an “arrangement” with the Mexican government, and without these individuals being under any refugee or asylum status.

“They are arriving on planes carrying Guatemalan returnees, and what we have done is bring them in transit so that, in coordination with Mexican immigration authorities, we can return them to Mexican territory within 24 hours of their arrival in the country,” he explained at a press conference.

The costs of these operations are covered by the Mexican government or, in some cases, by U.S. funding, he added.

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) confirmed to The Associated Press in a brief message that Mexicans have been deported by the Trump administration to Guatemala and Honduras, primarily since April, and are then transported by bus to southern Mexico.

“The reason is that the United States wants to prevent them from crossing back into its territory,” the institution said. The INM did not provide figures or further details.

Asked about why the Mexicans were sent to Central America and not their own country, and for more details, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, said in an emailed statement that the administration “is utilizing all lawful options to carry out the largest deportation operation in history, just as President Trump promised.”

“The Mexican government has expressed its opposition to this practice to U.S. authorities and has reiterated that every Mexican citizen has the right to enter the country,” the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. It added that Mexico is coordinating with the countries involved to ensure the safe return of Mexican citizens.

Third-country deportations raise concerns for Mexican migrants

Historically, Mexico has always been willing to receive its deported citizens.

Since Trump’s first term, it has also accepted deportees from third countries, although the details of immigration agreements with Washington have usually been opaque. In 2025, Mexico received some 12,000 deported foreigners, mostly Cubans and Venezuelans, according to figures provided by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. The government has not updated these figures since December although the practice has continued.

Authorities in Honduras also did not respond to requests for comment, but according to official documents from the country accessed by The Associated Press, 82 Mexicans deported from the United States arrived in the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on two flights on August 13 and 15. An additional 35 arrived on Thursday.

Another 165 Mexicans were deported to Honduras between May and mid-July, according to the website Third Country Deportation Watch, run by the NGOs Human Rights First and Refugees International, which track U.S. deportation flights to third countries.

The website does not clarify the source of its nationality figures, but both organizations have expressed concern because these transfers could endanger migrants who possibly sought asylum in the U.S. or have few resources in an unknown country.

The deportation tactic “seems to be to put pressure on the Mexican government,” said Savitri Arvey of Human Rights First. “They really don’t want any Mexicans crossing the border.” Some of those deported arrived in Honduras on U.S. military flights, she added.

A recent change in the deportation pattern

At the beginning of his second term, with immigration control as one of his priorities, Trump reached agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama to act as “bridge” or destination countries for migrants from third countries expelled from U.S. territory. These agreements gradually expanded to more countries, including some African ones, most recently Liberia.

Until recently, only a handful of Mexicans had been expelled from the U.S. to countries other than Mexico.

Arévalo said on Wednesday that Guatemala received 15 Mexicans in 2025. As of February 2026, Honduras had officially reported the arrival of six. Costa Rica has received 11 Mexicans since Trump’s return to the White House, and according to local immigration authorities, they remain in the country. Presumably, these individuals may have requested not to be returned to Mexico out of fear.

Immigration lawyers believe that the Trump administration is using deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers to return to Mexico when the government cannot send them there because it would violate court orders from immigration judges that recognize the dangers. Organizations and politicians both inside and outside the U.S. have also questioned the use of force by U.S. immigration authorities.

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Verza reported from Mexico City and González from Tegucigalpa.

Follow AP’s Latin America coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

Khan was taken from Adiala prison to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad after midnight and examined by doctors before being returned to the prison, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said.

“A team of qualified doctors, including an ophthalmologist, a cardiologist and a physician, conducted a detailed examination of him and declared him medically fit,” Tarar said in a post on X.

Tarar said Khan’s sister, Azma Khan, was present throughout the examination and treatment.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, had earlier confirmed that he was transferred to the hospital following a Supreme Court order earlier this week.

Khan’s party and family had demanded that he be allowed to remain at the hospital for treatment.

Earlier, a senior Cabinet minister said the government would comply with the Supreme Court order and could consider treatment abroad if adequate care was unavailable at a government facility.

The latest development comes a day after Parliamentary Affairs Minister Tariq Fazal Chaudhry said the government had approached the Supreme Court to seek clarification on whether the medical relief granted to Khan applied only to the former premier or could be extended to other prisoners.

Chaudhry's comments Thursday came two days after a three-judge Supreme Court panel ordered authorities to take Khan to Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad for a medical examination, following months of concerns from his family and personal physicians about his health and access to medical care. The court ordered that he be examined by a medical board that includes specialists and one of his personal physicians, Faisal Sultan.

Earlier Thursday, Chaudhry wrote on X that the government would fully comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling and that its request for clarification was not intended to defy or delay implementation of the decision. He later said all arrangements were in place to transfer Khan from prison to the hospital.

After midnight, local media reported that Khan — who has not been seen publicly since his imprisonment in 2023 in a graft case — was being examined at the hospital.

The government maintains that under existing rules, prisoners are provided medical treatment in prison and can be transferred to government hospitals when necessary.

Concerns about Khan’s health intensified in late January after his family said he had lost about 85% of the vision in his right eye, a claim the government disputed. Authorities later said Khan had regained about 70% of his vision in the eye and that his condition was improving.

The former cricket star turned politician was ousted in a parliamentary no-confidence vote in April 2022 and has been imprisoned since 2023 after being convicted in multiple cases.

Mendoza struggled in his second preseason game, throwing an interception that Houston returned for a touchdown before the Las Vegas Raiders rallied late for a 22-20 victory over the Texans on Thursday night.

Mendoza, the Heisman Trophy winner who led Indiana to a national title, played the first half and went 8 of 15 for 86 yards. The performance came after he threw a touchdown pass in his preseason debut last week against Arizona playing behind Kirk Cousins.

“I came away with there’s a lot more learning to do, and although that maybe you may have had a lot of success at another level, this level is a whole step further and that the margins are so small, and that one tiny mistake can lead to catastrophe,” Mendoza said.

On Thursday, Mendoza’s third pass was overthrown and intercepted by Wade Woodaz, who returned it 80 yards for a touchdown that made it 14-0. Mendoza chased him down, but Woodaz shoved him aside near the 15 and continued to the end zone.

“That’s what we are built for is attacking the football, so when we do that it puts us in a really good position,” Houston coach DeMeco Ryans said.

Mendoza was sacked once and took several other hits playing against Houston’s second-string defense. He played five series and led his team to just one field goal.

“I think there’s plenty to clean up, plenty to get better at,” Las Vegas coach Klint Kubiak said. “Plenty that we can do better for him as coaches. Plenty that he can learn from.”

Though Cousins is expected to start in Week 1, Kubiak wouldn't say that after the game.

“We got another week of playing. I don’t want anyone to be comfortable in their job,” he said. “It should always be that way from all positions, so let’s keep going forward.”

C.J. Stroud led the Texans (0-2) to a touchdown on his only series in his first action of the preseason. Stroud and the offensive line were among the few Texans starters who played.

Stroud was 4 of 6 for 27 yards, and a 20-yard scoring run by Woody Marks on the drive he led made it 7-0.

“C.J. made some really good decisions,” Ryans said. “Didn’t throw it around a ton but when he did throw it, it was good decisions with the football.”

The Raiders (1-1) also rested most of their starters, including Cousins, defensive end Maxx Crosby, running back Ashton Jeanty and tight end Brock Bowers.

A 4-yard run by Dylan Laube with about five minutes left in the third got the Raiders within 20-10.

Former Texan Dare Ogunbowale scored on a 19-yard run with less than eight minutes to go. Kansei Matsuzawa's extra point failed to make it 20-16.

Aidan O'Connell relieved Mendoza in the second half. He scored a 1-yard touchdown on a tush push with 14 seconds to go to put the Raiders ahead 22-20. Matsuzawa missed that extra point, too.

Kickers convert 3 from 50-plus

Houston’s Ka’imi Fairbairn made field goals of 51 and 57 yards in his first preseason action after sitting out last week. Matt Gay kicked a 52-yarder in the second quarter for the Raiders.

Clowney returns to Houston

Houston defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, the No. 1 pick in the 2014 draft, played the entire first half after sitting out last week. He rejoined the Texans on a one-year contract earlier this month after spending his first five seasons in Houston.

He had a tackle and a quarterback hurry Thursday night. Clowney spent last season with the Cowboys and had 8 1/2 sacks.

Injuries

Las Vegas linebacker Buddy Johnson left early in the third quarter with a shoulder injury but returned in the fourth. … Las Vegas CB Chigozie Anusiem was carted off the field in the third quarter with a knee injury.

Up next

Raiders: Host San Francisco next Thursday night in their final preseason game.

Texans: End the preseason with a visit to Carolina on Aug. 28.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, plan to return to the United Kingdom from California in a matter of weeks. They have already enrolled their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, in British schools so they can start the autumn term with their classmates.

News of the surprise decision, which broke late Wednesday in stories published by the Telegraph and Sun newspapers, has sparked widespread discussion about where the couple will live, who will pay for their security and whether they will return to royal duties one day.

But perhaps the most difficult issue is whether Harry can repair his once-close relationship with Prince William, the heir to the throne, which was decimated by Harry’s very public complaints of mistreatment at the hands of Buckingham Palace staff, racism in the royal family and the failings of the monarchy. There are also concerns that Harry and Meghan could try to upstage William and his wife Catherine, when they once again share the British stage.

“That will be something for the palace to deal with …” Craig Prescott, an expert on the U.K. constitution and the monarchy at Royal Holloway University of London, told The Associated Press. “They wouldn’t want Meghan and Harry’s presence in the U.K. here to overshadow the work of the monarchy, and there will have to be some discussion and allowance for that.”

Harry and Meghan wanted their children to grow up British

The couple are expected to live at a private, nonroyal residence outside of London and they won’t resume their royal duties, which they gave up when they moved to the exclusive Southern California community of Montecito six years ago, British media reported late Wednesday.

Their return to the U.K. comes as King Charles III, Harry’s 77-year-old father, continues to undergo treatment for an undisclosed form of cancer that was discovered in 2024. The prince said last year that he didn’t know “how much time my father has left,” and has expressed a desire for his children to have a chance to get to know their grandfather.

While Harry and Meghan’s decision is a surprise to many, royal historian Ed Owens said recent events created a pathway for the couple's return.

First, Harry spoke of his desire for reconciliation, then there was the apparently successful meeting between the king, his younger son and daughter-in-law and their children last month at Charles’ Highgrove estate in western England. In addition, there is Harry’s stated desire for his children to grow up British and that the U.K. looks like a safer place to be right now, given the divisions in American society, said Owens, author of “After Elizabeth: Can the Monarchy Save Itself?”

Royal experts expect Charles to forgive Harry

Finally, Owens said he expects Charles to forgive Harry because as the supreme governor of the Church of England he has to demonstrate the teachings of Christianity, including the virtue of forgiveness.

William may find forgiving his brother more difficult, but someday he too will become head of the church, Owens said.

“It may be that privately William never fully forgives his younger brother for what he deems the betrayal of the family,” Owens told The AP. “But publicly,” he will, “because for traditional moralists, traditional Christian values, they demand that there is this public act of forgiveness, that there’s reconciliation between the brothers.”

Charles was informed of Harry and Meghan’s plans on Sunday and the matter wasn’t discussed during their recent visit to the U.K.

Relations have been strained in the House of Windsor

Relations between Harry and Meghan and the rest of the royal family have been strained since the couple gave up their royal duties and moved to California in 2020 to earn their own living. The couple later signed lucrative contracts with Netflix and Spotify.

The rift deepened after the couple gave a series of interviews and Harry published his explosive memoir “Spare,” in which he said they left Britain to escape the restrictions of royal life. The couple also criticized palace officials for being insensitive to Meghan’s mental health and alleged at least one member of the royal family had expressed racist views when she was pregnant with their first child. Meghan describes herself as biracial.

Oprah Winfrey asked Harry to summarize his reasons for leaving Britain in a 2021 interview that was broadcast around the world.

“Lack of support and lack of understanding,” he replied.

Strains are exacerbated by long-running battles with the newspapers

Those tensions were exacerbated by Harry’s long-running legal battle with Britain’s tabloid newspapers, which he alleges illegally hacked his phones and invaded his privacy when he was younger. The courtroom drama seemed to be nearing an end after Harry and other plaintiffs lost their lawsuit against the publisher of the Daily Mail last month.

That case left Harry facing a potential bill for millions of pounds after the court ruled the plaintiffs were liable for the publisher’s legal fees. Associated Newspapers has filed documents showing that its costs amounted to 34.5 million pounds ($47 million).

Harry has also been embroiled in a legal wrangle with the British government after a government committee refused to authorize police protection for him and his family when they are in the U.K. The prince says they need armed police protection because they are at risk as members of the royal family, regardless of whether they are working royals.

The couple’s security arrangements are a “private matter” for Harry and Meghan to deal with, Prime Minister Andy Burnham said when asked about the issue on Thursday.

After Harry lost his court challenge of the committee’s decision in May 2025, the prince said he hoped to reconcile with his family while continuing to vent his anger at those in Britain he feels have mistreated him and his wife.

“I can’t see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point,” he told the BBC at the time. “And the things that they’re going to miss is, well, everything. You know, I love my country. I always have done, despite what some people in that country have done.”

Although much of the media attention on Harry and Meghan has focused on family tensions and recriminations in recent years, Owens suggested that the story may now shift to the royal’s efforts to rebuild family harmony.

“I think time is a great healer. It creates space in a social media-saturated world,” he said. “People are always looking for the next thing to talk about and, arguably, that will be reconciliation between first of all father and son, and then potentially the two brothers.”

The teachers and principals watched as an instructor prompted an AI tool to “create a map of the world.”

The result drew gasps of disbelief and laughter. Projected on a large screen was a map riddled with bizarre errors. Mali was spelled “Mail.” Egypt was identified as “Sopth.” In place of Libya was something simply called “Africa.” Dozens of other countries' names were misspelled or written in pure gibberish.

“If you ever want kids not to over trust these tools, try the map demo,” said the instructor, Amanda Bickerstaff, founder and CEO of AI For Education, an organization that helps schools draft AI policies and train teachers and students in what she calls safe, ethical and effective use of the technology.

After initially trying to ban AI use, a growing number of U.S. public schools are trying a new strategy: encouraging classroom experimentation, partly so students can see its shortcomings, including generative AI’s notorious tendency to “hallucinate,” or fabricate information.

AI literacy has become a buzzword of this back-to-school season as educators try to strike a balance between equipping students with the skills they need for an AI-driven future while preventing them from outsourcing their thinking to chatbots.

There is no single definition of what AI literacy means, or how it should be taught. Tech giants like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic offer schools training sessions in how to use their AI tools. But for educators, there is a growing consensus that AI literacy is about more than learning how to use generative AI and write good prompts.

“Good AI literacy,” said Rebecca Winthrop, director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, “includes knowing when not to use it.”

Some districts build their own approaches on AI literacy

Thirty-seven states have now published official AI guidance that schools can use as a blueprint. South Carolina is not one of them.

So the state’s second-largest school district set out to do it on its own, said Lucas Clamp, deputy superintendent of the 50,000-student Charleston County School District. “It has been a huge endeavor.”

A year ago, the district contacted AI for Education, which helped draft guidance for Chicago Public Schools, Houston and dozens of other districts.

Phase 1 was laying the foundation. The district developed an AI policy, seeking input from teachers, students and parents.

The district organized student focus groups and learned that student AI use was ubiquitous but unguided. Teachers and students said they were navigating the technology on their own and wanted clear rules and instruction.

Studies show a majority of teenagers and teachers nationwide are using AI for schoolwork, but they're teaching themselves how to use it; very few say they have a technical understanding or have received formal training on how it works.

Schools and parents are eager to avoid mistakes made with social media, where kids were left to explore the online world without learning about addictive algorithms, comparison culture and other downsides that have been linked to a youth mental health crisis and dwindling attention spans.

As the school year begins in Charleston, Phase 2 kicks in: training. Teachers and middle and high schoolers will get a mix of online and in-person instruction on how AI tools work and how to use them effectively.

The student course walks through familiar scenarios — like asking a chatbot to help with a research paper — to show that generative AI might deliver wildly inaccurate information, including made-up studies, with unflinching authority. “Always verify any factual information you get from GenAI, especially for your classwork,” the course advises.

A section on data privacy cautions against sharing personal information with AI tools because conversations can be stored, used for data training and potentially leaked.

High school teacher Ray Knauer attended the summer training and left with “teachable moments” for his AP Research class. He plans to show examples of AI bias and hallucinations to fuel student discussions.

“We’re all trying to figure this out right now: What’s the right balance so we don’t scare students away from AI but don’t encourage them to run to it,” Knauer said. “We have to teach students: You can’t just get an answer and move on. You have to use analytical skills and dig deeper.”

Some states offer top-down guidance on AI in classrooms

Utah was an early pioneer in taking a statewide approach to AI in education.

In 2024, the board of education named Matt Winters as its AI education specialist, making Utah the first state to create a full-time position overseeing the technology in schools.

Over the past year, Winters led AI training for over 7,000 teachers, almost a third of Utah’s public school instructors. He is helping districts shape AI policies, which they are required by state law to have in place by July 2027.

“There is a clear method from the top in Utah,” said Chris Agnew, director of the Generative AI for Education Hub at Stanford University. “When you’re tackling big change, it’s easier to have coherence if everyone is singing from the same hymn book.”

A handful of other states have since replicated Winters’ post, including Maine, West Virginia and Georgia.

In other states, a patchwork of AI approaches has emerged, with variance from one school district to another. Extensive AI literacy training requires steep investment, raising concerns that kids in under-resourced districts might not get the same attention.

In Utah, training starts with the basics of how AI works to teach an understanding of AI bias, hallucinations, ethical concerns and data privacy needs, Winters said. Teachers can then pursue additional training on specific tools.

“If I had to give advice: Figure out how to make training accessible to everyone,” said Emma Moss, who oversees AI at the Canyons School District and also led an eight-person team that traveled the state doing over 150 AI literacy trainings. The training was funded by a $500,000 AI literacy grant from a local healthcare provider. “We said, ‘We will come to you.’ Whether you are in a rural area or urban, it didn’t matter.”

The state has also played a key role in procuring AI tools, Winters said. He negotiated data privacy agreements along with discounted prices, which has allowed rural and under-resourced districts to get access.

“Everyone needs to understand what this technology is and how it works,” said Winters, who cautions against blanket bans. “AI literacy is much larger than saying: ‘Don’t use AI.’ It’s about how we can prepare kids for the future.”

Changing adult mindsets is also key, said Kristina Yamada, the state Board of Education's digital technology specialist.

“I think teachers need to change their mentality about students using AI to cheat,” Yamada said. There has always been cheating, she said. It’s up to teachers to speak students’ language and convince them they can’t rely on AI for all the answers.

For younger kids it means starting to talk about AI early, with conversations like, “People can lie. A program can lie. A robot can lie,” Yamada said. “For older students it’s different: ‘Sure, you can use ChatGPT to write computer code. But when the program stops working, you need to be able to fix it.’”

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Gecker reported from San Francisco.

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The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Attorney Jesse Dreicer was asking Jacksonville Beach Police Detective Chris Johns about the relationship between Fernandez and John Biggerstaff, the man investigators believe provided the gun for the ambush shooting that killed Bridegan in February 2022.

RELATED | Who was Jared Bridegan? A father, a creative builder, a believer — and so much more

Fernandez, 38, is currently on trial for first-degree murder and solicitation of murder, accused of orchestrating the murder by hiring the alleged gunman, Henry Tenon, who lived at a property on Potomac Avenue in Jacksonville that was owned by Fernandez and his wife, Shanna Gardner, who divorced Bridegan in 2015.

According to court documents, the state has said that Fernandez visited Biggerstaff on Jan. 25, 2022, weeks before the murder, and that there was evidence that before that visit, Biggerstaff had been looking up information on 10mm weapons, which was the type used to kill Bridegan.

RELATED: He’s the first to face trial in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case. What do we know about Mario Fernandez?

Biggerstaff owned a 10 mm gun at one point but had to give up that gun and other weapons after he was convicted of a felony. When police asked about the 10 mm gun, Biggerstaff said he didn’t have it.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Biggerstaff has never been charged with a crime in connection with Bridegan’s murder.)

But Dreicer said Fernandez had known Biggerstaff for “decades” and met him because Fernandez attended high school with Biggerstaff’s daughter.

Then Dreicer said, “Let’s just get it out in the open. Mr. Biggerstaff was a swinger, correct?”

Johns confirmed that he was, and Dreicer went on to ask Johns about a video that was found on Biggerstaff’s phone showing Fernandez having sex with Biggerstaff’s wife.

“That was a lifestyle that they chose to live?” Dreicer asked.

“Correct, according to Mr. Biggerstaff,” Johns replied.

Dreicer was trying to establish that, unlike the prosecution alleges, Fernandez could have been at Biggerstaff’s home on Jan. 25 for many reasons that had nothing to do with getting a gun from Biggerstaff.

“What you certainly have no evidence of is that Mr. Biggerstaff gave Mr. Fernandez a 10mm firearm. Do you?” Dreicer asked.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns responded.

“OK. When you say no physical evidence, there is no evidence of that. Correct?” Dreicer asked again.

“There is no physical evidence of that,” Johns repeated.

Johns also acknowledged on the stand that the gun that killed Bridegan was never recovered.

Potomac property

Later in his cross-examination, Dreicer emphasized that cellphone data places Fernandez’s phone at his Potomac rental property from about 2:02 to 4:23 p.m. on Jan. 29, 2022, while Henry Tenon’s phone traveled from Potomac to the area of Jared Bridegan’s murder and back, in an alleged “dry run.”

Before Bridegan’s murder, cellphone data and video of his truck also put Tenon near Bridegan’s neighborhood, the twins’ school, and other Jacksonville Beach locations, but not with Fernandez.

Johns acknowledged there was no surveillance, receipt, DNA, fingerprints, hair or other physical evidence placing Fernandez in Tenon’s blue truck or proving he accompanied Tenon on the days he went to Jacksonville Beach.

Dreicer argued Fernandez had legitimate reasons to be at Potomac, noting he owned the property, routinely visited it, arranged repairs and delivered construction materials.

Footage from a pole camera investigators placed near the Potomac home after the murder showed Fernandez repeatedly visiting the property, meeting contractors and working with Tenon; Johns agreed the videos supported legitimate property work but cautioned they did not necessarily establish what occurred on Jan. 29.

Dreicer continued showing pole-camera footage of Fernandez repeatedly visiting the Potomac rental property in August and September 2022, often carrying buckets or construction materials and appearing to perform tile work. The footage showed visits on Sept. 3-8, and Johns agreed Fernandez returned on Sept. 11 and 13 — about 20 visits in 30 days.

Dreicer argued the videos supported Fernandez’s claim that he was completing legitimate construction work and had not distanced himself from Biggerstaff, who was also seen doing work at the property, or from Tenon after the homicide. Johns acknowledged the footage but did not concede what Fernandez’s activities proved.

More detective testimony

Dreicer began his cross-examination of Johns by getting the detective to admit that in his initial interview, Fernandez told investigators the truth about the animosity between Gardner and Bridegan over how to raise their twin children.

Dreicer also questioned Johns about the fact that Gardner and Fernandez were not threatening Jared Bridegan despite ongoing disputes about custody, and that anyone could have known about the “date night” Bridegan was having with the children the Wednesday night he was killed.

The regular “date nights” every other Wednesday were part of the former couple’s custody agreement, which is public record in Florida.

“It goes to codify or make Wednesday night the official date night. Correct?” Dreicer asked, showing Johns a court custody document.

Johns agreed, and Dreicer then made the point that the documents are publicly available.

“So the idea that (Wednesday date night) is some personal detail that only the Bridegans would know and only the Gardner-Fernandez residence would know is simply not true. It’s public information. Correct?” Dreicer asked.

“The docket is publicly available,” Johns acknowledged.

Fernandez’s interview

On Tuesday, Johns recounted on the stand the evidence his team collected during the investigation and how he said those pieces led them to Fernandez and Gardner, who is also charged in the murder.

During Johns’ testimony on Tuesday, prosecutors played a 50-minute video showing Fernandez’s interview with Johns and another detective after the murder, but before he was considered a suspect.

During the interview with investigators, which Johns was questioned about again by the defense on Wednesday, Fernandez accused Bridegan of being difficult to interact with when it came to the care of the twins, a boy and a girl, that Bridegan shared with Gardner. The twins were 9 years old when Bridegan was killed.

Fernandez said Bridegan was a passive-aggressive person and called him a “keyboard warrior.”

“I remember reaching out to Jared (after marrying Shanna). ‘Now that I will be in the kids’ life more, let’s have a chat.’ Nothing. I got nothing,” Fernandez said.

He told detectives that the night of Bridegan’s murder, he had taken pain medication for headaches.

Friends testify

A man and a woman who knew Fernandez separately both testified on Wednesday about conversations they had with him before and after Bridegan’s murder

Taylor Kutis described Fernandez’s prior relationship with her, his marital and co-parenting problems, and his reference to a vague “contract” involving his wife’s family.

Under cross-examination, she acknowledged her recollections were not verbatim, she kept no notes, learned additional details from media reports, and never contacted police herself to report anything about Fernandez.

Victor Quiroz testified that Fernandez, a longtime online gaming friend, visited him in Clinton, North Carolina, in March 2022.

Quiroz said Fernandez acted normally, did not discuss the homicide during the visit, and only later mentioned during a gaming session that his wife’s ex-husband had been shot.

Evidence of murder

Bridegan, a father of four, was killed on Feb. 16, 2022, when he got out of his vehicle to remove a tire that was placed in the road.

After spotting the tire, Bridegan, who was driving home to St. Augustine after dropping off the twins at Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home, stopped his Volkswagen Atlas and put on warning lights to remove it.

But when he opened his door, he was shot twice.

Two other bullets (seen below in an evidence display) hit the SUV, with one missing his toddler daughter, Bexley, in the back seat by mere inches, investigators said.

RELATED: Murder of father of 4 in Jacksonville Beach inspires toy boxes for children caught in tragedy

Testimony on Tuesday morning included a minute-by-minute timeline of video evidence leading up to the deadly ambush shooting.

The video evidence follows the path of a blue two-tone F-150 pick-up truck through Jacksonville Beach. Investigators say it was the vehicle used to transport the shooter to the scene of Bridegan’s murder.

Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, became emotional when an evidence technician testified about the scene.

The prosecutor showed video the evidence tech took walking up to the dark scene; you see the tire in the road, shell casings and Bridegan’s body on the ground.

Another video shown in court Tuesday morning, taken near the scene, included the sound of gunfire.

Members of law enforcement who collected that video evidence and also DNA, the tire and bullet casings from the scene also testified on Tuesday about the process of cataloguing that evidence.

On Wednesday, a DNA analyst testified about finding Tenon’s DNA on the tire that was found in the road the night of the murder. He also acknowledged on cross-examination that Fernandez’s DNA was not found on any of the items submitted to his lab for testing.

Johns testified Tuesday about what was found inside the blue F-150, including business check stubs that were later matched to three checks Fernandez wrote to Tenon.

Johns also testified that boots and a jacket that belong to Tenon appeared to match those worn by the shooter, who was captured on video leaving the scene of the murder on foot.

JSO body camera video of Tenon walking inside the jail was also shown, and Johns said it was taken to show that Tenon’s distinct gait matched the gait of the shooter in the surveillance video the night of the murder.

Johns explained how investigators tried to use the announcement of Tenon’s arrest to “tickle the wire” and see if Fernandez and Gardner would be caught on wire taps talking to each other about the murder.

“It’s an event that is basically prearranged by law enforcement. So it spurs conversation about the actual crime that we’re trying to record,” Johns said, admitting that the effort was not successful.

Johns said Fernandez and Gardner were under surveillance at the time and were living in separate states: Gardner was in Washington state and Fernandez was in Orlando.

‘Absolutely no trust’

Kirsten Bridegan testified on Monday, the first day of the trial, describing the ongoing co-parenting tension between the couples that prosecutors believe was at the heart of the murder-for-hire scheme.

In her opening statement and while questioning Kirsten Bridegan on the stand, Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler traced the bitter relationship between Bridegan and Gardner, who spent years after their divorce in contentious court battles over how to raise their twins, from disputes about religion to doctor’s appointments and even school conferences.

“It was pretty terrible,” Kirsten Bridegan said on the stand. “There was absolutely no trust so everything was in writing. Texts, email. We did not speak in person, like at school events. Didn’t do phone calls.”

Fernandez also mentioned the family communication in his interview with detectives that was played in court on Tuesday. He said the family was in a group text and had an arrangement to text when they arrived to pick up the kids.

Fernandez recounted in his interview what happened one time when he opted to knock instead of texting.

“I went to go pick the kids up like three years ago. I picked them up. The kids came running out. They are scared. ‘Dad said no one should knock on the door. You can’t knock.’ I can do what I want. I could see him; he refused to turn around,” Fernandez recalled. “I got a message (that) if I ever do it again there would be a restraining order.”

Prosecutors have pointed to the ongoing acrimony between the couples as a major motive behind Bridegan’s killing.

“When it was something where all four of us were at, it was very tense. You could just feel the tension,” Kirsten said. “Jared, he would kind of retreat into himself and be quiet and not want to make eye contact. So it was not a comfortable experience ever.”

When prosecutors went through the night of the murder with Kirsten, she choked up as she remembered the moment an officer -- and not Jared -- answered the phone she’d been calling repeatedly after Jared had not made it home.

She cried when the prosecutor showed her a photo of Jared and asked her to confirm it was her husband.

Prosecutors also showed Kirsten a video from surveillance cameras at the Jacksonville Beach Police Department headquarters.

A man is seen walking in front of the police station and then down the street. During opening statements, the defense indicated that man is believed to be Henry Tenon.

The prosecutor asked Kirsten if she recognized the man in the video, and she said no.

On that same video, just seconds after the man walks out of frame, Kirsten is seen arriving at the station in the family’s Suburban after speaking with the officer who answered Jared’s phone.

It was unclear if Kirsten had ever seen the video before or knew how close she’d come to the man police believe shot her husband that night.

‘Targeted ambush’

On day one, Stifler pointed to the tire in the road as proof of a planned attack against Bridegan.

“A targeted ambush, a planned tactical ambush with a tire in the road in a dark place where no one would see and no one would know and no one would trace it back to those responsible,” Stifler told the jury in her opening statement. “The architects of Jared Bridegan’s murder intended it to be the perfect crime, and it almost was.”

In her opening statement, Stifler told the jury that the fatal shooting of the 33-year-old Microsoft design manager on that dark Jacksonville Beach road was hatched by Gardner and Fernandez, after years of post-marriage strife over religion and how to raise the twins.

Gardner, 39, faces her own trial in September. The accused gunman, 65-year-old Henry Tenon, is slated to go to trial next year after backing out of a guilty plea.

Stifler said that while it took investigators time to put the pieces together after discovering the execution-style killing, those pieces now point to a murder-for-hire scheme.

“The killer was a stranger to Jared Bridegan. The murder was personal,” Stifler told the jury.

Stifler acknowledged there were no eyewitnesses to the crime but said surveillance video captured a man later identified as Tenon running from the scene -- and someone else driving away in Tenon’s truck.

Those videos were what law enforcement went over in detail during Tuesday’s testimony.

Defense attorney James Hill told the jury in his opening that the state can’t prove who was driving the truck.

“They don’t know who’s driving the truck. They don’t know who actually solicited Henry Tenon. There’ll be no evidence to suggest they do,” Hill said.

Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer reiterated that point during cross-examination of investigators on Tuesday, saying there was no proof that Fernandez was the driver of the truck, the person running from the scene, or the shooter. He also pointed out a gap of 32 minutes in the footage where investigators admitted they did not know where the truck was.

Hill also told jurors on Monday that Fernandez, an Army veteran, had no motive to get rid of Bridegan and his actions shortly after the killing, a road trip to Pennsylvania and back, didn’t resemble that of a criminal schemer “running from the law.”

“He had access to a lot of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Hill acknowledged, referring to his wife Gardner’s trust fund. “He could have fled the country.”

Execution-style killing

Bridegan’s family was in court on Monday, and his siblings, sitting in the second row behind State Attorney Melissa Nelson, were visibly emotional during testimony from those who described the scene on the night Bridegan was killed.

The first trial witness, Jonelle Cruz, said that she comforted Bridegan’s daughter with a blanket in a separate vehicle while her boyfriend tried to figure out what had happened.

RELATED: 911 calls describe scene of confusion in Sanctuary neighborhood on night of Jared Bridegan’s ambush murder

“She was shaking. She was very worried about her dad,” Cruz testified.

Prosecutors showed a video Cruz had taken with Bexley that night. When she asks Bexley what happened, the toddler says she heard a “Boom!”

Cruz said Bexley asked about her daddy, saying he was hurt and wanting to know if the police would help him.

Cruz’s boyfriend, Shane Borja, described Bridegan being found face down in a pool of blood next to his SUV. Borja was the one who found Bexley in the SUV, took her out and handed her over to Cruz, who kept her until detectives took her to the police station.

That’s where she was reunited with her mother, who testified that she followed her “gut instinct” and urged police to investigate Gardner and Fernandez.

Stifler said Gardner, who was from a wealthy family, relocated to Washington state with her children after Bridegan’s death. Fernandez, meanwhile, moved to Orlando.

“Ms. Gardner got what she wanted: full control over her children and the freedom to move out of Jacksonville, Florida,” the prosecutor said.

The first day of the trial ended with testimony from the medical examiner who confirmed what no one had disputed: That Jared Bridegan died from gunshot wounds and that his death was a homicide.

Second tire found

Stifler said during her opening that police discovered a lead a few months into the investigation “that blew the case open.”

A tire at a rental property owned by Fernandez was very similar to the tire that had blocked Bridegan’s vehicle when he was shot.

An investigator testified on Tuesday to finding the tire at the Potomac Avenue home.

“I actually got onto Google and started looking at the DOT numbers that are on the tire, and according to Google, and ultimately later through Bridgestone itself, they matched or they appeared to match at least the same date and manufacture, manufacturer plan,” he said.

Police said they matched DNA on those two tires to Tenon, who had a criminal record and financial problems.

Tenon was charged with shooting Bridegan and at first pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and agreed to testify against Fernandez and Gardner. But he withdrew the plea earlier this year and will have his own trial in March 2027.

Tenon is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, child abuse, possession of a firearm by a felon and accessory after the fact.

Fernandez’s trial is scheduled to last through Aug. 28.

Gardner will go on trial after Fernandez, with jury selection from Aug. 31-Sept. 4, and the trial from Sept. 8-25.

Gardner is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, solicitation to commit a capital felony and child abuse.

Neither Gardner nor Tenon will testify in Fernandez’s trial.

The case has garnered national attention, and Judge London Kite has repeatedly explained to the 12 jurors and four alternates that they can not look up anything about the case or talk about it with anyone.

As part of the preparation for trial, Kite previously ordered that the seated jurors’ names be kept anonymous until 60 days after the trial, which is typical in high-profile cases. The jurors were referred to only by their numbers during jury selection to protect their identities.

The checks: A central piece of evidence

Prosecutors highlighted checks Fernandez allegedly wrote to Tenon as key evidence in their opening statement, framing the payments as money paid to hide a murder.

“These checks were a way to hide money for a murder hidden in plain sight to make it look legitimate with the hope that Henry Tenon would never be identified and no one would ever look that deep,” Stifler told the jury.

Fernandez is accused of paying Tenon at least $10,000 for fatally shooting Bridegan.

When police obtained Tenon’s bank records, they found three checks totaling $10,000 written from First Choice Home Rentals LLC — all signed by Fernandez. They were for $2,000 and $3,000 dated March 28, 2022, and $5,000 dated April 4, 2022. The memo lines described work such as landscaping, roof upkeep and “Kickstarter Good Luck!!,” according to copies released by prosecutors.

“There are no eyewitnesses; there’s no video footage that captures the individuals or individual in the truck clearly enough to make them out. These things are all true,” Stifler said. ”But it cannot change the fact that there is no connection between the shooter and Bridegan other than this defendant (Fernandez). It cannot change that this defendant paid a man $10,000 for work that didn’t happen and a Kickstarter that doesn’t exist."

But the defense pushed back, saying there is video evidence that Tenon did do work at the property.

“Man, Henry Tenon, he’s a workhorse. That guy tilled up the front yard, chopped down trees. You’ll actually see video of him unloading tile from the back of his truck at Potomac, doing work,” Hill said. “Henry Tenon is a worker. Mario Fernandez has hired him to do work, not murder, tree work, roof work, landscaping, tile work.”

Hill argued the payments were legitimate.

“Mario Fernandez, who had at the time access to hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars, gave money to a guy that had helped him around his own house and invest in his business that he wanted to start,” Hill said. “That’s what the checks say.”

Gene Nichols, an attorney not involved in the case, said the checks are the hinge point of the entire trial.

“I think when it’s all said and done, what does the jury believe about the checks? That’s going to rule a tremendous amount,” he said. “That, to me, is going to be where this hinges — will a jury believe that those checks were written in order to commit murder, or were those checks written for the work that Mr. Hill said they were written for?”

He added that the burden of proof remains high.

“If the jury believes that they were for work that was done, or they take the position that the state didn’t prove that the money was for murder, then that’s going to sway a jury,” Nichols said. “In order to convict him, it’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt by all of those jurors.”

Timeline: How we got here

More than four years ago, Jared Bridegan dropped his then-9-year-old twin children off at the home of his ex-wife, Shanna Gardner, after a “date night” with their dad.

He left Gardner’s Jacksonville Beach home on Feb. 16, 2022, with his 2-year-old daughter, Bexley, strapped in her car seat in the back of his dark-colored SUV. They were headed back to St. Augustine.

But the 33-year-old Microsoft employee never made it home.

Following his normal route through the Sanctuary neighborhood, Bridegan suddenly had to stop in the area of Jacksonville Drive, America Avenue and Sanctuary Boulevard.

A tire was in the road.

When Bridegan stepped out of his SUV, he was ambushed by gunfire. At least one bullet missed Bexley by mere inches in her car seat.

In previous interviews, Kirsten Bridegan said Bexley described the loud noise of the gunfire, calling it “the boom.”

“She says, ‘Boom! Boom! Boom! Daddy on the ground,’” Kirsten explained.

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Neighbors’ surveillance cameras from the Sanctuary subdivision caught the sound of those gunshots just before 8 p.m.

Jared Bridegan was left lying in the street next to the SUV with the door wide open, and the shooter seemed to melt into the shadows just as quickly as he had launched his ambush attack.

None of the 911 callers that night mentioned seeing a shooter or a vehicle leaving the scene.

LISTEN: Press play below to hear 911 calls from night of Jared Bridegan’s murder (WARNING: May include graphic content)

They said that the shooter ran off on foot and someone else drove away from the scene in a pick-up truck. Prosecutors also said they have Tenon’s DNA on the tire that was left in the road.

NEW INFORMATION: Prosecutor drops bombshell in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case: Accused gunman was not alone on night of shooting | RELATED: Defense attorneys for Mario Fernandez briefly discussed plea deal with state in Jared Bridegan murder-for-hire case

“When the victim was killed, there is a person that fled on foot and a person that fled in a vehicle. We know that Henry Tenon left his DNA behind on that tire. And we know that Henry Tenon was not driving the pick-up truck that fled the scene,” Assistant State Attorney Alan Mizrahi said during a hearing before jury selection began. He was arguing that this was proof of a deeper conspiracy in the case.

Eventually, detectives tracked down the man they say pulled the trigger.

Investigators say that it was all part of a murder-for-hire plot set in motion by Gardner and her second husband, Mario Fernandez. It was a conspiracy that began in November of 2021, according to court documents.

Interactive Timeline

Alleged murder-for-hire scheme

According to detectives, Gardner was tired of sharing custody of her twin children with Bridegan.

Fernandez, she knew, could “take care of him” because of his military background, Gardner told a friend. At least that’s what the friend told investigators as she detailed the strained marriage between Gardner and Fernandez and the contentious ongoing custody battle between Gardner and Bridegan.

RELATED: A friend of Shanna Gardner said she could help in Jared Bridegan’s murder case. Here’s what she told investigators | How investigators say they untangled conspiracy to kill Jared Bridegan

Investigators say that’s exactly what Fernandez did, hiring Henry Tenon, a tenant at one of his properties, to kill Bridegan.

In his initial interview with police in July 2022, Tenon told investigators that he had been renting a home from Fernandez in Jacksonville’s Biltmore neighborhood for several years.

Tenon’s original court records said he became involved in the conspiracy on Jan. 4, 2022 -- just over a month before Bridegan was killed.

The state says it has evidence of communications between Tenon and Fernandez in the days, weeks and “on the day of the particular crime.”

Investigators said when Tenon was arrested on an unrelated felony driving charge in August 2022, they questioned him about Bridegan’s murder and a Ford F-150 truck they had been searching for since the shooting.

RELATED | Follow the money: Checks written to Jared Bridegan’s admitted killer connect him to 2 accused in ‘murder-for-hire plot’ | Jared Bridegan’s wife files wrongful death lawsuit against 3 accused in his murder

Tenon was later arrested in Bridegan’s murder, and investigators said the single link between Tenon and Bridegan was Fernandez.

State prosecutors initially said they would be seeking the death penalty against Gardner and Fernandez if they were convicted, but they have since taken the death penalty off the table, with the support of Bridegan’s widow, Kirsten, and his family.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.