The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern in Philadelphia, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.

Harris is intent on demonstrating that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House.

Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

The vice president, for her part, will try to claim a share of credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while also addressing its low moments and explaining her shifts away from more liberal positions she took in the past.

The debate will subject Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

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“If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”

Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring a “prosecutor’s instincts to the debate stage.”

“That is a very strong quality in that setting: having someone who knows how to land a punch and how to translate it,” Hogan said.

The first early ballots of the presidential race will go out just hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Absentee ballots are set to be sent out beginning Wednesday in Alabama.

Trump plans to hit Harris as too liberal

Trump and his campaign have spotlighted far-left positions she took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He’s been assisted in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore into Harris during their primary debates.

Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.

The former president has argued a Harris presidency is a threat to the safety of the country, highlighting that Biden tapped her to address the influx of migrants as the Republican once again makes dark warnings about immigration and those in the country illegally central to his campaign. He has sought to portray a Harris presidency as the continuation of Biden’s still-unpopular administration, particularly his economic record, as voters still feel the bite of inflation even as it has cooled in recent months.

Trump’s team insist his tone won’t be any different facing a female opponent.

“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a phone call Monday.

Gabbard, who was also on the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.”

His advisers suggest Harris has a tendency to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”

The former president frequently plows into rambling remarks that detour from his policy points. He regularly makes false claims about the last election, attacks a lengthy list of enemies and opponents working against him, offers praise for foreign strongmen and comments about race, like his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to turn Black.”

Harris wants to argue Trump is unstable and unfit

The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken supporter of abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, is expected to focus on calling out Trump’s inconsistencies around women’s reproductive care, including his announcement that he will vote to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban in a statewide referendum this fall.

Harris was also set to try to portray herself as a steadier hand to lead the nation and safeguard its alliances, as war rages in Ukraine more than two years after Russia’s invasion and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza drags on with no end in sight.

She is likely to warn that Trump presents a threat to democracy, from his attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss in the presidential election, spurring his angry supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through comments he made as recently as last weekend. Trump on social media issued yet another message of retribution, threatening that if he wins he will jail “those involved in unscrupulous behavior,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.

Harris has spent the better part of the last five days ensconced in debate preparations in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours-long mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Ahead of the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was workshopping how to respond if Trump lies.

“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said.

___

AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

After traveling four hours to see her husband at a correctional facility in Tehachapi, Calif. on Sept. 6, 2019, Christina Cardenas was subject to a strip search by prison officials, drug and pregnancy tests, X-ray and CT scans at a hospital, and another strip search by a male doctor who sexually violated her, a lawsuit said.

“My motivation in pursuing this lawsuit was to ensure that others do not have to endure the same egregious offenses that I experienced,” Cardenas said.

Of the $5.6 million settlement, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will pay $3.6 million and the rest will be paid by the other defendants, which include two correctional officers, a doctor, and the Adventist Health Tehachapi Valley hospital.

Prison officials conducted their searches on the basis of a warrant, which said a strip search could only be conducted if an X-ray found any foreign objects that could be contraband in Cardenas’ body, her attorneys said. However, neither the X-ray or CT scan found any evidence of such.

She was also put in handcuffs in a “humiliating perp walk” while being taken to and from the hospital, and denied water or use of a bathroom during the majority of the search process. She was told she had to pay for the hospital’s services and later received invoices for a combined total of more than $5,000. Despite no contraband being found in any of her belongings or her body, Cardenas was denied her visit with her husband.

One of the prison officials asked her, “Why do you visit, Christina? You don’t have to visit. It’s a choice, and this is part of visiting,” according to Cardenas.

“We believe the unknown officer’s statement was a form of intimidation used to dismiss Christina’s right to visit her lawful husband during the course of his incarceration,” Cardenas’ attorney Gloria Allred said.

Cardenas also had to undergo a strip search during a previous visit to marry her husband, and continued to experience difficulties during her visits to him, though not to the same extent as the Sept. 6, 2019 incident. Her husband remains in custody today.

The settlement also requires the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to distribute a policy memorandum to employees that better protects the rights of visitors who have to undergo strip searches. This includes ensuring the search warrant is read and understood by the visitor, that the visitor receives a copy of the warrant, that the scope of the warrant is read and understood by everyone involved, and the scope of the warrant is not exceeded.

Cardenas is not alone in what she experienced from correctional officers, Allred said, and hopes this case will help protect the rights of spouses and family members who visit their loved ones in prison.

California prisons have faced an ongoing problem of sexual abuse and misconduct, with the the U.S. Justice Department announcing it had opened an investigation into allegations that correctional officers systematically sexually abused incarcerated women at two state-run California prisons.

Earlier this year the federal Bureau of Prisons announced it will close a women’s prison in Northern California known as the “rape club” after an Associated Press investigation exposed rampant sexual abuse by correctional officers.

Panasonic is one of 15 companies that are so-called TOP sponsors for the IOC. It’s not known the value of the Panasonic sponsorship, but sponsors contribute more than $2 billion in a four-year cycle to the IOC.

Two other Japanese companies are also among the IOC’s 15 leading sponsors. Toyota, which for several months has been reportedly ready to end its contract, was contacted Tuesday by The Associated Press but offered no new information.

“Toyota has been supporting the Olympic and Paralympic movements since 2015 and continues to do so,” Toyota said in a statement. “No announcement to suggest otherwise has been made by Toyota.”

Japanese sponsors seem to have turned away from the Olympics, likely related to the one-year delay in holding the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The COVID-19 delay reduced sponsors’ visibility with no fans allowed to attend competition venues, ran up the costs, and unearthed myriad corruption scandals around the Games.

Tiremaker Bridgestone told AP “nothing has been decided.”

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Toyota had a contact valued at $835 million — reported to be the IOC’s largest when it was announced in 2015. It included four Olympics beginning with the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games in South Korea and ran through the just-completed Paris Olympics and Paralympics.

Reports in Japan suggest Toyota may keep its Paralympic Olympic sponsorship.

The IOC TOP sponsors are: ABInBev, Airbnb, Alibaba, Allianz, Atos, Bridgestone, Coca-Cola, Deloitte, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, P&G, Samsung, Toyoto, and Visa.

In a report several months ago by the Japanese news agency Kyodo, unnamed sources said Toyota was unhappy with how the IOC uses sponsorship money. It said the money was “not used effectively to support athletes and promote sports.”

Japan was once a major font to revenue, but increasingly the IOC has sought out sponsors from China, with increasing interest from the Middle East and India.

Japan officially spent $13 billion on the Tokyo Olympics, at least half of which was public money. A government audit suggested the real cost was twice that. The IOC contribution was about $1.8 billion.

The Tokyo Games were mired in corruption scandals linked to local sponsorships and the awarding of contracts. Dentsu Inc, the huge Japanese marketing and public relations company, was the marketing arm of the Tokyo Olympics and raised a record-$3.3 billion in local sponsorship money. This is separate from TOP sponsors.

French prosecutors also looked into alleged vote-buying in the IOC’s decision in 2013 to pick Tokyo as the host for the 2020 Summer Games.

The IOC had income of $7.6 billion in the last four-year cycle ending with the Tokyo Games. Figures have not been released yet for the cycle ending with the Paris Olympics.

The IOC’s TOP sponsors paid over $2 billion in that period. The figure is expected to reach $3 billion in the next cycle.

The 11-day trip, which earlier took him to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and East Timor, is the longest for the 87-year-old pontiff since becoming head of the Catholic Church in 2013. Francis will be the second pope to visit Singapore, after a five-hour stopover by the late John Paul II in 1986.

Here’s what to know about Pope Francis’ three-day stay in Singapore:

Why is Francis visiting Singapore?

Singapore was originally part of Francis’ travel plans to the region in 2020 but it was derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The island city-state at the tip of the Malay peninsula has a small population of just under 6 million people and lacks natural resources, but it is a heavyweight in regional and international affairs. Astute leadership, its strategic location and reputation as one of the most open and least corrupt economies had transformed Singapore into a bustling financial giant and maritime and aviation hubs in just 59 years after independence.

Singapore is a strategic U.S. partner but also maintains close ties with China. Ethnic Chinese account for about three-quarters of its residents followed by minority Muslims and Indians.

According to a 2020 Singapore population census, Buddhists make up about 31%. About a fifth of the population claimed no religious belief, while Christians account for almost 19% and Muslims about 15%.

Singapore has four official languages: English, Malay, Mandarin and Tamil, reflecting its multicultural identity and heritage.

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“Singapore and the Holy See share a common interest in promoting interfaith dialogue and understanding. Pope Francis’ state visit is also the first papal visit to Singapore in almost 40 years,” Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said.

In a city ranked as one of the most expensive to live in, Singapore’s Cardinal WIlliam Goh said that key themes frequently emphasised by Francis such as human dignity, inclusiveness, interreligious dialogue, family values, the need to manage artificial intelligence responsibly and care for the environment were of particular relevance.

“As such, Pope Francis’ visit is highly anticipated and warmly welcomed not only by the Catholic faithful, but also by the wider society.” Goh said in a written response to The Associated Press. “After the apostolic visit is done, I pray that Singapore will be filled with hope — a profound, divine hope.”

What’s on the pope’s itinerary?

After flying in from Dili, East Timor, on Wednesday, Pope Francis will hold a private meeting with members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

On Thursday, he will receive an official welcome at Parliament House and meet Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and President Tharman Shanmugaratnam. He will also meet government officials, civil society and the diplomatic corps at the National University of Singapore.

The highlight will be a public Mass at the 55,000-seat National Stadium in the evening. Those attending include Catholics from neighboring Malaysia and Brunei. Francis will make a tour around the stadium pitch to greet the faithful in his Popemobile before delivering his homily.

On the last day, Francis will visit elderly residents at the St Theresa’s Home. He will also hold an interreligious meeting with youths at the Catholic Junior College.

How influential is the church in Singapore?

The church marked 200 years in Singapore in 2021. The Archdiocese of Singapore was formed in 1972, seven years after Singapore’s independence. Diplomatic relations with the Holy See were established in 1981.

In Singapore’s early years, Cardinal Goh said the church’s work in education and health care were important contributors to national development.

“Many of the country’s top leaders in both the public and private spheres were formed in Catholic schools; and many basic health care needs were provided by Church-run health care institutions,” he wrote on the Vatican News website.

The church supports 395,000 Catholics in Singapore with its 29 parish churches, three devotional churches, 53 schools, 47 humanitarian organizations and two health care institutions. Goh said the church holds frequent dialogue with the government, which views it as an important contributor and shaper of Singapore’s social fabric.

Goh, Singapore’s first cardinal installed by Francis in 2022, is a member of two Presidential Councils that advise the government on matters relating to racial and religious harmony and minority rights.

“As the final stop on this apostolic journey, Singapore stands as a testament to peaceful coexistence in a modern, multicultural, and multi-religious society,” Goh wrote in his reply to the AP. “This reflects the spirit of unity and diversity that Pope Francis has emphasized throughout his pontification.”

It was among the deadliest strikes yet in Muwasi, a sprawl of crowded tent camps along the Gaza coast that Israel designated as a humanitarian zone for hundreds of thousands of civilians to seek shelter from the Israel-Hamas war.

Gaza’s Civil Defense said its first responders recovered 40 bodies from the strike and were still looking for people. It said entire families were killed in their tents.

An Associated Press camera operator saw three large craters at the scene, where first responders and displaced people were sifting through the sand and rubble with garden tools and their bare hands by the light of mobile phones. They pulled body parts from the sand, including what appeared to be a human leg.

Attaf al-Shaar, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah, said the strike happened just after midnight and caused a fire.

“The people were buried in the sand. They were retrieved as body parts,” she told an Associated Press reporter at the scene.

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Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, one of three hospitals to receive casualties, said around two dozen bodies were brought in from the strike.

The Israeli military said it had struck Hamas militants who were operating in a command-and-control center. It said its forces used precise munitions, aerial surveillance and other means to avoid civilian casualties.

Israel says it tries to avoid harming civilians throughout the war, which was ignited by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. It blames Hamas for their deaths because the militants often operate in residential areas and are known to position tunnels, rocket launchers and other infrastructure near homes, schools and mosques.

Hamas released a statement denying any militants were in the area. Neither Israel nor Hamas provided evidence to substantiate their claims.

The war has caused vast destruction and displaced around 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Israeli evacuation orders, which now cover around 90% of the territory, have pushed hundreds of thousands of people into Muwasi, a sprawling line of squalid tent camps along the coast.

Aid groups have struggled to provide even basic services in Muwasi, and Israel has occasionally struck targets there despite designating it as a humanitarian zone.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says over 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the war began. It does not differentiate between fighters and civilians in its count.

Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in their Oct. 7 attack. They abducted another 250 people and are still holding around 100 after releasing most of the rest in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a weeklong cease-fire last November. Around a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.

The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent much of this year trying to broker an agreement for a cease-fire and the release of the hostages, but the talks have repeatedly bogged down as Israel and Hamas have accused each other of making new and unacceptable demands.

The war has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, and humanitarian groups have struggled to provide aid because of ongoing fighting, Israeli restrictions, and the breakdown of law and order. The international authority on the severity of hunger crises said in June that the territory is at high risk of famine.

The main United Nations agency providing aid to Palestinians said Israeli troops stopped a convoy taking part in a polio vaccination campaign for more than eight hours on Monday, despite it coordinating with the military. UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini said the staffers who were held had been taking part in the campaign in northern Gaza and Gaza City.

“The convoy was stopped at gun point just after the Wadi Gaza checkpoint with threats to detain UN staff,” he wrote on the social platform X. “Heavy damage was caused by bulldozers to the UN armoured vehicles.”

He said the staff and the convoy later returned to a U.N. base, but it was unclear if a polio vaccination campaign would take place Tuesday in northern Gaza.

The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The vaccination drive, launched after doctors discovered the first polio case in the Palestinian enclave in 25 years, aims to vaccinate 640,000 children during a war that has destroyed the health care system.

___

Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.

The interview happened after threats about a school shooting were posted online. The teen, Colt Gray, was questioned about the online threats and denied making them.

The 14-year-old has been charged with four counts of felony murder in the fatal shooting on Sept. 4 of two fellow students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.

His father, Colin Gray, 54, is the first parent in Georgia to be prosecuted after their child was accused in a school shooting. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter, second-degree murder and cruelty to children.

Attorneys for the defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday. Both appeared in court Friday but did not enter pleas.

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On Sept. 4, the day of the Apalachee High School shooting, the FBI and the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office sheriff’s office released a statement noting the teen had previously been interviewed over a school shooting threat.

The newly released video of the 2023 investigation follows the release of a transcript by the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office.

The transcript indicates that Investigator Dan Miller and Deputy Justin Elliott had come to the Winder home shared by father and son on May 21, 2023, to ask about a shooting threat made on the Discord platform.

The teen denied making the online threat and said he had deleted his account on the platform.

Colin Gray told the investigator that despite family stress, his son was “doing really good” at school and was constantly under his watchful eyes as he said he had become a frequent visitor to his school.

During the interview, the father explained the family’s situation, saying “one day” he rushed home after a deputy called him to report that he was being evicted and that his belongings were outside the residence in an upscale community nearby.

That, Colin Gray said, was part of a series of stressful events for his son that also included bullying at school and the father’s separation from the boy’s mother, with whom two of their children were staying.

“She took my younger two and went back home with her momma,” Colin Gray told the investigator. “Colt and I rented a house and came here.”

The father told investigators he was trying to ensure that the youth behaves, respects the power and dangers of firearms and is free of harassment at middle school.

“He struggled at first with the separation and all,” Colin Gray said. “He gets flustered under pressure. He doesn’t really think straight. Just kind of put your arms around him, get him through seventh grade.”

The teen told Miller he completed seventh grade days earlier.

The father said he was teaching his son to hunt as a way to discourage him from playing video games and encourage him to seek outdoor activities.

The remarks came in response to a question by Miller about whether Colin Gray keeps guns at home, and if they were accessible to his then-13-year-old son.

“I mean, there’s nothing loaded,” Colin Gray said. “Actually, we do a lot of shooting. We do a lot of deer hunting. He shot his first deer this year.”

“You see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer,” Colin Gray said as he showed the investigator a photo. “It was just the greatest day ever.”

If his son made a threat to shoot up a school, Colin Gray said, it would make him “mad as hell, and then all the guns will go away.”

Investigators determined there wasn’t enough evidence to tie Colt to the school shooting threat, which had been forwarded by the FBI. There were no arrests or referrals to prosecutors related to that threat, according to investigative documents.

Two law enforcement sources familiar with the Georgia school shooting investigation said Colin Gray had purchased an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle as a gift to his son after the 2023 threat investigation.

No connections between that weapon and last week’s school shooting have been made by authorities, but they did say the weapon used was based on the AR-15 platform.

Apalachee High students Mason Schermerhorn, 14, and Christian Angulo, 14; and teachers Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, were killed in last week’s shooting.

Officials have said another teacher and eight other students were injured, including seven who were hit by gunfire.

School officials have not set a date for the 1,900 students who attend Apalachee to return to classes. 

Juliette Arcodia contributed.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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“Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, ‘Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day in school,’ and your son comes back with a brutal operation? Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, a vital swing state. 

Trump made similar remarks — saying children were returning home from school after having had surgical procedures — the previous weekend at an event hosted by Moms for Liberty, a parent activist group that has gained outsized influence in conservative politics in recent years.

Asked by one of the group’s co-founders how he would address the “explosion in the number of children who identify as transgender,” Trump said: “Your kid goes to school and comes home a few days later with an operation. The school decides what’s going to happen with your child.”

There is no evidence that a student has ever undergone gender-affirming surgery at a school in the U.S., nor is there evidence that a U.S. school has sent a student to receive such a procedure elsewhere. 

About half the states ban transition-related surgery for minors, and even in states where such care is still legal, it is rare. In addition, guidelines from several major medical associations say a parent or guardian must provide consent before a minor undergoes gender-affirming care, including transition-related surgery, according to the American Association of Medical Providers. Most major medical associations in the U.S. support gender-affirming care for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. For those who opt for such care and have the support of their guardians and physicians, that typically involves puberty blockers for preteens and hormone replacement therapy for older teens.

A spokesperson for Trump’s campaign did not substantiate his claims and pointed NBC News to reports about parents’ being left in the dark about their children’s gender transitions at school. 

“President Trump will ensure all Americans are treated equally under the law regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation,” said the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt.

Kate King, president of the National Association of School Nurses, said that even when it comes to administering over-the-counter medication such as Advil or Tylenol, school nurses need explicit permission from a physician and a parent.

“There is no way that anyone is doing surgery in a classroom in schools,” she said when she was asked about Trump’s remarks.

Trump’s claims stand out even amid years of allegations by conservative politicians and right-wing media pundits that teachers, Democratic lawmakers and LGBTQ adults are “grooming” or “indoctrinating” children to become gay or transgender. 

The practice of labeling LGBTQ people, particularly gay men and trans women, as “groomers” and “pedophiles” of children had been relegated to the margins for decades, but the tropes resurfaced during the heated debate over Florida’s so-called Don’t Say Gay law, which Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in March 2022. The law limits the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in school and has been replicated in states across the country.

At the Republican National Convention in July, at least a dozen speakers — including DeSantis and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga. — mentioned gender identity or sexuality negatively in their speeches, according to an NBC News analysis. DeSantis, for example, alleged that Democrats want to “impose gender ideology” on kindergartners.

Nearly 70% of public K-12 teachers who have been teaching for more than one year said topics related to sexual orientation and gender identity “rarely or never” come up in their classrooms, according to a recent poll from the Pew Research Center. Half of all teachers polled, including 62% of elementary school teachers, said elementary school students should not learn about gender identity in school.

Trump vowed last year that if he is re-elected he would abolish gender-affirming care for minors, which he equated to “child abuse” and “child sexual mutilation.” This year, Trump also said he would roll back Title IX protections for transgender students “on day one” of his potential second presidential administration.

His campaign website says he would, if he is re-elected, cut federal funding for schools that push “gender ideology on our children” and “keep men out of women’s sports.”

More broadly, Trump has promised to eliminate the Education Department, claiming that doing so would give states more authority over education.

During his first administration, Trump barred trans people from enlisting in the military — which he has vowed to do again if he is re-elected — and rolled back several antidiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people. 

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According to the lawsuit filed Monday in Harris County, the woman is suing Watson for $1 million in damages.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe in the court documents, said the incident took place after she invited Watson to her apartment. She said Watson undressed shortly after arriving and demanded a massage.

It’s the latest legal entanglement for Watson, who settled 23 of 24 lawsuits against him in 2022 after two dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct and harassment during massage therapy sessions.

The 28-year-old Watson served an 11-game NFL suspension in 2022 for violating the league’s personal conduct policy, stemming from those accusations. He also had to pay a $5 million fine and underwent independent counseling before he was reinstated.

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The new lawsuit was filed by attorney Tony Buzbee, who represented the other women who alleged Watson’s misbehavior.

The Browns did not have an immediate response to the latest lawsuit. The NFL declined to comment.

Watson could also face further discipline from the league.

The three-time Pro Bowler has been plagued by issues since Cleveland traded five draft picks, including three first-round selections, to the Texans in 2022 for him. The Browns then signed Watson to a fully guaranteed $230 million contract.

Watson has been limited to just 13 starts due to the suspension and a shoulder injury that required surgery last season.

He played for the first time in 10 months on Sunday and completed 24 of 45 passes for 169 yards with two interceptions and a touchdown in a 33-17 loss to the Dallas Cowboys.

The 4-year-old dog was taken to a pet hospital last week, where he was treated for a high fever and pleural effusion, a condition where excess fluid accumulates between the lungs and the chest wall. His owner, Tracey Callahan Molnar, explained that she took him to the hospital after noticing symptoms such as stiffness, labored breathing and fever.

In a Sept. 9 Instagram update, Molnar announced he is now home.

“Beacon has some appetite, eating some of his meals on his own and me hand feeding him the rest,” she wrote. “I’m happy to say, beacon ate his entire dinner on his own.”

Molnar’s health update included photos of his time in the hospital and later in good spirits on a drive with Molnar.

The post also noted that she and Beacon are still holding out for a diagnosis and a treatment plan.

“Beacon is not out of the woods yet but i’m not sure we could have even gotten to today without your help,” she wrote toward the end of her post. “A huge and heartfelt thank you to all of you!”

Users responded to the post with well wishes and concern.

“Hopefully recovery at home proves to be the best medicine. Sending positive thoughts and virtual treats,” one user replied.

“Praying it’s not serious and he’s going to be fine,” another replied. “Beacon has inspired me to sign up to a charity for my own golden retriever to be a therapy dog volunteer.”

Beacon became a fan favorite during the 2024 United States Olympic gymnastics team trials in June because of the support he provided to athletes like Suni Lee and Simone Biles. Read on for more about him.

Beacon’s health timeline

On Sept. 4, Molnar shared on Instagram that Beacon had been admitted to an emergency pet hospital the day before.

“This is an incredibly difficult post to make. I’ve decided to share this now because beacon has 50k + followers and i know that can mean 50k + people sending him wishes for healing and good health,” she wrote at the time.

Molnar expressed her hope that Beacon’s legion of followers — currently 56,000 and counting — would send him “wishes for healing and good health.” 

Molnar added that Beacon was not reacting to treatments, including anti-inflammatory meds and cold laser therapy. According to the post, X-rays “showed fluid in his chest cavity, which was at least in part the reason for the labored breathing.”

“The high fever was of great concern to his veterinarian. The recommendation was to transport him to an emergency hospital with specialists who could diagnose and begin to treat him,” the message continued.

Molnar noted that while Beacon had undergone some diagnostic tests, more had to be completed.

“My understanding is that there are many potential causes therefore, many things to rule out,” she wrote, adding that she would keep his faithful followers updated.

Days later, on Sept. 6, Molnar shared that Beacon was still lethargic but “open to gentle hugs, pets and conversation” when she was visiting him at the hospital.

“We still don’t have definitive answers yet,” she wrote alongside a video collage of Beacon and her visit. “He has needed to have fluid removed from his chest cavity multiple times and during a procedure yesterday to take tissue samples from some concerning lung tissue (that showed on the CT scan he had), they placed two ports which will in part, make the drainage of that fluid easier. it’s something they will teach me to do so that he might be able to come home sooner.”

She added that his lung tissue biopsy would take five to seven days.

“During our visits, I read messages to Beacon from the autograph book that Milli, a rhythmic gymnast, so kindly gave Beacon,” she wrote at the time. “I also read the comments from you that have been posted on Instagram. Please know that your comments mean so much to me and I really want Beacon to hear them as well. I want him to know how loved he is by so many.”

Beacon is USA Gymnastics’ first therapy dog

The Instagram page for Beacon, USA Gymnastics’ first official therapy dog, is filled with snapshots of him with Olympians like Simone Biles, Jordan Chiles, former Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman and Laurie Hernandez, and many more athletes.

In an interview with ESPN, Molnar said that Beacon was an “emotional sponge” for people competing.

“(Therapy dogs) absorb the stress of the people they’re relieving the stress off of,” she told ESPN. “So even though he might be lying still for two hours, he’s wiped out afterwards.”  

Due to “challenges with logistics,” Beacon could not support Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics, his Instagram noted on July 22.

“Beacon and i will be cheering our olympians on from california,” Molnar wrote on the post.

Beacon received Olympics-themed toys and, in late August, provided animal-assisted therapy at the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York.

This article first appeared on TODAY.com. Read more from TODAY here:

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Hill, who was detained during a traffic stop and eventually cited for reckless driving and driving without a license, was pulled from his car by an officer about a minute into the video – and pushed to the ground. Hill was pulled out of the car after a dispute over his window being rolled up after the initial contact with an officer.

One police officer has been placed on administrative leave and an internal investigation into the incident is underway, according to officials.

In the video, the star wideout appears to be talking on the phone while on the asphalt, with several officers now involved, saying, “I’m getting arrested.” As he is handcuffed, an officer tells him, “When we tell you to do something, you do it.”

Hill was then brought up to his feet, where officers took him to sit along the sidewalk. One police officer can be seeing putting an arm around Hill’s neck and forcing him to the ground while Hill yells repeatedly that he recently had surgery on his knee.

A representative for the police union said the 30-year-old was at fault for not being “immediately” cooperative with officers.

Toward the end of the video, Hill could be heard telling an officer, “I can’t run. I’m not gonna run, bruh. I promise you I’m not gonna run, s—.”

“If I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, lord knows, I probably would have been like, worst-case scenario, I would have been shot or would have been locked up” and “put behind bars, you know, for a simple speeding ticket,” Hill told NBC News in the aftermath of the incident.

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The Miami-Dade Police Department later on Sunday opened an Internal Affairs investigation into the situation, and one of the involved officers was placed on administrative duties.

Drew Rosenhaus, Hill’s agent, told NBC6, “We’re going to look into it. This isn’t over on our end.”

Hill eventually suited up to play the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he logged seven catches for 130 yards and a touchdown, which he celebrated with a handcuff move.

The wide receiver was driving to the Dolphins-Jacksonville Jaguars game on Sunday when Miami-Dade police stopped him just outside Hard Rock Stadium, handcuffed him and put him face down on the pavement.

“If I wasn’t Tyreek Hill, lord knows, I probably would have been like, worst-case scenario, I would have been shot or would have been locked up” and “put behind bars, you know, for a simple speeding ticket,” Hill told NBC News.

For more from Tyreek Hill, tune into Nightly News at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT

“And that’s crazy that officers would take it, you know, to that level.”

The Miami-Dade Police Department has launched an internal affairs investigation, and at least one officer has been taken off the streets in the wake of the confrontation, which was captured on video that has been widely shared on social media.

Hill insists he was cooperative with police, rolling down his window and giving his identification. The receiver said he was in no rush because he was within the shadows of Hard Rock Stadium and had no reason to be anxious or in a hurry.

“It just went from 0 to 60 man from the moment that those guys pulled up behind me, knocked on my window, it went from 0 to 60 immediately,” said Hill, adding that he called team security officials from the car.

A representative for the police union said Hill was at fault for not being “immediately” cooperative with officers.

The department declined to comment on the union’s account, saying police officials must wait until the internal affairs investigation is completed before publicly discussing the incident.

Hill was cited for reckless driving and driving without a license, his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, said. 

Hill, 30, thanked teammates — tight end Jonnu Smith and defensive lineman Calais Campbell — who were driving by, saw him being detained and stopped to help.

Hill said he was particularly upset that Campbell was handcuffed even though his teammate was standing off to the side. The highly respected 38-year-old Campbell is a former Walter Payton Man of the Year winner.

“When I saw Jonnu and Calais pull up … I didn’t feel alone anymore,” Hill said.

“They ended up handcuffing Calais for just being 6-8 I think. But it was crazy. It was crazy how that same officer who took me down handcuffed Calais for just standing on the side.”

Ultimately, Hill said he’s happy no one was injured or worse.

“That officer was really on a power trip,” he said. “He felt like he just needed to … do something that day, you know. But like I said, I’m glad nobody was hurt.”

Hill is one of pro football’s best-known playmakers.

His 77 career TD catches is fifth among active players and 36th all time, just behind No. 35 DeAndre Hopkins (78) and retired Harold Carmichael and Charley Taylor who are tied at No. 33 with 79 scoring grabs. Carmichael and Taylor are both in the Hall of Fame.

The incident didn’t appear to impact Hill’s on-field performance in Sunday’s season opener; he caught seven passes for 130 yards and a touchdown in Miami’s 20-17 victory.

Faced with first-and-10 from the Miami 20, late in the third quarter and the Jags leading 17-7, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa connected with Hill on a slant at their own 46-yard line.

Hill then raced past two Jaguar defenders to complete the electrifying 80-yard TD which sparked the Miami comeback.

Hill put his hands behind his back, feigning that he was being handcuffed, as teammate Jaylen Waddle came up to walk the receiver off as if he was the arresting officer.

“You got to learn how to laugh and have a good time,” he said. “Man, whenever people think you’re … having a bad situation or having a low moment, I always try to find the good in every situation. That’s one way I’m able to stay so strong minded as a young male, well as a young Black male.”

Jesse Kirsch reported from Miami and David K. Li from New York City.

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An employee at Goodman Elementary School in Arlington, Texas, is on administrative leave after being accused of tying some students up with strings and putting tape over their mouths, according to a statement provided by the Arlington Independent School District.

The district said that on Friday, Sept. 6, it learned of the allegations and “immediately began an investigation and placed the employee on leave.”

Arlington ISD officials and campus administrators reportedly notified the parents of the students involved in the alleged incident on the same day.

“We appreciate the understanding and patience of our school community and encourage any students or parents with concerns to contact the school administration,” the district said in the statement on Monday afternoon.

The Arlington Police Department told NBC 5 that officers had been in contact with Arlington ISD on Monday afternoon regarding the allegations. However, no police report has been filed, and no criminal investigation has been initiated.

The school district is still investigating and working to gather more information. No further details were released.

His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed Jones died Monday morning at home in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The cause was not immediately clear.

The pioneering Jones, who in 1965 became one of the first African American actors in a continuing role on a daytime drama (“As the World Turns”) and worked deep into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He was also given an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

He cut an elegant figure late in life, with a wry sense of humor and a ferocious work habit. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway run of “The Gin Game” having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service of the work.

“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press then. “I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”

Jones created such memorable film roles as the reclusive writer coaxed back into the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” the boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” the writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”

He was also a sought-after voice actor, expressing the villainy of Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” commonly misremembered as “Luke, I am your father”), as well as the benign dignity of King Mufasa in both the 1994 and 2019 versions of Disney’s “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during station breaks. He won a 1977 Grammy for his performance on the “Great American Documents” audiobook.

“If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the pavement in these streets looking for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.

Some of his other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives” and playing an admiral in three blockbuster Tom Clancy adaptations — “The Hunt for Red October,” “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen love affair with Diahann Carroll.

LeVar Burton, who starred alongside Jones in the TV movie “Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones,” paid tribute on X, writing, “There will never be another of his particular combination of graces.”

Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958’s “Sunrise At Campobello” and would win his two Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” (1969) and “Fences” (1987). He also was nominated for “On Golden Pond” (2005) and “Gore Vidal’s The Best Man” (2012). He was celebrated for his command of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard alike. More recent Broadway appearances include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Driving Miss Daisy,” “The Iceman Cometh,” and “You Can’t Take It With You.”

As a rising stage and television actor, he performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” and in off-Broadway plays.

Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on Jan. 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had deserted his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.

When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.

“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me it was a heartbreak, and not long after, I began to stutter.”

Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and fellow students with handwritten notes. A sympathetic high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry, and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so faultlessly.

Teacher and student worked together to restore the boy’s normal speech. “I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his book.

At the University of Michigan, he failed a pre-med exam and switched to drama, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.

In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled with the American Theater Wing program for young actors. Father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.

True stardom came suddenly in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first Black heavyweight boxing champion, amid the racism of early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones repeated his role in the movie version and was nominated for an Academy Award as best actor.

Jones’ two wives were also actors. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson in the CBS police drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.

In 2022, the Cort Theatre on Broadway was renamed after Jones, with a ceremony that included Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You” and words from Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

“You can’t think of an artist that has served America more,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It’s like it seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look up and see that’s tangible.”

Citing his stutter as one of the reasons he wasn’t a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.

“I realized early on, from people like Athol Fugard, that you cannot change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as a scholar, you cannot change their mind. But you can change the way they feel.”

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The defendants, identified as Dallas Erin Humber and Matthew Robert Allison, face 15 federal counts in the Eastern District of California, including charges that accuse them of soliciting hate crimes and the murder of federal officials, distributing bomb-making instructions and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.

Humber, 34, of Elk Grove, California, and Allison, 37, of Boise, Idaho were arrested Friday. Humber pleaded not guilty in a Sacramento courtroom Monday to the charges. Her attorney Noa Oren declined to comment on the case Monday afternoon after the arraignment.

It was not immediately clear if Allison had an attorney who could speak on his behalf.

The indictment accuses the two of leading Terrorgram, a network of channels and group chats on Telegram, and of soliciting followers to attack perceived enemies of white people, including government buildings and energy facilities and “high-value” targets such as politicians.

“Today’s action makes clear that the department will hold perpetrators accountable, including those who hide behind computer screens, in seeking to carry out bias-motivated violence,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the Justice Department’s top civil rights official, said at a news conference.

Their exhortations to commit violence included statements such as “Take Action Now” and “Do your part,” and users who carried out acts to further white supremacism were told they could become known as “Saints,” prosecutors said.

Justice Department officials say the pair used the app to transmit bomb-making instructions and to distribute a list of potential targets for assassination — including a federal judge, a senator and a former U.S. attorney — and to celebrate acts or plots from active Terrorgram users.

Those include the stabbing last month of five people outside a mosque in Turkey and the July arrest of an 18-year-old accused of planning to attack an electrical substation to advance white supremacist views. In the Turkey attack, for instance, prosecutors say the culprit on the morning of the stabbing posted in a group chat: “Come see how much humans I can cleanse.”

A 24-minute documentary that the two had produced, “White Terror,” documented and praised some 105 acts of white supremacist violence between 1968 and 2021, according to the indictment.

“The risk and danger they present is extremely serious,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, the Justice Department’s top national security official. He added: “Their reach is as far as the internet because of the platform they’ve created.”

Telegram is a messaging app that allows for one-on-one conversations, group chats and large channels that let people broadcast messages to subscribers. Though broadly used as a messaging tool around the world, Telegram has also drawn scrutiny, including a finding from French investigators that the app has been used by Islamic extremists and drug traffickers.

Telegram’s founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, was detained by French authorities last month on charges of allowing the platform’s use for criminal activity. Durov responded to the charges with a post last week saying he shouldn’t have been targeted personally and by promising to step up efforts to fight criminality on the app.

He wrote that while Telegram is not “some sort of anarchic paradise,” surging numbers of users have “caused growing pains that made it easier for criminals to abuse our platform.”

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Transportation officials have spent the past few years refining a system in which radio transmitters inside commuter buses talk directly to the traffic signals in the Salt Lake City area, requesting a few extra seconds of green when they approach.

Congestion on these so-called smart streets is already noticeably smoother, but it’s just a small preview of the high-tech upgrades that could be coming soon to roads across Utah and ultimately across the U.S.

Buoyed by a $20 million federal grant and an ambitious calling to “Connect the West,” the goal is to ensure every vehicle in Utah, as well as neighboring Colorado and Wyoming, can eventually communicate with one another and the roadside infrastructure about congestion, accidents, road hazards and weather conditions.

With that knowledge, drivers can instantly know they should take another route, bypassing the need for a human to manually send an alert to an electronic street sign or the mapping apps found on cellphones.

“A vehicle can tell us a lot about what’s going on in the roadway,” said Blaine Leonard, a transportation technology engineer at the Utah Department of Transportation. “Maybe it braked really hard, or the windshield wipers are on, or the wheels are slipping. The car anonymously broadcasts to us that blip of data 10 times a second, giving us a constant stream of information.”

When cars transmit information in real time to other cars and the various sensors posted along and above the road, the technology is known broadly as vehicle-to-everything, or V2X. Last month, the U.S. Department of Transportation unveiled a national blueprint for how state and local governments and private companies should deploy the various V2X projects already in the works to make sure everyone is on the same page.

The overarching objective is universal: dramatically curb roadway deaths and serious injuries, which have recently spiked to historic levels.

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A 2016 analysis by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded V2X could help. Implementing just two of the earliest vehicle-to-everything applications nationwide would prevent 439,000 to 615,000 crashes and save 987 to 1,366 lives, its research found.

Dan Langenkamp has been lobbying for road safety improvements since his wife Sarah Langenkamp, a U.S. diplomat, was killed by a truck while biking in Maryland in 2022. Joining officials at the news conference announcing the vehicle-to-everything blueprint, Langenkamp urged governments across the U.S. to roll out the technology as widely and quickly as possible.

“How can we as government officials, as manufacturers, and just as Americans not push this technology forward as fast as we possibly can, knowing that we have the power to rescue ourselves from this disaster, this crisis on our roads,” he said.

Most of the public resistance has been about privacy. Although the V2X rollout plan commits to safeguarding personal information, some privacy advocates remain skeptical.

Critics say that while the system may not track specific vehicles, it can compile enough identifying characteristics — even something as seemingly innocuous as tire pressure levels — that it wouldn’t take too much work to figure out who is behind the wheel and where they are going.

“Once you get enough unique information, you can reasonably say the car that drives down this street at this time that has this particular weight class probably belongs to the mayor,” said Cliff Braun, associate director of technology, policy and research for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which advocates for digital privacy.

The federal blueprint says the nation’s top 75 metropolitan areas should aspire to have at least 25% of their signalized intersections equipped with the technology by 2028, along with higher milestones in subsequent years. With its fast start, the Salt Lake City area already has surpassed 20%.

Of course, upgrading the signals is the relatively easy part. The most important data comes from the cars themselves. While most new ones have connected features, they don’t all work the same way.

Before embarking on the “Connect the West” plan, Utah officials tested what they call the nation’s first radio-based, connected vehicle technology, using only the data supplied by fleet vehicles such as buses and snow plows. One early pilot program upgraded the bus route on a busy stretch of Redwood Road, and it isn’t just the bus riders who have noticed a difference.

“Whatever they’re doing is working,” said Jenny Duenas, assistant director of nearby Panda Child Care, where 80 children between 6 weeks and 12 years old are enrolled. “We haven’t seen traffic for a while. We have to transport our kiddos out of here, so when it’s a lot freer, it’s a lot easier to get out of the daycare.”

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Casey Brock, bus communications supervisor for the Utah Transit Authority, said most of the changes might not be noticeable to drivers. However, even shaving a few seconds off a bus route can dramatically reduce congestion while improving safety, he said.

“From a commuter standpoint it may be, ‘Oh, I had a good traffic day,’” Brock said. “They don’t have to know all the mechanisms going on behind the scenes.”

This summer, Michigan opened a 3-mile (4.8-kilometer) stretch of a connected and automated vehicle corridor planned for Interstate 94 between Ann Arbor and Detroit. The pilot project features digital infrastructure, including sensors and cameras installed on posts along the highway, that will help drivers prepare for traffic slowdowns by sending notifications about such things as debris and stalled vehicles.

Similar technology is being employed for a smart freight corridor around Austin, Texas, that aims to inform truck drivers of road conditions and eventually cater to self-driving trucks.

Darran Anderson, director of strategy and innovation at the Texas Department of Transportation, said officials hope the technology not only boosts the state’s massive freight industry but also helps reverse a troubling trend that has spanned more than two decades. The last day without a road fatality in Texas was Nov. 7, 2000.

Cavnue, a Washington, D.C.-based subsidiary of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Infrastructure partners, funded the Michigan project and was awarded a contract to develop the one in Texas. The company has set a goal of becoming an industry leader in smart roads technology.

Chris Armstrong, Cavnue’s vice president of product, calls V2X “a digital seatbelt for the car” but says it only works if cars and roadside infrastructure can communicate seamlessly with one another.

“Instead of speaking 50 different languages, overnight we’d like to all speak the same language,” he said.

The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern in Philadelphia, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.

Harris is intent on demonstrating that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House.

Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

The vice president, for her part, will try to claim a share of credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while also addressing its low moments and explaining her shifts away from more liberal positions she took in the past.

The debate will subject Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

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“If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”

Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring a “prosecutor’s instincts to the debate stage.”

“That is a very strong quality in that setting: having someone who knows how to land a punch and how to translate it,” Hogan said.

The first early ballots of the presidential race will go out just hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Absentee ballots are set to be sent out beginning Wednesday in Alabama.

Trump plans to hit Harris as too liberal

Trump and his campaign have spotlighted far-left positions she took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He’s been assisted in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore into Harris during their primary debates.

Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.

The former president has argued a Harris presidency is a threat to the safety of the country, highlighting that Biden tapped her to address the influx of migrants as the Republican once again makes dark warnings about immigration and those in the country illegally central to his campaign. He has sought to portray a Harris presidency as the continuation of Biden’s still-unpopular administration, particularly his economic record, as voters still feel the bite of inflation even as it has cooled in recent months.

Trump’s team insist his tone won’t be any different facing a female opponent.

“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a phone call Monday.

Gabbard, who was also on the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.”

His advisers suggest Harris has a tendency to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”

The former president frequently plows into rambling remarks that detour from his policy points. He regularly makes false claims about the last election, attacks a lengthy list of enemies and opponents working against him, offers praise for foreign strongmen and comments about race, like his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to turn Black.”

Harris wants to argue Trump is unstable and unfit

The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken supporter of abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, is expected to focus on calling out Trump’s inconsistencies around women’s reproductive care, including his announcement that he will vote to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban in a statewide referendum this fall.

Harris was also set to try to portray herself as a steadier hand to lead the nation and safeguard its alliances, as war rages in Ukraine more than two years after Russia’s invasion and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza drags on with no end in sight.

She is likely to warn that Trump presents a threat to democracy, from his attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss in the presidential election, spurring his angry supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through comments he made as recently as last weekend. Trump on social media issued yet another message of retribution, threatening that if he wins he will jail “those involved in unscrupulous behavior,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.

Harris has spent the better part of the last five days ensconced in debate preparations in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours-long mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Ahead of the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was workshopping how to respond if Trump lies.

“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said.

___

AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

“It happened so fast that we didn’t have time to think about what to do — we just reacted,” Amy Simmons, the principal of Cunningham Elementary School in Wichita Falls, Texas, tells TODAY.com.

On Aug. 28, Simmons received a text message from a teacher informing her that Paige Lockstedt, a pregnant teacher’s aid, wasn’t feeling well, Simmons explained in a video posted to the Facebook page of Wichita Falls school district. Simmons then received a phone call from Lockstedt, who was in the bathroom: Her water had just broken.

Simmons tells TODAY.com that she initiated an emergency drill that alerts staff and students to stay inside their classrooms. According to the video, special education teacher Ashley Strain and others helped Lockstedt into a wheelchair and pushed her toward the building entrance while the school nurse called 911.

“She said, ‘Oh! She’s coming!’ Strain recalled in the video. “And I went into the bathroom and I caught a baby in my hands.”

The three women clustered inside the bathroom for the delivery while Paige, who was 30 weeks pregnant, stood over the toilet, according to Strain.

“I dove underneath her and caught the baby in my hands,” Strain tells TODAY.com.

Baby Isabella was born weighing two pounds, nine ounces. Simmons cranked paper towels out of the bathroom dispenser to wrap Isabella while Strain rubbed her chest and wiped her face off.

“She opened her beautiful little eyes and looked at us,” says Strain.

Initially, Isabella wasn’t crying, which concerned the women. “Once we saw her chest moving, we knew it would be OK,” says Strain.

Simmons tells TODAY.com that approximately ten minutes passed from when Lockstedt’s water broke and she was loaded into an ambulance.

Students didn’t know a teacher had given birth on campus until later that night, says Simmons.

While Isabella is still in the hospital until she gains more weight, says Simmons, a few days after the birth, Lockstedt returned to Cunningham Elementary School to eat lunch with her staff.

A sign labeled “Labor and Delivery” now hangs on the door of the bathroom where Lockstedt gave birth.

“We have four other staff members who are pregnant and one thought it would be funny to make the sign,” says Simmons. “She asked to reserve the room on her due date.”

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Weinstein was moved from Rikers Island Sunday night “due to severe medical conditions” after complaining of not feeling well, and having a cough and weight gain, his publicist Juda Engelmayer and representative Craig Rothfeld told NBC News.

The 72-year-old was in the ICU at the Manhattan hospital after undergoing heart surgery Monday morning to “alleviate the massive amount of fluid on his lung and heart.”

“We can confirm that Mr. Weinstein had a procedure and surgery on his heart today,” his reps said, declining further comment on his condition.

Weinstein remains in custody in New York while awaiting retrial on rape and sexual assault charges in Manhattan. He has been in an out of Bellevue Hospital since returning to Rikers Island from state prison in April.

In July, he was hospitalized for treatment for a variety of health problems including COVID-19 and pneumonia in both lungs, his representatives said.

Weinstein, who has denied that he raped or sexually assaulted anyone, was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 while already serving a 23-year sentence in New York. His 2020 conviction in Manhattan was was thrown out earlier in the spring by the state’s top court, which ruled that the judge in the original trial unfairly allowed testimony against Weinstein based on allegations that weren’t part of the case.

The retrial in Manhattan is tentatively scheduled for November.

Weinstein’s legal team is appealing the Los Angeles conviction and its sentence of 16 years in prison.

Weinstein could be charged with more allegations of sexual misconduct by a New York grand jury, NBC News reported on Wednesday, citing a source.

A New York grand jury has been convened to weigh whether to bring new charges against the disgraced former movie mogul, a source with knowledge of the proceedings told NBC News. A vote on a potential new indictment is expected soon.

Weinstein’s attorney, Arthur Aidala, said last week in a statement: “We will be prepared for whatever comes our way, they are going to do whatever they can to make sure Harvey doesn’t see the light of day.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment in an email to NBC News.

At the same time, British prosecutors said last week they were dropping two charges of indecent assault against Weinstein in 2022 because there was “no longer a realistic prospect of conviction.’’

Weinstein has maintained that any sexual encounters were consensual.

JonBenét Ramsey’s father John Ramsey is still looking for answers 27 years after his daughter’s untimely death.

In fact, Ramsey alleges in a new TV series that police never tested DNA found on the weapon used to murder his then-6-year-old daughter in their Colorado home.

“I don’t know why they didn’t test it in the beginning,” Ramsey tells host Ana Garcia in a preview for the Sept. 9 episode of True Crime News. “To my knowledge it still hasn’t been tested. If they’re testing it and just not telling me, that’s great, but I have no reason to believe that.”

E! News reached out to the Boulder Police Department for comment on John’s claims, but due to the fact that JonBenét Ramsey’s case is an active and ongoing investigation, the department said it is unable to answer specific questions about actions taken or not taken.

JonBenét Ramsey, the youngest child of John and Patsy Ramsey was found sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled with a garrote in her family’s home the day after Christmas in 1996 almost eight hours after Patsy Ramsey — who died in 2006 — had frantically called the police to report her daughter had been kidnapped.

The case, which garnered national attention at the time, has continued to live on in infamy and has been the subject of numerous TV specials trying to get to the bottom of what led to JonBenét Ramsey’s death.

In fact, in 2016, JonBenét Ramsey’s brother Burke Ramsey broke his silence on the case, speaking to Dr. Phil McGraw, defending himself ahead of the CBS’ two-part special “The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey,” which alleged that he could have been the one to kill his sister when he was 10 years old.

The brother further responded to the CBS show by filing a $150 million defamation lawsuit against one of its experts Dr. Werner Spitz, calling the forensic investigator a “publicity seeker” who “once again interjected himself into a high-profile case to make unsupported, false, and sensational statements and accusations.”

In December 2016, Spitz filed a motion for the lawsuit to be dismissed with prejudice, according to documents obtained by E! News at the time, defending his Constitutional right to hypothesize and express his opinions about the case.

In the documents, Spitz’s lawyers wrote that “the First Amendment protects this speech on a matter of immense public concern” just as the many other “people [who] have offered various and contradictory hypotheses and theories about what happened.”

The case was settled in 2019. Burke Ramsey’s lawyer spoke out shortly after the settlement was reached at the time, tweeting, “After handling many defamation cases for them over the past 20 years, hopefully this is my last defamation case for this fine family.”

But while the case has yet to be solved, officials in Boulder have made it clear they are still trying to bring justice to JonBenét Ramsey. In a statement released ahead of the 25th anniversary of JonBenet Ramsey’s death in 2021, the Boulder PD said that with the major advancements in DNA testing, they had updated more than 750 samples using the latest technology and still hoped to get a match one day.

And as the unanswered questions have continued to linger, many who’ve investigated the tragedy have wondered whether the case will ever be solved.

“There’s still a good chance we’ll never know,” journalist Elizabeth Vargas, who hosted A&E’s 2019 special “Hunting JonBenét’s Killer: The Untold Story,” previously told E! News. “I don’t think it’s possible one person did this. That’s my own opinion, so that means two people, and that means at least two people out there know what happened.”

She added, “It’s incredible to me that those people have kept that secret, that people they probably told in their lives, because that’s a hard secret to keep, that nobody has told. We have all sorts of cold cases that were solved decades later, and I think this could be one of them.”

The probe covers more than 781,000 Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator vehicles from the 2021 through 2023 model years.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents posted Monday on its website that it has nine complaints of engine fires from owners, including one that caused an injury. A majority of the reports say fires began in the passenger side of the engine compartment.

The agency says a fire with the ignition off “can result in an increased risk of occupant injury, injury to persons outside the vehicle, and property damage, with little or no warning.”

Investigators contacted Jeep maker Stellantis and were told of several other “thermal events” that started at a power steering pump electrical connector.

The agency said it’s opening the investigation to determine the cause and scope of the problem and how often it happens. No recall has been issued, but one is possible.

US & World

Recalls Nov 22, 2023

More than 32,000 Jeep Wranglers recalled after some caught fire while engine was off

Recalls Feb 28

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Recalls Jun 18

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Stellantis said it is cooperating with the investigation.

Michael Brooks, executive director of the nonprofit Center for Auto Safety, said it would be wise for owners of the Jeeps under investigation to park them outdoors until the matter is resolved because NHTSA is citing a risk of property damage.

“If I owned one of these vehicles, I certainly wouldn’t want to park it in a garage,” Brooks said.

Overheating incidents rose 28% from 2019 to 2023, although such events remain relatively rare, UL Standards said in a report released Monday.

E-cigarettes overheated more often than any other device, based on reports from 35 airlines, according to the report.

In 60% of the cases, the overheating — called thermal runaway — happened near the seat of the passenger who brought the device on board.

In July, a smoking laptop in a passenger’s bag led to the evacuation of a plane awaiting takeoff at San Francisco International Airport. Last year, a flight from Dallas to Orlando, Florida, made an emergency landing in Jacksonville, Florida, after a battery caught fire in an overhead bin.

More than one-quarter of passengers surveyed for the study said they put vaping cigarettes and portable chargers in checked bags. That is against federal rules.

The Transportation Security Administration prohibits e-cigarettes and chargers and power banks with lithium-ion batteries in checked bags but allows them in carry-on bags. The rule exists precisely because fires in the cargo hold might be harder to detect and extinguish.

UL Standards, a division of UL Solutions Inc., a safety-science company previously known as Underwriters Laboratories, based its findings on data from 35 passenger and cargo airlines including almost all the leading U.S. carriers.

The Federal Aviation Administration reports 37 thermal-runaway incidents on planes this year, through Aug. 15. There were 77 reports last year, a 71% increase over 2019, according to the FAA numbers.

Considering that airlines operate about 180,000 U.S. flights each week, incidents in the air are relatively uncommon, and lithium batteries can overheat anywhere.

“We also know that one of these thermal-runaway incidents at 40,000 feet does present unique risks,” said UL’s David Wroth.

Those risks have been known for many years.

After cargo planes carrying loads of lithium-ion batteries crashed in 2010 and 2011, the United Nations’ aviation organization considered restricting such shipments but rejected tougher standards. Opponents, including airlines, argued that the decision on whether to accept battery shipments should be left up to the carriers, and some no longer take bulk battery shipments.

The most common lithium-ion-powered devices on planes are phones, laptops, wireless headphones and tablets. About 35% of reported overheating incidents involved e-cigarettes, and 16% involved power banks.

“Doing what I can to stay cancer free is now my focus,” she said in a video message, some six months after revealing she had an unspecified form of cancer following intense public speculation about her health.

“The last nine months have been incredibly tough for us as a family,” Kate said Monday, adding that the “cancer journey is complex, scary and unpredictable for everyone, especially those closest to you.”

“With humility, it also brings you face to face with your own vulnerabilities in a way you have never considered before, and with that, a new perspective on everything,” Kate said.

Thanking people for the support she and her family received, she said that “although I have finished chemotherapy, my path to healing and full recovery is long and I must continue to take each day as it comes.”

“I am however looking forward to being back at work and undertaking a few more public engagements in the coming months when I can,” she added.

Kate has made several public appearances since she revealed she had cancer in a video in March where she said she was undergoing “a course of preventative chemotherapy” on the advice of her medical team.

The princess, wife of the heir to the throne, Prince William, attended the men’s final at Wimbledon in July where she was joined in the Royal Box by her daughter Charlotte, 9, and sister, Pippa Middleton Matthews, 41. 

In June, she attended the Trooping the Colour, a ceremonial parade celebrating the official birthday of the British monarch. Ahead of the parade, she said in a statement that she was “not out of the woods yet” and that she had “good days and bad days.” She said she was “making good progress,” but that her treatment would continue for a few more months.

Kate revealed she had cancer just over a month after Buckingham Palace announced that her father-in-law, King Charles III, had also been diagnosed with the disease when he was hospitalized with an enlarged prostate. The palace has said that he does not have prostate cancer.

The video was released after months of fervent speculation about Kate’s health after Kensington Palace — the Prince and Princess of Wales’ official residence and office — said she would be taking a step back from public duties as she recovered from planned abdominal surgery.

Both Charles and Kate have declined to specify either what type of cancer they have or details about their prognosis.

Like Kate, however, the 75-year-old monarch has also attended several engagements since he resumed public duties earlier this year, including D-Day memorial services in France.

He is also set to visit Australia and Samoa next month alongside Queen Camilla, with an itinerary that will span 12 time zones.

While Charlotte attended Wimbledon with her mother, the princess and her brothers George, 11, and Louis, 6, have largely been out of the public eye since their mother’s surgery.

Charles’ and Kate’s illnesses have highlighted the challenges faced by a slimmed-down royal family as the king pledges to cut costs.

With fewer working royals available to carry out the ribbon cuttings, state events and awards ceremonies that make up the life of a modern royal, the remaining family members have been forced to take on more events.

So Camilla, Princess Anne, the king’s sister, and his youngest brother, Prince Edward, have had to shoulder the load. 

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

• King Charles attends church prayers on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s death
• Princess Kate makes rare appearance at church near Balmoral Castle in Scotland
• Harry says battles with British press contributed to rift with the royal family

Billy McFarland, the founder of the original 2017 music festival that was shrouded in controversy, sat down for an interview with NBC News’ Savannah Sellers on TODAY Sept. 9 to reveal exclusive details.

“Fyre Festival II is happening April 25, 2025, so we’re seven and a half months away,” he said. “We have a private island off the coast of Mexico in the Caribbean, and we have an incredible production company who’s handling everything from soup to nuts.”

He said the festival will run for three days until April 28, 2025. He couldn’t confirm the name of the island just yet, but said the plan is to lean on existing infrastructure for lodging, eateries and restrooms. The aforementioned production company, the name of which he didn’t indicate, will handle logistics.

He added, “But we are developing and building out the private island for the actual festival festivities.”

The initial Fyre Festival in April 2017, which promised a luxury experience on a private island in the Bahamas with top entertainment, took a disastrous turn and went viral online when attendees who paid thousands for tickets ended up with no concert, sleeping in tents and eating cheese sandwiches in takeout boxes.

In March 2018, McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud charges involving the event. He then pleaded guilty in July 2018 to separate fraud charges related to another ticket-selling scam, NBC News reported. He was sentenced in October 2018 to six years in prison. He served about four years before he was released early in May 2022. 

More than a year after his release, in August 2023, he resurfaced to announce on Instagram that Fyre Festival II was on the way.

In his interview with Sellers, McFarland said he is still in the planning stages of booking acts.

“We haven’t booked any talent for Fyre II,” he said. “It’s not going to be just music — for example, karate combat. We’re in talks with them to set up a pit to have, like, live fights at Fyre Festival II.”

Asked how McFarland would pitch artists following the failure of the first Fyre Festival, he said he and organizers have “the chance to embrace the storm.”

“Since 2016 Fyre has been the most talked about music festival in the world,” he said. “Obviously, a lot of that has been negative, but I think that most people, once they kind of get under the hood and study the plans and see the team behind Fyre II, they see the upside. We have the chance to embrace this storm and really steer our ship into all the chaos that has happened. And if it’s done well, I think Fyre has a chance to be this annual festival that really takes over the festival industry.”

It won’t be cheap to go to Fyre Festival II, either. McFarland said he already sold 100 tickets for $500 a piece, and other packages will soon go on sale ranging from $1,400 to $1.1 million.”

So what, exactly, will attendees get with a $1.1 million ticket?

“You will be on a boat, have the luxury yachts that we partner with who will be docked and parked outside the island,” he said. “But once again, Fyre is not just about this, like, luxury experience. It’s about the adventure. So you’ll be scuba diving with me. You’ll be bouncing around to other islands and other countries on small planes.”

As for convincing others let down by the first festival to return, McFarland said he has a plan for that, too.

“It’s hard because this is the deeper issue, where there are people who were legitimately hurt and let down from Fyre I, whether that was an employee and a family of a member of an employee, a ticket holder,” he said. “So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to repay those people. I don’t think it’s practical. I don’t actually think it’s right to try to do all that in the first year. I think that would lead to short term decisions. So we were trying to find small ways to give back to everybody that was hurt along the way.”

Although he is looking to revamp the festival and the brand this time, one thing will remain: the cheese sandwiches. The meal in the styrofoam box that went viral in 2017 will get a twist for Fyre Festival II.

“We will have cheese sandwiches,” he said. “They’re going to be super expensive, too. We’re going to make them, like, really good. That’ll be, like, the highest priced food item, I think.”

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

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Francine had maximum sustained winds of 60 mph as it moved north-northwest at 5 mph about 450 miles south-southwest of Cameron, Louisiana, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

A hurricane watch was issued from Cameron eastward to Grand Isle in Louisiana.

Francine is expected to be just offshore of the northern Gulf Coast of Mexico through Tuesday, and approach the Louisiana and Upper Texas coastline on Wednesday.

The storm is expected to gradually strengthen over the next few days and was likely to become a hurricane before it reaches the northwestern U.S. Gulf Coast on Wednesday.

While it’s the sixth system of the season, the name may strike you as unfamiliar. If so, you’re correct.

This is the first time that Francine has appeared on the World Meteorological Organization’s list for Atlantic basin storm names.

It replaced Florence from the 2018 season due to its noteworthy impacts to North and South Carolina.

Florence was retired at the end of that season, replaced with Francine.

The WMO names are used in six year cycles, thus making 2024 Francine’s debut.

Barring any extreme outcomes, the name will stay with the 2024 group and repeat again in 2030.

The search for Joseph A. Couch, 32, who authorities described as “armed and dangerous,” continued in connection with the Saturday evening shooting on Interstate 75, 8 miles north of the small city of London.

Five people were shot and left seriously injured. The wounded were identified by the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office Monday as: Rebecca Puyear, Norma Liberia, Renee Walker, Janet Booth and Erick Tavin.

Couch has since been charged with five counts of attempted murder and five counts of first-degree assault in an arrest warrant.

Once he’s taken into custody, “the court processes will begin quickly with the District Court,” Jackie Steele, commonwealth’s attorney for the 27th Judicial Circuit, said in a statement to NBC News. He could face other, less serious charges in connection with the other drivers affected in the shooting, such as property damage and wanton endangerment.

A $10,000 reward is also now being offered for information on his whereabouts leading to his capture, London Mayor Randall Weddle said.

Couch had previously served in the Army Reserve and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, Weddle told NBC News correspondent Priya Sridhar on Monday.

What we know about the shooting

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office has said that the gunman in the shooting opened fire from three different perches along a ridge that looks down on the interstate. An AR-15, believed to have been used in the shooting, was found near Couch’s vehicle that was found near the scene Saturday night.

Dispatch received reports of multiple people shot on I-75 around 5:30 p.m. on Sept 7.

Just a half hour prior, Laurel dispatch had received a call from a woman who said that Couch had texted her saying he intended to kill a lot of people, an affidavit for an arrest warrant obtained by NBC News said. 

Investigators interviewed that woman who called dispatch on Sunday and she showed a screenshot of that text that read, in part, “I’m going to kill a lot of people. Well try at least.” Another message he sent to her read: “I’ll kill myself afterwards …”In the shooting, at least 12 vehicles were struck, though some didn’t realize their cars were hit until they arrived at their destinations hours away. As many as 20 to 30 rounds may have been fired, Sheriff’s Capt. Richard Dalrymple said.

All the shot victims are stable and expected to survive, officials said Sunday.

Officials said Sunday that the suspect had purchased the AR-15 and about 1,000 rounds legally at a local gun store Saturday morning. According to the affidavit, Couch paid $2,914.40 for the AR-15, a sight mounted on it and the ammo.

A gun case and several charged magazines were also found in the suspect’s SUV. Laurel County Sheriff John Root said Sunday that the suspect went through all the proper paperwork and had nothing on record that would have prevented the sale. 

An investigation into the shooting, and potential motive, now turned over to Kentucky State Police, remains ongoing.

A former Army Reservist with a relatively clean record

Couch had served in the Army Reserve from March 2013 to January 2019, as a combat engineer, a spokesperson for the Army Reserve confirmed.

“He was a private at the end of service,” the spokesperson said, noting he had no deployments.  

Family members of Couch had told investigators that he had grappled with PTSD, Weddle said Monday.

“The reports came from some of the family member of Joseph, so they’re the ones that sent that on to investigators,” he said. 

He is not a felon and has a relatively clean record that includes the March dismissal of a charge of making a terrorist threat and at least one alleged traffic violation, Steele, the prosecutor for the region, said. He’s believed to have acted alone in the shooting.

Deputies were searching for Couch in the remote woods near the scene of the shooting Sunday. 

Weddle said the terrain where he could be hiding is rugged and includes an old salt mine cave that runs very deep. 

“This terrain is some of the roughest terrain to go in. A lot of trees, a lot of vegetation,” he said. “People got to keep in mind, [Couch] has a military background. So when you hear a helicopter and it’s blacked out, he knows to hide, or he hears the thrum.”

Laurel County Public Schools said school is canceled Monday “out of an abundance of caution.”

Weddle said that he’s heard from the governor’s office and the White House, offering support.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The Columbus, Ohio-based company plans to sell its assets and ongoing business operations to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management.

Big Lots, which sells furniture, home decor and other items, said in a statement on Monday that high inflation and interest rates have hurt its business as consumers have pulled back on their home and seasonal product purchases, two categories the chain depends on for a significant part of its revenue.

Sales at stores open at least a year, a key gauge of a retailer’s health, have declined for nine straight quarters, according to FactSet.

Big Lots said that its performance has been improving, but that its board determined during a strategic review that the proposed sale to Nexus was the right move for the business. The company had postponed the release of its second-quarter results to later this week.

The company will continue to sell goods at its stores and on its website during the court-supervised sale process. The chain added that it does plan to close some stores, but didn’t specify how many or what locations would be impacted. At the end of 2023, Big Lots operated nearly 1,400 stores in 48 states.

“The actions we are taking today will enable us to move forward with new owners who believe in our business and provide financial stability, while we optimize our operational footprint, accelerate improvement in our performance, and deliver on our promise to be the leader in extreme value,” Big Lots President and CEO Bruce Thorn said in a statement.

Nexus Capital will serve as a “stalking horse” bidder in a court-supervised auction, with the proposed sale subject to higher offers or other bids that could be considered better. If Nexus winds up as the winning bidder, the deal is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in an emailed statement that Big Lots seems to have lost some customers at a time when consumers are comparing prices more.

“Big Lots operates in a very crowded and competitive market where other value players do a far better job of delivering on low prices and compelling bargains. It needs to step up its game if it is to succeed post-bankruptcy,” he said.

Big Lots Inc. has secured commitments for $707.5 million of financing, including $35 million in new financing from some of its current lenders. Once approved by the court, the financing, along with cash from its ongoing operations, is expected to provide sufficient liquidity to support the company while it works to complete the sale.

The chain has also received a notice from the New York Stock Exchange because the average closing price of its shares was below $1 over a consecutive 30 trading-day period. The notice doesn’t mean that Big Lots’ stock will be immediately delisted as the company can appeal. In premarket trading shares slid 40% to 30 cents.

They have just three weeks to do so. Funding for the government runs out at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and former President Donald Trump is urging Republicans to force a shutdown unless certain demands are met, NBC News reports. A shutdown would close federal agencies and national parks, while limiting public services and furloughing millions of workers just weeks before the election.

The presidential race looms over the final stretch for Congress; it is expected to leave again at the end of the month and return after Election Day. When the House left town for its summer break on July 25, President Joe Biden had just dropped out of the presidential race, Democrats were preparing to pick Vice President Kamala Harris as their new standard bearer, and Republicans were rushing to draw up a new playbook against Harris.

House Republicans have now settled on some lines of attack, which they’ll highlight in politically charged GOP hearings and investigations into both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on issues from border security to the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Here’s what to expect during Congress’ final three-week sprint before it returns to the campaign trail in October.

Another shutdown threat

The single biggest task for Congress is to fund the government by the Sept. 30 deadline. It’s a foregone conclusion that lawmakers will need a stopgap bill to keep the government open past the election — they are nowhere close to agreement on a full-year funding measure. But the details and length of the bill are a source of consternation.

Under pressure from Trump and right-wing members, the Republican-led House released a stopgap bill that would keep money flowing through March 28 and tie it to the SAVE Act, a GOP-led bill to overhaul voting laws nationwide by requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Democrats oppose the latter measure, noting that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote, with hefty penalties that make the practice very rare. They also say it could deter Americans from voting, as many lack easy access to passports or birth certificates.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said House Republicans are “taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process.” But if the bill passes the House, it’s going nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, and Johnson will have to decide whether to back off or hold firm, as the GOP risks being blamed for a shutdown as the party that instigated the standoff.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a joint statement Friday after the release of the bill.

Also expiring on Sept. 30 is the farm bill for agriculture programs, which has already been punted once and is expected to be extended on a stopgap basis with a continuing resolution.

House GOP probes

After spending much of the 118th Congress focused on investigating Biden, House Republicans are now shifting their focus to Democrats’ new presidential ticket.

The House Education Committee subpoenaed Walz last week for information about how his administration responded to a large pandemic fraud scheme in Minnesota. While the committee has been investigating this issue since 2022 and had previously requested information from the state Education Department, this subpoena was the first outreach to Walz himself.

The House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, launched an investigation last month into contact Walz has had with Chinese Communist Party entities and officials, dating to the early 1990s, when Walz was a teacher leading student groups on educational trips to China.

Republicans are also focusing on the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which the Trump campaign has criticized Harris over. McCaul has threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt unless he agrees to testify about Afghanistan on Sept. 19.

House Republicans also have a full lineup of hearings this week focused on the “Biden-Harris administration.” There’s a Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives.” An Energy and Commerce subcommittee is holding one called “From Gas to Groceries: Americans Pay the Price of the Biden-Harris Energy Agenda.” And the Veterans Affairs Committee has a hearing titled “Accountable or Absent?: Examining VA Leadership Under the Biden-Harris Administration.”

While the House committees conducting the impeachment investigation of Biden released a report in August saying that the president committed impeachable offenses, it’s unlikely the full House will attempt to vote to impeach the president given the GOP’s razor-thin majority and skepticism from some rank-and-file members. Johnson only thanked the committees and encouraged Americans to read the report in a statement at the time.

Democrats strike back

House Democrats have launched their own investigations into the GOP presidential nominee, Trump, though they lack subpoena power in the minority.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel’s subcommittee for national security, the border and foreign affairs, sent a letter to Trump last week asking him to show proof he had never received any money from Egypt.

The top Democrats said they were probing a possible “$10 million cash bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi” to Trump’s 2016 campaign, after The Washington Post reported on Aug. 2 about a secret Justice Department probe into the alleged bribe; NBC News has not independently verified that report.

“Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president— took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator,” the Democrats wrote.

The Trump campaign responded by calling the story “fake news.”

In the Senate, Schumer has put members on notice that they will vote to confirm nominees and Biden-picked federal judges for the remainder of this year — including in the lame duck session after the election.

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

• House GOP leaders weigh options as Trump pushes for a government shutdown fight
• ‘Caught off guard’: How Tulsi Gabbard’s big moment with Harris is playing into Tuesday’s debate
• Sen. Bernie Sanders says he considers Harris ‘progressive’ and her policy changes are ‘pragmatic’

Paris raised the game for the Paralympics, with more than 4,000 athletes as well as 2.4 million tickets sold, which was second only to the London Games of 2012. Now the challenge for U.S. organizers is to top it with another breakout moment for para sports.

“We want to conquer America,” said Craig Spence, a spokesman for the International Paralympic Committee.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Reynold Hoover, CEO of the organizing committee for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and Paralympics, is confident the Paralympics can do just that.

“We don’t have the Eiffel Tower, we don’t have the Grand Palais, but we’ve got the Coliseum and we’ve got the Rose Bowl and we’ve got SoFi (Stadium), and all these tremendous state-of-the-art venues,” he said in an interview Friday as the Paris Games wound down.

The Paralympic venues for Los Angeles haven’t been announced yet – ideally, they’ll be finalized by the end of 2024. Since LA received the bid in 2017, several venues such as Crypto.com Arena and SoFi Stadium have either been re-envisioned or built.

With five new sports coming to the Olympics, and the addition of para climbing in the Paralympics, a record combined total of up to 15,000 athletes are expected to compete.

“We try to figure out what is the sport that is kind of new, engaging, emerging and can offer the Paralympians another avenue in which to show their intensity and commitment to sport,” Hoover said.

If the Paralympics are to take a jump in popularity in the United States, several areas are generally considered key to that success.

Paralympics Sep 8

China tops Paralympics final medal table, Team USA places third

Paralympics Sep 6

Gallery: Top moments from the Paris Paralympics

Television

As the Paris Games finished, the NFL kicked off and college football finished its second full week, dominating the U.S. sports market.

Chris Hammer, a para triathlon veteran who won his first gold medal in the PTS5 classification for athletes with mild impairment, wouldn’t be surprised if the attention in the U.S. landed elsewhere — he said he’s “guilty” of it, too.

“I love American football, that’s what I watch on TV,” he said. “We don’t embrace the niche sports as much as Europeans do, so I think that is a challenge that we need to overcome if we want to replicate the success of Paris.”

Since the London Games in 2012, Channel 4 in the United Kingdom has broadcast the Paralympics on live, linear television. France’s national broadcaster, France Télévisions, had near continuous coverage of the games, but while NBC and Peacock’s Olympic and Paralympic coverage has expanded, there is no guarantee Americans will pay for subscriptions when it’s behind a paywall.

Aaron Phipps, a veteran of Great Britain’s wheelchair rugby team, remembers U.S. athletes excited about being on TV back in 2012: “I was thinking ‘What are you talking about?’ For us, it’s just completely normalized.”

Olympic fatigue

With the Olympics and Paralympics, there’s several weeks of competition for people to pay attention and remain engaged. The Parisian crowds have done it, but can the Southern Californians?

Hoover said with new technology in the works to generate a more interactive experience, Olympic fatigue shouldn’t be an issue. Instead, he thinks fans will be “more excited” because Los Angeles will act as a “home field advantage” for the United States.

True stars

With access to Hollywood, Spence said the organizing committee has a chance to make an impact that extends outside Los Angeles — he expects a global cultural shift when it comes to making Paralympic athletes true pop culture stars.

Visibility isn’t a new issue. Scout Bassett, who competed in Rio de Janeiro and is on the athletes’ commission for Los Angeles, thinks more work should be done together between Paralympians and Olympians to generate more awareness through already established stars.

“We are a country that celebrates winning, success, and until we start telling these stories and really giving these athletes the opportunities they deserve in that spotlight, that’s the only way we’re going to grow the Paralympics and change the perceptions about people with disabilities,” she said.

Seasoned Paralympians noted most up-and-coming athletes went years without knowing of para sports programs available to them. They say that must change to grow the games.

“My hope is that LA is gonna be this moment for so many people with disabilities to say, ‘Oh gosh, I could compete, there’s something I could do,’” said Chuck Aoki, a veteran of Team USA’s wheelchair rugby team.

Medal count

The U.S. once again dominated the Summer Olympics medals table in Paris but, in the Paralympics, China has been the leading force since 2004.

“I think we need to go back to the drawing board,” said Jessica Long, one of the most decorated Paralympic swimmers of all-time.

Long doesn’t think the U.S. reached its full potential in Paris and some Paralympians, who were a part of the three-year turnaround from Tokyo, have struggled.

“I think we need to really get on board, the whole U.S., just to showcase what we can do,” she said.

For Matt Stutzman, the compound archer gold medalist, it’s a financial issue and athletes could be backed more by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee.

“(Money is) the stress – like you basically have to choose between Paralympic sport or supporting your family, and you always gotta pick your family,” Stutzman said.

Medalists from the United States do receive financial bonuses: $38,000 for gold, $23,000 for silver, $15,000 for bronze.

As for Los Angeles, Aoki said reaching the top of the medal table would be tough, but anything is possible.

“Because the reality is, you know, China’s a very large country. The United States is a large country. We have the ability to have athletes contesting every event,” he said. “We just don’t because people don’t know they have access to sport.”

Amanda Vogt is a student at the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.

Vermont State Police said in a release Monday that they have recovered the bodies of four victims following a plane crash in Addison County in the western part of the state. All four were from Connecticut, and they were identified Monday as 55-year-old Paul Pelletier, of Columbia, 88-year-old Frank Rodriguez, of Lebanon, and 51-year-old Susan Van Ness, and her daughter 15-year-old Delilah Van Ness, both of Middletown.

Middletown, Connecticut, police said Monday that Delilah, a sophomore at Middletown High School, was taking flight lessons with Pelletier, who is the school’s aviation technology teacher. The school district announced Monday that Middletown High School will be closed Tuesday and all scheduled athletic competitions will be rescheduled. Counseling will be available to students and staff at the high school during normal school hours.

“This unimaginable loss has left a void in our hearts and our community,” Middletown School Superintendent Alberto Vázquez Matos said in a statement. “Paul, Delilah, and Susan were special individuals whose absence is already being felt throughout our district and city.”

State police said their preliminary investigation determined that a four-seat, single-engine Piper aircraft departed Windham Airport in Connecticut around 8:30 a.m. Sunday for a flight of about two hours to Basin Harbor Airport in Ferrisburgh, Vermont. The privately owned plane landed and the occupants arrived for brunch reservations at Basin Harbor. They left the restaurant shortly after noon and were scheduled to fly back to Connecticut.

A witness reported seeing the plane on the runway around 12:15 p.m.

No reports were received indicating an aircraft in distress or that a plane had crashed, state police said. But when the plane failed to return to Connecticut as expected, relatives reported the situation to Connecticut State Police and Middletown, Connecticut, police. Those agencies worked with the Federal Aviation Administration and used cell phone location data to determine that the plane’s last known location was near the airstrip in Vermont.

Connecticut police notified Vermont State Police of the situation around 10:20 p.m. Sunday. Vermont state troopers responded along with members of the Middlebury Police Department and the Vergennes Fire Department. With the assistance of a police drone, investigators were able to locate the wreckage of the aircraft around 12:20 a.m. Monday in a wooded area just to the east of Basin Harbor Airport.

First responders confirmed that all four occupants were dead.

State police said the bodies of the victims were brought to the medical examiner’s office in Burlington, where autopsies will be conducted to determine the cause and manner of death.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are leading the crash investigation, while state poice are responsible for the death investigation.

“I never got to meet you.”

It is the sound of generational change at ground zero, where relatives read out victims’ names on every anniversary of the attacks. Nearly 3,000 people were killed when al-Qaida hijackers crashed four jetliners into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, 2001.

Some names are read out by children or young adults who were born after the strikes. Last year’s observance featured 28 such young people among more than 140 readers. Young people are expected again at this year’s ceremony on Wednesday.

Some are the children of victims whose partners were pregnant. More of the young readers are victims’ nieces, nephews or grandchildren. They have inherited stories, photos, and a sense of solemn responsibility.

Being a “9/11 family” reverberates through generations, and commemorating and understanding the Sept. 11 attacks one day will be up to a world with no first-hand memory of them.

“It’s like you’re passing the torch on,” says Allan Aldycki, 13.

He read the names of his grandfather and several other people the last two years, and plans to do so on on Wednesday. Aldycki keeps mementoes in his room from his grandfather Allan Tarasiewicz, a firefighter.

The teen told the audience last year that he’s heard so much about his grandfather that it feels like he knew him, “but still, I wish I had a chance to really know you,” he added.

Allan volunteered to be a reader because it makes him feel closer to his grandfather, and he hopes to have children who’ll participate.

“It’s an honor to be able to teach them because you can let them know their heritage and what to never forget,” he said by phone from central New York. He said he already finds himself teaching peers who know little or nothing about 9/11.

When it comes time for the ceremony, he looks up information about the lives of each person whose name he’s assigned to read.

“He reflects on everything and understands the importance of what it means to somebody,” his mother, Melissa Tarasiewicz, said.

Reciting the names of the dead is a tradition that extends beyond ground zero. War memorials honor fallen military members by speaking their names aloud. Some Jewish organizations host readings of Holocaust victims’ names on the international day of remembrance, Yom Hashoah.

The names of the 168 people killed in the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City are read annually at the memorial there.

On Sept. 11 anniversaries, the Pentagon’s ceremony includes military members or officials reading the names of the 184 people killed there. The Flight 93 National Memorial has victims’ relatives and friends read the list of the 40 passengers and crew members whose lives ended at the rural site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

The hourslong observance at the 9/11 Memorial in New York is almost exclusively dedicated to the names of the 2,977 victims at all three sites, plus the six people killed in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. All are read by relatives who volunteer and are chosen by lottery.

Each is given a subset of names to render aloud. Readers also generally speak briefly about their own lost kin, frequently in touching detail.

“I think often about how, if you were still here, you would be one of my best friends, looking at colleges with me, getting me out of trouble with Mom and Dad, hanging out at the Jersey Shore,” Capri Yarosz said last year of her slain uncle, New York firefighter Christopher Michael Mozzillo.

Now 17, she grew up with a homemade baby book about him and a family that still mentions him in everyday conversation.

“Chris would have loved that” is a phrase often heard around the house.

She has read twice at the trade center ceremony.

“It means a lot to me that I can kind of keep alive my uncle’s name and just keep reading everybody else’s name, so that more of the upcoming generations will know,” she said by phone from her family’s home in central New Jersey. “I feel good that I can pass down the importance of what happened.”

Her two younger sisters also have read names, and one is preparing to do so again Wednesday. Their mother, Pamela Yarosz, has never been able to steel herself to sign up.

“I don’t have that strength. It’s too hard for me,” says Pamela Yarosz, who is Mozzillo’s sister. “They’re braver.”

By now, many of the children of 9/11 victims — such as Melissa Tarasiewicz, who was just out of high school when her father died — have long since grown up. But about 100 were born after the attacks killed one of their parents, and are now young adults.

“Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me. I thank you for giving me this life and family,” Manuel DaMota Jr. said of his father, a woodworker and project manager, during last year’s ceremony.

One young reader after another at the event commemorated aunts, uncles, great-uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers whom the children have missed throughout their lives.

“My whole life, my dad has said I reminded him of you.”

“I wish you got to take me fishing.”

“I wish I had more of you than just a picture on a frame.”

“Even though I never got to meet you, I will never forget you.”

The contestant, Christian Moreno, recovered and resumed eating at the competition on stage Sunday.

Moreno was one of six participants at the Hampton Beach Seafood Festival contest. They had 10 minutes to eat as many lobster rolls as they could. The New England sandwich is traditionally stuffed with lobster, celery and mayonnaise and served on a hot dog-style bun.

“I’m shooting for at least 20,” Moreno, of Nashua, said in a video account before the contest started, saying he studied competitive eater Joey Chestnut of hot dog-contest eating fame.

Moreno was at the end of a long table, close to where Sununu was watching on the side of the stage after speaking to the crowd a bit earlier. Standing, Moreno had downed about two lobster rolls when he started choking and tapped his chest, video showed.

Sununu rushed out a short time later, put his arms around Moreno and started abdominal thrusts. He got in several before first responders took over, WMUR-TV reported.

Messages seeking comment Monday were sent to Sununu’s office and to Moreno.

“It was crazy because it wasn’t so much the jumping in and doing it — I mean, that was wild in itself — but there was so much commotion,” Sununu, a popular Republican governor who isn’t seeking reelection for fifth term, told the station.

Moreno, who didn’t have his glasses on, wasn’t aware it was the governor who had helped save him.

“My counter came up to me and, like, made a joke. And was like, ‘Oh, like, I bet nobody else can say that they’ve gotten the Heimlich from the governor before.’ And I looked at him, was just like, that was, that was the governor?” Moreno said.

Moreno recovered and went back to the contest. He didn’t win, but he did consume nine lobster rolls in all.

After a disastrous performance in the first general election debate of this cycle in June, President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, upending the campaign in its closing months and kicking off the rapid-fire process that allowed Harris to rise as Democrats’ nominee in his place.

As was the case for the June debate, there will be no audience present.

Pennsylvania is perhaps the nation’s premier swing state, and both candidates have spent significant time campaigning across Pennsylvania. Trump was holding a rally in Butler, in western Pennsylvania, in mid-July when he was nearly assassinated by a gunman perched on a nearby rooftop. Harris chose Philadelphia as the spot where she unveiled Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate in August.

In 2020, it was Pennsylvania’s electoral votes that put Biden over the top and propelled him into the White House, four years after Trump won the state. Biden’s victory came after more than three days of uncertainty as election officials sorted through a surge of mail-in votes that delayed the processing of some ballots, and the Trump campaign mounted several legal challenges.

An estimated 51.3 million people watched Biden and Trump in June. But that was before many people were truly tuned into the election, and the potential rematch of the 2020 campaign was drawing little enthusiasm.

Tuesday’s debate will almost certainly reach more people, whether or not it approaches the record debate audience of 84 million for the first face-off between Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016.

Here’s a look at what to expect:

When is the 2024 presidential debate?

The presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump takes place at 8 p.m. CT/9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, Sept. 10, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

The planned debate comes nearly three weeks after the conclusion of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, in which Harris formally accepted the party’s nomination after a turbulent month kickstarted by Biden’s withdrawal.

How to watch the presidential debate

Will mics be on or off? Full list of debate rules

The parameters now in place for the Sept. 10 debate are essentially the same as they were for the June debate between Trump and President Joe Biden.

According to ABC News, the candidates will stand behind lecterns, will not make opening statements and will not be allowed to bring notes during the 90-minute debate. David Muir and Linsey Davis will moderate the event.

“Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion,” the network noted.

A Harris campaign official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss planning around the debate, said a candidate who repeatedly interrupts will receive a warning from a moderator, and both candidates’ microphones may be unmuted if there is significant crosstalk so the audience can understand what’s happening.

After a virtual coin flip held Tuesday and won by Trump, the GOP nominee opted to offer the final closing statement, while Harris chose the podium on the right side of viewers’ screens. There will be no audience, written notes or any topics or questions shared with campaigns or candidates in advance, the network said.

Here’s the full list of rules:

– The debate will be 90 minutes with two commercial breaks.

– The two seated moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, will be the only people asking questions.

– A coin flip was held virtually on Tuesday, Sept. 3, to determine podium placement and order of closing statements; former President Donald Trump won the coin toss and chose to select the order of statements. The former president will offer the last closing statement, and Vice President Harris selected the right podium position on screen (stage left).

– Candidates will be introduced by the moderators.

– The candidates enter upon introduction from opposite sides of the stage; the incumbent party will be introduced first.

– No opening statements; closing statements will be two minutes per candidate.

– Candidates will stand behind podiums for the duration of the debate.

– Props or prewritten notes are not allowed onstage.

– No topics or questions will be shared in advance with campaigns or candidates.

– Candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

– Candidates will have two-minute answers to questions, two-minute rebuttals, and one extra minute for follow-ups, clarifications, or responses.

– Candidates’ microphones will be live only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak and muted when the time belongs to another candidate.

– Candidates will not be permitted to ask questions of each other.

– Campaign staff may not interact with candidates during commercial breaks.

– Moderators will seek to enforce timing agreements and ensure a civilized discussion.

– There will be no audience in the room.

Are other debates planned?

Though the September debate is currently the only debate currently planned between Harris and Trump, Harris’ campaign said that a potential October debate was contingent on Trump attending the Sept. 10 debate.

In addition to the planned Harris-Trump debate on Sept. 10, vice presidential candidates Tim Walz and JD Vance also agreed to a debate, scheduled to be hosted by CBS News on Oct. 1.

When is Election Day?

Voters will officially head to the polls just over a month later Tuesday, Nov. 5, for Election Day, though early voting starts significantly earlier in many states.

Decision 2024 Sep 4

Trump and Harris campaigns agree to rules for ABC debate

The officer, who was not identified, was one of at least three involved in detaining Hill. Some fans saw Hill being handcuffed and captured video on their way to the game, and it quickly went viral on social media.

Miami-Dade Police director Stephanie V. Daniels said she had launched an internal affairs investigation.

Told after the game that the officer was placed on leave pending the outcome of the investigation, Hill said: “That should tell you everything you need to know.”

Added defensive tackle Calais Campbell, who was also briefly handcuffed after coming to his teammate’s aid: “That makes sense based on the situation.”

Hill, who said he respects police officers and wants to be one when he retires from football, said he “had no idea” why police placed him in handcuffs.

“I wasn’t disrespectful because my mom didn’t raise me that way,” Hill said. “Didn’t cuss. Didn’t do none of that. Like I said, I’m still trying to figure it out, man.”

Hill starred on the field for the Dolphins, catching seven passes for 130 yards — including an 80-yard touchdown that helped Miami rally for a 20-17 win over the Jacksonville Jaguars. Hill celebrated the score by mimicking being handcuffed.

Hill said he didn’t want to use his celebrity to get out of the situation but wondered what would’ve happened if he weren’t an NFL star.

“I don’t want to bring race into it, but sometimes it gets kind of iffy when you do,” he said. “What if I wasn’t Tyreek Hill? Lord knows what that guy or guys would have done. I was just making sure that I was doing what my uncle always told me to do whenever you’re in a situation like that: ‘Just listen, put your hands on the steering wheel and just listen.’”

Daniels said in a statement earlier Sunday that she requested an “immediate review” of the details surrounding the incident, adding that the department would review available body camera footage.

In a later statement, Daniels said: “I’m committed to transparency and accountability to the community with any situation involving my officers.”

Hill said everything happened so fast it caught him off guard.

“I’m just glad that my teammates were there to support me in that situation because I felt alone,” Hill added.

Campbell said he was driving into Hard Rock Stadium when he saw Hill handcuffed, and he stopped to help. The 17-year NFL veteran ended up in handcuffs as well, saying officers told him it was because he disobeyed their direct orders.

“I’d seen, I feel like excessive force, so I get out of the car to kind of just try to de-escalate the situation,” Campbell said, also calling the incident “a bit extreme.”

Hill, who led the NFL in receiving yards in 2023, said he spoke to his wife and family after he was detained and before the game kicked off.

His agent, Drew Rosenhaus, called it a “heartbreaking situation” on ESPN.

“How things escalated into the situation that they were in, in handcuffs and being held on the ground with police, is mindboggling to me,” Rosenhaus said. “I’m deeply concerned by that. Very troubled. We will be looking into it. We will be investigating this. We will look out for Tyreek, but I’m not going to make any allegations at this time. The most important thing is Tyreek is OK physically, mentally he was very distraught about what happened.”

NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league has been in contact with the Dolphins, but declined to comment further.

John and Matthew Gaudreau were remembered as loving brothers and husbands who put family above hockey and everything else at their tearful funeral Monday, a week and a half after they died when they were struck by a suspected drunken driver while riding bicycles in their home state of New Jersey.

Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. John was 31 and Matthew 29.

“Everything was always John and Matty,” said Meredith, John’s wife, who revealed she was pregnant with the couple’s third child. “I know John would not have been able to live a day without his brother.”

Buses brought players and others to St. Mary Magdalen Catholic Church in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and a crowd of hundreds walked in for the service, including several children wearing Gaudreau No. 13 jerseys worn by the NHL player known to fans as “Johnny Hockey.” Columbus Blue Jackets teammate Patrik Laine, Cole Caufield of the Montreal Canadiens, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman and longtime executive Brian Burke were among those in attendance.

“It just shows the true honor and respect that everybody gave them. Just can’t imagine what they’re going through,” said Caufield, who will wear No. 13 in honor of John Gaudreau. “Just the amount of people that are here today and yesterday, just anything we can do to help.”

Meredith Gaudreau singled out two of John’s closest friends, Sean Monahan and Kevin Hayes, in her eulogy of more than 30 minutes.

“You helped shape him into the man I fell in love with,” she said. “He looked up to you both on and off the ice. You were his brothers, which means you are my brothers, too.”

John, an All-Star for the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets, and Matthew, who played collegiate hockey alongside his brother at Boston College a decade ago, died on the eve of their sister’s wedding.

The Rev. Tony Penna, the director of campus ministry at BC, asked those inside the church to look around at how many people made the trip to the Philadelphia suburbs to pay their respects, calling it a source of comfort for parents Guy and Jane.

“By the overwhelming presence and overwhelming number of people here today, they’re sending a message to you loud and clear that John and Matthew’s lives mattered, that they were noticed on this earth, they were loved on this earth and they were valued on this earth,” Penna said. “This robust crowd wants you to know that they’re here to tell you, all of you, that they love you, too, and they have your back and they’re here to support you in our loss.”

The Gaudreau brothers were cycling on a road in Oldmans Township at about 8 p.m. on Aug. 29 when a man driving an SUV in the same direction attempted to pass two other vehicles and struck them from behind, according to New Jersey State Police. They were pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver, who faces two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle, has been jailed pending a Sept. 13 hearing.

“I urge everyone to not drink and drive,” said Madeline Gaudreau, Matthew’s wife. “Find a ride. Please don’t put another family through this torture.”

A GoFundMe to support Madeline, who is pregnant with the couple’s first child, has surpassed $645,000, with donations from nearly 9,000 people pouring in, many from NHL players and their families.

John and Matthew have been mourned across the sports world, including in Columbus, Ohio, where Gaudreau signed a free-agent deal in 2022 with the small-market Blue Jackets over more lucrative free-agent offers from other teams, including the New Jersey Devils. Fans and Blue Jackets players gathered last week for an emotional candlelight vigil, and a similar gathering was held in Calgary.

The brothers’ lives have been celebrated on social media since their deaths. Katie Gaudreau, the little sister who was supposed to get married the day after the brothers were killed, posted pictures of her family in happier times.

Over the weekend, it was an Instagram video captioned “Birds for the Gaudreau boys” over a clip of John Gaudreau opening his winter coat to flash an Eagles jersey as he went through security ahead of an NHL game. She also posted a tribute to a family slideshow called “That day” where she wrote how she would “do anything to tell my big brothers I love them one more time.”

The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern in Philadelphia, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. In rapid fashion, President Joe Biden bowed out of the race after his disastrous performance, Trump survived an assassination attempt and bothsides chose their running mates.

Harris is intent on demonstrating that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters skeptical he should return to the White House.

Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

The vice president, for her part, will try to claim a share of credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments while also addressing its low moments and explaining her shifts away from more liberal positions she took in the past.

The debate will subject Harris, who has sat for only a single formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

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“If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”

Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring a “prosecutor’s instincts to the debate stage.”

“That is a very strong quality in that setting: having someone who knows how to land a punch and how to translate it,” Hogan said.

The first early ballots of the presidential race will go out just hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Absentee ballots are set to be sent out beginning Wednesday in Alabama.

Trump plans to hit Harris as too liberal

Trump and his campaign have spotlighted far-left positions she took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He’s been assisted in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore into Harris during their primary debates.

Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.

The former president has argued a Harris presidency is a threat to the safety of the country, highlighting that Biden tapped her to address the influx of migrants as the Republican once again makes dark warnings about immigration and those in the country illegally central to his campaign. He has sought to portray a Harris presidency as the continuation of Biden’s still-unpopular administration, particularly his economic record, as voters still feel the bite of inflation even as it has cooled in recent months.

Trump’s team insist his tone won’t be any different facing a female opponent.

“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a phone call Monday.

Gabbard, who was also on the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.”

His advisers suggest Harris has a tendency to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”

The former president frequently plows into rambling remarks that detour from his policy points. He regularly makes false claims about the last election, attacks a lengthy list of enemies and opponents working against him, offers praise for foreign strongmen and comments about race, like his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to turn Black.”

Harris wants to argue Trump is unstable and unfit

The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken supporter of abortion access after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, is expected to focus on calling out Trump’s inconsistencies around women’s reproductive care, including his announcement that he will vote to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban in a statewide referendum this fall.

Harris was also set to try to portray herself as a steadier hand to lead the nation and safeguard its alliances, as war rages in Ukraine more than two years after Russia’s invasion and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza drags on with no end in sight.

She is likely to warn that Trump presents a threat to democracy, from his attempts in 2020 to overturn his loss in the presidential election, spurring his angry supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, through comments he made as recently as last weekend. Trump on social media issued yet another message of retribution, threatening that if he wins he will jail “those involved in unscrupulous behavior,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.

Harris has spent the better part of the last five days ensconced in debate preparations in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours-long mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Ahead of the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was workshopping how to respond if Trump lies.

“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said.

___

AP Polling Editor Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux in Washington and Associated Press writers Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.

Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith have pleaded not guilty to charges that they deprived Nichols of his rights through excessive force and failure to intervene, and obstructed justice through witness tampering.

Nichols was pulled over in his car in January 2023, and he ran from police after he was yanked out of the vehicle. Officers caught up with Nichols and pummeled him in a Memphis neighborhood, police video showed.

Jurors will be selected from a pool of about 200 people. The trial is anticipated to last three to four weeks and will draw media from around the country. Nichols’ family is expected to attend the trial.

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Nichols, who was Black, died in a hospital on Jan. 10, 2023, three days after he was kicked, punched and hit with a police baton. Police video released later that month showed five officers, who also are Black, beating Nichols as he yelled for his mother about a block from his house. Video also showed the officers milling about and talking with each other as Nichols sat on the ground, struggling with his injuries.

The officers said Nichols was pulled over for reckless driving, but Memphis’ police chief has said there was no evidence to substantiate that claim.

Nichols worked for FedEx, and he enjoyed skateboarding and photography.

An autopsy report showed Nichols died from blows to the head and that the manner of death was homicide. The report described brain injuries and cuts and bruises to the head and other areas.

The three officers now facing trial, along with Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., were fired after Nichols’ death for violating Memphis Police Department policies. They had been members of a crime suppression team called the Scorpion unit, which was disbanded after Nichols’ death.

Shortly after their dismissal, the five officers were charged with second-degree murder in state court, where they pleaded not guilty. They were then indicted by a federal grand jury in September 2023.

Mills and Martin both have pleaded guilty in federal court and they could testify in the trial. A trial date in state court has not been set.

She remembers “seeing soccer kids and my own children pass out and faint from, you know, heat-related illnesses,” she said. “It was seeing my sons dehydrated.”

Schools across the U.S. are carpeted in heat-absorbing asphalt and lack shade. The buildings were often made with materials that radiated heat into indoor spaces. Kids are more vulnerable to heat illness than adults, and extreme temperatures affect learning, performance and concentration. Heat-related school closures are becoming more frequent.

The burden of extreme heat is not felt equally. Low-income neighborhoods and communities of color can be as much as 7 F (3.9 C) hotter than richer and whiter neighborhoods.

Yet there are well-known ways to cool down schools and neighborhoods.

Cool ground surfaces

In 2022, students at a school near Atlanta pointed thermometers onto their basketball court and got a reading of 105 F (about 40.5 C). A roofing manufacturer donated a solar-reflective coating and helped them paint it on. They took another reading. This time it was 95 F (35 C).

Paved surfaces get really hot in the sun. They absorb solar energy and slowly re-radiate it out as heat, increasing air temperatures by as much as 7 F (3.9 C).

Cooling playgrounds and roads by making them more reflective is not new, but interest has been growing along with more understanding of the way the accumulation can affect neighborhoods, known as urban heat islands, said Daniel Metzger, a fellow at Columbia Law School.

The Science, Arts and Entrepreneurship School recently had that same cool surface painted on their parking lot. Both times, the coatings and labor were donated. Without that, the school would have had to raise funds, said Scott Starowicz, the school’s co-founder and chief financial officer.

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Cool roofs and window films

East of Los Angeles, roofs across the Chaffey Joint Union High School District once reached 140 F (60 C). Warm roofs mean upper-floor classrooms could get hot, which would affect a lot of Chaffey’s students, nearly 65% of who are Latino or Hispanic.

Chaffey has spent $11.4 million in bond money and maintenance funds to convert asphalt shingle roofs to white cool roofing since 2017.

These roofs — as well as window films, paints and other technologies — reflect part of the incoming solar radiation away from a building, rather than allowing it to transfer inside as heat. These are some of the easiest and least costly actions a district can take.

Experts agree cool roofing lowers indoor temperature and reduces the need for AC.

The district has also invested in steel shade structures, trees and temperature devices to monitor heat stress.

Cooler, greener schoolyards

On hot days, Sharon Gamson Danks remembers seeing her kids and their peers sitting in the shade along the edges of their school building.

More schools are tearing out hot asphalt, turf or rubber mats in favor of grass, gardens, mulch or trees. Experts say trees are one of the best ways to cool things down.

At Parkway Elementary in Sacramento, trees replaced turf this summer thanks to a grant. The project is part of a California schoolyard forests effort to increase tree canopy in public schools, especially in underserved communities.

Paying for the needed changes

For the hottest schools, these solutions are often out of reach.

Federal agencies offer grants, but they often don’t cover the full cost, and schools sometimes don’t have the staff to apply for and manage grants. Increased maintenance costs are also a concern.

Relying on grant money “can completely exacerbate the haves and the have-nots” when it comes to reducing climate change and adapting to its harms, said UCLA professor V. Kelly Turner.

Many believe schools shouldn’t be left on their own. Every individual solution makes a difference, said Greg Kats of the Smart Surfaces Coalition. But combining efforts with a local government or neighborhood means schools can be even more comfortable, he said.

“It’s just sort of integration, right, of different strategies over a larger geographic area,” he added. “You’re really sort of transforming the school environment.”

In Phoenix, Aguilar’s efforts improved Osborn Elementary District, but the work is ongoing. It recently got money to plant more trees and add more shade.

Aguilar understood that it would only get hotter, she said. “I knew that we needed to take action.”

Despite the nearly 100-degree heat, a crowd of 26,516 filled San Diego’s Snapdragon Stadium for Morgan’s farewell match. The two-time Women’s World Cup winner announced on Thursday that she was pregnant with her second child and retiring from the game.

She started and wore the captain’s armband for the San Diego Wave in her final match, playing for the first 13 minutes against the North Carolina Courage before subbing out of the game to an ovation.

“I did everything I ever wanted to do and more. With this decision, I feel so at peace because I am ready to start my family and I am ready to hang up the boots and allow the next generation to flourish and just relish in the spotlight,” she said afterward. “It’s a good feeling.”

It was her 63rd appearance for the Wave, commemorated by a No. 63 jersey given to Morgan in a pregame ceremony. Overall, it was her 150th career appearance in National Women’s Soccer League play.

Before the match, the video scoreboard showed snippets of Morgan’s retirement video, along with highlights from her career.

Her 4-year-old daughter, Charlie, accompanied her on the field. She had more than 95 family members and friends at the game.

The Wave’s starters posed for a photo imitating Morgan’s iconic “tea sipping” celebration, an homage to her celebration of her go-ahead goal to beat England in the semifinals of the 2019 World Cup in France.

Morgan’s U.S. national team career was full of accomplishments, including World Cup titles in 2015 and 2019, and an Olympic gold medal in 2012 in London. Morgan played for the NWSL champion Portland Thorns in the league’s first year and helped the Wave win the Shield in 2023.

Morgan played in 224 matches for the U.S. national team, with 123 goals (fifth on the career list) and 53 assists (ninth). She was named the U.S. Soccer Player of the Year in 2012 and 2018.

When she subbed off, she fought back tears as she removed her cleats at midfield. During the substitution, a tifo in the supporter’s section read “For Country, Club, Community.”

Among the fans was San Diego Padres right-hander Joe Musgrove, who went to the game straight from his start against the San Francisco Giants.

“Twelve thousand tickets were sold in one day when she announced that this was going to be her last game” NWSL Commissioner Jessica Berman said. “That’s the power of Alex Morgan.”

The North Carolina Courage ultimately won the game, 4-1. Morgan attempted a penalty but it was stopped by Courage goalkeeper Casey Murphy.

But the night was all about celebrating a career.

Wave coach Landon Donovan said his daughter asked him to help her make a sign for Morgan’s last game.

“That stuff is immeasurable because she’s now made my daughter, who didn’t previously watch sports in general, fall in love with a sport, and women’s sports” Donovan said. “That’s what Alex has meant to the game and the sport. And it’s sad to see her go. Honestly, I don’t think there’ll ever be another one like her.”

Wave fan Amber Brunner attended the match with her family, saying “My girls fell in love with soccer because of her.”

Off the pitch, Morgan advanced women’s soccer in her fight for equal pay with the men’s national team.

The U.S. women filed a lawsuit in 2019 that led to a historic agreement in 2022 that equitably paid the men and women.

She also paved the way for reforms in the NWSL, calling for the adoption of an anti-harassment policy after a coach misconduct scandal rocked the league in 2021.

A young fan at the game held a sign that said, “Thank you Alex for all of your hard work for women’s sports.”

Morgan said she’s looking forward to cheering on the Wave, the U.S. national team and continuing her advocacy for the players.

“The next Alex Morgan is not only out there in the stands, because I am sure that there are a few of those, but they’re there on that field every single weekend,” she said. “It’s just incredible what we’ve been able to do here in the U.S. to really give soccer the best chance for people to buy in as much as we’ve bought in.”

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But Stafford, a maternal-fetal medicine physician at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, quickly realized something was wrong: She couldn’t find a heartbeat. The unborn baby boy had already died in the womb. 

Soon after, the mother’s syphilis test — given to all women before delivery — came back positive. The infection had been silently passed from mother to son.

It’s a death, Stafford said, that could’ve been prevented with early detection and a shot of penicillin. 

Syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection, was nearly eliminated in the U.S. at the beginning of the 21st century but has made a dramatic comeback. In 2022, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 200,000 syphilis cases — the highest counts since 1950. Congenital syphilis has similarly increased tenfold over the past decade, the CDC says, even though 90% of cases are fully preventable.

Syphilis in the U.S.

More than 200,000 cases were reported in 2022, the most since 1950.

The return of syphilis is the result, experts say, of poorly funded prevention programs over the past two decades and difficulties in diagnosis; syphilis is referred to as the “great imitator” because its symptoms can vary so widely. Most people don’t show symptoms or know they’re infected, and even if they do visit the doctor’s office, there’s no guarantee they’ll be properly diagnosed.

Stafford said her patient didn’t have the resources to seek prenatal care, and no doctor or public health worker had ever told her that she should get tested for syphilis. So, when the patient noticed a small rash on her belly, she didn’t think too much about it, Stafford added.

“There’s a lot of people who are seen in private practice, hospital ERs, or walk-in centers, and those clinicians are not necessarily thinking of syphilis, they’re not necessarily getting a sexual history,” said Dr. Kenneth Mayer, an infectious disease physician and medical research director of the Fenway Institute in Boston. With a generation of doctors who saw few, if any, syphilis cases during their training, Mayer said that “the issue is tests not being done in the first place.”

The all-encompassing nature of the Covid pandemic added fuel to this fire, as public health departments redirected STI resources toward fighting the coronavirus.

“The solutions for controlling syphilis are relatively straightforward. We’re not talking about high tech approaches or a novel therapeutic,” said Dr. Dave Chokshi, chair of the Common Health Coalition and a former New York City Commissioner of Health. “It simply revolves around closing gaps in testing and treatment.”

As syphilis cases surge, doctors and public health officials are starting to develop innovative and sometimes unconventional strategies to screen people for syphilis and curb the spread of the disease. 

Most often, that comes down to figuring out how to get people tested, a task that’s far easier said than done.

Spreading the word about syphilis

Given these challenges, some public health departments have launched eye-popping awareness campaigns, trying to raise the alarm among both the public and health care providers. 

A few years ago, Donna Fox, the HIV and STI manager at the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department in Ohio, noticed that about one-fifth of syphilis cases in the area were among people who reported paying for sex. 

So, trying to be proactive — and a bit provocative — Fox and her team ran billboards across the county in 2022 saying, “Paying for Sex? Get Tested!”

“We had to go bold, and we had to get to the point,” she said. The pushback was inevitable — “you might have to say something to your 10-year-old who can read,” Fox conceded — but the impact was measurable. From 2021 through 2022, the number of syphilis appointments scheduled via the county health department jumped by almost 50%, and syphilis cases dropped by 12%, she said.

Of course, syphilis doesn’t just spread among sex workers, so last year, Fox’s team broadened the campaign, keeping the same look and feel but instead saying “Syphilis is Serious” with “Spreading Locally!” overlaid over the side.

Other billboard campaigns across the country have featured giant bloodshot, infected eyes with the blurry words “Eye Syphilis is Serious” and a black silhouette of a pregnant woman with a red belly saying “Syphilis Can Be Fatal to Your Baby.” While these billboards are factually true, Mayer describes how this kind of fear-based campaign, or “loss frame,” draws lots of attention but may not be particularly effective at motivating behavioral changes for STIs.

“We’re not telling anybody not to have sex,” Fox said. “We’re telling people to have safe sex,” and to get tested afterward.

The sex positivity message isn’t just for the public. The Toledo-Lucas health department also launched an educational campaign for clinicians, reminding them to take a sexual history of all patients — since the county saw syphilis in people ages 15 to 72 last year — and to order a blood test if they suspect an STI, since the standard “pee in a cup” test can’t detect syphilis.

“Many physicians haven’t seen syphilis, and they’ve got a million things to know,” Fox said. “If we don’t talk to the physicians, we’re not going to get the testing we need done.”

Stafford, the maternal-fetal medicine doctor in Houston, has taken a more hands-on approach. Texas mandates syphilis testing for pregnant women at three points — during their first prenatal visit, around the 28-week mark and before delivery — but in reality, these tests are often missed. So, last year, Stafford launched an alert in UTHealth’s electronic medical records, prompting providers to test their pregnant patients for syphilis at each of the prescribed times. The simple tweak helped increase screening rates from 2% to 47% at all three timepoints, while decreasing congenital syphilis cases by half.

Chokshi sees this as another good example of the public health and health care systems working hand-in-hand, with the former “setting the parameters of what standard of care should look like” and hospitals making it a reality. 

Make syphilis testing convenient

Beyond greater awareness, access to testing and treatment needs to be quick, easy and convenient, Chokshi said. 

Indian Country has led the way on this, partly by necessity: American Indian and Alaska Natives have the highest syphilis rates of any racial or ethnic group, almost seven times higher than white people. 

As such, tribes across the U.S. have turned to incentives, giving people $10 gift cards if they come in for STI testing or treatment, said Jessica Leston, founder of the Raven Collective, an Indigenous public health organization.

“We’re just helping people pay for gas and child care and get food on their table,” Leston said. At Cass Lake Indian Hospital’s pharmacy in rural Minnesota, the strategy increased STI testing tenfold, according to one study, with over 70% of the patients who got a test not having a primary care provider.

In 2023, a coalition of tribal communities partnered with Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to ramp up a program called I Want the Kit, which sends at-home STI test kits in the mail. The tests come in unmarked envelopes with instructions on how to collect a sample and send back the test. Results come back in a week or two, and patients are linked to health care resources if the test comes back positive.

Even with these programs, syphilis testing can be overshadowed by more immediate concerns.

In California, for example, half of pregnant women with syphilis reported methamphetamine use, and a quarter were homeless. In the state’s rural Shasta County, near the Oregon border, almost 100% of pregnant woman with syphilis similarly have a substance use disorder and 90% are unhoused, said Trojan Carvajal,
a supervising public health nurse in the county’s STI unit.

In April 2023, Shasta County launched the CommUNITY Mobile Care Clinic, an RV retrofitted with a reception area and two exam rooms, bringing STI tests and treatments to the county’s most vulnerable — from homeless camps to pop-ups with the local LBGTQ community center. Importantly, there’s no STI branding on the mobile clinic itself, allowing people to feel more comfortable walking in to get tested.

Last year, one-third of all syphilis tests performed by Shasta County were done through the mobile clinic, according to Jai Winchell, a community education specialist with the county’s public health department. These people would likely have never sought syphilis services otherwise, Winchell said, but with this mobile clinic crisscrossing the county and arriving at their doorsteps, they can get tested and treated in just 30 minutes.

Piggybacking syphilis services

Shasta County’s mobile clinic also offers other services, including test strips for deadly drugs like fentanyl and xylazine, naloxone to reverse overdoses and referrals to addiction counselors, as well as water, snacks and dental kits, Winchell said. The idea is to address overlapping concerns together, while also attracting those who wouldn’t have considered STI testing, if not for the package deal.

This approach also helps build trust, said Dr. Arlene Seña, an infectious diseases physician at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, showing how mobile clinic staff are invested in you as a person with various needs, rather than a singular problem to be solved. “It might be more costly, but it’s also much, much more effective and helpful to the community,” Seña said.

Syphilis services can also be integrated with general health care services. In March, Stafford launched a rapid testing program at two Houston hospitals aimed at all pregnant women admitted to the emergency department. The program, called Preg-Out, was set up on an opt-out basis, so everyone got tested unless they refused. It took about 15 minutes, and women were offered prenatal care regardless of the result.

“We noticed that pregnant patients, especially those that end up having a child with congenital syphilis, often frequent the ED and don’t get tested,” Stafford said. In the three-month pilot, Stafford said testing rates for pregnant women increased twelvefold, with about 35% of their partners wanting to get tested as well. 

Other hospitals have implemented opt-out screening programs for all patients, including Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta in one of their urgent care centers and the University of Chicago in their emergency department. Not every hospital has the resources to test everyone, Seña said, so she believes prioritizing pregnant patients, as done in Houston, can be a high-impact first step.

“You can’t just rely on public health departments to do the brunt of the work for STI recognition and prevention,” she said. “You have to go hand in hand with other providers in the community.”

The future ahead

The U.S. got syphilis rates down before, but that was in the 1990s, when HIV was ravaging through America. 

“What changed behavior then was lethal, hard-to-treat disease,” said Mayer, from Fenway Health. “Now, you have a generation of people who may be less informed,” leading to lower rates of condom use and STI screening rates. 

However, it’s also a time of innovation. In June, the CDC recommended doxycycline post-exposure prophylaxis for high-risk groups — essentially, a morning after pill for STIs. If taken within 72 hours of condomless sex, so-called DoxyPEP reduces syphilis rates by over 70%, and Fenway Health, where half of patients are LGBTQ, has already begun ramping up distribution, Mayer said. Meanwhile, other researchers like Seña have been working on developing a syphilis vaccine, but that’s probably several years down the line.

“Our task right now is to arrest the growth in cases,” said Chokshi, from the Common Health Coalition, and he’s optimistic that these innovative awareness, testing and treatment campaigns can do that. But permanently bending the syphilis curve will require scaling these efforts nationally and promoting greater coordination between health care and public health.

“There’s no reason that the endgame can’t be, once again, trying to eliminate syphilis — this historic scourge that is completely preventable and treatable,” Chokshi said.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Francis flew aboard a Royal Australian Air Force C-130 transport plane from Port Moresby to Vanimo, on the northwest coast of the South Pacific nation. There, Francis met with the local Catholic community and missionaries from his native Argentina who have been ministering to them.

For an Argentine pope who marveled in 2013 at having been chosen from the “end of the Earth” to lead the church, it was a voyage to another end of the Earth on the longest, farthest trip of Francis’ pontificate.

Francis has previously traveled to the edge of the Arctic (to apologize to the Inuit people for church abuses), and into the Peruvian Amazon (to draw attention to its plight), and to the plains of Ur, Iraq (to boost Christian-Muslim ties). But even by his standards, Sunday’s trip to remote Vanimo was extraordinary.

An estimated 20,000 people were singing and dancing on the field in front of the Vanimo cathedral when Francis arrived, and he promptly put on a feathered headdress that had been presented to him.

In remarks from a raised stage, Francis praised the church workers who go out to try to spread the faith. But he urged the residents of Vanimo to work at home at being good to one another. He urged them to be like an orchestra, so that all members of the community come together harmoniously to overcome rivalries.

Doing so, he said, would help to “drive out fear, superstition and magic from people’s hearts, to put an end to destructive behaviors such as violence, infidelity, exploitation, alcohol and drug abuse, evils which imprison and take away the happiness of so many of our brothers and sisters.”

It was a reference to the tribal violence over land and other disputes that have long characterized the country’s culture but have grown more lethal in recent years. Francis arrived in Papua New Guinea to urge an end to the violence, including gender-based violence, and for a sense of civic responsibility to prevail.

Francis echoed the theme on Monday morning in a final encounter with young people in Port Moresby, the capital, before flying to East Timor on the next leg of his trip.

Francis was elected pope largely on the strength of a speech he gave to his fellow cardinals in 2013 about the need for the church to go out to the “peripheries” where people need God most. In keeping with that philosophy, Francis has largely shunned foreign trips to European capitals, preferring instead far-flung communities where Catholics are often a minority.

Vanimo, population 11,000, certainly fits the bill of being remote. It is near Papua New Guinea’s border with Indonesia, where the jungle meets the sea, and is for the most part only reachable by plane or boat.

There is a small airport, but no ambulift, the wheelchair elevator Francis needs to get on and off planes. Because of that, and the donated and purchased cargo Francis was bringing in, the C-130 was used so he could be wheeled on and off using the back ramp.

Francis, history’s first Latin American pope, has a special affinity for the work of Catholic missionaries. As a young Argentine Jesuit, he had hoped to serve as a missionary in Japan but was prevented from going because of his poor health. As pope, he often holds up missionaries as models for the church.

The Rev. Martin Prado, an Argentine missionary of the Institute of the Incarnate Word religious order, was responsible for inviting the pope to Vanimo.

As he waited for Francis to arrive Sunday, he recounted for reporters the “crazy” story of how he accompanied a group of Vanimo parishioners to Rome in 2019, and ended up scoring an audience with the pope after his parishioners insisted that they wanted to give him some gifts.

Prado, who has spent the past 10 of his 36 years working as a missionary in Vanimo, said he wrote a note, left it for the pope at the Vatican hotel where he lives, and the next day received an email from Francis’ secretary inviting his group in.

“I invited him, but he wanted to come,” Prado said. “He has a big heart for people. It’s not just words: He does what he says.”

Prado said some people deep in the interior of the diocese, in the jungle where cars have yet to arrive, need clothes, and for them a plate of rice and tuna fish “is glorious.”

Francis brought about a ton of medicine, clothing, musical instruments and toys, the Vatican said. Prado said Francis was also helping to build a new secondary school. He said half of the children of the diocese are unable to go to high school because there simply aren’t enough spots for them.

The event had a very Argentine flair to it: On the stage was a statue of the Virgin of Lujan, the patron of Argentina who is particularly dear to Francis and whose name also graces the local girls’ school. When Francis met privately after the event with the nuns and missionary priests, they served him mate, the Argentine tea.

There are about 2.5 million Catholics in Papua New Guinea, according to Vatican statistics, out of a population in the Commonwealth nation believed to be around 10 million. The Catholics practice the faith along with traditional Indigenous beliefs, including animism and sorcery.

Francis’ visit to Vanimo was the highlight of his visit to Papua New Guinea, the second leg of his four-nation tour of Southeast Asia and Oceania. After first stopping in Indonesia, Francis heads on Monday to East Timor and then wraps up his visit in Singapore later in the week.

Ehmer joined Waffle House in 1992 and quickly rose to senior leadership, becoming president of the company in 2002, and later adding the titles of CEO and chairman, according to information from Georgia Tech University, his alma mater.

“His leadership, dedication and warmth touched the lives of many, both within the Waffle House family and beyond. He leaves behind a remarkable legacy,” Mayor Andre Dickens said in a news release.

The board of directors for Waffle House issued a statement Sunday afternoon saying Ehmer died after a long illness. “He will be greatly missed by his entire Waffle House family,” the statement said.

Ehmer was chair of the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2013 and served numerous organizations, including the Georgia Tech Foundation Board and the Georgia Tech Advisory Board.

The Waffle House chain of around-the-clock diners opened in 1955 and now boasts more than 1,900 locations in 25 states.

Ehmer is survived by three children, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The student at South East High School was injured in a junior varsity game against Maywood Center for Enriched Studies on Aug. 23.

South East High School Principal Eric Jaimes said in the message Wednesday, “I am saddened to report the recent death of one of our students.”

“On behalf of our entire school community, I want to offer my deepest condolences. At this time, we request that the privacy of those who have been impacted be respected during this difficult time. Please know that our entire school community offers our support,” Jaimes wrote in the message, provided by a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

The Los Angeles Times reported the student needed medical assistance after he tackled another player on the sidelines of the game on Aug. 23.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has not released the student’s name, and he was not identified in Jaimes’ message to the school community.

The message and the district did not specify a cause of death or say whether the death was football-related.

Jaimes said in the message that the school has crisis counselors available for students who need additional support.

“Every member of the South East High School community matters and this loss impacts us all,” he wrote.

The school district spokesperson said it is district policy that at least one medical professional be present at all football games.

Two medical staff members were at the game where the student was injured, and both attended to the student, the spokesperson said.

The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury said 16 youth league, middle school, high school and collegiate football players died last year.

Thirteen of the deaths were directly or indirectly related to football, it said in an annual report.

Three were directly related to football participation with traumatic brain injury and 10 were indirectly related, which includes things like exertion and medical issues like heatstroke and sudden cardiac arrest, the center said in the report.

Two were not related, and the cause in one death was unknown at the time of the report, it said.

A Florida high school football player died Friday after having collapsed on the field during a game. The 18-year-old’s cause of death has not been publicly released. 

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Thomas Edward Kain, 73, was arrested after the vehicle drove into the Elks Lodge building in Apache Junction on Saturday night, police said. Alcohol “was a contributing factor,” said police, who provided no additional details.

“This accident shows just how dangerous it can be to drink and drive,” Apache Junction police said. “Alcohol impairs your ability to drive safely by reducing your reaction time and decision-making skills.”

No deaths were reported, but police reported a number of injuries of varying severity. At least 10 people were taken to local hospitals.

One person was in critical but stable condition.

Fifteen people were treated at the scene for minor injuries, and five others took themselves to hospitals, police said.

Jail records show Kain was in custody in Pinal County. He did not immediately return a phone call, and court records were not available online Sunday.

“We want everyone to remember that drunk driving can have serious consequences, not just for the driver but for everyone around them,” the city said.

The Elks Lodge said on Facebook that it was thinking of everyone injured and their family members. It also shared the number of a crisis support hotline for those in need.

“In response to the unfortunate incident at the Apache Junction Elks Lodge last night, we want to express our heartfelt sympathy and support for all those impacted,” it said.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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Joseph A. Couch, 32, was named a suspect in Saturday’s shootings on Interstate 75 after authorities recovered his SUV on a service road near the crime scene. They later found a semi-automatic weapon nearby that they believe was used in the shooting, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, a spokesperson for the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office.

The search was focused on a remote area north of London, a community of about 8,000 people, roughly 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Lexington.

“Where is he? that’s the big question right now,” Acciardo told reporters as law enforcement raced to find Couch in the heavily wooded area before darkness fell. “We’re still in there. We still feel like that he’s in there or we obviously wouldn’t be searching wholeheartedly like we are.”

The search was temporarily suspended after nightfall Sunday evening, but was set to resume early Monday morning.

“We’ve not had any luck so far, no trace so far, no information or evidence that’s at the scene to indicate that he’s there. But we believe that he’s there,” Acciardo said.

State Police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington, a spokesman for the London state police post, said additional troopers are being brought in from around the state to bolster the manhunt.

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At an evening press conference, authorities sought to reassure residents that they believe the suspect will be found.

“We’re doing everything that we can do,” said Laurel County Sheriff John Root, adding, ”Just be confident.”

Couch most recently lived in Woodbine, a small community about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of the shooting scene. Acciardo said authorities found his abandoned vehicle Saturday and then an AR-15 rifle on Sunday in a wooded area near a highway where “he could have shot down upon the interstate from.” A phone believed to be Couch’s was found by law enforcement, but the battery had been taken out.

Authorities said Couch purchased the gun and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition Saturday morning in London. Couch has a military background, having served in the National Guard for at least four years, said Captain Richard Dalrymple of the Laurel County Sheriff’s Office.

Couch was initially considered a person of interest in the case until he was upgraded to a suspect on Sunday, Acciardo said.

Authorities believe there was only one shooter. Acciardo said the shooting appeared to involve some planning but seemed to be a “random act” of violence in which no particular person was targeted. He wouldn’t speculate as to a possible motive.

Authorities were notified at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday about gunshots near the interstate’s exit 49. An individual who was “off that exit” fired multiple rounds into the northbound and southbound lanes. Authorities initially said nine vehicles were struck by gunfire, but later increased that number to 12, saying some people did not realize their cars had been hit by bullets until they arrived home. Dalrymple said the gunman fired a total of 20 to 30 rounds.

The gunman was not in a vehicle at the time of the shooting.

The wounded — one person from Kentucky and others from out of state — were hospitalized in stable condition Sunday. Some had “very serious” injuries, including one person shot in the face, Acciardo said.

Residents of Laurel County were on edge as authorities searched with a drone, helicopter and on foot in a remote and sparsely populated wooded area near the highway.

Cody Shepherd, sipping a bloody mary outdoors while waiting to watch a football game at the Pour Boyz Sports Lounge in London on Sunday, said locals were abuzz with speculation. A resident of London, he was at a party Saturday at a friend’s house about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of where the shooting occurred.

“We were listening to the police scanners all night,” he said, adding they heard sirens and saw a helicopter overhead.

On Sunday, several local churches canceled services. But Rodney Goodlett, pastor of Faith Assembly of God in London, was helping direct traffic as parishioners gathered for a morning service. He expected the search would hold down attendance.

“This is tragic, obviously, that somebody would randomly do violent acts,” he said. “You hear media things taking place all around our country, but then when it hits home, it’s a little bit of a wake-up call.”

Authorities released a photo of Couch and warned residents he was believed to be armed and dangerous.

According to Kentucky state court records, Couch was charged in February with misdemeanor “terroristic threatening.” However, the charge was dismissed when a victim failed to appear in court. In 2015, Couch was sentenced to six months in jail after being convicted of criminal mischief and unlawful transactions with a minor. Couch also has had a handful of traffic violations and a public intoxication conviction in 2020.

Acciardo said the search is dangerous for first responders and is painstaking because of thick foliage. There are “a lot of woods, a lot of cuts in the rock,” he said. “He could be hiding behind a tree and us walk right up on him.”

—

Associated Press journalist John Hanna contributed from Topeka, Kansas.

Annie Brown told the Washington Post that her sister, Colt Gray’s mother, texted her saying she spoke with a school counselor and urged them to “immediately” find her son to check on him.

Brown provided screen shots of the text exchange to the newspaper, which also reported that a call log from the family’s shared phone plan showed a call was made to the school about 30 minutes before gunfire is believed to have erupted.

Brown confirmed the reporting to The Associated Press on Saturday in text messages but declined to provide further comment.

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Colt Gray, 14, has been charged with murder over the killing of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, outside Atlanta, on Wednesday. His father, Colin Gray, is accused of second-degree murder for providing his son with a semiautomatic AR 15-style rifle.

Their attorneys declined to immediately seek bail during their first court appearance on Friday.

Investigators previously interviewed the suspects

The Georgia teenager had struggled with his parents’ separation and taunting by classmates, his father told a sheriff’s investigator last year when asked whether his son posted an online threat.

“I don’t know anything about him saying (expletive) like that,” Gray told Jackson County sheriff’s investigator Daniel Miller, according to a transcript of their interview obtained by the AP. “I’m going to be mad as hell if he did, and then all the guns will go away.”

Jackson County authorities ended their inquiry into Colt Gray a year ago, concluding that there wasn’t clear evidence to link him to a threat posted on Discord, a social media site popular with video gamers. The records from that investigation provide at least a narrow glimpse into a boy who struggled with his parents’ breakup and at the middle school he attended at the time, where his father said others frequently taunted him.

Father says his son was bullied at school

“He gets flustered and under pressure. He doesn’t really think straight,” Colin Gray told the investigator on May 21, 2023, recalling a discussion he’d had with the boy’s principal.

Middle school had also been rough for Colt Gray. He had just finished the seventh grade when Miller interviewed the father and son. Colin Gray said the boy had just a few friends and frequently got picked on. Some students “just ridiculed him day after day after day.”

“I don’t want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him,” Gray said. “Words are one thing, but you start touching him and that’s a whole different deal. And it’s just escalated to the point where like his finals were last week and that was the last thing on his mind.”

Shooting guns and hunting, he said, were frequent pastimes for father and son. Gray said he was encouraging the boy to be more active outdoors and spend less time playing video games on his Xbox. When Colt Gray killed a deer months earlier, his father swelled with pride. He showed the investigator a photo on his cellphone, saying: “You see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer.”

“It was just the greatest day ever,” Colin Gray said.

There’s no mention in the investigator’s report and interview transcript of either Gray owning an assault-style rifle. Asked if his son had access to firearms, the father said yes. But he said the guns weren’t kept loaded and insisted he had emphasized safety when teaching the boy to shoot.

“He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do,” Gray said, “and how to use them and not use them.”

Family evicted in 2022

An eviction upended the Grays’ family in summer 2022. On July 25 of that year, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to the rental home on a suburban cul-de-sac where Colin Gray, his wife, Colt and the boy’s two younger siblings lived. A moving crew was piling their belongings in the yard.

The Jackson County deputy said in a report that the movers found guns and hunting bows in a closet in the master bedroom. They turned the weapons and ammunition over to the deputy for safekeeping, rather than leave them outside with the family’s other possessions outside.

The deputy wrote that he left copies of receipt forms for the weapons on the front door so that Gray could pick them up later at the sheriff’s office. The reason for eviction is not mentioned in the report. Colin Gray told the investigator in 2023 that he had paid his rent.

It was following the eviction, he said, that his wife left him, taking the two younger siblings with her. Colt Gray “struggled at first with the separation and all,” said the father, who worked a construction job.

“I’m the sole provider, doing high rises downtown,” he told the investigator. Two days later, there was a follow-up interview with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said by phone: “I’m hanging off the top of a building. … I’ve got a big crane lift going, so it’s kind of noisy up here.”

Boy described as quiet

The investigator also interviewed the boy, then 13, who was described in a report as quiet, calm and reserved.

He denied making any threats and said that months earlier he’d stopped using the Discord platform, where the school threat was posted. He later told his father his account had been hacked.

“The only thing I have is TikTok, but I just go on there and watch videos,” the teen said.

A year before they would both end up charged in the high school shooting, Colin Gray insisted to the sheriff’s investigator that his son wasn’t the type to threaten violence.

“He’s not a loner, Officer Miller. Don’t get that,” the father said, adding: “He just wants to go to school, do his own thing and he doesn’t want any trouble.”

___

Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press reporter Trenton Daniel contributed from New York.

Internet access is restricted while a ship is underway to maintain bandwidth for military operations and to protect against cybersecurity threats.

The Navy quietly relieved Grisel Marrero, a command senior chief of the littoral combat ship USS Manchester, in August or September 2023, and released information on parts of the investigation this week.

The Navy Times was first to report on the details.

Marrero, a former information systems technician, and senior leaders paid $2,800 for the Starlink High Performance Kit and had it installed in April 2023 prior to deployment of the San Diego-based Manchester, according to the investigation.

She and more than a dozen other chief petty officers used it to send messages home and keep up with the news and bought signal amplifiers during a stop in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, after they realized the wireless signal did not cover all areas of the ship, according to the investigation.

Those involved also used the Chief Petty Officer Association’s debit card to pay off the $1,000 monthly Starlink bill.

The network was not shared with rank-and-file sailors.

Marrero tried to hide the network, which she called “Stinky,” by renaming it as a printer, denying its existence and even intercepting a comment about the network left in the commanding officer’s suggestion box, according to the investigation.

Marrero did not respond to an AP email Friday seeking comment.

She was convicted at a court-martial in March where she pleaded guilty to dereliction of duty and providing false official statements to commanders, the Navy Times reported.

She was demoted to a chief petty officer after the trial.

Marrero was relieved “due to a loss of confidence in her leadership abilities,” said spokesperson Cmdr. Cindy Fields said via email.

“Navy senior enlisted leaders … are expected to uphold the highest standards of responsibility, reliability and leadership, and the Navy holds them accountable when they fall short of those standards,” Fields said.

Last week a commander of the destroyer USS John McCain was relieved of duty after he was seen in a photo firing a rifle with a scope mounted backward.

Hector Ramon Martinez-Ayala, 54, of Tooele, confessed in a text message to his brother of making “a big mistake” before fleeing the country and using his daughter’s bank card to withdraw money, prosecutors said in court documents.

The victim was Marbella Martinez, 25, said Tooele Police spokesman Colbey Bentley.

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Martinez had started working as a corrections officer with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office in January. The department had memorialized her in a Facebook post Thursday, noting her death was being investigated as “suspicious” by Tooele police.

She had lived with her father in Tooele, west of Salt Lake City, until her father’s escalating series of obsessive texting, surveillance and stalking drove her to move into a hotel for a few days, according to court documents.

The charges alleged her the stalking behavior had gone on for months, and that the “text messages from the defendant to the victim are more of the nature of a jealous lover than a father.” Martinez also found a bag of her underwear in his room, prosecutors said. Then, in mid-July he placed a tracking device on her vehicle while she was out of the country and later used it to find her and a romantic interest out by a hiking area, according to the charges.

When she returned to their house on the morning of July 31, her father strangled her, investigators said. Cameras on the property were quickly disabled or disconnected, but Martinez-Ayala left plenty of digital footprints, including location data on his phone and his daughter’s phone, as well as a text message to his brother that afternoon, according to investigators.

“My brother, you know much I love you, I made a big mistake, an unforgivable sin, now I’m too scared and I don’t know what to do. I think I will never come back,” the message said, according to the charging documents.

He flew to California, then Texas, before his cell records ceased, prosecutors said. He was then filmed passing through customs in an undisclosed country where he used his brother’s identification.

Martinez’s body was found on Aug. 1 in her bedroom after police were called to do a welfare check.

In addition to murder, Martinez-Ayala is charged with felonies related to obstruction of justice, stealing a bank card, and stalking, as well as misdemeanor identity theft.

Martinez-Ayala does not have an attorney listed in Utah online court records, and attempts to find alternative methods to contact him were unsuccessful.

Officers with the Beaverton Police Department responded to 32-year-old Melissa Jubane’s home at 1050 SW 160th Avenue in Beaverton Wednesday to conduct a wellness check after she didn’t report for her morning shift at St. Vincent Hospital, the department said Thursday in a Facebook post.

Police searched Jubane’s apartment but did not find her, calling her absence and lack of communication “unusual and alarming.”

“Efforts by officers and family members to contact Melissa throughout the day were unsuccessful, as her phone appeared to be turned off,” police said. “Additionally, searches of Melissa’s bank and credit card records yielded no new information regarding her location.”

Following the investigation, one of Jubane’s neighbors, 27-year-old Bryce Johnathan Schubert, was arrested and charged with her murder, police said in an update Saturday.

Schubert was charged with murder in the second degree and is being held at the jail in Washington County, Oregon, according to online records. It’s not clear if he has an attorney at this time.

Jubane’s body was also recovered. Police have not shared any details regarding how Schubert was allegedly involved in Jubane’s murder, where her remains were found, or who found them.

“This is an active investigation,” police said. “While we acknowledge the significant community interest and concern, we must withhold further details to preserve the integrity of the investigation.”

The Beaverton Police Department is asking anyone with information on Jubane’s death to contact them at 503-526-2280.

“We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the community members who have assisted with the search for Melissa. Our deepest condolences go out to Melissa’s family, friends and co-workers,” police said.

This article first appeared on NBCNews.com. Read more from NBC News here:

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The incident was one of more than 85 breaks that the 12.5-mile (20-kilometer) long Transcanyon Waterline, which supplies potable water to the Grand Canyon’s South Rim and inner canyon, has experienced since 2010. Finished in 1970, the pipeline has long exceeded its 30-year design life, disrupting operations at one of the most popular U.S. national parks.

The pipeline has remained a leaky, flimsy albeit vital piece of infrastructure for millions of visitors. This year, after multiple breaks, officials imposed water restrictions and canceled overnight stays at busy hotels, upending some summer vacations over Labor Day weekend.

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A long-term fix is expected by roughly 2027, but it’s taken decades to get to that point. The lengthy timeline is due to a complex design process and the challenge of funding expensive projects at the National Park Service, which struggles under mountains of overdue maintenance, according to experts who know its history.

“It just takes awhile for something this big,” said Robert Parrish, chief of planning, environment and projects at Grand Canyon National Park, adding that it’s not just the park service — utilities can take 10 to 15 years to start building big projects.

Recent stays at El Tovar Hotel, Bright Angel Lodge and other hotels on the canyon’s South Rim were halted for roughly a week as officials rushed to patch up four breaks in the water line.

The Transcanyon pipeline twists and turns over the canyon’s rugged terrain. For years, the park service repaired pipeline failures from rock falls, freezes, flash floods and other causes on an ad hoc basis, Parrish said. One 2015 estimate said over roughly the previous three decades, the pipeline suffered five to 30 breaks per year. Those cost on average about $25,000 each.

It isn’t like fixing most pipelines, according to Dan Cockrum, chief of maintenance and engineering at the park for nearly a decade until 1993.

Helicopters had to shuttle workers to the leak. They would measure the damaged pipe’s thickness and bend, return to the rim and craft a replacement piece, then head back down to install the new section, he recalled.

Leaks happened a few times a year. Around when Cockrum left that job, engineers studied replacing the entire thing or its most vulnerable portions, because it was suffering stress fractures and corrosion and was near the end of its useful life. But the plan for a major fix wasn’t adopted.

“When you have inadequate resources it comes down to sort of a triage approach,” said Ernie Atencio, Southwest regional director with the National Parks Conservation Association and a former Grand Canyon ranger. “You do the best you can for as long as you can. And sometimes things will blow up on you.”

In the short term, a piecemeal approach may have made economic sense. A few repairs a year were significantly cheaper than the tens of millions of dollars for a replacement project, according to Greg MacGregor, chief of the project management team at the park from 2006 to 2017.

That thinking shifted toward a permanent solution in the early 2010s, Parrish said.

“Instead of looking at a large number of small repair projects, the teams really transitioned to ‘how do we look at making an overall replacement of the entire system?’” he said.

MacGregor remembers a huge brainstorm process to figure out the best option and years of analyzing how to solve the complex problem of moving scarce water up to the South Rim.

The park service has hurried to fix breaks, some bigger than others, and slowly save for a major overhaul, Parrish said, “There was too much to tackle at once.”

In 2018, the National Park Service released an environmental assessment, asked for public input, then the next year officials signed off on a more comprehensive fix. The Transcanyon Waterline project will involve replacing about 3 miles (5 kilometers) of pipe inside the canyon, upgrading 3 miles (5 kilometers) of electrical supply line inside the canyon, building a water intake at a new location and updating water treatment and electrical systems.

Officials say the project will ensure the park will be able to meet its water supply needs for the next 50 years or more.

Funding was one of the biggest hurdles. The park’s maintenance backlog kept growing during MacGregor’s time, and he remembers Congress was reluctant to write a big check. The park would end up contributing from visitor fees. In 2018, fees went up in part to help pay for the pipeline.

U.S. national parks fund costly maintenance work mainly through Congress but also from donations, philanthropy and park entrance fees. Large parks like the Grand Canyon, with nearly 5 million visitors in 2023, don’t keep everything they receive from entrance fees; larger parks distribute a portion of fees to smaller parks, many of which don’t charge visitors. Grand Canyon keeps 80% of its visitor fees, Parrish said.

A $208 million construction contract was awarded in 2023. Congress provided more than $70 million for the project but the bulk will come from park fees, Parrish said.

“The sheer magnitude of the scope of this project is maybe the answer to why it took so long to decide, plan and execute,” he said.

Over the years, breaks have taken a toll.

Wendy Haluda is a former baker at El Tovar Hotel where diners this spring could order a filet mignon with a demi glace for $54. After a pipeline break in 2016, water restrictions forced the restaurant to reduce dishwashing and use paper plates and plastic utensils. And Haluda recalled staff worrying about where they would go if conditions worsened to where they couldn’t stay overnight at their park housing.

“It was scary,” she recalled.

Badly needed repairs, maintenance and infrastructure replacement like the Grand Canyon’s pipeline are a nationwide problem. The park service has a nearly $23 billion maintenance backlog for aging infrastructure.

More than half of that is for road work and maintaining buildings at national parks. The remainder is for water systems, trails, campground and infrastructure such as wastewater treatment.

The Grand Canyon has a backlog of $823 million for maintenance and repairs, mostly maintaining buildings and trails.

The Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 provided billions in additional funding, although it will expire soon if Congress doesn’t renew it.

A lot of park infrastructure dates 70 years or more and upkeep has been neglected, according to Tate Watkins, a researcher at the think tank Property and Environment Research Center.

“People like cutting ribbons on new national parks,” he said. “But it’s a lot less sexy to talk about fixing sewer lines or, you know, rebuilding a water line for the Grand Canyon.”

___

Associated Press reporter Rio Yamat contributed from Las Vegas. Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.

The Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this month, is everything he hoped for.

Inch by inch, its pyramid structure honors the Mexica worldview. Among its 60,000 archeological pieces, dozens represent ancient deities. And though foreigners visit on a regular basis, its workshops and year-round activities aim to connect the local communities to their historic roots.

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“This is Diego Rivera’s dream come true: a space in which art, nature and the public coexist,” said María Teresa Moya, director of the Anahuacalli.

The Mexican muralist was aligned with a Communist ideology. He and his wife — renowned artist Frida Kahlo — openly criticized the Catholic Church. But their fascination with Mexico’s pre-Hispanic spirituality is palpable through their work.

In Rivera’s case, he bought and collected archeological pieces, depicted them on his murals and designed the Anahuacalli for their exhibition.

“Diego had a great respect, affection and admiration for our ancestors,” Moya said. “Everything he designed or created was inspired by our origins.”

Mexico’s pre-Hispanic worldview was so important to him that it even influenced the Anahuacalli’s architecture. While its main floor represents the underworld — and feels dimly lit and cold — the second and third levels were inspired by the earthly and celestial worlds, which makes them seem warmer and flooded by light.

Though Mexica heritage is dominant in the museum’s design, visitors can also appreciate other Mesoamerican influences, said Aldo Lugo, a researcher who points out the Mayan, Toltec and Teotihuacan elements through guided tours of the museum.

The three-story pyramid was inaugurated in September 1964, seven years after Rivera died. Its name, Anahuacalli, translates from the Nahuatl language as “house surrounded by water.”

According to a recent government publication, the Anahuacalli is distinctive among Mexican museums in being situated in an ecological reserve of about six acres (2.6 hectares) protecting nearby flora and fauna. The museum itself was built with volcanic rock to fuse with its natural surroundings.

Rivera and Kahlo first thought of the place as an oasis where they could move away from the buzz of the city. Later, even as their plans changed and Rivera decided to build the museum, the couple desired to be buried in the Anahuacalli’s underworld.

The adjoining niches of the main floor are currently empty. Kahlo’s remains are located in her “Blue House” and Rivera was buried in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons, a national cemetery site that honors those who made major contributions to Mexico’s history and culture. “But we keep the niches, just in case they end up here,” Lugo said.

During a one-hour visit through the Anahuacalli, its various rooms and cabinets can be read as a book.

From the start, Coatlicue, mother of the gods, greets all visitors from the ceiling. Her myth was special for the pre-Hispanic understanding of the world: a battle between her son and daughter — the sun and the moon — explained the origins of day and night.

The Anahuacalli’s main floor is focused on rituals and burials. The first level displays archeological pieces depicting everyday life, while the second level — representing the celestial world — is devoted to the gods.

The museum’s walls and stairs bear meanings too. Each of the Anahuacalli’s four corners depict a natural element — earth, wind, water and fire — and their respective pre-Hispanic deities. The stairs represent the transition between the stages of one’s existence.

“The Anahuacalli is a temple,” Moya said. “And one of a kind.”

To celebrate its 60th anniversary, the museum planned various activities reflecting on Mexico’s artistic and cultural landscape.

Aside from a gastronomic festival in June and monthly lectures on Rivera’s legacy — which the public can attend through December — neighbors who knew the artist are working on a video to preserve the oral collective memory of the museum and the neighborhood where it’s located.

“We want the community to keep feeling that this space belongs to them,” Moya said.

Contemporary artists are often invited to host exhibitions at Anahuacalli. “Atomic amnesia,” by Mexican sculptor Pedro Reyes, will be on exhibit from Sept. 13 through January 2025.

His 20 works on display, a press release said, were inspired by one of Rivera’s murals, which was highly controversial and mysteriously disappeared, though its sketch is preserved: “The Nightmare of War, The Dream of Peace. A Realist Fantasy (1952).”

Like Rivera, Reyes’ art reflects society. His works are meant to express the current political landscape and, following in Rivera’s footsteps, he regards his art as a platform to protest and raise awareness.

“Diego was quite controversial,” Moya said. “On the one hand, he had a huge interest in rescuing our pre-Hispanic heritage, but he also adhered to socialism in an unwavering way.”

“He wanted us to look at our past to understand our present and plant something for the future.”