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Attorney Donna Rotunno, who represented Harvey Weinstein in New York, sat next to Caruso, 67, during the pre-trial detention hearing, before Orange County Circuit Judge A. James Craner, a former Gov. Rick Scott appointee.

While on the stand in court, Caruso’s wife, Tracy Caruso, said house arrest would include a “private elevator” and “a ton of security” in Palm Beach.

“Yes, he will return to that residence. I love him,” Tracy Caruso said in court.

Caruso served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2018 to 2025, when Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him to his current position in Palm Beach. In February, Caruso announced that he was running to keep the job on Nov. 3.

Caruso didn’t have a Republican opponent during the primary. DeSantis suspended Caruso after his arrest, but that isn’t enough to remove him from the ballot. Caruso has not withdrawn.

Caruso faced charges of kidnapping, lewd or lascivious molestation, lewd or lascivious exhibition, luring or enticing a child, and child abuse causing mental injury, records show.

The investigation

Orange County Sheriff’s Office deputies talked to the child, and Florida Department of Law Enforcement Special Agent Reuben Roach included a video of an interview as evidence, according to the warrant.

During the hearing on Friday, Roach, who testified for the prosecution, said he was assigned the case on Dec. 9, 2025, and he spoke to the victim’s parents, who were concerned about their son’s behavior with a toddler sibling before their son disclosed Caruso’s sex abuse to them.

“He is a 4-year-old boy with a lot of energy,” Roach told the prosecutor in court about the victim.

The alleged abuse happened while Caruso was alone with the boy in Orange and Palm Beach counties and during a Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas 7-day cruise that sailed from PortMiami on or about Aug. 24, 2025, according to the warrant.

During the hearing, Roach told Jason Weiss, the defense attorney representing Caruso, that the boy’s disclosure to his parents was on Oct. 22, 2025, and his parents’ report to OCSO, and a Florida Department of Children and Families investigator’s interview were on Nov. 24, 2025.

Roach also told Weiss that the boy’s forensic interview with an expert was on Dec. 1, 2025.

Roach reported that the victim in the case was receiving psychological care in Orange County, and the victim’s family learned from an expert that the boy “exhibits responses consistent with trauma,” according to the warrant.

While based at the Miami Regional Operations Center, Roach, who has more than two decades of experience, conducted recorded calls between Caruso and relatives who were familiar with the allegations, according to the warrant.

“Caruso admitted that he had isolated the victim during the cruise ... denied showering with the victim,” Roach, whose experience includes serving as chief of police in Norwich, New York, wrote, according to the warrant.

During a conversation, Caruso admitted he had faced intra-familial sex abuse accusations before, according to the warrant.

“He acknowledged knowing that his [relative] ... had accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior, including sexual battery,” Roach wrote about a conversation with a relative on Dec. 6, according to the warrant.

During the hearing, Roach said that during his investigation, he also learned “through a family member” that another male relative had disclosed that Caruso had also abused him ”from the age of 10 to adulthood."

Roach said another man who is related to Caruso told him it was not “uncommon to be slapped or punched” as a child by Caruso or for him to play “tickle monster” to touch his genitalia.

A woman “now advised that at the approximate age of 4 she was alone with Mr. Caruso in the house and he made her get into the shower at which point they were in the shower together with no clothes on,” Roach said in court about another relative’s accusation of child sex abuse.

Roach said a Deerfield Beach Police Department report also mentioned Caruso allegedly saying, “tickle monster” to a victim. Roach also said a man and a woman who are Caruso’s relatives said they witnessed Caruso’s intra-familial violence.

Roach answered in the affirmative to a prosecutor’s questions about Caruso’s relatives being afraid of his release from Orange County jail.

On Aug. 17, a judge issued a warrant for Caruso’s arrest over the alleged 2024 and 2025 abuse of the boy. Craner ordered Caruso to surrender his passport and to stay away from minors, the victim in the case, and witnesses.

Caruso has denied the allegations.

Related stories

• Palm Beach County Clerk of Court Michael Caruso held without bond on child sex abuse charges
• Palm Beach County Clerk of Court Michael Caruso arrested on child sex abuse charges, AG says
• Mike Caruso discusses Alligator Alcatraz in 2025

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According to the arrest report completed by the Miami Police Department, the investigation began in February after detectives received an online complaint about five images/videos that were considered child sexual abuse material being uploaded to a Google account registered to Eric Cuevas Cordero.

Police said detectives with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force executed a search warrant at Cordero’s home on Wednesday, at which time they seized multiple electronic devices.

According to the arrest report, a forensic examination of the 21-year-old’s cellphone revealed numerous images and videos of child sexual abuse material involving victims ranging from infants to children as old as 12.

The report stated that Cordero made some kind of admission to detectives, however his exact statement was redacted from the publicly released report.

Cordero was arrested Thursday on 15 counts of possession of images showing the sexual performance of a child.

As of Friday afternoon, he remained held at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center. Online jail records listed his bond as “to be set.”

Según el informe de arresto elaborado por el Departamento de Policía de Miami, la investigación comenzó en febrero después de que detectives recibieran una denuncia en línea sobre cinco imágenes/videos considerados material de abuso sexual infantil que fueron subidos a una cuenta de Google registrada a nombre de Eric Cuevas Cordero.

La policía dijo que detectives del Grupo de Trabajo de Delitos en Internet contra Menores ejecutaron una orden de registro en la casa de Cordero el miércoles, momento en el que incautaron múltiples dispositivos electrónicos.

Según el informe de arresto, un análisis forense del teléfono celular del joven de 21 años reveló numerosas imágenes y videos de material de abuso sexual infantil que involucraban a víctimas desde bebés hasta niños de 12 años.

El informe indicó que Cordero hizo algún tipo de admisión ante los detectives, sin embargo, su declaración exacta fue censurada en el informe divulgado públicamente.

Cordero fue arrestado el jueves por 15 cargos de posesión de imágenes que muestran la actividad sexual de un menor.

Hasta la tarde del viernes, permanecía detenido en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight. Los registros de la cárcel en línea indicaban que su fianza estaba “por determinar”.

UEFA, the European soccer confederation, is spearheading the backlash against Infantino over his failed World Cup sell-off plan that created a deep rift in the sport one month ago.

Many of its member federations have withdrawn their support for the FIFA leader, who is up for re-election in March 2027, and some have called for his resignation.

Infantino has not given any indication he plans to step down.

Here’s what to know about the growing pushback against the FIFA president.

UEFA ramps up the pressure with legal action

On Thursday, UEFA escalated the situation by revealing that it is preparing a possible criminal complaint against the FIFA president in Switzerland – where the organization is based – for alleged mismanagement.

The European soccer confederation filed requests in U.S. courts seeking evidence about Infantino’s secretive plan to give private investors led by Joshua Kushner a stake in the profits of future World Cups and other FIFA tournaments for $4.2 billion.

FIFA withdrew the proposal on Aug. 1, just days after it was made public, after intense pushback.

UEFA’s lawyers called the plan “a vehicle for Infantino and that small circle to acquire a permanent stake in and otherwise profit from FIFA’s most valuable assets to the detriment of FIFA, its members, and other parties within the football family.”

FIFA did not comment on UEFA’s move, which increases pressure on Infantino and puts other FIFA staffers at risk of legal exposure relating to a project that its now-fired chief operating officer said was Infantino’s idea.

It also means Kushner, the younger brother of U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, faces increased scrutiny at a time when he is involved in a $12 billion takeover deal for the Los Angeles Lakers.

Some of Infantino’s critics want him to step down before the vote.

“Infantino is polarizing the world in a way we haven’t seen in history,” Norwegian soccer federation president Lise Klaveness said in Monaco.

Norway was the first FIFA member federation explicitly asking Infantino to resign in the wake of the World Cup investment plan.

Infantino’s re-election no longer a foregone conclusion

Just months ago, ahead of the World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Infantino was cruising toward an uncontested election win next March, with a clear majority of FIFA members backing him.

Things look less certain now, with UEFA, Asian confederation AFC and CONCACAF, the governing body for soccer North and Central America and the Caribbean, accusing the FIFA president of “ deception.”

Together those groups represent a majority of FIFA member federations. However, several AFC and CONCACAF members have declared continued support for Infantino as have a series of soccer federations in Africa and South America, many of which depend on FIFA funding. He needs just over half of FIFA’s 211 member federations to vote for him to be re-elected.

Infantino spent last weekend in the Dominican Republic meeting FIFA members from the Caribbean, despite a request by FIFA’s Canadian vice president and CONCACAF leader Victor Montagliani not to visit.

The Kushner-backed $4.2 billion investment would have funded $20 million offers to each of FIFA’s 211 member federations. That would be game-changing money for the 25 members in the Caribbean.

On Wednesday, Infantino’s Instagram account showed he was in Vietnam.

So far, no challenger has emerged to run against Infantino. The candidate deadline is Nov. 18, four months before election day in Rabat, Morocco, which is a FIFA stronghold.

Key dates on the soccer calendar

Infantino would be expected in Poland soon for the FIFA-organized Under-20 Women’s World Cup played from Sept. 5-27. But one Polish soccer official in Monaco said they had no idea of Infantino’s plans to be in the country.

It is a long-standing quip that FIFA staff read Instagram to learn where he is.

UEFA has an executive committee meeting Sept. 15 in Thessaloniki, Greece.

The influential European Football Clubs group meets Sept. 29 in Copenhagen. It is close to sealing a joint venture deal with FIFA overseeing the 2029 Club World Cup that Infantino wants to be worth $2 billion.

The clubs’ leader Nasser al-Khelaifi, from Paris Saint-Germain, is a key ally of UEFA and also a member of the government of Qatar which has backed Infantino in this crisis.

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The 40-year-old Florida coach signed a one-year extension earlier this month that increased the total value of his deal to $49.5 million. It averages $8.25 million annually and keeps him under contract through the 2031-32 season.

Golden's salary for next season jumps from $6 million to $7.5 million. He's due a $300,000 raise annually, with the contract culminating at $9 million in its final year. Only Kansas' Bill Self, UConn's Dan Hurley and Arkansas' John Calipari are slated to make more than Golden next season. New North Carolina coach Michael Malone also will make $7.5 million this season.

Golden’s deal is nearly fully guaranteed. Florida would owe him 85% of the remaining value if the school fired him without cause at any point.

Golden’s buyout to leave Gainesville starts at $16 million next season and drops annually: $13 million in 2027-28; $5 million in 2028-29; $3 million in 2029-30; $2 million in 2030-31; and $1 million in 2031-32.

However, Golden can leave for the NBA at a much lower price. His NBA buyout begins at $3 million next season and drops to $2 million (2027-29) and then $1 million in 2029-30.

Included in Golden’s annual compensation is a $500,000 annual longevity incentive and a $100,000 annual expense account. In addition to that, he gets 30 hours of free use of the university athletic association’s jet and other fringe benefits (cars, tickets, travel, etc.) valued at $62,000.

He would earn a $100,000 bonus for winning the SEC regular-season championship, a $50,000 bonus for winning the SEC Tournament, a $100,000 bonus for making the NCAA Tournament and a $50,000 bonus for every NCAA Tournament victory.

He also would get an additional $100,000 if his team's academic progress rate reaches 965.

The Gators made it clear in May that they wanted to get another deal done with their brightest coaching star, and the sides had most of the details worked out months ago. The finishing touches were finalized this month, weeks before the start of fall practice.

Golden’s raise also makes him the highest-paid coach on Florida’s campus; first-year Florida football coach Jon Sumrall’s six-year contract averages $7.45 million annually.

Golden has done plenty to earn his latest payday. He is 103-41 (.715) in four seasons in Gainesville, including a 36-4 mark in 2024-25 while leading the Gators to the program’s third national title.

And Florida is the betting favorite to win it all again this season. Golden returns nearly 82% of his team’s scoring from last season, most notably front-line stars Rueben Chinyelu, Alex Condon and Thomas Haugh.

Golden joined Florida in 2022 after three seasons at San Francisco. He got his first contract extension after Year 2, signing a deal that bumped his annual salary to $4.1 million. He signed another one last year that raised his salary to $6 million.

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“You’re going to see Carlitos playing the way he always has,” Alcaraz said.

The 23-year-old from Spain is set to play his first competitive singles match Monday since getting sidelined by the wrist injury in mid-April. He insists he has not changed anything about his mechanics and expressed confidence about physically feeling great.

"I need competition," Alcaraz said Friday. “We, my team and me, believe that I’m ready. It wasn’t an easy decision. I just did whatever it took to be ready."

Alcaraz is the defending champion and favored to go back-to-back, a year after beating Jannik Sinner and overtaking him for the No. 1 ranking. The field this time does not include Sinner, who withdrew because of a right knee injury.

“We are not going see each other for, like, six months now, seven months,” Alcaraz said. “It’s kind of a weird situation, to be honest.”

Alexander Zverev is the top seed in Sinner's absence. But all eyes are on Alcaraz, who earlier this year won his seventh Grand Slam title by defeating Novak Djokovic in the Australian Open final.

“Everyone is going to be pretty tapped in to see his first match,” 11th-seeded American Francis Tiafoe said. “If he comes back anywhere near his level, it’s tough. Regardless, even if he’s not at his tip-top (shape), you’ve still got to beat him in five (sets).”

Alcaraz opens against Roman Safiullin as he dives right back into best-of-five-set tennis in his return. He did get a chance to shake some rust off by playing a couple of mixed doubles matches with Serena Williams this week, but he knows not getting a full ramp up to the U.S. Open adds another layer of difficulty.

“It’s really challenging,” Alcaraz said. “Probably in terms of preparation and everything, (it) is not the best time.”

But the energy of playing in New York was enough of a draw that he said, “There is no better tournament than the U.S. Open to be back.”

Can he win it off such a long layoff? He knows Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have done it but does not want to set any expectations.

“I’m not going to set a limit for myself,” Alcaraz said in Spanish. “I don’t want to focus on a specific result. I want to focus on the process we’ve gone through. Just go out there, enjoy it and feel good.”

After dealing with intrusive thoughts during his time away from the sport, Alcaraz is still playing a mental game to not worry too much about the injury. His goals are to get through the U.S. Open healthy and stay away from the fear that creeps into his head.

“I just have to go 100%,” Alcaraz said. “I've got to trust my team. I've got to trust my people that tell me that it’s going to be fine.”

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AP Sports Writer Eric Nunez contributed to this report.

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In a changing of the guard match, Sakamoto beat Nishikori 6-4, 7-6 (3) on Friday in the final round of qualifying to earn a place in the main draw.

The 20-year-old Sakamoto, like many other players from Japan, considers Nishikori his hero. He was 8 years old and remembers when Nishikori reached the 2014 U.S. Open final, becoming the first Asian man to get that far in a Grand Slam tournament.

“I honestly grew up watching him play and he was my idol for my whole life,” Sakamoto said, “and it’s also a pity to see his last season.”

Nishikori, 36, has battled injuries in recent years and has said this will be his final season. No longer ranked high enough for a guaranteed spot in the main draw, he was given a wild card by the U.S. Tennis Association into the qualifying tournament.

He won two matches, but needed one more to lock up his spot. With fans chanting his name late in the second set, Nishikori was outplayed by Sakamoto, who pounded 19 aces, the last to end it after Nishikori had saved two match points.

“Not happy to lose today, but I’m happy for Rei,” Nishikori said. “He’s the next Japanese top player.”

Afterward, Nishikori was presented with a framed portrait of himself in action by U.S. Open officials. Sakamoto helped hold it up for a picture together.

It was a big moment for Sakamoto, but also a bittersweet one.

“I think a lot of people, like most of the people still follow tennis because of him,” Sakamoto said. “So he’s a superstar and he did a lot to Japanese tennis I think.”

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Más de 170 restaurantes participan en la promoción de este año, ofreciendo menús de precio fijo y experiencias gastronómicas especiales en todo Greater Fort Lauderdale hasta el 30 de septiembre.

El evento anual fue creado para ayudar a los restaurantes a atraer clientes durante la temporada tradicionalmente más lenta, al tiempo que brinda a los comensales la oportunidad de conocer nuevos lugares a precios reducidos.

Uno de los nuevos participantes de este año es The Wagyu House en Atlantic Village, en Hallandale Beach.

El restaurante surgió de una carnicería y la carne sigue siendo el centro de su menú. A pesar de su nombre, JP Abbas, de The Wagyu House, dijo que los clientes no deberían asumir que todo tiene un precio de lujo.

“La mayoría de las personas piensan que, debido a que nuestro nombre es Wagyu, somos un restaurante muy caro”, dijo Abbas. “Así que tenemos platos desde $20 USD o $22 USD hasta $300 USD”.

Las opciones de Dine Out Lauderdale ofrecen una variedad de platos, entre ellos burrata con maracuyá, branzino mediterráneo y ribeye.

También hay un crostini de picanha Wagyu flameado en la mesa.

Sakana Nikkei es otro participante por primera vez, que ofrece a los comensales una muestra de la cocina Nikkei, que combina técnicas japonesas con sabores peruanos.

“Les doy la bienvenida a todos los amantes de la comida. No se van a arrepentir”, dijo la propietaria Rosemary Batzel.

Por $60 USD, la cena de Dine Out del restaurante incluye opciones como ceviche clásico y dumplings hechos en casa, junto con un cóctel de bienvenida.

Los comensales que buscan cocina italiana pueden dirigirse a Vitolo, dentro de Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach.

Hasta el 30 de septiembre, El chef Anthony Vitolo ofrece un menú de cuatro platos por $60 USD de domingo a jueves, con platos que incluyen boloñesa hecha en casa y ravioles de langosta.

“La comida es amor para mí, así que eso es lo que recibes cuando vienes aquí”, dijo Vitolo.

Casa Sensei, en Las Olas Boulevard, regresa a la promoción con su cocina de fusión panasiática y latina.

“Tenemos un poco de todo para todos”, dijo el chef Will Reyes. “Tenemos cortes de carne prime, tenemos mariscos, tenemos muchas opciones diferentes entre las que puedes elegir y todo se prepara desde cero”.

El restaurante está incluyendo varios de sus platos populares en su menú de precio fijo, entre ellos arroz frito con kimchi preparado con carne de res coreana y su característico Red Dragon Roll.

Reyes dijo que la promoción permite a los comensales probar varios platos por menos de lo que normalmente gastarían al pedirlos individualmente.

“Solo un roll cuesta como $20 USD, $22 USD”, dijo Reyes. “Puedes obtener tres cosas por $35 USD para el almuerzo, $45 USD para la cena”.

Dine Out Lauderdale continúa hasta el 30 de septiembre, con menús de precio fijo de tres platos disponibles en los restaurantes participantes de todo Greater Fort Lauderdale.

Los menús de almuerzo comienzan en $35 USD, mientras que las opciones de cena están disponibles por $45 USD o $60 USD. La promoción también incluye experiencias gastronómicas de lujo por $75 USD.

Durante la promoción se llevan a cabo eventos especiales, incluidas experiencias gastronómicas inmersivas.

Una lista completa de los restaurantes participantes, eventos e información adicional sobre Dine Out Lauderdale está disponible haciendo clic aquí.

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More than 170 restaurants are participating in this year’s promotion, offering prix-fixe menus and special dining experiences across Greater Fort Lauderdale through Sept. 30.

The annual event was created to help restaurants attract customers during the traditionally slower season while giving diners a chance to experience new spots at discounted prices.

One of this year’s newcomers is The Wagyu House at Atlantic Village in Hallandale Beach.

The restaurant grew out of a butcher shop, and meat remains at the center of its menu. Despite its name, JP Abbas of The Wagyu House said customers shouldn’t assume everything comes with a luxury price tag.

“Most of the people that think because our name is the Wagyu, they think that we are a very expensive restaurant,” Abbas said. “So we have dishes from $22 or $20 up to $300.”

Its Dine Out Lauderdale selections offer a mix of dishes, including burrata with passion fruit, Mediterranean branzino and ribeye.

There’s also a Wagyu picanha crostini torched tableside.

Sakana Nikkei is another first-time participant, offering diners a taste of Nikkei cuisine, which combines Japanese techniques with Peruvian flavors.

“I welcome all the food lovers. They’re not going to regret (it),” owner Rosemary Batzel said.

For $60, the restaurant’s Dine Out dinner includes choices such as classic ceviche and house-made dumplings, along with a welcome cocktail.

Diners looking for Italian cuisine can head to Vitolo inside the Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach.

Through Sept. 30, Chef Anthony Vitolo is offering a four-course, $60 menu Sunday through Thursday, featuring dishes including house-made Bolognese and lobster ravioli.

“Food is love to me, so that’s what you get when you come here,” Vitolo said.

Casa Sensei on Las Olas Boulevard is returning to the promotion with its Pan-Asian and Latin fusion cuisine.

“We have a little bit of everything here for everybody,” chef Will Reyes said. “We have prime steaks, we have seafood, we have many different options you can choose from, and everything is made from scratch.”

The restaurant is putting several of its popular dishes on its prix-fixe menu, including kimchi fried rice made with Korean beef and its signature Red Dragon Roll.

Reyes said the promotion allows diners to sample several dishes for less than they might normally spend ordering individually.

“Just one roll is like $20, $22,” Reyes said. “You can get three things for $35 for lunch, $45 for dinner.”

Dine Out Lauderdale continues through Sept. 30, with three-course prix-fixe menus available at participating restaurants throughout Greater Fort Lauderdale.

Lunch menus start at $35, while dinner options are available for $45 or $60. The promotion also includes $75 luxury dining experiences.

Special events are being held throughout the promotion, including immersive dining experiences.

A full list of participating restaurants, events and additional information about Dine Out Lauderdale is available by clicking here.

Melissa Farris is scheduled to be arraigned next week on two felony counts. Grand jurors indicted her Thursday on charges of destroying the veterans' memorial and destroying government property.

An attorney for Farris didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment on Friday.

Farris, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, is suspected of spray painting the words “Clean hands dirty $” on the monument and filling a fountain with bubbles on Aug. 13. She was ordered released after her initial court appearance on Aug. 17.

President Donald Trump posted about the damage to the memorial on social media with a reference to his repeated claims — without providing evidence — that vandals had been damaging the nearby Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

“Our beautiful World War II Memorial was just hit by Spray Painting Vandals,” Trump wrote his Truth Social site. “First the Reflecting Pool, now this.”

A former Olympian was charged in late July with deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool, but the Justice Department later moved to dismiss that case, saying evidence prosecutors had received refuted the idea that vandals were to blame.

President Donald Trump presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to the three Americans and one Canadian whose April lunar flyby set a new distance record for humanity.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and other dignitaries took part in the packed ceremony at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, home to Mission Control. Trump used the occasion to announce the creation of a U.S. Space Academy for the Space Force as well as NASA and the commercial space community.

“Space is the hot thing,” the president told the crowd, adding that the academy's location has yet to be determined.

Commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canada’s Jeremy Hansen became the first astronauts to travel to the moon in more than half a century, coming within 4,067 miles (6,545 kilometers) while test-driving NASA’s new Orion capsule. They were the first to launch aboard NASA’s new moon rocket, a 30-story behemoth that had soared only once before from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

While they didn’t stop at the moon, the four set the stage for next year’s Artemis III docking rehearsal in orbit around Earth. Artemis IV’s moon landing by two astronauts, near the lunar south pole, could follow as soon as 2028.

Trump said Americans will land back on the moon before his term ends. Mars is next — “very shortly,” he said.

The president called the newest recipients “four intrepid space heroes.” He pointed out that they did not do it alone, thanking all who contributed to the Artemis II mission.

“There are no finer humans we could have sent as our ambassadors to the stars,” Isaacman added.

Wiseman and his crew are in good company, with only 30 astronauts receiving the prestigious honor before them. Many of the recipients were honored posthumously following their tragic spaceflight-related deaths.

Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong — whose phrase “That’s one step for man, one giant leap for mankind” gripped the world on July 20, 1969 — was the first to receive the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

President Jimmy Carter awarded six of these medals in 1978, which also went to Alan Shepard, the first American in space; John Glenn, the first American in orbit; and Apollo 8 commander Frank Borman, whose 1968 mission marked humanity’s first lunar voyage.

The most recent recipients were Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, the first astronauts to launch aboard a SpaceX rocket. Coming nine years after the space shuttle program's close, their 2020 test flight to the International Space Station restored America’s ability to launch crews from home soil. President Joe Biden awarded them the medals in 2023.

Dozens of astronauts participated in the ceremony, including Apollo 17 moonwalker Harrison Schmitt, who is now 91, and the four men assigned to NASA's upcoming Artemis III mission.

Schmitt noted that his mission — Apollo's last moonshot — was the most productive lunar exploration yet.

“Soon to be surpassed by Artemis,” he said of active astronauts standing behind him.

NASA plans a sustainable moon base staffed by astronauts and robots near the lunar south pole, where permanently shadowed craters are thought to hold tons of frozen water that could be turned into rocket fuel and drinking water. China is eyeing the same region.

“The second space race has begun,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Matthew Anderson.

As the two-hour ceremony came to a close, the Artemis II astronauts presented Trump with his own blue flight jacket complete with space patches, a promise they made while visiting him in the Oval Office following their mission.

The president then hustled over to Mission Control to call the three U.S. astronauts aboard the International Space Station. He informed them of the new U.S. Space Academy, then briefly handed the phone to two of their spouses for a quick hello.

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The Greenlandic government, which commissioned the inquiry, released the reports Friday but, when pressed by journalists during a news conference, would not say whether its leaders concluded whether a genocide had occurred. The government told the authors to use the definition under the United Nations' 1948 genocide convention, which includes “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

The reports come as U.S. President Donald Trump pushes to control the Arctic island, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark. The leaders of Greenland and Denmark say the island is not for sale and only Greenlanders can decide their fate.

Known as the “spiral case, " the revelations have rocked both Denmark and Greenland. More than 350 Greenlandic Indigenous women and girls, including some 12 years old and younger, previously came forward to investigators and reported that they were forcibly given contraception by Danish health authorities. Denmark says more than 4,000 women and girls — reportedly half the fertile women in Greenland at the time — received IUDs between the 1960s and mid-1970s.

The Inuit victims, many of them teenagers at the time, said they were either fitted with intrauterine contraceptive devices, known as IUDs or coils, or given a hormonal birth control injection. They were not told details about the procedure, or did not give their consent.

The alleged purpose was to limit population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies. The population on the Arctic island was rapidly increasing at the time because of better living conditions and better health care.

The cases occurred between the 1960s and the early 1990s. Greenland took over its own healthcare programs on Jan. 1, 1992.

The Danish government on Thursday approved payouts of 300,000 Danish kroner (about $46,500) to each victim. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen officially apologized last year.

Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen said a reconciliation commission would be set up, a move that Frederiksen endorsed in a statement Friday.

Authors split findings into two reports

On Friday, the Greenlandic government only accepted the findings of one of the reports, saying that an expert found that the second — the one that definitively said a genocide had not taken place — did not meet recognized scientific standards.

“There is no empirical evidence to assume that any Danish or Greenlandic authority, or any individual healthcare professional, at any time had any intention of destroying the Greenlandic population or a significant proportion of it,” the authors of the rejected report wrote. “There was no genocide.”

The accepted report, however, did not conclude whether there was a genocide. The authors wrote that they were not able to determine if any intent to destroy the population existed solely through the forcible contraception cases, and suggested further study that encompassed other Danish practices at the time that affected Greenlandic children and families. The authors did not, unlike the other report, conclusively say a genocide did not occur.

“It is difficult to imagine circumstances in which an attempt to substantially reduce the population of a single ethnic group could not constitute an intent to destroy, in part, that ethnicity,” the report said.

The reports were originally supposed to be a single publication but two of the four members of the group broke away several months ago and wrote their own report. Theirs was the one rejected by the island's government; one of the authors is a former director of the Danish Institute for Human Rights.

“The reason given was professional disagreements amongst the members and, to some extent, concerns about the geopolitical situation,” the Greenlandic government said Friday in a news release.

The news release did not elaborate on what the two authors considered to be the geopolitical situation.

Este es el primer estado de emergencia decretado por la presidenta Keiko Fujimori desde que llegó al poder hace un mes tras prometer orden en un país azotado por las extorsiones y los asesinatos, que convirtieron a la lucha contra el crimen en la primera preocupación de los peruanos.

Por 60 días se limitarán varios derechos constitucionales, incluida la inviolabilidad de domicilio. El decreto publicado en el diario oficial contempla la creación de un Comité de Inteligencia que coordinará la estrategia del trabajo policial y militar.

El comité estará integrado por funcionarios del sistema de inteligencia, de finanzas y del servicio penitenciario, así como por policías y militares. Para sus tareas utilizará un sistema integrado que conectará cámaras públicas y privadas, drones, sistemas satelitales y algoritmos de reconocimiento facial.

El incremento de la delincuencia provocó que desde octubre de 2025 el anterior gobierno decretara ocho estados de emergencia consecutivos en Lima. El más reciente finalizó el miércoles.

Las denuncias por extorsiones, el delito más extendido, pasaron de 2.421 en 2019 a 26.734 en 2025, según datos oficiales.

Fujimori lanzó el 8 de agosto el plan de seguridad denominado “Escudo” enfocado en combatir a los extorsionadores que asesinan a los choferes del transporte público en Lima y tirotean los autobuses o las terminales en zonas de la periferia, donde vive la mayoría de los 10 millones de habitantes de la capital peruana.

Desde el inicio de ese plan la violencia no se ha detenido. Se han reportado 20 ataques con armas de fuego, que han dejado siete muertos —seis choferes y un pasajero— y 17 heridos de bala.

The mountains are also a draw — home to millions of people with generations of connection to their environment, as well as many visitors who come to trek up some of the world's highest peaks or visit religious sites.

That has become clear in the aftermath of the floods, with people from at least 30 countries joining the hundreds of the region's residents among the missing.

Trekking has a deep history

People in that region of Asia have been traversing the mountains for centuries, such as traders moving their goods along a part of the route system known as the Great Silk Road.

Certain ethnic groups like the Sherpas in Nepal developed an expertise in mountaineering. In the mid-20th century, when the modern-day nation started welcoming in foreigners and tourism, Nepalis were tapped for their knowledge and guidance by explorers from elsewhere looking to make the climbs.

In 1953, one of them, Tenzing Norgay, connected with New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and the two men became the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the highest peak in the world.

In the decades since, interest in trekking has burgeoned, making tourism a bigger part of Nepal's economy. But it's also brought concerns about how to manage it.

Among the popular places for visitors to make a climbing attempt are Mount Everest and Everest Base Camp, as well as the trails of the Annapurna conservation area in Nepal. In May, a record 274 climbers reached the Everest summit in a single day. The uptick in mountaineers has drawn discussions about how to keep Everest pristine and managing issues like garbage and debris.

The area closer to Kathmandu, where flooding took place this week, is also a part of the country that sees wide trekking interest.

The increase in interest has spurred change in the country overall, said Rajendra Lama, general secretary of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, who lives in Kathmandu and has been working as a guide for more than two decades.

There's been infrastructure improvements like better roads in some areas, the rise of places to stay and eateries along the way, even the possibility of pizza.

“There's a big difference from when I started ... Nowadays people need more facilities,” Lama said in a phone call with The Associated Press.

Tourism has developed, but Nepal is loved for its unspoiled beauty

Despite the growing trappings of modern mass tourism, many are drawn to and love the country because of its natural beauty and unforgettable vistas, and the people and cultures that call it home.

That's the draw for Ariel Estulin. The photographer from Toronto has visited Nepal four times, his first visit more than 15 years ago.

He's traveled around the mountainous country to see different regions, some of them so remote that getting to them required “two full days of travel on the most unimaginable bus ride from Hell you can imagine,” he said. They were places where finding a place to sleep took knocking on a farmer's door and asking if he could spend the night, sharing their meals.

“It is changing,” he said, “but it will always remain wild.”

Lama is counting on that love to help Nepal get through this catastrophe, as rescuers are still trying to find survivors while a threat of more flooding looms.

He recalled the 2015 earthquake in Nepal that killed thousands and injured many more. He remembers how worried he was that it would keep visitors afraid and away, and how heartened he was when that didn't happen.

He's hopeful that same kind of energy will come through now, and said he's been getting numerous messages of support.

“It means,” he said, “that people love Nepal.”

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Beau Brattain was attacked by several dogs on July 29 while collecting sand on a beach in Bimini, according to the Royal Bahamas Police Force. They said he suffered numerous bites to his legs, arm, face and head, including the loss of part of his scalp.

Authorities said the Coast Guard crew evacuated Beau and his father from the Bahamas to Miami-Dade County, where Beau was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital’s Ryder Trauma Center for treatment.

Beau has undergone multiple surgeries and is expected to need additional procedures and therapy as he continues to recover.

His mother, Aliette Trelles, told Local 10 News on Friday that Beau is improving each day but still faces a long recovery.

“Beau is improving every day, and his positivity and spirit remain strong, but he has a long road ahead and with a number of additional surgeries scheduled,” Trelles said.

Trelles previously told Local 10 News that Beau was collecting sand for hermit crabs when the dogs suddenly attacked him. She said he managed to get back to the home where he was staying with family and friends.

Harrington Rolle, of South Bimini, was arrested in connection with the attack and faces charges including negligently causing grievous harm and failing to control a dangerous dog, according to Bahamian police.

Beau’s family has created a GoFundMe to help with his medical and rehabilitation expenses as he continues his recovery.

Beau Brattain fue atacado por varios perros el 29 de julio mientras recogía arena en una playa de Bimini, según la Real Fuerza de Policía de Bahamas. Las autoridades dijeron que sufrió numerosas mordeduras en las piernas, un brazo, el rostro y la cabeza, incluida la pérdida de parte del cuero cabelludo.

Las autoridades dijeron que la tripulación de la Guardia Costera evacuó a Beau y a su padre desde Bahamas hasta el condado Miami-Dade, donde Beau fue trasladado en ambulancia aérea al Ryder Trauma Center del Jackson Memorial Hospital para recibir tratamiento.

Beau ha sido sometido a múltiples cirugías y se espera que necesite procedimientos adicionales y terapia mientras continúa recuperándose.

Su madre, Aliette Trelles, dijo a Local 10 News el viernes que Beau mejora cada día, pero todavía enfrenta una larga recuperación.

“Beau está mejorando cada día, y su positividad y ánimo se mantienen fuertes, pero tiene un largo camino por delante y varias cirugías adicionales programadas”, dijo Trelles.

Trelles dijo anteriormente a Local 10 News que Beau estaba recogiendo arena para cangrejos ermitaños cuando los perros lo atacaron repentinamente. Dijo que logró regresar a la casa donde se hospedaba con familiares y amigos.

Harrington Rolle, de South Bimini, fue arrestado en relación con el ataque y enfrenta cargos que incluyen causar negligentemente lesiones graves y no controlar a un perro peligroso, según la policía de Bahamas.

La familia de Beau creó una campaña en GoFundMe para ayudar con sus gastos médicos y de rehabilitación mientras continúa su recuperación.

Elon Musk’s company is now in the process of shipping Starship back to its home base in Texas, a trip expected to take several months. SpaceX shared pictures of the recovery effort near Christmas Island late this week.

Starship — the biggest and most powerful rocket in the world — blasted off July 24 from Starbase, Texas. It was the 13th test flight of a full-up Starship, but unlike all the others, it survived the hourlong space-skimming flight and remained floating and intact.

“Congratulations to the entire SpaceX Recovery team for battling through challenging conditions to give our engineers access to a wealth of data to continue rapidly developing Starship,” the company said via X.

Starship is how Musk intends to get people and equipment to Mars, where he hopes to build a city. First up, though, is the moon. NASA is counting on Starship as well as Jeff Bezos' Blue Moon lander to return astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2028.

President Donald Trump endorsed both destinations during a visit to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday. He presented the Congressional Space Medal of Honor to each of the four Artemis II astronauts who flew around the moon in April.

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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.

Durante la audiencia, la esposa de Caruso, Tracy Caruso, dijo que el arresto domiciliario sería preferible, ya que tienen un “ascensor privado” y “muchísima seguridad” en Palm Beach.

“Sí, regresará a esa residencia. Lo amo”, dijo Tracy Caruso en la corte.

Caruso, de 67 años, sirvió en la Cámara de Representantes de Florida de 2018 a 2025, cuando el gobernador Ron DeSantis lo nombró para su actual cargo en el condado Palm Beach. En febrero, Caruso anunció que se postulaba para conservar el cargo el 3 de noviembre y no ha retirado su candidatura.

DeSantis suspendió a Caruso después de su arresto. El Departamento de Correcciones del condado Orange ingresó a Caruso el 19 de agosto y lo mantuvo detenido sin derecho a fianza, según muestran los registros.

Caruso enfrentaba cargos de secuestro, abuso lascivo o indecente, exhibición lasciva o indecente, atraer o inducir a un menor y abuso infantil que causa daño mental, según muestran los registros.

La investigación

Tras un reporte en el condado Orange, un agente del Departamento de Aplicación de la Ley de Florida realizó la investigación. El agente tiene más de dos décadas de experiencia, incluido su servicio como jefe de policía en Norwich, Nueva York, según muestran los registros.

Mientras estaba asignado al Centro Regional de Operaciones de Miami, el agente de FDLE habló con los padres de la víctima y realizó llamadas grabadas entre Caruso y familiares, según muestran los registros.

El 17 de agosto, un juez emitió una orden de arresto contra Caruso. Recientemente, un juez le ordenó entregar su pasaporte y mantenerse alejado de menores, de la víctima del caso y de los testigos.

Historias relacionadas

• Secretario judicial del condado Palm Beach Michael Caruso permanece detenido sin derecho a fianza por cargos de abuso sexual infantil
• Arrestan a secretario judicial del condado Palm Beach Michael Caruso por cargos de abuso sexual infantil, dice fiscal general
• Mike Caruso habla sobre Alligator Alcatraz en 2025

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Coral Gables Police Department Chief Ed Hudak said the suspects targeted the Valencia Avenue home of Henry Parra, 55, and Adam Hlavaty, 42, knowing they died in the Aug. 19 crash along with five others, several of whom had South Florida ties.

“These people were targeted the day they were killed in that crash, which I find reprehensible,” Hudak said at a news conference on Friday.

Flanked by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, and high-ranking members of the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office and his own department, Hudak said the investigation revealed a beehive of identity theft, fraud and burglary.

“We have boxes of documents that could be potential victims,” Hudak said.

He said those boxes of documents were found at the northwest Miami-Dade home of suspects Geybert Alexander Garcia, 40, and Melany Perdomo, 24, in the 8300 block of Northwest 195th Terrace.

The two are accused of stealing jewelry, electronics, documents, artwork and the couple’s Porsche and Range Rover.

Fernandez Rundle called the targeting of the late couple “really shocking and unfathomable” and part of a “much larger scheme.”

Hudak said CGPD “can’t rule anything out” when it comes to whether the suspects had help on the inside. He said the suspects knew to go behind the home’s liquor cabinet to remove the couple’s security system.

He also addressed purportedly-notarized paperwork Garcia’s attorney showed in court claiming that the victims signed over their vehicles to him.

Both a family friend and a CGPD detective testified that they believe the document is phony.

“I’ve never known anyone to have an affidavit for a dead person,” Hudak said.

Hudak said the sheer scale of the investigation has led CGPD to work with MDSO and multiple federal agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and explosives, to probe the wider case.

“We walked into ground zero of identity theft in this area,” Hudak said.

That includes passport fraud, he said, leading to the Diplomatic Security Service to join the investigation.

At the suspects’ home, near the unincorporated Palm Springs North area, Hudak said investigators recovered 20 key fobs corresponding to suspected stolen vehicles and authorities are working to track down the owners.

Additionally, investigators said they found a Ford F-250 with an altered VIN that turned out to be stolen out of Indian River County.

Hudak said owing to the sheer scale of evidence discovered the investigation is “going to take us some time.”

Meanwhile, as of Friday, Garcia and Perdomo remain locked up in Miami-Dade’s Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on multiple charges, including burglary and grand theft.

They were ordered to remain there without bond and are set to be arraigned in Miami-Dade court on Sept. 28.

El jefe del Departamento de Policía de Coral Gables, Ed Hudak, dijo que los sospechosos atacaron la casa de Henry Parra, de 55 años, y Adam Hlavaty, de 42, en Valencia Avenue, sabiendo que habían muerto en el accidente del 19 de agosto junto con otras cinco personas, varias de ellas con vínculos con el sur de Florida.

“Estas personas fueron blanco de los delincuentes el día que murieron en ese accidente, lo que me parece reprochable”, dijo Hudak durante una conferencia de prensa el viernes.

Acompañado por la fiscal estatal de Miami-Dade, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, y altos funcionarios de la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade y de su propio departamento, Hudak dijo que la investigación reveló una gran red de robo de identidad, fraude y robo.

“Tenemos cajas de documentos que podrían corresponder a posibles víctimas”, dijo Hudak.

Dijo que esas cajas de documentos fueron encontradas en la casa de los sospechosos Geybert Alexander Garcia, de 40 años, y Melany Perdomo, de 24, ubicada en la cuadra 8300 de Northwest 195th Terrace, en el noroeste de Miami-Dade.

Los dos están acusados de robar joyas, aparatos electrónicos, documentos, obras de arte, así como el Porsche y el Range Rover de la pareja.

Fernandez Rundle calificó el hecho de que la pareja fallecida fuera elegida como blanco de los delincuentes como “realmente impactante e inconcebible” y parte de un “esquema mucho más amplio”.

Hudak dijo que CGPD “no puede descartar nada” en cuanto a si los sospechosos recibieron ayuda desde dentro. Dijo que los sospechosos sabían que debían ir detrás del gabinete de licores de la casa para retirar el sistema de seguridad de la pareja.

También se refirió a documentos supuestamente notarizados que el abogado de Garcia mostró en la corte, alegando que las víctimas le habían transferido sus vehículos.

Tanto un amigo de la familia como un detective de CGPD testificaron que creen que el documento es falso.

“Nunca he conocido a nadie que tenga una declaración jurada de una persona muerta”, dijo Hudak.

Hudak dijo que la magnitud de la investigación ha llevado a CGPD a trabajar con MDSO y múltiples agencias federales, incluido el Servicio Secreto de Estados Unidos y la Oficina de Alcohol, Tabaco, Armas de Fuego y Explosivos, para investigar el caso más amplio.

“Llegamos al epicentro del robo de identidad en esta área”, dijo Hudak.

Eso incluye fraude de pasaportes, dijo, lo que llevó al Servicio de Seguridad Diplomática a sumarse a la investigación.

En la casa de los sospechosos, cerca del área no incorporada de Palm Springs North, Hudak dijo que los investigadores recuperaron 20 llaveros electrónicos correspondientes a vehículos que se sospecha fueron robados y las autoridades trabajan para localizar a los propietarios.

Además, los investigadores dijeron que encontraron una Ford F-250 con un VIN alterado que resultó haber sido robada en el condado Indian River.

Hudak dijo que, debido a la enorme cantidad de evidencia descubierta, la investigación “nos va a tomar algún tiempo”.

Mientras tanto, hasta el viernes, Garcia y Perdomo permanecían detenidos en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight de Miami-Dade por múltiples cargos, incluidos robo y hurto mayor.

Se ordenó que ambos permanezcan allí sin derecho a fianza y está previsto que sean procesados en una corte de Miami-Dade el 28 de septiembre.

Romo was arrested July 23 in Wisconsin on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence.

The case against the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback was amended Thursday to add citations for possessing open intoxicants in a motor vehicle, unsafe passing on the right and first-offense operating while intoxicated. He already had received a citation for refusal to take a test for intoxication after arrest.

CBS Sports president David Berson said earlier this month that he does not have a timeline for a decision about Romo’s future with the network.

Romo, 46, has been the lead game analyst for CBS’ NFL coverage since 2017 after making four Pro Bowl appearances during a playing career that ran from 2004-16 and was spent entirely with Dallas.

Analyst JJ Watt will join play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz and sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson on CBS Sports’ lead NFL team during Romo’s absence. Their first game will be on Sept. 13, when the Minnesota Vikings host the Green Bay Packers.

Romo's arrest followed a traffic stop as he was driving south on Interstate 43. According to the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office, Romo performed poorly on field sobriety tests before getting arrested, booked and released.

Citations released by the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office indicated an open bottle of an alcoholic beverage was found in the passenger’s side of Romo’s black Jeep during an inventory before it was towed.

Body camera footage released earlier this week showed Romo telling deputies he had been coming from a golf course and was on his way “to visit grandma and grandpa” when he was stopped. A deputy told Romo he suspected him of being impaired because he had “red glassy eyes” and an “odor of an intoxicating alcoholic beverage.”

“Tony accepts full responsibility for his actions and has taken proactive steps to ensure that this isolated civil matter is properly resolved,” a Romo spokesperson said in a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and TMZ. “We are working with local authorities to bring this matter to a close and we are communicating with CBS about next steps.”

Romo went to high school about 35 miles southwest of Milwaukee in Burlington, Wisconsin.

Romo remains the Cowboys’ franchise leader in career touchdown passes with 248. He held the franchise record for career passing yards (34,183) until Dak Prescott overtook him last season.

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See AP’s full NFL coverage here

A la audiencia, que podría extenderse por varias horas, acudió personalmente el exmandatario (2017-2021), quien al llegar a la sala judicial dijo “yo no soy un prófugo”, ratificando lo que anteriormente había afirmado de que se quedará a Ecuador a cumplir cualquier decisión judicial.

Junto a Moreno están acusados su esposa, su hija, dos hermanos y un cuñado, quienes supuestamente recibieron beneficios y ayudaron a encubrir los pagos.

La Fiscalía ha pedido una pena de seis años y seis meses de prisión para el exgobernante, de 73 años y con una discapacidad física que le impide caminar por lo que, de acuerdo con la ley ecuatoriana, le corresponde el arresto domiciliario.

En una reciente entrevista con el diario local La Hora Moreno afirmó que “podía haberme quedado en Paraguay, tengo una amistad personal con el presidente, me ofreció la protección. No la acepté y regresé” al tiempo que sostuvo su inocencia.

Según la Fiscalía entre 2008 y 2018 funcionó una red de corrupción que recibió sobornos equivalentes al 4% del valor de la construcción de una central hidroeléctrica por parte de Sinohydro. Los receptores de esos sobornos fueron varios empleados públicos, incluido Moreno, y el dinero ilícito fue entregado a los beneficiarios a través de transacciones nacionales e internacionales.

Sinohydro comenzó la construcción de la central Coca Codo Sinclair en 2010 con un costo de alrededor de 2.000 millones de dólares y la entregó en 2016. La obra ha sido cuestionada por fallas estructurales.

Moreno, un empresario turístico, alcanzó notoriedad en 2007 cuando llegó a la vicepresidencia de la mano de Rafael Correa (2007-2017). Como vicepresidente lo acompañó hasta 2013, cuando fue sucedido por Jorge Glas.

En 2017 Moreno ganó las elecciones presidenciales en representación del movimiento correísta en un binomio con Glas —quien luego dejó el cargo y ahora también cumple prisión por corrupción—. Pero poco después de asumir se separó de la agrupación política denunciando irregularidades y se convirtió en el enemigo de su mentor. Sus ex correligionarios lo calificaron de desleal.

Moreno ha señalado a Glas como responsable de la supuesta corrupción aduciendo que su sucesor dirigía los sectores estratégicos durante el gobierno de Correa.

Tras abandonar la presidencia se radicó en Paraguay durante cinco años y retornó a Ecuador en mayo pasado para enfrentar el juicio.

Hasta el 40% de las tierras del mundo está degradado, según la Convención de las Naciones Unidas de Lucha contra la Desertificación (UNCCD, por sus siglas en inglés), que organiza las conversaciones bienales. También aparecen sequías en zonas que, hace una década, no se consideraban altamente vulnerables, manifestó Yasmine Fouad, secretaria ejecutiva de la convención.

“La sequía llega junto con el impacto del cambio climático”, afirmó Fouad en una entrevista con The Associated Press. “Se vuelve más frecuente, más intensa y más prolongada”.

Los países se fueron de Ulán Bator sin resolver uno de los temas clave de las conversaciones —la creación de un acuerdo mundial sobre sequía jurídicamente vinculante—, y pospusieron una decisión hasta la próxima ronda de conversaciones en Egipto dentro de dos años. El asunto ya se había aplazado en la reunión anterior, hace dos años.

Un suelo sano puede reducir el impacto de la sequía

A menudo se describe la sequía como una falta de lluvia. Pero especialistas en la conferencia señalaron que su gravedad está determinada cada vez más por lo que ocurre con la tierra antes de que deje de llover.

Los suelos sanos absorben y almacenan agua, lo que ayuda a que los cultivos, los pastizales y los ecosistemas naturales sobrevivan a los periodos secos. Los suelos degradados escurren el agua con mayor rapidez y pierden productividad, lo que hace que las comunidades sean más vulnerables cuando suben las temperaturas o las lluvias se vuelven irregulares, según expertos en tierras.

“No se puede mantener un suelo sano sin gestionar el agua”, sostuvo Fouad. “Y no se puede decir que tenemos una gestión sostenible del agua sin garantizar que el suelo y la tierra estén bien”.

La conexión entre la tierra y el agua es especialmente importante para la agricultura. Joao Campari, líder global de alimentación y agricultura de WWF International, dijo que tratar la tierra y el agua como sistemas separados pasa por alto las condiciones básicas necesarias para la seguridad alimentaria.

“Si no tienes agua, no tienes agricultura. Si no tienes tierra, no tienes agricultura”, señaló.

Se espera que la presión sobre la tierra aumente a medida que crezca la demanda de alimentos. Según informes de la ONU, para 2050, con el aumento de la población mundial, el mundo necesitará producir un 50% más de alimentos que en 2012. Pero ampliar la producción despejando pastizales, sabanas u otras áreas naturales puede empeorar la degradación de la tierra, al liberar carbono de los suelos y reducir la capacidad de la tierra para almacenar agua.

La degradación de la tierra también puede agravar las tormentas de arena y polvo. Fouad indicó que, aunque las tormentas se desplazan por el aire, sus raíces suelen estar en el suelo, donde el uso insostenible de la tierra deja el terreno expuesto. Restaurar la vegetación y mejorar la gestión de la tierra puede ayudar a mantener el suelo en su lugar y reducir la cantidad que levantan los vientos fuertes.

Conversaciones en Mongolia recaudan miles de millones de dólares para restaurar pastizales

La conferencia de 12 días puso en marcha una iniciativa sobre pastizales que reúne 1.200 millones de dólares en 45 proyectos. Fouad señaló que el Banco Asiático de Desarrollo también anunció 2.000 millones de dólares para esfuerzos destinados a combatir la degradación de la tierra en la región de Asia-Pacífico.

Los pastizales, que incluyen praderas, sabanas y otras áreas utilizadas por animales de pastoreo y comunidades pastoriles, cubren el 54% de la superficie terrestre del planeta y sostienen a alrededor de 2.000 millones de personas, según la UNCCD.

Campari dijo que las praderas, sabanas y pastizales se están convirtiendo a otros usos a un ritmo aproximadamente cuatro veces mayor que los bosques. Como almacenan grandes cantidades de carbono en sus suelos, su destrucción puede liberar gases de efecto invernadero a la atmósfera incluso cuando se talan pocos árboles.

“Contienen el doble del carbono que hay en la atmósfera”, afirmó Campari. “Así que cuando despejas estos espacios para producir alimentos, significa que todo ese carbono sale del suelo y entra en la atmósfera”.

La restauración de tierras enfrenta un déficit anual de financiación de 278.000 millones de dólares

Se estima que se necesitan 355.000 millones de dólares al año hasta 2030 para cumplir los compromisos mundiales de restauración de tierras, pero la inversión actual es de unos 77.000 millones de dólares, lo que deja un déficit de 278.000 millones de dólares anuales. La financiación privada representa solo alrededor del 6% de la inversión mundial en restauración de tierras, según informes de la ONU.

El desafío no es solo recaudar dinero, sino ponerlo a disposición antes de que la sequía se convierta en un desastre. Más de 70 países cuentan ahora con planes nacionales de sequía, frente a tres en 2013, pero muchos climatólogos dicen que los planes a menudo carecen de la financiación necesaria para convertir en acciones las alertas tempranas, la gestión del agua, la restauración y la adaptación agrícola.

Fouad dijo que los gobiernos deben pasar de los planes de sequía a los planes de inversión, incorporando a empresas privadas, comunidades locales, mujeres y jóvenes en plataformas nacionales que puedan desarrollar proyectos y atraer financiación.

Un nuevo Mecanismo de Inversión para la Resiliencia ante la Sequía, anunciado a principios de esta semana en Ulán Bator, busca movilizar hasta 400 millones de dólares en capital público y privado para proyectos relacionados con la seguridad hídrica, la agricultura sostenible, soluciones basadas en la naturaleza y la restauración de tierras.

Para Esther Penunia, secretaria general de la Asian Farmers Association, la incapacidad de resolver la cuestión legal en torno a la sequía no debería convertirse en una excusa para el retraso.

“No podemos esperar a la COP18 para encontrar soluciones”, afirmó. “Sabemos que tenemos soluciones y podemos aplicarlas siempre que contemos con los recursos necesarios”.

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La cobertura climática y ambiental de The Associated Press recibe apoyo financiero de múltiples fundaciones privadas. La AP es la única responsable de todo el contenido. Encuentra los estándares de la AP para trabajar con organizaciones filantrópicas, una lista de las fundaciones y las áreas de cobertura que financian en AP.org.

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Esta historia fue traducida del inglés por un editor de AP con la ayuda de una herramienta de inteligencia artificial generativa.

Según la Oficina del Sheriff de Miami-Dade, el incidente ocurrió el 14 de agosto dentro de la tienda Ross ubicada cerca de Southwest 137th Avenue y Miller Drive.

Los agentes dijeron que una empleada de la tienda vio a Sean Edward Uribe, del suroeste de Miami-Dade, caminando de un lado a otro “sin rumbo y de manera sospechosa”.

La testigo dijo a los agentes que vio a Uribe agarrándose el pene por encima de la ropa y “masajeándolo”, según un informe de arresto.

Según el informe, la testigo dijo que luego vio que el pene de Uribe estaba completamente erecto mientras se colocaba detrás de otra empleada de la tienda, quien trabajaba en un pasillo, y tenía ambas manos frente a él cerca del área de la entrepierna.

Los agentes dijeron que la testigo vio a Uribe posiblemente rociando la camisa de la víctima con un “líquido desconocido” mientras se alejaba.

Cuando la testigo se acercó a su compañera de trabajo para alertarla sobre lo ocurrido, vio que la parte posterior de la camisa y los pantalones de la víctima tenían una “sustancia turbia y pegajosa de un líquido desconocido”, según el informe de arresto.

Según el informe, los detectives pudieron identificar a Uribe mediante un video de vigilancia debido a que ya tenían conocimiento sobre él y su “modus operandi”.

Una revisión de registros también reveló que Uribe tenía dos condenas previas por agresión en el condado Miami-Dade.

Los agentes dijeron que la testigo identificó a Uribe en una rueda de reconocimiento fotográfica el 19 de agosto y fue detenido el lunes por un cargo de agresión con dos condenas previas.

Según el informe, Uribe invocó su derecho a permanecer en silencio.

Hasta la mañana de este viernes, Uribe permanecía detenido en el Centro de Detención Metrowest. Los registros de la cárcel en línea indicaban que su fianza estaba “por determinar”.

Los registros muestran que se encontraba bajo libertad condicional al momento de su arresto por agresión e intento de manipulación de evidencia física. Además del cargo más reciente de agresión, también enfrenta un cargo por violación de la libertad condicional.

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According to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office, the incident occurred Aug. 14 inside the Ross store off Southwest 137^th Avenue and Miller Drive.

Deputies said a store employee witnessed Sean Edward Uribe, of southwest Miami-Dade, walking back and forth “aimlessly in a suspicious manner.”

The witness told deputies that she saw Uribe grabbing his penis on the outside of his clothing and “massaging it,” an arrest report stated.

According to the report, the witness said she then saw that Uribe’s penis had become fully erect as he positioned himself behind another store employee, who was working in an aisle, and had both of his hands in front of him near his crotch area.

Deputies said the witness saw Uribe possibly spraying the victim’s shirt with an “unknown liquid” as he walked away.

When the witness approached her co-worker to alert her about what had occurred, she saw that the back of the victim’s shirt and pants had a “cloudy, sticky substance from an unknown liquid,” the arrest report stated.

Detectives told Local 10 Friday that the liquid was “consistent with semen.”

“That fluid hits her in the back of the shirt and the employee’s pants. Obviously she’s freaked out, she didn’t know what to do, she goes home crying. And we took care of the case after that,” Detective Diego Mendoza said.

According to the report, detectives were able to identify Uribe from surveillance video due to previous knowledge about him and his “modus operandi.”

A records check also revealed that Uribe had two prior battery convictions in Miami-Dade County.

Deputies said the witness identified Uribe in a photo lineup on Aug. 19 and he was taken into custody Monday on a charge of battery with two prior convictions.

According to the report, Uribe invoked his right to remain silent.

As of Friday morning, Uribe was being held at the Metrowest Detention Center. Online jail records listed his bond as “to be set.”

Records show he was on probation at the time of his arrest for battery and attempting to tamper with physical evidence. Deputies confirmed he was taken into custody when reporting to his probation officer. In addition to the latest battery charge, he also faces a charge of probation violation.

Detectives ask anyone who believes they were victimized by Uribe to call Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-8477.

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Dolly’s remnants will head in the direction of the easternmost Caribbean islands today, where hostile conditions should keep it from reforming before reaching the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands later this weekend.

Though Dolly’s remnants could bring squally weather and locally heavy rain to higher terrain as it crosses the islands, its quick pace should limit widespread issues and the rainfall is generally a net positive for areas of the Caribbean, which have been plagued with intensifying drought conditions this summer, in part due to the strengthening El Niño.

Dolly the storm, not the singer

In a strange coincidence, Dolly the storm was christened only two days after the passing of American cultural icon and country music legend Dolly Parton.

With the unusual timing and insensitive appearance of naming a tropical storm Dolly the week flags were lowered in honor of the late, great singer, and the National Hurricane Center issued a statement clarifying the use of the name in its first advisory for Dolly on Thursday:

“The timing of the use of the name Dolly for this storm is purely coincidental,” the center wrote. “Tropical storm and hurricane names for the North Atlantic Basin originate from six pre-determined rotating lists established by the World Meteorological Organization Region IV Hurricane Committee.  The name Dolly replaced Diana after the 1990 hurricane season and was first used in 1996.”

For the crossover weather enthusiasts and Dolly Parton fans (including yours truly), the very first time a tropical cyclone was named Dolly was for a western Pacific typhoon in 1946, the same year as Ms. Parton’s birth.

Dolly unlikely to reform closer to the U.S.

As we’ve discussed in the newsletter all week, some outside scenarios have depicted Dolly’s remnants trying to reform in a region of lower wind shear and unusually warm waters around the Bahamas or into the eastern Gulf for middle next week.

Though the odds were low to begin with, models decidedly dropped that scenario yesterday. They’ve waffled somewhat since but Dolly should be sufficiently disrupted by its passage through the Great El Niño-driven wall of shear this weekend as its remnants hit the mountainous speed bumps of the islands – especially in places like Hispaniola – that an encore performance won’t be in the cards.

Google latest DeepMind’s 1,000-member ensemble system puts redevelopment odds at around 30% for next week, so it’s something to monitor.

We’ll of course update you in the event models change their tune, but for the time being, it’s nothing to be concerned about.

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The owner, Enrique Pomares, told Local 10’s Hannah Yechivi that he let his three dogs outside around 8 a.m., as he does each morning, when the crocodile entered the property and attacked Kygo, the larger dog.

Pomares said he spent about 10 minutes trying to fend off the crocodile and save his dog. he said the crocodile killed Kygo and dragged him toward a nearby canal.

“This morning, our Dutch Shepard got grabbed by a crocodile that was swimming in the canal in the back,” Pomares said. “The dog was trying to get away. I pulled him down several times. (It was) just horrific watching this whole thing go down and ultimately, he killed the dog.”

Pomares said he even threw a kayak into the water in an attempt to distract the crocodile.

“They are known to be back here,” he added. “I have seen them when I go kayaking. They don’t usually bother anybody, but today, I guess it was hungry.”

Pomares said the crocodile then began moving toward him.

“Then he started coming towards me and at that point, all bets were off,” he said. “It was just horrific. He killed the dog and brought it back. We have a little dog in the backyard, and he brought it back in his mouth like (a) trophy to show it to me.

Pomares, who described Kygo as a family member, was able to photograph the crocodile shortly after the attack.

Dexter Lovett, who lives nearby told Local 10 News that he spotted Kygo’s body further down the canal.

“I wanted to let them know the dog was here, so they could come get their dog. Dogs is family,” he said.

South Miami police detectives and a sergeant were investigating the incident.

Police said residents and visitors in the South Miami area are urged to keep children and pets away from canals, waterways, ponds and other areas where a crocodile may be present.

They also warned the public not to approach, feed, harass or attempt to capture a nearby crocodile.

Crocodiles are protected under Florida and federal law.

Anyone who spots the animal should maintain a safe distance and report the sighting to the appropriate wildlife authorities, police said.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officials urged the public to never feed crocodiles, as it is illegal and can make them associate people with food.

They also recommend keeping pets leashed and children away from the water’s edge, and swimming only in designated areas during daylight hours, since crocodiles are most active from dusk to dawn.

Police also urged residents to share the warning with neighbors, particularly those who have pets and live or walk in the area.

Residents or visitors with concerns about a crocodile in their area can contact the FWC at 866-392-4286.

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There were setbacks, surgeries and moments when the 23-year-old questioned whether he could keep going. There were three torn anterior cruciate ligaments, five knee surgeries and roughly three seasons spent away from the field.

But there was also a dream.

In 2026, Fray is a Major League Soccer champion with Inter Miami CF. He is still only beginning to write his professional story, and his goal remains the same one he had as a kid: playing in Europe.

Soccer in the Blood

Fray’s connection to soccer began before he ever stepped onto the pitch.

“My mom and dad both met playing soccer at Hartford University,” Fray said. “My dad was on the men’s team, my mom was on the women’s team, and then they got married, had kids, and all three of us played soccer.”

Raised in Coconut Creek, Fray started out close to home.

“They had a rec league in Coconut Creek right next to my house, so I played there growing up as a really young kid,” he said.

However, Fray’s path through the academy system wasn’t smooth.

“I played for Weston FC when I was a little younger,” he said. “And then they actually ended up cutting me from the team. They cut me from the academy.”

Instead of walking away, Fray landed with a new club.

“I ended up finding a new team in Miramar. So, I played for Miramar for a bit, two years, and then Inter Miami opened up — there were tryouts — and then ever since then I was in the academy, and then up from there,” he said.

The Work Behind the Dream

Fray’s rise wasn’t built on talent alone. He describes his development as years of work, often with his father taking him back to the field after club practices.

Eventually, soccer became a bigger priority than school.

“I dropped out of high school in my junior year,” he said. “It was just always — my dad was taking me to the field after my practices with my club team. It was a lot of work, but I loved doing it. It was something I enjoyed doing more than school at the time. That was just really healthy for me.”

The mentality for Fray after dropping out was pro or bust, and that’s how he stayed focused and driven.

Three ACLs, One Comeback

If Fray’s rise had one true test, it wasn’t a tryout — it was his knees. Five knee surgeries. Three torn ACLs. Roughly three full seasons lost to recovery. During one stretch, he was out for 15 months, only for the injury to strike again almost immediately after his return.

“I have a really good circle around me, close friends and family — and that was the most important thing that got me through,” he said. “Anytime I felt doubts, or there were times where in my head you tell yourself a bunch of things — I told myself, ‘I can’t do this again. This is gonna be too difficult.’ And then the words of affirmation from my friends and family, like, ‘You can’t give up, this is your dream, this is what you want to do,’ that just kept me going throughout the whole time.”

There were moments when the thought of quitting almost came true.

“I would say initially when the injury would first happen — like when it happened the third time, and because I just came back from being out for 15 months and then it happened again — it was initially like, ‘I can’t do this again, I don’t want to do this again,’” he said. “And then, after the next day, I had to talk to the surgeon. I was like, ‘No, I’m gonna get back to it.’”

Inter Miami backed that resolve.

“It was actually a week after, I think, I tore my ACL — they re-signed me, they re-signed me to a new contract through my option year, and that just spoke volumes [about] how much trust they had in me,” Fray said. “They were by my side the whole time. I thank them for that a lot.”

When health finally returned, so did the fire.

“It was just, it felt like a fire, you know — I was out for so long,” he said. “I was out for 12 months at a time, three separate times.”

“When I finally got back on the pitch, it was like, this is what I love to do,” Fray added. I’ve been watching the game for so long, seeing other people play in the position I wanna play in, knowing I could be there and help the team and build my career. It was really tough for me, so when I finally got the chance to go on the field, it was just like — it all happened. It was amazing, super quick.”

The Debut and the Climb

Fray’s MLS debut came in 2023 against Nashville SC, when he came on as a substitute and played right center back under then-coach Phil Neville.

“It was a surreal moment for me,” he said. “I’ll never forget that day. It was really important.”

His first professional goal came against D.C. United.

“I received the ball at the top of the box, one touch, and then hit it to the far-left side in this beautiful stadium (Chase Stadium),” he recalled. “A lot of memories.”

Even after everything, the MLS Cup wasn’t something Fray let himself picture during the injury years.

“Honestly, that’s not something I thought about when I was going through the injuries,” he said. “It was just like; I was just happy to play. My main goal was just getting back on the field, staying healthy, and the MLS Cup came along the way — it was just the cherry on top.”

Sharing a locker room with some of the sport’s most decorated professionals, like Lionel Messi, raised his own bar.

“It’s with a lot of things. Most of the things are also off the pitch, how he (Messi) eats, how he trains his body. He’s in the gym all the time, and his mentality,” he said.

One memory involving Messi particularly stayed with him.

Fray recalled Messi returning to training almost immediately after winning the Ballon d’Or in 2023.

It was a reminder that greatness doesn’t eliminate the need to work.

“He’s still doing it,” Fray said. “It shows how much he loves the game and respects everyone.”

Playing alongside soccer legends like Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets and Casemiro also helped the Jamaican National player improve his play on the pitch.

“When you lose the ball, they give you slack, and you just have to kind of deal with that. I think that was the biggest issue for me at first — dealing with that type of criticism, which makes you learn,” he said. “They obviously want the best, and they hold you to their standard, which has made me grow so much as a player — not wanting to miss a pass, not wanting to miss a tackle.”

“They’ve instilled that in a lot of the guys here.”

What’s Next

Inter Miami’s 2026 season has had its ups and downs, including an eight-match unbeaten streak followed by a five-game winless run, but Fray isn’t rattled.

“We’re the MLS champs,” he said. “We’re still second place in the league, which could tell you a lot. We’re gonna bounce back, and it’s not a problem.”

Looking further out, Fray’s ambitions point toward Europe.

“That’s my end goal, to go play in Europe,” he said. “I always — that’s my dream since I was a kid, and I’ve communicated that to the club. But I’m very happy here right now. It’s just in the future — that’s where I wanna be.”

Asked where he sees himself in five years, the answer came quickly: “Champions League.”

It’s a career defined by more than talent. It’s defined by refusal to quit after being cut, to quit after a third ACL tear, or to let go of a dream of playing in Europe that remains ahead of him. Fray’s story isn’t finished.

Hubo contratiempos, cirugías y momentos en los que el joven de 23 años se preguntó si podría seguir adelante. Sufrió tres roturas del ligamento cruzado anterior, cinco cirugías de rodilla y pasó aproximadamente tres temporadas alejado de las canchas.

Pero también hubo un sueño.

En 2026, Fray será campeón de la Major League Soccer con el Inter Miami CF. Apenas está comenzando a escribir su historia profesional, y su objetivo sigue siendo el mismo que tenía de niño: jugar en Europa.

El fútbol corre por las venas

La relación de Fray con el fútbol comenzó incluso antes de que pisara un terreno de juego.

“Mis padres se conocieron jugando al fútbol en la Universidad de Hartford”, dijo Fray. “Mi padre estaba en el equipo masculino, mi madre en el femenino, luego se casaron, tuvieron hijos y los tres jugamos al fútbol”.

Criado en Coconut Creek, Fray comenzó su carrera cerca de casa.

“Había una liga recreativa en Coconut Creek, justo al lado de mi casa, así que jugué allí cuando era muy pequeño”, dijo.

Sin embargo, el camino de Fray a través del sistema de la academia no fue fácil.

“Jugué en el Weston FC cuando era más joven”, dijo. “Y al final me echaron del equipo. Me echaron de la academia”.

En lugar de marcharse, Fray fichó por un nuevo club.

“Al final encontré un nuevo equipo en Miramar. Así que jugué para Miramar durante un tiempo, dos años, y luego surgió la oportunidad en Inter Miami —hubo pruebas de selección— y desde entonces he estado en la academia, y a partir de ahí he ido ascendiendo”, dijo.

El trabajo detrás del sueño

El ascenso de Fray no se basó únicamente en el talento. Él describe su desarrollo como años de trabajo, a menudo con su padre llevándolo de vuelta al campo después de los entrenamientos del club.

Con el tiempo, el fútbol se convirtió en una prioridad mayor que la escuela.

“Abandoné el instituto en mi penúltimo año”, dijo. “Siempre fue así: mi padre me llevaba al campo después de los entrenamientos con mi equipo. Era mucho trabajo, pero me encantaba. En aquel entonces, disfrutaba más que los estudios. Fue muy beneficioso para mí”.

Tras abandonar la competición, la mentalidad de Fray era convertirse en profesional o fracasar, y así fue como se mantuvo concentrado y motivado.

Tres lesiones de ligamento cruzado anterior, una remontada.

Si el ascenso de Fray tuvo una verdadera prueba, no fue una prueba de selección, sino sus rodillas. Cinco cirugías de rodilla. Tres roturas del ligamento cruzado anterior. Casi tres temporadas completas perdidas por recuperación. En un periodo, estuvo de baja durante 15 meses, solo para que la lesión reapareciera casi inmediatamente después de su regreso.

“Tengo un círculo de apoyo muy bueno a mi alrededor, amigos cercanos y familia, y eso fue lo más importante que me ayudó a salir adelante”, dijo. “Cada vez que sentía dudas, o había momentos en los que me decía un montón de cosas a mí mismo, me decía: ‘No puedo hacer esto otra vez. Esto va a ser demasiado difícil’. Y luego las palabras de aliento de mis amigos y familiares, como ‘No puedes rendirte, este es tu sueño, esto es lo que quieres hacer’, eso fue lo que me mantuvo en pie durante todo el proceso”.

Hubo momentos en que la idea de renunciar estuvo a punto de hacerse realidad.

“Diría que al principio, cuando me lesionaba por primera vez —como la tercera vez, justo después de haber estado 15 meses de baja— pensaba: ‘No puedo volver a hacerlo, no quiero volver a hacerlo’”, dijo. “Pero al día siguiente tuve que hablar con el cirujano. Le dije: ‘No, voy a volver a jugar’”.

El Inter Miami respaldó esa determinación.

“Creo que fue una semana después de que me rompiera el ligamento cruzado anterior; me volvieron a contratar, me renovaron el contrato hasta el último año, y eso demostró la gran confianza que tenían en mí”, dijo Fray. “Estuvieron a mi lado todo el tiempo. Les estoy muy agradecido por eso”.

Cuando finalmente recuperó la salud, también se apagó el fuego.

“Era como un incendio, ¿sabes? Estuve fuera durante mucho tiempo”, dijo. “Estuve fuera durante 12 meses seguidos, en tres ocasiones distintas”.

“Cuando finalmente volví a la cancha, pensé: ‘Esto es lo que me apasiona’”, añadió Fray. “Llevo mucho tiempo viendo fútbol, ​​viendo a otros jugar en la posición en la que quiero jugar, sabiendo que podría estar ahí, ayudar al equipo y construir mi carrera. Fue muy duro para mí, así que cuando por fin tuve la oportunidad de volver al campo, fue como si todo hubiera sucedido. Fue increíble, todo pasó rapidísimo”.

El debut y el ascenso

El debut de Fray en la MLS se produjo en 2023 contra el Nashville SC, cuando entró como suplente y jugó como defensa central derecho bajo las órdenes del entonces entrenador Phil Neville.

“Fue un momento surrealista para mí”, dijo. “Nunca olvidaré ese día. Fue realmente importante”.

Su primer gol como profesional lo marcó contra el DC United.

“Recibí el balón en la frontal del área, con un solo toque, y luego lo mandé al extremo izquierdo en este hermoso estadio (Chase Stadium)”, recordó. “Muchos recuerdos”.

Incluso después de todo, Fray no se permitía imaginarse ganando la Copa MLS durante los años en que estuvo lesionado.

“Sinceramente, no pensé en eso cuando estaba lidiando con las lesiones”, dijo. “Simplemente estaba feliz de poder jugar. Mi principal objetivo era volver a la cancha, mantenerme sano, y la Copa MLS llegó en el camino; fue la guinda del pastel”.

Compartir vestuario con algunos de los profesionales más laureados de este deporte, como Lionel Messi, elevó su propio listón.

“Tiene que ver con muchas cosas. La mayoría también se dan fuera del campo, como su alimentación, su entrenamiento físico. Está en el gimnasio todo el tiempo, y su mentalidad”, dijo.

Un recuerdo en particular, relacionado con Messi, se le quedó grabado.

Fray recordó que Messi volvió a entrenar casi inmediatamente después de ganar el Balón de Oro en 2023.

Fue un recordatorio de que la grandeza no elimina la necesidad de trabajar.

“Sigue haciéndolo”, dijo Fray. “Eso demuestra lo mucho que ama el juego y el respeto que le tiene a todo el mundo”.

Jugar junto a leyendas del fútbol como Jordi Alba, Sergio Busquets y Casemiro también ayudó al jugador de la selección jamaicana a mejorar su rendimiento en el terreno de juego.

“Cuando pierdes el balón, te dan un respiro y simplemente tienes que lidiar con eso. Creo que ese fue mi mayor problema al principio: lidiar con ese tipo de críticas, que te hacen aprender”, dijo. “Obviamente quieren lo mejor y te exigen lo mejor, lo que me ha hecho crecer mucho como jugador: no quiero fallar un pase, no quiero fallar una entrada”.

“Eso se lo han inculcado a muchos de los chicos de aquí.”

¿Qué sigue?

La temporada 2026 del Inter Miami ha tenido sus altibajos, incluyendo una racha de ocho partidos invicto seguida de una racha de cinco partidos sin ganar, pero Fray no se inmuta.

“Somos los campeones de la MLS”, dijo. “Seguimos segundos en la liga, lo que dice mucho. Nos vamos a recuperar, y no hay problema”.

Mirando más allá, las ambiciones de Fray apuntan hacia Europa.

“Mi objetivo final es jugar en Europa”, dijo. “Siempre ha sido mi sueño desde niño, y se lo he comunicado al club. Pero ahora mismo estoy muy contento aquí. Es solo cuestión de futuro; ahí es donde quiero estar”.

Cuando le preguntaron dónde se veía dentro de cinco años, respondió rápidamente: “En la Liga de Campeones”.

Su carrera se define por algo más que talento. Se define por su negativa a rendirse tras ser despedido, tras sufrir una tercera rotura del ligamento cruzado anterior, o por su negativa a abandonar el sueño de jugar en Europa, un sueño que aún le queda por cumplir. La historia de Fray no ha terminado.

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The Hurricanes reached the CFP National Championship Game last season before coming up short to Indiana and Fernando Mendoza, raising expectations around a program that enters the new season with plenty of attention.

But Cristobal rejected the idea that Miami should view itself as having a target on its back.

“I’ve never subscribed to that narrative. Honestly, if anyone thinks like that or talks like that, they should, they should be tossed out of the building,” said Cristobal. “If anyone is raised like that, they are not wired to be at the University of Miami.”

“Here you wake up every single day thinking ‘I’m gonna do my best to do whatever it takes to be one and know and whatever comes with that.’ The other stuff, the betta, and I mean, we don’t go that route,” he added.

Cristobal’s preferred approach is to remain aggressive rather than allow his players to become consumed with the idea that opponents are coming after them.

The Hurricanes will travel to Stanford for their season opener on Friday.

The full one-on-one interview with Cristobal will air as part of a season-opening kickoff special on Local 10 Thursday night at 8 p.m., ahead of Miami’s opener at Stanford on Friday at 9 p.m.

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The respected Trimbos Institute said that several of the pills have been handed in recently at a network of centers that test drugs for users before they take them.

“Absolutely do not use these pills,” the institute warned.

It released a photo of the pills that have a depiction of Trump's head on one side and on the other side “NL” and “Trump” stamped into the surface either side of a vertical line. One of the pills has a green face and another is yellow.

The institute warned in a “ Red Alert ” published on its website and social media that they contain a high concentration of a chemical called PMMA, or para-methoxymethamfetamine, that is similar to MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy pills.

However, PMMA is slower working than MDMA and that could lead users to take more because they think that the first pill didn't work, leading to a risk of overdosing, the institute said, adding that use of the pills “can lead to overheating with possibly deadly consequences.”

Spokesperson Anniek Groothuis said that the institute has no reported cases of serious illness or fatalities among people who may have used the drug.

“We do not know of any victims where PMMA was found in their blood,” she told The Associated Press.

Producing, selling and using ecstasy is illegal in the Netherlands, but it's widely used, particularly at clubs and music festivals. A government report in 2024 said that some 550,000 people took the drug in a year.

It's not the first time ecstasy pills in the form of Trump’s head have appeared. In 2017, German police seized thousands of orange Trump-shaped tablets.

Los Hurricanes llegaron al Juego por el Campeonato Nacional del CFP la temporada pasada antes de caer ante Indiana y Fernando Mendoza, lo que elevó las expectativas en torno a un programa que inicia la nueva temporada con mucha atención.

Pero Cristobal rechazó la idea de que Miami deba verse a sí mismo como un equipo que tiene un blanco en la espalda.

“Nunca he creído en esa narrativa. Sinceramente, si alguien piensa así o habla así, debería, debería ser expulsado del edificio”, dijo Cristobal. “Si alguien fue criado de esa manera, no está hecho para estar en la Universidad de Miami”.

“Aquí te despiertas todos los días pensando: “Voy a hacer todo lo posible, cueste lo que cueste, para ser el número uno y saber todo lo que eso conlleva”. Lo demás, lo de ser la presa, quiero decir, nosotros no vamos por ese camino”, agregó.

El enfoque que prefiere Cristobal es mantenerse agresivo en lugar de permitir que sus jugadores se obsesionen con la idea de que los rivales vienen por ellos.

Los Hurricanes viajarán a Stanford para su primer partido de la temporada el viernes.

La entrevista individual completa con Cristobal se transmitirá como parte de un especial de inicio de temporada en Local 10 el jueves por la noche a las 8 p.m., antes del partido inaugural de Miami en Stanford el viernes a las 9 p.m.

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Miami Gardens detectives suspect Richard Nieves, Jr. was in his black 2004 Dodge Ram during the shooting at the Goodwill Superstore in Miami Gardens, according to a police report.

Surveillance video shows Nieves, who lives in Miami-Dade’s Westview neighborhood, outside of the Goodwill Superstore, at 19300 NW 27 Ave., according to the police report.

Nieves “punched the victim and became involved in a physical altercation with him ... returned to the pickup truck and drove toward the rear of the Goodwill,” the police officer wrote, according to the arrest report.

Nieves, who was released from prison in 2014, was under a probation that was set to end on June 23, 2028, according to the Florida Department of Corrections.

On June 24, Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Carlos Humberto Gamez sentenced Nieves to probation after he was convicted of possession of a firearm, concealed weapon, or ammunition by a felon in Miami-Dade, according to court records.

Nieves also had convictions for trafficking heroin and grand theft motor vehicle in 2010, possession of more than 20 grams of marijuana in 2011, battery in 2015, and cocaine possession in 2016, according to court records.

On Thursday, Nieves was in his 2004 Dodge Ram when he “fired a firearm ... striking the victim,” a police officer wrote, according to the arrest report.

An air ambulance flew the victim to the HCA Florida Aventura Hospital, according to police.

Police officers detained Nieves for questioning and arrested him at 10 p.m. on Thursday at the Miami Gardens Police Department headquarters, records show.

Miami-Dade corrections booked Nieves shortly after 12:45 a.m. on Friday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, according to inmate records. Nieves faced a charge of first-degree attempted murder. His bond was $10,000. Court records show Gamez was set to preside over the new case.

Local 10 News Assignment Editor Mercedes Cevallos contributed to this report.

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Today, that decision continues to have an impact on a family that might not otherwise exist.

“My aunt donated her bone marrow to my mom, and that’s the reason that I’m here today,” said Vianca Perez, an advocate for bone marrow donations.

Perez’s mother, Liudmila Esquerdo, was just 19 years old when she was diagnosed with severe aplastic anemia, a rare and potentially life-threatening blood disorder.

Doctors initially tried treatments to get her bone marrow to respond.

“That did not work, and that’s when they were looking for a donor,” Esquerdo said.

Her younger sister, Ivette Esquerdo, turned out to be a perfect match.

“I was blessed that my sister — all 10 of those components — were 100% matched,” Liudmila Esquerdo said.

Ivette agreed to donate her bone marrow. She was just 16.

Before the transplant, Liudmila endured lengthy hospital stays and difficult treatments as her family stayed close and hoped for a successful outcome.

Even after the transplant, there was no guarantee it would work.

“July 24, 1995, it was the very last day and my bone marrow wasn’t reacting,” Liudmila recalled.

Her family began to lose hope.

Then, at the last moment, something changed.

“We had lost hope, and that last minute the bone marrow started to work,” she said.

For Liudmila, it became a second birthday.

“It’s the day their body accepted that bone marrow,” she said.

The transplant did more than save Liudmila’s life. It allowed her to go on to have a family, including daughter Vianca and younger son Gabriel.

Liudmila never forgot the other patients she met during her treatment who did not survive.

“While I was going through this process, so many people passed away in the bone marrow transplant center that I knew for sure that if I lived, I needed to pay it forward,” she said.

In 2018, she decided how she would do it: by starting the Get Redd Foundation.

The nonprofit works with people affected by rare blood disorders, providing support while also raising awareness about stem cell and bone marrow donation.

“We find out how we can help, but more than anything, how can we give you the hope that healing is possible and that miracles are for today,” Liudmila said.

Get Redd hosts an annual wellness event featuring fitness and nutrition workshops while educating attendees about becoming potential donors.

Registration to become a stem cell or bone marrow donor can begin with a simple cheek swab.

“There’s no price to knowing that you were part of someone staying alive and on this earth,” Liudmila said.

The foundation also holds celebration dinners honoring survivors of rare blood disorders.

Among those honored this year was Jeff Budnechky, owner of Apocalypse BBQ in Kendall.

Budnechky is a bone marrow recipient and said his donor gave him far more than additional years of life.

“If someone didn’t take the time to donate bone marrow, if somebody hadn’t swabbed for me to have a match, there would be no Apocalypse,” Budnechky said. “There would be no Lala’s Burgers. My daughter, Eli, wouldn’t exist. There would have never been a marriage to my wife, Laura.”

It is a message Perez hopes will inspire others to consider registering.

“How people not only can save one life, but they can save a family, a lineage,” Perez said. “It’s generations really who you’re impacting.”

Local 10, Get Redd and Apocalypse BBQ are now making it easier — and tastier — for South Floridians to take the first step toward potentially becoming a donor.

People 18 and older can register below.

The first 100 people to sign up will be invited to Apocalypse BBQ in Kendall to have their cheeks swabbed and join the donor registry. In return, each participant will receive a free pulled pork sandwich.

Additional details will be sent to the first 100 people who register.

For Liudmila and her family, the hope is that a simple decision today could have the same lasting impact as the one Ivette made 31 years ago — saving not just one life, but potentially generations to come.

• To donate: If you’d like to make a monetary donation toward a Good News South Florida story or project, click here. Local 10 has established the Local 10 Fund with The Miami Foundation and 100% of your donation will go toward the cause you designate in the “additional information” box.
• To volunteer or submit a story idea: If you’d like to volunteer for a Good News South Florida project or would like to submit a story for consideration, email goodnews@local10.com.

Good News South Florida airs Fridays on the Local 10 morning news at 10 a.m. It will encore Fridays at 3:30 p.m. and Sunday mornings, beginning at 6 a.m.

Hoy, esa decisión continúa teniendo un impacto en una familia que de otra manera quizás no existiría.

“Mi tía donó su médula ósea a mi mamá, y esa es la razón por la que estoy aquí hoy”, dijo Vianca Perez, defensora de las donaciones de médula ósea.

La madre de Perez, Liudmila Esquerdo, tenía apenas 19 años cuando fue diagnosticada con anemia aplásica severa, un trastorno sanguíneo poco común y potencialmente mortal.

Inicialmente, los médicos probaron tratamientos para lograr que su médula ósea respondiera.

“Eso no funcionó, y fue entonces cuando comenzaron a buscar un donante”, dijo Esquerdo.

Su hermana menor, Ivette Esquerdo, resultó ser completamente compatible.

“Tuve la bendición de que mi hermana, en esos 10 componentes, fuera 100% compatible”, dijo Liudmila Esquerdo.

Ivette aceptó donar su médula ósea. Tenía apenas 16 años.

Antes del trasplante, Liudmila soportó largas estadías en el hospital y difíciles tratamientos mientras su familia permanecía a su lado y esperaba un resultado exitoso.

Incluso después del trasplante, no había garantía de que funcionara.

“El 24 de julio de 1995 era el último día y mi médula ósea no estaba reaccionando”, recordó Liudmila.

Su familia comenzó a perder la esperanza.

Entonces, en el último momento, algo cambió.

“Habíamos perdido la esperanza, y en ese último minuto la médula ósea comenzó a funcionar”, dijo.

Para Liudmila, se convirtió en un segundo cumpleaños.

“Es el día en que su cuerpo aceptó esa médula ósea”, dijo.

El trasplante hizo más que salvar la vida de Liudmila. Le permitió formar una familia, incluida su hija Vianca y su hijo menor Gabriel.

Liudmila nunca olvidó a los otros pacientes que conoció durante su tratamiento y que no sobrevivieron.

“Mientras atravesaba este proceso, muchas personas fallecieron en el centro de trasplantes de médula ósea, y sabía con certeza que si vivía, necesitaba devolver ese favor”, dijo.

En 2018, decidió cómo lo haría: creando Get Redd Foundation.

La organización sin fines de lucro trabaja con personas afectadas por trastornos sanguíneos poco comunes, brindándoles apoyo y al mismo tiempo creando conciencia sobre la donación de células madre y médula ósea.

“Descubrimos cómo podemos ayudar, pero más que nada, cómo podemos darte la esperanza de que la sanación es posible y que los milagros ocurren hoy”, dijo Liudmila.

Get Redd organiza un evento anual de bienestar que incluye talleres de acondicionamiento físico y nutrición, mientras educa a los asistentes sobre cómo convertirse en posibles donantes.

El registro para convertirse en donante de células madre o médula ósea puede comenzar con un simple hisopado de mejilla.

“No hay precio para saber que fuiste parte de que alguien siga vivo y en esta tierra”, dijo Liudmila.

La fundación también organiza cenas de celebración en honor a sobrevivientes de trastornos sanguíneos poco comunes.

Entre los homenajeados este año estuvo Jeff Budnechky, propietario de Apocalypse BBQ en Kendall.

Budnechky recibió un trasplante de médula ósea y dijo que su donante le dio mucho más que años adicionales de vida.

“Si alguien no se hubiera tomado el tiempo de donar médula ósea, si alguien no se hubiera hecho un hisopado para que yo pudiera encontrar una persona compatible, Apocalypse no existiría”, dijo Budnechky. “Lala’s Burgers no existiría. Mi hija, Eli, no existiría. Nunca me habría casado con mi esposa, Laura”.

Es un mensaje que Perez espera que inspire a otros a considerar registrarse.

“Cómo las personas no solo pueden salvar una vida, sino que pueden salvar una familia, un linaje”, dijo Perez. “Realmente son generaciones en las que estás teniendo un impacto”.

Local 10, Get Redd y Apocalypse BBQ ahora están facilitando, y haciendo más sabroso, que los residentes del sur de Florida den el primer paso para potencialmente convertirse en donantes.

Las personas mayores de 18 años pueden registrarse a continuación.

Las primeras 100 personas que se registren serán invitadas a Apocalypse BBQ en Kendall para realizarse un hisopado de mejilla e ingresar al registro de donantes. A cambio, cada participante recibirá gratis un sándwich de cerdo desmenuzado.

Se enviarán detalles adicionales a las primeras 100 personas que se registren.

Para Liudmila y su familia, la esperanza es que una simple decisión tomada hoy pueda tener el mismo impacto duradero que la que tomó Ivette hace 31 años, salvando no solo una vida, sino potencialmente a generaciones futuras.

• Para donar: Si desea hacer una donación monetaria para una historia o proyecto de Good News South Florida, haga clic aquí. Local 10 ha establecido el Local 10 Fund con The Miami Foundation y el 100% de su donación se destinará a la causa que usted indique en el recuadro de “información adicional”.
• Para ser voluntario o enviar una idea para una historia: Si desea ser voluntario en un proyecto de Good News South Florida o enviar una historia para que sea considerada, envíe un correo electrónico a goodnews@local10.com.

Good News South Florida se transmite los viernes en el noticiero matutino de Local 10 a las 10 a.m. Se volverá a transmitir los viernes a las 3:30 p.m. y los domingos por la mañana, a partir de las 6 a.m.

Detectives de Miami Gardens sospechan que Richard Nieves, Jr. se encontraba en su Dodge Ram 2004 negro durante la balacera en la tienda Goodwill Superstore de Miami Gardens, según un informe policial.

Un video de vigilancia muestra a Nieves, quien vive en el vecindario Westview de Miami-Dade, afuera de la tienda Goodwill Superstore, ubicada en 19300 NW 27 Ave., según el informe policial.

Nieves “golpeó a la víctima con el puño y se involucró en un altercado físico con él, regresó a la camioneta y condujo hacia la parte trasera de Goodwill”, escribió el agente, según el informe de arresto.

Nieves, quien fue liberado de prisión en 2014, se encontraba bajo libertad condicional que estaba programada para finalizar el 23 de junio de 2028, según el Departamento de Correcciones de Florida.

El 24 de junio, el juez de circuito del condado Miami-Dade Carlos Humberto Gamez sentenció a Nieves a libertad condicional después de que fuera declarado culpable de posesión de un arma de fuego, arma oculta o municiones por parte de un delincuente en Miami-Dade, según registros judiciales.

Nieves también tenía condenas por tráfico de heroína y hurto mayor de vehículo motorizado en 2010, posesión de más de 20 gramos de marihuana en 2011, agresión en 2015 y posesión de cocaína en 2016, según registros judiciales.

El jueves, Nieves se encontraba en su Dodge Ram 2004 cuando “disparó un arma de fuego, alcanzando a la víctima”, escribió un agente, según el informe de arresto.

Una ambulancia aérea trasladó a la víctima al HCA Florida Aventura Hospital, según la policía.

Agentes detuvieron a Nieves para interrogarlo y lo arrestaron a las 10 p.m. del jueves en la sede del Departamento de Policía de Miami Gardens, según muestran los registros.

El Departamento de Correcciones de Miami-Dade ingresó a Nieves poco después de las 12:45 a.m. del viernes en el Centro Correccional Turner Guilford Knight, según registros de reclusos. Nieves enfrentaba un cargo de intento de asesinato en primer grado. Su fianza fue fijada en $10,000 USD. Los registros judiciales muestran que Gamez estaba programado para presidir el nuevo caso.

La editora de asignaciones de Local 10 News, Mercedes Cevallos, contribuyó a este reporte.

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Below is a list of places that recently accumulated 29 or more violations during an unannounced, routine food safety inspection.

That is unacceptable.

Do better!

**FONTANA RESTAURANT

BILTMORE HOTEL

1200 ANASTASIA AVE.

CORAL GABLES

INSPECTION DATE 8/27

37 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Food contaminated by employees/consumers and operator continued to serve food. See stop sale. observed a used water bottle buried in the ice bin used to make drinks. Manager removed bottle and discarded ice.”

“Food stored in ice used for drinks. See stop sale. Observed a used water bottle buried in the ice bin used to make drinks.”

“Self-service salad bar/buffet lacking adequate sneezeguards or other proper protection from contamination. Observed no sneeze guard provided at front buffet area. Products are: bagels, bread, yogurt, cut fruits and muffins.”

“Single-use gloves not changed as needed after changing tasks or when damaged or soiled.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed yogurt at 69°F, cut melons at 53°F in front counter buffet.”

“Toxic substance/chemical improperly stored. Observed at dry cabinet a spray with WD-40 with food.”

“Vacuum breaker missing at hose bibb or on fitting/splitter added to hose bibb. Next to dish machine.”

“Chemical test kit not used to ensure proper sanitization of equipment and utensils when using a chemical sanitizer.”

“Clam/mussel/oyster tags not marked with last date served.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Reach in cooler gaskets soiled, can opener soiled.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed utensils inside a hand sink.”

“No measuring device available for measuring utensil surface temperature when using hot water as sanitizer in a dish machine. Repeat Violation”

“No paper towels or mechanical hand drying device provided at handwash sink. Observed by coffee station entrance and other stations throughout the kitchen.”

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

“Accumulation of debris inside ware washing machine.”

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

“Bowl or other container with no handle used to dispense food. Observed bowls in different food storage containers.”

“Carbon dioxide/helium tanks not adequately secured.in soda station.”

“Cutting board has cut marks and is no longer cleanable. Observed at bread station and other areas of the kitchen.”

“Employee beverage container on a food preparation table or over/next to clean equipment/utensils. All throughout the kitchen.”

“Employee personal items stored in or above a food preparation area, food, clean equipment and utensils, or single-service items. Cell phones, purses.”

“Employee with no hair restraint while engaging in food preparation. Several employees in the kitchen.”

“Equipment in poor repair. Observed reach in cooler in the main hall way dripping water inside the unit.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside. In dishwasher room.”

“Faucet/handle missing at plumbing fixture. In pantry station.”

“Floor area(s) covered with standing water. On some areas of the kitchen.”

“Floors not maintained smooth and durable. Observed floors throughout the kitchen missing grout in most areas, cracked or broken tiles, with food debris between the tiles and some standing water in some areas due to the floor being in disrepair.”

“Hole in or other damage to wall. In front of walk in cooler located in the pantry station.”

“Ice buildup in reach-in freezer and/or walk-in freezer.”

“Ice scoop handle in contact with ice. Observed at soda station.”

“In-use knife/knives stored in cracks between pieces of equipment.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed all table fans soiled with dust, walking cooler fan covers.”

“Reach-in cooler shelves with rust that has pitted the surface.”

“Walk in cooler vents soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance.”

“Wall soiled with accumulated grease, food debris, and/or dust. In some areas of the kitchen, by dish washing rooms.”

“Wet mop not stored in a manner to allow the mop to dry.”

“Wet wiping cloth not stored in sanitizing solution between uses. Observed wet towels throughout the kitchen not kept in sanitizer solution.”

**RINCONCITO LATINO MIXTO

2502 NW 10TH AVENUE

MIAMI

INSPECTION BASED ON COMPLAINT

INSPECTION DATE 8/24

38 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Employee began working with food, handling clean equipment or utensils, or touching unwrapped single-service items without first washing hands. Observed employee come from another side of kitchen to front counter to get ice in a container without wash hands at front counter.”

“Food-contact surfaces not sanitized after cleaning, before use. Do not use equipment/utensils not properly sanitized. Observed employee washing cups at hand sink not sanitized at front counter.”

“Nonfood-grade bags used in direct contact with food. Observed pupusas and dough stored on trays inside Nonfood-grade bags stored inside walk in cooler.”

“Raw animal food stored over/not properly separated from ready-to-eat food. Observed raw fish stored over cooked beef at reach in cooler by cook line.”

“Shell eggs in use or stored with cracks or broken shells. See stop sale. Observed 4 cracked raw shell eggs across cook line reach in cooler.”

“Single-use gloves not changed as needed after changing tasks or when damaged or soiled. Observed employee changing task from cook line, to prep area, cleaning station with same gloves. Coached employee to discarded gloves and wash hands properly.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. Observed raw salmon and raw fish at reach in cooler Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. As per employee day prior.”

“Employee has not received adequate training related to their assigned duties as evidenced by the inability to answer basic food safety questions. Observed cook unable to answer the minimum cooking temperature of chicken.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed white cutting board across cook line soiled. Repeat violation.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed employee washing cups at hand sink front counter. Observed a sponge at hand sink front counter.”

“No probe thermometer provided to measure temperature of food products.”

“Ready-to-eat, time/temperature control for safety food prepared onsite and held more than 24 hours not properly date marked. Observed desserts at front counter cooler, tiramisu, Tres leches, flan and arroz con leche not dated. As per manager prepared a day prior. Observed cooked pork and cooked chicken not dated at walk in cooler. As per employee two days prior. Employee started dating containers. Repeat violation.”

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

“Accumulation of debris inside ware washing machine.”

“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 all vents soiled throughout the establishment. Repeat violation.”

“Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. Observed raw salmon and raw fish pargo at reach in cooler Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. As per employee day prior.”

“Cutting board has cut marks and is no longer cleanable. Observed by ware washing area under steamer shelves. Repeat violation,”

“Employee eating in a food preparation or other restricted area. Observed employee drinking coffee at front counter by coffee machine.”

“Equipment in poor repair. Observed reach in cooler gaskets torn across cook line.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside. Observed by back exit door. Repeat violation.”

“Floor area(s) covered with standing water. Observed standing water on floor by ware washing area and cook line.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Observed floor heavily soiled under shelves by storage room. Observed floor heavily soiled with accumulation of grease under cook line. Repeat violation.”

“Ice buildup in reach-in freezer and/or walk-in freezer. Observed reach in freezer by front counter.”

“Ice scoop handle in contact with ice. Observed ice scoop handle touching ice by ice machine outside.”

“No conspicuously located ambient air temperature thermometer in holding unit. Across cook line.”

“No container installed for catching grease from hood drip tray.”

“No handwashing sign provided at a hand sink used by food employees. Observed no sign at hand sink by front counter by coffee machine.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed reach in cooler gaskets soiled across cook line. Observed reach in cooler drawers under cook line soiled. Repeat violation.”

“Opened employee beverage container in a cold holding unit with food to be served to customers. Observed an employee plastic bottle beverage stored inside reach in cooler front counter by dining.”

“Screen in door torn/in poor repair. Observed back exit screen door torn.”

“Standing water in bottom of reach-in-cooler. Observed standing water inside reach in cooler across cook line.”

“Stored food not covered. Observed cooked pork and cooked beef not covered at reach in cooler and walk in cooler. Repeat violation.”

“Wall soiled with accumulated grease, food debris, and/or dust. Observed wall rusted by three compartment sink.”

“Wet mop not stored in a manner to allow the mop to dry. Observed wet mop stored inside mop bucket by storage room. Repeat violation.”

“Wet wiping cloth not stored in sanitizing solution between uses. Observed several wet cloths stored on top of reach in freezer by front counter. Repeat violation.”

“Wet wiping cloths used for occasional spills on equipment food- and nonfood-contact surfaces not clean. Observe a wet cloths stored soiled at cook line under grilled.”

“Working containers of food removed from original container not identified by common name. Observed flour and sugar container not labeled by walk in cooler entrance.”

**PANADERIA COLUMBIANA MI CALI

2350 WEST 60TH ST.

HIALEAH

INSPECTION DATE 8/24

32 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Food stored in ice used for drinks. See stop sale. Observed employees bottle water stored inside ice machine. Warning.”

“Shell eggs not stored at an ambient air temperature of 45 degrees Fahrenheit or less. Observed raw shell eggs on top of preparation table, for less than 4 hours as per operator.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Food stored in ice used for drinks. See stop sale. Observed employees bottle water stored inside ice machine.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food, other than whole meat roast, hot held at less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed meatballs (120F - Hot Holding); white rice (110F - Hot Holding); sancocho (109F - Hot Holding); yuca (120F - Hot Holding); cooked beef (113F - Hot Holding), for less than 4 hours as per operator. Operator reheated at 165°F.”

“Wiping cloth sanitizer solution exceeds the maximum concentration allowed. Observed wet wiping towels on chlorine sanitizer solution of 200 ppm, operator redo the sanitizer bucket, recheck 100 ppm.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed plastic container inside hand sink.”

“No paper towels or mechanical hand drying device provided at handwash sink.”

“No soap provided at handwash sink.”

“Probe thermometer not accurate within plus or minus 2 degrees Fahrenheit.”

“Proof of required state approved employee training not available for some employees.”

“Ready-to-eat, time/temperature control for safety food prepared onsite and held more than 24 hours not properly date marked. Observed cooked beef, dessert, sancocho, was prepared from more than 24 hours as per operator.”

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

“Bathroom located inside establishment not completely enclosed with tight-fitting, self-closing doors.”

“Ceiling/ceiling tile shows damage or is in disrepair. Water damage in the kitchen.”

“Clean utensils or equipment stored in a bathroom, locker room or mechanical room. Observed clean bowl, plate and to go container in employees bathroom.”

“Covered waste receptacle not provided in women’s bathroom.”

“Employee drinking from an unenclosed beverage container in a food preparation/clean dishware area and the container does not have a dispensing mechanism to prevent hand contact with lip contact area of drink container. Observed employee drink from open bottle water, instructed operator regarding cross contamination.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside.”

“Floor tiles missing and/or in disrepair.”

“Floors not maintained smooth and durable.”

“Food stored in a prohibited area. Observed avocado and pineapple stored inside employees bathroom.”

“Food stored on floor. Observed pots white rice, container with onions on the kitchen floor, operator properly stored it.”

“Hole in or other damage to wall. Bathroom wall and underneath of three compartment sink.”

“Interior of oven/microwave has accumulation of black substance/grease/food debris.”

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

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Hood soiled.”

“Plumbing system in disrepair. Observed hot water handle on disrepair, located in the bathroom.”

“Reach-in cooler shelves with rust that has pitted the surface.”

“Unsealed concrete floor in food preparation, food storage, ware washing area or bathroom.”

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

“Wet wiping cloth not stored in sanitizing solution between uses. Observed multiple wet wiping towels on top of preparation table.”

“Working containers of food removed from original container not identified by common name. Sugar container.”

**FIVE SPICE VIETNAMESE PHO AND SUSHI BAR

1801 NE 8TH ST.

HOMESTEAD

INSPECTION DATE 8/21

31 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Employee failed to wash hands before putting on gloves to initiate a task working with food. Observed food employee put on gloves without first washing her hands to plate soup to serve to customers.”

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

“Employee washed hands with cold water. Observed employee washed hands with cold water at sushi bar handwash sink.”

“Live, small flying insects found. Observed 2 live flies land on container with beans sprouts at preparation table.”

“Raw animal food stored over/not properly separated from ready-to-eat food. Observed raw beef stored over sweet and sour sauce at reach in cooler in the cook line.”

“Single-use gloves not changed as needed after changing tasks or when damaged or soiled. Observed employee wash metal container with gloves on and then proceeded to touch ready to eat carrots pickles with same gloves.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Single-use gloves not changed as needed after changing tasks or when damaged or soiled. Observed employee wash metal container with gloves on and then proceeded to touch ready to eat carrots pickles with same gloves.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed cook brisket (46F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across cook line, as per manager less than 2 hours. Observed cook shrimp (58F - Cold Holding) at reach in cooler across cook line, as per operator for an hour.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food, other than whole meat roast, hot held at less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed tapioca (85F - Hot Holding) near sealer machine.”

“Employee washed hands in a sink other than an approved handwash sink. Observed employee washing her hands in the triple sink.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed handwash sink needs to the triple used to store container with soap.”

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

“Non-pitting surface rust on food-contact equipment. Observed shelves at walk in cooler.”

“Probe thermometer not used to ensure proper food temperatures of cooked time/temperature control for safety food. Manager unable to find thermometer at time of inspection.”

“Water with a temperature of least 85 degrees Fahrenheit not provided/shut off at employee handwash sink. Observed water at sushi bar 83F.”

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

“Accumulation of debris inside ware washing machine.”

“Accumulation of debris on exterior of ware washing machine. Observed floor the top of the dishwasher soiled.”

“Ceiling/ceiling tiles/vents soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance. Observed black fan next to prep tables soiled with accumulated dust.”

“Clean glasses, cups, bowls, plates, pots and pans not stored inverted or in a protected manner. Observed metal pots not inverted at dry storage area.”

“Employee eating in a food preparation or other restricted area. Observed employee eating a protein bar at cook line.”

“Employee with no hair restraint while engaging in food preparation. Repeat violation.”

“Equipment and utensils not washed, rinsed and sanitized in the correct order in three-compartment sink. Do not use dishes/equipment not properly sanitized.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside. Observed gap on the right side, left side and bottom of exit door.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Observed floor under shelf at walk in cooler has accumulation of debris.”

“Food not stored at least 6 inches off of the floor. Observed a box of avocados stored on floor under prep table with microwave.”

“Interior of oven/microwave has accumulation of black substance/grease/food debris. Observed toaster at sushi bar heavily soiled with old food debris.”

“No Heimlich maneuver/choking sign posted. Provided operator with choking poster via email.”

“No copy of latest inspection report available.”

“Wet mop not stored in a manner to allow the mop to dry.”

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

**CAFE PANISSE

7310 SW 57TH AVE.

SOUTH MIAMI

INSPECTION DATE 8/26

33 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Employee touching ready-to-eat food with their bare hands - food was not being heated as a sole ingredient to 145 degrees F or immediately added to other ingredients to be cooked/heated to the minimum required temperature to allow bare hand contact. Establishment has no approved Alternative Operating Procedure.”

“Observed employee plate salad with bare hands with no approved AOP. Observed employee touch FCS of spoon with bare hands and use same spoon to handle gorgonzola cheese.”

“Pesticide/insecticide labeled for household use only present in establishment. Observed can of raid in storage room where walk in cooler is located.”

“Stop Sale issued due to adulteration of food product. Observed cooked steak on cloth towel resting. Observed employee plate salad with bare hands with no approved AOP. Observed employee touch FCS of spoon with bare hands and use same spoon to handle gorgonzola cheese.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Observed 4 tuna filet thawed in ROP. Repeat violation.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed at front counter: shredded cheese (55F - Cold Holding); cut tomato (49F - Cold Holding); gorgonzola (52F - Cold Holding); roasted red peppers (51F - Cold Holding). As per operator, less than 4 hours at cooler.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food, other than whole meat roast, hot held at less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed at cook line: fish (102F - Hot Holding). As per chef, less than 1 hour, cook removed from under cook line.”

“Establishment has no written procedures for employees to follow in response to a vomiting or diarrheal event where the vomit or diarrhea is discharged onto surfaces in the establishment.”

“Establishment not maintaining clam/mussel/oyster tags for 90 days. Observed mussels with tags missing last date of sale. Repeat violation.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed soiled dry food shelves. Repeat violation warning”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed knife stored in hand sink at front counter.”

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

“No tag on/for original container of raw, in-shell clams/mussels/oysters. See stop sale. Observed container of mussels with their original tag. Manager has tag marked with receiving date and found tag for batch.”

“Non-pitting surface rust on food-contact equipment. Observed on food and dish racks. Repeat violation”

“Buildup of food debris/soil residue on equipment door handles. Observed cooler handles soiled.”

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

“Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. See stop sale. Observed 4 tuna filet thawed in ROP. Repeat violation.”

“Employee beverage container on a food preparation table or over/next to clean equipment/utensils. Observed Red Bull on drink cooler. Observed Diet Coke can above soup warmer.”

“Employee wearing jewelry other than a plain ring on their hands/arms while preparing food. Observed cooks on line with bracelet.”

“Equipment in poor repair. Observed torn gaskets in cooler at front counter. Repeat violation.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside. Observed at back door.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Observed behind dish machine and beer coolers at front counter.”

“Floor tiles missing and/or in disrepair. Observed under dish machine and front counter. Repeat violation warning.”

“Food stored in a prohibited area. Observed cases of wine stored in restroom. Repeat violation warning.”

“Food stored on floor. Observed cases of food on floor in walk in cooler. Warning.”

“Hole in or other damage to wall. Observed in ware wash area. Warning.”

“Interior of refrigerator or freezer in disrepair/has exposed insulation. Observed at ice machine next to dishwasher. Warning.”

“No copy of latest inspection report available. Observed no copy on site. Warning.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed exterior of equipment soiled. Observed soiled gaskets in reach in cooler. Repeat violation warning.”

“Open dumpster lid. Observed lid open at time of inspection. Warning.”

“Reach-in cooler shelves with rust that has pitted the surface. Observed in reach in cooler. Repeat violation warning.”

“Silverware/utensils stored upright with the food-contact surface up. Observed at front counter. Warning.”

“Unsealed concrete floor in food preparation, food storage, ware washing area or bathroom. Observed throughout establishment. Repeat violation warning.”

“Wall soiled with accumulated grease, food debris, and/or dust. Observed in ware wash area. Warning.”

**RINCONCITO MIAMI 2

15956 SW 137TH AVE

WEST KENDALL

INSPECTION BASED ON COMPLAINT

INSPECTION DATE 8/27

42 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Dented/rusted cans present. See stop sale. Observed 3 cans of tomato paste with rust, 111 oz Red Pack. Observed 1 can of Antonio’s red pepper strips with dent, 102 oz.”

“Food with mold-like growth. See stop sale. Observed 2 oranges with mold next to juice machine. Operator discarded during inspection.”

“Pesticide/insecticide labeled for household use only present in establishment. Observed can of raid in cabinet under hand sink where service window is.”

“Raw animal food stored over/not properly separated from ready-to-eat food. Observed raw bacon over ham and cheese in walk in cooler. Operator changed order during inspection.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food, other than whole meat roast, hot held at less than 135 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed for one hour at steam table: malanga (112F - Hot Holding). Operator put onto stove for reheating. Final temp: 175F. Repeat violation.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed dust on dry food and dish racks. Repeat violation.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed bottle in hand sink at ware wash. Observed next to prep area metal stored in hand sink. Operator removed all items during inspection. Corrected on-site repeat violation.”

“Non-pitting surface rust on food-contact equipment. Observed on dry food and dish racks. Repeat violation”

“Water with a temperature of least 85 degrees Fahrenheit not provided/shut off at employee handwash sink. Observed at front counter hand sink where coffee bar is located. Observed no hot water at hand sink in waiter station. Repeat violation.”

“Accumulation of debris inside ware washing machine. Observed interior soiled. Repeat violation.”

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

“Buildup of food debris/soil residue on equipment door handles. Observed oven handles soiled. Repeat violation.”

“Ceiling tile missing. Observed above walk in cooler.”

“Ceiling/ceiling tile shows damage or is in disrepair. Observed cracks and holes in multiple tiles. Repeat violation.”

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

“Clean utensils or equipment stored in dirty drawer or rack. Observed clean pots in ware wash on soiled rack. Repeat violation.”

“Cloth used as a food-contact surface. Observed at waiter station, cloths used as liner for glasses.”

“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 reach in cooler no longer working at kitchen entrance. As per operator, no longer working. No TCS foods stored inside. Repeat violation.”

“Cove molding at floor/wall juncture broken/missing. Observed at back exit. Observed at walk in freezer entrance. Repeat violation.”

“Employee beverage container on a food preparation table or over/next to clean equipment/utensils. Observed bottle on prep table. Operator removed from prep table.”

“Employee personal items stored in or above a food preparation area, food, clean equipment and utensils, or single-service items. Observed phone on prep table. Observed shoes above hand sink in prep area.”

“Employee wearing jewelry other than a plain ring on their hands/arms while preparing food. Observed cook with air pod. Observed cooks with watch on cook line.”

“Employee with no hair restraint while engaging in food preparation. Observed cook with no hat or net. Hair restraint was placed on head. Corrected On-Site Repeat violation.”

“Equipment in poor repair. Observed oven door handle broken.”

“Exhaust/ventilation hood system not designed to prevent grease or condensation from dripping onto food, clean equipment and utensils, and single-service items. Observed hood system soiled. Repeat violation.”

“Exterior door has a gap at the threshold that opens to the outside. Observed at both back doors. Repeat violation.”

“Hole in or other damage to wall. Observed holes in wall in kitchen and ware wash area.”

“Hot holding unit not maintained in good repair. Do not store time/temperature control for safety food in this unit until the unit is repaired. Observed warmer on dry rack in back of kitchen no longer in use.”

“Ice buildup in reach-in freezer and/or walk-in freezer. Observed in walk in freezer and both reach in freezers. Repeat violation.”

“In-use knife/knives stored in cracks between pieces of equipment. Observed at cook line between fryer and griddl.e”

“In-use tongs stored on equipment door handle between uses. Observed tongs on door at cook line. Operator removed during inspection. Corrected On-Site Repeat violation.”

“Interior of oven/microwave has accumulation of black substance/grease/food debris. Observed ovens soiled. Repeat violation.”

“Interior of refrigerator or freezer in disrepair/has exposed insulation. Observed at reach in freezer at front counter.”

“No suitable facilities provided to store employee clothing and other possessions. Observed shoes above hand sink in prep area. Operator removed from shelf. Corrected on-site repeat violation.”

“Nonfood-contact surface soiled with grease, food debris, dirt, slime or dust. Observed exterior of equipment on cook line soiled. Observed soiled gaskets in reach in cooler. Repeat violation.”

“Reach-in cooler interior/shelves have accumulation of soil residues. Observed in walk in cooler. Repeat violation.”

“Ripped/worn tin foil used as shelf cover. Observed in kitchen. Repeat violation.”

“Single-service articles stored on a soiled surface. Observed on rack across cook line, soiled shelf where single service items are held. Repeat violation.”

“Stored food not covered. Observed multiple trays of food in walk in freezer with no cover. Repeat violation.”

“Unsealed concrete floor in food preparation, food storage, ware washing area or bathroom. Observed in walk in cooler.”

“Wall soiled with accumulated grease, food debris, and/or dust. Observed throughout establishment. Repeat violation.”

“Wet mop not stored in a manner to allow the mop to dry. Observed mop in bucket; not in use. Repeat violation.”

HONORABLE MENTION

**SHAHS OF KABOB

5975 SUNSET DR.

SOUTH MIAMI

INSPECTION DATE 8/18

29 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Container of medicine improperly stored. Observed pill container on counter above prep table where employee was prepping. Operator removed bottle from site.”

“Employee touched face/hair and then engaged in food preparation, handled clean equipment or utensils, or touched unwrapped single-service items without washing hands. Observed employee rub face with hands and reached for new set of gloves. Inspector went over handwashing with operator and employee. Employee washed hands properly. Repeat violation.”

“Live, small flying insects found. Observed 6 plus live flies in employee restroom near bags of onions.”

“Raw animal food stored over/not properly separated from ready-to-eat food. Observed raw chicken above container of mayonnaise in reach in cooler.”

“Establishment has no written procedures for employees to follow in response to a vomiting or diarrheal event where the vomit or diarrhea is discharged onto surfaces in the establishment. Observed no form or kit; inspector provided via email. Warning.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed utensils stored in hand sink in employee restroom where mop sink is located. Repeat violation warning.”

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

“Observed no CFM present at time of inspection, observed 5 employees on site working. Warning.”

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

“Observed in employee restroom where mop sink is also located; toilet has been removed and replaced with shelf for dry food storage, no plans submitted or updated. Warning.”

“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 all employees on site hired within less than 60 days as per operator, no agreement form signed or present.”

“Required employee training expired for some employees.”

“Water with a temperature of least 85 degrees Fahrenheit not provided/shut off at employee handwash sink. Observed hot water turned off at kitchen hand sink.”

“Bowl or other container with no handle used to dispense food. Observed cup as scoop in rice cooker. Operator removed during inspection.”

“Ceiling/ceiling tiles/vents soiled with accumulated food debris, grease, dust, or mold-like substance. Observed interior kitchen; soiled tiles. Repeat violation warning.”

“Current Hotel and Restaurant license not displayed. Observed expired license posted. Warning.”

“Employee beverage container on a food preparation table or over/next to clean equipment/utensils. Observed water bottle on shelf above prep table. Operator tossed on site. Corrected on-site warning.”

“Employee personal food not properly identified and segregated from food to be served to the public. Observed employee food stormed above ready to eat food for customers. Employee removed items from on top of food. Corrected on-site Warning.”

“Employee personal items stored in or above a food preparation area, food, clean equipment and utensils, or single-service items. Observed phone above prep table where employee is prepping food. Employee removed from table. Corrected on-site warning.”

“Equipment in poor repair. Observed torn gasket in reach in across cook line. Repeat violation warning.”

“Floor soiled/has accumulation of debris. Observed heavily soiled floor in bathroom where food is being stored and under triple sink. Warning.”

“Food stored in a prohibited area. Observed cases of onions stored in employee restroom at time of inspection. Operator is converting it into a storage room, but no plans have been submitted or updated. Warning.”

“Food stored on floor. Observed container of berries on floor next to cook line. Operator removed from floor. Warning.”

“Food stored outside. Observed cases of soda outside of restaurant. Warning.”

“Ice buildup in reach-in freezer and/or walk-in freezer. Observed in chest freezer. Repeat violation warning.”

“In-use wet wiping cloth/towel used under cutting board. Observed under cutting board on prep table. Operator removed during inspection. Warning.”

“Interior of oven/microwave has accumulation of black substance/grease/food debris. Observed interior of microwave soiled. Repeat violation warning.”

“No Heimlich maneuver/choking sign posted. Observed no poster; inspector provided via email. Warning.”

“No copy of latest inspection report available. Observed no copy on site. Repeat violation warning.”

“Reach-in cooler shelves with rust that has pitted the surface. Observed interior multiple coolers. Repeat violation warning.”

“Wet mop not stored in a manner to allow the mop to dry. Observed mop in bucket; not in use. Warning.”

Eso es inaceptable.

¡Hazlo mejor!

**RESTAURANTE FONTANA**

HOTEL BILTMORE

1200 AVENIDA ANASTASIA.

GABLES DE CORAL

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 27/8

Se detectaron 37 infracciones.

“Se detectó contaminación de alimentos por parte de empleados/consumidores y el operador continuó sirviendo comida. Véase la orden de cese de venta. Se observó una botella de agua usada enterrada en el recipiente de hielo utilizado para preparar bebidas. El gerente retiró la botella y desechó el hielo.”

“Alimentos almacenados en hielo utilizado para bebidas. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observó una botella de agua usada enterrada en el recipiente de hielo utilizado para preparar bebidas.”

“La barra de ensaladas/buffet de autoservicio carece de protectores contra estornudos adecuados u otra protección apropiada contra la contaminación. No se observó ningún protector contra estornudos en el área del buffet frontal. Los productos son: bagels, pan, yogur, fruta cortada y muffins.”

“Guantes de un solo uso que no se cambian según sea necesario después de cambiar de tarea o cuando están dañados o sucios.”

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para garantizar la seguridad de los alimentos refrigerados a más de 5 grados Celsius (41 grados Fahrenheit). Se observó yogur a 21 °C (69 °F) y melones cortados a 12 °C (53 °F) en el bufé del mostrador.”

“Sustancia tóxica/producto químico almacenado incorrectamente. Se observó en el armario de secado un rociado con WD-40 junto con alimentos.”

Falta el interruptor de vacío en la llave de paso o en el adaptador/divisor añadido a la llave de paso. Está junto al lavavajillas.

“El kit de prueba química no se utiliza para garantizar la correcta desinfección de equipos y utensilios al usar un desinfectante químico.”

“Las etiquetas de almejas/mejillones/ostras no indican la fecha de último consumo.”

“La superficie en contacto con los alimentos está sucia con restos de comida, una sustancia parecida al moho o una sustancia viscosa. Las juntas del refrigerador están sucias, el abrelatas está sucio.”

“Lavamanos utilizado para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observaron utensilios dentro del lavamanos.”

No se dispone de ningún dispositivo para medir la temperatura de la superficie de los utensilios al utilizar agua caliente como desinfectante en el lavavajillas. Infracción reiterada.

“No se proporcionan toallas de papel ni secadores de manos mecánicos en el lavamanos. Se observó lo mismo en la entrada de la estación de café y en otras estaciones de la cocina.”

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

“Acumulación de residuos dentro de la lavadora de vajilla.”

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

“Un recipiente u otro tipo de envase sin asa que se utiliza para servir la comida. Se observaron recipientes en diferentes contenedores de almacenamiento de alimentos.”

“Los tanques de dióxido de carbono/helio no están debidamente asegurados en la estación de refrescos.”

“La tabla de cortar tiene marcas de cortes y ya no se puede limpiar. Se observó en la zona de pan y en otras áreas de la cocina.”

“Recipientes de bebidas de empleados sobre la mesa de preparación de alimentos o encima/al lado de equipos/utensilios limpios. En toda la cocina.”

“Artículos personales de los empleados almacenados en o encima de un área de preparación de alimentos, alimentos, equipos y utensilios limpios o artículos de un solo uso. Teléfonos celulares, bolsos.”

“Empleado sin sujeción para el cabello mientras preparaba alimentos. Varios empleados en la cocina.”

“El equipo está en mal estado. Se observó que el refrigerador en el pasillo principal goteaba agua en su interior.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior. En el cuarto del lavavajillas.”

“Falta el grifo/manija en el accesorio de plomería. En la despensa.”

“Zonas del suelo cubiertas de agua estancada. En algunas zonas de la cocina.”

“Los suelos no se mantienen lisos ni resistentes. Se observó que en la mayoría de las zonas de la cocina faltaba lechada, había baldosas agrietadas o rotas, restos de comida entre ellas y agua estancada en algunas áreas debido al mal estado del suelo.”

“Agujero u otro daño en la pared. Delante de la cámara frigorífica ubicada en la despensa.”

“Acumulación de hielo en el congelador vertical y/o en el congelador industrial.”

“El mango de la pala para hielo estaba en contacto con el hielo. Observado en el puesto de refrescos.”

“Cuchillo/s en uso almacenados en las grietas entre las piezas del equipo.”

“Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia de grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observaron todos los ventiladores de mesa sucios de polvo, así como las cubiertas de los ventiladores de los refrigeradores portátiles.”

“Estantes de refrigeradores con óxido que ha corroído la superficie.”

“Las rejillas de ventilación de las cámaras frigoríficas están sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho.”

“Pared sucia con grasa acumulada, restos de comida y/o polvo. En algunas zonas de la cocina, cerca de los lavaplatos.”

“La fregona mojada no se guardó de forma que permitiera que se secara.”

“Los paños húmedos no se guardaban en solución desinfectante entre usos. Se observaron toallas húmedas en toda la cocina que no se mantenían en solución desinfectante.”

**RINCONCITO LATINO MIXTO

2502 NW 10TH AVENUE

MIAMI

INSPECCIÓN BASADA EN UNA DENUNCIA

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 24/8

Se detectaron 38 infracciones.

“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 venía de otra parte de la cocina hacia el mostrador para buscar hielo en un recipiente sin lavarse las manos en el mostrador.”

Las superficies en contacto con los alimentos no se desinfectan después de limpiarlas, antes de su uso. No utilice equipos ni utensilios que no estén debidamente desinfectados. Se observó a un empleado lavando vasos en el lavamanos del mostrador, que no estaba desinfectado.

“Se utilizaron bolsas no aptas para alimentos en contacto directo con los alimentos. Se observaron pupusas y masa almacenadas en bandejas dentro de bolsas no aptas para alimentos dentro de una cámara frigorífica.”

“Alimentos crudos de origen animal almacenados encima de alimentos listos para el consumo o sin la separación adecuada de estos. Se observó pescado crudo almacenado encima de carne de res cocida en el refrigerador junto a la línea de cocción.”

Huevos con cáscara en uso o almacenados con grietas o cáscaras rotas. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observaron 4 huevos crudos con cáscara agrietada en la línea de cocción del refrigerador.

Los guantes desechables no se cambiaban según fuera necesario después de cambiar de tarea o cuando estaban dañados o sucios. Se observó a un empleado cambiando de tarea, de la línea de cocina al área de preparación y luego a la estación de limpieza, con los mismos guantes. Se le indicó al empleado que se quitara los guantes y se lavara las manos correctamente.

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta debido a que los alimentos no se encontraban en condiciones saludables. Pescado procesado comercialmente envasado en atmósfera reducida, con una etiqueta que indicaba que debía permanecer congelado hasta su consumo, ya no estaba congelado y no se había retirado del envase. Se observó salmón crudo y pescado crudo al alcance de los clientes en el refrigerador. Pescado procesado comercialmente envasado en atmósfera reducida, con una etiqueta que indicaba que debía permanecer congelado hasta su consumo, ya no estaba congelado y no se había retirado del envase. Según lo informado por el empleado el día anterior.

“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 cocinero no sabía cuál era la temperatura mínima de cocción del pollo.”

“Superficie en contacto con alimentos sucia con restos de comida, una sustancia parecida al moho o una sustancia viscosa. Se observó una tabla de cortar blanca sucia sobre la línea de cocción. Infracción reiterada.”

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observó a un empleado lavando vasos en el mostrador del lavamanos. Se observó una esponja en el mostrador del lavamanos.”

“No se proporciona termómetro de sonda para medir la temperatura de los productos alimenticios.”

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 postres en el refrigerador del mostrador: tiramisú, tres leches, flan y arroz con leche sin fecha. Según el gerente, se prepararon el día anterior. Se observó carne de cerdo y pollo cocidos sin fecha en la cámara frigorífica. Según el empleado, se prepararon dos días antes. El empleado comenzó a fechar los envases. Infracción reiterada.

“Acumulación de una sustancia negra/verdosa parecida al moho en el interior de la máquina/contenedor de hielo. Se observó la máquina de hielo junto al mostrador principal.”

“Acumulación de residuos dentro de la lavadora de vajilla.”

“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 observó suciedad en todas las rejillas de ventilación del establecimiento. Infracción reiterada.”

“Pescado procesado comercialmente envasado en atmósfera reducida con una etiqueta que indica que debe permanecer congelado hasta el momento de su uso; ya no está congelado y no se ha retirado del envase de atmósfera reducida. Se observó salmón crudo y pargo crudo al alcance de la mano en el refrigerador. Pescado procesado comercialmente envasado en atmósfera reducida con una etiqueta que indica que debe permanecer congelado hasta el momento de su uso; ya no está congelado y no se ha retirado del envase de atmósfera reducida. Según el empleado del día anterior.”

“La tabla de cortar tiene marcas de cortes y ya no se puede limpiar. Observado en el área de lavado de vajilla debajo de las repisas de la vaporera. Infracción reiterada.”

“Empleado comiendo en una zona de preparación de alimentos u otra área restringida. Se observó a un empleado bebiendo café en el mostrador junto a la máquina de café.”

“El equipo está en mal estado. Se observó que las juntas del refrigerador estaban rotas en la línea de cocción.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior. Observado desde la puerta de salida trasera. Infracción reiterada.”

“Zonas del suelo cubiertas de agua estancada. Se observó agua estancada en el suelo junto a la zona de lavado de vajilla y la línea de cocción.”

“Piso sucio/con acumulación de residuos. Se observó el piso muy sucio debajo de los estantes junto al almacén. Se observó el piso muy sucio con acumulación de grasa debajo de la línea de cocción. Infracción reiterada.”

“Acumulación de hielo en el congelador vertical y/o en el congelador industrial. Se observó hielo en el congelador vertical junto al mostrador principal.”

“El mango de la pala para hielo estaba en contacto con el hielo. Se observó que el mango de la pala para hielo tocaba el hielo junto a la máquina de hielo exterior.”

“No hay ningún termómetro de temperatura ambiente visible en la unidad de mantenimiento. Al otro lado de la línea de cocción.”

“No se ha instalado ningún recipiente para recoger la grasa de la bandeja de goteo de la campana extractora.”

No hay ningún letrero que indique que se deben lavar las manos en el lavamanos utilizado por los empleados de la cocina. Tampoco se observó ningún letrero en el lavamanos junto al mostrador, cerca de la máquina de café.

Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia con grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observaron juntas sucias en la zona de cocción del refrigerador. Se observaron cajones sucios en la zona de cocción del refrigerador. Infracción reiterada.

“Se encontró un recipiente de bebida de un empleado abierto en una unidad de refrigeración junto con alimentos destinados a ser servidos a los clientes. Se observó una botella de plástico de bebida de un empleado almacenada dentro del mostrador refrigerado del comedor.”

“Mosquitera de la puerta rota/en mal estado. Se observó que la mosquitera de la salida trasera estaba rota.”

“Agua estancada en el fondo del refrigerador. Se observó agua estancada dentro del refrigerador, a la altura de la línea de cocción.”

“Alimentos almacenados sin cubrir. Se observó carne de cerdo y de res cocidas sin cubrir en el refrigerador y en la cámara frigorífica. Infracción reiterada.”

“Pared sucia con grasa acumulada, restos de comida y/o polvo. Se observó óxido en la pared junto al fregadero de tres compartimentos.”

“La fregona mojada no se almacenó de forma que permitiera su secado. Se observó una fregona mojada dentro de un cubo de fregona junto al almacén. Infracción reiterada.”

“Los paños húmedos no se guardan en solución desinfectante entre usos. Se observaron varios paños húmedos encima del congelador junto al mostrador. Infracción reiterada.”

“Los paños húmedos utilizados para limpiar derrames ocasionales en superficies de equipos que entran en contacto con alimentos y superficies que no entran en contacto con alimentos no deben estar limpios. Observe que los paños húmedos se almacenan sucios en la línea de cocción debajo de la parrilla.”

“Se observaron recipientes de alimentos en funcionamiento, retirados de sus envases originales, sin identificar por su nombre común. También se observó un recipiente de harina y azúcar sin etiquetar en la entrada de la cámara frigorífica.”

**PANADERIA COLOMBIANA MI CALI

2350 CALLE 60 OESTE

HIALEAH

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 24/8

Se detectaron 32 infracciones.

“Alimentos almacenados en hielo utilizado para bebidas. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observó a empleados almacenando agua embotellada dentro de la máquina de hielo. Advertencia.”

“Los huevos con cáscara no se almacenaron a una temperatura ambiente de 7 grados Celsius o menos. Se observaron huevos crudos con cáscara sobre la mesa de preparación durante menos de 4 horas, según el operador.”

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta debido a que los alimentos no se encontraban en condiciones higiénicas ni seguras. Los alimentos estaban almacenados en hielo utilizado para bebidas. Véase la orden de cese de venta. Se observó a empleados almacenando agua embotellada dentro de la máquina de hielo.

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos seguros, excepto asados ​​de carne enteros, mantenidos calientes a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Se observaron albóndigas (120 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); arroz blanco (110 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); sancocho (109 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); yuca (120 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente); carne de res cocida (113 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente), durante menos de 4 horas según el operador. El operador recalentó a 165 °F.”

“La solución desinfectante para paños de limpieza supera la concentración máxima permitida. Se observaron toallas húmedas en una solución desinfectante de cloro de 200 ppm; el operador rellenó el cubo de desinfectante y volvió a comprobar que la concentración era de 100 ppm.”

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observa un recipiente de plástico dentro del lavamanos.”

“No se proporcionan toallas de papel ni secadores de manos mecánicos en el lavamanos.”

“No hay jabón en el lavamanos.”

“El termómetro de sonda no tiene una precisión de más o menos 2 grados Fahrenheit.”

“No se dispone de comprobante de la capacitación requerida por el estado para algunos empleados.”

“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 carne de res cocida, postre y sancocho, que se prepararon hace más de 24 horas, según el operador.”

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

“El baño, ubicado dentro del establecimiento, no está completamente cerrado con puertas que se cierran automáticamente y ajustan herméticamente.”

“El techo/las baldosas del techo presentan daños o están en mal estado. Daños por agua en la cocina.”

“Utensilios o equipos limpios almacenados en un baño, vestuario o sala de máquinas. Se observó un tazón, plato y recipiente para llevar limpios en el baño de los empleados.”

“No se ha proporcionado un contenedor de basura con tapa en el baño de mujeres.”

“Un empleado bebió de un recipiente de bebida sin tapa en un área de preparación de alimentos/lavadero de vajilla. El recipiente no cuenta con un mecanismo dispensador que impida el contacto de las manos con la zona de contacto con los labios. Se observó al empleado bebiendo agua de una botella abierta y se instruyó al operador sobre la contaminación cruzada.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior.”

“Faltan baldosas en el suelo o están en mal estado.”

“Los suelos no se mantienen lisos ni resistentes.”

“Alimentos almacenados en zona prohibida. Se observaron aguacates y piñas almacenados en el baño de los empleados.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el suelo. Se observaron ollas de arroz blanco y un recipiente con cebollas en el suelo de la cocina; el operador los almacenó correctamente.”

“Agujero u otro daño en la pared. Pared del baño y debajo del lavabo de tres compartimentos.”

“El interior del horno/microondas presenta acumulación de una sustancia negra/grasa/restos de comida.”

“Se ha colocado un cartel que indica que no se debe lavar las manos en el lavamanos utilizado por los empleados de la cocina.”

Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia con grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Campana extractora sucia.

“Sistema de plomería en mal estado. Se observó que la manija del agua caliente estaba dañada, ubicada en el baño.”

“Estantes de refrigeradores con óxido que ha corroído la superficie.”

“Piso de concreto sin sellar en áreas de preparación de alimentos, almacenamiento de alimentos, lavado de utensilios o baños.”

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

“Los paños húmedos no se guardaban en solución desinfectante entre usos. Se observaron varios paños húmedos sobre la mesa de preparación.”

“Recipientes de alimentos usados, retirados de su envase original, sin identificar por su nombre común. Envase de azúcar.”

**Bar de sushi y pho vietnamita con cinco especias

1801 NE 8TH ST.

GRANJA

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 8/21

Se detectaron 31 infracciones.

“La empleada no se lavó las manos antes de ponerse los guantes para comenzar una tarea relacionada con alimentos. Se observó a la empleada ponerse los guantes sin lavarse las manos previamente para servir sopa a los clientes.”

“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. Se observó al empleado lavándose las manos con agua fría en el lavamanos de la barra de sushi.”

“Se encontraron pequeños insectos voladores vivos. Se observaron dos moscas vivas posándose en un recipiente con brotes de soja en la mesa de preparación.”

“Alimentos crudos de origen animal almacenados encima de alimentos listos para el consumo o sin la separación adecuada de estos. Se observó carne cruda almacenada encima de salsa agridulce en el refrigerador de la línea de cocción.”

“Los guantes desechables no se cambiaban según fuera necesario después de cambiar de tarea o cuando estaban dañados o sucios. Se observó a un empleado lavar un recipiente de metal con los guantes puestos y luego tocar zanahorias encurtidas listas para consumir con los mismos guantes.”

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta debido a que los alimentos no se encontraban en condiciones higiénicas ni seguras. Los guantes desechables no se cambiaron según era necesario después de cambiar de tarea o cuando estaban dañados o sucios. Se observó a un empleado lavar un recipiente de metal con los guantes puestos y luego manipular zanahorias encurtidas listas para consumir con los mismos guantes.

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos refrigerados seguros a más de 41 grados Fahrenheit. Se observó la cocción de brisket (46 °F - Refrigeración) en el refrigerador ubicado al otro lado de la línea de cocción, según el gerente, durante menos de 2 horas. Se observó la cocción de camarones (58 °F - Refrigeración) en el refrigerador ubicado al otro lado de la línea de cocción, según el operador, durante una hora.”

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos seguros, excepto asados ​​de carne enteros, mantenidos calientes a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Se observó tapioca (85 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente) cerca de la máquina selladora.”

“La empleada se lavó las manos en un lavabo distinto al lavabo autorizado. Se observó a la empleada lavándose las manos en el lavabo triple.”

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observa que el lavamanos necesita ser triplicado y se utiliza para guardar un recipiente con jabón.”

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

“Óxido superficial no corrosivo en equipos en contacto con alimentos. Observado en estantes de la cámara frigorífica.”

“No se utilizó el termómetro de sonda para garantizar la temperatura adecuada de los alimentos durante la cocción y el control de la temperatura para la seguridad alimentaria. El gerente no pudo encontrar el termómetro en el momento de la inspección.”

“No se proporciona agua a una temperatura mínima de 85 grados Fahrenheit en el lavamanos de los empleados, o bien, el agua está cortada. Se observó que el agua en la barra de sushi estaba a 83 grados Fahrenheit.”

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

“Acumulación de residuos dentro de la lavadora de vajilla.”

“Acumulación de residuos en el exterior del lavavajillas. Se observó que el suelo y la parte superior del lavavajillas estaban sucios.”

“Techo/baldosas/rejillas de ventilación sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho. Se observó un ventilador negro junto a las mesas de preparación sucio con polvo acumulado.”

“Vasos, tazas, cuencos, platos, ollas y sartenes limpios, almacenados sin estar boca abajo ni protegidos. Se observaron ollas de metal sin estar boca abajo en la zona de almacenamiento en seco.”

“Empleado comiendo en una zona de preparación de alimentos u otra área restringida. Se observó a un empleado comiendo una barra de proteínas en la línea de cocción.”

“Empleado sin sujeción para el cabello mientras preparaba alimentos. Infracción reiterada.”

“Los utensilios y equipos no se lavaron, enjuagaron ni desinfectaron correctamente en el fregadero de tres compartimentos. No utilice platos ni equipos que no estén debidamente desinfectados.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior. Se observa una abertura en el lado derecho, en el lado izquierdo y en la parte inferior de la puerta de salida.”

“El suelo está sucio/tiene acumulación de residuos. Se observó acumulación de residuos en el suelo debajo del estante de la cámara frigorífica.”

“Los alimentos no se almacenan a una altura mínima de 15 cm del suelo. Se observó una caja de aguacates almacenada en el suelo debajo de una mesa de preparación con microondas.”

“El interior del horno/microondas presenta acumulación de una sustancia negra/grasa/restos de comida. Se observó una tostadora en un bar de sushi muy sucia con restos de comida vieja.”

“No había ninguna señal de maniobra de Heimlich/asfixia colocada. Se le proporcionó al operador un cartel sobre asfixia por correo electrónico.”

“No hay copia disponible del último informe de inspección.”

“La fregona mojada no se guardó de forma que permitiera que se secara.”

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

**CAFÉ PANISSE

7310 SW 57TH AVE.

SUR DE MIAMI

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 26/8

Se detectaron 33 infracciones.

“El empleado manipuló alimentos listos para el consumo con las manos desnudas; los alimentos no se calentaban como ingrediente único a 63 grados Celsius ni se añadían inmediatamente a otros ingredientes para cocinarlos/calentarlos a la temperatura mínima requerida para permitir el contacto con las manos desnudas. El establecimiento no cuenta con un procedimiento operativo alternativo aprobado.”

“Observé a un empleado servir la ensalada con las manos desnudas sin el protocolo AOP aprobado. También observé al empleado tocar la superficie de contacto de la cuchara con las manos desnudas y usar la misma cuchara para manipular el queso gorgonzola.”

“Se encontró en el establecimiento un pesticida/insecticida etiquetado para uso doméstico únicamente. Se observó una lata de Raid en el almacén donde se encuentra la cámara frigorífica.”

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta debido a la adulteración del producto alimenticio. Se observó un bistec cocido sobre una toalla de tela. Se observó a un empleado sirviendo ensalada con las manos desnudas sin la etiqueta de producto aprobada. Se observó a un empleado tocando la superficie de contacto de la cuchara con las manos desnudas y usando la misma cuchara para manipular queso gorgonzola.

Se emitió una orden de cese de venta debido a que los alimentos no se encontraban en condiciones higiénicas ni seguras. Se observaron 4 filetes de atún descongelados en el recipiente de almacenamiento. Infracción reiterada.

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos refrigerados seguros a más de 5 °C (41 °F). Observado en el mostrador: queso rallado (13 °C - Refrigeración); tomate cortado (9 °C - Refrigeración); gorgonzola (11 °C - Refrigeración); pimientos rojos asados ​​(11 °C - Refrigeración). Según el operador, menos de 4 horas en el refrigerador.”

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para la seguridad alimentaria, excepto asados ​​de carne enteros, mantenidos calientes a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Observado en la línea de cocción: pescado (102 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente). Según el chef, menos de 1 hora, el cocinero fue retirado de la línea de cocción.”

“El establecimiento no cuenta con procedimientos escritos que los empleados deban seguir en caso de un episodio de vómitos o diarrea en el que el vómito o la diarrea se produzcan sobre las superficies del establecimiento.”

“El establecimiento no conserva las etiquetas de almejas, mejillones y ostras durante 90 días. Se observaron mejillones con etiquetas que no indicaban la fecha de la última venta. Infracción reiterada.”

“Superficie en contacto con alimentos sucia con restos de comida, moho o una sustancia viscosa. Se observaron estantes de alimentos secos sucios. Advertencia por infracción reiterada”.

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observó un cuchillo guardado en el lavamanos del mostrador principal.”

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

“No hay etiqueta en el envase original de almejas, mejillones u ostras crudas con concha. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observó un envase de mejillones con su etiqueta original. El gerente tiene la etiqueta marcada con la fecha de recepción y encontró la etiqueta del lote.”

“Óxido superficial no corrosivo en equipos en contacto con alimentos. Observado en rejillas para alimentos y vajilla. Infracción reiterada.”

“Acumulación de restos de comida/residuos de tierra en las manijas de las puertas de los equipos. Se observaron manijas de refrigeradores sucias.”

“Techo/baldosas/rejillas de ventilación sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho. Observado en todo el establecimiento. Infracción reiterada.”

Pescado envasado comercialmente con oxígeno reducido, con una etiqueta que indica que debe permanecer congelado hasta su consumo, ya no está congelado y no ha sido retirado del envase con oxígeno reducido. Véase la orden de cese de venta. Se observaron 4 filetes de atún descongelados en el envase con oxígeno reducido. Infracción reiterada.

“Se observó un recipiente de bebida de un empleado sobre una mesa de preparación de alimentos o encima/junto a equipos/utensilios limpios. Se observó Red Bull en el refrigerador de bebidas. Se observó una lata de Coca-Cola Light encima del calentador de sopas.”

“Empleado que llevaba joyas distintas a un simple anillo en las manos o brazos mientras preparaba la comida. Se observó a cocineros en la línea de producción con pulseras.”

“Equipo en mal estado. Se observaron juntas rotas en el refrigerador del mostrador. Infracción reiterada.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior. Observado en la puerta trasera.”

“El suelo está sucio/tiene acumulación de residuos. Se observó detrás del lavavajillas y de los refrigeradores de cerveza en el mostrador principal.”

“Faltan baldosas en el suelo o están en mal estado. Se observó debajo del lavavajillas y en el mostrador. Se advierte de una infracción reiterada.”

“Alimentos almacenados en zona prohibida. Se observaron cajas de vino almacenadas en el baño. Advertencia por reincidencia.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el suelo. Se observaron cajas de alimentos en el suelo de la cámara frigorífica. Advertencia.”

“Agujero u otro daño en la pared. Observado en el área de lavado de vajilla. Advertencia.”

“El interior del refrigerador o congelador está en mal estado/tiene aislamiento expuesto. Se observó en la máquina de hielo junto al lavavajillas. Advertencia.”

“No se dispone de copia del último informe de inspección. No se observó ninguna copia en el lugar. Advertencia.”

Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia con grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observó suciedad en el exterior del equipo. Se observaron juntas sucias en el refrigerador. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.

“Tapa del contenedor abierta. Se observó la tapa abierta en el momento de la inspección. Advertencia.”

“Estantes del refrigerador con corrosión superficial. Observado en el refrigerador. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“Cubiertos/utensilios almacenados en posición vertical con la superficie en contacto con los alimentos hacia arriba. Observado en el mostrador principal. Advertencia.”

“Piso de concreto sin sellar en áreas de preparación y almacenamiento de alimentos, lavado de utensilios y baños. Observado en todo el establecimiento. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“Pared sucia con acumulación de grasa, restos de comida y/o polvo. Observado en la zona de lavado de vajilla. Advertencia.”

**RINCONCITO MIAMI 2

15956 SW 137TH AVE

WEST KENDALL

INSPECCIÓN BASADA EN UNA DENUNCIA

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 27/8

Se detectaron 42 infracciones.

“Presencia de latas abolladas/oxidadas. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observaron 3 latas de pasta de tomate con óxido, paquete rojo de 111 oz. Se observó 1 lata de tiras de pimiento rojo Antonio’s abollada, de 102 oz.”

“Alimento con moho. Ver orden de cese de venta. Se observaron dos naranjas con moho junto a la máquina de zumos. El operario las desechó durante la inspección.”

“Se encontró en el establecimiento un pesticida/insecticida etiquetado para uso doméstico únicamente. Se observó una lata de Raid en el armario debajo del lavamanos, cerca de la ventanilla de servicio.”

“Alimentos crudos de origen animal almacenados encima de alimentos listos para el consumo o sin la separación adecuada de estos. Se observó tocino crudo sobre jamón y queso en la cámara frigorífica. El operario modificó el pedido durante la inspección.”

“Control de tiempo/temperatura para alimentos seguros, excepto asado de carne entera, mantenido caliente a menos de 135 grados Fahrenheit. Observado durante una hora en la mesa de vapor: malanga (112 °F - Mantenimiento en caliente). El operador lo colocó en la estufa para recalentarlo. Temperatura final: 175 °F. Infracción reiterada.”

“Superficie en contacto con alimentos sucia con restos de comida, una sustancia similar al moho o una sustancia viscosa. Se observó polvo en los alimentos secos y en las rejillas para platos. Infracción reiterada.”

“El lavamanos se usaba para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observó una botella en el lavamanos durante el lavado de vajilla. Se observó metal almacenado en el lavamanos junto al área de preparación. El operador retiró todos los objetos durante la inspección. Se corrigió la infracción reiterada en el lugar.”

“Óxido superficial no corrosivo en equipos en contacto con alimentos. Observado en alimentos secos y rejillas para platos. Infracción reiterada”.

No se proporciona agua a una temperatura mínima de 85 grados Fahrenheit (o está cortada) en el lavamanos de los empleados. Se observó lo mismo en el lavamanos del mostrador principal, donde se encuentra la barra de café. Tampoco se observó agua caliente en el lavamanos de la estación de camareros. Infracción reiterada.

“Acumulación de residuos en el interior de la lavadora de vajilla. Se observó suciedad en el interior. Infracción reiterada.”

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

“Acumulación de restos de comida/suciedad en las manijas de las puertas de los equipos. Se observaron manijas de horno sucias. Infracción reiterada.”

“Falta una baldosa en el techo. Se observó encima de la cámara frigorífica.”

“El techo/las baldosas del techo presentan daños o están en mal estado. Se observaron grietas y agujeros en varias baldosas. Infracción reiterada.”

“Techo/baldosas/rejillas de ventilación sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho. Observado en la cocina. Infracción reiterada.”

“Utensilios o equipos limpios guardados en un cajón o estante sucio. Se observaron ollas limpias en el lavaplatos sobre un estante sucio. Infracción reiterada.”

“Tela utilizada como superficie en contacto con alimentos. Se observó en la estación de camareros que se utilizaban paños como forro para vasos.”

“El equipo de refrigeración no se mantiene en buen estado. No almacene alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura para su seguridad en esta unidad hasta que se repare. Se observó que el refrigerador de acceso frontal en la entrada de la cocina ya no funciona. Según el operador, ya no funciona. No se almacenan alimentos que requieren control de tiempo/temperatura en su interior. Infracción reiterada.”

“La moldura de la pared/suelo está rota o falta. Se observó en la salida trasera. Se observó en la entrada del congelador. Infracción reiterada.”

“Se encontró un recipiente de bebida de un empleado sobre una mesa de preparación de alimentos o encima/junto a equipos/utensilios limpios. Se observó una botella sobre la mesa de preparación. El operario la retiró de la mesa de preparación.”

“Objetos personales de los empleados almacenados en o sobre un área de preparación de alimentos, alimentos, equipos y utensilios limpios, o artículos de un solo uso. Se observó un teléfono sobre la mesa de preparación. Se observaron zapatos sobre el lavamanos en el área de preparación.”

“Se observó a un empleado usando joyas distintas a un simple anillo en las manos o brazos mientras preparaba la comida. Se observó a un cocinero con auriculares inalámbricos. Se observó a cocineros con reloj en la línea de cocción.”

“Empleado sin redecilla para el cabello mientras preparaba alimentos. Se observó al cocinero sin gorro ni redecilla. Se le colocó una redecilla en la cabeza. Se corrigió la infracción reiterada en el lugar de trabajo.”

“El equipo está en mal estado. Se observó que la manija de la puerta del horno estaba rota.”

“El sistema de campana extractora no está diseñado para evitar que la grasa o la condensación goteen sobre los alimentos, los equipos y utensilios limpios, y los artículos desechables. Se observó que el sistema de campana estaba sucio. Infracción reiterada.”

“La puerta exterior tiene una abertura en el umbral que da al exterior. Se observó en ambas puertas traseras. Infracción reiterada.”

“Agujeros u otros daños en la pared. Se observaron agujeros en la pared de la cocina y en la zona de lavado de vajilla.”

La unidad de mantenimiento de temperatura no recibe el mantenimiento adecuado. No almacene alimentos que requieran control de tiempo/temperatura para su seguridad en esta unidad hasta que sea reparada. Se observó que el calentador en la rejilla de secado al fondo de la cocina ya no está en uso.

Acumulación de hielo en el congelador vertical y/o en el congelador industrial. Observada en el congelador industrial y en ambos congeladores verticales. Infracción reiterada.

“Cuchillo/s en uso almacenados en las grietas entre las piezas del equipo. Observado en la línea de cocción entre la freidora y la plancha.”

“Pinzas en uso guardadas en la manija de la puerta del equipo entre usos. Se observaron pinzas en la puerta de la línea de cocción. El operador las retiró durante la inspección. Se corrigió la infracción reiterada en el lugar.”

“El interior del horno/microondas presenta acumulación de una sustancia negra/grasa/restos de comida. Se observó que los hornos estaban sucios. Infracción reiterada.”

“El interior del refrigerador o congelador está en mal estado/tiene el aislamiento expuesto. Se observó en el congelador, en el mostrador principal.”

No se proporcionaron instalaciones adecuadas para guardar la ropa y demás pertenencias de los empleados. Se observaron zapatos sobre el lavamanos en el área de preparación. El operario retiró los zapatos del estante. Se corrigió la infracción reiterada en el lugar.

Superficie que no entra en contacto con alimentos sucia con grasa, restos de comida, suciedad, lodo o polvo. Se observó suciedad en el exterior del equipo de la línea de cocción. Se observaron juntas sucias en el refrigerador. Infracción reiterada.

“El interior y los estantes del refrigerador presentan acumulación de residuos de tierra. Observado en la cámara frigorífica. Infracción reiterada.”

Papel de aluminio roto/desgastado utilizado como tapa de estante. Observado en la cocina. Infracción reiterada.

Artículos de un solo uso almacenados sobre una superficie sucia. Observado en una rejilla frente a la línea de cocción, estante sucio donde se guardan los artículos de un solo uso. Infracción reiterada.

“Alimentos almacenados sin tapar. Se observaron varias bandejas de comida sin tapar en el congelador industrial. Infracción reiterada.”

“Piso de concreto sin sellar en área de preparación de alimentos, almacenamiento de alimentos, área de lavado de utensilios o baño. Observado en la cámara frigorífica.”

“Pared sucia con grasa acumulada, restos de comida y/o polvo. Observado en todo el establecimiento. Infracción reiterada.”

“La fregona mojada no se guardó de forma que permitiera que se secara. Se observó la fregona en un cubo; no estaba en uso. Infracción reiterada.”

MENCIÓN HONORÍFICA

**SHASHS OF KABOB**

5975 SUNSET DR.

SUR DE MIAMI

FECHA DE INSPECCIÓN 18/8

Se detectaron 29 infracciones.

“Envase de medicamento almacenado incorrectamente. Se observó el envase de pastillas sobre el mostrador, encima de la mesa de preparación donde un empleado estaba trabajando. El operario retiró el envase del lugar.”

“El empleado se tocó la cara/el cabello y luego preparó alimentos, manipuló equipo o utensilios limpios o tocó artículos desechables sin envolver sin lavarse las manos. Se observó que el empleado se frotó la cara con las manos y buscó un nuevo par de guantes. El inspector repasó el lavado de manos con el operador y el empleado. El empleado se lavó las manos correctamente. Infracción reiterada.”

“Se encontraron insectos voladores pequeños y vivos. Se observaron más de 6 moscas vivas en el baño de empleados, cerca de bolsas de cebollas.”

“Alimentos crudos de origen animal almacenados encima de alimentos listos para el consumo o sin la separación adecuada de estos. Se observó pollo crudo encima de un recipiente de mayonesa en el refrigerador.”

“El establecimiento no cuenta con procedimientos escritos que los empleados deban seguir en caso de vómitos o diarrea que se produzcan en las superficies del establecimiento. No se observó ningún formulario ni kit; el inspector lo proporcionó por correo electrónico. Advertencia.”

“El lavamanos se utiliza para fines distintos al lavado de manos. Se observaron utensilios guardados en el lavamanos del baño de empleados, donde se encuentra el fregadero para fregar. Se advierte de una infracción reiterada.”

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

“No se observó la presencia de CFM en el momento de la inspección; se observaron 5 empleados trabajando en el lugar. Advertencia.”

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

“Se observó en el baño de empleados, donde también se encuentra el fregadero para fregar; el inodoro ha sido retirado y reemplazado por un estante para almacenar alimentos secos. No se han presentado ni actualizado los planos. Advertencia.”

No se presentó ninguna prueba de que los empleados de la planta de procesamiento de alimentos estuvieran 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 que todos los empleados en el lugar habían sido contratados hacía menos de 60 días, según el operador, y no se presentó ningún formulario de acuerdo firmado.

“Para algunos empleados, la formación obligatoria para empleados ha caducado.”

“No se suministra agua a una temperatura mínima de 85 grados Fahrenheit (o está cortada) en el lavamanos de los empleados. Se observó que el agua caliente estaba cortada en el lavamanos de la cocina.”

“Se utilizó un recipiente sin asa para servir la comida. Se observó una taza usada como cuchara en la olla arrocera. El operador la retiró durante la inspección.”

“Techo/baldosas/rejillas de ventilación sucias con restos de comida acumulados, grasa, polvo o una sustancia similar al moho. Se observó en el interior de la cocina; baldosas sucias. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“No se muestra la licencia vigente del hotel o restaurante. Se observa una licencia vencida. Advertencia.”

“Se encontró un recipiente de bebida de un empleado sobre una mesa de preparación de alimentos o encima/junto a equipos/utensilios limpios. Se observó una botella de agua en un estante encima de la mesa de preparación. El operador la tiró en el lugar. Se corrigió la advertencia en el lugar.”

“La comida personal del empleado no estaba debidamente identificada ni separada de la comida que se serviría al público. Se observó que la comida del empleado estaba encima de la comida lista para consumir destinada a los clientes. El empleado retiró los artículos que estaban encima de la comida. Se corrigió la advertencia en el lugar.”

“Objetos personales del empleado almacenados en o sobre un área de preparación de alimentos, alimentos, equipos y utensilios limpios, o artículos de un solo uso. Se observó un teléfono sobre la mesa de preparación donde el empleado estaba preparando alimentos. El empleado fue retirado de la mesa. Se corrigió la advertencia en el lugar.”

“Equipo en mal estado. Se observó una junta rota en el acceso a la línea de cocción. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“Suelo sucio/con acumulación de residuos. Se observó un suelo muy sucio en el baño donde se almacenan alimentos y debajo del fregadero triple. Advertencia.”

“Alimentos almacenados en una zona prohibida. Se observaron cajas de cebollas almacenadas en el baño de empleados durante la inspección. El operador está transformando el espacio en un almacén, pero no se han presentado ni actualizado los planos. Advertencia.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el suelo. Se observó un recipiente con bayas en el suelo junto a la línea de cocción. El operario lo retiró del suelo. Advertencia.”

“Alimentos almacenados en el exterior. Se observaron cajas de refrescos fuera del restaurante. Advertencia.”

“Acumulación de hielo en el congelador vertical y/o en el congelador industrial. Observado en el congelador horizontal. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“Se observó un paño/toalla húmeda debajo de la tabla de cortar, sobre la mesa de preparación. El operario la retiró durante la inspección. Advertencia.”

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

“No hay ninguna señal de maniobra de Heimlich/asfixia colocada. No se observó ningún cartel; el inspector lo comunicó por correo electrónico. Advertencia.”

“No se dispone de copia del último informe de inspección. No se observó ninguna copia en el lugar. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“Estantes del refrigerador con óxido que ha corroído la superficie. Se observaron varios refrigeradores en el interior. Advertencia por infracción reiterada.”

“La fregona mojada no se almacenó de forma que permitiera su secado. Se observó la fregona en un cubo; no estaba en uso. Advertencia.”

Under a new rule proposed Friday by the Treasury Department, the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, would be severed from access to the U.S. financial system.

It follows Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's announcement this week of a new campaign to push countries that still do business with the already heavily sanctioned Islamic Republic to sever their financial ties or face retaliation from the United States.

In stopping short of imposing sanctions on the Egyptian bank, the move signals the Republican administration's reluctance to penalize major trading partners that do business with Iran, including China and India. Bessent told reporters on Monday that he wanted countries to have an opportunity to shift away from Iran before it was too late in a bid to avoid upending the global financial system.

The rule will be subject to a 30-day public comment period before it takes effect, the Treasury Department said.

The Trump administration “warned that Iran’s enablers cannot continue to enjoy access to the U.S. dollar and the global financial system,” Bessent said in a statement Friday. “Banque Misr UAE decided to find out the hard way, and today, we are taking the first step in holding it accountable for its continued, egregious support of the Iranian regime.”

Egypt’s foreign ministry and central bank confirmed knowledge of the new rulemaking and are communicating with U.S. officials, according to a statement issued by the Central Bank of Egypt on Friday.

“The CBE affirms that this measure is limited to the bank’s branches in the UAE and only to its dollar transfers,” the statement said.

It added that the measure does not affect any other Egyptian bank and does not extend to the Banque Misr’s operations inside Egypt or to any of its overseas branches.

“The Central Bank of Egypt affirms the strength and resilience of all banks operating in Egypt,” the statement said.

Also Friday, the U.S. Treasury Department posted on its Office of Foreign Assets Control website new sanctions on the bank manager of the Dubai branch of Iran’s Bank Melli and a Hong Kong-based firm that the U.S. accuses of helping launder funds for Iran.

Bessent is set to represent the U.S. next week at Group of 20 finance ministers meetings, where he will meet individually with his counterparts from the world's major and developing economies to encourage participation in the economic isolation of Iran.

___

Amiri reported from New York. Associated Press writer Noha ElHennawy in Cairo contributed to this report.

Sandusky, 82, has been serving a decades-long prison sentence since he was convicted of 45 counts of sexual abuse in 2012. Eight young men testified about what happened to them as boys. He has repeatedly lost efforts to get a new trial, but Sandusky's lawyers are trying again.

A man identified in court documents as R.R. said he was coached extensively by authorities.

“I was told — both directly and indirectly — that trauma may have fragmented my memory, and that I could safely affirm details I did not fully recall. I was assured this was common and even expected,” R.R. said in an affidavit filed by Sandusky's attorneys.

A court hearing in Centre County has been scheduled for Sept. 8.

R.R.’s allegations were "based on suggestive leading questioning, prosecutorial coercion and influence, confirmatory bias and memory manipulation, which permeated throughout each of the accusers as well,” Sandusky's attorneys said in a court filing.

The Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General said Friday that R.R.'s recantation is “highly suspect.”

Sandusky coached the defense at one of the country's top football programs under Hall of Fame head coach Joe Paterno. The scandal led to Paterno's firing, and the university paid more than $100 million to people who said they had been abused by Sandusky.

Authorities said Sandusky found and groomed victims at The Second Mile, a charity that he started for at-risk youth. He has repeatedly declared his innocence.

“I apologize that I’m unable to admit remorse for this because it’s something that I didn’t do,” Sandusky said during a 2019 court appearance.

At trial, R.R. was 25 years old. He testified that he was 11 when Sandusky performed oral sex in the coach's basement in 1998, a transcript shows.

“He told me that if I told anybody that I would never see my family again,” said R.R., who was in foster care at the time.

Sandusky later apologized and said “he loved me,” R.R. testified.

Republican lawmakers who toured Alligator Alcatraz this weekend came out with starkly different assessments of what they saw than Democratic colleagues.

State Rep. Mike Caruso, a Republican from Palm Beach County, is one of them. He joined “This Week in South Florida” host Glenna Milberg to discuss, and their conversation can be seen at the top of this page.

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Police said Eli was first reported missing at about 4:30 p.m. Wednesday near the intersection of Northwest 38th Street and 115th Avenue but has since reunited with family.

Authorities have not said what led to his whereabouts.

Se espera que el sistema, anteriormente designado Invest 96L, se mantenga como una tormenta tropical al límite de esa categoría mientras avanza hoy en dirección a las islas más orientales del Caribe, pero se pronostica que sucumba a condiciones cada vez más hostiles y se disipe para cuando llegue a las Antillas Menores, Puerto Rico y las Islas Vírgenes más adelante este fin de semana.

Aunque los remanentes de Dolly podrían traer condiciones de tiempo inestable y lluvias localmente fuertes a terrenos elevados mientras atraviesan las islas, su rápido desplazamiento debería limitar problemas generalizados y, en general, las lluvias son beneficiosas para zonas del Caribe que se han visto afectadas por condiciones de sequía cada vez más intensas este verano, en parte debido al fortalecimiento de El Niño.

Dolly, la tormenta, no la cantante

En una extraña coincidencia, Dolly, la tormenta, recibió su nombre apenas dos días después del fallecimiento del ícono cultural estadounidense y leyenda de la música country Dolly Parton.

Debido al inusual momento y a la apariencia insensible de nombrar Dolly a una tormenta tropical durante la semana en que las banderas fueron colocadas a media asta en honor a la fallecida y gran cantante, el Centro Nacional de Huracanes emitió un comunicado aclarando el uso del nombre en su primer aviso sobre Dolly el jueves:

“El momento en que se utilizó el nombre Dolly para esta tormenta es pura coincidencia”, escribió el centro. “Los nombres de tormentas tropicales y huracanes para la cuenca del Atlántico Norte provienen de seis listas rotativas predeterminadas establecidas por el Comité de Huracanes de la Región IV de la Organización Meteorológica Mundial. El nombre Dolly reemplazó a Diana después de la temporada de huracanes de 1990 y fue utilizado por primera vez en 1996”.

Para los aficionados tanto a la meteorología como a Dolly Parton, incluido quien escribe estas líneas, la primera vez que un ciclón tropical recibió el nombre Dolly fue para un tifón del Pacífico occidental en 1946, el mismo año del nacimiento de la señora Parton.

No se espera que Dolly vuelva a formarse más cerca de Estados Unidos

Como hemos comentado en el boletín durante toda la semana, algunos escenarios alternativos han mostrado la posibilidad de que los remanentes de Dolly intenten volver a formarse en una región con menor cizalladura del viento y aguas inusualmente cálidas alrededor de las Bahamas o hacia el este del Golfo a mediados de la próxima semana.

Aunque las probabilidades eran bajas desde el principio, los modelos descartaron decididamente ese escenario ayer. Dolly debería quedar suficientemente debilitada por su paso a través de la gran barrera de cizalladura impulsada por El Niño este fin de semana, mientras sus remanentes se encuentran con los obstáculos montañosos de las islas, especialmente en lugares como La Española, por lo que no se prevé una nueva formación.

El sistema de conjunto de 1,000 miembros de Google DeepMind sitúa las probabilidades de que vuelva a desarrollarse en un insignificante 2% para la próxima semana, por lo que no es algo que deba preocuparnos.

Mladic’s family and the Serbian government had requested several times that Mladic be released, citing his age and ailing health. He died a week after the U.N. rejected his latest request for release on humanitarian grounds.

“That was uncivilized behavior, unprecedented and without excuse,” Vucic said. “We can now see that they wanted Mladic to die behind bars.”

The U.N. tribunal for war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s sentenced Mladic to life in prison in 2017 in what was considered a key step toward bringing justice to the victims. He had been in custody since 2011.

The ruthless warlord was one of the most notorious figures of the conflict that left more than 100,000 people dead and over 1 million homeless. More than three decades after the wars, former Balkan foes remain divided over his role.

In an Aug. 20 ruling, the president of the U.N. court that deals with the legacies of now-closed war crimes tribunals, Uruguayan Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, cited the “comprehensive and compassionate medical care” Mladic was receiving in custody “as well as the exceptional visitation regime allowing meaningful family contact” as reasons for turning down the request.

Bosnian Serbs hold vigils, while victims' families see justice

Bosnian Serbs held vigils and lit candles Thursday evening for Mladic, whom they consider a hero despite his conviction.

“He could not have been a better man. Everything else is just a bunch of lies. He would not touch anyone, child, no one. It's all lies,” said Stojanka Visnjevac, a resident of Kalinovik, Mladic's small hometown.

But the families of the victims of crimes Mladic orchestrated said his death means at least some justice for their loved ones.

Fazila Efendic, who lost several members of her family in the 1995 massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, which is Europe's first acknowledged genocide since World War II, said it is important that Mladic died in prison.

“We, the victims, are satisfied, when we know that he was convicted to life in prison,” she said. "For us, it is important that he is convicted and that he served his sentence until he died.”

A U.N. “safe haven” for Muslims in Srebrenica ended up being overrun by Serbs who forced men and boys to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves. Serbs under Mladic’s control also laid siege to the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, and other cities and villages, established concentration camps for detained non-Serb civilians and enemy soldiers, and systematically killed prisoners.

Mladic could be buried in Serbia

Vucic said that Belgrade has no information on when Mladic’s body could be released.

Vucic said Mladic’s family will decide where he would be buried. “If the family expresses a wish that he be buried in the territory of Serbia, we will help so it can be done in a dignified way,” Vucic told reporters. He did not confirm earlier reports that Mladic would receive a state funeral. The reports sparked outrage throughout the region.

The U.N. court on Thursday opened an inquiry into Mladic's death, and on Friday, the judge conducting the inquiry visited the detention center where he was held.

The court, formally known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, said in an emailed response to questions from The Associated Press that it would not give any information on the cause of death before the inquiry is completed.

It added that “the relevant Dutch authorities have officially informed the Mechanism that they are not opening a criminal investigation into Mr. Mladic’s death and that they will not be performing an autopsy.”

___

AP writers Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.

According to data released early Friday afternoon by the industry data and analytics company Luminate, audio and video streams of Parton's discography skyrocketed 2,458% on the day of her death, compared to Monday — climbing from 1.2 million to 30.5 million in the U.S. And by Wednesday, that number rose to 46.3 million.

Worldwide, her audio and video streams jumped 1,549%, from 2.5 million on Monday to 41.8 million Tuesday.

And on Wednesday, her on-demand audio streams jumped to 79.7 million, making her the most streamed artist, globally, on that date.

In the U.S., 10 songs led the charge:

1. “Jolene” grew from over 196.2K streams on Monday to 2.7 million Tuesday and 4 million Wednesday.

2. “9 to 5” jumped from 208.6K on Monday to 2.3 million on Tuesday and 3.6 million on Wednesday.

3. “Islands in the Stream,” her duet with the late Kenny Rogers, climbed from 165.9K on Monday to 1.8 million Tuesday and 2.9 million Wednesday.

4. “I Will Always Love You,” Parton's performance of her own classic, a song that was later made famous by Whitney Houston's rendition, rose from 64.9K streams on Monday to 1.7 million Tuesday and 2.8 million Wednesday.

5. “Here You Come Again” followed, moving from 48.7K streams Monday to 1.3 million Tuesday to 2.1 million Wednesday.

6. Then there was “Coat of Many Colors,” with 28.9K streams Monday to 1.2 million Tuesday and 1.9 million Wednesday.

7. “There Was Jesus,” her 2019 duet with Christian singer Zach Williams, rose from 85.2K streams Monday to 503.1K Tuesday and 1.3 million Wednesday.

8. “Why’d You Come In Here Lookin’ Like That?” climbed from 22.1K Monday to 733.8K Tuesday and 1.1 million Wednesday.

9. “Tyrant,” Parton's collaboration with Beyoncé from Bey's Grammy winning 2024 album “Cowboy Carter,” jumped from 47.8K Monday to 534.7K Tuesday and 682K Wednesday.

10. And lastly, “My Tennessee Mountain Home” increased from 5.8K Monday to 501.7K Tuesday and 755.5K Wednesday.

Sales for such Parton-related books as the memoir “Dolly Parton, Songteller” My Life in Lyrics” and a picture story based on her classic song “Coat of Many Colors” were also soaring. As of early Friday afternoon, three Parton books were in the top 5 on Amazon.com ’s bestseller list.

Curious to hear more Parton? Check out The Associated Press' official playlist — from her country songs that challenge traditional gender dynamics to the greatest ballad ever committed to record — and read the stories behind them, here.

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According to BSO, deputies responded to the 700 block of Southwest 10th Drive near Fairview Park shortly after 8 a.m. Sunday after receiving a report of a person lying in the grass.

Pompano Beach Fire Rescue personnel also responded and pronounced the victim, identified as Lacurtis Knight, dead at the scene.

According to BSO Traffic Homicide Investigations detectives, Knight’s injuries were consistent with being struck by a vehicle.

Investigators conducted a detailed search of the area where the victim was discovered and said the crash may have happened at a different location.

Detectives are now asking anyone who may have information about the traffic homicide to come forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact BSO THI Detective Mike Wiley at 954-321-4841 or submit a tip through the SaferWatch app.

Those wishing to remain anonymous can contact Broward Crime Stoppers at 954-493-TIPS (8477), visit BrowardCrimeStoppers.org or dial **TIPS (8477) from any cellphone in the U.S. All tipsters may remain anonymous.

Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest.

Según BSO, los agentes acudieron a la cuadra 700 de Southwest 10th Drive, cerca de Fairview Park, poco después de las 8 a.m. del domingo tras recibir un reporte de una persona tendida sobre el césped.

Personal de Bomberos y Rescate de Pompano Beach también acudió al lugar y declaró muerta en la escena a la víctima, identificada como Lacurtis Knight.

Según detectives de Investigaciones de Homicidios de Tránsito de BSO, las lesiones de Knight eran consistentes con haber sido atropellado por un vehículo.

Los investigadores realizaron una búsqueda detallada del área donde fue encontrada la víctima y dijeron que el accidente pudo haber ocurrido en otro lugar.

Los detectives ahora están pidiendo a cualquier persona que pueda tener información sobre el homicidio de tránsito que se comunique con las autoridades.

Se pide a cualquier persona con información que se comunique con el detective Mike Wiley de THI de BSO al 954-321-4841 o envíe una pista a través de la aplicación SaferWatch.

Quienes deseen permanecer anónimos pueden comunicarse con Broward Crime Stoppers al 954-493-TIPS (8477), visitar BrowardCrimeStoppers.org o marcar **TIPS (8477) desde cualquier teléfono celular en Estados Unidos. Todas las personas que proporcionen información pueden permanecer anónimas.

Crime Stoppers ofrece una recompensa de hasta $5,000 USD por información que conduzca a un arresto.

West Broward quarterback Kayne Garbutt connected with Carlos Avila-Lopez for a touchdown, but the Bobcats came up short as the Indians held on for the seven-point victory.

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West Broward (0-1) will face Archbishop McCarthy (0-1)

High school sports are back, and Local 10 wants to help celebrate the student-athletes who make game days and championship moments special across South Florida.

High School Spotlight is a chance to showcase the athletes representing schools and communities across Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.

Whether it’s a game-winning touchdown, a big save on the soccer field, a volleyball celebration, a cheerleading routine, a cross-country finish or a memorable moment with teammates, we want to see it.

Click here for more information on how to submit your pictures.

Los registros de la cárcel en línea muestran que Tanyla Christyanna Gamble, de 25 años, enfrenta cargos de agresión relacionada con violencia en el noviazgo y agresión que causa lesiones corporales.

Un portavoz de Miramar Fire Rescue emitió un comunicado a Local 10 News el jueves, confirmando que Gamble es bombera y paramédica del departamento.

“Miramar Fire Rescue está al tanto del arresto de una de nuestras empleadas”, decía el comunicado. “El Departamento toma con seriedad los asuntos relacionados con la conducta de su personal. Las acusaciones están siendo manejadas actualmente por la agencia policial correspondiente y siguen siendo parte de una investigación en curso. Miramar Fire Rescue está cooperando según corresponda y también abordará este asunto de acuerdo con las políticas de la Ciudad y del Departamento y los procedimientos de personal aplicables.

“Para proteger la integridad de la investigación en curso y los derechos de todas las personas involucradas, el Departamento no hará comentarios sobre las circunstancias específicas del caso en este momento.

“Actualmente, la persona en cuestión se encuentra de licencia administrativa hasta la conclusión y el resultado de todas las investigaciones”.

Local 10 News ha solicitado una copia del informe de arresto de Gamble.

Hasta la tarde del jueves, Gamble permanecía detenida en la cárcel principal del condado Broward. Se esperaba que compareciera ante un tribunal de fianzas en algún momento del jueves.

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The MDSO Organized Crimes Bureau dubbed the investigation “Operation Sundown.”

According to investigators, the primary subject in the case, Juan Awais, 60, owned a property management company and allegedly used companies he owned, along with affiliated vendors, to exert undisclosed control over associations managed by his company.

Investigators said elderly, primarily Spanish-speaking association board members were allegedly misled into signing documents they did not fully understand.

According to MDSO, those documents allowed the subjects to gain control over association operations and finances for their own benefit.

The two-year investigation included seven search warrants and extensive digital forensic examinations, according to MDSO.

Investigators said they uncovered an alleged racketeering enterprise involving family members, employees and several affiliated companies whose connections were not disclosed.

According to the sheriff’s office, the group allegedly diverted association dues, insurance and loan proceeds, and collection revenues while concealing company ownership and the flow of money.

Investigators also alleged there were efforts to obstruct the investigation, including providing incomplete or newly created documents and discouraging association board members from speaking with law enforcement.

MDSO identified the subjects as Awais; Juliet Ramos, 37; Johana Perez Tapia, 31; Delma Alonso, 53; Cynthea Louise Waltz and Michael Irizarry.

Awais faces charges including racketeering, money laundering, organized fraud, grand theft and accepting or soliciting a kickback.

Ramos, Perez Tapia and Alonso also face racketeering, money laundering and multiple organized fraud charges, according to a press release from MDSO.

The sheriff’s office did not provide information on the charges against Waltz or Irizarry, noting that both were arrested by the Pembroke Pines Police Department.

MDSO said the investigation remains ongoing.

La Oficina de Crímenes Organizados de MDSO denominó la investigación “Operación Sundown”.

Según los investigadores, el principal sujeto del caso, Juan Awais, de 60 años, era propietario de una empresa de administración de propiedades y presuntamente utilizó empresas de su propiedad, junto con proveedores afiliados, para ejercer control no divulgado sobre asociaciones administradas por su compañía.

Los investigadores dijeron que miembros de juntas directivas de asociaciones de edad avanzada, principalmente de habla hispana, presuntamente fueron engañados para que firmaran documentos que no comprendían por completo.

Según MDSO, esos documentos permitieron a los sujetos obtener control sobre las operaciones y finanzas de las asociaciones para su propio beneficio.

La investigación de dos años incluyó siete órdenes de registro y extensos análisis forenses digitales, según MDSO.

Los investigadores dijeron que descubrieron una presunta organización de crimen organizado que involucraba a familiares, empleados y varias empresas afiliadas cuyas conexiones no fueron divulgadas.

Según la oficina del sheriff, el grupo presuntamente desvió cuotas de las asociaciones, fondos de seguros y préstamos, e ingresos por cobros, mientras ocultaba la propiedad de las empresas y el flujo de dinero.

Los investigadores también alegaron que hubo esfuerzos para obstruir la investigación, incluida la entrega de documentos incompletos o recién creados y el intento de disuadir a miembros de las juntas directivas de las asociaciones de hablar con las autoridades.

MDSO identificó a los sujetos como Awais; Juliet Ramos, de 37 años; Johana Perez Tapia, de 31; Delma Alonso, de 53; Cynthea Louise Waltz y Michael Irizarry.

Awais enfrenta cargos que incluyen crimen organizado, lavado de dinero, fraude organizado, hurto mayor y aceptar o solicitar un soborno.

Ramos, Perez Tapia y Alonso también enfrentan cargos de crimen organizado, lavado de dinero y múltiples cargos de fraude organizado, según un comunicado de prensa de MDSO.

La oficina del sheriff no proporcionó información sobre los cargos contra Waltz o Irizarry, señalando que ambos fueron arrestados por el Departamento de Policía de Pembroke Pines.

MDSO dijo que la investigación continúa en curso.

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A Van Cleef & Arpels necklace, two Louis Vuitton bracelets valued at nearly $150,000, and a gold bracelet valued at $95,650, were among the pieces that Izquierdo stole while working as the family’s housekeeper, according to a police officer’s arrest report.

“She had pawned multiple items consistent with property reported missing by the victim,” a West Miami police officer wrote, according to the report.

Police officers recently searched Izquierdo’s apartment in Hialeah and found “multiple items that had previously been reported missing from the victim’s residence,” according to police.

The property was in Izquierdo’s “bedroom and closet and was recovered as part of the investigation,” a police officer wrote, according to the arrest report.

The victims reported that Izquierdo also took a 24-karat gold knot chain, Cartier bracelets, two Cuban link chains, a custom-made bracelet with a diamond, according to the police report.

The list also included a nail necklace by Cartier, a Capricorn pendant, a pair of white gold diamond earrings, and a gold diamond necklace.

Court records show Miami police officers arrested Izquierdo on Nov. 21 and accused her of first-degree misdemeanor petit theft at a Target in the Flagami neighborhood. Miami-Dade prosecutors dropped the case.

Shortly before 9 a.m. on Aug. 20, Hialeah and West Miami police officers detained Izquierdo at her apartment, according to a police report.

Corrections booked Izquierdo shortly after 12:40 a.m. on Thursday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, according to Miami-Dade inmate records.

Izquierdo faced charges of burglary of an occupied dwelling and first-degree grand theft, according to Miami-Dade court records. A judge ordered her to stay away from the family in West Miami. Her bond was $20,000.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Tanya Brinkley was set to preside over the case.

Local 10 News Assignment Editor Mercedes Cevallos contributed to this report.

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The city released renderings on Thursday showing a memorial wall displaying the 98 names, near a water feature, and a graphic of clasped hands with a written message: “Love Lives On.”

“For five years, this community has carried the weight of remembering 98 friends and neighbors without a permanent place to do so,” Mayor Shlomo Danzinger said in a statement. “This memorial gives us that place.”

The memorial will be at the end of 88th Street and Collins Avenue, and the budget is about $3.5 million, including a $1 million grant from the state, according to city officials.

“It is tasteful, it is dignified, and it was shaped by the very people who loved them most,” Danzinger said. “A memorial cannot undo what happened here, but it can give a town a way forward. Now we have a permanent place to hold our neighbors in our hearts, and to heal together as a community.”

The city has yet to announce when the memorial will be unveiled.

Interactive graphic

Related links

• Town of Surfside gives final approval
• Announcement

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Jose Bravo surrendered to Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies at noon on Wednesday at the Broward County Main Jail in Fort Lauderdale, records show.

Bravo, who lives in Hialeah, was driving a black Chevrolet pickup truck when he stole fuel on July 6 from the 7-Eleven at 6460 Pines Boulevard, according to Pembroke Pines police officers.

“The eight separate incidents cost the victim business approximately 1,500 gallons of diesel fuel, totaling approximately $8,000,” a police officer wrote, according to the arrest report.

A detective accused Bravo of stealing fuel on July 6, on July 9, on July 14, on July 21, on July 24, on July 27, on Aug. 5, and on Aug. 7, according to the report.

A Hialeah detective also arrested Bravo over nine fuel thefts at other 7-Eleven gas stations in Hialeah and seized Bravo’s truck with a 150-diesel fuel tank, records show.

West Palm Beach police officers arrested Bravo after a detective accused him of stealing about $1,090 in fuel in July 2024 from a Wawa gas station at 2370 45th St., records show.

The 44 charges

In Miami-Dade County, Bravo faced 11 charges: Nine counts of petit theft, a misdemeanor; and two felonies, obtaining fuel fraudulently and transporting fuel without a license. His bond was $14,500.

Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge David H. Young was presiding over the case.

In Broward County, Bravo faced 33 charges: Grand theft of $5,000 or more, a third-degree felony; eight counts of obtaining fuel by fraud, a third-degree felony; eight counts of unlawful conveyance of fuel, a third-degree felony; eight counts of transporting fuel without a license, a first-degree misdemeanor; and eight counts of larceny - motor vehicle drive off, a second-degree misdemeanor.

Broward County Circuit Judge Lorena V. Mastrarrigo was presiding over the case.

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Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Kareem Johnson at 12:20 a.m. on Wednesday in the Gladeview-West Little River area, according to a deputy’s arrest report.

Johnson, of Fort Lauderdale, “failed to stop at a red light and struck the side of the victim’s vehicle” on May 9 in the Brownsville neighborhood, according to deputies.

MDSO deputies and Miami-Dade Fire Rescue personnel responded to the crash shortly after 9 p.m. on May 9 at Northwest 22 Avenue and 50th Street. MDFR personnel pronounced a man dead.

Prosecutors filed the felony case against Johnson on July 30, and a judge issued a warrant for his arrest, according to Miami-Dade County court records.

Miami-Dade corrections booked Johnson shortly after 3:10 p.m. on Thursday at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center, according to inmate records.

Johnson faced charges of vehicular homicide and DUI manslaughter. He was denied bond. Miami-Dade County Circuit Judge Lody Jean was set to preside over the case.

Kinchens connected with Aviyon Darien for a touchdown before finding Adrian Cox for another score. Northwestern’s defense kept the Generals off the scoreboard as the Bulls cruised to the shutout victory.

Northwestern improved to 2-0 on the season.

Jackson fell to 1-1 on the season.

Up next:

Northwestern will go on the road to face Hialeah Senior High School on Friday at 7 p.m.

Jackson will host Key West High School on Saturday at 5 p.m.

High school sports are back, and Local 10 wants to help celebrate the student-athletes who make game days and championship moments special across South Florida.

High School Spotlight is a chance to showcase the athletes representing schools and communities across Miami-Dade, Broward and Monroe counties.

Whether it’s a game-winning touchdown, a big save on the soccer field, a volleyball celebration, a cheerleading routine, a cross-country finish or a memorable moment with teammates, we want to see it.

Click here for more information on how to submit your pictures.

In his first high-profile speech at the Fed’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Warsh acknowledged that recent U.S. reports show that inflation has cooled a bit, but “they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

“We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed,” Warsh said. “Otherwise, we have work to do.”

The comments from the new Fed chair appeared to reassure Wall Street that fighting inflation remains the priority for the central bank. Warsh did not imply that a rate hike is imminent, but he appeared to dismiss perceptions that inflation is no longer a threat.

He pointed to data showing that inflation remains stubbornly above the central bank’s 2% target. Warsh replaced Jerome Powell in late May after his predecessor’s term ended.

The U.S. stock market held steady after the speech, but expectations are building in the bond market for the Fed to hike interest rates. The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its federal funds rate, moved from 4.22% to 4.30%, a sign that investors expect short-term yields to move higher.

Longer-term yields on 10-year and 30-year Treasuries were mostly flat, suggesting investors aren’t worried that higher rates will be needed for a long stretch of time to fight inflation.

Jon Faust, an economist at Johns Hopkins and a former adviser to Powell, said Warsh succeeded in conveying a tougher approach on inflation while avoiding the kind of detailed guidance from the Fed that he has disparaged.

“He found a way to convey that if necessary he would support raising rates, which is one thing people were concerned about,” Faust said.

Yet Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said the Fed chair has talked tough on inflation before without hiking the Fed’s key rate. His Friday remarks don’t provide any clearer guidance on the timing of any Fed moves, he added.

The Fed chair faced high stakes with his speech as questions swirled around Wall Street about whether he was sufficiently focused on fighting inflation. At a press conference July 29 he sowed confusion about whether he would back up his previous tough talk on rising prices with any action, such as lifting the Fed's short-term rate, which is currently about 3.6%.

Those concerns may have contributed to rising bond yields, which can increase the cost of borrowing for the government and everyone else. Yet Warsh has said he doesn’t want to provide what analysts call “forward guidance” about whether the Fed will hike or cut rates or stay on hold at upcoming meetings. He argues that it limits the Fed’s flexibility by committing it to a specific policy.

Yet some economists have argued that he could say more about his views on Fed policy without tipping his hand about future actions.

Warsh on Friday reiterated his skepticism about providing such guidance or even outlining his broad approach to interest-rate policy.

But he did suggest that interest rates currently aren’t restricting economic activity, pointing to robust business investment in AI equipment and infrastructure and strong consumer spending. As a rule of thumb, interest rates often need to be high enough to limit borrowing and spending to cool inflation.

The Fed next meets Sept. 15-16, and Warsh’s remarks don’t necessarily signal that the central bank will raise rates then. Wall Street investors now see the chances of a rate hike at the Fed’s Sept. 15-16 meeting as basically a coin flip, according to futures pricing tracked by CME FedWatch, up from about one-third before Warsh spoke.

Warsh said inflation data “are more concerning” than trends in the job market, where the unemployment rate is low. He also argued that inflation is unlikely to move back to the target on its own.

Warsh noted that in the past year, more than half of goods and services tracked by the government have seen price increases of 3% or higher. While that is down from the pandemic peak, it is “well above” the roughly one-third that saw such increases in the two decades before the pandemic.

Inflation cooled in June and July after spiking in May from soaring gas prices, yet it remains above the central bank’s target. According to the Fed’s preferred measure, it was 3.7% in July.

Warsh also sought to clear up some areas of confusion that arose after his remarks at the July 29 news conference, when he made vague remarks about what metric the Fed would use to track inflation and whether short-term interest rates were the Fed's main tool to combat higher prices.

On Friday, he specified that short-term interest rates are the Fed's “predominant tool," and added that the central bank is using the same gauge it has long followed to measure inflation.

Previous Fed chairs have often used speeches at Jackson Hole to address broad questions about interest-rate policy and the economy, or to signal upcoming changes in their approach. In 2022, with pandemic-era inflation having soared to 9.1%, Powell signaled the Fed would continue to sharply raise interest rates in a fight against runaway prices, and he acknowledged that such maneuvers would bring “pain” to consumers and businesses.

Questions about Warsh’s approach have intensified amid President Donald Trump’s continued calls for lower interest rates. While Trump has continued to defend Warsh, whom he appointed, the president has criticized other Fed officials for supporting higher rates.

Trump has also renewed his efforts to remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden. Replacing Cook would enable Trump to appoint a majority of the seven-member board. Trump tried to fire her last year but was temporarily blocked by the Supreme Court.

Longer-term rates have steadily risen in recent weeks because of a range of factors, including burgeoning U.S. government deficits and outsize borrowing by tech firms building AI infrastructure.

The rate on the 30-year Treasury bond reached the highest level in 19 years last week, prompting an unusual effort by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to buy back bonds and push yields lower.

Chaminade-Madonna went up 7-0 before Amos Bradford got into the end zone to tie the game.

From there, it was all Sierra Canyon.

Sierra Canyon took care of business and pulled away for a 24-7 win.

And another federal judge has halted — at least for now — Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting. Thousands of marchers have converged on the National Mall to support voting rights ahead of the midterm elections. Many are condemning Republican-led changes to voting laws as detrimental to racial justice and to Black Americans in particular.

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International Space Station gets a call from Trump

Trump joined a call to American astronauts on the International Space Station during a Friday visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Officials said it was the first time a sitting president called the station from Mission Control.

Trump congratulated the crew and said he admired their bravery.

“I wouldn’t do it. I will tell you right now, I hate to admit it,” Trump said. “But some people love it more than anything. And you have amazing courage.”

Crew members talked about their time on the station, saying they’re preparing for an upcoming spacewalk. They said they were excited to hear about Trump’s newly announced U.S. Space Academy.

When they get back to Earth, they will be invited to the White House, Trump said: “We’ll see you in the Oval Office, OK?”

Trump administration to appeal mail ballot decision

The White House plans to appeal a judge’s order blocking changes to mail voting ahead of the midterms.

Spokeswoman Lauren Bis said in statement Friday that the Trump administration will immediately appeal the order handed down late Thursday by a Boston-based judge.

Under Trump’s executive order, the U.S. Postal Service could refuse to deliver ballots from states that do not submit lists of eligible voters and follow a uniform envelope style.

With the first mail ballots set to go out next week, U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani found that states don’t have the time or money to produce new mail ballots and upload voter data.

Bis called the plan a series of commonsense measures that would protect ballot security.

A lawsuit from Democrat-controlled states says the new rules would cause chaos and leave out eligible voters.

Jeffries says Dems still could win majority in House despite GOP-led redistricting

In an interview with AP during Friday’s march for civil rights on the National Mall, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Democrats could still win a majority in the U.S. House despite GOP-led redistricting efforts in Southern states.

“We’re going to win all across the country, up and down the ballot,” Jeffries said. “We only have to flip about five or six seats, and that’s really what we’re going to do. It is a call to action.”

Egypt acknowledges US ban on government-owned bank’s UAE branches

Egypt’s foreign ministry and central bank are communicating with U.S. officials with regard to a recent decision by the U.S. Treasury to limit the operations of Banque Misr in the United Arab Emirates, according to a statement issued by the Central Bank of Egypt on Friday.

“The CBE affirms that this measure is limited to the bank’s branches in the UAE and only to its dollar transfers,” read the statement adding that the ban does not affect any other Egyptian bank and does not even extend to the Banque Misr’s operations inside Egypt or to any of its overseas branches.

“The Central Bank of Egypt affirms the strength and resilience of all banks operating in Egypt,” said the statement.

The Trump administration announced that it is taking steps to sever the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from access to the U.S. financial system on grounds that the financial institution was serving as an economic lifeline to Tehran’s leadership.

California sues Trump administration for ending state’s offshore wind project

State officials announced the lawsuit Friday over the administration buying back the lease for Golden State Wind. They say the cancellation will harm the state’s clean energy and climate goals, and economy.

The Trump administration is buying back offshore wind leases from energy companies as it seeks to discourage the expansion of wind energy in favor of fossil fuels.

Golden State Wind can recover about $120 million in lease fees after the same amount is invested in oil and gas development.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum says companies are shifting investment back toward dependable, secure energy infrastructure.

Trump loses again in bid to erase his hush money conviction

A federal judge rejected the president’s bid to move the state court case to federal court and have it dismissed on presidential immunity grounds.

Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein reiterated his earlier finding against Trump, saying that the reasons Trump cited for renewing his request were “neither new nor legally sufficient.”

The judge added: “He has failed to show good cause and diligence.”

It is the third time Hellerstein has blocked Trump from having the U.S. District Court in Manhattan seize control of the case from the New York court where he was tried and convicted.

Trump announces new Space Academy to join military academies

Speaking at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston on Friday, Trump said he is creating a U.S. Space Academy to train future generations for ambitious space missions.

Looking ahead to future missions to Mars and beyond, Trump said the nation needs to train “an entire generation of skilled service members, engineers and civil operators.”

Trump said he would soon decide a location for the academy, which he said will match the rigor of West Point, the Air Force Academy and other military academies.

“I said I’ll do it, but it’s got to be top line, it’s got to be the equivalent of the others,” he said.

Trump signed an executive order on Friday creating the new academy.

Trump sends good luck to team involved in weekend Roman Space Telescope launch

Trump is sending his best wishes to a team that on Sunday will launch the Roman Space Telescope, which NASA says will help settle questions in the areas of dark energy, exoplanets and astrophysics.

In his remarks at the ceremony, Trump noted the telescope will “help unlock the secrets of the universe.”

“To everyone involved here at NASA, good luck this weekend,” he added. “It’s a big deal.”

The telescope is named after Nancy Grace Roman, the first woman to hold an executive position at NASA and who helped with development of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Vance will speak at Republican Jewish leaders gathering – but his speech isn’t set to be public

Leading GOP voices are planning to address the Republican Jewish Coalition annual conference – but Vance’s remarks are listed as closed to reporters.

Vance, Indiana Sen. Jim Banks and Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, are all speaking at the gathering being held Sunday and Monday in Las Vegas, but are doing so behind closed doors only.

The public speech program is packed with other major GOP leaders, however. That includes members of Trump’s Cabinet, senators, House lawmakers and candidates vying for key Senate seats in North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan during November’s midterm elections.

Vance is widely seen as a 2028 presidential hopeful, and addressing the influential gathering is common for those likely to run for president. Also on the public speaking list is Vivek Ramaswamy, a 2024 presidential candidate now running for Ohio governor.

Top Democrat on Armed Services committee calls Iran war a ‘policy failure’

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island said Trump promised he would destroy Iran’s nuclear program, eliminate its missile and drone arsenal, and topple the regime in a matter of weeks.

“Six months later, not a single objective has been achieved,” Reed said. “Indeed, he has weakened our position in the Middle East and the world significantly.”

He called it a policy failure of “historic consequence” and said it was past time for accountability.

Jeffries says he doesn’t regret meeting with Jared Kushner

In an interview with The Associated Press, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said he did not regret meeting with Trump’s son-in-law.

Jeffries said he still expected Democrats to retake control of the U.S. House despite the party’s internal debates between its progressive and moderate wings, as well as Republican-led congressional redistricting efforts across the country.

“We’re going to win all across the country, up and down the ballot. We only have to flip about five or six seats, and that’s really what we’re going to do. It is a call to action,” said Jeffries.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s son says the state of the country would disappoint his father

Martin Luther King III told the AP during Friday’s voting right rally at the National Mall that the work of the Civil Rights movement “is further eroding” in the wake of the Supreme Courts’ April ruling that reinterpreted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

King III also said that his father, who worked so hard for that law, would be disappointed with the state of the country.

“Had he lived, we’d be on a totally different trajectory,” King said. “These would not be issues; they would have been resolved.”

US revokes visa of former Iraqi finance minister who won 2022 ‘International Women of Courage’ award

The Trump administration has revoked the U.S. visa of a former Iraqi finance minister who was honored in 2022 with an “International Women of Courage” award by the State Department.

The department said Friday it had revoked the visa of Taif Sami Mohammed Al Shakarchi, who served as Iraq’s finance minister from 2022 until July. Earlier this month she was implicated by Iraqi authorities in a possible corruption scheme.

The department said her visa was revoked after the FBI added her to its “terrorism watchlist.” It was not clear why she had been added to the watchlist but officials said she had left the United States before her visa revoked.

US Treasury targets Egyptian Bank’s UAE branches under ‘Operation Economic Outcast’

The Trump administration is taking steps to limit an Egyptian bank’s operations in the United Arab Emirates, accusing the financial institution of serving as an economic lifeline to Tehran’s leadership as the U.S. war in Iran reaches the six-month mark.

Under a new rule proposed by the U.S. Treasury, the Emirati branches of Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, would be severed from access to the U.S. financial system.

This comes after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent held a presser earlier in the week announced “Operation Economic Outcast,” warning countries that do business with Iran to sever their financial ties or face retaliation from the U.S.

US goals have shifted after 6 months of Iran war. The Strait of Hormuz is now a top concern

When Trump launched the war with Iran in late February, he forecast it would last four weeks to five weeks. Six months later, there still is no off-ramp in sight, despite Trump’s repeated assertions that the war has been won or a deal to resolve it was nearly complete.

A June memorandum of understanding designed to pave the way to end the war has fallen by the wayside. U.S. stockpiles of key weapons have diminished, and the Republican administration has pivoted to pressuring Iran economically rather than conducting more strikes.

The administration described various goals for the war:

1. Stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon 2. Reopen the Strait of Hormuz 3. Destroy Iran’s ability to fire missiles 4. Destroy Iran’s defense industrial base 5. Eliminate Iran’s navy and air force 6. Protect America’s Middle Eastern allies 7. Cut off support for Iranian proxy groups

▶ Read more about these objectives and where they stand

Sharpton says this year’s march is the most important yet

“We’ve been doing these marches for years, but this is probably the most important because this is the first year we are marching that the voting rights bill has been nullified by the Supreme Court,” Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The march opened with prayer and statements from Interfaith Alliance representatives who spoke on diversity, equity and inclusion practices, voting rights and systemic racism.

Thousands converge on National Mall in Washington to support voting rights

Friday’s march follows changes to voting laws and redistricting that civil rights groups have condemned as detrimental to racial justice and Black Americans in particular.

The 2026 “Defend the Vote” March on Washington, is organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III and echoes the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 march.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark April decision in Louisiana v. Callais reinterpreted the Voting Rights Act, allowing Southern states to redraw congressional maps in ways that erode equal representation in Black communities.

▶ Read more

The Iran war has changed the Mideast, but not in the way the US and Israel had hoped

It’s been six months since the United States and Israel attacked Iran with the perennial goal of transforming the Middle East through military force. The region has changed, but not in the way they had hoped.

The Islamic Republic survived the assassination of its top leaders and weeks of heavy bombing, and found a potent form of leverage in the Strait of Hormuz. Gulf Arab nations saw worrying gaps open up in the American security umbrella they have relied on for decades — and some are looking at alternatives.

Israel has once again thrashed its enemies without defeating them, and after nearly three years of war in Gaza and new land seizures, is at risk of a generational rupture with the U.S., its closest ally. Hopes of normalizing relations with Saudi Arabia — another enduring U.S. and Israeli aspiration — have dimmed even further.

▶ Read more

UN shipping regulator says 19 seafarers have been killed in Persian Gulf during Iran War

The International Maritime Organization said Friday that 19 seafarers have been killed in attacks on international shipping since the Iran war began, and at least 6,000 seafarers aboard hundreds of ships remain stranded and unable to leave.

The IMO said it has verified at least 70 attacks on international shipping in the Persian Gulf since the war began on Feb. 28.

“Thousands of seafarers in the region continue to live and work under conditions of heightened risk and uncertainty,” IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said. He urged practical solutions and cooperation to restore freedom of navigation.

Shipping has been disrupted and the through the Strait of Hormuz has been virtually closed since the Iran war started on Feb. 28. Before the war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, about one-fifth of the world’s traded oil and natural gas passed through the waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf.

Warsh faces high stakes as questions about his inflation-fighting may affect rising bond yields

The Fed chair, who replaced his predecessor Jerome Powell three months ago, has said he doesn’t want to provide what analysts call “forward guidance” about whether the Fed will hike or cut rates or stay on hold at upcoming meetings. He argues that it limits the Fed’s flexibility by committing it to a specific policy.

Yet some economists have argued that Warsh could say more about his views on Fed policy without tipping his hand.

Warsh on Friday reiterated his skepticism about providing such guidance or even outlining his broad approach to interest-rate policy.

But he did suggest that interest rates currently aren’t restricting economic activity, pointing to robust business investment in AI equipment and infrastructure and strong consumer spending. As a rule of thumb, interest rates often need to be high enough to limit borrowing and spending to cool inflation.

▶ Read more

Fed Chair Warsh signals rate hikes may be needed with inflation still elevated

Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh said Friday that inflation is still too high and suggested the central bank may have to raise interest rates in the coming months to bring it down, a clearer signal than he had sent previously about his economic outlook.

In his first high-profile speech at the Fed’s annual conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Warsh acknowledged in prepared remarks that recent inflation reports show it has cooled a bit, but “they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

“We must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed,” Warsh said. “Otherwise, we have work to do.”

Trump, like Bush, declares ‘mission accomplished’

Republican President George W. Bush was widely mocked for a 2003 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a White House-produced banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” It came to symbolize a premature declaration of victory for the Iraq War, which would go on for nearly nine more years. More than two decades later, there are still U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.

Trump’s war has stretched on far longer than he told Americans it would. It didn’t stop him from sharing a social media post this week declaring “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.” The AI-generated image features Trump against a backdrop of U.S. fighter jets, a warship and American flags above smaller images of Bush and former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the opening salvos of the war.

Trump will honor astronauts, unclear if he’ll speak on the war

The president is spending Friday in Houston, where he’ll honor the Artemis II NASA crew for their 10-day mission around the moon earlier this year.

It’s unclear how — or if — Trump will address the six-month anniversary of a conflict that has already cost the United States more than $37.5 billion and damaged his popularity ahead of critical November elections for his party.

As the conflict grinds on, Trump’s talk of finding a quick end to the war also appears to be fading. He stressed this week that he’s “not in a hurry” to get Iran back to the negotiating table, and he continues making the case that the Islamic Republic’s leadership is on the ropes.

“They’re not paying their troops. They’re in deep trouble. They have very little capacity,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “We don’t want to speak to them. We’re not looking to meet or anything.”

Watchdog requests that DOJ criminally investigate RFK Jr after AP and Guardian reporting

American Oversight is calling on the Justice Department to criminally investigate Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for allegedly making false statements during his confirmation hearings.

The liberal watchdog group’s letter Thursday includes a document published by the AP and the Guardian that contradicts Kennedy’s denials about his reasons for a 2019 trip to Samoa.

“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeatedly testified before two separate Senate committees that his trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines. But a letter he wrote to Samoa’s prime minister six years earlier appears to contradict that testimony,” the group’s executive director Chioma Chukwu said. “If Kennedy lied to the Senate while seeking confirmation as the nation’s top health official, the Justice Department must investigate and hold him accountable.”

Knowingly giving material false testimony to Congress is a crime, but it is rarely prosecuted. The Department of Health and Human Services said in response to AP’s questions that the Samoa visit was “unrelated to vaccines.”

CentCom says international shipping lanes are now demined in the Strait of Hormuz

Navy Admiral Bradley Cooper, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, said Thursday night that international shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz have been cleared of mines.

“Today, international shipping lanes are open and momentum is building,” he said in a video posted on social media.

Gulf states have not commented on the statement, and it was not possible to independently verify the claim. Even without mines, however, ships still face threats from drones, missiles and boats as they pass through the narrow waterway.

The U.S. government has claimed that up to 9 million barrels a day are flowing through the strait “over short time periods,” but commodities analysts at ING bank cautioned that the figure “seems aggressive.” Before the war, some 15 million barrels transited the strait daily.

Judge questions why Kennedy Center is moving so quickly to return Trump’s name to building

A judge on Thursday expressed skepticism about the Kennedy Center’s intention to return Trump’s name to the historic performing arts venue by early next month, challenging the board’s insistence on moving forward even in the face of a court ruling that blocked and reversed a previous effort.

Just seconds after the Trump administration’s lawyer, Brantley Mayers, began making his case at a nearly two-hour hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Christopher Cooper interrupted to ask why the center needed to begin inscribing the president’s name on the institution’s facade as soon as Sept. 8.

“What’s magic about that date?” Cooper asked, quipping that sometimes judges travel over the Labor Day holiday.

Mayers responded that the timeline was in accordance with a vote earlier this month by the Trump-aligned board. As he returned to his arguments that renovations at the Kennedy Center require energy and talent, Cooper interjected again.

“That’s all fine and good,” the judge said. “What does that have to do with what Congress intended in these statutes? That’s really what’s before me.”

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Judge again blocks Trump mail ballot executive order in ruling that’s likely to be swiftly appealed

A federal judge on Thursday halted — at least for now — attempts to implement Trump’s executive order limiting mail voting.

The move stalled the directive for a second time only about a week before the first mail ballots are due to be sent out for the rapidly approaching midterm elections. U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani blocked the government from implementing the order for two weeks.

The case could soon be appealed back to the Supreme Court, days after the justices handed down a procedural decision that allowed the administration to move ahead.

The ruling Thursday came after Democrats and voting rights groups refiled their lawsuits to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision. The high court’s conservative majority did not rule on the legality of Trump’s executive order, instead saying Talwani had acted too soon.

Judge says Pentagon’s measures against Anthropic were ‘illegal and baseless’

A federal judge has ruled in favor of artificial intelligence company Anthropic in its legal battle against the Pentagon after the government labeled the company as a supply chain risk earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a written order Thursday night that the Pentagon acted illegally by punishing the AI company for its criticism of the Department of Defense’s views on AI use. The government is expected to fight the ruling.

The dispute between the AI company and the government broke out in February when Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

Lin wrote that the government’s actions “were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government, not based on any articulable basis to believe that Anthropic would actually sabotage its model.”

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Trump used to say he saw a quick end to his Iran war. Six months later, he claims he’s in no hurry

President Donald Trump arrives at an awkward moment for his presidency on Friday as the U.S.-Israel war against Iran reaches the six-month mark, a notable milestone for a conflict that the Republican leader repeatedly assured Americans would be a “little excursion” lasting a matter of weeks.

The war isn’t over, though Trump claims that through bombs and blockade, he has already devastated Iran’s leadership, military and economy.

And this week his administration said it would turn its focus to increasing economic pressure — rather than military action — to try to finish off Iran. The shifting strategy centers on threats to punish any country or entity that continues to conduct business with Tehran.

The turn to using sanctions as the cudgel of choice comes as the administration weighs diminished munitions stockpiles after months of war, sparking concerns that the prolonged conflict could undermine U.S. military readiness in other parts of the globe.

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Julie Pierre, the 21-year-old owner of Roll and Dough Bakery in Sunrise, initially believed an Uber courier had stolen about $3,000 worth of cinnamon rolls she was sending to a farmers market.

Her story went viral on social media after she reported the rolls missing on Saturday.

But the courier never took off with the order.

A U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson identified the courier as Ivan Dario Rico Molano. According to the agency, he was arrested Saturday during a traffic stop in Hollywood.

A CBP spokesperson said Molano, a citizen of Colombia, admitted to being in the United States without legal authorization. Records indicate he entered the U.S. legally in May 2021 but remained beyond his authorized period of stay.

“We found out that he was pulled over in Hollywood by Border Patrol,” Pierre said. “When he was pulled over by Border Patrol, they called a family member and the family member was able to pick up the vehicle and the car still had the containers in the vehicle.”

Pierre said police recovered the vehicle and found the cinnamon rolls still inside the containers.

“Did the family member know there were cinnamon (rolls in there)?” Local 10’s Rosh Lowe asked Pierre. “How’d they find out?”

“So I think the police were the ones who contacted his family,” Pierre said.

She said the cinnamon rolls remained in containers in the vehicle, but she would not take a chance on anyone eating them and threw them away.

A police report was filed with the Sunrise Police Department after Pierre initially believed the cinnamon rolls had been stolen, and a GoFundMe page was created to help Pierre cover the lost expenses. She confirmed, however, that Uber has since fully reimbursed her for her loss.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s update about the May 26 failure in Longview, which expelled enough caustic liquid to blow out building walls, is part of an ongoing investigation. The federal agency said it is still determining the cause of the failure.

The board found that the contractor provided Nippon Dynawave Packaging Company with recommendations for internal inspections and shell repairs, but the company did none between a July 2025 inspection and the May 2026 failure.

“Because the investigation remains ongoing, we will not comment on individual findings or documents at this time,” an emailed statement from Nippon spokesperson Sam Jefferies said Friday. “Our focus remains on supporting affected families and employees and taking the necessary steps toward fully reopening the Longview facility.”

Jefferies said the company will continue to cooperate fully with the board.

The Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers released a statement on Friday saying the board's findings were “deeply troubling.”

“The update raises urgent questions about how technical findings and recommendations concerning the tank were communicated, evaluated and incorporated into decisions about its continued operation,” the statement said. “The families and workforce deserve a complete accounting of that process.”

Lawyer for family of 2 brothers who died says accountability is needed

A lawyer representing the family of two brothers who were killed, Tyler and Bradley Covington, said the board's findings are “nothing short of alarming.”

“When safety inspections and recommendations don’t lead to action, danger becomes a reality that causes devastation to human life,” lawyer Kyle Findley said in a statement Friday. “We will continue to work tirelessly to ensure those responsible for this horrific accident are held accountable and their families receive justice.”

Democratic U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said in a statement that the community deserves answers and “every worker has the right to come home safely at the end of the day.”

Multiple inspections found safety problems before tank failure

In July 2025, the contractor found “significant thinning” below the minimum safe thickness in the lower regions of the tank after an external inspection, according to the board's report. The minimum safe thickness is a threshold that measures a tank’s ability to contain the pressure of the liquid and support the tank’s weight, the report said.

The same contractor inspected the exterior of the tank in October 2025 and February 2026 and both times identified that “large portions of the tank remained thinner than the calculated minimum safe wall thickness.”

“The company also did not remove the tank from operation or derate the tank for reduced service,” the board said.

The tank failure released roughly 900,000 gallons (3.4 million liters) of a liquid known as white liquor that is used to break down wood for making paper products and is capable of causing severe burns. In addition to the workers killed, several others and one firefighter were injured.

Official questions why paper company didn't act

The board's Chairperson Steve Owens said in a statement “we are greatly concerned that the tank was not promptly removed from service or properly repaired after the clear findings in the inspection report.”

In an excerpt of the July 2025 inspection included in the board's update, the recommendations were noted as “Priority 1: Not fit for continued service unless corrected,” with a “high likelihood/consequence of failure (or) critical code/standard deficiency.”

“Owner should plan to have an internal inspection performed in order to determine the extent of the required repairs. It’s likely that the entire shell course should be replaced,” the inspection excerpt says.

The inspection was completed by Applied Technical Services LLC. The federal report did not specify why the company was conducting the inspections.

A message was left seeking comment from Applied Technical Services.

Tank failure occurred as employees started to arrive to work

The catastrophic failure hit just minutes after employees began arriving around 7 a.m., the board’s report said.

Shortly before 2 a.m., a vessel at the facility called a digestor was removed from service for repairs. As a result, the tank stopped sending white liquor into the digestor. But more white liquor continued to flow into the tank, causing it to approach full capacity around 6:20 a.m. It failed less than an hour later, the report said.

After flooding the courtyard, crushing vehicles and destroying part of one of the surrounding buildings, the liquid flowed into the buildings’ lower floors, where workers were holding morning meetings.

All eight workers in the electrical maintenance shop as well as a worker in the courtyard were killed. In the mechanical maintenance shop, five employees and the foreman escaped, but two were killed from exposure to the chemical, the report said. Two of the people who escaped were seriously injured due to chemical burns.

The company radioed for its medical emergency response team but didn’t explain that white liquor had been released, according to the report. A member of the team waded into a pool of white liquor to try to rescue an employee, thinking it was water, and was seriously injured from chemical burns.

Earlier this week, the Washington Department of Ecology issued notice of 35 environmental violations to Nippon Dynawave. The state agency oversees the facility’s air and water quality permits and compliance with environmental waste laws.

The board said its investigation is ongoing and that its complete findings will be included in its final investigation report.

___

Associated Press writers Martha Bellisle, Hallie Golden and Dave Collins contributed to this report.

Inside the Assembly Food Hall in downtown Nashville, Dolly Parton’s big blonde wig greets everyone, along with her signature smile.

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“She’s America’s fairy godmother and she’s just the kindest person and did so much for the world,” said Pamela Corris.

Since her passing, fans have posted messages there, sharing their love for her music and some of her best quotes, including: “It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.”

Everywhere you go in Nashville, sign after sign shows just how much she meant to Music City.

“She was amazing and this speaks for itself,” said Haley Minoske.

Tributes continue to pour in for the “9 to 5” singer.

Flags throughout the country are being flown at half-staff in honor of Dolly until Sept. 1.

In her hometown of Sevierville, Tennessee, a memorial keeps growing.

As fans continue to mourn, we’re learning more about Dolly’s final days. Her sister, Stella, posted on social media:

“My sister was one of the most generous, thoughtful and kind people I’ve ever known. What the world saw is exactly who she was, so much so, she told me recently that if there was no hope for her, she would still allow her medical team to try experimental drugs in the hope of helping others in the future.”

A private funeral for close friends and family will take place before she is laid to rest next to her husband, Carl Dean, at Woodlawn Memorial Park.

Flock is a brand of license plate readers. But unlike license plate readers that simply take pictures of cars and their license plates, Flock cameras can use artificial intelligence to record and track vehicles.

The details are stored in a searchable database.

Supporters say the technology can help track bad guys, notably the suspect in the Brown University shooting last year.

In Volusia County, the cameras were also used to track someone fleeing from police after allegedly attempting to carjack someone by force.

But critics say there is room for misuse.

They point to arrests of police officers accused of using the cameras to stalk exes, as well as broader privacy concerns.

“If you’re looking for a specific license plate related to a crime, you would make a match,” said Juliette Kayyem, a national security analyst. “Instead, deployed to 7,000 police departments with no training, no guidance.”

The cameras are now used across 49 states.

There are reportedly 120,000 Flock cameras, including more than 7,500 in Florida alone.

The debate has now entered the governor’s race, where both sides have issues with the technology.

Democrat David Jolly says he wants to call a special session to address concerns, saying reforms or outright elimination should be considered.

Republican Byron Donalds touts his support from law enforcement, which uses the technology, but supports criminal penalties if it is used for spying.

Small children were among those who deboarded the plane with adults.

Local 10 News got exclusive video of Haitian nationals landing at the airport.

Last week, a plane carrying 160 people arrived at the same airport. That group included a mixture of TPS holders and others who had previously faced legal troubles in the United States.

Around 7 p.m. Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security posted a video on its social media pages showing a group of Haitian nationals in the rain, shackled as they boarded a plane earlier in the day. A Haitian song played underneath the video.

One of the passengers was a man who made it back to Haiti.

Speaking in Haitian Creole, he said he left Haiti 10 years ago. The Port-au-Prince native said he did not enter the U.S. through the humanitarian parole program created in January 2023.

Asked how it feels to be back in Haiti, he said he hasn’t felt Haiti’s sunlight in a while.

He described the moment as both good and bad, saying he had wanted to return to Haiti, but not like this.

He said he would have preferred to arrive with a happy heart, enjoying the country with his friends and family.

Local 10 News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security with several questions about the group that landed. DHS had not responded as of Thursday night.

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Online jail records show Tanyla Christyanna Gamble, 25, faces charges of battery/dating violence and battery causing bodily harm.

According to an arrest report, officers were called to Fire Station 107, located at 11811 Miramar Parkway, at about 11:40 p.m. Wednesday regarding a physical altercation between two firefighters who had previously been involved in a romantic relationship for about two years before breaking up about a month ago.

Police said Gamble entered the victim’s room at the fire station and initiated an argument, which escalated into a physical altercation.

According to the report, Gamble repeatedly punched the victim, including once in the back of the head, which caused a visible bump.

Police said Gamble did not sustain any physical injuries during the incident.

The victim provided a sworn statement to detectives, detailing what occurred, but Gamble declined to provide a statement, according to the report.

A spokesperson for Miramar Fire Rescue released a statement to Local 10 News Thursday, saying Gamble has been placed on administrative leave.

“Miramar Fire Rescue is aware of the arrest of one of our employees,” the statement read. “The Department takes matters involving the conduct of its personnel seriously. The allegations are currently being handled by the appropriate law enforcement agency and remain part of an ongoing investigation. Miramar Fire Rescue is cooperating as appropriate and will also address this matter in accordance with City and Department policies and applicable personnel procedures.

“To protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation and the rights of everyone involved, the Department will not comment on the specific circumstances of the case at this time.

“Currently the individual in question is on administrative leave until the conclusion and outcome of all investigations.”

Gamble bonded out of jail Thursday evening.

Job Listing: Assignment Editor

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Engages users through social media, responds to reader comments and pursues other avenues for integrating with audiences. Knows how to play big and win weather and breaking news. Asks tough questions, demands accurate answers, and exhibits extraordinary poise and ethical decision-making skills under pressure. Other duties as assigned

Minimum 2 years news assignment editor experience. A college degree in Journalism, Communications or a related field is preferred. Must be able to work well under pressure and deal effectively with last minute deadlines. Grasp of Spanish/Creole languages helpful.

***All of the essential functions of this position are not necessarily described in this posting.

***We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider all qualified candidates regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, age gender, marital status, disability, matriculation or political affiliation. Any offer of employment is conditioned on successful completion of a pre-employment drug screen, investigative background check, employment/education verifications and reference checks. A valid driver’s license is required.

Please follow link below to apply for Assignment Editor Position:

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With all the political instability around the world that the U.S. is dealing with, you begin to wonder where is our Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio?

Trump’s son-in-law and businessman Jared Kushner; businessman and U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff; and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have traveled overseas on numerous diplomatic missions and most recently CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin after traveling to Cuba months ago and meeting with the Minister of the Interior, General Julio Casas.

There is no doubt in my mind that Marco Rubio is qualified and has the experience for the positions he holds. He also has a very good senior staff around him. Maybe his absence during these diplomatic missions is the fact that he knows very well that Trump’s foreign policy lacks clear strategical purpose and could backfire on him as they have on Trump, indicated by the polls.

Many in the Cuban-American community raised their hopes that given that we have a Cuban-American secretary of state, that Cuba would finally be free from their totalitarian government by the end of 2026 -- now it’s looking that we will have to wait until 2029. Regime change certainly did not happen in Venezuela.

If Rubio is going to run for president next time around, he does not need to be blamed for these foreign policy failures around the world. But eventually, he will have to explain to the American people what his role was.

The question remains whether or not he will remain in the Trump administration after the mid-term elections this coming November?

Aug. 26: For many young Cubans on the island, time has run out

Years ago, a young Cuban man sat one morning in the famous Malecon of Havana, looking at the ocean and said to himself “Either they kill me or I will kill myself,” feeling the frustration of living and surviving each day in Cuba.

On July 11, 2021, many young Cubans took to the streets of the island nation after years of frustration to protest the living conditions they faced each day. There were many expectations that change was not far away. As a result, many of the protesters were thrown in jail or kicked out of the country.

Five years later, with the many sanctions that have been placed by the U.S. on the Cuban government and their leaders, many of these same youngsters felt the end of the regime was near. In South Florida, the feeling was mutual. Politicians in South Florida said the regime would fall by the end of 2026. Now the same politicians say that Cubans on the island and Miami need to be patient. Change could come by 2029.

For many young Cubans on the island, time has run out. There is no more waiting. No more suffering. No more empty promises. Many of them have started to leave Cuba to anywhere around the world. For Cuban-Americans in South Florida, it is just one more disappointment.

Aug. 25: What will happen when Raul Castro dies?

Washington, D.C. keeps sanctioning the Cuban government and members of the elite. The Cuban government has shown their capability to survive at the cost of the Cuban people. The question I ask myself is what will happen when Raul Castro dies?

Will those Cuban military officers that have not benefited from the economic corruption within the government be willing to support someone Castro picks to succeed him? Or will they challenge the new leadership?

Aug. 21: CEPAL releases economic performance indicators for 2026, predicting Cuba’s economy will slow down 10.3%

The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) just came out with their economic performance indicators for 2026. It predicts that Cuba’s economy will slow down 10.3%, which is the worse performance in all of Latin America.

How much more will the Cuban people be able to take is anybody’s guess.

Aug. 20: Cuba’s president says health system on verge of total collapse

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel admitted earlier this week that the health system, one of the so-called “great accomplishments” of the Cuban revolution, is on the verge of total collapse. There are thousands of Cubans on the island waiting for surgeries that cannot be performed due to the lack of doctors, medicines, equipment and poor hospital conditions.

For years, Cuba has been sending medical brigades around the world to help pay-off their debt and export the ideals of their revolution. The U.S. government has accused Cuba of human trafficking for these actions.

Aug. 18: Trump’s Cuba strategy: Is there really a plan?

Does the Trump administration really have a plan for Cuba?

After months of rhetorical back-and-forth, you begin to wonder whether the Trump administration really knows what to do with Cuba. We keep hearing that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was given the responsibility to deal with Cuba and the rest of Latin America, which he knows extremely well. But from what I hear, White House senior staff keeps getting in the way.

Continuing to sanction operations and individuals in Cuba will not bring down the government. Now we hear from Secretary Rubio and members of our Cuban-American congressional delegation that the target date has been moved back, and they hope that by 2029, changes in Cuba will have taken place, which is absolutely ridiculous.

Aug. 14: Cuba turns to global investors as US sanctions and property claims raise risks

The Cuban government has realized that efforts to attract investment from U.S. and Cuban-American businesses have largely failed because of the many sanctions imposed by the United States and the fact that the risks still outweigh the opportunities.

However, the Cuban government is trying very hard to attract companies from around the world to take over many operations and businesses in Cuba. With many European hoteliers and other companies having recently left Cuba, it will still be a challenge to attract new investors.

One thing these companies should keep in mind before starting operations in Cuba is that they could be operating in properties that were confiscated by the Cuban government in the early 1960s. They could potentially face legal challenges in the future as a result.

For American companies alone, there are 5,913 businesses and properties that were confiscated and registered with the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Aug. 13: Fidel Castro’s 100th birthday prompts reflection on his legacy in Cuba

Thursday marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Fidel Castro, a man whose narcissistic personality took control of Cuba after overthrowing Fulgencio Batista on Jan. 1, 1959. He made promises to the Cuban people that he later betrayed for his own selfish ambitions and thirst for power.

At his trial on Oct. 16, 1953, following the failed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba, he famously said, “History will absolve me.”

In the end, history will judge him as a ruthless dictator who destroyed Cuba, impoverished its people and inflicted tremendous suffering on an entire nation.

Aug. 12: Cuba poses a tough foreign policy challenge for Rubio

“Who is on first, what is on second, I don’t know is on third.”

The famous comedy routine by Abbott and Costello can be compared to the Trump administration’s foreign policy strategies these days. Diplomatic negotiations are complex and complicated, especially when dealing with countries, governments, and individuals with whom the United States has not had good relationships.

Reliable sources tell me there are tremendous differences between the staffs at the White House and the Department of State over how to handle negotiations involving Ukraine, Russia, Israel-Gaza, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba. It does not help when those negotiating on behalf of the United States have limited to no diplomatic experience.

For now, let’s stay within the area of expertise: Cuba. While President Trump thinks Cuba can be resolved in two months, Secretary of State Marco Rubio knows very well, as does his senior staff, that negotiating with Cuba is not easy.

The Cuban government is willing to continue introducing cosmetic changes to its moribund economy without relinquishing political control. The United States can continue to sanction everyone on the island, and the Cuban government could not care less. All the while, the people of Cuba continue to suffer tremendous hardships. Yet the people are unlikely to turn against the government. The consequence of doing so can mean spending years in jail.

Meanwhile, in Miami, the guessing game continues over who will replace Raúl Castro when he dies, along with preparations for possible transition plans for Cuba. A transition to a democratic system of government in Cuba will take time. A civil society cannot be built overnight. It is also important to remember that Cuba did not have a democratic government before 1959.

For Rubio, expectations from the Cuban American community are high. Yet most in the community understand that it will not be easy to get the Cuban government to make political changes short of a U.S. military invasion. However, Rubio needs a win, especially if he is considering another presidential run. The failures of the Trump administration’s foreign policies around the world could affect Rubio’s future presidential campaign.

So, what will be Rubio’s next step on Cuba? The clock is ticking.

Aug. 10: Will the cat catch the mouse this time?

While U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues to put pressure on the Cuban government to change, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel went on Cuban television this past weekend and announced to the Cuban people that the government was making major “transformational changes” to the economy.

Díaz-Canel also told the Cuban people that it would take time and patience -- two things the Cuban people do not have anymore. Díaz-Canel went on to say that the benefits of these changes will begin to show by 2029.

Sources in Washington, D.C. have told me that the Trump administration is looking to see if there is someone in the Cuban government, like Delcy Rodriguez in Venezuela, to hand over Raul Castro or even take over the current government and be willing to negotiate with the U.S.

The Miami Herald reported this weekend that General Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas, currently the Cuban Minister of the Interior, may be acceptable to the U.S. General Casas is considered a hardliner and therefore unlikely to break with the Cuban leadership.

As I have said before, the case of Venezuela is quite different than Cuba. While Raul Castro is alive, I believe the Cuban government will continue in power and make promises to the Cuban people they cannot keep.

Aug. 8: Cuban opposition leader says Cuba’s transformation must include those on the island

According to Cuban opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, any plans to transform Cuba must include Cubans on the island.

But do Cubans on the island have the capacity and capabilities to participate in such a process? After living for almost 68 years under a totalitarian system that has shaped the population’s personal values and attitudes, it could take time not only to change it but, more importantly, to sustain those changes.

Democracies are not built in one day. It will take time and patience. Let’s also remember that before the Cuban Revolution, Cuba had a dictatorship under Batista.

Aug 6: US announces new set of economic sanctions against Cuba; 2 of Cuba’s top generals also sanctioned

The U.S. State Department announced a new set of economic sanctions against Cuba on Thursday. At the same time, two of Cuba’s top generals were also sanctioned, Alvaro Lopez Miera, Minister of Defense; and General Roberto Sotolongo, head of the armed forces.

Aug. 5: CIA Task Force on Cuba created, per report

The New York Times has reported the creation of a CIA Task Force on Cuba with the purpose of putting additional pressure on the Cuban government to make political and economic changes to their system.

This news will probably be received by Cuba as an additional threat by the U.S.

Aug. 5: Cuban president confirms ongoing conservations between Havana, US

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel confirmed today that there are ongoing conversations between Havana and DC for the purpose of avoiding a military confrontation and trying to find solutions to the issues between both nations.

The Cuban government understands that they are running out of options and most likely will need to reach an agreement with the U.S. Will it include regime change?

Aug. 3 update: Rubio speaks about Cuba’s ongoing espionage activities in the US

This past weekend, in an interview with Fox News, U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Marco Rubio spoke about Cuba’s ongoing espionage activities in the U.S.

Rubio went on to say that Cuban spies continue to infiltrate the U.S. government, financial institutions, organizations, and academic institutions. Rubio claimed that Cuba continues to be a national security threat to the U.S.

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.

“It costs me $73 to fill up our minivan right now," she said. "This is just not acceptable for working families.”

Some 600 miles away, political extremism is exactly what Republican Rep. Mike Lawler wants to talk about in his New York battleground district. He said the Democratic Socialists of America “is going to be a big issue, in part because that’s the platform that Democrats are running on.”

A transition is underway over these final days of summer as Democrats and Republicans push past internal fights over the direction of their parties and begin a two-month sprint to the general election. As they turn to the fall, a rigid split screen has emerged featuring fundamentally different campaign messages to win over voters. Which version they choose will decide whether Republican President Donald Trump and his party maintain full control of Washington for the next two years.

Specifically, Democrats are working to refocus on the economy, which voters say is their top concern as the cost of everyday goods remains high, even though inflation has fallen from the peak of Democratic President Joe Biden's term. Republicans, unwilling or unable to challenge Trump's policies, are fighting to keep the focus on Democrats' lurch to the left, warning nonstop about socialism or even communism.

Republican strategist David Urban, a Trump ally, acknowledged that the message “has limits.”

“That’s not going to work everywhere,” he said. Meanwhile, he described the war in Iran and the related economic fallout as “a mess.”

“Right now I think people see the war as a drag on the economy and therefore they don’t like it,” Urban said, warning that the road ahead for the Republican Party may be painful. “Do I have a rosy scenario where I think Republicans roll strong and keep the House and everything? I’m not naive enough to think that’s a likely scenario.”

Republicans still want to blame Biden for prices

The Republican Party is struggling to settle on a message to address voters' economic concerns.

The word “gasoline” is mentioned only one time across more than a dozen separate talking points released by the Republican National Committee this month, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press. That is as the average price of gasoline was $4.18 last week — the fifth consecutive week that national gas prices exceeded $4.

While largely ignoring the issue, the talking points encourage Republicans to blame high costs generally on Biden.

“President Trump is fixing what Biden broke,” they say.

Meanwhile, the word “Democrat” is cited 73 times in this month’s RNC talking points.

Vice President JD Vance did not address gas prices when he visited Ohio last week, touching on affordability in general only briefly.

“We got a lot of work to do, but we’re finally seeing that American dream of homeownership become accessible again to our young people,” he said.

Vance also ignored the Trump administration's war in Iran, which has now been going on for six months and has a direct impact on the rising cost of gas. He was eager to attack the rise of Democratic socialists, however.

“If these radicals take control of Congress, they’re going to pass the craziest agenda America has ever seen,” the vice president said.

Ideological fractures linger among Democrats

Some Democratic officials worry that the rise of democratic socialists within the party presents a political problem for candidates in swing districts.

At least eight DSA members or DSA-backed candidates secured Democratic nominations for Congress this primary season. That includes seven for the House, in addition to Democratic Senate nominee Angie Nixon in Florida. There are no DSA-affiliated nominees for governor after Wisconsin's Francesca Hong lost her primary bid this month.

While such candidates represent only a fraction of the 257 seats Democrats currently hold in Washington, Democrats know they cannot ignore the issue altogether.

In an interview, Michigan Democrat Hines refused to endorse two DSA-affiliated House candidates in her state or Michigan's Democratic Senate nominee, Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed is not affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, although he is a vocal ally of Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who is a progressive champion.

Without naming them, Hines condemned those in her party whom she does not view as sufficiently patriotic.

“I love my country,” she said. “It drives me crazy when some members of my party, particularly on the far left, don’t act like that.”

The Democratic Socialists of America are still far from a household name for most voters.

Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults had a favorable view of the DSA, according to a CNN/SSRS poll conducted in July, while about one-third had an unfavorable opinion and the rest have not heard of the organization or do not have an opinion. About 7 in 10 Democrats or people who lean toward the Democratic Party said they would feel “enthusiastic” or “okay” about their party nominating a candidate who describes themselves as a democratic socialist.

Trump remains deeply unpopular

Polling consistently shows that voters are far more concerned about costs and the economy.

A Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted in July found that most registered voters, about 6 in 10, mentioned something related to the economy or high prices when they were asked to share the most important factors for their midterm vote in their own words. About 3 in 10 mentioned immigration.

Very few mentioned anti-communism or socialism as a top factor for their vote, although cultural issues have been an effective wedge for Republicans in recent contests.

Still, Trump's weak standing represents another hurdle for Republicans. Only about one-third of U.S. adults approve of how the Republican is handling the presidency, according to Associated Press polling, down slightly from 37% in June.

Lawler said he would campaign with Trump again if the president returned to his district this fall, but the congressman also sought to create some distance from Trump.

“If he comes back that’s fine, but ultimately this race is going to be decided by my record and my vision,” he said. “It’s going to be an interesting fight to the finish.”

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Trump’s former personal attorney has stepped into the commanding role facing a challenge that other leaders of the Republican president’s Department of Justice could not overcome: threading the needle between Trump's boundary-busting demands and a prosecutor’s duty to uphold the rule of law. At the same time, Blanche must try to stabilize a workforce shaken by an exodus of experienced lawyers and an erosion of trust in the judicial branch.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press during a trip to Puerto Rico this week, Blanche promised to lead the department with integrity, dismissing concerns from critics who say his actions so far — including an indictment against longtime Trump foe and former FBI Director James Comey — call into question whether Blanche is still functioning as Trump’s personal lawyer.

A slew of ongoing politically charged investigations under Blanche’s watch could force him to choose between his long-standing loyalty to the president and the foundational principles of the Cabinet agency he leads. At stake is the fate of a department already reeling under a president who has made clear his desire for retribution over the criminal scrutiny he faced.

“My integrity, my commitment to the rule of law is the same today that it was the day I graduated,” Blanche told the AP when asked where he would draw the line on requests from the White House. “I would never do anything unethical or improper or violate my oath, no matter the circumstances.”

Critics disagree.

As acting attorney general, Blanche came under fire from lawmakers, including many Republicans, for signing off on a $1.8 billion fund meant to compensate Trump's allies who believed they were politically prosecuted. He also greenlit a deal that granted Trump, the Trump Organization, and two of his sons immunity from tax audits. Those moves, unusual steps aimed at granting the president and his allies far-reaching benefits, put Blanche's confirmation at risk, prompting key senators to express concern.

Blanche, like Trump's other attorneys general, walks a tightrope

In the AP interview, Blanche addressed criticism of the department under his leadership, his priorities as attorney general and losses the administration has had in high-profile cases. He also depicted the Justice Department as an institution whose independence had eroded long ago — a characterization at odds with decades of fierce autonomy that challenged the highest echelons of power in Washington and beyond.

Blanche, a former federal prosecutor in New York, is walking the same tightrope as Trump’s three other Senate-confirmed attorneys general. They found their pledges to uphold the rule of law and the department’s ethical norms at odds with the president’s demands to bend the institution to his will.

During Trump’s first term, one attorney general infuriated Trump over his withdrawal from an investigation into Trump's winning White House campaign and was forced out. Another submitted his resignation weeks after breaking with Trump over Trump's false claims of election fraud. Blanche’s immediate predecessor, Pam Bondi, was ousted in April after failing to deliver successful prosecutions against the president’s political enemies.

Blanche's narrow confirmation this month over opposition from two Republican senators underscored growing concerns about the dismantling of the Justice Department's long-standing tradition of independence from the White House, which is meant to protect the impartiality of politically sensitive investigations and prosecutions.

Concerns that the Justice Department is being weaponized

Blanche bristles at the suggestion that the Justice Department should be independent of the president and he has made clear his view that the executive has both the power and the right to shape and control the law enforcement agency.

He has staunchly defended the integrity of cases the administration has brought against the president's perceived political opponents, often pointing to his own experience representing Trump in criminal cases brought by Democratic President Joe Biden's Justice Department. Blanche and the president have characterized those cases as politically motivated.

“I think attorneys general and others have said, ‘Oh, we’re independent.’ I don’t think that’s actually true,” Blanche told the AP.

Blanche claimed the Justice Department was not truly independent when he was a federal prosecutor or during the Biden administration. But that characterization ignores the fact that under Biden, the Justice Department investigated Biden himself over his handling of classified documents and secured felony charges in two separate cases against his son Hunter before Biden pardoned him.

The two criminal cases filed by special counsel Jack Smith against Trump were based on allegations, supported by long-running investigations, that Trump had classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and obstructed government efforts to get them back, and conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Growing distrust of the Justice Department among judges

Blanche has sought to highlight the administration's focus on tackling illegal immigration, violent crime and drug-trafficking cartels, spotlighting cases such as the takedown of a Puerto Rican gang that he announced during his visit to the U.S. island territory.

But Blanche's policy priorities are often overshadowed by a growing number of investigations that have drawn criticism that the department is being used as a weapon in the president's campaign of retribution.

Blanche's supporters have argued that the close relationship he developed with Trump while serving as his criminal defense lawyer can make him more effective at pushing back on or explaining the legal constraints of the president's demands. Others wonder whether he will fare any better than Bondi up against the same skeptical court system, and factual and legal hurdles, that impeded efforts to deliver the sought-after results.

Blanche is also confronting growing distrust of the Justice Department among judges, who in multiple cases have accused government lawyers of withholding information or misleading courts. Courts in some cases have quashed subpoenas or ordered the review of grand jury transcripts, and the criminal cases against Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James were dismissed after a judge found the prosecutor who brought them was illegally appointed.

But Blanche played down concerns that the erosion of judicial trust could impede his efforts to advance his agenda.

“The isolated incidents that make the news are not reflective of the way the bench feels in my view, or the way prosecutors are doing their job around the country,” Blanche said.

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Associated Press writer Eric Tucker in Washington contributed to this report.

Hundreds are dead or missing after a deadly torrent of water and mud several stories high swept through communities Wednesday following a glacier collapse.

The Nepalese army has been using helicopters to rescue people because so many roads and bridges have been washed out.

Dan Hovey, vice president of emergency response at Direct Relief, which provides medicines and healthcare to disaster-struck areas, said his organization had already pre-positioned emergency supplies in Nepal for the upcoming monsoon season. That preparation has enabled Direct Relief to help quickly during these unexpected floods.

“Nepal is a very disaster-prone country,” he said. “On the disaster vulnerability indexes, it’s one of the highest – from earthquakes, floods, drought, wildfires.”

In addition to the medicines and supplies already in Nepal, Direct Relief was readying more shipments to send to Nepal Thursday, said Hovey, adding that new donations would allow the nonprofit to provide more support in the months to come.

“This is going to be a long recovery process,” Hovey said.

Responding organizations say giving cash is currently most needed to provide local agencies and nonprofits flexible funding to continue their relief efforts.

Here are some organizations aiding those on the Nepal-China border, including U.S. groups responding on the ground.

U.S.-based organizations already operating in Nepal

All Hands & Hearts, the disaster recovery nonprofit, says it is currently providing emergency relief in Nepal, where it has worked since 2015 and plans to continue its work of rebuilding schools and homes.

Catholic Relief Services, the international humanitarian agency, has partnered with Caritas Nepal to provide aid and social services, while also working to deploy its own teams to help relief efforts.

Global Giving, the support nonprofit, has launched the Nepal Flood Relief Fund that it hopes will raise $1.5 million to provide flexible funding for search and rescue efforts and other emergency responses, as well as infrastructure rebuilding and other recovery projects.

Humanity & Inclusion, the international victim assistance nonprofit, says it is already distributing emergency supplies and providing rehabilitation support inside local hospitals.

Save the Children, the international nonprofit, says it is already delivering cooking kits, mosquito nets and blankets to 1,000 households in the region and coordinating with national and local authorities to determine how to scale its response.

World Central Kitchen, Chef Jose Andres’ humanitarian nonprofit, says it is already feeding those in the region through its local partners. It plans to activate its distribution network to bring more food to the affected area.

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Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The undefeated British heavyweight (14-0) is aiming to become the second youngest heavyweight champion in history when he takes on Filip Hrgovic (21-1) for the IBF title in London on Saturday.

If Itauma can beat Hrgovic, he'd become the youngest heavyweight champion since a 20-year-old Mike Tyson stopped Trevor Berbick in 1986.

Hrgovic, a 34-year-old Croatian, has focused on Itauma's age in the buildup.

At times, he's claimed to be concerned Itauma is too young to handle the money and fame that comes with being a champion. There's been plenty of mockery, too.

“He is a kid, he is not mature enough and I think I am the man. I am a much better age, much more experience. No mind games," he said Thursday. “I’ll smash the kid on Saturday and send him back to high school.”

Itauma has brushed it all off.

“At the end of the day talk is cheap. He has just got schoolboy banter and that’s it. You’ve got to keep rolling,” he said.

Itauma added he just wants to beat Hrgovic and the title and record are just a “plus one.”

Itauma's whirlwind rise

Itauma made his pro debut a month after his 18th birthday and hasn't looked back since.

He racked up six wins in the space of nine months to start his pro career. The southpaw then made a big statement knocking out former contender Dillian Whyte in the first round last year. A crunching knockout of Jermaine Franklin in March brought more buzz. His resume also includes a win over Mike Balogun, a former Buffalo Bills linebacker turned pro boxer.

It's all a long way from the small town in Slovakia where Itauma was born to a Nigerian father and Slovakian mother. Itauma has described moving to England with his family as a child after encountering racist abuse. His brother Karol was a top light-heavyweight prospect but had to retire after a heart attack.

Hrgovic's rise has been more measured, with notable wins over Zhang Zhilei and Joe Joyce, but also a big setback in a 2024 loss to Daniel Dubois, who's now the WBO champion. Hrgovic was bleeding from deep cuts above his eyes when the ringside doctor recommended the fight be stopped.

Fractured heavyweight division

Itauma’s fight with Hrgovic wasn't meant to be for a major title.

When it was scheduled in June, it was a way to narrow down the contenders for a potential challenge to then-IBF champ Oleksandr Usyk. The Ukrainian's decision to vacate all of his titles weeks later, as he seeks one last bout before retirement, opened up the whole heavyweight division.

Cuban fighter Frank Sanchez was also in the IBF title picture. He has said he agreed to a deal to allow Itauma vs. Hrgovic to go ahead and will fight the winner.

The WBC recognized Agit Kabayel as champion, the first German in over 90 years with a major men's heavyweight belt, while Dubois has the WBO belt he won in an all-British fight against Fabio Wardley in May.

Murat Gassiev was upgraded to Usyk’s old WBA “super” title and defended it against Peter Kadiru in Moscow in July after his original opponent, Tony Yoka, was injured.

All these new champions could be overshadowed by two veterans as long-running talks grind on for a blockbuster fight between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury, without a major title at stake.

Ready for battle

At the weigh-in, Hrgovic came in at 107 kilograms (236.2 pounds), while Itauma registered 110 kilos (241.7).

After the ritual face-to-face pose, Hrgovic stepped in front of Itauma and began posing for the cameras, prompting Itauma to shove him off the stage. Hrgovic lunged back and managed to land a punch on the British fighter’s face and security prevented any further escalation.

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See AP’s full sports coverage here

Meanwhile, thousands of sailors remain stranded in the Persian Gulf by the Iran war, while Iran is touting an energy deal with Russia and the U.S. has imposed restrictions on a major Egyptian bank for its ties with Iran.

Here’s a look at the latest developments in the Iran war and the wider Middle East. Full coverage can be found here.

Israeli strikes in Gaza kill 5

Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed five people, local hospital officials said Friday.

Two brothers and another relative died in a strike on the family’s home outside Khan Younis, officials at Nasser Hospital said. Israel's military said it was not aware of a strike in Khan Younis.

Two separate Israeli strikes killed one person each in Gaza City on Friday, according to health officials at Shifa hospital. Israel’s military confirmed it struck two separate areas in the city, without elaborating.

The five deaths are the latest in Gaza since an October ceasefire deal. While the heaviest fighting has subsided, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes, killing at least 1,303 Palestinians, according to health officials in Gaza.

Attack kills 3 in Jenin

Israel's military said it killed three Palestinians in an airstrike in the West Bank city of Jenin on Friday, describing one of the dead as a Hamas operative and the two others as accomplices.

The military identified one of the targets as Qais Bitawi who was alleged to be “involved in advancing significant terrorist activity.” The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed Bitawi had been killed, along with two others. Hamas condemned the strike as a “heinous crime.”

Violence has escalated in the West Bank, where at least 87 Palestinians have been killed in attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers this year, according to Palestinian officials. Three Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in 2026.

Iranian leader bans actions undermining national unity

Iran’s leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, on Friday declared that actions undermining national unity in the political, security, cultural, social or economic spheres are prohibited.

In a message marking Iran’s Government Week, Khamenei said every major government decision should take into account its potential impact on “social cohesion.” He warned that even measures supported by some could ultimately be harmful if their broader social consequences are ignored.

“Any statement that creates despair or weakens national and public motivation,” as well as what he called false divisions such as “war or negotiations,” “consensus or radicalism” and “compromise or warmongering,” could damage the country, Khamenei said.

Thousands of sailors stranded by Iran war

The U.N.'s maritime agency said Friday that 19 seafarers have been killed and at least 6,000 remain stranded on hundreds of ships unable to leave the region since the start of the Iran war on Feb. 28.

There have been at least 70 attacks on international shipping in the Persian Gulf, according to the International Maritime Organization.

About 20% of the world’s traded oil and natural gas passed through the vital commercial waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf before the war.

Iran and Russia look to revive energy deal

Iran’s ambassador to Russia on Friday said the two countries are seeking to deepen links between their energy grids by reviving a plan that dates to 2022, according to Iranian state media.

Umud Shokri, a fellow at George Mason University, said the plan calls for piping 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually into Iran, via Azerbaijan.

He said that would help Iran weather U.S. economic pressure by alleviating seasonal shortages of gas, though there are significant hurdles, as building out the infrastructure would be expensive and time-consuming.

US imposes restrictions on Egyptian bank

The Trump administration is taking steps to limit an Egyptian bank’s operations in the United Arab Emirates.

Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, is accused of serving as an economic lifeline to Iran's leadership. But under a new rule proposed by the U.S. Treasury, the bank's Emirati branches would be severed from access to the U.S. financial system.

The Central Bank of Egypt said it was in contact with U.S. authorities and that the restrictions are limited to Banque Misr's branches in the UAE and relate to dollar transfers only. No other Egyptian bank is affected.

Iran objects to US economic pressure

Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Friday condemned a new round of U.S. economic measures against the country, calling them “economic terrorism” and saying Tehran would use all available means to counter them.

The ministry said the sanctions violated international law and called on other countries to refrain from implementing them. It accused Washington of using the U.S. dollar to pressure other countries into complying with its policies.

Earlier this week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent vowed to fully sever Iran from the global economy and threatened countries that continue to do business with Iran with secondary sanctions.

Finland to stop providing UN agency aid for Palestine

Finland said it will not extend an agreement to provide humanitarian aid with the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, or UNRWA.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry, which has accused the U.N. agency of being a “hotbed of terrorism,” welcomed the news. UNRWA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Finland provided UNRWA with 5 million euros ($5.8 million) annually under a multiyear deal set to expire later this year. Ville Tavio, the country's foreign trade minister, said in a post on X that aid to Palestinian territories would instead be provided through other channels, such as the U.N.'s World Food Programme.

UK warns Israel against removing British officials

The United Kingdom warned against any attempt by Israel to remove British officials from the Gaza ceasefire coordination center on Friday.

The U.K. government said any move to remove its officials would “undermine shared efforts” to implement the 20-point Gaza peace plan. The comments came in response to reports that Israel is considering expelling officials from Britain and other European nations from the monitoring center.

Israel has already removed two Dutch diplomats from the ceasefire center. The country said Thursday that the decision was in response to a Dutch ban on the trade of Israeli products from the occupied West Bank and other “ anti-Israel measures.”

Prolonged air raids in Kyiv on Thursday essentially locked down the Ukrainian capital for 15 hours, the Foreign Ministry said, choking the economy and severely disrupting civilian life more than 4½ years after Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor. Even longer alerts are a daily reality in regions closer to the front line, the ministry said.

Russian drone and missile attacks are also taking aim at the power grid in what Ukrainian officials say is an annual campaign to “weaponize winter.” In Ukraine’s southern Kherson region on the Black Sea, where glide bombs a day earlier forced a combined heat and power plant to shut down, officials predicted a winter of extended outages and told people to move elsewhere if they could.

Russian attacks aim to paralyze Kyiv, Ukraine says

Russian strikes in the Kyiv region damaged 14 warehouses, 16 private houses, three apartment buildings and 16 vehicles, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the Kyiv regional military administration, said Friday.

A second drone hit one location after emergency crews were deployed, the State Emergency Service said, in what is termed by the military as a “double tap” that targets first responders.

The attacks killed one person and wounded two others, according to officials.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its forces overnight struck a warehouse in the Kyiv region that stores Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missiles and fuel for rocket boosters.

Ukrainian officials didn't immediately confirm the Russian claim, and The Associated Press couldn't verify it. Recent strikes have damaged numerous warehouses across Kyiv and the wider region, including facilities storing books, food and other consumer goods.

The attacks stretched into daylight hours, and Tkachenko urged residents to stay in safe locations and heed air raid alerts.

Russia is launching small numbers of fast-moving jet-powered drones in waves in an attempt to paralyze the capital, according to Andrii Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council.

“The goal is to exhaust air defenses and the population,” he said on social media on Friday.

Kyiv region authorities said that air quality worsened because of the attacks and warned people in some areas to keep their windows closed and limit their time outdoors.

Four Russian glide bombs destroyed a sorting center belonging to the postal service Nova Poshta in the northern Sumy region, and a drone smashed one of its depots in the Kyiv region, the company said.

Kherson officials advise residents to move away from the region

In the southern Kherson region, which is about 70% under Russian control, officials urged tens of thousands of residents to move to safer regions because of the possibility of prolonged power and heating outages this winter.

“Kherson may be without electricity and heat not for hours or days, but for a long time. And we need to prepare for this now,” said Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, in a social media post late Thursday.

Russia has intensified attacks on critical infrastructure in the region, with 170 glide bombs dropped on the Kherson region since July 1 — more than in the first six months of the year, Prokudin said.

Russia has also launched more than 1,700 attack drones over the past two months, increasingly using jet-powered Shahed and Gerbera drones against critical infrastructure, he said, and attacks by smaller drones rose to 6,500 in the past week alone.

Authorities will offer help with evacuation, transportation, resettlement and social support for those who decide to leave, he said.

Russia and Ukraine keep up their dueling aerial attacks

Russia fired 164 drones at Ukraine overnight, Ukraine’s air force said. It didn’t mention missiles, which usually are part of Russia’s aerial attacks.

A 61-year-old man was killed and seven other people were wounded Friday in a Russian glide bomb attack on the northern Sumy region, said Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its air defenses overnight shot down 512 Ukrainian drones over 18 Russian regions, as well as over the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula and the waters of the Black Sea.

Ukrainian forces struck the Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Russia’s Yaroslavl region overnight, causing a fire, Ukraine’s General Staff said, as Ukraine continued its campaign against the Russian oil sector.

A fire broke out at the site, which is around 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from the border with Ukraine, the General Staff said. The plant produces gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel, fuel oil, lubricants and other petroleum products, it added.

A Ukrainian drone attack on Friday morning in the Yaroslavl region killed one person and wounded 27 other people, Gov. Mikhail Yevrayev said. Ten of those were wounded when drone debris fell on a bus, he said.

He said that unspecified “industrial infrastructure,” residential areas and unidentified retail facilities were hit.

In the Moscow region that surrounds but doesn't include the Russian capital, a drone hit a supermarket, damaging it and shattering windows in a nearby outpatient clinic, Gov. Andrei Vorobyov said on Telegram.

In the port city of Sevastopol in Crimea, a five-story residential building suffered significant damage from a drone, according to the Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhayev. Four people were wounded, he said. He posted images of a charred building with windows and balconies knocked out.

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Barry Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.

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

The two new zones affected are Biena and Manguredjipa in Congo’s North Kivu province, where the case fatality rate is much higher than the overall rate of 48%, due in part to delayed response efforts, according to Congo’s Ministry of Health data.

It said the outbreak has recorded 5,794 confirmed cases, including 2,786 deaths, as it is spreading at an unprecedented speed, faster than efforts to track and slow it.

The outbreak is spreading under extremely difficult conditions, fueled by insecurity, displacement, a health workers’ strike and intense population movements. The World Health Organization has said that it remains out of control and is on track to surpass the 2014-2016 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the deadliest on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, primarily in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

On Thursday, Congo began vaccinating health workers and other front-line workers with the Ervebo vaccine that was effective in past Ebola outbreaks caused by a different, more common type called Zaire.

Clinical trials are underway to find a licensed vaccine for the rare Bundibugyo virus that is causing the current outbreak and which has no approved vaccines or treatments.

Although the current outbreak was declared in mid-May, officials believe it had been spreading since February. It has spread from three health zones to nearly 60, with most cases and deaths occurring outside the network of monitored contacts and within communities.

Efforts to bring the outbreak under control — from limited public gatherings to social distancing and airport closures — have disrupted life in the six affected provinces, particularly Ituri, which has been ravaged by rebel violence.

The government has introduced measures, including installing health and sanitary equipment at some locations, but advocacy groups say more needs to be done to build trust within the community.

The majority of cases are concentrated in the northeastern Ituri province, which accounts for more than 83% of cases, according to the latest government figures.

While neighboring Uganda declared itself free of Ebola last month, the risk of further cross-border spread remains, WHO said Wednesday.

WHO expert Marie Roseline Belizaire said that the Central African Republic is now considered the country at highest risk of spillover, followed closely by South Sudan, as the outbreak in eastern Congo has expanded toward border areas.

“It's a complete retranslation. It's not a revision of the old version,” Wilson told The Associated Press during a recent Zoom interview from her home in Philadelphia, where she is a professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. “I'm about halfway through.”

Regarded as the first major English-language translation of Homer’s epic by a woman, her book was already a bestseller and a culture-wars flashpoint before the release of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation. But she says her translation methods have become more sophisticated and that enough time has passed for her to see some flaws in her work — as an example, she overused the word “slave” when ancient Greek had different terms for different categories of enslaved people. The new edition will be longer, she says, and will better reflect the differing social worlds of Homer’s poem.

Fiction writers and poets, from Henry James to Walt Whitman, have revised and reissued early works. But translators rarely start over on a full-length text — especially not within a decade of the original work's completion, and not when the translation has had the success of Wilson's “Odyssey.”

“I can’t really come up with a previous example of this situation,” says Kate Deimling, who oversees the literary division of the American Translators Association. “It’s not unheard of for translators to go back and make some corrections or edits in subsequent editions, but that’s not the same as a retranslation.”

Asked how her publisher responded, Wilson says her decision was “very controversial.” She says she’s “very much aware” that having two recent editions by the same translator would be a challenge for teachers, and hopes they won’t “curse” her name. Her editor at Liveright Publishing, Peter Simon, said in a statement that since she “has poured so much of her life and scholarship into ‘The Odyssey’ ... her new approach is bound to be thrilling.”

Fame was of prime importance to the ancient Greeks, and Wilson is the rare classical scholar who has firsthand knowledge of a public life. Wilson's 2017 translation was praised by many critics for making “The Odyssey” feel more modern and accessible, but also faced criticism online for making the story “woke.” Her “Odyssey” has now sold more than a million copies, and Wilson has again become a reason to argue.

Nolan had cited her translation and its opening sentence, “Tell me about a complicated man,” as inspiration for his epic film. Wilson, who says she will “probably” leave the line unchanged in the next edition, did not return his admiration. In interviews with the AP and other media outlets, and in an assessment for the London Review of Books, she called the movie grandiose and superficial, and at times incoherent.

Her reaction to the film has been extensively — even obsessively — defended and denounced, including by Joyce Carol Oates, who faulted her “haughty superiority.” Nolan has yet to respond directly, although, while being interviewed by podcaster Zhong Shu, he did speak out against “amateur criticism” for lacking the cinematic background essential for understanding the language of movies.

Wilson's current prominence aligns with the release of her new collection of essays, conceived well before Nolan's movie came out: “Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea,” a book that arrives Tuesday with blurbs from Salman Rushdie and “Song of Achilles” novelist Madeline Miller. It features a long section on translating “The Odyssey,” with tough assessments of modern editions by Daniel Mendelsohn and the late Robert Fagles. Other chapters take on the “slut-shaming” of Helen of Troy, offer tribute to the Roman poet Catullus and point to how some of the most famous words ever spoken by Robert F. Kennedy — his quoting Aeschylus in the aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King's assassination — echoed author Edith Hamilton's mistranslation.

During her interview, Wilson also discussed her feelings about celebrity, her disdain for Rick Riordan's “Percy Jackson” books (Riordan, through a spokesperson at Penguin Random House, declined to comment) and her renewed appreciation for Stoic philosophy.

This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

AP: In your essay on translating “The Odyssey” you write that Robert Fagles' translation is “very loud, lively and chatty, so it’s not surprising that it has remained a bestseller in the U.S.” As you are also a bestseller, what qualities do you think you were able to bring to your book?

WILSON: I was going for the ancient idea of “enargeia,” vividness, that sort of emotional impact, emotional directness, the narrative pacing, the sense you can fully understand how does this character feel every time she or he is speaking.

AP: One theme of your essays is how wrong we can be about the Greeks, like Robert Kennedy misquoting Aeschylus because he had been reading Edith Hamilton’s popular writings, which themselves have many inaccuracies.

WILSON: Part of the theme of the book is not just that we make mistakes — maybe we can fix them — but that the particular kinds of mistakes those scholars and translators and popularizers or teachers like Hamilton make are very much determined by their own time. Obviously, I make mistakes, too. I’m obviously going to come to Homer and to the whole of antiquity with particular preoccupations which are going to be different from the preoccupations of a Homerist or a translator some 50 or 100 years ago.

AP: In a lot of these essays, you're very conscious of bringing the ancient world into the present. In your essay on Stoicism (“Chill Out with the Stoics”), you start out by writing, “Stoicism is having a moment.” Are you more of a Stoic now than you were a month ago?

WILSON: I'm quite suspicious that through philosophy you can have security. The last few weeks have been a clear illustration of how I’m not in control of the reception of my work. I can write an essay; people will do whatever they want. They will have their own opinions of me. I have zero control. I actually think in some ways there’s a useful reminder about the powerlessness that comes with the awareness that “I’m going to be misunderstood. I’m going to be misread. People are going to hate me.” I’ve got to accept that.

AP: What is it about ancient Greece that made you study it, as opposed to Elizabethan England or 18th century France?

WILSON: I see it as a kind of intellectual greed. Through studying ancient Greece and Rome, I’m also interested in studying how did these cultures get reinvented, reimagined in each of these later periods.

AP: In your book, you criticize Rick Riordan's “Percy Jackson” books. You find an ideology that puts you off.

WILSON: Many of my students love them so much. I think if I had read them as a child, I might have been a fan. They're not designed for an adult literary reader. I think especially in the first Percy Jackson book, “The Lightning Thief,” there’s very much an ideology of: “Here’s this white boy in America who’s going to gather the whole of Western civilization, and there’ll be a hero’s journey, which will really be the heroism of American exceptionalism.” And I just think that is ideologically and historically quite questionable.

AP: In your chapter on comedy in ancient Greece, you begin with a reference to Cardi B's (and Megan Thee Stallion's) “WAP.” Does this happen to you a lot, where things pop up in the culture and it just resonates and you’re thinking, “Oh, that reminds me of something from classical times”?

WILSON: It happens to me all the time. Yes. This is not necessarily an explicit trope in the book, but I very much want to be constantly doing that, suggesting that we can find echoes of antiquity in places we might not expect. I use the discussion of “WAP” and of hip-hop as a way of talking about ancient comic poetry. My main point is not just that there's lots of obscenity in both, but also lots of poetics in both. And if we somehow turn around our expectations about antiquity, we can turn around our expectations about modernity.

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Hundreds of people remain missing as the death toll climbed above 570 and Nepali and Chinese authorities warned of further risk of flooding from a new lake that has formed upstream following Wednesday’s disaster. Those still in the potentially affected areas at risk were warned to move to safer ground.

More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far, but 1,924 people remain unaccounted for in the country. China’s state media previously said 558 people were missing on the Chinese side.

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority said the latest death toll had risen to 579.

China state broadcaster CCTV said five people had died in flooding along Tibet’s border with Nepal and 558 remained missing. Tibet is a region in China.

Here is the latest:

China sends rescue teams to disaster area

China has sent two rescue teams, comprising 21 people and a search dog, to the disaster site.

The deployment represents the first professional rescue teams to reach the disaster’s hardest-hit area, China’s Ministry of Emergency Management said on Friday.

Footage aired by China's state broadcaster CCTV showed a rescuer suspended from a drone being lowered onto the bank of the fast-flowing Gyirong River to help deploy an inflatable boat. A destroyed truck and a bridge pier could be seen nearby.

A separate team of 13 experts also later reached the area safely, according to the ministry.

Nepal raises death toll as number of missing doubles

Nepal’s disaster management authority said the death toll has risen to 579.

The agency said the number of people reported missing has doubled to 1,924, as more local residents were added to the tally.

The number of foreign nationals reported missing remains at 517.

Nepal does not need foreign search and rescue teams ‘for now’

Nepal said it does not require foreign search and rescue teams at this time.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lok Bahadur Poudel Chhetri said domestic personnel are managing the immediate crisis but remain open to targeted international technical support.

“Our security agencies are handling the rescue operations well, so for now, we do not need any rescue teams from other countries,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that we don’t need any kind of support. We might need expertise and based on the specific requirements, we will take it.”

China says water level of barrier lake drops

The water level of a barrier lake that was formed in the wake of the floods has fallen, the state broadcaster China Central Television reported, citing data by China’s Ministry of Water Resources.

The water level has dropped 10 meters (32 feet) from the high point on Thursday morning, the state broadcaster said.

India says 320 citizens remain missing

Randhir Jaiswal, Indian External Affairs Ministry spokesman, told reporters that 320 Indian nationals remain uncontactable.

He said 96 Indians who were stranded on the Chinese side have crossed over to Nepal by land and efforts were being made to evacuate them.

India also will send another flight with relief supplies along with a tunnel rescue team, Jaiswal said.

One portable, prefabricated bridge has been sent to Nepal to help restore connectivity in the flood-affected areas, he said.

Japan's foreign minister says relief team starting operations

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said Friday that two members of an emergency relief team were set to start their operations at the disaster site in Nepal.

Japan also has decided to provide emergency relief goods at the request of Nepal and will provide additional support as needed, Motegi said.

Nepal death toll rises above 500

Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority says the death toll in flash floods has risen to 538.

Nepali police later put the number of deaths higher at 553.

The authority said in an update Friday that the number of missing people remained at 977 while 3,742 people have been rescued.

The authority said 14,829 security personnel have been mobilized for search and rescue operations.

Pakistan sending emergency relief assistance

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif says his country is dispatching emergency relief assistance to support ongoing relief efforts following catastrophic flash floods.

Sharif gave the assurances while speaking to Nepalese Prime Minister Balen Shah on Friday.

Sharif’s office in Islamabad said he conveyed to Shah his “heartfelt condolences over the tragic loss of precious lives and widespread devastation caused by the recent flash floods and landslides.”

Sharif told Shah that Pakistan stood in complete solidarity with the government and people of Nepal during this difficult time.

“I assured Prime Minister Shah of our full support and conveyed that Pakistan is dispatching emergency relief assistance to contribute to the ongoing relief efforts,” Sharif said in the statement from his office.

Red Cross says at least 93,000 people ‘in great need’

The International Red Cross said it estimates at least 93,000 people “have been affected and are in great need.”

David Fisher, head of delegation in Nepal for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told reporters in Geneva that some areas are still accessible only by helicopter and it hasn’t yet been possible to complete initial assessments.

UNICEF said at least 17,000 children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance while 18 schools have been completely destroyed and another 20 damaged.

The World Health Organization said six health facilities have been damaged and eight health workers are missing.

Nepal's PM and cabinet to donate salaries to relief fund

Nepal Prime Minister Balen Shah and members of his cabinet will donate one month’s salary and remuneration to the Natural Disaster Relief Fund for flood victims, the government said Friday.

The decision was made during a cabinet meeting a day after Shah’s inspection of areas in Nuwakot hit by the flood.

Government spokesperson Sasmit Pokharel said the Finance Ministry also has been directed to prepare a relief and rehabilitation package for those affected.

The government is in contact with China through the Foreign Ministry over potential risks in the region, Pokharel said.

Rescuers arrive in hardest-hit zone on Chinese side of border

China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported Friday afternoon that 680 rescuers arrived at the hardest-hit zone in China’s Gyirong border area.

Video showed the rescuers arriving in an inflatable raft in rapids and flown in by a drone.

Footage shows that the road leading to the border was destroyed and flooded areas have become a river.

China says 5 people died in flooding

China state broadcaster CCTV says five people died in flooding along Tibet’s border with Nepal and 558 remain missing.

Tibet is a region in China.

China says glacier collapse in Nepal may have triggered disaster

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson said analysis showed the disaster may have been triggered by a high-altitude glacier collapse in Nepal.

Lin Jian told reporters Thursday that the assessments were made by experts and official institutions from China and Nepal.

Nepal police say water dam on the Tibet side has burst again

All security personnel, rescue workers and members of the public deployed in rescue and relief efforts were told to remain on high alert and immediately move to a safe location if necessary.

No further details were provided.

“It hasn’t stopped,” Nepal police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told The Associated Press, noting that the rescue operation is continuing but with a high alert.

Floods highlight growing glacier risks in warming Himalayas

The flooding was likely caused by a huge chunk of a glacier that broke off and temporarily dammed a river, according to preliminary investigations by scientists. That may have led to the backed-up water surging downstream with enormous force a few hours later, they suggested.

Scientists are still piecing together information from satellite and ground-level data to figure out exactly what happened to cause the flood.

The U.S. Geological Survey on Wednesday reported a magnitude 5.2 glacier collapse that sent debris flowing downstream with catastrophic impact on communities. It said its determination was based on data from nearby seismic stations, long period seismic waves and satellite imagery.

Scientists said it is too early to draw a direct connection between global warming and Wednesday’s catastrophe.

However, they said that as Earth’s temperature rises because of human activities such as burning oil, gas and coal, the chances of such disasters increase, especially in the Himalayan mountains, which are warming considerably faster than many other parts of the world.

But behind the scenes, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alleged in court filings, Rubinger secretly doled out illegal prescriptions for hundreds of thousands of highly addictive painkillers to clients in more than 20 states. Authorities allege she issued controlled substances without a legitimate medical purpose and instructed clients on how to avoid scrutiny from federal investigators.

The DEA last month revoked the nurse practitioner’s authority to prescribe controlled substances, citing what an administrative law judge found to be egregious conduct. Rubinger also agreed in March to pay $1.4 million to settle a Justice Department civil complaint in which she didn't admit any wrongdoing.

Rubinger has not been criminally charged. Her spokesperson, Erick Mullen, stressed that the Justice Department pursued a civil case and suggested she had been threatened and pressured by dangerous clients.

“Joan’s case was not a criminal matter but a civil action,” Mullen wrote in an email. “No raids with blue windbreakers carrying agency initials, and no loss of liberty at stake.”

Federal prosecutors declined to explain why they did not bring criminal charges despite alleging in court filings that Rubinger violated federal drug laws and regulations 900 times.

Court papers unsealed at the request of The Associated Press reveal new details about Rubinger’s prescribing and the prominent athletes who helped build her public profile. Here are the takeaways from those records and interviews:

Sports stars helped build Rubinger’s reputation

Rubinger, 49, was an accomplished athlete from an early age, competing internationally in gymnastics as a child. She later rowed and pole-vaulted at Syracuse University.

The nurse practitioner's life took a near tragic turn in 2015, when she fell 20 feet from a cliff while mountain biking, suffering spinal cord injuries that left her in a wheelchair.

She returned to work within three months. NBA players like Dwyane Wade wore orange wristbands in her honor, and athletes celebrated her as an inspirational figure and an important aid in their own recovery from injury.

Rubinger filled her website and social media accounts with testimonials from dozens of professional athletes.

The DEA says Rubinger created rules to avoid detection

The DEA alleges Rubinger’s illegal prescribing operation expanded over the years from professional athletes to clients who included members of an Ohio street gang, a confessed New Jersey drug trafficker and a New York City model.

New clients were required to follow instructions contained in a document Rubinger called “THE RULES,” court records show. The guidelines were intended “to minimize the attention we attract from the DEA,” she told one prospective client, according to a DEA seizure affidavit.

Investigators said Rubinger collected hundreds of thousands of dollars through a digital payment app, distributed a price list for painkillers and required clients to pay before receiving prescriptions.

Getting medication was “like at McDonald’s,” she told clients. “You gotta pay for your burger before they hand it to you.”

Authorities also allege Rubinger coached clients over an encrypted messaging app on how to prevent pharmacies from flagging their prescriptions. The DEA affidavit described the operation as “covert and slinking.”

An NFL player’s wife sounded the alarm

The DEA began investigating Rubinger in 2022 after Kelly Davis, then the wife of former Carolina Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis, visited a North Carolina emergency room with chest pains.

A doctor told Kelly Davis that she had been flagged for receiving excessive pain medication. She later learned Rubinger had written 23 oxycodone prescriptions using her name, even though the medication was intended for her husband, according to the DEA and Kelly Davis.

Authorities allege Thomas Davis received more than 13,000 oxycodone and Percocet pills from Rubinger between November 2019 and March 2024.

Kelly Davis confronted Rubinger over Instagram. “This is insane,” she wrote Rubinger in a direct message, according to DEA records. “You clearly know he has a problem. Why would you do this?”

Kelly Davis reported Rubinger to the DEA, the NFL Players Association and the California Board of Registered Nursing. She said her husband’s opioid use contributed to the collapse of their marriage.

Thomas Davis did not respond to requests for comment. In a May podcast interview, however, he blamed opioid abuse for damaging his family life.

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See AP’s full sports coverage here

Crown Prince Haakon, 53, became King Haakon VIII when his father, Harald V, died Friday at 89. Haakon adopted the motto, “All for Norway,” that dates back to his great-grandfather. His wife became Queen Mette-Marit, while his oldest child became Crown Princess Ingrid Alexandra and the heir to the throne.

Haakon knows the ropes. As his father aged and his health began to fail in recent years, the prince stepped in as the country’s regent on several occasions.

Norway’s monarchy has old roots, tracing its origins to King Harald Fairhair in the ninth century. When Norway regained its independence from Sweden in 1905, three-quarters of voters in a national plebiscite approved restoring the monarchy. Today, the role is largely symbolic as the power lies with an elected parliament, but the country's royal family retains celebrity and a role in promoting the wealthy nation around the world.

Haakon is the younger child of Harald, born two years after his sister, Princess Märtha Louise. As the oldest male, however, he became heir to the throne when his grandfather, King Olav, died in 1991. The Norwegian Constitution was altered in 1990 to allow future firstborns — regardless of gender — to take precedence in the line of succession. However, it was not applied retroactively.

Haakon said in a 1998 book that as a child he dreamed of owning a toy shop, but he soon realized that his path was already paved and one day he would become king.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and a master’s degree in development studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, with a specialization in international trade and Africa. In 1995, he graduated from the Royal Norwegian Naval Academy, and he also completed the Foreign Ministry’s trainee program for diplomats.

An avid surfer, skier and sportsman, he told Norwegian broadcaster NRK that if he hadn’t been a royal, he would have been a surfer. A music lover — he likes rock and rap — he attended festivals across Europe as a youth.

Haakon sought the king's permission to marry

Haakon knew his relationship would face an uphill battle for acceptance when he met Mette-Marit Tjessem Høiby at a popular music festival in Norway in 1999. She was a single mother whose son’s father had been sentenced to prison for cocaine possession, and she had been seen at parties where illegal drugs were used.

The country was divided. Some cheered for love, others were skeptical. The Norwegian newspaper VG wrote in 2000 that Haakon “lives closer to the people than any other heir to the throne before him.”

In a May 2000 interview with NRK, Haakon said that in the early 1990s, “a youth culture emerged in Oslo” and he acknowledged that Mette-Marit was “an active part of this environment at the time.”

“It is clear that there is relatively extravagant partying there,” Haakon said.

Nevertheless, he won permission from his father, who had also married a commoner, to wed Mette-Marit. And despite her background, the Norwegian people found much to like about this statuesque blond woman with striking eyes and a ready smile, a down-to-earth manner and an undisguised love for Haakon.

They wed in August 2001 at the Oslo Cathedral. The couple's popularity soared thanks to a carefully cultivated blend of the common touch and the glamour and grace demanded of royalty. They were constantly on the covers of gossip magazines, yet tried to live relatively normal and private family lives.

They have two children, Ingrid Alexandra and Prince Sverre Magnus. Haakon also became the stepfather of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby, who has no royal title.

Royal family's reputation took a hit from Høiby's trial

In June, Høiby was sentenced to four years in prison after being convicted of rape. He was found guilty of two of the four rape charges he was facing and acquitted of the other two. He was also convicted of assault and abuse in a close relationship. Høiby’s lawyers said he will appeal the convictions.

The trial unfolded amid renewed scrutiny of the royal family following disclosures about Mette-Marit’s past contacts with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased sex offender. She has publicly apologized for the association and said she exercised poor judgment in maintaining contact with him. She isn’t accused of any wrongdoing.

In a television interview in March, she said she was manipulated and deceived by Epstein and felt unsafe during a 2013 encounter with him at his Palm Beach, Florida, mansion.

In 2018, the royal palace announced that Mette-Marit had been diagnosed with a rare form of chronic pulmonary fibrosis, meaning she sometimes must take a break from her official duties. The incurable condition made breathing increasingly difficult, and she had a dry cough and fatigue, weight loss and loss of appetite. She received a lung transplant in June.

In connection with the couple's 50th birthdays in 2023, NRK interviewed Haakon and aired an old video of him playing guitar, with Ingrid Alexandra and Mette-Marit singing, and another one where he and his children mimic the moves of a Norwegian rapper. He watched the clips and burst into laughter, saying that they showed that “I am all in.”

One task for the new king will be to shore up popular support for the royal family. While a majority of people still support it, the proportion has declined in recent years and took a battering this year as Høiby's trial played out. Critics of Haakon's sister, Märtha Louise, who has written books in which she claimed to have contact with angels, also blame her for the family's reputational troubles.

Märtha Louise, who was previously married for 14 years, in 2024 wed Durek Verrett, an American who describes himself as a shaman and a healer on his website. In 2022, she announced that she would no longer officially represent the Norwegian royal house, following “many questions relating to me and my fiancé’s role.”

A poll published by Norway’s Dagbladet newspaper in late 2022 showed 68% of respondents saying they wanted to keep the monarchy. When NRK asked the same question in 2017, support for the royal house stood at 81%.

——

Dazio reported from Berlin. Olsen, a former AP journalist, contributed reporting previously for this story.

The palace said he died at the National Hospital in Oslo at 6:35 a.m.

Harald was Europe’s oldest monarch. The popular king modernized the royal house but refused to follow in the footsteps of other aging monarchs who have abdicated in recent times. His son automatically became King Haakon VIII.

Like other royal houses in Europe, the Norwegian monarchs serve a largely symbolic role, enjoying celebrity status while real power in the democracy of 5.5 million rests with an elected parliament. Harald was crowned after his British-born father, King Olav V, died in January 1991, and reigned during an oil-and-gas-driven economic boom in his country.

“A whole nation is in mourning and the people of Norway are left with a deep sense of gratitude for a long life in the service of Norway,” Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said in a statement. “For more than three decades as monarch, Harald V demonstrated an unwavering faith in the Norwegian people. He helped us to see the best in ourselves — and in one another.”

Funeral arrangements were not immediately released.

Royal family fled Norway during World War II

Harald was born in 1937 in Asker, near Oslo, becoming the first Norwegian prince to be born in the country since King Olav IV in 1370. In the following centuries, Norway didn't have a king of its own until Harald's grandfather, Haakon VII, was elected king following the 1905 dissolution of the union between Sweden and Norway.

Harald was 3 years old when the Nazis occupied Norway at the start of World War II. To avoid capture, his mother fled with him and his sisters, Ragnhild and Astrid, first to Sweden and then by boat to the U.S., while Harald’s father and grandfather went into exile in Britain with Norway’s government.

Haakon’s refusal to go along with German demands garnered respect among his people.

During their time in the U.S., the Norwegian royals were often guests at the White House. Harald was 6 when he carried out his first official duty, christening new warplanes at a Norwegian air base in Canada.

The family was reunited in Norway in June 1945, shortly after the end of the war in Europe. Harald attended public schools, the Norwegian military college and Oxford University.

Like his father — an Olympic champion sailor in 1928 — Harald loved the sea and sailboats. He represented Norway at several Olympics, and in 1987 he skippered his yacht to gold in the World Championships.

Harald married his longtime sweetheart

As a young man, Harald was urged to find a bride among Europe's noblewomen and princesses. For nine years he shunned a series of prospects, holding out until he finally won his father’s permission to marry his longtime sweetheart, Sonja Haraldsen, the daughter of a successful businessman.

King Olav had feared the marriage would weaken Norway’s still-young monarchy. Instead, Norwegians greeted the Aug. 29, 1968, wedding with jubilation, and later embraced Sonja as their queen. The couple had two children, Haakon and his older sister, Märtha Louise.

The Norwegian Constitution was altered in 1990 to allow the first born, regardless of gender, to take precedence in the line of succession. However, it was not applied retroactively, meaning that Haakon continued to take precedence over his sister.

When Harald assumed the throne on Jan. 21, 1991, he adopted the same motto his father and grandfather had used: “All for Norway.” He spent the next years trying to modernize the monarchy.

“It has been my experience that the monarchy stands strong,” he once said. “This is not least because my father and grandfather did most things right. That puts me under pressure, but I take it as a challenge.”

Harald won the praise of the country with an emotional speech at a memorial service after a right-wing extremist, Anders Behring Breivik, killed 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in Norway in 2011.

“I remain convinced that the belief in freedom is stronger than fear. I remain convinced in the belief of an open Norwegian democracy and society. I remain convinced in the belief in our ability to live freely and safely in our own country," the king said.

In 2016, Harald gave an unexpected and impassioned speech in support of LGBTQ+ equality, refugees and religious tolerance, saying “Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love each other.” He added that many Norwegians have emigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Poland and other countries and that they “believe in God, Allah, the universe and nothing.”

The public speech extolled the diversity of the Scandinavian nation and was viewed on social media by millions.

Recent scandals have put royal family under scrutiny

Scandal and serious allegations have hung over the Norwegian royal family this year. Harald’s daughter-in-law, now-Queen Mette-Marit, faced renewed scrutiny over her connections with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That raised questions over her judgment, though she is not accused of any wrongdoing. Mette-Marit apologized for the situation she put the royal family in, part of a broader apology for all those she had “disappointed.”

At around the same time, her eldest son, Marius Borg Høiby, was convicted of rape in a high-profile trial and sentenced to four years in prison. Høiby, Mette-Marit's son from a previous relationship before she met Haakon, has no royal titles or official duties.

In 2022, Harald’s daughter Princess Märtha Louise gave up royal duties after raising eyebrows by saying she could communicate with angels and becoming engaged to an American man who identifies as a shaman. They married two years later.

In January 2024, after the abdication of Denmark’s Queen Margrethe — his second cousin — Harald said that he stood by the oath he made when ascending the throne: “It lasts for life.”

However, he was hospitalized twice on foreign trips after that, including during a 2024 vacation in Malaysia when he was fitted with a pacemaker and during a February 2026 holiday on the Spanish island of Tenerife when he had a skin infection.

___

Jan M. Olsen, a former AP journalist, contributed reporting previously for this story from Copenhagen, Denmark. Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.

Lee Cheuk-yan, Chow Hang-tung and Albert Ho, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were charged in 2021 under the law that has effectively stifled the city’s previously thriving pro-democracy movement.

Lee and Chow, who pleaded not guilty, were convicted Aug. 21. Ho earlier entered a guilty plea, which often can result in a reduced sentence.

They face a maximum prison term of 10 years and are expected to be sentenced at a later date. Alex Lee, one of the judges, said they would be sentenced within two weeks.

The disbanded alliance also was found guilty on the same charge. It was best known for organizing the only large-scale public commemoration in China that drew tens of thousands of people annually for three decades to remember the 1989 crackdown’s victims.

The verdict has drawn concerns from foreign governments. Critics say the case illustrates a decline in freedoms Beijing promised to maintain when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. But the Hong Kong government insisted the court only considered the laws and evidence and that many rights and freedoms are not absolute.

Chow argues they did not deserve prison term

Three government-approved judges ruled the trio of former vigil organizers had intentionally encouraged supporters of the alliance to wait for the right time to carry out “end one-party dictatorship,” one of the group’s core demands, through unlawful means.

The judges said the call carried the notion of overthrowing or undermining the ruling Communist Party’s leadership status, adding that the defendants have long held enmity against the party and they did not genuinely believe their words and deeds would not violate the security law.

Erik Shum, a lawyer representing Lee and Ho, told the judges that China’s fundamental system did not change because of the alliance members' promotional work and the Communist Party was still stable and carrying out its duties, while the defendants’ advocacy work did not involve violence.

Chow, a barrister who represented herself, insisted she did not do anything wrong and did not deserve even one day in prison. She argued the verdict was saying that pursuing democracy is a crime.

“If the law truly has no room for our beliefs, then I would rather be a criminal than be a fake person,” she said.

In a post Friday on social media site Patreon, Chow said regardless of whether she is in or outside prison, she would persistently strive to vindicate the 1989 pro-democracy movement, end one-party dictatorship and build a democratic Hong Kong and China, among other goals.

The security law calls for sentences of between five and 10 years for convictions of inciting subversion, if the offense is deemed serious. If the circumstances are considered minor, sentences should not be more than five years, short-term detention or other restrictions.

Many leading activists have been jailed under the security law, including former media tycoon Jimmy Lai. But China said the security law was necessary for Hong Kong’s stability.

Hong Kong played key role in Tiananmen remembrance

Hundreds and possibly thousands of people were killed as military tanks rolled into the center of Beijing and troops opened fire to end the student-led pro-democracy protests in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

The bloody event soon became a political taboo in mainland China. But vigils in Hong Kong helped keep the memories alive under the greater freedom granted by Beijing's “one country, two systems” governing principle for the city.

The vigil organized by the alliance was banned in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic. After COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the former vigil site was occupied by a carnival each year.

The court hearing the former vigil organizers’ case also is expected to decide the future of the Pillar of Shame, a memorial sculpture commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown that was removed from a university campus in late 2021, and whether it could be returned to its owner.

They finished off the preseason with a 20-18 victory over the Los Angeles Chargers on Thursday night. Two weeks from now, they'll hop on a 16-hour flight to open the season against the San Francisco 49ers in Australia.

“And now here we go,” Rams coach Sean McVay said. "We know what a great challenge it’s going to be."

Ty Simpson threw a go-ahead touchdown in the second quarter and Harrison Mevis kicked two 27-yard field goals for the Rams, who won all three of their preseason games. Simpson finished 18 of 23 for 119 yards.

“I thought he had good command,” McVay said. “He’s got a great game-day demeanor.”

The Rams didn’t play any starters in keeping with McVay’s approach to games that don't count in the standings. Even backup quarterback Stetson Bennett was held out.

The Rams added a familiar face earlier Thursday, bringing back wide receiver Tutu Atwell while sending running back Jarquez Hunter to the Miami Dolphins. Atwell was drafted by the Rams in 2021. He signed as a free agent with Miami in March but didn't play a regular-season game there.

“He adds depth. It gives us an opportunity to be able to have that speed element, and he can do some different things,” McVay said, denying the move had anything to do with a potential league suspension of star wide receiver Puka Nacua.

The Chargers went 1-2 in the preseason, coming off a 41-17 loss to the 49ers last week.

“I liked the response of the entire team from week two to week three of the preseason,” coach Jim Harbaugh said. “Many of the things we were working on I saw some real strides. Offensive line would be a big one. Really like the way it’s coming together.”

Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert played just two series. His fumble led to Mevis' first 27-yard field goal early in the first quarter.

Herbert bounced right back, throwing a 65-yard TD pass to Quentin Johnston — the second-longest catch of the receiver's career — on the second play of a drive that lasted 14 seconds and gave the Chargers a 7-3 lead.

“It was double-wow — the route, the throw, the protection,” Harbaugh said.

New defensive coordinator Chris O'Leary chest-bumped safety Tony Jefferson after the Chargers forced the Rams to turn the ball over on downs inside the 1-yard line on a drive that lasted 9:41.

Trey Lance took over for Herbert in the second quarter, with his first series ending on a shanked 20-yard punt by JK Scott. The Rams quickly took the lead for good on third-stringer Simpson's 11-yard TD pass to fourth-string receiver Brennan Presley for a 10-7 lead.

Cameron Dicker missed a 49-yard field goal just before halftime, leaving the Chargers trailing 13-7. Known as the most accurate kicker in NFL history, he also whiffed on two extra-point attempts in three preseason games.

Dicker cut the deficit to 13-10 in the third, hitting a 34-yard field goal.

The Rams extended the lead to 20-10 in the fourth on Matthew Caldwell's 8-yard TD pass to Dean Connors.

The Chargers closed to 20-18 on Gregory Desrosiers' 34-yard TD run and third-string quarterback DJ Uiagalelei's 2-point conversion pass to Evan Svoboda.

Injury report

Rams: QB Caldwell (knee) went out after being hurt on a keeper late in the fourth quarter.

Chargers: WR Dalevon Campbell appeared to hurt his foot in the third quarter.

Up next

Rams: Open Sept. 10 against the San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia.

Chargers: Open Sept. 13 against the Arizona Cardinals at SoFi Stadium.

___

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

As the DJ prepared his set and attendants arranged bottles of expensive liquor on tables, Vincent Tabat joined those streaming into the venue, which is one of a handful along a street in Sokoto state.

It was an ironic scene given that the conservative Sokoto is known as the “seat of the caliphate” for its storied place in the birth and propagation of Islam in West and Central Africa. Despite its reputation, there is a thriving nightlife alongside strict religious codes, a morality police, and security challenges fueled by attacks by jihadi groups.

“This is nearly 2 a.m., and as you can see, everyone is outside to have fun,” Tabat told The Associated Press. Tabat was fired up by the booming music all night, dancing with female companions as he portioned out drinks into emptying cups on the table.

Partygoers shun regulated daily life

At the center of northern Nigeria's strict religious code is the local Islamic police, known as the Hisbah force, whose personnel are tasked with upholding public morals across some of the region's 19 states.

They often patrol cities and raid key spots to enforce Shariah and local laws, such as dress codes, haircuts and alcohol bans, with seized bottles often destroyed. Partygoers, however, say they are not deterred.

For frequent reveler Benjamin Danjuma, weekend outings are nearly sacrosanct. The few clubs and bars in Sokoto city are his haunts, and the scene for him is no different from those in the more liberal southern Nigeria.

“We are living our life more than anybody’s expectation in this state,” he said. “There is so much groove going on. We are not left behind.”

Gone are the days when nightlife and partying were considered taboo in conservative Nigerian society, as people have been partying for a long time, said Oluwamayowa Idowu, founder of Culture Custodian, a leading culture publication based in Lagos.

Amid the security crisis and its fallout of economic hardship in the region, nightlife offers people an escape from the tough realities, said Idowu. “The north has been ravaged by insecurity, but people still live there, and people still participate in life there daily,” he said.

Social division runs along religious lines

Both Tabat and Danjuma said they are not bound by Hisbah's rules as non-Muslims, but they acknowledged that there have been run-ins with the group.

This represents the dynamics of Nigeria’s religious composition in one of the few places in the world where the population is almost evenly split between Christians, who live predominantly in the south, and Muslims, mostly in the north.

For decades, non-Muslims have been caught up in Hisbah's enforcement, which the force says is to promote morality.

Following the return of Nigeria to democracy in 1999, several states in the northern region advocated for Shariah, revealing the fault lines of Nigeria’s federalism and status as a secular state. The matter was not resolved at the Supreme Court, leaving it as an open-ended legal question to date, and subsequent governments have not sought legal means to resolve it.

Hisbah is often accused of extreme policies and abuses

In many northern states, the laws being applied in Islamic courts are enforced by Hisbah. The group was disbanded in Sokoto in 2017, in part due to public complaints about alleged high-handed practices, before being reestablished in 2024.

The morality police, which are often accused of extreme policies, recently announced a statewide ban in Sokoto on the use of DJs at events, as well as inappropriate haircuts, extravagant bridal gifts and playing music on public transport.

Hisbah members also face widespread allegations of rights abuses in their enforcement operations, including subjecting offenders to dehumanizing punishments such as public beatings or shaming.

Fu’ad Lawal, executive director at Archivi.ng, a Lagos-based digital historical database, said the force altered the meaning of Nigeria's federalism and its secular nature.

“When it (Shariah) became a law, it basically extended (beyond) criminal law and, perhaps more consequential, led to the regulation of public life,” said Lawal.

The morality police say they only seek to ensure “peace and stability through moral justice” and are not “enforcing Sharia law per se.”

“Every citizen needs to fulfill his or her moral obligation,” Usman Abdullahi Jatau, commander of the Sokoto State Hisbah, told the AP.

Delicate balance sought between religion and nightlife

The nightclub where Tabat was partying has posted a list of banned items, including veils, and it turns away women wearing them.

Almost everywhere else in the city, women would need one — except at this venue, which tries to not upset the precarious balance of the religion-nightlife cohabitation.

The strict social codes can eventually wear on a society battling yearslong jihadi and rebel violence, analysts say.

Ibrahim Nuhu, a banker who was transferred from the more cosmopolitan Plateau state to Sokoto, has seen the city evolve in recent years from a drab scene to a lively experience on weekends. At first, he was worried about leaving his more cosmopolitan life behind, but admits he has grown enamored of the growing nightlife in Sokoto.

“People see Sokoto from outside; I see it from the inside,” he said.

Vaidyanathan, a yoga instructor, helped her grieving sister get face time with a high-profile guru who she hoped would help.

“But he told her this was the work of karma and she should use this opportunity to connect with her inner nature,” she said. “I understand how karma works, but saying that was cruel and extremely unhelpful to someone who was freshly grieving the loss of a child.”

That’s when they turned to artificial intelligence chatbots.

“It was a lot easier trying to get answers and peace of mind because ChatGPT is not judging you,” Vaidyanathan said. “We've found a compassionate guru now, but even he only has limited time. AI is accessible anytime.”

AI offers access and advice without judgment

This unfettered access — which can be challenging to find among human gurus — is what’s drawing more people to AI for spiritual guidance. This is a big step, particularly in Hinduism, where gurus are part of culture and deemed necessary to attain moksha — liberation from the cycle of birth, death and reincarnation. The word guru in Sanskrit means “dispeller of darkness.”

These chatbots are powered by large language models, AI systems that generate responses by using advanced statistics and troves of text, including sacred ones like Hinduism's Bhagavad Gita. Users can explore spiritual answers to personal problems and existential questions at anytime, without the typical hurdles of connecting with an in-demand guru and paying for their services.

AI's rising popularity has encouraged some successful gurus to launch their own chatbots.

In India, Jaggi Vasudev, also known as Sadhguru, has launched his Miracle of the Mind app with an interactive AI feature that answers questions using a database of his teachings. California-based self-help guru Deepak Chopra has an AI platform where “Digital Deepak” answers questions drawing from his decades of talks and writings.

Critics argue that AI cannot truly replace the lived experience, wisdom and ethical accountability of a human guru. Researchers also note that AI often validates and agrees with the user rather than posing those challenging questions needed for real spiritual and personal growth.

Lord Krishna’s AI avatar takes on guru’s role

Vikas Sahu, founder of GitaGPT — a platform he calls an “AI spiritual companion” — says he wouldn’t deter anyone from finding a human guru. But he says his free chatbot puts the Bhagavad Gita’s wisdom at the fingertips of those who might desperately need it.

On his platform, AI avatars of Lord Krishna, the sacred text's protagonist, offer advice. Sahu, based in Gurugram south of New Delhi, says he gets hundreds of messages about how it’s helpful. While he has a full-time job building websites, he says GitaGPT is his way of giving back.

“A lot of people don’t have anyone to talk to when they are in distress,” he said. “This app is giving them the encouragement a guru might give them. But a lot of gurus want your money and you can’t really talk to them openly like you can talk to a chatbot.”

Sahu said he trusts GitaGPT because it’s based on the word of God.

“How could Krishna steer anyone wrong?” he asks. “It’s impossible.”

Experts say a human soul is necessary for true connection

Liz Bucar, a religion professor at Northeastern University in Boston, is skeptical of chatbots based on religious texts.

“A sacred text needs a community and a context that interprets it,” she said. “Without the teaching of how to interpret the text, it’s just words on a page. Someone could feed in the text, but what answers will the bot spit out?”

But she does believe there is widespread distrust of institutional expertise that gurus and clergy represent, in some cases fueled by sex abuse scandals.

“Because religion has this PR problem, people tend to see chatbots as less biased and less likely to do bad things,” Bucar said. “I don’t know if we’re ready to replace gurus, but we are definitely in a shifting religious landscape, especially with” younger generations of AI users.

Noreen Herzfeld, a professor at St. John’s School of Theology and Seminary in Collegeville, Minnesota, said people could easily get straightforward answers from AI.

“But if they are looking for spiritual awakening, I think it takes physical presence,” she said. “In Christianity and in Hindu tradition, there is the belief that the eyes are windows to the soul and you can’t get that by looking at an avatar.”

AI chatbots can also be too eager to agree with you, serving as a cheerleader rather than a guide, Herzfeld said.

“In situations where you’re looking to grow or evolve, you need a teacher who can disagree with you and challenge you,” she said. “But even if you are just looking for affirmation, who are you being affirmed by? There’s no one on the other side.”

Vy Le, a mindfulness instructor in San Diego, sees AI as a “channeling” tool, using it as a mirror or collaborator to gain intuitive or mystical insights.

“If you are attuned to it, you can sense if a certain AI is connected to you,” she said. “My dad took his life 16 years ago. I felt his presence when I was engaging with AI.”

Le maintains that the era of gurus is over.

“AI is helping us find that inner guru,” she said.

Human gurus and organizations are getting in the game

Real-life gurus like the India-based Sadhguru, who has a global following of millions, have recognized AI's potential. David Nussbaum, founder of Proto Hologram in Los Angeles, is helping Sadhguru create a three-dimensional AI avatar that appears in a display box and can interact with devotees in several languages.

During a March festival, he created a Sadhguru hologram that took selfies with people.

“You basically have Sadhguru's hologram taking out his phone, turning around and taking a picture of you from his phone inside the display,” Nussbaum explained.

Shivaram K R, CEO of India-based Hue Learn, oversees a nonprofit initiative called Innerverse 360 that merges AI and spirituality. His platform features a portal where real monks and gurus can come online and do live sessions with devotees. It also has an “Ask AI” feature.

Shivaram doesn’t believe AI will replace gurus.

“The process of finding a guru in itself is a journey, but a guru is also not for everyone,” he said. “If you’re looking for practical advice on everyday spirituality, this app can also help you understand concepts such as the meaning of yoga.”

AI cannot replace ‘humans and souls’

One of the organizations Shivaram liaises with is the Los Angeles-based Self-Realization Fellowship, founded in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda, who brought ancient spiritual practices from India to the West.

Brother Govindananda, a monk with the order, said his organization sees AI simply as the next step to helping people access the late guru’s teachings through an online teaching portal — just as books did for previous generations.

“We’re taking our time with it because we want to make sure it has guardrails to safeguard from AI hallucinating answers instead of drawing from Yogananda’s teachings,” he said.

But Govindananda says a chatbot could never provide what a guru — whether living or not — can give to the disciple.

“We are humans and souls,” he said. “Technology cannot replace that.”

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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

All those victories and trophies he piled up alone would have made Federer remembered forever in tennis, but they were only part of the reason he enjoyed playing. He liked traveling to tournaments, meeting people and making new friends, whether they were on the other side of the net or sitting in the stands.

Only after he finished competing did Federer realize how much that impacted his legacy in the sport.

“I think when you retire, I think I said it before, that there was a lot of talk also about maybe my personality and what I brought to the game overall when I wasn’t on court, which I was a little surprised,” Federer said. "I thought it was about, in the moment, forehands and backhands and saving break points and victories and all that stuff.

"But actually it becomes a little bit, not irrelevant eventually, but it’s about what were you remembered for, how did you behave in the locker rooms or in the corridors or maybe with the media, or with the tournament directors, the ball kids."

Federer will have a chance to reflect back on it all Saturday when he is enshrined in the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, Rhode Island.

The 45-year-old from Switzerland, who will be honored along with broadcaster and former player Mary Carillo, said it would be his first trip to Newport. That seemed surprising, given how many places he's gone for his tennis.

Sure, there was regular stops such as New York and London and Paris for Grand Slam tournaments, but there were also cities like Cape Town, South Africa, for an exhibition match against Rafael Nadal that drew nearly 52,000 fans; or Mexico City, for one against Alexander Zverev that drew more than 42,000.

Those were near the end of his career, when Federer was forced to limit his schedule for health reasons. He hated having to do so, because he liked going too many places, even ones that didn't host the biggest events.

“For me, if I look back, that’s kind of what I’m very happy about, that I went through 25 years on tour, and actually felt like I made a lot of friends and a lot of people miss me,” Federer said. "Same with fans. They come up to me and say, ‘What a shame you’re not playing anymore.’

“Then I get a flashback saying it was an amazing time, and I say it every time. I loved it, and it’s a shame I can’t be on the tour anymore. But it was a great, great time and I miss it dearly.”

The fans clearly miss Federer. When he returned to the U.S. Open this week for an exhibition, his first time playing in Flushing Meadows since 2019, the lines of fans waiting to get into Arthur Ashe Stadium resembled a night in the second week of the tournament, not well before it even began.

Federer won five straight U.S. Open titles from 2004-08, during a stretch when he compiled a 247-15 record from 2004-06 and reached a record 10 consecutive Grand Slam finals from 2005-07, winning eight. He went on to win 1,251 matches and 103 tournaments, including 20 Grand Slams.

“He’s the best I’ve ever played against,” Andre Agassi, Federer's opponent in the 2005 final, said in a video the U.S. Open showed before Federer took the court Tuesday.

The way he won, with far more flair than some stuffy champions of the past but without the temper tantrums of others, earned him accolades that his skills alone couldn't. He won the ATP Tour's sportsmanship award every year from 2004-09, and again from 2011-17, and the fan favorite award every year from 2003-21. Those came while earning prize money of nearly $130.6 million.

Federer hits sometimes with his children — he and wife Mirka are parents of two sets of twins — and tries to attend a few events a year to keep him connected to the sport.

“I’m in a very comfortable place today, but I’m still happy to be out there and being in the tennis world from time to time, because it is the glue to everything that surrounds me still today,” Federer said.

“I had the best time, had a lot of friends on tour, from players to people who were organizers, et cetera. So I hope that a lot of the players who retire also feel the same way about the game, because I care dearly.”

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See AP’s full tennis coverage here

The play “Odysseus, Maeotis” is ready to open in the Ukrainian capital as the ancient tale enjoys a global moment with Christopher Nolan’s IMAX spectacle and box-office hit “The Odyssey” starring Matt Damon.

In Kyiv, the story is performed by professional actors and active-duty soldiers, including Daniil Mireshkin, a serviceman who plays the warrior king Odysseus

“I think this combination of myth and modernity allows us to draw parallels and understand just how critical the question of return is: the return of military personnel to civilian life, the return of our territories and the return of ourselves to our true identity as Ukrainians,” Mireshkin said.

The actor spoke to The Associated after a final rehearsal Tuesday, ahead of a premiere that has been repeatedly delayed due to successive Russian attacks.

“This story helps us talk about these topics, which, as it turns out, haven’t lost any of their relevance,” Mireshkin said.

Drones and killing machines as modern monsters

The staging at the Ivan Franko National Academic Drama Theater is designed to be austere and unsettling.

Against a darkened set laced with neon light bars, projections wash over the actors themselves. The monsters of the original — the Cyclops and the sirens — are replaced by drones that buzz across the stage and models of robotic war machines.

The play unfolds in parallel: Odysseus’ punishing journey and the long wait at home by his wife, Penelope.

Director Ivan Uryvskyi is candid about how the play recasts the ancient poem’s themes of return and those trapped in exile and captivity.

“Of course, very little of Homer’s original text remains here, because the play was written from scratch. We simply took the core narrative arc — Odysseus’ return home,” he said.

At the edge of the known world

An additional Greek reference is carried in the play’s title: “Maeotis” is an ancient name for the Sea of Azov, taken from the people who lived along its shores, a place once considered to be the edge of the known world.

The sea is home to Mariupol, the port city seized by Russia after a 2022 siege, and the play is based on accounts by its defenders from the Azov brigade, now part of the 1st Corps Azov — a part of the National Guard of Ukraine.

Mireshkin, the lead actor, and playwrite Oleksii Dorychevskyi are members of the 1st Corps Azov. Dorychevskyi drew on a year of interviews with former prisoners of war for the production. According to the Corps, an estimated 600 Azov brigade servicemen are among the thousands still in Russian captivity.

For Daryna Leheida, who plays Penelope, the ancient queen’s plight resonates with the stories of women in Ukraine who wait for loved ones to return.

“It’s about the fate of Ukrainian women who wait, believe and hope, but who can also feel powerless, hopeless and stripped of faith,” Leheida said.

“It’s about the temporarily occupied land waiting to come back home,” she said. “It’s about the children and people who are waiting, what we face during this waiting and the toll that war takes on us.”

The massive hospital, a New Orleans landmark that long cared for the city's most vulnerable residents, was shuttered after the last patients and staff were rescued in 2005. Now, as Louisiana marks the storm's 21st anniversary Saturday, the long-vacant storm-damaged building is on the brink of new life.

New Orleans landmark is to become a medical research hub

Tulane University announced this summer that it is spearheading a $500 million effort to convert Charity Hospital into a pioneering medical research facility, transforming the 1930s-era art deco building into a downtown hub of biomedical innovation. Construction is expected to start this fall.

Local leaders have embraced the project in a city where some hospitals have haunted New Orleans since Katrina. Dozens of patients died at the former Memorial hospital, now known as the Ochsner Baptist Medical Center, after floodwaters trapped them inside in sweltering conditions without power. Demolition crews this month began tearing down another complex, the Lindy Boggs Medical Center, which had sat blighted and vacant for more than 20 years after Katrina.

One of the deadliest and most destructive hurricanes in U.S. history, Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people across five states and racked up an estimated $200 billion in damage, flattening homes along the nearby Gulf Coast and swamping entire neighborhoods with ruinous floods.

Tulane leaders say reviving the iconic landmark marks a major stride in putting behind the hurricane's dark days.

Charity Hospital “reflected the sort of commitment of New Orleans to the healthcare of the community,” Tulane President Michael Fitts said. “Now it’s being brought back in a way that makes the same commitment to the community.”

Past moves to redevelop the art deco building fizzled

For generations, the Charity Hospital system served as New Orleans' safety net, treating all patients regardless of whether they had health insurance. The million-square-foot (93,000-square-meter) main building has remained empty since Katrina. In the intervening decades, various redevelopment gambits have fizzled.

The hospital was run by Louisiana State University, which determined that Katrina left the building too damaged to reopen — an assessment that was disputed by some hospital staff and community members. Instead, LSU used federal disaster relief funding to open a new hospital.

After Katrina made landfall in Louisiana, the failure of New Orleans’ federal levee system inundated about 80% of the city in floodwaters.

A doctor recalls canoeing through the flooded city to check on hospital patients

Dr. Lee Hamm, dean of the Tulane University School of Medicine, recalled canoeing through the submerged city to check on the welfare of patients and health care staff.

“Everyone was exhibiting a lot of courage at the moment,” Hamm said. “People were going about doing what they needed to do.”

The new medical research hub is scheduled to be completed in 2029.

Plans include providing space for medical and public health programs as part of what Fitts called “the largest, most significant initiative in the history of Tulane.” The new accommodations will also include labs for hundreds of researchers, space for biomedical startups, and classrooms.

Hamm said he hopes the hub will spur medical advancements that benefit the entire Gulf South.

Anticipating a bright, new future for the Charity Hospital building, New Orleans Mayor Helena Moreno called the redevelopment “a welcome step forward and an opportunity to put this historic property back to productive use.”

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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.

Clancy admits she strangled her children, but her lawyer said she did it because she had lost her grip on reality due to postpartum psychosis, a rare mental illness that can follow childbirth. In the months before the killings, Clancy sought treatment for her worsening mental health, including a stay in a psychiatric hospital.

Prosecutors said Clancy knew what she was doing. They say she killed the children because she was depressed and tired of living, and made a conscious choice to take her children with her before killing herself.

The jury met for a few hours Thursday without reaching a verdict. Members of the panel could find her guilty of murder or the lesser crime of manslaughter, or acquit her if they decide she wasn't in control of herself due to her psychiatric problems.

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

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Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. She did not testify during the trial, but jurors heard at length from medical professionals who treated her, as well as from friends and relatives she had told about her mental health problems.

Jurors also heard from medical experts called by prosecutors and the defense who disagreed about her likely state of mind when she killed her children, Cora, Dawson and Callan Clancy, ages 5, 3 and 8 months, at their Massachusetts home.

The killings happened less than three weeks after Clancy was discharged from a psychiatric hospital. She jumped from a second-floor window after strangling the children, but survived. She remains paralyzed from the waist down.

The S&P 500 fell 0.3% after flipping between modest gains and losses through the morning. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 47 points, or 0.1%, as of 2:28 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% lower.

The bond market had more of a reaction following Kevin Warsh's first time speaking as chairman of the Fed at an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The mountain setting has been the backdrop for major Fed policy announcements in the past, and the pressure was on Warsh.

Worries had grown that his tough talk about getting inflation down to the Fed's 2% target may be just that, unless the Fed backs it up with action. The Fed could hike short-term interest rates to get inflation under control, but it could also feel deterred from doing so because that would slow the economy and hurt prices for investments. And President Donald Trump, who appointed Warsh, has been vocal about wanting interest rates to be lower rather than higher.

Warsh was adamant again on Friday that he wants to give financial markets fewer clues about what the Fed plans to do with rates for its two jobs of keeping inflation low and the job market strong. He has said he wants markets to react to what incoming data says about the economy and inflation rather than what the Fed says.

But Warsh also said Friday that “short-term interest rates are the predominant tool” for the Fed to do its job. And he said, “I would be hard pressed to describe broad financial conditions as restrictive,” an implication that short-term interest rates may not be high enough to tamp down the economy and inflation.

The yield on the two-year Treasury, which closely tracks expectations for what the Fed will do with its federal funds rate, jumped to 4.35% from 4.22% just before the speech.

Traders are betting on a nearly 60% probability the Fed will hike its federal funds rate as soon as next month, up from the 35% probability they saw a day earlier, according to data from CME Group.

Longer-term yields, which move more on expectations of what the economy and inflation will do in upcoming years, zigzagged right after the Warsh speech but eventually moved higher. The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.73% from 4.67% late Thursday. The 30-year Treasury yield was at 5.21%, up from 5.19% late Thursday.

Yields had gotten so high during the summer for those longer-term bonds that the U.S. Treasury Department made an unusual move last week and said it would buy back more bonds, though analysts said it will likely have only a limited effect.

“The problem with the Warsh approach to monetary policy is that it could collide with the Treasury’s interventions in the bond market,” said Brian Jacobsen, chief economic strategist at Annex Wealth Management.

Warsh said Friday he prefers to use short-term interest rates to do the Fed's job when he called them its “predominant tool,” rather than buying bonds and adding them to the Fed's holdings like it's often done since the 2008 financial crisis.

On Wall Street, Gap jumped 13% after the retailer reported stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also said Michael Francis, an industry veteran who began his career on the retail sales floor, will take over as head of its Old Navy stores.

Marvell Technology fell 10.3% even though the chip company reported profit and revenue for the latest quarter that edged past analysts’ expectations. CEO Matt Murphy said its business related to artificial-intelligence technology is strong, and it raised its forecasts for upcoming revenue growth.

But analysts said much of that optimism may have already been baked into Marvell’s stock price, which came into the day with a surge of 184% for the year so far.

After rocketing higher for years because of the frenzy around AI, stocks across the industry are confronting skepticism that they shot too high and that booming demand for AI chips may fade if the AI revolution does not produce as much profit as promised.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe following a mixed finish in Asia. South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.8%, and France’s CAC 40 rose 1% for two of the world’s bigger moves.

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AP Business Writers Michelle Chapman and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Three weeks into his career, however, the rookie set a dubious mark by committing an error for the sixth straight game in Thursday night’s 5-1 loss to the Houston Astros.

Lombard has seven errors in his first 20 games and, after his latest miscue, the 21-year-old said his defense was not acceptable.

“It’s something we’re trying to figure out,” Lombard said. “It’s not acceptable. It can’t happen at this level. If you make your pitchers have to get extra outs it just makes it way harder on us, and teams are going to capitalize. So it’s something that we’re definitely going to have to clean up and I've got to be better tomorrow.”

With Christian Walker on second base in the eighth inning, Yainer Diaz hit a grounder that caromed off Lombard’s glove. The ball ricocheted to third baseman José Caballero and he was charged with a throwing error for his wild toss to first as Walker scored Houston’s fifth run.

“The one today, it’s kind of that in-between ball. So you’re like, is the third baseman getting there?” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Is he not? There’s a little indecisiveness there. So I think that played into that a little bit.”

Lombard became the first Yankees shortstop since Roger Peckinpaugh in 1915 to commit an error in six consecutive games. On Wednesday night, Lombard misplayed a grounder by Walker in the seventh that allowed the tying run to score before the Yankees pulled away for a 9-3 victory.

Lombard has a .925 fielding percentage and has turned 15 double plays after the Yankees used Anthony Volpe and Caballero at shortstop until calling up their top prospect. New York shortstops have combined to make 16 errors overall.

Last season, Volpe led American League shortstops with 19 errors while playing with a torn labrum in his shoulder for the final four months.

“The good thing about George is you know he’s so skilled and gifted out there and foundationally he’s really good, too," Boone said. “So he will get through it.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

Hundreds of people gathered near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial for the 2026 “Defend the Vote” March on Washington, organized by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, echoing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 march. The event follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark April decision in Louisiana v. Callais that reinterpreted key provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, allowing Southern states to redraw their congressional maps in a way that erodes equal representation in Black communities.

“We’ve been doing these marches for years, but this is probably the most important because this is the first year we are marching that the voting rights bill has been nullified by the Supreme Court,” Sharpton, founder of the National Action Network, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Some call it a ‘very dangerous moment in American history’

Friday's event harkened back to King Jr.’s historic March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, when more than 200,000 people gathered at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. That march, an inflection point in the Civil Rights Movement, came at a fraught moment, when economic headwinds, civil unrest, political division and the Vietnam War bitterly divided Americans.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., one of dozens of speakers at the event, said that now is a “very dangerous moment in American history” and that the “dream of a more just and equitable society has never been under greater threat than it is right now.”

He placed blame on Republican President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court's conservative majority, listing attempts to purge voter rolls, obtain sensitive voter data, restrict mail-in and early voting, and redraw Congressional districts as part of threats to voting rights.

“Today, we have a president along with the Supreme Court members he appointed carrying out the most significant assault on voting rights since segregation, targeting virtually every aspect of the electoral system,” Sanders said.

Martin Luther King III told the AP the Civil Rights movement's work “is further eroding” in the wake of the April ruling.

He said his father would be disappointed with the state of the country, but current civil rights advocates should be undaunted.

“Had he lived, we’d be on a totally different trajectory,” the younger King said. “These would not be issues; they would have been resolved. I don’t think he would be surprised because he understands our history and understands those who are trying to retain power. But the challenge is challenging our communities to engage even more.”

King's Drum Major Institute, a progressive think tank and community action group, co-hosted the march with Sharpton's group.

Ray Turner, a 65-year-old Maryland retiree, sat Friday on the steps in front of the Lincoln Memorial. He came independently, carrying a sign that read “(Puny) Hands off our elections.”

“The lies about the 2020 election being stolen continue to be sounded, even though they’ve been disproved,” Turner said, adding, “Now they’re trying to use this to prevent people who are legal citizens, legal voters, from voting.”

Sharpton said the Trump administration’s immigration policy for Haitians and white South Africans, as well as cuts to social programs, are unifying concerns for this year's march attendees. But redistricting efforts by Republican-led states set to reduce the number of Black lawmakers in Congress loom large.

“This march is about people who refuse to be counted out. When the courts and the legislature broke apart District 6, they did not just redraw lines,” Rep. Cleo Fields, D-La., said in a texted statement. “They told hundreds of thousands of Black families from Baton Rouge up through the Delta that their voice could be taken away at any moment.”

Fields' district was central in the Supreme Court decision that hollowed out the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The court ruled that his district, created just one term ago to permit a second majority-Black district in a state where Blacks make up 33% of the population, was unconstitutional because it relied too heavily on race.

The court has held that maps can be redrawn for partisan reasons.

Louisiana's legislature rushed to redraw the district after the decision, reshaping it to cluster around predominantly white communities in the Baton Rouge area and southern Louisiana.

Fields has opted not to seek reelection to Congress and instead is pursuing a seat in the state Senate.

Embattled Black lawmakers see need for continued rights push

Rep. Shomari Figures, an Alabama Democrat whose majority-Black district was targeted by the state’s Republican-led redistricting effort, said the original voting rights fight required local movements, national figures, lots of coordination and strategy. He sees this year's march as a continuation of that legacy.

“My district includes Montgomery, which was the birthplace of it all. It started with a bus boycott in 1955 and that, ultimately, morphed into a broader struggle for civil rights and led to a more broad Civil Rights Movement,” Figures told the AP.

Ahead of Friday, organizations participating in the march filed new claims in their federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting. The Supreme Court cleared a path Monday for possible implementation of the order, though it remains unclear how much can be put in place before the midterms.

Late Thursday, a federal judge in Boston who is hearing some of the lawsuits against that executive order put a temporary halt on the administration from moving forward with it. Time is running short to make any significant changes to voting in the midterms, with the first mail ballots scheduled to be sent out next week.

____

Associated Press writers Gary Fields in Washington and Kimberly Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, contributed.

The war isn't over, though Trump claims that through bombs and blockade, he has already devastated Iran’s leadership, military and economy.

And this week his administration said it would turn its focus to increasing economic pressure — rather than military action — to try to finish off Iran. The shifting strategy centers on threats to punish any country or entity that continues to conduct business with Tehran.

The turn to using sanctions as the cudgel of choice comes as the administration weighs diminished munitions stockpiles after months of war, sparking concerns that the prolonged conflict could undermine U.S. military readiness in other parts of the globe.

As the conflict grinds on, Trump's talk of finding a quick end to the war also appears to be fading. He stressed this week that he's “not in a hurry” to get Iran back to the negotiating table, and he continues making the case that the Islamic Republic's leadership is on the ropes.

“They’re not paying their troops. They’re in deep trouble. They have very little capacity,” Trump told reporters Thursday. “We don’t want to speak to them. We’re not looking to meet or anything,” he said.

It's unclear how — or if — Trump will address the six-month anniversary of a conflict that has already cost the United States more than $37.5 billion and done damage to his popularity ahead of critical November elections for his party. The president is spending Friday in Houston, where he'll honor the Artemis II NASA crew for their 10-day mission around the moon earlier this year.

Trump is declaring ‘mission accomplished' — a phrase that hurt a Republican predecessor

On its face, the moment is complicated for the “America First” leader who fiercely criticized his White House predecessors for wasting American taxpayer money and U.S. troops' lives in Middle East conflicts and vowed on the campaign trail to keep the military out of “endless wars.”

But Trump has bristled at suggestions that this war — in which no American troops have deployed into Iran — can be compared with the yearslong wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which more than 7,000 Americans were killed.

His Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, was widely mocked for a 2003 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath a White House-produced banner that read “Mission Accomplished.” It came to symbolize a premature declaration of victory for the Iraq War, which would go on for nearly nine more years. More than two decades later, there are still U.S. troops stationed in Iraq.

Trump’s war has stretched on far longer than he told Americans it would. It didn't stop him from sharing a social media post this week declaring “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED 2026.” The AI-generated image features Trump against a backdrop of U.S. fighter jets, a warship and American flags above smaller images of Bush and former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strike in the opening salvos of the war.

Trump has consistently emphasized that the U.S. and Israel campaign has been devastating for Iran's navy and air force. Iranian officials have said the country has suffered $270 billion in direct and indirect damage. Israeli military strikes in the first weeks of the war wiped out much of the theocratic government's leadership structure, including Khamenei.

But Iran has found leverage through its own strikes in the critical Strait of Hormuz, where relatively few vessels carrying oil and liquefied natural gas are risking passage. Trump again declared Thursday that the “Strait of Hormuz is open,” saying 24 vessels passed through a day earlier. That's a fraction of the roughly 130 vessels that passed through the vital waterway daily before the war began.

Trump is showing little interest in talks

Mediators Qatar and Pakistan continue to press for a diplomatic off-ramp from the two sides. Qatar's prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, was in Tehran on Thursday to discuss a proposed plan between Iran and Oman to boost traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

But in Washington, Trump has shown little interest in getting back to the preliminary deal reached in June that aimed to reopen the strait and launch talks about Iran’s nuclear program. That deal fell apart within weeks after Iran started attacking ships.

At the same time, Trump says the U.S. effort to economically choke off Tehran is working, with a U.S. naval blockade preventing Iranian oil from making it to market as the trickle of vessels carrying oil from other Gulf nations pass through.

“We have control and we have the blockade,” Trump said. "Iran is not getting anything. Nothing is going through.”

Iran is badly battered, but has a history of showing resilience

There's no doubt that the strikes combined with decades of international sanctions have battered Iran, said Aarathi Krishnan, a geopolitical risk analyst at RAKSHA Intelligence Future.

But as Trump tries to turn to a new chapter in the war, Krishnan argues the Republican may be misguided in concluding that more pressure on Tehran — which has spent decades adapting to international economic sanctions — will produce the political outcome he wants.

Indeed, Iran’s economy in the run-up to the start of the war was mired in surging inflation, according to the International Monetary Fund. National income per person had fallen from about $8,000 in 2012 to $5,000 in 2024, according to World Bank data.

But Tehran has also shown resilience, selling discounted oil and establishing opaque shipping and financial networks, Krishnan said.

“This administration has completely underestimated the Iranian resolve,” Krishnan said. “This is not new to the Iranian regime.”

Trump must decide how far he's willing to go with sanctions

Richard Goldberg, who served as a senior adviser on Iran at the National Security Council during Trump's first White House term, argues that Iran now finds itself in “uncharted waters” if the administration follows through with a truly biting campaign to pressure Iranian trade partners.

“What we should be seeing is an attempt to seal off every escape hatch the regime has left,” said Goldberg, who is now at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a hawkish Washington think tank. “Use the economic power of the United States to layer a naval blockade with an air and land embargo while dropping the hammer on anyone who gives the regime access to hard currency — whether that’s in the Middle East, China or even Europe.”

But it remains to be seen how far the administration is willing to go.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week unveiled a campaign the White House calls “Operation Economic Outcast,” but only issued warnings to nations to cut trade and has yet to announce any secondary sanctions. Bessent told reporters the administration wanted countries to have a chance to shift away from Iran before it was too late — and acknowledged there was economic risk to the U.S., too, in moving ahead.

The Treasury Department announced on Friday that it was taking steps that could lead to eventually severing Banque Misr, Egypt’s second-largest bank, from the U.S. financial system. The department accused the bank of serving as an economic lifeline to Tehran’s leadership.

China, which is Iran's biggest trade partner and oil buyer, responded earlier this week to the Trump administration's broad threats of going after countries and firms that still do trade with Iran by expressing its opposition to “illegal unilateral sanctions.”

Pressed Thursday about why he wasn't already sanctioning Chinese banks, Trump offered a cryptic response.

“Who said I’m not? You don’t know if I’m doing it,” Trump said. "I don’t have to announce everything, do I?”

—

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in New York and Fatima Hussein contributed to this report.

Atlanta Braves manager Walt Weiss had relievers ready in the bullpen for the ninth.

Even so, both knew Sale was not coming out Thursday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. After learning before the game about the death of a friend, Sale had extra motivation to finish the shutout in Atlanta's 1-0 win for a series sweep.

“He was on a mission,” Weiss said. “You could see it. He was attacking from the first pitch. And not that he doesn’t do that, but you can see he had a different look in his eye. And the look in the eye is always pretty good. But it was even a little bit different tonight.”

That different look meant Weiss already was planning to have Sale return to the mound for the ninth. Then, he said, Sale walked into the dugout after the eighth and announced, `This is mine.'"

Weiss wasn't about to argue.

Sale said he received a text message before the game saying his friend, Ashley Foss, a financial advisor who worked with Sale's agent, B.B. Abbott, had died. Sale provided no details.

“If you ever needed more incentive, that's all you're going to need right there,” Sale said.

The 37-year-old lefty was dominant in throwing only 60 pitches through five innings and 81 through seven. He allowed just five hits with no walks, throwing 80 of his 109 pitches for strikes.

Sale fanned 11 for his fourth double-digit strikeout game this season and the 95th of his career. The 10-time All-Star ranks seventh all-time. Sandy Koufax is sixth with 97.

Weiss said it was a Hall of Fame-caliber performance by Sale.

“I always talk about how the Hall of Famers are just different, and that’s a perfect example right there,” Weiss said. “Chris knew that we were really thin tonight in the bullpen, so he puts a team on his back and throws a complete-game shutout against the world champions.”

Weiss stuck with Sale even after Freddie Freeman singled to open the Dodgers ninth.

Teoscar Hernández popped out, pinch-runner Alek Thomas was out at second on Miguel Rojas’ fielder’s-choice grounder and Sale struck out Alex Call for his 17th complete game and first since 2019 with Boston at Kansas City.

It was Sale’s fourth career shutout and first since that three-hitter against the Royals on June 5, 2019. Sale threw a 100.1 mph fastball to Shohei Ohtani in the third, reaching triple digits on a pitch for the first time since July 2018 with the Red Sox.

Sale (13-9) lowered his ERA to 2.06 with the overpowering outing in a matchup of National League division leaders. He trails only Milwaukee ace Jacob Misiorowski (1.73) among qualified major league pitchers.

“I’m just thankful to get through it, man,” Sale said. “Like I said, I pride myself on working hard and I pride myself on going out there and giving my team a chance to win.”

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See AP’s full MLB coverage here

The development further dims prospects for an early resumption of diplomacy between North Korea and the U.S., despite President Donald Trump’s recent decision to scale back a major bilateral military drill with South Korea in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the North.

South Korea's military said in a statement the Freedom Edge exercise will start on Sept. 7 for a five-day run in the waters off South Korea's southern Jeju Island.

It said the exercise is defensive in nature and meant to respond to North Korean nuclear and missile threats as well as promote regional peace and stability.

North Korea has previously slammed the trilateral drill as a “reckless show of strength" that showed its adversaries' confrontational stance against it. Pyongyang has also said the drill contained a U.S. intention to lay siege to China and exert pressure on Russia.

Launched in 2024, the Freedom Edge drill is designed to increase the sophistication of previous exercises with simultaneous air and naval drills geared toward improving joint ballistic missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, surveillance and other capabilities.

Last week, the U.S. and South Korean militaries ended their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise six days earlier than originally planned, after Trump said he had ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the drill. Trump cited what he described as a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who views the drill as an invasion rehearsal.

But North Korea rebuffed Trump's overture, saying just shortening the drill won’t change its “provocative, aggressive nature.” North Korea launched about 10 short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea, apparently delivering on its previous threat to respond to the U.S.-South Korean drill.

Pyongyang has previously said it won’t resume diplomacy with the U.S. unless it drops its demand for a North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for talks.

Since his earlier diplomacy with Trump collapsed in 2019, Kim has boosted his military and diplomatic credentials by enlarging his nuclear arsenal and aligning with Russia over its war against Ukraine. With greater leverage now, experts say Kim would likely aim to win major U.S. concessions like an international recognition of North Korea as a nuclear state and sweeping sanctions relief in return for a partial surrender of his nuclear arsenal.

On Thursday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry accused the U.S. of engaging in “a series of hostile moves” targeting the North, including a possible sale of air-to-air missiles to South Korea. It said North Korea “will make a serious, immediate and powerful response."

The scaling back of the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise caused worries about a joint South Korean-U.S. defense readiness.

Earlier this week, South Korea’s Marine Corps said that a biennial joint amphibious landing drill with the U.S. will likely not take place in September as previously scheduled. It said the U.S. Marine Corps in June informed it of a constraint in the operational capability of its forces during the drill's planned period due to the situation in the Middle East, an apparent reference to the Iran war.

In response to questions by The Associated Press, the U.S. Marine Corps said Thursday that its “participation level” in the Ssangyong drill was determined in coordination with South Korea and was unrelated to decisions regarding other exercises. It said it “remains firmly committed to its longstanding partnership” with South Korea.

The rescue efforts included a team that rappelled into a severely damaged checkpoint area on the Chinese side of the border between the two countries. Rescuers were on high alert for more flooding from a new lake that formed high up in the Himalayan mountains after the initial floods Wednesday. Experts warned that the lake, created after a glacier collapse that triggered the floods, was starting to overflow.

Nepal's army was deployed to help rescue more than 100 people believed trapped inside a tunnel at a hydropower plant located in the country's worst-hit district. Like elsewhere in the disaster zone, their work was complicated by thick layers of mud that covered the site.

The rappelling rescue team descended into the once-bustling border-crossing area from wooded mountain slopes, the state broadcaster China Central Television said.

“As far as I can see, it’s nothing but debris,” rescue official Zou Mingqi told state media. The area where travelers went through border control to enter or leave China has been flattened to a muddy area, according to satellite images.

The floods have killed 579 in Nepal, the country's disaster-management authority said Friday. Nepali police later put the number of deaths at 553. There was little information on survivors on the Chinese side, where the death toll rose to five Friday as state media showed evacuations of villages and leaders’ efforts to direct the relief response.

More than 3,700 people have been rescued in Nepal so far. Meanwhile, the number of people who were unaccounted for in the country nearly doubled to 1,924 as more local residents were added to the tally. China's state media previously said 558 people were missing on the Chinese side. Hundreds of the missing are foreigners in the area to work, trek or make a pilgrimage to a sacred peak.

Authorities warn of flooding from a new lake

Nepali police issued a fresh alert Friday after receiving information that a dam on the Tibet side had burst. Security personnel and rescue and relief workers were told to stay on high alert and move to a safe location if necessary.

It was unclear if the dam bursting was related to flooding concerns over the lake that formed after the initial flash floods. Chinese broadcaster CCTV said the newly formed lake, located more than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from Gyirong Port, the hard-hit border crossing with Nepal, sits at an elevation of 2,950 meters (9,680 feet).

Nepali and Chinese authorities earlier warned of more flooding from the lake, which was already overflowing. Rescue workers heading to the disaster zone were ordered to stop temporarily Friday due to concern the lake would release more water and debris, and people in potentially affected areas were urged to move to safer ground.

Monitoring data from the Chinese Ministry of Water Resources later showed that the lake had dwindled in size. The water level dropped by 10 meters (32 feet) from the high point on Thursday morning, the state broadcaster said.

Some 680 rescuers eventually reached the Gyirong area by foot and via rafts. Some were dropped down from drones flown to the area, CCTV footage showed. “Anyone, anyone?” rescuers yelled, according to footage by the broadcaster.

It was not immediately known how many people were at the border checkpoint building when the floods hit.

Thousands of people have been evacuated while others await rescue

In Nepal's Rasuwa district, Nepali army rescuers struggled to help more than 100 people believed to be trapped by thick mud in a tunnel that's part of the Upper Trishuli-1 Hydropower Project. The army said it had rescued 350 people from the tunnel so far.

Video from the scene showed rescuers helping a man covered in mud out of the tunnel by pulling and pushing.

“It is complicated to find the entry and exit points of the tunnel because everything has been covered by mud,” Army spokesperson Brig. Gen. Raja Ram Basnet said.

Nepal’s disaster-management authority said 3,253 people had been airlifted by helicopter from the disaster area.

The search-and-rescue efforts have been supported by an outpouring of financial support from neighboring countries, including small, poorer countries like Sri Lanka, said Kanni Wignaraja, the United Nations development agency’s regional director for Asia and the Pacific.

“Sri Lanka has its own huge fiscal problems, but it has just sent $1 million immediately to the Nepal government,” Wignaraja said. “So you can see that while this devastation is happening, it has also really brought together countries in that neighborhood, who have stepped in for each other.”

Some felt the ground shake, then saw a ‘black storm’

Scientists who studied satellite images said bedrock underneath a glacier high in the Himalayan region had collapsed, taking part of the glacier with it. The rockfall was so extreme that it registered as magnitude 5.2. The rocks and melted water then swelled the rivers in the valleys below, causing a torrent of water that swept buildings, bridges and earth downstream in Tibet and Nepal.

Customs officer Karbir Gaire was among some of the survivors in Timure, the closest Nepalese village to the border with China, where some 1,500 people had lived.

Gaire reached his office around 8 a.m. Wednesday and was working on his computer when he first felt the ground shake.

“Right after the shake, I noticed a black storm coming towards us,” he recalled from Kathmandu, where he is back with family. “We all immediately started running out, and within a few seconds, we were climbing uphill on the opposite side of our office building. I think those 10 or so seconds saved some of us.”

Fifteen of Gaire's colleagues are missing. “It was like a Hollywood movie scene. I don’t call it a flood. It was a tsunami.”

Families around the world hope for news of loved ones

Nepal’s tourism board has said that among the missing are more than 500 foreigners.

While the Nepal government shared a public list of people they rescued, there was little information about victims on the Chinese side of the border.

Chinese government officials stuck to their tight media controls. Information about major disasters is typically released with a delay and without personal stories of victims. State media has focused on stories of rescuers working to reach the disaster site or reporting on instructions from top leaders.

About 90 Americans were unaccounted for.

Some of the missing may have been on a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet, a sacred site for Hindus, Buddhists and others.

Vishnuram Ramaswamy, who works at a private company in the southern Indian city of Puducherry, said that he last spoke to his mother and two sisters who were on that pilgrimage Wednesday morning. It was a highly anticipated trip, something his mother had always wanted to do, he said.

“My mother said they were on their way towards the border area and said they’ll reach their hotel and call us,” he said. He's in touch with government officials and the travel agency, but there's been no news.

“This was the last we spoke to them. They have been unreachable since.”

___

Associated Press journalists Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Sibi Arasu in Bengaluru, India; Huizhong Wu in Bangkok; Upendra Mansingh in Nuwakot district, Nepal; Aijaz Hussain in Srinagar, India; Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia; Farnoush Amiri in New York; Matthew Lee and Didi Tang in Washington; and Hannah Schoenbaum in Utah contributed to this report.

U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a written order Thursday night that the Pentagon acted illegally by punishing the AI company for its criticism of the Department of Defense’s views on AI use. The government is expected to fight the ruling.

The dispute between the AI company and the government broke out in February when President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused Anthropic of endangering national security and designated the company a supply chain risk. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to back down over concerns the company’s products could be used for mass surveillance or autonomous armed drones.

Lin wrote that the government's actions “were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its ‘arrogance’ in criticizing the government, not based on any articulable basis to believe that Anthropic would actually sabotage its model.”

An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that they welcome the judge's ruling: "We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the 59-page ruling, Lin, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, wrote that neither the Constitution nor the federal statute the government invoked allows them to “impose sweeping penalties based principally on Anthropic’s critique of the Administration’s views.”

Anthropic sued the Pentagon over the supply chain risk designation in March for what it called an “unlawful campaign of retaliation” over its refusal to allow unrestricted military use of its technology.

The legal challenge intensified an unusually public dispute over how AI can be used in warfare and mass surveillance. Anthropic’s primary tech industry rival, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, made its own deal to work with the Pentagon just hours after the government punished Anthropic for its stance.

Anthropic and OpenAI are each ramping up for buzzy initial public offerings.

Anthropic has also filed a separate and narrower case that is still pending in the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. That case involves a different rule the Pentagon is using to try to declare Anthropic a supply chain risk.

Earlier in the legal proceedings, Lin had temporarily blocked the Pentagon from labeling the company as a supply chain risk and blocked enforcement of Trump’s social media directive ordering all federal agencies to stop using Anthropic and its chatbot Claude.

In a hearing July 30, Lin had said that the government's position was “really troubling” to her and that it seemed “at odds to me with the First Amendment.” She also said she believed the record had “gotten worse for the government” over time.

In that same hearing, Department of Justice lawyers argued that the nature of AI models is “so staggeringly enormous and opaque” that the Defense Department cannot evaluate it in the same way it would a physical piece of hardware.

Anthropic lawyer Michael Mongan said in that hearing that the government's actions “profoundly harm Anthropic” and that they “threaten more broadly to chill speech and debate on a very important issue.”

“It's the NFL, there are monsters on the other side of the ball and you need to get the ball out quick,” Mendoza said. “It teaches you, you need to play on time, and there's less margin for error. So I think it's a great experience having that heat and duress because diamonds are built under pressure.”

Eddy Piñeiro made all six field goal attempts, including 51- and 54-yarders in the final 1:51 for the 49ers (2-1). Las Vegas' Matt Gay, who played briefly for San Francisco last season, made 4 of 5 field goals, his miss coming from 54 yards in the third quarter.

Mendoza completed 7 of 14 passes for 57 yards, making him 25 of 40 for 240 yards with a touchdown, two interceptions and four sacks for the three preseason games. He led five drives against the 49ers, one ending in a field goal and another in the missed attempt.

It wasn't quite the exclamation point the top overall draft pick wanted to put on the preseason, and now he will have to search for practice repetitions with Kirk Cousins expected to be the starter when the season begins. Cousins took the vast majority of snaps in training camp for the Raiders (1-2), who now go full time into game planning.

“(Mendoza) needs another three preseason games, and all those rookies do," Raiders coach Klint Kubiak said. “Now that the season is starting, the practice reps get smaller and that's just life. But us as coaches, we've got to get them ready to play and keep developing.”

Both coaches took notably different approaches to this preseason finale, with Kubiak playing almost his entire starting offense and defense for two series and the Niners' Kyle Shanahan going with backups the entire game.

Now both coaches have serious decisions to make before the rosters are cut to 53 on Sunday.

“I’m looking forward to figuring out exactly our final team here over these next three days," Shanahan said. "We got a lot of tough decisions; they’re not easy ones. I want to see how the practice squad pans out and really what our opening day roster is going to be. I just like when the season starts. Preseason gets a little bit old, and I like when it gets real and it’s going to get real, real fast.”

Cousins directed two drives, both ending in field goals. He completed 8 of 11 passes for 51 yards.

Mike Washington Jr., who could open the season as the starting running back with Ashton Jeanty out with an undisclosed injury. rushed for 49 yards on eight carries. Washington rushed for 168 yards in the preseason, averaging 7.3 per carry.

49ers backup quarterback Mac Jones and what was mostly the second-team offense was held to one first down and 20 yards on two drives against the Raiders' starting defense, minus pass rusher Maxx Crosby who didn't play in any preseason games. Jones finished 1 of 5 for 7 yards.

The Raiders went with Mendoza for the third period and gave him the starting offense, except for rookie Trey Zuhn III taking over for Tyler Linderbaum at center. Mendoza threw high to Jalen Nailor on his second play, and the ball popped into the air into the hands of San Francisco linebacker Tatum Bethune for an interception.

Injury report

49ers: CB Ephesians Prysock (shoulder) and TE Brayden Willis (concussion) were injured. LB Jalen Graham was evaluated for a concussion and cleared.

Raiders: DE Keyron Crawford (ankle) was hurt late in the third quarter.

Up next

49ers: Open Sept. 10 against the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia.

Raiders: Open Sept. 13 against Miami at home.

___

See AP’s full NFL coverage here

Records show rodent problems were reported at Eat and Run Subs, Seph Restaurant & Bakery, CM Chicken and Boardwalk Bar & Grill.

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Inspectors found dozens of rodent droppings at several of those businesses, including more than 50 at Seph, where additional droppings were found during a reinspection.

Roach activity was reported at LongHorn Steakhouse, Moonlite Diner, Eat and Run Subs, El Machetico, Family Kitchen Restaurant and Catering, The Licking South Beach and CM Chicken.

At Moonlite, inspectors found numerous live and dead roaches along with food being held at unsafe temperatures.

El Machetico had 18 violations, including live and dead roaches and employee handwashing violations, while Family Kitchen had dozens of live roaches and food held at temperatures as high as 65 degrees.

Inspectors also found dozens of flying insects landing directly on food at Chill N Kendall Place.

Below is a list of the establishments and some of the violations inspectors documented. All were ordered closed and later allowed to re-open following a cleanup and re-inspection.

**LONGHORN STEAKHOUSE

6225 N. ANDREWS AVE

FORT LAUDERDALE

INSPECTION BASED ON COMPLAINT

ORDERED SHUT 8/21

5 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 1 live roach on cart in prep area. Operator removed cleaned and sanitized Observed 1 live roach on top of three compartment sink in ware washing area with cut lettuce being prepared in three compartment sink. Cross contamination not observed. Observed approximately 15 live roaches behind 3 compartment sink on wall Observed 2 live roaches in between cove molding and wall in ware washing area Observed 1 live roach on wall in ware washing area. Observed 1 live roach on pipe in prep area next to ware washing area Observed 1 live roach on ground in dry produce storage area.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 2 dead roaches on ground in prep area. Repeat Violation.”

“Interior of oven has accumulation of black substance.”

**MOONLITE DINER

6201 N ANDREWS AVE.

FORT LAUDERDALE

ORDERED SHUT 8/20

15 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 1 live roach on wall behind flip top cooler on cook line in kitchen Observed 1 live roach on ground in ware washing area in kitchen Observed approximately 12 live roaches on wall behind flip top cooler on cook line in kitchen Observed 2 live roaches on ground behind chest freezer on cook line in kitchen Observed 1 live roach under wait station flip top cooler.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 1 dead roach on wall above wait station hand wash sink in kitchen area Observed 1 dead roach on wall under shelf in on cook line in kitchen Observed 3 dead roaches inside of reach in cooler at front counter.”

“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. right to left: cut tomatoes (45F); diced tomatoes (49F); turkey (44F); feta (46F); hard boiled eggs (45F); shredded cheese (51F); sliced cheese (48F); cooked meatloaf (46F); turkey (53F); raw shrimp (44F); tuna (46F); egg whites (50F); liquid eggs (62F). Per operator items being held in unit for more than 4 hours.”

“Stop Sale issued. Fish reduced oxygen packaged on premises, or commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish labeled with instructions to remain frozen until time of use, not held frozen. Commercially processed reduced oxygen packaged fish bearing a label indicating that it is to remain frozen until time of use no longer frozen and not removed from reduced oxygen package. Raw salmon stored fully thawed commercially packaged reduced oxygen packaging.”

“Dish machine chlorine sanitizer not at proper minimum strength. Discontinue use of dish machine for sanitizing and set up manual sanitization until dish machine is repaired and sanitizing properly. Operator set up three compartment sink and called for service.”

“Proof of required state approved employee training not available for some employees.”

“Required employee training expired for some employees.”

**EAT AND RUN SUBS

16775 N. MIAMI AVE.

NORTH MIAMI BEACH

ORDERED SHUT 8/20

10 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Rodent activity present as evidenced by rodent droppings found. Observed 5 rodent dropping on top of water heater, 20+ rodent droppings on the floor under the fryers, 20+ rodent droppings on the floor under the display case at the front counter handwashing, and 5 droppings on the floor under mop sink.”

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 2 live roaches crawling on the curtain in the entrance of the kitchen.”

“Roach excrement and/or droppings present. Observed 25+ droppings on the floor under the 3 compartment sink, 10+ droppings on the floor under the bread shelves.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed slicer with old food debris.”

“Handwash sink used for purposes other than handwashing. Observed kitchen handwashing sink with old food debris.”

**EL MACHETICO

9674 NW 25TH ST.

DORAL

ORDERED SHUT 8/20

18 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 1 live roach crawling inside of the handwash sink in the kitchen. Also observed 1 live roach inside of sanitizer water at the triple sink. Observed 1 live roach crawling on floor under the steam table. Observed 1 live roach crawling on black cabinet at front counter coffee and pastry area. Observed 2 live roach crawling inside of dry coffee cabinet at front counter coffee and pastry area.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed approximately 7+ dead roaches under preparation table in the kitchen. Employee started cleaning under preparation table at time of inspection. Observed 4 dead roaches on floor at front counter. Observed 5 dead roaches inside of clean container inside of dry coffee cabinet at coffee and pastry area.”

“Server handled soiled dishes or utensils and then picked up plated food, served food, or prepared a beverage without washing hands. Observed employee began making coffee without first washing her hands after handling dirty dishes from customers table.”

“Employee began working with food, handling clean equipment or utensils, or touching unwrapped single-service items without first washing hands.”

“Food not stored at least 6 inches off of the floor. Observed 1 box of sweet plantains store on floor under prep table in the middle of the kitchen. Also observed 1 box of onions store on floor under prep table in the middle of the kitchen.”

“No soap provided at handwash sink. Operator provided soap at time of inspection.”

**CHILL N KENDALL PLACE

9065 SW 107TH AVE

KENDALL

ORDERED SHUT 8/20

9 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Live, small flying insects found. Observed 15+ live flying insects flying and landing inside containers directly touching chocolate crunch bar, graham crackers, gummy worms, chopped pecans, Oreo cookies, chocolate chip cookie, Kit Kats, peanut butter cup, containers at front counter. Observed 2 live flying insects flying and landing inside containers directly touching white chocolate chips and mini chocolate chips at front counter. Observed 5+ live flying insects flying under front counter landing on brownie and cookie sheet tray. Observed 3+ live flying insects flying and landing on top of toppings reach in cooler at front counter. Observed 5+ live flies flying around dish machine. Observed 3+ live flying insects near reach in freezer in back prep area. Observed 5+ flying insects flying and landing on clean equipment at triple sink. Observed 20+ live flying insects landing on sponges at triple sink.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Live, small flying insects found. Observed 15+ live flying insects flying and landing inside containers directly touching chocolate crunch bar, graham crackers, gummy worms, chopped pecans, Oreo cookies, chocolate chip cookie, Kit Kats, peanut butter cup, containers at front counter. Observed 2 live flying insects flying and landing inside containers directly touching white chocolate chips and mini chocolate chips at front counter.”

“Insect control device installed over food preparation area. Observed bug zapper hanging on dry food rack in back prep room. Observed bug zapper installed over prep table at front counter.”

“Employee began working with food, handling clean equipment or utensils, or touching unwrapped single-service items without first washing hands. Observed employee begin to prepare customer order without first washing hands.”

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

**FAMILY KITCHEN RESTAURANT AND CATERING

3134 WEST COMMERCIAL BLUD.

TAMARAC

ORDERED SHUT 8/18

12 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 1 live roach on ground at front door in dining room Observed approximately 15 live roaches in between wall and reach in cooler in dry storage area Observed approximately 20 live roaches on ground and behind chest freezers in dry storage area. Observed approximately 2 live roaches on ground under oven in kitchen. Observed approximately 5 live roaches on ground under 2 door stainless reach in cooler in kitchen.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 1 dead roach on oven in kitchen Observed 1 dead roach in 1 door stainless reach in cooler in kitchen.”

“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. 2 door stainless: pickles (59F); cooked pork (59F); cooked beans (59F); raw chicken wings (59F); cooked gravy (60F); raw turkey wings (65F); operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today 1 door stainless: cooked chicken (48F); cooked pork (49F). operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today 1 door glass in dry storage: cooked chicken (51F); cooked turkey (48F); cooked goat (46F) operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today. pickles (80F) being held at front counter. Unknown time out of temperature.”

“No dishwashing facilities of any kind provided. No 3 compartment or ware washing machine provided in establishment.”

“Required employee training expired for all employees.”

**THE LICKING SOUTH BEACH

754-758 WASHINGTON AVE.

MIAMI BEACH

ORDERED SHUT 8/19

11 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed at ware washing area two live roaches crawling on the ground. Observed a live roach crawling on the wall next to prep sink at prep area. Observed one live roach crawling on the floor at cook line.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed two dead roaches on the floor next to prep sink at prep area.”

“Stop Sale issued due to food not being in a wholesome, sound condition. Observed MAC AND CHEESE (50F - Cooling) at walk in cooler, as per chef made the day prior.”

“Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Observed buttermilk marinade (70F - Cold Holding) at kitchen area.”

“Bowl or other container with no handle used to dispense food. Observed at walk in cooler a plastic tray with no handle used to portion pasta sauce.”

“Manager or person in charge lacking proof of food manager certification.”

“No proof of required state approved employee training provided for employee hired more than 60 days ago.”

**SEPH RESTAURANT & BAKERY

1362 NE 163RD ST

NORTH MIAMI BEACH

ORDERED SHUT 8/19

10 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Presence of insects, rodents, or other pests. Observed a potato with gnaw bites by the hot water heater.”

“Rodent activity present as evidenced by rodent droppings found. Observed approximately 50+ rodent droppings on the floor under kitchen handwashing sink, 5+ dropping on top shelves where clean utensils are stored, 10+ rodent droppings on the floor by hot water heater, 3 rodent droppings on the shelves where chemicals are stored, 20+ rodent droppings on the floor under seasoning shelves and 25+ rodent droppings on the floor under the front counter steam table.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed hot holding box in the front counter soiled.”

“Worn, torn and/or soiled floors/carpeting. Observed floors under 3 compartment sink, reach in coolers, steam table, fryers and stove heavily soiled.”

“Handwash sink not accessible for employee use at all times. Observed front counter handwashing sink blocked by plates.”

RE-INSPECTION 8/20

“Observed 10+ rodent droppings on the floor under reach in cooler in the kitchen and 4 rodent droppings on the floor behind reach in freezer.”

**CM CHICKEN

1256 NE 163RD ST.

NORTH MIAMI BEACH

ORDERED SHUT 8/19

8 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Rodent activity present as evidenced by rodent droppings found. Observed approximately 10+ rodent droppings on the floor under the fryers and 3+ rodent droppings on the back door window.”

“Roach excrement and/or droppings present. Observed 15+ dropping on the floor under the 3 compartment sink, 5+ droppings by the back door window, 20+ droppings on the floor at the front counter, 5+ droppings on the floor under the boba station,”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 2 dead roaches on the floor next to oil filter in the back.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Observed kitchen storage shelves soiled.”

**FAMILY KITCHEN RESTAURANT AND CATERING

3134 W. COMMERCIAL BLVD.

FORT LAUDERDALE

ORDERED SHUT 8/18

12 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Roach activity present as evidenced by live roaches found. Observed 1 live roach on ground at front door in dining room Observed approximately 15 live roaches in between wall and reach in cooler in dry storage area Observed approximately 20 live roaches on ground and behind chest freezers in dry storage area. Observed approximately 2 live roaches on ground under oven in kitchen. Observed approximately 5 live roaches on ground under 2 door stainless reach in cooler in kitchen.”

“Dead roaches on premises. Observed 1 dead roach on oven in kitchen Observed 1 dead roach in 1 door stainless reach in cooler in kitchen.”

“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. 2 door stainless: pickles (59F); cooked pork (59F); cooked beans (59F); raw chicken wings (59F); cooked gravy (60F); raw turkey wings (65F); operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today 1 door stainless: cooked chicken (48F); cooked pork (49F). operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today 1 door glass in dry storage: cooked chicken (51F); cooked turkey (48F); cooked goat (46F) operator states items have been held in unit overnight. Items not prepared or portioned today. pickles (80F) being held at front counter. Unknown time out of temperature.”

“Required employee training expired for all employees.”

**BOARDWALK BAR & GRILL

31044 AVENUE A

BIG PINE KEY

ORDERED SHUT 8/19

11 VIOLATIONS FOUND

“Rodent activity present as evidenced by approximately 10 rodent droppings found on top of dish machine.”

“Food-contact surface soiled with food debris, mold-like substance or slime. Potato cuter blade is soiled.”

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

“In walk-in cooler Time/temperature control for safety food cold held at greater than 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooked rice 56F, cooked broccoli 52F, shredded lettuce 53F items were transfer to another walk-in cooler that is cold holding at 42F or below as per operator these items were in the beer cooler under 4 hours.”