“Mr. Elias Irizarry is a qualified, patriotic young professional, and we are proud to have him as a political appointee," acting Pentagon press secretary Joel Valdez said in a social media post this week.

Irizarry, whose appointment was first reported by The Washington Post, was convicted in 2023 of a misdemeanor trespassing charge after a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol. He showed contrition when he was sentenced to two weeks behind bars in 2023, court documents show.

Internal Pentagon records described to The Associated Press show that Irizarry has been assigned to the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy, which is tasked with providing national security advice and support on military strategy and planning to the defense secretary.

It was not clear from Valdez's statement how long Irizarry had been in the post, and the Pentagon declined to provide more information.

Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on social media: “This administration thinks a convicted Jan. 6 rioter should be doing that kind of work?????”

Irizarry was a 19-year-old freshman at the Citadel military college in South Carolina and a Civilian Air Patrol cadet when he joined the attack on the Capitol, court documents show. He climbed through a broken window, entered a conference room, carried a metal pole through the Capitol and took photos before leaving the building, the records say.

“Because of his training, Irizarry was undoubtedly aware of the safety threat posed by a mass of angry rioters to the Congressional members and staff inside the building,” prosecutors said in a court filing.

Irizarry pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge in October 2022. In March 2023, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan sentenced Irizarry to 14 days behind bars.

Before learning his sentence, Irizarry told the judge that he brought “great shame upon myself, my family and even my country,” according to a transcript.

“The idea of Americans being willing to fight other Americans and tear down the very institutions that millions of other Americans sacrificed and built and protect is horrible. It is something I have to live with being a part of,” he said.

Irizarry is not the only convicted participant of the Jan. 6 riot to find a job within the Trump administration.

Jared Wise, a former FBI agent charged with joining the crowd, was hired at the Justice Department last year to serve as an adviser to the department’s pardon attorney.

Wise was on trial in Washington when Trump returned to the White House in January and immediately pardoned, commuted prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of cases for all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the attack. The case against Wise was dismissed before the jury reached a verdict.

He announced on social media in April that he had resigned from the department, saying: “I returned to Washington to fully expose the abuses by the FBI and DOJ against J6 defendants, but it became clear that this will only happen from outside of government. So I left and will do so.”

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Associated Press writers Michael Kunzelman and Eric Tucker contributed to this report.

Temperatures will be near seasonable with lows forecast in the mid-70s.

As a stalled front lingers in the vicinity of South Florida, more rain is expected Thursday. Soaking storms may tend to favor Miami-Dade and the Keys. Localized flooding remains a concern. The combo of clouds, rain and northeast winds should keep temperatures from getting too hot. Highs will make a run for the mid 80s, that is a few degrees below average.

The suspect, identified by deputies as Erick LaPlante, 33, was arrested Tuesday by the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.

According to the report, the victim and LaPlante had previously been in a relationship for about four years, share a child together, and occasionally lived together to help with childcare.

Investigators said the incident began after the victim returned home from taking her older son to school and fell asleep with her infant son.

According to the report, LaPlante woke her up and demanded access to her cellphone.

When she refused to unlock it, LaPlante allegedly pulled out a black handgun and placed the barrel in her mouth, causing her to provide the password out of fear, the report states.

After reviewing the contents of the phone, LaPlante confronted the victim about a conversation he found and the situation escalated into a violent attack, according to investigators.

The report states LaPlante pushed the victim to the ground, pinned her down and pressed his arms against her neck. When the victim said she was having trouble breathing, LaPlante allegedly responded, “Good.”

Authorities said LaPlante then pointed the gun at the woman and repeatedly questioned whether she had been with another man.

According to the report, he told her, “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you,” before chambering a round and firing the gun while she was on the ground.

Investigators said the shot “nearly missed her.”

After firing the gun, LaPlante allegedly picked up the spent casing, showed it to the victim and told her, “You see this” and “You see, I’m not playing,” according to the report.

Authorities said he then repeatedly struck the victim in the head with the handgun, punched her throughout her body and choked her with his hands, impeding her breathing.

The victim later told investigators she felt as though she was losing consciousness, the report states.

According to the report, LaPlante also demanded the victim’s Tesla key and she complied out of fear of further harm.

The victim’s sister later arrived at the home. Investigators said LaPlante ordered the victim to clean her face and not tell her sister what had happened.

When LaPlante entered the shower, the victim grabbed her 9-month-old child and fled the home with assistance from her sister, who later contacted law enforcement, according to the report.

Authorities said the victim suffered a cut to her lower lip, swelling to her head and face and visible scratches on her neck.

Investigators noted that the couple’s infant child was on the bed in close proximity to the alleged attack, including when the gun was discharged.

Deputies said LaPlante was later located and taken into custody. According to the report, he invoked his right to remain silent.

Jail records show LaPlante is facing charges that include attempted felony murder with a firearm, armed robbery with a firearm or deadly weapon, battery by strangulation, aggravated assault with a firearm, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, child neglect without great bodily harm and battery.

As of Wednesday, he was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where his bond was listed as “to be set.”

That was the case even though it wasn't a novel germ that the world had never seen before, like the virus that caused the coronavirus pandemic. It was a hantavirus, one of a family of viruses that have been known for decades and are thought to exist around the world.

Teams of researchers, including in Chile, Argentina and the United States, have long been trying to find and develop drugs and vaccines. But because the viruses are relatively rare and don't spread easily between people, there hasn't been enough sustained investment by governments, global health groups, or drug companies to pay for the extensive safety and efficacy testing needed to make them available.

Still, there have been some promising developments. Researchers on Wednesday published a hint that a drug used for an autoimmune disease may help hantavirus patients fight off the most deadly symptoms.

They and others hope the attention that the cruise ship outbreak brought to the virus — and concern that hantavirus infections could become more common as a changing climate is expected to increase contact between people and rodents — may bring new momentum to the hunt.

“I hope this situation will help us continue our research and strengthen the collaboration between healthcare workers, the community, and the necessary resources," said Dr. Fernando Tortosa of the National University of Río Negro in Patagonia, Argentina, the study's lead author.

Different species of hantavirus cause different symptoms

Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings. But there are unique species of hantavirus found in different parts of the world that have their own characteristics and can cause different symptoms.

The Andes virus, the germ behind the cruise ship outbreak, is a particular focus of researchers because it is the only hantavirus thought to be able to spread between people in some cases. And while hantavirus infections are rare, they can be extremely deadly.

“That is why it is a public health problem,” said María Inés Barría, a virologist at the Universidad San Sebastián in Chile who studies hantaviruses.

Three of the 13 likely cases among cruise ship passengers ended in death. Separately, in Chile, the Ministry of Health has confirmed 15 deaths and 42 cases of hantavirus so far this year. Authorities in Argentina have reported 32 deaths and 102 cases since June 2025. In the U.S., 35% of the hantavirus cases since tracking began in 1993 have resulted in death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The search for treatments to fight the worst symptoms

In Argentina, researchers are testing whether a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis might help fight hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a severe infection caused by both the Andes virus and the Sin Nombre virus, a type of hantavirus found in North America.

The drug tocilizumab tamps down a molecule called IL-6 that triggers damaging inflammation in some autoimmune and other diseases. IL-6 also is a suspect in the inflammatory reaction to the infection, which can rapidly cause lungs to fill with fluid and fail.

Four of five patients in an Argentinian hospital survived after receiving tocilizumab in addition to traditional supportive care for hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the research team reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The report is unusual, tracking the first people to receive tocilizumab in an ongoing “compassionate use” study — meaning doctors can use it in patients they deem eligible. Another five who were deemed eligible for tocilizumab but didn’t get it and instead received only standard care died. Two worsened too quickly and the hospital lacked supply for the others, the researchers reported.

The research team cautioned that the five patients who didn’t receive the drug were sicker and older than those who did. Still, they said tocilizumab warrants further investigation.

Efforts to stop hantavirus have also shown promise

Barría's team, which includes Chilean scientists, researchers from the U.S. National Institutes of Health's Rocky Mountain Laboratories and the Robert Koch Institute in Germany, is working on another approach — using cloned antibodies from hantavirus survivors to fend off infections. The team published research in 2018 showing the approach worked in animals, but they were not able to get funding to continue with human trials, in part because resources were diverted to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are truly at the forefront, at a very important stage of moving to the next phase," Barría said.

Several other groups, including at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Vanderbilt Center for Antibody Therapeutics, are also working on antibody treatments.

Vaccines against so-called Old World hantaviruses have been developed and used, though the World Health Organization says there are no current licensed hantavirus vaccines. But there are new vaccines in the works, including ones aimed to fight the Andes virus. A team lead by Jay Hooper of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, is working on a vaccine that has successfully generated antibodies against the virus in early-stage human trials, according to a study the team published in 2020.

Hantavirus treatments and vaccines have many hurdles still to clear

Dr. Paul Bollyky, an infectious disease doctor and researcher at Stanford Medical Center in California, said attracting and sustaining the support needed to produce vaccines and treatments is extremely difficult for rare diseases like hantavirus.

For one, labs typically don't have what Bollyky calls the necessary machinery they need to test and validate vaccines and treatments for rare infections. Also, because hantavirus outbreaks are so sporadic and unpredictable, that virus is much harder to study compared with a common germ that regularly circulates, such as the flu.

“That also makes clinical trials in this space super difficult because of the number of people you would have to immunize to protect against one infection,” he said. “It's just impractical.”

And it means there might not be a large or steady market for a vaccine or treatment, because it would be hard to know who is going to be exposed, and when.

Still, it frustrates researchers and doctors who know there are potential treatments that, with enough sustained investment, could be helping people now.

“What happened was a tragedy, but it can happen not only with this but also other diseases,” Tortosa said, referring to the cruise ship outbreak.

___

Montoya Bryan reported from Albuquerque, New Mexico. AP Medical Writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this story.

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

Agentes del Departamento de Policía Escolar de Miami-Dade arrestaron a Apolonia Crumpton el martes en Miami Northwestern Senior High School, ubicada en el 1100 de Northwest 71st Street, en el vecindario Liberty City de Miami.

Un informe de arresto indica que Crumpton, residente del noroeste de Miami-Dade, estaba en la escuela debido a que su hija estuvo involucrada en una pelea.

La policía dijo que Crumpton, descrita como una “madre furiosa”, comentó que “tenía esa m—– en su bolso”, lo que llevó a los oficiales de seguridad escolar a creer que posiblemente estaba armada. Según el informe, también le dijo a un oficial de seguridad: “Tengo puños y balas. Lo que quieran”.

Tras revisar su bolso, los agentes dijeron que encontraron una pistola negra de 9 milímetros y municiones en su interior.

Crumpton fue acusada de un cargo grave por posesión de un arma de fuego en propiedad escolar.

Hasta la tarde del miércoles, permanecía detenida en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, con una fianza “pendiente de ser fijada”.

Según la MDSO, la policía de Doral respondió a una vivienda en la comunidad cerrada Doral Isles en el área de Northwest 111th Court y 72nd Terrace poco después de las 7:30 p.m. tras recibir una llamada para verificar el bienestar de las personas que viven en la casa.

Las autoridades dijeron que los agentes ingresaron a la vivienda y encontraron a un hombre, una mujer y dos niñas que no respondían.

El personal de Miami-Dade Fire Rescue también respondió a la vivienda y declaró a los cuatro muertos en la escena.

Detectives de la Oficina de Homicidios de la MDSO han asumido la investigación de las muertes.

No se divulgaron de inmediato más detalles.

El hecho ocurrió alrededor de las 10:30 p.m. del domingo a bordo del vuelo 3345 de Frontier, que viajaba de Puerto Rico a Chicago cuando se vio obligado a realizar un aterrizaje de emergencia en MIA, según un informe de arresto de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade.

Según el informe, Juan Gabriel Reyes, de Pahokee, Florida, se tornó conflictivo durante el vuelo, lo que llevó a miembros de la tripulación y pasajeros a intervenir.

Los investigadores dijeron que testigos les informaron que Reyes primero intentó abrir una puerta de salida mientras el avión estaba en vuelo y les dijo a otras personas que quería abandonar la aeronave.

El informe indica que las azafatas lo detuvieron y le ordenaron regresar a su asiento.

Los agentes dijeron que Reyes presuntamente ignoró esas instrucciones y caminó hacia la parte delantera del avión, donde intentó acceder a la cabina de mando al “poner la mano en la manija de la puerta y empujar agresivamente con el hombro la puerta del piloto”.

Según el informe, una azafata le impidió el acceso.

Los investigadores dijeron que, después de que se le permitió usar el baño, Reyes intentó orinar en el piso del sanitario antes de que le indicaran que tomara asiento en otra parte del avión.

Indicaron que una azafata de Frontier fuera de servicio se ofreció voluntariamente para sentarse en la misma fila que Reyes después de que este fue reubicado.

El informe señala que la azafata fuera de servicio posteriormente confrontó a Reyes después de ser alertada de que estaba manipulando sus pertenencias. Cuando la azafata intentó tomar su bolso, Reyes presuntamente la agarró por la cabeza y comenzó a estrangularla, dijeron los agentes.

Según las autoridades, varios pasajeros intervinieron para ayudar a la víctima y apartar a Reyes. Posteriormente, azafatas y pasajeros trabajaron juntos para inmovilizarlo mientras este se resistía, indica el informe.

El vuelo fue desviado a MIA, donde agentes de la MDSO abordaron el avión y tomaron a Reyes bajo custodia.

Agentes del FBI acudieros al lugar y asumieron la investigación federal, según el informe. Las autoridades dijeron que Reyes fue informado de sus derechos Miranda, pero decidió ejercerlos y no ofreció ninguna declaración.

Los registros de la cárcel muestran que Reyes enfrenta un cargo de agresión.

Hasta el miércoles, permanecía detenido con una fianza de $20,000 USD en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight.

Mullin's comments came during a heated congressional hearing when he was asked about when the department would change the training requirement for new recruits from 42 days to 72 days, in a reference to media reports about truncated training for ICE recruits.

“July 1st. We bring it back up. We had to rewrite the curriculum. All training starting July 1st will be back up to the regular standards,” Mullin said. The secretary did not address criticism of the training schedule or comment on why it was being changed now.

ICE officials revamped the training as part of efforts to swiftly hire and train an additional 10,000 deportation officers with an infusion of billions of dollars last summer from Congress. At the time, the agency had about 6,500 deportation officers.

That lead to allegations that the department was cutting corners in an effort to get more officers in the field, which Homeland Security and ICE repeatedly denied.

In February, a former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer, Ryan Schwank, who was responsible for training new deportation officers warned that the agency’s training program for new recruits was “deficient, defective and broken.”

During a forum hosted by Democrats, Schwank accused the department of dismantling the training program for new deportation officers, making it shorter and lying about what they were doing.

“DHS told the public the new cadets receive all the training they need to perform their duties, that no critical material or standards have been cut,” he said. “This is a lie. ICE made the program shorter, and they removed so many essential parts that what remains is a dangerous husk.”

ICE and Homeland Security officials have rejected accusations new recruits weren't getting proper training. In response to Schwank’s testimony, Homeland Security said officers were receiving firearms training, were taught “de-escalation tactics” and were instructed on the Constitution. They also said no training hours were cut.

During a tour of the ICE training facility in Georgia with reporters in August, acting ICE director Todd Lyons said the agency made changes designed to streamline the process but denied watering it down.

Agency officials said they boosted training at the federal training center to six days a week, added training before and after recruits arrived at the facility, and got rid of a Spanish language requirement.

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It happened around 10:30 p.m. Sunday aboard Frontier Flight 3345, which was traveling from Puerto Rico to Chicago when it was forced to make an emergency landing at MIA, according to an arrest report from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.

According to the report, Juan Gabriel Reyes, of Chicago, Illinois, became disruptive during the flight, prompting crew members and passengers to intervene.

Investigators said witnesses told them that Reyes first attempted to open an exit door while the plane was in flight and told others he wanted to leave the plane.

The report states flight attendants stopped him and instructed him to return to his seat.

Deputies said Reyes allegedly ignored those instructions and walked toward the front of the plane, where he attempted to access the cockpit by “placing his hand on the door handle and shoving his shoulder aggressively on the pilot’s door.”

A flight attendant prevented him from gaining access, according to the report.

Investigators said after being allowed to use the restroom, Reyes attempted to urinate on the lavatory floor before being directed to take a seat elsewhere on the plane.

They said an off-duty Frontier flight attendant volunteered to sit in the same row as Reyes after he was relocated.

The report states the off-duty flight attendant later confronted Reyes after being alerted that Reyes was handling his belongings. As the flight attendant reached for his bag, Reyes allegedly grabbed him by the head and began choking him, deputies said.

According to authorities, several passengers stepped in to help the victim and remove Reyes.

Cellphone video shows flight attendants and passengers working together to restrain him as he resisted, the report states.

The flight was then diverted to MIA, where MDSO deputies boarded the plane and took Reyes into custody.

Passenger Josh Longwood, who was on that flight, told Local 10 News that he stepped in when the man started to get violent with another traveler.

“The guy tried to attack him and choke him and I was already ready for something to happen, so I instantly restrained him, put him in his row, laid him down, (and) tied him up with his seatbelt,” he said. “I did what I had to do to make sure everyone else was safe.”

FBI agents responded to the scene and assumed the federal investigation, according to the report. Authorities said Reyes was advised of his Miranda rights, but invoked them and did not provide a statement.

According to the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the case is being prosecuted at the federal level due to jurisdictional considerations.

Jail records show Reyes is facing one state charge of battery along with federal charges that include interference with flight crew members and attendants, and assault within maritime and territorial jurisdiction.

Authoritiries said a federal criminal complaint has already been filed, and authorities placed a federal hold on Reyes at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. He is expected to be transferred to the Federal Detention Center in Miami to face the federal proceedings.

If convicted on all charges, he could face up to 20 years in prison. Records show his bond is currently set at $20,000.

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Those killed have since been identified by authorities as Ryan Charles Whiten, 42; Melanie Lauren Hyer, 46; Savannah Whiten, 11; and Sienna Whiten, 8.

According to MDSO, Doral police responded to a home in the gated Doral Isles community in the area of Northwest 111^th Court and 72^nd Terrace just after 7:30 p.m. after receiving a call to check on the welfare from a family friend of the people who live there.

Authorities said officers entered the house and found four people who had stab wounds and were unresponsive.

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel also responded to the home and pronounced all four dead at the scene.

Detectives said they believe the four were killed in a murder-suicide, but they have not identified which person they believe was the killer.

A representative for Downtown Doral Charter Schools confirmed that both girls were students there.

“Our community is mourning the loss of two of our beloved students. Our heartfelt sympathies are with their families, friends, faculty and staff at our schools. These students will be deeply missed,” the representative said in a statement. “To support our students and staff, the school has arranged to have grief counselors on campus and will continue to provide support as needed. We encourage parents to talk openly with their children and closely monitor their well-being. Parents with any concerns or in need of additional support should contact the school.”

Doral Mayor Christi Fraga released a statement on social media, saying the loss hits especially close to home as she personally knew Hyer.

“Our Doral community is heartbroken by the unimaginable tragedy that has impacted a local family and taken the lives of a mother and her two young daughters,” Fraga said in part. “As a mother, and as someone who personally knew and admired the loving and dedicated mother at the center of this tragedy, this loss feels especially close to home. My heart aches for their loved ones, classmates, teachers, friends, neighbors, and everyone grieving during this incredibly painful time.”

Fraga added, “This tragedy is also a painful reminder that we must continue having honest conversations about mental health, domestic violence, emotional wellness, and the importance of speaking up when something feels wrong.”

Parents who live nearby were also shaken to learn of the incident.

“I live super close to their house and I didn’t even know,” said parent Anderina Zerpa. “That is a tragedy that is a worst nightmare for a parent.”

Court records obtained by Local 10 News show that Whiten and Hyer were divorced in April 2024 after just over two years of being married.

“I cannot believe things like that, but sometimes people do that, and mental health is something that needs to be discussed,” said parent Areal Boveda.

Fraga also shared the following resources for those experiencing domestic violence or mental health struggles:

• Miami-Dade Domestic Violence Hotline: 305-285-5900

• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-SAFE (7233)

• 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988

MDSO Homicide Bureau detectives have taken over the investigation into the deaths.

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The council’s CEO, Cindy Arenberg Seltzer, has been at the helm since the beginning.

After lawmakers voted for an amendment to slash property taxes that will go on this November’s ballot, Seltzer is sounding the alarm on what the vital resource could lose.

“Right now, it looks like roughly $10 million next year,” she said.

The plan would protect the first $250,000 of your home’s value from property tax, and lower the cap on assessment increases for second homes and commercial properties.

Broward officials estimate in fiscal year for 2027-2028, the county could lose more than $250 million while Miami-Dade County could be down $385.8 million.

“The loss compared to the benefit for hundreds of thousands of residents is manageable,” said Miami-Dade Property Appraiser Tomas Regalado.

But Florida CFO Blaise Ingoglia and the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis have been critical of Broward and Miami-Dade for what they say are bloated budgets and wasteful spending.

“You’re going to hear a lot of scare tactics and misinformation,” said Ingoglia. “I do not buy into the fact that they’re going to have to cut things. Everyone wants more money. The way you make things more affordable is you reduce one of their biggest payments, which is their housing payment.”

In the Florida Keys, Monroe County estimates it may lose $13.6 million.

One concern there is a potential funding shortfall for its mosquito control district.

A spokesperson for the county told Local 10 News they’re crunching the numbers.

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Officers with the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department arrested Apolonia Crumpton on Tuesday at Miami Northwestern Senior High School, located at 1100 NW 71st St. in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood.

An arrest report states that Crumpton, of northwest Miami-Dade, was at the school due to her daughter being involved in a fight.

Police said Crumpton, described as an “irate parent,” remarking that she “had that s--- in her bag,” led school security officers to believe she was potentially armed. According to the report, she also told a security officer, “I got hands and bullets. Whichever one they want.”

After searching her bag, officers said they found a black 9mm firearm and ammunition inside.

Crumpton was charged with one felony count of possession of a firearm on school property.

As of Wednesday afternoon, she was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center with bond listed as “to be set.”

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Pino, 55, is facing the charges in connection with the September 2022 death of 17-year-old Lucy Fernandez.

Miami-Dade Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez heard final motions from both sides on a range of topics, from mentions of alcohol on board the Robalo to what passengers who were on board the boat the day of the 2022 crash can testify to and more.

“They can describe how they feel, what they heard, what they saw,” Tinkler Mendez said.

Jurors will also be able to see the boat in person by taking a site visit to a location 13 miles away near North Miami Beach.

“This is not like a group field trip, though. This is just the jurors, the parties,” Tinkler Mendez said. “I don’t need to bring the clerk, as far as I know. I’m going to bring my court reporter, although there will be no conversations that take place during the viewing at all.”

Prosecutors had asked the court to allow jurors to visit the site, in part to get a better grasp of the size of the vessel.

The boat, operated by Pino, had his wife and 12 teenage girls, including his daughter, on board. After crashing into a channel marker, Fernandez became trapped beneath the capsized boat and drowned. Several others suffered varying injuries.

“The jurors would be in a marked area,” Tinkler Mendez said. “They have their notebooks if they wish and (they’re) free to meander about for a certain set period of time.”

The goal is to finalize the jury by Friday and, if accomplished, to have opening statements on Monday.

The trial is expected to stretch into the fourth week of June.

Pino, de 55 años, enfrenta los cargos en relación con la muerte de Lucy Fernandez, de 17 años, ocurrida en septiembre de 2022.

La jueza de Miami-Dade, Marisa Tinkler Mendez, escuchó las mociones finales de ambas partes sobre una variedad de temas, desde las referencias al alcohol a bordo de la embarcación Robalo hasta lo que los pasajeros que estaban en el bote el día del accidente de 2022 podrán testificar, entre otros asuntos.

“Pueden describir cómo se sintieron, lo que escucharon y lo que vieron”, dijo Tinkler Mendez.

Los miembros del jurado también podrán ver la embarcación en persona durante una visita a un lugar ubicado a unas 13 millas de distancia, cerca de North Miami Beach.

“Esto no es como una excursión grupal. Solo estarán los miembros del jurado y las partes involucradas”, dijo Tinkler Mendez. “Hasta donde sé, no necesito llevar al secretario judicial. Sí llevaré a mi taquígrafo judicial, aunque no habrá ninguna conversación durante la inspección”.

Los fiscales habían solicitado al tribunal que permitiera al jurado visitar el lugar, en parte para comprender mejor el tamaño de la embarcación.

El bote, operado por Pino, llevaba a bordo a su esposa y a 12 adolescentes, incluida su hija. Después de chocar contra una baliza de canal, Fernandez quedó atrapada debajo de la embarcación volcada y murió ahogada. Varias otras personas sufrieron lesiones de diversa consideración.

“Los miembros del jurado estarán en un área delimitada”, dijo Tinkler Mendez. “Tendrán sus libretas si así lo desean y podrán desplazarse libremente durante un período determinado de tiempo”.

El objetivo es finalizar la selección del jurado para el viernes y, si se logra, comenzar con los alegatos iniciales el lunes.

Se espera que el juicio se extienda hasta la cuarta semana de junio.

The Knicks are auctioning two celebrity row seats for Game 3 at Madison Square Garden, when the NBA Finals return to New York for the first time since 1999.

Ticket prices are skyrocketing with the league's biggest market finally back in the series, with tickets inside the Garden so hard to acquire that Knicks fans have instead bought up seats in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Cleveland as their team romped through the Eastern Conference playoffs.

The seats for the game Monday night are located in section VIP 10; row AA; seats 25 and 26, which the Knicks say is right off center court. It's impossible to know what they would usually cost, because the team doesn't sell them. Instead, they are given to the celebrity fans such as Tracy Morgan and Timothée Chalamet who are courtside fixtures.

The auction begins Thursday at noon at knicks.com/celebrityrowauction and proceeds benefit the Garden of Dreams Foundation, the organization that works with MSG's companies to assist children at need in the tristate area. It runs through Sunday at 5 p.m.

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/nba

He added: “We do think this is sort of a new approach.”

More than a half-century and 58 seasons later, that same term — “new approach” — is being deployed by CBS News leader Bari Weiss to explain her sweeping changes at the most renowned news program in TV history: firing the top producer and two correspondents, among others, and installing a new chief with no TV broadcast experience. Now, one of the show’s most famous faces, Scott Pelley, is gone too — fired after a tense confrontation with bosses.

“We realize, of course, that new approaches are not always instantly accepted,” Reasoner said on that night in 1968. And Weiss’ “new approach” has been greeted with biting criticism from some corners. Moreover, the turmoil has become a top news story in itself, with competing narratives flying — none of them flattering to CBS News.

The essential question percolating on Wednesday: Where does “60 Minutes” go from here? Can it stop being the story, get back to work and retain its reputation for probing journalism and its legendary success atop the news food chain? Or is its famous ticking timer, as some fear, literally running out?

Is it crumbling, or evolving?

To one prominent analyst of TV news, it seemed Wednesday that something had already evaporated — if only, perhaps, a long-held perception that “60 Minutes,” which manages to be both old-school and pugnacious, was something essentially untouchable.

“My first response is, it started in 1968 — not a bad run,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture. “Because it really does look like this is systematically deconstructing what (the show) was."

But, he quickly added: “I don’t think we’re writing the obituary of ‘60 Minutes.' I think there’s just too much value and voltage built into that brand.”

He felt, though, that there were concerning signs. The show is suddenly down four correspondents. Three have been dismissed, including Pelley, and Anderson Cooper is leaving of his own accord. There have also been unsettling accusations launched by Pelley. “New management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story,” the correspondent and former evening news anchor contended in a statement Tuesday. “I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified.”

CBS News denied the charge. “There is no political interference at CBS News, not from ownership, not from Bari Weiss," said a statement from a spokesperson Wednesday night. "The only ‘interference’ is the normal back and forth between editor and correspondent that happens in every newsroom.”

To Jeff Fager, former executive producer of “60 Minutes” and author of a book on the show, a major deficit will be the loss of Pelley himself.

“I can’t imagine running ‘60 Minutes’ without Scott,” said Fager, author of “Fifty Years of 60 Minutes: The Inside Story of Television’s Most Influential News Broadcast.”

“His is the most remarkable body of work in the history of the broadcast,” Fager said. “It’s hobbled without him.”

Internal blemishes are suddenly on display

A dizzying week of public airing of dirty laundry continued Wednesday with remarks from Weiss to staff about Pelley’s firing — and Pelley's response to those remarks. In a transcript seen by The Associated Press, Weiss began a morning editorial call by saying she was “only interested in working in a newsroom that is built on trust and mutual respect."

“That foundation was broken on Monday, and despite our attempts to engage with Scott Pelley and to find a way back, unfortunately we weren’t able to do so, and so we had to part ways," Weiss said on the call. "We did not want that to happen, but that’s the path that he chose."

In short order, Pelley countered with his own lengthy description of their meeting. “Bari Weiss knows what she said is not true,” he said in a statement posted by New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin. “In the meeting on Tuesday, in which I was effectively fired, there was no effort to ‘find a way back.’”

Turmoil had been evident at “60 Minutes” for more than a year, after President Donald Trump sued the show over its editing of a 2024 interview with then-Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris. It became part of a broader upheaval at CBS News after Weiss was named to the new role of editor-in-chief by parent company Paramount late last year following David Ellison's arrival as the network's corporate leader.

Ellison's company, Skydance, merged with CBS parent company Paramount, which later settled the Trump lawsuit for $16 million, angering some at “60 Minutes" — and indirectly leading to the departure last month of popular CBS late-night host Stephen Colbert, who had called the settlement “a big fat bribe.”

Discord at the show burst into public view last Thursday, when Weiss and CBS News President Tom Cibrowski announced their changes aimed at “building a show that thrives in the 21st century.”

They installed Nick Bilton, a former technology columnist and documentarian, as executive producer, replacing Tanya Simon, a 30-year veteran of the show who’d been in the top job about a year. Also let go were correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi, whose segment about Trump administration deportees in a Salvadoran prison had been abruptly pulled by Weiss before running a month later, and Cecilia Vega.

Four days later, a Monday morning staff meeting exploded into acrimony when Pelley confronted Bilton, saying he had little relevant experience for the job. When Bilton told the meeting that “Bari loves this institution,” Pelley countered, according to accounts of recordings: “She’s murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and she’s doing exactly that.”

That led to Weiss, Bilton and others calling Pelley in for the Tuesday meeting, after which he was fired. Weiss and Bilton did not answer interview requests Wednesday.

Reaction, though, pinballed across the media industry. “This is David Ellison's ‘60 Minutes’ now,” CNN media critic Brian Stelter wrote in his newsletter Wednesday.

Despite statements, the show's direction is uncertain

So what does the future look like for the show? In her staff call Wednesday, Weiss praised some of Pelley’s work on recent “unforgettable stories” and promised Bilton would be delivering that kind of work “in season 59 with the amazing team that’s still there and hopefully from some new people that are going to be joining us.”

There was no word on those additions. A much larger question was whether the disarray at “60 Minutes” would prove, over time, to be more political in nature — Pelley and others have accused the new leaders of trying to gain favor with the Trump administration — or more of a generational debate. Weiss and Bilton have presented the changes as necessary to evolve with the times.

Fager, among others, worries about that narrative. The show, he said, has done a good job adapting.

“It hasn’t been running in place — that's such a misunderstanding of the broadcast,” he said. “We adapted on a regular basis. Every time there’s been a new leader, there has been significant evolution."

He acknowledged that some change and evolution is always necessary. But watching the past week's "new approach" unfold, he remains concerned about the show’s overall future.

”I worry about it,” he said. “I’ve always thought it’s fragile, and I don’t take it for granted.”

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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.

Altarac was 18 when she left her native Sarajevo with her husband and traveled to Italy, France, Algeria, and Canada. She eventually moved to the U.S. in 1966.

Altarac, who has three daughters, seven grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren, and 17 great-great-grandchildren, was a guest of honor on Wednesday.

“It brings me such joy to see all of our efforts help these survivors reach 100 with dignity, with family, and surrounded by celebration,” said Masha Pearl, the executive director of The Blue Card Fund, a nonprofit organization that helps survivors.

Altarac, Hanna Gaon, and Leon Schagrin — the author of “The Horse Adjutant: A Boy’s Life during the Nazi Holocaust” — were among the nearly 130 guests at an early celebration on Wednesday of Holocaust Survivor Day at Temple Beth Emet in Cooper City.

The global celebration to honor the resilience of the survivors of the state-sponsored genocide of six million Jewish people between 1933 and 1945 has been observed annually on June 4 since 2021.

Schagrin, who was born in Grybów, Poland, turned 99 on Oct. 30. His memoir describes how he was forced to spend his childhood in ghettos and concentration camps, including Tarnów, Szebnia, and Auschwitz III.

The Blue Card Fund and Goodman Jewish Family Services of Broward County, a social services organization based in Davie, organized a busy itinerary that included a Medal of Honor ceremony, a student choir, and time for intergenerational dancing.

“You think about their stories, their perseverance, things they’ve experienced in their lives, the stories they could share, the stories they can tell,” said Randy Colman, the president and chief executive officer of Goodman JFS. “It’s important that we never forget and we always remember.”

Gaon, 88, also from Sarajevo, said her father was detained and held in a concentration camp in Croatia. She and her mother were in a labor camp before fleeing to the U.S. without him.

“They came to get my father in September of 1941,” Gaon said during the event.

Liliana Ferber, Betty Eisdorfer, Saul Dreier, David Elefant, Herman Haller, Rosa Lindenberg, Frances Gaspar, Altarac, and Schagrin, who turns 100 on Oct. 30, were inducted into the survivors’ Centenarian Club.

Ferber, who was born in Poland, is 100. She survived in a ghetto and in hiding, and her journey forced her to learn to speak five languages: Polish, Hebrew, German, French, and English.

Dreier, who was born in Poland, is 101. He is a drummer. He and his fellow survivor, Reuwen “Ruby” Sosnowicz, co-founded the Holocaust Survivor Band.

Elefant, who was born in Romania, is 101. He survived Auschwitz, Hirschberg, and Bunzlau. He lived in Israel and moved to the U.S. in 1984.

Haller, who was born in Germany, is 101. He survived Auschwitz, and the Death March to Breslau before U.S. soldiers freed him on April 11, 1945.

Eisdorfer, who was born in Germany, is 101. She credits the survival of her and her younger brother to a Kindertransport to England in 1939.

Lindenberg, who was born in Germany, is 102. She fled to Belgium after Kristallnacht and lived in England and New York.

Gaspar, who was born in Czechoslovakia, is 105. She survived in the Nazi’s Budapest ghetto. She lived in Israel and moved to the U.S. in 1957.

Location

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Owners last week made their first cap proposal since 1994, when a 7 1/2-month strike caused the cancellation of the World Series for the first time in 90 years. Manfred was a junior lawyer on the owners' bargaining team in those negotiations.

Players have vowed to fight a cap as long as it takes. Asked whether he is concerned the events of 1994-95 will be repeated, Manfred responded: “Of course I do.”

“We’re open to whatever ideas people have, but we need a realistic framework that addresses the fans' concerns about competitive balance and you just can’t ignore that financial penalties have not gotten it done for us,” he said Wednesday at a news conference during an owners’ meeting.

Baseball owners and players started the current luxury tax system for the 2003 season and in subsequent agreements have increased tax rates while adding surcharges.

“We have tried mightily over several rounds of bargaining to use a competitive balance tax to address competitive concerns and sometimes you got to admit you failed,” Manfred said.

More teams have been willing to exceed tax thresholds in recent years, with a record nine teams paying the penalty in both 2024 and 2025, when the Dodgers were hit with a $169.4 million bill. Total tax rose from $78.5 million in 2022 to $222.8 million the following year, $311.3 million in 2024 and $402.6 million last year.

“We never thought about the CBT as a revenue-generating device," Manfred said. “And when you see more and more tax getting paid, you realize that it is not the kind of speed bump that would help on the issue of competitive balance.”

Baseball's five-year collective bargaining agreement, agreed to in March 2022 after a 99-day lockout, expires on Dec. 1. Management is expected to impose a lockout, which would bring free-agent signings and trades to a halt.

Manfred wouldn’t publicly say whether management thought a stoppage would be worth the cost to obtain a cap.

“I’m not going to speculate about work stoppages,” he said. “I think that the proposal we’ve made is grounds for constructive dialogue and back and forth with the MLBPA about how we can address the number one concern of our fans and that is a lack of competitive balance in the game.”

MLB would limit spending in 2027 to $245.3 million, using figures for luxury tax payrolls that include $20.1 million for benefits and the pre-arbitration bonus pool. It also would establish a payroll floor of $171.2 million, forcing some teams to spend more. The Dodgers had a $415.2 million payroll on opening day this year while the lowest payroll was Miami at $81.8 million.

“The players are smart people," Manfred said. "I think they understand that payroll is a significant advantage for certain clubs and that high-payroll clubs win more than low-payroll clubs.”

No small-market team has won the World Series since the 2015 Kansas City Royals.

“Teams that go through periods, particularly longer periods, of non-competitiveness not only have lower revenues, but they are slower to recover once they become competitive," Manfred said.

MLB proposed a 50-50 split with players of defined revenue and an escrow system in which portions of salaries would be withheld for payback to the league in the event the players' share in a year is above 50%.

“If their proposal would have been in place in 2026 with current amateur entry figures, players would have lost more than half a billion dollars,” union head Bruce Meyer said in a statement.

Manfred said MLB has not made a proposal yet on players signing initial professional contracts.

Players asked for expanded free agency and salary arbitration rights, increasing luxury tax thresholds and almost doubling the major league minimum and increasing revenue sharing.

Baseball has had nine work stoppages since 1972, the last the 99-day lockout that slightly delayed the 2022 season.

The NFL has had a cap since 1994, the NBA since 1984-85 and the NHL since 2005-06.

Expansion

MLB won’t consider the possible addition of two teams until there is a new CBA. Among those expressing interest have been groups from Charlotte, North Carolina; Montreal; Nashville, Tennessee; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento, California; and Salt Lake City.

“We’ve made clear to all of the cities that have expressed an interest to say a post-labor topic,” Manfred said.

Olympics

Manfred hopes the union will agree to a decision on whether major leaguers will go to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics earlier than reaching a labor deal.

”It is my impression that they’re thinking about on a separate track,” he said. “I hope that’s the case because we can’t wait until we have a collective bargaining agreement to make a commitment on that one.”

Union head Bruce Meyer says a work stoppage that cancels regular-season games could disrupt Olympic plans.

Local broadcast media

MLB's proposal would pool and evenly distribute local broadcast revenue, tied to agreement to a salary cap. MLB plans to negotiate new national broadcast contracts for the 2029 season.

“Certainly there are going to be more national games. It’s our number one priority in terms of reach going forward,” Manfred said. “How the inventory after those national games is monetized is going to depend on the market.”

With the decline of regional sports networks, MLB is producing and distributing local broadcasts of 14 teams this season. Local media revenue is “down significantly," according to Manfred.

“Certainly the form of revenue sharing in the proposal was influenced by developments in the media market and where we think we need to be in order to extract the maximum revenue from the media environment as it exists today,” Manfred said. “You need more control over rights.”

Padres sale

Owners have yet to approve the proposed sale of the San Diego Padres from the Seidler family to an investor group led by Kwanza Jones and José E. Feliciano. The deal was announced on May 2. The sale has an enterprise value of a baseball-record $3.9 billion, with some investors remaining in the ownership group.

“Not ready for a vote today,” Manfred said. “It will probably be at some point this summer.”

Rays ballpark

Manfred is pleased with the Rays’ efforts to gain government approvals for a new ballpark in Tampa, near the spring training stadium of the New York Yankees.

“They need to get to definitive documents. My understanding is they’re on a mid-July-ish timeline on that,” he said. “We’re hopeful they get over the next hurdle.”

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/MLB

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The team also agreed to terms with San Diego State cornerback Chris Johnson, the 27th overall pick and Miami’s second first-round selection, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero.

The exact terms of their deals weren’t immediately released.

Proctor, 21, played three seasons at Alabama, where he started 40 games at left tackle. He helped the Crimson Tide win the SEC championship in 2023 and reach the College Football Playoff in 2023 and 2025.

He is expected to begin the season at left guard next to offensive tackle Patrick Paul.

Proctor was a consensus All-American and first-team All-SEC selection in 2025 after earning SEC All-Freshman Team honors in 2023 and second-team All-SEC recognition in 2024.

Johnson, a 6-foot, 193-pound defensive back, joined the Aztecs in 2022 and made an immediate impact, appearing in 12 games as a freshman before earning a larger role in the seasons that followed. He began to emerge in 2024, recording one interception, 67 tackles and three forced fumbles.

His senior season marked a true breakout.

Johnson, 21, started 11 games and recorded four interceptions, 49 tackles (36 solo), one sack, 13 passes defended, and 1 forced fumble. He also had two interceptions returned for touchdowns.

Johnson is expected to compete for a starting cornerback position.

The signings come one day after the Dolphins announced agreements with 10 members of their 2026 draft class: wide receivers Chris Bell, Kevin Coleman Jr. and Caleb Douglas; guard DJ Campbell; tight end Will Kacmarek; edge rushers Max Llewellyn and Trey Moore; linebackers Kyle Louis and Jacob Rodriguez; and safety Michael Taaffe.

The only remaining unsigned member of Miami’s 2026 draft class is tight end Seydou Traore, of Mississippi State, who was selected 180th overall.

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Local 10 News habló con un hombre de 64 años de Massachusetts cuya madre fue recientemente blanco de estafadores.

Su historia fue compartida el martes mientras las autoridades advertían al público sobre intentos de estafa similares.

La mujer anciana creyó que había ganado un gran premio, pero su familia comenzó a preocuparse cuando notó retiros de dinero de su cuenta y luego se enteró de que iba a reunirse con alguien llevando efectivo.

“Ella dijo que eran $7 millones USD, pero en realidad eran $72 millones USD y un automóvil Mercedes que pensaba que había ganado”, dijo su hijo.

El hombre, que no quiso ser identificado para esta historia, viajó al sur de Florida desde Boston y siguió a su madre para asegurarse de que no regresara al banco.

“Me preocupé mucho porque le había dicho a mi hermana que se reuniría con alguien el martes al mediodía, así que decidí tomar un avión”, dijo. “Al mismo tiempo, mi esposa llamó a la policía de Coconut Creek”.

Dijo que quería asegurarse de que su madre no fuera al banco.

“Ella se sorprendió de verme allí”, dijo. “Tuvimos que lidiar con un poco de vergüenza y un poco de olvidos”.

Mientras tanto, dijo que los estafadores siguen intentando comunicarse con su madre, algo que, según los agentes, suele ocurrir en este tipo de casos.

“Continúan llegando múltiples llamadas diariamente desde el número asociado con la estafa”, dijo.

El hombre espera que compartir la historia de su madre ayude a evitar que otras personas sean víctimas de una estafa.

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Local 10 News spoke to a 64-year-old man from Massachusetts whose mother was recently targeted by scammers.

Her story was shared on Tuesday as authorities warned the public against similar scamming attempts.

That elderly woman thought she won a big prize, but her family became very concerned when they stated to see withdrawals from her account and then were told that she was going to meet someone with cash.

“She said it was $7 million, but it was actually $72 million and a Mercedes car (she thought she had won),” her son said.

That man, who did not wish to be identified for this story, flew to South Florida from Boston and followed his mother to make sure she wasn’t going back to the bank.

“I got really concerned because she had told my sister that she was meeting someone on Tuesday at noon, so I decided to hop on a plane,” he said. “And concurrent to that, my wife called the Coconut Creek police.”

He said he wanted to make sure that his mother wasn’t going to the bank.

“She was surprised I was there,” he said. “We did deal with a little bit of embarrassment and a little bit of forgetfulness.”

Meanwhile, he said the scammers are still trying to contact his mom, while officers said that is usually the case in these situations.

“There continue to be multiple calls on a daily basis from the number associated with the scamming,” he said.

That man is hoping that sharing his mother’s story will help keep the next person from being scammed.

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They’ve done whatever it’s taken to make it work. But they’re running into trouble paying for it.

“I was just grateful, so grateful, having the opportunity to go to Africa,” student Chase Harrell said. “I knew when I first entered the room and he was telling us that we’ll all have the chance. I just knew I had to make an impression. I was like, no matter what, I need this opportunity.“

To get a chance to go on the trip, students like Harrell had to write 200 to 300 words on why they wanted to go, maintain at least a B- average and have good attendance.

“Right now, it’s hectic, I just spent so much money yesterday, trying to get everything together,” student Nevah Jimenez said. “It’s really hitting me that, oh my god, I’m really going to Africa for two weeks. The farthest I’ve been is Las Vegas.”

Parents aren’t taking the opportunity lightly either.

Student Rayshad Derden’s mom, Sharina Williams, said she knows how invaluable of an experience traveling to Zimbabwe would be for her 11th-grader.

“Since birth, we haven’t been apart that long,” she said “When he travels, I travel. Yeah, he’s my youngest child.”

Edwin Sheppard, the director of the Blindfolded International Student Cultural Exchange Program ― or BISCEP ― which is organizing the trip, said he’s dealing with budget cuts and previous donors being unable to give.

He said he’s determined to make the trip happen.

“Funding has been challenging, because we were on the verge of cancelling and we really need it now, because we are 21 days out,” Sheppard said.

BISCEP has set up a GoFundMe page to help cover expenses.

Han hecho todo lo necesario para lograrlo. Pero están enfrentando dificultades para pagar el viaje.

“Simplemente estaba agradecido, muy agradecido, por tener la oportunidad de ir a África”, dijo el estudiante Chase Harrell. “Supe desde que entré al salón y él nos dijo que todos tendríamos la oportunidad. Sabía que tenía que causar una buena impresión. Pensé: pase lo que pase, necesito esta oportunidad”.

Para tener la oportunidad de participar en el viaje, estudiantes como Harrell tuvieron que escribir entre 200 y 300 palabras explicando por qué querían ir, mantener un promedio mínimo de B- y tener buena asistencia.

“Ahora mismo es una locura. Ayer gasté mucho dinero tratando de organizar todo”, dijo la estudiante Nevah Jimenez. “Realmente me está cayendo en cuenta que, Dios mío, de verdad voy a África por dos semanas. Lo más lejos que he estado es Las Vegas”.

Los padres tampoco toman esta oportunidad a la ligera.

La madre del estudiante Rayshad Derden, Sharina Williams, dijo que sabe lo invaluable que sería para su hijo de undécimo grado viajar a Zimbabue.

“Desde que nació, nunca hemos estado separados por tanto tiempo”, dijo. “Cuando él viaja, yo viajo. Sí, es mi hijo menor”.

Edwin Sheppard, director del Programa Internacional de Intercambio Cultural Estudiantil Blindfolded, conocido como BISCEP, que organiza el viaje, dijo que enfrenta recortes presupuestarios y que donantes anteriores no han podido contribuir.

Dijo que está decidido a hacer que el viaje se realice.

“El financiamiento ha sido un desafío porque estuvimos a punto de cancelarlo y realmente lo necesitamos ahora, porque faltan 21 días”, dijo Sheppard.

BISCEP ha creado una página de GoFundMe para ayudar a cubrir los gastos.

Los términos exactos del contrato no fueron divulgados de inmediato.

Proctor, de 21 años, jugó tres temporadas en Alabama, donde fue titular en 40 partidos como tackle izquierdo. Ayudó a Crimson Tide a ganar el campeonato de la SEC en 2023 y a llegar al College Football Playoff en 2023 y 2025.

Se espera que comience la temporada como guardia izquierdo junto al tackle ofensivo Patrick Paul.

Proctor fue seleccionado All-American por consenso y formó parte del primer equipo All-SEC en 2025, después de haber sido incluido en el equipo All-Freshman de la SEC en 2023 y en el segundo equipo All-SEC en 2024.

La firma se produce un día después de que los Dolphins anunciaran acuerdos con 10 miembros de su clase del draft de 2026: los receptores Chris Bell, Kevin Coleman Jr. y Caleb Douglas; el guardia DJ Campbell; el ala cerrada Will Kacmarek; los cazamariscales Max Llewellyn y Trey Moore; los apoyadores Kyle Louis y Jacob Rodriguez; y el profundo Michael Taaffe.

Los únicos integrantes de la clase del draft de 2026 de Miami que siguen sin firmar son el esquinero de primera ronda Chris Johnson, seleccionado en el puesto 27 global procedente de San Diego State, y el ala cerrada de quinta ronda Seydou Traore, seleccionado en la décima posición de esa ronda procedente de Mississippi State.

Since taking office on March 11, ultraconservative Kast has pledged to cut roughly $6 billion in public spending over 18 months in an effort to improve the country’s fiscal accounts. As part of this ambitious austerity plan, his government is forcing a nearly 3% budget cut across all ministries.

The measures have drawn criticism not only from opposition parties but also from some sectors within the governing coalition.

The march was organized by the Confederation of Chilean Students and supported by other organizations, including the Teachers’ Union, secondary school student associations, and feminist groups.

Although the march began peacefully, tensions escalated as clashes broke out between protesters and police. Officers used water cannons and tear gas to disperse crowds, while some demonstrators threw rocks and other objects. Several streets were blocked and multiple subway stations were closed.

“The government sought to provoke this, to create this situation to justify repression,” Mario Aguilar, president of the Chilean Teachers’ Union, said.

Demonstrators also rallied against the government’s National Reconstruction bill, a sweeping package of measures aimed at reducing state spending, encouraging investment and boosting Chile's economy.

The project, known as the “mega-reform” bill, was approved by the Chamber of Deputies late May and is now set to be debated in the Senate.

“They want to silence us, but we are not going to stop,” said Magdalena Correa, a 21-year-old student. “They’re taking away our resources and rights, and we have to fight back.”

Police and government officials have not yet commented on the clashes. However, Associated Press journalists observed at least a dozen arrests and several injuries during the unrest.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The bear was spotted swimming in a lake before running through a resident’s yard in Tradition’s Town Park community. Video of the sighting quickly caught the attention of neighbors.

“I think it’s kind of cool because I’m like an adrenaline. I like that adrenaline. I like the chaos,” said resident Jeronimo Alonso.

For others, the encounter was a little more unsettling.

“It’s pretty crazy. It’s kind of close to home here,” said resident David Hoffman. “Seeing it swim through the lake and then go through the houses, you know, I’ve got a little pet at home. Kind of makes you think twice before you head outside.”

Officials say Florida black bears typically avoid people and usually move on if they can’t find an easy food source.

If you see a bear, officials advise giving it space, not approaching it and never trying to feed it. If you come face to face with a bear, stay calm, do not run and slowly back away while speaking in a calm, firm voice.

Police also recommend keeping pets on a short leash, as dogs can trigger defensive behavior from bears.

When asked how he would rank an alligator, panther and black bear from most frightening to least frightening, Hoffman put alligators at the top of the list.

“I’d say alligator. I’ve had experience with an alligator, so that definitely is scary there,” Hoffman said. “I live on the water and they come up there. The black bear, from what I hear, I don’t know much about them. From what I hear, they’re pretty docile.”

Officials say anyone who feels threatened by a bear, observes an injured or orphaned bear, or witnesses someone intentionally feeding or harming one should contact the Florida Fish and Wildlife alert hotline.

The company, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies Corp., said Wednesday it will sell 555.6 million shares at $135 a piece in an initial public offering. The estimated proceeds would easily top the $26 billion raised by oil giant Saudi Aramco in 2019. The offering would also give SpaceX a market value of $1.77 trillion. Only six companies in the S&P 500 are currently worth more, with Nvidia tops at $5.2 trillion.

Besides the size of the offering and the expected proceeds, SpaceX’s amended prospectus updates details about how much control of the company Musk will have. As SpaceX’s CEO, chief technical officer and chairman, Musk’s voting power will come primarily through his ownership of 5.22 billion Class B shares, which give the holder 10 votes for every share held. According to the filing, Musk would have 82.4% of the voting power in the company.

Forbes currently values Musk's net worth at $826 billion and his stake in SpaceX at $542 billion. The estimated value of his SpaceX holdings was based on an overall value for the company of $1.25 trillion. Based on those numbers, a $1.77 trillion valuation for SpaceX would boost Musk’s net worth by $223 billion, making him a trillionaire. However, much of Musk's worth is in stock that he has yet to cash in.

Even as it makes a bid for a blockbuster market debut, SpaceX is currently losing billions of dollars a year. The filing shows that the company lost $2.6 billion from operations last year on $18.7 billion in revenue, and the losses kept piling up at the start of this year, too.

Fantastical plans

Time will tell how SpaceX fares on the market. Musk’s plans for the company are as fantastical as the money he hopes raise in the sale.

Colorful, even frightening in parts, the IPO document strikes a contrast with the typically dry, technical prose in IPO documents, detailing plans to use proceeds from the sale to help put men on the moon again and perhaps even Mars. In one section, it talks of a need to build “a permanent human colony” on the red planet with “at least one million inhabitants” as existential threats loom that could consign man to “the same fate as the dinosaurs.”

Musk has almost equally ambitious plans for his other publicly traded company, Tesla. His goal is to transform the maker of electric vehicles into a producer of robotaxis and humanoid robots. Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that he expects Tesla and SpaceX to merge next year.

AI plays a key role

Key to the success of both companies — and any merged entity — is artificial intelligence. In its IPO filing, SpaceX says it sees potential revenue from AI of up to $26.5 trillion. But that depends on another lofty Musk ambition — putting data centers in space, which is not technologically possible at the moment.

Transforming his space company into a primarily AI-focused company will be a challenge for Musk, who started xAI in 2023 with 11 other co-founders who have all since left. Some were recruited away by rivals.

Its main AI product, the chatbot Grok, is “less impressive than anything that we see from any other major player in the space, whether that’s OpenAI, or Anthropic, or (Google’s) Gemini,” said IDC analyst Arnal Dayaratna.

Dayaratna said that doesn’t mean SpaceX doesn’t have potential as a major AI player, thanks in part to its computing partnership with Anthropic and Musk’s recent deal that gave SpaceX the rights to buy AI coding tool Cursor for $60 billion later this year. Folding in Cursor’s capabilities would give SpaceX access to the coveted business customers now using Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

SpaceX plans to use the net proceeds from the IPO to fund the expansion of infrastructure for its AI and rocket businesses, and to beef up the constellation of satellites that power Starlink Mobile, among other investments.

The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “SPCX” and could begin trading as soon as the end of next week.

And SpaceX isn’t the only colossal market debut investors are now bracing for. Earlier this week, Anthropic submitted a confidential filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to officially start its own IPO clock.

OpenAI has not yet reported filing the initial SEC paperwork, but an IPO from the ChatGPT maker is widely expected.

“This listing represents the first major test for public markets after years of muted IPO activity with SpaceX paving the way for AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI to follow soon after,” Ives wrote.

___

Associated Press Technology Writer Matt O’Brien contributed.

Meliá will cease operations at 15 of the 34 hotels it manages on the island, according to state website Cubadebate, dealing a blow to Cuba’s vital tourism sector, which has plummeted since its 2018 peak.

The report on Wednesday stated that Meliá’s decision was based on “a sense of corporate responsibility and external factors that have significantly affected the operation, legality and security of these establishments.”

The decision was announced May 26, just weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order expanding sanctions against the island. Most of the sanctions targeted Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., a business conglomerate operated by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, with the U.S. asserting it was a threat to its national security.

Meliá did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The executive order freezes the assets of foreign companies, seizes their accounts in the United States and prohibits travel by their shareholders, investors and employees— virtually eliminating their activity in the U.S. financial system.

GAESA, a Cuban conglomerate created in the 1990s, owns a wide range of businesses, from car rentals and retail stores to transportation companies. It is Meliá’s partner in hotel management through one of its subsidiaries, Gaviota.

Meliá deals new blow to Cuba's crumbling tourism sector

Meliá is one of Cuba’s most important partners in its vital tourism sector. Until its partial withdrawal, it operated some 14,000 rooms.

Spanish and Canadian firms are the biggest investors in Cuba’s hotel sector, noted Lee Schlenker, a research associate at the Quincy Institute’s Global South program, a Washington think tank.

“With the lack of international tourism, the fuel shortages, and just the broader decline since COVID…I’m sure that these companies will be rethinking their operations in Cuba with major implications for the people of Cuba, not just GAESA,” he said. “There are thousands of Cubans who work in these hotels.”

Several of the hotels that Meliá abandoned in idyllic destinations like the resorts of Varadero, Cayo Santa María and Jardines del Rey “were already closed and inactive due to energy problems and the drop in demand in Cuba,” according to Cubadebate.

Cuba’s government has blamed the U.S. energy blockade for prolonged blackouts, water shortages, supply problems, deficiencies in the healthcare system and disruptions in all aspects of daily life.

Those who work in Cuba’s crumbling tourism sector lamented Meliá’s announcement.

“It’s going to affect us, our families, and everyone involved in tourism. Our pay and income depend on this,” said Erich López, a driver of a green 1950s Dodge who has been driving for two decades to support his family.

For Carlos Luis Carbonel, a 62-year-old parking attendant who works in front of the giant Meliá Cohiba hotel in Havana, the situation “is going to be a blow.”

“This is terrible for everyone: for tour guides, for parking attendants, for hotel workers, for everyone," he said.

Other major hotel chains including Canadian-owned Royalton and Spain’s Iberostar have limited or suspended operations in Cuba in the past week.

Tourism in Cuba, which reached a peak of 4.3 million visitors in 2019, saw a significant drop in the number of tourists arriving in the first quarter of this year, 48% lower than in the same period in 2025.

Only 298,000 tourists arrived in Cuba in January, February and March, compared to 573,300 international visitors during the same period last year, according to government data.

Cuba struggles to breathe

On Wednesday, the enormous and iconic sign of the Royalton Paseo del Prado hotel at the entrance of Old Havana was removed, as confirmed by The Associated Press during a visit. Meanwhile, the 500-room Iberostar Selection — also known as Tower K — the most modern and luxurious of the hotels slated to open in 2025, standing over 150 meters (490 feet) tall, has remained closed for days.

Airlines including World2Fly, Air France and Iberia have canceled flights to and from Cuba.

Also on Wednesday, Cuba’s Central Bank announced that Visa and MasterCard operations on the island would be suspended following the termination of relationships between foreign entities and FINCIMEX S.A., a Cuba-based agency affiliated with GAESA.

Last month, Canadian miner Sherritt International Corp. signed a non-binding agreement with Gillon Capital LLC, a family office linked to a former Trump adviser, to sell its stake in a mining business in Cuba.

In late January, Trump threatened tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba, as his administration pressures for a change in its political system and government. The move has deepened a crisis caused by seven decades of U.S. sanctions.

While U.S. and Cuban officials held talks earlier this year, tensions have risen. In late May, former President Raúl Castro was charged in a U.S. indictment for his alleged role in the downing of two civilian aircraft operated by Miami-based exiles in 1996 in Cuban waters.

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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A man reported that his debit card data had been used without his authorization to make five withdrawals from a Citibank ATM on May 22 at CVS at 1825 NE 185 St. in North Miami Beach, according to police.

Surveillance video at the CVS showed “a heavy-set white male suspect, wearing a blue shirt, black jeans, and gray shoes,” who used eight cards at the ATM and left in a “silver vehicle,” according to a North Miami Beach police officer’s arrest report.

NMB detectives identified the man — behaving as if he was “engaged in organized fraudulent financial crimes involving counterfeit or re-encoded debit and credit cards” — as Norvys Colmenares, records show.

Colmenares, 46, had a silver Hyundai Elantra and was living with Janckeily Guerra, and a minor in an apartment, at 175 NW 160 St., that NMB detectives searched on Tuesday, records show.

Detectives found Colmenares and Guerra, 29, had “accessories commonly utilized in sophisticated credit card fraud and identity theft operations,” according to a police officer’s arrest reports.

On top of their kitchen counter, there was a card-skimming device with an integrated pinhole camera used on ATMs or register terminals to steal account numbers and pins, according to police.

In a toolbox, there were components and tools, including tap-to-pay sensors and electronic programming boards, used in the “manufacture, installation, and operation of card-skimming equipment,” according to police.

Detectives also reported finding “a silver magnetic stripe card encoder/re-encoder,” 143 credit, gift, and prepaid cards, including 132 that had been re-encoded; a glass jar with marijuana, and a loaded Glock 42.

“Guerra also had two altered credit cards inside her wallet,” a police officer wrote, according to the arrest report.

Homeland Security Investigations agents responded and reported that Colmenares and Guerra, who were both born in Venezuela, “had entered” the U.S. unlawfully and were “prohibited from possessing or exercising control over a firearm.”

NMB police officers arrested Colmenares and Guerra on Tuesday morning at the apartment. Miami-Dade corrections booked them on Tuesday night at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where they remained on Wednesday afternoon.

Colmenares faced six charges: Grand theft, fraudulent use or possession of personal identification, possession of a skimming device, attempted unlawful use of a scanning or reencoder device, credit card forgery, and possession of marijuana.

Guerra faced four charges: Possession of a skimming device, credit card forgery, marijuana possession, and unauthorized possession of a firearm.

Colmenares and Guerra both had holds by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Local 10 News Senior Assignment Editor Frine Gomez contributed to this report.

Un hombre denunció que los datos de su tarjeta de débito fueron utilizados sin autorización para realizar cinco retiros en un cajero automático de Citibank el 22 de mayo en el CVS ubicado en el 1825 de Northeast 185 Street, en North Miami Beach, según la policía.

Las imágenes de vigilancia del CVS mostraron a “un sospechoso masculino blanco de contextura robusta, vestido con una camisa azul, jeans negros y zapatos grises”, quien utilizó ocho tarjetas en el cajero automático y se marchó en un “vehículo plateado”, según un informe de arresto de un agente de North Miami Beach.

Los detectives de NMB identificaron al hombre, quien presuntamente actuaba como si estuviera “involucrado en delitos financieros organizados relacionados con tarjetas de débito y crédito falsificadas o recodificadas”, como Norvys Colmenares, muestran los registros.

Colmenares, de 46 años, tenía un Hyundai Elantra plateado y vivía con Janckeily Guerra y un menor de edad en un apartamento ubicado en el 175 de Northwest 160 Street, que los detectives de NMB registraron el martes, según los registros.

Los detectives encontraron que Colmenares y Guerra, de 29 años, tenían “accesorios comúnmente utilizados en sofisticadas operaciones de fraude con tarjetas de crédito y robo de identidad”, según informes de arresto policiales.

Sobre la encimera de la cocina había un dispositivo de clonación de tarjetas con una cámara integrada tipo pinhole utilizada en cajeros automáticos o terminales de pago para robar números de cuenta y códigos PIN, según la policía.

En una caja de herramientas había componentes y herramientas, incluidos sensores de pago sin contacto y placas electrónicas de programación, utilizados para la “fabricación, instalación y operación de equipos de clonación de tarjetas”, según la policía.

Los detectives también informaron haber encontrado “un codificador/recodificador de banda magnética plateado”, 143 tarjetas de crédito, regalo y prepagadas, incluidas 132 que habían sido recodificadas; un frasco de vidrio con marihuana y una pistola Glock 42 cargada.

“Guerra también tenía dos tarjetas de crédito alteradas dentro de su billetera”, escribió un agente en el informe de arresto.

Agentes de Investigaciones de Seguridad Nacional respondieron al lugar e informaron que Colmenares y Guerra, ambos nacidos en Venezuela, “habían ingresado” a Estados Unidos de manera ilegal y tenían prohibido poseer o controlar un arma de fuego.

Los agentes de policía de North Miami Beach arrestaron a Colmenares y Guerra el martes por la mañana en el apartamento. El Departamento Correccional de Miami-Dade los ingresó el martes por la noche en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, donde permanecían detenidos la tarde del miércoles.

Colmenares enfrenta seis cargos: hurto mayor, uso fraudulento o posesión de identificación personal, posesión de un dispositivo de clonación de tarjetas, intento de uso ilegal de un dispositivo de escaneo o recodificación, falsificación de tarjetas de crédito y posesión de marihuana.

Guerra enfrenta cuatro cargos: posesión de un dispositivo de clonación de tarjetas, falsificación de tarjetas de crédito, posesión de marihuana y posesión no autorizada de un arma de fuego.

Tanto Colmenares como Guerra tenían órdenes de retención emitidas por el Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos (ICE).

La editora sénior de asignaciones de Local 10 News, Frine Gomez, contribuyó a este informe.

Esta semana tenemos dos.

El restaurante Royal Palm Grill & Deli en Homestead ha sido inspeccionado 14 veces desde julio de 2023; seis de esas inspecciones requirieron una revisión posterior, y los registros muestran que se ordenó el cierre de Royal en 2024 por un problema de cucarachas.

Recientemente, se registraron 35 infracciones.

En Miami Beach, Coyote Taqueria, en Collins Avenue, también figura en la lista.

Los registros muestran que, desde noviembre de 2023, Coyote ha sido inspeccionado 7 veces y ha cumplido con los estándares de inspección en todas ellas hasta el momento.

31 infracciones en una inspección reciente.

Treinta o más infracciones no son mala suerte, son una decisión, y son inaceptables. Tienes que mejorar.

**ROYAL PALM GRILL & DELI

806 N. KROME AVE.

GRANJA

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 28/5

Se detectaron 35 infracciones.

TAMBIÉN SE ORDENÓ EL CIERRE (PROBLEMA DE CUCARACHAS)

“Acumulación de una sustancia negra/verdosa similar al moho en el interior de la máquina/contenedor de hielo. Infracción reiterada.”

“Acumulación de restos de comida/residuos de tierra en las manijas de las puertas de los equipos. Observado en la línea de cocción.”

“Falta una baldosa del techo. Se observó que faltaba una baldosa del techo encima de la mesa de preparación con el fregadero.”

“Los equipos, la vajilla y los utensilios limpios se almacenan junto al lavamanos/fregadero de preparación de alimentos y están expuestos a salpicaduras. Se observó una tostadora de pan almacenada junto al lavamanos en el mostrador principal, expuesta a salpicaduras.”

“Utensilios limpios guardados entre el equipo y la pared. Se observaron cuchillos guardados debajo de la rebanadora en la cocina con restos de comida vieja debajo.”

“Cucarachas muertas en las instalaciones. Se observó una cucaracha muerta en el suelo, frente al fregadero de preparación. Se observó una cucaracha muerta en el suelo, frente al refrigerador en el área de almacenamiento de productos secos.”

“Se observó un recipiente de bebida de un empleado sobre una mesa de preparación de alimentos o encima/al lado de equipos/utensilios limpios. También se observó una lata de Red Bull de un empleado sobre una tabla de cortar blanca al otro lado de la línea de cocción en la cocina trasera.”

“Empleado sin protector/sujeción de barba mientras prepara alimentos.”

“Equipos y utensilios sin secar al aire adecuadamente: apilamiento húmedo. Se observaron recipientes de plástico apilados sin secar al aire adecuadamente debajo de la mesa de preparación con el fregadero.”

“Zonas del suelo cubiertas de agua estancada. Observado en la cocina trasera.”

“El suelo está sucio/tiene acumulación de residuos. Se observó suciedad en el suelo debajo de los equipos de cocina y de las cámaras frigoríficas.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el suelo. Se observó un caso de aceite almacenado en el suelo debajo del lavamanos, cerca del lavavajillas.”

Acumulación de hielo en el congelador vertical y/o en el congelador industrial. Observado en el congelador vertical cerca de la cámara frigorífica. Observado en el congelador vertical cerca del baño. Infracción reiterada.

“Pinzas en uso guardadas en la manija de la puerta del equipo entre usos. Observado en la puerta del horno en la cocina trasera.”

“Paño/toalla húmeda para limpiar debajo de la tabla de cortar.”

“El interior del horno/microondas presenta acumulación de una sustancia negra/grasa/restos de comida. Se observó que el interior del microondas estaba sucio con restos de comida vieja.”

“Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia de grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observaron filtros interiores de la campana extractora sucios con polvo acumulado.”

“Se encontró un recipiente de bebida de un empleado abierto en una unidad de refrigeración con alimentos destinados a ser servidos a los clientes. Se observó a un empleado con una botella de agua abierta almacenada en un refrigerador cercano a la cámara frigorífica. Infracción reiterada.”

“Artículos de un solo uso almacenados incorrectamente. Se observó una caja de vasos almacenada en el suelo en el área de almacenamiento de productos secos.”

“Paño de limpieza húmedo no guardado en solución desinfectante entre usos. Observado en la línea de cocción. Infracción reiterada.”

“Los paños húmedos utilizados para limpiar derrames ocasionales en superficies de equipos que entran en contacto con alimentos y en superficies que no lo hacen no estaban limpios. Observado en la línea de cocción.”

“Solución desinfectante para paños de limpieza almacenada en el suelo. Observada debajo de la mesa de preparación, frente al fregadero triple.”

“El empleado comenzó a manipular alimentos, equipos o utensilios limpios, o a tocar artículos desechables sin envolver sin lavarse las manos previamente. Se observó que el empleado cobró al cliente y luego procedió a servir hielo. No se lavó las manos.”

“El empleado rompió huevos crudos con cáscara y luego manipuló alimentos listos para el consumo y/o equipos o utensilios limpios sin lavarse las manos.”

“El empleado se frotó las manos durante menos de 10-15 segundos mientras se las lavaba.”

“El empleado se lavó las manos con agua fría.”

“El empleado se lavó las manos sin jabón.”

Se encontraron insectos voladores pequeños y vivos. Se observaron aproximadamente 7 moscas vivas posándose sobre tomates sin lavar en el área de almacenamiento de productos secos. También se observaron aproximadamente 10 moscas vivas volando y posándose sobre cebollas sin lavar en el área de almacenamiento de productos secos.

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta para alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura para su seguridad debido a un manejo inadecuado de la temperatura. Los alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura para su seguridad se mantuvieron refrigerados a más de 41 grados Fahrenheit. Se observaron tomates en cubos (46 °F - Mantenimiento en frío) en el refrigerador ubicado frente al horno. Según el operador, permanecieron allí durante más de 6 horas. Se observó arroz (47 °F - Mantenimiento en frío) en el refrigerador ubicado frente al horno. Según el operador, permaneció allí durante más de 24 horas.

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos refrigerados seguros a más de 41 grados Fahrenheit. Se observaron tomates en cubos (46 °F - Refrigeración) en el refrigerador ubicado frente al horno. Según el operador, durante más de 6 horas. Se observó arroz (47 °F - Refrigeración) en el refrigerador ubicado frente al horno.”

“La solución desinfectante para paños de limpieza supera la concentración máxima permitida. Se observó en el cubo de desinfectante (cloro 200+ ppm).”

“Superficie en contacto con alimentos sucia con restos de comida, una sustancia parecida al moho o una sustancia viscosa. Se observaron bandejas para hornear usadas para preparar pan de maíz muy sucias con grasa vieja.”

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observó que el lavamanos se utilizaba para guardar un vaso transparente en el mostrador.”

No se proporcionaron toallas de papel ni secadores de manos mecánicos en el lavamanos. Tampoco se observaron toallas de papel en el lavamanos cerca del lavavajillas.

“Alimentos listos para consumir, que requieren control de tiempo y temperatura para su seguridad, preparados en el establecimiento y conservados durante más de 24 horas, no estaban debidamente fechados. Se observó sopa de fideos en el refrigerador cercano a la cámara frigorífica sin fechar. Según el jefe de cocina, llevaban menos de 7 días en el mercado.”

**TAQUERÍA COYOTE

1351 COLLINS AVE.

Playa de Miami

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 27/5

31 VIOLACIONES

“Acumulación de una sustancia negra/verdosa similar al moho en el interior de la máquina/contenedor de hielo.”

“Acumulación de residuos en el exterior de la lavadora de vajilla.”

“Techo/baldosas/rejillas de ventilación sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho. Se observaron rejillas de ventilación sucias.”

“Vasos, tazas, cuencos, platos, ollas y sartenes limpios, no almacenados boca abajo ni protegidos. Se observó una sartén sin colocar boca abajo en la línea de cocción.”

“El equipo de refrigeración no se encuentra en buen estado. No almacene alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura para su seguridad en esta unidad hasta que se repare. Se observó RIC en la línea de cocción y WIC a 50 °F.”

“La tabla de cortar tiene marcas de cortes y ya no se puede limpiar. Infracción reiterada.”

“Suelo sucio/con acumulación de residuos. Infracción reiterada.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el suelo. Se observó un recipiente de pollo crudo en el suelo dentro del WIC.”

“Utensilio en uso almacenado en agua estancada a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Observado en la línea de cocción.”

“No hay cartel de ‘no se debe lavarse las manos’ en el lavamanos utilizado por los empleados de la cocina. Observado en la zona del bar.”

Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia con grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observaron juntas sucias en el interior del RIC. Infracción reiterada.

“Agua estancada en el fondo del refrigerador.”

“Las pajitas que se proporcionan para el autoservicio del cliente no están envueltas individualmente ni se encuentran en un dispensador autorizado.”

“Pared sucia con grasa acumulada, restos de comida y/o polvo. Infracción reiterada.”

“No guardar el paño húmedo en solución desinfectante entre usos.”

“La separación entre la entrada de agua y el borde del fregadero/equipo es inferior a una pulgada. Observado en un fregadero de tres compartimentos.”

“El empleado no se lavó las manos antes de ponerse los guantes para comenzar una tarea que implicaba manipular alimentos.”

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta para alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura debido a un abuso de temperatura. Los alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura se mantuvieron refrigerados a más de 41 grados Fahrenheit. Se observó pollo cocido (46 °F - Conservación en frío) y queso (46 °F - Conservación en frío) en el refrigerador junto a la línea de cocina HWS. Según el chef del día anterior. Se observó carne de res cocida (50 °F - Conservación en frío), pollo cocido (52 °F - Conservación en frío), pollo crudo (52 °F - Conservación en frío) y pico de gallo (50 °F - Conservación en frío) dentro del refrigerador WIC, según el chef del día anterior.

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos refrigerados seguros a más de 5 grados Celsius (41 grados Fahrenheit). Se observó pollo cocido (8 °C - Refrigeración); queso (8 °C - Refrigeración) en el refrigerador junto a la línea de cocina HWS. Según lo informado por el chef el día anterior. Se observó carne de res cocida (10 °C - Refrigeración); pollo cocido (11 °C - Refrigeración); pollo crudo (11 °C - Refrigeración); pico de gallo (10 °C - Refrigeración) dentro del refrigerador WIC según lo informado por el chef el día anterior.”

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos seguros, excepto asados ​​de carne enteros, mantenidos calientes a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Se observaron frijoles negros (119 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); salsa de queso (126 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); maíz cocido (120 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente) en la mesa de vapor, según lo indicado por el chef una hora antes.”

“El empleado no ha recibido la capacitación adecuada para sus funciones, como lo demuestra su incapacidad para responder preguntas básicas sobre seguridad alimentaria. Se observó que el empleado desconocía la temperatura mínima de conservación en frío.”

“El desagüe del equipo desemboca en el lavamanos. Observado en la zona del bar.”

“Superficie en contacto con alimentos sucia con restos de comida, una sustancia similar al moho o una sustancia viscosa. Se observó la cuchilla del abrelatas sucia. Se observó la rebanadora sucia. Infracción reiterada.”

“Se ha retirado el lavamanos de la zona de preparación de alimentos/lavado de vajilla. Debe reinstalarse en el mismo lugar. Se ha observado que se ha retirado el lavamanos al final de la línea de cocción.”

“No se proporciona ningún kit de prueba química al usar desinfectante en lavadoras de vajilla de tres compartimentos o paños de limpieza.”

“No hay ningún gerente de servicio de alimentos certificado vigente de servicio con cuatro o más empleados dedicados a la preparación/manipulación de alimentos. Infracción reiterada.”

“No se ha presentado ni aprobado ninguna revisión del plan; se han realizado o están en curso renovaciones.”

“Se observó que el fregadero para fregar había sido retirado y reemplazado por un horno.”

“No se presentó ninguna prueba de que los empleados de alimentos estén informados de su responsabilidad de reportar a la persona a cargo información sobre su salud y actividades relacionadas con enfermedades transmitidas por los alimentos. Se observó a los empleados Franco Peladez y Amanda Diaz, contratados tres meses antes.”

“No había jabón en el lavamanos. Se observó en la zona del bar.”

“Alimentos listos para consumir, que requieren control de tiempo y temperatura para su seguridad, preparados en el establecimiento y conservados durante más de 24 horas, no estaban debidamente fechados. Se observaron frijoles, pollo y cerdo cocidos dentro del WIC sin fechar, según informó un empleado el día anterior. Infracción reiterada.”

“Botella pulverizadora que contiene una sustancia tóxica sin etiquetar. Se observó un spray de limpieza sin etiquetar en la zona del bar.”

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This week, we have two.

Royal Palm Grill & Deli in Homestead has been inspected 14 times since July 2023, six of those required a follow-up, and records show Royal was ordered shut in 2024 for a roach issue.

Recently, 35 violations.

Over in Miami Beach, Coyote Taqueria on Collins Avenue also makes the list.

Records show since November 2023, Coyote has been inspected 7 times and “met inspection standards” for all of them until now.

31 violations on a recent inspection.

Thirty or more violations is not bad luck, it’s a choice, and it’s unacceptable. You have to do better.

**ROYAL PALM GRILL & DELI

806 N. KROME AVE.

HOMESTEAD

INSPECTION DATE 5/28

35 VIOLATIONS FOUND

ALSO ORDERED SHUT (ROACH ISSUE)

“Accumulation of black/green mold-like substance in the interior of the ice machine/bin. Repeat Violation.”

“Buildup of food debris/soil residue on equipment door handles. Observed at cook line.”

“Ceiling tile missing. Observed ceiling tile missing above prep table with prep sink.”

“Clean equipment/dishware/utensils stored next to handwash/food preparation sink exposed to splash. Observed bread toaster stored next to handwash sink at front counter exposes to splash.”

“Clean utensils stored between equipment and wall. Observed knives stored under slicer in the kitchen with old food debris under.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 1 dead roach on floor across prep sink. Observed 1 dead roach on floor in front of reach in cooler at dry goods storage area.”

“Employee beverage container on a food preparation table or over/next to clean equipment/utensils. Observed employee Red Bull stored on white cutting board across the cook line in the back kitchen.”

“Employee with no beard guard/restraint while engaging in food preparation.”

“Equipment and utensils not properly air-dried - wet nesting. Observed plastic containers stacked together not properly air dried under prep table with prep sink.”

“Floor area(s) covered with standing water. Observed in the back kitchen.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Observed floor under cooking equipment and cold holding coolers soiled.”

“Food stored on floor. Observed 1 case of oil stored on floor under the handwash sink near the dishwasher.”

“Ice buildup in reach-in freezer and/or walk-in freezer. Observed at reach in freezer near walk in cooler. Observed at reach in freezer near restroom. Repeat Violation.”

“In-use tongs stored on equipment door handle between uses. Observed at oven door in the back kitchen.”

“In-use wet wiping cloth/towel used under cutting board.”

“Interior of oven/microwave has accumulation of black substance/grease/food debris. Observed interior of microwave soiled with old food debris.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed interior hood filters soiled with accumulated dust.”

“Opened employee beverage container in a cold holding unit with food to be served to customers. Observed employee open water bottle stored at reach in cooler near walk in cooler. Repeat Violation.”

“Single-service articles improperly stored. Observed box of cups stored on floor at dry goods storage area.”

“Wet wiping cloth not stored in sanitizing solution between uses. Observed at cook line. Repeat Violation.”

“Wet wiping cloths used for occasional spills on equipment food- and nonfood-contact surfaces not clean. Observed at cook line.”

“Wiping cloth sanitizing solution stored on the floor. Observed under prep table across the triple sink.”

“Employee began working with food, handling clean equipment or utensils, or touching unwrapped single-service items without first washing hands. Observed employee charged customer and then proceeded to scoop ice. No handwash.”

“Employee cracked raw shell eggs and then handled ready-to-eat food and/or clean equipment or utensils without washing hands.”

“Employee rubbed hands together for less than 10-15 seconds while washing hands.”

“Employee washed hands with cold water.”

“Employee washed hands with no soap.”

“Live, small flying insects found. Observed approximately 7+ live flies landing on unwashed tomatoes at dry goods storage area. Observed approximately 10+ live flies flying and landing on unwashed onions at dry goods storage area.”

“Stop Sale issued on time/temperature control for safety food due to temperature abuse. Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed diced tomatoes (46F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across oven. As per operator for more than 6 hours. Observed rice (47F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across oven. As per operator for more than 24 hours.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed diced tomatoes (46F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across oven. As per operator for more than 6 hours. Observed rice (47F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across oven.”

“Wiping cloth sanitizer solution exceeds the maximum concentration allowed. Observed Sanitizer Bucket (Chlorine 200+ppm).”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed baking sheets used to bake corn bread heavily soiled with old grease.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed handwashing sink used to store clear cup at front counter.”

“No paper towels or mechanical hand drying device provided at handwash sink. Observed no paper towels at handwash sink near the dishwasher.”

“Ready-to-eat, time/temperature control for safety food prepared onsite and held more than 24 hours not properly date marked. Observed noodle soup at reach in cooler near walk in cooler not date marked. As per kitchen manager for less than 7 days.”

**COYOTE TAQUERIA

1351 COLLINS AVE.

MIAMI BEACH

INSPECTION DATE 5/27

31 VIOLATIONS

“Accumulation of black/green mold-like substance in the interior of the ice machine/bin.”

“Accumulation of debris on exterior of ware washing machine.”

“Ceiling/ceiling tiles/vents soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance. Observed ceiling vents soiled.”

“Clean glasses, cups, bowls, plates, pots and pans not stored inverted or in a protected manner. Observed pan not inverted at cook line.”

“Cold holding equipment not maintained in good repair. Do not store time/temperature control for safety food in this unit until the unit is repaired. Observed RIC at cook line and WIC at 50F.”

“Cutting board has cut marks and is no longer cleanable. Repeat Violation.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Repeat Violation.”

“Food stored on floor. Observed raw chicken container on floor inside WIC.”

“In-use utensil stored in standing water less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed at cook line.”

“No handwashing sign provided at a hand sink used by food employees. Observed at bar area.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed gaskets inside RIC soiled. Repeat Violation.”

“Standing water in bottom of reach-in-cooler.”

“Straws provided for customer self-service not individually wrapped or in an approved dispenser.”

“Wall soiled with accumulated grease, food debris, and/or dust. Repeat Violation.”

“Wet wiping cloth not stored in sanitizing solution between uses.”

“Air gap between water supply inlet and flood rim of equipment/sink is less than one inch. Observed at 3 compartment sink.”

“Employee failed to wash hands before putting on gloves to initiate a task working with food.”

“Stop Sale issued on time/temperature control for safety food due to temperature abuse. Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed cooked chicken (46F - Cold Holding); cheese (46F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler by cook line HWS. As per chef from previous day. Observed cooked beef (50F - Cold Holding); cooked chicken (52F - Cold Holding); raw chicken (52F - Cold Holding); pico de gallo (50F - Cold Holding) inside WIC as per chef from previous day.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed cooked chicken (46F - Cold Holding); cheese (46F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler by cook line HWS. As per chef from previous day. Observed cooked beef (50F - Cold Holding); cooked chicken (52F - Cold Holding); raw chicken (52F - Cold Holding); pico de gallo (50F - Cold Holding) inside WIC as per chef from previous day.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food, other than whole meat roast, hot held at less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed black beans (119F - Hot Holding); cheese sauce (126F - Hot Holding); cooked corn (120F - Hot Holding) at steam table, as per chef from an hour prior.”

“Employee has not received adequate training related to their assigned duties as evidenced by the inability to answer basic food safety questions. Observed employee unaware of minimum cold holding temperature.”

“Equipment drain line draining into handwash sink. Observed at bar area.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed can opener blade soiled. Observed slicer soiled. Repeat Violation.”

“Handwash sink removed from food preparation/dishwashing area. Must be reinstalled in the same location where removed. Observed HWS removed at end of cook line.”

“No chemical test kit provided when using sanitizer at three-compartment ware washing machine or wiping cloths.”

“No currently certified food service manager on duty with four or more employees engaged in food preparation/handling. Repeat Violation.”

“No plan review submitted and approved - renovations were made or are in progress.”

“Observed mop sink removed and replaced with oven.”

“No proof provided that food employees are informed of their responsibility to report to the person in charge information about their health and activities related to foodborne illnesses. Observed employees Franco Peladez , Amanda Diaz hired 3 months prior.”

“No soap provided at handwash sink. Observed at bar area.”

“Ready-to-eat, time/temperature control for safety food prepared onsite and held more than 24 hours not properly date marked. Observed cooked beans, cooked chicken, cooked pork inside WIC with no date marked, as per employee from previous day. Repeat Violation.”

“Spray bottle containing toxic substance not labeled. Observed cleaning spray at bar area unlabeled.”

The ex-seminary student and father of two took out a loan against his home to pay for the $17,000 cost of filing the various forms to run for the seat. He received no other donations. He had no visible campaign and no staff.

Yet on Wednesday, the day after California's primary, Stansfield had done well enough with voters to be holding on to second place, potentially locking Democrats out of the November general election in a U.S. House race that the party had put at the center of its national redistricting strategy.

“I wanted to show Christianity and Judaism a God from the Bible who loves Muslims,” Stansfield said in a telephone interview before rushing to his son's sixth-grade graduation. “I wasn't necessarily going after it to win a race.”

It is too soon to know which two candidates will advance in the 6th Congressional District, but the early results are already serving as a cautionary tale about the assumptions both major parties make when they gerrymander political boundaries to expand their power. California Democrats won voter approval last year to redraw the state's congressional map as a way to counter Republican moves elsewhere before this year's midterm elections. Democrats had planned on gaining five seats in the state, and one was the 6th District, which stretches from Sacramento into Republican-leaning suburbs to the east.

Redistricting goal meets reality of campaign politics

Democrats assumed that one of the top two finishers would be a member of their party. But Stansfield's showing is evidence that the best-laid partisan mapmaking plans can go awry when they run into the unpredictable reality of campaign politics.

Kevin Kiley is the congressman whose conservative district was split in two and fused with a more Democratic area. Kiley, who left the Republican Party and filed to run as an independent and has nabbed the largest share of votes so far. That left Stansfield the only candidate on the ballot with an “R” next to his name, helping him land, for now, above the nine Democrats who split the majority of the votes recorded at this point.

Both Democratic and Republican strategists expect heavily Democratic-leaning mail ballots that comprise the tens of thousands and have yet to be counted to break for the party's candidates, making it likely one of them supplants Stansfield in the final tally.

“I would think there'd be an advantage to Democrats,” said Rob Stutzman, a GOP consultant in Sacramento.

The state allows mail ballots to count if they are postmarked by Election Day and received up to seven days afterward. Officials also must contact each mail voter whose signature does not match the one on file and offer that voter a chance of proving identity in other ways. Close races in the state often take weeks to resolve.

Stansfield intended to send a message to Republicans

Stansfield, who said he is married to a Muslim woman from the Middle East and was kicked out of seminary for arguing that Palestinians have a biblical right to the Holy Land, has made a quixotic run for Congress before. In 2018, he sought an Oregon congressional seat as a Democrat, a party he joined after the Iraq War.

He ended up losing badly in that primary, receiving about 4% of the vote in a district that included part of Portland, but a candidate survey he completed at the time offered more insight into his views. In a response to a question about his top priorities if elected, Stansfield said, among other things, that he was “against ignorance in all its forms.”

“If we are ever going to call ourselves a tolerant society we need to learn to embrace the diversity of our world with love,” he wrote.

In the questionnaire, he described himself as Jewish and said one of the public policies he was most passionate about was supplying water and medical equipment in Gaza.

Stansfield said he left the Democratic Party after the Israel-Hamas war broke out, during Democrat Joe Biden's presidency, and over what he described as the “genocide” in Gaza. After moving to California, he decided to run in the congressional district before last year's redrawing and when it was reliably conservative because he wanted his message to reach as many Republican voters as possible.

“I wanted to go to the Republican Party and say ‘Guys, I love you, but you’ve messed up,'” Stansfield said.

He had no idea he would end up in such a potentially pivotal role.

Democrats' concerns under new map had focused elsewhere

Democrats had fretted about being locked out of one of the five seats they expected to gain in their redistricting bid, but their concern was centered on a San Diego-area district where they had a similarly broad field of candidates. One of them, San Diego City Councilwoman Marni von Wilpert, surged ahead to secure a spot in the general election and will face Republican Jim Desmond, a San Diego County Supervisor, in November.

In another redrawn congressional district, Republican Rep. Ken Calvert secured a slot on the November ballot after a bruising campaign against fellow Republican Rep. Young Kim. The second slot in that race was still up for grabs on Wednesday.

Three veteran Democratic members of Congress who were challenged by younger upstarts from within their party seemed to have avoided upsets.

Reps. Brad Sherman and Mike Thompson emerged as the top voter-getters in their respective races and will move on to the general election. Rep. Doris Matsui was leading the tally Wednesday in her Sacramento district, although it remained uncertain which two candidates would move on to the general election.

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Associated Press writer Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed to this report.

The SETI Institute said Wednesday that extensive radio scans by its telescope in Northern California found no signs of otherworldly technology from our solar system’s latest interstellar visitor.

The object labeled 3I/Atlas was discovered last summer sweeping through our neck of the cosmic woods. Scientists quickly identified it as a comet that migrated from another star, although a few insisted without evidence it might be associated with intelligent life.

It’s only the third known object from a faraway star — all deemed of natural origin — to venture into the sun’s turf.

Several NASA spacecraft observed the celestial iceball as it swung past Mars last October, venturing within 19 million miles (30 million kilometers) of the red planet. The closest it ever got to Earth was in December at a whopping 167 million miles (269 million kilometers) away.

SETI said it conducted more than seven hours of observations in July soon after the comet was discovered, searching through a wide range of radio signals. The team identified nearly 74 million narrow-band radio signals.

After accounting for human interference or signals matching the object's movement, only slightly more than 200 signals remained, all of which “traced back to technology on the surface of the Earth or our own Earth-orbiting satellites,” according to SETI.

Results were published in the Astronomical Journal.

These results "show how realistic it is to detect a signal with the technology we have today,” co-author Valeria Garcia Lopez of Furman University said a statement. “That is why it is important to keep searching for technosignatures, even from objects we might not expect to have signals.”

SETI's Sofia Sheikh, the lead author, and her team pointed out that NASA's Voyager spacecraft will one day become extraterrestrial objects in neighboring star systems. Launched in the 1970s, the twin probes are the most distant spacecraft from Earth, drifting in the space between stars.

“Voyager and similar probes will eventually become interstellar objects in other stellar systems. We thus know that no extrapolation is needed for the idea of interstellar technological objects, as we have a proof by existence,” they wrote.

Almost 1 billion miles away now (1.3 billion kilometers) as it makes its way back to interstellar space — never to return — the comet is estimated to be within 1,444 feet (440 meters) and 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers) in size. Scientists suspect it could be as old as 11 billion years, twice as old as the sun.

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

The crash occurred at the crossing of a state highway and the Iowa Interstate Railroad in a rural area about 70 miles (113 kilometers) east of Des Moines, according to Poweshiek County Sheriff Matt Maschmann.

One person in the semi-truck died and another was transported with “serious injuries,” Maschmann said in a statement.

Seventeen train cars and two power engines derailed after the crash and caused "significant damage" to the railroad, he said. Images of the scene showed a massive heap of railcars with billowing smoke.

No hazardous material was spilled, according to Iowa State Patrol spokesman Sgt. Alex Dinkla.

Meliá dejará de operar 15 de los 34 hoteles que administra, informó el portal oficial Cubadebate y agregó que la firma justificó su decisión “en factores externos que han afectado de manera significativa la operativa, la legalidad y la seguridad de estos establecimientos”.

La decisión se enmarca en el impacto del cerco energético y financiero de Estados Unidos contra la nación caribeña y la consecuente caída del vital sector turístico.

Varios de los hoteles en destinos paradisíacos como los balnearios de Varadero, Cayo Santa María o Jardines del Rey “se encontraban cerrados y sin actividad debido a los problemas energéticos y a la caída de la demanda”, añadió Cubadebate.

Meliá es uno de los socios más importantes de la isla en el sector turístico y hasta su retiro parcial contaba con unas 14.000 habitaciones.

Otras compañías como la canadiense Royalton y la también española Iberostar limitaron o suspendieron operaciones en Cuba en la última semana.

El miércoles el cartel de la entrada del icónico Hotel Paseo del Prado en La Habana Vieja fue retirado, constató The Associated Press. Igualmente desde hace algunos días el Iberostar Selection –el más moderno y lujoso de los inaugurados por esa firma en 2025— permanece cerrado.

La limitación de operaciones o salida de estas compañías de la isla se suma a la de líneas áreas como World2Fly, Air France e Iberia.

Mientras, el Banco Central de Cuba informó el miércoles que debido a la suspensión de la relación de entidades extranjeras con la agencia financiera isleña Fincimex S.A, del conglomerado empresarial GAESA, se cancelaron las operaciones de las tarjetas Visa y Mastercard.

La entidad bancaria indicó en un comunicado que la medida está relacionada con una orden del 1 de mayo del presidente estadounidense Donald Trump que forma parte "de su estrategia de asfixia contra el pueblo de Cuba”.

Un sector en retroceso

Cuba, que llegó a recibir unos 4,3 millones de turistas en 2019, ha visto caer desde entonces el arribo de visitantes internacionales.

Según la Oficina Nacional de Estadística e Información, la cantidad de turistas que llegaron a la isla en el primer trimestre del año fue 48% menor que en el mismo periodo de 2025, apenas unos 298.000.

“Las empresas canadienses y españolas son las mayores inversoras en el sector hotelero de Cuba y, ante la falta de turismo internacional, la escasez de combustible y, en general, el declive más amplio desde la llegada del COVID, del cual el sector no se ha recuperado... estoy seguro de que estas compañías se replantearán sus operaciones en Cuba”, comentó a AP Lee Schlenker, investigador asociado del Instituto Quincy en Washington.

Estados Unidos impuso en enero un cerco petrolero a Cuba para presionar un cambio de modelo político que agravó la crisis que la isla padece desde hace un lustro, caracterizada por largos apagones y desabastecimiento de bienes básicos.

En mayo el Departamento de Estado sancionó a GAESA, lo que incluye el congelamiento de sus activos y la intervención de sus cuentas en Estados Unidos, además de la prohibición de viaje de sus accionistas, inversores y empleados.

GAESA, creada en la década de 1990 y que opera desde rentadoras de carros a tiendas minoristas y empresas de transporte, es socia de Meliá en la administración de hoteles.

Dadas las sanciones a GAESA, los expertos no descartan que empresas internacionales que operan con el conglomerado se sientan presionadas.

“Lo cual tendrá importantes repercusiones para el pueblo cubano y no sólo para GAESA. Hay miles de cubanos que trabajan en estos hoteles”, advirtió el académico Schlenker, quien resaltó que ni los hoteles, ni el turismo representan una amenaza para la seguridad nacional de los Estados Unidos.

Entre las personas que viven de los ingresos turísticos de la isla, la noticia generó preocupación.

Para Carlos Luis Carbonel, un parqueador autorizado de 62 años que trabaja frente al gigante hotel Meliá Cohiba, el efecto de estas decisiones empresarias “va a ser un golpe” para quienes trabajan con el turismo.

“Nos va a afectar a nosotros, a nuestras familias y a todos los que estamos vinculados al turismo. Nuestra remuneración y los ingresos dependen de esto”, dijo a AP Erich López, un chofer de un automóvil Dodge de los años 50 que desde hace dos décadas conduce para turistas.

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Siga a Andrea Rodríguez en X: https://x.com/ARodriguezAP

It’s not yet clear what could have prevented last week's crash because the National Transportation Safety Board investigation is just beginning. Still, it highlights the inherent dangers whenever a bus or semitruck crashes into other vehicles — even if riding a bus is much safer statistically than driving a car.

While collision-avoidance technology and emergency braking systems are standard on many new cars, commercial buses still lack them — even in the face of longtime NTSB recommendations and proposed regulations to require them.

Observers say the circumstances of the crash that happened early Friday also raise questions about driver fatigue. Court records, meanwhile, show that the E&P Travel Inc. bus driver, who now faces manslaughter charges, was previously ticketed for excessive speeding, along with other drivers for the same company.

While those tickets might not have been enough to automatically revoke the man's commercial driver's license, industry experts say even one similar violation would normally get a driver fired.

“The fact that there was one conviction and another citation and this driver is still on the road goes against industry norms and best practices in a pretty significant way,” said Fred Ferguson, who leads the American Bus Association trade group.

That NTSB crash investigators also have no power to enforce their recommendations factors into why so many have gone unfulfilled for years, as the industry and regulators often focus on the potential costs involved.

“Everybody walks a walk in talking safety at the industry level, at the congressional level. And then at the end of the day, it’s the same old excuses,” said Jim Hall, who was chairman of the NTSB during the 1990s. “And if it costs money, there’s going to be a strong resistance.”

A history of speeding

Federal rules say that a driver who is convicted twice within three years for driving more than 15 mph over the limit should be disqualified for 60 days.

The bus driver in last week's crash, Jing Sheng Dong, of New York City, was previously convicted of driving 73 mph (117 kph) in a 55 mph (89 kph) zone in Virginia in 2024, and received a second ticket in March in Annapolis, Maryland, that accused him of driving a motorcoach 72 mph (116 kph) in a 50 mph (80 kph) zone. The 48-year-old is now facing five charges of involuntary manslaughter and one count of reckless driving.

But Ned Einstein, an expert witness in some 700 transportation lawsuits, said he doubts the criminal charges filed after the crash will be effective at making roads safer because Dong didn’t create the conditions that likely contributed to it.

“They never hit the heart of the problem and never go after the person who’s responsible, and the person that’s responsible for these things is the person that runs the company,” Einstein said, explaining that drivers have to take the shifts they are given while company owners set the schedules and run the businesses.

Friday’s crash also happened around 2:30 a.m. ET — roughly five hours into a trip from New York to North Carolina. That makes former state trooper Jeremy Disbrow, who helps train law enforcement with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, wonder whether fatigue may have been a factor.

Bus drivers are prohibited under federal law from driving more than 10 hours or working more than 15 hours without taking at least eight hours off to rest. Electronic logs have helped better enforce those rules than paper logbooks, although there have been instances where the former have been tampered with.

Records show that another E&P Travel driver was involved in a similar crash in North Carolina in 2024 that injured nine people after the bus failed to slow down for a traffic control vehicle that was performing a moving lane closure. The bus hit that vehicle, and a third vehicle rear-ended the bus. The bus driver, Pei Jie Lu, later pleaded guilty to failure to reduce speed. That crash occurred three months after Lu was ticketed in Maryland for negligent driving and changing lanes unsafely, according to court records. He pleaded guilty in that case in September 2024.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said federal investigators are looking into Dong’s background as well as the company that hired him and the school that trained him. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is also trying to confirm that New York followed the rules when it awarded Dong a commercial driver’s license. Duffy has worked to strengthen and enforce standards for CDL holders, but that effort has focused on truck drivers.

A long list of unfulfilled recommendations

Even when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration agrees that something is a good idea, like automatic braking, it often takes years to finalize a rule requiring it. Commercial buses, for example, have only been required to have seat belts since 2016.

Numerous NTSB recommendations for buses and other commercial vehicles have never been adopted, including stricter standards to reduce driver fatigue and ensure drivers get enough rest between trips. A rule to require collision-avoidance technology in commercial buses and trucks was proposed in 2023, but it remains pending.

Ultimately, it falls to regulators, Congress and the industry to adopt them. Unlike regulators who must conduct a cost-benefit analysis, the NTSB isn't required to consider how practical its recommendations are. It simply urges safety improvements to prevent future tragedies.

The Transportation Department didn’t immediately respond this week to questions about why so many recommendations go unfulfilled.

Many bus companies do invest in safety

The American Bus Association trade group works to promote safety measures and Ferguson said driver-monitoring technology, such as inward-facing video cameras and advanced telematics systems similar to those used by major auto insurers, has become common. Some of those systems can even send alerts about driver behavior to a bus company.

Ferguson also said some companies have installed collision-avoidance technology on their buses because “the difference between catastrophic accidents and not having catastrophic accidents is you keeping your company.”

But cost is a factor — a new motorcoach previously cost roughly $650,000, and the industry is now dealing with the impact of 10% tariffs. Ferguson said newer buses have the most safety features, but increasing costs will slow upgrades.

“Operating safely not only is morally and ethically what they believe in, but it’s good business,” said Ferguson, whose group represents about 40% of the 1,800 companies that operate about 50,000 motorcoaches across the United States and Canada.

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Ramer reported from Concord, New Hampshire. Associated Press writer Allen G. Breed contributed from Wake Forest, North Carolina.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had tried to prevent an outcome that would show the mounting opposition to the war, abruptly shutting down floor action two weeks ago when the resolution was on the verge of approval. But displeasure has only grown as the conflict drags on and as Trump struggles to negotiate a plan for peace.

“Enough is enough,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who led the effort.

“It is time for the president to do the right thing," he said. “The people are tired of suffering because of his war of choice — suffering at the gas pump, suffering at the supermarkets.”

The roll call Wednesday was 215-208, but next steps are uncertain. Trump would likely reject any measure from Congress to limit his commander-in-chief authority. Still, the tally, with four Republicans joining Democrats, was a rebuke of the president's war strategy, and cheers erupted in the House chamber.

Opposition to war grows

It’s the fourth time the House has tried to curb the U.S. war against Iran. The Senate advanced its own war powers resolution last month when a handful of GOP senators broke ranks with the Republican president in a rare show of political pushback from his party.

Each time Democrats have pushed forward the war powers resolution, the vote tallies have inched higher as political unease with the U.S. war swells. Trump had campaigned for the White House on a promise to end U.S. entanglements abroad and focus more on domestic issues, but the war has shifted attention back to the Middle East.

Johnson insisted Trump is “laser focused” on the domestic front, particularly ahead of the midterm elections that will determine control of Congress.

The speaker said he spent three hours at the White House with the president this week and Trump is calling on allies to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resume the flow of commerce.

Since the U.S. joined Israel in launching the Feb. 28 strikes on Iran, Americans have seen gas prices spike at the pumps, adding to inflationary pressure on consumer spending.

Iran has been able to interrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital channel for a large segment of the world’s oil, natural gas and related products such as fertilizer.

“We’re working on that final piece,” said Johnson, R-La. “The entire world has an interest in the Strait of Hormuz being reopen for commerce. That what he’s working on.”

While a ceasefire in the conflict was declared in April, it remains uneasy and uncertain. Talks for a more durable end to the fighting have dragged, increasingly complicated by Israel’s broadening war with Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. Meanwhile, military strikes between the U.S and Iran continue to flare.

Congress exerts its war powers authority

The war powers resolution from the House would not immediately stop the war, but it would provide a symbolic — if not legal — step against further military action.

The resolution next goes to the Senate, where four Republican senators last month joined Democrats in advancing a similar measure to curtail the U.S. campaign against Iran. The Senate has yet to take a final vote to approve or reject its own war powers resolution.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Wednesday at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing that the Iranians would think that the administration's “hands are going to be tied” if Congress approved a war powers resolution. He said they would think ”we won’t be able to do anything to them, so why make a deal?”

It's not the only action Congress is taking in the national security arena as Democrats, in the minority, work to peel off Republican support for measures beyond the war against Iran.

The House also voted Wednesday on another Democratic-led effort, a procedural step toward a measure that would authorize U.S. support for Ukraine's military operations as it battles Russia and would help reconstruct the war-torn country. That vote is expected later this week. The House also expected to consider a war powers resolution to block U.S. action in Lebanon.

While Congress has the authority under the Constitution to declare war, the president also has power as the commander in chief to engage in military action, creating a legal dispute over which branch of government has ultimate say in matters of war and peace. If Senate joins the House to approve the resolution, it could set the stage for a fresh legal test of war powers.

Under the war powers act, the White House has a 60-day window to seek approval from Congress for military action. The administration, however, has indicated that because a ceasefire has been declared in the current conflict in Iran, the hostilities have ceased.

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Associated Press writer Ben Finley contributed to this report.

Con gritos de “la educación pública se defiende”, miles de estudiantes, docentes y organizaciones sociales marcharon en protesta contra los recortes al presupuesto educativo y las reformas anunciadas recientemente por la administración de Kast, que prevé una reducción de los recursos para programas claves de diversos ministerios, en especial los de Educación, Salud, Vivienda y Trabajo.

Kast, un ultraconservador que llegó al poder el pasado 11 de marzo, asumió las riendas del país con la promesa de recortar unos 6.000 millones de dólares en 18 meses a fin de mejorar las cuentas fiscales. Para ello, ordenó un ambicioso plan de ajuste que incluye un recorte de cerca del 3% en los presupuestos de los ministerios.

La medida ha generado críticas no solo de la oposición sino también de sectores del propio gobierno.

La protesta fue convocada por la Confederación de Estudiantes de Chile (Confech) y fue respaldada por el Colegio de Profesores, la Asamblea Coordinadora de Estudiantes Secundarios y la Coordinadora Feminista 8M, entre otras organizaciones.

Los manifestantes sostienen que, así implementadas, las medidas propuestas socavarán el acceso a la educación, ya que varias prevén la reducción de algunos beneficios destinados a la comunidad estudiantil, como el fin de la gratuidad de la educación superior para algunos grupos.

Aunque la protesta empezó de forma pacífica, con el transcurso de las horas se produjeron violentos choques entre manifestantes y la policía, que usó cañones de agua y gases lacrimógenos para dispersarlos. Los disturbios llevaron al corte de diversas calles y el cierre de estaciones de metro.

“El gobierno buscó provocar esto, buscó generar esta situación para justificar la represión”, denunció el presidente del Colegio de Profesoras y Profesores de Chile, Mario Aguilar, desde la marcha.

Ni la policía ni el gobierno se han manifestado hasta ahora sobre los enfrentamientos, pero según pudo observar The Associated Press al menos una decena de personas fueron detenidas, mientras diversas resultaron heridas.

Los manifestantes también alzaron la voz en contra de la controvertida propuesta de ley de Reconstrucción Nacional del gobierno, que prevé un austero y extenso programa de medidas para ajustar los gastos estatales, incentivar las inversiones y recuperar la economía.

También conocido como proyecto de “megarreforma”, la iniciativa recibió el visto bueno de la Cámara de Diputados a finales de mayo y deberá ser debatida por el Senado.

“Nos quieren callar, pero nosotros no vamos a parar”, dijo Magdalena Correa, estudiante de Pedagogía de 21 años. “Nos están quitando recursos y derechos, y tenemos que contraatacar”.

District attorney's spokesman Sean Webby confirmed Wednesday that the warrant has been issued in response to a video Aiyuk posted to social media last December that appeared to show him speeding on the road in front of Levi's Stadium.

The California Post first reported the arrest warrant.

Aiyuk posted an apology a few days after the video that appeared to show him driving well over the posted speed limit of 40 mph.

"Sorry ya’ll, my car content won’t come with speeding anymore,” Aiyuk wrote in a social media post. “Was praying with my son tonight and wouldn’t want anybody else to miss out on an opportunity to do the same with their loved ones! My apologies.”

Aiyuk is currently on the reserve/left squad list after he stopped showing up late last season as he rehabilitates a knee injury that has sidelined him since October 2024.

The issues with the 49ers and Aiyuk go back to last summer when the team previously voided $27 million guaranteed in his contract for next season for failing to participate in meetings and other team activities.

General manager John Lynch has said he doesn't expect Aiyuk to play again for the 49ers. The team has been waiting to see if another team is willing to trade for Aiyuk. The 49ers otherwise could either cut him or keep him on the reserve list.

Aiyuk has three years remaining on the four-year, $120 million extension he signed last year. But he now has no guaranteed money remaining.

The 28-year-old Aiyuk has 294 catches for 4,305 yards and 25 TDs since being drafted in the first round in 2020.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL

“There’s continuing litigation, and I’m unable to comment on ongoing litigation,” Bessent told lawmakers at the Senate Finance Committee hearing.

It was a frustrating answer for Democratic lawmakers looking to get answers from Bessent at a hearing ostensibly focused on the Treasury Department’s budget and came a day after acting Attorney General Todd Blanche seemed to indicate that the portion of the settlement dealing with the IRS audit immunity would still be in effect for the Republican president.

After several failed attempts to get Bessent to answer, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., said, “It’s been very clear you’re dodging this and you’re trying to use it as an excuse. It’s just outrageous on behalf of the American public.”

The White House referred the Associated Press to Secretary Bessent's comments in response to an inquiry about the status of the settlement. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump did not confirm whether the compensation fund had been scrapped or was simply on hold. “I’d have to ask the lawyers, I don’t know," he told reporters. “As far as I’m concerned, it was a beautiful thing,” he said.

The administration decided to scrap plans for the compensation fund, which could have included payouts to participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, after bipartisan outrage and a fierce political backlash that threatened to stall key elements of the White House agenda. Still, the status of the IRS immunity deal as part of the controversial settlement crafted to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS remained unclear, though Blanche said Tuesday that “nothing has changed” in that regard.

Last week, a federal judge in Florida overseeing Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS, who had initially dismissed the case, reopened the case and ordered the president’s attorneys to respond to allegations that Trump abandoned his claims to avoid the court’s scrutiny of the deal.

When she initially dismissed the case, Kathleen Williams, the judge handling the lawsuit, admonished the Justice Department for a lack of transparency and said no agency “submitted any settlement documents nor filed any documents ensuring that the settlement was appropriate where there was an outstanding question as to whether an actual case or controversy existed.”

Matt Platkin, a former New Jersey attorney general now at the law firm Platkin LLP, which is representing lawmakers and judges challenging the settlement agreement, called it “one of the greatest scams in American history.”

He told The Associated Press that Blanche’s testimony on Tuesday over plans to scrap the weaponization fund and grant Trump audit immunity “underscores the need for the court to continue its inquiry in Florida.”

Lawmakers on Wednesday tried to grill Bessent on the agreement without success.

“Secretary Bessent owes the committee an explanation of what the Treasury knows about the dirty settlement. That’s because his department was involved from beginning to end,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

Wyden asked Bessent: “Does the IRS audit immunity given to Trump, his family, and his businesses still stand?”

Bessent declined to answer, citing the unresolved legal dispute.

If audits and examinations into the president's taxes were thrown out under the settlement, an untold figure could be wiped from his bill to the federal tax collector.

Previous reporting from the New York Times and ProPublica shows that a long-standing audit of a technique Trump reportedly used to avoid paying taxes years ago could have resulted in an estimated $100 million bill if the IRS had found wrongdoing.

Even some Republicans expressed concern on Wednesday over the plan to shield Trump from the IRS.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., speaking to reporters outside the chambers, said, “I don’t think any American should have a deal like that.”

Nina Olson, founder of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, which has sued the Trump administration over IRS disclosures to immigration enforcement, called the settlement “the lowest point for the IRS since the 1970s and President Nixon’s efforts to help his friends by trying to stop IRS audits of them and hurting his enemies by urging IRS audits on them.”

Santos placed the bets on another prediction marketplace, Kalshi, after publicly announcing his intention to be at the Feb. 24 speech, according to a person familiar with the investigation. He later blamed a delayed flight for missing the event.

The suspicious trades were detected by Kalshi and referred to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, a federal regulator that has opened a probe into Santos for possible insider trading, according to a second person familiar with the investigation.

Both spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Santos was released from federal prison last October after Trump granted him clemency in a fraud case.

By the time of the State of the Union address, four months later, he was already working in an influencer capacity for Polymarket, using his substantial online platform to promote the controversial brand.

In response to an inquiry from the AP, a Polymarket spokesperson said the company was in the process of terminating the contract as a result of this week’s revelations.

Santos did not respond to phone calls and text messages from the AP. He wrote on social media Wednesday that the allegation was “preposterous,” adding that his legal team was in touch with the Justice Department.

On his podcast, “Doing Time with George Santos,” the former congressman has suggested that prediction markets are “easily manipulable,” and rife with abuse.

“There’s definitely some space for speculation. There will be investigations. There will be scrutiny,” he said in March. “I just want to make sure that people understand: It is not straightforward. It is not a crime to do prediction market. I don’t think people should be taking this seriously.”

The financial regulator overseeing prediction markets, meanwhile, has pledged to take the issue of insider trading “extremely seriously.”

“There is a myth in the mainstream media and social media that insider trading law doesn’t apply in the prediction markets. That is wrong,” David Miller, the director of enforcement at CFTC, said during a recent talk at New York Law School. “Insider trading in the prediction markets — where there is misappropriated information — is precisely the kind of serious violation that we are going after vigorously.”

That pledge comes as the Trump administration has thrown its support behind the prediction market operators and is actively suing states that have tried to regulate them. The president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., has invested in Polymarket through his venture capital firm and is a strategic advisor for Kalshi. And the CFTC has faced allegations of maintaining a friendly posture toward the industry it is meant to regulate.

Still, some bets have not escaped federal scrutiny.

Last week, prosecutors charged a Google engineer who allegedly used the company’s 2025 “Year in Search” data, before it was published, to enter Polymarket wagers about the most searched people of last year.

A spokesperson for Polymarket said the company had worked closely with the CFTC, along with federal prosecutors, ahead of the insider trading charges.

Experts said Santos’s own alleged actions didn’t appear to meet the same threshold for insider trading, since they would not have been based on stolen information. But the bets — coupled with his public statements — may run afoul of other financial laws.

“What he’s accused of sounds a lot more like market manipulation than insider trading,” said Todd Phillips, the director at Klaros Group and a former Georgia State University professor who has written extensively about prediction market regulation.

The federal regulator could also bring a civil action against Santos, potentially resulting in a steep fine and a ban from trading, he noted. But the rapid rise of online betting platforms has meant there are few similar cases to draw from.

“We didn’t have examples of people trading on contracts involving themselves. That is new, and it allows people to change their behavior in order to profit,” Phillips said. “Until pretty recently, the question of George Santos being at the State of the Union was not something that had ever been traded before.”

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Associated Press reporter Larry Neumeister in New York contributed to this report

That was easier to swallow during the first three rounds, when others down the lineup picked up the slack. Now, it is a problem that could cost them the Stanley Cup.

The Hurricanes have met their match in the final against the Vegas Golden Knights, a seasoned opponent with no glaring weaknesses who won the opener 5-4. With Game 2 on Thursday night, the pressure is squarely on Carolina's best players to get it together before it is too late.

"I know we have a better in us, and we've got to show it," Aho said Wednesday. “It's on us to figure it out.”

Top-line scoring woes

Through 14 games this postseason, the trio of Jarvis, Aho and Svechnikov has scored just three times against a goaltender at even strength. The success of the second line of Taylor Hall, Logan Stankoven and Jackson Blake made getting past Ottawa, Philadelphia and Montreal a breeze with a single loss in the three series combiend.

Vegas is a different animal, and Game 1 showed the frustration seeping through for the first line.

“This league is weird: You grip your stick a little tight and you get into a weird matchup, and it can look worse than it is,” Hall said. "But things can change on a dime, especially this time of year.”

The Hurricanes have been waiting nearly two months for that change. Coach Rod Brind'Amour for several weeks has exhibited patience and praised Jarvis, Aho and Svechnikov for doing good things away from the puck that contribute to winning, even if they're not showing up on the scoresheet.

His tone has changed facing a deficit in the final.

“They got to play in the other team's end,” Brind'Amour said. “They’re too much one and done and not even one (scoring chance), and it’s not a lot of time. So, they got to get a little more offensive zone time. Kind of like that last shift they had. That was one of the shifts you could say: ‘OK, there you go. That’s how it needs to look.’ We need them to get going.”

Glimpse of what could be

That final shift came with the score tied late in the third period Tuesday night, hemming the Golden Knights in their own end and generating quality opportunities. Jarvis had one shot blocked, then two more stopped by Carter Hart, including a flashy glove save that set the table for Tomas Hertl to score the winning goal 21 seconds later.

It was a marked improvement from earlier in the game, when Jarvis passed up an open shot looking for a pass and later missing a wide-open net.

“The chances are there,” Jarvis said. “We’ve had our looks. We just have to capitalize now more than ever. We can’t dwell on the past, can’t dwell on the stuff we missed. It’s about the next shift, the next shot.”

Easier said than done because Vegas is going to adjust, too. Coach John Tortorella has preached a consistent approach, and there is a reason the team has won 20 of 25 games since he took over in late March.

“We have thoughts on how to play this team,” Tortorella said. “We need to be patient. In a number of things, how we have to play, I think, requires patience — and when you get a little antsy against that team, they can capitalize. They’re that good. I think we have an understanding of how we have to go.”

What the Hurricanes need

While Jarvis, Aho and Svechnikov have looked off at times, there is little evidence it comes from a lack of caring. Maybe it's trying too hard.

“It’s not about work ethic or trying harder, but it doesn’t matter at the same time,” Aho said. “There’s also a part that we almost sometimes try to do too much, instead of just letting the game happen and play the game, let the game come to you in a way."

Teammates are trying to keep those guys' heads up and focused as best as possible. Defenseman Jalen Chatfield is all about bringing the positivity.

“Everybody’s giving everything out there,” Chatfield said. “That’s not the question. Sometimes it’s bounces. Sometimes things happen in hockey, but I think as a group, (it is about) leaning on each other to help each other play our best.”

Hall, the No. 1 pick in 2010 and MVP in 2017-18 who has found a groove with his sixth NHL organization at age 34, doesn't feel the need to coach up other players who are struggling. He maintains the belief that Jarvis, Aho and Svechnikov will turn things around.

“Those guys are great players,” Hall said. “They had their chances and their looks (in Game 1). Some of the looks didn’t turn into chances. But we know how good they are, and we know how good they can be and it’s only a matter of time.”

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AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/stanley-cup and https://apnews.com/hub/nhl

The Senate voted 53-46 on Wednesday to begin debate on the roughly $70 billion bill to fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. The legislation was delayed for weeks as Republican senators navigated the various obstacles to passage created by President Donald Trump and the White House, but they are now moving quickly to pass it after paring it back to its original form.

“Right now, the goal is to get the base bill across the finish line,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D.

Still, Republicans will need to find enough votes to beat back multiple amendments that Democrats — and some Republicans — say they will offer to permanently ban Trump’s $1.776 billion settlement fund.

After fierce Republican pushback, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told House lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday that “we are not moving forward with the fund, period.” But shortly after the Senate voted to move forward with the bill on Wednesday, Trump repeatedly defended the settlement in response to reporters’ questions at the White House.

When asked directly whether the fund is dead or just on hold, Trump responded: “I’d have to ask the lawyers, I don’t know.”

“I love it,” Trump said of the settlement. “I think it's so important.”

Republicans are using a process called budget reconciliation that enables them to pass the legislation without any Democratic votes, but they must first wade through a long series of amendment votes that could pose problems for the bill. That process is expected to start on Thursday.

Democratic amendments will test GOP unity

Republicans said they felt reassured by Blanche's promises to scrap the fund, which was part of a settlement resolving Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns. GOP senators had revolted and left town two weeks ago after the Justice Department announced the payouts, which could potentially go to participants in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and other Trump allies.

Democrats say they want it written into the law.

“It is only a matter of time before Blanche and Trump go back on their word,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., predicted Wednesday morning.

After Trump's comments, Schumer posted on X that “this is EXACTLY why" Democrats would be forcing votes to ban it.

Some Republicans also planned to try and put Blanche's promise in writing. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., has said he will offer an amendment to block any attempt at resurrecting the fund.

“We’ve got a sufficient number of Republicans who have been very clear they’ve got concerns there,” said Tillis.

Thune said earlier on Wednesday that Blanche’s comments were “extremely helpful” and that he thought most GOP senators were satisfied. He said he was working with Tillis and others who have discussed amendments as he tries to ensure he has enough votes for a simple majority in the 53-47 Senate.

“Keep in mind, we’ve got to keep them all together, make sure we’ve got 50 votes for it,” Thune said.

Money dropped for Trump's ballroom

The legislation was also delayed by the opposition to $1 billion in security funding for the White House, including for Trump’s new ballroom, that was added to the original bill.

Democrats and some Republicans questioned using taxpayer money for the massive project in a time of economic hardship for many voters. Democrats had planned amendments to strip that language, as well.

As various side issues temporarily derailed the legislation, Republicans have said their top priority is passing the ICE and Border Patrol funding that Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

But success requires GOP unity in the Senate and the House before it can reach Trump.

Republican House leaders said Wednesday they would like to pass the bill before the end of the week, if the Senate can finish it. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said that House leaders were having internal conversations about it.

“We just need to make sure everybody’s there,” Scalise said.

It was unclear how Trump’s comments on the settlement would affect Republicans’ votes on the immigration spending bill. In addition to defending the settlement, he also praised the Jan. 6 defendants who could get payouts, saying they had been subjected to “abuse.”

Friction between White House, Senate threatens other priorities

Even as Republican senators have strongly defended Trump's agenda, a growing number of them have become frustrated with the president as he ignores what they see as their political needs.

The Justice Department announced the settlement fund just as the Senate had planned to move forward on the immigration spending bill, giving Democrats an opportunity to offer amendments that could divide Republicans in an election year. That came just as Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and John Cornyn of Texas both lost reelection bids after Trump endorsed their primary opponents.

Trump also tapped real estate scion Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday, angering both Republicans and Democrats who said Pulte has no clear national security credentials. The appointment has complicated bipartisan negotiations on revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which expires at the end of next week.

At the same time, an increasing number of Republicans are voting against Trump's war in Iran. The House voted on Wednesday to halt U.S. military action there, following a Senate vote in May to advance its own war powers resolution.

Thune said he wasn't yet sure whether Republicans would be united on the immigration bill.

“We’ll find out," he told reporters.

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Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Now, 11 years after the first Ni Una Menos protest created a collective consciousness about what would come to be known as femicide — the killing of women and girls because of their gender — the nation is convulsing with anger once again.

This time, it's over the killing of 14-year-old Agostina Vega, in the central city of Cordoba. She arrived at a family friend's home the night of May 23, expecting to pick up a gift for her mother. Instead, she was sexually assaulted and hanged, initial autopsy results indicate, her body dismembered with a kitchen knife.

Her remains were found in a drainage ditch Saturday, a week after her disappearance, as vigils in her home province erupted into clashes with police.

The outrage has reverberated across the country, and on Wednesday, thousands of protesters gathered for the annual Ni Una Menos demonstration in downtown Buenos Aires. Many held posters printed with the faces and names of women who've been killed or who disappeared in recent years, including Agostina. Her case brought renewed energy and purpose to the protest, amplifying demands for government action and intensifying criticism of President Javier Milei.

The libertarian ally of U.S. President Donald Trump has called the feminist movement “a ridiculous and unnatural fight," promoted scrapping femicide from the penal code, and defunded programs supporting victims of gender violence as part of his cultural war and cost-cutting campaign.

This year, lawyers at the Center for Legal and Social Studies, a leading Argentine human rights group, have counted 63 legally registered femicides. But they and other advocates say it can be an uphill battle against the government to get that classification. Some have compiled a list of more than 100 names of women killed this year, arguing that many aren’t properly labeled.

Reports of femicide in Argentina fell 12%, to 200 cases last year compared with 2024, according to statistics published by the Supreme Court. Victims' lawyers say the change doesn’t reflect a drop in gender-based violence, but instead a failure to properly classify crimes.

“To stop calling femicides by their name, to deny the existence of gender violence — it's an attempt to rewind the past 20 years,” said Natalia Gherardi, director of the Latin American Team for Justice and Gender, a Buenos Aires-based rights group. "I hope this reaction generated by Agostina’s case, what we show in the streets, will be enough to counter the desire to move backward.”

Questions plague the handling of 14-year-old Agostina's case

After Agostina's death, protesters directed anger at local law enforcement, setting tires alight in the streets of Cordoba. Her family filed a missing person’s report the morning after her disappearance, but over 80 hours passed before phones across the province buzzed with a child abduction alert, according to family lawyer Gustavo Vaca.

The day after her death, a taxi driver reported that he'd driven Agostina to the house of the family friend, 33-year-old Claudio Barrelier, which security camera footage confirmed.

Agostina’s family has complained that security forces were consumed by concerns of fan violence during a major soccer game in the city of Cordoba that day. Three days later, police raided the house of Barrelier, an ex-boyfriend of Agostina's mother.

Barrelier is in custody as the main suspect in the case and denies killing Agostina. Investigators say his criminal history shows he had been arrested for abducting a young woman a year ago but was released on bail of $3,500 after 20 days.

When peppered with accusations of foot-dragging, lead prosecutor Raúl Garzón said last week that authorities “are not engaging in any self-criticism.”

Calls grew to characterize Agostina’s killing as a femicide. Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva has refused to do so.

“A homicide, whatever its nature, is not solely defined by what happens during one hour, two hours, or three hours, where the act itself occurs,” Monteoliva told reporters Monday in her only public comments on the case.

Advocates insist using the term femicide — which carries harsher penalties than other forms of homicide, with a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment in Argentina — is crucial for effective prosecution and victim protection.

“If we don't name the specific form of violence, if we don't recognize it, then we can't understand the problem in all its dimensions, and we can't create policies to prevent and combat it," said Lucila Galkin, director of the gender and diversity program for the Argentina chapter of Amnesty International.

Milei has waged his culture war against policies on gender

Milei has waged a cultural war against gender-based policies — what he sees as a dangerous consequence of socialism.

After Milei railed against the crime of femicide as “legally making a woman’s life worth more than a man’s” at the Davos summit last year, his justice minister announced plans to strip the category from the legal code.

Nothing came of that, but his government now is working to stiffen penalties for women who falsely report cases of gender-based violence. It is awaiting congressional debate.

In the last two and a half years, Milei has dissolved Argentina’s women’s ministry, shut down its anti-discrimination institute, gutted support programs for victims of gender violence, banned the use of gender-inclusive language in official documents, and defunded training in gender issues for public school students and state employees.

Among the affected programs is Acompañar, which assisted 350,000 women with aid equivalent to six months’ minimum wage before it was defunded. A 24-hour hotline to help victims lost two-thirds of its budget and half its staff last year. A government-sponsored program providing free legal assistance to people experiencing domestic violence or sexual abuse has also been dismantled.

With the latest case, an annual protest has gained urgency

On Wednesday, protesters gathered at Plaza Congreso, opposite the seat of the National Congress, as they have every year since Chiara Páez's death in 2015.

Laura Lenaza, 41, said she hadn’t attended a street protest in almost a decade. But the shock of recent cases moved her to bring her 17-year-old daughter, Milena.

“I’m fighting for myself, for my 11-year-old sister, and for all the women I know," the young woman said, squeezing her mother’s hand.

María Cacharo, 54, said she came with her 18-year-old daughter in honor of her sister, killed by her husband several years ago.

“Whenever resources are reduced, somehow we’re the ones who have to bear the cost,” she said of the impact of Milei’s cost-cutting on women, adding that the way police handled Agostina's case makes her sick.

Carrying “Justice for Agostina” signs, her family led a march in Cordoba on Wednesday to push for accountability in her killing under the banner of the movement that once made Argentina a regional beacon for social and legal action on gender equality.

“I think this femicide, which caused so much pain, so much shock, also mobilized us, reminded us that this is a problem concerning all of society,” Galkin said of Agostina's case.

“We are being forced to have conversations about issues we thought we had agreed on, a topic that we thought had been settled."

Congo's soccer federation said it was in discussions with the Spanish soccer federation and relevant international bodies to find solutions.

Government authorities in the southern city of La Linea de la Concepcion announced the decision to not authorize next Tuesday's friendly citing possible health risks linked to the Ebola crisis.

Congo was playing a warmup against Denmark in Liege, Belgium, on Wednesday.

An outbreak of a rare type of Ebola virus has plagued Congo and Uganda. The World Health Organization has declared it a public health emergency of international concern.

Congo had already canceled a three-day World Cup preparation training camp and a planned farewell to fans in the capital Kinshasa because of the outbreak the eastern part of the country.

All of the Congo players and the team’s French coach, Sébastien Desabre, are based outside of the central African country with most of them playing in France.

Soccer's governing body FIFA previously issued a statement saying it was aware of and monitoring the situation regarding an Ebola outbreak and was in close communication with Congo soccer officials to ensure the team was made aware of all medical and security guidance.

Congo will play in Group K at the World Cup. It faces Portugal for its opening game in Houston on June 17.

The Leopards then face Colombia in Guadalajara on June 23 before playing Uzbekistan in Atlanta for their final group game on June 27.

Congo's first World Cup qualification since 1974, when it was called Zaire, sparked scenes of jubilation across the nation, which has been battered by decades of conflict.

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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

La policía de Miami informó que Sulayman Zacchery Njie robó la tienda Cricket Wireless ubicada en el 5742 de Northwest Second Avenue, en el vecindario Little Haiti de la ciudad, el 9 de marzo. Los agentes detuvieron al hombre de 39 años el martes por cuatro cargos graves.

Según una orden de arresto, Njie entró a la tienda alrededor de las 10:20 a.m. y le dijo a la única empleada presente que “quería hacer un pago de su cuenta inalámbrica”.

Las autoridades dijeron que luego se acercó a la mujer y la agarró por la chaqueta, diciéndole: “Dame los teléfonos”.

Posteriormente, la empleada dijo a la policía que Njie “mantenía una mano dentro del bolsillo de su chaqueta como si tuviera un arma”, indica la orden.

La policía señaló que le ordenó “ir a la parte trasera de la tienda, donde se encuentra la caja fuerte que contiene los teléfonos celulares”, y que “la agarró por la chaqueta y la empujó hacia la caja fuerte”, donde ella la abrió. Según la orden, Njie “tomó varios iPhone y teléfonos Android” del interior.

Las autoridades dijeron que Njie le ordenó a la empleada que abriera la puerta trasera y luego le exigió las llaves de su camioneta, pero ella le respondió que no las tenía.

Según la policía, Njie le dijo: “Te he visto, vámonos”. La empleada le respondió: “No, simplemente vete”, dijeron los detectives.

La policía indicó que Njie volvió a agarrar a la mujer “por la chaqueta e intentó arrastrarla hacia afuera, pero ella se resistió y logró cerrar y asegurar la puerta cuando él se fue”.

Según la orden judicial, los videos de vigilancia mostraron el robo dentro de la tienda, así como “un teléfono en una funda beige” en el bolsillo trasero de Njie. También señala que videos captados cerca de la escena mostraron a Njie huyendo después del robo, pero ya sin el teléfono en el bolsillo.

Un detective encontró “un teléfono Motorola en una funda beige cerca de la salida trasera de la tienda, en la dirección por la que huyó (Njie)”, y los datos obtenidos mediante una orden de registro revelaron que el teléfono estaba registrado a nombre de Njie.

La policía dijo que las selfies y otras fotografías encontradas en el teléfono también vincularon a Njie con el delito.

Las autoridades indicaron que posteriormente la víctima identificó a Njie en una rueda fotográfica, afirmando que estaba “85% segura de que era el sospechoso que robó la tienda, pero no podía estar 100% segura porque llevaba gafas de sol”.

No quedó claro de inmediato dónde o cómo la policía de Miami localizó a Njie, pero fue detenido el martes por cargos de secuestro, robo con allanamiento y agresión o violencia, robo por la fuerza e intento de robo de vehículo.

Njie, también conocido por alias como “Sulayman Bethel” y “Zacchery Sulayman”, tiene antecedentes penales en el sur de Florida. Los registros judiciales muestran múltiples arrestos previos en el condado Miami-Dade, y registros judiciales del condado Broward lo describen como un “delincuente habitual”.

Cumplió tiempo en prisión en 2007 por condenas en Broward relacionadas con huir de las autoridades, robo con allanamiento y falsificación.

Regresó a una prisión estatal en 2017 tras un arresto realizado por la Oficina del Sheriff del Condado Brevard por manipular un monitor electrónico de tobillo. En ese momento residía en Cocoa.

Su condena más reciente parece haber sido por un caso grave de daños criminales derivado de un arresto en 2024 realizado por lo que entonces era el Departamento de Policía de Miami-Dade. Los registros muestran que recibió una sentencia de tres días de cárcel tras declararse culpable y se le ordenó pagar restitución.

Ahora está nuevamente en la cárcel y podría no salir pronto. Los registros muestran que Njie permanece detenido sin derecho a fianza en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight.

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Miami police said Sulayman Zacchery Njie robbed the Cricket Wireless at 5742 NW Second Ave. ― in the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood ― on March 9. Officers took the 39-year-old into custody on four felony charges Tuesday.

According to an arrest warrant, Njie walked into the store at around 10:20 a.m. and told the lone employee that he “wanted to make a payment for his wireless account.”

Authorities said he then approached the woman and grabbed her by the jacket, telling her, “Give me the phones.”

The worker would later tell police that Njie “was holding one hand in his jacket pocket as if he had a gun,” the warrant states.

He told her “to go to the back of the store, where the safe that contains the cellphones is located,” police said, and “grabbed (her) by her jacket and pushed her towards the safe,” where she opened the safe. Njie “took several iPhones and Android phones from it,” the warrant states.

Authorities said Njie told the employee to open the back door and then demanded her truck keys, which she told him she didn’t have.

Njie told her, “I’ve seen you, let’s go,” according to police. The worker told him, “No, just go,” detectives said.

Police said Njie grabbed the woman “by her jacket again and tried to pull her outside, but (she) resisted and was able to close and lock the door when (he) left.”

According to the warrant, surveillance video showed the robbery inside the store, as well as “a phone in a beige case” in Njie’s back pocket. It states that video from near the scene as Njie fled showed him fleeing after the robbery, but without the phone in his pocket.

A detective found “a Motorola phone in a beige case close to the rear exit of the store in the direction that (Njie) fled” and data obtained through a search warrant revealed that the phone was registered in Njie’s name.

Selfies and other photos found on the phone also tied Njie to the crime, police said.

Authorities said the victim later picked Njie out of a photo lineup, saying “she was 85% sure he is the (suspect who) robbed the store but could not be 100% sure because (he) was wearing sunglasses.”

It wasn’t immediately clear where or how Miami police located Njie, but he was taken into custody Tuesday on charges of kidnapping, burglary with assault or battery, strong-armed robbery and attempted carjacking.

Njie, also known by aliases including “Sulayman Bethel“ and ”Zacchery Sulayman," has a criminal history in South Florida; court records show multiple past arrests in Miami-Dade County and Broward County court records call him a “career criminal.”

He spent time in prison in 2007 for Broward convictions on for fleeing and eluding, burglary and forgery.

He went back to state prison in 2017 after an arrest by the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office for tampering with an ankle monitor. He was living in Cocoa at the time.

His most recent conviction appears to have been for felony criminal mischief case stemming from a 2024 arrest by what was then the Miami-Dade Police Department. Records show he received a three-day jail sentence after pleading guilty and was ordered to pay restitution.

He’s now back in jail and he may not be getting out any time soon. Records show Njie is being held without bond in the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional enter.

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Smith, 38, also known as Kerri Pierre, promised her customers 24-hour care support, transportation, and meals, but some of them complained of crowded and dirty houses, according to deputies.

A Snatched ‘n Curved customer reported she “had to stay in a house with 11 other women ... had to urinate in a cup,” and another reported that she was in a house with “a rodent problem” and “bugs crawling,” a deputy wrote, according to an arrest report.

MDSO deputies reported the assisted living facilities were not licensed by the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, as state law requires, records show.

Deputies had been searching for Smith for months when they arrested her shortly after 2:40 p.m. on Tuesday at 16010 SW 151 Terrace in Miami-Dade County’s Country Walk neighborhood, according to an arrest report.

“I received a call from an anonymous source that [Smith] was currently taking care of patients,” a deputy wrote, according to an arrest report.

On Wednesday, prosecutors filed five cases against Smith, who faced 15 charges. A judge ordered her to show that the source of her bail was not from the proceeds of her crimes, according to court records.

SMITH’S CO-DEFENDANT

During their investigation, MDSO deputies found eight patients and two employees on March 27 at a house that operated as an ALF at 21480 SW 132 Court, records show.

Smith, who was born in Texas, also worked with Crystal White, at Miami-based SNG Concierge, according to deputies who cited state corporate records.

“I have been in contact with [Smith’s] attorney multiple times regarding her surrender and was advised that [Smith] was upset because I arrested [White],” a deputy wrote, according to the arrest report.

Deputies arrested White, 38, on April 7. Smith and White “were previously arrested two separate times in 2023 for the unlicensed operation” of two ALFs, a deputy wrote, according to the arrest report.

While Smith and White had received more than $200,000 in payments from customers since October, patients paid $300 per night, an ALF employee earned $500 weekly, and a driver earned $45 per ride, according to deputies.

Detectives believe there may be more victims and asked anyone with information to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477 to remain anonymous.

SMITH’S 15 CHARGES

Miami-Dade County corrections booked Smith shortly before 7:10 p.m. on Tuesday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where she remained on Wednesday afternoon.

In the first case, Smith faced two charges: Organized fraud and operating an ALF without a license, according to county court records.

In the second case, Smith faced four charges: Florida litter law, illegal disposal of hazardous waste, nuisances injurious to health, health-safety failure to track biomedical waste.

In the third case, Smith also faced the same four charges: Florida litter law, illegal disposal of hazardous waste, nuisances injurious to health, health-safety failure to track biomedical waste.

In a fourth case, Smith faced four charges: Florida litter law, hazardous waste violation, nuisances injurious to health, health-safety failure to track biomedical waste.

In a fifth case, Smith faced a charge of operating an ALF without a license or failing to cease operations. She also had a warrant case for knowingly driving with a suspended license.

Related story: ‘Snatched N Curved’ illegal post-op recovery home busted in Miami-Dade, 1 arrested, deputies say

Smith, de 38 años, también conocida como Kerri Pierre, prometía a sus clientes atención las 24 horas, transporte y comidas, pero algunos de ellos se quejaron de casas abarrotadas y sucias, según los agentes.

Una clienta de Snatched ‘n Curved denunció que “tuvo que quedarse en una casa con otras 11 mujeres … tuvo que orinar en un vaso”, mientras que otra informó que estaba en una vivienda con “problemas de roedores” y “insectos arrastrándose”, escribió un agente en un informe de arresto.

Los agentes de la MDSO informaron que los centros de vivienda asistida no contaban con licencia de la Agencia para la Administración del Cuidado de la Salud de Florida, como exige la ley estatal, muestran los registros.

Los agentes habían estado buscando a Smith durante meses cuando la arrestaron poco después de las 2:40 p.m. del martes en el 16010 de Southwest 151 Terrace, en el vecindario Country Walk de Miami-Dade, según un informe de arresto.

“Recibí una llamada de una fuente anónima que informó que [Smith] estaba atendiendo pacientes en ese momento”, escribió un agente en el informe.

El miércoles, los fiscales presentaron cinco casos contra Smith, quien enfrentaba 15 cargos. Un juez le ordenó demostrar que el origen de su fianza no provenía de las ganancias de sus presuntos delitos, según los registros judiciales.

LA COACUSADA DE SMITH

Durante su investigación, los agentes de la MDSO encontraron a ocho pacientes y dos empleados el 27 de marzo en una casa que operaba como un centro de vivienda asistida en el 21480 de Southwest 132 Court, muestran los registros.

Smith, nacida en Texas, también trabajaba con Crystal White en SNG Concierge, con sede en Miami, según los agentes, quienes citaron registros corporativos estatales.

“He estado en contacto con el abogado de [Smith] en múltiples ocasiones respecto a su entrega y me informó que [Smith] estaba molesta porque arresté a [White]”, escribió un agente en el informe.

Los agentes arrestaron a White, de 38 años, el 7 de abril. Smith y White “fueron arrestadas previamente en dos ocasiones separadas en 2023 por operar” dos centros de vivienda asistida sin licencia, escribió un agente en el informe.

Mientras Smith y White habían recibido más de $200,000 USD en pagos de clientes desde octubre, los pacientes pagaban $300 USD por noche, un empleado del centro ganaba $500 USD semanales y un conductor recibía $45 USD por viaje, según los agentes.

LOS 15 CARGOS CONTRA SMITH

El Departamento Correccional de Miami-Dade registró el ingreso de Smith poco antes de las 7:10 p.m. del martes en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, donde permanecía detenida la tarde del miércoles.

En el primer caso, Smith enfrentaba dos cargos: fraude organizado y operar un centro de vivienda asistida sin licencia, según los registros judiciales.

En el segundo caso, enfrentaba cuatro cargos: violación de la ley estatal sobre desechos, eliminación ilegal de residuos peligrosos, generar condiciones perjudiciales para la salud y falta de control de residuos biomédicos.

En el tercer caso, también enfrentaba esos mismos cuatro cargos: violación de la ley estatal sobre desechos, eliminación ilegal de residuos peligrosos, generar condiciones perjudiciales para la salud y falta de control de residuos biomédicos.

En un cuarto caso, Smith enfrentaba otros cuatro cargos: violación de la ley estatal sobre desechos, infracción relacionada con residuos peligrosos, generar condiciones perjudiciales para la salud y falta de control de residuos biomédicos.

En un quinto caso, Smith enfrentaba un cargo por operar un centro de vivienda asistida sin licencia o no cesar sus operaciones. También tenía un caso por orden de arresto relacionado con conducir deliberadamente con la licencia suspendida.

Historia relacionada: Desmantelan en Miami-Dade hogar ilegal de recuperación postoperatoria de “Snatched N Curved”; arrestan a una persona, dicen agentes.

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Ramiro Perez was arrested by the Homestead Police Department and faces one count of animal cruelty with intent to injure or kill with a deadly weapon, jail records show.

According to police, the shooting happened around 3:45 p.m. on May 14 in an area that was redacted in Perez’s arrest report.

Officers said they responded to a report of an injured cat and met with the owner, who said Perez fired a BB gun at the animal while it was in Perez’s yard.

The owner told investigators he “heard the subject pump the BB gun three times” and then saw him fire toward the cat two to three times, striking it once in the eye, according to the report.

The report states that the cat was taken to a veterinary clinic, where its eye had to be surgically removed. Veterinary costs totaled $848.50.

Police said officers later went to Perez’s home and also visited his residence again on Tuesday before he later came to the HPD station, where he was read his Miranda rights in the presence of investigators.

As of Wednesday, he was being held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, where his bond was listed as “to be set.”

Un hombre de 66 años de Homestead fue arrestado el martes después de que la policía dijera que le disparó al gato de un vecino en un ojo con una pistola de balines el mes pasado.

Ramiro Pérez fue arrestado por el Departamento de Policía de Homestead y enfrenta un cargo de crueldad animal con intención de herir o matar utilizando un arma mortal, según muestran los registros carcelarios.

Según la policía, el incidente ocurrió alrededor de las 3:45 p.m. del 14 de mayo en un área cuyo nombre fue censurado en el informe de arresto de Pérez.

Los agentes dijeron que respondieron a un reporte sobre un gato herido y se reunieron con el dueño, quien afirmó que Pérez disparó una pistola de balines contra el animal mientras este se encontraba en el patio de Pérez.

El propietario dijo a los investigadores que “escuchó al sujeto bombear la pistola de balines tres veces” y luego lo vio disparar hacia el gato entre dos y tres veces, impactándolo una vez en el ojo, según el informe.

El informe indica que el gato fue llevado a una clínica veterinaria, donde tuvieron que extirparle quirúrgicamente el ojo. Los gastos veterinarios ascendieron a $848.50 USD.

La policía informó que posteriormente los agentes acudieron a la vivienda de Pérez y regresaron nuevamente el martes antes de que él se presentara en la estación de HPD, donde le leyeron sus derechos Miranda en presencia de los investigadores.

Hasta el miércoles, permanecía detenido en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, donde su fianza figuraba como “pendiente de ser fijada”.

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According to an arrest report from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, Christian Quintero was taken into custody Tuesday at the MDSO Kendall District Station and transported to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.

The investigation began after an incident on Feb. 10 near Southwest 48th Street and Southwest 107th Avenue.

Investigators said a teenage witness told detectives that he was riding an electric bicycle with a friend around 3:30 p.m. when he blew a kiss toward a woman sitting inside a white Toyota Camry.

The teen said the male driver of the vehicle, later identified as Quintero, became enraged and began following and harassing both teens while cursing at them.

The teen who blew the kiss told investigators he was able to evade the vehicle, but his friend was not.

During the encounter, the teen recorded video footage that captured the vehicle and its Florida license plate, according to the report.

When detectives later interviewed the other teen, he corroborated his friend’s account and provided additional details.

According to the arrest report, the second teen said the driver followed closely behind him before he stopped his electric bicycle.

The report states the driver then approached him in the vehicle, rolled down a window, pointed a handgun at him and asked, “Where’s your boy?”

The teen told investigators he feared for his life during the confrontation.

According to the report, the teen also said the driver exited the vehicle at one point and claimed, “I’m a cop.”

Investigators traced the license plate captured in the video to a vehicle registered to another man, but further investigation revealed that Quintero lives at the same address as the vehicle owner and matched the physical description provided by the victim, authorities said.

According to the report, the victim identified Quintero in a photo lineup on April 15.

Detectives also reviewed the video provided by the victim’s friend, which reportedly showed the Toyota Camry following both teenagers. Investigators said the footage also showed two occupants inside the vehicle, including a driver who appeared to be Quintero and a white female passenger.

Quintero was taken into custody Tuesday on charges of aggravated assault with a firearm and falsely impersonating a police officer.

According to the arrest report, he declined to speak with detectives following his arrest.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Quintero remained at TGK on a $7,500 bond.

Según un informe de arresto de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade (MDSO), Christian Quintero fue detenido el martes en la estación del distrito Kendall de la MDSO y trasladado al Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight.

La investigación comenzó tras un incidente ocurrido el 10 de febrero cerca de Southwest 48th Street y Southwest 107th Avenue.

Los investigadores dijeron que un testigo adolescente informó a los detectives que viajaba en una bicicleta eléctrica con un amigo alrededor de las 3:30 p.m. cuando lanzó un beso hacia una mujer que estaba sentada dentro de un Toyota Camry blanco.

El adolescente dijo que el conductor del vehículo, posteriormente identificado como Quintero, se enfureció y comenzó a seguir y acosar a ambos menores mientras les gritaba insultos.

El adolescente que lanzó el beso dijo a los investigadores que logró escapar del vehículo, pero su amigo no.

Durante el incidente, el adolescente grabó un video que captó el vehículo y su matrícula de Florida, según el informe.

Cuando los detectives entrevistaron posteriormente al otro adolescente, este corroboró la versión de su amigo y proporcionó detalles adicionales.

Según el informe de arresto, el segundo adolescente dijo que el conductor lo siguió de cerca hasta que detuvo su bicicleta eléctrica.

El informe indica que el conductor se le acercó en el vehículo, bajó una ventana, le apuntó con una pistola y le preguntó: “¿Dónde está tu amigo?”.

El adolescente dijo a los investigadores que temió por su vida durante el enfrentamiento.

Según el informe, el adolescente también dijo que el conductor salió del vehículo en un momento y afirmó: “Soy policía”.

Los investigadores rastrearon la matrícula captada en el video hasta un vehículo registrado a nombre de otro hombre, pero una investigación posterior reveló que Quintero vive en la misma dirección que el propietario del vehículo y coincide con la descripción física proporcionada por la víctima, dijeron las autoridades.

Según el informe, la víctima identificó a Quintero en una rueda fotográfica el 15 de abril.

Los detectives también revisaron el video proporcionado por el amigo de la víctima, el cual supuestamente mostraba al Toyota Camry siguiendo a ambos adolescentes. Los investigadores dijeron que las imágenes también mostraban a dos ocupantes dentro del vehículo, incluido un conductor que parecía ser Quintero y una pasajera blanca.

Quintero fue detenido el martes por cargos de agresión agravada con arma de fuego y por hacerse pasar falsamente por un agente de policía.

Según el informe de arresto, se negó a hablar con los detectives después de su arresto.

Hasta la tarde del miércoles, Quintero permanecía en TGK con una fianza de $7,500 USD.

Ye has drawn widespread controversy in recent years for a series of antisemitic remarks, leaving Dutch authorities under mounting pressure to cancel the gigs on June 6 and 8.

The Central Jewish Council filed the emergency lawsuit on Tuesday, arguing that Ye should be banned from the country for voicing admiration for Adolf Hilter and selling T-shirts featuring swastikas.

According to the Amsterdam District Court, there were no grounds to bar Ye from performing. “There are no indications that West’s presence in the coming days will lead to concrete public order dangers,” the court said in a statement.

The Central Jewish Council expressed disappointment with the ruling. “The feeling we are getting is that it is okay if you are antisemitic,” Chanan Hertzberger, the organization’s chair, told The Associated Press.

Lawmakers in the Netherlands supported a motion to bar Ye from entering the country but the country's immigration minister said there was no legal basis for such a move. Ye's remarks were “reprehensible” but there was “no reason to bar him," Bart van den Brink told journalists last week.

The 48-year-old was set to perform his first European dates in more than a decade. In April, he was barred from entering the U.K. over his remarks, setting off a series of cancellations. Shows in Italy and Poland have been scrapped.

More than 100,000 fans turned out in Istanbul on Saturday evening to watch Ye’s first performance in Turkey.

Concert organizers say 70,000 tickets have been sold for the two upcoming shows at the Gelredome in the eastern Dutch city of Arnhem.

Ye apologized in January through a full-page advertisement in The Wall Street Journal, stating that his bipolar disorder led him to fall into “a four-month long, manic episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior that destroyed my life.”

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The crash happened at around 3:15 p.m. at Angels of Paradise Mortuary, located at 2796 NW 46th St. in the county’s unincorporated Brownsville area.

Video from Sky 10 showed the crumpled brown dirt bike on the ground with the driver’s side window of the Cadillac hearse shattered.

Medics rushed the dirt bike rider to Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition.

Officials with the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office confirmed Wednesday morning that the man later died. They identified him Wednesday afternoon as 38-year-old Terrell Ray.

They said they are looking into whether speed was a factor in the crash.

The 10 rotating seats on the 15-member Security Council are earmarked for different regions of the world. The assembly elects five countries by secret ballot every year to serve two-year terms alongside the council’s five permanent veto-wielding members — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

In the other contested race, after four rounds of voting in the 193-member General Assembly, Kyrgyzstan defeated the Philippines by a vote of 143-49 and will join the council for the first time.

Zimbabwe, the African candidate, and Caribbean candidate Trinidad and Tobago had no opponents and both were elected with more than 180 votes.

The Security Council is mandated under the U.N. Charter with ensuring international peace and security, but it has failed in the three major current conflicts because of the veto power of Russia on Ukraine and of the United States, Israel’s closest ally, often on Gaza and on Iran.

There have been decades of efforts to reform the Security Council to reflect the geopolitical realities of the current world, not of the post-World War II era 80 years ago, when the United Nations was established. But they have all failed, though a new attempt is underway.

In the race for the two seats for the group of mainly Western nations, Portugal received 134 votes and Austria 131 votes, while Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse which had served six previous terms on the council, received 104 votes.

“Obviously, the result is a real disappointment,” German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul told reporters. He said Russia campaigned against Germany because of its strong support for Ukraine. “It also may have cost us votes that Germany must always assume a special responsibility for Israel with regard to the Middle East conflict," he said.

Austria’s foreign ministry said its election capped a 15-year campaign and is a “strong international sign of confidence” in the country.

Kyrgyzstan’s Foreign Minister Jeenbek Kulubayev told reporters “we understand now is a turbulent time” and said Kyrgyzstan will work together with other council members.

The five new members will take up their seats on Jan. 1. They will replace Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.

___

Associated Press writer Stephanie Liechtenstein in Vienna, Austria contributed to this report.

New York Judge Gregory Carro said he sealed the virtual proceeding at the request of the defense but provided no other details, raising questions about transparency in the closely watched case.

Court hearings in the U.S. are presumptively open to the public, but judges are permitted to close them in certain circumstances, such as to protect sensitive or confidential information.

Carro held the hearing in his chambers at the Manhattan courthouse where Mangione is set to go to trial on Sept. 8. Mangione, his lawyers and prosecutors all appeared via video conference. A lawyer representing news organizations sent a letter to Carro asking his reasons for sealing the hearing but was ignored by the judge and rebuffed by his staff.

When the lawyer, Jeremy Chase, called Carro's chambers Wednesday morning, he said the judge's clerk told him: “We don't read emails or letters at night. We go home.” She then hung up on him, he said in an email to news organizations obtained by The Associated Press.

After Wednesday's hearing, Carro returned to the courtroom and announced it's "sealed at the moment.” He scheduled an in-person hearing for June 16. That one, he said, will be open to the public.

Spokespeople for Mangione’s defense team and for the Manhattan district attorney's office, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment. A message seeking comment was left for a spokesperson for New York’s state court system.

Laura Italiano, a veteran New York City courts reporter who was in Carro's courtroom on Wednesday, said this is the third time in six months that the judge and court staff have silenced or ignored journalists seeking access to evidence or proceedings in Mangione's case.

At a pretrial hearing in December, court officers ejected a reporter from the courtroom after she tried objecting to Carro's decision to seal certain evidence. In February, Carro held a 27-minute, off-the-record bench conference during an otherwise public hearing. Reporters emailed the judge to no avail and asked a court officer to relay a note to him, but the officer refused.

“We’re seeing serious transparency problems and the trial hasn’t even begun,” Italiano said. “There's huge public interest in this case and the judge is carrying on as if that were not the case.”

Carro scheduled Wednesday’s hearing at the end of Mangione’s last court appearance on May 18.

After meeting briefly with prosecutors and Mangione’s lawyers at the bench at that prior proceeding, Carro said he’d hold a virtual hearing to discuss scheduling and jury selection issues. He gave no indication that it would be sealed, nor has anyone said how, why or when Mangione’s lawyers asked for it to be.

Typically when virtual hearings are scheduled in New York courts, the press and public are able to follow along by watching on TV monitors in the judge's courtroom. When a party requests that a proceeding be sealed, a judge will often solicit input from the other side and allow third parties, such as the public and news media, to also provide input.

An AP reporter emailed Carro directly on Tuesday, asking him to share, even broadly, his reasoning for sealing Wednesday's hearing, and whether a transcript or recording would be provided. The judge didn’t respond and, instead, forwarded the email to the court’s press office.

Mangione, 28, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in the Dec. 4, 2024, killing. His federal trial, which involves stalking charges, is set to begin on Oct. 13. He could spend his life in prison if convicted in either case.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for UnitedHealth Group’s annual investor conference. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione, an Ivy League graduate from a wealthy Maryland family, was arrested five days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan. At the May 18 hearing, Carro ruled that a gun and notebook that prosecutors say link Mangione to the killing can be used as evidence against him.

The gun, a 3D-printed pistol, matches the one used to kill Thompson, prosecutors said. The notebook describes wanting to “wack” a health insurance executive and rebelling against “the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel.”

Ernesto Justiniano asumió en reemplazo de Marcelo Salinas y en su primer discurso dijo que su misión será retornar el país a la normalidad. También destacó la labor de las Fuerzas Armadas y sostuvo que "no venimos a actuar por impulso, venimos a actuar con prudencia, firmeza y responsabilidad. Bolivia no necesita más violencia. Necesita paz, presencia del Estado, abastecimiento, seguridad y convivencia democrática”.

Hasta ahora Justiniano se desempeñaba como viceministro de Defensa Social y Sustancias Controladas, cargo desde el que lideró en marzo la captura del presunto narcotraficante uruguayo Sebastián Marset, luego entregado a Estados Unidos.

A su turno, Paz convocó nuevamente al diálogo a los sindicatos que protestan con bloqueos viales que han causado millonarias pérdidas al sector productivo y provocado escasez de alimentos, oxigeno medicinal y combustibles a La Paz. Según el gobierno, siete personas murieron por falta de atención médica por los cortes de carreteras y vías.

A su vez el mandatario anunció que envió un proyecto de ley a la Asamblea Legislativa para regular el Estado de excepción. “Nuestra Policía Nacional y nuestras Fuerzas Armadas y el gobierno van a ser acción humanitaria para cambiar esta situación. Nosotros no venimos del concepto de la violencia”, señaló.

El mandatario —que el mes pasado había cambiado a su ministro de Trabajo— expresó que habrá otras modificaciones en su administración luego de las críticas de que su gabinete no tenía representación de todos los sectores. “Agradezco a aquellos servidores que han estado, pero serán cambios también en un proceso de inclusión”, mencionó.

La ciudad de La Paz, sede de los poderes Ejecutivo y Legislativo, es la más castigada por las protestas y la víspera se declaró en emergencia sanitaria y humanitaria por 90 días.

Los cortes de ruta se han extendido a siete de las nueve regiones del país, según un informe de la Administradora Boliviana de Carreteras.

Las protestas han polarizado al país entre quienes piden una pronta solución del conflicto y la Central Obrera Boliviana, que lidera las manifestaciones junto a sindicatos campesinos, juntas vecinales y seguidores del expresidente Evo Morales (2006-2019) y que piden la renuncia de Paz y han rechazado dialogar con el gobierno. Alegan que sus reclamos sectoriales y de un aumento salarial no fueron atendidos a tiempo.

Los empresarios estimaron las pérdidas en cerca de 2.000 millones de dólares.

He said Wednesday the finished product probably won't be ready until 2028 and would be a system "that outlives any player.”

The tour is moving toward a model of two tracks that Rolapp first mentioned in March. The top track for the top performers would be roughly 16 tournaments, not including the majors or postseason. Track 1 would have around 120 to 130 players.

Track 2 would be for those aspiring to get to Track 1. The purses would be smaller and the title sponsors would pay less, though Rolapp sounded confident there would be sponsors willing to spend less for such tournaments. Still under discussion is whether players could move up to Track 1 in the middle of the season depending on their performance, such as winning multiple times.

Key to a new model, Rolapp said, was bringing back the 36-hole cut, which would make sense if the fields are going from 72 players to 120 players or more. The tour now has “signature events” with 72 players and a 36-hole cut at only three such events hosted by golf greats.

“At the end of the day, sports is about how good the athletes are and what the competitive consequences are,” he said. “I think you’ll see that in Track 2. And I think you’ll see people fighting to stay on Track 1. And I think we have lost a lot of that with the smaller field, no-cut events.”

He said the tour wants to get back to the competitive meritocracy that makes golf unique.

Rolapp has leaned on the pillars of scarcity, simplicity and parity since he first appointed a Future Competition Committee in August, leading to speculation that tour would go to a smaller, more streamlined schedule that would create fewer opportunities.

Rolapp painted a different picture Wednesday while meeting with a small group of reporters.

“I think when you see where we land, you’re not going to see that,” he said. "But what you are going to see is an elevation of tournaments. And you’re going to have a collection of Track 1 that are special, that are bigger. I think what we have found as we’ve talked to sponsors both for Track 1 and Track 2, there’s a lot of demand for both. And the price points will be different.

“The bigger events ... not everyone can afford and may not be sort of consistent with their business goals,” he said. “That's great. There’s other price points too for it, and I think there’s plenty of demand for both Track 1 and Track 2 in that regard because there’s definitely people who want to invest different amounts in these events.”

The postseason format also is being revamped. Rolapp said he invited all the PGA Tour's broadcast partners and even those with whom the PGA Tour does not have contracts, such as streaming services, to provide insight into the tour's thinking toward a new media rights deal.

Rolapp has pointed toward June 23 — a day after the next board meeting — for a full update.

“I feel good where we are, but I also had expectations that it wasn’t going to be easy,” Rolapp said. “You don't have a good process if there’s not tension. That means you’re not asking the right questions.”

Still under discussion are details that include which tournaments are going on Track 1 and Track 2, the courses they play and perhaps going to bigger markets the tour is not in, such as New York, Chicago, Boston, Denver and Philadelphia, for example.

There also is the issue of players who defected to LIV Golf, a rival league that has its own set of issues now that the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia will stop paying for it after this year.

Brooks Koepka ended his LIV contract and took advantage of a program the PGA Tour created that allowed him to return immediately with financial stipulations, such as a $5 million charity donation and no access to PGA Tour equity for five years.

Patrick Reed also is on his way back through his play on the European tour, though he is not eligible for PGA Tour events for one year since his last LIV appearance.

Bryson DeChambeau is a little more complicated, mainly because DeChambeau was among those who kept his name on an antitrust lawsuit against the tour.

Rolapp repeated his view that he would not concern himself with LIV players until it was time.

“All fans want the best golfers in the world together. I think we have most of them, pretty close to all of them. And we're building a tour that attracts the best players in the world,” Rolapp said. "I think this new model will even improve upon that.

“But we do have to account for whatever lingering discipline is left, or rules that have been broken,” he said. “There’s scar tissue, and that has to be accounted for. That’s not to say we’re going to be punitive, it’s just that we’re a membership organization of rules.”

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Workers carefully hoisted the big guns one-by-one from the back of a truck and wheeled them inside their new home at the Savannah History Museum, which will put them on display just in time for the Fourth of July celebration of America's 250th birthday.

“They look brand new,” said Andrea Farmer, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist who was part of the team that researched and preserved the cannons. "They could pretty much be fired if someone wanted to.”

The artifacts were discovered in 2021 when a dredge scooping sediment from the riverbed as part of an Army Corps project to deepen Savannah's shipping channel pulled up a cannon in its metal jaws. The crew soon dug up two more.

In the course of just over a year, a total of 19 cannons were hoisted from the location just downstream from Savannah, which is where Georgia was founded in 1733 as the last of Britain's 13 American colonies.

After being pulled from the river, most of the cannons left Georgia for several years to undergo cleaning and preservation work at a Texas lab.

One of the Revolution's bloodiest battles was fought in Savannah

Archaeologists initially assumed the cannons likely dated to the Civil War. But further research indicated they’re likely almost a century older and sank during the buildup to the American Revolution’s bloody siege of Savannah.

Savannah was under British occupation in the fall of 1779, when colonists planned an attack to retake the city with help from French allies.

When French ships carrying troops were spotted off the Georgia coast, British forces scuttled at least six ships in the Savannah River downstream from the city to block the French vessels.

The land battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the war. British forces killed nearly 300 colonial fighters and their allies, and wounded hundreds more.

The Savannah History Museum sits right next to the battlefield. Its staff on Wednesday hoisted the cannons, weighing up to 1500 pounds (680 kilograms) apiece, onto custom display mounts that staffers likened to giant wine racks.

The cannons will be part of a new exhibit on Savannah's role in the American Revolution, which is scheduled to open Fourth of July weekend, said Samantha Moss, the museum's curator.

"Our great team has been prepping for months -- building mounts and planning how we can safely display these very large, very special artifacts,” she said.

Cleaning the crusty cannons took years

Each of the iron cannons emerged from the river covered by a thick crust of mud and minerals.

Two were left in that raw state and put on display at the museum. The other 17 were sent to Texas A&M University, which has a lab that specializes in preserving underwater artifacts. Its staff spent years painstakingly cleaning the big guns and coating them in paint and wax to prevent rusting and corrosion.

“A lot of them have scour marks on the side from anchors or dredging, so there’s some scarring on the cannons," said Chris Dostal, a professor of nautical archaeology who leads Texas A&M's Conservation Research Lab. "But most of them look pretty exceptional.”

Most of the cannons arrived with wooden plugs still sealing their bores, which remained packed with cannonballs and gunpowder charges.

Dostal said radiocarbon dating of the wooden stoppers placed them roughly in the late 1700s. His team shared the cannons' measurements and other details with experts in London, who concluded three of them were very likely forged by the British military.

The rest appeared to be of French design but bore no telltale markings. Dostal said he suspects those guns may have been cast in America around the time of the war.

Other artifacts found with the cannons included pieces of anchors and a portion of a ship's bronze bell. Like the cannons, none of them bore engravings indicating which ship they came from.

That means many details of the cannons' origins remain a mystery.

“You don't have all of the information,” Farmer said. “You're trying to piece it together as best as you can.”

LaBeouf must attend an alcohol treatment program under the sentence handed down by an Orleans Parish judge, according to Sarah Chervinsky, an attorney for the actor.

LeBeouf, most widely known for his starring roles in 2007’s “Transformers” and in 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull,” had been released on bail following his arrest near the city's historic French Quarter. Video of the Feb. 17 encounter shows a shirtless LaBeouf outside a bar shoving one person to the ground and hitting another person in the face, “causing his nose to possibly dislocate,” according to a New Orleans police report. Police said LaBeouf repeatedly used homophobic slurs, including while he was arrested.

LeBeouf pleaded guilty to three counts of simple battery. Orleans Parish Judge Juana Marine-Lombard handed the actor a six month suspended sentence and two years of probation. LaBeouf also must stay away from the victims and the bar.

Chervinsky said LaBeouf wanted “to take accountability for his part in what happened" and called it a “minor Mardi Gras bar tussle.” Chervinsky said there was “no evidence it was about bias or prejudice.”

Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said in a statement that his office consulted with the victims to ensure their support before offering LaBeouf the plea deal.

Jeffrey Damnit, a local entertainer whom police identified as Jeffrey Klein, said he was one of the people attacked by LaBeouf. He has said LaBeouf had pushed him from behind at the bar earlier in the night, shouting homophobic slurs and threatening his life.

Damnit's attorney said his client hopes LaBeouf's behavior improves after the actor undergoes substance abuse treatment.

"In New Orleans we are all equal, we should all feel safe, and we don’t treat people different based upon relative fame,” attorney Michael Kennedy said.

After LaBeouf was charged in February, a judge ordered him to return to drug and alcohol rehabilitation.

Days later, LaBeouf denied having a “drinking problem” in an interview with journalist and YouTuber Andrew Callaghan. LaBeouf said he doubted rehab would help him. He told Callaghan that the issues leading led to his aggressive behavior during Mardi Gras were more rooted in “anger and ego” than alcohol.

LaBeouf also said that “big gay people are scary to me.”

“When I’m standing by myself and three gay dudes are next to me touching my leg, I get scared,” he told Callaghan. “I’m sorry. If that’s homophobic, then I’m that.”

LaBeouf, who converted to Catholicism a few years ago, has had several run-ins with the law during his career, including a 2017 New York City arrest on suspicion of assault that happened during a livestream.

While on location in Georgia filming “The Peanut Butter Falcon” later that year, he was arrested for public drunkenness and accused of disorderly conduct and obstruction and sentenced to probation.

In 2020, he was charged with misdemeanor battery and petty theft in Los Angeles.

That year, the English singer and actor FKA Twigs, whose legal name is Tahliah Barnett, also filed a lawsuit alleging LaBeouf was physically and emotionally abusive to her during their relationship, which they settled in July.

The actor first gained acclaim as a child for his role on the Disney Channel series “Even Stevens.”

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Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

While talks are in early stages, expanding U.S. nuclear deterrence in Europe could reassure continental allies of continued U.S. military support at a time when President Donald Trump has led an effort to reduce his country's conventional defense involvement in Europe.

“We are talking, in order to create better conditions for nuclear deterrence and for Poland to play an important role in that,” Polish Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski told Polish Radio on Wednesday.

Poland, however, has denied any plans to host nuclear weapons. That would be “an extremely serious matter, which is serious in terms of political consequences,” he said.

“Discussions are indeed taking place. I do not want to go into details at this point as they are classified, but discussions are ongoing, and Lithuania is certainly not standing on the sidelines,” Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said Tuesday, according to press agency BNS.

Both ministers were replying after anonymous sources cited Tuesday by the Financial Times said the United States had signaled openness to deploying elements of its nuclear arsenal in new European countries, in addition to the six currently thought to host nuclear weapons.

The FT reported that Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, the NATO members located closest to Ukraine, were interested in potentially hosting bases for U.S. dual-capable aircraft, which can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.

The Pentagon declined to comment, but a Defense Department official said the U.S. and NATO “continuously assess the security environment” and work to keep effective deterrents. The official was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

The US has had nuclear weapons in Europe for decades

The United States has stationed nuclear weapons in several European countries for decades as part of its security guarantees to NATO allies.

In recent years, Russia’s war against Ukraine and the broader threat Moscow poses to NATO have prompted discussions about the possibility of expanding the U.S. nuclear cooperation with Europe.

“Work to assess and potentially adapt NATO’s nuclear deterrence posture has been ongoing for several years and is not linked to any decision taken by the U.S. to adjust its conventional posture in Europe,” an official tasked with communicating for NATO but not authorized to be publicly named told the AP.

The NATO nuclear sharing program includes U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey and Britain, as well as dual-capable aircraft owned by both the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. maintains full control over the nuclear weapons.

Poland has expressed its willingness to participate in the U.S. nuclear deterrence program since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with former president Andrzej Duda even welcoming the hosting of nuclear weapons. The current government led by Donald Tusk has been more cautious, speaking only about a bigger role in nuclear deterrence.

The U.S., however, has repeatedly indicated that placing nuclear weapons in eastern countries of NATO would be too provocative for Russia, Artur Kacprzyk, a nuclear deterrence analyst with the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw, told the AP.

“There might be a middle ground there, which could be called ‘nuclear sharing light'. You would have, for example, Polish planes, certified for carrying U.S. nuclear weapons, but the weapons won’t be deployed in Poland. This aircraft from the east could be a sort of backup if, let’s say, German or Dutch aircraft are destroyed before they can use those nuclear weapons.”

U.S. and French deterrence efforts are complementary

Earlier this year, Poland said it would be one of several European countries to join France’s initiative of coordinating its nuclear deterrence efforts with European allies. France has been the only nuclear power in the European Union since Britain’s exit from the bloc in 2020.

The French-initiated cooperation is “complementary” to the U.S. deterrence, Kacprzyk said, but it has a different nature.

Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Sweden, Denmark and Norway also have said they were interested in the French initiative, which allows for the temporary deployment of France’s nuclear-armed aircraft to allied countries. It also allows partners to participate in France’s deterrence exercises and allows allies’ non-nuclear forces to participate in France’s nuclear activities.

Polish Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz told Polish broadcaster TVP on Tuesday that nuclear deterrence would be discussed during a NATO meeting in Brussels on June 18. He said both the French initiative and the U.S. program are part of those efforts.

Increasing nuclear cooperation in Europe might help the U.S. offset conventional reductions but it cannot fully substitute the forward presence of conventional troops, especially in countries bordering Russia, Kacprzyk said.

“Communicating ‘I might risk nuclear war to defend an ally but I don’t want to send my soldiers into the fight’ is a conflicting signal,” he said. “You need coherent signals at all levels of deterrence.”

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McNeil reported from Brussels and Toropin from Washington. Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed.

Kinski, now 65, has urged Wenders to reedit the film. Last month, she told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung: “That was my first film, he was my first director and he didn't protect me.”

Wenders, the acclaimed director behind “Paris, Texas” and “Wings of Desire,” issued a statement apologizing to Kinski.

“I recognize that Nastassja Kinski should have been better protected back then,” Wenders said. “For that, I apologize to you, Nastassja, unreservedly, no ifs and buts.”

“The Wrong Move” marked the film debut of Kinski, the daughter of actor Klaus Kinski. It stars Rüdiger Vogler as an aspiring writer wandering through Germany. His encounters include an apparently mute teen acrobat played by Kinski, who appears topless in a scene.

Wenders said he was “withdrawing it from all current forms of distribution and exhibition,” including streaming services and broadcast television. His nonprofit Wim Wenders Foundation owns “The Wrong Move.”

The film will remain unavailable, Wenders said, until a mutually agreed upon solution can be found. He said he will seek “a broad dialogue” that includes Kinksi, the German Film Academy and other film groups.

“It is necessary for our society to find appropriate ways of dealing with controversial film works from the 20th Century and to face new learning processes and inclusive perspectives regarding cinema,” said Wenders.

Representatives for Kinski did not immediately respond to The Associated Press' request for comment Wednesday.

At the German Film Awards last week, Wenders spoke about his quandary over the film. Speaking to the audience at Germany's equivalent of the Oscars, Wenders said retroactively editing it “sets a precedent that affects you all, and then it becomes possible with all your films later on.”

Kinski would go on to co-star in Wenders' 1984 film “Paris, Texas,” but long maintained misgivings about her introduction to the film business. At the ages of 14 and 17, she also appeared nude in the films “To the Devil a Daughter” and “Stay As You Are.”

“If I had had somebody to protect me or if I had felt more secure about myself, I would not have accepted certain things. Nudity things,” Kinski told W Magazine in 1997. "And inside it was just tearing me apart.”

Writing on the Truth Social platform the previous day, Trump offered his “complete and total endorsement” for de la Espriella, calling him an “intelligent, strong and tough leader” who will take on a “radical leftist Marxist,” referring to progressive Iván Cepeda, in the June 21 runoff election.

He emphasized the importance of the elections for the two countries' relationship.

“With my head held high and a heart full of patriotic gratitude, I receive your words and your steadfast support," de la Espriella, known as “El Tigre” or “The Tiger,” wrote on X. "Thank you, Mr. President!”

This is not the first time Trump has backed candidates in foreign elections, a practice that has drawn criticism from opponents who say the U.S. should not meddle in other countries’ domestic politics. Last year, Trump endorsed Honduras’ National Party presidential candidate Nasry “Tito” Asfura, who went on to win. He also backed libertarian President Javier Milei in Argentina during legislative elections that proved critical to the leader’s political agenda.

Cepeda in comments to the press Wednesday denounced Trump's remarks as having an “interventionist tone” and called on him to respect Colombia's sovereignty.

Trump’s support in the Colombian presidential campaign underscores the current tension between Washington and Bogota as relations between the countries have grown strained under Colombian President Gustavo Petro. Sharp disagreements have emerged over migration, Israel’s military actions in Gaza and anti-narcotics strategies, particularly regarding the bombing of drug boats in the Caribbean.

Petro rejected Trump’s support for the conservative candidate and urged citizens to vote freely so as to “not become anyone’s slaves or colony.”

“When a country intervenes in the decisions of another country, freedom dies,” Petro wrote on X.

While the U.S. remains Colombia’s largest export market and was long considered Washington’s primary ally in the hemisphere, relations have cooled significantly under the current administration.

De la Espriella, who holds dual Colombian and U.S. citizenship, is a Trump supporter and a member of the Republican Party. With no prior experience in elected office, he secured 43.74% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, followed by Sen. Cepeda — an ally of Petro — with 40.90%, according to preliminary counts.

The candidate has said his views align with U.S. policies, particularly regarding the fight against narcotics. He has promised to eradicate thousands of hectares of coca leaf crops — the raw material for cocaine — and to halt the trafficking bound for the United States.

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Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

The U.S. Open returns to Shinnecock Hills for the first time since 2018, when Brooks Koepka won during a tough, dry week in which no one finished under par.

Scheffler had never been to the fabled course on New York's Long Island, which held the second edition of the U.S. Open in 1896. This major is bigger than usual for the world's No. 1 player because a victory would make him only the seventh player to complete the career Grand Slam.

“It was kind of what I expected,” Scheffler said. “I had heard some rumors about how difficult the greens were. I was a little surprised at the width of the fairways, but the green complexes there are extremely difficult, and I think that’s where the greatest challenge comes from.”

He also said the rough was thick and penal. That's typical of a U.S. Open. A vintage U.S. Open has firm greens, and that looks to be the case, provided the weather cooperates.

Narrow fairways? Not so much.

“The fairways are very generous,” said McIlroy, who missed the cut with rounds of 80-70 when he first played a U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills. "They’re more generous than they were in 2018. But the first cut of rough is 5 inches long. So it’s like the first cut is maybe three paces wide and then it gets into the fescue.

“So if you miss the fairway even by a yard ... but you shouldn’t. The fairways are very, very generous. So if you miss the fairway, I feel like you deserve a bad lie.”

It will be a big week for the USGA to get it right. In 2004, the par-3 seventh green was so dead on Sunday that players couldn't keep the golf ball on the putting surface and USGA officials wound up watering the green between groups.

Then in 2018, some of the greens became so severe that it was thought to be borderline unplayable. Phil Mickelson swatted a moving golf ball on the 13th green out of frustration. Officials softened the course so much for the final day that Tommy Fleetwood shot 63.

The course has a reputation of being tough, and Scheffler felt it lived up to that.

“The rough, also, was a really good penalty for the width,” he said. "Once you start missing fairways out there, you have no chance. But the fairways are generous enough to where it provides you some opportunity, and that way it’s just that the green complexes are extraordinarily difficult.

“They can put the pins wherever they want and make the scores as high as they could possibly want them to be.”

McIlroy said the greens were around 11 on the Stimpmeter when he played on Monday and he doesn't see a need for them to get much faster.

“I think if they can keep them at that green speed, they can get them firm, and they can use the hole locations that they want to use without having some of the struggles that they have had the last couple of U.S. Opens. ... If it’s set up the right way, I think it’s one of the best championship tests in the country. It’s an amazing golf course.”

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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf

Republicans could net about 10 additional U.S. House seats in the November elections if redrawn voting districts perform as they were intended. The question is whether that's enough for the GOP to hold on to a majority in the chamber, where Democrats need to gain only a few seats to take control.

Political trends and historic patterns favor Democrats. President Donald Trump's approval ratings are negative. And the incumbent's party has lost House seats in every midterm election over the past two decades.

This election season already has been unusual. Voting districts typically are redrawn only after a census at the start of each decade. But Trump urged Republicans last summer to redraw congressional districts to their advantage to try to prevent losses in the 2026 midterms.

Since then, Republicans think they could win as many as 16 additional seats from new House maps enacted in eight states — Texas, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama. Democrats, whose counterattack faced several setbacks, think they could win up to six additional seats from new districts in California and Utah.

Nearly 145 million people — about two of every five U.S. residents — live in states with new congressional districts for this election.

Yet the mid-decade redistricting battle didn't go as far as it could have.

Republicans in Kansas and Democrats in Illinois both rebuffed party pushes to take up redistricting. In Republican-led Indiana and South Carolina and Democratic-led Maryland, new congressional districts passed the state House but ultimately died in the state Senate. The Virginia Supreme Court invalidated new voter-approved districts that could have helped Democrats win up to four additional seats. And the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a lower court order that could have helped Democrats gain a congressional seat in New York.

Here's a look at the states with new U.S. House maps:

Texas

Current map: 13 Democrats, 25 Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a revised House map into law last August that could help Republicans win five additional seats. Democrats think they could still win some of those seats.

Missouri

Current map: two Democrats, six Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Mike Kehoe signed a revised House map into law last September that could help Republicans win an additional seat by reshaping a Democratic-held district based in Kansas City. Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins has until Aug. 4 — the date of Missouri's primaries — to decide whether to reject an initiative petition seeking a statewide vote on the map.

North Carolina

Current map: four Democrats, 10 Republicans

New map: The Republican-led General Assembly gave final approval in October to revised districts that could help Republicans win an additional seat.

Ohio

Current map: five Democrats, 10 Republicans

New map: A bipartisan panel composed primarily of Republicans voted in October to approve revised House districts that improve Republicans’ chances of winning two additional seats. Democrats think they could still win those seats.

California

Current map: 43 Democrats, nine Republicans

New map: Voters in November approved revised House districts drawn by the Democratic-led Legislature that could help Democrats win five additional seats.

Utah

Current map: no Democrats, four Republicans

New map: A judge in November imposed revised House districts that could help Democrats win a seat in the Salt Lake City area.

Florida

Current map: eight Democrats, 20 Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed revised House districts in May that improve the GOP’s chances of winning four additional seats. Legal challenges are pending.

Tennessee

Current map: one Democrat, eight Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed new House districts in May that improve the GOP’s chances of winning an additional seat by carving up the lone Democratic-held seat, a majority-Black district based in Memphis. Legal challenges are pending.

Louisiana

Current map: two Democrats, four Republicans

New map: Republican Gov. Jeff Landry signed off on new House districts in May that improve Republican chances of winning an additional seat by eliminating a majority-Black district held by a Democrat that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down as an illegal racial gerrymander.

Alabama

Current map: two Democrats, five Republicans

New map: The U.S. Supreme Court in June allowed the state to use a congressional map approved by Republican state lawmakers that improves the GOP's chances of winning an additional seat by reshaping a Democratic-held district that has a large number of Black voters.

The Swiss soccer federation at the team's training camp in San Diego confirmed why Embolo’s travel approval to the U.S. had been put under review Tuesday. He has a conviction that became binding this year.

Embolo was charged after an altercation in Basel city center in 2018 and his guilty verdict was upheld at appeal last September. The verdict was finalized in April, just weeks before Embolo was due to travel to the U.S. for the third World Cup of his career.

“The embassy’s inquiries focused specifically on whether any physical violence had been involved. This was not the case,” the Swiss soccer body said. “Breel and the team are now awaiting approval so that he can travel to San Diego and join the squad as soon as possible.”

Switzerland starts its World Cup campaign on June 13 against Qatar at the San Francisco 49ers’ stadium in Santa Clara.

The Swiss then play Bosnia-Herzegovina in Inglewood, California and finish Group B against tournament co-host Canada in Vancouver on June 24.

The 29-year-old Embolo is set to be Switzerland’s first-choice striker and has scored 24 goals in 86 internationals.

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AP World Cup: https://apnews.com/hub/fifa-world-cup

Es en parte un club de lectura y en parte un club social, y una prueba de que una historia compartida puede unir a desconocidos.

El fundador Maalik Nelson lanzó el club de lectura Maalik Meets en Instagram, invitando a amigos a leer y discutir libros juntos. Lo inició de manera orgánica, impulsado por su propio amor por la literatura.

“Cuando comenzó, realmente eran mis cinco, seis o siete amigos más cercanos. Empecé a elegir libros cada vez más intencionales que pensaba que la comunidad querría leer”, dijo Nelson. “El grupo pasó de unas 10 personas a 20, luego al mes siguiente pasó de 20 a 30, después de 30 a 50 y continuó creciendo a medida que pasaban los meses”.

Actualmente, el club se reúne mensualmente en Dale’ Zine, en el Design District de Miami, una librería y galería independiente especializada en libros de arte que organiza encuentros y también tiene su propia página de Instagram.

Los miembros leen el mismo libro y luego se reúnen para compartir perspectivas, reacciones e interpretaciones. El formato es intencionalmente simple y los libros reflejan los tiempos actuales.

“Todos leemos un libro. Todos leemos el mismo libro. Tienen cosas que decir. No me necesitan a mí”, dijo Nelson. “Los dejo hablar y hacer lo suyo, y luego, a mitad de la reunión, tenemos una discusión más estructurada”.

La selección de este mes fue “Piranesi”, de Susanna Clarke.

Tanto para los miembros de larga trayectoria como para quienes asistían por primera vez, la discusión reveló una verdad central del club: no hay dos lectores que experimenten una misma historia de la misma manera.

“Podemos leer el mismo libro y cada persona obtendrá algo completamente único de él, y es increíble cada vez porque ven algo que tú nunca habías visto antes”, dijo Andrew Mendez, miembro del club.

No hay un profesor al frente de la sala. No hay panelistas. No hay conferencia. Solo conversación.

Aunque los libros pueden ser la razón por la que las personas asisten cada mes, a menudo no son la razón por la que regresan.

Maalik Meets se ha convertido en mucho más que un simple club de lectura. El grupo organiza parrilladas, paneles de discusión y encuentros sociales diseñados para que las conexiones continúen creciendo más allá de las páginas.

En una época impulsada por los “me gusta”, los seguidores y los algoritmos, los miembros afirman que están construyendo algo más personal. Muchos llegan por los libros, pero se quedan por las personas.

La selección del próximo mes es “Go Tell It on the Mountain”, de James Baldwin.

Para enviar una idea para What Connects Us, envíe un correo electrónico a whatconnectsus@wplg.com.

Leer en español

It’s part book club, part social club — and proof that a shared story can bring strangers together.

Founder Maalik Nelson launched Maalik Meets book club on Instagram, inviting friends to read and discuss books together. He started it organically, through his own love of literature.

“When it started, it just legitimately was like my closest five, six, seven friends. I started to choose more and more intentional books that I thought the community would want,” said Nelson. “The group went from like 10 to 20, then the next month it went from 20 to 30, then 30 to 50 and it continued to grow as the months went on.”

Currently, the club gathers monthly at Dale’ Zine in Miami’s design district, an independent art bookshop and gallery hosting meetups that also has its own Instagram page.

Members read the same book, then come together to share perspectives, reactions and interpretations. The format is intentionally simple and the books reflect the times.

“We all read a book. We all read the same book. You have stuff to say. You don’t need me,” said Nelson. “I let them talk and let them do their thing and then in the middle we have more of a structured discussion.”

This month’s selection was “Piranesi” by Susanna Clarke.

For longtime members and first-time visitors alike, the discussion revealed a central truth of the club: no two readers experience the same story the same way.

“We can read the same book and everybody will get something completely unique out of it and it’s incredible every time cause they will see something that you’ve never seen before,” said club member, Andrew Mendez.

There’s no professor at the front of the room. No panel. No lecture. Just conversation.

While books may be the reason people show up every month, they’re often not the reason people come back.

Maalik Meets has become much more than just a book club. The group hosts cookouts, panel discussions and social gatherings designed to keep connections growing beyond the page.

In an age driven by likes, followers and algorithms — members say they’re building something more personal. Many show up for the books, but stay for the people.

Next month’s selection is “Go Tell It on the Mountain” by James Baldwin.

To submit an idea for What Connects Us, email whatconnectsus@wplg.com.

Raúl Castro, the former president of Cuba, turns 95 years old Wednesday under the shadow of a criminal indictment from the U.S. and an uncertain future for Cuba with the legacy of his brother, Fidel Castro, on his shoulders.

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June 1 update: Looking to the future: Should Cuban Americans invest in Cuba?

A few months ago, Cuba’s Vice Minister Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, who is the grand-nephew of Raúl Castro, invited Cuban Americans in exile to invest in Cuba.

In 2019, the Cuban government amended their constitution to allow foreign investment. However, they did not change their laws to protect the investments.

Therefore, the risks to invest in Cuba remain greater than the opportunities.

Dr. Andy S. Gomez is Local 10’s Cuba Analyst. Gomez is considered one of the leading scholars on Cuba. He worked in higher education for 32 years before retiring from the University of Miami in 2012.

Raúl Castro, ex presidente de Cuba, cumple 95 años este miércoles bajo la sombra de una acusación penal de Estados Unidos y un futuro incierto para Cuba, cargando sobre sus hombros el legado de su hermano, Fidel Castro.

Actualización del 1 de junio: Mirando al futuro: ¿Deberían los cubanoamericanos invertir en Cuba?

Hace algunos meses, el viceministro de Cuba, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, sobrino nieto de Raúl Castro, invitó a los cubanoamericanos en el exilio a invertir en Cuba.

En 2019, el gobierno cubano modificó su Constitución para permitir la inversión extranjera. Sin embargo, no cambió sus leyes para proteger esas inversiones.

Por lo tanto, los riesgos de invertir en Cuba siguen siendo mayores que las oportunidades.

El Dr. Andy S. Gómez es el analista sobre Cuba de Local 10. Gómez es considerado uno de los principales expertos sobre Cuba. Trabajó en la educación superior durante 32 años antes de retirarse de la Universidad de Miami en 2012.

El director financiero de Florida y jefe estatal de bomberos, Blaise Ingoglia, ofreció una conferencia de prensa el miércoles en el Centro de Entrenamiento de Búsqueda y Rescate Urbano de Miami-Dade Fire Rescue.

Ingoglia aprovechó el evento para exhortar a los floridanos a abastecerse de inmediato de suministros esenciales, revisar su cobertura de seguro y elaborar un plan antes de que una tormenta amenace al estado.

Los funcionarios también recordaron a los residentes que deben conocer su zona de evacuación, evitar conducir por calles inundadas y estar atentos a posibles estafas después de una tormenta.

“El momento de prepararnos para los huracanes que se dirigen hacia nuestra área es ahora”, dijo Ingoglia. “No es cuando ya estamos dentro del cono, es ahora. No esperemos a que haya una tormenta con nombre, preparémonos desde ahora. Con solo tomar algunas medidas proactivas hoy, podemos marcar una gran diferencia mañana”.

Ingoglia también anunció una nueva iniciativa de preparación que enviará a agentes estatales de seguros a comunidades propensas a huracanes para compartir directamente con los residentes información sobre preparación ante tormentas.

Hasta ahora, dijo, ya han tocado las puertas de más de 6,000 viviendas.

La iniciativa continuará durante el resto de la temporada de huracanes de este año.

La transmisión de la conferencia de prensa puede verse a continuación: