Authorities had previously said an active shooter who never got inside the building was “neutralized” outside Mount Horeb Middle School. State Attorney General Josh Kaul told reporters Wednesday evening no one else was harmed and that an investigation is ongoing.

“This incident took place outdoors. The subject in this case never gained entry,” he said.

Authorities described the student as a juvenile male but didn’t provide an age or indicate which of the Mount Horeb district’s schools he attended.

Kaul declined to answer several questions about what happened once police responded, including whether the student had fired a weapon, what type of weapon he had, and whether he tried to get inside the school. Authorities said multiple Mount Horeb officers, wearing body cameras, had fired weapons but they did not say how many.

Police remained on the scene hours afterward while students were kept locked down in buildings late into the afternoon before slowly being released to relatives.

For panicked kids and their terrified parents, it was an anxious, unsettling wait. Parents described children hiding in closets, afraid to communicate on cell phones, and one middle schooler said his class initially fled the school gym on in-line skates.

The district used Facebook posts throughout the day to give updates, with the earliest around 11:30 a.m. reporting all district schools were on lockdown. Authorities in Mount Horeb said the “alleged assailant” was the only person harmed, and witnesses described hearing gunshots and seeing dozens of children running.

Several hours later, school buses remained lined up for blocks outside the middle school and police tape surrounded the middle school, the nearby high school and playing fields between both buildings.

“An initial search of the middle school has not yielded additional suspects,” a post around noon said. “As importantly, we have no reports of individuals being harmed, with the exception of the alleged assailant.”

Earlier, the district posted without elaborating that “the threat has been neutralized outside of the building” in Mount Horeb, a small village about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the state capital of Madison.

Jeanne Keller said she heard about five gunshots while in her shop The Quilting Jeanne, just down the block from the middle school.

“It was maybe like pow-pow-pow-pow,” Keller told The Associated Press by phone. “I thought it was fireworks. I went outside and saw all the children running … I probably saw 200 children.”

One middle schooler said his class was in the school gym practicing in-line skating when they heard gunshots.

Max Kelly, 12, said his teacher told the class to flee. He said they skated to a street, ditched their in-line skates and ran to a nearby convenience store and gas station and hid in a bathroom.

Kelly, shoeless, was reunited with his parents and sat on a hillside with them early Wednesday afternoon waiting for his younger siblings to be released from their own schools.

“I don’t think anywhere is safe anymore,” said his mother, 32-year-old Alison Kelly.

Police in Mount Horeb said they could not provide information in the immediate hours afterward. The Dane County Sheriff’s office directed reporters to a staging area but also provided no updates.

Anxious parents spent hours thronging a bus depot waiting for their kids. Kaul said law enforcement had been concerned about the possiblity of a continuing threat though he didn’t provide more details. He said investigators sought to interview students as they were reunited with parents.

Shannon Hurd, 44, and her former husband, Nathian Hurd, 39, sat waiting for their 13-year-old son, Noah, who was still in the locked-down school.

Shannon Hurd said Noah texted her saying he loved her and she nearly fell down the stairs at her work as she rushed to the school.

“I just want my kid,” she said. “They’re supposed to be safe at school.”

Stacy Smith, 42, was at the bank Wednesday when she saw police cars rush by and got a text warning of an active shooter.

She initially couldn’t reach her two children — junior Abbi and seventh-grader Cole. Finally, she reached Abbi by phone but the girl whispered she was hiding in a closet and couldn’t talk. She eventually connected with both and learned they were OK.

“Not here,” she said in disbelief. “You hear about this everywhere else but not here.”

Schools nationwide have sought ways to prevent mass shootings inside their walls, from physical security measures and active shooter drills to technology including detailed digital maps. Many also rely on teachers and administrators working to detect early signs of student mental health struggles.

Mount Horeb Area School District Superintendent Steve Salerno suggested that without recent security upgrades “this could have been a far worse tragedy.” He said students immediately told school staff about seeing someone suspicious outside the building but did not elaborate.

“It’s an experience that you just pray to God every day that you just don’t ever have to enter into,” Salerno told reporters.

The village is home to around 7,600 people and the central office of outdoor gear retailer Duluth Trading Company. Mount Horeb markets itself as the “troll capital of the world,” a reference to carvings of trolls stationed throughout its downtown district.

___

Associated Press reporters Corey Williams in Detroit and Rick Callahan in Indianapolis contributed to this report.

The testimony from attorney Keith Davidson is seen as a vital building block for the prosecution’s case that Trump and his allies schemed to bury unflattering stories in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. He is one of multiple key players expected to be called to the stand in advance of prosecutors’ star witness, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer.

Prosecutors are seeking $1,000 fines for each of four comments by Trump that they say violated a judge’s gag order barring him from attacking witnesses, jurors and others closely connected to the case. Such a penalty would be on top of a $9,000 fine that Judge Juan M. Merchan imposed on Tuesday related to nine separate gag order violations that he found.

It was not immediately clear when Merchan might rule on the request for fresh sanctions, but the prospect of further punishment underscores the challenges Trump the presidential candidate is facing in adjusting to the role of criminal defendant subject to rigid courtroom protocol that he does not control. It also remains to be seen whether any rebuke from the court will lead Trump to adjust his behavior given the campaign trail benefit he believes he derives from painting the case as politically motivated.

During a one-day break from the trial on Wednesday, Trump kept up his condemnation of the case, though stopped short of comments that might run afoul of the gag order.

“There is no crime,” he told supporters in Waukesha, Wisconsin. “I have a crooked judge, is a totally conflicted judge.”

Donald Trump Apr 30

Judge raises threat of jail as he holds Trump in contempt, fines him $9,000 in hush money trial

The trial, now in its second week of testimony, has exposed the underbelly of tabloid journalism practices and the protections, for a price, afforded to Trump during his successful run for president in 2016.

The case concerns hush money paid to squelch embarrassing stories, including from a porn actor and a former Playboy model, and reimbursements by Trump that prosecutors say were intentionally fraudulent and designed to conceal the true purpose of the payments and to interfere in the election.

The former publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, testified last week that he offered to be the “eyes and ears” of the Trump campaign and described in detail his role in purchasing a sordid tale from a New York City doorman that was later determined to not be true as well as accusations of an extramarital affair with former Playboy model Karen McDougal.

The goal was to prevent the stories from getting out, a concern that was especially pointed in the aftermath of the disclosure of a 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which he was heard describing grabbing women without their permission.

A separate $130,000 payment was made by Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and personal fixer, to porn actor Stormy Daniels, to prevent her claims of a 2006 sexual encounter with Trump from surfacing.

Trump’s company then reimbursed Cohen and logged the payments to him as legal expenses, prosecutors have said in charging the former president with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — a charge punishable by up to four years in prison.

Returning to the stand Thursday will be Keith Davidson, a lawyer who represented both Daniels and McDougal in their negotiations with the National Enquirer and Cohen.

He testified that he arranged a meeting at his Los Angeles office during the summer of 2016 to see whether the tabloid’s parent company American Media, Inc. was interested in McDougal’s story. At first, they demurred, saying she “lacked documentary evidence of the interaction,” Davidson testified.

But the tabloid at Pecker’s behest eventually bought the rights, and Davidson testified that he understood — and McDougal preferred — it would never be published. One reason for that, he said, is that there was an “unspoken affiliation” between Pecker and Trump and a desire by the company that owned the Enquirer to not publish stories that would hurt Trump.

The morning will begin with another gag order hearing. The four statements at issue were made by Trump before Merchan warned on Tuesday that additional violations could result in jail time.

They include comments to reporters and in interviews assailing Cohen’s integrity.

In 2022, 817 U.S. women died either while pregnant or soon after giving birth, down from 1,205 the previous year.

“If you look at 2021, we had such a sharp increase as we were really still in the pandemic and still dealing with disruptions of care, the fear of coming into the healthcare space and the inability to access care during that time,” said Dr. Veronica Gillispie-Bell, an OB-GYN at Ochsner Medical Center in Kenner, Louisiana. She was not involved in the new report, which was published Thursday by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The maternal mortality rate in 2022 was 22.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 32.9 per 100,000 in 2021, according to the new report.

“It’s looking like it’s returning to a pre-pandemic level,” said Donna Hoyert, the report’s author and an NCHS health scientist. The same appears to be true for preliminary 2023 data, she said.

Decreases were noted across all age groups and races, though Black women continue to be disproportionately affected. Their maternal mortality rate was 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2022. In 2021, it was 69.9 deaths per 100,000.

“We still have a long way to go to create really meaningful prevention interventions and strategies to decrease mortality,” said Dr. Warner Huh, an OB-GYN and head of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, “particularly among Black women and women of color.” Huh was not involved with the NCHS report.

The accuracy of NCHS’s maternal mortality data, which comes from death certificates, has long been scrutinized. More than a decade ago, the research group noted that many deaths among pregnant women were not being counted because of a problem with medical coding.

In 2003, the NCHS tried to correct the issue by recommending that states add a standardized checkbox to the certificates to make it clear whether the death occurred in a pregnant or recently pregnant woman. It wasn’t unti

A study published last month suggested the checkbox rule grossly overestimated rates of maternal mortality because it wasn’t nuanced enough to determine whether the cause of death was truly related to pregnancy.

Gillispie-Bell, also the medical director of the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative at the state’s department of health, said she disagreed with those findings because they did not account for mental health conditions.

And according to CDC data, the most common cause of death during or just after pregnancy is related to mental health conditions, which include drug and alcohol use disorder.

Hoyert said her group continues to refine the quality of the data.

“If we didn’t use the checkbox, we would be right back where we were in the past, when we were getting roundly criticized for missing a substantial percent of maternal deaths,” she said.

While it appears that the numbers are “trending in the right direction,” Huh said, “they’re still too high.”

“No mother should come into pregnancy with a fear that she is going to die delivering her baby,” Gillispie-Bell said. “As long as mothers are dying, we still have work to do.”

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

• Harvey Weinstein to return to court after N.Y. rape conviction is overturned
• New research shows how a surge of anger could raise heart attack risk
• Inside the tiny N.J. suburb with the fastest-growing Asian population in the country

Griner spoke for the first time about her months-long detention in Russia during an hourlong interview that aired Wednesday night on ABC. Her memoir, “Coming Home,” is set to be released on May 7.

Griner was detained after arriving at a Moscow airport after Russian authorities said a search of her luggage revealed vape cartridges allegedly containing oil derived from cannabis.

“I wanted to take my life more than once in the first weeks,” Griner told interviewer Robin Roberts. “I felt like leaving here so badly.”

She decided against it in part because she was afraid the Russian authorities wouldn’t release her body to her family.

Her plight unfolded at the same time Russia invaded Ukraine and further heightened tensions between Russia and the U.S., ending only after she was freed in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Griner said before she was released, she was forced to write a letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“They made me write this letter. It was in Russian,” she said. “I had to ask for forgiveness and thanks from their so-called great leader. I didn’t want to do it, but at the same time I wanted to come home.”

She was disappointed when she got on the plane for the trade and that Paul Whelan, another American who has been detained in Russia, wasn’t with her.

“I walked on and didn’t see him, maybe he’s next. Maybe they will bring him next,” she said. “They closed the door and I was like, are you serious? You’re not going to let this man come home now.”

Griner plays for the Phoenix Mercury. The WNBA season begins on May 14.

___

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

The man, 33-year-old Jovokhir Attoev, crossed the border into Arizona and was apprehended by Border Patrol in February 2022, the officials said. At the time, neither Customs and Border Protection nor ICE could find any derogatory information on Attoev. He was released inside the U.S. on bond.

Then, in May 2023, Uzbekistan put out an international notice that Attoev was wanted in his home country for his alleged affiliation with ISIS.

But it was not until March 2024, almost a year later, when the U.S. government was reviewing Attoev’s application for asylum, that officials discovered the notice from Uzbekistan and connected it with the man living in Maryland.

After the connection was made, ICE arrested him on April 17 in Baltimore. Attoev is currently in custody in Pennsylvania, according to the ICE website. He’s awaiting trial in immigration court next week in New Jersey, where ICE lawyers will likely argue that they need to keep him detained in order to glean more information about his potential ties to ISIS.

Multiple former Department of Homeland Security officials interviewed by NBC News said the case raises concerns about how quickly and frequently the U.S. can do follow-up vetting on migrants who have already crossed the border.

While no derogatory information existed on Attoev at the time he crossed the border in 2022, the notice from the Uzbek government in 2023 was not initially checked against the list of immigrants living in the U.S. and awaiting court hearings.

Elizabeth Neumann, who served as assistant secretary for counterterrorism and threat prevention at DHS from 2017 to 2020, said Congress should pass the bipartisan border security legislation that was blocked by Republicans earlier this year and allocate more money for counterterrorism.

“The concern I have is that in the last decade or so our counterterrorism budgets have drastically decreased,” Neumann said. “And that means we have [fewer] analysts doing this work. So it is harder to do things in a really timely manner when you have [fewer] resources.”

She added that counterterrorism budgets decreased after the destruction of the ISIS caliphate in the Middle East. But since then, particularly because of the fall of the Afghan government in 2021, ISIS has reemerged as a threat. A branch of ISIS, Islamic State Khorasan (ISIS-K), claimed responsibility for a deadly gun attack in Moscow in March. 

In February, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a Senate hearing that ISIS “remains a significant counterterrorism concern for us.” 

There is no indication that ISIS has managed to organize a secret network inside the United States, and if a militant managed to cross over the U.S. border, they would be hard-pressed to organize an attack without such a network, according to Colin Clarke, a senior fellow at the Soufan Center, a nonprofit center focused on global security issues.

Multiple law enforcement officials told NBC News that the U.S. has not definitively determined whether Attoev is a part of ISIS or if he ever carried out or planned to carry out an attack. DHS continues to seek information and is questioning him further while he is in detention, the officials said. 

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said, “DHS screens and vets individuals seeking to enter the United States to identify national security or public safety threats and takes appropriate action, to include preventing an individual from entering the country. Screening and vetting evaluates information available to the U.S. Government at that time. If individuals who have entered the country are later found to be associated with information indicating a potential national security or public safety concern, DHS and our federal partners investigate and we detain, remove, or refer them to other federal agencies for further vetting and prosecution as appropriate. In this case, the individual is in U.S. custody and there is no threat to public safety.”

NBC News previously reported that another migrant, an Afghan named Mohammad Kharwin, 48, was on the U.S. terror watchlist but was released by CBP because they did not have enough information to connect him to the watchlist at the time he crossed. He spent nearly a year inside the U.S. before he was arrested in San Antonio. He was released again on bond after a court hearing and then arrested again hours after NBC News published a story on his case.

The national terrorist watchlist, which is maintained by the FBI, includes the names of 1.8 million people considered potential security risks. The database indicates Kharwin is a member of Hezb-e-Islami, or HIG, a political and paramilitary organization that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization.

Attoev was not on the watchlist at the time he crossed the border in 2022 or at the time he was arrested in April, according to the U.S. officials.

The percentage of migrants with terror ties crossing the border remains extremely low. An NBC News analysis found that the percentage of migrants on the terrorist watchlist as a proportion of the total number of CBP encounters across U.S. borders was slightly lower during the Biden administration than during the Trump administration. It has averaged 0.02% during the Biden administration, lower than the 0.05% it averaged under Trump.

In fiscal year 2023, which ended in late September and saw a surge in border crossings, CBP had 736 encounters with migrants on the terrorist watchlist at U.S. borders, the most in the past six years. The second highest year was 2019, during the Trump administration, when CBP had 541 encounters with migrants on the watchlist.

It is not known whether any migrants on the watchlist or who were named in international notices as having suspected terror ties were released into the U.S. during the Trump administration.

NBC News’ Didi Martinez and Dan De Luce contributed.

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

• Georgia governor signs immigration bill months after UGA slaying, worrying Latino advocates
• Pentagon official warns that Russian anti-satellite nuclear weapon could be devastating
• Trump acknowledges he told Secret Service on Jan. 6 that he would ‘like to go down’ to the Capitol

On April 17, Denny’s announced the return of its low-priced All-Day Diner Deals, which it first introduced in 2022 — this might be enticing for hungry customers who are frustrated at rising fast-food prices. The chain also debuted its new menu featuring spins on sandwiches, pancakes and dessert dishes, including a limited-time, sweet and savory Berry Waffle Slam.

Denny’s All-Day Diner Deals

Denny’s All-Day Diner Deals start at $5.99 and are positioned as a more wallet-friendly way to eat out. Keep in mind, however, prices vary by location.

The deals include six separate options, including eggs, pancakes, burgers and a steak dinner. Here’s what comes with each deal:

• Scrambled Eggs & Cheddar Breakfast: This diner deal features scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, two bacon strips, two sausage links and buttermilk pancakes.
• Everyday Value Slam: Customers can choose two buttermilk pancakes, two slices of Brioche French Toast or a biscuit with gravy. This deal is served with eggs, plus a choice of two bacon strips or two sausage links. 
• Super Slam: This diner deal consists of two buttermilk pancakes served with eggs, bacon strips, sausage links and hash browns. 
• Quarter Pound Cheeseburger: A 4-ounce 100% beef patty is topped with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion and pickles on a split-top brioche bun. It’s served alongside wavy-cut fries.   
• Get Your Fixin’ Country Fried Steak Dinner: This meal consists of a large, chopped beef steak doused in country gravy. It’s served with two sides and dinner bread.
• All You Can Eat Pancakes: Choose this option for an endless amount of buttermilk pancakes. The first serving is a stack of three, and all refills are served one two-pancake stack at a time. This deal is for dine-in customers only.

Additionally, Denny’s wants to remind folks that kids eat free every Tuesday with the purchase of a $6 entrée — this deal runs from 4 — 10 p.m.

Denny’s New Menu

Denny’s also is now serving its new menu, with three permanent additions and one limited-time offering.

“Our guests have always loved the variety of breakfast options at Denny’s, and the Berry Waffle Slam® is a delightful addition to our lineup,” said Sharon Lykins, Denny’s vice president of product innovation, said in a press release. 

Here’s the new options fans can try: 

• Berry Waffle Slam: This limited-time offering consists of two pearl sugar-dotted Liège-style waffles with seasonal berries, and sea salt caramel sauce on top. The dish is served with two fresh made-to-order eggs, bacon strips and sausage links. 
• BBQ Bacon Chicken Sandwich: The sandwich features a barbecue sauce-coated grilled chicken breast topped with bacon strips, aged white cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato and sliced pickles on a grilled brioche bun. It’s served with wavy-cut fries.
• Brownie Sundae with Oreo Pieces: Diners can opt for this warm, chocolate brownie topped with vanilla ice cream, Oreo cookie pieces and a drizzle of chocolate sauce.
• Cinnamon Sugar Pancake Puppies: These are bite-size fried pancakes topped with cinnamon sugar and served with cream cheese icing. 

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Busy Philipps shares how adult ADHD diagnosis changed her life: ‘I felt terrible all the time’
• Our son died by suicide 2 years ago. We’re still waiting for him at the dinner table
• Oil pulling is going viral for whitening teeth and more. Do dentists think it’s worth trying?

The 65-page report was the result of a three-year investigation and was made public hours before a Senate Budget Committee hearing about the role that oil and gas companies have played in global warming.

“They could’ve been the environmental Paul Revere but, instead, they were more like Rip Van Winkle, wanting everyone to go to sleep,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said about fossil fuel companies’ efforts to mislead and distract the American public for more than 60 years. “The thing that gets me the most is thinking back to the decades when ‘Big Oil and Gas’ understood the problem in a way almost no one in the country or the world did.”

Democrats’ investigation revealed research, transcripts and even video recordings that show the fossil fuel industry knew the consequences of its emissions since at least the 1960s. Their report also showed how oil and gas companies initially tried to hide that information but employed new tactics to downplay the urgency of eliminating emissions.

Geoffrey Supran, an associate professor and director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami, researches climate disinformation and propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. He said that oil and gas companies’ claims of decarbonizing are just their latest strategy to delay climate action. 

“Putting spin before science continues at oil companies to this day,” he said of his research into the tactics of the industry.

“This is greenwashing 101,” Supran added. “Talk green, act dirty.”

Senate Republicans called the hearing purely partisan and attempted to refocus the discussion on the financial cost of rapidly transitioning away from oil and gas. 

“We spend all this money, and we don’t lower global temperatures one scintilla of a degree,” said Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the top oil and gas producing states in the U.S.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), a major lobbying group for the industry, was repeatedly blamed in the report and Senate hearing for helping oil and gas companies hide the truth about climate change. According to Senate Democrats, API both advised fossil fuel companies on public relations strategies, while also acting as a scapegoat for congressional scrutiny.

In a statement to NBC News, an API spokesperson said, “At a time of persistent inflation and geopolitical instability, our nation needs more American energy – including more oil and natural gas – and less unfounded election year rhetoric. America’s energy workers are focused on delivering the reliable, affordable oil and natural gas Americans demand while scaling the next generation of low-carbon technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture, and any suggestion to the contrary is inaccurate.” 

Democrats reiterated that oil and gas companies have damaged the planet for decades without having to pay for the consequences. That led Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to ask what happens next. 

“If we have an industry that knowingly, and that’s the point … knowingly understood that climate change would bring devastating destruction to the lives of billions of people, what are the legal grounds we can hold them accountable for?” he said.

The proposal, which passed 320-91 with some bipartisan support, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. It now goes to the Senate for a vote.

Action on the bill was just the latest reverberation in Congress from the protest movement that has swept university campuses. Republicans in Congress have denounced the protests and demanded action to stop them, thrusting university officials into the center of the charged political debate over Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war was launched in October, after Hamas staged a deadly terrorist attack against Israeli civilians.

If passed by the Senate and signed into law, the bill would broaden the legal definition of antisemitism to include the “targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity.” Critics say the move would have a chilling effect on free speech throughout college campuses.

“Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination,” Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., said during a hearing Tuesday. “By encompassing purely political speech about Israel into Title VI’s ambit, the bill sweeps too broadly.”

Advocates of the proposal say it would provide a much-needed, consistent framework for the Department of Education to police and investigate the rising cases of discrimination and harassment targeted toward Jewish students.

“It is long past time that Congress act to protect Jewish Americans from the scourge of antisemitism on campuses around the country,” Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., said Tuesday.

The expanded definition of antisemitism was first adopted in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental group that includes the United States and European Union states, and has been embraced by the State Department under the past three presidential administrations, including Joe Biden’s.

Previous bipartisan efforts to codify it into law have failed. But the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas militants in Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza have reignited efforts to target incidents of antisemitism on college campuses.

Separately, Speaker Mike Johnson announced Tuesday that several House committees will be tasked with a wide probe that ultimately threatens to withhold federal research grants and other government support for universities, placing another pressure point on campus administrators who are struggling to manage pro-Palestinian encampments, allegations of discrimination against Jewish students and questions of how they are integrating free speech and campus safety.

The House investigation follows several high-profile hearings that helped precipitate the resignations of presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. And House Republicans promised more scrutiny, saying they were calling on the administrators of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to testify next month.

The House Oversight Committee took it one step further Wednesday, sending a small delegation of Republican members to an encampment at nearby George Washington University in the District of Columbia. GOP lawmakers spent the short visit criticizing the protests and Mayor Muriel Bowser’s refusal to send in the Metropolitan Police Department to disperse the demonstrators.

Bowser on Monday confirmed that the city and the district’s police department had declined the university’s request to intervene. “We did not have any violence to interrupt on the GW campus,” Bowser said, adding that police chief Pamela Smith made the ultimate decision. “This is Washington, D.C., and we are, by design, a place where people come to address the government and their grievances with the government.”

It all comes at a time when college campuses and the federal government are struggling to define exactly where political speech crosses into antisemitism. Dozens of U.S. universities and schools face civil rights investigations by the Education Department over allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia.

Among the questions campus leaders have struggled to answer is whether phrases like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” should be considered under the definition of antisemitism.

The proposed definition faced strong opposition from several Democratic lawmakers, Jewish organizations as well as free speech advocates.

Israel-Hamas War May 1

A look at the protests of the war in Gaza that have emerged at US colleges

Israel-Hamas War 24 hours ago

Violence, chaos erupts on campuses as protesters and counter-protesters clash over the war in Gaza

In a letter sent to lawmakers Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union urged members to vote against the legislation, saying federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment.

“H.R. 6090 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism,” the letter stated.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the centrist pro-Israel group J Street, said his organization opposes the bipartisan proposal because he sees it as an “unserious” effort led by Republicans “to continually force votes that divide the Democratic caucus on an issue that shouldn’t be turned into a political football.”

___

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil, Collin Binkley and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

The agency has been conducting tests on 297 pasteurized retail dairy products after findings last week showed that fragments of the virus had gotten into the commercial milk supply.

The tests showed that the products didn’t contain live virus that could make people sick, the FDA said Wednesday.

The new results, though still preliminary, “affirm the safety of the U.S. commercial milk supply,” Don Prater, acting director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said during the briefing. The samples come from 38 states.

Health & Wellness Apr 30

The USDA will test ground beef for bird flu. Here's what to know

Animals Apr 3

What to know about the latest bird flu outbreak in the US

In addition, the FDA has tested powdered infant and toddler formulas and found no evidence of bird flu virus. It was unclear how many formula samples were tested.

Prater said the latest findings confirm that the pasteurization process inactivates the virus, making it unable to infect people. The FDA is also testing raw milk for live virus, though it strongly advises against drinking raw, unpasteurized milk.

Bird flu has now been detected in 36 dairy herds in nine states: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, New Mexico, North Carolina, South Dakota, Ohio and Texas.

Those cases appear to have all originated among herds in Texas, then spread as cattle were moved across state lines to other farms.

In affected herds, about 10% of the cows show symptoms, Dr. Rosemary Sifford, chief veterinary officer at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said during the call. Most recover on their own within about two weeks, she said.

Sifford said that it appears the virus spreads between cows through affected raw milk, which contains high levels of the virus.

There is no evidence yet that this strain of the bird flu, called H5N1, spreads easily from person to person. But the concern is that the longer the virus spends in mammals, it could mutate into a form that does.

For now, Sifford said, that doesn’t seem to be happening.

“We are not seeing any changes in the virus that would indicate it is in a position to be more easily spread between people,” Sifford said.

The risk to the general public remains low, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

One person, a dairy worker in Texas, has been diagnosed with the virus since the outbreak was detected in dairy cows. The person’s case was mild and the only symptom was conjunctivitis, or pink eye.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that more than 100 people have been asked to monitor themselves for symptoms for 10 days after coming into contact with an infected animal.

Around 25 have been tested for the virus, Daskalakis said.

He said there is no indication of “unusual flu activity in people, and that includes avian influenza.”

But there have been reports that other cases may have gone undetected.

Multiple dairy workers in Texas were sick with fevers, body aches, upset stomach and eye infections at the same time the bird flu was working its way through cows in Amarillo, Dr. Barb Petersen, the veterinarian who discovered what was making the animals sick, previously told NBC News.

No hospitalizations or deaths have been reported.

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

• How police officers preyed on teens in the Boy Scouts’ police Explorer program
• Federal Reserve keeps interest rates at current levels as inflation holds its grip
• Arizona Senate passes repeal of 1864 abortion ban

“So, let’s talk about Mother’s Day,” Mellissa Grice, a 53-year-old mom in North Carolina, said in a TikTok video, referencing a younger creator who declared the holiday solely for “moms in the trenches” of parenthood.

“I am so tired of moms and mothers-in-law and grandparents being sh*t on, on this app … When did the younger generation just totally throw us to the wolves?” said Grice, adding, “I don’t understand — it’s just the moms of young kids that should really be celebrated for Mother’s Day? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Grice added, “As a mom, how am I going to celebrate my son or be thankful to be a mom if my children aren’t around me because I’m older?”

Every year, moms with young children, grandparents and mothers-in-law fight for recognition on a holiday that historically celebrated each family’s “one and only mother.”

Moms with school-aged kids frequently say Mother’s Day should honor those actively parenting, whether they’re changing diapers, driving kids to sports games or helping write college essays. They’re tired, touched out and touchy: according to a 2023 TODAY.com poll, 62% of mothers want “alone time” on Mother’s Day versus 38% who want “family time.”

“Trouble for me is that I don’t get to celebrate being a mom with my kids because we spend 100% of our day with our moms,” a TikToker commented on Grice’s video. “It’s another exhausting holiday for us.”

Another added: “I’m a young mom of three. I don’t want to run around to make the grandmas happy that day. When do I get a day to do what I want?”

Meanwhile, moms of adult children say motherhood is a lifelong duty, despite an update of their title to “grandma” or “mother-in-law.” They don’t want the whole spotlight, but say that decades of parenting deserves a phone call or a brunch reservation. Others observe Mother’s Day with multigenerational events.

“It’s about all moms,” someone wrote under Grice’s post. “We never stop being a mom.” Another person: “I’m 56 and have two boys, (ages 18 and 21). Mother’s Day has always been about my mom and mother-in-law as the matriarchs of their families.”

Other grandmothers are happy to step aside.

“Time for my annual reminder to grandmothers to shift the focus from you to your daughters and daughters-in-law who are mothers,” TikTok user “More Than Grand” said in a video. “Instead of expecting the family to gather to honor you, it’s time to make the day about the next generation of mothers.”

“When did the younger generation just totally throw us to the wolves?”

This year, Grice hopes to enjoy her annual Mother’s Day brunch with her 32-year-old son, his wife and their new baby. Grice says she wants her daughter-in-law to feel utterly loved and appreciated on her first Mother’s Day. She’s also hoping for a little recognition.

“It’s more about balance … and trying to fit everybody in on that day,” Grice tells TODAY.com, adding, “I’ve always run around everywhere to where my mom or my grandmother were … they were usually together on Mother’s Day.”

Grice has noticed that some younger moms on social media claim Mother’s Day all for themselves.

“My son has his own life but as a mom, you don’t want to feel like you’re being pushed aside,” she says, adding, “No mom wants to feel unneeded.”

“It’s Mother’s Day, not Grandmother’s Day.”

Three years ago, Emily Wehner, a 30-year-old mom in Indiana established “Mother’s Day rules.”

“It’s Mother’s Day, not Grandmother’s Day,” Wehner explained in an April TikTok video with almost 2 million views.

Wehner, whose children are 1 and 3, recalled her first Mother’s Day as “pretty sad” while the day “coordinating grandparent visits.”

“I didn’t get to do anything for myself,” she said in her video. “I was like, ‘I’m not doing this again.’”

Wehner said she celebrates her parents and in-laws on different days that mimic Mother’s Day and Father’s Day around the official holidays.

“This may ruffle feathers for some people but that’s what I want to do and … I’m the one deep into the mothering right now,” she said in the video.

Wehner tells TODAY.com she was “sobbing” on her first Mother’s Day.

“I needed to get to my mother-in-law’s (house) at a certain time but I really wanted to get my nails done,” she says. “I didn’t get to do that because of my child’s nap schedule and all the things of mothering.” Topping it off, Wehner, who eats a gluten-free diet, didn’t have much to eat at the family meal. “At that point,” she says, “I was done.”

During the celebration, she didn’t feel celebrated. So Wehner and her husband agreed to opt out of future Mother’s Day events in exchange for an intimate brunch, followed by gardening at home.

Wehner said “mean” comments on her video largely came from older moms.

“I don’t think (many) …. took a second to do what they wanted so it’s very off-putting that I’m saying, ‘I want time for myself,’” says Wehner. “The more we do it, the better we are as moms.”

“Mother’s Day can be a minefield”

According to a @todayparents Instagram poll, where 2,366 people responded, 51% say mothers of young children and grandmothers should be equitably honored on Mother’s Day. Forty-eight percent said newer moms should get the spotlight while 2% voted for grandmothers to take top billing.

“Mother’s Day can be a minefield, as both older and newer moms feel unacknowledged for the hidden labor that has contributed to the well being of their families,” Rachael D. Robnett, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, tells TODAY.com.

“It seems that newer moms and matriarchs are fighting over a piece of pie that’s too small to begin with.”

Robnett proposes that in heterosexual relationships, male partners should lead Mother’s Day plans and handle communication with in-laws.

“It’s a little unfair to frame (the debate) as between moms if men can step up and orchestrate Mother’s Day,” she says, noting, “Boys aren’t usually socialized to proactively celebrate others so men don’t have the practice.” 

With parents of children under 18 needing more mental health support, Robnett suggests that matured generations approach Mother’s Day with flexibility.

“Mother’s Day can still honor and celebrate the previous generation,” she says. “It’s not necessarily a zero-sum game.”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• 50 DIY Mother’s Day gifts for every crafting level
• Exclusive: Melissa Gorga says her feud with Teresa Giudice ‘trickles down’ to their kids
• The internet is debating the difference between ‘white SUV moms’ and ‘black SUV moms’

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Two Republicans joined with Democrats in the Senate on the 16-14 vote in favor of repealing a Civil War-era ban on abortions that the state’s highest court recently allowed to take effect. The ban on all abortions — which provides no exceptions for survivors of rape or incest, and only allows for procedures done to save a patient’s life — would still be active until the fall.

Hobbs said in a statement that she looks forward to quickly signing the repeal, with a ceremony scheduled for Thursday.

“Arizona women should not have to live in a state where politicians make decisions that should be between a woman and her doctor,” Hobbs said. “While this repeal is essential for protecting women’s lives, it is just the beginning of our fight to protect reproductive healthcare.”

The revival of the 19th century law has put Republicans on the defensive, as it’s one of a handful of battleground states that will decide the next president.

“Across the country, women are living in a state of chaos and cruelty caused by Donald Trump,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement on Wednesday. “While Arizona Democrats have worked to clean up the devastating mess created by Trump and his extremist allies, the state’s existing ban, with no exception for rape or incest, remains in effect.”

If the repeal bill is signed, a 2022 statute banning the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy would become Arizona’s prevailing abortion law. Still, there would likely be a period when nearly all abortions would be outlawed, because the repeal won’t take effect until 90 days after the end of the legislative session, likely in June or July.

Arizona state Attorney General Kris Mayes called the vote “a win for freedom in our state,” but expressed concern that without an emergency clause, Arizonans would still be subject to the near total-abortion ban for some time.

“Rest assured, my office is exploring every option available to prevent this outrageous 160-year-old law from ever taking effect,” she said.

The near-total ban on abortions predates Arizona’s statehood. In a ruling last month, the Arizona Supreme Court suggested doctors could be prosecuted under the 1864 law, which says that anyone who assists in an abortion can be sentenced to two to five years in prison. Then, last week, the repeal bill narrowly cleared the Arizona House.

Voting on the bill stretched more than an hour on Wednesday, amid impassioned speeches about the motivations behind individual votes.

“This is about the Civil War-era ban that criminalizes doctors and makes virtually all abortions illegal, the ban that the people of Arizona overwhelmingly don’t want,” said Democratic state Sen. Eva Burch. “We’re here to repeal a bad law. I don’t want us honoring laws about women written during a time when women were forbidden from voting because their voices were considered inferior to men.”

Burch made public on the Senate floor in March that she had a non-viable pregnancy and was going to have an abortion. She warned supporters of reproductive rights on Wednesday that they could not yet rest easy, even after the repeal is signed.

“They are going to use every tool in the toolbox to try to do whatever it is they can to interfere with the repeal of this ban,” she said.

There were numerous disruptions from people in Senate gallery Wednesday, as Republican state Sen. Shawnna Bolick explained her vote in favor of repeal, joining with Democrats.

GOP state Sen. Jake Hoffman denounced Republican colleagues for joining with Democratic colleagues, calling it an affront to his party’s principles.

“It is disgusting that this is the state of the Republican Party today,” Hoffman said.

Advocates on both sides of the abortion issue arrived outside the Arizona Senate on Wednesday to emphasize their views. They included people affiliated with Planned Parenthood and faith-based groups opposed to abortion.

A school-age girl kneeled in prayer in front of a table holding a large statute of the Virgin Mary, while a man with a megaphone shouted at passersby to repent.

Outside Phoenix in the satellite town of Gilbert, 26-year-old Anna Kupitz, a middle-school math teacher, expressed disappointment in the Senate vote to overturn a near-total abortion ban.

“It is outrageous that we believe so little in women’s ability to value the life of their child and also value their careers,” she said. “As a country, we believe that human life deserves to be protected.”

Former President Donald Trump, who has warned that the issue could lead to Republican losses, has avoided endorsing a national abortion ban but said he’s proud to have appointed the Supreme Court justices who allowed states to outlaw it.

The law had been blocked since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion nationwide.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022 though, then-Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, persuaded a state judge that the 1864 ban could again be enforced. Still, the law hasn’t actually been enforced while the case was making its way through the courts. Mayes, who succeeded Brnovich, urged the state’s high court against reviving the law.

Planned Parenthood officials have vowed to continue providing abortions for the short time they are still legal and said they will reinforce networks that help patients travel out of state to places like New Mexico and California to access abortion.

Advocates are collecting signatures for a ballot measure allowing abortions until a fetus could survive outside the womb, typically around 24 weeks, with exceptions — to save the parent’s life, or to protect her physical or mental health.

Republican lawmakers, in turn, are considering putting one or more competing abortion proposals on the November ballot.

A leaked planning document outlined the approaches being considered by House Republicans, such as codifying existing abortion regulations, proposing a 14-week ban that would be “disguised as a 15-week law” because it would allow abortions until the beginning of the 15th week, and a measure that would prohibit abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, before many people know they’re pregnant.

House Republicans have not yet publicly released any such proposed ballot measures.

abortion Apr 24

Arizona state House passes bill to repeal 1864 abortion ban

Arizona Apr 9

Arizona Supreme Court upholds near-total ban on abortions

The survey of more than 925 local election officials in February and March also found 62% are concerned about political leaders’ attempting to interfere with how election officials do their jobs.

Thirteen percent of the local officials who responded said they are “concerned about facing pressure to certify results in favor of a specific candidate or party.”

“Election officials are adjusting to ensure workers and voters are safe. The numbers around threats, harassment and interference remain unacceptably high, but election officials aren’t being passive in the face of this hostile environment. They are investing in security trainings, increasing physical and cybersecurity measures, and building stronger networks with emergency management services,” said Lawrence Norden, senior director of elections and government at the Brennan Center, part of the New York University School of Law.

NBC News has reported on growing security threats facing election workers as the November presidential election approaches. Many local jurisdictions have said they need more money for more security and more training about what to do should a threat to the safety of election workers arise.

Hanging over the election workers are false claims spread after the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and his supporters, who insist the election was “stolen” from Trump because of election workers who manipulated the results. 

Trump has recently told supporters at his rallies that votes go missing or end up thrown on the floor in areas like Philadelphia.

Omar Sabir, chair of the city commission that runs Philadelphia’s elections, received a threatening voicemail and email. “We have insiders that will be snitching this time around and violators will be sent to federal prison,” the email said.

Sabir and others have said federal government should do more to keep local officials safe.

Four out of 5 respondents in the Brennan Center survey said their budgets need to grow to keep up with their administration and security needs.

Turnover is another top concern for officials, as many are fighting to find new hires amid high dropout rates due to retirement and security concerns.

One in 5 are unlikely to continue to serve in the 2026 midterms, and 27% know of colleagues who have left their jobs because of concerns about safety.

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

• Harvey Weinstein to return to court after N.Y. rape conviction is overturned
• New research shows how a surge of anger could raise heart attack risk
• Inside the tiny N.J. suburb with the fastest-growing Asian population in the country

In a widely expected move, the U.S. central bank kept its benchmark short-term borrowing rate in a targeted range between 5.25%-5%. The federal funds rate has been at that level since July 2023, when the Fed last hiked and took the range to its highest level in more than two decades.

 The rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee did vote to ease the pace at which it is reducing bond holdings on the Fed’s mammoth balance sheet, in what could be viewed as an incremental easing of monetary policy.

With its the decision to hold the line on rates, the committee in its post-meeting statement noted a “lack of further progress” in getting inflation back down to the central bank’s 2% target.

 “The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward 2 percent,” the statement said, reiterating language it had used following the January and March meetings.

The statement also altered its characterization of its progress toward its dual mandate of stable prices and full employment. The new language hedges a bit, saying the risks of achieving both “have moved toward better balance over the past year.” Previous statements said the risks “are moving into better balance.”

Beyond that the statement was little changed, characterizing economic growth as moving at “a solid pace” while “strong” job gains and “low” unemployment.

On the balance sheet, the committee said that beginning in June it will slow the pace at which it is allowing maturing bond proceeds to roll off without reinvesting them.

In a program begun in June 2022 and nicknamed “quantitative tightening,” the Fed had been allowing up to $95 billion a month in proceeds from maturing Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities to roll off each month. The process has resulted in the central bank balance sheet to come down to about $7.4 trillion, or $1.5 trillion less than its peak around mid-2022.

Under the new plan, the Fed will reduce the monthly cap on Treasurys to $25 billion from $60 billion. That would put the annual reduction in holdings at $300 billion, compared to $720 billion from when the program began in June 2022. The potential mortgage roll-off would be unchanged at $25 billion a month, a level that has only been hit on rare occasions.

QT was one way the Fed used to tighten conditions after inflation surged, as it backed away from its role of assuring the flow of liquidity through the financial system by buying and holding large amounts of Treasury and agency debt. The reduction of the balance sheet roll-off, then, can be seen as a slight easing measure.

Markets will be listening for Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference at 2:30 p.m. ET for further clues on where the Fed is heading with interest rates.

The funds rate sets what banks charge each other for overnight lending but feeds into many other consumer debt products. The Fed uses interest rates to control the flow of money, with the intent that higher rates will dampen demand and thus help reduce prices.

However, consumers have continued to spend, running up credit indebtedness and decreasing savings levels as stubbornly high prices eat away at household finances. Powell has repeatedly cited the pernicious effects of inflation, particularly for those at the lower income levels.

Though price increases are well off their peak in mid-2022, most data so far in 2024 has shown that inflation is holding well above the Fed’s 2% annual target. The Fed’s main gauge shows inflation running at a 2.7% annual rate – 2.8% when excluding food and energy in the critical core measure that the Fed especially focuses on as a signal for longer-term trends.

At the same time, gross domestic product grew at a less than expected 1.6% annualized pace in the first quarter, raising concerns over the potential of stagflation with high inflation and slow growth.

Most recently, the Labor Department’s employment cost index this week posted its biggest quarterly increase in a year, sending another jolt to financial markets.

Consequently, traders have had to reprice their expectations for rates in a dramatic fashion. Where the year started with markets pricing in at least six interest rate cuts that were supposed to have started in March, the outlook now is for just one, and likely not coming until near the end of the year.

Fed officials have shown near unanimity in their calls for patience on easing monetary policy as they look for confirmation that inflation is heading comfortably back to target. One or two officials even have mentioned the possibility of a rate increase should the data not cooperate. Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic was the first to specifically say he only expects one rate cut this year, likely in the fourth quarter.

In March, FOMC members penciled in three rate cuts this year, assuming quarter percentage point intervals, and won’t get a chance to update that call until the June 13-14 meeting. 

The post published in early April misrepresented federal data from the Social Security Administration to falsely suggest that hundreds of thousands of migrants may have registered to vote in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Texas. One hour later, the tweet got the rocket fuel it needed to take off: X owner Elon Musk reposted it with the comment, “extremely concerning.” 

In less than four days, the false narrative was widely shared on X, Facebook and Instagram. Donald Trump and Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene soon joined in, respectively proclaiming, “What is going on???” and “Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” By the end of the month, the original tweet and Musk’s had generated more than 125 million views.

All the while, election officials in the three states publicly debunked the claims, and multiple news organizations and a news literacy nonprofit published fact-checking articles providing accurate context. Yet the rumors continued spreading — showing how virulent misinformation is and how casually it can spread on social media.

Under federal laws, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, and states are required to regularly update their voter rolls, or voter registration lists, to remove anyone ineligible.

The X post that triggered this latest wave of migrant voting misinformation used publicly available federal data from the Help America Vote Verification (HAVV) program, which shows the total number of times Texas, Pennsylvania and Arizona requested the Social Security Administration to verify a voter’s identity using their Social Security numbers.

While verification requests are not necessarily a one-to-one tally of people registering to vote, the X post falsely presented such numbers as if they were, suggesting that nearly 1.9 million individual voters registered in such states without a photo identification, only using the last four digits of their Social Security numbers.

The post then states that people present in the U.S. illegally can get Social Security cards with a work authorization. That is not widely the case. In 2021, about 587,000 noncitizens, most of whom were  lawful permanent residents or were granted work permits, received a Social Security number. Noncitizens with Social Security numbers are still banned from voting. A study of the 2016 election conducted by the Brennan Center the following year found “that of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials only found about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting,” according to The Associated Press. 

Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, has researched the connections between false claims of noncitizen voting and “rigged election” allegations for the past several years. 

Bayar has found that falsehoods connected to these narratives often gain more traction when “there’s a real crisis behind it,” such as the increasing number of migrants seeking to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. They also often include “misleading cuts of evidence to put [in] some sort of a grain of truth,” he said. 

X did not respond to a request for comment.

Once the falsehoods hit social media, moderators face a difficult game of Whac-A-Mole to keep up with the spread, even after a claim has been fact-checked.

Media Matters, a left-leaning nonprofit media watchdog, provided NBC News with 10 examples of social media posts published on Meta’s platforms, most of them from Facebook, that amplified the false claim from X. Nearly two weeks after the claims in the posts had been publicly debunked, the social media company had only labeled one of the 10 posts as containing false information and included a hyperlink to a fact-checking article.

NBC News sent links for the 10 posts to a Meta representative. Hours later, Meta labeled all the posts as false.

According to a Meta spokesperson, when one of its fact-checking partners determines a post contains false information, it kicks off an automated “similarity detection” process to identify other posts duplicating the same debunked content and label them as false. But when misinformation is shared through screenshots, as it was in the Facebook posts, it can often remain undetected by the automated methods and would require a content moderator or a fact-checker to manually find and flag the posts.

The false information label not only signals to Meta users that they may be receiving misinformation, but it also helps the company reduce the distribution of that content on their platforms, the spokesperson added.

Kadida Kenner, CEO of the New Pennsylvania Project, a voting rights organization that has helped register 40,000 new voters in the state over the past three years, said her team often encounters people who believe misinformation “as it relates to the safety of our elections,” she said. 

Kenner said she believes “there’s bad actors that are absolutely putting bad information” on social media to cast doubt over the electoral process “with the intent to suppress votes.”

And while her organization hadn’t come across the falsehood about migrants being able to vote, the conflicting stories and prevalence of questionable information about voting in the election has contributed to potential voters feeling disengaged, Kenner said, adding that countering such feeling is “a big part of our job at this moment.”

Bobby Arena, the outreach director for the Lehigh County GOP in Pennsylvania, got a text message from someone who came across the false social media claims suggesting hundreds of thousands of migrants may have registered to vote illegally.

Arena said he later fact-checked the information and realized the numbers were off — they were “just too extreme” — and responded to the person who had initially texted him about it.

But that still didn’t appease Arena’s underlying concerns over “a potential problem with the voter rolls.”

Republicans in Pennsylvania and in other states have been scrutinizing voter registration lists through lawsuits and legislation as the party increasingly seizes on the rolls as a focus of their election activism, even when there’s no evidence that bloated voter rolls lead to voter fraud.

Bayar said that while correction is the best response available to combat misinformation, it still falls short on addressing the sets of beliefs tied to such false narratives.

“You are dealing with people’s anti-immigration attitudes, people’s partisanship, people’s ideology, people’s grievances toward the system,” Bayar said. “So, what you’re trying to correct is not just one belief, but a mindset that is distrustful of the U.S. elections.”

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

• Arizona Senate expected to vote on repeal of 1864 abortion ban
• Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene says she will force a vote to oust Speaker Mike Johnson next week
• 7 big issues at stake in the 2024 election

The biggest dollar-amount losses came from scams involving bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, the report said.

Since at least 2018 the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) has published statistics showing the extent of the impact cybercrime has had on older Americans.

In 2023, the IC3 office received 101,068 complaints from this population, up 11% from the year prior and nearly even with the high seen in 2020.

Losses totaled about $3.4 billion — with nearly 40% of that involving cryptocurrencies alone, totaling $1.33 billion, IC3 said.

More than 12,000 victims ages 60 and older indicated cryptocurrency was “a medium or tool used to facilitate” the fraud they fell victim to, the agency said.

In March, the FBI issued a separate report warning of a spike in cryptocurrency schemes. These often begin with a romance or confidence scam and evolve into cryptocurrency investment fraud, the agency said.

“Criminals use fictitious identities to develop relationships and build rapport with victims,” it said. “Criminals target victims using dating applications (apps), social media platforms, professional networking sites, or encrypted messaging apps.”

For 2023, there was an overall 14% increase in complaints filed by elderly victims. 

“Combatting the financial exploitation of those over 60 years of age continues to be a priority of the FBI,” said Assistant Director Michael D. Nordwall, who leads the bureau’s Criminal Investigative Division. “Along with our partners, we continually work to aid victims and to identify and investigate the individuals and criminal organizations that perpetrate these schemes and target the elderly.” 

Among types of fraud, call center or tech support scams continued to be the most common type of complaint among the 60 and older population, with nearly half the complaints reported by the group and 58% of the financial losses. In these schemes, fraudsters pose as customer or tech support representatives from reputable well-known companies and convince victims that an account has been compromised and that their funds need to be moved.

Victims reported selling their homes, emptying retirement accounts, and borrowing from family and friends to cover losses in these scams.

Some incidents have resulted in suicide because of shame or loss of sustainable income, the FBI said.

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.

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

• TikTok honors 15 creators for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month
• Johnson & Johnson to pay $6.5 billion to resolve nearly all talc ovarian cancer lawsuits in U.S.
• Connection interrupted: Federal internet discount begins to expire

Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years. That overwhelming margin contrasts sharply with the decades of controversy around the issue. Past General Conferences of the United Methodist Church had steadily reinforced the ban and related penalties amid debate and protests, but many of the conservatives who had previously upheld the ban have left the denomination in recent years, and this General Conference has moved in a solidly progressive direction.

Applause broke out in parts of the convention hall Wednesday after the vote. A group of observers from LGBTQ advocacy groups embraced, some in tears. “Thanks be to God,” said one.

The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. It’s possible that the change will mainly apply to U.S. churches, since United Methodist bodies in other countries, such as in Africa, have the right to impose the rules for their own regions. The measure takes effect immediately upon the conclusion of General Conference, scheduled for Friday.

The consensus was so overwhelmingly that it was rolled into a “consent calendar,” a package of normally non-controversial measures that are bundled into a single vote to save time.

Also approved was a measure that forbids district superintendents — a regional administrator — from penalizing clergy for either performing a same-sex wedding or for refraining from performing one. It also forbids superintendents from forbidding or requiring a church from hosting a same-sex wedding.

That measure further removes scaffolding around the various LGBTQ bans that have been embedded various parts of official church law and policy. On Tuesday, delegates had begun taking steps to dismantle such policies.

Delegates are also expected to vote as soon as today on whether to replace their existing official Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the “practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” and that now defines marriage as between “two people of faith” rather than between a man and a woman.

The changes are historic in a denomination that has debated LGBTQ issues for more than half a century at its General Conferences, which typically meet every four years. On Tuesday, delegates voted to remove mandatory penalties for conducting same-sex marriages and to remove their denomination’s bans on considering LGBTQ candidates for ministry and on funding for gay-friendly ministries.

At the same time, it comes following the departure of one-quarter of the U.S. churches within the UMC. And it could also prompt departures of some international churches, particularly in Africa, where more conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.

Last week, the conference endorsed a regionalization plan that essentially would allow the churches of the United States the same autonomy as other regions of the global church. That change — which still requires local ratification — could create a scenario where LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage are allowed in the United States but not in other regions.

More than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States disaffiliated between 2019 and 2023 reflecting dismay over the denomination not enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.

The conference last week also approved the departure of a small group of conservative churches in the former Soviet Union.

The denomination had until recently been the third largest in the United States, present in almost every county. But its 5.4 million U.S. membership in 2022 is expected to drop once the 2023 departures are factored in.

The denomination also counts 4.6 million members in other countries, mainly in Africa, though earlier estimates have been higher.

Vicenta Polanco, 30, and Luis Ariel Escalante, 24, were arrested Tuesday on human trafficking and prostitution charges, Miami-Dade jail records showed.

The charges stem from the accounts of two women who said they had been forced to prostitute themselves at the direction of Polanco and Escalante, police said.

According to arrest reports, one victim said Polanco and Escalante visited her in Cuba and offered to pay to smuggle her across the border, telling her they’d pay her to be an exotic dancer at an adult entertainment club.

When she arrived in the U.S., they told her that instead of exotic dancing, she’d be working as a prostitute, and took provocative photos of her to post on prostitution websites, the reports said.

The second victim was assisted by Polanco and Escalante with entering the U.S. illegally and also promised work as an exotic dancer but after about a week she was told she’d also be doing prostitution work, the reports said.

Both women were asked to hand over their Cuban passports and other legal documents, and were told they’d be assisted with legal representation for the immigration process, the reports said.

In actuality, the passports and documents were taken as collateral to force the women to prostitute themselves, the reports said.

Both women said they were expected to work seven days a week, seeing four to five customers per day. Escalante collected the money from the customers, the reports said.

The victims performed prostitution from an apartment where they were allowed to live, or Polanco or Escalante would drive them to “dates,” the reports said.

On Monday, both victims demanded their documents back, but Polanco refused and told them they needed to pay off their debt of $10,000 to $12,000, the reports said.

The women contacted police, who arrested Polanco and Escalante and booked them into jail.

Police searched Polanco and Escalante’s apartment and found $9,000 cash, eight mobile phones, three laptops, and two iPads, the reports said.

In court Wednesday, Polanco and Escalante were appointed public defenders and ordered held without bond.

The company says a computer can falsely detect too much current on one or both of the tail lamps, causing them to stay dark while the trucks are being driven. That can increase the risk of a crash.

The recall covers certain pickups from the model years 2022 through 2024.

Tesla Apr 19

Tesla recalls Cybertrucks due to faulty pedal that can stick and accelerate unintentionally

Recalls Apr 18

Ford recalls over 456,000 Bronco Sport and Maverick cars due to loss of drive power risk

Ford says it has no reports of any crashes or injuries due to the problem. Headlights, turn signals and brake lights will still work.

Documents posted Wednesday on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website say dealers will update software to fix the problem at no cost to owners. Notification letters will be mailed starting May 20.

Harvey Weinstein arrived at a Manhattan courthouse Wednesday, his first appearance since his 2020 rape conviction was overturned by an appeals court last week.

Weinstein, wearing a navy blue suit, was seated in a wheelchair pushed by a court officer as he entered the preliminary hearing in Manhattan. He appeared attentive at the defense table, but did not speak during the hearing in which attorneys for both sides discussed evidence among other matters.

Weinstein’s defense lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said his client was attending the hearing despite the 72-year-old having been hospitalized since shortly after his return to the city jail system Friday from an upstate prison. He has said Weinstein, who has cardiac issues and diabetes, was undergoing unspecified tests because of his health ailments.

Aidala said he has no concern about his client’s mental abilities, describing Weinstein as “sharp as a tack. As sharp as he ever was.” Aidala added that when he told his client of his conviction being overturned, Weinstein responded with one word: good.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg was in the courtroom Wednesday. His office has said it is determined to retry the case against Weinstein.

Legal experts say that may be a long road and come down to whether the women he’s accused of assaulting are willing to testify again. One of the women, Mimi Haley, said Friday she was still considering whether she would testify at any retrial. Her attorney, Gloria Allred, said she was “still thinking about it,” and that it was “not an easy” decision.

Prosecutors said one of the accusers, Jessica Mann, who was in court Wednesday, is prepared to testify again. They also suggested locking in a date in September after Labor Day for the retrial.

Aidala said his client wants to prove his innocence: “It’s a new trial. It’s a new day…Harvey Weinstein is now presumed innocent.”

The judge said the trial itself would not start until after Labor Day, though no exact date was given. Weinstein’s next court appearance is scheduled for May 29. After being wheeled out of the courtroom in a wheelchair, he was taken back to Bellevue Hospital following the hearing.

The once-powerful studio boss was also convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and is still sentenced to another 16 years in prison in California. His lawyers have said they plan on appealing that one as well, because what happened in New York was referenced in that trial.

In the New York case that is now overturned, he was convicted of rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actor in 2013, and of forcing himself on Haley, a former “Project Runway” production assistant, in 2006. Weinstein had pleaded not guilty and maintained any sexual activity was consensual.

On Thursday, the New York Court of Appeals vacated his conviction in a 4-3 decision, erasing his 23-year prison sentence, after concluding a trial judge permitted jurors to see and hear too much evidence not directly related to what he was charged with. The judges who overturned the conviction recommended a new trial be brought against Weinstein.

The ruling shocked and disappointed women who celebrated historic gains during the era of #MeToo, a movement that ushered in a wave of sexual misconduct claims in Hollywood and beyond. Weinstein, whose guilty verdict was seen as a reckoning of the movement, has always maintained any sex was consensual.

Bare Necessities & Travel, a company that has been organizing clothing-optional vacations since 1990, is taking over the Norwegian Pearl from Feb. 3 to Feb. 14, where nude passengers will visit the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, Dominica, Martinique, and St. Lucia.

Even though it’s a clothes-free cruise, there will be some rules to follow, such as wearing clothes inside dining rooms and guests are encouraged to use a towel or thong to sit in the stateroom, pool deck, and buffet area. Fondling or inappropriate touching is prohibited, as is being nude in front of other ships in port. Lingerie and fetish wear are also not allowed.

Another important rule that will give some peace of mind to the ones afraid of ending up in social media is that taking photos and videos of any passenger without their consent is prohibited, according to the travel company.

Anyone who fails to comply with decorum and etiquette will be dismissed from the cruise.

For more information about the Big Nude Boat, visit here.

NBC Select Deals is here to help you find the products you need, from fashion to beauty, kitchen to tech, home to hobbies, kids, pets, and more.

Our team of experts finds deals for everything you need in your day-to-day life, without input from our commercial team or any outside third parties. Our product choices are based on in-depth reporting and research that comprises interviewing experts in the field, tracking shopping trends and demystifying jargon and marketing language.

For today’s launch, you can find deals on sunglasses (61% off), scented candles (32% off), earbuds (83% off) and more.

Each month, NBC Select Deals will bring you new deals with great discounts. We’ll highlight these products in our news and lifestyle shows, as well as on the NBC Select Deals site. On that site, you’ll also find great deals from The Kelly Clarkson Show, TODAY Steals & Deals and more.

Methodology

As an editorial team, we independently select deals on products based on research, reporting and what we think would benefit NBC Select Deals readers.

We have affiliate relationships with retailers, directly correlating our interests with reader interests: When you click a link to shop an NBC Select Deals product, we will receive a commission if you purchase anything through that link. All products are final sale and we do not accept any returns or exchanges on products. If your item does not arrive or is damaged upon arrival, we will work with the brand to issue a refund or replacement.

Items are sold by retailers, not NBC Select Deals. Pricing and availability are accurate as of publish time.

Editorial Direction

Our affiliate relationships do not impact editorial direction or decisions to feature certain products. Instead, we determine which products to feature based only on what we believe readers are interested in or what our research and reporting bears out.

Our goal is to provide our NBC audience with the very best the market has to offer.

The incident occurred around 5 p.m. near Casa Grande, a city about 50 miles south of Phoenix, the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

“Several children were playing in a bounce house when a strong gust of wind sent it airborne into the neighboring lot,” the sheriff’s office said. “A two-year-old child was transported to the hospital where he passed away.”

A second child was hospitalized with injuries that were not considered life-threatening.

“This appears to have been a tragic accident,” the sheriff’s office said.

The child’s parents were identified as Karl and Cristy, according to a verified GoFundMe page. Karl is a firefighter in Phoenix, and the dead child was identified as Bodhi, the webpage said.

The couple is set to welcome its second child in late May, according to the GoFundMe page.

“This devastating loss has left Karl and Cristy grappling with unimaginable grief,” the fundraiser said. “Amidst their sorrow, they face the daunting task of preparing for the arrival of their newborn.”

Attempts to reach the couple Tuesday afternoon through the fundraising account were unsuccessful.

A Phoenix fire spokesperson confirmed in a statement that the couple has ties to the department, which is providing them support.

“We are all devastated by this tremendous loss of life,” the statement said. “The fire service prides itself on being one big family. Our membership and our department are doing everything we can to support Karl and Cristy during this difficult time.”

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

• Brian McCardie, ‘Line of Duty’ actor, dies at 59
• ‘You are our hope’: Gaza students find strength in U.S. campus protests
• To fend off tourists, a town in Japan is building a big screen blocking the view of Mount Fuji

Local emergency services providers said they are receiving accidental 911 alerts from people’s smart devices. In some cases, it’s been prompted by something as simple as dropping an Apple Watch onto a hard floor. 

“So, the smart devices that are out there nowadays where if you fall, it does benefit that it’s able to call 911. However, it could also pick up, let’s say if you’re riding a bike and you hit a pothole and nothing, you know, you’re still continuing on your way, it could trigger 911,” Olney said. 

In addition to the smart devices, 911 call centers are now getting crash notifications directly from a vehicle’s onboard computer system, through popular internet radio provider Sirius XM. 

The partnership between Sirius XM Connected Vehicle Services and a company called RapidSOS allows any connected vehicle to automatically share information with first responders.

“It’s called in by Sirius, possible crash notification,” a dispatcher said.

When these false alarms do occur, dispatchers can be heard in call center recordings trying to figure out if it’s a real emergency.

“It’s an Apple crash notification with no response, no vehicle description as well.”

“Could be one of the iPhone automatic messages, for a fall message.”

“We received an automated message, through the patient’s iPhone, about a fall.”

If you realize you accidentally called 911, never do this one thing:

“Definitely, if it triggers 911, please stay on the phone. Do not hang up because we are obligated to call back. So please do not hang up,” Olney said.

Instead, 911.gov advises callers to explain to the dispatcher what happened. Otherwise, they may send first responders to your location.

Both iPhone and Android users can adjust or turn off the SOS function in system settings. 

Metropolitan Police Department (DC Police / MPD) Apr 12

‘I want to be a part of that change': Community safety ambassadors will give MPD new approach to policing

Washington DC Dec 5, 2023

Emergency legislation allows retired firefighters, police officers to work for DC's 911 call center

A large crowd of students, alumni and neighbors gathered on campus steps outside the barricaded area of tents, sitting as they listened and applauded various speakers and joined in pro-Palestinian chants. Overheard television cameras showed students in the barricaded area passing out goggles and helmets, as well as setting up medical aid stations. A small group of students holding signs and wearing T-shirts in support of Israel and Jewish people gathered nearby.

The law enforcement presence and continued warnings stood in contrast to the scene that unfolded the night before, when counter-demonstrators attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, throwing traffic cones, releasing pepper spray and tearing down barriers. Fighting continued for several hours before police stepped in, and no one was arrested. At least 15 protesters suffered injuries, and the tepid response by authorities drew criticism from political leaders as well as Muslim students and advocacy groups.

Ray Wiliani, who lives nearby, said he came to UCLA on Wednesday evening to support the pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

Israel-Hamas War May 1

A look at the protests of the war in Gaza that have emerged at US colleges

Israel-Hamas War Apr 30

Around 100 arrested after Columbia University calls in police to end pro-Palestinian occupation

“We need to take a stand for it,” he said. “Enough is enough.”

Elsewhere, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, activists clashed with police officers who destroyed their tents early Wednesday, and police dismantled an encampment at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire just hours after pro-Palestinian demonstrators put up a handful of tents. Officers arrested multiple people, including at least one professor, according to local media reports.

The chaotic scenes unfolded early Wednesday after police burst into a building occupied by anti-war protesters at Columbia University on Tuesday night, breaking up a demonstration that had paralyzed the New York school.

An Associated Press tally counted at least 38 times since April 18 where arrests were made at campus protests across the U.S. More than 1,600 people have been arrested at 30 schools.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement that “a group of instigators” perpetrated the previous night’s attack, but he did not provide details about the crowd or why the administration and school police did not act sooner.

“However one feels about the encampment, this attack on our students, faculty and community members was utterly unacceptable,” he said. “It has shaken our campus to its core.”

Block promised a review of the night’s events after California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Los Angeles mayor denounced the delays.

“The community needs to feel the police are protecting them, not enabling others to harm them,” Rebecca Husaini, chief of staff for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, said in a news conference on the Los Angeles campus later Wednesday, where some Muslim students detailed the overnight events.

Speakers disputed the university’s account that 15 people were injured and one hospitalized, saying the number of people taken to the hospital was higher. One student described needing to go to the hospital after being hit in the head by an object wielded by counter-protesters.

Several students who spoke during the news conference said they had to rely on each other, not the police, for support as they were attacked, and that many in the pro-Palestinian encampment remained peaceful and did not engage with counter-protesters. UCLA canceled classes Wednesday.

Tent encampments of protesters calling on universities to stop doing business with Israel or companies they say support the war in Gaza have spread across campuses nationwide in a student movement unlike any other this century. The ensuing police crackdowns echoed actions decades ago against a much larger protest movement protesting the Vietnam War.

In Madison, a scrum broke out early Wednesday after police with shields removed all but one tent and shoved protesters. Four officers were injured, including a state trooper who was hit in the head with a skateboard, authorities said. Four were charged with battering law enforcement.

This is all playing out in an election year in the U.S., raising questions about whether young voters — who are critical for Democrats — will back President Joe Biden's reelection effort, given his staunch support of Israel.

In rare instances, university officials and protest leaders struck agreements to restrict the disruption to campus life and upcoming commencement ceremonies.

At Brown University in Rhode Island, administrators agreed to consider a vote to divest from Israel in October — apparently the first U.S. college to agree to such a demand.

The nationwide campus demonstrations began at Columbia on April 17 to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the Health Ministry there.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

Late Tuesday, New York City police officers entered Columbia's campus and cleared an encampment, along with Hamilton Hall, where a stream of officers used a ladder to climb through a second-floor window, and police said protesters inside presented no substantial resistance.

The demonstrators had seized the Ivy League school building about 20 hours earlier, ramping up their presence on the campus from a tent encampment that had been there for nearly two weeks.

They encountered police clearing tents early on, as well as more than 100 arrests and threats of suspension unless they abandoned the encampment Monday. Instead, protesters took over Hamilton Hall early Tuesday.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams blamed “outside agitators” on Wednesday for leading the demonstrations and repeatedly cited the presence of a woman on Columbia’s campus whose husband Adams said had been “convicted for terrorism." The woman, Nahla Al-Arian, wasn’t on Columbia’s campus this week and isn’t among the protesters who were arrested.

Al-Arian, a retired elementary school teacher, told The Associated Press that Adams misstated both her role in the protests and the facts about her husband, Sami Al-Arian, a prominent Palestinian activist. Nahla Al-Arian said she did go to Columbia for one day on April 25 to see the protest encampment there but left after she got tired.

Meanwhile, protest encampments elsewhere were cleared by the police, resulting in arrests, or closed up voluntarily at schools across the U.S., including The City College of New York, Fordham University in New York, Portland State in Oregon, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona and Tulane University in New Orleans.

________

Offenhartz and Frederick reported from New York. Associated Press journalists around the country contributed to this report, including Christopher L. Keller, Lisa Baumann, Cedar Attanasio, Jonathan Mattise, Stefanie Dazio, Jae C. Hong, Colleen Long, Karen Matthews, Sarah Brumfield, Carolyn Thompson, Philip Marcelo, Corey Williams and Felicia Fonseca.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday said it plans to pay $6.5 billion over 25 years to settle nearly all of the thousands of lawsuits in the U.S. claiming its talc-based products caused ovarian cancer, pending approval of the claimants.

Those cases have for decades caused financial and public relations trouble for J&J, which contends that its now-discontinued talc baby powder and other talc products are safe for consumers. About 99% of the talc-related lawsuits filed against J&J and its subsidiaries stem from ovarian cancer. 

The company recorded a charge of about $2.7 billion in the first quarter to raise its reserve for talc claims to about $11 billion.

The deal, pending approval by claimants, would allow J&J to resolve the lawsuits through a third bankruptcy filing of a subsidiary company, LTL Management. Courts have rebuffed J&J’s two previous efforts to resolve the lawsuits through the bankruptcy of that subsidiary, which was created to absorb the company’s talc liabilities.

J&J will begin a three-month voting period for claimants, in hopes of reaching a 75% support threshold needed for a bankruptcy settlement that would end the litigation entirely and prevent future lawsuits. Claimants did not have the opportunity to vote in LTL Management’s previous bankruptcy cases, J&J executives said on a call with investors on Wednesday.

J&J has the “significant support of the overwhelming majority of the claimants” based on conversations with their lawyers or representation, the executives added.

“We firmly believe this plan is in the best interest of claimants and should receive a favorable and immediate confirmation from the bankruptcy court,” said Erik Haas, J&J’s worldwide vice president of litigation, during the call.

He contended the settlement is a far better recovery for claimants than would be likely in a trial.

“As that track record shows, most of bearing claimants have not recovered, nor are they expected to ever recover anything at trial,” Haas said. “At the rate at which use cases have been tried, it would take decades to try the remaining cases meaning most claimants will never see their day in court.”

Still, litigation has resulted in some large verdicts for claimants. That includes a roughly $2 billion award in favor of 22 women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in J&J’s talc products.

Shares of J&J closed more than 4% higher Wednesday.

J&J said the remaining pending lawsuits relate to a rare cancer called mesothelioma and will be addressed outside of the new settlement plan. The pharmaceutical giant said it has already resolved 95% of mesothelioma lawsuits filed to date.

J&J noted on Wednesday that it has reached “final and comprehensive” settlements to resolve an investigation by a coalition of more than 40 states into claims the company misled patients about the safety of its talc baby powder and other talc-based products.

The company has also reached an agreement in principle to resolve claims brought by suppliers of its talc, which include Imerys Talc America, Cyprus Mines Corporation and their related parties.

The Biden administration on Wednesday announced that it would forgive more than $6.1 billion in student debt for 317,000 former students of The Art Institutes, the once-giant chain of for-profit schools.

The relief will go to borrowers who enrolled at any of the dozens of Art Institute campuses across the country between Jan. 1, 2004, and Oct. 16, 2017.

The U.S. Department of Education, which reviewed evidence provided by the attorneys general of Iowa, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, concluded that the schools and its parent company, the Education Management Corp., or EDMC, made “pervasive and substantial” misrepresentations to prospective students about post-graduation employment rates, salaries and career services.

“For more than a decade, hundreds of thousands of hopeful students borrowed billions to attend The Art Institutes and got little but lies in return,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona said in a statement.

“We must continue to protect borrowers from predatory institutions — and work toward a higher education system that is affordable to students and taxpayers,” Cardona added.

More from Personal Finance:
Treasury Department announces new Series I bond rate
Why new home sales inch higher despite 7% mortgage rates
Don’t believe these money misconceptions

The Education Department said The Art Institutes falsified average graduate salaries, among other abuses.

“For example, according to a former employee, one Art Institute campus included professional tennis player Serena Williams’ annual income to ‘skew the statistics and overinflate potential program salaries,'” the department said.

Eligible borrowers will get the forgiveness automatically, whether or not they went through the formal process for loan relief for defrauded borrowers.

EDMC sold its remaining Art Institute campuses in October 2017, and all existing schools closed under separate ownership in September 2023, the Education Department said.

EDMC filed for bankruptcy in 2018. At one point, Goldman Sachs owned a large share of EDMC.

In response to a request for comment on the news, a spokesperson for Goldman Sachs said it exited the investment more than 10 years ago.

The little turtles are mostly endangered loggerheads and should be cruising the ocean. Most of them instead will spend the first few months of their lives in newly built plastic tanks at the Turtle Conservation Center at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town. The aquarium is rehabilitating around 400 of the roughly 530 sick and injured turtles that were brought in, while sending the rest to two other aquariums to spread the load.

Baby turtles have to fend for themselves from the moment they hatch on beaches and make their way to the ocean.

In South Africa, loggerheads hatch on the northeast coast on the far side of the country from Cape Town. These turtles were likely sucked in by the warm Indian Ocean Agulhas Current, carried around the tip of South Africa and spat out in the cold waters of the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Town.

That’s fairly common, said Talitha Noble-Trull, the head of the Turtle Conservation Center. She’s in charge of treating the new arrivals.

What isn’t normal is the powerful storm that recently hit the Cape Town area, leaving hundreds of baby turtles needing help.

Animals Jan 25

Ostrich, endangered salamander among 100 animals found hoarded at New York home

The conservation center usually receives a few to maybe 100 stranded young turtles in the three to four months after hatching season. It has a normal capacity of 150 turtles.

“What we haven’t seen before is over 500 turtles in two weeks, which is what the last little bit of time has brought us,” Noble-Trull said. “My budgeting plans for the year have really gone out the window.”

She estimated that each turtle will cost $500 to get back to full strength before being released into the warmer Indian Ocean in a few months. The Turtle Conservation Center has brought in a small army of volunteers to help the aquarium’s full-time staff care for them.

The turtles are ranked according to how sick they are, with some needing intensive care due to injuries, malnutrition or infection. A number is written on each shell to identify them.

While the storm was a major shock to the turtles, who are vulnerable to extreme weather and climate change, it has given Noble-Trull and other conservationists a valuable insight into another increasingly common danger.

Many of the turtles had ingested small pieces of plastic, which exited their systems after they arrived at the aquarium. Noble-Trull has a tray of plastic pieces collected in just one day, some as big as a fingernail.

The conservation team normally wouldn’t see that amount of evidence of plastic pollution in the ocean.

Turtles spend almost all their lives in the ocean, apart from when they’re born and when females return to shore to lay eggs. Because of that, they’re “ocean indicators,” Noble-Trull said.

“Little bits of soft plastic, little bits of hard plastic are floating all along the oceans and turtles are eating them. So, for us it’s very important to be collecting and capturing this data. Because these turtles are coming at us with a message. They’re not telling us. They’re shouting it at us. That our oceans are not a safe place for turtles.”

___

Pottawatomie County officials said on Facebook that a tornado struck the city of about 700 people Tuesday evening, destroying 22 homes, three RVs and five outbuildings and damaging another 13 homes and one commercial building. First responders were conducting grid searches in Westmoreland to survey damage and to look for people who may have been injured.

A Pottawatomie County spokesperson confirmed the single fatality in a news release sent to media. The name of the person who died was being withheld pending family notification.

Three people also were reported injured, but none of them were critical, the county spokesperson said in a follow-up statement.

Westmoreland is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) northwest of Topeka and is the Pottawatomie County seat.

Images posted to social media showed a tornado on the ground in Westmoreland, as well as damaged homes, uprooted trees and a flipped semi.

The county spokesperson said the entire city was without power Tuesday night and county offices were running on emergency generators. The Red Cross set up a shelter at the local high school about 6 miles (10 kilometers) from town.

Tuesday’s storms came just two days after tornadoes tore through Oklahoma on Sunday, killing four people and injuring at least 100. On Friday, tornadoes twisted through Nebraska and Iowa, demolishing homes and businesses and leaving one person dead.

The federation on Tuesday released a 154-page report on Ted Nash, who died in 2021. The report said Jennifer Fox’s allegations that Nash had groomed and sexually abused her in 1973 were believable. They met that year at a horseback-riding camp where Nash was teaching when he was 40 and Fox was 13.

Fox documented her experience in a 2018 movie “The Tale” that she told investigators was a fictionalized account of the alleged abuse. The movie did not name Nash, who was still alive at the time. The New York Times published a 2023 story about Fox’s experience — in which she revealed Nash’s identity — that led to the investigation.

“This whole process has been really, really hard and the result is like removing a lifelong festering tumor from your body,” Fox told the newspaper Tuesday.

The law firm that conducted the report was not asked to find legal evidence of abuse. Still, it said it interviewed nearly 50 witnesses who corroborated many of the allegations “and we did not uncover evidence that expressly refutes Ms. Fox’s claims or suggests a motive for Ms. Fox to fabricate her account of abuse.”

2024 paris olympics May 1

Pro-Palestinian protesters call on Olympic officials to limit Israel's participation in Paris

2024 paris olympics May 1

Olympic refugee athlete Lohalith suspended in team's 3rd doping case ahead of Paris

Among the report’s findings were that a third party turned in details of the case to the U.S. Center for SafeSport, which took jurisdiction over the matter but administratively closed the case in part because Nash had already died.

Fox turned to U.S. Rowing, which said in a news release “we determined that the gravity of Ms. Fox’s claims outweighed Mr. Nash’s inability to respond to these allegations.”

U.S. Rowing rescinded all honors it had given to Nash, including his 2005 Man of the Year and 2013 U.S. Rowing Medal of Honor.

The students are calling for universities to separate themselves from companies advancing Israel’s military efforts in Gaza and in some cases from Israel itself. Police have arrested hundreds nationwide since detainments at Columbia on April 18.

Officials are trying to resolve the protests as the academic year winds down, but students have dug in at several high-profile universities.

A look at protests on campuses:

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

Hundreds of New York City police officers began entering the campus of Columbia University on Tuesday night as dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrating against the Israel-Hamas war remained on campus.

Police wearing helmets and carrying zip ties and riot shields massed at the Ivy League university’s entrance. More than 12 hours earlier, demonstrators occupied Hamilton Hall, an administration building on campus, spreading their reach from an encampment elsewhere on the grounds that’s been there for nearly two weeks.

More than a dozen officers entered Hamilton Hall via a second floor window, using a ramp on the back of a police vehicle to gain access. Officers took protesters into custody. The exact number wasn't immediately known. Less than two hours later, police said Hamilton Hall had been cleared of protesters.

A statement released by a Columbia spokesperson late Tuesday said officers arrived on campus after the university requested help. University officials also said they believed that the group that broke into and occupied the building was led by people who are not affiliated with the school.

Police first tried to clear the encampment of Pro-Palestinian student protesters on April 18, when they arrested more than 100. But the move motivated Columbia protesters to regroup.

The university said Monday that it was beginning to suspend student protesters who defied an ultimatum to leave the encampment by Monday afternoon.

Columbia said Tuesday that students occupying the building face expulsion, that those who did not abide by the deadline terms were being suspended and seniors will be ineligible to graduate on May 15.

CALIFORNIA STATE POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY, HUMBOLDT

A weeklong occupation of the administration building at the California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, ended about 3 a.m. Tuesday, when dozens of police officers wearing helmets and wielding batons cleared protesters from campus. The university said 25 people were arrested and taken to jail. A group of demonstrators showed up at the jail later Tuesday, waving Palestinian flags as they rallied for their release.

The university on the state’s rural north coast earlier announced a “hard closure,” meaning that people were not permitted to enter or be on the 8,000-student campus without authorization.

Arrest footage posted on the Lost Coast Outpost, a digital publication, showed about 100 police officers in riot gear arriving in vans and buses and then marching in with shields at the ready.

Some officers approached a group of protesters who were chanting “Viva, viva Palestina!” and sitting in a circle outside the administration building. Police picked them up one by one, tied their hands behind their back with zip ties and led them off campus.

Damage to the school since protests started on April 22 is estimated to be over $1 million, California state Senate President Pro Tempore Mike McGuire, a Democrat whose district includes the campus, said Tuesday.

“Let’s be clear – it’s going to take time to heal, McGuire said. “Cal Poly Humboldt must be a campus where all faiths and students of all backgrounds feel safe, respected, and included. This has not been the case for Humboldt’s Jewish students and others over the past week.”

YALE UNIVERSITY

Yale authorities cleared a protesters’ encampment Tuesday morning after students heeded final warnings to leave, university officials said. Yale and New Haven, Connecticut, police officers were at the site, but no arrests were reported. Yale officials said they warned that students could be arrested and face discipline, including suspension, if they didn’t clear the grassy quad area.

Demonstrators moved their gathering to a public sidewalk area. It was the second encampment removed since last week. On April 22, police arrested nearly 50 people, including 44 students, and took down dozens of tents.

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

Police moved in on a campus encampment at the Storrs, Connecticut, school Tuesday morning and arrested 25 protesters after giving them several warnings to leave, UConn spokesperson Stephanie Reitz said.

Twenty-four of those arrested were students; one was a former student. They were charged with criminal trespass and disorderly conduct after university officials said they repeatedly ignored directives by campus police to remove tents and disperse from an encampment first set up on April 24.

Tuesday’s arrests came a day after protest leaders met with university officials

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

In a statement, protesters said the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school “has sought to shut off all outside access and visibility to the encampment."

"Meanwhile, the Harvard administration has initiated disciplinary action against nearly forty students and student workers,” the statement said.

Last week, Harvard limited access to its famous Harvard Yard to those with school identification after a camp was set up.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

The university's president, Chris Eisgruber, posted a statement on Instagram saying 13 protesters — 12 affiliated with the university — were arrested Monday night after briefly occupying Clio Hall, the campus graduate school building.

“All those arrested received summonses for trespassing and have been barred from campus,” Eisgruber said in the statement. “The students will also face University discipline, which may extend to suspension or expulsion.”

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Protesters at Brown University in Rhode Island agreed to dismantle their pro-Palestinian encampment Tuesday after school officials said five students will be invited to meet with five members of the Corporation of Brown University in May to present their arguments to divest Brown’s endowment from companies contributing to and profiting from the war in Gaza.

In addition, Brown President Christina Paxson will ask an advisory committee to make a recommendation on divestment by Sept. 30, which will be brought before the school’s governing corporation for a vote in October.

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

The school in Evanston, Illinois, said Monday that it had reached an agreement with students and faculty who represent the majority of protesters on its campus since Thursday.

The university said in a statement that it agrees to answer questions within 30 days about specific holdings and investments. It also said it would reconvene an advisory committee to ensure “any vendor who profits from the Israeli occupation" will not provide services on campus. The statement said the university plans to further invest in supporting Muslim and Jewish life on campus.

Northwestern says it will permit peaceful demonstrations that comply with university policies through June 1, which is the end of spring quarter classes.

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

In a confrontation between police and protesters at the Austin school late Monday, 79 people involved were jailed, according to the Travis County sheriff’s department. Most were charged with criminal trespass.

About 150 protesters sat on the ground as state troopers and police encircled them, with hundreds of others shouting when officers dragged someone away. After police cleared the original group of demonstrators, hundreds of students and protesters ran to block officers from leaving campus. Protesters pushed in on officers, creating a mass of shoving bodies before police used pepper spray and set off flash-bang devices to clear a path for a van to take those arrested off campus.

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Encampment organizers met with university President Carol Folt for about 90 minutes Monday. Folt declined to discuss details of what was discussed but said the purpose of the meeting was to allow her to hear the concerns of protesters. Another meeting was scheduled for Tuesday.

The university has canceled its main graduation ceremony, set for May 10. It already canceled a commencement speech by the school’s pro-Palestinian valedictorian, citing safety concerns.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

Security was tightened Tuesday at the campus a day after officials said there were “physical altercations” between dueling factions of protesters.

Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA Strategic Communications, said in a Tuesday statement that anyone involved in blocking classroom access could face expulsion or suspension.

GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Before dawn Monday, demonstrators at the school in Washington, D.C., tore down metal barricades confining them to University Yard and set up more than a dozen tents in the middle of a street.

Later in the day, there were no signs of conflict. The Metropolitan Police Department said in a statement that it will continue monitoring the situation and that the protest remained peaceful.

The university said it will move law school finals to a different building because of noise from the protests.

VIRGINIA TECH

A protest at the school in Blacksburg resulted in 82 arrests, including 53 students, a university spokesperson said Monday.

Protesters began occupying the lawn of the graduate life center Friday. After protesters took further steps to occupy the lawn and outdoor spaces Sunday, the university advised those gathered to disperse. Those who failed to comply were warned they would be charged with trespassing, the university said.

DEPAUL UNIVERSITY

Tents were erected Tuesday on the school's Chicago-area campus. The university said in a letter that tents and other structures without permits violate school policies. The school also warned that actions that interfere with operations, damage property or are disruptive will lead to disciplinary measures, including suspension, expulsion and criminal sanctions.

CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY

Dozens of students, faculty and staff camped out overnight at the Cleveland school hours after a similar encampment had been broken up and more than 20 people were detained but later released.

School officials initially had said protests would be limited to daylight hours but announced Monday night that students and others affiliated with the school would be allowed to stay at the makeshift encampment on the school’s public green.

Officials were checking the participants’ identification before they were given wristbands signifying they could remain at the site. Roughly 100 people camped out overnight without incident, officials said.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

About 30 people were detained by campus police Tuesday morning after the university said encampment protesters refused to leave. At 5:30 a.m., a university statement said protesters needed to remove tents and other items and leave the area by 6 a.m. or risk arrest.

Clearing out the encampment took approximately 45 minutes, according to the university. The university had not responded to a query about whether protesters were arrested and charged.

Tensions escalated Tuesday afternoon when protesters removed the American flag from a flagpole on campus central grounds and replaced it with a Palestinian flag, according to news outlets on the scene. Police then rehung the American flag as protesters and counter-protesters circled the area.

The university issued an alert that classes were canceled for the rest of Tuesday, the last day of scheduled classes.

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

Nine people, including six students, were arrested at the Gainesville university — where about 50 people began protesting last week — by campus police and state troopers Monday.

Steve Orlando, the school’s associate vice president of communications, said many of the protesters were “outside agitators” and they had been warned for many days that prohibited activities would result in a trespassing order, barring them from campus for three years. Individuals who didn’t comply were arrested after campus police gave them multiple warnings, he said.

Last week, university officials warned that students could face suspension and employees could be fired if they violated a series of rules.

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

The Ann Arbor school told students, staff and faculty in a letter Friday that its upcoming commencement ceremonies likely will be the site of “various student expressions, including possible demonstrations.” Last week, a demonstration at the center of the campus had grown to nearly 40 tents.

The letter noted that school policies “make clear that interfering with speakers and events is not protected speech and is a violation of university policy.”

VIRGINIA COMMONWEALTH UNIVERSITY

At the Richmond, Virginia, campus, demonstrators protesting the Israel-Hamas war clashed with police Monday night after officers tried to remove a makeshift encampment.

Protesters put up tents and built a barricade with shipping pallets. Police, some wearing riot gear, charged the line of demonstrators to clear the crowd, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported. Some protesters were seen hurling water bottles and other objects at police.

VCU said in a statement Tuesday that 13 people, including six VCU students, were charged with unlawful assembly and trespassing. VCU said officers used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

A small group of students at the downtown Portland, Oregon, school broke into its library late Monday. Students have been protesting in a park on campus and on the library steps since Thursday.

Campus was closed Tuesday as a result of the library occupation. District Attorney Mike Schmidt said the protesters’ actions had crossed into criminal behavior and those arrested would be prosecuted.

TULANE UNIVERSITY

Several dozen protesters camped in about a dozen small tents on a grassy area near an administration building Monday at Tulane University in New Orleans.

Tulane police “moved in immediately to attempt to stop the encampment," the administration said in a Tuesday afternoon news release. It added that university officials are “now focused on containing and ending the protest” at the direction of New Orleans police and Louisiana state police.

The university said six people were arrested and five students suspended after a Monday confrontation with police. The Students for a Democratic Society organization also was suspended.

About 2 p.m. Tuesday, university officials wheeled a portable electronic sign onto the lawn. “PRIVATE PROPERTY—NO TRESPASSING,” it read. “Everyone must leave this area immediately.”

The university said some classes would be held remotely.

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Police arrested protesters Monday who tried to set up an encampment at the university northeast of Atlanta. A spokesperson wouldn’t say how many people were arrested on the final day of classes before spring exams.

Athens-Clarke County jail records showed that University of Georgia police had booked 12 people into the jail by midafternoon on criminal trespassing charges. State troopers aided university police.

UNIVERSITY OF UTAH

Protesters erected an encampment at the Salt Lake City school Monday. About two dozen tents were set up on the lawn outside the university president’s office, and roughly 200 students held protest signs and Palestinian flags. Later Monday, dozens of officers in riot gear sought to break up the encampment.

Police dragged students off by their hands and feet, snapping the poles holding up tents and zip-tying those who refused to disperse. Twenty arrests were made. The university says it is against code to camp overnight on school property, and the students were given several warnings to disperse before police were called in.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA

Student protest groups posted on social media Tuesday that their encampment of dozens of tents and hundreds of people was still standing, even after police ordered them to disperse Monday night. More than 10 university buildings, including a student union and large library, near the encampment remained closed in anticipation of continued protests.

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO

In Albuquerque, police in tactical gear tore down tents and clashed briefly with protesters who occupied the University of New Mexico’s student union building for about seven hours Monday night into Tuesday morning.

University officials said 16 people were arrested, including five students and 11 people not affiliated with the school. They said the protesters vandalized the student union building and sprayed-painted graffiti across campus. They didn’t immediately provide a damage estimate.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

About 300 people attended the rally at the headquarters of the Paris Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the suburb of Saint-Denis, waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans against Israel’s “institutional participation” in the Games because of the war in Gaza.

Citing the example of Russian athletes, who will be competing at the Olympics under a neutral flag and with no Russian government officials allowed at the Games, protesters said the International Olympic Committee should apply the same protocol for the Israelis.

“They didn’t need more than four days to decide to ban Russia and Belorussia from the Olympics after the invasion of Ukraine,” said Nicolas Shahshahani, a member of the EuroPalestine activist group, who took part in Tuesday’s protest. “They are prepared to welcome the Israeli delegation.”

In an interview earlier this month, French President Emmanuel Macron backed the IOC’s decision to allow Russian athletes to compete in the Olympics despite the Ukraine invasion, but under a neutral flag.

He defended the participation of Israeli athletes under their country’s flag despite its offensive in Gaza since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel and killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the subsequent Israel-Hamas war, according to the health officials in Gaza.

“We cannot say that Israel is attacking,” Macron said. “Israel was a victim of a terrorist attack to which it is now responding to in Gaza.”

Tuesday’s protests came days after pro-Palestinian students, inspired by Gaza solidarity encampments at campuses in the United States, staged protests and tried to occupy campus buildings at France’s two prestigious universities in the Paris region.

artificial intelligence Apr 19

Olympic organizers unveil strategy for using artificial intelligence in sports

2024 paris olympics Apr 19

Olympic sports bodies criticize track and field's move to pay Paris gold medalists $50,000

On Monday, French police removed 50 students from the Sorbonne university after pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the main courtyard. Last week, protests broke out at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, known as Sciences Po, as pro-Palestinian students attempted to occupy an amphitheater.

On Friday, pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators faced each other in a tense standoff in the street outside the school. Riot police stepped in to separate the opposing groups. The protest ended peacefully, when students reached an agreement with the administration and evacuated the building late on Friday.

The Olympic Games in Paris will take place in July 26-Aug. 11 followed by the Aug. 28- Sept. 8 Paralympics.

——-

Associated Press writer Barbara Surk in Nice, France, contributed to this report.

The scene unfolded shortly after 9 p.m. as police, wearing helmets and carrying zip ties and riot shields, massed at the college’s entrance. Scores of officers climbed through a window to enter the occupied building, streaming in over a ramp raised from the top of a police vehicle to get inside. Multiple protesters were taken into custody and taken away from campus on buses.

In all, nearly 100 people were arrested during Tuesday’s confrontation, with about 40 of them coming from inside the building, an NYPD spokesperson told NBC News. Hamilton Hall was cleared by police just before 11 p.m.

The confrontation occurred more than 12 hours after the demonstrators took over Hamilton Hall shortly after midnight Tuesday, spreading their reach from an encampment elsewhere on the grounds that’s been there for nearly two weeks to protest the Israel-Hamas war. The police action happened on the 56th anniversary of a similar police action to quash an occupation of Hamilton Hall by students protesting racism and the Vietnam War.

The university, in a statement issued after the police entered the campus, described its decision to seek NYPD aid as a last resort. The police department had previously said officers wouldn’t enter the grounds without the college administration’s request or an imminent emergency. Now, law enforcement will be there through May 17, the end of the university’s commencement events.

Israel-Hamas War Apr 29

Israel-Hamas war protesters arrested in Texas, others defy Columbia University demand to leave camp

Israel-Hamas War Oct 9, 2023

What sparked the war between Israel and Hamas?

“After the University learned overnight that Hamilton Hall had been occupied, vandalized, and blockaded, we were left with no choice,” the school’s statement said, adding that school public safety personnel were forced out of the building and one facilities worker was “threatened.”

“The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing,” the statement said. “We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”

Columbia’s protests earlier this month kicked off demonstrations that now span from California to Massachusetts. As May commencement ceremonies near, administrators face added pressure to clear protesters.

More than 1,000 protesters have been arrested over the last two weeks on campuses in states including Texas, Utah, Virginia, North Carolina, New Mexico, Connecticut, Louisiana, California and New Jersey, some after confrontations with police in riot gear.

Tuesday’s police action at Columbia comes exactly 56 years after officers swept into Hamilton Hall to arrest protesters occupying the building in 1968. The students taken into custody on that April 30 had taken over the hall and other campus buildings for a week to protest racism and the Vietnam War.

Former President Donald Trump called into Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel to comment on Columbia’s turmoil as live footage of police clearing Hamilton Hall aired. Trump praised the officers.

“But it should never have gotten to this,” he told Hannity. “And they should have done it a lot sooner than before they took over the building because it would have been a lot easier if they were in tents rather than a building. And tremendous damage done, too.”

In a letter to senior NYPD officials, Columbia President Minouche Shafik said the administration was making the request that police remove protesters from the occupied building and a nearby tent encampment “with the utmost regret.”

Earlier in the day, New York City Mayor Eric Adams advised the protesters to leave before police arrived.

“Walk away from this situation now and continue your advocacy through other means,” he said. “This must end now.”

Before officers arrived, the White House condemned the standoffs at Columbia and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters had occupied two buildings until officers with batons intervened overnight and arrested 25 people. Officials estimated the northern California campus’ total damage to be upwards of $1 million.

President Joe Biden believes students occupying an academic building is “absolutely the wrong approach,” and “not an example of peaceful protest,” said National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby.

Other colleges have sought to negotiate agreements with the demonstrators in the hopes of having peaceful commencement ceremonies. As cease-fire negotiations appeared to gain steam, it wasn’t clear whether those talks would inspire an easing of protests.

Northwestern University notched a rare win when officials said they reached a compromise with students and faculty who represent the majority of protesters on its campus near Chicago to allow peaceful demonstrations through the end of spring classes.

The nationwide campus protests began at Columbia in response to Israel’s offensive in Gaza after Hamas launched a deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to stamp out Hamas, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.

Israel and its supporters have branded the university protests as antisemitic, while Israel’s critics say it uses those allegations to silence opposition. Although some protesters have been caught on camera making antisemitic remarks or violent threats, organizers of the protests, some of whom are Jewish, say it is a peaceful movement aimed at defending Palestinian rights and protesting the war.

On Columbia’s campus, protesters first set up a tent encampment almost two weeks ago. The school sent in police to clear the tents the following day, arresting more than 100 people, only for the students to return – and inspire a wave of similar encampments at campuses across the country.

Negotiations between the protesters and the college came to a standstill in recent days, and the school set a deadline for the activists to abandon the tent encampment Monday afternoon or be suspended.

Instead, protestors defied the ultimatum and took over Hamilton Hall early Tuesday, carrying in furniture and metal barricades. The demonstrators dubbed the building Hind’s Hall, honoring a young girl who was killed in Gaza under Israeli fire, and issued demands for divestment, financial transparency and amnesty.

The Columbia University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors said faculty’s efforts to help defuse the situation have been repeatedly ignored by the university’s administration despite school statutes that require consultation.

Ilana Lewkovitch, a self-described “leftist Zionist” student at Columbia, said it’s been hard to concentrate on school for weeks, amid calls for Zionists to die or leave campus. Her exams have been punctuated with chants of “say it loud, say it clear, we want Zionists out of here” in the background, she said.

Lewkovitch, who identifies as Jewish and studied at Columbia’s Tel Aviv campus, said she wished the current pro-Palestinian protests were more open to people like her who criticize Israel’s war policies but believe there should be an Israeli state.

Adams claimed Tuesday that the Columbia protests have been “co-opted by professional outside agitators.” The mayor didn’t provide specific evidence to back up that contention, which was disputed by protest organizers and participants.

NYPD officials made similar claims about “outside agitators” during the huge, grassroots demonstrations against racial injustice that erupted across the city after the death of George Floyd in 2020. In some instances, top police officials falsely labeled peaceful marches organized by well-known neighborhood activists as the work of violent extremists.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

A handful of Democrats joined with Republicans in passing the bill. The measure now goes to the Senate, but it appears doomed after the White House issued a statement Monday warning that the Biden administration opposes it. Congress shouldn’t play a role in determining whether a species has recovered, the statement said.

The Republican-authored bill comes amid national debate on the wolves’ future. Hunters and farmers across the country maintain the species is stable and have been complaining for years about wolf attacks on game species and livestock. They want to be allowed to legally kill the animals.

Conservationists insist the population remains fragile after being hunted to near-extinction by the 1960s.

In 2011 Congress stripped Endangered Species Act protection from gray wolves in the northern Rocky Mountains and the Trump administration removed protections across the rest of the continental U.S. in 2020. However, a federal judge blocked the change except in the northern Rocky Mountains. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service this past February rejected requests from conservation groups to restore protections in that six-state Rockies region, allowing Idaho, Montana and Wyoming’s state-sponsored wolf hunts to continue. The agency estimated the wolf population in the region at almost 3,000 animals at the end of 2022.

Animals and Wildlife Jan 24

Federal officials are considering adding these 10 species to the endangered list

Animals and Wildlife Dec 27, 2023

As the Endangered Species Act turns 50, those who first enforced it reflect on its mixed legacy

Wolves aren’t considered threatened in Alaska — the population there stands at between 7,000 and 11,000 animals — and they aren’t found in Hawaii. There were an estimated about 8,000 animals across the lower 48 states in 2022, according to a compilation of wildlife agency data by the Wolf Conservation Center.

Republicans argued wolves have clearly recovered and ending protections should be celebrated as a conservation success.

Democrats countered that the species still needs help. They said if protections are lifted, hunters will again push wolves to near extinction.

“Passing this bill would simply call the wolves recovered, but that does not make it so,” said Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat.

Rep. Cliff Bentz, an Oregon Republican, said wolves are “natural born killers” and that conservationists have no idea what it’s like for farmers and ranchers to get up in the middle of the night to deal with wolf attacks on their livestock.

The House approved the bill 209-205. Four Democrats sided with Republicans voting for the bill, including Yadira Caraveo of Colorado, Henry Cueller of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington state.

Bird flu has been found in nearly three-dozen dairy herds across nine states. The new testing is the latest effort by the USDA to track and understand how the virus is spreading among livestock.

Two studies will test if particles of the bird flu virus, called Type A H5N1, is found in beef for sale in the states where dairy cows have tested positive or in the muscles of dairy cows sent to slaughter. A third will test how cooking meat at different temperatures affects the virus using a bird flu surrogate.

A week ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed it found non-infectious remnants of the bird flu virus in pasteurized milk. The particles are inactive and pose no threat to consumers, experts said.

Health & Wellness Apr 25

More cows are being tested and tracked for bird flu. Here's what that means

health Apr 12

As bird flu spreads in the US, is it safe to eat eggs? What to know about the risk to humans

Scientists say there’s no evidence to suggest people can get bird flu by consuming food that’s been pasteurized or properly cooked.

The virus was first found in dairy cows this spring, and since then, H5N1 was detected in the lung tissue of a dairy cow culled and sent to slaughter.

So far, officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have not seen signs that the virus is changing to be more transmissible to people. Two farmworkers have been infected with bird flu since the outbreak began.

AP Health Writer JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday sent warning letters to 10 drugmakers, taking issue with patents on popular drugs for weight loss, diabetes, asthma and other respiratory conditions. The letters allege that certain patents filed by Novo Nordisk, GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and seven other companies are inaccurate or misleading.

Brand-name drugmakers use patents to protect their medicines and stave off cheaper, generic medicines. Most blockbuster drugs are protected by dozens of patents covering various ingredients, manufacturing processes and intellectual property. Generic drugmakers can only launch their own cheaper versions if the patents have expired or are successfully challenged in court.

“By filing bogus patent listings, pharma companies block competition and inflate the cost of prescription drugs, forcing Americans to pay sky-high prices for medicines they rely on,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan, in a statement.

Ozempic is part of a class of drugs that were originally developed to treat diabetes but which have recently been approved to treat obesity, generating a surge in prescribing. Medicare spending on the drugs has also spiked in recent years.

The drug’s manufacturer, Novo Nordisk, declined to comment.

FTC’s latest announcement follows a similar action in September when regulators challenged more than 100 patents held by drugmakers, including Abbvie, AstraZeneca and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Companies receiving the letters have 30 days to withdraw or update their patent listings, or “certify under penalty of perjury” that they are legitimate, according to the FTC. The patents are registered with the Food and Drug Administration, which reviews and approves new drugs.

The patent challenges are part of a strategy by President Joe Biden to bring down drug prices, including allowing Medicare to negotiate with drugmakers and permitting states like Florida to import cheaper drugs from other countries.

Health & Science Apr 24

Senate launches investigation into high prices of Ozempic and Wegovy in the U.S.

Biden Administration Dec 7, 2023

Biden administration threatens to cancel patents of high-priced drugs developed with taxpayer dollars

But any eventual aid distribution — which could start as soon as early May — will rely on a complicated logistical and security plan with many moving parts and details that are not yet finalized.

The relief is desperately needed, with the U.N. saying people in Gaza are on the brink of famine. But there are still widespread security concerns. And some aid groups say that with so much more needed, the focus should instead be on pushing Israel to ease obstacles to the delivery of aid on land routes.

Setting up the system is expected to cost at least $320 million, the Pentagon said Monday. Here’s how it will work:

It all starts in Cyprus

Humanitarian aid bound for Gaza through the maritime route will be delivered by air or sea to Cyprus, an island at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea.

Cyprus Foreign Minister Constantinos Kombos has said the aid will undergo security checks at Larnaca port. Using that one departure point will address Israel’s security concerns that all cargo be inspected to ensure that nothing is loaded on ships that Hamas could use against Israeli troops.

The screening will be strict and comprehensive, including the use of mobile X-ray machines, according to a Cyprus government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to publicly disclose details about the security operation. The process will involve Cypriot customs, Israeli teams, the U.S. and the United Nations Office for Project Services.

An American military official said the U.S. has set up a coordination cell in Cyprus to work with the government there, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies and partners. The group will focus on coordinating the collection and inspection of the aid, said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details.

Then to the floating platform

Once the pallets of aid are inspected, they will be loaded onto ships — mainly commercial vessels — and taken about 200 miles to the large floating pier being built by the U.S. military off the Gaza coast.

There, the pallets will be transferred onto trucks that in turn will be loaded onto two types of smaller Army boats — Logistic Support Vessels, or LSVs, and Landing Craft Utility boats, LCUs. The U.S. military official said the LSVs can hold 15 trucks each and the LCUs about five.

The Army boats will then shuttle the trucks from the pier to a floating causeway, which will be several miles away and anchored into the beach by Israeli Defense Forces.

Since Biden has made clear that no U.S. forces will step foot in Gaza, the troops doing the construction and driving and crewing the boats will be housed and fed on other ships offshore near the large floating pier.

The British Royal Navy support ship RFA Cardigan Bay will provide accommodations for hundreds of U.S. sailors and soldiers working to establish the pier. Another contracted ship will also be used for housing, but officials did not identify it.

Small boats to the causeway

The small Army boats will sail to the two-lane, 550-meter (1,800-foot) causeway.

The U.S. military official said an American Army engineering unit has teamed up with an Israeli engineering unit in recent weeks to practice the installation of the causeway, training on an Israeli beach just up the coast. The U.K. Hydrographic Office also has worked with the U.S. and the Israeli military to analyze the shoreline and prepare for the final installation.

U.S. vessels will push the floating causeway into place, shoving it into the shoreline, where the Israeli Defense Forces will be ready to secure it.

Trucks loaded with the pallets of aid will drive off the Army boats onto the causeway and down to a secure area on land where they will drop off the aid and immediately turn around and return to the boats. The trucks will repeat that loop over and over, and they will be confined to that limited route to maintain security.

They will be driven by personnel from another country, but U.S. officials have declined to say which one.

Distribution to aid agencies and civilians

Aid groups will collect the supplies for distribution on shore, at a port facility built by the Israelis just southwest of Gaza City. Officials say they expect about 90 truckloads of aid a day initially and that it will quickly grow to about 150 a day.

The U.N. is working with USAID to set up the logistics hub on the beach.

There will be three zones at the port: one controlled by the Israelis where aid from the pier will be dropped off, another where the aid will be transferred and a third where Palestinian drivers contracted by the U.N. will wait to pick up the aid before taking it to distribution points.

Aid agencies, however, say this maritime corridor isn’t enough to meet the needs in Gaza and must be just one part of a broader Israeli effort to improve sustainable, land-based deliveries of aid to avert famine.

The groups, the U.N., the U.S. and other governments have pointed to Israel’s aid restrictions and its failure to safeguard humanitarian workers as reasons for the reduction in food shipments through land crossings, although they credit Israel with making some improvements recently.

Security onshore and off

U.S. Gaza envoy David Satterfield said last week that only about 200 trucks a day were getting into Gaza, far short of the 500 that international aid organizations say are needed.

A key concern is security — both from militants and the Israeli military, which has been criticized for its killing of aid workers.

Sonali Korde, a USAID official, said key agreements for security and handling the aid deliveries are still being negotiated. Those include how Israeli forces will operate in Gaza to ensure that aid workers are not harmed.

Aid groups have been shaken by the Israeli airstrike that killed seven World Central Kitchen aid workers on April 1 as they traveled in clearly marked vehicles on a delivery mission authorized by Israel.

And there has already been one mortar attack at the site by militants, reflecting the ongoing threats from Hamas, which has said it would reject the presence of any non-Palestinians in Gaza.

U.S. and Israeli officials have declined to provide specifics on the security. But the U.S. military official said it will be far more robust when deliveries begin than it is now. And there will be daily assessments of the force protection needs there.

The IDF will handle security on the shore, and the U.S. military will provide its own security for the Army and Navy forces offshore.

___

Associated Press reporters Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Cyprus, and Ellen Knickmeyer in Washington contributed.

The insects’ synchronized emergence is an evolutionary strategy, scientists say. Birds, raccoons and other predators can eat only so many of them. So the more cicadas emerge together, the better the odds that more will live on to reproduce and pass along their genes. 

“They have the safety-in-numbers strategy,” said Chris Simon, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Connecticut who studies the insects.

The rare cicadas that lose track of time and emerge without their kin, by contrast, are sometimes called “stragglers.” Most small groups of stragglers get snapped up and don’t survive to reproduce. 

“Natural selection has favored individuals who wait, because the ones who don’t wait get eaten,” Simon said.

This summer, the number of periodical cicadas is expected to be extra large, as two broods emerge at the same time. The last time these two emerged together was in 1803. Tens of billions of the insects are predicted to surface. Users of the Cicada Safari app, which is designed to report cicada sightings and help scientists track the insects, have tallied more than 1,000 sightings in Georgia and hundreds in North Carolina and Alabama. 

Periodical cicadas fall into two categories of brood, or age class: those that take 13 years to emerge and those that take 17 years. Temperature seems to trigger when they pop out, but how exactly they set their internal clocks or communicate when to come up from the ground together remains somewhat mysterious. 

Cicadas

Science Jan 20

Billions of cicadas will emerge in the US this year in a rare double-brood event

Wildlife Apr 24

Cicadas are so noisy in a South Carolina county that residents are calling the police

Wildlife Apr 1

Cicadas are nature's weirdos. They pee stronger than us and an STD can turn them into zombies

What’s more, scientists say they’ve noticed some changes in the insects’ rhythms, which has led to hypotheses that rising temperatures may be rewiring the internal clocks of some periodical cicadas.

Gene Kritsky, an entomologist and cicada expert at Mount St. Joseph University in Ohio, said that as average temperatures have climbed higher because of global warming, the dates of emergence have shifted earlier in the calendar year.

“Cicadas are insects of the climate,” he said, adding, “They’re now emerging almost 10 days to two weeks earlier than they did in 1940.” 

John Cooley, a University of Connecticut cicada researcher who maps cicada broods, said he expects the bugs’ range to shift northward as the climate warms and the plant species they prefer shift north.

He also noted an increase in reports of stragglers, a trend that is intriguing researchers. 

“If you look at the data, we definitely have more reports of straggling now than we ever did in the past,” Cooley said. “That could be because there’s more straggling than there was in the past or because we have the internet and if you see this strange bug in the yard, you can send it in.”

Simon said Brood XIII, which is emerging this year, produced a record number of stragglers in 2020.

“This time four years ago, there were so many that they were out for the entire four weeks,” she said. “They weren’t completely eaten. They were able to sing and lay eggs. So they could be forming a new population.”

“They’re definitely responding to climate warming and growing season length,” Simon added.

Simon has a theory about how climate change may be playing a role: She thinks rising temperatures are lengthening the growing seasons of the plants that cicadas feed on, supercharging the insects’ development underground. That, in turn, may cause many more “stragglers” to emerge early. Eventually, she said, the entire population will adapt and shift timing.  

Simon predicted that 17-year cicada broods will shift to become 13-year cicadas. And 13-year cicadas might emerge every nine years. 

If the theory proves true, it would be yet another example of how climate change is disrupting the regular cadences that have governed the natural world.  

Periodical cicadas, which are harmless to people, are distributed across the Eastern and Midwestern U.S. Unlike annual cicada species, which reappear every year, the emergence of cicadas like the ones popping out now in the Southeast is a special event. The U.S. is home to 12 broods that emerge on 17-year cycles and three broods that have 13-year cycles.  

During their years underground, periodical cicadas spend their time feeding on plant roots. Once they’re above ground, they participate in a song-filled mating ritual, trying to lay eggs before they become lunch for a bird or a raccoon.

Scientists are still trying to figure out exactly how cicadas select a particular span of days to emerge together. 

Although temperature clearly plays a role, ground temperatures are rarely uniform in cicada habitat, and the insects are often buried at different layers in the soil. A study this year said there’s not an obvious explanation for the success of cicadas’ coordination and suggested that scientists should investigate whether they can communicate beneath the ground. 

“Nobody’s ever studied this,” Simon said.

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

• Grizzly bears are set to be reintroduced to Washington state, after years of debate
• Climate change threatens the coastal Gullah Geechee
• Goldman Environmental Prize awarded to Latina organizer fighting air pollution crisis

“We’ve all seen the movies where the babies get swapped in the hospital, when the parents take the wrong one home,” a mom named Maisie, who lives in the U.K., said in a TikTok video. “Never in a million years did I think this was something I’d have to worry about. But yes, it did actually happen to us.”

“My newborn baby was swapped at birth,” Maisie captioned her video with more than 1 million views. The National Health Service has confirmed the incident and says it is investigating.

Maisie shared that 48 hours after she delivered a daughter named Isabella in September 2023, hospital staff placed the baby under phototherapy lamps for medical reasons.

“Because of her condition, she needed to be monitored very closely,” Maisie said in her video. She explained that her room was across the hallway from Isabella’s nursery.

“She was being monitored every two hours by the nurses so they definitely knew who me and Isabella were,” Maisie said in her video. “But night number two in the hospital is when the unthinkable happened and I was given the complete wrong baby.”

Maisie explained that she woke up at 3 a.m. and went to see Isabella, who was lying in a cot in her nursery.

“I … went off to the toilet and on my way back, the nurses called me into the office because they had Isabella in there,” she said. “This did raise a few little red flags, just because I was told she wasn’t allowed out of her phototherapy lamp. And of course, I did ask them, but the midwives explained to me that they had her in the office because she had been crying loads and she just wouldn’t settle.”

Maisie (who was only two days postpartum and very tired) said she picked up the baby and went back to her room.

According to Maisie, when the midwives came to check on Isabella, “They were saying how much she looks like me.” After a few hours, Maisie said she asked the nurses when Isabella should return to her lamp.

“They told me to get her undressed and ready,” said Maisie. She said she almost “had a heart attack” when she began changing the baby’s diaper to discover it was a boy.

“Isabella was definitely born a girl, so I honestly nearly passed out and I pressed that emergency button,” Maisie said in the video. “I was probably being really impatient but nobody turned up for about a minute. So I picked up the baby and I stormed into the office. All I saw was red and I was demanding for them to tell me where Isabella was, because this was not my baby.”

Maisie said the nurses’ “faces went white.”

“The reasoning behind it was apparently because I looked identical to this little boy’s mom so they just thought that I was her, without checking,” said Maisie in her video.

According to the mom, who was hospitalized for five days, “it was never spoken about again.”

“I’m not even sure if the other mom knew what happened, which is really worrying,” said Maisie.

In a different video, Maisie stated she had a “legal meeting” about what happened.

Maisie did not respond to a request for comment from TODAY.com, nor did she name the hospital in her video.

A spokesperson from University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust confirms to TODAY.com that the incident described by Maisie occurred at Poole Hospital.

The spokesperson pointed TODAY.com to a website statement:

“We are investigating an incident in our maternity unit in September 2023 in which a baby was temporarily handed to the wrong mother. We deeply regret any distress that was caused and are committed to providing full support to the affected families. The safety of our parents and babies is the highest priority. We have fully reviewed all our safety procedures and we want to reassure you this was an isolated incident.”

According to the website, in addition to hospital staff identifying babies with name bands, “Since this incident we have reminded staff to ensure a member of our team always walks out with you when you take your baby home for the first time.”

The BBC reported in March 2023 that maternity staff at Poole Hospital were issued a “statutory warning notice” by the Care Quality Commission for not investigating problems in a “thoroughly or in a timely way.”

According to the BBC, University Hospitals Dorset “said it was improving.”

This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:

• Who is Mother’s Day really for? Moms and grandmothers sound off
• What to say? One woman shares the texts that actually helped after her mom died
• A police officer once rescued an abandoned infant. Two decades later, fate brought them together

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has written in general terms about ICC action against Israeli troops and officials, and Israel’s foreign ministry has said it is also tracking reports of pending action.

The ICC was established in 2002 as the permanent court of last resort to prosecute individuals responsible for the world’s most heinous atrocities – war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression.

The Rome Statute creating the ICC was adopted in 1998 and entered into force when it got 60 ratifications on July 1, 2002. The U.N. General Assembly endorsed the ICC, but the court is independent.

Without a police force, the ICC relies on member states to arrest suspects, which has proven to be a major obstacle to prosecutions.

Netanyahu said Friday on the social platform X that Israel “will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”

“While the ICC will not affect Israel’s actions, it would set a dangerous precedent,” he wrote.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry said late Sunday that it had informed missions abroad of “rumors” that the court could order the arrest of senior Israeli political and military officials. The ministry did not give a source for the rumors.

In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, the court’s prosecution office declined to comment in detail.

What is the ICC?

The ICC’s 124 member states have signed on to the Rome Statute. Dozens of countries did not sign and do not accept the court’s jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide and other crimes. They include Israel, the United States, Russia and China.

The ICC becomes involved when nations are unable or unwilling to prosecute crimes on their territory. Israel argues that it has a functioning court system, and disputes over a nation’s ability or willingness to prosecute have fueled past disputes between the court and individual countries.

In 2020, then-President Donald Trump slapped economic and travel sanctionson the ICC prosecutor and another senior prosecution office staffer. The ICC staff were looking into U.S. and allies’ troops and intelligence officials for possible war crimes in Afghanistan.

President Joe Biden, whose administration has provided crucial military and political support for the Gaza offensive, lifted the sanctions in 2021.

The ICC has 17 ongoing investigations, has issued a total of 42 arrest warrants and taken 21 suspects into custody. Its judges have convicted 10 suspects and acquitted four.

Israel-Hamas War Apr 30

Police in riot gear enter Columbia University to clear out Pro-Palestinian protesters

Israel-Hamas War Apr 30

Ahead of visit to Israel, US's Blinken presses Hamas to accept new proposal for Gaza cease-fire

In its early years, the court was criticized for focusing on crimes in Africa — 10 of its investigations are in African nations — but now it has investigations in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

What is the ICC’s relationship to Israel and Palestinian territories?

The U.N. General Assembly raised the Palestinians’ status in 2012 from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join international organizations including the ICC.

The ICC accepted “The State of Palestine” as a member in 2015, a year after the Palestinians accepted the court’s jurisdiction.

The court’s chief prosecutor at the time announced in 2021 that she was opening an investigation into possible crimes on Palestinian territory. Israel often levies accusations of bias at U.N. and international bodies, and Netanyahu slammed the decision as hypocritical and antisemitic.

Current ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan visited Ramallah and Israel in December, meeting Palestinian officials and families of Israelis killed or taken hostage by Hamas militants in the Oct. 7 attack that sparked the Israel-Hamas war.

Khan called Hamas’ actions “some of the most serious international crimes that shock the conscience of humanity, crimes which the ICC was established to address,” and called for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.

Khan said “international humanitarian law must still apply” in the Israel-Hamas war and “the Israeli military knows the law that must be applied.” After the visit, Khan said an ICC investigation into possible crimes by Hamas militants and Israeli forces “is a priority for my office.”

Who else has the ICC charged?

A year ago after the court issued a warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine. Russia responded by issuing its own arrest warrants for Khan and ICC judges.

Other high-profile leaders charged by the court include ousted Sudanese strongman Omar al-Bashir on allegations including genocide in his country’s Darfur region. Former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi was captured and killed by rebels shortly after the ICC issued a warrant for his arrest on charges linked to the brutal suppression of anti-government protests in 2011.

A certain type of fee is popping up on more and more bills, and experts say it can range anywhere from a couple bucks to $1,000.

“That’s the facility fee. They bill the insurance company $212, but they knock it down to $60.21,” said Paul Paoli, who said he was surprised to see an unexpected $60.21 charge for his last doctor’s appointment.

It wasn’t for his cancer treatment, but rather for a “facility fee” for his hospital visit. The explanation of benefits does not detail what the facility fee covers.  

“It’s not transparent, you know, because most of us are used to a copay and you pay it and you’re down the road, and then now this has come up,” said Paoli.

Facility fees are becoming more common across the country.

Abe Scarr with the Public Interest Research Group of Illinois explained why.

“More and more we’re seeing these mega health systems, hospital systems, and as they grow and have more market power, that’s when we start to see things like this, these arbitrary fees that they’re only able to get away with because consumers don’t really have much choice,” said Scarr.

Scarr said knowing how much the fees may cost can be hard to predict.

“They don’t work in any predictable way. So we’ve seen them as small as $4 and up to $1,000. And they’re often not disclosed until after the fact. So it’s not necessarily a percentage of your bill, or anything tied to any other part of your bill. It’s a tacked-on fee,” said Scarr.

As Paoli learned, asking for the cost of the facility fee at the time you schedule your appointment may not lead to a clear answer.

“I said, ‘What’s the facility fee?’ And he goes, ‘Well, there’s going to be a fee, but I can’t tell you what it is.’ I go, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Well it depends on how long or this or that,'” said Paoli.

According to a new report from PIRG, 15 states across the country passed laws about facility fees. Illinois and Wisconsin are not included in the list, but last year, Indiana passed a law requiring more transparency about facility fees.

Connecticut, Colorado, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Texas and Washington state all passed laws either restricting or banning facility fees on patient’s medical bills.

Scarr said if you’re billed this fee, you can try disputing it.

“Bring it up with your insurer, contest it with the hospital or provider, and file a complaint with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or here in Illinois with the Attorney General’s Office. I can’t say that that’s going to be successful, any of those disputes, but it’s always worth trying,” said Scarr.

After he spoke up, Paoli got his insurance company to cover the entire cost of his facility fee.

“I can afford it, but not everybody can afford it,” said Paoli.

The event marks the king’s first formal public engagement since Feb. 6, when Buckingham Palace announced that he would be taking a break from public duties to focus on his treatment for an undisclosed type of cancer.

It will be the first of several public appearances Charles will make in the coming weeks as he prepares to host a state visit by the emperor and empress of Japan in June.

It is unclear how many of the summer’s traditional royal events, including the king’s formal birthday parade and the horse racing at Royal Ascot, Charles will attend as his treatment continues. The palace said last week that doctors were “very encouraged” by the king’s progress, but his schedule would be adjusted as needed to protect his recovery.

British Royal Family Apr 21

King Charles and Queen Camilla seen going to church for late Queen Elizabeth's 98th birthday

Apr 30

Kate Middleton and Prince William share never-before-seen pic on 13th wedding anniversary

For now, Tuesday’s appearance gives Charles another opportunity to raise awareness of the benefits of early diagnosis and treatment of cancer and other health problems as he has done throughout his illness.

Unlike most royals before him, Charles chose to publicly disclose details about his health when he first underwent treatment for an enlarged prostate and later when he was diagnosed with cancer. The decision raised awareness of these issues.

The National Health Service in England said the number of people seeking advice about prostate problems increased 11-fold in the weeks after Charles’ announced he was undergoing treatment.

Relying too heavily on the search engine, though, can feed a common mental trap known as availability bias, says Cynthia Borja, a project leader at The Decision Lab, a think tank where researchers study how people make decisions.

Availability bias is the tendency to think easily accessible information is the most factual information.

But Google’s algorithm sometimes shows users unreliable or even misleading news sources. The first result you see isn’t necessarily the most accurate one.

“If you are not applying a really critical lens and making sure that you’re checking more than one source, all you’re doing is getting information that is biased from one perspective,” Borja says.

How to avoid availability bias

To curb your availability bias, Borja recommends consulting multiple sources of different types.

“I never find a single page and go for that solution,” Borja says. “I find something on a university page then I try to find one from a nonprofit on the same thing.”

Say you’re searching for tips on how to build muscle fast and come across a study. Be sure to compare its findings with another source and look into who funded the research. Even if you’re reading a reputable publication, you should check that the sources they are citing are also legitimate.

You can learn to spot misinformation by practicing something called “lateral reading,” Google executive Beth Goldberg told CNBC Make It.

This is where you try to verify information you read online by opening new tabs to consult additional sources and evaluate the credibility of the author, organization, and website that published the information.

″[It’s] looking up the funder, looking up the name of the website and where it’s from, and really digging in and getting other sources to verify what’s in the first tab that you’re on,” says Goldberg.

And, if you have the time, seek sources outside the internet.

“Books still have value and libraries still exist,” Borja says. “There are still ways to find information that maybe doesn’t fall prey to the algorithm you have in Google.”

Google is a useful tool, but you want it to help inform your thought process, not override it.

Want to make extra money outside of your day job? Sign up for CNBC’s new online course How to Earn Passive Income Online to learn about common passive income streams, tips to get started and real-life success stories.

The FSIS was notified that the German establishment produced a portion of the identified lots without inspection before its shipment to the United States for distribution. There have been no confirmed reports of illness through consumption of these products, however, concerned buyers are advised to contact a healthcare provider.

The recall covers the 5.29-oz plastic packages containing “Stockmeyer PROSCIUTTO Product of GERMANY” with lot codes 09118-3A, 09118-3B, 09120-3A, 09120-3B, 13133-3A, 13133-3B, 13104-3A, 13104-3B, 13105-3A, 13105-3B, 13109-3A and 13109-3B. 

Produced on dates between Sept. 25, 2023, through March 6, 2024, these recalled items have “BEST BEFORE:” dates of 4/28/2024, 5/26/2024, 7/7/2024, 8/4/2024, 8/11/2024 and 10/7/2024. 

Impacted states include California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

The FSIS advises buyers not to consume the product and to throw it away or return to the place of purchase.

Any further questions about the recall can be directed to Luann Servidio, Director of Imports, conSup North America Inc., at 973-628-7330 or L.Servidio@consup.us. 

The DEA’s proposal, which still must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, would recognize the medical uses of cannabis and acknowledge it has less potential for abuse than some of the nation’s most dangerous drugs. However, it would not legalize marijuana outright for recreational use.

The agency’s move, confirmed to the AP on Tuesday by five people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive regulatory review, clears the last significant regulatory hurdle before the agency’s biggest policy change in more than 50 years can take effect.

Once OMB signs off, the DEA will take public comment on the plan to move marijuana from its current classification as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and LSD. It moves pot to Schedule III, alongside ketamine and some anabolic steroids, following a recommendation from the federal Health and Human Services Department. After the public-comment period the agency would publish the final rule.

marijuana Mar 26

Where is marijuana legal in the US? A state-by-state guide

news Sep 27, 2023

Landmark marijuana financing bill clears big hurdle in the Senate

It comes after President Joe Biden called for a review of federal marijuana law in October 2022 and moved to pardon thousands of Americans convicted federally of simple possession of the drug. He has also called on governors and local leaders to take similar steps to erase marijuana convictions.

“Criminal records for marijuana use and possession have imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities,” Biden said in December. “Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana. It’s time that we right these wrongs.”

The election year announcement could help Biden, a Democrat, boost flagging support, particularly among younger voters.

Schedule III drugs are still controlled substances and subject to rules and regulations, and people who traffic in them without permission could still face federal criminal prosecution.

Some critics argue the DEA shouldn’t change course on marijuana, saying rescheduling isn’t necessary and could lead to harmful side effects.

On the other end of the spectrum, others argue say marijuana should be dropped from the controlled-substances list completely and instead regulated like alcohol.

Federal drug policy has lagged behind many states in recent years, with 38 having already legalized medical marijuana and 24 legalizing its recreational use.

That’s helped fuel fast growth in the marijuana industry, with an estimated worth of nearly $30 billion. Easing federal regulations could reduce the tax burden that can be 70% or more for businesses, according to industry groups. It could also make it easier to research marijuana, since it’s very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies on Schedule I substances.

The immediate effect of rescheduling on the nation’s criminal justice system would likely be more muted, since federal prosecutions for simple possession have been fairly rare in recent years. Biden has already pardoned thousands of Americans convicted of possessing marijuana under federal law.

___

Goodman reported from Miami, Mustian from New Orleans. AP writer Colleen Long contributed.

The EPA said its action will protect Americans from health risks while allowing certain commercial uses to continue with robust worker protections.

The rule banning methylene chloride is the second risk management rule to be finalized by President Joe Biden’s administration under landmark 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act. The first was an action last month to ban asbestos, a carcinogen that kills tens of thousands of Americans every year but is still used in some chlorine bleach, brake pads and other products.

“Exposure to methylene chloride has devastated families across this country for too long, including some who saw loved ones go to work and never come home,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. The new rule , he said, “brings an end to unsafe methylene chloride practices and implements the strongest worker protections possible for the few remaining industrial uses, ensuring no one in this country is put in harm’s way by this dangerous chemical.”

US & World

Environmental Protection Agency Apr 25

Tough new EPA rules would force coal-fired power plants to capture emissions or shut down

news Apr 10

New EPA limits on ‘forever chemicals' in drinking water could cost $1.5 billion per year to implement

Environmental Protection Agency Apr 9

New EPA rule says 200 US chemical plants must reduce toxic emissions that are likely to cause cancer

Methylene chloride, also called dichloromethane, is a colorless liquid that emits a toxic vapor that has killed at least 88 workers since 1980, the EPA said. Long-term health effects include a variety of cancers, including liver cancer and lung cancer, and damage to the nervous, immune and reproductive systems.

The EPA rule would ban all consumer uses but allow certain “critical” uses in the military and industrial processing, with worker protections in place, said Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

Methylene chloride will continue to be allowed to make refrigerants as an alternative to other chemicals that produce greenhouse gases and contribute to climate change, Freedhoff said. It also will be allowed for use in electric vehicle batteries and for critical military functions.

“The uses we think can safely continue (all) happen in sophisticated industrial settings, and in some cases there are no real substitutes available,” Freedhoff said.

The chemical industry has argued that the EPA is overstating the risks of methylene chloride and that adequate protections have mitigated health risks.

The American Chemistry Council, the industry’s top lobbying group, called methylene chloride “an essential compound” used to make many products and goods Americans rely on every day, including paint stripping, pharmaceutical manufacturing and metal cleaning and degreasing.

An EPA proposal last year could introduce “regulatory uncertainty and confusion” with existing exposure limits set by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the group said.

The chemical council also said it was concerned that the EPA had not fully evaluated the rule’s impacts on the domestic supply chain and could end up prohibiting up to half of all end uses subject to regulation under the Toxic Substances Control Act.

While the EPA banned one consumer use of methylene chloride in 2019, use of the chemical has remained widespread and continues to pose significant and sometimes fatal danger to workers, the agency said. The EPA’s final risk management rule requires companies to rapidly phase down manufacturing, processing and distribution of methylene chloride for all consumer uses and most industrial and commercial uses, including in home renovations.

Consumer use will be phased out within a year, and most industrial and commercial uses will be prohibited within two years.

Liz Hitchcock, director of a safer chemicals program for the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future, praised the new rule but added: “As glad as we are to see today’s rule banning all consumer and most commercial uses, we are concerned that limits to its scope will allow continued exposure for too many workers to methylene chloride’s dangerous and deadly effects.”

Wendy Hartley, whose son Kevin died from methylene chloride poisoning after refinishing a bathtub at work, called the new rule “a huge step that will protect vulnerable workers.”

Kevin Hartley, 21, of Tennessee, died in 2017. He was an organ donor, Wendy Hartley said, adding that because of the EPA’s actions, “Kevin’s death will continue to save lives.”

Previously, the task force had said women could choose to start breast cancer screening as young as 40, with a stronger recommendation that they get the exams every two years from age 50 through 74.

The announcement Tuesday from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force makes official a draft recommendation announced last year. The recommendations were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“It’s a win that they are now recognizing the benefits of screening women in their 40s,” said Dr. Therese Bevers of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She was not involved in the guidance.

Other medical groups, including the American College of Radiology and the American Cancer Society, suggest mammograms every year — instead of every other year — starting at age 40 or 45, which may cause confusion, Bevers said, but “now the starting age will align with what many other organizations are saying.”

Breast cancer death rates have fallen as treatment continues to improve. But breast cancer is still the second-most common cause of cancer death for U.S. women. About 240,000 cases are diagnosed annually and nearly 43,000 women die from breast cancer.

The nudge toward earlier screening is meant to address two vexing issues: the increasing incidence of breast cancer among women in their 40s — it’s risen 2% annually since 2015 — and the higher breast cancer death rate among Black women compared to white women, said task force vice chair Dr. John Wong of Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

“Sadly, we know all too well that Black women are 40% more likely to die from breast cancer than white women,” Wong said. Modeling studies predict that earlier screening may help all women, and have “even more benefit for women who are Black,” he said.

Here are more details on what’s changed, why it’s important and who should pay attention.

When should I get my first mammogram?

Age 40 is when mammograms should start for women, transgender men and nonbinary people at average risk. They should have the X-ray exam every other year, according to the new guidance. Other groups recommend annual mammograms, starting at 40 or 45.

The advice does not apply to women who’ve had breast cancer or those at very high risk of breast cancer because of genetic markers. It also does not apply to women who had high-dose radiation therapy to the chest when they were young, or to women who’ve had a lesion on previous biopsies.

What about women 75 and older?

It’s not clear whether older women should continue getting regular mammograms. Studies rarely include women 75 and older, so the task force is calling for more research.

Bevers suggests that older women talk with their doctors about the benefits of screening, as well as harms like false alarms and unnecessary biopsies.

What about women with dense breasts?

Mammograms don’t work as well for women with dense breasts, but they should still get the exams.

The task force would like to see more evidence about additional tests such as ultrasounds or MRIs for women with dense breasts. It’s not yet clear whether those types of tests would help detect cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage, Wong said.

Does this affect insurance coverage?

Congress already passed legislation requiring insurers to pay for mammograms for women 40 and older without copays or deductibles. In addition, the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover task force recommendations with an “A” or “B” letter grade. The mammography recommendation has a “B” grade, meaning it has moderate net benefit.

A hearing on those issues — including a request from Jamie Spears for a broad ruling dismissing them — had been scheduled for Monday but was pulled from the court calendar after the settlement was approved by a judge on Friday.

Britney Spears was taken out of the conservatorship in November 2021, after a pair of speeches she made to a judge turned what had been a growing public sentiment against it into a cause best known by the hashtag #FreeBritney.

But several elements remained and dragged on in court, including final payments to the attorneys who helped operate the conservatorship. Spears’ attorney Mathew Rosengart had also sought a public reckoning over what he said was financial malfeasance by Jamie Spears and allegations of excessive surveillance of Spears.

All of that will now be dispensed with in the settlement whose terms were not disclosed in a series of filings last week, one of which said Jamie Spears had been “fully and finally discharged as Former Conservator of the Estate.”

“Although the conservatorship was terminated in November, 2021, her wish for freedom is now truly complete,” Rosengart said in a statement. “As she desired, her freedom now includes that she will no longer need to attend or be involved with court or entangled with legal proceedings in this matter. It has been our honor and privilege to represent, protect, and defend Britney Spears.”

The trial had been slated to begin next month.

Jamie Spears’ attorney, Alex Weingarten, said the settlement was confidential at the insistence of her lawyer.

“Jamie has nothing to hide and would be happy to disclose everything about every aspect of the conservatorship so that the public knows the actual truth,” Weingarten said in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday. “Jamie loves his daughter very much and has always done everything he can to protect her.”

In her memoir, “ The Woman in Me,” published last year, Spears said she felt that her father had “always been all about the money.”

She married longtime boyfriend Sam Asghari months after the conservatorship ended, but Asghari filed for divorce just over a year later. The divorce has yet to be finalized and the two are still legally wed.

And while she has dabbled in music including a 2022 collaboration with Elton John, in January she shot down rumors of a new album and vowed to “never return to the music industry.”

“These carriers failed to protect the information entrusted to them. Here, we are talking about some of the most sensitive data in their possession: customers’ real-time location information, revealing where they go and who they are,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement released Monday.

Officials first began investigating the carriers back in 2019 after they were found selling customers’ location data to third-party data aggregators. Fines were proposed in 2020, but carriers were given time to argue against the claims before the fines were imposed.

The FCC argues that the four firms are required to take reasonable measures to protect certain consumer data per federal law.

“The FCC order lacks both legal and factual merit,” AT&T said in a statement. “It unfairly holds us responsible for another company’s violation of our contractual requirements to obtain consent, ignores the immediate steps we took to address that company’s failures, and perversely punishes us for supporting life-saving location services like emergency medical alerts and roadside assistance that the FCC itself previously encouraged. We expect to appeal the order after conducting a legal review.”

T-Mobile faces the largest fine at $80 million. Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile since the investigation began, received a $12 million charge. The FCC hit Verizon with a $47 million penalty, and AT&T was issued a $57 million fee.

The Wallygator Facebook page has been sharing updates on the search for Wally since late last week.

The theft apparently occurred on Sunday, April 21, in Brunswick, Georgia, according to Wally’s owner Joie Henney.

After the initial post on Wally being stolen, the gator’s owner on Sunday reported that Wally was taken by a person who likes to drop gators in people’s yards “to terrorize them.” The state department of natural resources then got a trapper who captured Wally and released him into a swamp with fellow alligators.

“The swamp is very large and the trapper said the chances of them finding Wally is slim to none,” the post read.

In stepped the Gator Boys to try and recover Wally, but as of Monday, April 29, 2024, they were still gathering info to track down Wally’s exact location.

For now, the “Where’s Wally” search continues.

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser.

A total of 28 shows earned a Tony nod or more, with the musical “The Outsiders,” an adaptation of the beloved S. E. Hinton novel and the Francis Ford Coppola film, earning 12 nominations; a starry revival of “Cabaret” starring Eddie Redmayne, nabbing nine; and “Appropriate,” Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ searing play about a family reunion in Arkansas where everyone has competing motivations and grievances, grabbing eight.

Rachel McAdams, making her Broadway debut in “Mary Jane,” earned a best actress in a play nomination, while “Succession” star Jeremy Strong, got his first ever nomination, for a revival of “An Enemy of the People.” Jessica Lange in “Mother Play,” Sarah Paulson in “Appropriate” and Amy Ryan, who stepped in at the last minute for a revival of “Doubt,” also earned nominations in the best actress in a play category.

“The Big Bang Theory” star Jim Parsons earned a supporting nod for “Mother Play,” and Daniel Radcliffe on his fifth Broadway show, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Merrily We Roll Along,” won his first nomination.

Redmayne in his second show on Broadway got a nod as best lead actor in a musical, as did Brian d’Arcy James for “Days of Wine and Roses,” Brody Grant in “The Outsiders,” Jonathan Groff in “Merrily We Roll Along” and 73-year-old Dorian Harewood in “The Notebook,” the adaptation of Nicholas Sparks romantic tearjerker. Harewood, in his first Broadway show in 46 years, landed his first Tony nomination.

Redmayne’s “Cabaret” co-star Gayle Rankin earned a nomination for best actress in a musical, as did Eden Espinosa in “Lempicka,” Maleah Joi Moon in “Hell’s Kitchen,” Kelli O’Hara in “Days of Wine and Roses” and 71-year-old Maryann Plunkett, who plays the elderly wife at the heart of “The Notebook.”

Steve Carell in his Broadway debut in a poorly received revival of the classic play “Uncle Vanya” failed to secure a nod, but starry producers who earned Tony nods include Keys, Angelina Jolie (for “The Outsiders”) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (for “Suffs”).

The best new musical crown will be a battle between “Hell’s Kitchen,” “The Outsiders,” the dance-heavy, dialogue-less stage adaptation of Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album “Illinois,” “Suffs,” based on the American suffragists of the early 20th century, and “Water for Elephants,” which combines Sara Green’s 2006 bestseller with circus elements.

The best new play Tony will pit “Stereophonic” against “Mother Play,” Paula Vogel’s play about a mother and her kids spanning 1964 to the 21st century; “Mary Jane,” Amy Herzog’s humanistic portrait of a divorced mother of a young boy with health issues; “Prayer for the French Republic,” Joshua Harmon’s sprawling family comedy-drama that deals with Zionism, religious fervency and antisemitism; and “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” Jocelyn Bioh’s comedy about the lives of West African women working at a salon.

The nominations marked a smashing of the Tony record for most women named in a single season. The 2022 Tony Awards had held the record for most female directing nominees, with four total across the two races — musical and play. Only 10 women have gone on to win a directing crown.

This year, three women were nominated for best play direction — Lila Neugebauer (“Appropriate”), Anne Kauffman (“Mary Jane”) and Whitney White (“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”) — while four were nominated in the musical category — Maria Friedman (“Merrily We Roll Along“), Leigh Silverman (“Suffs”) Jessica Stone (“Water for Elephants”) and Danya Taymor (“The Outsiders”).

A spring barrage of new shows — 14 shows opened in an 11-day span this year — is not unusual these days as producers hope their work will be fresh in the mind of voters ahead of the Tony Awards ceremony on June 16.

There were some firsts this season, including “Here Lies Love” with Broadway’s first all-Filipino cast, which earned four nominations, including best original score for David Byrne and Fat Boy Slim. And seven openly autistic actors starred in “How to Dance in Ohio,” a first for Broadway but which got no Tony love.

Academy Award winner and Tony Award-nominee Ariana DeBose, who hosted both the 2023 and 2022 ceremonies, will be back this year and will produce and choreograph the opening number.

This year’s location — the David H. Koch Theater — is the home of New York City Ballet and in the same sprawling building complex as Lincoln Square Theater, which houses the Broadway venue Beaumont Theater.

Like last year, the three-hour main telecast will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+ from 8 p.m.-11 p.m. EDT/5 p.m.-8 p.m. PDT with a pre-show on Pluto TV, and some Tony Awards handed out there.

This season’s Broadway numbers — about $1.4 billion in grosses and 11.1 million tickets — is running slightly less than the 2022-23 season, off about 4% in grosses and down 1% in tickets.