Children lost in flooding as US endures extreme weather, from smoke up north to heat in the West
WASHINGTON CROSSING, Pa. (AP) — Pennsylvania authorities drew on 100 people, drones and cadaver dogs Monday in their search for two missing children whose family's car was swept away in flash flooding that ravaged the East Coast over the weekend. Other parts of the country endured threateningly high temperatures and severe air pollution from Canadian wildfires.
In eastern Pennsylvania, authorities described Monday's search for missing Matilda Sheils, 2, and her 9-month-old brother Conrad Sheils as a “massive undertaking” along a creek that drains into the Delaware River. The children are members of a Charleston, South Carolina, family that was visiting relatives and friends when they got caught in a flash flood Saturday.
The children's father, Jim Sheils, grabbed their 4-year-old son, while the children's mother, Katie Seley, and a grandmother grabbed the other children, said Upper Makefield Township Fire Chief Tim Brewer. Sheils and his son made it to safety, but Seley and the grandmother were swept away.
The grandmother survived, but Seley, 32, was among five killed by the floods.
“A wall of water came to them; they did not go into the water,” Brewer said of the Sheils family.
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Phoenix's long simmering heat poised to break records for relentless high temperatures
PHOENIX (AP) — A relentless streak of temperatures hitting 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 C) or more in Phoenix is poised to smash a record for major U.S. cities, showing that Earth's ongoing summer swelter is as persistent as it is hot. The stretch of dangerous heat tied the record Monday and is set to reach 19 days on Tuesday.
Nighttime has offered little relief from the brutal temperatures. Phoenix's low of 95 F (35 C) on Monday was its highest overnight low ever, smashing the previous record of 93 F (33.8 C) set in 2009. It was the eighth straight day of temperatures not falling below 90 F (32.2 C), another record.
It's “pretty miserable when you don’t have any recovery overnight," said National Weather Service meteorologist Matt Salerno.
The length of Phoenix's heat wave is notable even during a summer in which much of the southern United States and the world as a whole has been cooking in record temperatures, something scientists say is stoked by climate change.
What's going on in city at the heart of a region known as the Valley of the Sun is far worse than a short spike in the thermometer, experts said, and it poses a health danger to many.
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Actors and writers on strike are united and determined in the face of a long summer standoff
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Solidarity and stamina were picket-line themes Monday as striking screenwriters and actors in New York and Los Angeles braced for a long, hot summer standoff with studios.
Picketers emphasized unity between writers, who have been on the lines for more than two months, and performers, who are only on Day 2 of striking — as well as camaraderie between highly paid actors and those with spare screen credits who struggle to scrape by.
Kevin Bacon, who was among the famous faces picketing among unknowns outside Viacom headquarters in New York, said his presence was about “seeing people out here and being aware that not all actors are super high paid actors, that they are working class people who are trying to make a living.”
One such working actor, Whitney Morgan Cox, who has appeared on the CBS series “Criminal Minds,” said it was “powerful” to see writers and actors come together who don't often work simultaneously in production.
“I don’t think people necessarily realize the energy that writers and actors have,” Cox said outside Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, “and the stamina, and our ability to commit, that’s all our entire job is about is just committing to something and following through. So it’s been a really beautiful sense of community.”
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Spotlight on judge in Trump documents case intensifies following controversial earlier ruling
MIAMI (AP) — A month after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents, the judge presiding over the case is set to take on a more visible role as she weighs competing requests on a trial date and hears arguments this week on a procedural, but potentially crucial, area of the law.
A pretrial conference Tuesday to discuss procedures for handling classified information will represent the first courtroom arguments in the case before U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon since Trump was indicted five weeks ago. The arguments could provide insight into how Cannon intends to preside over the case while she also confronts the unresolved question of how to schedule Trump's trial as he campaigns for president.
Those issues would be closely watched in any trial involving a former president. But Cannon could face additional scrutiny in light of a much-dissected ruling she issued last year that granted the Trump team’s request for a special master to conduct an independent review of the reams of classified records removed by the FBI from his Mar-a-Lago estate. A three-judge federal appeals panel reversed her order, rebuking Cannon for a ruling it said she lacked the legal authority to make in the first place.
Cannon's ruling, in a lawsuit Trump brought against the Justice Department, elicited criticism from legal experts who saw her as overly preferential to the former president. It also focused public attention on her limited experience as a judge, particularly in hugely sensitive national security matters, given that she was appointed to the bench just three years ago by Trump.
Still, some Florida lawyers say there's no doubt, as the judge now assigned to Trump's criminal case, that she's mindful of the stakes of the most politically explosive federal prosecution in recent memory.
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Turning Point Action's student activists were torn between Trump and DeSantis last year. Not anymore
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — When student activists assembled in Florida last year for Turning Point Action’s annual summit, many were torn, wrestling with whether former President Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the Republican Party’s best hope for 2024.
One year later, there is no more doubt. Attendees at this year's meeting booed at even the suggestion of a contested GOP primary. Trump, they overwhelmingly said, is their pick.
“Trump, for sure. I don’t think anyone else really has a chance,” said Sky Sanchez, 21, a student from Durham, North Carolina, who was volunteering at the conference with the Tea Party Patriots.
Soren Nielsen, 18, who lives near Ann Arbor, Michigan, said he had been seriously considering DeSantis earlier this year, worried that Trump had lost momentum, particularly after a weaker-than-expected Republican showing in last year’s midterm elections.
But those views changed as he watched Trump reenergize his campaign and saw DeSantis falter.
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Why allowing Ukraine to ship grain during Russia's war matters to the world
LONDON (AP) — Russia has suspended a wartime deal designed to move grain from Ukraine to parts of the world where millions are going hungry.
The Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered by the U.N. and Turkey, has allowed 32.9 million metric tons (36.2 million tons) of food to be exported from Ukraine since August, more than half to developing countries, according to the Joint Coordination Center in Istanbul.
Some analysts don't foresee a lasting rise in the cost of commodities like wheat because there’s enough grain in the world to go around. But many countries are already struggling with high local food prices, which are helping fuel hunger.
Here's a look at the crucial accord and what it means for the world:
Ukraine and Russia signed separate agreements in July 2022, one that reopened three of Ukraine's Black Sea ports that were blocked for months following Moscow's invasion. The other facilitated the movement of Russian food and fertilizer amid Western sanctions.
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Abortion in Iowa is legal again, for now, after a judge blocks new restrictions
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An Iowa judge on Monday temporarily blocked the state’s new ban on most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, just days after Gov. Kim Reynolds signed the measure into law.
That means abortion is once again legal in Iowa up to 20 weeks of pregnancy while the courts assess the new law’s constitutionality.
The new law prohibits almost all abortions once cardiac activity can be detected, which is usually around six weeks of pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant.
The Republican-controlled Legislature approved the measure in a rare, all-day special session last week, prompting a legal challenge by the ACLU of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic. Judge Joseph Seidlin held a hearing on the matter Friday, but said he would take the issue under advisement — just as Reynolds signed the bill into law about a mile away.
Abortion providers said they scrambled last week to fit in as many appointments as possible before the governor put pen to paper, preemptively making hundreds of calls to prepare patients for the uncertainty and keeping clinics open late.
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4 slain in Georgia mass shooting memorialized as neighbors gather for candlelight vigil
HAMPTON, Ga. (AP) — A few hundred people gathered Monday for a vigil to remember four victims of a mass shooting in an Atlanta suburb, singing “This Little Light of Mine” at the end as they lit candles in their honor.
Family members, friends and neighbors were still shaking off disbelief at the 10-minute span Saturday when Scott Leavitt, 67; his wife, Shirley Leavitt, 66; Steve Blizzard, 65; and Ronald Jeffers, 66, were shot and killed. Police and witnesses named 40-year-old Andre Longmore as the shooter.
“My parents loved each other," Scott Leavitt Jr. said after the vigil, a tear running down his cheek. “They always said neither one of them would be able to live without the other, so we've been able to find some comfort that they went together.”
Harold Blizzard said his older brother, Steve, was a lover of photography and adventure. The two had planned a trip along Route 66 in early July, but when Harold had to cancel to allow an amputated finger to heal, Steve told him they'd do it another time.
“It's the biggest regret of my life,” Harold Blizzard said after the vigil.
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Biden still concerned about judicial overhaul as he extends invite to meet with Israel's Netanyahu
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet with him in the U.S. this fall, the White House said, even as he expressed ongoing concern about Netanyahu's controversial plans to overhaul his country's judicial system.
Monday's phone conversation between the U.S. and Israeli leaders came one day before Israel's figurehead president Isaac Herzog is set to visit to the White House and as Netanyahu's government pushes forward with the judicial changes that have sparked widespread protest in Israel.
The Biden administration declined to say whether Biden would host Netanyahu at the White House — as the Israeli leader has hoped — or in New York on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly.
White House visits are typically standard protocol for Israeli prime ministers, and the delay in Netanyahu receiving one has become an issue in Israel, with opponents citing it as a reflection of deteriorating relations with the U.S.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden again on Monday expressed concern to Netanyahu over the judicial plan — as he did when they last spoke earlier this year — and urged the “broadest possible consensus” over the legislation that has been pushed by Netanyahu and his hard-line coalition.
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Arrest in Gilgo Beach killings isn't end of investigation, police say. Other deaths remain unsolved
MASSAPEQUA PARK, N.Y. (AP) — Detectives on Long Island are hunting for fresh clues about an architect arrested in connection with a string of slayings known as the Gilgo Beach killings. They’re combing through storage units linked to Rex Heuermann and using DNA evidence to see if he’s connected to other cold cases.
The ongoing work Monday marks an important new phase in a multi-agency investigation that — after years of dead ends and frustrations — led prosecutors to charge Heuermann with murder last Friday in the deaths of three of the 11 women whose remains were found buried along a remote beach highway in 2010 and 2011.
Heuermann, who has lived for decades across a bay from where the remains were found, is also considered the prime suspect in the killing of a fourth victim. He has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer said Heuermann denied committing the crimes.
Investigators have said it’s unlikely just one person killed all of the victims, and they insist the probe is far from over after the watershed moment of Heuermann's arrest.
Suffolk County Police Commissioner Rodney Harrison, who spearheaded the creation of an interagency task force last year to solve the Gilgo Beach killings, has vowed that authorities will “work tirelessly until we bring justice to all the families involved.”
The Associated Press
