“It’s only a start, but so far, it’s gone well,” Biden told reporters in Nantucket Friday afternoon. He also noted the release of several Thai nationals who had also been kidnapped by Hamas.

The three American citizens who fall into the category of women and children, including now-4-year-old Abigail Edan, were not part of this first release, but Biden renewed his commitment to seek their return.

“We also will not stop until we get these hostages brought home and an answer to their whereabouts,” he said.

Biden said he expects to soon get the names of those among the second wave of hostages who will be released Saturday, saying he was “hopeful it’s as we anticipate.” He said he did not know when the three Americans would be released, but confirmed he still does “expect it to occur.”

“My hope and expectation is it’ll be soon,” he said of the possibility of the release of the three Americans.

Biden suggested it is possible that the pause in fighting could extend by additional days to bring more than the expected 50 hostages home, telling reporters, “I think the chances are real.”

But asked whether all of the 10 unaccounted-for Americans are alive, he said, “We don’t know all of their conditions.”

And he offered a bleak assessment of Hamas’ objectives when asked whether he trusts the Palestinian militant group.

“I don’t trust Hamas to do anything right. I only trust Hamas to respond to pressure,” he said, later adding that Hamas “does not give a damn” about innocent Palestinian civilians.

The president also speculated on the reasoning behind Hamas’ October 7 attack: “I believe one of the reasons why Hamas struck when they did is that they knew I was working very closely with the Saudis and others in the region to bring peace to the region by having recognition of Israel and Israel’s right to exist,” he said, adding that he will “continue to work” on those efforts.

Biden cast the initial hostage release as the product of extensive US diplomacy and numerous calls he held with world leaders in the region, including the emir of Qatar, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. He thanked each for their “personal partnership” during the painstaking, weeks-long negotiations and noted he would remain in close touch with the leaders to ensure the deal stays on track. He said that he has been in constant contact with his team and will “remain engaged” over the course of the implementation process.

Biden also pointed to the humanitarian aid going to Gaza as part of this pause, saying those in the region are “not wasting one single minute” to bring in critical supplies like fuel, medicine, cooking gas and food. US special envoy David Satterfield is monitoring the progress on that front and Biden said he has asked Satterfield to keep him updated “minute by minute.”

Biden reiterated the need for a two-state solution in order to bring peace to the region in the long term.

“As we look to the future, we have to end this cycle of violence in the Middle East. We need to renew our resolve to pursue this two-state solution where Israelis and Palestinians can one day live side by side in a two states solution with equal measure of freedom and dignity, two states for two people and it’s more important now than ever. Hamas unleashed this terrorist attack because they fear nothing more than Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace,” he said.

Biden said that he and the first lady were keeping the hostages in their prayers as they begin a “long journey of healing,” expressing empathy for the trauma the group has experienced.

Pérez Salas is “one of the Sinaloa Cartel’s lead sicarios, or assassins,” according to a news release from the Department of Justice. Known as “Nini,” Pérez Salas was captured by the Mexican National Guard on Wednesday in Culiacán, Sinaloa, according to Mexican officials.

CNN has reached out to the Mexican Attorney General’s Office for more details about the arrest but did not immediately receive a response. It is not clear if Pérez Salas has an attorney.

In February 2021, Pérez Salas was charged in the United States with cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and witness retaliation. The US State Department offered a reward of up to $3 million for information leading to his arrest.

The State Department said Pérez Salas worked directly with Oscar Noé Medina González, a subordinate of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán Salazar, one of the sons of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, who was sentenced to prison in the US in 2019.

The State Department also said Pérez Salas was responsible for the security apparatus of Los Chapitos, a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel. He is accused of being one of the commanders of the “Ninis” cell, described as a “particularly violent” group of security personnel for Los Chapitos.

President Joe Biden praised Mexican security forces for Pérez Salas’ arrest on Wednesday.

“On November 22, Mexican security forces captured Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas (‘El Nini’), the notorious head of security for the Chapitos wing of the Sinaloa Cartel. For nearly three years, El Nini has been one of Mexico’s and the United States’ most wanted criminals, indicted by the United States for his roles in perpetrating violence and illicit fentanyl trafficking into the United States, and both our countries are safer with him behind bars and facing justice for his crimes,” the president said in a statement.

Biden heralded the US-Mexico partnership to “secure our communities against violence, counter the cartels, and end the scourge of illicit fentanyl” days after the US secured an agreement with China regarding the source materials used to make fentanyl.

Biden expressed his gratitude to Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador and the Mexican Army and special forces.

“I want to thank President López Obrador and the Mexican Army and special forces for effectively capturing El Nini, and express our appreciation for the brave men and women of Mexican security forces who undertook this successful operation to apprehend him,” he said.

The huge mass of ice broke away from the Filchner-Ronne ice shelf in 1986, calved and grounded on the Antarctic’s Weddell Sea floor almost immediately.

The iceberg, named A23a, is about 400 meters (1,312 feet) thick, and almost 4,000 square kilometers (1,544 square miles) in area. Greater London, by way of comparison, is 1,572 square kilometers (607 square miles).

But now, nearly three decades later, the iceberg has probably shrunk enough in size to lose its grip on the seafloor as part of the natural growth cycle of the ice shelf, and has started moving, scientists Ella Gilbert and Oliver Marsh from the British Antarctic Survey told CNN.

A23a has held the “largest current iceberg” title several times since the 1980s, occasionally being surpassed by larger but shorter-lived icebergs, including A68 in 2017 and A76 in 2021, they added.

The iceberg, carried by ocean currents, will likely head eastward, and at its current rate is traveling five kilometers (three miles) a day.

Gilbert and Marsh added that while this particular iceberg probably broke away as part of the natural growth cycle of the ice shelf, climate change is driving changes in Antarctica’s ice and the continent is losing enormous quantities of ice every year.

Police were called at 5:45 a.m. PST on Friday morning and she was arrested shortly after. She remains in custody as of Friday morning local time, a public information officer told CNN.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Haddish for comment.

Haddish had reportedly performed at The Laugh Factory in West Hollywood on Thursday night for the comedy club’s 43rd annual free Thanksgiving feast for the community.

The comedic actress was also arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in 2022 bear Atlanta, Georgia.

The civil suit filed under the New York Adult Survivors Act names Combs and his companies, including Bad Boy Entertainment, and is just the latest in a rush of cases filed against high profile men among others as the window to file under the state’s look back law closes this week.

The civil suit filed in New York Supreme Court demands a trial by jury and seeks damages. “Plaintiff brings suit against Defendants to redress the substantial and lifetime injuries she has suffered as a result of being drugged, sexually assaulted and abused, and being the victim of ‘revenge porn’ that Sean Combs or ‘P. Diddy’ created and distributed,” the suit filed in New York Supreme Court stated.

A spokesperson for Combs says the allegations are “made up and not credible,” adding the move is “purely a money grab.”

“This last-minute lawsuit is an example of how a well-intentioned law can be turned on its head,” the spokesperson said. “Mr. Combs never assaulted her, and she implicates companies that did not exist,” it continues.

A representative for Bad Boy Entertainment was not immediately available for comment.

The alleged victim, Joi Dickerson-Neal, was a Syracuse University student at the time of the 1991 incident and had previously appeared with Combs in a few video clips of a music video.

The suit alleged she agreed to a dinner at a Harlem restaurant “reluctantly” with Combs while on school break for the holidays in January, when he “pushed” her to keep him company while he attended to “a few things in the city.”

The suit alleges during their date he “intentionally drugged” her “resulting in her being in a physical state where she could not independently stand or walk.”

While at dinner, she left to use the restroom and left her drink “unattended,” it is alleged in the suit.

In the car, the suit alleges she took a puff of a “blunt” under pressure from Combs, and “from that point on, Plaintiffs memory is incomplete.”

“Driving first to a music studio where she could not get out of the car, Combs proceeded to a place he was staying to sexually assault her,” the suit alleges.

“Because she had been drugged, Plaintiff lacked the physical ability or mental capacity to fend Combs off,” the suit alleges.

The suit alleges Combs video recorded  the sexual assault, and days later a male friend revealed to Dickerson he had viewed it.

“Horrified, Ms. Dickerson asked how many others saw it, to which he responded, ‘everyone.’”

Thereafter, Dickerson alleges her life “went into a tailspin,” she was admitted to hospital for severe depression and suicide ideation, the suit claims.

According to the suit, Dickerson filed police reports at unspecified agencies in New York and New Jersey and spoke to “several prosecutors” hoping to press charges and was told her “allegations would need to be corroborated.”

The suit goes on to say Combs had experienced “great success” with the launch of late Notorious B.I.G.’s career whose hit single Juicy was charted on Billboard, and claims witnesses were “terrified that Combs would retaliate against them and that they would lose future business and music opportunities if they made a statement in support” of her.

The accuser was trying to gain a foothold in the music industry working as a location scout for an industry cameraman, and despite her allegations of “emotional pain” continued work in the music industry at a DJ management company after the incident, the suit states.

She eventually left as Combs’ “star continued to rise and his presence was inescapable,” according to the suit.

“It was the filing of the lawsuit about his abuse of Cassie Venture [sic] on November 16, 2023, that forced her to face his assault again,” the suit says.

Ventura, former girlfriend of Combs, accused the rapper and producer of years of sexual abuse, rape and trafficking in a suit Combs said was resolved “amicably” one day after the filing.

Combs’ representative at the time said it was “in no way an admission of wrongdoing” and “does not in any way undermine his flat-out denial of the claims.”

On Instagram and TikTok, the star posted about welcoming her second child, a daughter named London. Hilton and her husband Carter Reum are also parents of an infant son, Phoenix.

“Thankful for my baby girl,” the caption reads on her Instagram photo of a pink outfit with the name “London” inscribed on the shirt.

Hilton also shared a video in which she’s holding her son and saying, “I’m a big brother” as her husband cheers them on.

“Celebrating Phoenix the ‘Big Brother’ on #Thanksgiving,” the caption reads on the video.

In another TikTok video, Hilton can be heard asking her niece and nephew if they are excited for their new cousin and answering in the affirmative when her nephew asks if she has two babies.

The couple announced the birth of their son in January. Hilton married the venture capitalist in November 2021. The lavishness of their celebrations were documented in the Peacock docuseries, “Paris in Love.”

Earlier this year, Hilton explained to Glamour UK why she and Reum opted to use a surrogate to have their son.

“When I was in ‘The Simple Life,’ I had to be in a room when a woman was giving birth and that traumatized me as well,” she told the publication. “But I want a family so bad, it’s just the physical part of doing it. I’m just so scared… childbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and the second gentleman will also attend the Tuesday service.

A number of ceremonies  are slated to take place next week to celebrate the life of Carter, the wife of former President Jimmy Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 96.

According to the Carter Center, members of the public will be able to pay their respects as the former first lady lies in repose at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum on Monday, while the tribute service will be held for invited guests Tuesday at Glenn Memorial Church at Emory University. A funeral service will take place Wednesday for family and invited friends at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia, according to the schedule shared by the Carter Center.

Former President Jimmy Carter’s attendance “has not been confirmed” for events remembering his wife, The Carter Center told CNN.

Biden, speaking with reporters shortly after Rosalynn Carter’s death, praised the Carter family, saying: “They’re really an incredible family because they brought so much grace to the office.”

While Rosalynn Carter’s most lasting individual legacy will be her efforts to diminish the stigma attached to people with mental illnesses and her fight for parity and access for mental health treatment, she, along with her husband of 77 years, redefined and revolutionized the post-presidency.

Together they founded the Carter Center and traveled to hot spots around the world, including visits to Cuba, Sudan and North Korea, monitoring elections and working to eradicate Guinea worm disease and other neglected tropical diseases.

Shortly before her death, the Carter Center announced that Rosalynn Carter had entered hospice care in the couple’s home in Plains. She had been diagnosed with dementia in May. Former President Jimmy Carter began home hospice care in February, following a series of hospital stays.

The pause in fighting will start at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with 13 women and children hostages to be freed at 4 p.m., according to a spokesperson for Qatar’s foreign ministry, Majed Al-Ansari.

The list of hostages who are expected to be released has been handed to the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, Al-Ansari said.

The Mossad will also hand over a list of Palestinian prisoners expected to be released to the Qataris, he added. “Whenever we have both lists confirmed this is when we can begin with the process of getting people out,” the spokesperson said.

An Israeli official told CNN a total of 39 Palestinian prisoners will be released Friday as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas.

The prisoners will be taken from two jails – Damon and Megiddo, both southeast of Haifa – and driven to the Ofer prison, south of Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, for final checks by the Red Cross.

And Israel has started notifying the families of the first hostages set to be released on Friday, Israeli coordinator for hostages and missing persons Gal Hirsch said in a statement. “Liaison officers have informed all of those families whose loved ones appear on the list, as well as all of the hostages’ families,” the statement said.

An Israeli official told CNN Wednesday that the truce had been slated to begin at 10 a.m. local time on Thursday to be followed by the release of at least 50 women and children out of the more than 230 being held hostage in Gaza. But those plans were delayed late Wednesday, just hours before the pause in fighting was initially expected to begin.

“Nothing is finalized until it’s actually happening. And even amid the process, changes might occur at any moment,” Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Daniel Hagari said in his daily press briefing on Thursday.

He said that the Israeli army continues to fight in the Gaza Strip “at this hour,” pointing out that once the pause goes into effect, IDF soldiers will be stationed along the “truce lines” established inside the territory.

Under the deal outlined earlier, 150 Palestinian prisoners would be released from Israeli jails. The prisoners concerned are women and children, Hamas said Wednesday, adding that the agreement also involves the entry of hundreds of trucks carrying aid relief, medical supplies and fuel to all parts of the besieged territory.

The Israeli government on Wednesday published a list of 300 Palestinian prisoners for possible release, as Israel is offering a potential second phase of exchanges.

The list includes the ages of the prisoners, and the charges on which they are being held – throwing stones and “harming regional security” are among the most common. Others are listed as detained for supporting illegal terror organizations, illegal weapons charges, incitement, and at least two accusations of attempted murder.

Most of the Palestinian prisoners listed as eligible for release are male teenagers aged 16 to 18 – children under the United Nations definition – although a handful are as young as 14. Some 33 are women, according to a CNN count.

Delay until Friday

Israel’s National Security Council said earlier in a statement that the first group of hostages would not be released before Friday. An Israeli official told CNN the start of an agreed temporary truce in fighting was also delayed until Friday.

“Talks to release our hostages are advancing and are ongoing. The start of the release process will take place according to the original agreement between both sides, and not before Friday,” the statement said.

The comments over ongoing planning echo those from American officials.

A US National Security Council spokesperson stressed in a statement late Wednesday that the hostage deal “remains agreed,” adding that the parties were “working out final logistical details particularly for the first day of implementation.”

“It is our view that nothing should be left to chance as the hostages begin coming home,” NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “Our primary objective is to ensure that they are brought home safely. That is on track and we are hopeful that implementation will begin on Friday morning.”

One Israeli official familiar with the matter downplayed its seriousness, putting it down to “fairly minor implementation details.”

Netanyahu warned on Thursday, however, that getting the first group of hostages out of Gaza is “not without its challenges.”

“We hope to get this first tranche out, and then we’re committed to getting everyone out,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.

Officials and analysts in Israel have long cautioned that any deal would be precarious up and until the hostages were safely across the border.

“The fighting will continue forcefully”

The IDF had continued ground and air operations in Gaza on Wednesday ahead of the expected start of the truce, carrying out strikes in the north-eastern and central parts of the Gaza Strip. Areas further south, including Khan Younis and Rafah, were also hit, according to Palestinian accounts.

Israeli forces continued to strike targets on Thursday, the IDF said, including in northwest Jabalya.

The IDF also said Thursday that Israeli soldiers had located a tunnel shaft inside a mosque and located and struck another tunnel shaft in an agricultural area in Beit Hanoun. It claimed IDF soldiers had located “numerous weapons” and identified a tunnel shaft inside a civilian residence in the area.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has said Israel’s military operation against Hamas will continue “forcefully” after the brief truce and that the fighting is expected to go on for at least two more months.

“This will be a brief pause, when it ends the fighting will continue forcefully, and will create pressure that will allow the return of more hostages… Fighting of at least two more months is expected,” Gallant said while visiting Israeli troops on Thursday.

The deal had marked a major diplomatic breakthrough nearly seven weeks after the start of a conflict that has spiraled into a grave humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The announcement was greeted with relief and heightened anticipation from the families of those taken hostage.

The truce, meanwhile, would also allow the entry of “a larger number of humanitarian convoys and relief aid,” as laid out by key negotiator Qatar in a statement.

There is an option for the pause to last as long as 10 days, but Israeli officials believe it is unlikely to last that long.

Netanyahu said when the deal was approved that for every additional 10 hostages released, there will be an additional one day pause in the fighting.

Hamas is holding 236 hostages captive in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The mass abductions at gunpoint took place during October 7, when Hamas militants struck across the border in a coordinated and bloody surprise attack killing around 1,200 people – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

Prior to the deal, only a handful of hostages had been released.

Israel responded to the attack by declaring war against Hamas and imposing a siege on Gaza that cut off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, while launching a relentless air and ground assault. Some 12,700 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to data from the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank, which draws on information from Hamas-run health authorities.

The two musicians are famous as the members of the eponymous Hall & Oates rock duo that had tremendous success in the early 1980s with hits like “Private Eyes” and “Maneater.”

The suit by Hall against Oates as an individual and Oates’s trust is listed as a “contract/debt” dispute, but the details of the case are sealed, court records show.

On Friday, the court granted Hall’s motion for a temporary restraining order to take effect November 30, according to records.

Because the file is largely sealed, the nature of the restraining order is not apparent. Such an order might typically be entered in a business dispute to keep one party from harming the other party’s economic interests.

CNN has reached out to representatives and attorneys of both Hall and Oates for comment and more information.

The hitmakers met in the 1960s in Philadelphia, and according to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, had 29 Top Forty hits from 1976 to 1990.

“Their most indelible earwigs (sic) include the ethereal chorus of ‘I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)’; the percolating beat and chiming harmonies of ‘Kiss on My List’; the weightless rhythmic flow and play of voices in ‘Maneater’; and the plangent, soul-searing refrain of ‘She’s Gone,’” Parke Puterbaugh wrote for Hall & Oates’ induction into the Hall of Fame in 2014.

Search efforts for three people who remain missing have finished for the evening, and a search strategy will be announced Thursday, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in a Wednesday news release.

The landslide was reported around 9 p.m. local time Monday on the Zimovia Highway near Wrangell and walloped three homes in its path, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said. The state’s transportation department said the path grew to an estimated 450 feet wide and had a significant debris field.

A girl was found dead during initial search and rescue efforts Monday night, and the remains of two adults were recovered after they were located by a drone operator Tuesday, according to the department of public safety.

Nearby resident Eric Yancey said the lights at his house in Wrangell flickered within the hour before the landslide occurred. But that’s common during storms, so he wasn’t alarmed, Yancey told CNN in a phone interview.

About an hour later, Yancey said he heard about the severity of the landslide. People began contacting his brother-in-law, Frankie, who owned a big, well-lit fishing boat, he said. Frankie wanted to provide some light on the beach to find anyone who was stranded, Yancey said.

Yancey wanted to help and used one of his boats, a 75-foot landing craft with a ramp for accessing the beach, he said. He went to the beach to provide better light and help people who were stranded.

After getting a hold of Frankie and one of his wife’s sons, they all rounded up a crew and headed out to see how they could assist.

“On our way out there, we began having radio communications with the volunteer fire department folks who were on site,” Yancey said. “What was suggested to me was to run to a person’s private dock and pick up some of the people that had abandoned their houses because of the situation.”

It took him about an hour to get there by boat, Yancey said.

Once he was there, he initially rescued eight people who were at the private dock before going back to rescue another group of people, including children, at the dock several hours later. Just as he was about to leave, four more people showed up, Yancey said.

Yancey said he didn’t dock until 3 a.m. By then, he had helped rescue about 19 people and a few dogs and brought them back to town.

“We are a small town on an island, so everybody is pretty darn helpful in whatever ways possible,” Yancey said.

Community bands together

The area has been wet in recent days, which is typical for this time of year. But it was particularly rainy Sunday and Monday, with more than 3 inches of rain falling around Wrangell in the 24 hours leading up to the landslide, said Andy Park, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Juneau.

Winds of 61 to 87 mph Monday evening may have been a factor in the landslides as well, Park told CNN.

The southeast Alaska region is already at risk for debris flows, said Barrett Salisbury, a geologist with the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys. Heavy rainfall, rapid snowmelt or saturated soil only increase that risk, he said in a news conference.

The Wrangell community has come together after the landslide, as people with private boats have shuffled fuel and supplies to folks who need it, Yancey said.

Spenser Stavee, who now owns a company Yancey used to own, was running to the nearby town of Petersburg on Wednesday to get supplies such as food and fuel to the stricken community, Yancey said. The items will be donated to parks and recreation officials, who will then give the haul of supplies to people in need.

“We are going over there with boats to grab and bring it back,” Stavee said.

The alleged incident occurred in 2015 at Catch NYC, a popular New York City restaurant, according to the complaint obtained by CNN.

CNN has reached out to a representative for the plaintiff seeking comment.

The plaintiff, identified as Jane Doe, claims in the suit that Foxx “intentionally and without consent used force to offensively touch Plaintiff’s person,” including groping her breasts and genitals. The complaint alleges Foxx seemed “intoxicated” at the time of the incident.

As a result, the complaint states the woman suffered and continues to suffer “physical and emotional injuries, anxiety, distress, embarrassment and economic harm,” and is seeking an unspecified amount.

“The alleged incident never happened. In 2020, this individual filed a nearly identical lawsuit in Brooklyn. That case was dismissed shortly thereafter. The claims are no more viable today than they were then,” a spokesperson for Foxx told CNN in a statement Thursday.

“We are confident they will be dismissed again. And once they are, Mr. Foxx intends to pursue a claim for malicious prosecution against this person and her attorneys for re-filing this frivolous action,” the statement read.

The plaintiff is also suing the restaurant’s parent company, Catch Hospitality Group, and various related business entities as defendants for negligent hiring, training and supervision.

A representative for the company was not immediately available for comment.

The lawsuit was filed under the New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which went into effect in late November 2022 and allows adult survivors of sexual abuse to sue their abusers in New York – even if the statute of limitations on their claims had expired.

The law has given adult survivors of sexual assault one year to file lawsuits against their perpetrators and is set to expire on Friday.

Foxx had a medical episode earlier this year after he was hospitalized in Atlanta for an undisclosed medical condition. The Oscar-winner addressed his recovery for the first time in July.

Alarms were raised from New York to Washington, DC, late Wednesday morning after the incident on the US side of the Rainbow Bridge crossing. Investigators believe the couple was traveling in a Bentley at high speed when it struck a curb at the checkpoint, then hit a guardrail that sent the vehicle airborne and into a screening area before it exploded, according to the sources.

Despite initial concerns of a terror attack, the FBI has not found any connection to terrorism and no explosives were found at the scene, the agency’s Buffalo field office announced Wednesday night. The case is being turned over to local police as a traffic investigation.

“I want to be very, very clear to Americans and New Yorkers: At this time there is no indication of a terrorist attack,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference Wednesday evening.

“Two individuals died in the vehicle,” Hochul said, noting the car is associated with a western New York resident.

Investigators believe the man who died had plans to attend a KISS concert in Canada, but when it was canceled he went to a casino in the US instead. The crash occurred sometime after the couple left the casino, the sources said.

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions,” Hochul said of the vehicle’s occupants Wednesday. She noted it was still unclear whether the crash was an accident or an intentional act.

The explosion prompted a temporary shutdown of all four bridges between Canada and the US near Niagara Falls on one of the busiest travel days of the year. Three of the bridges reopened later Wednesday, but Rainbow Bridge remains closed.

Here’s what we know so far.

Crash looked ‘absolutely surreal,’ governor says

The vehicle was traveling at an “extraordinarily high rate of speed” when it approached the border crossing around 11:30 a.m. and hit a barrier, Hochul said.

The impact sent the car soaring several feet into the air before it came crashing down into a Customs and Border Protection booth and burst into flames, Hochul said. She described footage of the incident as “absolutely surreal.”

An officer working in the booth was treated for minor injuries, she said.

The vehicle was “basically incinerated” and pieces of the wreck were scattered across more than a dozen checkpoint booths, the governor said.

Rickie Wilson saw the car flying past him “almost like a movie,” and for a moment, he thought it was a plane, the witness told CNN affiliate WKBW.

FBI investigated explosion as possible terrorist threat

In the aftermath of the crash, federal investigators scrambled to determine whether the incident was an act of terrorism. Within hours, officials shared preliminary findings and assured the public they hadn’t found any indication of terrorist motivation.

“But we will continue to stay vigilant. We will continue to make sure that the information we have is passed onto the public,” US Attorney Trini Ross of the Western District of New York said in a news conference.

The leaders of both the US and Canada were briefed on the incident as the investigation was underway.

The initial explosion triggered heightened security precautions around the region, including the evacuation of local government offices on the US side.

Buffalo Niagara International Airport closed to international arriving and departing flights but later lifted the restriction, according to the US Federal Aviation Administration. All cars coming into the airport were also being screened by bomb-detecting dogs, a Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority spokesperson said.

Amtrak temporarily suspended part of its cross-border route connecting New York to Toronto.

Officials investigating the crash had been looking into an individual but working through the Joint Terrorism Task Force did not initially find any concerning information, FBI Special Agent-in-Charge Matthew Miraglia said Wednesday afternoon.

“We do not have any derogatory information on this person that we’ve identified,” he said. “We’re scanning his social media, there’s nothing there. We’re still running a full investigation so that’s a preliminary assessment.”

By Wednesday night, the FBI announced it had concluded its investigation at the scene and turned the case over to the Niagara Falls Police Department as a traffic investigation.

In a statement, CENTCOM said the USS Thomas Hudner shot the drones down while it was on patrol in the Red Sea, adding that there had been no damage to the ship or injuries sustained by the crew.

Tensions have increased in the Red Sea region since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, with Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels claiming to have fired ballistic missiles and drones toward Israel.

On Sunday, the Galaxy Leader cargo ship was hijacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea with about 25 crew members on board.

The United States demands “the immediate release” of the cargo ship and crew seized by the Houthis in the Red Sea, State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday.

The animatronic model from “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” is part of a sale organized by Julien’s Auctions and Turner Classic Movies, which, like CNN, is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. More than 1,000 props and memorabilia from some of the best-known sci-fi, fantasy, action and superhero movies and TV series will be available at the auction.

Designed by the late Carlo Rambaldi, the model has some incredibly expressive moves. Its nostrils open and close, and its veins pulsate, while cables also allow for the movement of its eyes, lips, eyebrows, forehead and tongue.

This model comes from Rambaldi’s own collection, as did the animatronic figure of E.T. sold by Julien’s Auctions last November for $2.56 million.

His daughter, Daniela Rambaldi, recalls her father finding inspiration for E.T.’s expressive blue eyes from their family cat “Kikka,” the auction house said.

The story of the homesick E.T. and his bond with Elliott, the boy who finds him, Spielberg’s 1982 movie won near-universal acclaim and was nominated for nine Oscars, of which it won four.

Other artifacts from movie history are also up for sale, including a full Batman costume worn by Michael Keaton in “Batman Returns,” which has an estimate of up to $70,000, and a model of The Robot from the 1960s sci-fi series “Lost in Space.”

This model is “one of the rarest artifacts from the era ever offered at auction which also is still functional,” the auction house said, since only two full-scale models of The Robot were made during the show’s run. It is expected to be sold for up to $500,000.

Several items of Harry Potter memorabilia are for sale, too, including robes and the half-moon glasses worn by Richard Harris playing Albus Dumbledore in “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.” The robes – screen-matched for authenticity – and glasses are anticipated to reach up to $70,000 and $20,000, respectively.

And for Marvel fans, props such as Captain America’s shield, complete with battle scars, from “Captain America: The First Avenger,” and a helmet worn by Robert Downey Jr. playing Iron Man in “Captain America: Civil War” are expected to sell for up to $70,000 and up to $40,000, respectively.

Local authorities are warning people to keep their distance and avoid approaching the poisonous green mamba, which is between 1.8 and 2 meters (6 to 6.5 feet) long.

In the unlikely event someone is bitten by the snake, they should immediately call the emergency services, the spokesperson said.

The tropical snake has a fondness for warm, dark spaces, the spokesperson added, saying it is unlikely the runaway mamba has slithered out of its owner’s house to face the cold Dutch winter.

There are three species of green mamba, all native to Africa – one is found in the east and south of the continent, another in the west and another in the center. The municipality spokesperson did not specify which species the missing snake belonged to.

Normally found in trees, this timid snake produces a fast-acting venom that can kill within days, though it is rarely attacks humans, instead preying on birds, small mammals and lizards.

Cinnamon applesauce pouches sold under the WanaBana, Weis and Schnucks brands have been recalled, and the FDA is screening shipments of cinnamon from multiple countries for possible lead contamination. The agency says that it’s working with Dollar Tree on getting those products off shelves but that, in the meantime, consumers should not buy them.

The FDA, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local partners have been investigating reports of high blood lead levels in children who consumed the pouches, which were manufactured in Ecuador. There have been 52 reports of illness among children under age 4 in 25 states as of Wednesday.

In one product sample of a WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Puree from Dollar Tree, the level detected was 2.18 parts per million, the FDA said — more than 200 times greater than the action level the FDA had proposed in previous draft guidance for products intended for babies and young children.

“In response to WanaBana’s Apple Cinnamon Fruit Puree pouch voluntary recall announcement, Dollar Tree locked its registers to prevent sales and instructed stores to remove the product from the shelves,” the company told CNN on Wednesday. “We are committed to the safety and integrity of the products we sell. If customers have this recalled product, they are advised to stop using it immediately and return it to the place of purchase for a full refund.”

Recalled products should be discarded by opening the pouches and emptying them into the trash before throwing away the packaging, the FDA says, to keep anyone from taking them out of the trash and consuming them.

Lead is toxic to humans, and there is no safe level. Exposure is not typically apparent right away, but it can cause developmental delays in children. Initial symptoms of lead poisoning may include head, stomach and muscle aches, vomiting, anemia, irritability, fatigue and weight loss.

The deal is structured in such a way that each day, a group of hostages to be released would be handed off to the Red Cross; the Red Cross would then take the group to a designated border point, which will largely depend on the location of those hostages, the source familiar said. Many of the first 50 hostages are expected to come out through Egypt, they said.

A source familiar with how hostages are expected to leave Gaza told CNN that the first swap is expected to take place on Thursday at 10 a.m. Israeli time (3 a.m. ET). 50 Israel hostages — including some with dual nationalities — are expected to be released over the four-day pause. 10 is the minimum number of hostages to be released each day, but that could be higher.

Every evening before the next day’s release Israel and Hamas will give the Red Cross the list of hostage and prisoner names being released.

Hostages will be brought by the Red Cross to Rafah where they will be met by specially trained Israeli soldiers. They will verify that the hostages released were the people expected and on the list. The families of the hostages will not be notified until the identities of those released have been confirmed.

Hostages will then be taken by helicopter to several designated hospitals in Israel where there will be special areas and rooms for them, closed to the public. There, their families will finally be able to see them after over six weeks in captivity.

The first two days of the hostage release will be treated as a “testing period,” the source said, to make sure the process is working. By day three, there is expected to be intense discussions about the potential second phase of the hostage release beyond the initial group of 50.

“The first swap is the most crucial to see that the mechanism is working as was agreed,” the source said.

In terms of the remaining hostages, including Israeli soldiers, Hamas had initially tried to designate all Israeli women under 45 as soldiers, given that women have to serve in the Israeli military and are often reservists, the source said. Israel rejected that, and the two sides agreed that only women serving, in uniform when they were abducted, would be designated as soldiers.

As part of the deal the Red Cross is expected to be able to visit and offer medical support to the hostages that remain in Gaza, the source said.

White House Coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Brett McGurk told CNN’s Boris Sanchez Wednesday he could not speak to the schedule of when the Americans would be released. He confirmed that three US hostages – Edan and two women — are expected to come home as part of the 50 hostages released by Hamas. A total of 10 Americans are believed to be hostages.

“I was asked earlier do we know if the 50 are alive and well. We understand they’re alive, but they’re certainly not well,” McGurk said. “These 50 women, children and toddlers, it’s just unimaginable what they’ve gone through, but we’re gonna make sure that they get the care they need when they come home.”

McGurk said he is “hopeful” that the Red Cross will get access to the other hostages but noted, “I cannot confirm that nor guarantee that.”

McGurk suggested that the humanitarian pause and hostage releases could continue beyond the initial four-day period, saying they “do have some assurances” on this.

“For this humanitarian pause to continue, we have to see more hostages coming out,” he said. “We do have some assurance that even beyond the four-day period, on day five, day six, we will meet that benchmark to extend the humanitarian pause at least by those of period of days, but I can’t guarantee that.”

“We have to see and again, we’re dealing with Hamas, a terrorist group here, who’s holding toddlers and babies at the other end of the table,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Supreme Court “has now greenlit the (hostage) deal to go forward,” thus clearing the way for the process to move forward on Thursday, McGurk said.

Asked on “CNN News Central” if there are concerns around the release of the Palestinian prisoners, McGurk noted that “the Israelis are balancing a number of different objectives and risks and they determined that the release of the Palestinian prisoners in this circumstance, after a full debate within their government, was the way to proceed.”

“And I know that was actually discussed today before the Israeli Supreme Court and I understand the Supreme Court has now greenlit the deal to go forward,” he said.

A senior Israeli official told CNN Tuesday that there was a 24-hour window following the announcement of the deal for appeals to be lodged with the court.

The Supreme Court has rejected a legal challenge to the Gaza hostage deal, which includes the release of at least 150 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

The Almagor association, which was set up in 1986 to represent victims of terror, had claimed that the government’s decision, among a series of objections, intensified the risk of “the recurrence of serious acts of terrorism to which all the citizens and residents of the country are exposed.”

Almagor had asked the Supreme Court to “annul the government’s decision … [and] order [the government] to discuss again the terms of the deal with Hamas,” according to information released by the court.

The court said it rejected the petition outright on the grounds that the hostage deal, “is a clear political issue to which this court does not consider its involvement as necessary.”

The ruling clears any legal objection in Israel to the execution of the deal that involves the exchange of Israeli hostages in Gaza for the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Speaking on a recent episode of “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” seven-time Super Bowl winner Brady was in a damning mood as he lamented the current standard of play in the NFL.

“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” he said.

Asked why he felt that way, Brady added: “I think the coaching isn’t as good as it was. I don’t think the development of young players is as good as it was. I don’t think the schemes are as good as they were.

“I think the rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. So I just think the product, in my opinion, is less than what it’s been.”

Brady, who retired from the NFL in February after a 23-year career with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, alluded to the increased scrutiny around roughing-the-passer – which is intended to protect quarterbacks from injury – and unnecessary roughness rules.

He found himself at the center of this debate last year when he benefited from a controversial roughing-the-passer call as the Bucs held on to beat the Atlanta Falcons.

“Guys are competitive. Guys play hard,” Brady said. “I look at a lot of [former] players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott and guys that impacted the game in a certain way and every hit they would have made would have been a penalty [today].

He added: “Offensive players need to protect themselves. It’s not up to a defensive player to protect an offensive player.

“A defensive player needs to protect himself … I think a lot of the ways that the rules have come into play have allowed this – you can essentially play carefree and then if anyone hits you hard, there’s a penalty. And it’s very different than when I was playing.”

The 46-year-old said that his teams used to work on the “fundamentals” of players not being tackled, but added that, in today’s game, “they’re trying to be regulated all the time.”

Brady retired from the NFL with a record number of Super Bowl rings. He also won more games and passed for more yards and for more touchdowns than any other player in the history of the league.

Too much regulation or protecting players?

Denver Broncos safety Kareem Jackson, who was suspended by the NFL for four games – later reduced to two on appeal – in late October after multiple unnecessary roughness violations, posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, of Brady’s interview in apparent support of the NFL legend’s comments.

Tuesday’s post came after Jackson was again handed a four-game suspension for repeated violations of player safety rules after a hit – which was not penalized during the game – on Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs in Denver’s 21-20 win on Sunday night. The win was the safety’s first game back from his October suspension.

Commenting on the latest suspension, which Jackson can appeal, NFL vice president of football operations Jon Runyan wrote in a letter to the Broncos safety: “You could have made contact with your opponent within the rules, yet you chose not to.”

Former Super Bowl champion cornerback Richard Sherman, who defended Jackson after his previous suspension, responded to the new suspension and Brady’s comments, posting on X: “The product is suffering. Calling a player ‘dirty’ because he plays a physical brand of football that would have him on every highlight tape on every network when this game was great. Skewed the game so that players don’t have to be as skilled to be productive.”

Likely a future Hall of Famer for his stellar Major League Baseball (MLB) career as an outfielder, Ichiro, 50, not only still likes to play, but he’s doing it as a pitcher.

A Japanese high school girls’ team found out just how well he can throw during Ichiro’s annual All-Star game on Tuesday.

The game, which was first played two years ago, was set up to encourage women to play baseball in Japan – and Ichiro was certainly all in.

According to MLB.com, Ichiro threw a 116-pitch, complete game shutout and struck out nine in the 4-0 victory at the Tokyo Dome.

He even dusted off an 86-miles-per-hour fastball during the game which, in truth, might give some of the best hitters in the world something to think about.

Ichiro was joined in the game by former MLB pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka – who played for the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets – and retired from professional baseball in 2021, with the pair excited to show off their skills once again.

As well as his prowess from the mound, Ichiro also picked up two hits in the game – a relief given he went hitless during the last two years of the exhibition contest, according to MLB.com.

“Personally, I am glad to be able to make a hit. I would like to continue training in hopes to motivate the female athletes,” Ichiro said after the game, according to Japanese broadcaster NHK.

The Japanese great certainly inspired the opposition during the game, both with his exploits as well as being struck out by Okayama Gakugeikan High School’s Ryona Domae in one inning, leading the aspiring young athlete to beam with excitement.

“I was really looking forward to this match with Ichiro. I was determined to get a win, but the fact that I got to strike him out is a memory I will cherish forever,” Domae said on Japan’s TBS Sports.

“Knowing that I was able to strike out Ichiro, I think I can compete with confidence in future matches.”

Ichiro praised the pitcher, saying to an ecstatic Domae: “I had a weird feeling [being struck out] – I typically have very few strike outs. You should be proud of yourself.”

MLB icon

Ichiro’s professional debut came with the Orix Blue Wave of Japan’s Pacific League on July 11, 1992. He played in Japan from 1992-2000, winning three consecutive MVP awards and seven straight batting titles.

When he made the move to the Seattle Mariners in 2001 – becoming the first Japanese position player to sign with an MLB team – Ichiro emphatically made his mark. He went on to win the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year awards that year, becoming just the second player ever to win both honors in the same season.

From 2001-2010, Ichiro won 10 consecutive Gold Glove Awards and made 10 straight trips to the All-Star Game.

In 2016, he recorded his 3,000th MLB hit to join an elite list of players to reach such a landmark.

In addition to the Mariners, Ichiro played for the New York Yankees and Miami Marlins in his MLB career.

For fans itching for more of Ichiro on the field after Tuesday’s game, the baseball great had some good news as he emphasised that the series would continue.

“I felt the energy of everyone and it was the most happiest moment me – and I believe it was for Matsuzaka and the high school team as well. Thank you so much everyone,” he added.

“But especially for the high school female athletes who will continue on with this sport, in hopes that I can be their motivation. I will continue my training and so will Matsuzaka. I want to do this again next year at the Tokyo Dome!”

Sights of people lining up at 5 pm Thanksgiving Day at large retailers to catch Black Friday deals are rare since the onset of the pandemic. Many stores opted to close its doors on Thanksgiving in 2020 to limit crowding and spread out the holiday shopping season — and made the decision permanent.

This year, the turkey day falls on Thursday, Nov. 23. Here’s what’s open and closed on Thanksgiving Day 2023.

Retail

Target is closed on Thanksgiving Day. The closure on Thursday began for the first time in 2020.

“Once I heard from team members how much they appreciated that time with their families, it was an easy decision to make the policy permanent, and our store teams have had that time off ever since,” CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement in November.

Walmart also won’t be open on Thanksgiving.

“It’s a thing of the past. We’ll again be closed on Thanksgiving,” Walmart (WMT) US CEO John Furner said in an NBC interview last year.

Best Buy will be closed on Thanksgiving Day.

Among department stores, Macy’s, Kohl’s and Nordstrom will be closed.

Pharmacies

Most Walgreens locations will be closed, marking the first time the pharmacy chain has closed stores on Thanksgiving day, it said. However, nearly all of its 700 24-hour locations will remain open to help meet healthcare needs. The chain has faced staffing shortages and walkouts from pharmacy employees in recent months.

CVS Health said it’s closing all of its non-24 hour stores early on Thanksgiving. Rite Aid said its pharmacies will be closed but its retail locations will be open with varying hours.

Groceries

If you need to pop in to a grocery store last minute, there are a few options.

H.E.B is open from 6 am to 12 pm. Whole Foods has modified hours, and said to check with local stores for details. Most of Albertsons’ stores — such as Safeway, Albertsons, Jewel-Osco, Acma, Vons and Tom Thumb — will be open on Thanksgiving Day with modified hours. Kroger said most of its stores will close early, but to make sure to check specific hours for local stores.

All Publix stores will be closed on Thanksgiving. So will Aldi, Trader Joe’s and Costco.

Government offices

Thanksgiving is a government holiday, so federal offices, courts and post offices will be closed. Other government institutions — think the DMV and local libraries — will also be closed.

Banking

Thanksgiving is a banking holiday. The Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange will not be trading. Most banks branches will be closed, but online banking and ATMs will still be available for use.

Postal services

Don’t expect any packages on Thanksgiving day. USPS will be closed. All UPS and FedEx services will be closed except for UPS Express Critical and FedEx Custon Critical.

The beer is safe to drink, thanks to a series of treatments that include microfiltration and ultraviolet light, and it is meant to bring attention to the issue of water scarcity and reuse.

“Buildings globally use 14% of all potable water,” says Aaron Tartakovsky, CEO and co-founder of Epic Cleantec, the San Francisco-based water treatment company that made the beer in collaboration with a local brewery. “Almost no buildings reuse that water — that’s what we’re trying to change.”

The beer is a Kölsch-style ale — a crisp, light-bodied drink originating from Germany — and was made with recycled graywater from Fifteen Fifty, a 40-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco. But it’s not for sale, as regulations prohibit the use of recycled wastewater in commercial beverages. At least for now.

A ‘solar’ moment

Epic Cleantec equips buildings with its water recycling system, eliminating the need to discharge wastewater into a sewer to transport it to a remote treatment facility. The system recycles up to 95% of wastewater, according to the company — either what is known as blackwater, which comes from toilets, or graywater, which comes from sinks, washing machines, bathtubs and showers.

It does so by first using biological treatment to remove organic matter, then microfiltration via membranes just 0.04 microns thick (about 0.05% of the thickness of a human hair), and finally disinfection by ultraviolet light and chlorine, which makes the water safe for reuse in non-potable applications like toilet and urinal flushing, irrigation and laundry. The system installed in Fifteen Fifty is designed to recycle 7,500 gallons of water per day, or up to 2.75 million gallons per year.

“What we’ve done is just take a lot of existing principles in the wastewater world and design it for single buildings instead,” Tartakovsky said. “We do for water what solar did for energy, which is moving away from a sole reliance on large, centralized infrastructure.”

Epic Cleantec says the system has other benefits: recovered heat from the wastewater can be used to pre-heat domestic hot water, cutting heating costs, and the organic matter in the wastewater can be used to produce natural soil products, usable in landscaping, gardens or parks.

An installation takes the space of a few parking spots, on average, but it’s expensive — from a few hundred thousand dollars into the millions, depending on the size of the building. However, Tartakovsky says that it pays for itself in just a few years, by lowering utility bills.

In San Francisco, since 2015, all new buildings of more than 100,000 square feet are required to have an on-site water recycling system; out of the few dozen currently installed, Epic Cleantec is responsible for five.

“It’s very common sense. Why are we still using pristine drinking water from our national parks to flush the toilets of our tech employees in downtown San Francisco?” Tartakovsky asks. “Scientifically, this water often meets or even exceeds drinking water standards.”

Cutting water usage

Epic Cleantec started its beer project in late 2022, for attendees of a conference on sustainable building technologies. “We ended up producing just over 7,000 cans, not as a commercial product, but as an educational effort,” Tartakovsky says, using 2,000 gallons of recycled water. “It was meant to tell the water reuse story in a new way. But frankly, we did not anticipate the tremendous response that we saw.”

While Epic Cleantec’s system isn’t intended to produce water for drinking, regulations currently allow potable reuse of wastewater in many US states, including California and Texas. More states, including Arizona, Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Washington, are in the process of updating their water reuse regulations.

“Recycled water is already being used as a source of drinking water in places like Southern California, Singapore and Australia,” says David Sedlak, director of the Berkeley Water Center at the University of California, Berkeley. “All of those operations rely upon recycling plants that are associated with sewage treatment plants. Building-scale water recycling systems offer an opportunity for cities to reduce their reliance on water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs — sources that are vulnerable to climate change. It also offers opportunities to save energy and reduce the amount of pollutants that cities release to the environment.”

Sedlak, who is not involved in Epic Cleantec, says the water recycling system developed by the company has proven its technology to be a viable means of recycling water within buildings. “It is clean enough to use to produce a tasty beer and it is certainly clean enough to use for toilet flushing and landscape irrigation,” he adds.

In 2017, two California-based brewers produced limited-edition beers made from recycled water, to serve at local events. Daniel McCurry, an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Southern California, tried one. “I drank it with no reservations, but it was brewed with water from a municipal potable reuse project in San Diego,” he says.

He explains that municipal systems for potable reuse typically include two more steps than Epic Cleantec’s – reverse-osmosis and UV/advanced oxidation processes – which McCurry says can remove chemical contaminants such as industrial solvents and pharmaceuticals “to a much greater extent than by ultrafiltration, UV, and chlorine alone.”

Being able to sell beer or other drinks made with such water would require another regulatory step, but it isn’t out of the question, according to Tartakovsky. “When I got into the water industry, there was a lot of often-repeated tropes that the general public was just not ready for recycled water,” he says.

“In the industry, we call it the ‘yuck’ factor. There’s a mental perception that recycled water is not as clean as other sources of water. But what I often remind people of is that all water on this planet is recycled. The water we are drinking today is the same water that was consumed by the dinosaurs millions of years ago.”

He adds that, despite not being its focus, Epic Cleantec is now having conversations with some of the largest brewers in the world. “We have a lot of people who are asking for more of it, just because beyond being an interesting environmental story, the beer actually just tastes really good,” he says.

“You’re going to start hearing a lot more about a lot of different industries using recycled water for their products. I think the sky’s the limit for what we can do.”

The donations are in the form of shares, with a release from his Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate detailing that 1.5 million shares are going to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is named after his wife. Another 900,000 shares are being divided evenly among three charities run by his children.

Buffett said the donations “repeat those made at Thanksgiving last year” and that they “supplement certain of the lifetime pledges I made in 2006 and that continue until my death (at 93, I feel good but fully realize I am playing in extra innings).”

Last year, he donated about $750 million to the same foundations. He’s been making the same donations yearly since 2006.

In a letter to shareholders, Buffett wrote on Tuesday that he and his children “have a common belief that dynastic wealth, though both legal and common in much of the world including the United States, is not desirable.”

“We also agree that capitalism — whatever its weaknesses, including the vast disparities in wealth and political influence that it delivers somewhat capriciously to its citizens — has worked wonders and continues to work wonders,” he wrote.

The letter also said that “Berkshire’s advantage is that it has been built to last” and that the company’s “distinctive characteristics and behavior will be supported by my large Berkshire holdings.”

The 93-year-old remains in control of the sprawling company. He named Greg Abel, the head of Berkshire Hathaway’s non-insurance business, as his successor in 2021.

Berkshire Hathaway recently reported a surge in third-quarter operating earnings and a record-high cash pile of $157 billion.

Benjamin Charles Jones entered the store in Beavercreek, about 10 miles east of Dayton, around 8:35 p.m., said Capt. Chad Lindsey, acting Beavercreek Police Department chief, during a Tuesday news conference.

Witnesses saw Jones holding a rifle that police identified as a Hi-Point .45 caliber carbine long gun, which is a semi-automatic rifle, Lindsey said. He then walked through different parts of the store, appearing to shoot indiscriminately at patrons, he added.

“No shots were fired by any responding police officers,” the department said in a social media post.

The victims were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment, Capt. Scott Molnar said in a news briefing on Monday.

One man and three women were injured. Three are in stable condition and one remains in critical condition, Lindsey said on Tuesday. Police didn’t provide specifics about their conditions.

The gunshot injuries sustained by the victims appeared to be “largely random,” Lindsey said, and the wounds were “throughout all different parts of the body.”

Police did not release any additional information about the victims but noted details about their backgrounds or races are considered part of the ongoing investigation into a possible motive behind the attack.

It’s at least the second deadly shooting at the same store where, nearly 10 years ago, police shot and killed a Black man who was holding an air rifle he had found on a store shelf and was not in its packaging. The killing sparked outrage and calls for reform.

Police responded to the scene within three minutes of receiving the first 911 call about the shooter, Lindsey said on Tuesday when he broke down the agency’s response to the shooting and shared footage from a responding officer’s body-worn camera.

Roughly seven minutes after the first call, officers found the shooter on the ground toward the store’s front entrance with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, he said. Police secured and cleared the building less than an hour after arriving on scene, according to Lindsey.

Monday night’s violence adds to a long list of shootings that have turned commonplace events and settings across the country – retail stores, schools, bowling alleys and birthday parties – into crime scenes.

There have been at least 609 mass shootings in the US this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as one in which four or more people are shot, not including the shooter.

A gunman nearly a year ago killed six people at another Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia. Since then, thousands of people have been killed by gun violence in the US, according to the archive. Many simply found themselves in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Walmart will offer emergency support to affected associates and set up an offsite resource center offering counseling, the company said in a statement.

“With details of Monday night’s shooting at our Beavercreek store still coming to light, we’re focused on providing our associates with the attention and support needed to cope with this tragedy,” the statement read.

No decision has been made on when the store will reopen, the company said.

The FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, were all investigating the shooting Monday night.

Students at nearby Wright State University shop at the store, they told CNN affiliate WKEF.

“It’s crazy thinking that we’re literally less than five minutes away where we live. They could have went to a campus and not a Walmart, and it could have been us,” Wright State University student Kailie Conley told WKEF.

This story has been updated with additional information.

CNN’s Maria Sole Campinoti, Amanda Jackson, Lauren Mascarenhas and Nicki Brown contributed to this report.

The landslide was reported Monday around 9 p.m. local time on the Zimovia Highway near Wrangell, and a preliminary survey by emergency responders determined it had walloped three single-family residences in its path, the department said in a release Tuesday. State troopers have assumed command of the search and rescue effort, although ground search efforts are temporarily paused until the slide can be assessed for safety issues by a geologist, they said.

The girl who died was found during initial search and rescue efforts Monday night, public safety department spokesperson Austin McDaniel told CNN. He did not provide the girl’s age.

Three adults and two juveniles remain missing, McDaniel said. One woman was rescued and is receiving medical treatment, he said, noting she is in good condition.

It has been wet in recent days — typical for this time of year there — but it was particularly rainy on Sunday and Monday, with more than 3 inches of rain falling around Wrangell in the 24 hours leading up to the landslide, Andy Park, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Juneau, told CNN.

Park said winds of 61 to 87 mph Monday evening may have been a factor in the landslides as well.

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has issued a disaster declaration in Wrangell after the deadly landslide, his office posted on social media.

Alaska’s Department of Public Safety urges people not to enter the slide area as it has been active throughout the night and additional landslides are possible.

Alaska’s Department of Transportation shared an image of the landslide on Facebook which the agency estimates to be 450 feet wide, with a significant debris field, according to the post.

CNN reached out to Alaska’s Department of Public Safety for updates.

Pitching sensation Yoshinobu Yamamoto is set to make a high-profile switch to Major League Baseball (MLB) during the offseason, after he was posted as a free agent by Japan’s Orix Buffaloes on Monday.

The 25-year-old is expected to attract the attention of the league’s biggest franchises and could receive a highly-lucrative contract worth around $200m, per Reuters.

A bidding war is expected to get underway on Tuesday and will run until January 4.

Yamamoto has certainly impressed during the early part of his career, being awarded the Eiji Sawamura Award – given to the top starting pitcher in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) – on three occasions.

He was 16-6 this last season with a 1.21 ERA; form that saw him win his third consecutive Triple Crown – in wins, ETA and strikeouts – in the NPB’s Pacific League.

The right-hander, who boasts a fastball comfortably in the mid-to-high 90s, has enjoyed success on the international stage as well, helping his country win gold at the Tokyo Olympics, before clinching the World Baseball Classic in March.

A free agent with his talent, at his age, is extremely rare in baseball. According to The Athletic, the New York Yankees, New York Mets, Boston Red Sox and the LA Dodgers are just some of the teams with a reported interest.

Yamamoto is set to follow in the footsteps of the likes of Ichiro Suzuki, Hideki Matsui and current star Shohei Ohtani who have made the switch from Japan to the MLB.

Home sales remained at 13-year lows as buyers competed for the few available homes on the market and continued to push up prices. Elevated prices, together with the average rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage nearing 8% in October, have created the least affordable market in several decades.

The median price for existing homes — which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops — climbed to $391,800 last month. That was up 3.4% from a year ago and marked the fourth consecutive month of year-over-year price increases. It was the highest median price on record for the month of October. Prices rose in all four regions of the country, the Northeast, Midwest, South and the West, NAR found.

Higher costs to buy and finance a home pushed sales down to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 3.79 million, falling 4.1% from September and a 14.6% from a year ago, according to the report. This fell short of analysts’ expectations for a rate of 3.9 million units sold. Home sales slid from last month in the Northeast, South and West, but were unchanged in the Midwest.

“Prospective home buyers experienced another difficult month due to the persistent lack of housing inventory and the highest mortgage rates in a generation,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist. “Multiple offers, however, are still occurring, especially on starter and mid-priced homes, even as price concessions are happening in the upper end of the market.”

Of the homes sold in October, 28% went above the listing price, which suggests there was a bidding war among would-be buyers.

“There are lingering effects of multiple offers, with more people waiving home inspection and appraisal contingencies,” said Yun. “Given the lack of inventory home sellers are in driver seat, they like the offers that waive those contingencies.”

In October, 24% home buyers waived home inspections, a year ago it was 20%; 21% waived appraisal contingency, compared to 18% a year ago.

Home sales were down in lower priced categories – under $750,000 – due to lack of inventory and sales grew in higher price categories where there was more inventory.

“Where there is more inventory more sales can get done,” said Yun.

Inventory of homes for sale at the end October was 1.15 million units, which was up 1.8% from September. Typical inventory levels prior to the pandemic was about 1.9 million, meaning there were about half the number of homes for sale compared to pre-Covid.

Properties typically remained on the market for 23 days in October, up from 21 days in September 2023 and October 2022. Over half of homes sold in last month were on the market for less than a month.

First-time buyers were responsible for 28% of sales in October.

“First time buyers are still not able to crack above 30% on a consistent basis,” said Yun.

All-cash sales accounted for 29% of transactions in October, unchanged from September but up from 26% in October 2022.

“The lack of inventory and higher interest rates really hitting the home sales market,” said Yun. “Maybe in a couple months we will see some improvement in affordability.”

The mysterious illness is described as an “atypical canine infectious respiratory disease,” the Oregon Department of Agriculture said in a November 9 news release. Symptoms include coughing, sneezing, eye or nose discharge and lethargy.

Veterinarians in Oregon have reported more than 200 cases of the disease since mid-August. Other cases have been reported in Colorado, Illinois and New Hampshire.

“Based on the epidemiology of the cases reported at this point, the cases appear to share a viral etiology, but common respiratory diagnostic testing has been largely negative,” Oregon State Veterinarian Dr. Ryan Scholz told the American Veterinary Medical Association.

In other words, dogs with the unidentified illness show similar signs of an upper respiratory disease but generally don’t test positive for common respiratory diseases. And the disease is generally resistant to standard treatments, said Dr. David B. Needle, a pathologist at the New Hampshire Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and clinical associate professor at the University of New Hampshire.

“Fatalities do not seem to be a large part of the syndrome we are investigating, with rare animals developing an acute and sometimes fatal pneumonia after the longer chronic disease,” Needle said. “We think these may represent secondary infections.”

Where did the disease come from?

Needle said he’s part of a team trying to identify the disease and find common DNA segments by collecting samples from local veterinary clinics and comparing the results.

“If what we have identified is a pathogen, it is likely that the bacteria is host-adapted bacteria with long histories of colonizing dogs,” Needle said. An “evolutionary event” like spontaneous mutation or getting a gene from a different source could then have led the bacteria to become virulent, he said.

He said researchers have received samples from Oregon and expect to receive samples from Colorado, Illinois and other states for testing.

The Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory has also reported cases of a mysterious canine disease, the lab’s director told CNN in an email.

“There has been an uptick in the numbers of dogs with respiratory disease, (coughing, lethargy, fever) and the signs have been persisting longer than a few days,” said Kevin Snekvik, the laboratory’s executive director and a professor at the Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine.

Snekvik said his Washington lab has not reported any canine deaths from the mystifying disease, but said labs in other states have reported a few deaths.

What can dog owners do?

While the news may be concerning, “We suggest caution rather than worry,” the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association’s website says.

While this particular disease is unusual, “Periodic outbreaks of Canine Infectious Respiratory Disease Complex (CIRDC) can occur in a dog population. At least nine different bacteria and viruses have been linked as causes of CIRDC, which is transmitted by respiratory droplets,” the association said.

“Infection with more than one bacterial or viral agent is common. Symptoms include coughing, sneezing, nasal and/or eye discharge, and lethargy. If your dog shows these symptoms, please contact your veterinarian.”

Dog owners should help keep their pets healthy by making sure they’re up-to-date on all vaccines, such as those for canine influenza, Bordetella and parainfluenza, the association said. Other tips include:

• Reducing contact with large numbers of unknown dogs. Just like with other respiratory pathogens, the more contacts your dog has, the greater the risk of encountering a dog that’s infectious.
• Reducing contact with sick dogs. This can be harder to determine but if a dog looks sick (coughing, runny nose, runny eyes), keep your dog away from it.
• Keep sick dogs at home and seek veterinary care.
• Avoid communal water bowls shared by multiple dogs.

As part of a coordinated settlement across the federal government, Binance has agreed to pay more than $4 billion in fines and other penalties. Zhao, one of the most powerful figures in crypto, has agreed to step down as CEO from the exchange that he founded.

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, admitted to engaging in anti-money laundering, unlicensed money transmitting and sanctions violations.

US officials described this as the biggest-ever corporate resolution that includes criminal charges for an executive.

Following a years-long investigation, authorities allege Binance allowed bad actors to freely transact on the platform, enabling everything from child sex abuse and narcotics to terrorist financing for ISIS, Al Qaeda and Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades.

Zhao, who has amassed a fortune estimated at more than $23 billion, pled guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program.

US authorities hope the guilty plea from Binance and its founder, on top of the recent conviction of FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried, will send a clear message to bad actors across the crypto industry.

“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in US history,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

Zhao faces a maximum of 10 years behind bars, though his ultimate sentence will likely be far lower. Federal guidelines likely place the high end of a possible sentence for Zhao around 18 months. Sentencing is ultimately decided by a judge.

According to the plea deal, Zhao agreed to prosecutors’ recommendation that he pay a fine of $50 million.

“Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profits,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals and child abusers through its platform.”

The Binance guilty plea is part of a coordinated settlement reached with a wide range of government agencies, including the Justice Department, Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Office of Foreign Asset Controls (OFAC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Binance did not respond to requests for comment.

What Binance allegedly did wrong

Federal prosecutors unsealed court records on Tuesday alleging Binance, led by Zhao, processed transactions by customers who operated illicit mixing services and “laundered proceeds of darknet market transactions, hacks, ransomware and scams.” Prosecutors allege that Binance had lax anti-money laundering procedures.

This alleged misconduct paved the way for Binance to become king of the crypto exchanges, prosecutors allege.

“In part because of this scheme, and because Defendant prioritized growth, market share and profits over compliance with US law (Binance) became the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world,” prosecutors said.

Prosecutors allege Binance, “knowingly failed” to register as a money service business, willfully violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement and maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and willfully caused violations of US economic sanctions.

The charges, filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Washington, accused Binance of a “deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the US market without implementing controls required by US laws.”

Prosecutors allege the misconduct started as early as August 2017, continued until at least October 2022 and included certain Binance officers, directors, employees and agents.

Proponents of digital currencies point out that the great majority of business done via crypto is lawful and legitimate, and a cottage industry of companies have emerged in the last five years that work with law enforcement to track digital transactions.

Binance’s legal woes follow the collapse of another crypto exchange, FTX, and the conviction of it founder Sam Bankman-Fried on fraud charges. Those are the most extreme examples of the greater scrutiny that law enforcement and regulators have brought in recent months to the largely unregulated crypto industry.

But ransomware gangs from Russia and money launderers from North Korea, for example, continue to see crypto as core to their business model, and have often used publicly available tools, or “mixing services,” to hide their ill-gotten gains.

The US Justice Department in August unsealed federal charges against the co-founders of one such service, Tornado Cash, accusing them of moving $1 billion in cryptocurrency for criminals. One of the Tornado Cash co-founders has pleaded not guilty to the charges while the other remains at large.

What is Binance?

Binance was founded in 2017 by Zhao, a Canadian national. US market regulators this year brought civil cases against Binance, which they accuse of running an illegal exchange for unregistered securities in the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission in June sued Binance, saying the company ran an “extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”

Binance has long argued that it isn’t subject to US laws because it doesn’t have a physical headquarters in America.

The SEC also alleged that Zhao and Binance commingled customer assets and even diverted some to an entity controlled by Zhao.

Zhao claims that the company’s headquarters are wherever he is at any point in time, “reflecting a deliberate approach to attempt to avoid regulation,” according to a complaint by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. That agency accused Binance and Zhao of violating US derivatives trading laws in multiple ways, including allegedly secretly coaching “VIP” customers within the United States on how to evade compliance controls.

A spokesperson for Binance said in June that the company takes the SEC’s allegations seriously, but it believes the agency’s accusations are “unjustified.”

“We respectfully disagree with the SEC’s allegations that Binance operated as an unregistered securities exchange or illegally offered and sold securities,” the company said in a statement. “Because of our size and global name recognition, Binance has found itself an easy target caught in the middle of a US regulatory tug-of-war.”

The freeing of the hostages will come in exchange for a four-day truce in Israel’s air and ground campaign in Gaza, the statement said. It made no mention of the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, though it is understood this is also a key part of the deal. Earlier reports suggested about 150 Palestinian prisoners, also predominantly women and children, would be released.

The deal was approved by the Israeli cabinet by a significant majority, a government source told CNN.

The statement held out the potential for the truce to extend beyond the original four-day period, saying that an extra day would be added to the truce for each ten additional hostages available for release.

It also made clear that Israel plans to resume its air and ground campaign “to complete the eradication of Hamas” once this round of hostage releases concludes.

Details of arrangements would be sent to families of the hostages later today, the statement added.

A diplomatic source familiar with the talks told CNN “details on when the pause starts are still unclear.”

There are 239 hostages being held captive in Gaza, including foreign nationals from 26 countries, according to figures from the Israeli military. The mass abductions took place during on October 7, when Hamas militants struck across the border in coordinated attacks killing around 1,200 people – the largest such attack on Israel since the country’s founding in 1948.

The deal followed mounting pressure on the Israeli government from the families of the hostages, who have demanded answers and action from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the return of their loved ones.

Many of the hostages were seized at gunpoint during Hamas’ rampage of violence though border communities near the Gaza Strip and the nearby Nova music festival.

Israel responded to the attacks by imposing a blockade on Gaza that cut off supplies of food, water, medicines and fuel, and launched a relentless air and ground assault that has plunged the enclave into a dire humanitarian crisis.

More than 12,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to the Hamas-run government’s press office.

Just a handful of hostages have been released prior to the deal. On October 20, two Americans – Judith Tai Raanan and her 17-year-old daughter Natalie Raanan – were freed on humanitarian grounds following negotiations between Qatar and Hamas.

Soon after, two Israeli women, Nurit Cooper and Yocheved Lifshitz, were also released.

Lifshitz said she “went through hell,” describing being snatched from her home and driven off on a motorbike before being taken to a network of tunnels.

The total number of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails is approximately 8,300, according to Qadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Prisoners Club, a non-governmental organization.

Of those 8,300, more than 3,000 are being held in what Israel calls “administrative detention,” which means they are being held without knowing the charges against them or an ongoing legal process.

Best Buy, Lowe’s and Kohl’s all reported sales declines during their most recent quarter Tuesday and are forecasting holiday sales to drop from a year ago.

“Consumer demand has been even more uneven and difficult to predict,” Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said in a statement, noting that the company “prepared for a customer who is very deal-focused.”

Holiday sales are predicted to grow this year but at a slower rate.

In 2021, Holiday shopping sales spiked by 14% and grew by a healthy 5% last year. But Moody’s Investors Service said in a report today that consumers are “losing spending steam” and holiday sales will grow by just 1% to 3% this year.

Shoppers have become more cautious in the face of inflation, higher interest rates and the resumption of student loan repayments.

Moody’s analysts say the high cost of living and dwindling savings will cause low and middle income consumers to shrink their holiday budgets.

Many customers are pulling back on major discretionary purchases like TVs and furniture and have shifted to focus on essentials. Walmart, Costco and discount clothing stores such as TJ Maxx could benefit from shoppers seeking out value, Moody’s said.

“Retailers offering a combination of value and non-discretionary essentials will see their sales outperform the broader retail industry this holiday season,” according to Moody’s.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, retailers have started Black Friday deals earlier than ever to draw shoppers.

“One trend that’s sticking is a longer holiday season. Christmas creep has gotten particularly pronounced,” said Berna Barshay, an independent retail analyst.

Retailers have also been dealing with higher losses from shoplifting.

But there are signs that these problems could be easing.

Dick’s Sporting Goods in August blamed an “increasingly serious” theft problem for its profit plunge. But the company reported Tuesday that its profit bounced back this quarter.

The Duke of Sussex also dropped the ceremonial puck ahead of the game, fist-bumping captains Quinn Hughes and Tomáš Hertl at center ice.

“I actually had to tell him [to drop the puck] because he kept holding [it] and smiling,” Hertl told reporters after the game. “I said it’s time to drop it. It was a cool moment, for sure I will remember that one.”

Prince Harry and Meghan are visiting Vancouver ahead of the 2025 Invictus Games, which will be held in British Columbia.

The Invictus Games, founded by Prince Harry and first staged in 2014, is an international sporting event involving military personnel injured in service.

Previous editions have been held in the UK, the US, Australia, Netherlands, and Germany, while Canada will host it for the second time.

The Canucks won Monday’s game 3-1, improving to 13-5-1 on the season thanks to goals from Hughes, Sam Lafferty, and J.T. Miller.

Hughes also recorded an assist to take his points tally for the season to a league-leading 30 – the third defenseman in NHL history to reach that milestone in fewer than 20 games.

Prince Harry’s grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth II, also dropped the ceremonial puck during a game between the Canucks and the Sharks in 2002 – a trip to Canada that coincided with her Golden Jubilee celebrations.

One Minnesota resident, it seems, took that time – and then some.

Now, over a century later, her child has returned it to the Saint Paul Public Library through another library system in the state, the city library director, Maureen Hartman, told CNN on Monday.

The 1902 edition of “Famous Composers vol. 2” by Nathan Haskell Dole was found by a patron in Hennepin County sorting through their mother’s belongings, the library wrote on X.

No other information on the book’s return were immediately available, though the library welcomes the chance to chat with whoever brought it back, Hartman said.

The title itself explores the lives and works of some prominent composers from the Baroque period to the Romantic era, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin, a modern synopsis shows.

This particular copy lived only a short time on the Saint Paul library’s shelves, according to a web librarian who pieced together some of its journey through dated stamps and the pocket card, the library said.

It was checked out several times, according to the check-out slip in the back of the book – most likely last in 1919.

And it hadn’t been returned since.

The grossly overdue book caught the attention of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, who joked online about the fine more than 100 years’ delay might accrue – or lack thereof, rather, since the library, like many across the country, stopped charging late fees in 2019, he said.

A century before that, the going rate for a late book would have been a penny a day, Carter said, meaning today, the Dole hardback would have incurred a fine of about $380.

Backtracking through time

Two check-out stamps – from June 4, 1914, and January 17, 1916 – reveal the tome’s journey, indicating it may have been entered in the library’s catalog twice, the Saint Paul Public Library said.

The book “was added first in 1914 when the city’s library was housed in Old Market Hall and the Central Library was still being built,” it said. Old Market Hall caught fire in 1915, however, with essentially the whole library – 160,000 volumes – burned.

Some 34,000 titles, presumably in the hands of patrons at the time, escaped the flames, Hartman said.

Dole’s text, it added, was likely one of the few books to survive.

This particular “Famous Composers vol. 2” most likely was added back into the library’s collection in 1916, the Saint Paul Public Library’s librarian deduced, ahead of the 1917 opening of the Central Library building.

Still, the hardcover book remains intact, held together by what appears to be its original binding, with weathered pages marked by library stamps, scattered pencil writings and a few stains, photos from the library show.

A math equation inked on the pocket card still solves this problem: 1928 minus 1791, the library pointed out. Perhaps the patron was trying to work out how old the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer would have been if he’d lived to see the later year, staff hypothesized.

Due to its fragile condition, the library doesn’t think the book should go back into circulation, Hartman said. Instead, it could end up displayed under glass in the Saint Paul Collection, which documents parts of the city’s history.

“This has been such a wonderful opportunity to talk about this specific book, Hartman said, “but also just about libraries and the value of libraries in general.

“This has proven again to us that libraries are as interesting and beloved now just as much as they were 100 years ago.”

Meanwhile, the answer to that math equation – as well as why the book remained checked out for over 100 years – may be among those that simply can’t be found in the library, its staff acknowledged:

“We may never know.”

Chauvin was found guilty in April 2021 of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in Floyd’s death. He was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison – which exceeded Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines range of 10 years and eight months to 15 years.

Chauvin later pleaded guilty to federal charges of violating Floyd’s civil rights and was sentenced to 21 years in prison to run concurrently with his state sentence.

Floyd’s killing while in police custody on a Minneapolis street was caught on video and ignited prolonged protests in the community and across the country over police brutality and racial injustice.

Chauvin claimed in his appeal against conviction he had not received a fair trial because jurors in his case may have had a vested interest against acquitting, out of fear of instigating more street protests and violence.

Chauvin’s lawyers have said there were various reasons to overturn his conviction, including a state district court depriving the former officer of his right to a fair trial by denying his request for a change of venue, despite “pervasive adverse publicity.”

The Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal without comment or a recorded vote.

CNN has reached out to an attorney for Chauvin, Floyd family attorney Ben Crump and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison for comment.

The bipartisan commission, which has sponsored every general election presidential debate since its founding in 1987, will host three next year, with the first on September 16 at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas.

The second debate will be on October 1 at Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, and the third will be on October 9 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

There will also be one vice presidential debate on September 25 at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Typically, the first debate has been in late September or early October. In 2020, the first debate was on September 29, but amid an uptick in pandemic-era early voting, the Trump campaign called for an additional early September debate.

The schedule tweak also means that the debates will end earlier than they ever have. There will be 27 days between the last debate and Election Day on November 5. That’s compared to 12 days in 2020 and 20 days in 2016.

However, it’s not certain the debates will actually happen.

Last year, the Republican National Committee voted to withdraw from its participation in the commission, with RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel saying at the time that commission is “biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms.”

The scheduling change could make it more likely that the eventual Republican nominee participates in the debates, as the lack of a debate before voting started was one of McDaniel’s specific criticisms.

In 2020, the second scheduled presidential debate was canceled after then-President Donald Trump refused to take part in the event when the commission proposed doing it virtually because of coronavirus concerns. Instead, Trump and then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden participated in dueling town halls.

While the University of Utah hosted the 2020 vice presidential debate, the other three schools will host debates for the first time, with the commission’s co-chairs noting that Virginia State University will be the first historically Black college or university to host a general election debate.

All of the debates will start at 9 p.m. ET and will run for 90 minutes without commercial breaks, according to the commission’s statement, but details about format and moderators will be announced next year.

To receive an invitation to the debate, candidates need to be constitutionally eligible to serve as president, to be on the ballot on enough states to win a majority of the electoral votes, and to register at least 15% in polls from organizations selected by the commission.

Three cases were reported in both California and Florida, with other cases reported in Colorado, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan and Ohio. However, the CDC says the number of cases is probably higher because some people with Listeria infections get better without medical care, so their illnesses aren’t reported.

Testing showed that HMC Farms peaches were contaminated with Listeria that’s closely related to the bacteria from some of those sickened in this outbreak. HMC Farms has recalled peaches, plums and nectarines sold in stores between May 1 and November 15 last year and this year. The stone fruit was sold individually and in 2-pound bags.

The CDC advises anyone who has recalled fruit to throw it out and clean surfaces and containers that may have touched the fruit, including inside your refrigerator, since Listeria can survive there.

Listeria is more likely to cause severe illness in people who are pregnant, who have weakened immune systems or who are 65 or older. Get medical care if you have symptoms of a Listeria infection such as fever, muscle aches, fatigue, headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance or seizures.

The CDC is also continuing its investigation into another recent illness-related fruit recall. At least 43 illnesses have been reported in a salmonella outbreak linked with whole and pre-cut cantaloupes. Trufresh, Vinyard and Aldi products are included in the recall.

“We’ve known for a while that as the belly size gets larger, the memory centers in the brain get smaller,” said Alzheimer’s disease researcher Dr. Richard Isaacson, a preventive neurologist at the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases of Florida.

“This study shows a brain imaging marker of neuroinflammation which I had not seen before,” said Isaacson, who was not involved in the new study. “The brain imaging links the belly fat, or visceral fat, to the brain dysfunction through an inflammatory cascade.”

The study found individuals in their 40s and 50s with a greater amount of hidden belly fat “had a higher amount of an abnormal protein called amyloid in a part of the brain that we know is one of the earliest places where Alzheimer’s occurs,” said senior author Dr. Cyrus Raji, associate professor of radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Beta amyloid plaques in the brain are one of the hallmark signals of Alzheimer’s, along with tangles of a protein called tau. Amyloid plaques typically appear first, with tau tangles arriving later as the disease progresses.

“There’s a sex difference, as well, where the men had a higher relationship between their belly fat and amyloid than women,” Raji said. “The reason that’s important is because men have more visceral fat than women.”

The study also found a relationship between deep belly fat and brain atrophy, or a wasting away of gray matter, in a part of the brain’s memory center called the hippocampus.

“That’s important because brain atrophy is another biomarker of Alzheimer’s disease,” Raji said.

The brain’s gray matter contains the majority of brain cells that tell the body what to do. White matter is made up of fibers, typically distributed into bundles called tracts, which form connections between brain cells and the rest of the nervous system.

“We also found that the individuals with higher amounts of visceral fat tend to have more inflammation in widespread white matter tracks in the brain,” said lead author Dr. Mahsa Dolatshahi, a postdoctoral research fellow at Washington University School of Medicine.

Without a functional white matter highway, the brain cannot adequately communicate with different parts of the brain and the body.

‘Pushing the envelope’

Published as a pilot study in the journal of Aging and Disease in August, Raji and his team originally imaged the brains and bellies of 32 adults ages 40 to 60.  The team kept adding participants and are now presenting information on an additional 20 people — 52 total — at the Radiology Society of North America’s 2023 conference on Monday.

As more people were added to the study, details of how inflammation from belly fat on the parts of the brain where Alzheimer’s originates came into focus. The brain changes they found were modest, but significant, Raji said.

“The reason we’ve shown very subtle effects is because we’re looking at midlife — people in their 40s and 50s — while earlier studies looked at people in their 60s and 70s,” he said. “These are people who, if they do develop Alzheimer’s disease, it won’t happen for another 20 or 25 more years.

“So, we’re really pushing the envelope of how early we can detect some of the kind of subtlest manifestations of abnormalities that can be related to Alzheimer’s pathology,” Raji added. “By identifying this pathological link to visceral fat, there are ways we can potentially intervene in this population.”

Visceral fat and inflammation

When we think of fat, most of us think of subcutaneous fat, the type you can pinch under your skin or along your waistline. Subcutaneous fat typically makes up 90% of the body, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Visceral fat can’t be poked, prodded or pinched. Visceral fat hides behind the abdominal muscles, deep in the belly, wrapping itself around vital organs. Both types secrete hormones and other molecules, but experts say visceral fat is more metabolically active, sending signals that can trigger insulin resistance and other health issues.

“Subcutaneous fat is typically not associated with insulin resistance,” Isaacson said. “The higher the visceral fat level, however, the more a person has insulin resistance that causes inflammation in the body and the brain.”

Insulin resistance occurs when cells in the body don’t respond well to insulin, a hormone essential for regulating blood sugar levels. The condition often leads to diabetes and a host of other chronic diseases.

“We’ve hypothesized inflammation in the fat cells leads to insulin resistance, and that’s fast-forwarded by visceral fat,” Isaacson said.  “Insulin resistance then causes inflammation that fast-forwards amyloid deposition, one of the key markers of Alzheimer’s disease. That’s why people with diabetes have twice the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Expensive full-body MRIs and body scans are the most precise way to measure visceral fat, but many use estimates based on waist circumference or waist size in proportion to height. To measure your waist, the Cleveland Clinic recommends wrapping a flexible tape measure around the waist just above the hips.

“For women, 35 inches (89 centimeters) or more means you’re at risk for health problems stemming from visceral fat. For men, the number is 40 inches (102 centimeters) or more,” the clinic states on its website.

“Regardless of weight, people should find out if they have hidden visceral fat,” Raji said. “It can be totally missed by using body mass index (BMI) or weight on the scale.”

That’s because even thin people can have excess visceral fat. Called “skinny fat” or “TOFI” (thin outside, fat inside), it can happen when a person exercises but has a poor diet, and to certain ethnic groups. Asians, for example, have more visceral fat than Black, White or Hispanic people.

Visceral fat ‘easier to lose’

There’s good news: Visceral fat responds well to diet and exercise, Raji said. “It is easier to lose visceral fat from diet and exercise than it is to lose subcutaneous fat because visceral fat is more easily metabolized and burned.”

There are multiple things that can target body fat, both from an exercise and nutrition perspective, Isaacson said.

“Eat a healthy diet and exercise on a regular basis, which should include muscle strength training a few times a week, along with fat-burning, less intense cardio for 45 to 60 minutes, several times a week,” he said.

More tips: Eliminate or reduce ultraprocessed foods, cut portion sizes, replace sugary drinks with water, limit processed meats, and reduce meat and high-fat dairy products, such as cheese and butter, which are packed with saturated fats, other experts suggest.

Watch alcohol intake too: It’s not just beer that leads to a “beer belly,” according to the Mayo Clinic. Drinking alcohol of any kind will expand the waistline.

Watch your sleep as well. Millions of Americans are sleep-deprived on a daily basis, yet studies have found people who sleep less than six hours a day have greater levels of amyloid in their brains.

President Joe Biden presided over the annual White House Thanksgiving tradition of the turkey pardon Monday, sparing Liberty, a 42.5-pound turkey, and Bell, 42.1 pounds, in a brief respite from the global crises facing his administration.

Liberty and Bell were roasted – but only metaphorically – by the president on the South Lawn of the White House. The yearly occasion is an opportunity for a cornucopia of fowl jokes – and to give thanks as the holiday season begins.

“These birds have a new appreciation for the word, ‘Let freedom ring,’” Biden told an audience of children of his staff and Cabinet members, local schoolkids, and others.

“That’s a big bird, man. I’m impressed,” Biden said as one of the turkeys flapped on a table. “I hereby pardon Liberty and Bell. Congratulations, birds.”

As Americans gather around their Thanksgiving tables this year, the price of the average meal is down from a historic high, signaling some relief from rampant inflation. The average cost of the feast is down approximately 4.5% compared with last year, according to the American Farm Bureau’s annual survey, giving the White House some good news to squawk about.

Rumors of turkey pardons go back in presidential history as far as the Abraham Lincoln administration. Folklore has it that Lincoln’s young son asked his father to spare a pet turkey that was supposed to be part of their Thanksgiving dinner.

The competition of the delivery became national news in the 1920s, when a turkey from Texas sent to Woodrow Wilson in a White House-shaped crate battled outside the White House with a turkey from Kentucky. The Kentucky bird emerged victorious, according to the White House Historical Association.

The National Turkey Foundation became the official turkey supplier to the first family in 1947, and the formal turkey presentation ceremony has been around since Harry Truman. Truman was the first to accept a turkey from the group – however, he did not spare it.

The first documented turkey pardon was given by John F. Kennedy in 1963, though it didn’t catch on right away. Even though Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, neither one of them decided to pardon any turkeys as president.

Turkey pardoning became the norm in 1989, when George H.W. Bush revived the tradition, now a staple of the White House holiday season.

Biden’s most recent predecessors have peppered their pardons with turkey and other topical political puns.

Last year, after the midterm elections, Biden joked that the two birds were part of “another flock hoping to come to Washington in 2024.”

“The votes are in, they’ve been counted and verified, no ballot stuffing, no fowl play. The only red wave this season is going to be if German shepherd Commander knocks over the cranberry sauce,” he said.

Donald Trump poked fun at the impeachment inquiry against him in 2019, telling a crowd that the turkeys “have already received subpoenas to appear in Adam Schiff’s basement,” referring to the California Democratic congressman.

And Barack Obama employed his signature rhetoric: “I want to take a moment to recognize the great turkeys who weren’t so lucky, who didn’t get to ride the gravy train to freedom. Who met their fate with courage and sacrifice and proved that they weren’t chicken.”

“Yes, we cran,” Obama added.

Hatched in July, this year’s birds were raised in a barn by Jennie-O in Willmar, Minnesota. They rode the gravy train to the nation’s capital this week, making the nearly 20-hour drive over three days in a “makeshift pen” in a stretch Cadillac Escalade, Steve Lykken – National Turkey Federation chairman and Jennie-O Turkey Store president – told CNN in an interview. Lykken described the drivers as “seasoned individuals” with turkey-handling experience.

They were chosen from their flock for their extroverted behavior, and were prepared for Monday’s pardon ceremony by being exposed to sounds such as clapping and music at different volumes, Lykken said.

The duo arrived in Washington over the weekend and are staying at the luxe Willard InterContinental, steps from the White House, where pardoned turkeys have rested and ruffled their feathers for over a decade. They participated in a news conference Sunday where their names were formally unveiled, strutting and squawking in front of a podium.

“They checked in, they went up to their rooms, they saw the map with what to do in the city, they had a bubble bath, and I heard that they also had something out of the minibar,” said Markus Platzer, the hotel’s general manager.

Lykken told news conference attendees that the birds are “absolutely ready for prime time.”

Follwing the ceremony, Liberty and Bell will return to their home state, retiring to the University of Minnesota College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources Sciences.

“I know they’re going to receive the highest level of care from the experts and enjoy their time,” Lykken said.

The 47-year-old has not played a tournament since his early withdrawal from The Masters in April but will tee off as tournament host at the unofficial PGA Tour event in Albany, The Bahamas, on November 30, organizers announced Saturday.

Woods underwent ankle surgery in May after enduring “constant” pain across his three rounds at Augusta National the previous month, only his second competitive appearance of 2023.

Started in 2000 and staged as a benefit to Woods’ TGR Foundation, the Hero World Challenge will see the five-time event winner compete as part of a 20-player invitational field featuring many of the game’s top players, including world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, Viktor Hovland, Max Homa and Matt Fitzpatrick.

American trio Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas are also set to play, with Justin Rose and Lucas Glover making the field as tournament exemptions.

Fifteen-time major winner Woods has prioritized appearances at the four major championships in his sporadic competitive appearances since suffering severe leg injuries in a car crash two years ago but missed the three subsequent flagship events following The Masters as he recovered from May’s surgery.

He has not been totally absent from the course, however, appearing at various points to support – and even caddie for – his son Charlie at various junior tournaments.

Woods was on bag duty for his son as he won his Junior National Golf Championship qualifier in Orlando in September, then took up a supporting role as the 14-year-old helped his Benjamin School boys team clinch the Florida High School state championship earlier this month.

In January, Woods is slated to play in The TGL, a televised indoor golf league staged in partnership with the PGA Tour and created by TMRW Sports, a company he co-founded alongside Rory McIlroy.

At a handful of stores, Target has restricted self-checkout to customers buying 10 items or fewer. Customers buying more than that are required to use full-service lanes with cashiers.

A Target spokesperson said the test was designed to shorten wait times and “better understand” shoppers’ preferences.

“Our guests tell us they enjoy interacting with our team,” Target Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan said on a call with analysts Tuesday about the changes. The company has “refocused” its checkout areas and since seen a 6% increase in customers using full-service cashier lanes across its stores.

Target and other retailers had expanded self-checkout machines in recent years. Self-checkout was designed to help companies save on labor costs and speed up checkout for shoppers.

But the promise of self-checkout hasn’t always played out.

Self-checkout machines sometimes break. Customers often face errors and glitches scanning items, requiring employees to come over and assist them. This erases potential labor savings and makes self-checkout slower, in some cases, than full-service checkout — the problem it was supposed to resolve.

“Our customers have told us this over time — that the self-scan machines that we’ve got in our stores … can be slow, they can be unreliable [and] they’re obviously impersonal,” an executive at Booths supermarket chain told the BBC. Booths recently removed self-checkout on all but two of its 28 stores. Walmart, Costco, Shoprite and other chains have also revised their self-checkout strategies.

Notably, retailers lose more possible sales with self-checkout than full-service cashiers, both from intentional shoplifting and honest errors by customers. One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average.

Target said that merchandise losses, known as shrink, were not a factor in testing new self-checkout policies.

Target has pointed to theft, both petty shoplifting and organized groups of criminals stealing merchandise and reselling it online, as responsible for the increase in losses. (More than 60% of shrink includes employee theft, damaged products, administrative errors, vendor fraud and other factors.)

“Shrink remains a significant financial headwind,” Target finance chief Michael Fiddelke said Tuesday.

“I can’t believe I’m writing these words but it is with a shattered heart that I say we lost a fan earlier tonight before my show,” Swift said. “I can’t even tell you how devastated I am by this. There’s very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young.”

The circumstances surrounding the death are unclear.

Friday marked Swift’s first show in Rio de Janeiro, which is experiencing high temperatures, according to Brazil’s National Institute of Meteorology.

“I’m not going to be able to speak about this from stage because I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it,” Swift said. “I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends. This is the last thing I ever thought would happen when we decided to bring this tour to Brazil.”

Swift is slated to perform on Saturday and Sunday in Rio de Janeiro before heading to Sao Paulo for an additional three performances, according to her website.

Salmonella causes diarrhea, fever and stomach cramps, and illness can start six hours to six days after swallowing the bacteria, according to the CDC.

The most recent illnesses in the outbreak began November 6. A total of 43 cases have been reported, the agency said Friday, but many more people have probably been sickened.

In Canada, authorities found salmonella bacteria on cantaloupes from Mexico that was genetically related to the strain that’s making people sick.

The tainted cantaloupes were sold at multiple retailers. As a result of the investigation, Malichita brand whole cantaloupes from Mexico – sold in stores between October 16 and October 23 – have been recalled, as have Vinyard brand pre-cut cantaloupe and fruit products sold in Oklahoma between October 30 and November 10.

Aldi stores have recalled whole and pre-cut cantaloupe and fruit products sold in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin between October 27 and October 31.

The CDC is advising people not to eat or serve the recalled fruit. It’s also important to wash and sanitize any surfaces that may have come into contact with it. Seek medical attention if you develop symptoms of severe illness such as bloody diarrhea, high fever or dehydration.

The major decision issued Friday by Colorado District Judge Sarah Wallace comes after judges in Minnesota and Michigan also refused to remove Trump from that state’s Republican primary ballots.

These three high-profile challenges against Trump, which had the backing of well-funded advocacy groups, have so far failed to remove him from a single ballot, with the 2024 primary season fast approaching.

Wallace said she was keeping the former president on the ballot because the 14th Amendment’s “insurrectionist ban” does not apply to presidents, though she found that “Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump’s speech.”

The 14th Amendment, ratified after the Civil War, says American officials who take an oath to support the Constitution are banned from future office if they “engaged in insurrection.” But the Constitution doesn’t say how to enforce the ban, and it has only been applied twice since 1919 – which is why many experts view these lawsuits as long shots.

The provision explicitly bans insurrectionists from serving as US senators, representatives, and even presidential electors – but it does not say presidents. It says it covers “any office, civil or military, under the United States,” and Wallace ruled that this does not include the office of the presidency.

“After considering the arguments on both sides, the Court is persuaded that ‘officers of the United States,’ did not include the President of the United States,” she wrote. “It appears to the Court that for whatever reason the drafters of Section Three did not intend to include a person who had only taken the Presidential Oath.”

Legal scholars believe these cases will, in some form, end up at the US Supreme Court. But before that, the GOP and independent voters who filed the Colorado lawsuit in coordination with a liberal watchdog group, could first file an appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court.

‘Trump engaged in an insurrection’

In her ruling, Wallace concluded that Trump engaged in the January 6 insurrection by inciting his supporters to attack the US Capitol – but that the 14th Amendment’s ban on insurrectionists holding office does not apply to the president.

“The Court finds that Petitioners have established that Trump engaged in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 through incitement, and that the First Amendment does not protect Trump’s speech,” Wallace wrote, referring to the rally at the Ellipse on the morning of January 6.

“Such incendiary rhetoric, issued by a speaker who routinely embraced political violence and had inflamed the anger of his supporters leading up to the certification, was likely to incite imminent lawlessness and disorder,” she wrote.

Trump’s campaign has said these lawsuits are meritless attempts to deploy an “absurd conspiracy theory” to block him from office, especially when he has a commanding lead in the GOP primary and is doing well in head-to-head polls against President Joe Biden.

“We applaud today’s ruling in Colorado, which is another nail in the coffin of the un-American ballot challenges,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “The American voter has a Constitutional right to vote for the candidate of their choosing, with President Donald J. Trump leading by massive numbers.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group involved in the Colorado case, fell short against Trump but succeeded last year in enforcing the “insurrectionist ban” to remove a convicted January 6 rioter from a New Mexico county commission.

Beyond the disqualification attempts, Trump faces state and federal criminal charges in connection with his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He has pleaded not guilty.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett Friday evening that allowing the judicial system to decide “big contentious issues” is “how this country should work.”

“Regardless if Trump is on the ballot or not, he is a danger to American democracy,” Griswold said, adding that the former president’s allegations that the case was “somehow election interference is just the continuation of his lies to the American people about our democracy.”

Griswold did not take a position in the case, but said that she expects the ruling will go through the appeals process, and that she will “follow whatever judicial decision is in place by the time that ballot certification happens” in the primary elections next year.

Historic disqualification trial

The case against Trump in Colorado revolved around his history of stoking political unrest, his public call for supporters to flock to Washington, DC, for a “wild” protest on January 6, and his instruction that they march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

In the eyes of the challengers, these actions clearly rose to the level of “engaging in insurrection” against the US Constitution – which is the bar for disqualification set by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

The weeklong bench trial featured firsthand accounts from US Capitol Police officers who were wounded fending off the pro-Trump mob on January 6, video clips of Trump’s incendiary speech before the riot and testimony from an expert on right-wing extremism who said far-right brawler groups like the Proud Boys interpreted Trump’s words as “a call to violence.”

An attorney for the challengers, Sean Grimsley, said at closing arguments Wednesday that “the Constitution does not allow” Trump to return to office, no matter his standing in the polls.

“Our founders have made clear, time and again, that a candidate’s popularity does not supersede the Constitution,” Grimsley said. “The rule of law must apply whether a candidate has no chance of winning election or is a potential frontrunner. The application of Section 3 is at its most urgent when a person who has desecrated their oath to support the Constitution seeks the highest office in the land.”

Trump’s lawyers called witnesses who said his team tried to avoid violence that day and that he had authorized National Guard troops to keep DC safe on January 6.

Even before the trial, they unsuccessfully argued that the case should be thrown out because the allegations against Trump were largely based on his speech before the riot, which they claimed was protected by the First Amendment and did not meet the legal standard for inciting violence.

“They’re making up the standard so that it fits the facts of January 6,” Trump lawyer Scott Gessler said in his opening statement at the trial, adding that Trump “didn’t carry a pitchfork to the Capitol grounds, he didn’t lead a charge, he didn’t get in a fistfight with legislators,” but rather “gave a speech in which he asked people to ‘peacefully and patriotically’ go to the Capitol to protest.”

The trial was also a history lesson in the Civil War, the tumultuous Reconstruction era, the congressional debate over drafting and ratifying the 14th Amendment, and the application of its insurrectionist ban.

Indiana University law professor Gerard Magliocca, perhaps the nation’s top scholar on the provision, testified in favor of removing Trump from the ballot. He explained how thousands of former Confederates were disqualified from office, including some who never took up arms, even one congressman-elect who had only written a letter-to-the-editor advocating violence against Union troops.

The provision says, in part: “No person shall… hold any office … under the United States … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

Apple announced on Thursday plans to adopt a messaging standard that will finally bring iMessage features to Android users, eroding what some considered an element of Apple’s walled garden.

The change – first reported by tech site 9to5Mac – will add features, such as read receipt, typing indicators, better support for group chats and higher quality media sharing of images and videos, across platforms.

Apple told CNN in a statement it will add support for the standard, called RCS (Rich Communication Services), later next year. RCS is considered the replacement to alternatives such as SMS, or short messaging service, and can work over both Wi-Fi and mobile data.

“We believe RCS Universal Profile will offer a better interoperability experience when compared to SMS or MMS,” the company said in the statement. “This will work alongside iMessage, which will continue to be the best and most secure messaging experience for Apple users.”

A push from Europe

The change follows pressure from both regulators and competitors to more seamlessly work across operating systems. The European Union’s Digital Markets Act, for example, requires companies to make their key services interoperable between platforms. Earlier this year, it launched an investigation into whether it considers iMessage a core product.

Meanwhile, Google, which already has support for RCS within its messaging app, has been vocal about wanting Apple to adopt the standard. In early November, the company wrote a letter to the European Commission arguing iMessage was indeed a core Apple product and should be required to comply.

“Everyone deserves to communicate with each other in ways that are modern and secure, no matter what phone they have,” Google said in a statement. “That’s why we have worked closely with the mobile industry to accelerate the adoption of RCS, and we’re happy to see Apple take their first step today by coming on board to embrace RCS. We welcome Apple’s participation in our ongoing work with GSMA to evolve RCS and make messaging more equitable and secure, and look forward to working with them to implement this on iOS in a way that works well for everyone.”

Apple resistance

Over the years, Apple has pushed back on this type of connectivity. When asked how Steve Jobs would feel about the state of communication across platforms, CEO Tim Cook said last year during a conference: “I don’t hear our users asking that we put a lot of energy in on that at this point.” When an audience member said he wasn’t able to share certain videos with his mother, who was not an iPhone user, Cook responded: “Buy your mom an iPhone.”

The change also comes nearly two months after Apple announced its next-generation iPhone 15 would tout a USB-C universal charging system for the first time. The switch came less than a year after the European Union voted to approve legislation to require smartphones, tablets, digital cameras, portable speakers and other small devices to support USB-C charging by 2024.

“Both the adoption of the USB-C for the new iPhones as well as the support for RCS messaging is Apple’s way of getting ahead of European Union regulations which would likely have forced its hand in any case,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, a VP principal analyst at Forrester Research. “Better the company own it and market it to their advantage.”

According to Michael Inouye, a principal analyst at ABI Research, Apple is also expected to work with the GSM Association, a nonprofit that works with mobile operators, to make RCS more secure through encryption and bring it closer to if not on par with iMessage –- “something that could benefit all users.”

“Some have also questioned if this will open the door for more Apple users to try new Android devices now that communications will be better supported across iOS and Android, such as foldable phones,” Inouye said. “But I don’t foresee this playing a significant role in changing demand for iPhones.”

Bubble longevity?

The move, however, doesn’t necessarily mean the green bubbles (Android or other users) and blue bubbles (Apple users) that are displayed when messaging someone on the other platform will go away anytime soon.

Chatterjee said that keeping the colors is an Apple marketing strategy that will likely continue, despite the shift to the RCS standard.

“The blue bubble is a badge of the Apple tribe, and this distinctive identity, as well as the company’s iMessage platform, is not going anywhere anytime soon,” Chatterjee said. “Instead, RCS support will enable a smoother and better customer experience of iPhone users communicating across platforms. The company hopes that’s a win-win for all –- their customers get to inhabit Apple’s world, but also play nicely with others.”

There have been 34 reports of illnesses linked to apple cinnamon fruit puree pouches sold under the WanaBanana, Weis and Schnucks brands, the FDA said Friday — a dozen more cases since an update on Monday. Cases have been identified in at least 22 states, and the agency says it’s continuing to evaluate incoming reports of illnesses.

The FDA, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state and local partners have been investigating reports of high blood lead levels in children who consumed the pouches, which were manufactured in Ecuador. In one product sample of a WanaBana Apple Cinnamon Puree from Dollar Tree, the level detected was 2.18 parts per million, the agency said — more than 200 times greater than the action level FDA had proposed in previous draft guidance for products intended for babies and young children.

“FDA’s leading hypothesis is that cinnamon used in these recalled pouches is the likely source of contamination for these products,” the agency said in its update on Friday, although it hasn’t yet been able to test samples of the cinnamon used in the products.

“At this time, FDA has no indication that this issue extends beyond these recalled products, but to further protect public health, FDA is screening incoming shipments of cinnamon from multiple countries for lead contamination.”

This week, the CDC warned doctors to be on the lookout for children who may have been exposed to lead in the fruit pouches. The pouches were sold at retailers including Amazon, Dollar Tree and Sam’s Club, as well as Schnucks and Weis stores.

Families should not eat or serve the products. They should be thrown away or taken back to the store for a refund, the FDA has said. Caregivers should take any children who may have eaten these products to have blood tests to check for exposure to lead.

Lead is toxic to humans, and there is no safe level. Exposure is not typically apparent right away, but it can cause developmental delays in children. Initial symptoms of lead poisoning may include head, stomach and muscle aches, vomiting, anemia, irritability, fatigue and weight loss.

On Monday, the FDA released a warning letter addressed to Amazon CEO Andrew Jassy noting that the e-commerce website was selling seven brands of eye drops marketed as treatments for conditions like pink eye, dry eyes, dust irritation and cataracts.

As a result, the agency says, the products can be classified as “new drugs” that Amazon is distributing without FDA approval.

The brands included in the letter are Similasan Pink Eye Relief, the Goodbye Company Pink Eye, Can-C Eye Drops, Optique 1 Eye Drops, OcluMed Eye Drops, TRP Natural Eyes Floaters Relief and Manzanilla Sophia Chamomile Herbal Eye Drops.

Amazon says it has begun removing the products from its online marketplace.

“Safety is a top priority at Amazon,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We require all products offered in our store to comply with applicable laws and regulations. The products in question have been investigated and are in the process of being removed.”

Amazon’s sale and distribution of the eye drops – which the FDA says are not “generally accepted as safe and effective” – without prior agency approval constitutes a violation of the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and United States Code, according to the letter.

“These products are especially concerning from a public health perspective,” the FDA’s letter says. “Ophthalmic drug products, which are intended for administration into the eyes, in general pose a greater risk of harm to users because the route of administration for these products bypasses some of the body’s natural defenses.”

Manufacturer recalls other eyedrops

Monday’s warning letter follows others from the FDA raising the alarm about eye drops.

In October, the agency warned that dozens of over-the-counter eye drop products, including those sold under store brands including CVS, Target, Walmart and Rite Aid, could lead to eye infections resulting in vision loss or blindness.

Although eye drops are supposed to be sterile, the agency reported that the facility where the drops were manufactured had “insanitary conditions” and “positive bacterial test results from environmental sampling of critical drug production areas” in the facility.

CVS, Rite Aid and Target removed the products from store shelves and websites. Cardinal Health, which had six of its Leader brand eye drops on the FDA’s list, issued a recall for the products in early November.

On Wednesday, Mumbai-based Kilitch Healthcare India Ltd., which manufactured the affected eye drops from the October recall, also issued a recall for all the eye drops on the FDA’s warning list. Kilitch Healthcare India Limited said it had not received any reports of adverse events related to the recall as of November 15.

Earlier this year, the FDA warned against using several other eye drop products due to contamination from bacteria or fungus.

In February, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urged health care providers and patients to avoid using EzriCare eye drops after an investigation into bacterial contamination linked with over 80 infections across 18 states.

The infections involved a rare strain of the drug-resistant bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa that had never before been identified in the US. Four deaths were reported, along with 14 instances of vision loss and four cases in which eyeballs had to be surgically removed.

Lawmakers are expected to address the resolution at the end of the month once they return from the Thanksgiving holiday.

In its report, the Ethics Committee said it uncovered additional “uncharged and unlawful conduct” by Santos that go beyond the criminal allegations already pending against him, and would immediately refer the allegations to the Justice Department for further investigation. The committee concluded that Santos “sought to fraudulently exploit every aspect of his House candidacy for his own personal financial profit.”

Santos, who has only been in Congress since January, announced that he will not seek reelection following the release of the committee’s report, though he remained defiant and denounced the investigation, calling it a “biased report.”

Santos has also pleaded not guilty to 23 federal charges, including allegations of fraud related to Covid-19 unemployment benefits, misusing campaign funds and lying about his personal finances on House disclosure reports.

Santos, who has faced calls to resign from Democrats and Republicans throughout this year, has survived several previous attempts to oust him from the House.

In early November, a Republican-led effort to expel Santos failed. A number of lawmakers had expressed concern over the prospect of expelling a member facing an as-yet unfinished legal battle and absent a criminal conviction. Ahead of the vote, Santos defended his right to “the presumption of innocence.”

In May, the House voted to refer a Democrat-led resolution to expel Santos to the Ethics Committee.

The decision means Musk may be forced to cooperate with federal investigators who are probing X, the company formerly known as Twitter, over business decisions that regulators fear may have jeopardized user security or privacy.

The 11-page order by US Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixon denies X’s attempt to invalidate a longtime privacy settlement with the FTC that forms the basis for the investigation. Hixon said the US District Court for the Northern District of California lacks the authority to grant X’s request to overturn the independent agency’s administrative order.

For the same reason, Hixon said he could not block the FTC from trying to depose Musk as part of the probe. The ruling could indirectly boost a similar and recent move by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to compel Musk’s testimony in a separate investigation related to Musk’s purchase of Twitter.

The privacy settlement at stake is central to the US government’s scrutiny of X. Questions about whether the company has complied with the 2011 order arose in a significant way in 2022. That’s when Twitter paid $150 million in an update to the settlement, resolving fresh allegations that it harmed users when it used personal information provided for account authentication purposes for advertising purposes instead.

Later that year, a whistleblower disclosure by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, Twitter’s former security chief, again raised new doubts about Twitter’s compliance, triggering the current FTC probe. And the investigation has only intensified since Musk’s takeover of the company, prompting X to protest what it has called government overreach and harassment of Musk. The FTC has said that it is attempting to carry out its mission to ensure X is complying with its legal obligations.

X didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday’s order.

The megarocket — the most powerful launch vehicle ever built — was expected to lift off on Friday, but SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said in a social media post Thursday that the company would hold off until Saturday to allow for time to replace a small rocket part.

It was not immediately clear what time SpaceX is planning to launch Saturday. The company had been targeting a two-hour window that opened at 7 a.m. CT (8 a.m. ET) if Starship had lifted off on Friday. But public notices sent to airplanes and ships indicate SpaceX can launch anytime between 5:25 a.m. CT and 11:10 a.m. CT on Saturday.

Musk shared that the reason for the delay was the need to replace an actuator — or a mechanical component that allows movement — on one of the rocket’s grid fins. Grid fins are metal, mesh squares that line the top of Starship’s Super Heavy rocket booster, and they’re used to orient the booster as it heads in for a landing after flight.

Riding on Starship’s eventual success is the company’s hopes for human exploration of the moon and Mars.

The Starship spacecraft stacked atop the Super Heavy booster is intended to play a key role in the NASA Artemis III moon mission, currently slated for 2025. How the launch attempt fares could have a deep impact on the US space agency’s lunar exploration goals.

SpaceX will carry a live stream of the launch from the company’s Starbase facility in Boca Chica, Texas. CNN will also provide live updates.

The inaugural integrated test flight of Starship and Super Heavy in April ended just minutes after takeoff when the vehicle began tumbling tail-over-head, forcing SpaceX to initiate self-destruct mode and explode both rocket stages over the Gulf. Debris rained down over parts of the South Texas landscape, sparking outcry among environmental and wildlife groups.

Local officials are expected to keep people far away from the launch site, recommending a viewing location about 5 miles (8 kilometers) across the water on Texas’ South Padre Island.

What to expect

Standing at 397 feet (121 meters) tall, the gargantuan rocket consists of two parts: the upper spacecraft, referred to as Starship, and the lower first-stage booster, called Super Heavy, that gives the initial burst of power at liftoff.

If all goes according to plan, the Super Heavy will ignite up to 33 of its massive engines and vault the Starship capsule out over the Gulf of Mexico. After its fuel is spent, the Super Heavy will detach from the Starship spacecraft and fall back toward the ocean.

Starship will then ignite its own engines and attempt to propel itself to speeds quick enough to enter Earth’s orbit, a feat that typically requires spacecraft to travel about 5 miles (8 kilometers) per second.

“Technically it’s a scooch below orbit because it’s going to do almost a complete circuit of the Earth but then splash down somewhere in the Pacific just off the coast of Hawaii,” said Musk, referring to the upcoming flight test, on October 5 during the International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijian.

All told, the mission will likely last about an hour and a half.

Musk’s Starship hopes and what’s at stake

If successful, the test flight will be considered a monumental step, queuing up SpaceX to begin testing far more complex Starship missions, including delivering satellites to orbit and attempting to refuel the spacecraft while it’s in orbit. Being able to top off the ship’s fuel in space could allow it to complete missions deeper into the cosmos.

If the test mission fails, the consequences will have a ripple effect, potentially pushing back deadlines for SpaceX’s — and NASA’s — stated goals for the rocket system.

SpaceX has framed Starship as the rocket that will fulfill the company’s founding purpose: Put humans on Mars for the first time and pave the way for a permanent Martian settlement.

Musk has said he thinks the first test flight to Mars could take place within the next “three or four years,” though he’s known for offering overly optimistic time frames.

Perhaps closer on the horizon is the mission that NASA is hoping Starship will help fulfill. The space agency intends to land humans on the moon — returning US astronauts there for the first time in five decades — as part of its Artemis program. And Starship is slated to complete the final leg of the journey, taking the astronauts from their spacecraft in lunar orbit and ferrying them down to the moon’s surface.

SpaceX received a $2.89 billion contract from NASA in 2021 to get the job done, with another deal worth up to $1.15 billion awarded a year later. The company will receive payments as it completes certain milestones in Starship’s development.

NASA hopes the first moon landing using Starship will take place as soon as late 2025.

“With the difficulties that SpaceX has had, I think that’s really concerning,” said Jim Free, associate administrator of NASA’s Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, in June. “You can think about that launch date slipping probably into ’26.”

The US space agency is aiming to put boots on the moon sooner rather than later, as it’s racing against China to create the first permanent lunar base.

What success looks like for SpaceX

High hopes aside, SpaceX has been known to embrace fiery mishaps and explosions in the early stages of developing a new rocket.

SpaceX has said its approach to rocket development is geared toward speed. The company makes use of an engineering method called “rapid spiral development.” That essentially boils down to a desire to quickly build prototypes and willingly blow them up in the name of learning how to construct a better one — faster than if the company solely relied on ground tests and simulations.

After the first test flight’s explosion, the company immediately sought to frame the mishap as a success, saying in a statement at the time, “With a test like this, success comes from what we learn, and we learned a tremendous amount.”

Previous explosions have grounded a rocket for a year or more. But SpaceX quickly developed a new prototype, implemented “thousands” of upgrades, and was ready to fly another test vehicle in early September, according to updates shared by Musk on social media.

Musk has said that the company has made enhancements to both the Starship spacecraft and the Super Heavy booster design to incorporate lessons learned from the first launch.

The launchpad, for example, was blown to bits after the inaugural launch because of the sheer force of the Super Heavy booster’s engines. SpaceX has since equipped the pad with a water deluge system that will spew water up as the engines ignite, dampening their blast and hopefully sparing the pad. Musk has likened the contraption to a colossal showerhead.

SpaceX is also changing the method Starship will use to break away from the Super Heavy booster midflight, opting to use the Starship’s own engines to push away, rather than a separate mechanical system.

It’s not clear whether all those changes will lead to success.

“I do want to set expectations, well, not too high,” Musk said at the October conference when asked about his goals for this test mission.

Musk also posted in August on social media that he foresees about a “50% probability of reaching orbital velocity,” though he cautiously added that “even getting to stage separation would be a win,” referring to the launch phase when the Super Heavy rocket detaches from the Starship spacecraft.

Those are still better odds than Musk gave the April test flight, which he had said would have been a success if the rocket made it off the launchpad.

Regulators and environmentalists

Starship couldn’t fly when SpaceX first claimed it was ready in September due to regulatory hurdles. The company was still waiting on the Federal Aviation Administration, which licenses commercial rocket launches, to close an investigation into the explosive April test flight and issue a new launch license.

William Gerstenmaier — SpaceX’s vice president for build and reliability who previously served as NASA’s associate administrator for human exploration — blasted the regulatory process during an October US Senate hearing, accusing them of hamstringing Starship’s development.

“It’s a shame when our hardware is ready to fly, and we’re not able to go fly because of regulations or review,” Gerstenmaier said. “These delays may seem small in the big scheme of things but … delays in each and every test flight adds up. And eventually we will lose our lead and we will see China land on the moon before we do.”

On the other end of the spectrum, however, are environmentalists, who say the FAA isn’t doing nearly enough to ensure the company is not damaging the public lands and wildlife refuges that surround SpaceX’s South Texas launch site.

One group of activists sued the FAA in May, alleging regulators had failed to comply with federal environmental law when they greenlit Starship’s April test flight. That case is ongoing, and the FAA could face another complaint over the second launch license, which was issued Wednesday by the federal agency, a senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, Jared Margolis, told CNN November 8.

The environmental groups have protested SpaceX testing operations, saying its explosive mishaps have spewed shrapnel onto public beaches and into the nearby wildlife reserves, in addition to burning acres of land with unintended brush fires.

SpaceX, which is involved in the case as an intervener, denied many of the allegations in the lawsuit but admitted its testing operations have flung debris into nearby areas. But both SpaceX and the FAA maintain that they have complied with federal environmental laws.

In a written reevaluation of its environmental assessment signed by the FAA on Wednesday, the agency noted that SpaceX made changes at the launchpad that could reduce the amount of debris generated by the next test flight.

The agency also concluded, “New information from the first launch and ongoing monitoring does not present any significant new circumstances or information relevant to environmental concerns.”

SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment for this story, nor does the company typically respond to inquiries from reporters.

“I…learned that the San Diego Zoo and the Californians very much look forward to welcoming pandas back,” Xi told American business leaders during a speech in San Francisco on Wednesday.

“We are ready to continue our cooperation with the United States on panda conservation, and do our best to meet the wishes of the Californians so as to deepen the friendly ties between our two peoples.”

Xi delivered the remarks hours after he held extensive talks with US President Joe Biden, where the two leaders made positive steps in stabilizing rocky relations between the world’s top two economies.

China loans pandas to more than 20 countries around the world as envoys of friendship from Beijing – a program that’s often referred to as “panda diplomacy.”

Over the past decade, Xi has approved new panda loans across Europe, including to Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark and Finland. Last year, China sent a pair of pandas to Qatar, in the first loan to a Middle Eastern country.

In contrast, China has not granted any new panda loans to the US for two decades.

Pandas have served as something of an unofficial barometer of China-US relations since 1972, when Beijing gifted a pair of the bears to the Smithsonian National Zoo in Washington, D.C. following US President Richard Nixon’s historic ice-breaking trip to China.

Earlier this month, three last remaining pandas at the Smithsonian National Zoo – Tian Tian, Mei Xiang and their youngest cub, Xiao Qi Ji – were returned to China, marking the end of more than 50 years of Chinese pandas being housed at the zoo.

Their departure leaves Zoo Atlanta as the only other US zoo to feature pandas from China. The contracts for Atlanta’s four bears is set to expire next year, with no word on an extension.

“Recently, the three pandas at Smithsonian’s National Zoo in Washington D.C. have returned to China. I was told that many American people, especially children, were really reluctant to say goodbye to the pandas, and went to the zoo to see them off,” Xi said at the dinner event Wednesday.

The Chinese leader did not offer additional details on where any future Chinese pandas might be sent, but suggested California would be the most likely destination.

The San Diego Zoo returned its last two pandas to China in 2019, after the loan agreement concluded.

Xi arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday for a four-day visit that includes his attendance at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation international forum. It’s also the Chinese leader’s first trip to the US in more than six years.

The four-hour long meeting between Xi and Biden on Wednesday was the first time the two leaders have spoken since November 2022, when they met on the sidelines of another international gathering in Bali, Indonesia.

Loay Alnaji was arrested Thursday on suspicion of involuntary manslaughter and his bail will be set at $1 million, the news release said. Alnaji was arrested within the hour and does not yet appear in the Ventura County inmate roster. CNN is trying to determine if he has legal representation.

Paul Kessler, 69, died after suffering a head injury following an interaction with a pro-Palestine protestor during dueling rallies on November 5.

Witnesses said Kessler was “involved in a physical altercation” with at least one counter protester while pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian rallies were being held in Thousand Oaks, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in an earlier news release.

It is unclear what interaction Kessler and Alnaji had before the incident.

“Though an arrest has been made, we continue to encourage community members who may have information about this criminal investigation and have yet to come forward,” the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

Anyone who was driving a vehicle with video recording equipment in the area where the pro-Israel and pro-Palestine protests were being held is being asked to reach out to detectives or submit evidence.

Kessler, according to the sheriff’s office, was supporting Israel at the demonstrations – two among the many that have sprung up in cities across the United States, either in support of Israel or to protest its retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks, which killed more than 1,200 people.

More than 11,200 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its military offensive a month ago, the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said Tuesday, drawing from sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. Israeli airstrikes have hit schools, refugee camps and ambulances.

Details surrounding altercation remain unclear

The simultaneous protests where the incident took place were held by two groups identified as “Freedom for Palestine” and “We are Pro-Israel,” according to the sheriff’s office. Authorities estimated between 75 and 100 people were present between both groups.

What happened prior to Kessler’s head injury is unclear due to conflicting accounts from pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian witnesses, Ventura County Sheriff James Fryhoff said in an earlier news release.

One video filmed at the scene and shared online shows Kessler lying on his back on the sidewalk, with blood on his face and on the ground. He places his hands on his head as a woman with a Palestinian flag on her back and a man lean over him, trying to help, the video shows. The footage does not show the altercation that led to Kessler’s injuries.

A suspect was interviewed at the scene, Fryhoff said in the release. He was cooperative and told authorities he was involved in the altercation with Kessler, Fyhoff said. The suspect also said he was among the people who called 911 so Kessler could receive medical attention.

Kessler was still conscious and responsive when Ventura County Sheriff deputies arrived on the scene, according to Fryhoff. Kessler was given medical aid by the Ventura County Fire Department and taken to the hospital, where he was listed in critical condition, the sheriff said.

It was just before 3 a.m. on November 6 that the hospital informed the sheriff’s office Kessler had died, Fryhoff said.

Later that day, detectives conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by the suspect and he was detained during the execution of a search warrant at his home. It is unclear if the suspect interviewed at the scene and arrested Monday afternoon was Alnaji.

An autopsy revealed Kessler suffered non-lethal injuries on the left side of his face and injuries to the back of his head, which were “consistent with and typical of injuries sustained from a fall,” Dr. Christopher Young, the chief medical examiner for Ventura County, told reporters. He also suffered internal injuries consistent with a fall, like skull fractures and swelling and bruising of the brain, Young said.

The cause of death was determined to be blunt force head trauma and the manner of death a homicide, Young said. The latter, he noted, is a medical determination meaning the death occurred at the hands of another person, and it does not mean a crime has been committed.