Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

Col. Phillip “PJ” Burnett said that the body found Wednesday is believed to be Joseph Couch, of Woodbine, Kentucky.

Burnett said accessories found with the body have led them to conclude it is him.

Authorities say the body was found following a lengthy search of the rugged and hilly terrain in the area of southeastern Kentucky where the Sept. 7 attack happened.

*UPDATE*
“Kentucky State Police troopers have located a body in the vicinity of exit 49 in Laurel County and detectives are working to confirm the identity.” -Trooper Scottie Pennington

— KY State Police (@kystatepolice) September 18, 2024

Investigators were working to identify the body, state police Master Trooper Scottie Pennington said earlier in a social media post. It was located in the vicinity of the Interstate 75 exit near London, a city of about 8,000 people about 75 miles (120 kilometers) south of Lexington.

The highway shootings put the rural area on edge, leading some schools to shut down and shift to virtual learning for several days as authorities warned area residents to be vigilant. Schools reopened Tuesday with extra police security in the county where the shooting happened.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has called the shootings an “act of violence and evil.”

A dozen vehicles were struck as the shooter fired 20 to 30 rounds near an interstate exit, creating a chaotic scene. Authorities rushed to the scene after being alerted at about 5:30 p.m. The five victims survived the attack but some suffered serious injuries.

After sending the text message vowing to “kill a lot of people” before the attack, Couch sent another saying, “I’ll kill myself afterwards,” investigators say in the affidavit. The document did not describe the relationship between Couch and the woman who received the texts. However, Couch and the woman have a child together but were never married, according to an attorney who handled the custody arrangement for the couple and their son born in 2016.

Searchers found Couch’s abandoned vehicle near the crime scene and a semi-automatic weapon that investigators believe was used in the shooting. An Army-style duffel bag that was found had “Couch” hand-written in marker, and a phone believed to be Couch’s also was found but the battery had been taken out.

Authorities said he purchased the AR-15 weapon and about 1,000 rounds of ammunition at a London gun store hours before the shooting.

Couch had a military background in the Army Reserve. The U.S. Army said he served from 2013 to 2019 as a combat engineer. He was a private when he left and had no deployments.

The search focused on a densely wooded area about 8 miles (13 kilometers) north of London that a state police official described as “walking in a jungle.” Aided by helicopters and drones, search teams on the ground contended with cliffs, sinkholes, caves, waterways and thick brush.

Authorities said they were inundated with tips from the public and followed up on each one. When the ground search was suspended at night, specially trained officers were deployed in strategic locations in the woods to prevent the gunman from slipping out of the area.

On Tuesday, authorities said they were pulling searchers from the woods to bolster patrols in nearby communities in hopes of calming fears among residents.

Police received more than 400 tips since the shooting, with most pointing to areas outside the sprawling forest that was the focus of the search.

Prosecutors say that over the course of 14 years, Brian Jeffrey Raymond, 48, sexually assaulted victims in multiple countries during various overseas postings. He also recorded and photographed the nude or partially nude victims when they were unconscious or otherwise “incapable of consent,” and could be seen in the recordings “touching and manipulating the victims’ bodies,” they said.

Brian Jeffrey Raymond kept nearly 500 videos, including many in which he can be seen opening the victims’ eyelids, groping or straddling them, prosecutors say. The images date to 2006 and track much of Raymond’s career, with victims in Mexico, Peru and other countries.

Raymond formerly worked for the CIA and at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. When he was arrested three years ago, during his last assignment when he was stationed in Mexico City, he would meet women on dating apps and invite them back to his embassy-leased apartment for drinks. During that posting, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, a nude woman was spotted on the balcony of his apartment on May 31, 2020, “screaming for help.” She told investigators she met Raymond over a dating app, but blacked out after having food and drinks that he provided, according to court documents.

The investigation revealed photos and video on Raymond’s cell phones and other electronic devices, according to the Department of Justice. A search of his internet history found an incriminating online search history for phrases such as “Ambien and alcohol and pass out” and “vodka & valium.” In one email to an online pharmacy, Raymond wrote, “Hello, do you have chloral hydrate for insomnia?,” according to the DOJ.

Prosecutors described the 47-year-old Raymond as an experienced sexual predator who kept a detailed accounting of potential victims organized by name, ethnicity and notes on their physical characteristics.

Prosecutors say Raymond tried to delete the photographs and videos he took of the women after learning he was under investigation.

He was arrested in La Mesa in fall 2020 and pleaded guilty to four federal counts last year, including abusive sexual contact and transportation of obscene material.

His plea agreement includes admissions to drugging and “creating obscene material depicting 28 women without their knowledge or permission,” nonconsensual sexual acts with four women, and nonconsensual sexual contact with six women, the DOJ said.

Along with prison, Raymond is required to register as a sex offender and must pay $260,000 in restitution to the victims.

“When this predator was a government employee, he lured unsuspecting women to his government-leased housing and drugged them,” District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves said. “After drugging these women, he stripped, sexually abused, and photographed them. Today’s sentence ensures that the defendant will be properly marked as a sex offender for life, and he will spend a substantial portion of the rest of his life behind bars.”

A Lancaster County judge sentenced Zachary Scheich last week after he pleaded no contest in July to first-degree sexual assault, attempted first-degree sexual assault, generation of child pornography — age 19 or over — and child enticement with electronic communication, according to a sentencing order and plea agreement.

Scheich’s sentence runs a maximum of 120 years in prison, according to the order. He won’t be eligible for parole for 40 years, according to NBC affiliate KOLN of Lincoln.

During his sentencing hearing, Lancaster County Deputy County Attorney Amber Scholte said Scheich “targeted, groomed and lured” students via social media while pretending to be their peer or boyfriend, the station reported.

The public defender’s office that represented Scheich did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday night.

Scheich identified himself as “Zak Hess,” 17, and attended two high schools in Lincoln — Northwest High School and Southeast High School — for 54 days in the 2022-23 school year, officials previously said.

He was admitted to the schools using fake documents, including a birth certificate, immunization records, a transcript and medical records, the officials said.

A spokesperson for the district where Scheich attended high school also did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Authorities began investigating Scheich in June 2023 after a concerned parent contacted the school district. Police announced his arrest in July.

Charging documents show the crimes he pleaded guilty to mostly occurred in 2022 and 2023. Several victims were under the age of 16, the documents show. Another was 13 or older.

One of the sexual assault charges was from 2019 and involved two people whose ages are not included in the documents.

In September, authorities accused a 23-year-old woman of criminal impersonation after she allegedly posed as Scheich’s mother and helped him get enrolled in the schools, according to KOLN. She pleaded not guilty and the case is ongoing.

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

• Body found amid Kentucky manhunt near site of highway mass shooting
• Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs arrest: Timeline, indictment and what to know
• House Republicans reject their own funding bill with a shutdown around the corner

The facility, the only federal jail in New York City, has been plagued by problems since it opened in the 1990s. In recent years, its conditions have been so stark that some judges have refused to send people there. It has also been home to a number of high-profile inmates, including R. Kelly, Ghislaine Maxwell and Michael Cohen.

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In a statement, the federal Bureau of Prisons said: “We also take seriously addressing the staffing and other challenges at MDC Brooklyn.” An agency team is working to fix problems, including by adding permanent correctional and medical staff, remedying more than 700 backlogged maintenance requests and answering judges’ concerns.

A judge on Wednesday denied a request by Combs’ lawyers to let him await trial under house arrest at his $48 million mansion on an island in Miami Beach, Florida.

Here are some important things to know about the jail:

What is the Metropolitan Detention Center?

The Bureau of Prisons opened the facility, known as MDC Brooklyn, as a jail in the early 1990s.

It’s used mainly for post-arrest detention for people awaiting trial in federal courts in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Other inmates are there to serve short sentences following convictions.

The facility, in an industrial area on the Brooklyn waterfront, has about 1,200 detainees, down from more than 1,600 in January. It has outdoor recreation facilities, a medical unit with examination rooms and a dental suite. It has a separate wing for educational programs and the jail’s library.

The Bureau of Prisons closed its crumbling Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan in 2021, leaving MDC Brooklyn as its only facility in the nation’s largest city.

What are some problems with MDC Brooklyn?

Detainees have long complained about rampant violence, dreadful conditions, severe staffing shortages and the widespread smuggling of drugs and other contraband, some of it facilitated by employees. At the same time, they say they’ve been subject to frequent lockdowns and have been barred from leaving their cells for visits, calls, showers or exercise.

In June, Uriel Whyte, 37, was stabbed to death at the jail. A month later, Edwin Cordero, 36, died after he was hurt in a brawl. At least four people detained at the jail have died by suicide in the last three years.

Cordero’s lawyer, Andrew Dalack, told The New York Times his client was just the victim of “an overcrowded, understaffed and neglected federal jail that is hell on earth.”

At least six MDC Brooklyn staff members have been charged with crimes in the last five years. Some were accused of accepting bribes or providing contraband such as drugs, cigarettes, and cellphones, according to an Associated Press analysis of agency-related arrests.

MDC Brooklyn has also come under fire for its response to debilitating infrastructure breakdowns and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, a week-long power failure sparked unrest among shivering inmates and drew concerns from federal watchdogs. In March 2020, the jail had the first federal inmate to test positive for COVID-19.

As of last November, according to court filings, MDC Brooklyn was operating at about 55% of full staffing, which was taxing to employees and added to its security woes.

What is being done about these problems?

Judges and advocates have taken notice, excoriating the Bureau of Prisons for “dangerous, barbaric conditions” and pressing the agency to make improvements. Some judges have moved away from sending defendants to MDC Brooklyn or have given reduced sentences because of the conditions there.

In January, U.S. District Judge Furman took the rare step of allowing Gustavo Chavez, 70, to remain free on bail after his conviction for drug crimes rather than locking him up at the Brooklyn jail to await sentencing.

“Prosecutors no longer even put up a fight, let alone dispute that the state of affairs is unacceptable,” Furman wrote.

In August, U.S. District Judge Gary Brown said he would vacate a 75-year-old defendant’s nine-month sentence for tax fraud and place him on home confinement if the Bureau of Prisons sent him to MDC Brooklyn.

In response, the Bureau of Prisons said it had “temporarily paused” sending any defendants convicted of crimes to the jail to serve their sentences. In a statement Tuesday, the agency said 43 people were currently serving sentences in a minimum-security unit at the jail.

What other notable people have been detained at MDC Brooklyn?

Combs is just the latest celebrity inmate to be locked up at MDC Brooklyn, joining a list that includes Maxwell, Kelly, Cohen, cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and the rapper Fetty Wap.

Other high-profile detainees have included Pharma Bro Martin Shkreli, NXIVM sex cult founder Keith Raniere, former Mexican government official Genaro Garcia Luna and ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez Alvarado.

What happened to New York City’s other federal jail?

The Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan closed in 2021 after a slew of problems that came to light after Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide there two years earlier.

The jail — next to the courthouse where Combs was arraigned — was plagued by lax security, severe staffing shortages and squalid, unsafe conditions including falling concrete, freezing temperatures and busted cells.

People detained at the facility were relocated to MDC Brooklyn or a medium-security prison in Otisville, New York.

What have Combs’ lawyers and prosecutors said?

Combs’ lawyers argued in paperwork seeking his release that the Metropolitan Detention Center is not fit for pretrial detention. They cited recent detainee deaths, and the concerns shared by judges that the jail is no place for anyone to be held.

Asked about keeping a high-profile inmate like Combs locked up, particularly in light of Epstein’s 2019 death, Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “We are concerned with anyone’s safety whenever they are detained prior to trial.”

“I do not draw any sort of connection between Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide and what may or may not happen to any other defendant while they are detained pretrial,” he added.

Combs’ lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said Wednesday that the rapper is being held in MDC Brooklyn’s special housing unit, which offers an extra layer of security but can make trial preparation more onerous. He asked that Combs be moved to a New Jersey jail, but a judge said it’s up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide.

Is it just MDC Brooklyn, or do all federal prisons have issues?

An ongoing Associated Press investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, an agency with more than 30,000 employees, 158,000 inmates, 122 facilities and an annual budget of about $8 billion.

AP reporting has revealed dozens of escapes, chronic violence, deaths and severe staffing shortages that have hampered responses to emergencies, including inmate assaults and suicides.

In April, the Bureau of Prisons said it was closing its women’s prison in Dublin, California, known as the “rape club,” giving up on attempts to reform the facility after an AP investigation exposed staff-on-inmate sexual abuse.

In July, President Joe Biden signed a law strengthening oversight of the Bureau of Prisons after the AP’s reporting shined a spotlight on the agency’s many flaws. __

Follow Sisak at x.com/mikesisak and Balsamo at x.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/.

Ryan Beierman, 43, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that he was pinned beneath the 200-pound bruin on Sept. 6 when his son, Owen, fired a shot from the boy’s hunting rifle.

“Owen was a hero. He shot that bear and killed it on top of me,” said Beierman, who suffered bites to his forehead, arm and leg. He also needed stitches to reattach a flap of skin on his cheek that was ripped during the attack.

Earlier, he and Owen spotted the bear from a tree stand near Siren, Wisconsin, about 90 miles (144 kilometers) northeast of Minneapolis. Owen fired a shot, wounding the bear which then ran away. The pair waited about 20 minutes before starting to look for the bear and used a neighbor’s tracking dog to try and find it.

“We were sort of hung up in a thicket when we heard the dog yelp and sprint past us in retreat,” Beierman told the newspaper. “Just then, I stepped into a semi-clearing. I said, ‘There he is, Owen.’”

The bear charged from about 6 feet (1.8 meters) away. Beierman said he fired eight shots at the animal with his pistol, but all missed.

“Before I knew it, I was flat on my back,” he recounted. “I started pistol-whipping him and it felt like I was striking a brick wall. I tried hitting him between the ear and mouth with a blunt edge of the pistol.”

The bear then lunged at Beierman’s head.

“All I could see were his claws and teeth,” he said. “I lifted my right arm to block him. I remember the first bite. I heard a crunch. The bear was still attacking. He wasn’t going to leave me.”

“The bear was fighting for its life, and I was fighting for mine,’’ Beierman added. “I’m punching and kicking and flailing around. That’s when I saw a flash from the muzzle of Owen’s rifle.”

Beierman then was able to push the bear off him. He estimates that the attack lasted about 45 seconds.

A neighbor began driving Beierman and Owen to a hospital. They were met by an ambulance which took them the rest of the way. The wound on his cheek would require 23 stitches. There were seven puncture wounds and a cut on Beierman’s right arm.

A conservation officer with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said their hunt was legal.

There’s no indication that any of the recipients responded, officials said, and several media organizations approached over the summer with leaked stolen information have also said they did not respond. Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign called the emails from Iran “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity” that were received by only a few people who regarded them as spam or phishing attempts.

The emails were received before the hack of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there’s no evidence the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

The announcement is the latest U.S. government effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran.

U.S. officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public advisories to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including an indictment targeting a covert Russian effort to spread pro-Russia content to U.S. audiences.

It’s a stark turnabout from the government’s response in 2016, when Obama administration officials were criticized for not being forthcoming about the Russian interference they were seeing on Trump’s behalf as he ran against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The emails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

The agencies have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.

The FBI informed Trump aides within the last 48 hours that information hacked by Iran had been sent to the Biden campaign, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to speak because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The Trump campaign disclosed on Aug. 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets — Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post — were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.

Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.

In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has cooperated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden’s team were among the recipients of the emails.

“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Finkelstein said. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.

Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the effort to dangle stolen information to the Biden campaign “further proof the Iranians are actively interfering in the election” to help Harris.

Intelligence officials have said Iran opposes Trump’s reelection, seeing him as more likely to increase tension between Washington and Tehran. Trump’s administration ended a nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, an act that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Iran’s intrusion on the Trump campaign was cited as just one of the cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns identified by tech companies and national security officials at a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their plans for safeguarding the election, and the attacks they’d seen so far.

“The most perilous time I think will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft President Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on American tech companies’ efforts to safeguard the election from foreign disinformation and cyberattacks.

Brian Jeffrey Raymond, with a graying beard and orange prison jumpsuit, sat dejectedly as he heard his punishment for one of the most egregious misconduct cases in the CIA’s history. It was chronicled in his own library of more than 500 images that showed him in some cases straddling and groping his nude, unconscious victims.

“It’s safe to say he’s a sexual predator,” U.S. Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in imposing the full sentence prosecutors had requested. “You are going to have a period of time to think about this.”

Prosecutors say the 48-year-old Raymond’s assaults date to 2006 and tracked his career in Mexico, Peru and other countries, all following a similar pattern:

He would lure women he met on Tinder and other dating apps to his government-leased apartment and drug them while serving wine and snacks. Once they were unconscious, he spent hours posing their naked bodies before photographing and assaulting them. He opened their eyelids at times and stuck his fingers in their mouths.

One by one, about a dozen of Raymond’s victims who were identified only by numbers in court recounted how the longtime spy upended their lives. Some said they only learned what happened after the FBI showed them the photos of being assaulted while unconscious.

“My body looks like a corpse on his bed,” one victim said of the photos. “Now I have these nightmares of seeing myself dead.”

One described suffering a nervous breakdown. Another spoke of a recurring trance that caused her to run red lights while driving. Many told how their confidence and trust in others had been shattered forever.

“I hope he is haunted by the consequences of his actions for the rest of his life,” said one of the women, who like others stared Raymond down as they walked away from the podium.

Reading from a statement, Raymond told the judge that he has spent countless hours contemplating his “downward spiral.”

“It betrayed everything I stand for and I know no apology will ever be enough,” he said. “There are no words to describe how sorry I am. That’s not who I am and yet it’s who I became.”

Raymond’s sentencing comes amid a reckoning on sexual misconduct at the CIA. The Associated Press reported last week that another veteran CIA officer faces state charges in Virginia for allegedly reaching up a co-worker’s skirt and forcibly kissing her during a drunken party in the office.

Still another former CIA employee — an officer trainee — is scheduled to face a jury trial next month on charges he assaulted a woman with a scarf in a stairwell at the agency’s Langley, Virginia, headquarters. That case emboldened some two dozen women to come forward to authorities and Congress with accounts of their own of sexual assaults, unwanted touching and what they contend are the CIA’s efforts to silence them.

And yet the full extent of sexual misconduct at the CIA remains a classified secret in the name of national security, including a recent 648-page internal watchdog report that found systemic shortcomings in the agency’s handling of such complaints.

“The classified nature of the activities allowed the agency to hide a lot of things,” said Liza Mundy, author of “Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.” The male-dominated agency, she said, has long been a refuge for egregious sexual misconduct. “For decades, men at the top had free rein.”

CIA has publicly condemned Raymond’s crimes and implemented sweeping reforms intended to keep women safe, streamline claims and more quickly discipline offenders.

But a veil of secrecy still surrounds the Raymond case nearly four years after his arrest. Even after Raymond pleaded guilty late last year, prosecutors have tiptoed around the exact nature of his work and declined to disclose a complete list of the countries where he assaulted women.

Still, they offered an unbridled account of Raymond’s conduct, describing him as a “serial offender” whose assaults increased over time and become “almost frenetic” during his final CIA posting in Mexico City, where he was discovered in 2020 after a naked woman screamed for help from his apartment balcony.

U.S. officials scoured Raymond’s electronic devices and began identifying the victims he had listed by name and physical characteristics, all of whom described experiencing some form of memory loss during their time with him.

One victim said Raymond seemed like a “perfect gentleman” when they met in Mexico in 2020, recalling only that they kissed. Unbeknownst to the woman, after she blacked out, he took 35 videos and close-up photos of her breasts and genitals.

“The defendant’s manipulation often resulted in women blaming themselves for losing consciousness, feeling ashamed, and apologizing to the defendant,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing. “He was more than willing to gaslight the women, often suggesting that the women drank too much and that, despite their instincts to the contrary, nothing had happened.”

Raymond, a San Diego native and former White House intern who is fluent in Spanish and Mandarin, ultimately pleaded guilty to four of 25 federal counts including sexual abuse, coercion and transportation of obscene material. As part of his sentence, the judge ordered him to pay $10,000 to each of his 28 victims.

Raymond’s attorneys had sought leniency, contending his “quasi-military” work at the CIA in the years following 9/11 became a breeding ground for the emotional callousness and “objectification of other people” that enabled his years of preying upon women.

“While he was working tirelessly at his government job, he ignored his own need for help, and over time he began to isolate himself, detach himself from human feelings and become emotionally numb,” defense attorney Howard Katzoff wrote in a court filing.

“He was an invaluable government worker, but it took its toll on him and sent him down a dark path.”

___

Goodman reported from Miami. Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.

Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

Common Sense Media, a company that aims to build a more healthy, equitable and empowering future for all kids in the digital age, talked to more than 1,000 teenagers to find out how they are interacting with AI, or Artificial Intelligence, on a daily basis.

The company’s research found that 7 out of 10 teens between ages 13 and 18 use at least one type of generative AI tool that take a question or prompt and provide an instant answer.

Most often, teenagers are using these tools to do their homework.

“Parents and teachers are pretty much out of the loop, so that young people are using AI platforms with virtually no guidance,” says Jim Steyer, CEO of Common Sense Media. In fact, only 37% of parents whose kids use AI actually knew their children were using it.

Steyer said that parents have learned valuable lessons about technology from the introduction of the social media craze. At the time, it had few guardrails and kids had unfettered access to a variety of outlets.

This time around, parents have a chance to get ahead of the wave.

The upside of AI

A growing number of experts, like Jonathan Haidt who wrote “The Anxious Generation, have expressed concern with the abundance of technological resources kids have access to.

But teens and technology aren’t always a bad combination.

NBC’s Kate Snow talked to Savannah Hill, a junior in high school who takes dance classes four days each week. Her busy schedule was “one of the reasons why I ended up resorting to ChatGPT,” Hill says.

When she had trouble catching up on her work in physics class, Hill says she “would go to ChatGPT to understand the topic that was being taught.”

Like many overwhelmed parents, Hill’s mother, Muna Heaven, said she didn’t know her daughter was using ChatGPT and felt “disappointed that the pace of the class got to the point where she had to find her own resources.”

The discovery wasn’t all bad, however. “I’m very proud that she found a way to teach herself independently.” She added, “I think that aspect of AI is great.”

Here’s what parents need to know about AI

Nearly half of parents haven’t talked to their teenage children about AI and the vast majority of parents say that schools haven’t communicated with them about AI policies, says Common Sense Media.

So far, teens have been left to figure out their own rules about AI, which is why Steyer said, “It’s essential for parents to take test drives with their kids, and learn with their kids how AI works.”

For kids who utilize AI for schoolwork, Common Sense Media recommends teaching kids how to form the right prompt and fact check AI’s responses.

It’s also important to teach children not to rely on AI for all the answers.

Heaven noted how important it is for teenagers to “hold fast” to their “authentic voice,” and that “the magic is in the creativity” that comes directly from the kids themselves

“And I think that maybe just raising their awareness of what’s not good, having more conversations around the dinner table is what I see as one of the mechanisms to get our children through,” she added.

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“Neither major candidate was able to make serious commitments to our union to ensure the interests of working people are always put before Big Business,” Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien said in a statement.

He added, “We sought commitments from both [former president Donald] Trump and [Vice President Kamala] Harris not to interfere in critical union campaigns or core Teamsters industries—and to honor our members’ right to strike—but were unable to secure those pledges.”

The union’s decision comes two days after senior leaders met with Harris as they weighed whom to endorse.

The Teamsters, which represents truck drivers, freight workers and others, held similar meetings with Trump and President Joe Biden when he was still seeking re-election.

The union, which at 1.3 million members is one of the largest in the world, collected input on an endorsement from its members through straw polling and a QR poll from a code printed on a union magazine, a vice president at large of the union, John Palmer, said.

On Wednesday, the union released the results of their survey, which was conducted after Biden dropped out of the race. It found that almost 60% of rank-and-file union members preferred to endorse Trump, while 34% backed Harris, according to an electronic member poll. A phone poll indicated similar margins, with 58% supporting Trump and 31% supporting Harris.

The union has not released the number of poll participants or the margin of error.

The Teamsters have for decades endorsed Democratic presidential candidates. The union supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020. They also backed Barack Obama in both of his presidential runs, John Kerry in 2004 and Al Gore in 2000.

In an email Wednesday, the Trump campaign highlighted the Teamsters polling.

“While the Teamsters Executive Board is making no formal endorsement, the hardworking members of the Teamsters have been loud and clear— they want President Trump back in the White House!” said campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “These hardworking men and women are the backbone of America and President Trump will strongly stand up for them when he’s back in the White House.”

The former president addressed the union’s decision not to endorse a candidate when talking with reporters on Wednesday, saying that it is “a great honor.”

“The Teamsters carry a lot of weight. The Democrats cannot believe it,” Trump said. “Look, it was always automatic that Democrats get the Teamsters, and they said, ‘We won’t endorse the Democrats this year,’ so that was an honor for me.”

Harris campaign spokesperson Lauren Hitt pointed to local Teamsters chapters that endorsed the vice president.

“The Vice President’s strong union record is why Teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her — alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor,” Hitt said in a statement. “As the Vice President told the Teamsters on Monday, when she is elected president, she will look out for the Teamsters rank-and-file no matter what — because they always have been and always will be the people she fights for.”

Over the course of his presidency, Biden has promoted his support for organized labor and has frequently weighed in on disputes between union workers and corporate leaders. In 2021, he expressed support for the right to unionize in a direct-to-camera video as Amazon workers in Alabama were about to vote on whether to organize.

Then-Teamsters president James P. Hoffa in 2021 credited Biden with including an $83 billion pension-fund bailout in the American Rescue Plan Act, which boosted the Teamsters’ Central States pension fund.

In 2023, Biden became the first sitting president to join a picket line when he visited striking autoworkers in Michigan.

But despite calling himself “the most pro-union President leading the most pro-union administration in American history,” Biden drew criticism from organized labor two years ago when he worked with Congress to pass a law that averted an impending rail strike.

The law forced union workers to accept a union contract that had been brokered by the Biden administration. At the time, four of the 12 unions involved had rejected the deal.

As he signed the legislation, Biden called it “a tough [vote] for me,” but cited the need “to keep the supply chains stable around the holidays.”

The International Association of Fire Fighters is the most prominent union that has not yet endorsed a presidential candidate this year. The union endorsed Biden in 2020.

The AFL-CIO, which represents dozens of unions and millions of workers, and the United Auto Workers union have each endorsed Harris.

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As Republican and Democratic leaders gathered in a moment of bipartisanship with Washington’s National Mall spread before them, no direct mention was made of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack where Trump’s supporters used pipes, lumber and other materials from the inauguration stage to attack law enforcement and halt the certification of the election.

But memories of that day, and heightened worries about violence in this year’s tense election season after the latest apparent assassination attempt against Trump, shadowed the event.

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“These workers will literally set the stage for the peaceful transfer of power,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democrat who chairs the joint committee overseeing preparations for the inauguration.

Preparations for the last inauguration became an integral part of the violence that unfolded at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, with rioters swarming the stage and the tall press platform that stands in front of it during their siege of the building.

Workers who were putting finishing touches on the structure had to flee that morning as rioters closed in. They later had to clean up the debris and rebuild parts of the stage for President Joe Biden’s inauguration two weeks later.

Klobuchar, flanked by construction workers in hard hats and reflective vests, cast the presidential inauguration next year as an opportunity to “celebrate our democracy and the sacred values that tie us together as a nation.”

Earlier Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican who is also on the committee, took aim at Democrats for describing Trump as a threat to democracy, but also called on “everybody” to scale back their attacks.

“Let’s have a vigorous debate on the policy differences, on the records, but let’s turn the rhetoric down because we’re not going to be able to sustain that,” Johnson, R-La., said.

Adding to the symbolism, the six congressional leaders noted the event also coincided with the anniversary of George Washington laying the cornerstone of the Capitol.

Lawmakers hammered a handful of the roughly 500,000 nails that will hold the stage together. House Republican Leader Steve Scalise took to the task eagerly, using his left hand to finish ahead of his colleagues, while Klobuchar finished the ceremony with gusto, banging her hammer with a smile and a laugh.

When finished for the Jan. 20 ceremony, the platform will hold nearly 1,600 people — the president and vice president-elect, past presidents, foreign dignitaries, Supreme Court justices and congressional leaders — to mark the beginning of a new administration.

Above the ceremony, five American flags will fly. One will be the current flag, two have 13 stars for the original colonies, and two hold the number of stars as when the president’s home state was admitted to the union.

There will either be a 31-star flag for Vice President Kamala Harris’s California or a 27-star flag for Trump’s Florida. And the next president will either be the first Black woman and the first South Asian American to serve as president or just the second to succeed in a comeback bid to the White House.

___

Associated Press photographer J. Scott Applewhite contributed to this report.

Hadley Duvall says in voiceover that she’s never slept a full night in her life — her stepfather first started abusing her when she was five years old, and impregnated her when she was 12. As she speaks, images of Duvall as a child flash on the screen. The soundtrack of the ad is a song by Billie Eilish, who endorsed the vice president on Tuesday.

“I just remember thinking I have to get out of my skin. I can’t be me right now. Like, this can’t be it,” Duvall says. “I didn’t know what to do. I was a child. I didn’t know what it meant to be pregnant, at all. But I had options.”

The ad is part of a continued push by the Harris campaign to highlight the growing consequences of the fall of Roe, including that some states have abortion restrictions with no exceptions for rape or incest. Women in some states are suffering increasingly perilous medical care and the first reported instance of a woman dying from delayed reproductive care surfaced this week. Harris lays the blame squarely on Republican nominee Donald Trump, who appointed three of the conservatives to the U.S. Supreme Court who helped overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

Duvall blames Trump, too.

“Because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade, girls and women all over the country have lost the right to choose, even for rape or incest,” she says in the ad. “Donald Trump did this. He took away our freedom.”

During the presidential debate on Sept. 10, Trump repeatedly took credit for appointing the three Supreme Court justices and leaned heavily on his catchall response to questions on abortion rights, saying the issue should be left up to the states. He said he would not sign a national abortion ban.

“I’m not signing a ban,” he said, adding that “there is no reason to sign the ban.”

But he also repeatedly declined to say whether he would veto such a ban if he were elected again — a question that has lingered as the Republican nominee has shifted his stances on the crucial election issue.

Duvall of Owensboro, Kentucky, first told her story publicly last fall in a campaign ad for the governor’s race in her home state supporting Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. Duvall’s stepfather was convicted of rape and is in prison; she miscarried.

Beshear won reelection, and Democrats have said Duvall’s ad was a strong motivator, particularly for rural, male voters who had previously voted for Trump.

Duvall is also touring the country to campaign for Harris along with other women who have been telling their personal stories since the fall of Roe, joining Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro last week.

Next steps on government funding are uncertain. Lawmakers are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund federal agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure to prevent a partial shutdown when that budget year begins Oct. 1.

The vote was 220-202. Now, Johnson will likely pursue a Plan B to avoid a partial shutdown, though he was not ready before the vote to share details of such a proposal.

Johnson pulled the bill from consideration last week because it lacked the votes to pass. He worked through the weekend to win support from fellow Republicans but was unable to overcome objections about spending levels from some members, while others said they don’t favor any continuing resolutions, insisting that Congress return to passing the dozen annual appropriations bills on time and one at a time. Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the measure.

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Requiring new voters to provide proof of citizenship has become a leading election-year priority for Republicans raising the specter of noncitizens voting in the U.S., even though it’s already illegal to do so and research has shown that such voting is rare.

Opponents also say that such a requirement would disenfranchise millions of Americans who do not have a birth certificate or passport readily available when they get a chance to register at their school, church or other venues when voter registration drives occur.

But Johnson said it is a serious problem because even if a tiny percentage of noncitizens do vote, it could determine the outcome of an extremely close race. He noted that Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa won her seat back in 2020 by six votes.

“It’s very, very serious stuff and that’s why we’re going to do the right thing,” Johnson said. “We’re going to responsibly fund the government and we’re going to stop noncitizens voting in elections.”

Meanwhile, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump weighed in again just hours before the vote. seemingly encouraging House Republicans to let a partial government shutdown begin at the end of the month unless they get the proof of citizenship mandate, referred to in the House as the SAVE Act.

“If Republicans don’t get the SAVE Act, and every ounce of it, they should not agree to a Continuing Resolution in any way, shape, or form,” Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social.

Johnson told reporters he was not ready to discuss an alternative plan to keep the government funded.

“Let’s see what happens with the bill, all right. We’re on the field in the middle of the game. The quarterback is calling the play. We’re going to run the play,” Johnson said.

House Democrats said the proof of citizenship mandate should not be part of the continuing resolution to keep the government funded and urged Johnson to work with them on a bill that can pass both chambers.

“This is not going to become law,” said Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif. “This is Republican theatrics that are meant to appease the most extreme members of their conference, to show them that they are working on something and that they’re continuing to support the former president of the United States in his bid to demonize immigrants.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the only way to prevent a government shutdown was for both sides to work together on an agreement. He said the House vote announced by Johnson was doomed to fail.

“The only thing that will accomplish is make clear that he’s running into a dead end,” Schumer said. “We must have a bipartisan plan instead.”

The legislation would fund agencies generally at current levels while lawmakers work out their differences on a full-year spending agreement.

Democrats, and some Republicans, are pushing for a short extension. A temporary fix would allow the current Congress to hammer out a final bill after the election and get it to Democratic President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.

But Johnson and some of the more conservative members of his conference are pushing for a six-month extension in the hopes that Republican nominee Donald Trump will win the election and give them more leverage when crafting the full-year bill.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky declined to weigh in on how long to extend funding. He said Schumer and Johnson, ultimately, will have to work out a final agreement that can pass both chambers.

“The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown. It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election because certainly we would get the blame,” McConnell said.

Regardless of the vote outcome Wednesday, Republican lawmakers sought to allay any concerns there would be a shutdown at the end of the month. Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., said if the bill fails, then another stopgap bill should be voted on that would allow lawmakers to come back to Washington after the election and finish the appropriations work.

“The bottom line is we’re not shutting the government down,” Lawler said.

But Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries accused Republicans of engaging in a “shutdown effort.”

“That’s not hyperbole,” Jeffries said. “It’s history. Because in the DNA of extreme MAGA Republicans has consistently been an effort to make extreme ransom demands of the American people, and if those extreme ransom demands are not met, shut down the government.”

The House approved a bill with the proof of citizenship mandate back in July. Some Republicans who view the issue as popular with their constituents have been pushing for another chance to show their support for the measure.

Many have investigated noncitizen voting and found little evidence of it, NBC News reported. The Brennan Center found just 30 suspected noncitizen votes amid 23.5 million votes in 2016, suggesting that suspected noncitizen votes accounted for 0.0001% of votes cast. Trump’s own election integrity commission disbanded without releasing evidence of voter fraud, even though he’d claimed 3 million undocumented immigrants had voted in 2016 costing him the popular vote.

Around the world in 57 days.

A new moon is expected to be pulled into the Earth’s orbit by the end of September, but the rare phenomenon won’t last long.

The visiting moon is technically an asteroid known as 2024 PT5, and was initially spotted Aug. 7 by NASA’s Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) initiative, which warns of asteroid impacts. Unlike the existing moon — which has orbited our planet for about 4 billion years — this new floating rock is only expected to orbit the Earth once, beginning its trip Sept. 29 before breaking off from its gravitational pull on Nov. 25.

Researchers Carlos de la Fuente Marcos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos explained the event in the journal “Research Notes of the AAS,” writing, “Earth can regularly capture asteroids from the Near-Earth object (NEO) population and pull them into orbit, making them mini-moons.”

Some have debated whether the asteroid even qualifies as a mini-moon due to its relatively small size — clocking in at 33 feet wide — as well as brief stay in Earth’s orbit.

“Every time an object with an orbit so earthlike is discovered, there is a chance that we are just recovering space debris,” Raúl told the New York Times, but confirmed that 2024 PT5 “is a natural object, no doubt about that.”

So how can you get a glimpse of the extraterrestrial event? Sadly for stargazers, 2024 PT5’s small frame will make it difficult to spot, but the space find is still intriguing as it’s one of the rare times Earth has collected additional temporary moons.

One such example occurred in 1981 and 2022, when another asteroid — known as 2022 NX1 — similarly took a short trip around the globe. In fact, the researchers noted in the journal that 2024 PT5 “follows a path that resembles that of 2022 NX1.”

The State Department announced Wednesday that its online renewal system is now fully operational, after testing in pilot programs, and available to adult passport holders whose passport has expired within the past five years or will expire in the coming year. It is not available for the renewal of children’s passports, for first-time passport applicants for renewal applicants who live outside the United States or for expedited applications.

“By offering this online alternative to the traditional paper application process, the Department is embracing digital transformation to offer the most efficient and convenient passport renewal experience possible,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

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The department said it estimated that about 5 million Americans would be able to use this service a year. In 2023, it processed 24 million passports, about 40% of which were renewals.

After staffing shortages caused mainly by the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in lengthy passport processing delays, the department ramped up hiring and introduced other technological improvements that have reduced wait times by about one-third over last year. It says most applications are now completed in far less than the advertised six weeks to eight weeks and the online renewal system is expected to further reduce that.

The system will allow renewal applicants to skip the current process, which requires them to print out and send paper applications, photos and a check by mail, and submit their documents, photo, and payment through a secure website, www.Travel.State.Gov/renewonline.

There will be no change to the existing passport processing fees, which are currently $130 for a regular renewal.

Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter, whose bureau oversees passport processing said the department hoped to expand the program in the coming years to possibly include Americans living abroad, those seeking to renew a second passport and children’s passports.

“This is not going to be the last thing that we do,” she told reporters. “We want to see how this goes and then we’ll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years.”

The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it will lower its benchmark rate by a half percentage point, or 50 basis points, paving the way for relief from the high borrowing costs that have hit consumers particularly hard. 

The federal funds rate, which is set by the U.S. central bank, is the interest rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another overnight. Although that’s not the rate consumers pay, the Fed’s moves still affect the borrowing and savings rates they see every day.

Wednesday’s cut sets the federal funds rate at a range of 4.75%-5%.

A series of interest rate hikes starting in March 2022 took the central bank’s benchmark to its highest in more than 22 years, which caused most consumer borrowing costs to skyrocket — and put many households under pressure.

Now, with inflation backing down, “there are reasons to be optimistic,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com.

However, “one rate cut isn’t a panacea for borrowers grappling with high financing costs and has a minimal impact on the overall household budget,” he said. “What will be more significant is the cumulative effect of a series of interest rate cuts over time.”

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“There are always winners and losers when there is a change in interest rates,” said Stephen Foerster, professor of finance at Ivey Business School in London, Ontario. “In general, lower rates favor borrowers and hurt lenders and savers.”

“It really depends on whether you are a borrower or saver or whether you currently have locked-in borrowing or savings rates,” he said.

From credit cards and mortgage rates to auto loans and savings accounts, here’s a look at how a Fed rate cut could affect your finances in the months ahead.

Credit cards

Since most credit cards have a variable rate, there’s a direct connection to the Fed’s benchmark. Because of the central bank’s rate hike cycle, the average credit card rate rose from 16.34% in March 2022 to more than 20% today — near an all-time high.

Going forward, annual percentage rates will start to come down, but even then, they will only ease off extremely high levels. With only a few cuts on deck for 2024, APRs would still be around 19% in the months ahead, according to McBride.

“Interest rates took the elevator going up, but they’ll be taking the stairs coming down,” he said.

That makes paying down high-cost credit card debt a top priority since “interest rates won’t fall fast enough to bail you out of a tight situation,” McBride said. “Zero percent balance transfer offers remain a great way to turbocharge your credit card debt repayment efforts.”

Mortgage rates

Although 15- and 30-year mortgage rates are fixed, and tied to Treasury yields and the economy, anyone shopping for a new home has lost considerable purchasing power in the last two years, partly because of inflation and the Fed’s policy moves.

But rates are already significantly lower than where they were just a few months ago. Now, the average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is around 6.3%, according to Bankrate.

Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree, expects mortgage rates will stay somewhere in the 6% to 6.5% range over the coming weeks, with a chance that they’ll even dip below 6%. But it’s unlikely they will return to their pandemic-era lows, he said.

“Though they are falling, mortgage rates nonetheless remain relatively high compared to where they stood through most of the last decade,” he said. “What’s more, home prices remain at or near record highs in many areas.” Despite the Fed’s move, “there are a lot of people who won’t be able to buy until the market becomes cheaper,” Channel said.

Auto loans

Even though auto loans are fixed, higher vehicle prices and high borrowing costs have stretched car buyers “to their financial limits,” according to Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds’ head of insights.

The average rate on a five-year new car loan is now more than 7%, up from 4% when the Fed started raising rates, according to Edmunds. However, rate cuts from the Fed will take some of the edge off the rising cost of financing a car — likely bringing rates below 7% — helped in part by competition between lenders and more incentives in the market.

“Many Americans have been holding off on making vehicle purchases in the hopes that prices and interest rates would come down, or that incentives would make a return,” Caldwell said. “A Fed rate cut wouldn’t necessarily drive all those consumers back into showrooms right away, but it would certainly help nudge holdout car buyers back into more of a spending mood.”

Student loans

Federal student loan rates are also fixed, so most borrowers won’t be immediately affected by a rate cut. However, if you have a private loan, those loans may be fixed or have a variable rate tied to the Treasury bill or other rates, which means once the Fed starts cutting interest rates, the rates on those private student loans will come down over a one- or three-month period, depending on the benchmark, according to higher education expert Mark Kantrowitz. 

Eventually, borrowers with existing variable-rate private student loans may be able to refinance into a less expensive fixed-rate loan, he said. But refinancing a federal loan into a private student loan will forgo the safety nets that come with federal loans, such as deferments, forbearances, income-driven repayment and loan forgiveness and discharge options.

Additionally, extending the term of the loan means you ultimately will pay more interest on the balance.

Savings rates

While the central bank has no direct influence on deposit rates, the yields tend to be correlated to changes in the target federal funds rate.

As a result of Fed rate hikes, top-yielding online savings account rates have made significant moves and are now paying more than 5% — the most savers have been able to earn in nearly two decades — up from around 1% in 2022, according to Bankrate.

If you haven’t opened a high-yield savings account or locked in a certificate of deposit yet, you’ve likely already missed the rate peak, according to Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s credit analyst. However, “yields aren’t going to fall off a cliff immediately after the Fed cuts rates,” he said.

Although those rates have likely maxed out, it is still worth your time to make either of those moves now before rates fall even further, he advised.

One-year CDs are now averaging 1.78% but top-yielding CD rates pay more than 5%, according to Bankrate, as good as or better than a high-yield savings account.

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If a strike were resolved within a few weeks, consumers probably wouldn’t notice any major shortages of retail goods. But a strike that persists for more than a month would likely cause a shortage of some consumer products, although most holiday retail goods have already arrived from overseas.

A prolonged strike would almost certainly hurt the U.S. economy. Even a brief strike would cause disruptions. Heavier vehicular traffic would be likely at key points around the country as cargo was diverted to West Coast ports, where workers belong to a different union not involved in the strike. And once the longshoremen’s union eventually returned to work, a ship backlog would likely result. For every day of a port strike, experts say it takes four to six days to clear it up.

“I think everyone’s a bit nervous about it,” said Mia Ginter, director of North America ocean shipping for C.H. Robinson, a logistics firm. “The rhetoric this time with the ILA is at a level we haven’t seen before.”

The longshoremen’s union and the United States Maritime Alliance, which represents the ports, haven’t met to negotiate since June, when the union said it suspended national talks to first complete local port agreements. No further national contract talks have been scheduled.

Harold Daggett, the union president, warned earlier this month that the longshoremen stood ready to strike once their contract expires on Sept. 30.

“We are very far apart,” Daggett said. “Mark my words, we’ll shut them down Oct. 1 if we don’t get the kind of wages we deserve.”

Top-scale port workers now earn a base pay of $39 an hour, or just over $81,000 a year. But with overtime and other benefits, some can make in excess of $200,000 annually. Neither the union nor the ports would discuss pay levels. But a 2019-2020 report by the Waterfront Commission, which oversees New York Harbor, said about a third of the longshoremen based there made $200,000 or more.

Daggett contends, though, that higher-paid longshoremen work up to 100 hours a week, most of it overtime, and sacrifice much of their family time in doing so.

The Maritime Alliance has said it’s committed to resuming talks and avoiding the first national longshoremen’s strike since 1977. It has accused the union of having already decided in advance to walk off the job.

“We need to sit down and negotiate a new agreement that avoids an unnecessary and costly strike that will be detrimental to both sides,” the alliance said in a statement.

In the case of a short-lived strike, industry experts say consumers wouldn’t likely notice shortages of store goods during the holiday shopping season. Most retailers had goods transported ahead of the usual pre-holiday shipping season, and they’re already stored in warehouses.

“It would be an inconvenience, but it’s not going to be ‘Santa’s not showing up,’ ” said Jonathan Chappell, senior managing director of transportation at Evercore ISI, an investment research firm.

Imports to ports are up 10% this year over 2023 on the East Coast and 20% on the West Coast, indicating that some freight was shipped in anticipation of a strike, said Ben Nolan, a transportation analyst with Stifel.

The longshoreman’s union, Nolan suggested, commands some leverage going into a presidential election, with memories still fresh of jammed ports and clogged supply chains that followed the pandemic recession. Unions also have drawn support this year from political candidates who have been courting the labor vote.

“If ever there was a time that labor can get what they want,” Nolan said, “it’s right now.”

If a strike were to extend beyond a month or so, spot shortages of goods could develop. Some manufacturers could run short of parts, notably in the auto and pharmaceutical industries, which generally don’t stock large parts inventories. Exports of autos and other goods that move through the East Coast also could be affected.

Most analysts don’t expect President Joe Biden to intervene, as he and Congress did to head off a railroad strike in 2022, at least not before the Nov. 5 presidential election. Robinson, of the logistics firm C.H. Robinson, noted that the administration cannot legally impose a contract on the dockworkers before a strike. But if a strike were deemed to endanger national health or safety, Ginter said, Biden could, under the Taft-Hartley Act, seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period. This would suspend the strike.

Analysts say the union’s initial demands included a 77% pay raise over the course of a six-year contract. Daggett, the union president, said sizable pay raises would make up for the inflation spike of the past few years.

And he said it would give workers a share of the billions the companies have earned, especially during the pandemic. Copenhagen-based Maersk, among the world’s largest container shipping companies, made more than $50 billion in profits over the past four years. Earnings, though, dropped substantially in 2023 as pandemic-era consumer demand eased and brought sky-high freight rates back down.

Daggett said the union members expect to be waging their biggest fight — against the automation of job functions at ports — well into the future.

“We do not believe that robotics should take over a human being’s job,” he said. “Especially a human being that’s historically performed that job.”

As an example, he pointed to a gate that automatically processes trucks without union labor at the port in Mobile, Alabama. The gate has been in place since 2008.

The Maritime Alliance has said it offered, as part of a new contract, to keep current provisions that bar fully automated terminals and block the use of semi-automated equipment without an agreement from both sides on protecting human jobs.

Experts say it’s not altogether clear whether automation would lead to layoffs.

A 2022 study by the Economic Roundtable of Los Angeles that was funded by the West Coast dockworkers union found that automation cost 572 jobs each year in 2020 and 2021 at partially automated terminals at the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

But another study that same year by a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, that was commissioned by port operators and shippers concluded that between 2015, when Los Angeles-area ports adopted some automation, and 2021, paid hours for port union members grew 11.2%.

At the huge Port of Rotterdam, one of the world’s most automated ports, union workers pushed for early-retirement packages and work-time reductions as a means to preserve jobs. And in the end, mechanization didn’t cause significant job losses, a researcher from Erasmus University in the Netherlands found.

U.S. ports trail their counterparts in Asia and Europe in the use of automation. Analysts note that most U.S. ports take longer to unload container ships than do those in Asia and Europe and suggest that without more automation, they could become even less competitive. Shippers might send more cargo to Mexican or Canadian ports and then on to the U.S. by rail or truck, said Eleftherios Iakovou, associate director of supply chain resilience at Texas A&M University.

He suggested that the two sides discuss the use of automation to augment the functions of human workers rather than to displace them.

Any final reckoning over automation, though, remains a long way off. For shippers to abandon U.S. ports, Mexican ports would have to become more efficient at the same time that U.S. ports became “prohibitively inefficient,” said Stifel’s Nolan.

“I do think there’s some validity to it, but it’s not a this-decade kind of issue,” he said.

In the meantime, if there is a strike, analysts say West Coast ports could pick up at least some additional freight that might be diverted from Eastern ports, especially from Asia. But they couldn’t handle it all. Neither could the U.S. rail system.

“The East Coast has grown a lot,” Nolan said. “There’s just no way to get around it.”

The lawsuit filed in Maryland provides the most detailed account yet of the cascading series of failures on the Dali that left the vessel’s pilots and crew completely helpless in the face of looming disaster.

The Justice Department alleges that mechanical and electrical systems on the massive container ship had been “jury-rigged” and improperly maintained, culminating in a horrific power outage moments before it crashed into a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March. Six construction workers were killed when the bridge plunged into the water.

“This tragedy was entirely avoidable,” if not for the companies’ decision to place an “ill-prepared crew on an abjectly unseaworthy vessel,” says the lawsuit against Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine Group, both of Singapore.

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Darrell Wilson, a spokesperson for Grace Ocean, said the owner and manager had no comment at this time, but “look forward to our day in court to set the record straight.”

Justice Department officials refused to answer questions Wednesday about whether a criminal investigation into the bridge collapse remains ongoing. FBI agents boarded the vessel in April amid a criminal investigation into the circumstances leading up to the catastrophe.

The ship was leaving Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. Six members of a road work crew on the bridge were killed in the collapse. The men were working an overnight shift filling potholes on the bridge deck when it suddenly crumbled beneath them, sending them tumbling into the water.

The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully opened in June.

The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history. Justice Department officials said there is no legal support for the companies’ bid to limit their legal liability and they would vigorously contest it.

“With this civil claim, the Justice Department is working to ensure that the costs of clearing the channel and reopening the Port of Baltimore are borne by the companies that caused the crash, not by the American taxpayer,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in written statement.

The case comes a day after the victims’ families declared their intent to file a claim seeking to hold the ship’s owner and manager fully liable for the disaster. Several other interested parties, including city officials and local businesses, have filed opposing claims accusing the companies of negligence.

Documents released last week by the National Transportation Safety Board revealed investigators’ discovery of a loose cable on the ship that, when disconnected, triggered an electrical blackout similar to what happened as it approached the bridge on March 26.

But the Dali had already been experiencing power issues in the hours before the collapse. The first blackout occurred when it was still docked in Baltimore after a crew member mistakenly closed an exhaust damper while conducting maintenance, causing one of its diesel engines to stall, according to safety investigators. Crew members then made changes to the ship’s electrical configuration, switching from one transformer and breaker system — which had been in use for several months — to a second that was active upon its departure. That second transformer and breaker system is where investigators found the loose cable.

The Justice Department complaint points to “excessive vibrations” on the ship that attorneys called a “well-known cause of transformer and electrical failure.” Instead of dealing with the source of the excessive vibrations, they “jury-rigged” the ship, the Justice Department alleges.

The complaint notes cracked equipment in the engine room pieces of cargo being shaken loose. Inspectors have found loose bolts, nuts, and washers and broken electrical cable ties, the Justice Department says. The state of the ship’s electrical equipment was so bad that an independent testing agency stopped further electrical testing because of safety concerns, according to the lawsuit.

“In sum, this accident happened because of the careless and grossly negligent decisions made by Grace Ocean and Synergy, who recklessly chose to send an unseaworthy vessel to navigate a critical waterway and ignored the risks to American lives and the nation’s infrastructure,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Chetan A. Patil.

When that transformer and breaker system failed, power should have automatically transferred to the ship’s other transformer within seconds, the lawsuit says, “but this automation, a safety feature tailor made for the occasion at hand, had been recklessly disabled.” Instead, the ship’s engineers had to manually restore power, which took a full minute, according to the complaint.

Power was momentarily restored, but it again switched off because of a problem with the ship’s fuel pumps, which resulted from a cost-cutting measure, the Justice Department alleges.

The anchor wasn’t able to be immediately deployed and the bow thruster was unavailable in the critical moments when the ship’s pilots were desperately trying to avoid disaster, according to the complaint.

Lebanon’s Red Cross said it deployed 30 ambulances across southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley in response to the walkie-talkie explosions.

Meanwhile, the country’s civil defense force said teams worked to put out fires “inside homes, cars and shops” that were ignited by the blasts.

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Al-Manar, a Hezbollah-affiliated news agency, reported that the wireless devices had exploded in people’s hands.

The Lebanese Ministry of Communications identified the exploding devices as Icom V82s, a type of handheld transceiver, adding that they were not purchased through the official distributor and were not licensed by the ministry. Icom did not immediately return a request for comment to NBC News, but a sales manager for Icom America told The Associated Press it appears that explosive devices were knock-offs.

Icom’s website lists the V82 as one of its most frequently counterfeited products and states that is has been discontinued.

“Pay special attention to counterfeit IC-V80, IC-718 (currently produced model) and IC-V82 (discontinued model),” the website said. “Copies of these models are floating in the market.”

The Associated Press reported that its journalists were in Beirut at a funeral for four people killed by exploding pagers Tuesday when they heard “multiple explosions at the site.”

Ambulances arrived at the scene, the AP journalists said.

On Tuesday, exploding pagers belonging to Hezbollah members killed at least 12 people and injured nearly 3,000.

Two U.S. officials said Israel was behind the attack targeting Hezbollah, an Iran-back militia and political party that the United States considers a terrorist organization. The militant group and Lebanese officials also pinned blame on Israel, which has not taken direct responsibility.

It was unclear why Israel carried out the attack when it did and whether it was an opportunistic operation or something more strategic that would be followed by other actions, the officials said.

However, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday that he believed the country was in a “new phase in the war.”

“The ‘center of gravity’ is moving north, meaning that we are allocating forces, resources and energy for the northern arena,” Gallant said, adding that they must allow residents to return home.

Lebanon’s Public Health Minister Dr. Firas Abiad said that 12 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack, including an 8-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. More than 2,700 were injured, with an estimated 10% in critical condition, according to National News Agency.

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati said he was visiting the public health ministry’s emergency operation center when news broke about the walkie-talkie explosions. He told reporters that he instructed the country’s foreign minister to call for a United Nations Security Council meeting to address the matter.

“What happened is regrettable — it is a collective crime that defies humanity and human rights, targeting defenseless people in their homes,” Mikati said.

Mikati and other Lebanese government officials have repeatedly said that they do not want the country to be dragged into a war, but stop short of condemning Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel.

The Security Council is expected to meet Friday on the pager attacks and other communications device explosions in Lebanon following a request from Algeria, a U.S. official confirmed to NBC News.

A spokesperson for U.N. Secretary–General António Guterres said he was “deeply alarmed” by the device explosions in Lebanon and urged restraint from both parties.

The U.S. was not involved in Wednesday’s incident, said John Kirby, the White House’s national security communications advisor. He declined to answer questions about Israel’s role or whether the U.S. deemed detonating wireless devices an acceptable form of warfare.

Kirby said the U.S. believes the best way to prevent opening a war front with Lebanon is through diplomacy.

“We still don’t want to see an escalation of any kind,” Kirby said. “We don’t believe that the way to solve where we are at in this crisis is by additional military operations at all.”

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. called for a “full accounting” of the attacks to Congress to determine “whether any US assistance went into the development or deployment of this technology.”

The attack risked civilian lives as the devices detonated in “a slew of public spaces,” Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a post on X, adding that it “clearly and unequivocally violates international humanitarian law and undermines US efforts to prevent a wider conflict.”

Also on Wednesday, an Israeli commander said troops near the border were “at peak readiness.”

“The mission is clear — we are determined to change the security reality as soon as possible,” said the Israel Defense Forces’ Northern Command chief, Maj. Gen. Ori Gordin. 

Hezbollah has been exchanging fire with Israel since October, aligning with Hamas after the Palestinian group’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack.

International officials have worried for months that the exchanges over Lebanon and Israel’s border could widen the Israel-Hamas war and further destabilize the region.

Thousands of civilians in southern Lebanon and northern Israel have been displaced by the exchange of fire between Hezbollah and the Israel Defense Forces.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Monday that he and his Cabinet have updated its list of war objectives to include the safe return of its residents in the north.

The country’s officials have also warned the U.S., its closest ally, that “military action” would most likely be the only way to address mounting hostilities with Hezbollah.

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

• Who made the exploding pagers? A messy global trail emerges behind deadly Lebanon blasts
• Why did Israel blow up hundreds of Hezbollah pagers — and what might happen next?
• Israel sets new war goal, adding to signs of escalation with Hezbollah

A spokesperson for the airline company said that Flight 1203 from Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon, was unable to pressurize above 10,000 feet.

Crew members “followed procedures to return to SLC where our teams on the ground supported our customers with their immediate needs,” the company said in a statement.

“We sincerely apologize to our customers for their experience,” the statement read.

Passenger Jaci Purser told NBC affiliate KSL-TV of Salt Lake City that she felt her ear pop and then bubble because of the pressure in the cabin. She said it felt like someone was stabbing her in the ear.

“I grabbed my ear, and I pulled my hand back, and there was blood on it,” she said.

Another passenger, Caryn Allen, said she looked over at her husband and he was leaning over and covering both ears with his hands. Other passengers were experiencing similar issues.

“I looked about a row behind me, over on the other side of the aisle, and there was a gentleman that clearly had a very bad bloody nose, and people were trying to help him,” Allen told the news station.

Delta said medical personnel met the flight at the gate and treated or evaluated 10 people. The Boeing aircraft had 140 passengers onboard.

It’s not clear what caused the pressurization issue but Delta technicians were able to fix it. The plane was briefly taken out of service Sunday morning and went back into service the following day, Delta said.

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Praised for their versatility and universal appeal, balloons made the list Wednesday of 12 finalists being considered for the honor later this year, alongside other first-time contenders including the trampoline and the party game Apples to Apples.

A panel of expert judges and the public will vote on which of the finalists will be inducted in November.

This year’s nominees also include the bestselling “Choose Your Own Adventure” gamebooks, which encourage readers to plot stories; Hess Toy Trucks, which have signaled the holiday season since 1964; remote-controlled vehicles and the stick horse.

Rounding out the list are the games Phase 10, Sequence and the Pokemon Trading Card Game, along with two perennial nominees, My Little Pony figures and Transformers action figures, both of which debuted in the 1980s.

“These 12 toys represent the wide range of play — from strategic to whimsical to physical — and present many playful matchups. The selection judges and public will have some tough decisions this year,” predicted Christopher Bensch, vice president for collections and chief curator.

Fans can vote for their favorites from Sept. 18 to 25 at toyhalloffame.org. The three toys that receive the most public votes will make up a “Player’s Choice” ballot that will be tallied along with ballots from 22 historians and other experts.

Since 1998, the National Toy Hall of Fame has recognized more than 80 toys for inspiring creative play across generations. They range from humble playthings like the stick, paper airplane and cardboard box to those that have influenced pop culture, like the Barbie doll and Dungeons & Dragons.

Last year’s inductees were baseball cards, Cabbage Patch Kids, Fisher-Price Corn Popper and Nerf foam toys. The National Toy Hall of Fame is inside The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York.

The feature, called Teen Accounts, is meant to address the harm social media can do to young peoples’ mental health.

Switching teens to private accounts means they can only be messaged or tagged in posts and comments by accounts they follow, and restrictive search will filter out harmful words and content. The platform also revamped its time reminder feature; teens will get a notification telling them to leave the app after 60 minutes each day.

This is a good first step, says Dr. Shannon Bennett, associate director of the center for youth mental health at NewYork-Presbyterian.

“The opportunity cost while using social media is sleep or in-person socialization,” she says. “I think it’s encouraging to see some effort being made.”

Experts agree the new features might net positive changes, but say its really too early to tell.

Social media might be a major factor in youth loneliness

In 2020, an explosive report revealed Facebook knew Instagram was harmful to youth mental health: 32% of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse, researchers said in a presentation posted to Facebook’s internal message board.

U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy named social media as one of the main reasons young people feel more alone in his 2023 report “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” 

“Several examples of harms include technology that displaces in-person engagement, monopolizes our attention, reduces the quality of our interactions, and even diminishes our self-esteem,” Murthy wrote “This can lead to greater loneliness, fear of missing out, conflict, and reduced social connection.”

In his best-selling book “The Anxious Generation” NYU social psychologist Johnathan Haidt also cited social media and smartphones as a major cause of youth loneliness.

“Kids going through puberty online are likely to experience far more social comparison, self-consciousness, public shaming, and chronic anxiety than adolescents in previous generations, which could potentially set developing brains into a habitual state of defensiveness,” Haidt wrote for The Atlantic.

‘It’s encouraging to see some effort being made’

Upon Meta’s unveiling of Teen Accounts, experts expressed mixed feelings.

Haidt released a statement saying he is “cautiously optimistic” about the changes.

“Of course, this is just a first step in reforming an ecosystem that badly needs a simpler, more robust way to identify minors and install real age gating, especially for those under 13,” his statement read. “Most of the problems with social media will still plague teens on Instagram. But this is a good start, and I hope it is just the first of many steps from Meta.”

These features do address the major concerns parents and doctors have regarding social media use, Bennett says: “It is a matter both of how much teens are using Instagram and the content they are viewing.”

Teens are using the platform too much and digesting some “extreme or disturbing content,” she says. And, they are often doing so at the expense of face-to-face connection.

However, only time will reveal how effective the changes will be, especially since kids can easily lie about their age.

“On other platforms age restrictions were almost universally ignored,” Bennett says.

However, a growing body of research contradicts the finding that social media is the defining culprit responsible for young peoples’ unhappiness.

So, implementing restrictions might not really matter, says Jeffrey Hall, a communications professor at the University of Kansas who studies relationships and social interaction.

“As there is no strong, causal association between time spent using social media and mental health, it is unlikely that these changes will make a difference for teens across the board,” Hall says.

He also raises concerns about enforcing age restrictions: “With the ease of falsifying age, it is hard to know whether these changes will benefit those who are most at risk.”

While skeptical, Hall echoes Bennett’s sentiment that only time will tell if Teen Accounts will help in any way.

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During an event on Wednesday morning, First Assistant District Attorney Robert Listenbee said Muhyyee-ud-din Abdul-Rahman, 18, of West Philadelphia, not only had bomb-making materials, that were found in the trash at his home, he had tested bombs in the woods behind his home and had likely considered an attack on Philly’s LGBTQ community.

But, on Wednesday, Listenbee said, Abdul-Rahman had not only made bombs, but he had considered placing bombs in trashcans along the route of last year’s Philadelphia Pride March and intended to move to Syria in the hopes of becoming a bomb-maker for a terrorist group.

“The defendant, who had a scholarship to attend college as a wrestler, decided that he wanted to become a bomb-maker,” said Listenbee. “He wanted to leave America and go to Syria an join a terrorist group. He developed bombs in his home and tested those bombs twelve to twenty times in his back yard and in the woods nearby.”

He is also accused of communicating with Khatiba al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, or KTJ — a global terrorist group that is affiliated with Al-Qaeda.

In detailing how far Abdul-Rahman was willing to go to achieve his goals, Listenbee said that he was ready to throw away everything in order to become a bomb-maker for KTJ.

“He was ready to leave his family, his friends, his school and his wrestling team. He had no intention of going to college in the United States,” said Listenbee.

He had obtained his passport, Listenbee said, and at the time of his arrest, he was found in possession of tactical gear, uniforms, radios, knives, and other military items that he intended to bring to Syria.

Also seized at that time, Listenbee said, were two phones, and on them, he claims officials discovered “frightening searches” including focused searches on the Philadelphia Pride March.

Listenbee said that these searches included the location and schedule of the parade, along with information about making “trashcan bombs” and the locations of trashcans along the route of the parade.

“He was at least considering targeting the LGBT community and the pride parade,” Listenbee said. “That did not happen, but, at least, it was important as far as we were concerned that we acknowledge that that was one of the intense searches that occurred.”

In an interview with law enforcement officials, Listenbee said Abdul-Rahman was upset about homosexuality and how it was “pressed upon children in the United States.”

Along with these searches, Listenbee said officials found searches for nuclear power station locations across the region, army-navy football games and the parade, along with details about Fort Bragg and the Pentagon, as well as 40 other military bases and entities.

Yesterday, Listenbee said a judge ruled that Abdul-Rahman would not be amenable to treatment in the juvenile justice system and he will instead be charged as an adult.

He has been in custody since his arrest last year and his bail has been set at $5 million.

Listenbee said that, at this time, no one else in the home Abdul-Rahman lived in with his family, are alleged to have been a part of — and were likely not aware of — the alleged activities that led to these charges.

He has been charged with weapons of mass destruction, criminal conspiracy, arson and related offenses.

Officials said Abdul-Rahman has not entered a plea.

NBC10 reached out to his family to see if he had an attorney but was unable to reach them for comment.

This is a breaking news story. it will be updated as new information becomes available.

What the 20-year-old sold her instead were counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid that can be lethal in a dose as small as 2 milligrams. Hours later, Alexandra Capelouto, also 20, was dead in her Temecula, California, home.

It is an increasingly common scenario as fentanyl overdoses have become a leading cause of death for minors in the last five years, with more than 74,000 people dying in the U.S. from a synthetic opioid in 2023, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McDowell has been behind bars since 2022 with a fentanyl possession conviction. But the Capeloutos have now won an additional $5.8 million judgment against him for the death of their daughter.

“We’ve won the battle but not the war,” said Matt Capelouto, Alexandra’s father. “We still have a long ways to go in terms of holding drug dealers accountable for deaths.”

Baruch Cohen, the Capeloutos’ lawyer, said this was the first time a drug dealer has been held liable civilly for someone’s death, to his knowledge.

“Here’s the hope that this judgment will be the shot that’s heard around the world, so to speak,” Cohen said. “Because if it inhibits another drug deal from going down, where the drug dealer … realizes that besides the jail sentence, he is a liable for millions of dollars of damages, maybe he’ll think twice.”

McDowell, now 25, first pleaded guilty in California federal court in 2022 for possession with intent to distribute fentanyl, a charge that carries a 20-year minimum sentence if linked to death or serious injury and convicted by a jury. McDowell was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Alexandra’s father, Matt Capelouto, felt that wasn’t enough. He and his wife, who was also diagnosed with stage four breast cancer that year and has been battling it since, decided to sue McDowell for wrongful death.

“For taking somebody’s life, that was not a fair sentence,” he said. “I was going to pursue every means possible to make sure justice was served.”

While McDowell filed for bankruptcy, the Capeloutos won a judgment of about $5 million against him. The Superior Court of Riverside County found he sold harmful narcotics with “willful and malicious” intent that lead to Alexandra Capelouto’s death. A few months later, the Capeloutos filed another case in federal bankruptcy court to ensure that McDowell could not escape his debt under bankruptcy.

“Bankruptcy is designed for honest debtors, not crooked criminal debtors,” Cohen said. “This judgment will haunt him the rest of his life, and when he does make money, we’ll garnish it. When he does buy property, we’ll put a lien on it.”

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Judge Mark Houle ruled in the Capeloutos’ favor, ordering a $5.8 million judgement against Brandon McDowell that includes a year and half of interest in addition to the initial $5 million.

Since his daughter’s death, Matt Capelouto founded the non-profit Stop Drug Homicide to advocate for families and push for more legislation to hold drug dealers accountable. One is Alexandra’s Law, which would require a formal warning be given to anyone with a drug-related conviction to inform them of the dangers of dealing drugs and that they could be charged with murder if they distribute drugs that lead to someone’s death.

In California, it can be difficult for prosecutors to charge drug dealers with someone’s death because they must prove the dealer had knowledge that the drugs could cause death, Capelouto said. Having an admonishment on the record for dealers who have been convicted of a drug-related crime could be used as evidence in future cases if someone dies from the drugs they sold. Alexandra’s Law is included in Proposition 36, a tough-on-crime ballot measure that Californians will vote on in November.

Capelouto is also part of a group of 60 families suing Snapchat for its role in the distribution of deadly narcotics. Alexandra Capelouto and Brandon McDowell had communicated over Snapchat when she bought pills from him.

Justin McDowell, Brandon’s father, said it is unfair for his son to take all the blame. He said his son was struggling with drug abuse and had been in rehab, and he didn’t live with him at the time because he had younger children.

“My son is no drug dealer at all. They were both users. They both had an addiction,” he said. “He was a stupid 20-year-old kid.”

Justin McDowell said he felt like the Capeloutos were seeking revenge through their lawsuits, and he did not have the money and resources to fight on his son’s behalf in court. Brandon McDowell was being held at the federal prison in San Pedro during the lawsuit and did not have lawyers to defend himself in civil or bankruptcy court.

“I think that’s sad, that shouldn’t be allowed,” Justin McDowell said. “We’ll wait for him to get out of prison, give him a hug, and figure out how to deal with the situation … the kid’s never going to make $5.8 million in his life.”

Matt Capelouto said there was no evidence of his daughter having a drug addiction, and Brandon McDowell’s addiction does not absolve him of responsibility in her death.

“When you go from drug user to drug dealer, you cross a line from needing help to needing to be held accountable,” he said.

Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

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“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

The company plans to continue operating and will seek court approval for a sale, it said just before midnight on Tuesday.

The company is seeking bankruptcy protection amid growing struggles to revitalize its business. Tupperware sales growth improved during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but overall sales have been in steady decline since 2018 due to rising competition. And financial troubles have continued to pile up for the Orlando, Florida, company.

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Doubts around Tupperware’s future have floated around for some time. Last year, the company sought additional financing as it warned investors about its ability to stay in business and its risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.

Shares have fallen 75% this year and closed Tuesday at about 50 cents apiece.

Tupperware experienced explosive growth in the mid 20th century with the rise of Tupperware parties, first held in 1948. Tupperware parties gave many women a chance to run their own businesses out of their homes, selling the products within social circles.

The system worked so well Tupperware removed its products from stores three years later. Social changes, namely fewer dinners made from scratch and more nights spent dining out, took a toll Tupperware sales.

On Sept. 18, burger lovers will celebrate National Cheeseburger Day, and many restaurants are firing up the grill and giving customers some juicy deals to bite into. Ready to join in on the celebration? Here are a plethora of discounts and freebies to choose from.

Dog Haus 

Dog Haus will run a buy one, get one free cheeseburger offer for rewards members on Sept. 18. The offer is available in the chain’s app.

Eddie Merlot’s

On Sept. 18, Eddie Merlot’s customers can order Eddie’s Prime Cheeseburger for $15 between 4 — 6:30 p.m. Pricing and participation can vary based on location.

Farm Burger

Grass-fed burger chain Farm Burger is running a build-your-own cheeseburger deal starting at $5 on National Cheeseburger Day.

Farmer Boys

Farmer Boys customers can order the chain’s Big Cheese cheeseburger for just $4 on National Cheeseburger Day between 2 p.m. and close at participating locations while supplies last. The offer can’t be combined with other deals, is limited to two burgers per customer and is available in restaurant or in the drive-thru.

Very Important Farmer (VIF) loyalty members can also get an extra surprise when they scan their receipt.

Friendly’s

Friendly’s Fan Club members can save $2 on cheeseburgers between Sept. 18 — 20.

Hat Creek

Hat Creek customers who order the Little Hat Burger in the chain’s app will score the menu item for just $2 on Sept. 18.

Instacart

Instacart customers can get $10 off their $20 purchase from the National Cheeseburger Day product collection, which features meat, cheese, buns, condiments and more. The offer is valid at select retailers via Instacart. 

Krystal

Krystal is currently running a limited-time offer for 12 cheese Krystals for just $15.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s customers who order in the chain’s app can enjoy a 50-cent double cheeseburger on Sept. 18.

Omaha Steaks

Omaha Steaks is offering the following deals in honor of National Cheeseburger Day:

• Perfect Burger Pack for $99.99
• Custom Burger Experience With Free Brioche Buns for $129.99
• Deluxe Burger Experience for $131.46
• Butcher’s Burger Assortment for $188.46

Red Robin

Between Sept. 17 — 19, Red Robin customers can get a Gourmet Cheeseburger, bottomless side and drink for just $10 (regularly $14.99 or more) while dining in at participating restaurants.

Sonic

For a limited time, Sonic customers can order a quarter pound double cheeseburger for just $1.99.

Smashburger

Smashburger customers can score $5 Classic Singles on National Cheeseburger Day in store, online and in the restaurant’s app using the code CLASSIC24. The offer includes Classic Singles, Classic Single Turkey Burgers and Classic Single Black Bean Burgers.

Sullivan’s Steakhouse

Between 3 — 6 p.m. on Sept. 18, Sullivan’s Steakhouse customers can order the restaurant’s signature beef burger sliders for just $10. Pricing and participation can vary by location.

Wahlburgers

Wahlburgers adult burgers will be 50% off on Sept. 18 at participating locations. The offer is valid in-store and online, and excludes doubles, triples, sandwiches and Smahlburgers. It’s limited to one per customer and can’t be combined with other offers.

Wayback Burgers

Wayback Burgers is running a buy one, get one free deal on its classic burgers on Sept. 18.

Wendy’s

Between Sept. 18 — 22, Wendy’s customers can get a Jr. Bacon Cheeseburger for $0.1 with any purchase while placing an app order at participating restaurants.

Whataburger

On National Cheeseburger Day, Whataburger rewards members who place an app or online order for a patty melt, Sweet & Spicy Bacon Burger or a Whataburger with cheese will be entered for the chance to win free Whataburger for a year. Winners will receive their prize in the form of 52 coupons, which can be redeemed at participating locations.

White Castle

White Castle is running a buy one cheese slider, get one free deal on National Cheeseburger Day. To score the deal, simply use the code SAYCHEESE in the restaurant’s app.

In addition, customers can buy a sack of 10 cheese sliders for $7.99 ($8.99 in New York, New Jersey, Florida and Arizona) through November 10.

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

• The healthiest lunch for weight loss includes these 5 components, according to a dietitian
• Wendy’s is selling Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers for 1 cent for 5 days
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Police believe the pair, working with the help of a suspected lookout, cut into the roof of the one-story store with power tools before the drop-in captured on security video took place, according to an incident report about the Sept. 3 crime.

On Monday, the Atlanta Police Department, working with the nonprofit Crime Stoppers Greater Atlanta, distributed images of the two robbers to seek the public’s help identifying them, Officer A. Fix said by email. The images appear to be taken from the security video.

The department also released some of that morning’s video, captured from inside the store as its ceiling was breached and including the robbers’ exit. The strip mall-based location in southwest Atlanta is fortified with bank teller-style security barriers intended to thwart robberies.

According to the security video and the police report, the first of two people who ended up inside the store dropped in about 8:17 a.m., not long after it opened. Manager Teyoka Glenn was inside and appeared to be startled, according to the report and the video.

There was construction in the building, which prompted her to believe that noise the robbers made breaching the roof was normal, according to the report. When the person dropped down, Glenn told officers, she thought he may have been an injured worker, the report says.

But that first person grabbed her neck, guided her to the ground and yelled at her to stay down, according to the report. The second person dropped in, and a third, the alleged lookout, told the first via phone that a customer was entering the store, the report says.

They told Glenn to get the person to leave, which she did, according to the report. The two then had her guide them to a large safe, where video captures them peering inside.

The manager said they used a pink and black duffel bag to transport cash they grabbed from the safe, according to the report.

Glenn said the two took her to a bathroom, bound her with duct tape and searched for more cash, according to the report. It’s not clear whether they found more; the total haul was estimated at $150,000, the report says.

The two retrieved Glenn to ask for directions on getting out, and she told them about a backdoor, it says. They fled out the rear portal, and video captured a woman walking by just after the door was opened.

Police said the possible third person is seen on separate security video, captured by a device in the city’s Connect Atlanta network of police and volunteer cameras, carrying a cooler as he walked down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.

The manager was unharmed, police said.

In incident at 3:39 a.m. the same day, security video captured a man in a mask and a hoodie burglarizing a business after he breached it through the wall of a bathroom he was able to access, according to an Atlanta police statement.

The breach caused a water pipe to rupture, and an alarm sounded, police said. The burglary netted clothing and purses, they said.

Investigators were processing fingerprints found at the scene, according to the police statement.

Asked whether the two incidents could be related, Fix, the police spokesperson, said by email, “Because both of those investigations remain active and ongoing, we have no further information that is available.”

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The rate cut, the Fed’s first in more than four years, reflects its new focus on bolstering the job market, which has shown clear signs of slowing. Coming just weeks before the presidential election, the Fed’s move also has the potential to scramble the economic landscape just as Americans prepare to vote.

The central bank’s action lowered its key rate to roughly 4.8%, down from a two-decade high of 5.3%, where it had stood for 14 months as it struggled to curb the worst inflation streak in four decades. Inflation has tumbled from a peak of 9.1% in mid-2022 to a three-year low of 2.5% in August, not far above the Fed’s 2% target.

The Fed’s policymakers also signaled that they expect to cut their key rate by an additional half-point in their final two meetings this year, in November and December. And they envision four more rate cuts in 2025 and two in 2026.

In a statement and in a news conference with Chair Jerome Powell, the Fed came closer than it has before to declaring victory over inflation.

“We know it is time to recalibrate our (interest rate) policy to something that’s more appropriate given the progress on inflation,” Powell said. “We’re not saying, ‘mission accomplished’ … but I have to say, though, we’re encouraged by the progress that we have made.”

“The U.S. economy is in a good place,” he added, “and our decision today is designed to keep it there.”

Though the central bank now believes inflation is largely defeated, many Americans remain upset with still-high prices for groceries, gas, rent and other necessities. Former President Donald Trump blames the Biden-Harris administration for sparking an inflationary surge. Vice President Kamala Harris, in turn, has charged that Trump’s promise to slap tariffs on all imports would raise prices for consumers even further.

Rate cuts by the Fed should, over time, lead to lower borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans and credit cards, boosting Americans’ finances and supporting more spending and growth. Homeowners will be able to refinance mortgages at lower rates, saving on monthly payments, and even shift credit card debt to lower-cost personal loans or home equity lines. Businesses may also borrow and invest more. Average mortgage rates have already dropped to an 18-month low of 6.2%, according to Freddie Mac, spurring a jump in demand for refinancings.

In an updated set of projections, the Fed’s policymakers collectively envision a faster drop in inflation than they did three months ago but also higher unemployment. They foresee their preferred inflation gauge falling to 2.3% by year’s end, from its current 2.5%, and to 2.1% by the end of 2025. And they now expect the unemployment rate to rise further this year, to 4.4%, from 4.2% now, and to remain there by the end of 2025. That’s above their previous forecasts of 4% for the end of this year and 4.2% for 2025.

Powell was pressed at his news conference about whether the Fed’s decision to cut its key rate by an unusually large half-point is an acknowledgment that it waited too long to begin reducing borrowing rates.

“We don’t think we’re behind,” he replied. “We think this is timely. But I think you can take this as a sign of our commitment not to get behind. We’re not seeing rising (unemployment) claims, not seeing rising layoffs, not hearing from companies that that’s something that’s going to happen.”

He added: “There is thinking that the time to support the labor market is when it’s strong and not when you begin to see the layoffs. We don’t think we need to see further loosening in labor market conditions to get inflation down to 2%.”

The Fed’s next policy meeting is Nov. 6-7 — immediately after the presidential election. By cutting rates this week, soon before the election, the Fed is risking attacks from Trump, who has argued that lowering rates now amounts to political interference. Yet Politico has reported that even some key Senate Republicans who were interviewed expressed support for a Fed rate cut this week.

Powell pushed back Wednesday against any suggestion that the Fed shouldn't cut rates so close to an election.

“This is my fourth presidential election at the Fed," he said. "It’s always the same. We’re always going into this meeting in particular and asking, ‘What’s the right thing to do for the people we serve?’ We do that and we make a decision as a group and we announce it. That’s always what it is. Nothing else is discussed.”

The Fed's move Wednesday reverses the inflation-fighting effort it engineered by raising its key rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Wage growth has since slowed, removing a potential source of inflationary pressure. And oil and gas prices are falling, a sign that inflation should continue to cool in the months ahead. Consumers are also pushing back against high prices, forcing such companies as Target and McDonald’s to dangle deals and discounts.

The Fed’s decision drew the first dissent from a member of its governing board since 2005. Michelle Bowman, a board member who has expressed concern in the past that inflation had not been fully defeated, said she would have preferred a quarter-point rate cut.

But the Fed's policymakers as a whole recognize that after years of strong job growth, employers have slowed hiring, and the unemployment rate has risen nearly a full percentage point from its half-century low in April 2023 to a still-low 4.2%. Once unemployment rises that much, it tends to keep climbing.

At the same time, the officials and many economists have noted that the rise in unemployment this time largely reflects an influx of people seeking jobs — notably new immigrants and recent college graduates — rather than layoffs.

“The labor market is actually in solid condition," Powell said. "Our intention with our policy move today is to keep it there.”

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Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

Police received a call at around 8:20 p.m. ET from Allen Township, a small community in Michigan, after reports of a “car versus pedestrian crash.” Upon arrival, they found the body of the toddler lying on the road.

The child received potential life-saving treatments and was transported to Hillsdale Hospital, where she was later pronounced deceased, according to a police statement.

Preliminary investigations show that the toddler was put to bed by her parents and, somehow, she walked out of the house while the parents weren’t watching her.

Officials believe that a 38-year-old man struck the child. They said alcohol and drugs do not appear to be a factor in the crash and did not specify if the driver will face any charges.

The investigation is ongoing. If anyone has information on the crash, contact the MSP Jackson Post at 517-780-4580.

Kerr took the stage on the first night of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago, an arena he is familiar with from his time playing with the Bulls, and addressed a crowd of approximately 26,000-plus attendees and millions watching from home, endorsing current Vice President Kamala Harris for president in the 2024 election while channeling Steph Curry’s viral “night night” celebration in speaking out against former President Donald Trump.

The Warriors coach joined “The Dan Le Batard” show on Tuesday, where he was asked about the opportunity to speak at the convention and his nerves leading up to it.

“Yeah, that was an interesting experience,” Kerr said. “They asked me to do it a couple days before I went on and I really gave it a lot of thought because I knew I was going to take a lot of heat for it. But I wanted to make sure I got the right message across, what was most important to me. After thinking about it I realized ‘Hey, they asked me for a reason. They think it matters that I speak my mind.” And so I decided to do it and it was very nerve-wracking and I’m glad I did it. Met a lot of great people, there’s a lot of great energy in the building. It was a lot of fun to be a part of.”

Kerr received some criticism for his appearance but the feedback overall for his speech was positive as he aimed to convey a message of unity in a divided political climate.

“I got some emails. But generally speaking, the vast majority of people who contacted me were very supportive,” Kerr shared. “I wanted to make sure my message was one of unity, especially coming off the Olympic gold medal performance by the team in Paris.

“I just think the political rhetoric, really the national rhetoric on a lot of platforms is just so ugly these days and divisive and I just wanted to make sure my message was a reminder to people that when we come together in a lot of different ways we can accomplish a lot. I think it applies to sports, it applies to our country too and we need to come together.”

Despite playing in numerous NBA Finals games, including Game 6 of the 1997 series where he hit the game-winning shot to deliver the Bulls their second of three consecutive titles, Kerr felt out of place in a different kind of arena.

“I just felt like a fish out of water because it was such a different realm for me,” Kerr explained. “I’m used to game nerves and those actually feel good. Competing in sports is so much fun because you have to lay it on the line and you do everything you can to win but you kind of know you’re going to lose your fair share.

“There’s going to be nights where you lose sleep because of decisions you made, backfired, all that kind of stuff … but the political spectrum is different, the setting was different. Having teleprompters on either side of me, addressing the crowd, knowing there were millions of people watching on TV. It was definitely nerve-wracking.”

Kerr cherished the opportunity and appreciated the chance to convey his message to such a large audience but certainly is looking forward to returning to the arena he is far more comfortable in.

The Iran-backed militant group blamed Israel for the deadly explosions, which targeted an extraordinary breadth of people and showed signs of being a long-planned operation. How the attack was executed is largely uncertain and investigators have not immediately said how the pagers were detonated. The Israeli military has declined to comment.

Here’s what we know so far.

Why were pagers used in the attack?

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah previously warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track the group’s movements. As a result, the organization uses pagers to communicate.

A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the exploded devices were from a new brand the group had not used before. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press, did not identify the brand name or supplier.

Nicholas Reese, adjunct instructor at the Center for Global Affairs in New York University’s School of Professional Studies, explains smart phones carry a higher risk for intercepted communications in contrast to the more simple technology of pagers.

This type of attack will also force Hezbollah to change their communication strategies, said Reese, who previously worked as an intelligence officer, adding that survivors of Tuesday’s explosions are likely to throw away “not just their pagers, but their phones, and leaving their tablets or any other electronic devices.”

How could sabotage cause these pagers to explode?

With little disclosed from investigators so far, multiple theories have emerged Tuesday around how the attack might have been carried out. Several experts who spoke with The Associated Press suggest that the explosions were most likely the result of supply-chain interference.

Very small explosive devices may have been built into the pagers prior to their delivery to Hezbollah, and then all remotely triggered simultaneously, possibly with a radio signal.

By the time of the attack, “the battery was probably half-explosive and half-actual battery,” said Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec.

A former British Army bomb disposal officer explained that an explosive device has five main components: A container, a battery, a triggering device, a detonator and an explosive charge.

“A pager has three of those already,” explained the ex-officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he now works as a consultant with clients on the Middle East. “You would only need to add the detonator and the charge.”

After security camera footage appeared on social media Tuesday purporting to show one of the pagers explode on a man’s hip in a Lebanese market, two munitions experts also said that the blast appeared to be the result of a tiny explosive device.

“Looking at the video, the size of the detonation is similar to that caused by an electric detonator alone or one that incorporates an extremely small, high-explosive charge,” said Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordinance disposal expert.

This signals involvement of a state actor, Moorhouse said. He adds that Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, is the most obvious suspect to have the resources to carry out such an attack.

N.R. Jenzen-Jones, an expert in military arms who is director of the Australian-based Armament Research Services, agreed that the scale and sophistication of the attack “almost certainly points to a state actor,” and that Israel had been accused of carrying out such operations in the past. Last year, AP reported that Iran accused Israel of trying to sabotage its ballistic missile program through faulty foreign parts that could explode, damaging or destroying the weapons before they could be used.

How long was this operation?

It would take a long time to plan an attack of this scale. The exact specifics are still unknown, but experts who spoke with the AP shared estimates ranging anywhere between several months to two years.

The sophistication of the attack suggests that whoever is behind it has been collecting intelligence for a long time, Reese explained. An attack of this caliber requires building the relationships needed to gain physical access to the pagers before they were sold; developing the technology that would be embedded in the devices; and developing sources who can confirm that the targets were carrying the pagers.

And it’s likely the compromised pagers seemed normal to their users for some time before the attack. Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based veteran and a senior political risk analyst with over 37 years experience in the region, said he has had conversations with members of Hezbollah and survivors of Tuesday’s pager attack. He said the pagers were procured more than six months ago.

“The pagers functioned perfectly for six months,” Magnier said. What triggered the explosion, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices.

Based on his conversations with Hezbollah members, Magnier also said that many pagers didn’t go off, allowing the group to inspect them. They came to the conclusion that between 3 to 5 grams of a highly explosive material were concealed or embedded in the circuitry, he said.

What else could have happened?

Another possibility is that malware could have been inserted into the operating system of the pagers — somehow causing the device batteries to all overload at a specific time, causing them to burst into flame.

According to a Hezbollah official and Lebanese security officials, the pagers first heated up and then exploded in the pockets, or the hands, of those carrying them Tuesday afternoon.

These pagers run on lithium ion batteries, the Hezboolah official said, claiming the devices exploded as the result of being targeted from an Israeli “security operation,” without elaborating further.

When overheated, lithium ion batteries can smoke, melt and even catch on fire. Rechargeable lithium batteries are used in consumer products ranging from cellphones and laptops to electric cars. Lithium battery fires can burn up to 590 C (1,100 F).

Still, Moorhouse and others noted that images and video footage seen Tuesday more strongly resembled the detonation of small explosive charge, not an overheating battery.

“A lithium ion battery fire is one thing, but I’ve never seen one explode like that. It looks like a small explosive charge,” said Alex Plitsas, a weapons expert at the Atlantic Council.

Among those pointing to the likelihood of a supply chain attack is Jenzen-Jones, who adds that “such a large-scale operation also raises questions of targeting” — stressing the number of causalities and enormous impact reported so far.

“How can the party initiating the explosive be sure that a target’s child, for example, is not playing with the pager at the time it functions?” he said.

Eight Russian military planes and four navy vessels, including two submarines, have come close to Alaska in the past week as Russia and China conducted joint military drills. None of the planes breached U.S. airspace and a Pentagon spokesperson said Tuesday there was no cause for alarm.

“It’s not the first time that we’ve seen the Russians and the Chinese flying, you know, in the vicinity, and that’s something that we obviously closely monitor, and it’s also something that we’re prepared to respond to,” Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a news conference Tuesday.

As part of a “force projection operation” the Army on Sept. 12 sent the soldiers to Shemya Island, some 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage, where the U.S. Air Force maintains an air station that dates to World War II. The soldiers brought two High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, with them.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, also said the U.S. military deployed a guided missile destroyer and a Coast Guard vessel to the western region of Alaska as Russia and China began the “Ocean-24” military exercises in the Pacific and Arctic oceans Sept. 10.

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The North American Aerospace Defense Command said it detected and tracked Russian military planes operating off Alaska over a four-day span. There were two planes each on Sept. 11, Sept. 13, Sept. 14 and Sept. 15.

Sullivan called for a larger military presence in the Aleutians while advocating the U.S. respond with strength to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

“In the past two years, we’ve seen joint Russian-Chinese air and naval exercises off our shores and a Chinese spy balloon floating over our communities,” Sullivan said in a statement Tuesday. “These escalating incidents demonstrate the critical role the Arctic plays in great power competition between the U.S., Russia, and China.”

Sullivan said the U.S. Navy should reopen its shuttered base at Adak, located in the Aleutians. Naval Air Facility Adak was closed in 1997.

___

Associated Press writers Tara Copp and Lolita Baldor contributed from Washington, D.C.

“It would be an extreme strain on our resources. So it’d be fine with me if they decided not to make that visit,” Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said during a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday.

NBC News reported on Sunday that Trump planned to visit the city “soon,” according to a source familiar with the former president’s planning, after amplifying during a presidential debate a baseless claim that had circulated in right-wing spheres online for weeks, saying Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” and cats of local residents.

Officials in Springfield have said the allegations were meritless, with city police issuing a statement that said there were “no credible reports” of pets being harmed by Haitian immigrants.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, had also panned the claims as “garbage” and visited Springfield Tuesday as the city responds to dozens of bomb threats, deemed hoaxes that have led to temporary closures and evacuations of schools and city buildings.

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DeWine said that a campaign visit from a presidential candidate is “generally very, very welcomed,” but acknowledged that it would pose challenges.

“I have to state the reality though that resources are really, really stretched here,” DeWine said.

DeWine said he hasn’t spoken to Trump or Vance and hasn’t heard about the candidates potentially visiting Springfield.

A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.

Ohio Sen. JD Vance, the Republican vice presidential nominee who has also spread the false claims about pets in Springfield, told reporters on Tuesday that he hasn’t made plans to visit the city.

Asked on Tuesday whether he would be joining the former president on the trip or if he had his own travel plans, Vance said a trip had not been formalized, but safety would be a top concern.

“I haven’t made plans to go just in the last few days,” Vance said. “I know the president would like to go but also hasn’t made any explicit plans.”

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“It’s a crying shame. Literally,” Harris said in her most extensive remarks to date about her Republican opponent’s baseless claims.

“I know that people are deeply troubled by what is happening to that community in Springfield, Ohio, and it’s got to stop,” she said during a discussion hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists.

Follow live campaign coverage here

The city has been hit with dozens of bomb threats, some at elementary schools, after Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, promoted false rumors that immigrants were eating residents’ pet dogs and cats.

“I mean, my heart breaks for this community. You know there were children, elementary school children,” who had to be evacuated on what was supposed to be school picture day, Harris said.

 “A whole community put in fear,” she added.

During last week’s presidential debate, which was viewed by more than 67 million people, Trump said: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Harris said of Trump on Tuesday, “When you have that kind of microphone in front of you, you really ought to understand how much your words have meaning.”

“You say you care about law enforcement? Law enforcement resources being put into this because of these serious threats,” Harris said.

“The American people deserve and, I do believe, want better than this,” she added.

The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Harris’ remarks.

Vance, speaking at an event in Michigan, said he and Trump are not to blame for the threats to Springfield.

“The governor of Ohio came out yesterday and said every single one of those bomb threats was a hoax, and all of those bomb threats came from foreign countries. So the American media for three days has been lying and saying that Donald Trump and I are inciting bomb threats when, in reality, the American media has been laundering for this information. It is disgusting,” he said Tuesday.

In his statement Monday, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, said that “many of these threats are coming from overseas,” but he did not say all of them originated abroad. He also announced he was deploying dozens of state troopers to help sweep schools.

DeWine was in Springfield on Tuesday and visited elementary school students accompanied by a therapy dog.

In an interview with ABC News on Sunday, DeWine said the immigrants in Springfield are there legally, that there is no evidence that they have been eating pets and that the conspiracy theories were “garbage.”

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a Republican, told reporters Tuesday that school attendance is down and that “there’s a high level of fear in our community,” which has been plagued by threats to government offices, as well.

“We did not have threats seven days ago,” Rue said, referring to the Sept. 10 presidential debate, at which Trump amplified the baseless claims.

“We need those on the national stage to stop this and tell the truth,” he said.

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On Sept. 17, Taco Bell and the team at National Day Calendar announced their joint decision to move National Taco Day from Oct. 4 to the first Tuesday in October … annually.

Before the shift, the holiday only fell on a Tuesday roughly once every five or six years, a representative from Taco Bell tells TODAY.com. And that seemed anything but festive.

Even fans on social media have complained about the clear oversight.

“To right this wrong, Taco Bell has worked tirelessly with the powers that be, in this case National Day Calendar, to move the National Taco Day recognition to fall solely on Tuesdays henceforth,” the chain said in a press release.

In honor of the occasion, the fast-food giant is dropping deals each Tuesday throughout October. Representatives from Taco Bell say fans can stay up to date on the drops by signing up for the chain’s rewards program and keeping a close eye on its social media pages.

According to journalist Gustavo Arellano, National Taco Day has a much richer history than just showing up one day among other deal- and discount-centric food holidays.

The columnist and author of “Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America” traced the day back to San Antonio, Texas, in the 1960s. While the initial celebratory season was reportedly in early May, fans saw it shift into October in the late 2000s, the chain wrote in a press release.

This is just the latest update in Taco Bell’s crusade to spread the tastiness of Taco Tuesday.

On Oct. 24, 2023, the day-of-the-week phrase officially became free to use after the chain had worked to petition the reversal of trademarks held by two restaurants — the trademarks made its use a violation for participants across all 50 states.

“When we set out to free Taco Tuesday, we did it for all who make, sell, eat and celebrate tacos,” Taco Bell’s then-incoming CEO, Sean Tresvant, said in a press release at the time.

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

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The new laws come as California legislators ramped up efforts this year to regulate the marquee industry that is increasingly affecting the daily lives of Americans but has had little to no oversight in the United States.

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The laws also reflect the priorities of the Democratic governor who’s walking a tightrope between protecting the public and workers against potential AI risks and nurturing the rapidly evolving homegrown industry.

“We continue to wade through uncharted territory when it comes to how AI and digital media is transforming the entertainment industry, but our North Star has always been to protect workers,” Newsom said in a statement. “This legislation ensures the industry can continue thriving while strengthening protections for workers and how their likeness can or cannot be used.”

Inspired by the Hollywood actors’ strike last year over low wages and concerns that studios would use AI technology to replace workers, a new California law will allow performers to back out of existing contracts if vague language might allow studios to freely use AI to digitally clone their voices and likeness. The law is set to take effect in 2025 and has the support of the California Labor Federation and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or SAG-AFTRA.

A big step forward for protecting workers in the evolving AI space!@SAGAFTRA President @FranDrescher joins Gov. @GavinNewsom to celebrate two new laws ensuring performers' legal rights when negotiating digital replicas & setting rules for recreating performers who've passed. pic.twitter.com/WyrqyJGvzB

— California Governor (@CAgovernor) September 17, 2024

Another law signed by Newsom, also supported by SAG-AFTRA, prevents dead performers from being digitally cloned for commercial purposes without the permission of their estates. Supporters said the law is crucial to curb the practice, citing the case of a media company that produced a fake, AI-generated hourlong comedy special to recreate the late comedian George Carlin’s style and material without his estate’s consent.

“It is a momentous day for SAG-AFTRA members and everyone else because the AI protections we fought so hard for last year are now expanded upon by California law thanks to the legislature and Governor Gavin Newsom,” SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher said in a statement. “They say as California goes, so goes the nation!”

California is among the first states in the nation to establish performer protection against AI. Tennessee, long known as the birthplace of country music and the launchpad for musical legends, led the country by enacting a law protecting musicians and artists in March.

Supporters of the new laws said they will help encourage responsible AI use without stifling innovation. Opponents, including the California Chamber of Commerce, said the new laws are likely unenforceable and could lead to lengthy legal battles in the future.

The two new laws are among a slew of measures passed by lawmakers this year in an attempt to reign in the AI industry. Newsom signaled in July that he will sign a proposal to crack down on election deepfakes but has not weighed in other legislation, including one that would establish first-in-the-nation safety measures for large AI models.

The governor has until Sept. 30 to sign the proposals, veto them or let them become law without his signature.

Robert Cole Parmalee, 40, posted statements on TikTok and sent emails to University of Connecticut officials that showed an infatuation with Bueckers and included threats, police said.

Parmalee, whose last known addresses were in Grants Pass, Oregon, and Ritzville, Washington, was ordered detained on $100,000 bail Monday after being arraigned on the charges in the courthouse in Rockville, Connecticut. He was also ordered to stay away from a person named in court as “P.B.” and banned from the UConn campus in Storrs.

His public defender did not immediately return an email seeking comment Tuesday.

Parmalee was initially arrested on Aug. 27 while walking along a highway near Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. He told a state trooper that he had just flown in from the Pacific Northwest and was on his way to see Bueckers at UConn, the police reports said, adding he was found with a ring and lingerie.

The trooper took Parmalee into custody when he learned there was an arrest warrant out of Josephine County, Oregon, accusing Parmalee of setting a home on fire with roommates and pets inside, police said.

Parmalee had posted photos, videos and comments about Bueckers on TikTok and other social media platforms and had been emailing UConn officials since June with rambling comments including his desire to marry Bueckers, police said. The postings and emails initially did not warrant criminal charges, but his comments became alarming over time, the reports said.

An arrest warrant affidavit redacts the name of the UConn student at whom Parmalee’s posts were directed and names her only as “V1,” but says Parmalee posted on social media about his desire to marry V1.

“Parmalee has shown a continual, escalating behavior and directed effort to make electronic postings about V1 and threats against those close with V1 which has caused emotional distress over the past two weeks for V1,” a UConn police officer wrote in the affidavit dated Friday.

V1 told police that she discovered that Parmalee had been sending various videos to her Instagram direct messages since February, but they were not threatening. She said she did not respond to the messages. She said she became concerned for the safety of herself, her family and her teammates after learning of Parmalee’s arrest near the airport.

In a TikTok posting reviewed by The Associated Press, Parmalee referred to a photo of Bueckers and an unnamed man, writing, “This is worth it for this guy, huh? … this is just one guy, I’ll sacrifice him, no problems, no questions asked.” The police reports mention that post and refer to V1.

In another post, he talked about bringing V1 flowers and finding her mother’s home, police said. He also wrote in a different post that if he cannot live with the woman of his choosing — referring to V1 — then, “I will choose to die, and I will choose to take all of you that pose me, oppose us, to hell.” He also tells V1 that “if you allow them to touch you, you allow them to die,” according to the police reports.

In a TikTok post before he arrived in Connecticut, Parmalee wrote, “I’m coming to UCONN Paige Madison Bueckers, I’ll be in Hartford tomorrow morning,” and included a photo of himself with airline tickets at an airport.

Parmalee was initially detained on the arson warrant out of Oregon before being charged with felony stalking and misdemeanor harassment and breach of peace by UConn police.

The police reports say Parmalee has a criminal history dating back to 2002 that includes arrests for misdemeanor sexual abuse, harassment, burglary, driving under the influence and possession of methamphetamine. Police officials in Oregon told Connecticut authorities they had no information related to mental health calls associated with Parmalee.

The tax preparation company came in No. 1 for employee wellbeing, according to the 2024 Work Wellbeing 100 from Indeed and the University of Oxford’s Wellbeing Research Centre.

The index ranks the top 100 publicly traded U.S. companies where employees reported high levels of happiness, purpose, satisfaction, and low stress when prompted to take a survey while leaving a review of their employer on Indeed. And those high marks could be driving better business performance.

Indeed’s ranking found that companies with higher work wellbeing scores also have higher valuations, returns on assets and profits. Collectively, the companies on the list outperform stock market indexes including the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite, according to the report.

The most prevalent industries on the list were retail, which appeared 23 times, and transportation, which was noted 14 times. 

“A lot of these companies tend to prioritize work flexibility,” says Kyle M.K., a talent strategy advisor at Indeed. Those policies allow employees to choose where, how and when they work, “giving them the option to go to doctor’s appointments or soccer games or work from home if that’s easier for them.”

At a time when large firms are changing their policies and pushing workers to come into the office as many as five days per week, the Indeed report suggests that companies refraining from stricter mandates are winning favor among recruits.

“Companies that provide choice are the ones that tend to have a much better reputation among their employees,” M.K. says.

Leading the pack, H&R Block operates a hybrid workplace, with 42% of corporate staff working remotely full-time, the company’s chief people officer told Human Resource Executive recently.

These are the top 20 employers on the list:

1. H&R Block
2. Delta Air Lines
3. L3Harris
4. Accenture
5. Nike
6. Tradesmen International
7. Disney Parks, Experiences and Products
8. Addus HomeCare
9. IBM
10. Amazon Flex
11. Apple
12. The Walt Disney Company
13. Wipro
14. Maximus
15. Vans
16. Cognizant Technology Solutions
17. Google
18. Dutch Bros Coffee
19. Microsoft
20. FedEx Freight

A majority of job seekers want to work for companies that care about their feelings at work, according to M.K., and Indeed’s list spotlights the firms they may want to consider prioritizing in their job search.

“While work wellbeing has faced challenges in recent years, it’s more important than ever for companies to create environments where employees can truly thrive,” LaFawn Davis, Indeed’s chief people and sustainability officer, said in a statement. “By prioritizing work wellbeing, companies cultivate a more resilient, effective and happier workforce which ultimately drives business growth.”

M.K. encourages job applicants to take stock of their values when making decisions about where they will work, adding that it will help them find companies that are aligned with their “intrinsic motivations” and where they can perform well.

“We believe that everyone has the right to thrive at work and deserve[s] a workplace that takes care of them,” he says.

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Coca-Cola just ordered another round in the booming canned cocktail market. It is going with another classic, launching a canned rum and coke in collaboration with Bacardi Limited.

The two brands on Tuesday announced plans to release the ready-to-drink cocktail in several international markets, starting with an initial launch in Mexico and select European markets in 2025. The company is also evaluating a U.S. launch of the drink for 2025, a spokesperson confirmed with CNBC.

The Coca-Cola Company‘s latest move reflects continued explosive growth in the canned cocktails market. Premixed cocktails were the fastest-growing spirit category in the U.S. in 2023, growing 26.7% to $2.8 billion in revenue, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S.‘ annual economic report.

Spirit sales in the U.S. have remained at the top of the alcoholic market, beating out wine and beer for the second straight year in 2023, according to the Spirits Council report. Vodka brought in the most revenue out of all spirits with about $7.2 billion.

The new drink is not Coke’s first entry into the premixed cocktail market. The company joined with beer giant Molson Coors to debut Topo Chico Hard Seltzer in 2021, and joined with Brown-Forman‘s Jack Daniels whiskey to can another popular bar drink, Jack and Coke. Those cans hit the U.S. market in 2023. Later that same year, Coca-Cola brand Sprite partnered with Pernod Ricard‘s Absolut Vodka for two versions of a premixed cocktail, one with Sprite and the other with Sprite Zero Sugar.

“We are continuing to develop our portfolio as a total beverage company, including in the growing alcohol ready-to-drink market,” said James Quincey, CEO of Coca-Cola, in a press release.

The entire ready-to-drink alcohol market is showing heady signs for the future. Hard seltzers, which often contain malt-based alcohol, showed signs of falling off in 2022 as category-wide sales lagged, leading Boston Beer to throw away excess supply of its hard seltzer brand Truly. But the U.S. hard seltzer market grew from $13.2 billion to $18.97 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow steadily into 2030, according to Grand View Research.

Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

This is one of them: Drinking several cups of caffeinated coffee or tea a day may protect against Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, NBC reports.

The findings, published Tuesday in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, add to existing research suggesting that daily coffee drinkers have better heart health than nondrinkers — provided they don’t drink too much caffeine.

“Caffeine intake at different doses could have different health effects,” the study’s co-lead author Chaofu Ke, an associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at Soochow University in China, wrote in an email. 

Ke and a group of researchers in China and Sweden analyzed the coffee and tea drinking habits of 188,000 people ages 37 to 73 from the U.K. Biobank, a large database that contains anonymous health information, who had completed questionnaires about their beverage intake over the past 24 hours. They also looked at responses from about 172,000 people who specified that they drank caffeinated coffee or tea. None of them had a history of cardiometabolic disease — defined by a diagnosis of at least two of the three conditions: Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease or stroke — when the study began. 

The researchers followed up with the participants after about 12 years.

Drinking two to three cups of coffee or up to three cups of tea a day was the sweet spot, the researchers found.  

People who consumed about 200 to 300 milligrams of caffeine daily had a lower risk of cardiometabolic disease, compared to people who drank less than 100 mg a day. Coffee drinkers, in particular, had the lowest risk — a nearly 50% reduction — while people who got the 200 to 300 milligrams of caffeine from tea or a mix of both beverages were about 40% less likely to develop cardiometabolic disease. For tea drinkers, cardiometabolic risk decreased the most for those who drank up to three cups daily, but the benefits tapered off after that. 

Even for people who consumed more than 400 mg of caffeine a day — just 4% of the study’s caffeine drinkers — the stimulant didn’t appear to have negative consequences for their cardiometabolic health. 

And among those who did eventually develop cardiometabolic disease, drinking moderate amounts of coffee every day was still associated with lower risk of developing another cardiometabolic disease. 

Moderate caffeine intake was also associated with certain metabolites — compounds produced when the body digests foods and drinks — that are linked to better heart health.

“Moderate caffeine intake may regulate levels of these metabolites,” Ke said. 

Dr. Luke Laffin, co-director of the Center for Blood Pressure Disorders at Cleveland Clinic, said that the findings need to be taken in context.

“It can give us an idea, but we can’t draw any conclusions,” said Laffin, who wasn’t involved with the research. “Everything in moderation is probably the best way to do it. If someone is having a couple cups of coffee a day, this suggests that dose might be protective.”

However, some types of heart disease can make caffeine intake more dangerous, he said. 

“Too many cups of coffee can raise blood pressure in someone who already has hypertension,” Laffin said. 

Studies have also shown a link between high caffeine intake and a greater risk of dementia and stroke. Other studies have shown positive links between caffeine and kidney health, Type 2 diabetes and heart failure. 

Dr. Stephen Kopecky, a preventative cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said that, in addition to a person’s underlying health issues, the way a person consumes caffeine likely makes a big difference in how it affects their health. 

“The message I don’t want to get out there is that caffeine is good, so let’s take more of it. We have never found that taking what is good in the diet and putting it in a pill is equally beneficial,” Kopecky said. 

An important caveat of the study is that it only included people who regularly drank coffee or green or black tea, all of which contain hundreds or thousands of chemical compounds, only one of them being caffeine. 

“It’s likely all of these components that have an impact, but they have to be together,” Kopecky said.

Although the researchers did adjust for some heart disease factors, such as smoking, obesity, exercise and diet, a lot remains unknown about what other habits they may have in addition to drinking caffeine, which could affect their risk. 

“It’s hard to do a study that controls for everything,” Laffin said, adding that a daily cup of coffee is just fine for most people. 

Kopecky agreed, adding that consuming caffeine in energy drinks, which often have added sugar, artificial sweeteners and other additives, or caffeine shots, is definitely something to avoid. 

And when it comes to tea and coffee, keep it simple. 

“People need to be scrupulous about what else is in their coffee aside from caffeine,” Laffin said. 

“If you are going to your favorite coffee shop and ordering a coffee with whipped cream and sugary syrup, you’re consuming a lot of calories, which can contribute to cardiometabolic disease.”

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

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Sean “Diddy” Combs pleaded not guilty in court Tuesday to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. An indictment says the music mogul “engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals.”

Combs was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex trafficking investigation raided his luxurious homes in Los Angeles and Miami. Read the indictment.

Over the past year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning that Combs, 54, would plead not guilty and that he would “fight like hell” to get his client released from custody.

Here is the latest:

Combs held without bail

After Combs pleaded not guilty to the three federal charges he faces, the judge denied him bail, ordering the entertainment star be sent to jail while awaiting trial.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky announced the decision Tuesday after hearing lengthy arguments from prosecutors and Combs’ lawyers. His attorneys proposed that he be released on a $50 million bond to home detention with electronic monitoring, but the judge sided with prosecutors who argued that Combs not only posed a safety risk to the community, but also that he was a flight risk because of his wealth.

Combs showed few expressions and little emotion during the plea hearing, appearing solemn in a black T-shirt, sweatpants and Air Jordan sneakers. At least three of his sons and eight family members were in the courtroom for the hearing.

Prosecutors argue in court that Combs should remain jailed

Federal prosecutors have asked that Combs be jailed without bail, while his attorneys have proposed he be released on a $50 million bond.

In court Tuesday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Johnson said the government is seeking Combs’ detention on “multiple bases,” including the severity of the charges against him and the potential punishment of life in prison. She argued that he is a flight risk and there is a risk of witness intimidation.

“Mr. Combs physically and sexually abused victims for decades,” Johnson said. “He used the vast resources of his company to facilitate his abuse and cover up his crimes. Simply put, he is a serial abuser and a serial obstructor.”

Combs enters a not guilty plea

Sean “Diddy” Combs has pleaded not guilty to federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges.

Combs stood up to enter his plea in a New York courtroom Tuesday. His hands were not cuffed but he held them behind his back.

An indictment unsealed Tuesday alleges Combs presided over a sordid empire of sexual crimes, coercing and abusing women for years while using blackmail and shocking acts of violence to keep his victims in line.

Comb’s attorneys request Diddy’s release on $50M bond

A motion for bail from Combs’ attorneys proposes he be released on a $50 million bond secured by his home in Miami.

The motion filed Tuesday also proposes his detention at home with GPS monitoring, with his travel restricted to federal districts in south Florida and southern New York.

The motion says Combs will turn over his passport and that he is attempting to sell his private jet. It says he has remained in the country even though there were no restrictions on his travel, and that his attorneys have kept authorities updated on his location.

It adds that “conditions at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn are not fit for pre-trial detention.”

Prosecutors describe Combs’ alleged violence, including kidnapping and arson

Prosecutors say Combs repeatedly engaged in violence towards his employees and others.

In a court filing Tuesday, prosecutors say Combs and an unidentified co-conspirator kidnapped someone at gunpoint a few days before Christmas in 2011 in order to facilitate a break-in at another person’s home. They say multiple witnesses, police reports and other records corroborate the incident.

The detention memo also says that two weeks later, Combs’ allies set fire to a vehicle by slicing open its convertible top and dropping a Molotov cocktail inside.

Prosecutors say police and fire department reports document the arson and that multiple witnesses heard Combs brag about his involvement.

Prosecutors say Combs is a flight risk

Prosecutors say Combs should be denied bail because he is a serious flight risk.

In a detention memo filed in court, prosecutors say Combs has “seemingly limitless resources” to flee, pointing out that his net worth is close to $1 billion, including over $1 million in personal cash on hand as of last December.

They said he has had a personal plane for international travel since 2019, along with multiple vehicles in multiple locations.

The letter says Combs “has the money, manpower, and tools” to flee without detection.

Prosecutors urge court to deny Combs bail

Prosecutors say the violence Combs exacted on his victims was so extreme that he should be denied bail.

In a detention letter written for the federal judge overseeing the music mogul’s case, prosecutors described how Combs would assault women, employees and others “by throwing objects at them, choking them, pushing them, kicking them, and slamming them against walls and on to the ground.”

The letter says the violence was sometimes spontaneous and sometimes premeditated, including “resorting to kidnapping and arson when the defendant’s power and control were threatened.”

Prosecutors say Combs’ “disposition to violence cannot be reasonably prevented through bail conditions.”

The letter also says Combs should be denied bail because he has already reached out to potential witnesses in the case and that further attempts at witness tampering are likely.

Prosecutor says Combs was enabled by staff in his alleged crimes

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams says Combs did not act alone.

During a news conference Tuesday, Williams said Combs’ security and household staff, as well as operators high up in the music industry were complicit. Williams says they cleaned up damaged hotel rooms and “delivered large quantities of cash to Combs to pay for the commercial sex workers.”

Williams says the investigation is ongoing, and is urging “anyone with information about this case to come forward and to do it quickly.”

US Attorney says he wants Diddy detained ahead of trial

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams, whose office is bringing the case against Sean “Diddy” Combs, says the music mogul led a criminal organization that carried out kidnapping, forced labor and sex trafficking, among other crimes.

Speaking at a news conference Tuesday, Williams said authorities will seek to have Combs detained while he awaits trial.

He spoke before a display board showing images of some of the items recovered in searches of Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami in March, including AR-15s and a drum magazine containing dozens of rounds of ammunition. He says agents also seized electronic devices that contain images and videos of sexual encounters.

Williams says: “Combs led and participated in a racketeering conspiracy that used the business empire he controlled to carry out criminal activity, including sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson, bribery, and the obstruction of justice.”

Combs’ lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, has said he will fight to keep his client free. He says Combs is innocent and will plead not guilty.

Cassie Ventura declines to comment on Combs’ indictment

Comb’s former longtime girlfriend, whom he was seen attacking in a March 2016 security video, has declined to comment on the federal case against him.

Douglas Wigdor, an attorney for the singer Cassie Ventura, said in a statement released before Combs was due to appear in court Tuesday that neither he nor his client have anything to say on the matter.

Wigdor says: “We appreciate your understanding and if that changes, we will certainly let you know.”

Ventura reached a settlement with Combs last November, one day after filing a lawsuit containing allegations of beatings and abuse by the music producer.

Combs’ Lawyer says Diddy is innocent

Outside the Manhattan courthouse early Tuesday, Combs’ lawyer, noted that his client came to New York City voluntarily because they knew the charges were coming.

Marc Agnifilo said: “Not a lot of defendants do that. He came to New York to, to basically engage the court system and start the case.”

Though the indictment was not unsealed at the time of his comments, Agnifilo said they know what the charges will be and that Combs is “innocent of these charges.” He vowed to “fight like hell” to get Combs released from federal custody.

Prosecutors say injuries of Combs’ victims sometimes took weeks to heal

The indictment alleges Combs hit, kicked and threw objects at victims, and sometimes dragged them by their hair, causing injuries that often took days or weeks to heal. It says Combs also threw people around, choked and shoved them.

Prosecutors say his employees and associates witnessed his violence and, rather than intervening, helped him cover it up, including by preventing victims from leaving, and locating and contacting victims who attempted to flee.

Authorities say Combs was the head of a criminal enterprise

The indictment describes Combs as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labor, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offenses, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice.

He’s accused of striking, punching and dragging women on numerous occasions, throwing objects and kicking them, and enlisting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all.

The bill includes a requirement that people registering to vote must provide proof of citizenship, which has become a leading election-year priority for Republicans raising the specter of noncitizens voting in the U.S., even though it’s already illegal to do so and research has shown that such voting is rare.

“I urge all of my colleagues to do what the overwhelming majority of the people of this country rightfully demand and deserve — prevent non-American citizens from voting in American elections,” Johnson said Tuesday.

Johnson told reporters he was not ready to discuss an alternative plan to keep the government funded other than what will come before the House on Wednesday.

“I’m not having any alternative conversations. That’s the play. It’s an important one. And I’m going to work around the clock to try and get it done,” Johnson said.

The legislation faces an uphill climb in the House and has no chance in the Senate. The vast majority of Democrats oppose it, and some Republicans do, too, but for different reasons.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the only way to prevent a government shutdown was for both sides to work together on an agreement. He said the House vote announced by Johnson was doomed to fail.

“The only thing that will accomplish is make clear that he’s running into a dead end,” Schumer said. “We must have a bipartisan plan instead.”

The legislation would fund agencies at current levels while lawmakers work out their differences on a full-year spending agreement.

Democrats, and some Republicans, are pushing for a short extension. A temporary fix would allow the current Congress to hammer out a final bill after the election and get it to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.

But Johnson and some of the more conservative members of his conference are pushing for a six-month extension in the hopes that Republican nominee Donald Trump will win the election and give them more leverage when crafting the full-year bill.

Schumer said a six-month measure would shortchange the Pentagon and other government agencies that need more certainty about funding levels.

“You simply cannot run the military with six-month stopgaps,” Schumer said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declined to weigh in on how long to extend funding. He said Schumer and Johnson, ultimately, will have to work out a final agreement that can pass both chambers.

“The one thing you cannot have is a government shutdown. It would be politically beyond stupid for us to do that right before the election because certainly we would get the blame,” McConnell said.

Johnson said last week that he was not giving up on his proposal just yet and would be working through the weekend to build support. He said ensuring that only U.S. citizens vote in federal elections is “the most pressing issue right now and we’re going to get this job done.”

On Sunday, he traveled to Florida to meet with Trump, who had earlier seemingly encouraged a government shutdown if Republicans “don’t get assurances on Election Security.” Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social that they should not go forward with a stopgap bill without such assurances.

The House approved a bill with the proof of citizenship mandate back in July. Some Republicans who view the issue as popular with their constituents have been pushing for another chance to show their support for the measure. Still, other Republicans are expected to vote no because they view the spending in the bill as excessive.

The lawsuit was filed on Monday in Los Angeles federal court by Tempo Music Investments, which says it owns a portion of the copyright to Mars’ song after acquiring co-writer Philip Lawrence’s music catalog. Mars is not named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Co-writers Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack are also named, and Sony Music Publishing, Apple, Target, Walmart, Amazon, Live Nation and other companies are accused for distributing the song.

According to the lawsuit obtained by NBC News, “‘Flowers’ duplicates numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements of ‘When I Was Your Man,’ including the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, certain bars of the chorus, certain theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions.”

The lawsuit also states that “the opening vocal line from the chorus of ‘Flowers’ begins and ends on the same chords as the opening vocal line in the verse of ‘When I Was Your Man.’ ”

Among other accusations are a comparison of lyrics of the two songs, which the lawsuit suggests are “no coincidence.”

“It is undeniable based on the combination and number of similarities between the two recordings that ‘Flowers’ would not exist without ‘When I Was Your Man,’” the lawsuit states.

Tempo Music Investments is seeking damages to be determined at trial or “the maximum of $150,000 per infringement,” a number that could be astronomical due to record-breaking number of streams. Its also demanding that the listed defendants stop reproducing, distributing or publicly performing “Flowers.”

Representatives for Cyrus and Mars did not immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

Released in 2023, “Flowers” was the breakout hit from Cyrus’ eighth studio album “Endless Summer.” It debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and spent eight non-consecutive weeks leading the charts and 57 weeks atop the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart. The song also broke a string of records on streaming services, including the Spotify record for reaching 1 billion streams faster than any other song in Spotify history. “Flowers” also holds the record for the most-streamed song in a single week.

Cyrus also won Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 2024 Grammy Awards for “Flowers.”

Read the lawsuit here:

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Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

Among those wounded was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon. The mysterious explosions came amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, which have exchanged fire across the Israel-Lebanon border since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas that sparked the war in Gaza.

The pagers that blew up had apparently been acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members in February to stop using cellphones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand, but declined to say how long they had been in use.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, as people shopped for groceries, sat in cafes or drove cars and motorcycles in the afternoon traffic, the pagers in their hands or pockets started heating up and then exploding — leaving blood-splattered scenes and panicking bystanders.

It appeared that many of those hit were members of Hezbollah, but it was not immediately clear if others also carried the pagers.

The blasts were mainly in areas where the group has a strong presence, particularly a southern Beirut suburb and in the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon, as well as in Damascus, according to Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

The Israeli military declined to comment. The explosions came hours after Israel’s internal security agency said it had foiled an attempt by Hezbollah to kill a former senior Israeli security official using a planted explosive device that could be remotely detonated.

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said the United States “was not aware of this incident in advance” and was not involved. “At this point, we’re gathering information,” he said.

Experts said the pager explosions pointed to a long-planned operation, possibly carried out by infiltrating the supply chain and rigging the devices with explosives before they were delivered to Lebanon.

Whatever the means, it targeted an extraordinary breadth of people with hundreds of small explosions — wherever the pager carrier happened to be — that left some maimed.

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One online video showed a man picking through produce at a grocery store when the bag he was carrying at his hip explodes, sending him sprawling to the ground and bystanders running.

At overwhelmed hospitals, wounded were rushed in on stretchers, some with missing hands, faces partly blown away or gaping holes at their hips and legs, according to AP photographers. On a main road in central Beirut, a car door was splattered with blood and the windshield cracked.

Lebanon’s health minister, Firas Abiad, told Qatar’s Al Jazeera network at least nine people were killed, including an 8-year-old girl, and some 2,750 were wounded — 200 of them critically — by the explosions. Most had injuries in the face, hand, or around the abdomen.

It appeared eight of the dead belonged to Hezbollah. The group issued a statement confirming at least two members were killed in the pager bombings. One of them was the son of a Hezbollah member in parliament, according to the Hezbollah official who spoke anonymously. The group later issued announcements that six other members were killed Tuesday, though it did not specify how.

“We hold the Israeli enemy fully responsible for this criminal aggression that also targeted civilians,” Hezbollah said, adding that Israel will “for sure get its just punishment.”

Iranian state-run IRNA news agency said that the country’s ambassador, Mojtaba Amani, was superficially wounded by an exploding pager and was being treated at a hospital.

Previously, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah had warned the group’s members not to carry cellphones, saying they could be used by Israel to track and target them.

Sean Moorhouse, a former British Army officer and explosive ordnance disposal expert, said videos of the blasts suggested a small explosive charge — as small as a pencil eraser — had been placed into the devices. They would have had to have been rigged prior to delivery, very likely by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, he said.

Elijah J. Magnier, a Brussels-based senior political risk analyst, said he spoke with Hezbollah members who had examined pagers that failed to explode. What triggered the blasts, he said, appeared to be an error message sent to all the devices that caused them to vibrate, forcing the user to click on the buttons to stop the vibration. The combination detonated a small amount of explosives hidden inside and ensured that the user was present when the blast went off, he said.

Israel has a long history of carrying out deadly operations well beyond its borders. This year, separate Israeli airstrikes in Beirut killed Saleh Arouri, a senior Hamas official, and a top Hezbollah commander. A mysterious explosion in Iran, also blamed on Israel, killed Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ supreme leader.

Israel has killed Hamas militants in the past with booby-trapped cellphones and it’s widely believed to have been behind the Stuxnet computer virus attack on Iran’s nuclear program in 2010.

The pager bombings also likely stoke Hezbollah’s worries about vulnerabilities in security and communications, as Israeli officials are threatening to escalate their monthslong conflict. The near daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah have killed hundreds in Lebanon and several dozen in Israel, and have displaced tens of thousands on both sides of the border.

Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert, the U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon, deplored the attack and warned that it marks “an extremely concerning escalation in what is an already unacceptably volatile context.”

On Tuesday, Israel said that halting Hezbollah’s attacks in the north to allow residents to return to their homes is now an official war goal. Israeli Defense Minister Gallant said this week the focus of the conflict is shifting from Gaza to Israel’s north and that time is running out for a diplomatic solution with Hezbollah, saying “the trajectory is clear.”

Renata Rojas is the latest person to testify who is connected to Titan owner OceanGate after an investigatory panel has listened to two days of testimony that raised questions about the company’s operations before the doomed mission. OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among five people who died when the submersible imploded en route to the site of the Titanic wreck in June 2023.

Earlier this month, the Coast Guard opened a public hearing that is part of a high-level investigation into the cause of the implosion. The public hearing began on Sept. 16 and some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.

During the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.

Atlantic Ocean Sep 17

A key employee says the Titan sub tragedy could have been prevented

Atlantic Ocean Sep 16

‘All good here' was 1 of the final texts sent from the doomed Titan submersible

“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”

Also expected to testify on Thursday is former OceanGate scientific director Steven Ross. The hearing is expected to run through Friday with more witnesses still to come.

Lochridge and other witnesses have painted a picture of a company led by people who were impatient to get the unconventionally designed craft into the water. The deadly accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.

Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.

OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.

During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about the Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if the Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.

One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual recreation presented earlier in the hearing.

When the submersible was reported missing, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Four days later, wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.

OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. The Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.