By Colleen Long and Will Weissert
The Associated Press

JONESBORO, Ga. (AP) — Kamala Harris on Oct. 20 summoned Black churchgoers to turn out at the polls and got a big assist from music legend Stevie Wonder, who rallied congregants with a rendition of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”

Harris visited two Atlanta area churches as part of a nationwide push known as “souls to the polls.” It’s a mobilization effort led by the National Advisory Board of Black Faith Leaders, which is sending representatives across battleground states to encourage early voting.

After services, buses took congregants straight to early polling places.

At both churches, Harris delivered a message about kindness and lifting people up rather than insulting them, trying to set up an implicit contrast with Republican Donald Trump’s brash style. With just 16 days left until Election Day, Harris is running out of time to get across her message to a public still getting to know her after a truncated campaign.

“There is so much at stake right now,” she said at the Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro. “We understand for us to do good works, it means to do it in the spirit of understanding that our strength is not based on who we beat down, as some would try to suggest. Our strength is based on who we lift up. And that spirit is very much at stake in these next 16 days.”

Wonder led the crowd in singing his version of “Happy Birthday” to the vice president, who turned 60 on Oct. 20.  When he was done, she appeared to choke up, saying, “I love you so much.”

Wonder grinned and said “don’t cry” before telling the crowd how important it was for people to get out and vote.

“We’re going to make the difference between yesterday and tomorrow,” he said.

Harris later said that she “had to check off a whole big one” on her bucket list because of Wonder singing her a birthday song, which prompted the singer to spring up and lead the congregation in a quick verse of “Higher Ground.”

Pastor Donald Battle said of the election: “Georgia’s gonna be the state that turns it for the vice president.”

“Souls to the Polls” as an idea traces back to the Civil Rights Movement. The Rev. George Lee, a Black entrepreneur from Mississippi, was killed by White supremacists in 1955 after he helped nearly 100 Black residents register to vote in the town of Belzoni. The cemetery where Lee is buried has served as a polling place.

Black church congregations across the country have undertaken get-out-the-vote campaigns for years. In part to counteract voter suppression tactics that date back to the Jim Crow era, early voting in the Black community is stressed from pulpits nearly as much as it is by candidates.

In Georgia, early voting began on Oct. 15, and more than 310,000 people voted on that day, more than doubling the first-day total in 2020. A record 5 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Earlier Oct. 20, the Democratic presidential nominee attended New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, where the congregation also sang “Happy Birthday.”

New Birth Pastor Jamal Bryant called the vice president “an American hero, the voice of the future” and “our fearless leader.” He also used his sermon to welcome the idea of America electing its first woman president, saying, “It takes a real man to support a real woman.”

“When Black women roll up their sleeves, then society has got to change,” Bryant said.

Harris referenced scripture as she promoted the importance of loving one’s neighbor, and then drew a contrast to the current political environment.

“In this moment, across our nation, what we do see are some who try to deepen division among us, spread hate, sow fear and cause chaos,” Harris told the congregation. “The true measure of the strength of a leader is based on who you lift up.”

One congregant who got a hug from Harris was 98-year-old Opal Lee, an activist who pushed to make Juneteenth a federally recognized holiday.

Harris is a Baptist. Her husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish. She has said she’s inspired by the work of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and influenced by the religious traditions of her mother’s native India as well as the Black Church. Harris sang in the choir as a child at Twenty-Third Avenue Church of God in Oakland.

Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, attended church in Saginaw, Michigan, and his wife, Gwen, headed to a service in Las Vegas.

Also Oct. 20 Harris sat for an interview with the Rev. Al Sharpton and was asked about the idea that she might see her support slipping among Black men — some of whom might be reluctant to vote for a woman for president. Former President Barack Obama suggested that might be an issue during a recent campaign stop for Harris in Pittsburgh.

Harris said she had garnered support from many key Black male leaders, adding, “there’s this narrative about what kind of support we are receiving from Black men that is just not panning out in reality.”

On Oct. 21, she will campaign with former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

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By Stephen Whyno
AP Sports Writer

BALTIMORE (AP) — Lamar Jackson threw for 323 yards and a touchdown to outshine rookie Jayden Daniels in a showdown between two of the NFL’s best quarterbacks this season, Derrick Henry ran for two TDs and the Baltimore Ravens beat the Washington Commanders 30-23 on Oct. 13 for their fourth consecutive victory.

Jackson found Mark Andrews for the tight end’s first touchdown of the season and completed nine passes to Zay Flowers for 132 yards — all in the first half. Henry had 132 yards and his NFL-leading eighth and ninth TDs as the Ravens (4-2) mixed and matched the pass and run to near perfection.

Daniels connected with Terry McLaurin on two TD passes, but did not get nearly enough help from the backfield in a matchup of the two top rushing offenses in the league. With Brian Robinson Jr. out because of a knee injury, Washington (4-2) got just 52 yards on the ground.

The Commanders’ defense struggled to contain Jackson and Henry, allowing Baltimore to rack up 484 yards, and their winning streak ended at four with a loss at the hands of an opponent that is starting to look like the legitimate Super Bowl contender it was expected to be.

The masterclass by the Ravens included scoring drives of 93 and 94 yards, three sacks of Daniels and enough to overcome an early interception by Jackson when the ball went off Andrews’ hands and was caught by rookie Mike Sainristil for Washington’s first pick of the season. 

Struggles defending against the pass continued, with Daniels going 24 of 35 for 269 yards, but again Baltimore was able to outscore its problems.

Henry became the first player to rush for a TD in each of his first six games since LaDainian Tomlinson in 2005. Andrews tied Todd Heap for the most catches since the team moved to Baltimore with the 41st of his career.

Injuries

Ravens: LB Malik Harrison (groin), CB Arthur Maulet (knee and hamstring) and DE Broderick Washington (knee) were inactive.

Commanders: DT Jonathan Allen was ruled out early in the fourth quarter with a pectoral injury. … DE Dorance Armstrong left in the second with a rib injury. … DE Clelin Ferrell missed a fourth consecutive game with a knee injury.

Up next

Commanders: Host the Carolina Panthers Oct. 20.

Ravens: Visit the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Monday, Oct. 21.

___

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

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By Chris O’Meara, Brendan Farrington and Ty O’Neil
The Associated Press

LITHIA, Fla. (AP) — Florida residents slogged through flooded streets, gathered up scattered debris and assessed damage to their homes on Oct. 11 after Hurricane Milton smashed through coastal communities and spawned a barrage of deadly tornadoes.

At least 10 people were dead, and rescuers were still saving people from swollen rivers, but many expressed relief that Milton wasn’t worse. The hurricane spared densely populated Tampa a direct hit, and the lethal storm surge that scientists feared never materialized.

Gov. Ron DeSantis warned people to not let down their guard, however, citing ongoing safety threats including downed power lines and standing water that could hide dangerous objects.

“We’re now in the period where you have fatalities that are preventable,” DeSantis said. “You have to make the proper decisions and know that there are hazards out there.”

About 2.2 million customers remained without power in the state, according to poweroutage.us. St. Petersburg’s 260,000 residents were told to boil water before drinking, cooking or brushing their teeth, until at least Oct. 14. 

Also Oct. 11, the owner of a major phosphate mine disclosed that pollution spilled into Tampa Bay during the hurricane.

The Mosaic Company said in a statement that heavy rains from the storm overwhelmed a collection system at its Riverview site, pushing excess water out of a manhole and into discharges that lead to the bay. The company said the leak was fixed Oct. 10.

Mosaic said the spill likely exceeded a 17,500-gallon minimum reporting standard, though it did not provide a figure for what the total volume might have been.

Calls and emails to Mosaic seeking additional information about Riverview and the company’s other Florida mines received no response, as did a voicemail left with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

The state has 25 such stacks containing more than 1 billion tons of phosphogypsum, a solid waste byproduct of the phosphate fertilizer mining industry that contains radium, which decays to form radon gas. Both radium and radon are radioactive and can cause cancer. Phosphogypsum may also contain toxic heavy metals and other carcinogens, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury and nickel.

Florida’s vital tourism industry has started to return to normal, meanwhile, as Walt Disney World and other theme parks reopened. The state’s busiest airport, in Orlando, resumed full operations Oct. 11.

Arriving just two weeks after the devastating Hurricane Helene, Milton flooded barrier islands, tore the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays ‘ baseball stadium and toppled a construction crane.

Crews from the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office on Oct. 11 were assisting with rescues of people, including a 92-year-old woman, who were stranded in rising waters along the Alafia River. The river is 25 miles (40 kilometers) long and runs from eastern Hillsborough County, east of Tampa, into Tampa Bay.

In Pinellas County, deputies used high-water vehicles to shuttle people back and forth to their homes in a flooded Palm Harbor neighborhood where waters continued to rise.

Ashley Cabrera left with her 18- and 11-year-old sons and their three dogs, Eeyore, Poe and Molly. It was the first time since Milton struck that they had been able to leave the neighborhood, and they were now headed to a hotel in Orlando.

“I’m extremely thankful that we could get out now and go for the weekend somewhere we can get a hot meal and some gas,” Cabrera said. “I thought we’d be able to get out as soon as the storm was over. These roads have never flooded like this in all the years that I’ve lived here.”

Animals were being saved, too. Cindy Evers helped rescue a large pig stuck in high water at a strip mall in Lithia, east of Tampa. She had already rescued a donkey and several goats after the storm.

“I’m high and dry where I’m at, and I have a barn and 9 acres,” Evers said, adding that she will soon start to work to find the animals’ owners.

In the Gulf Coast city of Venice, Milton left behind several feet of sand in some beachfront condos, with one unit nearly filled. A swimming pool was packed full of sand, with only its handrails poking out.

Some warnings were heeded and lessons learned. When 8 feet (2.4 meters) of seawater flooded Punta Gorda during Hurricane Helene last month, 121 people had to be rescued, Mayor Lynne Matthews said. Milton brought at least 5 feet (1.5 meters) of flooding, but rescuers only had to save three people.

“So people listened to the evacuation order,” Matthews said.

Heaps of fruit were scattered across the ground and trees toppled over after both Milton and Hurricane Helene swept through Polk County and other orange-growing regions, Matt Joyner of trade group Florida Citrus Mutual said Oct. 11.

Milton arrived at the start of the orange growing season, so it is still too early to evaluate the full scope of the damage.

Florida has already seen orange production diminish over the years, with the industry still recovering from hurricanes of years past while also waging an ongoing battle against a deadly greening disease. Milton could be the knockout punch for some growers, Joyce said.

In the western coastal city of Clearwater, Kelvin Glenn said it took less than an hour early Oct. 10 for water to rise to his waist inside his apartment. He and seven children, ranging in age from 3 to 16, were trapped in the brown, foul floodwaters for about three hours before an upstairs neighbor opened their home to them.

Later that day, first responders arrived in boats to ferry them away from the building.

“Sitting in that cold, nasty water was kind of bad,” Glenn said.

Short-term survival is now turning into long-term worries. A hotel is $160 a night. Everything inside Glenn’s apartment is gone. And it can take time to get assistance.

“I ain’t going to say we’re homeless,” Glenn said. “But we’ve got to start all over again.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has enough money to deal with the immediate needs of people impacted by Helene and Milton but will need additional funding at some point, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Oct. 11.

The disaster assistance fund helps pay for the swift response to hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and other disasters. Congress recently replenished the fund with $20 billion — the same amount as last year.

___

Farrington reported from St. Petersburg, Florida. Associated Press journalists Terry Spencer outside of Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Stephany Matat in Fort Pierce, Florida; Freida Frisaro in Fort Lauderdale; Lolita Baldor and Michael Biesecker in Washington; and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed.

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By Johnathan Landrum Jr. and Hillel Italie
The Associated Press

Cissy Houston, a two-time Grammy-winning soul and gospel artist who sang with Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley and other stars and knew triumph and heartbreak as the mother of Whitney Houston, has died. She was 91.

Cissy Houston died Oct. 7 morning in her New Jersey home while under hospice care for Alzheimer’s disease, her daughter-in-law Pat Houston told The Associated Press. The acclaimed gospel singer was surrounded by her family.

“Our hearts are filled with pain and sadness. We [loss] the matriarch of our family,” Pat Houston said in a statement. She said her mother-in-law’s contributions to popular music and culture are “unparalleled.” 

“Mother Cissy has been a strong and towering figure in our lives. A woman of deep faith and conviction, who cared greatly about family, ministry, and community. Her more than seven-decade career in music and entertainment will remain at the forefront of our hearts.”

A church performer from an early age, Houston was part of a family gospel act before breaking through in popular music in the 1960s as a member of the prominent backing group The Sweet Inspirations with Doris Troy and her niece Dee Dee Warwick. The group sang backup for a variety of soul singers including Otis Redding, Lou Rawls and The Drifters. They also sang backup for Dionne Warwick.

Houston’s many credits included Franklin’s “Think” and ”(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and Dusty Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man.” The Sweet Inspirations also sang on stage with Presley, whom Houston would remember fondly for singing gospel during rehearsal breaks and telling her that she was “squirrelly.”

“At the end of our engagement with him, he gave me a bracelet inscribed with my name on the outside,” she wrote in her memoir “How Sweet the Sound,” published in 1998. “On the inside of the bracelet he had inscribed his nickname for me: Squirrelly.”

The Sweet Inspirations had their own top 20 single with the soul-rock “Sweet Inspiration,” made in the Memphis studio where Franklin and Springfield among others recorded hits and released four albums just in the late ’60s. The group appeared on Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and sang background vocals for The Jimi Hendrix Experience on the song “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” in 1967.

Houston’s last performance with The Sweet Inspirations came after the group hit the stage with Presley in a Las Vegas show in 1969. Her final recording session with the group turned into their biggest R&B hit “(Gotta Find) A Brand New Lover” a composition by the production team of Gamble & Huff, who appeared on the group’s fifth album, “Sweet Sweet Soul.”

During that time, the group occasionally performed live concert dates with Franklin. After the group’s success and four albums together, Houston left The Sweet Inspirations to pursue a solo career where she flourished.

Houston became an in-demand session singer and recorded more than 600 songs in multiple genres throughout her career. Her vocals can be heard on tracks alongside a wide range of artists including Chaka Khan, Donny Hathaway, Jimi Hendrix, Luther Vandross, Beyoncé, Paul Simon, Roberta Flack and Whitney Houston.

Cissy Houston went on to complete several records, including “Presenting Cissy Houston,” the disco-era “Think It Over” and the Grammy-winning gospel albums “Face to Face” and “He Leadeth Me.”

In 1971, Houston’s signature vocals were featured on Burt Bacharach’s solo album, which includes “Mexican Divorce,” “All Kinds of People” and “One Less Bell to Answer.” She performed various standards including Barbra Streisand’s hit song, “Evergreen.”

Never far from her native New Jersey or musical origins, Houston presided for decades over the 200-member Youth Inspirational Choir at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church, where Whitney Houston sang as a child.

Cissy Houston would say that she had discouraged her daughter from show business, but they were joined in music for much of Whitney’s life, from church to stage performances to television and film and the recording studio. Whitney’s rise seemed inevitable, not only because of her obvious talents, but because of her background: Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick were cousins, Leontyne Price a cousin once removed, Franklin a close family friend.

Whitney Houston made her debut on national television when she and Cissy Houston sang a medley of Franklin hits on “The Merv Griffin Show.” Cissy Houston sang backup on Whitney’s eponymous, multi-platinum first album, and the two shared the lead on “I Know Him So Well,” from the 1987 mega-seller “Whitney.”

They would sing together often in concert and appeared in the 1996 film “The Preacher’s Wife.” Their most indelible moments likely came from the video for one of Whitney’s biggest hits from the mid-1980s, “Greatest Love of All.” It was filmed as a mother-daughter homage, ending with a joyous Whitney exiting the stage of Harlem’s Apollo Theater and embracing Cissy Houston, who stood in the wings.

On Feb. 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found dead — from what was ruled as an accidental drowning — in a Beverly Hills bathtub. Cissy Houston would write about her daughter in the memoir “Remembering Whitney: A Mother’s Story of Life, Loss and The Night The Music Stopped.”

In 2015, Cissy Houston was grieving again when granddaughter Bobbi Kristina Brown, the only child of Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, was found unconscious in a bathtub, spent months in a coma and died at age 22. The family was back in the news in 2018 with the release of the documentary “Whitney.” which included allegations that Dee Dee Warwick (who died in 2008) had molested Whitney when she was a girl.

Cissy Houston was briefly married to Freddie Garland in the 1950s; their son, Gary Garland, was a guard for the Denver Nuggets and later sang on many of Whitney Houston’s tours. Cissy Houston was married to Whitney’s father, entertainment executive John Russell Houston, from 1959-1990. In addition to Whitney, the Houstons also had a son, Michael.

Cissy Houston was born Emily Drinkard in Newark, the youngest of eight children of a factory worker and a housewife. She was just 5 when she and three siblings founded the Drinkard Singers, a gospel group that lasted 30 years, performing on the same bill as Mahalia Jackson among others and releasing the 1959 album “A Joyful Noise.”

She later said she would have been happy to remain in gospel, but John Houston encouraged her to take on studio work. When rockabilly star Ronnie Hawkins (along with drummer Levon Helm and other future members of The Band) needed an extra voice, Cissy Houston stepped in.

“I wanted to get my work done, and get it done quickly. I was there, but I didn’t have to be part of them. I was in the world, but I wasn’t of the world, as St. Paul put it,” Houston wrote in “How Sweet the Sound,” remembering how she soon began working with the Drifters and other singers.

“At least in the recording studio we were living together as God intended us to. Some days, we spent 12 or 15 hours together there,” she wrote. “The skin-deep barriers of race seemed to fall away as we toiled side by side creating our little pop masterpieces.”

Pat Houston said she is thankful for the many valuable lessons learned from her mother-in-law. She said the family feels “blessed and grateful” that God allowed Cissy to spend so many years.

“We are touched by your generous support, and your outpouring of love during our profound time of grief,” Houston said on behalf of the family. “We respectfully request our privacy during this difficult time.”

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By Kemo Cham and Jessica Donati
The Associated Press

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone (AP) — Companies that bring solar power to some of the poorest homes in Central and West Africa are said to be among the fastest growing on a continent whose governments have long struggled to address some of the world’s worst infrastructure and the complications of climate change.

The often African-owned companies operate in areas where the vast majority of people live disconnected from the electricity grid, and offer products ranging from solar-powered lamps that allow children to study at night to elaborate home systems that power kitchen appliances and plasma televisions. Prices range from less than $20 for a solar-powered lamp to thousands of dollars for home appliances and entertainment systems.

Central and West Africa have some of the world’s lowest electrification rates. In West Africa, where 220 million people live without power, this is as low as 8 percent, according to the World Bank. Many rely on expensive kerosene and other fuels that fill homes and businesses with fumes and risk causing fires.

At the last United Nations climate summit, the world agreed on the goal of tripling the capacity for renewable power generation by 2050. While the African continent is responsible for hardly any carbon emissions relative to its size, solar has become one relatively cost-effective way to provide electricity.

The International Energy Agency, in a report earlier this year, said small and medium-sized solar companies are making rapid progress reaching homes but more needs to be invested to reach all African homes and businesses by 2030.

About 600 million Africans lack access to electricity, it said, out of a population of more than 1.3 billion.

Among the companies that made the Financial Times’ annual ranking of Africa’s fastest growing companies of 2023 was Easy Solar, a locally owned firm that brings solar power to homes and businesses in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The ranking went by compound annual growth rate in revenue.

Co-founder Nthabiseng Mosia grew up in Ghana with frequent power cuts. She became interested in solving energy problems in Africa while at graduate school in the United States. Together with a U.S. classmate, she launched the company in Sierra Leone, whose electrification rates are among the lowest in West Africa.

“There wasn’t really anybody doing solar at scale. And so we thought it was a good opportunity,” Mosia said in an interview.

Since launching in 2016, Easy Solar has brought solar power to over a million people in Sierra Leone and Liberia, which have a combined population of more than 14 million. The company’s network includes agents and shops in all of Sierra Leone’s 16 districts and seven of nine counties in Liberia.

Many communities have been connected to a stable source of power for the first time. “We really want to go to the last mile deep into the rural areas,” Mosia said.

The company began with a pilot project in Songo, a community on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital Freetown. Uptake was slow at first, Mosia said. Villagers worried about the cost of solar-powered appliances, but once they began to see light in their neighbors’ homes at night, more signed on.

“We have long forgotten about kerosene,” said Haroun Patrick Samai, a Songo resident and land surveyor. “Before Easy Solar we lived in constant danger of a fire outbreak from the use of candles and kerosene.”

Altech, a solar power company based in Congo, also ranked as one of Africa’s fastest growing companies. Fewer than 20 percent of the population in Congo has access to electricity, according to the World Bank.

Co-founders Washikala Malango and Iongwa Mashangao fled conflict in Congo’s South Kivu province as children and grew up in Tanzania. They decided to launch the company in 2013 to help solve the power problems they had experienced growing up in a refugee camp, relying on kerosene for power and competing with family members for light to study at night.

Altech now operates in 23 out of 26 provinces in Congo, and the company expects to reach the remaining ones by the end of the year. Its founders say they have sold over 1 million products in Congo in a range of solar-powered solutions for homes and businesses, including lighting, appliances, home systems and generators.

“For the majority of our customers, this is the first time they are connected to a power source,” Malango said.

Repayment rates are over 90 percent, Malango said, helped in part by a system that can turn off power to appliances remotely if people don’t pay.

___

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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By David Klepper
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The facts emerging from Hurricane Helene’s destruction are heartrending: Businesses and homes destroyed, whole communities nearly wiped out, hundreds of lives lost, hundreds of people missing.

Yet this devastation and despair is not enough for the extremist groups, disinformation agents, hucksters and politicians who are exploiting the disaster to spread false claims and conspiracy theories about it and the government’s response.

According to former President Donald Trump, the federal government is intentionally withholding aid to Republican disaster victims. Far-right extremist groups warn on social media that officials plan to bulldoze affected communities and seize the land from residents. A tale straight from science fiction asserts that Washington used weather control technology to steer Helene toward Republican voters in order to tilt the presidential election toward Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

The claims, according to experts and local officials dealing with disaster response, say less about the reality of the widespread damage from Helene than they do about America’s fractured politics and the fear and distrust shadowing an election year marked by assassination attempts and escalating global tension.

Debunking conspiracy theories takes time away from recovery efforts

As rescue work continues and authorities try to separate fact from fiction, the conspiracy theories are not helping. 

Elected leaders from both parties have had to set the record straight and urge people not to give into fear and rumor.

“If everyone could maybe please put aside the hate for a bit and pitch in to help, that would be great,” posted Glenn Jacobs, the retired professional wrestler known as Kane, who is now the Republican mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. Jacobs’ post was intended to rebut rumors that workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency were seizing relief supplies from private citizens.

Many of the conspiracy theories focus on hard-hit North Carolina, a state key to winning the White House. Rumors circulated that FEMA was raiding storm donations and withholding body bags, forcing local hospitals to stack the bodies of victims. One claim suggested federal authorities would condemn the entire town of Chimney Rock and prohibit resettlement in order to commandeer a valuable lithium mine nearby.

False claims of blocked relief flights and aid withheld from Republicans

Elon Musk, the owner of Tesla, X and SpaceX, posted that private relief flights to North Carolina were being blocked by the Federal Aviation Administration, a claim dismissed as false by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

Despite the tradition of Democrats and Republicans putting aside politics for disaster response, many conspiracy theories suggest Democrats such as President Joe Biden or North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper are intentionally withholding aid from Republicans. Trump has pushed the claim, as has North Carolina’s lieutenant governor, Mark Robinson, the embattled GOP nominee for governor.

“They’re being treated very badly in the Republican areas,” Trump told Fox News, ignoring reports and photo and video evidence of recovery efforts underway throughout the region. “They’re not getting water, they’re not getting anything.”

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones endorsed Trump’s fact-free allegation. Jones, the founder of InfoWars, popularized the idea that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut that killed 20 children in 2012 was faked. “Exclusive: Victims of Hurricane Helene Confirm The Federal Government is Purposely Blocking Rescuers and Stealing Aid In an Attempt to Keep Deep Red Areas From Voting,” Jones posted Ocr. 3 on X.

Disinformation campaigns by China and Russia amplify the misleading claims

State-run media and disinformation campaigns run by China and Russia have amplified false and misleading claims about the response to the storm. Both countries have used social media and state news stories to criticize responses to past U.S. natural disasters, part of a larger effort to stoke division and distrust among Americans.

State and local officials from both parties have condemned the conspiracy theories as rumors, saying the focus should be on recovery, not political division and hearsay. 

Responding to the hoaxes is taking up time that should go toward assisting victims, said North Carolina state Sen. Kevin Corbin, a Republican who urged his constituents not to give into hoaxes.

“Friends can I ask a small favor?” Corbin posted Oct. 3 on Facebook. “Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet… Please don’t let these crazy stories consume you.”

After Robinson, the GOP candidate for North Carolina governor, posted that state officials had not prepared for the storm, a spokesman for the governor accused Robinson of mounting “an online disinformation campaign.” North Carolina officials say the response to Helene is the largest in state history, including thousands of members of the National Guard and other recovery workers, millions of meals, dozens of aircraft and more than 1,000 chainsaws.

Trump has tried to tie the hurricane’s aftermath to immigration, a leading issue of his campaign. He falsely claimed that FEMA had run out of money because all of it had gone to programs for undocumented immigrants.

The agency’s funding for disaster aid is stretched, but that is because of the many parts of the country dealing with the effects of hurricanes, wildfires and other calamities. Disaster aid is funded separately from other Department of Homeland Security programs that support immigration-related spending.

Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology

Bizarre stories proposing that the government used weather control technology to aim the hurricane at Republican voters quickly racked up millions of views on X and other platforms.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., endorsed the idea, posting Oct. 2 on X: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

Far-out tales of space lasers, fake snow and weather control technology — sometimes tinged with antisemitism — have spread after recent natural disasters, including a snowstorm in Texas and last year’s wildfire in Maui.

Experts who study conspiracy theories say big events like disasters — or the Sept. 11 attacks or the COVID-19 pandemic — create perfect conditions for conspiracy theories to spread because large numbers of anxious people are eager to find explanations for shocking events.

Responding to the volume of false claims about Helene, the Red Cross urged people to consult trustworthy sources of information and to think twice before reposting conspiracy theories.

“Sharing rumors online without first vetting the source and verifying facts ultimately hurts people — people who have just lost their homes, neighborhoods, and, in some cases, loved ones,” the organization wrote in a public plea.

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By Bruce Schreiner
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — The death toll from Hurricane Helene inched up to 227 on Ocr. 5 as the grim task of recovering bodies continued more than a week after the monster storm ravaged the Southeast and killed people in six states.

Helene came ashore Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane and carved a wide swath of destruction as it moved northward from Florida, washing away homes, destroying roads and knocking out electricity and cellphone service for millions.

The number of deaths stood at 225 on Oct. 4; two more were recorded in South Carolina the following day. It was still unclear how many people were unaccounted for or missing, and the toll could rise even higher.

Helene is the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. About half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina.

The city of Asheville, in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered. A week later workers used brooms and heavy machinery to clean mud and dirt outside of New Belgium Brewing Company, which lies next to the French Broad River and is among thousands of city businesses and households affected.

So far North Carolinians have received more than $27 million in individual assistance approved by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said MaryAnn Tierney, a regional administrator for the agency. More than 83,000 people have registered for individual assistance, according to the office of Gov. Roy Cooper.

In Buncombe County, where Asheville is located, FEMA-approved assistance has surpassed $12 million for survivors, Tierney said Oct. 5 during a news briefing.

“This is critical assistance that will help people with their immediate needs, as well as displacement assistance that helps them if they can’t stay in their home,” she said.

She encouraged residents impacted by the storm to register for disaster assistance.

“It is the first step in the recovery process,” she said. “We can provide immediate relief in terms of serious needs assistance to replace food, water, medicines, other life safety, critical items, as well as displacement assistance if you cannot stay in your home.”

Helene’s raging floodwaters shocked mountain towns hundreds of miles inland and far from where the storm made landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast, including in the Tennessee mountains that Dolly Parton calls home.

The country music star has announced a $1 million donation to the Mountain Ways Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to providing immediate assistance to Hurricane Helene flood victims.

In addition, her East Tennessee businesses as well as the Dollywood Foundation are combining efforts, pledging to match her donation to Mountain Ways with a $1 million contribution.

Parton said she feels a close connection to the storm victims because so many of them “grew up in the mountains just like I did.”

“I can’t stand to see anyone hurting, so I wanted to do what I could to help after these terrible floods,” she said. “I hope we can all be a little bit of light in the world for our friends, our neighbors — even strangers — during this dark time they are experiencing.”

Walmart U.S. President and CEO John Furner said the company, including Sam’s Club and the Walmart Foundation, would increase its commitment and donate a total of $10 million to hurricane relief efforts.

In Newport, an eastern Tennessee town of about 7,000, residents continued cleaning up Ocr. 5 from the destruction caused by Helene’s floodwaters.

Mud still clung to the basement walls of one Main Street funeral home. The ground-floor chapel of another nearby was being dried out, a painting of Jesus still hanging on the wall in an otherwise barren room.

Newport City Hall and its police department also took on water from the swollen Pigeon River. Some of the modest, one-story homes along its banks were destroyed, their walls crumbled and rooms exposed.

Farther east in unincorporated Del Rio, along a bend in the French Broad River, residents and volunteers toiled to clean up. The smell of wood hung in the air as people used chainsaws to cut through downed trees, and Bobcats beeped as they moved mangled sheet metal and other debris. Many homes sustained damage, including one that slid off its foundation.

___

Associated Press journalists Jeff Roberson in Newport, Tennessee; Hannah Fingerhut in Des Moines, Iowa; and Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed.

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By Tom Krisher
AP Business Writer

DETROIT (AP) — Some 45,000 dockworkers at East and Gulf coast ports are returning to work after their union reached a deal to suspend a strike that could have caused shortages and higher prices if it had dragged on.

The International Longshoremen’s Association is suspending its three-day strike until Jan. 15 to provide time to negotiate a new contract. The union and the U.S. Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shipping companies, said in a joint statement that they have reached a tentative agreement on wages.

A person briefed on the agreement said the ports sweetened their wage offer from about 50 percent over six years to 62 percent. The person didn’t want to be identified because the agreement is tentative. Any wage increase would have to be approved by union members as part of the ratification of a final contract.

Talks now turn to the automation of ports, which the unions says will lead to fewer jobs, and other sticking points.

The settlement pushes the strike and any potential shortages past the November presidential election, eliminating a potential liability for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee. It’s also a big plus for the Biden-Harris administration, which has billed itself as the most union-friendly in American history. Shortages could have driven up prices and reignited inflation.

It will take a day or two for the ports to restart machinery and for ships waiting at sea to get to a berth, but even so, consumers aren’t likely to see any shortages because the strike was relatively short, said William Brucher, an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University who follows ports.

“I think the disruptions are going to be rather minimal and consumers aren’t really going to feel them,” Brucher said.

Supply chain experts say that for every day of a port strike, it takes four to six days to recover. That means it will take probably about 20 days to recover, said Brucher. But during those 20 days, Longshoremen will be gradually increasing their capacity to handle freight until they hit normal levels.

The union went on strike early Oct. 1 after its contract expired in a dispute over pay and the automation of tasks at 36 ports stretching from Maine to Texas. The strike came at the peak of the holiday season at the ports, which handle about half the cargo from ships coming into and out of the United States.

Most retailers had stocked up or shipped items early in anticipation of the strike.

“With the grace of God, and the goodwill of neighbors, it’s gonna hold,” President Joe Biden told reporters the night of Oct. 3 after the agreement.

In a statement later, Biden applauded both sides “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.”

Biden said that collective bargaining is “critical to building a stronger economy from the middle out and the bottom up.”

The union’s membership won’t need to vote on the temporary suspension of the strike. Until Jan. 15, the workers will be covered under the old contract, which expired on Sept. 30.

The union had been demanding a 77 percent raise over six years, plus a complete ban on the use of automation at the ports, which members see as a threat to their jobs. Both sides also have been apart on the issues of pension contributions and the distribution of royalties paid on containers that are moved by workers.

Thomas Kohler, who teaches labor and employment law at Boston College, said the agreement to halt the strike means that the two sides are close to a final deal.

“I’m sure that if they weren’t going anywhere they wouldn’t have suspended (the strike),” he said. “They’ve got wages. They’ll work out the language on automation, and I’m sure that what this really means is it gives the parties time to sit down and get exactly the language they can both live with.”

ILA President Harold Daggett has been seeking an outright ban on anything that would cost human jobs. But shipping companies want more flexibility to automate at a faster pace in order to compete against more efficient facilities that already use the technology, said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Work and Employment Research.

Although automation does indeed eliminate some jobs, as workers legitimately fear, it also tends to create new ones, in part because equipment must be maintained and set up for different tasks, Kochan said. The companies could agree to include such jobs in the union membership.

“There are ways to address those fears both by providing job security for those people who are displaced and also the ability then to take on the new jobs that are created,” he said. “That’s the sweet spot that I suspect they are trying to find in these final negotiations over automation.”

Just before the strike had begun, the Maritime Alliance, which represents ports and shippers, said both sides had moved off their original wage offers, a tentative sign of progress.

The Oct. 3 deal came after Biden administration officials met with foreign-owned shipping companies before dawn on Zoom, according to a person briefed on the day’s events who asked not to be identified because the talks were private. The White House wanted to increase pressure to settle, emphasizing the responsibility to reopen the ports to help with recovery from Hurricane Helene, the person said.

Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su told them she could get the union to the bargaining table to extend the contract if the carriers made a higher wage offer. Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the carriers they had to make an offer by the end of the day so a manmade strike wouldn’t worsen a natural disaster, the person said.

By midday the Maritime Alliance members agreed to a large increase, bringing about the agreement, according to the person.

____

AP Writers Darlene Superville and Josh Boak in Washington and Annie Mulligan in Houston contributed to this report.

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By Bill Barrow, Zeke Miller and Nicholas Riccardi
The Associated Press

Vice presidential hopefuls Tim Walz and JD Vance focused their criticism on the top of the ticket on Oct 1, as they engaged in a policy-heavy discussion that may be the last debate of the 2024 presidential campaign.

It was the first encounter between Minnesota’s Democratic governor and Ohio’s Republican senator, following last month’s debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. It comes just five weeks before Election Day and as millions of voters are now able to cast early ballots.

The Oct. 1 confrontation played out as the stakes of the contest rose again after Iran fired missiles into Israel, while a devastating hurricane and potentially debilitating port strike roiled the country at home. Over and again, Walz and Vance outlined the policy and character differences between their running mates, while trying to introduce themselves to the country.

Here are some takeaways from the debate.

With Mideast in turmoil, Walz promises ‘steady leadership’ and Vance offers ’peace through strength’

Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Israel on Oct 1, elicited a contrast between the Democratic and Republican tickets on foreign policy: Walz promised “steady leadership” under Harris while Vance pledged a return to “peace through strength” if Trump is returned to the White House.

The differing visions of what American leadership should look like overshadowed the sharp policy differences between the two tickets.

The Iranian threat to the region and U.S. interests around the world opened the debate, with Walz pivoting the topic to criticism of Trump.

“What’s fundamental here is that steady leadership is going to matter,” Walz said, then referenced the “nearly 80-year-old Donald Trump talking about crowd sizes” and responding to global crises by tweet.

Vance, for his part, promised a return to “effective deterrence” under Trump against Iran, brushing back on Walz’s criticism of Trump by attacking Harris and her role in the Biden administration.

“Who has been the vice president for the last three and a half years and the answer is your running mate, not mine,” he said. He pointedly noted that the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, happened “during the administration of Kamala Harris.”

Vance and Walz punch up rather than at each other

Vance and Walz trained the bulk of their attacks not on their onstage rivals, but on the running mates who weren’t in the room.

Both vice presidential nominees sought to convey a genial mien as they lobbed criticism at Harris and Trump, respectively.

It was a reflection of the fact that most voters don’t cast a ballot based on the vice president, and on a vice presidential nominee’s historic role in serving as the attack dog for their running mates.

Walz pointedly attacked Trump for failing to meet his pledge of building a physical barrier across the entire U.S.-Mexico border at the country’s southern neighbor’s expense.

“Less than 2 percent of that wall got built and Mexico didn’t pay a dime,” Walz said.

Underscoring the focus on the top of the ticket, during a back-and-forth about immigration, Vance said to his opponent, “I think that you want to solve this problem, but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does.”

It was a wonky policy debate, with talk of risk pools, housing regulations and energy policy

In an age of world-class disses optimized for social media, the debate was a detour into substance. Both candidates took a low-key approach and both enthusiastically delved into the minutiae.

Walz dug into the drafting of the Affordable Care Act when he was in the House in 2009, and pushed Vance on the senator’s claim that Trump, who tried to eliminate the law, actually helped preserve it. Vance, defending his claim that illegal immigration pushes up housing prices, cited a Federal Reserve study to back himself up. Walz talked about how Minneapolis tinkered with local regulations to boost the housing supply. Both men talked about the overlap between energy policy, trade and climate change.

It was a very different style than often seen in presidential debates over the past several election cycles.

Vance stays on the defensive on abortion

Walz pounced on Vance repeatedly over abortion access and reproductive rights as the Ohio senator tried to argue that a state-by-state matrix of abortion laws is the ideal approach for the United States. Walz countered that a “basic right” for a woman should not be determined “by geography.”

“This is a very simple proposition: These are women’s decisions,” Walz said. “We trust women. We trust doctors.”

Walz sought to personalize the issue by referencing the death of Amber Thurman, who waited more than 20 hours at the hospital for a routine medical procedure known as a D&C to clear out remaining tissue after taking abortion pills. She developed sepsis and died.

Rather than sidestep the reference, Vance at one point agreed with Walz that “Amber Thurman should still be alive.”

Vance steered the conversation to the GOP ticket’s proposals he said would help women and children economically, thus avoiding the need for terminating pregnancies. But Walz retorted that such policies — tax credits, expanded childcare aid, a more even economy — can be pursued while still allowing women to make their own decisions about abortion.

Both candidates put a domestic spin on climate change

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Vance contended that the best way to fight climate change was to move more manufacturing to the United States, because the country has the world’s cleanest energy economy. It was a distinctly domestic spin on a global crisis, especially after Trump pulled the U.S. out of the international Paris climate accords during his administration.

Walz also kept the climate change focus domestic, touting the Biden administration’s renewable energy investments as well as record levels of oil and natural gas production.

It was a decidedly optimistic take on a pervasive and grim global problem.

Walz, Vance each blame opposing presidential candidate for immigration stalemate

The two running mates agreed that the number of migrants in the U.S. illegally is a problem. But each laid the blame on the opposing presidential nominee.

Vance echoed Trump by repeatedly calling Harris the “border czar” and suggested that she, as vice president, single-handedly rolled back the immigration restrictions Trump had imposed as president. The result, in Vance’s telling, is an unchecked flow of fentanyl, strain on state and local resources and increased housing prices around the country.

In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene, Vance took a question about climate change and gave an answer about jobs and manufacturing, taking a detour around Trump’s past claims that global warming is a “hoax.”

Harris was never asked to be the “border czar” and she was never specifically given the responsibility for security on the border. She was tasked by Biden in March 2021 with tackling the “root causes” of migration from the Central American countries of Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador and pushing leaders there and in Mexico to enforce immigration laws. Harris was not empowered to set U.S. immigration policy — only the president can sign executive orders and Harris was not empowered as Biden’s proxy in negotiations with Congress on immigration law.

Walz advanced Democrats’ arguments that Trump single-handedly killed a bipartisan Senate deal to tighten border security and boost the processing system for immigrants and asylum seekers. Republicans backed off the deal, Walz noted, only after Trump said it wasn’t good enough.

Both candidates leaned on tried-and-true debate tactics — including not answering tough questions

Asked directly whether Trump’s promise to deport millions of illegal immigrants would remove parents of U.S.-born children, Vance never answered the question. Instead, the senator tried to put his best spin on Trump’s plan to use the military to help with deportations and pivot to attacking Harris for a porous border. Asked to respond to Trump’s having called climate change a “hoax,” Vance also avoided a response.

The debate kicked off with Walz being asked if he’d support a preemptive strike by Israel against Iran. Walz praised Harris’ foreign policy leadership but never answered that question, either.

And at the end of the debate, Vance would not answer Walz’s direct question of whether Trump indeed lost the 2020 election.

Walz has stumbles and lands punches in uneven night

Walz had several verbal stumbles on a night in which he admitted to “misspeaking” often. In the debate’s opening moments, he confused Iran and Israel when discussing the Middle East.

At one point he said he had “become friends with school shooters,” and he stumbled through an explanation of inaccurate remarks about whether he was in Hong Kong during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. (He was not.)

But the governor noticeably put Vance on the defensive over abortion and, near the end of the debate, with a pointed question about whether Trump won the 2020 election.

Vance stays on a limb on Jan. 6 insurrection

The candidates went out of their way to be polite to each other until the very end, when Vance refused to back down from his statements that he wouldn’t have certified Trump’s 2020 election loss.

Vance tried to turn the issue to claims that the “much bigger threat to democracy” was Democrats trying to censor people on social media. But Walz wouldn’t let go.

“This one is troubling to me,” said Walz, noting that he’d just been praising some of Vance’s answers. He rattled off the ways Trump tried to overturn his 2020 loss and noted that the candidate still insists he won that contest. Then Walz asked Vance if Trump actually lost the election.

Vance responded by asking if Harris censored people.

“That is a damning non-answer,” said Walz, noting that Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, wasn’t on the debate stage because he stood up to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and presided over Congress’ certification of the former president’s loss.

“America,” Walz concluded, “I think you’ve got a really clear choice on this election of who’s going to honor that democracy and who’s going to honor Donald Trump.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Mae Anderson and Anne D’innocenzio
The Associated Press

U.S. ports from Maine to Texas shut down Oct.1 when the union representing about 45,000 dockworkers went on strike for the first time since 1977.

Workers began walking picket lines early Oct. 1, picketing near ports all along the East Coast. Workers outside the Port of Philadelphia walked in a circle and chanted, “No work without a fair contract.”

A lengthy shutdown could raise prices on goods around the country and potentially cause shortages and price increases at big and small retailers alike as the holiday shopping season — along with a tight presidential election — approaches.

What are the issues in the dockworkers strike?

The International Longshoremen’s Association is demanding significantly higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container-moving trucks that are used in the loading or unloading of freight at 36 U.S. ports. Those ports handle roughly half of the nations’ cargo from ships.

The contract between the ILA and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, expired Tuesday. Some progress was reported in talks late Monday, but the union went on strike anyway.

The union’s opening offer was for a 77 percent pay raise over the six-year life of the contract, with President Harold Daggett saying it’s necessary to make up for inflation and years of small raises. ILA members make a base salary of about $81,000 per year, but some can pull in over $200,000 annually with large amounts of overtime.

Monday evening, the alliance said it had increased its offer to 50 percent raises over six years, and it pledged to keep limits on automation in place from the old contract. The alliance also said its offer tripled employer contributions to retirement plans and strengthened health care options.

Which ports are affected?

While any port can handle any type of goods, some ports are specialized to handle goods for a particular industry. The ports affected by the shutdown include Baltimore and Brunswick, Georgia, the top two busiest auto ports; Philadelphia, which gives priority to fruits and vegetables; and New Orleans, which handles coffee, mainly from South America and Southeast Asia, various chemicals from Mexico and North Europe, and wood products such as plywood from Asia and South America.

Other major ports affected include Boston; New York/New Jersey; Norfolk, Va.; Wilmington, N.C.; Charleston, S.C.; Savannah, Ga.; Tampa, Fla.; Mobile, Ala.; and Houston.

Can the government intervene?

If a strike were deemed a danger to U.S. economic health, President Joe Biden could, under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. This would suspend the strike.

But Biden, during an exchange with reporters on Sept 29, said “no” when asked if he planned to intervene to plan a potential work stoppage impacting East Coast ports.

“Because it’s collective bargaining, I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” Biden said.

How will this affect consumers?

The strike could last weeks — or months. If the strike is resolved within a few weeks, consumers probably wouldn’t notice any major shortages of retail goods. But a strike that persists for more than a month would likely cause a shortage of some consumer products, although most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas. Shoppers could see higher prices on a vast array of goods, from fruit and vegetables to cars.

Businesses are making contingency plans

Since the major supply chain disruption in 2021 caused by pandemic bottlenecks, retailers have adapted to supply chain disrupters being “the new norm,” said Rick Haase, owner of a mini-chain of Patina gift shops in and around the Twin Cities in Minnesota.

“The best approach for Patina has been to secure orders early and have the goods in our warehouse and back rooms to ensure we are in stock on key goods,” Haase said.

Jay Foreman, CEO of Basic Fun, a Boca Raton, Florida-based maker of such toys as Care Bears and Lincoln Logs, has been monitoring the port situation for months and planned for it by shifting all of its container shipments to the West Coast ports, primarily Los Angeles and Long Beach, away from ports in New York and Newark, New Jersey. But he said the shift added anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent extra costs that his company will have to absorb. He noted that Basic Fun’s prices for the next 10 months are locked in with retailers, but he could see raising prices during the second half of 2025 if the strike is prolonged.

Daniel Vasquez, who owns Dynamic Auto Movers in Miami, which specializes in importing and exporting vehicles, increased inventory, specifically for vehicles that take longer to ship, in anticipation of a strike.

He has also stopped relying on one port or shipping partner and has expanded his relationship with smaller ports and shipping companies that can bypass congested areas.

How will a strike affect holiday shopping?

Jonathan Gold, vice president of the supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation, the nation’s largest retail trade group, said the strike arrives with the supply network continuing to face challenges from Houthi attacks on commercial shipping that have essentially shut down the use of the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

The uncertainty over the supply chain is taking place at the peak of the holiday shipping season for retailers, which traditionally runs from July through early November. Many big retailers, anticipating a strike, started shipping their goods to U.S. distribution centers in June, and Gold said that the majority of products ordered are already in the U.S.

But retailers will have a hard time replenishing items and are incurring extra warehouse costs to store goods longer. Gold also noted that carriers are already announcing surcharges on containers to address potential disruptions.

Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of The Toy Association, the nation’s leading toy trade group, noted that a strike would happen at an extremely critical time for toy sellers and makers — up to 60 percent of a toy company’s annual sales come during the fourth quarter.

The holiday shipping window for the toy industry is anywhere from six to eight weeks and started in July, though some toy companies tried to ship earlier or add more toys to shipments, Ahearn said.

“It hits many ways,” he said. “From a consumer perspective, it starts with delays in availability and then starts to surface as product shortages within toys. At retail for the toy industry, it results in potentially higher prices based on scarcity and increased costs.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Tim Reynolds
The Associated Press

Dikembe Mutombo, a Basketball Hall of Famer who was one of the best defensive players in NBA history and a longtime global ambassador for the game, died Sept.30 from brain cancer, the league announced. He was 58.

His family revealed two years ago that he was undergoing treatment in Atlanta for a brain tumor. The NBA said he died surrounded by his family.

“Dikembe Mutombo was simply larger than life,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “On the court, he was one of the greatest shot blockers and defensive players in the history of the NBA. Off the floor, he poured his heart and soul into helping others.”

Mutombo was distinctive in so many ways — the playful finger wag at opponents after blocking their shots, his height, his deep and gravelly voice, his massive smile. Players of this generation were always drawn to him and Philadelphia 76ers star Joel Embiid, who was born in Cameroon, looked to Mutombo as an inspiration.

“It’s a sad day, especially for us Africans, and really the whole world,” Embiid said Monday. “Other than what he’s accomplished on the basketball court, I think he was even better off the court. He’s one of the guys that I look up to, as far as having an impact, not just on the court, but off the court. He’s done a lot of great things. He did a lot of great things for a lot of people. He was a role model of mine. It is a sad day.”

Mutombo spent 18 seasons in the NBA, playing for Denver, Atlanta, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and the then-New Jersey Nets. The 7-foot-2 center out of Georgetown was an eight-time All-Star, three-time All-NBA selection and went into the Hall of Fame in 2015 after averaging 9.8 points and 10.3 rebounds per game for his career.

He also was part of one of the league’s most iconic playoff moments, helping eighth-seeded Denver oust top-seeded Seattle in the first round of the 1994 Western Conference playoffs. That best-of-five series marked the first time a No. 8 beat a No. 1 in NBA history.

“It’s really hard to believe,” Toronto President Masai Ujiri said Monday, pausing several times because he was overcome with emotion shortly after hearing the news of Mutombo’s death. “It’s hard for us to be without that guy. You have no idea what Dikembe Mutombo meant to me. … That guy, he made us who we are. That guy is a giant, an incredible person.”

Mutombo last played during the 2008-09 season, devoting his time after retirement to charitable and humanitarian causes. He spoke nine languages and founded the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation in 1997, concentrating on improving health, education and quality of life for the people in the Congo.

And on occasion, LeBron James pointed out with a laugh on Monday, Mutombo didn’t necessarily improve the health of others.

“My fondest memory of Dikembe Mutombo? He fractured my face on my birthday in Cleveland with an elbow,” James, the Los Angeles Lakers’ star, said while taking several minutes Monday to pay tribute to Mutombo’s life. “I never even got an opportunity to tell him about that. But yeah. I don’t remember how old … I was in Cleveland, my first stint, and I think I was turning 22 maybe?

“I went to the hole and caught one of those Dikembe elbows, and if anybody know about the Dikembe elbows, they do not feel good. He fractured my face, and I went to the hospital that night, and I wore a mask for a little bit. That is my memory of Dikembe,” James said.

James was close on the details: Dec. 29, 2004, was when that play happened, late in the first half, one day before his 20th birthday.

Mutombo told reporters that night he wasn’t sure how James got hurt. “He was laying there and I was like, ‘What happened, what happened?’” Mutombo told the Houston Chronicle after that game. “All I know, I was running to the basket. … LeBron turned around to stop me going to the basket. The collision happened.”

Ryan Mutombo, the Hall of Famer’s son, said in a tribute posted on social media that his father “loved others with every ounce of his being.”

“My dad is my hero because he simply cared,” Ryan Mutombo wrote. “He remains the purest heart I have ever known.”

Mutombo served on the boards of many organizations, including Special Olympics International, the CDC Foundation and the National Board for the U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

“There was nobody more qualified than Dikembe to serve as the NBA’s first Global Ambassador,” Silver said. “He was a humanitarian at his core. He loved what the game of basketball could do to make a positive impact on communities, especially in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo and across the continent of Africa.”

Mutombo is one of three players to win the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year four times. The others: reigning DPOY winner Rudy Gobert of the Minnesota Timberwolves, and Hall of Famer Ben Wallace.

“He was always there to talk to me and advise me on how to approach the season and take care of my body and icing after games and stretching and trying different things like yoga,” Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo said. “He will be always remembered and may his soul rest in peace.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press. 

AP Sports Writers Steve Megargee in Milwaukee, Greg Beacham in Los Angeles and Dan Gelston in Camden, New Jersey, and Associated Press writer Ian Harrison in Toronto contributed to this report.

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By Tom Krisher and Wyatte Grantham-Philips
Associated Press

The union representing U.S. dockworkers has signaled that 45,000 of its members will walk off the job at midnight, kicking off a strike likely to shut down ports across the East and Gulf coasts.

The coming work stoppage threatens to significantly snarl the nation’s supply chain, potentially leading to higher prices and delays in goods reaching households and businesses if it drags on for weeks. That’s because the strike by members of the International Longshoremen’s Association could cause 36 ports — which handle roughly half of the goods shipped into and out of the U.S. — to shutter operations.

ILA confirmed over the weekend that its members would hit the picket lines at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, Oct 1. In a Monday, Sept. 30, update, the union blamed the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, for continuing to “to block the path” toward an agreement before the contract deadline.

“The Ocean Carriers represented by USMX want to enjoy rich billion-dollar profits that they are making in 2024, while they offer ILA Longshore Workers an unacceptable wage package that we reject,” ILA said in a prepared statement. “ILA longshore workers deserve to be compensated for the important work they do keeping American commerce moving and growing.”

ILA also accused the shippers of “gouging their customers” with sizeable price increases for containers over recent weeks. The union said that this will result in increased costs for American consumers.

The Associated Press reached out to a USMX spokesperson for comment.

If drawn out, the strike would force businesses to pay shippers for delays and cause some goods to arrive late for peak holiday shopping season — potentially impacting delivery of anything from toys or artificial Christmas trees, to cars, coffee and fruit.

A strike could have an almost immediate impact on supplies of perishable imports like bananas, for example. The ports that could be affected by the strike handle 3.8 million metric tons of bananas each year, or 75 percent of the nation’s supply, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.

Americans could also face higher prices as retailers feel the supply squeeze.

“If the strikes go ahead, they will cause enormous delays across the supply chain, a ripple effect which will no doubt roll into 2025 and cause chaos across the industry,” noted Jay Dhokia, founder of supply chain management and logistics firm Pro3PL.

Dhokia added that East Coast ports aren’t the only ones at risk for disruption, as concern leading up to the strike has already diverted many shipments out West, adding to route congestion and more pressure on demand. Impacts will also be felt internationally — particularly in places like the United Kingdom, he said, where the U.S. is its largest trading partner.

ILA members are demanding higher wages and a total ban on the automation of cranes, gates and container-moving trucks used in the loading or unloading of freight.

The coming strike by the ILA workers — set to impact ports from Maine to Texas — will be the first by the union since 1977. West Coast dockworkers belong to a different union and aren’t involved in the strike.

If a strike were deemed a danger to U.S. economic health, President Joe Biden could, under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. That would suspend the strike.

All eyes are on what, if any, action the administration might take — particularly just weeks ahead of a tight presidential election. But Biden has signaled that he will not exercise this power.

During an exchange with reporters on Sunday, Biden said “no” when asked if he planned to intervene in the potential work stoppage.

“Because it’s collective bargaining, I don’t believe in Taft-Hartley,” he said.

At a briefing Monday, Sept 29, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reiterated that the administration had never invoked Taft-Hartley “to break a strike and are not considering doing so now.” She added that top officials were still urging both parties to return to the bargaining table and negotiate in good faith.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By Stephen Smith, Kate Payne and Heather Hollingsworth
The Associated Press

PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Helene left an enormous path of destruction across Florida and the southeastern U.S. on Sept. 27, killing at least 44 people, snapping towering oaks like twigs and tearing apart homes as rescue crews launched desperate missions to save people from floodwaters.

Among those killed were three firefighters, a woman and her 1-month-old twins, and an 89-year-old woman whose house was struck by a falling tree. According to an Associated Press tally, the deaths occurred in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

The Category 4 hurricane knocked out power to some hospitals in southern Georgia, and Gov. Brian Kemp said authorities had to use chainsaws to clear debris and open up roads. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) when it made landfall late Sept. 26 in a sparsely populated region in Florida’s rural Big Bend area, home to fishing villages and vacation hideaways where the state’s panhandle and peninsula meet.

Moody’s Analytics said it expects $15 billion to $26 billion in property damage.

The wreckage extended hundreds of miles northward to northeast Tennessee, where a “dangerous rescue situation” by helicopter unfolded after 54 people were moved to the roof of the Unicoi County Hospital as water rapidly flooded the facility. Everyone was rescued and no one was left at the hospital as of late Sept. 27, Ballad Health said.

In North Carolina, a lake featured in the movie “Dirty Dancing” overtopped a dam and surrounding neighborhoods were evacuated, although there were no immediate concerns it would fail. People also were evacuated from Newport, Tennessee, a city of about 7,000 people, amid concerns about a dam near there, although officials later said the structure had not failed.

Tornadoes hit some areas, including one in Nash County, North Carolina, that critically injured four people.

Atlanta received a record 11.12 inches (28.24 centimeters) of rain in 48 hours, the most the city has seen in a two-day period since record keeping began in 1878, Georgia’s Office of the State Climatologist said on the social platform X. The previous mark of 9.59 inches (24.36 cm) was set in 1886. Some neighborhoods were so badly flooded that only car roofs could be seen poking above the water.

Climate change has exacerbated conditions that allow such storms to thrive, rapidly intensifying in warming waters and turning into powerful cyclones sometimes in a matter of hours.

When Laurie Lilliott pulled onto her street in Dekle Beach, Florida, after Helene plowed through, she couldn’t see the roofline of her home beyond the palm trees. It had collapsed, torn apart by the pounding storm surge, one corner still precariously propped up by a piling.

“It took me a long time to breathe,” Lilliott said.

As she surveyed the damage, her name and phone number were still inked on her arm in permanent marker, an admonition by Taylor County officials to help identify recovered bodies in the storm’s aftermath. The community has taken direct hits from three hurricanes since August 2023.

All five who died in one Florida county were in neighborhoods where residents were told to evacuate, said Bob Gualtieri, the sheriff in Pinellas County in the St. Petersburg area. Some who stayed ended up having to hide in their attics to escape the rising water. He said the death toll could rise as crews go door-to-door in flooded areas.

More deaths were reported in Georgia and the Carolinas, including two South Carolina firefighters and a Georgia firefighter who died when trees struck their trucks.

Video on social media showed sheets of rain and siding coming off buildings in Perry, Florida, near where the storm hit land. A news station showed a home that was overturned, and many communities established curfews.

Also in Perry, the hurricane peeled off the new roof of a church that was replaced after Hurricane Idalia last year.

When the water hit knee-level in Kera O’Neil’s home in Hudson, Florida, she knew it was time to escape.

“There’s a moment where you are thinking, ‘If this water rises above the level of the stove, we are not going to have not much room to breathe,'” she said, recalling how she and her sister waded through chest-deep water with one cat in a plastic carrier and another in a cardboard box.

President Joe Biden said he was praying for survivors, and the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency headed to the area. The agency deployed more than 1,500 workers, and they helped with 400 rescues by late morning.

In Tampa, some areas could be reached only by boat.

Officials urged people who were trapped to call for rescuers and not tread floodwaters, warning they can be dangerous due to live wires, sewage, sharp objects and other debris.

More than 3 million homes and businesses were without power in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas as of late Sept. 27, according to poweroutage.us. The site also showed outages as far north as Ohio and Indiana due to Helene’s rapid northward movement throughout the day.

In Georgia, an electrical utility group warned of “catastrophic” damage to utility infrastructure, with more than 100 high voltage transmission lines damaged. And officials in South Carolina, where more than 40 percent of customers were without power, said crews had to cut their way through debris just to determine what was still standing in some places.

The hurricane came ashore near the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of where Idalia hit last year at nearly the same ferocity. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the damage from Helene appears to be greater than the combined effects of Idalia and Hurricane Debby in August.

“It’s tough, and we understand that. We also understand that this is a resilient state,” DeSantis said at a news conference in storm-damaged St. Pete Beach.

Soon after it crossed over land, Helene weakened to a tropical storm and later a post-tropical cyclone. Forecasters said it continued to produce catastrophic flooding, and some areas received more than a foot of rain.

A mudslide in the Appalachian Mountains washed out part of an interstate highway at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line.

Another slide hit homes in North Carolina and occupants had to wait more than four hours to be rescued, said Ryan Cole, the emergency services assistant director in Buncombe County. His 911 center received more than 3,300 calls in eight hours Sept. 27.

“This is something that we’re going to be dealing with for many days and weeks to come,” Cole said.

Forecasters warned of flooding in North Carolina that could be worse than anything seen in the past century. Evacuations were underway and around 300 roads were closed statewide. The Connecticut Army National Guard sent a helicopter to help.

School districts and universities canceled classes. Florida airports that closed due to the storm reopened Sept. 27. Inspectors were examining bridges and causeways along the Gulf Coast, the state’s transportation secretary said.

Helene was the eighth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, which began June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has predicted an above-average season this year because of record-warm ocean temperatures.

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Payne reported from Tallahassee, Florida, and Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Associated Press journalists Seth Borenstein in New York; Jeff Amy in Atlanta; Russ Bynum in Valdosta, Georgia; Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Andrea Rodríguez in Havana; Mark Stevenson and María Verza in Mexico City; and Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, contributed.

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By Nicky Forster
The Associated Press

At the site of a race massacre that reduced neighborhoods to ashes a century ago, where murals memorialize a once-thriving “ Black Wall Street,” one African-American mother strives to keep others from dying as they try to bring new life into the world.

Black women are more than three times as likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth as White women in Oklahoma, which consistently ranks among the worst states in the nation for maternal mortality.

“Tulsa is suffering,” said Corrina Jackson, who heads up a local version of the federal Healthy Start program, coordinating needed care and helping women through their pregnancies. “We’re talking about lives here.”

Across the nation, programs at all levels of government — federal, state and local — have the same goals to reduce maternal mortality and erase the race gap. None has all the answers, but many are making headway in their communities and paving the way for other places.

Jackson’s project is one of more than 100 funded through Healthy Start, which gave out $105 million nationally in grants this year. Officials call Healthy Start an essential part of the Biden administration’s plan for addressing maternal health.

Other approaches to the crisis include California halving its maternal mortality rate through an organization that shares the best ways to treat common causes of maternal death and New York City expanding access to midwives and doulas two years ago. Several states passed laws this year aiming to improve maternal health, including a sweeping measure in Massachusetts. And last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced more than $568 million in funding to improve maternal health through efforts such as home visiting services and better identifying and preventing pregnancy-related deaths.

“We need to really identify the birthing people who are at potentially the greatest risk,” New York City health commissioner Dr. Ashwin Vasan said, “and then wrap our arms around them throughout their pregnancies.”

A healthy start in Tulsa

Besides coordinating prenatal and postpartum care — which experts say is crucial for keeping moms alive — local Healthy Start projects provide pregnancy and parenting education and referrals to services for things like depression or domestic violence. The local efforts also involve women’s partners and kids up to 18 months. And they focus on issues that influence health, such as getting transportation to appointments.

“You try to get them in their first trimester and then work with them to delivery day, and then we also work with the babies to make sure that they reach their milestones,” Jackson said.

Jackson got help from the local Urban League as a single mom, and felt called to give back to her community. She’s been with Healthy Start for more than 25 years, first through Tulsa’s health department and recently through a nonprofit she started that received about $1 million in federal funds this fiscal year.

“I’m just like a mom to this program,” Jackson said.

Oklahoma overall has a maternal mortality rate of about 30 per 100,000 live births, significantly higher than the national average of about 23. But in Jackson’s quarter-century tenure, she said, there have been no maternal deaths among clients.

Pivotal to Healthy Start’s success are care coordinators like Krystal Keener, a social worker based at Oklahoma State University’s obstetrics and gynecology clinic, where clients get prenatal care. One of her responsibilities is to educate clients about health issues, like how to spot the signs of preeclampsia or how much bleeding is too much after delivery.

She also helps with practical matters: Many clients don’t have cars, so they call Keener when they need a ride to a prenatal visit, and she assists in scheduling one.

With doctors, Keener serves as a patient advocate. On a recent afternoon, Keener sat in on a prenatal appointment for Areana Coles. A single mom, Coles was joined by her 5-year-old daughter, who was born prematurely and spent time in intensive care.

With Coles’ due date approaching, Keener talked about what to watch for around delivery and shortly after, like blood clots and postpartum depression. She advised Coles to take care of herself and “give yourself credit for small things you do.”

During an ultrasound a few minutes later, Coles watched Dr. Jacob Lenz point to her unborn baby’s eyes, mouth, hand and heart. He printed an image of the scan, which Coles immediately showed her daughter.

Keener said she’s gratified that Coles would not be giving birth prematurely this time.

“You made it to term – yay!” she told her client.

Coles smiled. “My body can do it!”

Improving medical care

While programs like Healthy Start focus on individual patient needs, other efforts manage the overall quality of medical care.

California has the lowest maternal mortality in the nation — 10.5 per 100,000 live births, less than half the national rate. But that wasn’t the case before it created a “maternal quality care collaborative” in 2006.

Founded at Stanford University’s medical school in partnership with the state, it brings together people from every hospital with a maternity unit to share best practices on how to deal with issues that could lead to maternal injury or death, like high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and sepsis.

“When you look at the rate of maternal death in the United States compared to California, they basically ran neck-and-neck until it was established,” said Dr. Amanda Williams, clinical innovation adviser for the collaborative. “At that time they totally separated and California started going down. The rest of the country started going up.”

In the collaborative, hospitals get toolkits full of materials such as care guidelines in multiple formats, articles on best practices and slide sets that spell out what to do in medical emergencies, how to set up medical teams and what supplies to keep on the unit. The collaborative also tackles issues such as improving obstetric care by integrating midwives and doulas – whose services are covered by the state’s Medicaid program.

At first, some doctors resisted the effort, figuring they knew best, Williams said, but there’s much less pushback now that the collaborative has proven its value.

MemorialCare Miller Children’s and Women’s Hospital Long Beach started participating around 2010. The collaborative helps “vet through all the research that’s out there,” said Shari Kelly, executive director of perinatal services. “It’s just so important to really understand how we as health care providers can make a difference.”

For example, if a woman loses a certain amount of blood after a vaginal delivery, “we know to activate what we call here a ‘code crimson,’ which brings blood to the bedside,” Kelly said. “We can act fast and stop any potential hemorrhage.”

She said the collaborative has also helped reduce racial inequities — bringing down the rate of cesarean sections among Black moms, for example.

In July, U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed a similar initiative to California’s, focused on the quality of maternal care nationwide: the first baseline health and safety requirements for maternal emergency and obstetric services in hospitals.

A community perspective

Experts said getting maternal mortality under control at a national level requires tailoring solutions to individual communities, which is easier when programs are locally run.

New York City has a goal of reducing maternal mortality overall — and specifically achieving a 10 percent drop in Black maternal mortality by 2030. Statewide, Black residents are about four times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth than White residents.

The city is starting with, among others, low-income residents and those living in public housing. The New Family Home Visits Initiative gives pregnant people and those who’ve given birth visits from professionals such as nurses, midwives, doulas and lactation consultants. Vasan said more than 12,000 families have gotten visits since 2022.

Nurse Shinda Cover-Bowen works for the initiative’s Nurse Family Partnership, which has her visiting some families for 2 1/2 years, well beyond the pregnancy and birth. She said “that consistency of someone being there for you and listening to you and guiding you on your mother’s journey is priceless.”

Being grounded in the local community — and its history — is also crucial for Healthy Start projects. The lingering effects of racism are evident in Tulsa, where in 1921, White residents are estimated to have killed 100-300 Black people and destroyed homes, churches, schools and businesses in the Greenwood section. That’s where Jackson lives now, and where health disparities persist.

Being relatable is valuable for Black women, who may distrust the health care system, Jackson said. Plus, knowing the community makes it possible to work closely with other local agencies to meet people’s needs.

Denise Jones, who enrolled in Healthy Start in February, has struggled with anxiety, depression and drug addiction, but has been sober since April.

In mid-July, baby items filled her room — a crib, a bassinet, tiny clothes hanging neatly in a closet — in anticipation of her child’s arrival. Jones, 32, flipped through a baby book, pointing to a sonogram of her son Levi, who would be born within a couple of weeks.

She said she feels healthy and blessed by the help she’s gotten from Healthy Start and Madonna House, a transitional living program run by Catholic Charities of Eastern Oklahoma.

“I have professionals that are working with me and give me support. I didn’t have that with my other pregnancies,” she said. “I’m at one with my baby and I’m able to focus.”

This is the second story in a two-part series examining how the United States could curb deaths from pregnancy and childbirth.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By Sharon Johnson
The Associated Press

The third-grade students at Roberta T. Smith Elementary School had only a few days until summer vacation, and an hour until lunch, but there was no struggle to focus as they filed into the classroom. They were ready for one of their favorite parts of the day.

The children closed their eyes and traced their thumbs from their foreheads to their hearts as a pre-recorded voice led them through an exercise called the shark fin, part of the classroom’s regular meditation routine.

“Listen to the chimes,” said the teacher, Kim Franklin. “Remember to breathe.”

Schools across the U.S. have been introducing yoga, meditation and mindfulness exercises to help students manage stress and emotions. As the depths of student struggles with mental health became clear in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last year endorsed schools’ use of the practices.

Research has found school-based mindfulness programs can help, especially in low-income communities where students face high levels of stress or trauma.

The mindfulness program reached Smith Elementary through a contract with the school system, Clayton County Public Schools, where two-thirds of the students are Black.

GreenLight Fund Atlanta, a network that matches communities with local nonprofits, helps Georgia school systems pay for the mindfulness program provided by Inner Explorer, an audio platform.

Joli Cooper, GreenLight Fund Atlanta’s executive director, said it was important to the group to support an organization that is accessible and relevant for communities of color in the Greater Atlanta area.

Children nationwide struggled with the effects of isolation and remote learning as they returned from the pandemic school closures. The CDC in 2023 reported more than a third of students were affected by feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness. The agency recommended schools use mindfulness practices to help students manage emotions.

“We know that our teenagers and adolescents have really strained in their mental health,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen told The Associated Press. “There are real skills that we can give our teens to make sure that they are coping with some big emotions.”

Approaches to mindfulness represent a form of social-emotional learning, which has become a political flashpoint with many conservatives who say schools use it to promote progressive ideas about race, gender and sexuality.

But advocates say the programming brings much-needed attention to students’ well-being.

“When you look at the numbers, unfortunately, in Georgia, the number of children of color with suicidal thoughts and success is quite high,” Cooper said. “When you look at the number of psychologists available for these children, there are not enough psychologists of color.”

Black youth have the fastest-growing suicide rate among racial groups, according to CDC statistics. Between 2007 and 2020, the suicide rate among Black children and teens ages 10 to 17 increased by 144 percent.

“It’s a stigma with being able to say you’re not OK and needing help, and having the ability to ask for help,” said Tolana Griggs, Smith Elementary’s assistant principal. “With our diverse school community and wanting to be more aware of our students, how different cultures feel and how different cultures react to things, it’s important to be all-inclusive with everything we do.”

Nationwide, children in schools that serve mostly students of color have less access to psychologists and counselors than those in schools serving mostly white students.

The Inner Explorer program guides students and teachers through five-to-10-minute sessions of breathing, meditating and reflecting several times a day. The program also is used at Atlanta Public Schools and over 100 other districts across the country.

Teachers and administrators say they have noticed a difference in their students since they’ve incorporated mindfulness into their routine. For Aniyah Woods, 9, the program has helped her “calm down” and “not stress anymore.”

“I love myself how I am, but Inner Explorer just helps me feel more like myself,” Aniyah said.

Malachi Smith, 9, has used his exercises at home, with his father helping to guide him through meditation.

“You can relax yourself with the shark fin, and when I calm myself down, I realize I am an excellent scholar,” Malachi said.

After Franklin’s class finished their meditation, they shared how they were feeling.

“Relaxed,” one student said.

Aniyah raised her hand.

“It made me feel peaceful,” she said.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Ngala Killian Chimtom
The Associated Press

MAYOS, Cameroon (AP) — The morning sun filtered through the forest canopy, casting dappled light on this village in Cameroon. For the Baka Indigenous community, it was a timeless image.

But a passing truck broke the silence and stirred up billows of dust, a reminder that the Baka now live an uneasy life along roadsides after being forced from their traditional homes.

The Baka and fellow Indigenous Bagyieli have lived in harmony with the forests of central Africa for generations. But mining and logging activities are encroaching, along with conservation areas, and government policy aims to integrate the ethnic groups into mainstream society.

Lives “were better when we were in the forest,” said Rebecca Gwampiel, a 78-year-old Baka. She prepared yam porridge in front of a traditional hut constructed with arched saplings. In the dusty courtyard, children played football using bound banana leaves.

Among them was Francis, an 11-year-old who has quickly adapted to the new life and has aspirations. “I want to become a nurse,” he declared. “I want to be able to treat my grandmother when she is sick.”

But for many Baka children, such dreams go unfulfilled. Their lack of birth certificates poses a significant barrier — part of a wider global problem. They never saw the need for birth certificates when they barely interacted with the world beyond the forest. Even now, they live far from administrative centers and can rarely afford the transport to reach them.

“Without a birth certificate, he is stuck with me here in the village,” said Francis’ 61-year-old father, Bertrand Akomi. He himself was denied employment by a lumber company because he didn’t have a birth certificate.

The document remains elusive for the more than 120,000 members of Cameroon’s Baka and Bagyieli communities. Without birth certificates, they cannot obtain national identity documents and are excluded from the full benefits of citizenship.

“When births are not registered, how can you identify yourself as Cameroonian?” asked Banmi Emmanuel Dingha, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Cameroon’s National Assembly, calling the document crucial for accessing education, health care and employment opportunities.

There is hope for change. Earlier this summer, Dingha and colleagues in the Cameroon parliament passed a bill allowing the country to accede to two United Nations conventions relating to the recognition of stateless people.

That would “help to significantly reduce discrimination against persons who often are only victims of circumstances,” the government said at the time.

Cameroon’s actions are part of a commitment by African nations earlier this year to address the right to nationality and eradicate statelessness on the continent of more than 1.3 billion people.

The Indigenous people of Cameroon are mostly hunters and gatherers who are long used to easily crossing lightly guarded international borders in search of food and game.

“The Bakas are not only in Cameroon. You find them in Congo, you find them in the Central African Republic, you find them in Gabon and you find them in Equatorial Guinea. And many of them move across forests that straddle all these countries,” Dingha said.

Sebastian Bissolababa, a teacher at a government school in Mayos, emphasized the urgency. Many Baka students can’t move on to secondary education or beyond, and companies often require identification papers, closing another route to integration into society.

The Indigenous Bagyieli, who live some 590 kilometers away in the southern Campo region, face similar challenges.

There, Henri Lema of Nazareth village was returning from hunting, with a porcupine dangling from his spear. He joined his wife, Bilore Marie, in preparing the evening meal.

As he sliced the porcupine, he expressed frustration with the lack of identification documents and the trouble it causes with paramilitary forces and other authorities.

“Each time I have to travel to Kribi (the district administrative headquarters), gendarmes disturb me because I don’t have an ID card,” he said. “I have to pay a bribe each time. And that’s money I don’t even have.”

Simplice Nguiamba is a senior government official in charge of, among other things, ensuring that the Bagyelis in Campo have access to nationality documents.

“In concrete terms, our actions are based on raising awareness, doing advocacy, monitoring and support for Bagyelis,” he said.

Several other groups of Cameroonians also have risked statelessness.The ongoing separatist crisis in the country’s English-speaking North West and South West regions, and the Boko Haram insurgency in the Far North region, have triggered internal displacement, resulting in the loss of birth certificates and national identity cards for many people.

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For more news on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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By Kim Chandler
The Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A mass shooting killed four people and wounded 18 others in a popular nightlife area in Birmingham, Alabama, with many of the victims caught in the crossfire, police said early Sept. 22. Authorities asked the public for tips as they searched for the shooters.

The shooting happened shortly after 11 p.m. Sept. 21 in Five Points South, a district filled with entertainment venues, restaurants and bars that is often crowded on weekend nights.

Multiple suspects pulled up in a vehicle, got out, fired shots, got back in the vehicle and fled, Police Chief Scott Thurmond said at a news conference early Sept. 22. He described the shooting as possibly “a hit” conducted in exchange for payment.

Officers found two men and a woman on a sidewalk with gunshot wounds, and they were pronounced dead there. An additional male gunshot victim was pronounced dead at a hospital, police said.

Authorities believe the intended target was among the dead, Thurmond said at the news conference, where he was joined by Mayor Randall Woodfin and officials from the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Investigators believe other victims were caught in the crossfire.

By early Sept. 22, after victims began showing up at hospitals, police had identified 18 people with injuries, some of them life-threatening, Officer Truman Fitzgerald said in an email.

There were no immediate arrests. Anyone with information was asked to contact authorities.

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Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee, contributed to this report.

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By Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press

The world creates 57 million tons of plastic pollution every year and spreads it from the deepest oceans to the highest mountaintop to the inside of people’s bodies, according to a new study that also said more than two-thirds of it comes from the Global South.

It’s enough pollution each year — about 52 million metric tons — to fill New York City’s Central Park with plastic waste as high as the Empire State Building, according to researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. They examined waste produced on the local level at more than 50,000 cities and towns across the world for a study in Wednesday’s journal Nature.

The study examined plastic that goes into the open environment, not plastic that goes into landfills or is properly burned. For 15 percent of the world’s population, government fails to collect and dispose of waste, the study’s authors said — a big reason Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa produce the most plastic waste. That includes 255 million people in India, the study said.

Lagos, Nigeria, emitted the most plastic pollution of any city, according to study author Costas Velis, a Leeds environmental engineering professor. The other biggest plastic polluting cities are New Delhi; Luanda, Angola; Karachi, Pakistan and Al Qahirah, Egypt.

India leads the world in generating plastic pollution, producing 10.2 million tons a year (9.3 million metric tons), far more than double the next big-polluting nations, Nigeria and Indonesia. China, often villainized for pollution, ranks fourth but is making tremendous strides in reducing waste, Velis said. Other top plastic polluters are Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia and Brazil. Those eight nations are responsible for more than half of the globe’s plastic pollution, according to the study’s data.

The United States ranks 90th in plastic pollution with more than 52,500 tons (47,600 metric tons) and the United Kingdom ranks 135th with nearly 5,100 tons (4,600 metric tons), according to the study.

In 2022, most of the world’s nations agreed to make the first legally binding treaty on plastics pollution, including in the oceans. Final treaty negotiations take place in South Korea in November.

The study used artificial intelligence to concentrate on plastics that were improperly burned — about 57 percent of the pollution — or just dumped. In both cases incredibly tiny microplastics, or nanoplastics, are what turn the problem from a visual annoyance at beaches and a marine life problem to a human health threat, Velis said.

Several studies this year have looked at how prevalent microplastics are in our drinking water and in people’s tissue, such as hearts, brains and testicles, with doctors and scientists still not quite sure what it means in terms of human health threats.

“The big time bomb of microplastics are these microplastics released in the Global South mainly,” Velis said. “We already have a huge dispersal problem. They are in the most remote places … the peaks of Everest, in the Mariana Trench in the ocean, in what we breathe and what we eat and what we drink.”

He called it “everybody’s problem” and one that will haunt future generations.

“We shouldn’t put the blame, any blame, on the Global South,” Velis said. “And we shouldn’t praise ourselves about what we do in the Global North in any way.”

It’s just a lack of resources and ability of government to provide the necessary services to citizens, Velis said.

Outside experts worried that the study’s focus on pollution, rather than overall production, lets the plastics industry off the hook. Making plastics emits large amounts of greenhouse gas that contribute to climate change.

“These guys have defined plastic pollution in a much narrower way, as really just macroplastics that are emitted into the environment after the consumer, and it risks us losing our focus on the upstream and saying, hey now all we need to do is manage the waste better,” said Neil Tangri, senior director of science and policy at GAIA, a global network of advocacy organizations working on zero waste and environmental justice initiatives. “It’s necessary but it’s not the whole story.”

Theresa Karlsson, science and technical advisor to International Pollutants Elimination Network, another coalition of advocacy groups on environment, health and waste issues, called the volume of pollution identified by the study “alarming” and said it shows the amount of plastics being produced today is “unmanageable.”

But she said the study misses the significance of the global trade in plastic waste that has rich countries sending it to poor ones. The study said plastic waste trade is decreasing, with China banning waste imports. But Karlsson said overall waste trade is actually increasing and likely plastics with it. She cited EU waste exports going from 110,000 tons (100,000 metric tons) in 2004 to 1.4 million tons (1.3 million metric tons) in 2021.

Velis said the amount of plastic waste traded is small. Kara Lavender Law, an oceanography professor at the Sea Education Association who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed, based on U.S. plastic waste trends. She said this was otherwise one of the more comprehensive studies on plastic waste.

Officials in the plastics industry praised the study.

“This study underscores that uncollected and unmanaged plastic waste is the largest contributor to plastic pollution and that prioritizing adequate waste management is critical to ending plastic pollution,” Chris Jahn, council secretary of the International Council on Chemical Associations, said in a statement. In treaty negotiations, the industry opposes a cap on plastic production.

The United Nations projects that plastics production is likely to rise from about 440 million tons (400 million metric tons) a year to more than 1,200 million tons (1,100 million metric tons, saying “our planet is choking in plastic.”

Jennifer McDermott contributed from Providence, Rhode Island.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By Larry Neumeister, Michael R. Sisak and Andrew Dalton
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs on 918/, saying the government had proved “by clear and convincing evidence” that no amount of bail could guarantee the hip-hop mogul won’t tamper with witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter handed down the ruling after prosecutors and defense lawyers presented strenuous arguments for and against a $50 million bail package that would allow Combs to be released to home detention with GPS monitoring and strict limitations on who could visit him.

Combs, 54, pleaded not guilty Sept. 17 after an indictment accused him of using his “power and prestige” to induce female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, elaborately produced sexual performances dubbed “freak offs” that Combs arranged, participated in and often recorded. The events would sometimes last days, the indictment said.

The indictment alleges he coerced and abused women for years, with the help of a network of associates and employees, while using blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings to keep victims from speaking out.

Combs has been in federal custody since his arrest the night of Sept.16 at a Manhattan hotel.

Arguing to keep him locked up, prosecutor Emily Johnson told U.S. District Judge Andrew L. Carter that the once-celebrated rapper has a long history of intimidating both accusers and witnesses to his alleged abuse. She cited text messages from women who said Combs forced them into “freak offs” and then threatened to leak videos of them engaging in sex acts.

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By The Associated Press

A former police officer in the nation’s capital was sentenced Aug. 29 to five years in prison for fatally shooting a 27-year-old man who had been sleeping in the driver’s seat of a car stopped at a traffic light.

Former Metropolitan Police Department Sgt. Enis Jevric, 42, pleaded guilty in February to involuntary manslaughter and using unconstitutional, excessive force in the August 2021 shooting death of 27-year-old An’Twan Gilmore.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss also sentenced Jevric to five years of supervised release after his prison term, according to Justice Department prosecutors.

More than a dozen officers were on the scene when Jevric arrived at the intersection in Washington, D.C., where Gilmore was sleeping in the stopped car with a handgun in his waistband.

Jevric had a ballistics shield when he approached the driver’s side door. He told another officer to knock on the car’s windows, which jolted Gilmore awoke with a confused look on his face.

Video from police body cameras shows both of Gilmore’s hands on the steering wheel. When the car inched forward, Jevric fired four times into the car and then fired six more shots as it rolled down the closed-off street, prosecutors said. No other officer fired a shot.

The gun was still tucked into Gilmore’s waistband, underneath his buckled seat belt, when police entered the car. 

Prosecutors recommended a seven-year prison sentence for Jevric. They said no other officer on the scene saw a basis to shoot Gilmore.

“Several described being ‘shocked’ that shots were fired,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Jevric had been a police officer in Washington since 2007. His attorney, Christopher Macchiaroli, had requested a sentence of home confinement without prison time.

“Sgt. Jevric has spent the better part of his life helping people, not hurting people, protecting life, not taking life,” the defense lawyer wrote.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Ed White
The Associated Press

Murder charges filed against the father of a 14-year-old boy accused of a Georgia school shooting follow the successful prosecution of two parents in Michigan who were held responsible for a similar tragedy at a school north of Detroit.

Is it a sign of a crackdown on parents accused of gross negligence when it comes to kids and guns? Could public outrage lead to more prosecutions or changes in law in other states, too?

“It’s a matter of looking at the relationship between what the child says and does and what the parent knows about what the child says and does,” said David Shapiro, a former prosecutor who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Colin Gray, 54, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the deaths of two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. Nine more people were wounded.

Gray’s son, Colt Gray, is charged with murder. Investigators said he used a “semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” in the attack.

The charges against Colin Gray “are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” said Chris Hosey, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Milestone in Michigan

James and Jennifer Crumbley were convicted of involuntary manslaughter earlier this year for the deaths of four students at Oxford High School in 2021. It was the first time that parents were held criminally responsible for a U.S. mass school shooting. They’re serving 10-year prison terms while appeals are pending.

The Crumbleys didn’t know what son Ethan Crumbley was planning. But prosecutor Karen McDonald said their son’s actions were foreseeable. They were summoned to discuss the 15-year-old’s macabre drawings of a gun and blood on a math assignment and a message, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless.”

The Crumbleys declined to take him home but said they would seek counseling. On that same day, Ethan Crumbley removed a gun from his backpack and began shooting, using a weapon that James Crumbley had purchased as a gift just a few days earlier. No one — parents or school staff — had checked the backpack.

The parents’ “actions and inactions were inexorably intertwined” with what their son ultimately did at Oxford, the Michigan Court of Appeals said in 2023 when the groundbreaking case was allowed to move forward.

The Georgia case

Prosecutor Brad Smith declined to publicly disclose details that led him to charge Colin Gray in the Apalachee shooting. But in arrest warrants, authorities said he had provided a gun to his son “with knowledge that he was a threat to himself and others.”

Smith acknowledged the Michigan case during a news conference Sept. 6 and said his case was a first for Georgia.

“I’m not trying to send a message,” he said. “I’m just trying to use the tools in my arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit.”

Colin Gray was interviewed last year when authorities were investigating his son about a menacing post on social media. The father said the teen “knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do, and how to use them and not use them,” according to a transcript. 

Nothing more was pursued.

McDonald, the prosecutor in Michigan, said the Georgia shooting and the father’s arrest was a “real punch in the stomach.”

“I can’t believe the facts that stood out as so egregious in our case seem to be so similar,” she told The Associated Press.

More scrutiny for parents?

McDonald said states have laws that carry consequences for gross negligence in various situations. She said it’s encouraging that police in Georgia immediately investigated how the gun was obtained.

“I have never felt it was a moment that would open the floodgates to charges against parents or sending a message to people,” McDonald said of the Crumbley case. “Most people don’t need that message. It’s heartbreaking to watch it play out.”

She said it takes only seconds to put a lock on a gun, which she demonstrated for a jury.

Shapiro, the former New Jersey prosecutor, said all states likely have laws that can be used to hold parents responsible, though much depends on the facts and a prosecutor’s views.

“You don’t want to be able to allow parents to overlook those kinds of signs [that] there is something seriously wrong or a serious risk,” he said.

Michigan has a new law this year that requires adults to keep guns locked up when minors are present. In Newaygo County, a grandfather pleaded no contest in August in the death of a 5-year-old grandson. Another boy had picked up and fired a loaded shotgun.

“If people simply locked up their firearms, we would not be putting parents behind bars for this reason,” said Kris Brown, the president of Brady, a gun violence prevention group. “And we would not be digging as many graves.”

___

AP reporters Kate Brumback in Atlanta and Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington contributed to this story.

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By Michael Kunzelman
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — From jail, Shane Jenkins helped sell T-shirts, tote bags and other merchandise promoting the notion that he and other rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol are political prisoners unjustly held in pretrial detention.

That disturbed the judge who sentenced the Texas man to seven years in prison for storming the Capitol, trying to smash a widow with a metal tomahawk and hurling makeshift weapons at police officers guarding the building on Jan. 6, 2021. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta assured Jenkins that he wasn’t getting punished for his political beliefs.

“And what bothers me about this notion of being (a) political prisoner is it continues to fuel the lie that somehow an election was stolen, that somehow people who are being charged because of their actions and not their beliefs are the victims. That is false,” the judge told Jenkins.

Mehta is among several judges presiding over the nearly 1,500 riot cases in Washington who have pushed back on false narratives being spread about the Jan. 6 attack and the idea that the rioters are being treated unfairly by the criminal justice system.

“Twelve people looked at the same evidence that people who are here today just saw,” Mehta told Jenkins at his sentencing. “And it’s hard for me to believe anybody could come to any other conclusion. It’s all on video.”

A jury convicted Jenkins last year of charges including obstructing an official proceeding, the Jan. 6 joint session of Congress called to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory over Trump.

Prosecutors argued that Jenkins played a pivotal role in the attack. He struck a windowpane six times with the spike end of the tomahawk before another rioter stepped in to break the window.

“Are we going in or not?” he shouted at the crowd.

Destroying the window allowed rioters to enter a conference room, where they made improvised weapons from the broken parts of wooden furniture. Mob members used the furniture pieces to attack police officers guarding an entrance in a tunnel on the Capitol’s Lower West Terrace.

Jenkins told the judge he never would have been at the Capitol if he “had any inkling things were going to go the way they did” and regrets not doing more to “de-escalate the situation.”

“Things definitely got out of hand,” Jenkins said before the judge handed down his sentence. “I did get caught up in the heat of the moment, but I never had a malicious plan or intent. There was never any premeditated anything to January 6th for me.”

A website promotes Jenkins as the founder of a group that seeks to “shed light on the January 6th defendants and the treatment they have faced from the government.” The website hawked apparel with Jan. 6-themed slogans, including “Free the J6 political prisoners” and “Want my vote? Help the J6ers.”

Defense attorney Kyle Singhal told The Associated Press that he believes that Jenkins’ views on Jan. 6 have evolved, and his client wouldn’t consider himself a political prisoner or a hostage today.

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By Darren Sands
The Associated Press

A Connecticut pastor will be the new president of the largest Black Protestant denomination in the U.S., bringing to an end a leadership election that stirred division among members.

The Rev. Boise Kimber, senior pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church in New Haven, Connecticut. — and the only person on the ballot Sept. 5 in Baltimore — was elected to lead the National Baptist Convention, USA as its 19th president, according to the convention. The election was marked with controversy over the eligibility of four candidates who officials said did not qualify.

Kimber won the top post with a vote of 1,744 to 794, and replaces Mississippi pastor, the Rev. Jerry Young, who ran the Nashville, Tennessee-based NBCUSA for a decade. Kimber, who previously served as the NBCUSA board secretary, said he felt a “sigh of relief” once the election results were announced at the convention’s meeting.

Kimber said that while it was a fair election, he remains concerned about uniting the convention and fostering an atmosphere where every member congregation thrives. He said he will embark on a national “listening tour” even as the convention shifts its focus to the election of the next U.S. president.

Those upset by the election procedures think the controversy should rekindle debates over the denomination’s relevancy and role at a time of political and social upheaval. The Rev. Matthew V. Johnson, who leads Mount Moriah Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, distributed a manifesto titled “Rebirth,” challenging church members to address issues about the NBCUSA’s future that it has avoided for decades.

___

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.

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The Associated Press

JOPPA, Md. (AP) — A student at a Maryland high school died after being shot by another student during an altercation on Sept. 6 in a school bathroom, Harford County Sheriff Jeff Gahler said.

Warren Curtis Grant, 15, died after the shooting at Joppatowne High School, the sheriff said at a media briefing.

A 16-year-old student whom police identified as the shooter fled shortly afterward but was caught minutes later nearby.

“He has yet to be charged, but will be charged, and at the time those charges are preferred as an adult, we will release the name of the suspect,” Gahler said.

Gahler also said that the sheriff’s office has had more than 10 incidents since 2022 “where the suspect was either the victim, witness or the suspect in an incident handled by the Harford County Sheriff’s Office,” adding that the investigation was in its early stages.

Shortly after the shooting, the sheriff’s office asked people to avoid the area, but emphasized that the confrontation was an “isolated incident, not an active shooter.” A parent-student reunification center was established at a nearby church. More than 100 personnel responded to the high school about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Baltimore, Gahler said.

The fight happened two days after a shooter whom authorities identified as a 14-year-old student killed four people at a high school outside Atlanta. The Sept. 4 attack renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and had parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma.

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By Jonathan Landrum Jr. and Andrew Dalton
AP Entertainment Writers

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Rich Homie Quan, the Atlanta rapper who gained mainstream fame through the trap singles “Type of Way” and “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh),” has died. He was 33.

Quan, whose legal name is Dequantes Devontay Lamar, died at an Atlanta hospital, the Fulton County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Associated Press. The medical examiner was informed of his death Sept. 5, said Jimmy Sadler, senior medical examiner investigator. The cause of death was not immediately available, with an autopsy scheduled for Sept. 6.

Quan was one of the biggest names in hip-hop in the mid-2010s. He released a slew of mixtapes before he broke through in 2013 with the infectious “Type of Way.” The song became such a success that several other rappers jumped on the remix, including Jeezy and Meek Mill. He maintained his momentum, appearing on a YG track with Jeezy and releasing the London on da Track-produced song “Lifestyle” through his Rich Gang rap collective that included Young Thug and Birdman.

Quan followed up with “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh),” a song produced by DJ Spinz and Nitti Beatz. It became his highest charting solo single at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He also featured on Lil Dicky’s viral “$ave Dat Money.”

In 2018, Quan debuted his first and only studio album “Rich as in Spirit,” which mostly went without any features — except for “Think About It,” a single with Rick Ross.

Quavo, Lil Boosie and Playboi Carti are some of the music artists who paid tribute to Quan on social media.

“Rest in Peace my brother Rich Homie Quan,” said singer Jacquees, who also called him a “legend” on X. “I love you for Life.”

Quan spoke with The Associated Press in 2022 about returning to music after an abrupt hiatus. At the time, the rapper said he was going through litigation with independent label T.I.G. (Think It’s a Game Record), but was prepared to make a comeback.

During that time, Quan ended up in a feud with his old collaborator Young Thug — who along with rapper Gunna were among a group indicted on charges of conspiracy to violate Georgia’s RICO Act and also accused of participation in a criminal street gang.

Quan said there was no beef between him Young Thug and was open to having a conversation with him if the opportunity presented itself. He said he hated to see Young Thug locked up, adding that rappers were being targeted by law enforcement.

“I wouldn’t say unfairly targeted because at the same time, some of these rappers are putting guns in videos and, you know, it’s like social media — it goes back to the social media thing,” he said.

“I think we’re showing too much, I think they’re showing too much, you know what I mean. Like that’s the difference in my music, I’ma tell a story but I ain’t going to tell you how I did it,” he added. “It’s still Black art, but we’re definitely being targeted. So that’s why I’m mindful of what I say in my music.”

___

Landrum and Dalton reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Gary Gerard Hamilton contributed to this report from New York. ___

This story has been updated to correct Quan’s age to 33 based on information from the medical examiner.

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By Charlotte Kramon
The Associated Press

WINDER, Ga. (AP) — Colt Gray, a 14-year-old Georgia high school student, has been charged as an adult with using an assault-style rifle to kill two students and two teachers in the hallway outside his algebra classroom, according to authorities.

Colin Gray, the teen’s father was charged Sept. 5  in connection with the shooting, including with counts of involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said.

The shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, about an hour’s drive from Atlanta, was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas.

Here’s what’s known about the victims of tje Sept. 4 shooting:

Christian Angulo, 14

Christian’s sister, Lisette, wrote in a GoFundMe fundraiser seeking donations to help with funeral costs that they were heartbroken by the loss of her “baby brother.”

“He was a very good kid and very sweet and so caring. He was so loved by many. His loss was so sudden and unexpected,” she wrote. “He really didn’t deserve this.”

Mason Schermerhorn, 14

A neighbor described watching Mason grow into a first-year high school student from an inquisitive little boy of about 4 who would rush to the neighbor’s yard when his parents brought him outside.

“He’d come over and say, `What are you doing? What are you doing?’ It was so fun to see him like that, as a little kid,” Tommy Pickett said.

Mason’s death left Pickett shaken and his daughter, who’d seen Mason at the bus stop that morning, in tears.

“She actually saw him get on the bus that day and he ain’t coming back on the bus,” Pickett said. “That really bothered her.”

“I just can’t believe he’s gone like that. Why? Why him?” Pickett said. “He always was smiling. He always was funny, you know, he just laughed and stuff. When he talked to you, he smiled and stuff. I mean, why him? What did he do to deserve that?”

Louis Briscoe told The New York Times that when he learned of the shooting, he called the boy’s mother, a friend and co-worker. She told him “Mason’s gone,” and his heart dropped.

“Nobody should have to go through this type of pain,” Briscoe said.

Cristina Irimie, 53

Silvia Pasch told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution she got to know Irimie, a math teacher, when they volunteered at Saints Constantine and Helen Church in Lilburn, which holds festivals to celebrate Romanian culture. She said Irimie’s practice with the children’s dance group this spring included a lesson for a student struggling with an algebra concept. Pasch said she listened in as she chopped vegetables in the kitchen “because I thought I might learn something.” Without Irimie, the next festival will be hard, Pasch said.

“I bet when we are cutting potatoes and vegetables we will talk about her,” she said.

Nicolae Clempus told the newspaper Irimie made him feel welcome when he moved to the United States in 2001. She was active in the expat community after immigrating from Romania a few years earlier. The priest at Saint Mary Romanian Orthodox Church in Dacula described Irimie as someone “you know you can count on” and who always volunteered at events by cooking or dancing.

Irimie, who was part of a traditional Romanian dance group from the Transylvania region when she was younger, later became an instructor and had a gift for working with young people, Clempus said.

Richard Aspinwall, 39

Apalachee High School football coach Mike Hancock told the Athens Banner-Herald the team’s defensive coordinator, who was also a math teacher, was a great man and father who loved his daughters and wife, loved football and was well-respected.

“He worked his tail off,” Hancock said. “He coached old-school ways, but he loved those kids.”

Junior and former football player Jay Garcia, attended a prayer vigil at a downtown Winder park Sept. 4 to remember the coach and teacher who helped him a lot, both in learning football and in life.

“You can’t bring back the dead,” Garcia said. “I understand some people won’t be here tomorrow and just never forget who they are and what they meant to you.”

___

This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Cristina Irimie’s first name.

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By Kirsten Grieshaber
The Associated Press

It was a balmy summer night in 2020, shortly after the lifting of Germany’s first COVID-19 lockdown, and Omar Diallo and two friends from his home country of Guinea wanted to celebrate Eid al-Adha, the Muslim festival of sacrifice.

“We were enjoying life, playing music, walking through the city at night — we just wanted to be together again and have a good time,” Diallo, 22, told The Associated Press in Erfurt, an area in the eastern state of Thuringia.

He was not prepared for how the day would end. Suddenly Diallo and his friends were confronted by three black-clad White men.

“They were shouting: ‘What do you want here, f-——- foreigners, get out’!” Diallo remembered.

“First there were three, then five, seven — they were surrounding us from all sides. We couldn’t run away, and then they started chasing us,” he said. 

At some point Diallo managed to call the police, and when the officers finally arrived, the attackers ran away. One of his friends was beaten up so badly that he had to be hospitalized.

“I simply tried to survive,” Diallo said. “I hadn’t done anything wrong. It all happened only because of my skin color.”

Being Black in Germany has always meant exposure to racism, from everyday humiliations to deadly attacks. In eastern Germany, the risk can be even greater. 

After World War II, West Germany became a democratic, diverse society but in East Germany, which was run by a communist dictatorship until the end of 1989, residents barely had any contact with people of different ethnicities and were not allowed to travel freely abroad.

Experts say that specifically in Thuringia, radical far-right forces have created an environment that’s hostile toward minorities, including Black people.

Now, with the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, Black Germans and African migrants like Diallo are growing increasingly concerned. 

Thuringia, which has a population of 2.1 million,holds state elections on Sept. 1, and the fiercely anti-immigration AfD is leading the polls, on 30 percent.

In 2023, the NGO Ezra, which helps victims of far-right, racist and antisemitic violence, documented 85 racist attacks in Thuringia, down only slightly from 88 attacks in 2022, which Ezra described as “an all-time high of right-wing and racist violence” in the state. 

“In recent years, an extreme right-wing movement has formed in Thuringia, which has contributed to a noticeable ideological radicalization of its followers. Politically, the Alternative for Germany party is the main beneficiary,” Ezra and a consortium of organizations tracking racism wrote in their annual report. 

AfD’s Thuringia branch is particularly radical and was put under official surveillance by the domestic intelligence service four years ago as a “proven right-wing extremist” group.

“Authoritarian and populist forces, which are becoming very strong here now, harbor a great danger in Thuringia,” says Doreen Denstaedt, Thuringia’s minister for migration, justice and consumer protection. 

Denstaedt, the daughter of a Black father from Tanzania and a White German mother, was born and grew up in Thuringia.

The 46-year-old member of the Green party said that growing up in Communist East Germany, she was “always the only Black child.” As a teenager, she was never allowed to go home on her own because of the risk of racist attacks, and she sometimes suffered racist slurs in her school.

“I actually experienced myself that people called me a foreigner, which really confused me at first, because I was born in Saalfeld” in Thuringia, Denstaedt said.

She fears that in the current political climate, racist narratives will become acceptable in the middle of society.

“My biggest concern is that people do not question [these prejudices], especially if they are not affected themselves,” she said.

It’s not exactly clear how many Black people live in Germany nowadays, as different ethnicities are not documented in official statistics, but estimates put the number of people of African descent at 1.27 million. More than 70 percent were born in Germany, according to Mediendienst Integration, which tracks migration issues in the country.

Germany’s history of racial discrimination begins long before the Nazis began excluding, deporting and ultimately murdering Black people in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The German Empire held numerous colonies in Africa from 1884 until the end of World War I. These included territories in present-day Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Namibia, Cameroon, Togo and Ghana.

The German government has only recently started dealing with the injustices committed during that period. In 2021, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier called on Germans to face the country’s cruel colonial past, and in 2023, he apologized for colonial-era killings in Tanzania over a century ago. 

Daniel Egbe, a 58-year-old chemist from Cameroon who moved to Thuringia in 1994 to study, says he’s shocked how little Germans know about their colonial history. He says this ignorance may also factor into the unequal treatment of Black people. 

“I’ve been teaching classes in school,” Egbe told the AP. “I tell them a bit about myself and especially the fact that Cameroon was a German colony. Many students don’t know anything about Africa or about the German past and it must be put on the map.”

Egbe, who took German citizenship in 2003, founded AMAH, an organization that helps university students and migrants from Africa when they experience discrimination in the city of Jena, in eastern Thuringia.

He’s worried about the rise of the AfD but has no intention of leaving. 

“We won’t leave, we will do our part to change this society,” he said. “People are mostly afraid of what and who they don’t know. We have to change things through education.”

As for Diallo, the Guinean who was attacked in Erfurt four years ago, he also vowed to help improve the situation for Black people in Germany.

Even though the attack traumatized him, it also empowered him to fight for justice, he said. A year ago, he enrolled in university in Munich to study law, but he still visits Erfurt frequently, where he supports Youth without Borders, a network of young migrants.

“I don’t exactly know yet how I’m going to change Germany, but I know I will,” he said.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Alexandra Olson
AP Business Writer

With up to 17 rooms to clean each shift, Fatima Amahmoud’s job at the Moxy hotel in downtown Boston sometimes feels impossible.

There was the time she found three days worth of blond dog fur clinging to the curtains, the bedspread and the carpet. She knew she wouldn’t finish in the 30 minutes she is supposed to spend on each room. The dog owner had declined daily room cleaning, an option that many hotels have encouraged as environmentally friendly but is a way for them to cut labor costs and cope with worker shortages since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unionized housekeepers, however, have waged a fierce fight to restore automatic daily room cleaning at major hotel chains, saying they have been saddled with unmanageable workloads, or in many cases, fewer hours and a decline in income.

The dispute has become emblematic of the frustration over working conditions among hotel workers, who were put out of their jobs for months during pandemic shutdowns and returned to an industry grappling with chronic staffing shortages and evolving travel trends.

Some 10,000 hotel workers represented by the UNITE HERE union walked off the job Sept. 1 at 25 hotels in eight cities, including Honolulu, Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego and Seattle. Hotel workers in other cities could strike in the coming days, as contract talks stall over demands for higher wages and a reversal of service and staffing cuts. A total of 15,000 workers have voted to authorize strikes.

“We said many times to the manager that it is too much for us,” said Amahmoud, whose hotel was among those where workers have authorized a strike but have not yet walked out.

Michael D’Angelo, Hyatt’s head of labor relations for the Americas, said the company’s hotels have contingency plans to minimize the impact of the strikes. “We are disappointed that UNITE HERE has chosen to strike while Hyatt remains willing to negotiate,” he said.

In a statement before the strikes began, Hilton said it was “committed to negotiating in good faith to reach fair and reasonable agreements.” Marriott and Omni did not return requests for comments.

The labor unrest serves as a reminder of the pandemic’s lingering toll on low-wage women, especially Black and Hispanic women who are overrepresented in front-facing service jobs. Although women have largely returned to the workforce since bearing the brunt of pandemic-era furloughs — or dropping out to take on caregiving responsibilities — that recovery has masked a gap in employment rates between women with college degrees and those without.

The U.S. hotel industry employs about 1.9 million people, some 196,000 fewer workers than in February 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nearly 90 percent of building housekeepers are women, according to federal statistics.

It’s a workforce that relies overwhelmingly on women of color, many of them immigrants, and which skews older, according to UNITE HERE.

Union President Gwen Mills characterizes the contract negotiations as part of a long-standing battle to secure family-sustaining compensation for service workers on par with more traditionally male-dominated industries.

“Hospitality work overall is undervalued, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s disproportionately women and people of color doing the work,” Mills said.

The union hopes to build on its recent success in southern California, where after repeated strikes it won significant wage hikes, increased employer contributions to pensions, and fair workload guarantees in a new contract with 34 hotels. Under the contract, housekeepers at most hotels will earn $35 an hour by July 2027.

The American Hotel And Lodging Association says 80 percent of its member hotels report staffing shortages, and 50 percent cite housekeeping as their most critical hiring need.

Kevin Carey, the association’s interim president and CEO, says hotels are doing all they can to attract workers. According to the association’s surveys, 86 percent of hoteliers have increased wages over the past six months.

“Now is a fantastic time to be a hotel employee,” Carey said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Hotel workers say the reality on the ground is more complicated.

Maria Mata, 61, a housekeeper at the W Hotel in San Francisco, said she earns $2,190 every two weeks if she gets to work full time. But some weeks, she only gets called in one or two days, causing her to max out her credit card to pay for household expenses

“It’s hard to look for a new job at my age. I just have to keep the faith that we will work this out,” Mata said.

Guests at the Hilton Hawaiian Village often tell Nely Reinante they don’t need their rooms cleaned because they don’t want her to work too hard. She said she seizes every opportunity to explain that refusing her services creates more work for housekeepers.

Since the pandemic, UNITE HERE has won back automatic daily room cleans at some hotels in Honolulu and other cities, either through contract negotiations, grievance filings or local government ordinances.

But the issue is back on the table at many hotels where contracts are expiring. Mills said UNITE HERE is striving for language to make it difficult for hotels to quietly encourage guests to opt out of daily housekeeping.

The U.S. hotel industry has rebounded from the pandemic despite average occupancy rates that remain shy of 2019 levels, largely due to higher room rates and record guest spending per room. Average revenue per available room, a key metric, is expected to reach a record high of $101.84 in 2024, according to the hotel association.

David Sherwyn, the director of the Cornell University Center for Innovative Hospitality Labor & Employment Relations, said UNITE HERE is a strong union but faces a tough fight over daily room cleaning because hotels consider reducing services part of a long-term budget and staffing strategy.

“The hotels are saying the guests don’t want it, I can’t find the people and it’s a huge expense,” Sherwyn said. “That’s the battle.”

Workers bristle at what they see as moves to squeeze more out of them as they cope with erratic schedules and low pay. While unionized housekeepers tend to make higher wages, pay varies widely between cities.

Chandra Anderson, 53, makes $16.20 an hour as a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency Baltimore Inner Harbor, where workers have not yet voted to strike. She is hoping for a contract that will raise her hourly pay to $20 but says the company came back with a counteroffer that “felt like a slap in the face.”

Anderson, who has been her household’s sole breadwinner since her husband went on dialysis, said they had to move to a smaller house a year ago in part because she wasn’t able to get enough hours at her job. Things have improved since the hotel reinstated daily room cleaning earlier this year, but she still struggles to afford basics like groceries.

Tracy Lingo, president of UNITE HERE Local 7, said the Baltimore members are seeking pensions for the first time but the biggest priority is bringing hourly wages closer to those in other cities.

“That’s how far behind we are,” Lingo said.

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Associated Press Writer Jennifer Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this story.

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The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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By Jamie Stengle
The Associated Press

From barbecues to getaways to shopping the sales, many people across the U.S. mark Labor Day — the federal holiday celebrating the American worker — by finding ways to relax.

This year is the 130th anniversary of the holiday, which is celebrated on the first Monday of September. While actions by unions in recent years to advocate for workers are a reminder of the holiday’s activist roots, the three-day weekend it creates has become a touchstone in the lives of Americans marking the unofficial end of summer.

Here’s what to know about Labor Day:

How did Labor Day become a federal holiday?

Its origins date back to the late 19th century, when activists first sought to establish a day to pay tribute to workers.

The first Labor Day celebration in the U.S. took place in New York City on Sept. 5, 1882, when some 10,000 workers marched in a parade organized by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor.

Workers were seeing their quality of life decline as they transitioned from artisan to factory jobs, even as the quality of life of factory owners was “just skyrocketing,” said Todd Vachon, an assistant professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations.

In the years that followed, a handful of cities and states began to adopt laws recognizing Labor Day. President Grover Cleveland signed a congressional act in 1894 making it a federal holiday.

That was the same year that workers for the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike after the railcar-maker cut wages without reducing rent in the company-owned town where workers lived near Chicago, Vachon said. Over 12 workers were killed after Cleveland sent federal troops to crush the strike, he said. 

Cleveland’s move to establish Labor Day as a federal holiday is seen by some historians as a way for him “to make peace” with the working class after that, Vachon said.

What do Americans do over Labor Day weekend?

For the three-day weekend created by Labor Day, travelers pack airports and highways for end-of-summer escapes, and backyard chefs prepare cookouts for family and friends.

Barbecuing has been a part of Labor Day celebrations from the start, said Robert F. Moss, food writer, culinary historian and author of “Barbecue: The History of an American Institution.” 

He said it was already such an entrenched tradition in the U.S. that when the labor movements developed in the late 19th century, it was natural to celebrate as large groups gathered. In the 20th century, the holiday’s barbecues moved more toward gatherings of friends and family in backyards, he said.

“It still has a lot of that same communal sense, gathering around the grill, eating together,” he said.

Vachon said that whether the origins of the labor movement are on one’s mind while celebrating depends on whether they live somewhere with a large union presence.

In Chicago, a parade and festival are held over Labor Day weekend in what is now the Pullman neighborhood, home of the holiday’s roots. Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, said the parade and festival they host brings in union members and their families from all over the area.

How has the labor movement evolved over the decades?

When Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894, unions in the U.S. were largely contested and courts would often rule strikes illegal, leading to violent disputes, Vachon said. It wasn’t until the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 that private sector employees were granted the right to join unions. 

Later into the 20th century, states also began passing legislation to allow unionization in the public sector. But even today, not all states allow collective bargaining for public workers.

In recent years, Vachon said, there’s been a resurgence in labor organizing, activism, interest and support. 

“A lot of the millennial and Gen Z folks are coming into the labor market in a period that’s not a lot different from that period in the 1880s where there was a lot of labor unrest,” Vachon said. “Jobs just don’t pay enough for people to achieve the American dream.”

What’s the connection between fashion and Labor Day?

The adage that one shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day is a “rule” that’s broken with very fashionable results, but where did it originate?

Fashion experts say it likely goes back to the Gilded Age — the same period in the late 1800s that spawned Labor Day. The cool, white frocks worn by wealthy New Yorkers during their summers in places such as Newport, Rhode Island, would be packed away on their end-of-summer return to the city with its dirt-packed streets. 

Christy Crutsinger, a professor in merchandising and digital retailing at University of North Texas, heard the adage from generations of women in her family. But “the fashion world’s not working that way anymore,” she added.

“People think it, say it, but don’t abide by it,” she said.

With back-to-school shopping and a switch by many business people from a more relaxed summer dress code, fashion is on the mind of many around Labor Day, said Daniel James Cole, adjunct assistant professor in fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology and co-author of “The History of Modern Fashion.”

The holiday, he said, “is kind of this hinge” between summertime dress and fun to going “back to more serious pursuits.”

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Associated Press journalist Wyatte Grantham-Philips contributed to this report.

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By Mark Sherman
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson is embarking on a high-profile, nationwide tour to promote her new memoir, “Lovely One.”

Jackson, 53, is using the book, publisher Random House says, to trace her family’s rise from segregation to her confirmation as the first Black woman on the nation’s highest court in the span of one generation.

“It is the story of the promise of America,” she said in a television interview that aired Sept. 1.

She also is the first public defender to serve as a justice and she delves into advancing in the legal profession as a woman of color and a mother balancing a demanding career and family life.

Since joining the court in June 2022, Jackson has been the most active participant in the argument sessions, according to the Empirical Scotus website. She has at times taken a liberal approach to originalism, a method of interpreting the Constitution more often used by the court’s conservatives.

In her appearances off the court, she has embraced her history-making role, telling an audience on the day of her ceremonial swearing-in that she has “a seat at the table now and I’m ready to work.”

Jackson kicks off the book tour Sept. 3 at New York’s Apollo Theater on the same day the book is published.

Just in the first week, Jackson will make stops at major entertainment venues in Washington, Atlanta, Miami, Seattle and San Francisco.

She reported receiving an advance of nearly $900,000 last year from Random House, putting herself in the company of two colleagues, Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor, who each received advances of a million dollars or more for their memoirs.

The up-from-poverty accounts of Thomas’ “My Grandfather’s Son” and Sotomayor’s “My Beloved World” landed atop The New York Times’ bestseller list for nonfiction. Sotomayor has earned roughly $4 million for the memoir and children’s books she has written since joining the court in 2009.

Last year, The Associated Press reported that Sotomayor’s court staff was deeply involved in organizing speaking engagements to sell the books and also prodded colleges and universities to buy them.

The court has referred questions about Jackson’s book tour to her publisher.

The Supreme Court adopted its first code of conduct last year in response to sustained criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices.

The code lacks a means of enforcement and it sets no limit on income justices can earn from books they write. Other outside income from teaching, for example, is capped at about $30,000 a year. The justices are earning $298,500 this year for their work on the court, though Chief Justice John Roberts gets paid a little more.

“A binding code of ethics is pretty standard for judges,” Jackson told CBS’ Sunday Morning.” “And so I guess the question is, ‘Is the Supreme Court any different?’ And I guess I have not seen a persuasive reason as to why the court is different than the other courts.” 

She said she does not “have any problem with an enforceable code” and is considering supporting an enforcement mechanism “as a general matter,” but would not comment on “particular policy proposals.”

Democratic President Joe Biden has proposed an enforceable code of ethics.

Jackson began work on the book shortly after joining the court. The book’s title comes from the English translation of Ketanji Onyika, the name suggested by an aunt who at the time was a Peace Corps worker in West Africa.

“My parents really wanted to honor our heritage and asked her to send them a list of African names. And they picked that one, Lovely One, Ketanji Onyika, which is my given middle name,” she told CBS.

Jackson was born in the District of Columbia and grew up in Miami. She has traced her interest in the law to when she was in preschool and her father, Johnny Brown, was in law school and they would sit together at the dining room table, she with coloring books and he with law books. Her father became an attorney for the county school board and her mother, Ellery Brown, was a high school principal. She has a brother, nine years younger, who served in the Army, including in Iraq, and is now a lawyer.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also has been on the road this summer with his new book, “Over Ruled: The Human Toll of Too Much Law,” written with Janie Nitze, a former law clerk to Gorsuch. Gorsuch has reported receiving advances for the book totaling $500,000.

Yet another justice has a book in the works. Justice Amy Coney Barrett received $425,000 in 2021 as part of a book deal with Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin Random House.

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By Mae Anderson
The Associated Press 

A “side hustle” can be one way to try out a new business idea before taking a full-fledged jump.

Nearly one in three Americans earn money on the side in addition to working full time, a Bankrate survey found.

But having a side hustle can be tricky to maintain. And if you’re not prepared, you might be on the hook for unpaid taxes and other headaches. Here are some tips to start working for yourself, even if it is just on the side.

First: Be organized. 

Even if you’re simply turning a hobby into a way to make a few dollars, creating a detailed step-by-step business plan can help prevent problems later. Keep detailed records of all expenses and communication. Downloading an expense-tracking app may make bookkeeping easier.

Second: Keep taxes top of mind. 

Anyone earning over $400 from self-employment must file a tax return. And the IRS requires self-employed workers to file estimated taxes quarterly. It might be worth consulting a tax professional to determine the best tax filing route to take.

Third: Avoid burnout.

Taxes aside, it’s important to figure out how much time you want to dedicate to the side hustle so you don’t get burnt out or overwhelmed. And building a customer base is key: gathering email and other contact information from customers can help you get feedback that could determine next steps.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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Vice President Kamala Harris stood on the stage of the Democratic National Convention and formally accepted the nomination for president on Aug. 22. If elected into the role of president with her running mate, current Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris would be the first woman and the first person of Jamaican and Indian descent to lead the United States of America.

Walking out to thunderous applause and the sound of Beyonce Knowles’ 2016 hit song, “Freedom,” Harris thanked President Joe Biden, spoke to her humble beginnings and the future she sees for America under her leadership.

“America, the path that led me here in recent weeks was no doubt unexpected. But I’m no stranger to unlikely journeys,” said Harris, invoking the story of her mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris “My mother was 19 when she crossed the world alone, traveling from India to California with an unshakeable dream to be the scientist that would cure breast cancer.” 

The story of Harris’ mother was a recurring theme throughout the speech. 

“She taught us to never complain about injustice, but to do something about it. That was my mother– and she taught us to never do anything ‘half-assed–’ and that is a direct quote.”

Harris said that her father implored her to never be afraid or let anything stop her, teaching her to be fearless.

At a young age, Harris was exposed to the fight for equality through the work of her mother. And the abuse of a high school friend that influenced her decision to go into the criminal justice field. 

“I believe everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice. As a prosecutor, when I had a case, I charged it not in the name of the victim, but in the name of the people for a simple reason: in our system of justice, a harm against any one of us, is a harm against all of us,” said Harris. “No one should be made to fight alone- we are all in this together.” 

Though Harris received the Democratic nomination during a virtual roll call on Aug. 6, she accepted on Aug. 20 via video from a rally in Milwaukee. She reiterated her commitment to the country and formally accepted the nomination on the DNC stage Aug. 22.

“On behalf of my mother and everyone who has ever set out on their own unlikely journey, on behalf of the people who I grew up with– people who work hard, chase their dreams and look out for one another– on behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on earth, I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America.” 

“This election is not only the most important of our lives, it is one of the most important in the life of our nation,” she said.

Harris spoke on the Republican nominee for president and the implications if he is elected to a second term. 

“In many ways, Donald Trump is an unserious man, but the consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious. Consider the chaos and calamity when he was in office but also the gravity of what has happened since he lost the election,” said Harris, calling up images from Jan. 6, 2021.

Many of those responsible for the attack on the U.S. Capitol Building as lawmakers tried to certify election results in favor of Joe Biden– not Trump– are still free or have received light sentences, given the fact that lives were lost as a result of the insurrection.

Harris repeatedly told the crowd that it was time to move forward, together. 

“America, we are not going back,” she said, as the audience began to chant the phrase.

“We are charting a new ‘forward’…forward to a future with a strong and growing middle class because we know that a strong middle class has always been critical to America’s success. Building that middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.” 

For the entire length of Harris’ speech, Harris’ Republican opponent hit back via Truth Social, the platform he created when he was ousted from Twitter, now known as “X.”

“She’s talking about the Middle Class, but she’s the one who broke the Middle Class, and made it UNSAFE AND UNAFFORDABLE!,” said Trump, to his Truth Social followers. 

Harris promised to create an “opportunity economy” that featured the ability for all to succeed, regardless if the person lives “in a rural area, small town or big city.” 

“We will pass a middle class tax cut that will benefit more than 100 million Americans,” she promised. 

Still, the former hit back, by saying Harris’ platform included “No specific programs, ALL TALK, NO ACTION — Why didn’t she do it three and a half years ago?” 

Aside from the economy, Harris promised to address affordable housing and a woman’s right to choose when it comes to abortion. She also spoke on the war currently raging between Israeli forces and Hamas militants in Gaza. 

“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to stand up for itself,” said Harris. “…At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking.” 

Harris said that she believes she will be successful in getting a ceasefire agreement signed for the conflict that has continued non-stop since Hamas attacked innocent Israeli citizens in the early morning hours of Oct. 7, 2023.

The vice president said she “will not cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-Un, who are rooting for Trump because they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors. They know Trump won’t hold autocrats accountable because he wants to be an autocrat himself.”

“In the enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny, I know where I stand and I know where the United States belongs,” said Harris, before imploring voters to the polls. 

“Let’s get out there- let’s vote for it and together let’s write the next great chapter in the most extraordinary story ever told.”

The final night of the DNC included a variety of speakers from Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey to D.L. Hughley and Eva Longoria. But day four concluded with more than just Democratic party members touting their nominee. An appearance by the former Republican U.S. Rep Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, was an interesting addition to the list of speakers.

“I am proud to be in the trenches with you as part of this sometimes awkward alliance that we have to defend truth, defend democracy and decency,” said Kinzinger, from the DNC stage. “I was just a kid when I was drawn to the party of Ronald Raagen, to his vision of a strong America, the shining ‘City on the Hill.’ I was a Republican for 12 years in Congress and I still hold on to the label.”

“I never thought I’d be here- but listen- you never thought you’d see me here, did you?” asked Kinzinger, getting a laugh from the crowd. 

Kinzinger spoke to his fellow Republicans in saying that Democratic Party members are just as patriotic and invested in protecting the country’s values as Republicans are. 

“I’ve learned something about my party too,’ he said. “The republican party is no longer conservative. It has switched its allegiance from the principles that gave it purpose to a man whose only purpose is himself. Donald Trump is a weak man, pretending to be strong,” said Kinzinger. “He’s a small man, pretending to be big. He’s a faithless man, pretending to be righteous. He’s a perpetrator who can’t stop playing the victim.”

Kinzinger openly called out Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol Building in 2021, and told the audience that “Donald Trump has suffocated the soul of the Republican Party.”

“How can a party claim to be patriotic if it idolizes a man who tried to overthrow a free and fair election?”

Aside from elected officials and celebrities, members of Harris’ family came forward in support of her run for president. She was introduced by younger sister Maya Harris, who highlighted the crucial time ahead of the Nov. 5 election. 

“We are living in a time when some are trying to divide us, to separate us in ways that make it difficult for us to come together. My sister rejects that view. Where others push darkness Kamala sees promise.” 

“Kamala understands we have so much more in common than what separates us,” said the younger Harris sister. 

“She knows the measure of our success isn’t just about winning an election, it’s about who we bring along and lift up in the process,” said Maya Harris. 

She ended her speech on the verge of tears, as she imagined what her mother would have said if she were alive to see her eldest daughter run for president.

“She would tell all of us to roll up our sleeves and get to work; to elect a leader who sees the potential in each of us; a leader who cares for all of us; a leader who fights for every one of us- our Democratic nominee, my big sister, the next president of the United States– Kamala Harris.” 

For information on voting registration deadlines and other voter information, please visit the U.S. Vote Foundation’s page for election dates and guidelines, organized by state.

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By Christopher Rugaber
The Associated Press

With inflation and high grocery prices still frustrating many voters, Vice President Kamala Harris on Aug. 16 proposed a ban on “price gouging” by food suppliers and grocery stores, as part of a broader agenda aimed at lowering the cost of housing, medicine, and food. 

It’s an attempt to tackle a clear vulnerability of Harris’ head-on: Under the Biden-Harris administration, grocery prices have shot up 21 percent, part of an inflation surge that has raised overall costs by about 19 percent and soured many Americans on the economy, even as unemployment fell to historic lows. Wages have also risen sharply since the pandemic, and have outpaced prices for more than a year. Still, surveys find Americans continue to struggle with higher costs. 

“We all know that prices went up during the pandemic when the supply chains shut down and failed,” Harris said Aug. 16 in Raleigh, North Carolina. “But our supply chains have now improved and prices are still too high.”

Will her proposals do much to lower prices? And what even is “price gouging”? The answers to those and other questions are below: 

What is price gouging?

There is no strict definition that economists would agree on, but it generally refers to spikes in prices that typically follow a disruption in supply, such as after a hurricane or other natural disaster. Consumer advocates charge that gouging occurs when retailers sharply increase prices, particularly for necessities, under such circumstances.

Is it already illegal? 

Several states already restrict price gouging, but there is no federal-level ban. 

There are federal restrictions on related but different practices, such as price-fixing laws that bar companies from agreeing to not compete against each other and set higher prices. 

Will Harris’ proposal lower grocery prices? 

Most economists would say no, though her plan could have an impact on future crises. For one thing, it’s unclear how much price gouging is going on right now. 

Grocery prices are still painfully high compared to four years ago, but they increased just 1.1 percent in July compared with a year earlier, according to the most recent inflation report. That is in line with pre-pandemic increases.

President Joe Biden said Aug. 14 that inflation has been defeated after Wednesday’s inflation report showed that it fell to 2.9 percent in July, the smallest increase in three years. 

“There’s some dissonance between claiming victory on the inflation front in one breath and then arguing that there’s all this price gouging happening that is leading consumers to face really high prices in another breath,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. 

In general, after an inflationary spike, it’s very hard to return prices to where they were. Sustained price declines typically only happen in steep, protracted recessions. Instead, economists generally argue that the better approach is for wages to keep rising enough so that Americans can handle the higher costs. 

So why is Harris talking about this now? 

Probably because inflation remains a highly salient issue politically. And plenty of voters do blame grocery stores, fast food chains, and food and packaged goods makers for the surge of inflation in the past three years. Corporate profits soared in 2021 and 2022.

“It could be that they’re looking at opinion polls that show that the number one concern facing voters is inflation and that a large number of voters blame corporations for inflation,” Strain said.

At the same time, even if prices aren’t going up as much, as Harris noted, they remain high, even as supply chain kinks have been resolved. 

Elizabeth Pancotti, a policy analyst at Roosevelt Forward, a progressive advocacy group, points to the wood pulp used in diapers. The price of wood pulp has fallen by half from its post-pandemic peak, yet diaper prices haven’t. 

“So that just increases the [profit] margins for both the manufacturers and the retailers,” she said. 

Did price gouging cause inflation? 

Most economists would say no, that it was a more straightforward case of supply and demand. When the pandemic hit, meat processing plants were occasionally closed after COVID-19 outbreaks, among other disruptions to supply. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lifted the cost of wheat and other grains on global markets. Auto prices rose as carmakers were unable to get all the semiconductors they needed from Taiwan to manufacture cars, and many car plants shut down temporarily.

At the same time, several rounds of stimulus checks fattened Americans’ bank accounts, and after hunkering down during the early phase of the pandemic, so-called “revenge spending” took over. The combination of stronger demand and reduced supply was a recipe for rising prices.

Still, some economists have argued that large food and consumer goods companies took advantage of pandemic-era disruptions. Consumers saw empty store shelves and heard numerous stories about disrupted supply chains, and at least temporarily felt they had little choice but to accept the higher prices. 

Economist Isabella Weber at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, called it “seller’s inflation.” Others referred to it as “greedflation.”

“What a lot of corporations did was exploit consumers’ willingness” to accept the disruptions from the pandemic, Pancotti said. 

Is banning price gouging like instituting price controls? 

During the last spike of inflation in the 1970s, both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations at times imposed price controls, which specifically limited what companies could charge for goods and services. They were widely blamed for creating shortages and long lines for gas. 

Some economists say Harris’ proposal would have a similar impact.

“It’s a heavy-handed socialist policy that I don’t think any economist would support,” said Kevin Hassett, a former top economic adviser in the Trump White House. 

But Pancotti disagreed. She argued that it was closer to a consumer protection measure. Under Harris’ proposal, the government wouldn’t specify prices, but the Federal Trade Commission could investigate price spikes. 

“The proposal is really about protecting consumers from unscrupulous corporate actors that are trying to just rip the consumer off because they know they can,” she said. 

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Mae Anderson
The Associated Press

In March, a federal judge ruled that the Minority Business Development Agency, an organization that has helped thousands of minority-owned businesses over the last 55 years, had to begin serving people regardless of race. The agency has since made adjustments to give help to all businesses owned by socially or economically disadvantaged people in obtaining financing and government contracts.

The Associated Press recently spoke to Eric Morrissette, acting undersecretary of commerce for minority business development and leader of the MBDA, about what comes next for the agency. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How did you come to be the Acting Under Secretary of commerce for minority business development?

A: My mom dedicated her life to public service. She worked in New York City public schools for around 20 years. Every Sunday, my sister and I would help her prepare meals for her students, many of whom didn’t have enough to eat at home. I was inspired by my mother’s selflessness and service, and it helped me recognize there were families that couldn’t put food on the table. For some of those kids, that was the only meal they were guaranteed each day.

Q: How have you seen the agency make a difference in minority communities and for minority businesses?

A: MBDA’s mission is to help create an economy that gives every American the opportunity to build a successful business. There remains a $6.3 trillion opportunity gap between minority and non-minority-owned firms. If we are to out-compete the rest of the world and have the strongest, most resilient economy, it is in our national interest to close that gap once and for all.

Last year, we helped businesses secure over $5.4 billion in capital and contracts. That is up from $2.9 billion in capital and contracts the year before — a nearly 90 percent increase — and it is in large part thanks to our expansion under the Biden-Harris Administration.

Q: Since the ruling came down, what changes have you had to make? What happens next for the agency?

A: MBDA’s doors are open for business and we will continue to serve businesses owned and operated by socially or economically disadvantaged individuals, and we get results.

We are working closely with lawyers at the Department of Justice to weigh all of our options, but in compliance with the court’s order, we have updated our website and client engagement form and established new guidance for our Business Center operators, all while working with them to implement necessary changes.

MBDA, the Department of Commerce, and the Biden-Harris Administration are committed to ensuring that all people in all communities have the resources, access and opportunities necessary to succeed. We are going to keep fighting to close the opportunity gap and keep pursuing the mission Congress gave us.

Q: Has the racial and ethnic makeup of who is applying for programs changed significantly, or is it too soon to tell?

A: MBDA Business Center operators have been very supportive of MBDA. They want to know how they can help, they are committed to supporting their communities, and will continue to do extensive outreach to make sure people know that MBDA is there to provide assistance. To me, that’s the main takeaway while we learn more about how potential clients and Business Centers adapt to any changes.

Something that has been really motivating to me has been the impact of our Business Centers. Our Missouri Business Center played a major role in helping Kingsway Development secure $62 million in financing to purchase a major residential development at the center of the historically redlined district north of the Delmar Divide in St. Louis. Along with helping to uplift the historically underserved neighborhood, the project is expected to create and retain over 300 jobs.

Q: Is there anything you feel like people misunderstand about the agency or the ruling?

A: Ensuring every American has the opportunity to build a successful business is critical to bridging the gap between what America is and what America can and should be.

MBDA was founded in 1969 by President Nixon and permanently reauthorized by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers in 2021. It has historically enjoyed bipartisan support. Challenging the constitutionality of this organization questions the value of equal opportunity itself, which is incredibly frustrating and hurtful.

The work we do at MBDA benefits the entire country, not just the individual businesses we serve. When minority business enterprises succeed, our nation succeeds. Our work creating opportunities is not a zero-sum game. It is not about diminishing opportunities for some to give to others.

This work is about expansion. It is about creating a bigger pie with more slices. If the United States closes the opportunity gap between minority and non-minority firms, we would add an estimated $6.3 trillion and 20 million jobs to our economy. That benefits everybody, and it makes our country and our economy stronger.

Q: What do you want people that seek out services at the MBDA to know?

A: I want to make clear that MBDA is open for business. We are going to continue providing the services that have made MBDA a reliable business resource for business owners from all backgrounds for more than five decades. We help businesses overcome the greatest challenges minority business enterprises face, which is access, including access to capital, contracts, networks and markets.

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By The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Check your freezer. Perdue Foods is recalling more than 167,000 pounds of frozen chicken nuggets and tenders after some customers reported finding metal wire embedded in the products.

According to Perdue and the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, the recall covers select lots of three products: Perdue Breaded Chicken Tenders, Butcher Box Organic Chicken Breast Nuggets and Perdue Simply Smart Organics Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.

FSIS and Perdue determined that some 167,171 pounds (75,827 kilograms) of these products may be contaminated with a foreign material after receiving an unspecified number of customer complaints. In an announcement Aug. 16, Maryland-based Perdue said that the material was “identified in a limited number of consumer packages.”

The company later “determined the material to be a very thin strand of metal wire that was inadvertently introduced into the manufacturing process,” Jeff Shaw, Perdue’s senior vice president of food safety and quality, said in a prepared statement. Shaw added that Perdue decided to recall all impacted packages “out of an abundance of caution.”

As of Aug. 16, there were no confirmed injuries or adverse reactions tied to eating these products, according to FSIS and Perdue. Still, FSIS is concerned that the products may be in consumers’ freezers.

The now-recalled tenders and nuggets can be identified by product codes listed on both Perdue and FSIS’s online notices. All three impacted products have a best buy date of March 23, 2025, and establishment number “P-33944” on the back of the package. They were sold at retailers nationwide.

Consumers who have the recalled chicken are urged to throw it away or return the product to its place of purchase. Perdue is offering full refunds to impacted consumers who can call the company at 866-866-3703.

Foreign object contamination is one of the the top reasons for food recalls in the U.S. today. Just last November, Tyson Foods recalled nearly 30,000 pounds (13,600 kilograms) of chicken nuggets after consumers also found metal pieces in the dinosaur-shaped products. Beyond metal, plastic fragments, rocks, bits of insects and more “extraneous” materials have prompted recalls by making their way into packaged goods.

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By Curt Anderson
The Associated Press

A White Florida woman was convicted Aug. 16cof manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black neighbor after the jury rejected her claims that she fired through a metal door in self-defense amid an ongoing dispute over children playing outside her home.

The all-White jury in Ocala, Florida, found 60-year-old Susan Lorincz guilty after 2 1/2 hours of deliberation. Lorincz faces up to 30 years in prison at sentencing. She had claimed self-defense when she fired a single shot with a .380-caliber handgun through her front door on June 2, 2023, killing 35-year-old Ajike “A.J.” Owens.

The confrontation was the latest in a dispute between the two neighbors over Owens’ children playing in a grassy area near both of their houses. Prosecutors said Owens had come to Lorincz’s home after her children complained that she had allegedly thrown roller skates and an umbrella at them amid a long-running annoyance at their boisterous play outside.

Lorincz told detectives in a videotaped interview that she feared for her life as Owens yelled and pounded on her door.

“I thought I was in imminent danger,” she said.

Lorincz also said she had been harassed for most of the three years she lived in the neighborhood.

The victim’s family members broke down in tears after Lorincz left the courtroom with deputies. She showed no reaction or emotion when the verdict was announced.

Circuit Judge Robert W. Hodges did not immediately set a sentencing date but ordered a background report to be done on Lorincz.

Anthony Thomas, an attorney for the Owens family, said they would push for the maximum 30-year prison term. Owens’ mother, Pamela Dias, said she took some solace from the guilty verdict.

“We’ve achieved some justice for Ajike. My heart is a little lighter,” Dias told reporters outside the courthouse. “This has been a long journey to get to this stage, to get to this verdict. I find some peace with that verdict.”

State’s Attorney William Gladson, whose office prosecuted the case, said it was “a tragic reminder” of the consequences of gun violence.

“The defendant’s choices have left four young children without their mother, a loss that will be felt for the rest of their lives,” Gladson said in a statement. “While today’s verdict can’t bring A.J. back, we hope it brings some measure of justice and peace to her family and friends.”

During closing arguments, prosecutor Rich Buxman had said there was no evidence that Owens posed an imminent physical threat to Lorincz.

“It’s not a crime to bang on somebody’s door. It’s not a crime to yell,” Buxman told jurors. “There was no imminent danger whatsoever when she fired that gun.”

A lawyer for Lorincz countered that she was frightened by Owens’ aggressive actions and was legally justified in firing her gun under Florida’s “stand your ground” law. An autopsy found Owens weighed about 290 pounds (130 kilograms), making her much larger as well as younger than Lorincz, and the two had previous confrontations.

“She can defend herself,” said Amanda Sizemore, an assistant public defender. “She had a split second to make a decision whether or not to fire her weapon.”

Lorincz did not testify but said in an interview with detectives that was played for jurors that she never intended to harm Owens. Still, in one 911 call, Lorincz told a dispatcher, “I’m just sick of these children.”

“She was not in fear. She was angry,” Buxman said.

Owens’ family has expressed surprise no Black jurors were selected for the trial given the racially sensitive nature of the case. There were protests in the Black community when prosecutors took weeks to charge Lorincz with manslaughter, a lesser count than second-degree murder which carries a potential life prison sentence.

The county court clerk’s office said in an email that eight Black people were among the 70 in the initial jury pool. In contrast, 49 were White and 10 were listed as Hispanic, two as Asian and one as “other,” the clerk’s office said, based on records provided by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

Ocala is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Orlando in central Florida. Marion County’s Black population is about 12 percent, according to census figures.

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By Rodney Muhumuza
The Associated Press

NEAR MOUNT ELGON, Uganda (AP) — The dancers shook their hips to the beat of drummers who led the way, anticipating the start of mass circumcision among the Bamasaaba people of Uganda’s mountainous east.

Yet the frolicking in the streets belied a dispute brewing behind the scenes as some locals questioned their king over the very public presentation of Imbalu, the ritualized circumcision of thousands of boys every other year in this remote community near Uganda’s border with Kenya.

Could it be turned into a carnival, put on for the gaze of foreigners? Or should it remain a sacred ceremony in which families quietly prepare their sons to face the knife with courage?

The king, known as the Umukuuka, had his way ahead of the Aug. 3 ceremonial inauguration at a park in the town of Mbale, arguing for a traditional festival that also looked attractive to visitors. The organizers of Imbalu received over $120,000 in financial support from the Ugandan government and a corporate sponsor.

In an interview with the AP, the Umukuuka asserted that organizing a modern Imbalu was challenging and defended his decision to market the ritual as a tourist event in line with Uganda’s national development plan.

“Everything is changing as the population expands. People may not manage to follow the cultural processes,” he said, citing the economic hardship and commercialization he said were diluting the communal aspect of Imbalu. “But we are fighting through the clan system that (Imbalu) remains intact.”

But the Ugandan government’s intervention has raised eyebrows among many Bamasaaba and underscored angst over the most important ceremony for this ethnic group of 4 million Ugandans. Some who spoke to the AP said they felt the Umukuuka, in his first year in office, was trivializing Imbalu by exposing it to outside interests.

“Our leadership is being hijacked by” national political leaders, said Wasukira Mashate, an elder who is a custodian of Bamasaaba cultural property, charging that the Umukuuka was missing the counsel of clan leaders with real spiritual authority.

“I don’t think they are having any role” in Imbalu, he said, speaking of clan leaders. “It was for our own benefit culturally, but now it is becoming a national event because the government of Uganda has captured it.”

At the ceremonial inauguration, an angry crowd gathered outside the totemic shrine of the clan that historically has launched Imbalu by cutting the first candidates. Clan members pointed to the young mixed-breed bull tethered to the grass as offensive, saying only a local breed would suffice as an appropriate sacrifice to the gods.

“This cow is exotic. We are Bamasaaba, and he brought us a white animal,” said Kareem Masaba, speaking of the Umukuuka. “He has insulted us. His predecessors used to come into the shrine and participate in the rituals, but this man will not come here. He is disrespecting us.”

The dispute over the sacrificial animal delayed the inauguration into the late afternoon as anger grew among men wielding machetes, sharp sticks and other crude weapons. The Umukuuka, seated not far away in a tent among dignitaries from elsewhere in Africa, did not budge. Clan members retaliated by refusing to present the first group of initiates before the Umukuuka, a former forestry officer whose real name is Jude Mudoma.

The mass circumcisions will last until the end of 2024.

The tribal initiation of boys into adulthood has long been controversial in African countries such as South Africa, where incidents of botched, deadly circumcisions among Xhosa-speaking people have inspired campaigns for safe clinical circumcision. 

Among the Bamasaaba, whose cutting method is just as violent, there have been no calls to end the practice. The strongest adherents see Imbalu as more important than ever amid widespread infant circumcision in hospital settings. They say those boys who are not initiated in the tribal way risk suffering lifelong social delinquency.

Tribal circumcision is performed by a traditional surgeon wielding a knife usually fashioned from melted nails. Bamasaaba hundreds of kilometers away in the Ugandan capital of Kampala are known to hunt down Imbalu dodgers they then cut by force. The bodies of uncircumcised men can be violated before burial.

Circumcision “helps us to be strong,” said Peter Gusolo, a traditional surgeon, gesticulating to express his people’s purported sex prowess. Those who resist circumcision will be cut “even if (they) are dying,” he said. “We circumcise you at night. We bury you in the morning.”

He added, “We cannot bury you in the land of the Bamasaaba without (being circumcised). No, no, no. It is in the constitution of the culture of the Bamasaaba. … It is a curse if you bury into the land people who are not circumcised.”

Gusolo, whose family lives in a house on the side of a hill planted with arabica coffee plants, spent days isolating himself in a cave and postponing intimacy with his wife so that he could be possessed by the spirit of Imbalu. Even though men like Gusolo wield certificates issued by local health authorities to prove their skill, the title is hereditary. The surgeons say they cannot afford to be flippant with their work because the wounds they inflict will not heal if they are not spiritually strong.

The first candidate for initiation this year was a teenager whose face had been smeared with mud and the dregs of homemade beer. He spread his legs and unblinkingly stared at the sky while a swarm of frenzied people around him pushed and shoved, demanding courage. 

The surgeon, applying no anesthetic, took hold of the boy and skinned him with a swift movement of his hands. A member of the boy’s family, aiming to protect the boy from the threat of witchcraft, collected the skin and took it home.

Emmanuel Watundu, the father of a 17-year-old boy who was among the first to be cut, said he stood by Imbalu, describing it as the life-changing event his son asked for. But he criticized what he saw as a carnival atmosphere by “peer groups (who) normally behave differently than we used to.”

Outside Watundu’s house, where a crowd had gathered, drunken people of all ages danced wildly, and one woman briefly exposed her breasts. A politician seeking a seat in the national assembly had a procession marching in the dirt road. Boys fondled girls and swung legs at them.

Watundu said the street dancers he saw were “from different areas” and that most people attending Imbalu came “to do business.” He said of the Ugandan government’s involvement that it had “given some bad picture” about the Umukuuka’s role as the chief organizer of Imbalu.

Wilson Watira, who chaired the Imbalu organizing committee, defended the government’s role as a supporter of Bamasaaba tradition. The exuberant street processions left people feeling joyful, he said.

“When it comes to performance of culture, of culture itself … it remains culture. We only want to show the world that even when we are performing this culture, it can also attract other people,” he said.

In the past, people thought the ritual was barbaric and brutal, Watira said.

“It’s the reason why we said, ‘No, we are not barbaric. We can make this thing very attractive, and you will enjoy it.'”

___

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.

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By Noreem Nasir
The Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — From the Australian b-girl with the meme-worthy “kangaroo” dance move to the silver-medal winning Lithuanian in a durag, breaking’s Olympic debut had a few moments that raised questions from viewers about whether the essence of the hip-hop art form was captured at the Paris Games.

Rachael Gunn, or “b-girl Raygun,” a 36-year-old professor from Sydney, Australia, quickly achieved internet fame, but not necessarily for Olympic-level skill. Competing against some b-girls half her age, she was swept out of the round-robin stage without earning a single point, and her unconventional moves landed flat while failing to match the skill level of her foes.

At one point, Gunn raised one leg while standing and leaned back with her arms bent toward her ears. At another, while laying on her side, she reached for her toes, flipped over and did it again in a move dubbed “the kangaroo.”

Gunn has a Ph.D. in cultural studies, and her LinkedIn page notes she is “interested in the cultural politics of breaking.”

“I was never going to beat these girls on what they do best — their power moves,” said Gunn. “What I bring is creativity.”

Clips of her routine have gone viral on TikTok and elsewhere, and many cringed at her moves platformed on the Olympic stage as a representation of hip-hop and breaking culture.

“It’s almost like they are mocking the genre,” wrote one user on X.

Some of it was ‘weird to see’

Many Black viewers, in particular, called out Lithuania’s silver medalist b-girl Nicka, (legally named Dominika Banevič) for donning a durag during each of her battles. Durags, once worn by enslaved Africans to tie up their hair for work, are still worn by Black people to protect and style their hair. They became a fashionable symbol of Black pride in the 1960s and 1970s and, in the 1990s and early 2000s, also became a popular element of hip-hop style. 

But when worn by those who aren’t Black, durags can be seen as cultural appropriation. Banevič is White.

Actor Kevin Fredericks responded on Instagram to Banevič donning the headwear by saying it looked “weird to see somebody who don’t need it for protective style or waves to be rocking the durag.”

The 17-year-old breaker ultimately won the silver medal after losing in the final to Japan’s b-girl Ami (Ami Yuasa).

For her part, Banevič has credited the breakers from the 1970s in the Bronx — the OGs — or “original gangsters” in hip-hop who created the dance — for her own success and breaking style.

“It’s a huge responsibility to represent and raise the bar every time for breaking because they did an amazing job. Big respect for the OGs and the pioneers that invented all those moves. Without them, it wouldn’t be possible,” she said. “Without them, breaking wouldn’t be where it is today. So I’m grateful for them.”

Concerns over losing breaking’s roots

The slips “may have alienated too many new viewers to garner the anticipated response from our Olympic premiere,” said Zack Slusser, vice president of Breaking for Gold USA and USA Dance, in a text message to the Associated Press.

“We need to change the narrative from yesterday’s first impression of breaking as Olympic sport. There were significant organizational and governance shortcomings that could have been easily reconciled but, unfortunately, negatively impacted Breaking’s first touching point to a new global audience.”

The challenge for Olympic organizers was to bring breaking and hip-hop culture to a mass audience, including many viewers who were skeptical about the dance form’s addition to the Olympic roster. Others feared the subculture being co-opted by officials, commercialized and put through a rigid judging structure, when the spirit of breaking has been rooted in local communities, centered around street battles, cyphers and block parties. Hip-hop was born as a youth culture within Black and Brown communities in the Bronx as a way to escape strife and socio-economic struggles and make a statement of empowerment at a time when they were labeled as lost, lawless kids by New York politicians.

Refugee breaker Manizha Talash, or “b-girl Talash,” channeled that rebellious vibe by donning a “Free Afghan Women” cape during her pre-qualifier battle — a defiant and personal statement for a 21-year-old who fled her native Afghanistan to escape Taliban rule. Talash was quickly disqualified for violating the Olympics’ ban on political statements on the field of play.

Both American b-girls were eliminated in the Aug. 9 round-robin phase, a blow to the country representing the birthplace of hip-hop in what could be the discipline’s only Games appearance. B-girl Logistx (legal name Logan Edra) and b-girl Sunny (Sunny Choi) both ranked in the top 12 internationally but came up short of the quarterfinals.

“Breaking for the Olympics has changed the way that some people are dancing,” said Choi, referring to some of the flashier moves and jam-packed routines. “Breaking changes over time. And maybe I’m just old-school and I don’t want to change. … I think a lot of people in our community were a little bit afraid of that happening.”

___

Associated Press Race & Ethnicity Editor Aaron Morrison contributed to this report from New York.

___

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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By John Leicester
The Associated Press

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Paris is closing out two-and-a-half extraordinary weeks of Olympic sports and emotion with a boisterous, star-studded show in France’s national stadium, handing over hosting duties for the Summer Games to the next city in line: Los Angeles in 2028.

Speculation was rife that Hollywood star Tom Cruise — seen around town during the final weekend — would feature in the closing ceremony that unlike the rain-drenched July 26 opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Games, basked in hot weather.

Shortly after French President Emmanuel Macron and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach had taken their seats, the ceremony opened with a singer belting out “Under the skies of Paris” — sung in the past by Edith Piaf and others.

The stadium crowd roared as French swimmer Léon Marchand, dressed in a suit and tie instead of the swim trunks he wore to win four golds, was shown on the giant screens collecting the Olympic flame from the Tuileries Gardens in Paris. There, the Olympic cauldron — powered by electricity instead of fossil fuels — had lit up the French capital for the duration of the Games, thrilling crowds by rising into the skies on a balloon every night.

For Los Angeles, topping Paris could be mission impossible. The French capital made spectacular use of its cityscape for its first Games in 100 years. The Eiffel Tower and other iconic monuments became Olympic stars in their own right, serving as backdrops and in some cases venues for competitions.

But Los Angeles was bringing star power of its own: singer Billie Eilish, rapper and Paris Olympics mainstay Snoop Dogg, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are scheduled to perform Aug. 11 as part of the handover from the City of Light to the City of Angels.

Each of the music artists is a California native, including H.E.R., who is expected to sing the U.S. national anthem live at the Stade de France, which hosted Olympic track and field and rugby sevens. The audience was expected to top 70,000 people.

As night fell, athletes marched into the stadium waving the flags of their 205 countries and territories — a display of global unity in a world gripped by global tensions and conflicts, including in Ukraine and Gaza. The stadium screens carried the words, “Together, united for peace.” With the 329 medal events finished, the expected 9,000 athletes — many wearing their shiny medals — and team staffers who filled the arena danced and cheered to the thumping beats.

The stadium, France’s largest, was one of the targets of Islamic State gunmen and suicide bombers who killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13, 2015. The joy and celebrations that swept Paris during the Games as Marchand and other French athletes racked up 64 medals — 16 of them gold — marked a major watershed in the city’s recovery from that night of terror.

The closing ceremony also will see the last medals — each embedded with a chunk of the Eiffel Tower — hung around athletes’ necks.
Fittingly for the first Olympics that aimed for gender parity, they’ll all be women — the gold, silver and bronze winners from the women’s marathon earlier Aug. 11.

The race — won by Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands — took the spot of the men’s race that traditionally closed out previous Games. In Paris, the men were bumped to the final Aug. 10, with Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola taking gold.

The switch was part of efforts in Paris to make the Olympic spotlight shine more brightly on the sporting feats of women. Paris was also where women first made their Olympic debut, at the Games of 1900.

The U.S. team again topped the medal table, with 126 in all and 40 of them gold. Three were courtesy of gymnast Simone Biles, who made a resounding return to the top of the Olympic podium after prioritizing her mental health instead of competition in Tokyo in 2021.

Following controversy that enveloped the opening ceremony — assailed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, French bishops and others over segments they felt poked fun at Christianity — the closing ceremony was being closely watched to see whether artistic director Thomas Jolly had any more surprises in store.

Jolly and other members of his creative team filed police complaints over death threats and online vitriol targeting them and some of opening show’s performers.

Critics jumped to the conclusion that a segment featuring drag queens and a DJ who is also an LGBTQ+ icon had parodied “The Last Supper,” Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting showing Jesus Christ.

Jolly and his team repeatedly insisted that was never their intention and got backing from Macron, who described himself as “outraged and sad” by the backlash against them.

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By Tales Azzoni
AP Sports Writer

PARIS (AP) — There is the table tennis player who didn’t get enough financial support back home. The discus thrower who couldn’t make rent. The badminton player who needed help to continue her journey to Paris.

Several dozen athletes have used crowdfunding to help pay for their costs to prepare for the 2024 Olympics and compete in France, with GoFundMe saying more than $2 million was raised worldwide in the run-up to the Games.

American discus thrower Veronica Fraley raised more than $23,000 on GoFundMe, with most of the donations coming after she posted on X that she couldn’t pay her rent and entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian and rapper Flavor Flav decided to help, attracting more attention — and more funds — to her cause.

Badminton player Jennie Gai got nearly $22,000 to help in the preparations for her mixed doubles participation in Paris.

“This absolutely wouldn’t have been possible without everyone’s support,” Gai said on her GoFundMe page. “Your donations relieved a lot of financial burden in planning our tournaments and training, which allowed me to focus fully on the Olympic race. I am incredibly grateful for each and every one of your contributions.”

American table tennis player Kanak Jha raised more than $30,000 to help cover the costs for training, travel, accommodation and hiring a private coach.

“I started to GoFundMe just to participate in these Games. And I’m really grateful for everyone who supported,” Jha told The Associated Press. “Everything given there was spent solely on the preparation for here, so just really grateful to have that support.”

Jha, who trains and competes mostly in Germany because he said it’s “financially impossible” to be a professional table tennis player in the United States, secured the U.S. its best Olympic run in the men’s tournament by reaching the last 16 at the Paris Games.

“The idea came solely for the purpose of preparation for the Paris Olympics and then for the Games,” he said. “Table tennis is a very global sport. We’re traveling a lot. We’re going to many tournaments, many training camps. So financially it’s not so cheap at times.”

Among the international athletes who sought crowdfunding support was 16-year-old Australian break dancer Jeff Dunne, who raised more than $20,000 for his preparations, and Tonga’s first female Olympic boxer, Feofaaki Epenisa, who got more than $10,000 in the run-up to Paris.

Former U.S. hurdler Lashinda Demus raised $21,700 to bring her family to Paris to watch her receive a gold medal she was denied 12 years ago. Demus originally won the silver medal in the 400 meter hurdles in London 2012, but she was upgraded to gold retroactively after the Russian hurdler who finished first was found guilty of doping.

“The thought of having my mom, Yolanda, by my side in Paris fills me with joy. She was my coach in London, and now she’ll be there to witness this momentous occasion. The same with my dad who has been with me every step of the way,” she said on her GoFundMe page. “Your kindness has turned a personal achievement into a family celebration. The idea of receiving my gold medal in Paris, surrounded by the people I love most, is becoming a beautiful reality.”

Among the family members trying to make it to Paris to watch their loved ones compete were the parents of U.S. hurdler Freddie Crittenden, who raised more than $20,000 to help with the costs of their trip. Some $6,000 was raised so the mom and younger sister of American wrestler Aaron Brooks, could make it to France. About the same amount was raised for the parents of U.S. swimmer Hunter Armstrong, who won silver in the 4×100-meter men’s relay.

“Help aunt Tiff make it to the Paris Olympics,” said the headline of the GoFundMe page set up by Tiffany Martin, who said she is the aunt of American swimmer Keaton Jones, the fifth-place finisher in the 200-meter backstroke final last week. Only $520 had been raised on the page ahead of the Games.

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By Andrew Dampf
AP Sports Writer

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Sometimes, all it takes is one athlete.

In March, triple jumper Thea LaFond was the only representative of her tiny Caribbean nation, Dominica, at world indoors.

She won the gold medal.

Now at the Paris Olympics, LaFond is the only woman from her country competing in track and field.

Again, she won gold.

Only it was more than gold. It was the very first Olympic medal for Dominica.

“It’s an understatement to say it’s a really big deal,” LaFond said after her victory Aug. 3 at the Stade de France. “Sometimes you wonder if being from a small country means that you have less accessibility to resources. … But we’ve been really big on (prioritizing) quality and just executing it.”

LaFond left Dominica for the United States when she was 5 and now lives in Maryland. But she’s still ambassador for her birth nation.

“My country’s name is Dominica (dah-min-EE-ka). We’re not Dominican Republic, so it’s pronounced differently,” LaFond said. “We are about roughly 70,000 people. Not 7 million. Not 70 million. Seventy thousand. And it is a gorgeous, gorgeous gem in the Caribbean near to Martinique and Guadeloupe. … Our neighbors also include St. Lucia, Barbados and, further south, Trinidad and Tobago. Our primary language is English. And now they have a gold medal.”

Dominica wasn’t the only Caribbean island to earn its first Olympic medal on Aug. 3. Julien Alfred of St. Lucia won the 100-meter title.

In 2017, 90 percent of the homes on Dominica were damaged by Hurricane Maria and 31 people died.

There are virtually no facilities for track and field on the island. Plans to build a track have been stalled for years, LaFond said.

“The biggest issue has been getting the land allocation for this track. Give us the land and there will be a track,” LaFond said. “I’m really hoping this medal kind of lights a fire under all government officials to get that done. I want a place where the next generation doesn’t necessarily have to go overseas.”

After her move to the U.S., LaFond developed into a classically trained dancer. She gave up dance at 13 when her family couldn’t afford lessons anymore and discovered track and field at John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, and went on to compete at the University of Maryland.

When she made her Olympic debut in 2016, she was introduced to Aaron Gadson, who became her coach and then her husband. Gadson’s first big advice for LaFond involved a big change to her jumping technique.

LaFond had leaped off her right leg since she was a teenager. Gadson thought she was stronger jumping off her left leg, though, so they made the change.

“It’s basically teaching your body how to jump again,” LaFond said. “There were some very frustrating days.”

Gadson had some more invaluable advice in Paris after LaFond leaped 14.32 meters on her first jump: “He came to me and he said, ‘Listen, there is torrential downpour coming in 20 minutes. You have to do something big now because the weather is not going to be on your side.'”

LaFond leaped 15.02 on her second attempt, which was the winning jump. As Gadson predicted, the storm then came and nobody else could come close in the wet conditions.

“We had to put it together right then and there,” LaFond said.

Shanieka Ricketts of Jamaica took silver at 14.87 and Jasmine Moore of the U.S. got bronze at 14.67.

Missing from the competition was world-record holder and defending Olympic champion Yulimar Rojas of Venezuela, who was out with an Achilles tendon injury.

Besides celebrations on Dominica, LaFond’s victory sparked jubilation at a Navy football preseason practice session when the news was communicated to Chreign LaFond, Thea’s younger brother and a junior defensive end with the Midshipmen.

Navy shared on social media a video of his teammates jumping all over Chreign.

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By Eddie Pells
AP National Writer

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — Noah Lyles won the Olympic 100 meters by .005 seconds Aug. 4, waiting some 30 seconds after the finish of an excruciatingly close sprint to find out he’d edged out Kishane Thompson of Jamaica.

The word “Photo” popped up on the scoreboard after Lyles and Thompson dashed to the line. Lyles paced the track with his hands draped over his head. Finally, the numbers came up. Lyles won in 9.784 seconds to edge out the Jamaican by five-thousandths of a tick of the clock.

America’s Fred Kerley came in third at 9.81 and defending champion Marcell Jacobs finished fifth.

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By Eddie Pells
AP National Writer

SAINT-DENIS, France (AP) — There were small signs for anyone willing to look that the sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson might not quite match the person she has become.

The wobbly starts. The little details. The meek exit from the Olympic trials earlier this summer after such a promising start.

All the hype aside, Richardson was never a sure thing to win an Olympic gold medal Aug. 3 in the 100 meters. On a rainy and odd evening at the Stade de France, 23-year-old Julien Alfred from St. Lucia showed there’s more than one inspirational story, and more than one great sprinter, at this Olympic track meet.

Alfred romped through the puddles and past Richardson and the rest of a largely depleted field, finishing in 10.72 seconds to throw a brick wall in front of what was supposed to be one of the best stories in Paris.

She beat Richardson by .15 seconds — the biggest margin in the Olympic 100 since 2008 — to bring home the first medal of any color to the small eastern Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Alfred’s victory completed a journey that included her father’s death in 2013 and a move to Jamaica as a teenager, alone, in hopes of training to become a great sprinter.

“He believed I could do it,” Alfred said, crying as she talked about her dad. “He couldn’t get to see me on the biggest stage of my career.”

Richardson was left with silver — a nice color but certainly not the point of all this after what she’s been through the last three years. 

Her training partner, Melissa Jefferson, finished third in 10.92 seconds.

Richardson came in as the favorite even though she has hardly been flawless this summer. Her opening race on the road to Paris included a terrible start at Olympic trials in an event she won with an untied shoelace.

Those starts got marginally better, but after she won the U.S. title in the 100, it was a bit of a shock when she failed to qualify for the 200, thus denying herself a chance at double gold in Paris.

On the gold-medal day in the 100, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce abruptly withdrew from the event before the semifinal, leaving all three Jamaicans who swept the podium at the Tokyo Games on the sideline for what, at one point, had been billed as the marquee race of the Olympics.

All of which seemed to set up perfectly for Richardson — only when she lined up in the semifinal, she was right next to Alfred, the only other woman in the Olympic field to crack 10.8 this year.

Richardson lumbered out of the blocks and lost that race by .05 seconds. It was a harbinger of things to come, though Alfred said she barely noticed who was in the lane next to her — it was Richardson again — when the final rolled around 90 minutes later.

“Sometimes when I do, I tend to panic,” Alfred said. “So far this year (not paying attention) has been such a good strategy.”

Neither the specter of Richardson on her right again nor the downpour that started about 10 minutes before the race began could slow down Alfred in the final.

Alfred’s opening burst played big when she won the world indoor title earlier this year at 60 meters, and she started strong in this one, with two steps on the entire field at the 40-meter mark. Richardson, as has happened before this summer, labored to get to full speed.

The American, her arms pumping wide in Lane 7, looked to be making up a bit of ground when Alfred leaned into the finish line. But there was too big a gap between them, and the real contest was the one between Richardson and Jefferson for second.

“I’m a baby in this sport,” said the 23-year-old Jefferson, who won the 2022 U.S. title while Richardson was still fashioning her comeback. “I have a lot of learning and growth to do.”

A centerpiece of NBC’s pre-Games’ coverage and the star of a Netflix documentary about track, Richardson did not show up for interviews after her second-place finish. It was a rarely seen breach of Olympic protocol and a move destined to keep the world guessing about a star who has stayed very much on message since her luck started changing this time last year.

In the few interviews she did in the leadup to the Games, she leaned into personal growth, and how she had become a more thoughtful, mindful person since her lowest point in 2021, shortly after she learned of the death of her biological mother.

That triggered a bout with depression, which left her alone in her hotel room in 2021 at Olympic trials, which is where she said she used marijuana. That cost her the trip to Tokyo. It took two years for her to climb back to the pinnacle, and it turns out, the high point came last year at worlds in Hungary, when she won the 100-meter title.

Given where she was at the last Olympics, a silver medal at these ones, with a chance for more next week in the 4×100 relays, isn’t bad.

But hardly anyone had her playing second fiddle to the sprinter from St. Lucia.

Alfred said on race days, she usually wakes up early on to jot down thoughts in her journal.

On Aug. 3, she kept it simple. “I wrote down ‘Julien Alfred: Olympic champion,'” she said.

Short. Simple. And 100 percent on target, a lot like the race she ran to become one.

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By Mike Schneider
The Associated Press

The income gap between White and Black young adults was narrower for millennials than for Generation X, according to a new study that also found the chasm between White people born to wealthy and poor parents widened between the generations.

By age 27, Black Americans born in 1978 to poor parents ended up earning almost $13,000 a year less than White Americans born to poor parents. That gap had narrowed to about $9,500 for those born in 1992, according to the study released last week by researchers at Harvard University and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The shrinking gap between races was due to greater income mobility for poor Black children and drops in mobility for low-income White children, said the study, which showed little change in earnings outcomes for other race and ethnicity groups during this time period.

A key factor was the employment rates of the communities that people lived in as children. Mobility improved for Black individuals where employment rates for Black parents increased. In communities where parental employment rates declined, mobility dropped for White individuals, the study said.

“Outcomes improve … for children who grow up in communities with increasing parental employment rates, with larger effects for children who move to such communities at younger ages,” said researchers, who used census figures and data from income tax returns to track the changes.

In contrast, the class gap widened for White people between the generations — Gen Xers born from 1965 to 1980 and millennials born from 1981 to 1996.

White Americans born to poor parents in 1978 earned about $10,300 less than than White Americans born to wealthy parents. For those born in 1992, that class gap increased to about $13,200 because of declining mobility for people born into low-income households and increasing mobility for those born into high-income households, the study said.

There was little change in the class gap between Black Americans born into both low-income and high-income households since they experienced similar improvements in earnings.

This shrinking gap between the races, and growing class gap among White people, also was documented in educational attainment, standardized test scores, marriage rates and mortality, the researchers said.

There also were regional differences.

Black people from low-income families saw the greatest economic mobility in the southeast and industrial Midwest. Economic mobility declined the most for White people from low-income families in the Great Plains and parts of the coasts.

The researchers suggested that policymakers could encourage mobility by investing in schools or youth mentorship programs when a community is hit with economic shocks such as a plant closure and by increasing connections between different racial and economic groups by changing zoning restrictions or school district boundaries.

“Importantly, social communities are shaped not just by where people live but by race and class within neighborhoods,” the researchers said. “One approach to increasing opportunity is therefore to increase connections between communities.”

___

Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP.

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By Steve Peoples and Matt Brown
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump has found tremendous success from the very first moment he stepped onto the presidential stage by stoking racial animus.

Democrats expressed new outrage this week at the former president’s derisive and false charge that Vice President Kamala Harris, who is of Jamaican and Indian heritage, only recently “turned Black” for political gain. Some Republicans — even from within Trump’s own campaign — seemed to distance themselves from the comment.

But Trump’s rhetoric this week, and his record on race since he entered politics nearly a decade ago, indicate that divisive attacks on race may emerge as a core GOP argument in the three-month sprint to Election Day — whether his allies want them to or not.

A Trump adviser, granted anonymity Aug. 1 to discuss internal strategy, said the campaign doesn’t need to focus on “identity politics” because the case against Harris is that she is “so liberal it’s dangerous.” The adviser pointed to Harris’ record on the Southern border, crime, the economy and foreign policy.

In a sign that Trump may not be coordinating his message with his own team, the Republican presidential nominee doubled down on the same day with a new attack on Harris’ racial identity. He posted on his social media site a picture of Harris donning traditional Indian attire in a family photo.

Sen. Cynthia Lummis, a Wyoming Republican who has endorsed Trump, was among a number of lawmakers on Capitol Hill who said Aug. 1 that the rhetoric around race and identity is not “helpful to anyone” this election cycle.

“People’s skin color doesn’t matter one iota,” Lummis said in an interview.

Trump turned to an old tactic against Harris

It’s been less than two weeks after President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid and endorsed Harris. Trump has had to pivot from campaigning against an 81-year-old White man showing signs of decline to facing a 59-year-old Black woman who is drawing much larger crowds and new enthusiasm from Democratic donors.

Trump went to the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31. In an appearance carried live on cable news and shared widely online, he falsely suggested Harris misled voters about her race.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said.

At a Pennsylvania rally hours later, Trump’s team displayed years-old news headlines describing Harris as the “first Indian-American senator” on the big screen in the arena. And Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, told reporters traveling with him that Harris was a “chameleon” who changed her identity when convenient.

Harris attended Howard University, the historically Black institution where she pledged the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, and has often talked throughout her career about being both about being Black and Indian American.

Trump’s team argued that his message on race is part of a broader pitch that may appeal to some Black voters, although very few allies defended his specific rhetoric this week.

“What impacts our historic gains with Black voters is President Trump’s record when compared to Kamala’s,” said Trump campaign senior adviser Lynne Patton, pointing to the “cost of living, securing the border, deporting Kamala’s illegal aliens, making neighborhoods safe again and keeping men out of women’s sports.”

Veteran Republican pollster Frank Luntz said he explored racial politics during a July 31 focus group with swing voters almost immediately after Trump’s interview. He found that Harris may be vulnerable to criticism based on her gender, but race-based attacks could hurt Trump among the voters that matter most this fall.

Much has changed, Luntz said, since Trump rose to prominence by questioning the citizenship of Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black president.

“Trump seems to think that he can criticize her for how she’s dealt with her race. Well, no one’s listening to that criticism. It simply doesn’t matter,” Luntz said. “If it’s racially driven, it will backfire.”

Eugene Craig, the former vice chair of the Maryland Republican Party, said that Trump “got what he wanted” at the NABJ convention but that the substance of his argument risked being more offensive than appealing.

“The one thing that Black folks will never tolerate is disrespecting Blackness, and that goes for Black Republicans too,” said Craig, who is Black and worked as a staffer for conservative pundit Dan Bongino’s 2012 Senate campaign. He is now supporting Harris.

Trump has a long history of racist attacks

Trump has frequently used race to go after his opponents since he stepped into presidential politics nearly a decade ago.

Trump was perhaps the most famous member of the so-called “birther” movement questioning where Obama was born. He kicked off his first campaign by casting Mexican immigrants as “rapists” and drug traffickers and later questioned whether a U.S. federal judge of Mexican heritage could be fair to him.

While in the White House, Trump defended a White supremacist march in Charlottesville, Virginia, and suggested that the U.S. stop accepting immigrants from “shithole” countries including Haiti and parts of Africa. In August 2020, he suggested Harris, who was born in California, might not meet the Constitution’s eligibility requirements to be vice president.

And just two weeks after formally entering the 2024 campaign, he dined with notorious White supremacist Nick Fuentes at his Mar-a-Lago residence.

Trump won in 2016 but lost reelection in 2020 to Biden by close margins in several swing states. He swept the 2024 Republican primary even while facing a raft of criminal charges.

Some Trump critics worried that his racial strategy might resonate with a significant portion of the electorate anyway. Voters will decide in November whether to send a Black woman to the Oval Office for the first time in the nation’s nearly 250-year history.

“I hope Trump’s attacks on Harris are just him flailing about ineffectively. But put together Trump’s shamelessness, his willingness to lie, his demagogic talent, and the issue of race — and a certain amount of liberal complacency that Trump is just foolish — and I’m concerned,” Bill Kristol, a leading conservative anti-Trump voice, posted on social media Aug. 1.

The Harris campaign thinks there’s little upside for Trump

A Harris adviser described the moment as an opportunity to remind voters of the chaos and division that Trump breeds. But the adviser, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said it would be a mistake for Democrats to engage with Trump’s attacks on race at the expense of the campaign’s broader focus on key policies.

So long as the campaign does not get distracted, the adviser said, Harris’ team believes there is little political upside for Trump to continue attacking Harris’ racial identity.

Harris told a gathering of a historically Black sorority on July 31 that Trump’s attack was “the same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect.”

On the ground in at least one swing state, however, there were signs that Trump’s approach may be resonating — at least among the former president’s White male base.

Jim Abel, a 65-year-old retiree who attended a rally for Vance in Arizona on July 31, said he agreed with Trump’s focus on Harris’ racial identity.

“She’s not Black,” Abel said. “I’ve seen her parents. I’ve pictures of her and her family and she’s not Black. She’s looking for the Black vote.”

But several high-profile Republican voices disagreed.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted on X a picture of a road sign with two directions. One led to, “Attack Kamala’s record, lies and radicalism,” while the other, “Is she really Black?”

“I dunno guys, I just think that maybe winning the 2024 election might be more important than having this silly and meaningless conversation,” Shapiro wrote.

___

Brown reported from Chicago. AP writers Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri in Washington; and Gabriel Sandoval in Glendale, Arizona, contributed to this report.

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By Paul Newberry and Stephen Wade
AP Sports Writers

NANTERRE, France (AP) — In another disappointment for the American swim team, Simone Manuel was eliminated in the preliminaries of the 50-meter freestyle at the Paris Olympics on Aug. 3.

Manuel posted the 18th-fastest time in the hectic sprint covering one length of the pool, not good enough to make it to the evening semifinals.

The first Black woman to win an individual gold medal in swimming touched in 24.87 seconds, 0.15 out of the time she needed to crack the top 16 and a whopping 1.02 behind the fastest qualifier, Sarah Sjöström of Sweden.

Manuel stormed off the deck and right past reporters. Asked to stop for a question, she replied “nope” and kept on going.

The United States went into the next-to-last day of the competition with 21 medals but only four golds, a performance that has fallen short of expectations for the world’s dominant swim nation.

Several high-profile swimmers have failed to even make the finals in some of their best events.

Caeleb Dressel, a star of the Tokyo Olympics with five gold medals, was knocked out in the semis of the 100 butterfly and broke down in tears after leaving the deck.

Ryan Murphy, a longtime stalwart in the backstroke, managed a bronze in the 100 back and was knocked out in the semis of the 200 — far short of his goal to reclaim the titles he swept at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

Manuel came up short, too, in her comeback from overtraining syndrome, which plagued her preparations for the Tokyo Olympics. She won a silver in the 50 freestyle at the 2016 Rio Games, to go along with her historic gold in the 100 free.

The Americans are intent on finishing strong, with several events they are favored to win over the last two days. But it’s shaping up to be their lowest gold-medal total since they were limited to eight at the 1988 Seoul Games, which were led by an East German team that was later revealed to have a massive, state-sponsored doping operation.

“I think there’s a bit of realization of just how much the world has caught up,” said American swimmer Jack Alexy. “We’re still doing the best we can and we’re still swimming fast.”

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By Will Graves
AP National Writer

PARIS (AP) — The similarities were striking. Maybe fitting in the birthplace of déjà vu.

Simone Biles sitting off to the side at the Olympics. USA Gymnastics team doctor Marcia Faustin by her side. A look of concern on both their faces.

Three years ago in Tokyo, the scene ended with Biles removing herself from multiple finals to protect her safety — prompting an international discussion about mental health.

Yet Biles is determined to write a different ending to the story in Paris. The 27-year-old American star wasn’t dealing with any sort of block or trauma but something far more common to gymnasts, particularly ones who have been doing this two decades.

Just like in Tokyo, Biles and Faustin briefly disappeared. Unlike Tokyo, Biles returned not in a sweatsuit but with her left leg heavily taped after tweaking her calf during her warmup on floor exercise. She spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with a noticeable limp everywhere except the competition floor.

The woman who has been saying over and over and over that this isn’t 2021 went out and proved it on July 28 inside star-studded Bercy Arena, shaking off what U.S. coach Cecile Landi described as a minor calf issue to post the top score in the all-around and put whatever lingering ghosts there may be from Tokyo in the rearview mirror.

Biles finished at 59.566, well clear of reigning Olympic champion and teammate Sunisa Lee, saluting the crowd after her dismount on uneven bars, her final event. She hopped off the podium, danced with good friend Jordan Chiles and has no plans to stop her quest for gold in the team final on July 30 and the  individual all-around on Aug. 1.

“It was pretty amazing, 59.5,” Landi said. “Not perfect so she can improve even (but) … just really good.”

Landi said the issue popped up a couple of weeks ago and she described it as minor. There was no discussion of Biles pulling out.

Instead, Landi and her husband, Laurent — who have long served as Biles’ personal coach in Texas — encouraged her to take a breath and keep going as Laurent applied heavy doses of tape to her leg.

“We told her to remind herself, like she’s capable of doing it,” Landi said. “She knows she’s got it and it’s OK and then she did. So, really excited for her.”

The issue hardly slowed her down. Biles posted the highest score on floor and vault — both after the injury — as she tries to add to her career total of seven Olympic medals.

The only event final Biles is likely to miss is uneven bars, where she opted not to attempt a unique skill she submitted to the International Gymnastics Federation on July 26. She can still opt to do it during the team final, opening the door for it to be entered into the sport’s Code of Points with her name attached.

Yet, that appeared to be far from Biles’ mind when she finished up her bars set. Instead, there was a mixture of relief and the urge to soak in the moment following her dismount at what could be the final competition of her unparalleled career.

The same could be said of her teammates after the heavily favored Americans finished at 172.296, more than five points clear of second-place Italy (166.861) as they search for what they’re calling “redemption” following a runner-up finish to Russia three years ago.

“They’re happy and relieved,” Landi said. “Day 1, now moving on to team finals, all-around finals, a couple event finals hopefully.”

Landi said Biles’ leg was feeling better as she moved through the events and expects her to be available going forward.

The reality is the Americans — especially with Russia out of the mix due to the war in Ukraine — don’t need to rely on her as much as they have in previous Games.

Biles, Lee and Chiles went 1-2-3 in the all-around during early qualifying, though Chiles will miss the all-around final due to rules that limit countries to entering two athletes per competition.

There’s a chance Chiles will make the floor exercise final should she finish in the top eight. Lee is practically a lock for the beam and bars finals, with 2020 floor exercise champion Jade Carey in good position to join Biles in the vault final.

That is, of course, if Biles is healthy.

The injury added a dash of drama to an event that’s become a must-see for athletes and celebrities alike.

The stands were buzzing and filled with stars. Tom Cruise posed for selfies while waiting for Biles to emerge. Snoop Dogg had front-row seats, and Ariana Grande, Jessica Chastain, John Legend and Anna Wintour were also on hand.

Biles arrived in Paris as the face of the U.S. Olympic movement and maybe the Olympics themselves. The buzz around her return to the Games has been palpable, with NBC leaning heavily into her star power by splashing Biles’ face on countless promotions in the lead-up to Paris.

Her gravitational pull is real. Athletes across the Olympic spectrum have said they want to make it a point to catch the most decorated gymnast of all time put on a show that is uniquely hers. Among them: LeBron James and the U.S. men’s basketball team, which was busy July 28 with their Olympic opener.

James & Co. may have a chance to catch Biles later this week, provided her calf cooperates, hardly a given in a sport where the injury rate is nearly 100 percent.

Biles has spent the last 11 years largely avoiding the kind of physical setbacks that have ended the Olympic journeys of so many others.

Not for Biles — not yet anyway — as her chance at a golden send-off remains very much in the offing even if she literally is now forced to take it one ginger step at a time.

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By Christine Fernando
The Associated Press

CHICAGO (AP) — ” Brats for Harris.” ” We need a Kamalanomenon. ” ” Gen Z feels the Kamalove.”

In the days since President Joe Biden exited the presidential race and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, Gen Z voters jumped to social media to share coconut tree and “brat summer” memes — reflecting a stark shift in tone for a generation that’s voiced feeling left behind by the Democratic Party.

Youth-led progressive organizations have warned for months that Biden had a problem with young voters, pleading with the president to work more closely with them to refocus on the issues most important to younger generations or risk losing their votes. With Biden out of the race, many of these young leaders are now hoping Harris can overcome his faltering support among Gen Z and harness a new explosion of energy among young voters.

Since July 21, statements have poured out from youth-led organizations across the country, including in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, California, Minnesota, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, as leaders thanked Biden for stepping aside and celebrated the opportunity to organize around a new candidate. On July 26, a coalition of 17 youth-led groups endorsed Harris.

“This changes everything,” said Zo Tobi, director of communication for the Movement Voter Project, a national progressive funding group focusing on youth-led organizations, when he heard the news that Biden was dropping out of the race and endorsing Harris. “The world as it is suddenly shifted into the world as it could be.”

As the campaign enters a new phase, both Harris and her Republican rival, Donald Trump, are expected to target messages aimed at younger voters who could prove decisive in some of the most hotly contested states. 

Trump spoke late July 26 at a Turning Point USA conference and Harris plans to deliver a virtual address July 27 to Voters of Tomorrow, an organization focused on young voters.

John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, who has worked with Biden, said the “white-hot energy” among young people is something he hasn’t seen since former President Barack Obama’s campaign. While there’s little reliable polling so far, he described the dynamic as “a combination of the hopefulness we saw with Obama and the urgency and fight we saw after the Parkland shooting.”

In many ways, it was the first time many young people felt heard and felt like their actions could have an impact on politics, he and several young leaders said.

“It’s reset this election in profound ways,” he said. “People, especially young people, for so long, for so many important reasons have been despondent about politics, despondent about the direction of the country. It’s weighed on them. And then they wake up the next morning, and it seems like everything’s changed.”

About 6 in 10 adults under 30 voted for Biden in 2020, according to AP VoteCast, but his ratings with the group have dipped substantially since then, with only about a quarter of the group saying they had a favorable opinion of him in the most recent AP-NORC poll, conducted before Biden withdrew from the race.

That poll, along with polls from The New York Times/Siena and from CNN that were conducted after Biden dropped out, suggest that Harris starts off with somewhat better favorable ratings than Biden among young adults.

Sunjay Muralitharan, vice president of College Democrats of America, said it felt like a weight was lifted off his chest when Harris entered the race.

Despite monthly coalition calls between youth-led groups and the Biden campaign, Muralitharan spent months worrying about how Biden would fare among young voters as he watched young people leave organizations such as the College Democrats and Young Democrats to join more leftist groups.

College Democrats issued statements and social media posts encouraging the party to prioritize young people and to change course on the war in Gaza and have “worked tirelessly to get College Dems programming” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this summer. But they received limited outreach in return, Muralitharan said.

A Harris campaign represents an opportunity to move in a new direction, he said. The vice president has shown her vocal support for issues important to young voters such as climate change and reproductive rights, Muralitharan said, adding that she may also be able to change course and distance herself from Biden’s approach to the war in Gaza.

“The perpetual roadblock we’ve run into is that Biden is the lesser of two evils and his impact on the crisis in Gaza,” he said. “For months, we’ve been given this broken script that’s made it difficult for us to organize young voters. But that changes now.”

Santiago Mayer, executive director of the Gen Z voter engagement organization Voters of Tomorrow, said the Biden campaign “created an entirely new framework for operating with youth organizations” that can now be transitioned into supporting Harris’ campaign.

“Gen Z loves VP Harris, and VP Harris loves Gen Z,” he said. “So we’re ready to get to work for her.”

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The Associated Press receives support from several private foundations to enhance its explanatory coverage of elections and democracy. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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By John O’Connor and Rick Callahan
The Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Autopsy findings released July 26 on Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman fatally shot in her Illinois home by a now-fired sheriff’s deputy charged in her death, confirm that she died from a gunshot wound to the head.

The report was released shortly before civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Massey’s family, denounced the killing by ex-sheriff’s deputy Sean Grayson as senseless, unnecessary and excessive.

Sangamon County Coroner Jim Allmon had previously disclosed initial findings on Massey’s July 6 death in Springfield and the full autopsy report released July 26 confirmed those conclusions, including that her death was a homicide.

In addition to the bullet striking her just beneath her left eye, Massey had “minor blunt force injuries” to her right leg, the autopsy said.

Grayson, who is White, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct charges in Massey’s killing. He was fired last week by the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office and has been jailed without bond.

Crump, at his third news conference this week since the body camera video was released July 22, used an enlarged diagram from the autopsy that showed the bullet exited on her lower neck in a downward trajectory. That, he said, emphasizes the physical mismatch between Massey and the much larger Grayson, who fired on her because he said he felt threatened by a pan of hot water she was moving from her stove.

“When Sonya Massey was staring at the barrel of his gun, she stooped down, said, ‘Sorry, sir, Sorry,’ and the bullet was shot while she was in this stooped position, coming up,” Crump said. “The autopsy confirms what everybody already knows, that this was just a senseless, unnecessary, excessive use of force.”

Grayson is 6-foot-3 (191 centimeters) and 228 pounds (103 kilograms). The autopsy lists Massey at 5-foot-4 (163 centimeters) and 112 pounds (51 kilograms). Prosecutors have added that the distance between shooter and victim and a counter between them gave Grayson “distance and relative cover” from the hot water.

Authorities said Massey had called 911 to report a suspected prowler. Two deputies eventually showed up at her house in Springfield, about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

The video confirmed prosecutors’ earlier account of the tense moment when Grayson yelled across a counter at Massey to set down a pot of hot water, aiming his 9mm pistol at her and threatening to shoot her in the face. He fired three times.

The unidentified deputy with Grayson then said he would get his medical kit, but Grayson said, “She done. You can go get it, but that’s a head shot. There’s nothing you can do, man.”

He later relented while the second deputy held towels to Massey’s head to try to stem the bleeding, but by the time Grayson returned with his kit, emergency medical professionals had arrived and when they told Grayson his help wasn’t needed, he threw his kit on the floor and said, “I’m not even gonna waste my med stuff then.”

Massey struggled with mental illness, according to her family. Her son, 17-year-old Malachi Hill Massey, said July 26 that he and his 15-year-old sister had moved in with their fathers because Sonya Massey had admitted herself to a 30-day inpatient program in St. Louis sometime during the week before her death, but returned two days later without explanation.

Malachi Massey also said that on July 5, the day before the early morning shooting, law enforcement officers whom he thought were from Sangamon County were called to the house and were there when he arrived. By then, his mother had called him to say she was driving herself to a local hospital, apparently for mental health treatment. He said he doesn’t know who called police or what help she was seeking that day.

The Associated Press has asked local law enforcement agencies for records of the July 5 call.

___

Callahan reported from Indianapolis.

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By John Leicester and Megan Janetsky
The Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Celebrating its reputation as a cradle of revolution, Paris kicked off its first Summer Olympics in a century on July 26 with a rain-soaked, rule-breaking opening ceremony studded with stars and fantasy along the Seine River.

On-and-off showers — the first rain at a Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony in more than 70 years — did not seem to hamper the enthusiasm of the athletes. Some held umbrellas as they rode boats down the river in a showcase of the city’s resilience as authorities investigated suspected acts of sabotage targeting France’s high-speed rail network.

Widespread travel disruptions triggered by what French officials called coordinated arson attacks on high-speed rail lines as well as the weather had dampened the mood ahead of the ceremony.

Still, crowds crammed the Seine’s banks and bridges and watched from balconies, “oohing” and “aahing” as Olympic teams paraded in boats down the waterway that got increasingly choppy as the weather worsened.

Undeterred from the festivities, many of the hundreds of thousands of spectators huddled under umbrellas, plastic ponchos or jackets as the rain intensified, others danced and sang, and some dashed from their seats for shelter.

“The rain can’t stop us,” said U.S. basketball star LeBron James, sporting a plastic poncho along with the other American flag bearer, tennis player Coco Gauff.

The weather made for some bizarre scenes at the show combining prerecorded and live performances: a stiff upper-lipped pianist played on even as small puddles formed on his grand piano. A breakdancer flipped her moves on the sheen of a rain-drenched platform. Some athletes in Bermuda-style colorful shirts looked dressed for the beach, not a deluge.

As global audiences tuned in, Paris put its best foot forward — quite literally, with a spectacular Olympic launch that lifted spirits and joyous French cancan dancers featured early on. A humorous short film featured soccer icon Zinedine Zidane. Plumes of French blue, white and red smoke followed.

Lady Gaga sang in a prerecorded performance, in French, with dancers shaking pink plumed pompoms, injecting a cabaret feel. To close the show, Celine Dion, standing under the Eiffel Tower, belted out her first live performance since the French-Canadian singer was diagnosed with stiff person syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, at the end of 2022.

French-Malian pop star Aya Nakamura, the most listened-to French-speaking artist in the world, emerged from a pyrotechnic display in an all-gold out to sing her hit “Djadja” accompanied by a Republican guard band of the French army.

More than three hours into the show, French President Emmanuel Macron declared the Games open. In a gaffe shortly beforehand, the five-ring Olympic flag was raised upside down at the Trocadero across from the Eiffel Tower.

The final torch relay spanned landmarks like the Louvre and included sports legends like tennis greats Serena Williams and Rafael Nadal before French judo champ Teddy Riner and three-time Olympic champion runner Marie-Jose Perec lit the Olympic cauldron attached to a giant balloon, which floated into the Paris night.

The ceremony celebrated women, including 10 golden statues of female pioneers that rose from giant pedestals along the river. Among them was Olympe de Gouges, who drafted the Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female Citizen in 1791 during the French Revolution. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery and was guillotined in 1793.

The Paris Games aim to be the first with equal numbers of men and women competing.

With the ambitious ceremony, the stakes for France were immense. Dozens of heads of state and government were in town, and the world was watching as Paris turned itself into a giant open-air theater. Along the Seine, iconic monuments became stages for dancers, singers and other artists.

Sofia Cohen, 20, watching with her father, called the ceremony “electric.” The Nicaraguan-Americans said the roar of applause given to the Ukrainian team was their favorite part.

“Every Olympics is different, and this one was very French. The ceremony started out very majestic and regal. And as the rain started pouring down and time went on, everything got a little more hectic and fun,” she said.

The sprawling event gave organizers bigger crowds to transport, organize and safeguard than would have been the case if they’d followed the example of previous Olympic host cities that opened with stadium shows.

Still, as the show got underway, optimism soared that Paris — true to its motto that speaks of being unsinkable — might just see its gambles pay off. That’s despite the soggy weather — no other Summer Olympics opening ceremony has had rain since Helsinki in 1952.

Paris organizers said 6,800 of the 10,500 athletes would attend before they embark on the next 16 days of competition.

The boats carrying the Olympic teams started the parade by breaking through curtains of water that cascaded down from Austerlitz Bridge, the start of the 6-kilometer (nearly 4-mile) route. The jetting waters were a wink at the fountains of Versailles Palace, the venue for Olympic equestrian competitions.

Per Olympic protocol, the first boat carried athletes from Greece, birthplace of the ancient Games. It was followed by the Olympic team of refugee athletes and then, the other nations in French alphabetical order.

Usually during Olympic opening ceremonies, the parade of athletes takes place during a pause in the razzmatazz. But Paris shattered that tradition by having the parade and pageantry at the same time, blending sports and artistic expression.

Some spectators who followed organizers’ advice to arrive well ahead of time along the ceremony route fumed over long waits to get to their seats.

“Paris has been great, anything to do with the Olympics and dissemination of information has been horrible,” said Tony Gawne, a 54-year-old Texan who turned up six hours in advance with his wife.

“When you spend $6,000 on two tickets, well, that’s a little frustrating,” he said.

But Paris had plenty of aces up its sleeve. The Eiffel Tower, its head visible below the clouds, Notre Dame Cathedral — restored from the ashes of its 2019 fire — the Louvre Museum and other iconic monuments starred in the opening ceremony. Award-winning theater director Thomas Jolly, the show’s creative mind, was using the signature Paris cityscape of zinc-gray rooftops as the playground for his imagination.

His task: Tell the story of France, its people, their history and essence in a way that leaves an indelible imprint on Olympic audiences. Refresh the image and self-confidence of the French capital that was repeatedly struck by deadly extremist attacks in 2015. Capture how Paris is also aiming to reboot the Olympics, with Summer Games it has worked to make more appealing and sustainable.

It’s a big ask. So Paris went big, very big. That goes for the security, too. Large fenced-off stretches of central Paris were locked down to those without passes and the skies during the ceremony were a no-fly zone for 150 kilometers (93 miles) around.

During the athletes’ waterborne adventure, they passed historic landmarks that have been temporarily transformed into arenas for Olympic sports.

Concorde Plaza, where French revolutionaries guillotined King Louis XVI and other royals, now hosting skateboarding and other sports. The golden-domed resting place of Napoléon Bonaparte, the backdrop for Olympic archery, and the Eiffel Tower, which donated chunks of iron that have been inlaid in the gold, silver and bronze Olympic medals. They’ll be won in the 32 sports’ 329 medal events.

Paris’ aim, said Estanguet, is “to show to the whole world and to all of the French that in this country, we’re capable of exceptional things.”

___

AP journalists Jerome Pugmire, Hanna Arhirova, Tales Azzoni, Jocelyn Noveck, Debora Rey and Kristie Rieken and contributed from Paris. ___

AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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By Alanis Thames
The Associated Press

When Naomi Osaka lifts her racket on the red clay courts at Roland Garros during the Paris Olympics later this month, it’ll represent more than a high-stakes competition for the tennis star.

For Osaka, a four-time grand slam champion, it’s an important step in her journey after returning to tennis earlier this year, after stepping away to prioritize her mental health and give birth to her daughter.

Osaka will join gymnastics icon Simone Biles and track and field star Sha’Carri Richardson on the Olympic stage. These Black women athletes at the height of their careers have been vocal about mental health, public critique and other personal struggles. Osaka and Biles needed time away from their respective sports to prioritize mental health. Richardson returned to competition after a highly scrutinized ban from track and field.

They’ve all bounced back to the world’s biggest stage while displaying different levels of vulnerability. Their stories, different yet similar, give viewers a unique image of Black women.

“I always think about this: We weren’t born playing our sport,” Osaka recently told The Associated Press. “We were born the same way as everyone else. I wasn’t born holding a racket. We’re humans first, and we’re athletes as a profession.”

That idea is often overlooked when it comes to Black female athletes, who sit in the shadowed intersection of racism and sexism, said Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sport management and director of the Center for Race and Ethnicity in Sport at the University of Michigan.

“It is critically important that they’re elevated in this way,” Armstrong said, “because I think it’s helping people to reimagine what Black women are and who they are.”

Biles, Osaka create space for women like them

Biles withdrew from the all-around gymnastics competition at the Tokyo Games to focus on her well-being after what she described as feeling the “weight of the world” on her shoulders.

After a two-year hiatus, Biles, 27, proved to be just as dominant in her 2023 return to the international stage as she was at her first Olympics in 2016. She won the individual all-around title at the gymnastics world championships in October and breezed through last month’s U.S. Olympic trials.

“Most athletes are wired to win,” Armstrong said. “They’ve been winning all of their lives. And so oftentimes in their sport, they know how to take a day off. And I think what we’re seeing is they’re realizing that even as life intersects with sport, it’s OK to take a time out.”

Osaka and Biles returns to the Olympics is important in creating space for women who look like them to be just as vulnerable, said Victoria Jackson, a sports historian and clinical associate professor of history at Arizona State University, while “also kind of forcing broader culture to accept” them for who they are beyond what they do in their sport.

Jackson said the trio’s journeys show a leadership quality that’s innate for Black women, who are often seen as invincible. As a result, they take on added pressure and adopt missions “bigger than them.”

“They shouldn’t be in a situation where they should feel like it’s expected of them,” she said. “I think that’s a part of this, too. How many generations of Black women have to…recognize that they’re taking on something to make the world a better place for people like them and for everyone else, too?”

“It feels like there should be an endpoint. We’re still asking a lot of Black women athletes,” said Jackson.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to athletes.

“Most Black women you talk to, we all feel that similar weight on our shoulders because we feel like we are the most overlooked and disrespected people in this country,” said Shaneka Stanley, a senior human resources consultant based near Chicago.

Stanley also juggles caring for her young son, step daughter, aging parents and brother, who has a mental disability.

“I am every woman for all people in my life,” Stanley said. “I get tired, but I put that cape on every single day.”

Conditions for Brown and Black women much harder

Richardson was expected to be a breakout star in Tokyo before a positive test for marijuana at the 2021 Olympic trials. Afterward, Richardson said she smoked marijuana to cope with her mother’s recent death, but that didn’t stop the ridicule that followed the sprinter’s 30-day suspension from the sport.

Richardson’s name was suddenly mentioned in wide-ranging debates on race, fairness and longstanding anti-doping rules.

Tarlan Chahardovali, an assistant professor in the University of South Carolina’s Department of Sport and Entertainment Management, said she has wondered if the criticism that Richardson faced would be applied to a White runner in her position.

“I think the condition for Brown and Black women is much harder,” Chahardovali said.

Now, Richardson gets a second chance at Olympic glory after one of the most dominant seasons in track and field this year. She’ll be a favorite in the 100 meters after winning the race in 10.71 seconds at the U.S. track trials last month.

During her comeback, Richardson has repeatedly talked about resiliency.

“The message is basically understanding and having a deeper love and a deeper care for the talent that I’ve been given,” Richardson said. “And I take advantage of it, nurture it … and that way I can compete and execute when I show up on the track.”

When Biles, Osaka and Richardson took a step back in their careers, “I was so proud of them for living in their truth,” said Marisa Tatum-Taylor, a DEI manager for a large data company. “ … I hope that women across the world receive that message that sometimes in order to show up, you have to put yourself first.”

Associated Press writer Claire Savage and AP Sports Writers Howard Fendrich and Eddie Pells contributed to this report.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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The Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The new bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi is being formally installed July 20, and she is the first woman and first Black person to hold the post.

The Rev. Dorothy Sanders Wells was elected bishop in February and has been in the leadership role since May. She is being ordained and consecrated by the Most Rev. Michael Curry, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.

Wells succeeds former Bishop Brian Seage, who was elected in 2014 and had been in the role since the 2015 retirement of his predecessor.

The Mississippi diocese has about 17,600 members in 87 congregations.

Wells is a native of Mobile, Alabama, and studied vocal performance at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. She earned a law degree from the University of Memphis and practiced law for 18 years in Memphis before becoming a priest.

She earned a master of divinity degree from Memphis Theological Seminary and a doctor of ministry degree from Emory University.

Wells told the Clarion Ledger that she does not focus on being the first woman and first African American to become the Episcopal bishop of Mississippi.

She was previously rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Germantown, Tennessee, and chaplain of the church’s preschool. She had been there since 2013. She said leaders of the Mississippi Diocese are looking for ways to help small, rural congregations serve their communities.

“It is a priority to re-energize and get people excited again about all of the ministry opportunities that we have,” she said.

Wells said she wants people to emphasize their faith in everyday interactions.

“If it ends when our time together ends on Sunday mornings, then we have already missed the message,” Wells said. “That should be the beginning. When we walk out the doors, that becomes the beginning of us showing that radical love and hospitality.”

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By Brian Witte
The Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland’s attorney general filed a civil lawsuit on July 19 against an Eastern Shore landlord and his company, alleging a pattern of gender-based housing discrimination involving sexual harassment and demands to exchange sex for rent.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Wicomico County Circuit Court, is the first case to be brought by the attorney general’s Civil Rights Division, which was formed in January.

“For too long predatory landlords have taken advantage of people in financial and housing crisis by abusing their power as housing providers to make sexual demands of tenants or prospective tenants – often low-income women and single mothers,” Attorney General Anthony Brown said. “In Maryland, that ends today.”

Jonathan Smith, who is chief of the attorney general’s Civil Rights Division, said the allegations began as early as 2018 in units that were “in deplorable conditions” that “targeted low-income and working people.”

Speaking at a news conference with Brown and other officials, Smith said five women came forward to assist the attorney general’s investigation.

The lawsuit has been filed against Eric Sessoms and Mt. Vernon Group, LLC for engaging in a pattern or practice of gender-based discrimination in housing, the attorney general’s office said.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that Sessoms targeted women who were unhoused and at risk of homelessness,” Smith said.

An attorney for Sessoms in other legal matters said he was not representing him in this case. It was not immediately clear if Sessoms had legal representation in the civil lawsuit announced Friday.

The complaint alleges that Sessoms specifically preyed on vulnerable women who were either experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness. For example, the complaint says he offered housing benefits, like reduced rent, in exchange for sexual favors.

“I want to echo Attorney General Brown’s commitment to women who are sexually harassed by their landlords. We have heard you, and we are taking action,” said Candace McLaren Lanham, chief deputy attorney general. “The women at the center of this case who bravely entrusted us with their harrowing stories are the reason we are able to seek justice today against defendant Eric Sessoms and his company Mt. Vernon Group, LLC.”

The complaint also alleges that he subjected women tenants and prospective tenants to unwanted sexual advances, unwelcome sexual contact, unsolicited sexual comments, and other egregious conduct in a discriminatory fashion on the basis of his tenants’ and prospective tenants’ gender.

Maryland Legal Aid, the state’s largest provider of free civil legal services, partnered with the attorney general’s office on the case.

“Maryland is already suffering from a tragic housing crisis, impacting so many families — primarily women with children — who are left with too few options. Landlords, like Sessoms, who take full advantage of women in desperate situations and broker in insidious, gender-based discrimination, cannot be tolerated,” said Vicki Schultz, the group’s executive director.

The attorney general’s office says other victims can contact investigators by calling 1-833-282-2977 or emailing mdvsessoms@oag.state.md.us.

The lawsuit seeks injunctive relief, restitution for tenants and prospective tenants, civil penalties, and the costs of the investigation and litigation.

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By Kate Payne 
The Associated Press/Report for America

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — The president of Florida’s only public historically Black university is resigning amid backlash over the school’s apparent failure to properly vet a multi-million dollar donation from a dubious donor.

Larry Robinson submitted his resignation last week and will leave Florida A&M University at a time when state officials are scrutinizing programs at the school that they say are underperforming and as increasing political influence reshapes the state’s higher education landscape.

During a graduation ceremony in May, Robinson stood on stage in his academic regalia holding a jumbo check for $237 million, a gift that would have been the single largest private donation to a historically Black college or university – if it ever materialized.

Robinson has led the 137-year-old HBCU for seven years. There has been public outcry over the university’s handling of the donation, which took the form of millions of shares in 30-year-old donor Gregory Gerami’s fledgling industrial hemp company. FAMU put the gift on pause and authorized an outside investigation of the debacle, which is ongoing.

“I saw in this unprecedented gift the potential to serve our students and our athletic programs in ways unimaginable at that time,” Robinson told the university’s trustees on May 15. “I wanted it to be real and ignored the warning signs along the way.”

During Robinson’s tenure, FAMU has touted its rise in national rankings. But state officials have also scrutinized the flagging performance of some of the university’s programs, including its colleges of pharmacy and law.

The leadership change at the institution is raising concerns among some alumni, at a time when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is working to limit the state’s diversity programs and restrict what can be taught about race and American history.

Democratic State Senator Shevrin Jones, who’s a 2006 graduate of the HBCU, says he hopes the university’s leaders remember the institute was founded to educate African Americans as it searches for a new president.

“If they make decisions based off of the politics of this time, I fear for my institution,” Jones said.

The university’s trustees are expected to set Robinson’s departure date and begin discussing the presidential search when it meets July 23. Robinson plans to return to his position as a professor in FAMU’s School of the Environment after a year-long sabbatical.

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Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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By Tom Murphy
The Associated Press

Tamika Davis couldn’t nap on her couch during cancer treatment. She kept worrying one of her toddlers would wander over and pull out the needle delivering chemotherapy.

Friends and family watched her kids when they could during her treatment last year for colon cancer. But Davis had gaps with no help because she couldn’t afford child care and didn’t know where to look for assistance.

“I did not have the strength nor the energy to try to navigate these things myself,” the San Antonio, Texas, resident said.

Patients are not getting enough help dealing with a healthcare system that is growing increasingly complex, according to researchers and other experts in care delivery. They say more frequent insurance complications, doctor and drug shortages, and a lack of communication all make life harder for people with serious or chronic illnesses.

“Just about anything you can think of, it’s now harder to get it done, basically,” said Elisabeth Schuler, founder and president of Patient Navigator, a business that helps people get through the system.

More care providers and employers are offering help guiding people, a practice the federal Medicare program has started to cover. But that assistance has limits.

Patients with serious or chronic illnesses face a web of challenges. They include:

— Coordinating doctor appointments and tests, often while working or undergoing treatment.

— Dealing with coverage denials or care delays due to insurer pre-approval requirements.

— Figuring out how to fill a prescription if they can’t get coverage or their medication lands on a growing list of drugs in shortage.

— Acting as a go-between for doctors and specialists who don’t talk to each other.

— Paying medical bills and getting help with rent or utilities. That assistance has been harder to find since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Beth Scott of the non-profit Patient Advocate Foundation.

All of this can be compounded for patients who don’t speak English or have no experience navigating the health care system, noted Gladys Arias, a policy principal with the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network.

Davis, the San Antonio cancer patient, said she was in the hospital when she asked for help finding community resources.

She said a case manager set a book of available resources on her bedside table and did nothing else. Davis, a nursing professor, found the book confusing. The programs it detailed had different qualifications based on things like income or diagnosis. The 44-year-old wound up losing her car and leaving her home after care bills piled up.

“I feel like there was some type of help out there for me,” she said. “I just didn’t know where to look.”

Ali DiGiacomo said she wishes that she learned in college how to deal with insurance companies. She often has to do that while coping with side effects from rheumatoid arthritis treatments.

The 30-year-old personal trainer said she’s spent years trying to get a diagnosis for bouts of intense chest pain, which doctors think may be tied to her condition. That requires imaging tests that insurers often decline to cover.

“Dealing with them with brain fog and fatigue and being in pain is just like the cherry on top,” DiGiacomo said.

DiGiacomo said her formulary, or list of covered drugs, has changed three times. That can force her to hunt for a place that carries the newly covered drug, which puts her behind on her medication schedule.

She figures she talks to her insurer at least four times a month.

“I have to hype myself up,” she said. “Then you talk to a million different people. I wish I just had like one person that helped me deal with all this.”

Care delays due to insurer pre-approval requirements have grown more common, many experts say. More plans also have made it challenging to get coverage outside their networks of doctors and hospitals.

A typical appeal for a denial can easily involve 20 to 30 phone calls between the patient, the insurer and the doctor’s office, said Scott, director of case management for Patient Advocate Foundation, which helps people with chronic or debilitating illnesses.

She said some patients give up.

“Sometimes you are sick, and you don’t want to fight it anymore,” she said.

Case managers at hospitals are often overworked, which limits how much help they can provide, noted Schuler, who became a patient advocate about 20 years ago after her 2-year-old daughter went through cancer treatment.

Overall, help for patients is “very patchy everywhere,” according to Harvard Medical School researcher Michael Anne Kyle.

“I think we have a lot of Band-Aids that are necessary,” she said.

Many cancer centers offer patient navigators who can help coordinate appointments, get answers to coverage questions, find rides to the doctor and provide other support. Some insurers provide similar assistance.

And more employers are offering navigation or advocacy help for people on their insurance plans, according to the benefits consultant Mercer.

But these services still aren’t widespread. Alzheimer’s disease patients and their caregivers lack consistent access to such help, said Sam Fazio, a senior director with the non-profit Alzheimer’s Association.

“People are having trouble finding their way,” he said.

Making the system better for patients requires big change, said Dr. Victor Montori, a Mayo Clinic researcher who studies care delivery.

He said the system must focus more on minimally disruptive medicine, which makes care fit into patient lives. That means things like cutting unnecessary paperwork and surveys, making appointments more flexible and giving patients more time with doctors.

He noted that the burden that falls on patients is not just the time and effort they spend navigating the system. It’s also what they give up to do that.

“If you waste people’s time on silly things, you are being unkind to (their) main purpose, which is to live,” he said. “We have to stop thinking of the patient as a part time employee of the healthcare system that we don’t get to pay.”

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By Jade Lozada
The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Terrorism and organized crime by violent extremist groups linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State are a “pervasive threat” in Africa’s volatile Sahel region and are spilling over to West Africa’s coastal countries, the top U.N. envoy for the area warned July 12.

Leonardo Simão, the U.N. special representative for the Sahel and West Africa, said the focus on combating terrorism has had limited effect in stopping rampant illegal trafficking in the Sahel and the effort needs more police.

“It’s drugs, it’s weapons, it’s human beings, it’s mineral resources, and even food,” Simão said after briefing the U.N. Security Council.

According to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ new report on the Sahel and West Africa, hundreds of people have been killed in the first half of 2024 alone in terrorist attacks, many of them civilians.

The vast majority of deaths occurred in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, whose ruling military juntas in March announced a joint security force to fight terrorism, though the force has yet to begin operations. The three countries are increasingly cutting ties with the U.S. military and allying with Russia on its security challenges.

Last week, the three juntas doubled down on their decision to leave the Economic Community of West African States, the nearly 50-year-old regional bloc known as ECOWAS, following the creation of their own security partnership, the Alliance of Sahel States, in September.

Simão did not comment on the countries’ international alliances, but said their withdrawals from ECOWAS will be “harmful to both sides.” He lauded ECOWAS for taking a “vigorous approach” to engaging with Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger and urged the countries to maintain regional unity.

He called for the U.N.’s continued support of the Accra Initiative, a military platform involving Burkina Faso and nearby coastal countries to contain the spread of extremism in the Sahel. He also said the Security Council should pursue financing regionally led police operations.

U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield expressed support for ECOWAS and U.N. efforts in West Africa and the Sahel and said the Security Council “must also step up.”

Thomas-Greenfield urged increased funding and the appointment of a U.N. resident coordinator in the region, saying a U.N. presence is critical to support U.N. development efforts “as well as ensuring the delivery of much needed humanitarian assistance.”

Russia’s deputy ambassador, Anna Evstigneeva, countered that international security efforts amount to an “attempt to continue imposing new colonial models” on Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. She accused Western donors of limiting assistance for “political reasons.”

“Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger are conducting an uncompromising and coordinated fight against terrorist groups and they are achieving success and stabilizing their territories,” Evstigneeva said.

The region’s deadliest terrorist attacks this year took place in Burkina Faso, where the militant jihadist groups Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin, which has ties to al-Qaida, and the Islamic State claim “extensive swaths” of territory, Guterres said in the report. In February alone, major terrorist attacks killed 301 people, including a single assault that claimed 170 lives.

According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, there were 361 conflict-related deaths in Niger during the first three months of 2024, a significant increase from 250 over the same period last year.

Guterres encouraged the “accelerated implementation” of remaining security agreements, including recent plans for a counterterrorism center in Nigeria and the deployment of an ECOWAS standby force to help eradicate terrorism.

The military juntas of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger have ended long-standing foreign military partnerships in recent years.

In 2022, France withdrew its troops from Mali over tensions with the junta, followed by a military withdrawal from Niger at the government’s request.

The U.N. ended its 10-year peacekeeping mission in Mali in December 2023 at the junta’s insistence. It had been the deadliest U.N. peacekeeping mission, with more than 300 personnel killed.

The U.S. military is set to conclude its withdrawal from Niger, also at the junta’s request, by Sept. 15.

Guterres said regional insecurity “continues to impact negatively on the humanitarian and human rights situation.”

The report said 25.8 million people in Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria need humanitarian assistance this year. Those four countries had more than 6.2 million people internally displaced and 630,000 refugees in April. In addition, 32.9 million people faced food insecurity.

Guterres said humanitarian agencies lack adequate funding, having received only 13 percent of the $3.2 billion needed for 2024. “Without additional funding, millions of vulnerable people will be left without vital support,” he said in the report.

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By Noah Trister
AP Sports Writer

BALTIMORE (AP) — Former NFL receiver Jacoby Jones, whose 108-yard kickoff return in 2013 remains the longest touchdown in Super Bowl history, has died. He was 40.

The Houston Texans, Jones’ team for the first five seasons of his career, announced his death July 14. There was no immediate word on a cause of death.

Jones played from 2007-’15 for the Texans, Baltimore Ravens, San Diego Chargers and Pittsburgh Steelers, and he made several huge plays for the Ravens during their most recent Super Bowl title season.

Jones was a key part of Baltimore’s “Mile High Miracle” in a playoff game at Denver in January 2013. He caught a 70-yard touchdown pass with 31 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter to tie the score. The Ravens eventually won in double overtime.

In the Super Bowl that postseason against San Francisco, Jones caught a 56-yard TD pass from eventual game MVP Joe Flacco. Then he raced 108 yards to the end zone to open the second half and give Baltimore a 28-6 lead. The Ravens held on for a 34-31 victory.

That Super Bowl was played in New Orleans, where Jones grew up.

“My favorite football play was when Jacoby was talking to his mom in the end zone, just before a late-game kickoff return against the Vikings in a snowstorm shootout. Jacoby then raced to catch the ball and run it back for a touchdown,” Ravens coach John Harbaugh said in a statement. “My favorite Jacoby personal moment was every time I saw his smiling face full of joy.”

Jones made The Associated Press All-Pro team as a kick returner for the 2012 season. Shortly after that, he appeared on “Dancing With The Stars.”

“Jacoby was one of the most fun-loving teammates and people I’ve ever been around,” former Texans pass-rushing star J.J. Watt said on social media. “Always dancing and laughing, with a permanent smile on his face. Gone far, far too soon.”

In April, Jones became coach of the Beaumont Renegades, an arena football team in Texas.

“What can be said about him as a football player is only scratching the surface of who he was as a man,” the Renegades said in a statement. “When you needed something, he was there. When you called him, he answered. Didn’t matter if you were a family member, a close friend, player he coached, etc.”

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AP Sports Writer Kristie Rieken in Houston contributed to this report.

___

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

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By Michael Biesecker and Alanna Durkin Richer
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Law enforcement officials were working July 14 to learn more about the 20-year-old Pennsylvania man who they say tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally and to determine what drove him to open fire, killing one spectator.

Authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the shooter who fired from a rooftop outside the rally venue in nearby Butler before he was killed by the Secret Service.

An FBI official said late July 13 that a motive had not yet been determined. Public court records in Pennsylvania show no past criminal cases against Crooks, who graduated from high school two years ago.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said on social media the upper part of his right ear was pierced in the shooting. Two spectators were critically injured, authorities said. The man killed was Corey Comperatore, a former fire chief from the area who Pennsylvania’s governor says died a “hero” by diving onto his family to protect them.

Relatives of Crooks didn’t immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press. His father, Matthew Crooks, told CNN late July 13 that he was trying to figure out “what the hell is going on” but wouldn’t speak about his son until after he talked to law enforcement.

Crooks graduated from Bethel Park High School in 2022. In a video of the school’s graduation ceremony posted online, Crooks can be seen crossing the stage to receive his diploma, appearing slight of build and wearing glasses. The school district said it will cooperate fully with investigators. His senior year, Crooks was among several students given an award for math and science, according to a Tribune-Review story at the time.

Jason Kohler, who said he attended the same high school but did not share any classes with Crooks, said Crooks was bullied at school and sat alone at lunch time. Other students mocked him for the way he dressed, such as hunting outfits, Kohler said.

“He was bullied almost every day,” Kohler told reporters. “He was just an outcast, and you know how kids are nowadays.”

Crooks’ political leanings were not immediately clear. Records show Crooks was registered as a Republican voter in Pennsylvania, but federal campaign finance reports also show he gave $15 to a progressive political action committee on Jan. 20, 2021, the day President Joe Biden was sworn into office.

Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger told AP on July 14 that Crooks had been previously unknown to investigators in his county and had not been on their radar. He said the investigation had so far not turned up any evidence that he had coordinated with anyone else in the region.

A blockade had been set up July 14 preventing traffic near Crooks’ house, which is in an enclave of modest brick houses in the hills outside blue-collar Pittsburgh and about an hour’s drive from the site of the Trump rally. Police cars were stationed at an intersection near the house and officers were seen walking through the neighborhood.

Bomb-making materials were found inside Crooks’ vehicle near the Trump rally and at his home, according to two officials who were not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. A white Allegheny County Police truck identified as bomb squad pulled up to the home late Sunday morning.

Law enforcement recovered an AR-style rifle at the scene of the shooting, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing investigation.

Investigators believe the weapon was bought by the father at least six months ago, two law enforcement officials told AP.

The officials said federal agents were still working to understand when and how Thomas Crooks obtained the gun. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

An AP analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos from the scene of the Trump rally, as well as satellite imagery of the site, shows the shooter was able to get close to the stage where the former president was speaking.

A video posted to social media and geolocated by AP shows Crooks wearing a gray t-shirt with a black American flag on the right arm lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held.

The roof where Crooks lay was less than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target. For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a scaled human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M-16 rifle.

Images of Crooks’ body reviewed by AP shows that at the time of the shooting he appears to have been wearing a T-shirt from Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel with more than 11.6 million subscribers that regularly posts videos that show creator Matt Carriker firing off handguns and assault rifles at targets that include human mannequins and vehicles.

Carriker, who lives in Texas, did not respond to a phone message or email on July 14, but posted a photo of Crooks’ bloody corpse wearing his brand’s T-shirts on social media with the comment, “What the hell.”

_____

Associated Press journalists Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Julie Smyth and Joshua Bickel in Bethel Park, Michael R. Sisak in New York, Michael Kunzelman in Silver Spring Maryland, Mike Balsamo in Chicago and Colleen Long in Washington contributed.

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By Mary Clare Jalonick
The Associated Press

Former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell is mostly recovered from the brutal assaults he endured from Donald Trump’s supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. But not completely. His shoulder still has limited endurance and there are screws and a metal plate holding his right foot together after bone fusion surgery.

Emotional recovery has been more difficult. Gonell struggled when he heard that former Trump visited Capitol Hill last month and received what he called a “hero’s welcome” from the Republican lawmakers Gonell had protected that day, and when Trump falsely told millions of viewers in last week’s debate that many of the violent rioters, his supporters, “were ushered in by the police.”

Trump’s Capitol Hill visit was a “triggering mechanism for my PTSD,” says Gonell, who retired from the force in 2022 due to his injuries and has recently participated in several campaign events for President Joe Biden. “We did what we had to do to keep those elected officials safe, and instead of siding with us, the officers, they have sided with a person who put their lives at risk.”

Three and a half years after the Capitol attack, Trump still falsely claims the 2020 election was stolen. He has promised that if he wins the presidency again he will pardon his supporters who violently beat police and broke into the Capitol to try and overturn the legitimate results. To counter the misinformation, Gonell and two of his fellow officers who were there that day are working with Biden’s campaign, attending events in swing states to try and make sure that voters don’t forget.

“I’m a living primary source about an important day in American history,” says Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who became a recognizable face shortly after the attack when a video of him being crushed between two doors went viral. “So I try to make that count, and make it so that people hear the truth from someone who was there.”

Along with former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, Hodges and Gonell are telling audiences about what they went through that day and trying to lay out the contrast between Biden and Trump. It’s an unusual transition for law enforcement officers who once protected members of Congress and are used to keeping their political views to themselves.

“I’m really an introvert, and I’m not someone to seek a microphone or an audience,” says Hodges, who testified along with Gonell and Dunn at the House Jan. 6 panel’s first hearing in 2021. “But I’m in this unique position where people will listen to what I say about an important issue. So I feel a moral obligation to do so.”

At recent events in Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, they stood with local officials and said that Trump is a danger to the country after trying to overturn Biden’s legitimate election.

“Three and a half years later, the fight for democracy still continues,” Dunn recently told a group of voters in Arizona, flanked by a handful of politically active Democratic veterans in Phoenix. “It still goes on. Donald Trump is still that threat. His deranged, self-centered, obsessive quest for power is the reason violent insurrectionists assaulted my coworkers and I.”

The officers have also aggressively pushed back on Trump’s comments at the debate, where he falsely said that there were a “relatively small” group of protesters and that the police let them enter the Capitol. More than 1,400 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the riot, and police were bloodied and injured — some seriously — as they struggled to prevent more from getting in.

Dunn, who recently lost his own bid for a congressional seat in Maryland, said after the debate that Trump’s comments were “a slap in the face, but it’s what we have come to expect from Donald Trump.”

And the officers said they are still supporting Biden, even after he failed to push back on many of Trump’s false claims about Jan. 6 and received widespread criticism for his weak showing at the debate.

“He could have been a little more forceful, but I’ll take the person who doesn’t send a mob to kill me and my colleagues over the other person,” said Gonell, who published a book last year about his experience. “Every single day I’m reminded of that horrible day. Every time I put my shoes on, I see my scar.”

Gonell was caught in the worst of the fighting on the Capitol’s west front as Trump’s supporters protesting his defeat violently tried to push past him and his fellow officers. At one point he was pulled under the crowd and lost oxygen to the point that he thought he would die.

Hodges was nearby, trapped in the heavy golden doors in the center of the Capitol’s west front as rioters beat him bloody. A video of his guttural scream as he tried to escape went viral and was played at Democrats’ impeachment trial in the weeks after the attack.

Dunn, who has said he was targeted with racial slurs by Trump’s supporters during the fighting, says it has been good to travel out of the Washington area, his hometown, and talk to people who may not be watching cable news every day as he campaigns for Biden. There’s a lot they don’t know about what happened on Jan. 6, he says.

“Being able to have somebody who was there bring firsthand experience and facts retelling the story, it’s very beneficial,” Dunn said,

The officers were widely praised after Jan. 6, but their criticism of Trump in recent years has made them less popular with some Republicans. When Gonell and Dunn visited the Pennsylvania legislature this spring, some Republicans booed them.

But they are unbowed by the criticism, and have continued to try and bring more attention to their stories. Gonell was outside the Supreme Court on Monday July 1, as the justices ruled on whether Trump has immunity for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and criticized the justices for sending the federal case back to a lower court. The decision effectively ends any prospects that Trump could be tried before the November election.

On Friday, July 5, the court limited a federal obstruction law that has been used to charge some Capitol riot defendants.

“Every single time that the Supreme Court or any other court says that some of these people shouldn’t be held accountable, it’s a disgrace,” Gonell said.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By  Chevel Johnson Rodrigue
The Associated Press

For 30 years, the Essence Festival of Culture has brought together people from all walks of life and from around the world to connect through conversation, shared experiences and, of course, music. 

The nation’s largest annual celebration of Black culture ended Sunday with musical performances by Janet Jackson and a special tribute to Frankie Beverly & Maze, the soul band that closed the event for the festival’s first 15 years. Beverly, now 77, has said he is stepping away from performing live, and the group has been on a farewell tour. 

Others performing included Victoria Monét, Teedra Moses, Tank and the Bangas, Dawn Richard, SWV, Jagged Edge, Bilal and Anthony Hamilton.

Barkue Tubman-Zawolo, chief of staff, talent and diasporic engagement for Essence Ventures, told The Associated Press the festival helps connect the global Black community.

“Historically, as Black people, sometimes we’re not sure where our heritage comes from,” Tubman-Zawolo said. “America is just one place. But within America there’s a melting pot of different Black cultures: Africa, Latin, Europe, the Caribbean. Understanding that allows our power to be even greater.”

Tubman-Zawolo said those connections could be seen throughout this year’s Film Festival, held at the city’s convention center, where fans heard from storytellers from Nigeria, Ghana and the Caribbean “who are targeting our stories about us, for us, globally. ” 

She noted similar connections through the Food and Wine stage, where discussions highlighted Caribbean and African cuisine; the Soko Market Place, where vendors from all over the world shared their craft; and on the Caesars Superdome stage, which spotlighted Caribbean and African artists including Machel Montano of Trinidad. 

“All of that occurred over four days,” Tubman-Zawolo said. “But the beauty of it is, it doesn’t stay here. (Fans) take it with them.”

New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell said this year’s “We Love Us” theme was appropriate. 

“This whole ‘We Love Us’ theme brought us together to build communities,” she said.

The festival’s impact on the city and state has surpassed $300 million, with more than 500,000 people visiting since 1994.

Essence started the festival as a way to celebrate 25 years of the magazine’s history.

“The locals are being incorporated in a manner that we can see and touch and feel and smell. That has been a part of the evolution of Essence,” Cantrell said.

The event’s current contract ends in 2026, but Essence Ventures CEO Caroline Wanga has said the festival’s “forever home” is New Orleans.

“That’s what we believe as well,” Cantrell said. “We have a foundation that’s been laid over 30 years. The city is always ready and prepared to host this event and more. I think staying in New Orleans is the best fit and best marriage, the best partnership.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Ken Miller 
The Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A World War I veteran is the first person identified from graves filled with more than a hundred victims of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that devastated the city’s Black community, the mayor said July 12.

Using DNA from descendants of his brothers, the remains of C.L. Daniel from Georgia were identified by Intermountain Forensics, said Mayor G.T. Bynum and officials from the lab. He was in his 20s when he was killed.

“This is one family who gets to give a member of their family that they lost a proper burial, after not knowing where they were for over a century,” Bynum said.

A White mob massacred as many as 300 Black people over the span of two days in 1921, a long-suppressed episode of racial violence that destroyed a thriving community known as Black Wall Street and ended with thousands of Black residents forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard.

Brenda Nails-Alford, a descendant of massacre survivors and a member of the committee overseeing the search for victims, said the identification brought her to tears.

“This is an awesome day, a day that has taken forever to come to fruition,” Nails-Alford said.

More than 120 graves were found during searches that began in 2020, with forensic analysis and DNA collected from about 30 sets of remains. Daniel’s remains are the first from those graves to be linked directly to the massacre.

The breakthrough for identifying Daniel came when investigators found a 1936 letter from his mother’s attorney seeking veteran’s benefits. Alison Wilde, a forensic scientist with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Forensics, said the letter provided by the National Archives convinced investigators that Daniel was killed in the massacre.

No members of Daniel’s family, many of whom don’t know each other, attended the news conference announcing the identification, which was made earlier this week, Wilde said.

“I think it’s shocking news, to say the least” for the family, Wilde said. “We know we’ve brought a lot into their lives.”

The massacre began when a White mob, including some deputized by authorities, looted and burned Tulsa’s Greenwood District. More than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches were destroyed from May 31-June 1.

Forensic anthropologist Phoebe Stubblefield said Daniel’s remains were fragmented and a cause of death could not be determined.

“We didn’t see any sign of gunshot wounds, but if the bullet doesn’t hit bone or isn’t retained within the body, how would we detect it?”

Oklahoma state archaeologist Kary Stackelbeck said the remains that were exhumed, including Daniel, were found in simple wooden boxes — and Daniel’s was too small for him.

“They had to bend his legs somewhat at the knee in order to get him to fit,” Stackelbeck said. “His head and his feet both touched either end of the casket.”

Stackelbeck said investigators were searching for simple caskets because they were described in newspaper articles at the time, death certificates, and funeral home records as the type used for burials of massacre victims.

Bynum said the next search for victims will begin July 22.

“We’ll continue the search until we find everybody that we can,” Bynum said.

A lawsuit by the two known living survivors of the massacre was dismissed by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in June.

Attorneys for the two, Viola Fletcher, 110, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 109, are asking the court to reconsider the decision. Attorneys are also asking the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act of 2007, which allows for the reopening of cold cases of violent crimes against Black people committed before 1970.

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By Lisa Mascaro, Zeke Miller and Seung Min Kim
Associated Press

President Joe Biden, in a letter to congressional Democrats, stood firm against calls for him to drop his candidacy and called for an end to the intraparty drama that has torn apart Democrats since his dismal public debate performance.

Biden’s efforts to shore up a deeply anxious Democratic Party came on July 8 as lawmakers returned to Washington confronting a choice: Decide whether to work to revive his campaign or try to edge out the party leader, a make-or-break time for his reelection and their own political futures.

Biden wrote in the two-page letter that “the question of how to move forward has been well-aired for over a week now. And it’s time for it to end.” He stressed that the party has “one job,” which is to defeat presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in November.

“We have 42 days to the Democratic Convention and 119 days to the general election,” Biden said in the letter, distributed by his reelection campaign. “Any weakening of resolve or lack of clarity about the task ahead only helps Trump and hurts us. It’s time to come together, move forward as a unified party, and defeat Donald Trump.”

Anxiety is running high as top-ranking Democratic lawmakers are joining calls for Biden to step aside despite his defiance. At the same time, some of the president’s most staunch supporters are redoubling the fight for Biden’s presidency, insisting there’s no one better to beat Trump in what many see as among the most important elections of a lifetime.

Biden followed up the letter with a phone interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, on which he insisted that “average Democrats” want him to stay in the race and said he was frustrated by the calls from party officials for him to step aside.

“They’re big names, but I don’t care what those big names think,” Biden said.

He threw the gauntlet at his critics, saying if they’re serious they ought to “announce for president, challenge me at the convention” or rally behind him against Trump. Later, Biden joined a call with members of his national finance committee, while first lady Jill Biden campaigned for her husband in a three-state swing focused on engaging veterans and military families.

Biden followed up the letter with a phone interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show, on which he insisted that “average Democrats” want him to stay in the race and said he was frustrated by the calls from party officials for him to step aside.

“They’re big names, but I don’t care what those big names think,” Biden said.

He threw the gauntlet at his critics, saying if they’re serious they ought to “announce for president, challenge me at the convention” or rally behind him against Trump. Later, Biden joined a call with members of his national finance committee, while first lady Jill Biden campaigned for her husband in a three-state swing focused on engaging veterans and military families.

“For all the talk out there about this race, Joe has made it clear that he’s all in,” she told a military crowd in Wilmington, North Carolina. “That’s the decision that he’s made, and just as he has always supported my career, I am all in, too.”

Democratic voters are split on whether Biden should remain the Democratic Party’s nominee for president, or whether there should be a different Democratic nominee, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.

More voices spoke up July 8, including the chair of the House’s Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, who was not ready to cast aside Biden, saying that the threat of a second Trump presidency remains too high. Yet one of the most endangered Democrats this election cycle, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, said in a statement, “President Biden has got to prove to the American people—including me—that he’s up to the job for another four years.”

As lawmakers weigh whether Biden should stay or go, there appear to be no easy answers.

It’s a tenuous and highly volatile juncture for the president’s party. Democrats who have worked alongside Biden for years — if not decades — and cherished his life’s work on policy priorities are now entertaining uncomfortable questions about his political future. And it’s unfolding as Biden hosts world leaders for the NATO summit this week in Washington.

Time is not on their side, almost a month from the Democratic National Convention and just a week before Republicans gather in Milwaukee to renominate Trump as their presidential pick. Many Democrats are arguing the attention needs to be focused not on Biden but on the former president’s felony conviction in the hush money case and pending federal charges in his effort to overturn the 2020 election.

It’s what Biden himself might call an inflection point. As he definitely says he will only step aside if the Lord almighty comes and tells him to, Democrats in the House and Senate are deciding how hard they want to fight the president to change his course, or if they want to change course at all.

In an effort to “get on the same page,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries is convening lawmakers for private meetings before he shows his own preference, according to a person familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it. He planned to gather on Monday some Democrats whose bids for reelection are most vulnerable.

A private call Sunday, July 7, including some 15 top House committee members exposed the deepening divide as at least four more Democrats — Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state and Rep. Mark Takano of California — privately said Biden should step aside.

Nadler, as one of the more senior members on the call, was the first person to say that Biden should step aside, according to a person familiar with the call who was granted anonymity to discuss it. He did so aware of his seniority and that it would allow others to join him.

Many others on the call raised concerns about Biden’s capability and chance of winning reelection, even if they stopped short of saying Biden should step out of the race.

Still other members, including Rep. Maxine Waters of California and Rep. Bobby Scott of Virginia, both leaders in the Congressional Black Caucus, spoke forcefully in support of Biden, as did Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee.

And several lawmakers appeared frustrated that leadership was not providing direction or a path forward, according to people familiar with the call. One Democratic lawmaker said regardless of the decision, the situation has to “end now,” one of the people said.

Neal said afterward that the bottom line is Biden beat Trump in 2020 and “he’ll do it again in November.”

The upheaval also is testing this generation of leaders, headed by Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Both New Yorkers have refrained from publicly directing lawmakers on a path forward as they balance diverse opinions in their ranks.

Behind the scenes is Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who continues to field calls from lawmakers seeking advice about the situation, and is widely viewed as the one to watch for any ultimate decision on Biden’s future because of her proximity to the president and vote-counting skills in party politics.

Pelosi spoke up last week, saying Biden’s debate performance raised “legitimate” questions he needed to answer, but she has remained supportive of the president. And Biden called her last week when he reached out to other party leaders.

When Biden’s prime-time ABC interview on Friday appeared to do little to calm worried Democrats, and some said made the situation worse, Pelosi stepped forward to publicly praise Biden on social media as a “great President who continues to deliver for America’s kitchen table.” She added, “and we’re not done yet!”

Schumer has kept a lower profile throughout the ordeal but will convene Democratic senators Tuesday for their weekly lunch when senators are certain to air many views.

One Democrat, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, had intended to gather senators Monday to discuss Biden privately, but a person familiar with his thinking said those conversations will take place in Tuesday’s regular caucus luncheon with all Democratic senators.

Another Democrat, Sen. Alex Padilla of California, said it was “time to quit the hand-wringing and get back to door knocking.”

Padilla spoke with Biden over the weekend, and urged his campaign to “let Joe be Joe.”

“Given the debate, I think the campaign has no choice,” Padilla said Sunday, explaining that Biden needs to hold town halls and unscripted events to show voters “the Joe Biden that most people in America have come to know and love.”

While some deep-pocketed donors may be showing discomfort, strategists working on House and Senate races said they have posted record fundraising as donors view congressional Democrats as a “firewall” and last line of defense against Trump.

As Democratic candidates campaign alongside Biden, the advice has been to focus on building their own brands and amplifying the way the work that’s done in Congress affects their local districts.

This article was originally published by the Associated Press.

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By John Hanna
The Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Educators in Kansas’ largest public school district discriminated against Black and disabled students when disciplining them, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, which announced an agreement July 2 that will have the district revising its policies.

Changes the Wichita district has agreed to include restraining unruly students less often and ending the practice of putting misbehaving students alone in rooms by Jan. 1, 2025, the DOJ said.

The district also agreed to offer counseling or tutoring to every student who was confined alone in a room during the past three school years, with the number of hours matching those for which the student was secluded. The department said the district already is writing a new code of conduct for students and has scheduled crisis-prevention training for staff.

The agreement comes amid an ongoing national debate about classroom discipline and whether punishments for minority and disabled students are disproportionately harsh. The Justice Department has previously reached similar agreements with other school districts in the U.S.

The settlement “sends a powerful message to Kansas schools and schools across the nation to ensure that they must no longer alienate or target Black students or students with disabilities,” said Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas.

The Department of Justice said in a letter to the Wichita district’s attorney that it investigated disciplinary practices for the past three school years and visited the district in March 2023. It concluded that the district disciplined Black students more often and more severely than White students.

The DOJ also said that in the more than 3,000 times over three years that the district restrained or secluded students, 98 percent of those students were disabled. And it noted that hundreds of the cases involved students in kindergarten, first or second grade. More than 40 students were restrained or secluded more than 20 times each, the DOJ said.

“We substantiated allegations that the District discriminated against Black students in its administration of school discipline and referral of student conduct to law enforcement,” the department said in its letter. “We also found evidence that the District denied students with disabilities equal opportunity to participate in or benefit from its education program.”

The Wichita district has more than 46,000 students, nearly 10 percent of all students in Kansas. About 64 percent of the students are Black, Hispanic or have multiple ethnicities, according to State Department of Education figures, and the state considers nearly 78 percent to be at risk of failing academically.

The DOJ said the district cooperated throughout its investigation and had “expressed a desire to make positive improvements.”

“We can and must create a more equitable school district by changing some of our practices and procedures,” Superintendent Kelly Bielefeld said in an online statement after the Wichita school board approved the agreement. “Safe learning communities — for students and staff — will always be of the utmost importance.”

Disability rights advocates in numerous states for years have criticized restraints and seclusion for disabled students, saying the punishments are overused and dangerous.

In 2022, Iowa’s second-largest school district promised to end the use of seclusion rooms after the Department of Justice concluded that it had violated the federal Americans with Disabilities Act. In 2023, Alaska’s largest district agreed to stop secluding students and to use restraints only when there is a real risk of physical harm to the student or others.

Kansas law already dictates that restraint can be used only when there is an imminent risk that students will seriously harm themselves or others, according to Nichols.

“Wichita public schools should have been following that requirement all along,” he said.

In other states, pressure to do more about unruly students has led officials to go in a different direction.

Arkansas last year expanded its restraint law so that — in addition to teachers — other school staff can restrain students in some cases. Some states still allow corporal punishment: A southwestern Missouri district reinstituted student spanking in 2022 as a form of discipline, but only in cases where the parents agree.

In Wichita, the Department of Justice said, the difference in discipline for Black and White girls was “particularly pronounced.” At one middle school, Black girls faced being punished for insubordination 4.5 times as often as White girls and were cited for dress code violations 3.6 times as often, the DOJ letter said. Wichita schools restrained students 1,570 times over three years and put them in seclusion 1,450 times, the letter added.

“We concluded that most of the District’s restraints and all its seclusions were improper under both District policy and generally accepted practice,” the letter said.

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The Associated Press

UPPER MARLBORO, Md. (AP) — Minnesota Vikings rookie cornerback Khyree Jackson and two of his former high school teammates were killed in an early morning car crash July 6 in Maryland, police and the team said.

Jackson, 24, and Isaiah Hazel died at the scene, while Anthony Lytton Jr., was pronounced dead at a hospital after the three-car crash in Prince George’s County, according to Maryland State Police. Lytton was 24 and Hazel was 23.

The three were in the same vehicle just after 3 a.m. when it was struck by another vehicle that was speeding and changing lanes, police said.

The Vikings released a statement saying the team spoke to Jackson’s family, and is “devastated by the news.”

“I am heartbroken by the loss of Khyree,” Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah said. “As we got to know him throughout the pre-draft process, it was clear the goals Khyree wanted to accomplish both professionally and personally. His story was one of resilience. He was taking steps to become the best version of himself not just for him, but for those who cared about and looked up to him.”

Jackson was a fourth-round draft pick by the Vikings in April. He played two years at Alabama before finishing his college career with one season at Oregon.

Jackson was in the running to earn a starting cornerback job at the team’s training camp, which opens later this month in Eagan, Minnesota.

“I am absolutely crushed by this news,” Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell said. “Khyree brought a contagious energy to our facility and our team. His confidence and engaging personality immediately drew his teammates to him.”

Hazel played college football at Maryland and Charlotte, and Lytton played at Florida State and Penn State.

The three won a state championship together at Maryland’s Dr. Henry A. Wise Jr. High School, which paid tribute to them in a social media post.

Hazel was driving, and Jackson and Lytton were passengers in a Dodge Charger, which veered off the road after being hit and struck multiple tree stumps, police said.

Investigators believe the driver of a second vehicle traveling north attempted to change lanes “at a high rate of speed” when it collided with the car driven by Hazel and a third vehicle.

Nobody was injured in the second or third vehicles.

Investigators say alcohol might have been a contributing factor in the crash and charges could be coming.

Jackson was a first-team All-Pac-12 selection by The Associated Press last season after tying for second in the conference with three interceptions. His college career began in junior college in 2019.

“RIP Khyree… Love you,” Oregon coach Dan Lanning posted on social media. “At a loss for words. I will miss your smile. Great player, better person.”

___

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

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By Jill Colvin
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — For years it’s been a Republican scare tactic.

A vote to reelect President Joe Biden, the GOP often charges, is really a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. It’s an attack line sometimes tinged with racist and misogynist undertones and often macabre imagery.

But after Biden’s dismal performance at last week’s presidential debate, which has sparked Democratic calls for him to step aside, what was once dismissed as a far-right conspiracy — Harris replacing Biden — could now have a chance of coming to pass. And Republicans, including Donald Trump, are ramping up their attacks.

Trump and his allies have been rolling out new attack lines against Harris, insulting her abilities, painting her as Biden’s chief enabler and accusing her of being part of a coverup of his health. It’s an effort, campaign officials insist, that is not a reflection of their concerns about a potential change at the top of the ticket, given Biden’s insistence he is not leaving the race.

But in a post marking Independence Day on his Truth Social site July 4, Trump singled out Harris, calling her his “potentially new Democrat Challenger” and giving her a new derisive nickname: “Laffin’ Kamala Harris.”

“She did poorly in the Democrat Nominating process, starting out at Number Two, and ending up defeated and dropping out, even before getting to Iowa, but that doesn’t mean she’s not a ‘highly talented’ politician! Just ask her Mentor, the Great Willie Brown of San Francisco,” he wrote. ( Harris dated Brown in the mid-1990s.)

The post came after Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles released a statement earlier this week that offered a different, but similar, moniker, calling her Biden’s “Cackling Copilot Kamala Harris.”

Trump also posted an expletive-laced video, which was first reported by the Daily Beast, in which he was captured on the golf course calling Biden an “old broken down pile of crap” and declaring that he’d driven the president from the race. (Trump, in interviews, has repeatedly said he did not expect Biden to be pushed aside.)

“He’s quitting the race,” Trump said. “And that means we have Kamala. I think she’s going to be better. She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic,” he said.

Allies have also joined the attacks, painting Harris as a chief defender of Biden’s faculties and accusing her of lying to the American public.

Biden, the White House and his campaign insist he has no plans to drop out of the race. During an interview with ABC News that aired July 5 he said that only “the Lord Almighty” would drive him from the race.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back against the tenor of attacks against Harris, particularly Trump’s decision to invoke a decades-old relationship and other sexist rhetoric.

“I think it’s gross, I think it’s disturbing,” Jean-Pierre told reporters July 5 aboard Air Force One. “She should be respected in the role that she has as vice president. She should be respected like any other vice president before her who was in that room. It is appalling that, I’m going to be careful here, that a former president is saying that about a current vice president. And we should call that out — it is not OK.”

It remains unclear how Harris would fare against Trump, compared to Biden. Replacing a candidate this late in a presidential cycle — much less an incumbent president who has already sailed through the Democratic Party’s primaries — would be unprecedented in modern history, and the mechanics are complicated and potentially messy.

Polling shows that Harris’ favorability ratings are similar to Biden’s and Trump’s. A June AP-NORC poll found about 4 in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion of her. But the share of those who have an unfavorable opinion is slightly lower than for Trump and Biden, and about 1 in 10 have no opinion of her yet.

Harris, at 59 years old, would be a marked generational contrast to Trump, who is 78 years old and has also shown signs of aging. As the first woman, the first Black person and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president, she would also chart a potentially barrier-breaking candidacy that could draw the support of women, minority voters and younger people — groups with whom Trump has been working to make significant inroads.

Harris has also been the Biden administration’s leading voice on abortion rights, an animating issue for Democrats since the overturning of Roe v. Wade that could again motivate turnout this fall.

Trump’s campaign, however, said it was confident in Trump’s chances regardless of his opponent and dismissed the idea that Harris might pose a greater challenge to Trump, seeing her as a more polarizing figure than the president.

“President Trump will beat any Democrat on November 5th because he has a proven record and a agenda to Make America Great Again,” LaCivita and Wiles said in their statement.

One campaign official suggested the focus on Harris was more of a reflection of the current media focus on the Democratic ticket than a belief that she will ultimately replace Biden.

While the party has plenty of opposition research on Harris at the ready thanks to her 2020 campaign and her years as vice president, at the end of the day, they argue, the Biden record is the Harris record, and if she were to replace Biden, Trump aides wouldn’t face a totally different race.

Harris, for instance, was tapped by Biden to lead the administration’s response to drivers of the border crisis, tying her to one of his weakest issues. And if he does drop out, they argue, voters will have issues trusting the administration, Harris and the press for not shedding light on Biden’s weaknesses sooner.

“The economy’s still the economy, the border’s still the border, there’s still global conflicts,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Danielle Alvarez. “And changing the person at the top of the ticket doesn’t change those realities for American voters.”

___ Associated Press writers Linley Sanders and Josh Boak contributed to this report from Washington.

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By Dánica Coto
The Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Hurricane Beryl strengthened into what experts called an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 storm as it approached the southeast Caribbean, which began shutting down June 30 amid urgent pleas from government officials for people to take shelter.

The storm was expected to make landfall in the Windward Islands the morning of July 1. Hurricane warnings were in effect for Barbados, St. Lucia, Grenada, Tobago and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“This is a very dangerous situation,” warned the National Hurricane Center in Miami, which said that Beryl was “forecast to bring life-threatening winds and storm surge.”

Beryl was located about 250 miles (400 kilometers) southeast of Barbados. It had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 kph) and was moving west-northwest at 18 mph (30 kph). It is a compact storm, with hurricane-force winds extending 35 miles (340 kilometers) from its center.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for Martinique. A tropical storm watch was issued for Dominica, Trinidad, Haiti’s entire southern coast, and from Punta Palenque in the Dominican Republic west to the border with Haiti.

Beryl is expected to pass just south of Barbados early July 1 and then head into the Caribbean Sea as a major hurricane on a path toward Jamaica. It is expected to weaken by midweek, but will still remain a hurricane as it heads toward Mexico.

Historic hurricane

Beryl had strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane on early June 30, becoming the first major hurricane east of the Lesser Antilles on record for June, according to Philip Klotzbach, Colorado State University hurricane researcher.

It took Beryl only 42 hours to strengthen from a tropical depression to a major hurricane — a feat accomplished only six other times in Atlantic hurricane history, and with Sept. 1 as the earliest date, according to hurricane expert Sam Lillo.

Beryl is now the earliest Category 4 Atlantic hurricane on record, besting Hurricane Dennis, which became a Category 4 storm on July 8, 2005, hurricane specialist and storm surge expert Michael Lowry said.

“Beryl is an extremely dangerous and rare hurricane for this time of year in this area,” he said in a phone interview. “Unusual is an understatement. Beryl is already a historic hurricane and it hasn’t struck yet.”

Hurricane Ivan in 2004 was the last strongest hurricane to hit the southeast Caribbean, causing catastrophic damage in Grenada as a Category 3 storm.

“So this is a serious threat, a very serious threat,” Lowry said of Beryl.

Reecia Marshall, who lives in Grenada, was working a Sunday shift at a local hotel, preparing guests and urging them to stay away from windows as she stored enough food and water for everyone.

She said she was a child when Hurricane Ivan struck, and that she doesn’t fear Beryl.

“I know it’s part of nature. I’m OK with it,” she said. “We just have to live with it.”

Forecasters warned of a life-threatening storm surge of up to 9 feet (3 meters) in areas where Beryl will make landfall, with up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain for Barbados and nearby islands.

Warm waters were fueling Beryl, with ocean heat content in the deep Atlantic the highest on record for this time of year, according to Brian McNoldy, University of Miami tropical meteorology researcher. Lowry said the waters are now warmer than they would be at the peak of the hurricane season in September.

Beryl marks the farthest east that a hurricane has formed in the tropical Atlantic in June, breaking a record set in 1933, according to Klotzbach.

“Please take this very seriously and prepare yourselves,” said Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “This is a terrible hurricane.”

Bracing for the storm

Long lines formed at gas stations and grocery stores in Barbados and other islands as people rushed to prepare for a storm that rapidly intensified.

Thousands of people were in Barbados on June 29 for the Twenty20 World Cup final, cricket’s biggest event, with Prime Minister Mia Mottley noting that not all fans were able to leave June 30, despite many rushing to change their flights.

“Some of them have never gone through a storm before,” she said. “We have plans to take care of them.”

Mottley said that all businesses should close by late June 30 and warned the airport would close by nighttime.

Across Barbados, people prepared for the storm, including Peter Corbin, 71, who helped his son put up plywood to protect his home’s glass doors. He said by phone that he worried about Beryl’s impact on islands just east of Barbados.

“That’s like a butcher cutting up a pig,” he said. “They’ve got to make a bunker somewhere. It’s going to be tough.”

In St. Lucia, Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre announced a national shutdown for Sunday evening and said that schools and businesses would remain closed on Monday.

“Preservation and protection of life is a priority,” he said.

Looking ahead

Caribbean leaders were preparing not only for Beryl, but for a cluster of thunderstorms trailing the hurricane that has a 70 percent chance of becoming a tropical depression.

“Do not let your guard down,” Mottley said.

Beryl is the second named storm in what is forecast to be an above-average hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30 in the Atlantic. Earlier this month, Tropical Storm Alberto came ashore in northeastern Mexico with heavy rains that resulted in four deaths.

On Sunday evening, a tropical depression formed near the eastern coastal city of Veracruz, with the National Hurricane Center warning of flooding and mudslides.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicts the 2024 hurricane season is likely to be well above average, with between 17 and 25 named storms. The forecast calls for as many as 13 hurricanes and four major hurricanes.

An average Atlantic hurricane season produces 14 named storms, seven of them hurricanes and three major hurricanes.

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By Maria Sherman
AP Music Writer

The BET Awards return June 30, with a performance-filled show that will kick off with a fiery set from Megan Thee Stallion, two days after the release of her third studio album.

The show, which takes place at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, will be hosted by Oscar-nominated actor Taraji P. Henson for a third time.

Performers will include Lauryn Hill and her son YG Marley, Childish Gambino, Ice Spice, Tyla, Chlöe, Coco Jones, Keke Palmer, Marsha Ambrosius, Summer Walker, GloRilla, Latto, Muni Long, Sexyy Red, Shaboozey, and Victoria Monét. Will Smith will perform a new song, though no details were announced. The Grammy and Oscar winner is still emerging from the infamous Oscars slap two years ago, with the successful launch of “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” helping boost his comeback. And country musician Tanner Adell will also perform on the BET Amplified stage.

The BET Awards will air live beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern on BET from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. It will be simulcast on Comedy Central, Logo, MTV, MTV2, Pop, TV Land, Nickelodeon at Nite and VH1.

Drake leads the nominations, just like he did last year. Those include an album of the year nod for his eighth studio album, “For All the Dogs.” One of the awards he’s up for is the music video for “First Person Shooter,” his collaboration with J. Cole that may have been a catalyst for his recent beef with rapper Kendrick Lamar.

Nicki Minaj follows with six, including for album of the year for her highly anticipated “Pink Friday 2” release. Two of her nominations were for her song with Ice Spice, “Barbie World,” part of the blockbuster “Barbie” soundtrack.

J. Cole, Sexyy Red, SZA and best new artist Grammy winner Victoria Monét tie with five nods; 21 Savage, Beyoncé, Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Tyla and Usher boast four each.

Usher will take home the lifetime achievement award — one of the highest honors at the BET Awards, given to Busta Rhymes at last year’s ceremony and Sean “Diddy” Combs the year prior. The R&B superstar is an eight-time Grammy winner who recently ended a two-year Las Vegas residency, “Usher: My Way” at the Park MGM. In February, he released his first solo album in eight years, and in August is scheduled to kick off a 24-city U.S. tour titled “Past Present Future.”

Usher’s 2024 Super Bowl halftime performance drew acclaim and included guest appearances by such stars as Alicia Keys, H.E.R., Jermaine Dupri, Lil Jon and Ludacris. His album “Confessions” has sold more than 10 million units in the U.S., ranking it among one of the best-selling music projects of all time. It launched No. 1 hits such as “Yeah!” with Ludacris and Lil Jon, “Burn” and “Confessions Part II.”

Presenters include Andra Day, Colman Domingo, DC Young Fly, Devale Ellis, Jay Ellis, Jessica Betts, Ms. Pat, Niecy Nash-Betts, Saucy Santana and more.

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By Summer Ballentine and Michael Goldberg
The Associated Press

COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) — Four Missouri prison guards were charged June 28 with murder, and a fifth with accessory to involuntary manslaughter, in the December death of a Black man who was pepper sprayed, had his face covered with a mask and was left in a position that caused him to suffocate while in custody at a correctional facility, according to a complaint filed June 28.

A group of guards making up the Department of Corrections Emergency Response Team was sweeping one of the housing units for contraband on Dec. 8, 2023, when Othel Moore Jr., 38, was pepper sprayed twice, then put in a spit hood, leg wrap and restraint chair, according to a news release from Cole County Prosecuting Attorney Locke Thompson.

Moore was then moved to a separate housing unit, where he was left in a locked cell in the hood, wrap and chair for 30 minutes, according to Thompson and probable cause statements. Thompson said multiple people heard him saying he couldn’t breathe.

Moore was eventually taken to a hospital wing and was pronounced dead. Thompson said the medical examiner ruled Moore’s cause of death was from positional asphyxiation, and his death was listed as a homicide. He confirmed the events were captured on the prison’s video surveillance system.

“After sitting down and reviewing all evidence, the dozens and dozens of interviews, all the reports, we determined that charges were appropriate,” Thompson told The Associated Press.

The complaint charges Justin Leggins, Jacob Case, Aaron Brown and Gregory Varner each with one count of second-degree murder and with one count of being an accessory to second-degree assault. A fifth guard, Bryanne Bradshaw, is charged with one count of accessory to involuntary manslaughter.

Those charged with felony murder could face between 10 and 30 years in prison, Thompson said.

Thompson said all five defendants are jailed. Multiple phone calls to numbers associated with the defendants and potential relatives were not answered June 28. Thompson said Case is the only one with a lawyer so far, but Thompson could not identify the attorney. A voice message requesting comment from the corrections officers union was not immediately returned June 28.

An attorney for Moore’s family, Andrew Stroth, has said Moore had blood coming out of his ears and nose.

“There’s a system, pattern and practice of racist and unconstitutional abuse in the Missouri Department of Corrections, and especially within the Jefferson City Correction Center,” Stroth said, adding: “It’s George Floyd 3.0 in a prison.”

After Moore was searched for contraband and stripped down to his boxers by other guards inside his cell, he was handcuffed behind his back and led outside, according to affidavits by Cole County Sheriff’s detectives.

Moore was ordered to be quiet, and when he questioned why, Leggins pepper-sprayed his face, according to affidavits.

“During a subsequent interview with Leggins, he stated that he deployed his pepper spray on the victim because he was not following directives to be quiet,” a detective wrote in an affidavit. “He then stated that he felt threatened because the victim turned towards him and ‘stepped’ or lurched at him.”

But detectives wrote in affidavits that video showed Moore was only turning his head to speak.

Another officer, Case, sprayed Moore a second time in the face for what he said was noncompliance, according to affidavits. Officers then restrained Moore’s legs with a restraint system known as a WRAP.

Officers said they then put a spit mask on him because he spit at them, according to detectives. But other staff said Moore was spitting pepper spray out of his mouth, according to affidavits.

Detectives said multiple officers heard Moore crying out for help after the mask was put on, and one heard Moore say he has asthma.

Moore then was taken to another cell and was not checked on for another 20 minutes, according to detectives. Department of Corrections staff did not evaluate or provide medical assistance to Moore until he became unresponsive, the deputies wrote.

Moore showed no aggression during the process and was complying with orders, affidavits said.

Lawyers for Moore’s mother and sister filed a wrongful death lawsuit June 28 against the officers and the Department of Corrections.

The Moore family’s lawyers described the Corrections Emergency Response Team — who interacted with Moore — as “a group that uses coercive measures to brutalize, intimidate and threaten inmates” in a copy of the lawsuit provided to AP.

The lawsuit describes Moore’s death as part of “a systematic practice of fear-mongering, infliction of pain, and intimidation tactics.”

The Missouri Department of Corrections released a statement June 28 saying Moore died in a restraint system designed to prevent injury to himself and others, and that the department has discontinued using that system.

The corrections department also said after the criminal investigation and its own internal review, 10 people involved in the incident “are no longer employed by the department or its contractors.”

The department said it “will not tolerate behaviors or conditions that endanger the wellbeing of Missourians working or living in our facilities. The department has begun implementing body-worn cameras in restrictive-housing units at maximum-security facilities, starting with Jefferson City Correctional Center, to bolster both security and accountability.”

Oriel Moore, Othel Moore’s sister, said her family never had a chance to see Othel Moore outside of prison after his childhood, adding to their heartbreak.

“He won’t get to live his life, he doesn’t even know what it is to be a grown man because he’s been in there since he was a kid,” Moore said. “He had plans. He wanted to be a productive member of society. He matters. His life matters.”

Moore, who grew up in St. Louis, was serving a 30-year sentence on a range of charges.

An AP investigation into lethal restraint used by law enforcement documented dozens of deaths between 2012 and 2021 in which officers had put someone in a spit mask or hood before they died. But those devices were rarely listed as a cause or contributing factor in the deaths.

———

Associated Press writer Ryan J. Foley contributed to this report from Iowa City, Iowa and researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.

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By Jonathan Landrum Jr. 
AP Entertainment Writer

BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — If Dionne Harmon never found an old script on New Edition’s biopic, the R&B group’s story might still be sitting on a shelf instead of becoming a highly-rated miniseries for BET.

Same can be said for other projects like “The Bobby Brown Story” and the Soul Train-inspired series “American Soul.” She might not have a household name, but she’s known in Hollywood for working on big projects and major events including the Oscars, Emmys and Golden Globes. Harmon has worked on multiple Super Bowl halftime shows, becoming the first Black woman to produce the show.

Next up, she’ll be a producer at the BET Awards on June 30 at 8 p.m. Eastern. The show will air live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.

The Emmy winner is one of the few Black women to hold a top position in the entertainment industry. She is president of Jesse Collins Entertainment, one of television’s most requested production companies. Harmon reports directly to CEO Jesse Collins, who is her fiancé.

“I’ve been grinding to build my toolbox just to be ready for these moments,” said Harmon, a Harvard University graduate who has worked at JCE since 2012.

She started at JCE as an assistant, a position she was reluctant to take until Collins introduced her to other employees who had gradually risen into high-ranking positions at the company.

Harmon accepted the job. Collins guaranteed he’d teach her everything he knew about the business, allowing her to shadow him in meetings and on phone calls.

“This is a place where you put your roots in and they grow,” she said. “On the surface, it looked like a step backwards. I had to talk down my ego, which didn’t want me to take that step. … But this was the best decision I’ve ever made.”

Harmon’s big break came through the 2017 project “The New Edition Story.”

After seeing the tremendous success of TLC’s biopic “CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story” in 2013, she realized there were more opportunities to explore.

Harmon found an old script about New Edition’s story written by Abdul Williams that had been sitting around for years, took it to Collins and convinced him to pitch the idea to Stephen Hill, BET’s president of programming at the time. The series became a massive hit on the network, but she didn’t receive producer credits.

However, Harmon did well enough to earn a promotion to director of development — without a staff — that resulted in more projects. She led the reworked format for “Hip Hop Squares” that evolved into the creation of three spin-off shows such as CMT’s “Nashville Squares,” BET’s “Celebrity Squares” and “Hollywood Squares” for CBS with Drew Barrymore. She also played a key role in the development and production of the critically acclaimed competition show “Rhythm + Flow” on Netflix, which has now expanded to France, Italy and Brazil.

Erykah Badu said Harmon was instrumental in her return for three consecutive years as host and producer of the Soul Train Awards starting in 2015. The singer called Harmon a “no-nonsense, deliberate producer.”

“With such an enigmatic work ethic, she reminds us that our best work is still inside us,” Badu said.

Under her leadership, Harmon helped JCE’s staff grow from 11 full-time employees to 25. She also spearheaded the company’s efforts to work directly with brands on content production on large-scale events with Nike, Ford, Pepsi and TikTok.

“She’s very passionate, creative and knows how to navigate a very complicated world known as Hollywood,” Collins said. “She really leads with integrity first. That has really helped her grow. Once you build a reputation of trust and you’re creative, all the doors open up for you.”

Harmon became one of the few Black women to co-produce the Oscars. And after co-executive producing the 2022 Super Bowl halftime show featuring Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige and others, she was elevated to president at JCE, overseeing creative strategy and financial growth.

Life is grand for Harmon both professionally and personally. Collins proposed to her last year. She said their relationship is a “perfect partnership” and that they both manage work-life balance well.

Harmon often thinks back to her decision to remove her ego and join JCE more than a decade ago. She would joke with her mom that if she married or met anybody, that it would be at the airport or work.

“It’s crazy how one decision can have an effect on every aspect of your life,” she said about when she interviewed at JCE. “I never in my wildest dreams. … It never crossed my mind that I would end up engaged. If someone told me that, I’d be like ‘Oh my God, what is wrong with you?'”

Harmon says Collins is “a great guy” — but at the start, he was just her boss.

“But over the course of working together and really becoming equals and moving together and building this company, it just opened the doors for something completely different.”

Harmon wants to keep building on her and JCE’s success. She wants to create more scripted shows and featured films and someday, produce the Olympics.

Collins sees directing in Harmon’s cards.

“Everything is possible for her,” he said. “But ultimately, she’ll probably end up directing at some point. She has a real eye for that type of detail.”

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By Eddie Pells
AP National Writer

EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Two steps before she reached the finish line, Sha’Carri Richardson started pounding her chest.

She knew she had it won. Anyone who doesn’t see her as the sprinter to beat later this summer at the Paris Olympics should probably think again.

Richardson notched the latest stop on her “I’m Not Back, I’m Better” tour with a 10.71-second sprint in the 100 meters at U.S. track trials on June 22 that makes her the fastest woman in the world this year and officially earned her a trip to France where the women start racing Aug. 2.

The final marked the third time in this meet that Richardson did not get off to a stellar start. It also marked the third time in the meet she finished well in the clear.

She was .09 seconds ahead of training partner Melissa Jefferson, the 2022 U.S. champion. Another sprinter in coach Dennis Mitchell’s camp, Twanisha Terry, finished third and also earned a spot on the women’s 100-meter team.

“I feel honored,” Richardson said. “I feel every chapter I’ve been through in my life prepared me for this moment.”

A few seconds after her line-crossing celebration, she was down on a knee, clearly caught up in emotion.

“The emotion was just joy because of the hard work I put in, not just physically on the track, but mentally and emotionally to grow into the mature young lady I am today,” she said.

It has been quite a ride for the 24-year-old Texan. Three years ago, she won this race, too (in 10.86 seconds), only to see the victory stripped because of a positive marijuana test that laid bare everything from her own struggles with depression to an anti-doping rulebook that hadn’t changed with the times.

That’s when the hard work began. What emerged, Richardson said, was a better and more in-tune person than the one who lit up this same Hayward Field back in 2021 — her orange hair flowing, looking like this sport’s breakout star.

It took nearly two years for the results to show up on the track again. But she won the national championship in 2023 and declared “I’m not back, I’m better,” then backed that up a month later with the world title.

“I’d say the message I’m sending out is to believe in yourself no matter what,” Richardson said, echoing much the same thoughts from last year in Budapest. “You want to remain solid in yourself. Stay grounded in yourself and your hard work.”

It’s risky business to hand her the gold medal in Paris given the competition she’ll face. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Shericka Jackson and two-time defending champion Elaine Thompson-Herah have 19 Olympic medals between them — Richardson has never been to the games — and all are slated to run at next weekend’s Jamaican trials.

A recent injury to Thompson-Herah has mixed up that math. Meanwhile, Fraser-Pryce has been a rarely seen commodity in 2024 and Jackson is the two-time world champion at 200 meters — a race Richardson finished third in at worlds and is entered in next week at trials.

Back in the U.S., the Americans are feeding off each other, and Mitchell, a huge name in sprinting in the 1990s, pulled off a rarity by placing all three of his best sprinters in the Olympics.

“The odds of getting all three is probably a point-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero-something,” Mitchell said. “But those girls didn’t care about those odds. They went out there and had a plan and they executed well and they deserve everything they got.”

Given she bettered the season’s best time despite a mediocre start and after pounding her chest and pulling up before the end of the race, it’s hard to argue that Richardson is the favorite. Asked if she had a time in mind for the Olympics, she did not bite.

“I just know that if I execute and run the race I’m trained to prepare for that the time will come with it,” she said.

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By Gerald Imray
The Associated Press

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — In a country where racial segregation was once brutally enforced, South Africa’s new coalition government has brought a Black president and a White opposition leader together in an image of unity.

Yet the power-sharing agreement sealed a week ago between President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party and the Democratic Alliance, one of South Africa’s few White-led parties, has unwittingly renewed some racial rifts.

Many Black South Africans have expressed discomfort with a White-led party being back in power, even in a coalition. The country is haunted by the apartheid system of White minority rule that ended 30 years ago but is still felt by millions among the Black majority who were ruthlessly oppressed by a White government and remain affected by unresolved issues of poverty and inequality.

South Africa is now faced with the likelihood of seeing more White people in senior government positions than ever since apartheid ended. White people make up around 7 percent of the country’s population of 62 million.

The ANC liberated South Africa from apartheid in 1994 under Nelson Mandela, the country’s first Black president. Its three-decade political dominance ended in the landmark May 29 election, forcing it to form a coalition. The DA, with its roots in liberal White parties that stood against apartheid, won the second largest share of votes.

Both have promoted their coming together in a multi-party coalition as a new unity desperately needed in a country with vast socioeconomic problems.

But history lingers. The DA suspended one of its White lawmakers June 20, days after being sworn into Parliament, over racist slurs he made in a social media video more than a decade ago. Renaldo Gouws — reportedly a student in his 20s at the time — used an especially offensive term for Black people that was infamous during apartheid and is now considered hate speech.

Gouws faces disciplinary action from his party, and the South African Human Rights Commission said it will take him to court. The DA, which previously fended off allegations of favoring Whites, is again under scrutiny.

The Congress of South African Trade Unions, an important political ally of the ANC, asserted that Gouws’ outburst was symptomatic of a DA that is “soft on racists.” The DA “needs to reflect on and address this if it wants to be accepted as a partner in the government of national unity by ordinary South Africans,” it said.

DA leader John Steenhuisen denied in a television interview that his party is dedicated only to White interests, saying it wouldn’t have won the second largest share of votes in a Black majority country if it was. The DA has Black and White lawmakers and supporters, but its only Black leader left the party in 2019, questioning its commitment to Black South Africans.

Political analyst Angelo Fick said the DA does have a “sense of whiteness” in the eyes of many South Africans and has created that by being “utterly disinterested in speaking to the concerns about race from Black South Africans.”

Shortly before Gouws’ case, racially charged language came from another direction when the MK Party of former President Jacob Zuma — once an ANC leader — called Ramaphosa a “house negro” for entering into the agreement with the DA. Zuma’s party also referred to white DA chairperson Helen Zille as Ramaphosa’s “slave master.”

The MK Party and the Economic Freedom Fighters — the third and fourth biggest parties in Parliament — have refused to join what the ANC calls a government of national unity open to all. They said the fundamental reason is the DA, which they say is committed only to the well-being of South Africa’s White minority.

“We do not agree to this marriage of convenience to consolidate the White monopoly power over the economy,” EFF leader Julius Malema said.

Malema has sometimes provoked racial tensions in demanding change, once saying, “We are not calling for the slaughtering of White people, at least for now,” and that South Africa’s “White man has been too comfortable for too long.”

He now says his party is not against White people but against a perceived “White privilege” that leaves 64 percent of Black people in poverty compared with 1 percent of White people, according to a 2021 report by the South African Human Rights Commission.

Malema represents a new opposition to the ANC by many Black South Africans frustrated over the race-based inequality that’s evident after 30 years of freedom. White people generally live in posh neighborhoods. Millions of Black people live in impoverished townships on the outskirts.

That frustration led many voters to give up on the ANC. The concerns about teaming up with the DA could weaken the party even further.

In his inauguration speech June 18, Ramaphosa recognized the “toxic” divisions that remain decades after Mandela preached racial reconciliation. “Our society remains deeply unequal and highly polarized,” Ramaphosa said.

The ANC is trying to use the coalition as a kind of reboot of Mandela’s ideals.

“To us, it doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white,” ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said of the agreement with the DA. Mandela had used the phrase to signal he was open to all races serving in South Africa’s government.

“Fundamentally,” Mbalula said, “the question is how do we move the country forward.”

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By James Pollard
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — It would have been the largest-ever private gift to a historically Black college or university: $237 million — far beyond the recipient’s endowment. The money was promised by a 30-year-old who had recounted his rise from a childhood in foster care to becoming, as he put it, Texas’ “youngest African American industrial hemp producer.”

And so, the first weekend of May, Florida A&M University celebrated Gregory Gerami’s extraordinary contribution with all the necessary pomp. He spoke at commencement. Regalia-clad administrators posed with a jumbo check. Gerami even assured the audience that “the money is in the bank.”

It wasn’t, and it may never be.

Following public backlash over its apparent failure to properly vet Gerami and the donation, FAMU said the gift is now on pause — dashing expectations of increased financial stability for the 137-year-old institution and its 9,000 students. Gerami maintains everything will ultimately work out, but other small universities he approached with proposals for major donations never got any money.

An eye-popping gift from an obscure company

Gerami contacted Florida A&M’s development office about a donation last fall, according to Shawnta Friday-Stroud, then-vice president for university advancement. University officials, including President Larry Robinson and Athletic Director Tiffani-Dawn Sykes, began meeting with him virtually shortly thereafter.

In January, Atlanta’s Spelman College publicized a $100 million gift — then considered the single largest donation to any HBCU. FAMU officials say Gerami wanted to surpass that figure. They ultimately agreed it would come through 14 million shares in his fledgling industrial hemp company.

However, the value of the company — and those shares — remains unclear.

Gerami founded Batterson Farms Corp in 2021 with aspirations of becoming a leading hemp plastics producer. While Texas Department of Agriculture records confirm the company is licensed to grow hemp, little else suggests that’s happening.

The company’s website is sparse. Affiliate links to purchase HempWood products were broken and the shopping cart payment function failed when an Associated Press reporter visited the site in late May and early June. A confusing message to investors also warned of late fees for failing to complete monthly payments on time.

Kimberly Sue Abbott, a founding board member who told the AP that she was incorrectly listed as co-CEO, cast doubt on Gerami’s self-reported value of the shares and said Batterson Farms “is not farming any hemp anywhere that I’m aware of.”

She and Gerami met around 2013 during her time on the Birmingham City Council in Alabama. She felt he needed guidance on how to “do something good with his money.” He has since invited her to partake in various ventures — none of which lasted, she said.

“He never holds to a schedule. The information that he has is always flawed somehow. Technicalities are always an issue,” she said.

Greg Wilson, HempWood’s founder, confirmed that Gerami is a customer but said he doesn’t buy much. High interest rates have dampened both home sales and interest in remodeling with products like his, Wilson said, making it a bad time for wood-alternative businesses.

Gerami described Abbott’s characterizations as “inaccurate” and outdated. Without answering whether or not Batterson Farms is growing hemp, he said his company acts as an intermediary between farmers and consumers. He refused to provide specifics about the company’s contracts, revenue and staffing.

He also claimed that a third-party developer created the company’s website, which he said was never intended to be a place where people could directly buy flooring.

NDAs, ‘misrepresentations’ and a lack of due diligence?

Florida A&M officials have shared little about their knowledge of Gerami or their vetting process.

Friday-Stroud told FAMU Foundation board members last month that an “expansive screening” into Gerami’s background produced the same information that ended up “on social media,” apparently referencing online upset over his previous reported donation attempts and his company’s obscurity.

Still, she said, they moved forward after looping in Robinson. Friday-Stroud signed a nondisclosure agreement on behalf of the foundation board on April 26 at Gerami’s request, according to a copy obtained by AP.

They also announced the donation while awaiting a still outstanding independent appraisal of the private stock’s worth, which Gerami said he assessed based on existing but undisclosed sales contracts.

Officials have acknowledged that the appraisal could return with a much lower valuation.

Stock donations and NDAs are not abnormal for university advancement offices. However, according to some higher education fundraisers, such donations usually come from wealthy shareholders of reputable public companies and NDAs should include the entire foundation board.

“You want to make certain those resources are available, always, before you make the announcement,” said W. Anthony Neal, a longtime HBCU fundraiser who dealt with Gerami in the past. “Because you don’t want to come back with egg on your face.”

Companies typically get what’s known as a 409A valuation from an independent third party before gifting shares, said Bob Musumeci, an Indiana University business professor with a background in corporate finance.

Equity ownership, employee numbers, financial projects and other details all factor into the assessment. Outside investments from things like a family trust can also boost a company’s worth beyond what sales numbers — and public data, if available — might suggest.

Gerami didn’t break any laws by flouting that norm, Musumeci said, but the fact that the gift wasn’t properly assessed before being publicized is questionable.

“I would certainly be cautiously pessimistic about it. But I can’t say whether it is or it isn’t,” he said of the valuation’s accuracy.

Both FAMU and Gerami have said the transfer of the stock certificates between their respective accounts took place in April.

A spokesperson for Carta, the equity management company they say completed the exchange, would only confirm that the platform notified Gerami on May 14 that his contract was terminated over “misrepresentations” he’d made. They declined to comment on FAMU’s assertion that it had an account with Carta and Gerami’s claim that the company sent documentation confirming the transfer.

Small schools with small endowments

Florida A&M is not the first school to receive a pitch from Gerami.

Neal, the HBCU fundraiser, was overseeing a $3.4 million fundraising campaign in 2023 for the 150th anniversary of Wiley University in Marshall, Texas, when Gerami reached out. They discussed funding for new campus facilities in the $1 million to $2 million range, Neal said, and he began the “normal vetting process” as the senior vice president of institutional advancement at the time.

But not a lot of information surfaced. After at least seven conversations, Neal sought a one-on-one meeting to verify Gerami’s legitimacy in person. Communications subsequently dropped off.

“Sometimes donors just pull out,” Neal said. “Doesn’t mean anything bad.”

However, three years prior, Coastal Carolina University also withdrew from a $95 million contribution made by an anonymous donor because he had “not fulfilled an early expectation of the arrangement,” according to a press release.

While CCU declined to name the anonymous donor in an email to AP, Gerami was identified as the benefactor last spring by The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Gerami told AP that he “considered” as many as 15 colleges and universities in recent years as part of a strategy to establish research partnerships that he said would make his company eligible for grants. Though Gerami did not disclose the names of those schools, those documented are all small institutions with scant endowments. He said he eyed institutions that needed funding and had the capacity for hydroponics, a method of growing plants without soil.

A transformative gift gone sideways

The fallout at FAMU is palpable.

The school ended its engagement with Gerami. Friday-Stroud resigned. University trustees — surprised they were left in the dark throughout the six-month process — approved a third-party investigation that state officials have joined.

Speaking May 15 before the trustees, Robinson described the announcement of Gerami’s gift as “premature at best.”

“I saw in this unprecedented gift the potential to serve our students and our athletic programs in ways unimaginable at that time,” Robinson said. “I wanted it to be real and ignored the warning signs along the way.”

Days after announcing the donation, Robinson withdrew a $15 million request to a local economic development board to enhance FAMU’s football stadium, according to records obtained by AP.

While he did not give a reason and the university declined to comment, the gift agreement shows a one-time $24 million allocation of Gerami’s donation for athletics facilities.

Millions annually were also supposed to fund scholarships, the nursing school and a student business incubator over the next decade.

The public embarrassment has worried some HBCU supporters, who hope the outsize negative attention won’t dampen an otherwise resurgent fundraising atmosphere.

“As somebody that wants HBCUs to always succeed, this is really heartbreaking because there was so much excitement,” said Marybeth Gasman, an education researcher at Rutgers University and three-time HBCU board member. “Just real, real excitement for just a transformative gift of this magnitude.”

There was a time when HBCUs might have had to gamble on an unknown miracle donor, but Gasman said that’s less common now. Long overlooked by foundations and underfunded by some states, the schools have courted and gained newfound corporate interest in recent years.

Still, public funding disparities persist. Historically Black land-grant universities in 16 states missed out on $12.6 billion over the past three decades — including $1.9 billion that should have gone to FAMU — according to a 2023 Biden administration analysis.

For his part, Gerami believes the questions over his donation are unnecessary “whack-a-mole.” He admitted the sum of his donation was his own estimate, but said he expects an independent valuation will confirm the shares’ worth within the month. He said he also believes FAMU will accept the gift once its independent probe is complete.

“Until a third-party valuation is done, this is all speculation,” Gerami said.

“We want to tread very carefully because we do not want to play games that lead to speculation without actual, factual information,” he added.

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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.

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By Mogomotsi Magome
The Associated Press

BUSHBUCKRIDGE, South Africa (AP) — The walls of Shadrack Mashabane’s hut in the rural South African town of Bushbuckridge are covered with traditional fabrics, with a small window the only source of light. What stands out among the herbs and medicines in glass bottles is a white box containing an HIV testing kit.

Mashabane is one of at least 15 traditional healers in the town who, in a pilot study, have been trained by University of the Witwatersrand researchers to conduct HIV testing and counseling in an effort to ensure as many South Africans as possible know their status.

It’s part of the largest known effort in the country to involve traditional healers in a public health goal and study the results. Later this year, at least 325 other healers will undergo the training and become certified HIV counselors. Researchers will compare rates of HIV testing by healers and clinics.

Most traditional healers were already knowledgeable about HIV — some from personal experience — and were eager to get involved, researchers said.

South Africa has one of the highest rates of HIV in the world. Stigma remains in many communities around the disease and its treatment — even though HIV antiretroviral medication and pre-exposure prophylaxis are free. Concern about privacy at clinics also keeps people from seeking help.

Many people in rural areas see traditional healers as their first point of contact for illnesses, and the project hopes they can help change attitudes.

South Africa’s large younger population is a special concern. A government study released in December showed that people living with HIV had fallen from 14 percent  in 2017 to 12.7 percent in 2022, but HIV prevalence rose among girls between 15 and 19, a phenomenon largely attributed to older men sleeping with them.

Around 2,000 traditional healers operate in the Mpumalanga province town of Bushbuckridge, home to about 750,000 people, providing traditional and spiritual services.

Mashabane said patients at first found it difficult to believe he was offering HIV testing — a service they had long expected to be available only at health clinics.

“Many were not convinced. I had to show them my certificate to prove I was qualified to do this,” he said.

The process includes the signing of consent forms to be tested, along with a follow-up with Mashabane to ensure that patients who test positive receive their treatment from the local clinic.

He said breaking the news to a patient who has tested positive for HIV is not that difficult because the illness can be treated with readily available medication. But in many cases, he has to accompany the patient to the clinic “to make it easier for them.”

Florence Khoza is another traditional healer who has been trained to test for HIV. She said risky sexual behavior is common. She often dispenses traditional herbs and medication to treat gonorrhea, but now she goes further by advising patients to test for HIV.

“I tell them it is in their best interest,” she said.

Khoza said many patients fear going to the clinic or hospital and having other community members see them collecting HIV treatment.

“In many cases I collect the HIV medication on their behalf,” she said.

Ryan Wagner, a senior research fellow with the study, said testing and treating via traditional medicine practitioners could “ultimately lead to the end of new HIV cases in communities such as rural Mpumalanga, which has some of the largest HIV burden globally.”

Researchers hope their findings will inspire South Africa’s government to roll out such training across the country.

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The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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By Mark Anderson
AP Sports Writer

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Gervonta “Tank” Davis made a triumphant return to the ring after more than a year away, once again showing why he is one of the top pound-for-pound boxers.

Armed with a punching power not typically associated with a lightweight, Davis made full use of his skills June 15 in dominating Frank Martin and knocking him out at 1:29 of the eighth round to retain the WBA championship.

“I knew the way he fell he wasn’t getting back up,” Davis said.

Davis delivered a right and two lefts to Martin’s face to send the Indianapolis resident to the canvas for his first career loss after he won his first 18 fights. Tank again proved to be one of boxing’s most ferocious punchers, improving to 30-0 — all but two by knockout.

He predicted before the fight an eight-round knockout.

“I was just throwing that out there. Next fight in the first round,” Davis said, smiling.

This fight showed why Davis, a Baltimore native and resident, was a substantial favorite at 7-1, according to BetMGM Sportsbook.

That bout between 29-year-olds headlined the 100th championship fight night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, which has been supplanted by T-Mobile Arena as Las Vegas’ prime spot for combat sports. To mark the occasion, four title fights took place, including the interim WBC light heavyweight championship that David Benavidez won by unanimous decision over Oleksandr Gvozdyk.

But there was no doubt who the main attractions were on this night, and that was clear at the June 12 press conference. Davis and Martin bantered back and forth during the news conference. Then when the two boxers did the traditional poses afterward, Davis pretended to take a swing at Martin. Martin flinched and Davis left the podium laughing.

This was Davis’ first fight since April 22, 2023, when he delivered a devastating left uppercut that handed Ryan Garcia a seventh-round knockout at T-Mobile Arena. Garcia, wearing a shirt that read “Tank’s No. 1 Fan,” congratulated and hugged the champion after the victory over Martin.

The 421-day layoff showed early as Martin won two of the first three rounds, including a right that caught Davis in the face.

That seemed to wake up Davis, who then took over the fight by repeatedly sending Martin into ropes and corners. Davis appeared ready to finish off Martin with several hard blows in the sixth round, bringing the pro-Tank crowd of 13,239 to its feet.

“I had to get in the right range,” Davis said. “He has a decent jab. I had to break him down as the fight was going on.”

Then in the eighth, Davis ended any doubts by charging after Martin early then knocking him out midway through the round. As Martin was being counted out, Davis bounced on the second rung of the ropes, jumped off, and then went to the top cords and did a backflip and stuck the landing.

“I got caught with a shot that I didn’t see,” Martin said. “It came from underneath.”

Benavidez (29-0) made a successful debut in his move up from super middleweight. The Las Vegas resident defeated Gvozdyk (20-2), a Ukraine native who trains in Oxnard, California, by scores of 116-112, 117-111 and 119-109.

Alberto Puello (23-0) of the Dominican Republic won the WBC interim super lightweight championship with a split decision over Gary Russell (17-1) of Capitol Heights, Maryland. Two judges gave Puello the victory with scores of 115-112 and 114-113 and another had it for Russell 118-109.

Dominican middleweight champion Carlos Adames (24-1) retained his WBC belt with a unanimous decision over Terrell Gausha (24-4-1) of Encino, California. Two judges scored the fight 118-110 and the other had it 119-109.

Heisman Trophy winner and Washington Commanders rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels was among those in attendance. Milwaukee Bucks star Damian Lillard, Chicago Bulls forward DeMar DeRozan and coach Antonio Pierce and owner Mark Davis of the Las Vegas Raiders also were in the crowd.

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By Jonel Aleccia
The Associated Press

People with HIV can breastfeed their babies, as long as they are taking medications that effectively suppress the virus that causes AIDS, a top U.S. pediatricians’ group said May 27 in a sharp policy change. 

The new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics reverses recommendations it had in place since the start of the HIV epidemic in the 1980s.

It recognizes that routinely prescribed drugs can reduce the risk of transmitting HIV via breast milk to less than 1 percent, said Dr. Lisa Abuogi, a pediatric HIV expert at the University of Colorado and lead author of the report. 

“The medications are so good now and the benefits for mom and baby are so important that we are at a point where it is important to engage in shared decision-making,” Abuogi said.

The drugs, known as antiretroviral therapy, don’t eliminate all risk of transmitting HIV through breast milk. Avoiding breastfeeding is the only certain way to prevent spreading the virus, Abuogi said.

In addition, parents must breastfeed exclusively for the babies’ first six months because research shows that switching between breastmilk and formula can disrupt an infant’s gut in ways that increase the risk of HIV infection.

About 5,000 people who have HIV give birth in the U.S. each year. Nearly all take drugs to suppress the virus to very low levels, Abuogi said, though viral levels can rebound if they don’t stay on them.

Before the medications became widely available starting a decade ago, about 30 percent of HIV infections transmitted from moms to babies occurred during breastfeeding, said Dr. Lynne Mofenson, an adviser to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. In the early 1990s, about 2,000 infections occurred in U.S. infants each year. Today, it’s fewer than 30. 

The AAP policy comes more than a year after the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed long standing recommendations against breastfeeding by people with HIV. That guidance said people who have consistent viral suppression should be counseled on their options. It also emphasizes that health care providers shouldn’t alert child protective services agencies if a parent with HIV seeks to breastfeed.

The goal is listening to patients “and not blaming or shaming them,” said Dr. Lynn Yee, a Northwestern University professor of obstetrics and gynecology who helped draft the NIH guidance. 

Breastfeeding provides ideal nutrition for babies and protects them against illnesses and conditions such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes, research shows. Nursing also reduces the mother’s risk of breast and ovarian cancer, diabetes and high blood pressure.

The World Health Organization has recommended since 2010 that women with HIV in developing countries breastfeed their infants and have access to antiretroviral therapy. The guidance weighed the risk of infants acquiring HIV through breastfeeding and the risk of babies dying from malnutrition, diarrhea and pneumonia in places where safe replacements for breast milk aren’t available.

In developed nations, however, experts had recommended against breastfeeding because the wide availability of safe water, formula and human donor milk could eliminate the risk of HIV transmission, Yee said.

That frustrated people with HIV who were flatly refused the option of nursing. 

Ci Ci Covin, 36, of Philadelphia, said she was diagnosed with HIV at age 20 and not permitted to breastfeed her first child, Zion, now 13.

“I couldn’t understand how come my sister that lives in a place like Kenya, who looks just like me with the same color brown skin, was given the option to breastfeed and how my option was starkly no,” she said. 

Not being able to nurse her son sent Covin into a spiral of postpartum depression, she said. When she became pregnant with her now 2-year-old daughter, Zuri, her health care team helped her successfully breastfeed for seven months. Covin took her prescriptions as directed and also gave the baby drugs to prevent infection. 

“Breast milk has everything in it that my baby would need,” Covin said. “That’s a beautiful thing.” 

Abuogi said the AAP report provides crucial guidance for pediatricians, nurses and lactation specialists who work directly with children and families.

Some providers were already helping people treated for HIV to nurse their babies, despite the earlier recommendations. The new guidance should expand the practice, hopefully quickly, Abuogi said.

“This is a unique situation because it’s not just doctors and providers who are changing,” Abuogi said. “Our patients are pushing this as well.”

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This article was originally published by The Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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By Darren Sands
The Associated Press

CALVERTON, Md. (AP) — The Rev. Matthew L. Watley says it’s not happenstance his suburban Maryland congregation, part of the historically Black African Methodist Episcopal denomination, landed at the top of a list of the fastest-growing churches in America.

From hearing his call to ministry while dancing with his Step Afrika troupe in South Africa to giving up his law school aspirations and enrolling at Howard School of Divinity, all paths led to the pulpit — and eventually Kingdom Fellowship AME Church — for this son and grandson of AME ministers.

“There’s a phrase that says, ‘In America we believe in God, but in Africa, they depend on God,'” said Watley, who also met his wife, a lawyer and federal lobbyist, at Howard. “I had never seen faith like that before.”

In 2019, the year Kingdom Fellowship AME was founded, the church had about 3,000 members and an average weekly attendance of about 1,800 people, according to the church’s figures. Today, membership has swelled to nearly 8,000, and its weekly services draw about 2,500 attendees altogether.

On a recent Sunday morning, Watley, 50, preached to a packed sanctuary from the Gospel of Luke about Zacchaeus’ transformative meeting with Jesus. The short and corrupt tax collector changed his ways after climbing a tree to see Jesus over the crowd.

“When Zacchaeus climbed that tree, that was his way of doing what he needed to do to become whole — to become healed from the stuff he’d been carrying his whole life,” Watley said.

Afterward more than 20 people, some with tears in their eyes, retreated to an intake room for new members. Kingdom Fellowship is averaging about 110 additions per month, according to the church’s count.

Before Kingdom Fellowship, Watley built a robust following for years through a ministry called Power Lunch, the first of which drew about 300 people. These were midday worship hours held in the District of Columbia and the greater Washington metropolitan area that provided attendees with a to-go meal before they headed back to work.

Watley also brought a church to the people, taking note of the scores of Black Americans relocating from D.C. to the suburbs and in need of a place to worship. Although outside the District, Watley and Kingdom Fellowship have remained in the capital’s political orbit, sharing his pulpit with Baptist pastor and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga.; and hosting Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff for the inaugural service in its new church building. They have also welcomed Angela Alsobrooks, the Democratic U.S. Senate nominee challenging former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, among other politicians.

But Kingdom Fellowship still wants to be identified with its homespun hospitality and a culture that puts its members on equal footing regardless of what they do outside the church.

“We appreciate that you’re the CEO, whatever. We need some help on the parking lot. It’s great you’re … the head of the ER medical unit. We need somebody to hold this door. And that’s the culture,” Watley said.

Kingdom Fellowship began as a satellite campus of the growing Reid Temple AME Church in nearby Montgomery County, which is where Watley served as executive pastor, overseeing the budget, local ministries and its 132,000 square-foot-facility featuring a sanctuary, credit union and bookstore that was completed in 2004. Watley also served as the de facto chief of staff for Reid Temple’s senior pastor, the Rev. Lee Washington.

“He had a lot of ideas,” said Washington, who recently retired. “I gave him the freedom and the flexibility to do what he thought was best.”

With Washington’s blessing, those ideas included launching Reid Temple North with a small contingent of volunteers. They held the first worship service in 2006 in the Montgomery Blair High School cafeteria, where they met until 2010. The growing congregation moved into a renovated building in Silver Spring, Maryland, where Watley added a second Sunday service in 2011 and a third in 2013. The campus eventually became financially self-sufficient.

Instead of naming Watley his successor, Washington with an eye on retirement opted to spin-off Reid Temple North as an independent church. It was renamed Kingdom Fellowship AME and Watley became its inaugural senior pastor in 2019.

“Our church was growing by leaps and bounds, and I did not believe in hoarding,” Washington said. “I believe in sharing.”

Watley, even as a young leader, was noticed within the denomination for his maturity and strong opinions, said Bishop James Levert Davis, the presiding prelate for the AME district that includes Kingdom Fellowship. Davis has selected Watley to be part of his district’s delegation to the upcoming AME General Conference where the denomination’s ban on same-sex marriage is expected to be debated — an issue Watley hopes won’t cause a schism.

“I tease Matthew constantly telling him that he’s the oldest young person that I know,” Davis said. “Between his father and his grandfather, he has been anchored and nurtured by the best of who we are.”

Watley’s role as the first leader of Kingdom Fellowship also came with a nerve-wracking capital project — building a new worship center with sky-high ceilings and an amphitheater-style sanctuary. Not only was there a recent example of a similar project falling apart at another church in the region, but Kingdom Fellowship was preparing to break ground when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“I was very cognizant of that. Absolutely,” Watley said.

But no one pulled out: neither the bank nor the contractor or the congregation. Instead, members of Kingdom Fellowship increased their giving, and the congregation celebrated their first service in the new worship center in 2022 for Easter. Recently, Outreach magazine named the church the fastest growing, a ranking based on a self-reported Lifeway Research survey that compared average weekly, in-person attendance for February and March 2023 to 2022 numbers.

In the U.S., Black Protestants’ monthly church attendance declined 15 percent from 2019 to 2023, a larger drop than any other major religious group, according to a 2023 Pew Research study. They are also more likely than other groups to take in religious services online or on TV, with more than half (54 percent) saying they attend services virtually.

The pace of growth at Kingdom Fellowship AME has been rapid but seamless, said Sharon and Billy Watts, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland. What has remained constant is the kindness and care of church staff, they said.

The couple previously attended Reid Temple North where they got to regularly witness Watley’s gift for preaching and reaching people. Watley inspires outside the church, too, said Sharon Watts, noting the speech the pastor gave at her husband’s retirement party that had the crowd of soon-to-be retirees wondering how and where they could hear Watley again.

“It’s something about that man and what he brings forth in his preaching,” said Sharon Watts, who first noticed Watley’s knack for drawing crowds in the Power Lunch days. “To me it seems like we’re called to bring the community together, to hear the word of God, to not just prepare them spiritually, but to prepare the whole person.”

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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.

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By Maria Sherman 
AP Music Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Every June since the 1970s, across the United States, musicians, fans and industry professionals celebrate Black Music Month. It’s an opportunity to highlight the contributions of Black artists and position Black art at the center of American culture across popular music and beyond.

Black Music Month ‘s origins trace back to 1979. In that year, a decade after the Civil Rights era, President Jimmy Carter designated June a time to celebrate the cultural and historical significance of Black musicianship and held the first ever Black Music Month celebration on the White House lawn. That makes 2024 its 45th annual commemoration.

But what inspired Black Music Month in the first place, and how has it evolved?

WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF BLACK MUSIC MONTH?

Black Music Month was originally founded in 1979, but not by President Carter. Credit goes to Philadelphia soul pioneer Kenny Gamble of Gamble and Huff and a couple of other associates, said Naima Cochrane of the Black Music Action Coalition, an advocacy organization founded in June 2020 following a music industry blackout in response to the murder of George Floyd.

“Black Music Month was founded out of an organization called the Black Music Association,” she says.

Gamble based his organization, founded in 1978, on the Country Music Association because he saw how much power and influence they held in the country music business, Cochrane explains. He aimed to do the same with Black stakeholders in the music industry. Those included promoters, retailers, bookers, venue owners, executives, artists and household names like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Motown Records founder Berry Gordy.

Black Music Month, coincidentally, was brought forth by Gamble, Cleveland radio DJ Ed Wright, and media strategist Dyana Williams.

“Black Music Month was originally created to promote, protect, and perpetuate the business of Black music, not just to celebrate Black music,” says Cochrane. “The tagline was originally ‘Black music is green,’ and it was meant as a way to drive retail sales to increase awareness for the artists but honestly, really to increase the business of Black music, and not just to celebrate the history of Black music.”

“It’s evolved into something different over the years… The original intention has gotten lost,” she says. “The original purpose of the month was to prove that the business of Black music was profitable.”

HOW IS BLACK MUSIC MONTH CELEBRATED?

Each June, Black Music Month is recognized with a presidential proclamation.

“During Black Music Month, we celebrate the Black artists and creatives whose work has so often been a tidal wave of change — not only by defining the American songbook and culture but also by capturing our greatest hopes for the future and pushing us to march forward together,” President Joe Biden’s 2024 proclamation read. “Black music is a staple of American art and a powerhouse of our culture — that is why we must continue to open doors for the next generation of Black artists.”

This year, Biden will once again celebrate Black Music Month with a Juneteenth concert featuring Patti LaBelle, Gladys Knight, Charlie Wilson, Kirk Franklin, Anthony Hamilton, Brittney Spencer, Trombone Shorty and more.

Under the Obama Administration, Black Music Month was re-named African-American Music Appreciation Month but it’s since gone back to its roots.

Black Music Month “is an acknowledgement that Black music is an original American artform and has influence in almost every other American art form. But it was designed to drive the business of Black music to Black stakeholders,” Cochrane added.

In the years since its origins, Black Music Month has often been used as a salute to Black music excellence: 30 days to celebrate Black musicianship across media platforms, museums, streaming platforms and beyond. But some fear that concentrating the observance might have limiting effects.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE DIFFERING OPINIONS ABOUT BLACK MUSIC MONTH?

“I always felt conflicted: happy to see the uplifting of Black artists but disappointed that Black Music Month only benefitted superstars (and ostensibly turned the other 11 months over to white musicians),” 4AD Records label manager Nabil Ayers wrote of Black Music Month in 2021.

“Musically, the Black Music Month that I knew in the ’90s and 2000s focused on the artists who could potentially sell the most records,” he continued. “But the reality is that it costs money to make music, and financial support for artists matters now more than ever.”

Of course, there are varying opinions. In 2016, Philadelphia resident Branford Jones started They Have the Range, a popular Instagram account with one million followers, dedicated to showcasing Black singers.

“When I created it, Black music programming wasn’t really there,” he says, noting a few other performance pages that “weren’t posting everyday Black people,” and a modern-day dearth of shows like “Soul Train” or BET’s “106th and Park.”

“For They Have the Range, every month is Black Music Month,” Jones says, laughing. “But it’s important to have a Black Music Month, especially in a time where so many people are trying to erase historical context. … We know how much Black folks have contributed to the world when it comes to music.”

He cites the Hulu series “The 1619 Project” as an influence: “One of the things they said about Black music is that it’s uncatchable. Every single decade, (Black music) has been able to shift, change, and lead the masses.”

For him, Black Music Month is an opportunity for celebration that can endure all year long — and it feels especially poignant that it lands in the month that also holds Juneteenth.

“As time moves on, more brands will become involved, more people will get involved,” he says. “And so it is important to recognize it.”

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By John Leicester 
The Associated Press

OMAHA BEACH, France (AP) — A medal richly deserved but long denied to an African-American combat medic wounded on Omaha Beach in the D-Day landings was tenderly laid June 7 on the hallowed sands where he saved lives and shed blood.

U.S. First Army soldiers held a ceremony in honor of Waverly Woodson Jr. on the beach where he came ashore and was wounded, and where hundreds of American soldiers were killed by withering fire in the June 6, 1944, landings in Normandy, northern France.

The Distinguished Service Cross is the second-highest honor that can be bestowed on a member of the U.S. Army and is awarded for extraordinary heroism.

The medal was awarded posthumously to Woodson this month — just ahead of the 80th anniversary of D-Day — following years of lobbying for more recognition of his achievement on that fateful day.

U.S. First Army Maj. Gen. William Ryan gently placed the World War II-era medal on the sand, close to the spot where Woodson is thought to have come ashore on the now-peaceful beach that on D-Day was raked by German machine-gun and artillery rounds before U.S. forces finally captured it and started pushing inland.

The soldiers all saluted, still and quiet under blue skies, when U.S. First Army Command Sgt. Maj. Christopher Prosser gave the order to present arms.

U.S. First Army historian Capt. Kevin Braafladt explained to the soldiers that the next step would be the medal’s presentation to Woodson’s widow, 95-year-old Joann. It will be given to his family in a ceremony later this summer.

“We want to be able to say that this medal came from Omaha Beach and was at the site of Woodson’s actions,” Braafladt said.

The soldiers delicately passed the medal from hand-to-hand, feeling its weight and inspecting it.

The ceremony moved U.S. First Army Staff Sgt. Aaron Williams, who is Black, to tears.

“Understanding my position as an African American and to learn about Corporal Woodson and everything he experienced here on Omaha and in Normandy is very touching to me, and to be here in the exact spot, it’s just historic,” Williams said. “It’s very, very touching.”

Woodson was just 21 years old when his First Army unit, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, took part in the Allied operation that helped precipitate Adolf Hitler’s downfall 11 months later.

Woodson’s battalion, the only African-American combat unit on Omaha that day, was responsible for setting up high-flying inflatable balloons to prevent enemy planes from buzzing over the beach and attacking the Allied forces.

At a time when the U.S. military was still segregated by race, about 2,000 African-American troops are believed to have taken part in the D-Day invasion.

Woodson died in 2005, at age 83, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

His son, 66-year-old Stephen Woodson, fought back tears June 7 when The Associated Press described the ceremony to him by phone.

“I’ve got chills,” he said. “My father is receiving a lot of attention that is long overdue. It’s almost beyond words for me to describe how important this is for my family.”

Waverly Woodson himself spoke to the AP in 1994 about how his landing craft came under intense fire from German gunners as it approached the beach.

“The tide brought us in, and that’s when the 88s hit us,” he said of the German 88mm guns. “They were murder. Of our 26 Navy personnel there was only one left. They raked the whole top of the ship and killed all the crew. Then they started with the mortar shells,” Woodson said in the interview.

For the next 30 hours he treated 200 wounded men while under intense small arms and artillery fire before collapsing from his injuries and blood loss, according to accounts of his service. At the time he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Although 1.2 million Black Americans served in the military during World War II, none was among the original recipients of the Medal of Honor awarded in the conflict.

The Army commissioned a study in the early 1990s to analyze whether Black troops had been unjustly overlooked during an era of widespread racism and segregation in the military. Ultimately, seven Black World War II troops were awarded the Medal of Honor in 1997.

___

Associated Press writer Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.

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By Gerald Imray and Mogomotsi Magome
The Associated Press

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The African National Congress party lost its majority in a historic election result June 1 that puts South Africa on a new political path for the first time since the end of the apartheid system of White minority rule 30 years ago.

With more than 99 percent of votes counted, the once-dominant ANC had received just over 40 percent in the June 29 parliamentary election, well short of the majority it had held since the all-race vote of 1994 that ended apartheid and brought it to power under Nelson Mandela.

The final results are still to be formally declared June 2 by the Independent Electoral Commission, but the ANC cannot pass 50 percent and an era of coalition government — also a first for South Africa — is looming.

The ANC remains the biggest party despite a staggering loss of support since the last election in 2019 as South Africa struggles with deep poverty and inequality. The country has one of the highest unemployment rates in the world and voters also blamed the ANC for shortages of clean water, electricity, housing and other services.

The ANC will now likely need to look for a coalition partner or partners to remain in the government and reelect President Cyril Ramaphosa for a second and final term. Parliament must meet to elect the South African president within 14 days after the election result is declared.

“The way to rescue South Africa is to break the ANC’s majority and we have done that,” said John Steenhuisen, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance party.

Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters opposition party, said that the ANC’s “entitlement of being the sole dominant party” was over.

The way forward could be complicated for Africa’s most advanced economy, and there’s no coalition on the table yet. The three main opposition parties and many more smaller ones are in the mix as the bargaining begins.

“We can talk to anybody and everybody,” ANC Chairman Gwede Mantashe said on national broadcaster SABC.

Steenhuisen’s Democratic Alliance received around 21 percent of the vote. The new MK Party of former President Jacob Zuma, who has turned against the ANC he once led, was third with just over 14 percent of the vote in the first election it has contested. The Economic Freedom Fighters was fourth with just over 9 percent.

More than 50 parties contested the election, many of them winning tiny shares, but the three main opposition parties appear to be the most obvious for the ANC to approach.

Electoral commission Chairman Mosotho Moepya said it was a time for everyone to keep calm “and for leaders to lead and for voices of reason to continue to prevail.”

“This is a moment we need to manage and manage well,” he said.

Steenhuisen said his party is open to discussions with the ANC, as did Malema. The MK Party said one of their conditions for any agreement was that Ramaphosa be removed as ANC leader and president. That underlined the fierce personal political battle between Zuma, who resigned as South African president under a cloud of corruption allegations in 2018, and Ramaphosa, who replaced him.

“We are willing to negotiate with the ANC, but not the ANC of Cyril Ramaphosa,” MK Party spokesperson Nhlamulo Ndlela said.

MK and the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters have called for parts of the economy to be nationalized.

The centrist Democratic Alliance, or DA, is viewed as business-friendly. Analysts say an ANC-DA coalition would be more welcomed by foreign investors.

DA has been the most critical opposition party for years and doesn’t share the ANC’s pro-Russia and pro-China foreign policy. South Africa takes over the presidency of the Group of 20 industrialized and emerging-market nations next year.

An ANC-DA coalition “would be a marriage of two drunk people in Las Vegas. It will never work,” Gayton McKenzie, the leader of the smaller Patriotic Alliance party, told South African media.

DA says an ANC-MK-EFF agreement would be a “doomsday coalition” given MK and EFF are made up of former ANC figures and would pursue the same failed policies.

The three opposition parties had a combined share that was bigger than the ANC, but they are highly unlikely to all work together. The DA was also part of a preelection agreement with other smaller parties to potentially form a coalition.

Amid it all, there was no sense of celebrations from ordinary South Africans, but rather the realization that a rocky political road was ahead. The Daily Maverick newspaper had a South African scratching his head with the words: “What Does It Mean For Our Future?” on its front page. The Die Burger newspaper led with an image of about a dozen political parties’ logos going into a meat grinder.

South African opposition parties were united in one thing — something had to change in the country of 62 million, which is Africa’s most developed but also one of the most unequal in the world.

The official unemployment rate is 32 percent and the poverty disproportionately affects Black people, who make up 80 percent of the population and have been the core of the ANC’s support for years. The violent crime rate is also high.

The ANC has seen a steady decline in its support over the last 20 years, but by around three to five percentage points each election. It dropped 17 percentage points this time from the 57.5 percent it won in 2019.

Nearly 28 million South Africans were registered to vote, and turnout was expected to be around 60 percent, according to the electoral commission.

People lined up on a cold winter night and waited hours after the official poll closing time, with some votes being cast at 3 a.m. the following day. That indicated the desire from many to have their say, but also reflected one of South Africa’s inherent problems — some voting stations had delays because of electricity outages plunging them into the dark.

___

Gerald Imray reported from Cape Town.

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By Dino Hazell 
The Associated Press

Half a year after the nation’s capital bid an emotional farewell to its giant pandas, the National Zoo is expecting a renewed surge in panda-mania with the announcement that two more of the furry black-and-white icons will be coming to Washington. 

The zoo announced May 29 that a fresh agreement had been struck with the Chinese government, and a pair of adult pandas would be arriving from China by the end of the year. The Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute said the incoming pair are Bao Li (pronounced BOW’-lee) and Qing Bao (ching-BOW’). 

“We’re thrilled to announce the next chapter of our breeding and conservation partnership begins by welcoming two new bears, including a descendent of our beloved panda family, to Washington, D.C.,” said Brandie Smith, the zoo’s director. “This historic moment is proof positive our collaboration with Chinese colleagues has made an irrefutable impact.”

Giant pandas are prized in Washington and around the nation and the world. The number of pandas in American zoos has dwindled as loan agreements lapsed during diplomatic tensions between the U.S. and China that remain high over economic relations, technology, trade, Taiwan and even a spy balloon. Washington’s three pandas returned to China last November. 

For more than five decades, the institute has created and maintained one of the world’s foremost giant panda conservation programs, helping move the panda from “endangered” to “vulnerable” on the global list of species at risk of extinction.

Chinese President Xi Jinping had signaled during a trip in late 2023 that China would be sending new pandas to the United States. He called them “envoys of friendship between the Chinese and American peoples.”

The zoo accompanied the announcement with a light-hearted video featuring Smith, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and first lady Jill Biden. The trio in the video are gathered to discuss protocol for a reception to welcome unnamed honored guests. When Biden asks about attire and menu, Smith dryly replies that the impending guests are “strict vegetarians” who are “partial to black and white.”

Last November, giant pandas Tian Tian and Mei Xiang and their cub, Xiao Qi Ji, went back to China, prompting a nationwide outpouring of farewell from millions of U.S. panda fans of all ages. The trio’s departure left only one panda family remaining in American zoos, at Zoo Atlanta, and those remain scheduled to return to China later this year. 

Zoo Atlanta is making preparations to return panda parents Lun Lun and Yang Yang along with their American-born twins Ya Lun and Xi Lun, zoo officials said earlier this month.

It’s possible that America will welcome another new panda pair before the Atlanta bears depart. The San Diego Zoo said last month that staff members recently traveled to China to meet pandas Yun Chuan and Xin Bao, which could arrive in California as soon as this summer. A separate agreement was also announced to send a breeding pair of pandas to San Francisco as well. 

Pandas have been a symbol of U.S.-China friendship since Beijing sent a pair to the National Zoo in 1972, ahead of the normalization of bilateral relations. Later, Beijing loaned pandas to other U.S. zoos, with proceeds going back to panda conservation programs.

When U.S-China relations began to sour in recent years, members of the Chinese public started to demand the return of giant pandas. Unproven allegations that U.S. zoos mistreated the pandas, known as China’s “national treasure,” flooded China’s social media.

The National Zoo said the pandas coming to Washington are:

— Bao Li, a two-year-old male whose name means “treasure” and “energetic.” He was born Aug. 4, 2021, at the China Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda in Sichuan to father An An and mother Bao Bao. The zoo said Bao Li’s mother was born at the zoo in 2013, and his grandparents Tian Tian and Mei Xiang lived at the zoo from 2000 to 2023. It was Mei Xiang and Tian Tian, along with their cub Xiao Qi Ji, who left the zoo in November.

— Qing Bao, a two-year-old female whose name means “green” and “treasure.” She was born Sept. 12, 2021.

A research and breeding agreement with the Chinese runs through April 2034 and, like previous ones, says any cubs born at the zoo will move to China by age four, according to the announcement. The zoo will pay a $1 million annual fee to the China Wildlife Conservation Association to support research and conservation efforts in China.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Darlene Superville 
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — On election night 2008, as Barack Obama sat nervously in a Chicago hotel suite and awaited news on whether he would become the country’s first Black president, his mother-in-law was by his side.

“Are you ready for this, Grandma?” Obama asked Marian Shields Robinson, who years earlier had doubted that he and her daughter, Michelle, would last.

Six months, tops, she had predicted.

“Never one to overemote, my mom just gave him a sideways look and shrugged, causing them both to smile,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir, “Becoming.” “Later, though, she’d describe to me how overcome she’d felt right then, struck just as I’d been by his vulnerability. America had come to see Barack as self-assured and powerful, but my mother also recognized the gravity of the passage, the loneliness of the job ahead.”

She continued: “The next time I looked over, I saw that she and Barack were holding hands.”

The union of Barack and Michelle Obama, the 20-something lawyers who met one summer while working at a Chicago law firm, endured and made history. In her own way, Mrs. Robinson would, too.

She died peacefully on May 31, the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, and their families announced in a statement.

“There was and will be only one Marian Robinson,” they said. “In our sadness, we are lifted up by the extraordinary gift of her life. And we will spend the rest of ours trying to live up to her example.”

Besides being the mother of the nation’s first Black first lady, Mrs. Robinson was also unusual for being one of the few in-laws who lived at the White House with the president and his immediate family.

Until January 2009, Mrs. Robinson had lived her entire life in Chicago. She was a widow and in her early 70s when Obama was elected in 2008 and resisted the idea of starting over in Washington. President Obama said the family suggested she try Washington for three months before deciding. The first lady enlisted her brother to help persuade their mother to move.

“There were many good and valid reasons that Michelle raised with me, not the least of which was the opportunity to continue spending time with my granddaughters, Malia and Sasha, and to assist in giving them a sense of normalcy that is a priority for both of their parents, as has been from the time Barack began his political career,” Mrs. Robinson wrote in the foreword to “A Game of Character,” a memoir by her son, formerly the head men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University.

“My feeling, however, was that I could visit periodically without actually moving in and still be there for the girls,” she said.

Mrs. Robinson said her son understood why she wanted to stay in Chicago, but still used a line of reasoning on her that she would use on him and his sister. He asked her to think of the move as an opportunity to grow and try something new.

“As a compromise, I opted to move to the White House after all, at least temporarily, while still reserving lots of time to travel and maintain a certain amount of autonomy,” she wrote.

Granddaughters Malia and Sasha were just 10 and 7, respectively, when they started to call the executive mansion home in 2009 after their dad became president. In Chicago, Mrs. Robinson had become almost a surrogate parent to them during the presidential campaign. She retired from her job as a bank secretary to help shuttle them around.

At the White House, she was a reassuring presence, and her lack of Secret Service protection made it possible for her to accompany them to and from school daily without fanfare.

“I would not be who I am today without the steady hand and unconditional love of my mother, Marian Shields Robinson,” Michelle Obama wrote in her memoir. “She has always been my rock, allowing me the freedom to be who I am, while never allowing my feet to get too far off the ground. Her boundless love for my girls, and her willingness to put our needs before her own, gave me the comfort and confidence to venture out into the world knowing they were safe and cherished at home.”

Her White House life was not limited to caring for her granddaughters.

Mrs. Robinson enjoyed a level of anonymity that the president and first lady openly envied, allowing her to come and go from the White House as often as she pleased on shopping trips around town, to the president’s box at the Kennedy Center and to Las Vegas or to visit her other grandchildren in Portland, Oregon. She gave a few media interviews but never to White House press.

She attended some White House events, including concerts, the annual Easter Egg Roll and National Christmas Tree lighting, and was a guest at some state dinners.

White House residency also opened up the world to Mrs. Robinson, who had been widowed for nearly 20 years when she moved to a room on the third floor, one floor above the first family.

She had never traveled outside the U.S. until she moved to Washington, taking her first flight abroad on Air Force One in 2009 when the Obamas visited France. She joined them on a trip to Russia, Italy and Ghana later that year, during which she got to meet Pope Benedict, tour Rome’s ancient Colosseum and view a former slave-holding compound on the African coast.

She also accompanied her daughter and granddaughters on two overseas trips without the president to South Africa and Botswana in 2011, and China in 2014.

Craig Robinson wrote that he and his parents doubted whether his sister’s relationship with Obama would last, though Fraser Robinson III and his wife thought the young lawyer was a worthy suitor for their daughter, also a lawyer. Craig Robinson and his parents were sitting on the front porch of their Chicago home one hot summer night when Obama and his sister stopped by on their way to a movie.

Her parents exchanged knowing glances as soon as the couple departed. “Too bad,” Mrs. Robinson said. “Yep,” answered Fraser Robinson. “She’ll eat him alive.”

Craig Robinson wrote that his mother gave the relationship six months. Barack and Michelle Obama tied the knot on Oct. 3, 1992 and have been married for 31 years.

Marian Lois Shields Robinson was born in Chicago on July 30, 1937. She attended two years of teaching college, married in 1960 and, as a stay-at-home mom, stressed the importance of education to her children. Both were educated at Ivy League schools, each with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton. Michelle Obama also has a law degree from Harvard.

Fraser Robinson was a pump operator for the Chicago Water Department. He had multiple sclerosis and died in 1991.

Besides the Obama family, Mrs. Robinson is survived by her son, Craig, his wife, Kelly, and their children Avery, Austin, Aaron and Leslie.

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By Will Graves
AP National Writer

FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — Gabby Douglas’ long shot bid to make the U.S. women’s gymnastics team for the Paris Olympics is over.

The 2012 Olympic all-around champion withdrew from the USA Gymnastics Championships on May 29, citing an ankle injury.

The 28-year-old Douglas, who also helped the U.S. win gold in the team competition at the 2016 Olympics, had been attempting a comeback after an eight-year layoff.

She returned to competition at the American Classic last month and made her first appearance at a major U.S. meet at the U.S. Classic in Hartford, Connecticut, two weeks ago.

Douglas fell twice on the uneven bars in her first rotation, finishing her routine while the crowd chanted her name. She withdrew from the remainder of the meet but did not offer specifics.

Douglas qualified to compete in three events — vault, uneven bars and balance beam — but did not meet the minimum score standard to compete in the all-around, limiting her chances of making what will be a highly competitive five-woman U.S. team.

Douglas, the first Black woman to win the Olympic title, announced her return last summer, saying her love for the sport had returned while watching the 2022 U.S. championships.

“It ended rough for me in 2016, so I didn’t want to end on that note,” Douglas said before the U.S. Classic. “Regardless of the outcome, I wanted to make sure I end on love and joy instead of hating something that I loved.”

She has spent most of the last two years training in Texas under Valeri Liukin, the father and coach of 2008 Olympic all-around champion Nastia Liukin.

Douglas competed in all four events at the American Classic, showing signs of rust but also glimpses of the powerhouse she was when she burst onto the scene in the run-up to the London Olympics.

She left England as a champion and a star before taking a brief break. She returned to training in 2014 and helped the American women continue their long run atop the sport by winning gold at the 2015 world championships and then again in Brazil the following summer.

Douglas never formally announced her retirement, though her return came as a bit of a surprise. Her future as a gymnast is uncertain, though there may be opportunities to compete again if she chooses.

___

AP Summer Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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By Wyatte Grantham-Philips
AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay nearly $20 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that accuses the Wall Street brokerage giant of racially discriminating against its Black financial advisers.

The lawsuit alleges that African-American advisers employed by Bank of America-owned Merrill received less compensation and promotions than their White counterparts — and were terminated at higher rates than their White colleagues, with fewer advancing to more senior roles. The case alleges that this was a result of discriminatory practices at the company, which included a broader lack of support and inequitable teaming opportunities.

“The violations of African-American employees’ rights are systemic and are based upon company-wide policies and practices,” reads the suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida last week. The complaint was brought by four former Merrill advisers.

According to a May 24 motion for settlement, Merrill has agreed to pay $19.95 million — which, beyond attorney fees and administration costs, is set to compensate class members with individual payments. 

The plaintiffs expect there are about 1,375 eligible class members.

As part of the settlement, which still needs a judge’s approval, Merrill has also agreed to additional “programmatic relief” — including a review of the company’s current and past diversity initiatives as well as analysis of diversity metrics and pay equity. Merrill does not admit to any wrongdoing under the settlement’s terms.

In a statement to The Associated Press, Bank of America said that the company “reached an agreement to resolve this matter so we could focus on initiatives to assist Black financial advisers and their clients.”

Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, which acquired Merrill in 2008, added that it had “implemented numerous policies and programs over the last 10 years” — including increased training aimed at improving diversity and inclusion. In that time, the company noted, the number of Black financial advisers at Merrill has increased by over 40 percent and representation on teams has more than tripled.

This legal battle dates back several years. According to the motion for settlement, the class counsel first sent Merrill a letter informing the company of the plaintiffs’ allegations back in September 2020, and negotiations between the parties continued in the months and years following.

In July 2021, a class action complaint was also filed in federal court in Michigan — but the plaintiffs voluntarily dismissed the action in November 2022, so that settlement negotiations could conclude, last week’s motion notes.

Just over a decade ago, in August 2013, Merrill agreed to a sweeping settlement following previous allegations of racial discrimination from Black financial advisers. At the time, the company agreed to pay $160 million and implement a list of measures aimed at improving diversity in the workplace.

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By Josh Boak
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris announced May 24 the formation of a new partnership to help provide internet access to 80 percent of Africa by 2030, up from roughly 40 percent  now.

The announcement comes as follow-through on Harris’ visit to the continent last year and in conjunction with this week’s visit to Washington by Kenyan President William Ruto. Harris and the Kenyan leader had a public chat on May 24 at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce about how public-private partnerships can increase economic growth.

“Many could rightly argue that the future is on the continent of Africa,” said Harris, noting that the median age in Africa is 19, a sign of the potential for economic growth. “It is not about, and simply about aid, but about investment and understanding the capacity that exists.”

Africa has struggled to obtain the capital needed to build up its industrial and technological sectors. The United Nations reported last year that foreign direct investment in the continent fell to $45 billion in 2022, from a record high $80 billion in 2021. Africa accounted for only 3.5 percent of foreign direct investment worldwide, even though it makes up roughly 18 percent of the global population.

Besides launching the nonprofit Partnership for Digital Access in Africa, Harris announced an initiative geared toward giving 100 million African people and businesses in the agricultural sector access to the digital economy.

The African Development Bank Group along with Mastercard, among other organizations, will help form the Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy Alliance, or MADE. The alliance will start a pilot program to give digital access to 3 million farmers in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria, before expanding elsewhere.

Harris, a Democrat and the first female U.S. vice president, also announced that the Women in the Digital Economy efforts to address the gender divide in technology access have now generated more than $1 billion in public and private commitments, with some federal commitments pending congressional approval.

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By Terry Spencer
The Associated Press

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Rapper and singer Sean Kingston and his mother committed more than a million dollars in fraud in recent months, stealing money, jewelry, a Cadillac Escalade and furniture, documents released May 24 allege.

Kingston, 34, and his 61-year-old mother, Janice Turner, have been charged with conducting an organized scheme to defraud, grand theft, identity theft and related crimes, according to arrest warrants released by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

The two were arrested May 23 after a SWAT team raided Kingston’s rented mansion in suburban Fort Lauderdale. Turner was arrested in the raid, while Kingston was arrested at Fort Irwin, an Army training base in California’s Mojave Desert where he was performing.

Kingston, who had a No. 1 hit with “Beautiful Girls” in 2007 and performed with Justin Bieber on the song “Eenie Meenie,” is being held at a California jail awaiting his return to Florida.

Robert Rosenblatt, the attorney for the Jamaican-American performer and his mother, said on May 24 that Kingston would return voluntarily if allowed, “which would save the state the expense of extradition and the costs of travel for the detectives and Sean.”

His mother was being held May 24 at the Broward County jail on $160,000 bond.

“We look forward to addressing these (charges) in court and are confident of a successful resolution for Shawn and his mother,” Rosenblatt said.

Specific details of Kingston’s and Turner’s alleged crimes are not included in the warrants, but the documents say that from October to March they stole almost $500,000 in jewelry, more than $200,000 from Bank of America, $160,000 from the Escalade dealer, more than $100,000 from First Republic Bank, $86,000 from the maker of customized beds and other smaller amounts.

Kingston, whose legal name is Kisean Anderson, was already on two years’ probation for trafficking stolen property. Further information on that conviction could not be found.

According to federal court records, his mother pleaded guilty in 2006 to bank fraud for stealing over $160,000 and served nearly 1.5 years in prison.

The two have also been sued.

In 2015, a seller of customized watches successfully sued Kingston and his mother in a New York City federal court for $356,000 after they failed to pay.

In 2018, a New York jeweler successfully sued the two for $301,000 after they scammed the store out of nine items.

More recently, a Florida entertainment systems company sued Kingston in February, saying he failed to pay $120,000 of a $150,000 bill for a 232-inch (5.8 meter) television it installed in his home. The TV is approximately 17 feet by 9.5 feet (5 meters by 3 meters) and covers a wall.

He allegedly told the owners that if they gave him a low down payment and credit, he and Bieber would make commercials for them. That never happened, and Kingston never paid, the lawsuit says.

The company’s attorney says Bieber had no involvement — Kingston was falsely using his name.

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By Darlene Superville, Matt Brown and Bill Barrow
The Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — President Joe Biden on May 19 told Morehouse College graduates during his commencement speech that he heard their voices of protest over the Israel-Hamas war, and that scenes from the conflict in Gaza have been heartbreaking.

“I support peaceful nonviolent protest,” he told students at the all-male, historically Black college, some who wore keffiyeh scarves around their shoulders on top of their black graduation robes. “Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.”

The president said there was a “humanitarian crisis in Gaza, that’s why I’ve called for an immediate cease-fire to stop the fighting” and bring home the hostages taken when Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. 

The comments, toward the end of his address that also reflected on American democracy and his role in safeguarding it, were the most direct recognition to U.S. students about the campus protests that have swept across the country.

“It’s one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world,” Biden told the graduates. “There’s nothing easy about it. I know it angers and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well.”

The speech — and one planned later that day in Detroit — is part of a burst of outreach to Black constituents by the president, who has watched his support among these voters soften since their strong backing helped put him in the Oval Office in 2020.

Biden spent much of his address focused on the problems at home. He condemned Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigrants and noted that the class of 2024 started college in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and George Floyd’s murder. Biden said it was natural for them, and others, to wonder whether the democracy “you hear about actually works for you.”

“If Black men are being killed in the street. What is democracy?” he asked. “The trail of broken promises that still leave Black communities behind. What is democracy? If you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot.”

Protests over the war have roiled America’s campuses. Columbia University canceled its main commencement ceremony. At Morehouse, the announcement that Biden would be the commencement speaker drew some backlash among the faculty and those who oppose the president’s handling of the war. Some Morehouse alumni circulated an online letter condemning administrators for inviting Biden and they solicited signatures to pressure Morehouse President David Thomas to rescind it.

The letter claimed that Biden’s approach to Israel amounted to support of genocide in Gaza and was out of step with the pacifism expressed by Martin Luther King Jr., Morehouse’s most famous graduate.

The Hamas attack on southern Israel killed 1,200 people. Israel’s offensive has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health officials in the territory.

But in the end, there were no major disruptions at the event, and applause for his remarks was muted. 

At least seven graduates and a faculty member sat with their backs turned during Biden’s address, and another student draped himself in a Palestinian flag. Protesters near the ceremony carried signs that said “Free Palestine,” “Save the Children” and “Ceasefire Now” as police on bikes kept watch.

On the stage behind the president as he spoke, academics unfurled a Congolese flag. The African country has been mired in a civil war, and many racial justice advocates have called for greater attention to the conflict as well as American help in ending the violence.

The class valedictorian, DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, said at the close of his speech that it was his duty to speak on the war in Gaza and that it was important to recognize that both Palestinians and Israelis have suffered.

“From the comfort of our homes, we watch an unprecedented number of civilians mourn the loss of men, women and children, while calling for the release of all hostages,” he said. “It is my stance as a Morehouse man, nay as a human being, to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.”

Biden stood and shook his hand after Fletcher finished.

Kingsley John, a graduating senior, said “the temperature on campus was expected given we had the president of the United States come and speak.” John said he stood “in solidarity” with his classmate and that Biden “seemed to be reflective and open to hear the feedback.”

The college also awarded Biden an honorary degree. After he accepted the honor, Biden joked: “I’m not going home,” as chants of “four more years” broke out in the audience before he left the stage. He was heading to Detroit to speak at an NAACP dinner.

Georgia and Michigan are among a handful of states that will help decide November’s expected rematch between Biden and Trump. Biden narrowly won Georgia and Michigan in 2020 and needs to repeat — with a boost from strong Black voter turnout in both cities.

Biden spent the back end of the past week reaching out to Black constituents. He met with plaintiffs and relatives of those involved in Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that outlawed racial segregation in public schools. He also met with members of the “Divine Nine” Black fraternities and sororities and spoke with members of the Little Rock Nine, who helped integrate a public school in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

In Detroit, Biden planned to visit a Black-owned small business before giving the keynote address at the NAACP’s Freedom Fund dinner, which traditionally draws thousands of attendees. The speech gives Biden a chance to reach thousands of people in Wayne County, an area that has historically voted overwhelmingly Democratic but has shown signs of resistance to his reelection bid.

Wayne County also holds one of the largest Arab American populations in the nation, predominantly in the city of Dearborn. Leaders there were at the forefront of an “uncommitted” effort that received over 100,000 votes in the state’s Democratic primary and spread across the country.

A protest rally and march against Biden’s visit were planned in Dearborn. Another protest rally was expected at the dinner venue.

___

Associated Press writers Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan and Colleen Long and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the first name of Rev. Lea is Claybon, not Clyburn.

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By The Associated Press

VAN HORN, Texas (AP) — Ed Dwight, America’s first Black astronaut candidate, finally rocketed into space 60 years later, flying with Jeff Bezos’ rocket company on May 19.

Dwight was an Air Force pilot when President John F. Kennedy championed him as a candidate for NASA’s early astronaut corps. But he wasn’t picked for the 1963 class.

Dwight, now 90, went through a few minutes of weightlessness with five other passengers aboard the Blue Origin capsule as it skimmed space on a roughly 10-minute flight. He called it “a life changing experience.”

“I thought I really didn’t need this in my life,” Dwight said shortly after exiting the capsule. “But, now, I need it in my life …. I am ecstatic.”

The brief flight from West Texas made Dwight the new record-holder for oldest person in space — nearly two months older than “Star Trek” actor William Shatner was when he went up in 2021.

It was Blue Origin’s first crew launch in nearly two years. The company was grounded following a 2022 accident in which the booster came crashing down but the capsule full of experiments safely parachuted to the ground. Flights resumed last December, but with no one aboard. This was Blue Origin’s seventh time flying space tourists.

Dwight, a sculptor from Denver, was joined by four business entrepreneurs from the U.S. and France and a retired accountant. Their ticket prices were not disclosed; Dwight’s seat was sponsored in part by the nonprofit Space for Humanity.

Dwight was among the potential astronauts the Air Force recommended to NASA. But he wasn’t chosen for the 1963 class, which included eventual Gemini and Apollo astronauts, including Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. NASA didn’t select Black astronauts until 1978, and Guion Bluford became the first African American in space in 1983. Three years earlier, the Soviets launched the first Black astronaut, Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez, a Cuban of African descent.

After leaving the military in 1966, Dwight joined IBM and started a construction company before earning a master’s degree in sculpture in the late 1970s. He’s since dedicated himself to art. His sculptures focus on Black history and include memorials and monuments across the country. Several of his sculptures have flown into space.

___

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

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By Gary D. Robertson
The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Ralph Kennedy Frasier, the final surviving member of a trio of African American youths who were the first to desegregate the undergraduate student body at North Carolina’s flagship public university in the 1950s, has died.

Frasier, who had been in declining health over the past several months, died May 8 at age 85 at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, according to son Ralph Frasier Jr. A memorial service was scheduled for May 18 in Columbus, Ohio, where Frasier spent much of his working career.

Frasier, his older brother LeRoy, and John Lewis Brandon — all Durham high school classmates — fought successfully against Jim Crow laws when they were able to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1955. LeRoy Frasier died in late 2017, with Brandon following weeks later.

Initially, the Hillside High School students’ enrollment applications were denied, even though the UNC law school had been integrated a few years earlier. And the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation happened in 1954.

The trustee board of UNC — the nation’s oldest public university — then passed a resolution barring the admission of Blacks as undergraduates. The students sued and a federal court ordered they be admitted. The ruling ultimately was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The trio became plaintiffs, in part, because their families were insulated from financial retribution — the brothers’ parents worked for Black-owned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Durham, for example. The brothers were 14 months apart in age, but Ralph started his education early.

After the legal victory, it still was not easy being on campus. In an interview at the time of his brother’s death, Frasier recalled that the school’s golf course and the university-owned Carolina Inn were off-limits. At football games, they were seated in a section with custodial workers, who were Black. And the three lived on their own floor of a section of a dormitory.

“Those days were probably the most stressful of my life,” Frasier told The Associated Press in 2010 when the three visited Chapel Hill to be honored. “I can’t say that I have many happy memories.”

The brothers studied three years at Chapel Hill before Ralph left for the Army and LeRoy for the Peace Corps. Attending UNC “was extremely tough on them. They were tired,” Ralph Frasier Jr. said this week in an interview.

The brothers later graduated from North Carolina Central University in Durham, an historically Black college. LeRoy Frasier worked as an English teacher for many years in New York. Brandon got his degrees elsewhere and worked in the chemical industry.

Frasier also obtained a law degree at N.C. Central, after which began a long career in legal services and banking, first with Wachovia and later Huntington Bancshares in Columbus.

Ralph Frasier was proud of promoting racial change in the Columbus business community and by serving on a committee that helped put two Black jurists on the federal bench, his son said.

Relationships with UNC-Chapel Hill improved, leading to the 2010 campus celebration of their pioneering efforts, and scholarships were named in their honor.

Still, Ralph Frasier Jr. said it was disappointing to see the current UNC-Chapel Hill trustee board vote this week to recommend diverting money from diversity programs for next year.

“It’s almost a smack in the face and a step backwards in time,” Ralph Frasier Jr. said. The action comes as the UNC system’s Board of Governors will soon decide whether to rework its diversity policy for the 17 campuses statewide.

Frasier’s survivors include his wife of 42 years, Jeannine Marie Quick-Frasier; six children, 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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By Gary D. Robertson
The Associated Press

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Ralph Kennedy Frasier, the final surviving member of a trio of African American youths who were the first to desegregate the undergraduate student body at North Carolina’s flagship public university in the 1950s, has died.

Frasier, who had been in declining health over the past several months, died May 8 at age 85 at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, according to son Ralph Frasier Jr. A memorial service was scheduled for May 18 in Columbus, Ohio, where Frasier spent much of his working career.

Frasier, his older brother LeRoy, and John Lewis Brandon — all Durham high school classmates — fought successfully against Jim Crow laws when they were able to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the fall of 1955. LeRoy Frasier died in late 2017, with Brandon following weeks later.

Initially, the Hillside High School students’ enrollment applications were denied, even though the UNC law school had been integrated a few years earlier. And the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education decision that outlawed segregation happened in 1954.

The trustee board of UNC — the nation’s oldest public university — then passed a resolution barring the admission of Blacks as undergraduates. The students sued and a federal court ordered they be admitted. The ruling ultimately was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The trio became plaintiffs, in part, because their families were insulated from financial retribution — the brothers’ parents worked for Black-owned North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Co. in Durham, for example. The brothers were 14 months apart in age, but Ralph started his education early.

After the legal victory, it still was not easy being on campus. In an interview at the time of his brother’s death, Frasier recalled that the school’s golf course and the university-owned Carolina Inn were off-limits. At football games, they were seated in a section with custodial workers, who were Black. And the three lived on their own floor of a section of a dormitory.

“Those days were probably the most stressful of my life,” Frasier told The Associated Press in 2010 when the three visited Chapel Hill to be honored. “I can’t say that I have many happy memories.”

The brothers studied three years at Chapel Hill before Ralph left for the Army and LeRoy for the Peace Corps. Attending UNC “was extremely tough on them. They were tired,” Ralph Frasier Jr. said this week in an interview.

The brothers later graduated from North Carolina Central University in Durham, an historically Black college. LeRoy Frasier worked as an English teacher for many years in New York. Brandon got his degrees elsewhere and worked in the chemical industry.

Frasier also obtained a law degree at N.C. Central, after which began a long career in legal services and banking, first with Wachovia and later Huntington Bancshares in Columbus.

Ralph Frasier was proud of promoting racial change in the Columbus business community and by serving on a committee that helped put two Black jurists on the federal bench, his son said.

Relationships with UNC-Chapel Hill improved, leading to the 2010 campus celebration of their pioneering efforts, and scholarships were named in their honor.

Still, Ralph Frasier Jr. said it was disappointing to see the current UNC-Chapel Hill trustee board vote this week to recommend diverting money from diversity programs for next year.

“It’s almost a smack in the face and a step backwards in time,” Ralph Frasier Jr. said. The action comes as the UNC system’s Board of Governors will soon decide whether to rework its diversity policy for the 17 campuses statewide.

Frasier’s survivors include his wife of 42 years, Jeannine Marie Quick-Frasier; six children, 14 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

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By Ayanna Alexander
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Young Black lawyers and law students are taking on a new role ahead of the general election: Meeting with Black voters in battleground states to increase turnout and serve as watchdogs against voter disenfranchisement.

The Young Black Lawyers’ Organizing Coalition has recruited lawyers and law students and is sending them to Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas to meet with Black voters, aiming to better understand the barriers that the historically disadvantaged voting bloc faces when registering to vote and accessing the ballot.

The recruits are leading educational focus groups with an ambitious goal: restoring fatigued Black voters’ faith in American democracy.

“I think what makes us unique is that we’re new messengers,” said Abdul Dosunmu, a civil rights lawyer who founded YBLOC. “We have never thought about the Black lawyer as someone who is uniquely empowered to be messengers for civic empowerment.”

Dosunmu, who shared the coalition’s plans exclusively with The Associated Press, said recruits will combat apathy among Black voters by listening, rather than telling them why their participation is crucial. The focus groups will inform “a blueprint for how to make democracy work for our communities,” he said.

According to a Pew Research Center report, in 2023, just 21 percent of Black adults said they trust the federal government to do the right thing at least most of the time. That’s up from a low of 9 percent during the Trump administration. For White adults, the numbers were reversed: 26 percent of White adults expressed such trust in 2020, dropping to 13 percent during the Biden administration.

The first stop on the four-state focus group tour was Michigan in February. This month, YBLOC plans to stop in Texas and then North Carolina. Venues for the focus groups have included barbershops, churches and union halls.

Alyssa Whitaker, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law, said she got involved because she is dissatisfied with the relationship Black communities have with their democracy.

“Attorneys, we know the law,” Whitaker said. “We’ve been studying this stuff and we’re deep in the weeds. So, having that type of knowledge and expertise, I do believe there is some level of a responsibility to get involved.”

In Detroit, Grand Rapids and Pontiac, Michigan, the recruits heard about a wide variety of challenges and grievances. Black voters said they don’t feel heard or validated and are exasperated over the lack of options on the ballot.

Despite their fatigue, the voters said they remain invested in the political process.

“It was great to see that, even if people were a bit more pessimistic in their views, people were very engaged and very knowledgeable about what they were voting for,” said another recruit, Awa Nyambi, a third-year student at Howard University School of Law.

It’s a shame that ever since Black people were guaranteed the right to vote, they’ve had to pick “the lesser of two evils” on their ballots, said Tameka Ramsey, interim executive director of the Michigan Coalition on Black Civic Participation.

“But that’s so old,” said Ramsey, whose group was inspired by the February event and has begun holding its own listening sessions.

These young lawyers are proving the importance of actually listening to varying opinions in the Black community, said Felicia Davis, founder of the HBCU Green Fund, a non-profit organization aimed at driving social justice and supporting sustainable infrastructure for historically Black colleges and universities.

YBLOC is “teaching and reawakening the elements of organizing 101,” she said.

The experience also is informing how the lawyers navigate their careers, said Tyra Beck, a second-year student at The New York University School of Law.

“It’s personal to me because I’m currently in a constitutional law class,” Beck said.

Kahaari Kenyatta, a first-year student also at The New York University School of Law, said the experience has reminded him why he got into law.

“You care about this democracy and civil engagement,” Kenyatta said. “I’m excited to work with YBLOC again, whatever that looks like.”

___

The Associated Press’ coverage of race and voting receives support from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. See more about AP’s democracy initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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By Anna Furman
The Associated Press

Over the past two decades, Gee’s Bend quilts have captured the public’s imagination with their kaleidoscopic colors and their daring geometric patterns. The groundbreaking art practice was cultivated by direct descendants of slaves in rural Alabama who have faced oppression, geographic isolation and intense material constraints.

As of this year, their improvisational art has also come to embody a very modern question: What happens when distinctive cultural tradition collides with corporate America?

Enter Target. The retailer launched a limited-edition collection based on the quilters’ designs for Black History Month this year. Consumer appetites proved to be high as many stores around the country sold out of the checkered sweaters, water bottles and faux-quilted blankets.

“We’re actually in a quilt revival right now, like in real time,” says Sharbreon Plummer, an artist and scholar. “They’re so popularized, and Target knew that. It created the biggest buzz when it came out.” 

Indeed, there has been a resurgence of interest among Gen Z and millennials in conscious consumption and the homemade — with “cottagecore” style, baking bread, DIY bracelets — but both are at odds with the realities of fast fashion.

The Target designs were “inspired by” five Gee’s Bend quilters who reaped limited financial benefits from the collection’s success. They received a flat rate for their contributions rather than pay proportionate to Target’s sales. A spokesperson for Target wouldn’t share sales numbers from the collection but confirmed that it indeed sold out in many stores.

Unlike the pay structure of the Freedom Quilting Bee of the 1960s — an artist-run collective that disbursed payment equitably to Gee’s Bend quilters, who were salaried and could set up Social Security benefits — one-off partnerships with companies like Target benefit only a small number of people, in this case five women from two families.

The maxim “representation matters” is not new, but it’s gaining wider traction. Still, when visibility for some doesn’t translate into meaningful change for a marginalized community as a whole, how is that reconciled?

A HISTORY OF OUTSIDERS

“Every stage of the finances has been problematic,” says Patricia Turner, a retired professor in World Arts and Culture and African American Studies at UCLA who traced the commodification of Gee’s Bend quilts back to the White collector Bill Arnett in the 1990s. “I’m really bothered by Target’s in-house designer manipulating the look of things to make it more palatable for their audience,” she says of the altered color palettes and patterns.

Target spokesperson Brian Harper-Tibaldo said that quilters had the opportunity to provide input on multiple occasions throughout the process.

“We worked with five quilters from The Quilters of Gee’s Bend on a variety of limited-time only items,” he wrote in an emailed statement. “As is standard with limited-time collections at Target, each quilter was paid a discussed and agreed upon fee for their services. As outlined in our contracts, Target had the right to make final design decisions, however, with the goal of honoring their storied heritage, the process was highly collaborative.”

While thumbnail-size photos of the makers appeared on some marketing materials and the text “Gee’s Bend” was printed on clothing tags, the company’s engagement with the quilters was limited. As soon as Black History Month ended, the quilters’ names and images were scrubbed from the retailer’s site.

Target has pledged to spend more than $2 billion on Black-owned businesses by 2025.

The situation today mirrors that of the 1990s, when some quilters enjoyed newfound visibility, others were disinterested and still others felt taken advantage of. (In 2007, several quilters brought a series of lawsuits against the Arnett family, but all cases were settled out of court and little is known about the suits because of nondisclosure agreements.)

The profit-oriented approach that emerged, which disrupted the Quilting Bee’s price-sharing structure, created “real rifts and disharmony within the community,” Turner explains, over engaging with collectors, art institutions and commercial enterprises. “To have those bonds disrupted over the commercialization of their art form, I think, is sad.”

REPRODUCING ART OUT OF CONTEXT

Quilts are made to mark major milestones and are gifted to celebrate a new baby or a marriage, or to honor someone’s loss. Repurposing fabric — from tattered blankets, frayed rags, stained clothes — is a central ethos of the community’s quilting practice, which resists commodification. But the Target collection was mass-produced from new fabrics in factories in China and elsewhere overseas.

The older generations of Gee’s Bend quilters are known for one-of-a-kind designs with clashing colors and irregular, wavy lines — visual effects borne of their material constraints. Most worked at night in houses without electricity and didn’t have basic tools like scissors, let alone access to fabric stores. Stella Mae Pettway, who has sold her quilts on Etsy for $100 to $8,000, has characterized having scissors and access to more fabrics now as a paradox of “advantage and a disadvantage.”

Many third- and fourth-generation artists returned to quilting as adults for a creative and therapeutic outlet, as well as a tether to their roots. After her mom died in 2010, quilter JoeAnn Pettway-West revisited the practice and found peace in completing her mother’s unfinished quilts. “As I’m making this stitch, I can just see her hand, stitching. It’s like, we’re there together,” she says. “It’s a little bit of her, a little bit of me.”

Delia Pettway Thibodeaux is a third-generation Gee’s Bend quilter whose grandmother was a sharecropper and whose bold, rhythmic quilts are now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s permanent collection. For the Target collection, she received a flat fee rather than a rate proportional to sales.

“I was kind of concerned in the beginning” about how quilts would be altered to fit with the collection, Pettway Thibodeaux says. “But then again when I saw the collection, I felt different.”

Claudia Pettway Charley, a Gee’s Bend quilter and a community manager at Nest, a nonprofit, said in an emailed statement that the collaboration was “a great way to make our designs accessible” to a wide audience.

“We had no idea how large this campaign would be and what it would mean to our community,” she said.

LOOKING FOR ECONOMIC REVITALIZATION

Because job opportunities are so limited in Gee’s Bend, many fourth-generation quilters have left the area to take jobs as teachers, day care workers, home health aides, and to serve in the military.

“We, as the next generation, were more dreamers,” Pettway-West says.

National recognition has certainly brought some positive change. But more visibility — from museum exhibitions, academic research, a U.S. Postal Service stamp collection — hasn’t necessarily translated into economic gains. After all, the average annual income in Boykin, Alabama, is still far below the poverty rate at about $12,000, according to the nonprofit Nest.

“This is a community that still, to this day, really needs recognition, still needs economic revitalization,” says Lauren Cross, Gail-Oxford Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at The Huntington Museum of Art. “And so any economic opportunities that, you know, funnel back to them, I support.”

Target’s line in particular, though, is disconnected from the group’s origins and handmade practice, she says. It’s a problem that distills the very challenge at hand when something handcrafted and linked to deep tradition goes national and corporate.

“On one hand you want to preserve the stories and that sense of authenticity,” Cross says.

“And on the other hand,” she asks, “how do you reach a broader audience?”

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By Chinedu Asadu and Dan Ikpoyi
The Associated Press

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Nigeria’s fashion and traditional dances were on full display on May 12 as Prince Harry and Meghan arrived in its largest city, Lagos, as part of their three-day visit to the country to promote mental health for soldiers and empower young people.

The couple, invited to the West African nation by its military, were treated to different bouts of dancing, starting from the Lagos airport where a troupe’s acrobatic moves left both applauding and grinning. One of the dancers, who looked younger than 5 years old, exchanged salutes with Harry from high up in the air, standing on firm shoulders.

Going with Meghan’s white top was the traditional Nigerian aso oke, a patterned handwoven fabric wrapped around the waist and often reserved for special occasions. It was a gift from a group of women a day earlier.

The couple visited a local charity – Giants of Africa — which uses basketball to empower young people. There, they were treated to another round of dancing before unveiling a partnership between the organization and their Archewell Foundation.

“What you guys are doing here at Giants of Africa is truly amazing,” Harry said of the group. “The power of sport can change lives. It brings people together and creates community and there are no barriers, which is the most important thing.”

Masai Ujiri, the charity’s president and an ex-NBA star, wished Meghan a happy Mother’s Day and acknowledged how hard it can be “for us to be away from our kids and family to make things like this happen.”

“To do so shows dedication (and) we truly appreciate it,” he told the couple.

Meghan and Harry later attended a fundraiser for Nigeria’s soldiers wounded in the country’s fight against Islamic extremists and other armed groups in the country’s conflict-battered north. The event was related to Harry’s Invictus Games, which Nigeria is seeking to host in the future.

The couple were also hosted at the Lagos State Government House, where Meghan received another handwoven Nigerian fabric.

“We’ve extended an additional invitation to them that they can always come back when they want to,” Lagos Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu told reporters.

—-

Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria.

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By Stephen Smith and Sudhin Thanawala
The Associated Press

FORT WALTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Just two days before a sheriff’s deputy in Florida shot him dead, U.S. Air Force Senior Airman Roger Fortson called home to find out what his 10-year-old sister wanted for her birthday.

It was a typical gesture for the 23-year-old from Atlanta, who doted on the girl and was devoted to helping her, a younger brother and his mom prosper, his family says.

“He was trying to give me everything that I never could get for myself,” his mother, Chantemekki Fortson, said May 9 at a news conference in Fort Walton Beach, where her son was living when he was killed.

He was her “gift,” she said, the man who taught her to love and forgive and served as her co-worker and counselor.

An Okaloosa County sheriff’s deputy shot Fortson May 3. Sheriff’s officials say he acted in self-defense while responding to a call of a disturbance in progress at an apartment complex. But civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing the Fortson family, has accused the deputy of going to the wrong apartment and said the shooting was unjustified.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is investigating.

At the May 9 news conference, Chantemekki Fortson held a large framed portrait of her son in dress uniform. He joined the Air Force in 2019, the same year he graduated from Ronald McNair High School — a majority Black school in metro Atlanta’s DeKalb County where roughly half of students don’t graduate in four years.

Air Force service was a lifelong dream, and Fortson rose to the rank of senior airman. He was stationed at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach.

“Where we come from, we don’t end up where Roger ended up,” his mother said.

Fortson, a gunner aboard an AC-130J, earned an Air Medal with combat device, which is typically awarded after 20 flights in a combat zone or for conspicuous valor or achievement on a single mission. An Air Force official said Fortson’s award reflected both — completing flights in a combat zone and taking specific actions during one of the missions to address an in-flight emergency and allow the mission to continue. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details that had not been made public.

But his service, like almost everything else he did, had a larger purpose.

“He was trying to help his family have a better life,” Crump said May 9.

That meant serving as a role model for his 16-year-old brother, André, his mom said, saving up to try to buy her a house and getting her a new car. His nickname was “Mr. Make It Happen.”

Chantemekki Fortson recalled that her son, then in high school, accompanied her in the ambulance to the hospital when she was giving birth to her daughter and tried to tell the doctor how to deliver the baby.

The girl and his brother were always in his thoughts.

André was not coping well, his father, Keith Vann, said in a phone interview May 10.

“He’s basically like a zombie, some people say,” he said.

Vann remembered Fortson as a quiet boy who didn’t get in any trouble.

“He was very respectful,” he said.

Fortson was assigned to the 4th Special Operations Squadron as a special missions aviator, where one of his roles was to load the gunship’s 30 mm and 105 mm weapons.

Chantemekki Fortson said her son was injured while loading a plane and was in such severe pain he thought he would die. But he told his mom he had to push through for his brother and sister.

He was also by her side when she got into an accident a short time later and needed to go to the emergency room.

“That’s the kind of gift he was,” she said. “They took something that can never be replaced.”

___

Thanawala reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed.

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By Jim Mustian 
The Associated Press

FARMERVILLE, La. (AP) — Mona Hardin has been waiting five long years for any resolution to the federal investigation into her son’s deadly arrest by Louisiana State Police troopers, an anguish only compounded by the fact that nearly every other major civil rights case during that time has passed her by.

It took just months for Tyre Nichols’ beating death last year to result in federal charges against five Memphis police officers. A half-dozen White lawmen in Mississippi have been federally sentenced in last year’s torture of two Black suspects. And federal prosecutors long ago brought swift charges in the slayings of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky.

Every one of those cases happened months or years after the death of Ronald Greene in northern Louisiana on May 10, 2019, which sparked national outrage after The Associated Press published long-suppressed body-camera video showing White troopers converging on the Black motorist before stunning, beating and dragging him as he wailed, “I’m scared!”

Yet half a decade after Greene’s violent death, the federal investigation remains open and unresolved with no end in sight. And Hardin says she feels ghosted and forgotten by a Justice Department that no longer even returns her calls.

“Where’s Ronald Greene’s justice?” asked Hardin, who refuses to bury her son’s cremated remains until she gets some measure of accountability. “I still have my boy in that urn, and that hurts me more than anything. We haven’t grieved the loss of Ronnie because we’ve been in battle.”

Justice Department spokesperson Aryele Bradford said the investigation remains ongoing and declined to provide further details.

Under federal law, no statute of limitations applies to potential civil rights charges in the case because Greene’s arrest was fatal. But prosecutors have wavered for years on whether to bring an indictment, having all but assured Greene’s family initially that an exhaustive FBI investigation would produce charges of some kind.

A federal prosecution seemed so imminent in 2022 that one state police supervisor told AP he expected to be indicted. The FBI had shifted its focus in those days from the troopers who left Greene handcuffed and facedown for more than nine minutes to state police brass suspected of obstructing justice by suppressing video evidence, quashing a detective’s recommendation to arrest a trooper and pressuring a state prosecutor.

All the while, federal prosecutors asked local District Attorney John Belton to hold off on bringing state charges until the federal investigation was complete. They later reversed course, and in late 2022 a state grand jury indicted five officers on counts ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance. Charges remain against only two, with a trial scheduled for later this year for a senior trooper seen on video dragging Greene facedown by his ankle shackles.

State police initially blamed the 49-year-old’s death north of Monroe on a crash following a high-speed chase over a traffic violation. But that explanation was called into question by photos of Greene’s body on a gurney showing his bruised and battered face, a hospital report noting he had two stun gun prongs in his back and the fact that his SUV had only minor damage. Even the emergency room doctor questioned the troopers’ initial account of a crash, writing in his notes: “Does not add up.”

All that changed two years later when AP published graphic body-camera video of Greene’s final moments, showing him being swarmed by troopers even as he appeared to raise his hands, plead for mercy and wail, “I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” Troopers repeatedly jolted Greene with stun guns before he could even get out of the car, with one of them wrestling him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face, Another called him a “stupid motherf——.” They then ordered a shackled Greene to remain facedown on the ground, even as he struggled to prop himself up on his side.

A reexamined autopsy ordered by the FBI ultimately debunked the crash narrative and listed “prone restraint” among other contributing factors in Greene’s death, including neck compression, physical struggle and cocaine use.

Greene’s family members weren’t the only ones baffled by the pace of the federal inquiry. Then-Gov. John Bel Edwards expressed private frustration with the lack of answers in a closed-door meeting with state lawmakers, saying he believed from the first time he saw the video, in late 2020, that Greene’s treatment was criminal and racist.

“Are they ever going to come out and have a charge?” the Democratic governor asked amid reporting by AP that he had been notified within hours of Greene’s death that troopers engaged in a “violent, lengthy struggle.”

“This was a cover-up of the highest order,” Michael McClanahan, president of the NAACP’s Louisiana state conference, told sign-toting demonstrators May 10 outside the Union Parish Courthouse in Farmerville.

“Why call the police when they’re the very ones that might kill you?” McClanahan said. “It was Ronald Greene then but it’s been a whole lot since Ronald Greene. Enough is enough.”

Perhaps the most significant hurdle to federal charges was the untimely death of Chris Hollingsworth, the trooper who was seen on the video repeatedly bashing Greene in the head with a flashlight and was later recorded by his own body camera calling a fellow officer and saying, “I beat the ever-living f— out of him.” Hollingsworth died in a high-speed, single-vehicle crash in 2020 hours after he was told he would be fired over his actions in Greene’s death.

Another major sticking point has been whether prosecutors could prove the troopers acted “willfully” in abusing Greene — a key component of civil rights charges that has complicated such prosecutions around the country. The FBI even enhanced the video of the arrest in an ultimately inconclusive attempt to determine whether he had been pepper-sprayed after he was in custody, focusing on an exchange in which a deputy jeeringly said, “S— hurts, doesn’t it?”

The Justice Department has also been conducting a sweeping investigation into use of force by the Louisiana State Police and whether it engages in ” racially discriminatory policing.” The department began that “pattern-or-practice” inquiry nearly two years ago following an AP investigation that found Greene’s arrest was among at least a dozen cases in which troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct.

Also still pending is the federal wrongful death lawsuit Greene’s family filed four years ago seeking damages from the officers, who have denied wrongdoing. The civil case has been put on hold as the criminal proceedings play out.

Hardin said it’s long past time for the state of Louisiana to make amends.

“It started with a lie — we were told Ronnie was killed in a car crash,” she said. “That was wrong, and it has to be addressed. I will go to my grave knowing I did everything I could to get justice for Ronnie.”

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By Fatima Hussein
The Associated Press

An independent review of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) workplace culture describes an environment that fostered “hostile, abusive, unprofessional, or inappropriate conduct,” and questions whether the agency’s chairman is credible to lead the agency through a cultural transformation.

The report released May 7 by law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton outlines incidents of stalking, harassment, homophobia and other violations of employment regulations. 

The incidents span from field offices to headquarters in Washington, and ”arose within a workplace culture that is ‘misogynistic,’ ‘patriarchal,’ ‘insular,’ and ‘outdated’ — a ‘good ol’ boys’ club where favoritism is common, wagons are circled around managers, and senior executives with well-known reputations for pursuing romantic relations with subordinates enjoy long careers without any apparent consequence,” the report states. 

More than 500 workers reported incidents of harassment, discrimination and other issues.

Examples of the worker complaints included a woman stalked by a coworker who was continually harassed even after complaining about his behavior; a field office supervisor referring to gay men as “little girls”; and a female field examiner describing receiving a picture of an FDIC senior examiner’s private parts. 

The report comes after the Wall Street Journal last November published an investigation that outlined details of the agency’s workplace culture. The FDIC’s board then ordered the independent review FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg’s behavior is also examined in the report, describing “deeply unsettling exchanges” between the chair and his subordinates. Several instances of the chairman losing his temper are outlined in a chapter of the report, stating in one example that as recently as last year, he held a 45-minute rant on bank failures where he threatened that he could “fire” or “reassign” anybody he wanted. Attendees described the meeting as “embarrassing and inappropriate.”

His “reputation raises questions about the credibility of the leadership’s response to the crisis and the ‘moral authority’ to lead a cultural transformation,” the report states. 

“Far too many employees and for far too long, the FDIC has failed to provide a workplace safe from sexual harassment, discrimination and other interpersonal misconduct,” according to the report. 

“We also find that a patriarchal, insular, and risk-averse culture has contributed to the conditions that allowed for this workplace misconduct to occur and persist, and that a widespread fear of retaliation, as well as a lack of clarity and credibility around internal reporting channels, has led to an underreporting of workplace misconduct over the years.”

The agency last December released a plan to address the issues outlined in the report, which Gruenberg mentioned in an apology posted to the agency’s website on May 7. 

“To anyone who experienced sexual harassment or other misconduct at the FDIC, I again want to express how very sorry I am,” Gruenberg said. “I also want to apologize for any shortcomings on my part. As Chairman, I am ultimately responsible for everything that happens at our agency, including our workplace culture.”

Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill have called on Gruenberg to resign from his post. 

House Financial Services Committee Chair Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), said the report “makes clear new leadership is needed at the FDIC” and Democratic committee member Rep. Bill Foster from Illinois said “sweeping changes must be made to mend the toxic work environment that has run rampant for far too long, and that starts with a change of leadership. It is time for Chair Gruenberg to resign.”

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee said “it’s time for Chairman Gruenberg to resign so the FDIC can move forward with the leadership it deserves and desperately needs.”

The FDIC is an independent government agency that protects bank deposits in the event of a bank failure.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Alicia Rancilio
The Associated Press

It all began with a post on Twitter. It was 2020 during the height of the pandemic and LaDarrion Williams was thinking about the lack of diversity in the fantasy genre. He proposed: “What if Harry Potter went to an HBCU in the South?”

“Growing up, I watched ‘Twilight,’ I watched ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘Divergent’ and ‘Percy Jackson,’ which is one of my favorite books. I didn’t see myself in those stories, and I didn’t feel seen by them,” said Williams. He is a self-taught playwright, filmmaker and screenwriter.

The post went viral and started a dialogue online, leading Williams down a long road to make good on his idea. He’s the first to admit though that the process was not a fairytale.

Williams’ “Blood at the Root,” the first in a three-book deal, arrives in stores May 7. Jalyn Hall (“Till”, “All American”) recorded the audio version. The book follows Malik, a 17-year-old with magical powers who gets accepted into Caiman University, an HBCU with a “Blackgical culture” and a magic program.

Williams talked to The Associated Press about how his tweet became a novel and his inspirations for “Blood at the Root.”

Answers have been edited for clarity and brevity.

___

AP: You sent that… and got a big reaction. Then what happened?

WILLIAMS: I wrote it as a TV pilot. I didn’t intend it to be a novel. I was sharing (the process) online and people were sending me money with CashApp and Venmo from the U.S., Canada, even New Zealand. They said, “Go make this a short film.” It was October 2020. Things were shut down. You couldn’t buy hand sanitizer. I asked my friends, and we shot this magical short film around LA. We snuck onto the UCLA campus. Sorry, UCLA, but we wanted to film on an actual college campus. That’s when I realized this story was very special.

I thought I had it all. I thought I had the viral tweet, the short film, I had the script, I had the idea. I thought Hollywood was going to give me a multimillion-dollar offer. I was humbled very quickly with that. No calls were coming. I struggled to get meetings with different production companies and showrunners and studios. Nobody wanted to meet with me. I was really confused and fell into a deep depression.

AP: Is that when you decided to pivot and write the book?

WILLIAMS: I was very sad. There were some days I couldn’t even get out of bed. I felt like I failed my friends who risked their health. I felt I failed people who supported it on social media. It was kind of embarrassing. My friend one day said, “Why don’t you turn it into a book?” With everything that was going on in the world and in America, like the civil unrest, I didn’t think publishing would want this.

At first, they didn’t. I was getting rejections left and right saying, “We can’t connect with this. It’s not marketable.” One of my biggest rejections came on my birthday, Dec. 3, 2022. In late January 2023, I was driving for Uber, and I got a call from my agent who said we got a three-book deal.

AP: Did you scream? Cry?

WILLIAMS: No. I turned the Uber app off and drove home in silence. I went to Ralphs and sat in the parking lot and said, “I sold a book. I didn’t just sell a book, I sold three.” Then I started screaming and calling everybody.

AP: Talk about the protagonist Malik.

WILLIAMS: I wanted to create a Black boy from Helena, Alabama, which is where I’m from, who has cool magical powers. It’s a coming-of-age story about a 17-year-old who gets to attend this really cool school. He’s fun. He makes friends. Friendships, especially as a teenager, are very important. They kind of set you up for life. Malik also connects with his family and ancestry. He’s had childhood trauma and hardships, and he’s going to make mistakes, but the mistakes don’t cost him his life. I want people to get to know him. The way he speaks, the way he thinks. I wanted him to have vulnerability and softness. He extends the love he didn’t have as a child to his foster brother. I wanted to create all of that through the lens of magic.

AP: You were also very specific about how you wanted the cover to look.

WILLIAMS: The only time I saw myself on book covers was Christopher Paul Curtis’ “The Watsons Go to Birmingham — 1963” and “Bud Not Buddy.” It was a nonnegotiable with my publishers. I was like, “I need a Black boy on the cover. I don’t care how we do it. That’s what I want.” I was a little bold, but it’s all right. I also wanted him in a hoodie on the cover because, you know, Black boys in hoodies are often criminalized. I got what I wanted.

AP: Do you still see the story as a TV series?

WILLIAMS: There are talks about it. I remember going to watch “Twilight,” as a 6-foot-3 Black kid in Alabama. It was such a cool era to go to the movies and be in this fandom and meet other people that you would never meet. I want to recreate that moment when “Black Panther” dropped, and everybody was just buzzing about it. I want to do that for television. I want that for Black kids.

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By Evelyne Musambi
The Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Kenyan President William Ruto has postponed next week’s planned reopening of schools until further notice, as heavy rains and floods that have killed more than 200 people continue.

The president in his state of the nation address on May 3 said that “meteorological reports paint a dire picture,” citing the possibility of Cyclone Hidaya hitting coastal Kenya in coming days.

Kenya and other parts of East Africa have been overwhelmed by flooding, with more than 150,000 displaced people living in camps across the country.

Schools originally were to reopen this week, but the education ministry postponed that by a week. Students will now wait for the announcement of new reopening dates as some schools remain flooded and others have been damaged. Some displaced people have been living in schools while the government prepares to relocate them to camps.

The government has ordered people living near 178 dams and reservoirs that are either full or nearly full to evacuate or be forcefully moved.

Water levels at two major hydroelectric dams have reached historic highs and the government has warned those living downstream along the Tana River.

Last week, a boat capsized on the river, which flows to the Indian Ocean, leaving seven people dead and 13 others missing. A passenger bus was also swept off a bridge along the same river last month.

The government has been accused of an inadequate response to the floods.

The flooding has left more than 155 people dead in neighboring Tanzania, where Cyclone Hidaya is expected to hit coastal areas. Hundreds of people have been affected in Burundi, Ethiopia and Somalia as well.

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By Darlene Superville
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on May 3 bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom on 19 people, including civil rights icons such as the late Medgar Evers, prominent political leaders such as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. James Clyburn, and actor Michelle Yeoh.

Biden said the recipients of the nation’s highest civilian honor are “incredible people whose relentless curiosity, inventiveness, ingenuity and hope have kept faith in a better tomorrow.”

One of them, Clarence B. Jones, said in an interview that he thought a prankster was on the phone when he answered and heard the caller say they were from the White House.

“I said, ‘Is this a joke or is this serious?'” Jones recalled. The caller swore they were serious and was calling with the news that Biden wanted to recognize Jones with the medal.

Jones, 93, was honored for his activism during the Civil Rights Movement. He’s a lawyer who provided legal counsel to Martin Luther King Jr. and helped write the opening paragraphs of the “I Have a Dream” speech that King delivered at the Lincoln Memorial at the 1963 March on Washington.

The White House said the recipients are “exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.”

The 10 men and nine women hail from the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, civil rights and LGBTQ+ advocacy, science and religion. Three medals were awarded posthumously.

Seven politicians were among the recipients: former New York mayor and philanthropist Michael Bloomberg, former Sen. Elizabeth Dole, climate activist and former Vice President Al Gore, Biden’s former climate envoy John Kerry, former Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who died in 2013, Clyburn, the Democratic congressman from South Carolina, and Pelosi, the Democratic congresswoman from California.

Biden in his remarks acknowledged that Clyburn’s endorsement in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary helped him score a thundering win in South Carolina, powering him to his party’s nomination and ultimately the White House. Bloomberg mounted a short-lived bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

“I can say this without fear of contradiction,” Biden said. “I would not be standing here as president making these awards were it not for Jim. I mean that sincerely.”

In addition to representing North Carolina in the Senate, Dole, a Republican and the widow of former Sen. Bob Dole, also served as transportation secretary and labor secretary and was president of the American Red Cross. She currently leads a foundation supporting military caregivers.

Pelosi is the first and only woman ever elected to the speaker’s post, putting her second in the line of succession to the presidency. Biden referenced her legislative achievements, noted her actions during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and said “history will remember you, Nancy, as the greatest speaker of the House of Representatives.”

Evers received posthumous recognition for his work more than six decades ago fighting segregation in Mississippi in the 1960s as the NAACP’s first field officer in the state. He was 37 when he was fatally shot in the driveway of his home in June 1963. His daughter, Reena, who was 8 years old when her father was killed, accepted his medal.

Yeoh made history last year by becoming the first Asian woman to win an Academy Award for best actress for her performance in ” Everything, Everywhere All at Once.”

Jim Thorpe, who died in 1953, was the first Native American to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States.

Judy Shepard co-founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation, named after her son, a gay 21-year-old University of Wyoming student who died in 1998 after he was beaten and tied to a fence.

Jones said he felt “very touched” after he digested what the caller had said.

“I’m 93 years old with some health challenges, but I woke up this morning thanks to the grace of God,” he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview May 2. “I’m looking forward to whatever the White House would like for me to do.”

The other medal recipients are:

— Gregory Boyle, a Jesuit Catholic priest who founded and runs Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention and rehabilitation program.

— Phil Donahue, a journalist and former daytime TV talk-show host.

— Katie Ledecky, the most decorated female swimmer in history.

— Opal Lee, an activist who is best known for pushing to make Juneteenth a federal holiday. Biden did so in 2021.

— Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space and the second female director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center.

— Jane Rigby, an astronomer who is chief scientist of the world’s most powerful telescope. She grew up in Delaware, Biden’s home state.

— Teresa Romero, president of the United Farm Workers and the first Hispanic woman to lead a national union in the U.S. The union has endorsed Biden’s reelection bid and backed him in 2020.

In 2022, Biden presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 17 people, including gymnast Simone Biles, the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and gun-control advocate Gabby Giffords.

Biden knows how it feels to receive the medal. As president, Barack Obama presented Biden, his vice president, with the medal a week before their administration ended in 2017.

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By Peter Smith
The Associated Press

The United Methodist Church lost one-fourth of its U.S. churches in a recent schism, with conservatives departing over disputes on sexuality and theology. 

Now, with the approach of its first major legislative gathering in several years, the question is whether the church can avert a similar outcome elsewhere in the world, where about half its members live.

The question is particularly acute in Africa, home to the vast majority of United Methodists outside the U.S. Most of its bishops favor staying, but other voices are calling for regional conferences to disaffiliate.

At the upcoming General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, delegates will tackle a wide range of proposals – from repealing the church’s ban on same-sex marriage and ordaining LGBTQ people, to creating more autonomy for regional conferences to set such rules, to making it easier for international churches to leave the denomination.

Delegate Jerry Kulah of Liberia said he believes it’s time for African churches to leave.

He said that when he first attended a General Conference in 2008, he was shocked by proposals to liberalize church rules. Since then, he helped mobilize African delegates to vote with American conservatives to create ever-stricter denominational rules against same-sex marriage and ordaining LGBTQ people.

But progressive American churches have increasingly been defying such rules and now appear to have the votes to overturn them.

“We know that we are not going to the General Conference to necessarily win votes,” said Kulah, general coordinator of the advocacy group UMC Africa Initiative. “So our goal is to go and articulate our position and let the world know why it has become very necessary to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church, because we cannot afford to preach different gospels.”

But Jefferson Knight, also a delegate from Liberia, opposes disaffiliation. He said a schism would amount to forsaking the rich spiritual legacy of the UMC in Africa and would severe its valuable international bonds.

“Liberia was the birthplace of the United Methodist Church on the continent of Africa in the 1800s,” said Knight, of the advocacy group United Methodist Africa Forum. The church has developed leaders in education, health care and evangelism across the continent, said Knight, who also works as a human rights monitor for the church.

Knight said schism isn’t necessary.

He shares the widespread opposition in Africa to liberalizing policies on marriage or ordination, but he favors a proposal that would allow each region of the church – from America to Africa to Europe to the Philippines – to fit rules to its local context.

“The best way out is to regionalize and see how we can do ministry peacefully and do ministry within our context, our culture,” Knight said. 

The United Methodist Church traces its roots to 18th century revivalist John Wesley and has long emphasized Christian piety, evangelism and social service. It has historically been present in almost every U.S. county.

But it’s also the most international of the major U.S. Protestant denominations.

Generations of missionary efforts brought Methodism across the world. Local churches took root and grew dramatically, particularly in Africa. 

Today, members from four continents vote at legislative gatherings, serve on boards together, go on mission trips to each others’ countries and are largely governed by the same rules. U.S. churches help fund international ministries, such as Africa University in Zimbabwe.

More than 7,600 U.S. congregations departed during a temporary window between 2019 and 2023 that enabled congregations to keep their properties – held in trust for the denomination – under relatively favorable legal terms, according to a UM News count.

That provision applied only to American churches. Some say the General Conference – running April 23 through May 3 – should approve one for other countries.

“Our main goal is to ensure that African and other United Methodist outside the U.S. have the same opportunity that United Methodists in the U.S. have had,” said the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice president of the conservative advocacy group Good News.

Opponents say overseas churches already can disaffiliate under church rules – and some conferences in Eastern Europe have taken such steps. But proponents say the process is too cumbersome.

Further complicating the matter is that churches operate in a range of legal settings. Some African countries criminalize same-sex activity, while in the U.S., same-sex marriage is legal. 

Most departing American congregations were conservative churches upset with the denomination’s failure to enforce its bans on same-sex unions and the ordination of LGBTQ people. Some joined denominations such as the new Global Methodist Church, while others went independent.

The departures accelerated membership losses in what until recently had been the third-largest American denomination. The United Methodist Church recorded 5.4 million U.S. members in 2022, a figure sure to plummet once disaffiliations from 2023 are factored in.

A detailed study by the UMC’s General Council on Finance and Administration indicated there are 4.6 million members in other countries – fewer than earlier estimates, but still approaching U.S. numbers.

The United Methodist Church has been debating homosexuality since the early 1970s, steadily tightening its LGBTQ bans through its last legislative gathering in 2019.

That year, “the traditionalists won the vote but they lost the church” said the Rev. Mark Holland, executive director of Mainstream UMC, which advocates for lifting the church-wide bans and for a “regionalization” proposal allowing each region to decide on such rules.

He noted that numerous regional church conferences in the United States reacted to the 2019 vote by electing more progressive delegates to the upcoming General Conference. 

Progressives believe they have adequate votes to repeal language in the governing Book of Discipline barring ordination of “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” and penalizing pastors who perform same-sex marriages.

Less certain is the fate of regionalization, which would increase regional autonomy. 

Regionalization involves constitutional amendments requiring a two-thirds General Conference majority and approval by two-thirds of local conferences worldwide.

Proponents say regionalization would also bring parity to different regions, saying the current system is a U.S.-centric relic of an earlier missionary era. The regionalization scenario could also allow churches in some regions to maintain LGBTQ bans while others remove them. 

Church regions outside the United States already have some leeway in adapting rules to their settings, but regionalization would define that flexibility more precisely and extend it to U.S. churches.

The UMC-affiliated church in the Philippines – the only one in Asia, with about 280,000 members – would maintain its opposition to same-sex marriage, which is not legally recognized there, a church official said. It will also not allow openly LGBTQ people to be ordained.

Most African bishops oppose disaffiliation, even as they oppose LGBTQ ordination and marriage.

“Notwithstanding the differences in our UMC regarding the issue of human sexuality especially with our stance of traditional and biblical view of marriage, we categorically state that we do not plan to leave The United Methodist Church and will continue to be shepherds of God’s flock in this worldwide denomination,” said a statement signed by 11 African bishops at a meeting in September.

Among those withholding signatures was Nigeria Area Bishop John Wesley Yohanna.

Nigerian Methodists in December celebrated 100 years of the denomination in their country, but its future remains uncertain. Deeply conservative views on sexuality are widespread in Nigeria. A spokesman said the bishop’s position on disaffiliation would be determined by what happens at the General Conference.

Same-sex marriage “is unbiblical and also is incompatible with Christian teaching according to our Book of Discipline,” Yohanna said at a January news conference, in which he also said “no to regionalization.”

___

AP reporters Chinedu Asadu in Lagos, Nigeria, and Jim Gomez in Manila contributed to this article.

___

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.

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By Darren Sands,
The Associated Press

No woman had ever preached the keynote sermon at the Joint National Baptist Convention, a gathering of four historically Black Baptist denominations representing millions of people.

That changed in January when the Rev. Gina Stewart took the convention stage in Memphis, Tennessee, — the Southern city home to Christ Missionary Baptist Church where she serves as senior pastor — and delivered a rousing message, asserting that Jesus not only included women in his ministry, but identified with their suffering.

But what happened next put a spotlight on the obstacles women in Christian ministry continue to face as they carve out leadership space within the patriarchal culture of the Black Church in America. Several women pastors told The Associated Press that it should serve as the breaking point.

“This is an example of no matter how high you rise as a woman, you’re going to meet patriarchy at the top of the hill,” said Martha Simmons, founder of Women of Color in Ministry, which helps women navigate the process of getting ordained. “The next Norton Anthology of African American preaching is probably 20 years away, but that sermon will be in there.”

Despite the enthusiastic reception for Stewart, the original recording of her historic sermon disappeared from the convention’s Facebook page, setting off a social media firestorm – driven mostly by women – protesting its removal. A recording of the sermon later appeared, but it was followed by accusations the convention edited her closing remarks, which challenges the four allied denominations to support women in ministry.

National Baptist Convention, USA, President Jerry Young did not reply to requests from The Associated Press for comment. He said at another January meeting that he believed the Facebook page had been hacked and he planned to involve the FBI.

“I still don’t know what happened with the sermon, but what is clear is that this was a form of erasure,” Stewart said. “I was just as shocked, stunned and surprised as everyone else.”

It is symptomatic of a larger problem, according to several Black women pastors interviewed by the AP. They emphasized how they were worn down by the physical and psychological toll of working in a male-dominated culture.

In some denominations, women have made progress. The African Methodist Episcopal Church estimates that one-fourth of its total staff are women, including 1,052 ordained ministers.

In the Black Church as a whole, male pastors predominate, though there’s no comprehensive gender breakdown. Simmons estimates that less than one in 10 Black Protestant congregations are led by a woman, even as more Black women are attending seminary.

The conditions aren’t new, but the public discourse over women’s equality in ministry has rapidly gained ground due in large part to the bullhorn social media provides, said Courtney Pace, scholar-in-residence with Memphis-based Equity for Women in the Church. Pace noted how Facebook afforded Eboni Marshall Turman a venue to publicly share her grievances before filing a gender discrimination lawsuit in December against Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York.

The late theologian and civil rights activist Prathia Hall underscores this dynamic, said Pace, who wrote “Freedom Faith: The Womanist Vision of Prathia Hall.” In the book, she details how Hall was a key inspiration for Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

“The kind of thing that happened to Gina Stewart happened a lot to Prathia Hall,” Pace said. “When she was doing her work, we did not have social media, or cell phones with voice recorders and cameras in every hand. So who knows what the response to Prathia would have been with an empowered public like we have today.”

Hall was born in Philadelphia in 1940, the daughter of a Baptist preacher. As a youth, she took part in local speech competitions where she melded folk religion and liberation theology.

But not all of Hall’s relationships within the insular preaching fraternity of the National Baptist Convention were as collegial as her relationship with King, whom she said in later years did more with “I have a dream” than she could have.

Many theologically conservative Christian churches, including some Black Protestant denominations, prohibit women from preaching. They frequently cite certain biblical passages, including one they interpret as saying women ought to “be silent” in churches. Even in denominations without explicit bans, women with leadership aspirations often must contend with a patriarchal culture.

Last month, the audience was dotted with young Black women at an event hosted at the Howard Divinity School in Washington. A group convened a panel about the evolution of Black women’s role in the church.

Inside the cavernous Dunbarton Chapel that Howard Divinity shares with the Howard School of Law, a half-dozen Black women representing a range of independent churches and Black Protestant denominations spoke about persevering through instability and transition.

Their current duties, some of the women said, left them exhausted and unable to grieve the members they lost to COVID-19.

One speaker was the Rev. Lyvonne Briggs. In 2019, she was being overworked and underpaid as an assistant pastor of a large Baptist church in California. Her marriage dissolved.

She restarted her life in Atlanta. During the lockdown one Sunday morning in her apartment, Briggs went live on Instagram and held a self-styled worship space for 25 people to share their experiences. It became known as The Proverbial Experience, which Briggs describes as an “African-centered, womanist series of spiritual gatherings to nourish the soul.”

In two years, Briggs grew her church into a digital community of 3,000. She also wrote “Sensual Faith: The Spiritual Art of Coming Back to Your Body,” a treatise on liberation from the sexual politics and objectification of Black women’s bodies in the church setting.

“I don’t ascribe to this idea that the Black Church is dead,” Briggs told the AP. “But I do acknowledge and promote that we have to eulogize what it used to be so that we can birth something new.”

One preacher who fashions himself an expert on the topic of women’s role in the church, Walter Gardner of the Newark Church of Christ in Newark, N.J, sent a video link of one of his lectures when queried by the AP about his beliefs. At the end of one session, Gardner suggested that women, overall, ignore Scripture and are incapable of being taught.

That’s a mindset Gina Stewart would like to change, on behalf of future generations of Black women.

“I would hope that we can knock down some of those barriers so that their journey would be just a little bit easier,” said Stewart, who has continued to charge forward.

In a given week, her preaching schedule can take her to multiple cities. As an example, she traveled to Washington earlier this month after accepting a sought-after invitation to preach at Howard University’s Andrew Rankin Memorial Chapel.

Stewart’s goals mesh with those of Eboni Marshall Turman, who gave the Martin Luther King Jr. Crown Forum lecture in February at Martin Luther King’s alma mater, Morehouse College. In December, after not being named a finalist, she had sued Abyssinian Baptist Church and its pulpit search committee for gender discrimination over its hiring process for its next senior pastor, an assertion the church and the committee disputed. No woman has ever held the post.

A former Abyssinian assistant minister, the Rev. Rashad Raymond Moore, said in an email to The Associated Press that of the several dozen applicants for the senior pastor job, “none were more exciting, promising and refreshing than Eboni Marshall Turman.”

Added Moore, who now is pastor of New York City’s First Baptist Church of Crown Heights, “Pastoral searches in Black congregations, historically socially conservative, are often mired in the politics of discrimination, including biases based on gender, sexual orientation, marital status and age.”

Marshall Turman, a Yale Divinity School professor, offered pointed critiques in her first book at what she deemed the inherent patriarchy of Morehouse’s social gospel justice tradition. She adapted her recent lecture’s title from the last speech ever given by King, the all-male college’s most famous alumni.

The title was blunt: “I’m Not Fearing Any Man.”

___

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.

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By The Associated Press

KATY, Texas (AP) — Gabby Douglas is officially back.

Whether the gymnastics star’s return to the sport carries all the way to the Paris Olympics remains to be seen.

Douglas, who became the first Black woman to win the Olympic all-around title when she triumphed in London in 2012, competed for the first time in eight years on April 27 at the American Classic.

The 28-year-old looked rusty in spots and promising in others while posting a score of 50.65 in the all-around. Douglas qualified in multiple events for the U.S. Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, next month. She will get another chance to qualify for the all-around competition at nationals when she takes the floor at the the U.S. Classic in Hartford, Connecticut, on May 18.

Douglas last competed at the 2016 Rio Olympics, where she helped the Americans claim a second straight gold in the team competition. She took an extended break from the sport but never officially retired. The itch to come back returned while watching the 2022 U.S. Championships, and she’s spent the better part of the last two years training in the Dallas area with an eye toward trying to make the five-woman U.S. team that will be heavily favored to win gold in Paris this summer.

Her comeback, however, has been shrouded in mystery. She was supposed to compete at Winter Cup in February but she pulled out of the competition just days before after testing positive for COVID-19. She has limited press exposure and unlike 2020 Olympic gold medalist Sunisa Lee and Jade Carey — both of whom competed at American Classic — she opted not to participate in podium training on April 26.

Douglas walked out onto the floor about an hour before competition and showed flashes of what turned her into a star in London. Her double-twisting Yurchenko on vault had plenty of amplitude and on bars — her best event — she had the pieces of a routine that would certainly be competitive at the elite level.

The challenge will be finding a way to put all the pieces together consistently.

Douglas came off bars twice and her floor routine lacked the crispness and endurance to stack up with what will be required for anyone hoping to make a serious bid for the Olympic team.

There is time for Douglas, but not much. The U.S. Classic is in three weeks. The U.S. Championships are in five and the Olympic Trials await in Minneapolis in late June.

Carey, who won gold on floor exercise in Tokyo, captured the all-around with a score of 55.000 while also recording the top scores on vault and floor. Lee, who has dealt with kidney-related health issues the last two years, put together a dazzling beam routine to win easily with a score of 14.300.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Suni Lee competed and won the balance beam competition. A previous version stated she competed and won on the uneven bars.

___

AP Olympics coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games

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By Evelyne Musambi,
The Associated Press

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Flooding and heavy rains in Kenya have killed at least 70 people since mid-March, a government spokesperson said April 26, twice as many as were reported earlier this week.

The East African country has seen weeks of heavy rains and severe flooding in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, as well as in the country’s western and central regions.

Kenya’s government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura on April 26 refuted claims that hundreds of people have died in the ongoing flooding and said the official tally now stands at 70.

Five bodies were retrieved April 26 from a river in Makueni county, east of the country, after a lorry they were traveling in was swept off a submerged bridge, local station Citizen TV reported. Another 11 were rescued.

Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua said April 26 at a news briefing that the government had set aside 4 billion Kenya shillings ($29 million) for emergency relief efforts, but did not provide further details.

More than 130,000 people are currently affected with thousands of houses washed away and others flooded. Some 64 public schools in the capital were flooded and had to shut down. Roads and bridges have been damaged or destroyed.

The Kenya Meteorological Department on April 26 issued a heavy rainfall advisory for the weekend and urged residents to be vigilant.

Other East African countries have reported flooding with 155 people reported to have died in neighboring Tanzania and more than 200,000 people affected in Burundi.

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By Chineu Asadu and John Minchillo,
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — A Nigerian chess champion and child education advocate played chess nonstop for 60 hours in New York City’s Times Square to break the Guinness World Record for the longest chess marathon.

Tunde Onakoya, 29, hopes to raise $1 million for children’s education across Africa through the record attempt that began on April 17.

He had set out to play the royal game for 58 hours but continued until he reached 60 hours at about 12:40 a.m. April 20, surpassing the current chess marathon record of 56 hours, 9 minutes and 37 seconds, achieved in 2018 by Norwegians Hallvard Haug Flatebø and Sjur Ferkingstad.

The Guinness World Record organization has yet to publicly comment about Onakoya’s attempt. It sometimes takes weeks for the organization to confirm any new record.

Onakoya played against Shawn Martinez, an American chess champion, in line with Guinness World Record guidelines that any attempt to break the record must be made by two players who would play continuously for the entire duration.

Support had been growing online and at the scene, where a blend of African music kept onlookers and supporters entertained amid cheers and applause. Among the dozens who cheered Onakoya on at the scene was Nigerian music star Davido.

The record attempt is “for the dreams of millions of children across Africa without access to education,” said Onakoya, who founded Chess in Slums Africa in 2018. The organization wants to support the education of at least 1 million children in slums across the continent.

“My energy is at 100 percent right now because my people are here supporting me with music,” Onakoya said later April 18 after the players crossed the 24-hour mark.

On Onakoya’s menu: Lots of water and jollof rice, one of West Africa’s best-known dishes.

For every hour of game played, Onakoya and his opponent got only five minutes’ break. The breaks were sometimes grouped together, and Onakoya used them to catch up with Nigerians and New Yorkers cheering him on. He even joined in with their dancing sometimes.

A total of $22,000 was raised within the first 20 hours of the attempt, said Taiwo Adeyemi, Onakoya’s manager.

“The support has been overwhelming from Nigerians in the U.S., global leaders, celebrities and hundreds of passersby,” he said.

Onakoya’s attempt was closely followed in Nigeria, where he regularly organizes chess competitions for young people living on the streets.

More than 10 million school-age children are not in school in the West African country — one of the world’s highest rates.

Among those who have publicly supported him are celebrities and public office holders, including Nigeria’s former Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who wrote to Onakoya on the social media platform X, “Remember your own powerful words: ‘It is possible to do great things from a small place.'”

This version corrects that Osinbajo is Nigeria’s former vice president, not current vice president.

Asadu reported from Abuja, Nigeria.

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By The Associated Press

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Mandisa, a contemporary Christian singer who appeared on “American Idol” and won a Grammy for her 2013 album “Overcomer,” has died. She was 47.

A representative for the singer told The Associated Press that the singer was found dead in her home in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 18. The representative said the cause of Mandisa’s death was not yet known.

Mandisa, whose full name was Mandisa Lynn Hundley, was born near Sacramento, California, and grew up singing in church. She gained stardom after finishing ninth on “American Idol” in 2006.

As she left, host Ryan Seacrest told the singer that she was “a great spirit on the show.”

Mandisa moved on, releasing her debut album in 2007 called “True Beauty,” which received a Grammy nomination that year for best pop and contemporary gospel album.

She went on to release five more albums, including a Christmas album.

In 2014, she won a Grammy for best contemporary Christian music album for “Overcomer,” her fifth album.

Mandisa spoke openly about her struggles with depression, releasing a memoir entitled “Out of the Dark: My Journey Through the Shadows to Find God’s Joy” in 2022 that detailed her experiences with severe depression, weight-related challenges, the coronavirus pandemic and her faith.

On April 19, the Christian radio network K-Love paid tribute to the singer on social media, saying: “Mandisa struggled, and she was vulnerable enough to share that with us, which helped us talk about our own struggles.”

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Here’s what’s known about the scam surrounding the shooting

By Ben Finley
The Associated Press

It was a common scam that ended with an uncommon outcome, tragically in an Ohio driveway.

William J. Brock fatally shot an Uber driver because he wrongly assumed she was part of a scheme to extract $12,000 in supposed bond money for a relative, authorities said this week. Lo-Letha Hall was a victim of the same con, summoned by the grifters to Brock’s house to retrieve a purported package for delivery.

Brock later told investigators he believed Hall arrived to get the money the scammers wanted. He is now facing murder charges, to which he’s pleaded not guilty. Hall’s family is grieving. And Uber is helping investigators to try to catch whoever was behind the attempted swindle.

The grift is commonly known as a grandparent scam or fraud, exploiting older people’s love for their family, experts say. Callers claim to be anyone from grandchildren to police, telling victims something terrible happened and that their younger relative needs money.

Here’s what we know about the shooting and the investigation so far:

WHAT EXACTLY HAPPENED?

Brock, 81, received scam calls the morning of March 25 at his home in South Charleston, a town of about 1,800 people between Dayton and Columbus. The calls regarded an incarcerated relative and “turned to threats and a demand for money,” according to a statement from the Clark County Sheriff’s Office.

While Brock was on the phone, Hall got a request through the Uber app to pick up a package from Brock’s house for delivery, the sheriff’s office said. Hall, 61, of Columbus, was unaware of the attempted scam.

“Upon being contacted by Ms. Hall, Mr. Brock produced a gun and held her at gunpoint, making demands for identities of the subjects he had spoken with on the phone,” the sheriff’s office said.

Hall was unarmed and never threatened Brock or made any demands of him, the sheriff’s office said.

Brock took Hall’s cellphone and refused to let her leave, the sheriff’s office said. When she tried to get back into her car, Brock shot her. He shot her a second time and a third time during subsequent scuffles.

Brock then called 911 to report he shot someone on his property who was trying to rob him.

Police body camera footage shows him briefly discussing what he said had happened.

“I’m sure glad to see you guys out here because I’ve been on this phone for a couple hours with this guy trying to say to me I had a nephew in jail and had a wreck in Charleston and just kept hanging on and needing bond money,” Brock said. “And this woman was supposed to get it.”

The footage shows investigators discussing $12,000 sitting on a table in Brock’s house.

The footage also shows a Clark County Sheriff’s Office detective in Brock’s house talking on the phone with a man who was talking to Brock earlier. He identified himself as an officer and told the detective, “You’re going to be in trouble.”

When the detective identified herself as an actual police officer, the phone disconnected. During a subsequent phone call with the man, the detective told him the Uber driver was in a serious accident, in the hospital and “not doing well.”

The man told the detective he’d be there in 20 minutes. He was not.

Brock was indicted on April 15 on charges of murder, assault and kidnapping. He posted $200,000 bail and was released from the Clark County Jail on April 17. His attorney, Paul Kavanagh, did not immediately return an email seeking comment on April 19.

HOW COMMON ARE THESE SCAMS?

Grandparent scams have become increasingly common in the last 10 to 15 years — in part because of the abundance of personal information available about people online, said Anthony Pratkanis, an emeritus psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Criminals retrieve specific details about someone’s relative on social media and use the information to convince victims that their loved one is in trouble, said Pratkanis, whose research includes fraud crimes.

“Basically what the criminal is doing is taking advantage of our human nature,” he said. “You’re in a panic state, high emotional arousal. It’s a fear appeal. And the best way to get rid of that fear is to give the criminal that money.”

Fraudsters typically prefer financial transactions that don’t require physical proximity, such as wire transfers, gift cards or cryptocurrency, Pratkanis said. This case is unusual because the scammers deployed Hall as an unsuspecting money mule.

“Most people in today’s kind of scams don’t really have interactions with the criminal — there’s a distance,” Pratkanis said. “But when there isn’t, there’s an opportunity for the anger of being victimized to cause the victim to take action.”

Uber said April 17 that it was helping investigators look into an account that sent Hall to Brock’s home. 

The ride-hailing company described Hall’s death as “a horrific tragedy.”

‘A BOND LIKE NO OTHER’

An obituary for Hall described her as the parent of a son and a stepson, a devoted member of her church and a talented cook known for delicious pound cakes.

She retired from Ohio’s Regional Income Tax Agency and also worked in behavioral health, at a school and for Uber. She studied horticulture at Ohio State and started a janitorial business.

At a memorial service that was streamed online, her son Mario Hall spoke of how close they were even though they lived in different states, often speaking on the phone multiple times a day. He said they “had a bond like no other.”

“Thank you for all your sacrifices and all the things you have instilled in me,” he said. “You are the best mom that anyone could ask for. And I promise to continue to make you proud.”

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By The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Faith Ringgold, an award-winning author and artist who broke down barriers for Black female artists and became famous for her richly colored and detailed quilts combining painting, textiles and storytelling, has died. She was 93.

The artist’s assistant, Grace Matthews, told The Associated Press that Ringgold died the night of April 12 at her home in Englewood, New Jersey. Matthews said Ringgold had been in failing health.

Ringgold’s highly personal works of art can be found in private and public collections around the country and beyond, from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art to New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Atlanta’s High Museum of Fine Art. But her rise to prominence as a Black artist wasn’t easy in an art world dominated by White males and in a political culture where Black men were the leading voices for civil rights. A founder in 1971 of the Where We At artists collective for Black women, Ringgold became a social activist, frequently protesting the lack of representation of Black and female artists in American museums.

“I became a feminist out of disgust for the manner in which women were marginalized in the art world,” she told The New York Times in 2019. “I began to incorporate this perspective into my work, with a particular focus on Black women as slaves and their sexual exploitation.”

In her first illustrated children’s book, “Tar Beach,” the spirited heroine takes flight over the George Washington Bridge. The story symbolized women’s self-realization and freedom to confront “this huge masculine icon — the bridge,” she explained.

The story is based on her narrative quilt of the same name now in the permanent collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

While her works often deal with issues of race and gender, their folk-like style is vibrant, optimistic and lighthearted and often reminiscent of her warm memories of her life in Harlem.

Ringgold introduced quilting into her work in the 1970s after seeing brocaded Tibetan paintings called thangkas. They inspired her to create patchwork fabric borders, or frames, with handwritten narrative around her canvas acrylic paintings. For her 1982 story quilt, “Who’s Afraid of Aunt Jemina,” Ringgold confronted the struggles of women by undermining the Black “mammy” stereotype and telling the story of a successful African American businesswoman called Jemima Blakey.

“Aunt Jemima conveys the same negative connotation as Uncle Tom, simply because of her looks,” she told The New York Times in a 1990 interview.

Soon after, Ringgold produced a series of 12 quilt paintings titled “The French Collection,” again weaving narrative, biographical and African American cultural references and Western art.

One of the works in the series, “Dancing at the Louvre,” depicts Ringgold’s daughters dancing in the Paris museum, seemingly oblivious to the “Mona Lisa” and other European masterpieces on the walls. In other works in the series Ringgold depicts giants of Black culture like poet Langston Hughes alongside Pablo Picasso and other European masters.

Among her socially conscious works is a three-panel “9/11 Peace Story Quilt” that Ringgold designed and constructed in collaboration with New York City students for the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Each of the panels contains 12 squares with pictures and words that address the question “what will you do for peace?” It was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In 2014, her “Groovin High,” a depiction of a crowded energetic dance hall evocative of Harlem’s famous Savoy Ballroom, was featured on a billboard along New York City’s High Line park.

Ringgold also created a number of public works. “People Portraits,” comprising 52 individual glass mosaics representing figures in sports, performance and music, adorns the Los Angeles Civic Center subway station. “Flying Home: Harlem Heroes and Heroines” are two mosaic murals in a Harlem subway station that feature figures like Dinah Washington, Sugar Ray Robinson and Malcolm X.

In one of her recent books, “Harlem Renaissance Party,” Ringgold introduces young readers to Hughes and other Black artists of the 1920s. Other children’s books have featured Rosa Parks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Underground Railroad.

Born in Harlem in 1930, Ringgold was the daughter of a seamstress and dress designer with whom she collaborated often. She attended City College of New York where she earned bachelor and master’s degrees in art. She was a professor of art at the University of California in San Diego from 1987 until 2002.

Ringgold’s motto, posted on her website, states: “If one can, anyone can, all you gotta do is try.”

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By Samy Magdy,
The Associated Press

CAIRO (AP) — On a clear night a year ago, a dozen heavily armed fighters broke into Omaima Farouq’s house in an upscale neighborhood in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. At gunpoint, they whipped and slapped the woman, and terrorized her children. Then they expelled them from the fenced two-story house.

“Since then, our life has been ruined,” said the 45-year-old schoolteacher. “Everything has changed in this year.”

Farouq, who is a widow, and her four children now live in a small village outside the central city of Wad Madani, 136 kilometers (85 miles) southeast of Khartoum. They depend on aid from villagers and philanthropists since international aid groups can’t reach the village.

Sudan has been torn by war for a year now, ever since simmering tensions between its military and the notorious paramilitary Rapid Support Forces exploded into street clashes in the capital Khartoum in mid-April 2023. The fighting rapidly spread across the country.

The conflict has been overshadowed by the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza Strip, which since October has caused a massive humanitarian crisis for Palestinians and a threat of famine in the territory.

But relief workers warn Sudan is hurtling towards an even larger-scale calamity of starvation, with potential mass death in coming months. Food production and distribution networks have broken down and aid agencies are unable to reach the worst-stricken regions. At the same time, the conflict has brought widespread reports of atrocities including killings, displacement and rape, particularly in the area of the capital and the western region of Darfur.

Justin Brady, head of the U.N. humanitarian coordination office for Sudan, warned that potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands could die in coming months from malnutrition-related causes.

“This is going to get very ugly very quickly unless we can overcome both the resource challenges and the access challenges,” Brady said. The world, he said, needs to take fast action to pressure the two sides for a stop in fighting and raise funds for the U.N. humanitarian effort.

But the international community has paid little attention. The U.N. humanitarian campaign needs some $2.7 billion this year to get food, heath care and other supplies to 24 million people in Sudan – nearly half its population of 51 million. So far, funders have given only $145 million, about 5 percent, according to the humanitarian office, known as OCHA.

The “level of international neglect is shocking,” Christos Christou, president of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, or MSF, said in a recent statement.

The situation with fighting on the ground has been deteriorating. The military, headed by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, have carved up Khartoum and trade indiscriminate fire at each other. RSF forces have overrun much of Darfur, while Burhan has moved the government and his headquarters to the Red Sea city of Port Sudan.

The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence Against Women, a government organization, documented at least 159 cases of rape and gang rape the past year, almost all in Khartoum and Darfur. The organization’s head, Sulima Ishaq Sharif, said this figure represents the tip of the iceberg since many victims don’t speak out for fear of reprisal or the stigma connected to rape.

In 2021, Burhan and Dagalo were uneasy allies who led a military coup. They toppled an internationally recognized civilian government that was supposed to steer Sudan’s democratic transition after the 2019 military overthrow of longtime autocrat Omar al-Bashir amid a popular uprising. Burhan and Dagalo subsequently fell out in a struggle for power.

The situation has been horrific in Darfur, where the RSF and its allies are accused of rampant sexual violence and ethnic attacks on African tribes’ areas. The International Criminal Court said it was investigating fresh allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the region, which was the scene of genocidal war in the 2000s.

A series of attacks by the RSF and allied militias on the ethnic African Masalit tribe killed between 10,000 and 15,000 people in Geneina, the capital of West Darfur near the Chad border, according to a report by United Nations experts to the Security Council earlier this year. It said Darfur is experiencing “its worst violence since 2005.”

With aid groups unable to reach Darfur’s camps for displaced people, eight out of every 10 families in the camps eat only one meal a day, said Adam Rijal, the spokesman for the Coordination for Displaced Persons and Refugees in Darfur.

In Kelma camp in South Darfur province, he said an average of nearly three children die every 12 hours, most due to diseases related to malnutrition. He said the medical center in the camp receives between 14 and 18 cases of malnutrition every day, mostly children and pregnant women.

Not including the Geneina killings, the war has killed at least 14,600 people across Sudan and created the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the United Nations. More than 8 million people have been driven from their homes, fleeing either to safer areas inside Sudan or to neighboring countries.

Many flee repeatedly as the war expands.

When fighting reached his street in Khartoum, Taj el-Ser and his wife and four children headed west to his relatives in Darfur in the town of Ardamata.

Then the RSF and its allies overran Ardamata in November, rampaging through the town for six days. El-Ser said they killed many Masalit and relatives of army soldiers.

“Some were shot dead or burned inside their homes,” he said by phone from another town in Darfur. “I and my family survived only because I am Arab.”

Both sides, the military and RSF, have committed serious violations of international law, killing civilians and destroying vital infrastructure, said Mohamed Osman, Sudan researcher at Human Rights Watch.

Food production has crashed, imports stalled, movement of food around the country is hampered by fighting, and staple food prices have soared by 45 percent in less than a year, OCHA says. The war wrecked the country’s healthcare system, leaving only 20 to 30 percent of the health facilities functional across the country, according to MSF.

At least 37 percent of the population is at crisis level or above in hunger, according OCHA. Save the Children warned that about 230,000 children, pregnant women and newborn mothers could die of malnutrition in the coming months.

“We are seeing massive hunger, suffering and death. And yet the world looks away,” said Arif Noor, Save the Children’s director in Sudan.

About 3.5 million children aged under 5 years have acute malnutrition, including more than 710,000 with severe acute malnutrition, according to the World Health Organization.

About 5 million people were one step away from famine, according to a December assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, considered the global authority on determining the severity of hunger crises. Overall, 17.7 million people were facing acute food insecurity, it found.

Aid workers say the world has to take action.

“Sudan is described as a forgotten crisis. I’m starting to wonder how many people knew about it in the first place to forget about it,” said Brady, from OCHA. “There are others that have more attention than Sudan. I don’t like to compare crises. It’s like comparing two cancer patients. … They both need to be treated.”

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By Tia Goldenberg,
The Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel on April 14 hailed its air defenses in the face of an unprecedented attack by Iran, saying the systems thwarted 99 percent of the more than 300 drones and missiles launched toward its territory. Regional tensions were high amid fears of an Israeli counter-strike that could fuel further escalation.

U.S. President Joe Biden convened a meeting of the Group of Seven advanced democracies “to coordinate a united diplomatic response.” The participants unanimously condemned the attack and said they “stand ready to take further measures now and in response to further destabilizing initiatives.”

The U.S. made clear it would not participate in any offensive action against Iran. “We don’t seek a war with Iran. We’re not looking for escalation here,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told NBC.

Iran launched the attack in response to a strike widely blamed on Israel that hit an Iranian consular building in Syria earlier this month and killed two Iranian generals. Israel said Iran launched 170 drones, more than 30 cruise missiles and more than 120 ballistic missiles.

By early April 14, Iran said the attack was over, and Israel reopened its airspace. Israel’s War Cabinet held a meeting.

“We will build a regional coalition and collect the price from Iran, in the way and at the time that suits us,” said a key War Cabinet member, Benny Gantz.

The two foes have for years been engaged in a shadow war marked by attacks such as the Damascus strike. But the April 14 assault, which set off air-raid sirens across Israel, was the first time Iran has launched a direct military assault on Israel, despite decades of enmity dating back to the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Israel has over the years established — often with the help of the United States — a multilayered air-defense network that includes systems capable of intercepting a variety of threats, including long-range missiles, cruise missiles, drones and short-range rockets.

That system, along with collaboration with the U.S. and others, helped thwart what could have been a far more devastating assault at a time when Israel is already bogged down in its war against Hamas in Gaza and engaged in low-level fighting on its northern border with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.

Israeli and U.S. officials praised the response to the aerial assault.

“Iran launched more than 300 threats and 99 percent were intercepted,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military spokesman. “That is a success.” Asked if Israel would respond, Hagari said the country would do what was needed to protect its citizens.

Hagari said none of the drones and cruise missiles reached Israel and that only a few ballistic missiles got through. Of the cruise missiles, 25 were shot down by the Israeli air force, he said.

Hagari said minor damage was caused to an Israeli airbase, but he said it was still functioning. Rescuers said a 7-year-old girl was seriously wounded in southern Israel, apparently in a missile strike, though police were still investigating the circumstances.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted a message on X: “We intercepted. We blocked. Together, we will win.” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant thanked the U.S. and other countries for their assistance.

Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, said the operation was over, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. “We have no intention of continuing the operation against Israel,” he was quoted as saying.

Iran said it targeted Israeli facilities involved in the Damascus strike, and that it told the White House early April 14 that the operation would be “minimalistic.” Turkey said it acted as an intermediary for the messages.

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, claimed Iran had taught Israel a lesson and warned that “any new adventures against the interests of the Iranian nation would be met with a heavier and regretful response from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard issued a new threat against the U.S., saying “any support or participation in harming Iran’s interests” will be followed by a decisive response by Iran’s armed forces.

The success of Israel’s defense stands in sharp contrast to the failures it endured during Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7. Facing a far less powerful enemy in Hamas, Israel’s border defenses collapsed, and the military took days to repel the militants — an embarrassing defeat for the Middle East’s strongest and best-equipped army.

While thwarting the Iranian onslaught could help restore Israel’s image, what it does next will be closely watched in the region and in Western capitals.

In Washington, Biden said U.S. forces helped Israel down “nearly all” the drones and missiles and pledged to convene allies to develop a unified response. U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said Britain’s air force shot down a number of Iranian drones. Jordan, which sits between Israel and Iran, indicated that its military also assisted.

Biden later spoke with Netanyahu. “I told him that Israel demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks — sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel,” Biden said.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. would hold talks with allies in the coming days.

Israel and Iran have been on a collision course throughout Israel’s six-month war against Hamas militants in Gaza. In the Oct. 7 attack, militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also backed by Iran, killed 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 250 others. An Israeli offensive in Gaza has caused widespread devastation and killed over 33,000 people, according to local health officials.

In other developments, negotiations meant to bring about a cease-fire in exchange for the release of the hostages appeared to hit a setback. Netanyahu’s office said Hamas rejected the latest proposal for a deal, which had been presented to Hamas a week ago by mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States.

A Hamas official said the group wants a “clear written commitment” that Israel will withdraw from Gaza during the second of a three-phase cease-fire deal. The deal presented calls for a six-week cease-fire in Gaza, during which Hamas would release 40 of the more than 100 hostages the group is holding in the enclave in exchange for 900 Palestinian prisoners from Israel’s jails, including 100 serving long sentences for serious crimes.

Hamas welcomed Iran’s attack, saying it was “a natural right and a deserved response” to the strike in Syria. It urged the Iran-backed groups in the region to continue to support Hamas in the war.

Almost immediately after the war erupted, Hezbollah began attacking Israel’s northern border. The two sides have been involved in daily exchanges of fire, while Iranian-backed groups in Iraq, Syria and Yemen have launched rockets and missiles toward Israel.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller in Washington; Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran; Samy Magdy in Cairo; Omar Akour in Amman, Jordan; and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.

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By Joseph Federman
The Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military says Iran has launched a number of drones toward Israel.

The army’s spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said it would take several hours for the aircraft to arrive. He said Israel was prepared. He spoke late April 13.

Israel has been on heightened alert since an airstrike last week killed two Iranian generals in Syria. Iran accused Israel of being behind the attack and vowed revenge. Israel has not commented on that attack.

A U.S. official briefed on the attack said Iran had launched “dozens” of drones. The official could not publicly discuss details of the attack and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Earlier April 13, the Israeli military said it was canceling school and limiting public gatherings to no more than 1,000 people as a safety precaution.

Briefing reporters, Hagari said Israel is “prepared and ready” with defensive and offensive actions. He also said there was “tight” cooperation with the U.S. and other partners in the region.

The head of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, has been in Israel in recent days to coordinate with Israel about the Iranian threats.

Israel has a number of layers of air defense capable of intercepting everything from long-range missiles to UAV’s and short-range rockets. Hagari said Israel has an “excellent air defense system” but stressed it is not 100 percent effective and urged the public to listen to safety announcements.

___

AP writer Michael Balsamo in New York contributed.

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By Brian Witte
The Associated Press

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland Gov. Wes Moore announced on April 12 the start of a program to help Port of Baltimore businesses retain employees in the aftermath of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse.

The $12.5 million program aims to prevent layoffs while recovery work continues. The program was created by executive order and authorized by emergency legislation the governor signed on April 9.

“We must do everything in our power to support the 8,000 Port workers whose jobs have been directly affected by the collapse of the Key Bridge — and the thousands more who have been touched by this crisis,” Moore, a Democrat, said in a news release.

The program is being run by the state’s labor department.

“The Worker Retention Program will keep Port businesses in operation and workers able to earn income and support their families as the U.S. Army Corps and others work to get the shipping channels reopened,” said Maryland Secretary of Labor Portia Wu.

Under the program, entities eligible for up to $200,000 in grants include businesses that employ up to 500 workers, unions, trade associations, and organizations that have had operations hindered or completely halted by the port slowdown.

Up to $7,500 can be spent per worker on wages or other support.

Businesses that receive funding under the program must demonstrate an effort to the fullest extent to avoid layoffs and maintain workforce hours, rates of pay, and benefits that were in effect before the port’s reduced operations.

Allowable expenses include supportive services for workers, such as subsidizing child care and transportation costs as well as payroll expenses as part of participation in the Work Sharing Unemployment Insurance Program.

The governor’s office said other relief programs that were authorized by the legislation signed into law this week will start on April 22.

One of them provides grants of up to $100,000 to eligible businesses that have had operations impacted or shipments disrupted at the port. To be eligible, businesses must demonstrate economic and financial injury through a reduction in business revenue and activity, or increased costs to business operations.

The Department of Commerce: Port of Baltimore Emergency Business Assistance Program will begin accepting applications.

Another program will make a total of $15 million in loans and grants available to businesses that have been affected by a loss of revenue or increased costs, under the Neighborhood BusinessWorks program administered by the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development.

The Small Business Grants Program will have $5 million to offer grants up to $50,000 to small businesses within a 5-mile radius of the Key Bridge, and the Business Loan Program will have $10 million to offer loans up to $500,000 to businesses impacted by the Key Bridge collapse or reduction in Port activity statewide.

The container ship Dali was leaving Baltimore, laden with cargo and headed for Sri Lanka, when it struck one of the bridge’s supporting columns last month, causing the span to collapse into the Patapsco River. 

Six members of a roadwork crew were killed.

—

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By Charles Odum 
AP Sports Writer

ATLANTA (AP) — Hank Aaron refused to be intimidated by racist hate mail or threats during his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s home run record.

Aaron’s teammates, including Dusty Baker, worried on his behalf even as the future Hall of Famer circled the bases following his record-breaking 715th homer on April 8, 1974. Baker, who was on deck, and Tom House, who caught the homer in the Atlanta bullpen behind the left-field wall, will return April 8, 2024, for the 50-year anniversary of the homer.

After sprinting from the bullpen to deliver the ball to Aaron at home plate, House found Aaron’s mother giving the slugger a big hug.

“You could see both of them with tears in their eyes,” House told The Associated Press. “… It was a mother and son. Obviously, that was cool. It was also mom protecting her boy. At that time everybody thought somebody would actually try to shoot him at home plate.

“So there were all kind of things. I gave him the ball. I said, ‘Here it is, Hank.’ He said ‘Thanks, kid.'”

Baker referred to Aaron as a father figure or big brother who looked out for him as he began his playing career with the Braves. Baker and other teammates, including Ralph Garr, tried to look out for Aaron during the home run chase.

“We always felt the need to protect him, always felt that need,” Baker said last week. “I think we were more afraid for him than he was actually afraid because he never showed any fear of the threats or whatever. It seems like it drove him to a higher concentration level than ever before was possible.”

Baker retired as Houston’s manager following the 2023 season.

Bob Hope, then the Braves media relations director, said Aaron would not be deterred by the threats issued late in the 1973 season as he approached Ruth’s record of 714 career homers.

“One time the FBI wanted to come meet with him on a Sunday and asked him not to play because they felt they had legitimate death threats on him,” Hope said.

“We went down to the clubhouse and sat down with him and Hank just said: ‘What kind of statement would that be? I am a baseball player. You guys do what you need to do to keep things secure, but I’m playing baseball.’ And I thought that was very reflective of his personality all the way through.”

Hope said most fan mail Aaron received was positive. “The hate mail was not pleasant, but there wasn’t nearly as much as you’re led to believe,” Hope said. “It was just a very, very small percentage of the fans were causing that problem.”

Hope and Baker remained close to Aaron after Aaron’s career and until his death in 2021 at 86.

“One of the honors of your life that you don’t want is when Hank died, at his funeral, Dusty and I were the only two nonfamily pallbearers,” Hope said. “When I realized that at the funeral, it was almost overwhelming.”

Wonya Lucas, Aaron’s niece and the daughter of Bill Lucas, who with the Braves in 1976 became Major League Baseball’s first African American general manager, said she can remember “Uncle Hank” remaining strong during the chase. She said that stayed constant even when threats led to police cars showing up at Aaron’s home and Aaron’s oldest daughter, Gaile, having to return home from college.

“I certainly understood the gravity of the situation and how the mood shifted is probably a good way to put it,” Wonya Lucas said April 5. “But I do also remember his quiet strength, and despite all those conditions I described I felt safe in the home because I felt he gave us a sense of comfort.”

To mark the 50-year anniversary of Aaron’s 715th homer, the Atlanta History Center will open a new exhibit to the public celebrating Aaron on April 9 that will remain open through the 2025 All-Star Game in Atlanta. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred is expected to attend a preview of the exhibit the previous day.

Aaron’s bat and the ball he hit for the record homer, normally housed at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, will be on display at Truist Park on April 8.

The Hank Aaron Invitational is designed to encourage high school players from diverse backgrounds to play at higher levels. Alumni of the Hank Aaron Invitational include Cincinnati pitcher Hunter Greene, who participated in 2015, and Braves outfielder Michael Harris II, who played in 2018.

Major League Baseball also supports other initiatives, including the Andre Dawson Classic, designed to promote diversity in the sport.

“For me, just having somebody that looked like me that could be that successful and do the things he’s done, the road he paved for players like me, that’s pretty huge,” Harris said  April 5.

Despite those efforts, the number of Black players on major league rosters has declined. A study done by The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida revealed African American players represented just 6.2 percent of players on MLB opening day rosters in 2023, down from 7.2 percent in 2022. Both figures from the institute’s latest reports were the lowest since the study began in 1991.

A recent spike in the number of African American first-round draft picks provides hope that MLB’s efforts, including the Hank Aaron Invitational, may make a difference.

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By Maria Sherman,
The Associated Press

It has been 21 years since Sean Paul’s dancehall anthem “Get Busy” topped the Billboard Hot 100 — which means “Get Busy” is finally old enough to hear “Get Busy” at the club.

“It’s changed for me now,” Sean Paul told The Associated Press over Zoom from his studio in Jamaica, reflecting on the song’s legacy. “Because when I say, ‘Get busy,’ I’m telling the kids to do their homework or clean stuff up.”

In the years since Paul helped introduce dancehall riddims and reggae to new audiences, he’s released six ambitious albums, including two straight out of the coronavirus pandemic: 2021’s “Live n Livin” and 2022’s “Scorcha.” He’s become a father and a devoted husband to his wife,  “Jodi”– yes, that “Jodi”– the one mentioned in the “Get Busy” lyric, “Shake dat ting, yo, Donna Donna / Jodi and Rebecca.” These days Paul’s ambition to make joyful, danceable music has never wavered.

“It’s a timeless piece for me,” he says of “Get Busy.” 

“Every time I try to do a song, I try to put the same butterflies that I had in my belly when I was flirting with the first girl on the first dance floor I went to. It’s just a feeling.”

That translates to his goal of bringing positivity to the masses.

“I have a lot of help with the riddim tracks, the genre itself is very infectious,” he says. “It gives you joy.”

His dedication comes from life experience.

“I had a lot of problems, as most teenagers do, trying to find themselves, trying to understand what life’s about. You know, my father was in prison. It was a single mom situation, and she was struggling to make sure that we were conscious beings,” he says.

Music was his release.

Now, he’s taking that energy on a 22-date U.S. run dubbed the “Greatest Tour,” kicking off May 2 at House of Blues in Orlando, Florida, and ending June 16 at the Fillmore in Charlotte, North Carolina.

“Why am I doing it now? I feel that the people are ready for me again,” Paul says.

“I did some work with some reggaetón acts last year,” he adds, referencing new dancefloor hits, including the massive “Niña Bonita” with Feid and “Dem Time Deh” with Colombian singer Manuel Turizo.

He’s also released a few solo singles, including the infectious “Greatest,” and promises more conscious songs in the future — thematically not unlike 2016’s “Never Give Up.”

“There’s a lot of struggles here in Jamaica as well as it being, you know, a very beautiful place. But we do have our struggles that we have to deal with,” he says. “A lot of people don’t know me for that type of material, but, you know, it’s as important in my career.”

At his shows, fans will get a little taste of everything. But “good vibes,” mostly, he says: “I think people feel the fun from me and it bounces back and forth.”

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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The Associated Press undefined

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Rev. Dr. Cecil L. “Chip” Murray, an influential pastor and civil rights leader who used his tenure at one of Los Angeles’ oldest churches to uplift the predominantly Black neighborhoods of South Los Angeles following one of the country’s worst race riots, has died. He was 94.

Murray died on April 5, according to an announcement from the USC Center for Religion and Civic Culture. He died of natural causes, his son, Drew Murray, told the Los Angeles Times.

Born in Lakeland, Florida, in 1929, Murray spent 27 years as the pastor of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles. The church was small when he took over. But by the time he retired, it had grown into an 18,000-member megachurch.

In 1992, the acquittal of four police officers who were caught on video violently beating Rodney King triggered an explosion of violence in the predominantly Black neighborhoods of South Los Angeles.

Murray emerged as a calming presence and was a frequent guest on national television news shows. He used his connections with the city’s political and business leaders to raise money for recovery efforts, including loans for businesses and assistance for people displaced by the violence.

“While many famous preachers have roots in Southern California, Chip Murray is unparalleled in his ability to mobilize the city of Los Angeles to heal the inequities related to race and income inequality,” said Donald E. Miller, the Leonard K. Firestone Professor of Religion at USC and co-founder of the Center for Religion and Civic Culture.

During his time as pastor, First AME became a must-stop for prominent politicians, including former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton along with former California governors Pete Wilson, Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Under Murray’s leadership, the church worked to transform the community through a host of programs and initiatives, including job training, support for foster children and developing affordable housing units for low-income families.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Murray dedicated his life to service, community and “putting God first in all things.”

“I had the absolute honor of working with him, worshiping with him, and seeking his counsel,” Bass said. “My heart is with the First AME congregation and community today as we reflect on a legacy that changed this city forever.”

After retiring as First AME’s pastor, he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California as the Tansey Professor of Christian Ethics, where he trained about 1,000 faith leaders in the “Murray Method”of church leadership.

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The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Association of Black Students at St. Louis’ Washington University on April 5 held a sit-in at a dining hall where a group of students last month allegedly threw eggs, stood on tables and used racial slurs in front of primarily racial minority workers.

University spokesperson Julie Flory in a statement said the private college does not “share information about any specific incident or investigation involving our students or other members of our community.”

“We are working directly with our students and other members of our community to address their concerns,” Flory said.

Dining hall workers felt intimidated and uncomfortable when students on March 21 jumped on tables, spit at each other and used racial slurs, the president of a local food workers union, David Cook, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

The Association of Black Students told the newspaper that most of the workers that night were racial minorities.

St. Louis Democratic state Sen. Karla May in an April 5 statement said she reached out to student advocates and campus leaders “to ensure steps are being taken to address these overt acts of racism.”

The Association of Black Students met at the cafeteria April 5 to write thank-you notes and show support for workers who were present during the alleged incident, which the group said was “not an isolated instance of violence.”

“It shows how racism is still a part of the culture and has been fostered at Washington University, elite institutions, and historically white organizations for far too long,” the group said in a statement posted on the social media platform Instagram.

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By Steve Peoples and Jonathan J. Cooper
AP National Political Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The No Labels group said April 4 it will not field a presidential candidate in November after strategists for the bipartisan organization failed to attract a high-profile centrist willing to seize on the widespread dissatisfaction with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

“No Labels has always said we would only offer our ballot line to a ticket if we could identify candidates with a credible path to winning the White House,” Nancy Jacobson, the group’s CEO, said in a statement sent out to allies. “No such candidates emerged, so the responsible course of action is for us to stand down.”

The unexpected announcement further cements the general election matchup between the two unpopular major party candidates, Biden and Trump, leaving anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the only prominent outsider still seeking the presidency. Kennedy says he has collected enough signatures to qualify for the fall ballot in five states.

No Labels’ decision, which comes just days after the death of founding chairman Joe Lieberman, caps months of discussions during which the group raised tens of millions of dollars from a donor list it has kept secret. It was cheered by relieved Democrats who have long feared that a No Labels’ ticket would fracture Biden’s coalition and help Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

The Wall Street Journal first reported No Labels’ decision.

“Millions of Americans are relieved that No Labels finally decided to do the right thing to keep Donald Trump out of the White House,” said MoveOn executive director Rahna Epting, a No Labels critic. “Now, it’s time for Robert Kennedy Jr. to see the writing on the wall that no third party has a path forward to winning the presidency. We must come together to defeat the biggest threat to our democracy and country: Donald Trump.”

Stefanie Spear, a spokesperson for Kennedy, said No Labels’ struggles were “testimony to the stranglehold of the corrupt two-party duopoly on American democracy.”

Kennedy announced earlier in the day that he had collected enough signatures to qualify for the general election in five states, including swing states Nevada and North Carolina. A super PAC backing his campaign, American Values 2024, says it has collected signatures for Kennedy in several other states, including battlegrounds Arizona and Georgia. Democrats are challenging the validity of signatures collected by the group, which is not legally allowed to coordinate with Kennedy.

No Labels said it had qualified for the ballot in 21 states, but ultimately, the centrist group could not persuade a top-tier moderate from either party to embrace its movement.

No Labels delegates voted overwhelmingly in March to launch the process of creating a bipartisan presidential and vice presidential ticket. But by then, No Labels had been rejected, publicly and privately, by many Democratic or Republican candidates.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who suspended her campaign for the GOP presidential nomination last month, had said she would not consider running on the No Labels ticket. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., ruled out running and former Gov. Larry Hogan, R-Md., decided to run for the U.S. Senate.

Last month, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, said he wouldn’t run under the No Label banner, either.

The group had been weighing the nomination of a “unity ticket,” with a presidential candidate from one major party and a vice presidential candidate from the other, to appeal to voters unhappy with Biden and Trump.

“We are deeply relieved that everyone rejected their offer, forcing them to stand down,” said Matt Bennett of the centrist group Third Way, which had been fighting No Labels’ 2024 ambitions. “While the threat of third-party spoilers remains, this uniquely damaging attack on President Biden and Democrats from the center has at last ended.”

Biden supporters had worried No Labels would pull votes away from the president in battleground states and had been critical of how the group would not disclose its donors or much about its decision-making. No Labels never named all of its delegates and most of its deliberations took place in secret.

Dan DuPraw, a 33-year-old sales worker in Philadelphia who would have been a delegate to a No Labels convention, said the decision was disappointing but prudent. He trusts the No Labels leadership to make the right call.

“I understand why they made the decision, and I think it’s the right thing to do in this moment,” DuPraw said. “But I’m so disappointed that we get Trump and Biden again. I think it’s such a horrible thing for our country.”

DuPraw said he will now decide between Biden and Kennedy.

“I’m excited that there are other options than the two main parties,” he said.

___

Cooper reported from Phoenix.

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By Sean Murphy
The Associated Press

McALESTER, Okla. (AP) — A Black man convicted of shooting and killing two people in Oklahoma City more than two decades ago was executed April 4.

Michael Dewayne Smith received a lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:20 a.m., Oklahoma Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West said.

After the first of three lethal drugs, midazolam, was administered, Smith, 41, appeared to shake briefly and attempt to lift his head from the gurney before relaxing. He then took several short, audible breaths that sounded like snores or gasps. Oklahoma DOC Director Steven Harpe said after the execution that Smith “appeared to have some form of sleep apnea.”

A masked doctor entered the execution chamber at 10:14 a.m. and shook Smith several times before declaring him unconscious.

Smith appeared to stop breathing about a minute later. The doctor reentered the execution chamber at 10:19 a.m. and checked for a pulse before Harpe announced the time of death.

Smith was sentenced to die in the separate shooting deaths of Janet Moore, 41, and Sharath Pulluru, 22, in February 2002. He is the first person executed in Oklahoma this year and the 12th put to death since the state resumed executions in 2021 following a nearly seven-year hiatus resulting from problems with executions in 2014 and 2015.

Given the opportunity to say last words, Smith responded, “Nah, I’m good.”

Moore’s son Phillip Zachary Jr. and niece Morgan Miller-Perkins witnessed the execution from behind one-way glass. Attorney General Gentner Drummond read a statement on their behalf that said in part: “Justice has been served.”

Drummond, in his own statement, called Moore “a rock for her family” and said Pulluru “was an inspiration to his family” as the first member to come to the United States for an education.

“Janet and Sharath were murdered simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time; that was all. I am grateful that justice has been served,” Drummond said.

During a clemency hearing last month, Smith expressed his “deepest sorrows” to the victims’ families, but denied he was responsible.

“I didn’t commit these crimes. I didn’t kill these people,” Smith said, occasionally breaking into tears during his 15-minute address to the board, which denied him clemency in a 4-1 vote. “I was high on drugs. I don’t even remember getting arrested.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 4 denied a stay of execution requested by Smith’s attorneys, who argued that his confession to police was not sufficiently corroborated.

Prosecutors say Smith was a ruthless gang member who killed both victims in misguided acts of revenge and confessed his involvement in the killings to police and two other people.

They claim he killed Moore because he was looking for her son, who he mistakenly thought had told police about his whereabouts. Later that day, prosecutors say Smith killed Pulluru, a convenience store clerk who Smith believed had disrespected his gang during an interview with a newspaper reporter.

Smith’s attorney, Mark Henricksen, argued that Smith is intellectually disabled, a condition worsened by years of heavy drug use, and that his life should be spared and he should be allowed to spend the rest of it in prison. Henricksen said Smith was in a PCP-induced haze when he confessed to police and that key elements of his confession aren’t supported by facts.

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By Rodney Muhumuza and Ignatius Ssuuna
The Associated Press

KIGALI, Rwanda (AP) — Rwanda is preparing to mark the 30th anniversary of the East African nation’s most horrific period in history — the genocide against its minority Tutsi. To this day, new mass graves are still being discovered across the country of 14 million people, a grim reminder of the scale of the killings.

Delegations from around the world will gather on April 7 in the capital of Kigali as Rwanda holds somber commemorations of the 1994 massacres. High-profile visitors are expected to include Bill Clinton, the U.S. president at the time of the genocide, and Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

In a pre-recorded video ahead of the ceremonies, French President Emmanuel Macron said on April 4 that France and its allies could have stopped the genocide but lacked the will to do so. Macron’s declaration came three years after he acknowledged the “overwhelming responsibility” of France — Rwanda’s closest European ally in 1994 — for failing to stop the country’s slide into the slaughter.

Here’s a look at the past and how Rwanda has changed under President Paul Kagame, praised by many for bringing relative peace and stability but also vilified by others for his intolerance of dissent.

WHAT HAPPENED IN 1994?

An estimated 800,000 Tutsi were killed by extremist Hutu in massacres that lasted over 100 days. Some moderate Hutu who tried to protect members of the Tutsi minority were also targeted.

The killings were ignited when a plane carrying then-President Juvénal Habyarimana, a member of the majority Hutu, was shot down on April 6, 1994, over Kigali. The Tutsi were blamed for downing the plane and killing the president. Enraged, gangs of Hutu extremists began killing Tutsi, backed by the army and police.

Many victims — including children — were hacked to death with machetes. Kagame’s rebel group, the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front, managed to stop the killings, seized power and has since, as a political party, ruled Rwanda.

Kagame’s government and genocide survivor organizations have often accused France of training and arming militias and troops that led the rampage, sometimes saying they expect a formal apology.

A report commissioned by Macron in 2019 and published in 2021 concluded that French authorities failed to see where Habyarimana’s regime, which France supported, was headed and were subsequently too slow to acknowledge the extent of the killings. However, the report cleared France of any complicity in the massacres.

WHAT CAME AFTER THE GENOCIDE?

After Kagame seized power, many Hutu officials fled into exile or were arrested and imprisoned for their alleged roles in the genocide. Some escaped to neighboring Congo, where their presence has provoked armed conflict. In the late 1990s, Rwanda twice sent its forces deep into Congo, in part to hunt down Hutu rebels.

Some rights groups accused Rwanda’s new authorities of revenge attacks, but the government has slammed the allegations, saying they disrespect the memory of the genocide victims.

Kagame, who grew up as a refugee in neighboring Uganda, has been Rwanda’s de facto ruler, first as vice president from 1994 to 2000, then as acting president. He was voted into office in 2003 and has since been reelected multiple times.

WHAT’S THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE LIKE?

Rwanda’s ruling party is firmly in charge, with no opposition, while Kagame’s strongest critics now live in exile. Kagame won the last presidential election, in 2017, with nearly 99 percent of the vote after a campaign that Amnesty International described as marked by suppression and a “climate of fear.”

Critics have accused the government of forcing opponents to flee, jailing or making them disappear while some are killed under mysterious circumstances. Rights groups cite serious restrictions on the Internet, as well as on freedom of assembly and expression.

Some claim Kagame has exploited alleged Western feelings of guilt over the genocide to entrench his grip on Rwanda.

Now a candidate in the upcoming July presidential election, Kagame has cast himself in the role of a leader of a growing economy marked by technological innovation, with his supporters often touting Rwanda as an emerging business hub in Africa.

WHAT ABOUT RECONCILIATION?

Rwandan authorities have heavily promoted national unity among the majority Hutu and the minority Tutsi and Twa, with a separate government ministry dedicated to reconciliation efforts.

The government imposed a tough penal code to punish genocide and outlaw the ideology behind it, and Rwandan ID cards no longer identify a person by ethnicity. Lessons about the genocide are part of the curriculum in schools.

However, a leading survivors’ group points out that more needs to be done to eradicate what authorities describe as “genocide ideology” among some Rwandans.

WHAT DOES RWANDA LOOK LIKE TODAY?

The streets of Kigali are clean and free of potholes. Littering is banned. Tech entrepreneurs flock here from far and wide. Stylish new buildings give the city a modern look and an innovation center aims at nurturing local talent in the digital culture.

But poverty is rampant outside Kigali, with most people still surviving on subsistence farming. Tin-roofed shacks that dotted the countryside in 1994 remain ubiquitous across Rwanda.

The nation is young, however, with every other citizen under the age of 30, giving hope to aspirations for a post-genocide society in which ethnic or tribal membership doesn’t come first.

Corruption among officials is not as widespread as among other governments in this part of Africa, thanks in part to a policy of zero-tolerance for graft.

ARE THERE TROUBLES ON THE HORIZON?

Though mostly peaceful, Rwanda has had troubled relations with its neighbors. Recently, tensions have flared with Congo, with the two countries’ leaders accusing one another of supporting various armed groups.

Congo claims Rwanda is backing M23 rebels, who are mostly Tutsi fighters based in a remote area of eastern Congo. The M23 rebellion has displaced hundreds of thousands in Congo’s North Kivu’s province in recent years. Rwanda says Congo’s military is recruiting Hutu men who took part in the 1994 massacres.

U.N. experts have cited “solid evidence” that members of Rwanda’s armed forces were conducting operations in eastern Congo in support of M23, and in February, amid a dramatic military build-up along the border, Washington urged Rwandan authorities to withdraw troops and missile systems from Congo.

In January, Burundi, whose troops are fighting alongside the Congolese military in eastern Congo, closed its border with Rwanda and started deporting Rwandans. This happened not long after Burundian President Evariste Ndayishimiye accused Rwanda of backing Congo-based rebels opposed to his government. Rwanda denies the allegation.

Rwanda has also been in the news recently over a deal with Britain that would see migrants who cross the English Channel in small boats sent to Rwanda, where they would remain permanently. The plan has stalled amid legal challenges. In November, the U.K. Supreme Court ruled the plan was illegal, saying Rwanda is not a safe destination for asylum-seekers.

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By Doug Feinberg
AP Basketball Writer

CLEVELAND (AP) — Dawn Staley did a masterful job guiding a young South Carolina team back to the Final Four with an undefeated record for the second straight season.

Staley was honored April 4 as The Associated Press women’s college basketball Coach of the Year for the second time. She received 27 votes from the 35-member national media panel that votes on the AP Top 25 each week. She also won the award in 2020.

Staley joins an elite group of coaches that include Geno Auriemma (9), Muffet McGraw (4), Kim Mulkey (3) and Brenda Frese (2) who have won the AP award multiple times since it was first given in 1995.

Lindsay Gottlieb of Southern California, Felisha Legette-Jack of Syracuse and Scott Rueck of Oregon State tied for second with two votes each. Voting was done before the NCAA Tournament.

“I don’t coach to win awards, I really don’t,” Staley said. “I’m very, very satisfied with just being there for my players. … I’m forever indebted to basketball for what it’s given to me.”

Staley, who was presented the award alongside AP Player of the Year Caitlin Clark, thanked her own staff for all of their hard work helping the team go undefeated again.

South Carolina faces North Carolina State on April 5 in a national semifinal and is the overwhelming favorite to win its second title in three years and third overall, all since 2017. The Gamecocks are two wins away from completing the 10th undefeated season in NCAA Division I history.

“We had our fair share of rocky in the beginning and then as we continued throughout the season, the road got a little smoother and then obviously you’re going to face some adversity throughout the season, and this team being undefeated really is a shocker to me,” Staley said this week.

Staley has rebuilt the program into a power since she arrived in 2008 and last year’s team was expected to add another championship until Iowa knocked off the Gamecocks in the Final Four. This season, Staley had to replace her entire starting lineup and still guided them back to the semifinals for a fourth consecutive year.

She’s built a fanbase that has led the nation in attendance the past 10 years and in 2021 the school announced a new, seven-year contract that will pay her $2.9 million this season and grow to $3.5 million in the final season of 2027-28. She said then the $22.4 million deal should make an impact and perhaps lead to equity in the men’s and women’s games.

Along the way, Staley has become a voice of leadership and direction in the women’s game. The former point guard is already the first Black coach to win two NCAA titles — success that has given Staley the platform to champion issues off the court. She continues to speak out about gender equity, diversity and opportunities for women.

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By Beth Harris
AP Sports Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Bronny James will enter the NBA draft after one season at Southern California that was shortened by his recovery from cardiac arrest.

The 19-year-old son of LeBron James announced April 5 on his Instagram account that he also plans to retain his college eligibility and will enter the transfer portal.

“I’ve had a year with some ups and downs but all added to growth for me as a man, student and athlete,” James wrote.

James posted his decision hours before USC introduced Eric Musselman as its new coach. He comes from Arkansas and replaces Andy Enfield, who left on April 1 to become coach at SMU.

Musselman is scrambling to assemble a coaching staff and assess a roster that has also lost junior Kobe Johnson, who said April 4 that he’s committed to crosstown rival UCLA. USC star freshman Isaiah Collier attended Musselman’s news conference.

“I need to try to get a hold of Bronny. I’ve texted him,” Musselman said after his campus news conference. “Certainly he’s got a lot of options and we respect those options. We just want him to know that, hey, this opportunity here, if you want to play at USC, we’d love to have him. Such a talented young man.”

James averaged 4.8 points and 2.8 rebounds while starting six of 25 games for the Trojans. He shot 37 percent from the field, 27 percent from three-point range and 68 percent from the free throw line.

The elder James, his wife and their 9-year-old daughter were frequent courtside spectators at the Galen Center this season.

“Bronny is his own man,” the elder James said this week. “He has some tough decisions to make. When he’s ready to make those decisions, he’ll let us all know. But as his family, we’re going to support whatever he does.”

The 39-year-old James has been vocal about wanting to play with his son in the NBA.

Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, who represents father and son, said recently that he doesn’t “value a young player getting into the lottery as much as I do getting him on the right team in the right developmental situation.”

James, a 6-foot-4 combo guard, didn’t make his college debut until Dec. 10. Afterward, James appeared in front of the media for less than a minute to thank the doctors, athletic trainers and support system that helped him return to play.

Despite numerous requests, James never spoke to reporters during the season.

He suffered cardiac arrest on July 20 during a workout at the Galen Center. He was found to have a congenital heart defect that was treatable.

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By Farai Mutsaka and Gerald Imray
The Associated Press

Delicately and with intense concentration, Zanyiwe Ncube poured her small share of precious golden cooking oil into a plastic bottle at a food aid distribution site deep in rural Zimbabwe.

“I don’t want to lose a single drop,” she said.

Her relief at the handout — paid for by the United States government as her southern African country deals with a severe drought — was tempered when aid workers gently broke the news that this would be their last visit.

Ncube and her seven-month-old son she carried on her back were among 2,000 people who received rations of cooking oil, sorghum, peas and other supplies in the Mangwe district in southwestern Zimbabwe. The food distribution is part of a program funded by American aid agency USAID and rolled out by the United Nations’ World Food Programme.

They’re aiming to help some of the 2.7 million people in rural Zimbabwe threatened with hunger because of the drought that has enveloped large parts of southern Africa since late 2023. It has scorched the crops that tens of millions of people grow themselves and rely on to survive, helped by what should be the rainy season.

They can rely on their crops and the weather less and less.

The drought in Zimbabwe, neighboring Zambia and Malawi has reached crisis levels. Zambia and Malawi have declared national disasters. Zimbabwe could be on the brink of doing the same. The drought has reached Botswana and Angola to the west and Mozambique and Madagascar to the east.

A year ago, much of this region was drenched by deadly tropical storms and floods. It is in the midst of a vicious weather cycle: too much rain, then not enough. It’s a story of the climate extremes that scientists say are becoming more frequent and more damaging, especially for the world’s most vulnerable people.

In Mangwe, the young and the old lined up for food, some with donkey carts to carry home whatever they might get, others with wheelbarrows. Those waiting their turn sat on the dusty ground. Nearby, a goat tried its luck with a nibble on a thorny, scraggly bush.

Ncube, 39, would normally be harvesting her crops now — food for her, her two children and a niece she also looks after. Maybe there would even be a little extra to sell.

The driest February in Zimbabwe in her lifetime, according to the World Food Programme’s seasonal monitor, put an end to that.

“We have nothing in the fields, not a single grain,” she said. “Everything has been burnt (by the drought).”

The United Nations Children’s Fund says there are “overlapping crises” of extreme weather in eastern and southern Africa, with both regions lurching between storms and floods and heat and drought in the past year.

In southern Africa, an estimated 9 million people, half of them children, need help in Malawi. More than 6 million in Zambia, 3 million of them children, are impacted by the drought, UNICEF said. That’s nearly half of Malawi’s population and 30 percent of Zambia’s.

“Distressingly, extreme weather is expected to be the norm in eastern and southern Africa in the years to come,” said Eva Kadilli, UNICEF’s regional director.

While human-made climate change has spurred more erratic weather globally, there is something else parching southern Africa this year.

El Niño, the naturally occurring climatic phenomenon that warms parts of the Pacific Ocean every two to seven years, has varied effects on the world’s weather. In southern Africa, it means below-average rainfall, sometimes drought and is being blamed for the current situation.

The impact is more severe for those in Mangwe, where it’s notoriously arid. People grow the cereal grain sorghum and pearl millet, crops that are drought resistant and offer a chance at harvests, but even they failed to withstand the conditions this year.

Francesca Erdelmann, the World Food Programme’s country director for Zimbabwe, said last year’s harvest was bad, but this season is even worse. “This is not a normal circumstance,” she said.

The first few months of the year are traditionally the “lean months” when households run short as they wait for the new harvest. However, there is little hope for replenishment this year.

Joseph Nleya, a 77-year-old traditional leader in Mangwe, said he doesn’t remember it being this hot, this dry, this desperate. “Dams have no water, riverbeds are dry and boreholes are few. We were relying on wild fruits, but they have also dried up,” he said.

People are illegally crossing into Botswana to search for food and “hunger is turning otherwise hard-working people into criminals,” he added.

Multiple aid agencies warned last year of the impending disaster.

Since then, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema has said that 1 million of the 2.2 million hectares of his country’s staple corn crop have been destroyed. Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera has appealed for $200 million in humanitarian assistance.

The 2.7 million struggling in rural Zimbabwe is not even the full picture. A nationwide crop assessment is underway and authorities are dreading the results, with the number needing help likely to skyrocket, said the WFP’s Erdelmann.

With this year’s harvest a write-off, millions in Zimbabwe, southern Malawi, Mozambique and Madagascar won’t be able to feed themselves well into 2025. USAID’s Famine Early Warning System estimated that 20 million people would require food relief in southern Africa in the first few months of 2024.

Many won’t get that help, as aid agencies also have limited resources amid a global hunger crisis and a cut in humanitarian funding by governments.

As the WFP officials made their last visit to Mangwe, Ncube was already calculating how long the food might last her. She said she hoped it would be long enough to avert her greatest fear: that her youngest child would slip into malnutrition even before his first birthday.

This article was originally published by The Associated Press.

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By Sylvie Corbet,
The Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — More than a sporting competition, the Olympics are also a powerful political stage widely used in the past by totalitarian regimes as a propaganda tool but also by athletes as a driver of change in the fight against racial inequalities.

Before this summer’s Paris Olympics, an exhibit in the French capital shows how the games have been a “mirror of society” since the beginning of the 20th century.

Historian Paul Dietschy, one of the curators, told The Associated Press on March 27 that “this exhibit tries to show … this relationship between ideology, power and the Olympic Games.”

The exhibit at the Shoah Memorial, in central Paris, features photos, documents and Olympic items as well as film archives from the past century. It opened to the public on March 29 and is scheduled to last until mid-November, organizers said.

It notably highlights the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was used by Nazi Germany for propaganda purposes; the 1968 Mexico Olympics, where Black sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists to protest racial injustice in the U.S. and the 1972 Munich Olympics, which was the scene of a brutal attack on 11 Israeli team members who were killed by Palestinian militants.

Dietschy said the exhibit sought to show the historic and political significance of the Olympics “through the life of big stars or champions like Alfred Nakashe, who was a Jew from Algeria competing in swimming and who was deported to an Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Nakashe competed with the French team in Berlin in 1936 and in the first postwar Summer Olympics in London in 1948 after surviving the Holocaust.

The exhibit also tells the stories of athletes who embody Olympic values like Jesse Owens, the U.S. Black athlete who won four Olympic gold medals in Berlin.

Historian Caroline François, one of the curators, stressed that “the 1936 Games are emblematic with Jesse Owens’ story, because he is both an immense champion who left his mark on the history of sport … but also because of his personality, his career, his close ties to German champion Luz Long.”

“Owens embodies this struggle to confront Hitler and the Nazi ideology … But he himself was a victim of racism and segregation in the United States,” she said.

The exhibit also addresses the issue of how Olympic stadiums were turned into internment camps during World War II. Following the Nazi invasion of France in 1940, the country was ruled by a government commonly known as Vichy France, which collaborated with Nazi Germany.

The displays feature photos of the Vel d’Hiv stadium outside Paris, where French police herded about 13,000 people on July 16-17, 1942, before they were deported to Auschwitz. The stadium had been used for boxing, wrestling and weightlifting during the 1924 Paris Olympics.

International politics, again, are expected to be on the agenda of the Paris Olympics this year.

The International Olympic Committee said earlier this month that Russian and Belarusian athletes won’t be allowed to take part in the traditional parade at the opening ceremony in the French capital. Russia and Belarus are barred from team sports at the Olympics because of Moscow’s war in Ukraine, and the IOC has laid out a two-step vetting procedure for individual athletes from those countries to be granted neutral status. Those athletes must first be approved by the governing body of their individual sport and then by an IOC-appointed review panel.

Amid the Israel-Hamas war, IOC President Thomas Bach recently said that Israel faces no threat to its Olympic status and added: “Since the heinous attack on the Israeli team (during the 1972 Munich Olympics), there were always special measures being taken with Israeli athletes.”

In recent times, totalitarian and democratic powers have been competing, including through sports, Dietschy said.

“So the Olympic Games of Paris are a huge moment, because we will see if the peace values will be respected,” he said. “We’ll see if sports can be also a way of spreading universal democratic values.”

“The context (now) is more tense as a war is spreading in the world. Maybe the (Paris) Games will be a moment of peace,” Dietschy said hopefully.

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By Lea Skene 
The Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — Generations of Maryland workers — longshoremen, seafarers, steelworkers and crabbers whose livelihoods depend on Baltimore’s port — watched in disbelief this week as an iconic symbol of their maritime culture crumbled into the Patapsco River.

The deadly collapse of the historic Francis Scott Key Bridge has shaken Baltimore to its core.

“What happened was kind of a travesty,” said Joe Wade, a retired port worker who remembers fishing near the bridge as a child. “I’m not a crier, but … I got emotional.”

Baltimore was a port long before it was incorporated as a city — and long before the United States declared its independence from Britain. Many of the city’s brick rowhouses were built to house fishermen, dockworkers and sailors. They earned a reputation for being pioneering and tough, unafraid of rough seas and long days.

It’s a cultural identity that persists among modern-day watermen like Ryan “Skeet” Williams, who makes a living harvesting crabs from the Chesapeake Bay.

“We’re rugged and salty,” he said. “You build your own life.”

Williams relied on the Key Bridge to connect his small maritime community outside Baltimore with Maryland’s Eastern Shore, the lifeblood of the state’s robust seafood industry. Many of his friends and relatives used the bridge for their daily commutes.

Scott Cowan, president of the International Longshoremen’s Association Local 333, said the union represents about 2,400 people whose jobs now hang in the balance. Shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore can’t resume until the underwater wreckage has been cleared.

“They always say it’s the port that built the city,” said Cowan, who followed in his father’s footsteps when he became a longshoreman decades ago.

The disaster early March 26 marks the latest blow to a city whose storied history often gets lost in conversations about its more recent struggles: poverty, violent crime and population loss.

Six members of a roadwork crew plunged to their deaths after a 985-foot (300-meter) cargo ship lost power and crashed into the bridge, eliminating a key piece of Baltimore’s skyline and halting maritime traffic to one of the east coast’s busiest ports.

In the aftermath, some experts questioned whether the span’s supporting columns should have been better protected against the gigantic container ships that would routinely pass by them. But Baltimore is an old city with aging infrastructure that often receives little attention from national politicians.

Officials have promised to rebuild the Key Bridge, but that could take years.

“This is no ordinary bridge. This is one of the cathedrals of American infrastructure,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said during a news conference in Baltimore earlier this week. “So the path to normalcy will not be easy. It will not be quick. It will not be inexpensive.”

A storied history: Francis Scott Key, and generations of dockworkers

Baltimore became a global leader in shipbuilding early on in its history. It later became a major transportation hub with the addition of a railroad line connecting the east coast to the Midwest and beyond.

During the War of 1812, British forces attacked Baltimore in hopes of weakening its industrial and maritime prowess. But American troops successfully defended south Baltimore’s Fort McHenry, and the invasion inspired Francis Scott Key to write the national anthem after he witnessed an American flag flying defiantly overhead following a night of heavy bombing.

More than 150 years later, construction began on a bridge that would be named in his honor.

The Key Bridge opened in 1977, spanning 1.6 miles (2.6 kilometers) at the entrance of Baltimore’s harbor and allowing residents to traverse the waterway without driving through the city. It provided a direct connection between two working-class, water-oriented communities that formed during World War II — when nearby steel mills produced hundreds of massive warships to aid in the defense effort.

Baltimore’s history is rife with iconic characters, from debaucherous pirates and corrupt politicians to the treasured poet Edgar Allan Poe and jazz legend Billie Holiday. Through it all, the port was a relative constant.

It has allowed countless people to earn a decent living by showing up and putting in the hours, including immigrants and other disenfranchised groups. And it has remained an economic engine, adapting and evolving even as other local businesses have shuttered amid declines in industrial production.

It currently processes more cars and farm equipment than any other port in the country. Last year alone, it handled $80 billion of foreign cargo, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore said at a news conference earlier this week.

“The collapse of the Key Bridge is not just a Maryland crisis. The collapse of the Key Bridge is a global crisis,” he said. “The national economy and the world’s economy depends on the Port of Baltimore.”

The loss of life falls on one of Baltimore’s hardworking communities

The men who died in the collapse were filling potholes during an overnight shift. While police quickly stopped traffic after the ship sent a mayday signal, they didn’t have time to alert the construction crew — a group of Latino immigrants in active pursuit of the American dream.

Two survivors were rescued almost immediately and divers recovered two bodies the following day. The remaining four victims are still missing and presumed dead.

Advocates say their deaths take on larger significance in the context of the myriad challenges facing immigrants in the U.S. The men were performing a physically grueling job for relatively low wages. They were laboring during nighttime hours to avoid inconveniencing Maryland commuters.

It comes as little surprise that these already disenfranchised workers are the ones who ended up paying the ultimate price, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Baltimore-based immigration services nonprofit Global Refuge. Immigrants will almost inevitably be involved in rebuilding the bridge as well, she added.

The workers came to Maryland from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, seeking higher wages and better opportunities for themselves and their families.

By settling in the Baltimore area, they added to a long history of immigration that has played a key role in shaping the city’s culture and commerce. That history is inextricably linked to the port.

Between the Civil War and World War I, Baltimore became one of the country’s largest points of entry for European immigrants. In 1868, an immigration pier opened in south Baltimore not far from the historic battlefield that birthed the Star-Spangled Banner.

Many immigrants passed through the city on their way to the Midwest, but others stayed and put down roots. Those without specialized skills or advanced education worked on the docks and in the railroad yards, often alongside African Americans who came north to escape slavery. Their contributions are memorialized in the Baltimore Immigration Museum, which occupies a historic building constructed in 1904 to house European immigrants.

“Baltimore became a real melting pot of cultures,” said local historian Johns Hopkins, who directs the nonprofit Baltimore Heritage.

In more recent decades, Latino immigrants have settled in and around Baltimore, though other cities have received larger influxes, likely because they’re experiencing more job growth.

CASA, an immigrant advocacy group based in Maryland, has been in contact with two of the families whose loved ones are among those still missing. Both men — Maynor Suazo Sandoval and Miguel Luna — were husbands and fathers who left their home countries over 15 years ago.

“These construction workers are absolutely essential,” said Gustavo Torres, the organization’s executive director. “In a time when there is so much hatred against the immigrant community, we look to the quiet leadership of Maynor and Miguel and appreciate how they uphold our society so that Americans can live comfortably.”

A key thoroughfare

Many port workers and thousands of others used the Key Bridge on a daily basis.

Along with their neighbors, they awoke March 26 to news of its demise and quickly logged onto social media, still in disbelief. They watched video footage showing every detail of the catastrophic collapse, replaying the horrific sequence until it finally seemed real.

Seeing a major piece of their city’s infrastructure crumble like a toy left some Baltimoreans with an uneasy sense of shock, jolted by the realization that anything can happen.

In the days that followed, many residents stopped at various vantage points near the collapse site to survey the wreckage and pay their respects. Some recalled watching the bridge take shape in the 1970s, arching majestically across the water.

“It was always there. It was a landmark,” said Niki Putinski, who spent years living in a small residential neighborhood at the base of the bridge. “I just didn’t think something could bring it down like that.”

The whole city is grieving, said Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, whose father moved to Baltimore as a young man to work at the port. But there’s a reason Baltimoreans are known for their grit and perseverance, Scott said.

“You can’t talk about Baltimore — past, present and future — without talking about the port,” he said. “And this will be the latest example of Baltimore bouncing back. That’s really ingrained in us here. We don’t give up, we ignore the noise and we keep that gritty chip on our shoulder.”

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Associated Press video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report from Baltimore.

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By Gerald Imray and Nqobile Ntshangase 
The Associated Press

MMAMATLAKALA, South Africa (AP) — An 8-year-old girl was the lone survivor after a bus full of pilgrims making their way to a popular Easter festival in rural South Africa slammed into a bridge on a mountain pass and plunged more than 150 feet into a ravine before bursting into flames, killing all 45 others onboard.

It was a tragic reminder of how deadly South Africa’s roads become during the Easter period, when millions crisscross the country during the long holiday weekend. Authorities repeatedly warn motorists of the danger and had issued multiple messages urging caution just a day before the horrific crash on March 28.

The girl somehow survived after the bus carrying worshippers from neighboring Botswana careened off the bridge and caught fire as it hit the rocks below, according to authorities.

The girl was in a stable condition in the hospital after being admitted with serious injuries and was “in safe hands,” an official with the local health department said March 29. Details of her injuries were not released.

Forensic investigators retrieved what they believed were 34 of the 45 bodies but couldn’t be certain of the exact number, reflecting the gruesome nature of the crash. Many of the victims trapped inside the bus were burned beyond recognition, authorities said.

Dr. Phophi Ramathuba, an official with the Limpopo provincial health department, said only nine of the bodies recovered were likely to be identifiable.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the victims, who appeared to all be from Botswana, were on their way to the rustic town of Moria in Limpopo province for the Easter weekend pilgrimage that attracts hundreds of thousands of followers of the Zion Christian Church.

The church has its headquarters in Moria and it was the first time the full pilgrimage was being held since the COVID-19 pandemic. Worshippers flocked to the small town which features a giant star — the church’s emblem — and the words “Zion City Moria” painted in white on a hillside.

The church was formed in South Africa in the early 1900s as a Christian denomination that also retains some African traditions. It has an estimated 7 million followers across the southern African region.

Ramathuba said South African authorities had asked church leaders from Botswana to come and help identify the victims.

Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays in South Africa and many of its neighbors, when millions travel into, out of and across the nation. For some South Africans, it’s a chance to return to their home towns and villages from jobs in the cities. Migrants also travel back to their home countries to see family. Some, like the pilgrims that died on March 28, make religious trips.

Road travel can be treacherous; South Africa’s Road Traffic Management Corporation reported that 252 people died in road crashes between Holy Thursday and Easter Monday last year.

Authorities said it appeared the bus driver lost control and the vehicle slammed into the barriers along the side of the bridge and then went over the edge. The driver was among the dead.

South African Minister of Transport Sindisiwe Chikunga was in Limpopo province attending a road safety campaign when she was informed of the “devastating news” of the crash, according to the national Department of Traffic.

Ramathuba said she had been at an Easter prayer meeting when she was called to the crash scene on the Mmamatlakala bridge near the town of Mokopane, which is about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of the South African capital, Pretoria.

“I attended the scene of the accident, but now our focus as the health department is on the brave little survivor. She is in safe hands in a hospital with experts looking after her,” Ramathuba told reporters. She declined to give details of the child’s injuries, but authorities released a photograph of the child lying in a hospital bed and being examined by a doctor.

Ramathuba also declined to say if the child’s parents or other family members were on the bus, saying authorities needed time to trace and inform families of the dead, who were mostly in Botswana.

Meanwhile, forensic investigators worked through the wreckage amid the rocks and steep cliffs. At least 11 bodies were believed still inside what was left of the charred bus, which was almost crushed flat.

“We were at the scene,” said local resident Simone Mayema, who said he was one of the first to arrive after the crash. “We tried to help (but) there was nothing we could do because there was flames.”

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Imray reported from Cape Town, South Africa.

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By Michael Balsamo and Colleen Long,
The Associated Press

Two properties belonging to music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs in Los Angeles and Miami were searched March 25 by federal Homeland Security Investigations agents and other law enforcement as part of an ongoing sex trafficking investigation by federal authorities in New York, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press.

It’s not clear whether Combs was the target of the investigation. The officials were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the investigation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

In a statement, Homeland Security Investigations said it “executed law enforcement actions as part of an ongoing investigation, with assistance from HSI Los Angeles, HSI Miami, and our local law enforcement partners.”

A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan declined to comment.

Messages to Combs’ lawyers and other representatives seeking comment were not immediately returned.

A police line was set up around the Los Angeles house in the wealthy Holmby Hills neighborhood near Beverly Hills. Helicopter video from KABC-TV showed a group of agents with vests that indicated they were from Homeland Security Investigations gathered in the home’s backyard near the pool. A command post was set up outside the house and agents were still entering and leaving hours after the search began.

There have been several sexual assault lawsuits filed against Combs in recent months.

In February a music producer filed a lawsuit alleging Combs coerced him to solicit prostitutes and pressured him to have sex with them. Combs’ attorney Shawn Holley has said of those allegations that “we have overwhelming, indisputable proof that his claims are complete lies.”

Combs’ former protege and girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, sued him in November alleging years of sexual abuse, including rape. The lawsuit said he forced her to have sex with male prostitutes while he filmed them. The suit was settled the day after it was filed.

Another of Combs’ accusers was a woman who said the rap producer raped her two decades ago when she was 17.

The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly as Cassie did.

Combs had said in a December statement, “I did not do any of the awful things being alleged.”

Douglas Wigdor, an attorney who represents Cassie and another woman who sued Combs, said in a statement Monday, “Hopefully, this is the beginning of a process that will hold Mr. Combs responsible for his depraved conduct.”

It is not clear whether the search is related to any of the allegations raised in the lawsuits. 

Combs is among the most influential hip-hop producers and executives of the past three decades. Formerly known as Puff Daddy, he built one of hip-hop’s biggest empires, blazing a trail with several entities attached to his famous name. He is the founder of Bad Boy Records and a three-time Grammy winner who has worked with a slew of top-tier artists including Notorious B.I.G., Mary J. Blige, Usher, Lil Kim, Faith Evans and 112.

Combs created the fashion clothing line Sean John, launched the Revolt TV channel with a focus on music, and produced the reality show “Making the Band” for MTV.

His latest album, “The Love Album – Off the Grid,” was released last year days after Combs was honored at the MTV VMAs. It was nominated for best progressive R&B album at February’s Grammy Awards, which the rapper-mogul did not attend.

The entertainment industry has been beset with a steady stream of career-ending sexual misconduct allegations in the years since stories about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein spawned the #MeToo movement in 2017. Weinstein and “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson are each serving prison sentences after rape convictions. Dozens of civil lawsuits have been filed against prominent figures.

The music industry has not faced a reckoning to the same degree, but singer and producer R. Kelly is serving a prison sentence for sexually abusing young fans, seven women have sued hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons alleging he raped them and two women have sued Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler alleging sexual assault.

Weinstein, Masterson and Kelly are appealing their convictions, and Simmons has denied all of the allegations against him. One lawsuit against Tyler has been dismissed and he is contesting the other.

AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton contributed from Los Angeles. This article was originally published by The Associated Press. 

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By Jessica Damiano,
The Associated Press

Women have long been at the forefront of gardening, whether passing agricultural traditions from generation to generation, organizing garden clubs and beautification societies, or — in some cases — making significant contributions to science and landscape design.

Some of these “plant women” gained notoriety for their work. Many are not as well known.

Here are a few who have left permanent marks on American horticultural history:

Fannie Lou Hamer 

A civil rights and agricultural activist, Hamer founded the Freedom Farm Cooperative in the late 1960s to provide land, livestock and vegetable-growing resources to poor Black families and farmers in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The Cooperative facilitated crop-sharing, self-reliance and financial independence. Participating families were also loaned a piglet to raise to maturity, after which they would return it for mating and give the cooperative two piglets from each litter to continue the program. “If you have a pig in your backyard, if you have some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and your family, and nobody can push you around,” Hamer said. Her Cooperative became one of the earliest examples of modern community gardening and a precursor of today’s food justice movement.

Claudia ‘Lady Bird’ Johnson

First lady from 1963 to 1969, Johnson was an environmentalist and early native plants proponent who advocated for preserving wild spaces. She led the effort to secure the passage of the 1965 Highway Beautification Act during her husband’s presidency. The law sought to clear highways of billboards and to plant wildflowers along their shoulders to support plant and animal biodiversity and regional identity. Today, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin honors her legacy.

Marie Clark Taylor

In 1941, Taylor became the first Black woman to receive a doctorate in botany in the United States, and the first woman of any race to gain a Ph.D. in science from Fordham University. As an educator, she applied her doctoral research on the effect of light on plant growth to change the way high school science was taught. She encouraged the use of light microscopes and botanical materials in the classroom for the first time. In the mid-1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson enlisted her to expand her teaching methods nationwide. Taylor also served as chair of Howard University’s Botany Department for nearly 30 years until her retirement in 1976.

Waheenee

Also known as Buffalo Bird Woman, Waheenee was a Hidatsa woman born around 1839 in what is now North Dakota. She mastered and shared centuries-old cultivating, planting and harvesting techniques with Gilbert L. Wilson, a minister and anthropologist who studied the tribe in the early 1900s. During visits that spanned 10 years, Wilson, whose work was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, transcribed Waheenee’s words with her son serving as interpreter. The resulting book, “Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden: Agriculture of the Hidatsa Indians,” first published in 1917, documented the Hidatsa women’s methods for growing beans, corn, squash, sunflowers and tobacco, as well as the tools they used and their practices for drying and winter storage. Her advice is still relevant today.

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By David Ginsburg,
AP Sports Writer

BALTIMORE (AP) — Peter Angelos, owner of a Baltimore Orioles team that endured long losing stretches and shrewd proprietor of a law firm that won high-profile cases against industry titans, died March 23. He was 94.

Angelos had been ill for several years. His family announced his death in a statement released by the Orioles that thanked the caregivers “who brought comfort to him in his final years.”

Angelos’ death comes as his son, John, is in the process of selling the Orioles to a group headed by Carlyle Group Inc. co-founder David Rubenstein. Peter Angelos’ public role diminished significantly in his final years. According to a lawsuit involving his sons in 2022, he had surgery after his aortic valve failed in 2017.

“I offer my deepest condolences to the Angelos family on the passing of Peter Angelos,” Rubenstein said in a statement. “Peter made an indelible mark first in business and then in baseball. The city of Baltimore owes him a debt of gratitude for his stewardship of the Orioles across three decades and for positioning the team for great success.”

Born on the Fourth of July in 1929 and raised in Maryland by Greek immigrants, Peter Angelos rose from a blue-collar background to launch a firm in his own name after receiving his law degree from the University of Baltimore in 1961.

In August 1993, Angelos led a group of investors that bought the Orioles. The group included writer Tom Clancy, filmmaker Barry Levinson and tennis star Pam Shriver. The price tag of $173 million — at the time the highest for a sports franchise — came in a sale forced by the bankruptcy of then-owner Eli Jacobs.

While remaining active in a law firm specializing in personal injury cases, Angelos assumed a hands-on approach to running his hometown team. Few player acquisitions were carried out without his approval, and his reputation for not spending millions on high-priced free agents belied his net worth, which in 2017 was estimated at $2.1 billion.

In 1996, his firm brought a lawsuit on behalf of the state of Maryland against tobacco giant Philip Morris, securing a $4.5 billion settlement. The Law Offices of Peter Angelos also earned millions of dollars through the settlement of asbestos cases, including a class-action suit on behalf of steel, shipyard and manufacturing facility workers.

Angelos made headlines as well in baseball. In 1995, he was the only one of 28 owners who refused to adhere to a plan to use replacement players during a union strike that began during the 1994 season.

“We’re duty bound to provide major league baseball to our fans, and that can’t be done with replacement players,” he insisted.

At the time, Orioles shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. was only 122 games from breaking Lou Gehrig’s record of 2,130 consecutive games played. The streak would have ended if the season started with replacement players and Ripken remained on strike, but the owners and players reached an agreement before opening day and Ripken ultimately ended up extending his record run to 2,632.

Angelos also fought for years to create an exhibition series between the Orioles and Cuba’s national team, a quest that reached fruition in 1999. On March 28, the Orioles played in Havana while Angelos sat alongside Cuban leader Fidel Castro. The teams met again on May 3 at Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

The series marked the first time the Cuban national team had faced a squad composed solely of major league players, and the first time since 1959 a big league club played in Cuba.

“He’s always had an interest in politics, especially foreign policy. That, and his involvement with baseball, made it a natural thing,” said John Angelos, a son and the Orioles’ current chairman and CEO.

The Orioles never won a World Series with Angelos as their owner. The team finally ended a run of 14 consecutive losing seasons in 2012, reaching the postseason under manager Buck Showalter. Baltimore made it to the American League Championship Series in 2014. But in 2018 the bottom fell out when the Orioles finished 47-115, the worst record in the majors and the franchise’s worst since it relocated from St. Louis in 1954.

Showalter was fired, and a major rebuild began the following season under rookie manager Brandon Hyde. The Orioles capped a swift rise from their rebuild by winning 101 games and a division title in 2023.

Though the team was rarely sensational, its home base certainly stood out. Sellout crowds were the norm after Oriole Park at Camden Yards opened in 1992. The iconic structure was built predominantly with brick, mortar and steel — much in the same fashion as old-time ballparks — and was the blueprint for other stadiums to follow.

In an era when owners often sell the name of their team’s stadium or arena to advertisers with the highest bid, Angelos never succumbed to such a transaction.

As he neared his 90th birthday, Angelos finally settled into the background and entrusted the operation of the team to his two sons, John and Louis.

John Angelos also is president of the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network, a regional network that televises Orioles and Washington Nationals games. Though both teams share ownership of MASN, the Orioles hold a large majority interest.

Though known as the owner of a baseball team and successful law firm, Peter Angelos’ reach in Maryland went far deeper. He had a political career that began with an unsuccessful run for state Senate in 1958, but after that he held a seat on the Baltimore City Council from 1959 to 1963.

In 1967, his bid to become Baltimore’s mayor ended in the Democratic primary.

Angelos also was a player in the horse racing industry. He bought several horses and named one after his manager at the time — Showalter, who won his debut race as a 2-year-old at Laurel Race Course in 2015.

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By Maria Sherman,
AP Music Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Days after Beyoncé releases her highly anticipated eighth studio album, she’ll make an appearance at the 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards to receive its innovator award.

Beyoncé will appear at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles to accept the honor during the April 1 ceremony hosted by Ludacris. She’s being recognized for her pioneering career: for decades of creative risks and influencing pop culture on a mass scale, as well as last year’s groundbreaking Renaissance World Tour.

Ludacris will also perform, joining a previously announced lineup of Justin Timberlake, Green Day, TLC, Jelly Roll, Lainey Wilson, and Tate McRae.

Cher will be presented with the iHeartRadio icon award.

Beyoncé’s upcoming “Act ll: Cowboy Carter” is the follow-up to 2022’s acclaimed “Act I: Renaissance.”

Last month, the superstar singer became the first Black woman to top Billboard’s country music chart after the uptempo country stomp “Texas Hold ‘Em” reached No. 1 on the country airplay chart.

This year, Beyoncé scored five iHeartRadio Music Awards nominations, including R&B artist of the year, R&B song of the year (for “Cuff It,”) favorite tour style, best fan army and a new category, favorite on screen, for “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.”

Taylor Swift leads the nominations with nine, followed closely by Jelly Roll, SZA, and 21 Savage with eight. Behind them is Olivia Rodrigo, who received seven.

Fans can vote in several categories including best lyrics, best music video, best fan army, social star award, favorite tour photographer, TikTok bop of the year, favorite tour style and two new fields: favorite on screen and favorite debut album.

Social voting is open at iHeartRadio.com/awards and will close on March 25 at 11:59 p.m. PDT for all categories.

The show will air live on Fox stations beginning at 8 p.m. EDT. It will also air on iHeartRadio stations across the U.S. and the app.

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By Ashraf Khalil,
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kevin Hart, who rose from the open mics and comedy clubs of his native Philadelphia to become one of the country’s most recognizable performers, will receive the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor at a gala performance March 24 at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Hart, 44, has honed a signature style that combines his diminutive height, expressive face and motor-mouth delivery into a successful stand-up act.

In Hollywood, Hart made his movie debut in the 2002 film “Paper Soldiers” and came to mainstream fame through a string of scene-stealing cameos in hits such as 2005’s “The 40-Year-Old-Virgin.”

Hart’s films have grossed more than $4.23 billion globally.

Now in its 25th year, the Mark Twain Prize annually honors performers who have made a lasting impact on humor and culture. Honorees receive a bronze bust of Twain, the iconic American writer and satirist whose real name was Samuel Clemens.

Mark Twain recipients are honored with a night of testimonials and video tributes, often featuring previous award winners. Other comedians receiving the lifetime achievement award include George Carlin, Whoopi Goldberg, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett and Dave Chapelle. Bill Cosby, the 2009 recipient, had his Mark Twain Prize rescinded in 2019 amid allegations of sexual assault.

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The Associated Press

ATLANTA (AP) — Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said March 23 that the election interference prosecution against Donald Trump hasn’t been delayed by proceedings over her romantic relationship with a special prosecutor she hired for the case.

“I don’t feel like we have been slowed down at all,” Willis told CNN in an interview. “I think there are efforts to slow down the train, but the train is coming.”

Her latest comments come as defense attorneys continue to press claims about her handling of a sprawling prosecution against the former president and current GOP presumptive nominee. Trump faces four felony indictments — including separate federal and state cases for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election that he lost to President Joe Biden — but has fought to delay and dismiss the cases, arguing that political opponents are wrongly targeting him.

Willis spoke days after a Georgia judge allowed attorneys for Trump’s codefendants to appeal his ruling that she could stay on the case after the withdrawal of the special prosecutor, Nathan Wade. That may allow defense attorneys to amplify allegations of impropriety between Wade and Willis.

Defense attorneys have alleged Willis hired Wade to profit from the Trump prosecution through their romantic relationship. Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee said there wasn’t sufficient evidence to prove those claims but rebuked Willis for what he called a “tremendous lapse in judgment.”

Willis told CNN that she didn’t think her reputation needed to be reclaimed and that she hadn’t done anything embarrassing.

“I’m not embarrassed by anything I’ve done,” Willis said. “I guess my greatest crime is that I had a relationship with a man, but that’s not something I find embarrassing in any way.”

Anthony Michael Kreis, a Georgia State University law professor who’s been following the case, criticized her comments in a post on X.

“If I were Fani Willis, I would simply not talk to the media at all at this point just out of an abundance of caution,” Kreis said.

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By Michael Goldberg and Emily Wagster Pettus
The Associated Press

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge on March 21 finished handing down prison terms of about 10 to 40 years to six White former Mississippi law enforcement officers who pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and torturing two Black men in an hours-long attack that included beatings, repeated uses of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.

U.S. District Judge Tom Lee called the culprits’ actions “egregious and despicable” and gave sentences near the top of federal guidelines to five of the six men who attacked Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in January 2023.

The case drew condemnation from top law enforcement officials in the country, including Attorney General Merrick Garland. In its grisly details, local residents saw echoes of Mississippi’s history of racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a steep price for their crimes, the victims’ attorneys said.

“The depravity of the crimes committed by these defendants cannot be overstated,” Garland said March 21.

Brett McAlpin, 53, who was the fourth highest-ranking officer in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, received a sentence of about 27 years on March 21. McAlpin nodded to his family in the courtroom. He offered an apology before he was sentenced but did not look at the victims as he spoke.

“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” McAlpin said. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”

The only defendant who didn’t receive a prison term at the top of the sentencing guidelines was Joshua Hartfield, 32, a former Richland police officer who did not work in a sheriff’s department with the others and was not a member of a “Goon Squad.” He was the last of the six former officers sentenced over three days this week, months after they all pleaded guilty.

Before giving Hartfield a 10-year sentence March 21, Lee said Hartfield did not have a history of using excessive force and was roped into the brutal episode by one of the former deputies, Christian Dedmon. Lee said, however, that Hartfield failed to intervene in the violence and participated in a cover-up.

Lee sentenced Dedmon, 29, to 40 years and Daniel Opdyke, 28, to 17.5 years on March 20. He gave about 20 years to Hunter Elward, 31, and 17.5 years to Jeffrey Middleton, 46, on March 19.

Arguing for a lengthy sentence, federal prosecutor Christopher Perras said McAlpin was not technically a member of the Goon Squad but “molded the men into the goons they became.”

Parker told investigators that McAlpin functioned like a “mafia don” as he instructed the officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other deputies often tried to impress McAlpin, and Opdyke’s attorney said March 20 that his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.

The younger deputies tried to wrap their heads around how they had started off “wanting to be good law enforcement officers and turned into monsters,” Perras said March 21.

“How did these deputies learn to treat another human being this way? Your honor, the answer is sitting right there,” Perras said, pointing at McAlpin.

In March 2023, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.

The officers invented false charges against the victims, planting a gun and drugs at the scene of their crime, and stuck to their cover story for months until finally admitting that they tortured Jenkins and Parker. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it in what federal prosecutors said was meant to be a “mock execution.”

The terror began Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a White person complained to McAlpin that two Black men were staying with a White woman at a house in Braxton. McAlpin told Dedmon, who texted a group of White deputies asking if they were “available for a mission.”

“No bad mugshots,” Dedmon texted — a green light, according to prosecutors, to use excessive force on parts of the body that wouldn’t appear in a booking photo.

Dedmon also brought Hartfield, who was instructed to cover the back door of the property during their illegal entry.

Once inside, the officers mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns. They handcuffed them and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. Dedmon and Opdyke assaulted them with a sex toy. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess.

After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw, they devised a coverup. The deputies agreed to plant drugs, and false charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.

McAlpin and Middleton, the oldest in the group, threatened to kill other officers if they spoke up, prosecutors said. In court March 21, McAlpin’s attorney Aafram Sellers said only Middleton threatened to kill them.

Sellers also questioned a probation officer about details submitted to the judge. When federal investigators interviewed the neighbor who called McAlpin, that person reported seeing “trashy” people at the house who were both White and Black, Sellers said. That called into question whether the episode started on the basis of race, he argued.

Federal prosecutors said the neighbor referred to people at the home as “those people” and “thugs.” 

The information included in the charging documents, which the officers did not dispute when they pleaded guilty, revealed some of them used racial taunts and epithets throughout the episode.

Majority-White Rankin County is just east of Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city. The officers shouted at Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say.

Attorneys for several of the deputies said their clients became ensnared in a culture of corruption that was encouraged by leaders in the sheriff’s office.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey revealed no details about his deputies’ actions when he announced they had been fired last June. After they pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and promised changes. Jenkins and Parker called for his resignation and filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department.

Bailey, who was reelected without opposition in November, said in a statement March 21 that he is “committed to the betterment of this county” and will work “with the honest, hard-working men and women currently with this department” to make Rankin County safer.

In a statement read by his attorney March 21, Jenkins said he “felt like a slave” and was “left to die like a dog.”

“If those who are in charge of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office can participate in these kinds of torture, God help us all,” Jenkins said. “And God help Rankin County.”

___

Michael Goldberg 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. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.

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By The Associated Press

SOUTHWICK, Mass. (AP) — Investigators in Massachusetts are pursuing criminal charges against six teens who they say participated in “a hateful, racist online chat that included heinous language, threats, and a mock slave auction.”

A group on Snapchat was created overnight from Feb. 8 through Feb. 9 by a group of eighth grade students in the town of Southwick, Massachusetts, located about 100 miles (161 kilometers) west of Boston, according to investigators.

During the chat, some participants expressed hateful and racist comments, including wanting to commit acts of violence toward people of color, racial slurs, derogatory pictures and videos, and a mock slave auction directed at two particular students, investigators said.

Snapchat servers are designed to automatically delete all one-on-one messages and group chats after they’ve been viewed by all recipients, according to the company’s website. Still, the company warns that those who see messages can potentially save them, whether by taking a screenshot or another image-capture technology.

On Friday, Feb. 9, the existence of the group chat was reported to school authorities. The following Monday, six students were suspended from Southwick Regional School. On the same day, local police informed the Hampden District Attorney’s Office about the posts.

One of the students has been charged with interference with civil rights, threatening to commit a crime and witness interference. A second participant has been charged with interference with civil rights and threatening to commit a crime. The remaining four have each been charged with threatening to commit a crime.

The identities of the six teens were not disclosed due to their age. The charges were filed in juvenile court.

Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni said he met personally with the identified victims and their families.

“Hatred and racism have no place in this community. And where this behavior becomes criminal, I will ensure that we act,” Gulluni said in a written statement.

“There is no question that the alleged behavior of these six juveniles is vile, cruel, and contemptible. Seeing it, and facing the reality that these thoughts, that this ugliness, can exist within middle school students, here, in this community, in 2024 is discouraging, unsettling, and deeply frustrating,” he added.

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By Luis Andres Henao,
The Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” has been a box-office hit in the United States and several other countries. The film, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, is focused on the Rastafari legend’s story during the making of his 1977 album “Exodus” while leading up to a momentous concert in his native Jamaica.

The Rastafari faith is rooted in the Caribbean island in the 1930s. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Marley — the faith’s most famous exponent. For decades, Rastafari have been prosecuted for their ritualistic use of marijuana. Some of those laws have eased, granting Rastafari sacramental authorization to grow the marijuana they deem sacred.

Here is a quick look at the faith’s beliefs and history:

WHAT DO RASTAFARI BELIEVE?

The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to White colonial oppression. The beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa.

Both are crucial to Marley’s lyrics and worldview. In ” The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told,” author Dean A. MacNeil writes that Marley’s personal Bible was a King James version. It included on its cover a photocopied image of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, who is worshipped by most Rastafari.

The Rastafari message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Marley and Peter Tosh, another Jamaican reggae legend and globally known Rastafari.

In the film “One Love,” the actor who plays Marley mentions “Jah” several times.

That’s because Rastafari’s personal relationship with “Jah,” or God, is considered central to the faith.

Rastafari reject materialist values and often practice a strict oneness with nature. They also let their hair grow, uncombed, into dreadlocks.

In several scenes in the film — produced with the involvement of the Marley estate — Marley sings to large crowds of people who wave Rastafari flags in the green, gold and red colors of the faith.

WHY DO RASTAFARI USE SACRAMENTAL MARIJUANA?

Rastafari followers believe the use of marijuana is directed in biblical passages and that the “holy herb” induces a meditative state and brings them closer to the divine. The faithful smoke it as a sacrament in chalice pipes or cigarettes called “spliffs,” add it to plant-based organic stews and place it in fires as a burnt offering.

For decades, many have been jailed and endured racial and religious profiling by law enforcement because of their marijuana use. Many also were treated as second-class citizens across the Caribbean islands, looked down on for their dreadlocks and use of marijuana.

WHO BROUGHT MARIJUANA TO THE CARIBBEAN?

“Ganja,” as marijuana is known in the Caribbean, has a long history in Jamaica, and its arrival predates the Rastafari faith. Indentured servants from India brought the cannabis plant to the island in the 19th century, and it gained popularity as a medicinal herb.

As public opinion and policy continues to shift across the world toward the legalization of marijuana for both medical and recreational purposes, Rastafari are demanding for broader relaxation to curb persecution and ensure freedom of worship.

Some nations, including the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda, have granted the Rastafari authorization to grow and smoke the herb that they deem holy.

WHO IS HAILE SELASSIE?

In one of the first scenes of the film, Marley mentions this name. That’s because most of the many Rastafari sects worship Selassie. This is rooted in Jamaican Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey’s 1920s prediction that a “Black king shall be crowned” in Africa, ushering in a “day of deliverance.”

When an Ethiopian prince named Ras Tafari, who took the name Haile Selassie I, became emperor in 1930, the descendants of the enslaved in Jamaica took it as proof that Garvey’s prophecy was being fulfilled. When Selassie visited Jamaica in 1966, he was greeted by adoring crowds, and some Rastafari insisted miracles and other mystical occurrences took place during his visit to the island.

___

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.

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By Dave Collins,
The Associated Press

A White Connecticut state trooper was acquitted of all charges March 15 in the death of Mubarak Soulemane, a Black 19-year-old community college student who was shot as he sat behind the wheel of a stopped stolen car holding a kitchen knife and apparently in the throes of a mental health crisis.

Trooper Brian North, 33, could have faced up to 40 years in prison if he had been convicted of first-degree manslaughter in the Jan. 15, 2020, shooting. The state’s inspector general said the shooting shouldn’t have happened because North and other officers were not in imminent danger. But the six-person jury in Milford acquitted him on that charge and two lesser counts: second-degree manslaughter and negligent homicide.

North showed little emotion as the verdicts were read. Afterward, he shook hands with his lawyers and hugged the head of the state police union. North didn’t comment while leaving court, but his lead attorney, Frank Riccio II, said the trooper is still shaken by the shooting.

“This is not something that he will ever live down, because it was a very traumatic experience,” Riccio said. “The verdict is obviously favorable for him, but it doesn’t change what happened on Jan. 15.”

Relatives and friends of Soulemane, including his mother and sister, declined to comment while leaving the courthouse. Mark Arons, a lawyer for the family, said they were devastated by the verdict.

“We have questions about whether justice was fully done and received here,” Arons said. “The trooper gets to live his life and Mubarak’s never coming back.”

He said the verdict marked another tragedy for the family, but that it wouldn’t affect the family’s lawsuit against North and the other officers at the scene that day.

“They’ve had to relive through the trial all the horrific events that unfolded that terrible afternoon, early evening. And then to hear the acquittal on all the three counts, it’s a tragic loss all over again.”

The case caught the attention of the local NAACP and the Rev. Al Sharpton, but race was not raised as a factor in the shooting during the trial.

Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut State Conference of the NAACP, called the acquittal “a major atrocity.”

“Very disappointing. It’s a huge setback. Shame on the jury,” Esdaile said by phone. “They didn’t have to murder this young man. I think this is a disgusting decision.”

On the day of the shooting, North fired his handgun seven times at close range into the car’s driver’s window after Soulemane led police on a high-speed chase through several towns on Interstate 95. The shooting happened less than a minute after the car crashed into another vehicle in West Haven, ending the chase, and police surrounded the car.

North testified that he fired when Soulemane pulled out a 9-inch knife and made a threatening movement. He said he believed Soulemane posed a danger to police officers who were on the other side of the car and had just broken the passenger door window.

But Inspector General Robert Devlin, who investigates all police uses of deadly force in the state, said no officers were in danger because the stolen car was boxed in and Soulemane couldn’t go anywhere. He said officers made no attempt to de-escalate the situation.

The state police union, meanwhile, criticized Devlin for charging North, saying he had been forced to make a split-second decision and believed he was protecting other officers.

Devlin issued a statement after the trial, saying that although his office is disappointed by the verdict, it respects the jury’s decision.

Soulemane struggled with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, according to his family. His mother, sister and girlfriend, who testified at the trial, said in the days leading up to the shooting, Soulemane’s mental health problems were worsening and he was acting paranoid and erratically — behavior he previously displayed when he went off his medications.

According to police, the events that led to Soulemane’s death began when he displayed the knife at an AT&T store in Norwalk and unsuccessfully tried to steal a cellphone. He then slapped a Lyft driver and drove off in the driver’s car after the driver got out, leading police on a 30-mile (48-kilometer) chase from Norwalk to West Haven during the afternoon rush hour at speeds of up to 100 mph (161 kph).

State police body camera videos show that after the case ended, a West Haven officer smashed the passenger door window of the stolen vehicle before another trooper, Joshua Jackson, shot Soulemane with a Taser through the window, though it had no effect on Soulemane, who was wearing a heavy coat.

North testified that he fired his gun because he thought the West Haven officer — whom he couldn’t see — had leaned in through the smashed window and was in danger from Soulemane, who made a motion to the passenger side of the car while holding the knife.

“I was afraid that he was going to be stabbed in the face or the neck, which obviously can be a fatal injury,” North testified.

On cross-examination, Devlin said the videos showed the other officers were not trying to enter the vehicle and asked North if he still believes anyone was actually in danger.

“Not from what I could see now and after hearing testimony. But what I’m perceiving at the time is that there was danger,” North said.

In the lawsuit against the officers, Soulemane’s mother, Omo Mohammad, offered to settle the wrongful death case for $13 million.

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By Maria Sherman,
AP Music Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Beyoncé is full of surprises — and on March 12, dropped yet another one. Her forthcoming album has a name: “Act II: Cowboy Carter.”

The title was revealed on Bey’s official website, along with details on a few limited edition CD, vinyl and box set releases.

“Act II: Cowboy Carter” arrives March 29.

Beyoncé first announced the news of an album last month after starring in a Verizon commercial during the Super Bowl that ended with the superstar saying, “They ready, drop the new music.” The main details about the release had been a cryptic Instagram video with country iconography that teased “act ii” coming out in March. (Beyoncé’s 2022 album “Renaissance” is frequently referred to as “Act I: Renaissance.”)

Soon after, she released two new country tracks — “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages.” Those releases made Beyoncé the first Black woman to top Billboard’s country music chart.

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By Jonathan Landrum Jr.,
AP Entertainment Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Usher was named entertainer of the year at the 55th annual NAACP Awards on March 16, which highlighted works by entertainers and writers of color.

After Usher accepted his award at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, the superstar R&B singer spoke about being thankful about the journey of his successful career that has lasted three decades.

He reeled off several of his recent big moments including his sold-out residency in Las Vegas, getting married, releasing his ninth studio album “Coming Home” and his Super Bowl halftime performance, which became the most-watched in the game’s history.

Usher beat out Colman Domingo, Fantasia Barrino, Halle Bailey and Keke Palmer.

“I don’t know how many people do that much stuff in one setting,” said the multi-Grammy winner, who was presented the award by Oprah Winfrey. After being surprised by Winfrey’s presence, he thanked those who have supported him throughout the years.

“This is for you, you, my number ones,” the singer said as the audience repeated his words back to him. 

The final words of his speech were recited lyrics from his popular song “Superstar” from his 2024 album “Confessions,” which has sold more than 10 million units in the U.S.

Earlier in the ceremony, Usher was honored with the President’s Award for the singer’s public service achievements through his New Look Foundation. He thanked the strong women in his life, including his mother and wife Jenn Goicoechea, whom he married after his Super Bowl halftime performance last month.

“They say behind or beside or with every strong man is a stronger woman,” he said.

Queen Latifah hosted the awards ceremony aired live on BET.

“The Color Purple” was awarded best motion picture. The musical film featured a star-studded cast, including Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Domingo, H.E.R., Danielle Brooks, Corey Hawkins and Bailey.

Barrino, who starred as Celie in the film, won for best actress in a motion picture.

“I didn’t prepare a speech, because I didn’t think I was going to win,” the singer-actor said. “I was afraid to play Celie, but I’m glad I did. Because I kept saying ‘If I don’t win an award, the awards that I will win will come from the people who watched ‘Color Purple’ and the women who will relate to her and feel like Oscars when they walk out.'”

New Edition was inducted into the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame. The induction is bestowed on individuals who are viewed as pioneers in their respective fields and whose influence shaped their profession.

“We stand here in brotherhood,” said Michael Bivins while his group members behind him. The Grammy-nominated group includes Bobby Brown, Johnny Gill, Ralph Tresvant, Ronnie DeVoe and Ricky Bell.

“You’ve seen our story. You know what we’ve been through,” said Bivins, who spoke about the group overcoming conflict and tension in their earlier years to now holding a residency in Las Vegas.

“But we call each other every day,” he continued. “We text each other every day. We check on our families. You watched us grow up. We’re still growing.”

Damson Idris won best actor in a drama television series for his role in “Snowfall.” Henson and Domingo took home best supporting roles in “The Color Purple.” Domingo also won best actor in a motion picture for his role in “Rustin.”

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By Deng Machol,
The Associated Press

JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan’s government is closing down all schools starting March 18 as the country prepares for a wave of extreme heat expected to last two weeks.

The health and education ministries advised parents to keep all children indoors as temperatures are expected to soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), in a statement late March 16.

They warned that any school found open during that time would have its registration withdrawn, but didn’t specify how long the schools would remain shuttered.

The ministries said they “will continue to monitor the situation and inform the public accordingly.”

Peter Garang, a resident who lives in the capital, Juba, welcomed the decision. He said that “schools should be connected to the electricity grid” to enable the installation of air conditioners.

South Sudan, one of the world’s youngest nations, is particularly vulnerable to climate change with heatwaves common but rarely exceeding 40C. Civil conflict has plagued the east African country which also suffered from drought and flooding, making living conditions difficult for residents.

The World Food Program in its latest country brief said South Sudan “continues to face a dire humanitarian crisis” due to violence, economic instability, climate change and an influx of people fleeing the conflict in neighboring Sudan. It also stated that 818,000 vulnerable people were given food and cash-based transfers in January 2024.

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