Almost half of the tap water in the United States is contaminated with chemicals known as "forever chemicals," according to a new study from the U.S. Geological Survey.

Video above: What are harmful 'forever chemicals' and how can they make you sick

The number of people drinking contaminated water may be even higher than what the study found, however, because the researchers weren't able to test for all of these per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances, or PFAS, chemicals that are considered dangerous to human health.

PFAS are a family of ubiquitous synthetic chemicals that linger in the environment and the human body. PFAS exposure is linked to problems like cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, decreased fertility, liver damage and hormone suppression, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In June 2022, based on the latest science, the EPA issued health advisories that said the chemicals are much more hazardous to human health than scientists originally thought and are probably more dangerous even at levels thousands of times lower than previously believed.

There are more than 12,000 types of PFAS in total, according to the National Institutes of Health, but only 32 of the compounds can be picked up by lab tests developed by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Previously, there was limited information on exactly how much PFAS chemicals are in residential tap water, said the authors of the research, published Wednesday in the journal Environmental International. They added that this study is the most comprehensive to date that includes both private wells and public water sources.

The scientists collected water samples directly from taps at 716 locations – 269 from private wells and 447 from public sources – between 2016 and 2021. Based on their findings, they estimate that at least one PFAS chemical would be detected in 45% of U.S. drinking water samples.

Most of the contamination came from water sources near urban areas and in areas that generated PFAS, like manufacturing that uses the chemicals in its products or sites where waste was collected.

The highest concentrations of PFAS in drinking water were found in the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, the Eastern Seaboard and Central/Southern California, the study said.

Concentrations were similar between private wells and public supplies.

PFAS can be found in many places, studies show, so toxicologist Dr. Jamie DeWitt is not surprised that it is in so much drinking water.

"There's been almost no place scientists have looked where they have not found PFAS," said DeWitt, a professor of pharmacology and toxicology in the Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology at East Carolina University who was not involved in the new study.

PFAS are found in hundreds of household items. The chemicals are used to make carpets and clothes stain-resistant. They keep food from sticking to pans and food packaging, and they're good at keeping grease and water from soaking through. PFAS are in mobile phones, commercial airplanes and low-emission vehicles, in the foods you can buy at the farmers market or the grocery store, and in rainwater and dental floss. They're even in the dust that collects in your home.

A 2019 study suggested that PFAS chemicals could be found in 98% of the U.S. population. With that in mind, the new 45% number may sound low, but DeWitt said there could be a couple of factors at play. For one, a number of utilities have been making an effort to remove PFAS from the water. Homeowners could also have filters on their systems that make it so PFAS are not as easily detectable.

"I think that's still a pretty high number, considering," she said.

DeWitt said that it's important for people to know what’s in their drinking water but that they don't necessarily need to be scared.

"I don't think people should be afraid, but they should be aware and armed themselves with knowledge so that they can get information that will help them to make decisions," she said.

She recommended looking at your local utility website to get its most recent water report. Utilities will disclose what’s in the water and what they are doing to reduce contaminants.

A carbon filter can help, but it has to be changed regularly. If used too long, the filter can become saturated with chemicals and not work as well. Households can also use reverse osmosis filtering systems, but those can be expensive.

The EPA has proposed the first national drinking water standards for six PFAS chemicals. The proposed limits set the allowable levels for these chemicals so low that they could not be easily detected.

If the standards are finalized, water systems will have to determine whether levels of these PFAS pose a potential risk. They may also need to install treatment or take other actions, the EPA said, and may even need to switch to different water sources.

If PFAS is in 45% of U.S. water systems, the country will have a lot of work to do, said Dr. Graham Peaslee, a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and concurrent professor of chemistry and biochemistry who does PFAS research at the University of Notre Dame.

"I think that we should try our best to work on how to clean this up. My fear is that this is, global warming aside, this is probably the most expensive environmental problem we're ever going to face," said Peaslee, who was not involved in the new study. "There's nothing that will magically fix it. It's fairly expensive to clean this up. And it's a recurring cost, and there's no permanent solution to it for any particular utility. It looks frightening."

But the cleanup will have to be done, he said, because these chemicals carry real health consequences, and people can't exactly avoid drinking water.

"It's really insidious, this poison," Peaslee said. "We are going to have to get inventive on how to filter it out for all of our days."

WASHINGTON —

Seeking a valid U.S. passport for that 2023 trip? Buckle up, wishful traveler, for a very different journey before you step anywhere near an airport.

A much-feared backup of U.S passport applications has smashed into a wall of government bureaucracy as worldwide travel rebounds toward record pre-pandemic levels — with too few humans to handle the load. The result, say aspiring travelers in the U.S. and around the world, is a maddening pre-travel purgatory defined, at best, by costly uncertainty.

With family dreams and big money on the line, passport seekers describe the slow-motion agony of waiting, worrying, holding the line, refreshing the screen, complaining to Congress, paying extra fees and following incorrect directions. Some applicants are buying additional plane tickets to snag in-process passports where they sit — in other cities — in time to make the flights they booked in the first place.

So grim is the outlook that U.S. officials aren't even denying the problem or predicting when it will ease. They're blaming the epic wait times on lingering pandemic-related staffing shortages and a pause in online processing this year. That's left the passport agency flooded with a record-busting 500,000 applications a week. The deluge is on track to top last year's 22 million passports issued, the State Department says.

It was early March when Dallas-area florist Ginger Collier applied for four passports ahead of a family vacation at the end of June. The clerk, she said, estimated wait times at eight to 11 weeks. They'd have their passports a month before they needed them. "Plenty of time," Collier recalled thinking.

Then the State Department upped the wait time for a regular passport to as much as 13 weeks. "We'll still be okay," she thought.

At two weeks to travel, this was Collier's assessment: "I can't sleep." Failure to obtain the family's passports would mean losing $4,000, she said, as well as the chance to meet one of her sons in Italy after a study-abroad semester. "My nerves are shot, because I may not be able to get to him," she said. She calls the toll-free number every day, holds for as much as 90 minutes to be told — at best — that she might be able to get a required appointment at passport offices in other states.

"I can't afford four more plane tickets anywhere in the United States to get a passport when I applied in plenty of time," she said.

By March, concerned travelers began asking for answers and then demanding help, including from their representatives in the House and Senate, who widely reported at hearings this year that they were receiving more complaints from constituents on passport delays than any other issue.

The U.S. secretary of state had an answer, of a sort.

"With COVID, the bottom basically dropped out of the system," Antony Blinken told a House subcommittee on March 23. When demand for travel all but disappeared during the pandemic, he said, the government let contractors go and reassigned staff that had been dedicated to handling passports.

Around the same time, the government also halted an online renewal system "to make sure that we can fine-tune it and improve it," Blinken said. He said the department is hiring agents as quickly as possible, opening more appointments and trying to address the crisis in other ways.

Passport applicants lit up social media groups, toll-free numbers and lawmakers' phone lines with questions, appeals for advice and cries for help.

At U.S. consulates overseas, the quest for U.S. visas and passports isn't much brighter.

On a day in June, people in New Delhi could expect to wait 451 days for a visa interview, according to the website. Those in Sao Paulo could plan on waiting more than 600 days. Aspiring travelers in Mexico City were waiting about 750 days; in Bogota, Colombia, it was 801 days.

In Israel, the need is especially acute. More than 200,000 people with citizenship in both countries live in Israel. On July 2, the wait was down to 90 days, according to the web site.

Batsheva Gutterman started looking for appointments immediately after she had a baby in December, with an eye toward attending her sister's wedding in July, in Raleigh, N.C. Her quest for three passports stretched from January to June, days before travel. And it only resolved after Gutterman paid a small fee to join a WhatsApp group that alerted her to new appointments, which stay available for only a few seconds.

She ultimately got three appointments on three consecutive days — bureaucracy embodied.

"This makes me incredibly uneasy having a baby in Israel as an American citizen, knowing there is no way I can fly with that baby until we get lucky with an appointment," she said.

There appeared to be some progress. The wait for an appointment for renewal on June 8 stood at 360 days. By July 2, the wait was 90 days, according to the website.

Back in the U.S., Marni Larsen of Holladay, Utah, stood in line in Los Angeles, California, on June 14, in hopes of snagging her son's passport. That way, she hoped, the pair could meet the rest of their family, who had already left as scheduled for Europe, for a long-planned vacation.

She'd applied for her son's passport two months earlier and spent weeks checking for updates online or through a frustrating call system. As the mid-June vacation loomed, Larsen reached out to Sen. Mitt Romney's office, where one of four people he says is assigned full-time to passport issues was able to track down the document in New Orleans.

It was supposed to be shipped to Los Angeles, where she got an appointment to retrieve it. That meant Larsen had to buy new tickets for herself and her son to Los Angeles and reroute their trip from there to Rome. All on a bet that her son's passport was indeed shipped as promised.

"We are just waiting in this massive line of tons of people," Larsen said. "It's just been a nightmare."

They succeeded. And Ginger Collier? She found her happy ending. "I just got my passports!" she texted.

A seven-hour visit to the passport office in Dallas, plus a return the next day, produced the passports with four days to spare.

"What a ridiculous process," Collier said. Nevertheless, the reunion with her son in Italy was sweet. She texted last week: "It was the best hug ever!"

BALTIMORE —

As many as 30 people were shot in a mass shooting overnight in Baltimore, Maryland, police said.

Baltimore Police Department Acting Commissioner Rich Worley said officers received multiple calls just after 12:30 a.m. for a mass shooting in the Brooklyn neighborhood, where there was a block party underway.

Worley said officers found an 18-year-old woman dead at the scene. Nine others were taken to hospitals, and as many as 20 others arrived at hospitals across the region on their own.

A 20-year-old man also died, and three others were in critical condition.

Worley said a suspect is not in custody, but that investigators were reviewing video and talking to witnesses to try to identify a suspect. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott implored the public to provide information.

"This is an absolute tragedy that did not have to happen," Scott said. "Anyone that knows anything about what happened here, anything about this mass shooting, to come forward with any piece of information. Treat this as if it was your family and how you would want people to treat it as as if you were mourning, as if this were an event happening in your community."

Residents told our sister station WBAL TV there was a large gathering in the neighborhood before they heard what sounded like fireworks, which they later learned were gunshots.

No further information was immediately released.

This report will be updated.

Raw video below: Police news conference in its entirety

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PARIS —

Young rioters clashed with police into early Sunday and targeted a mayor's home with a burning car, injuring members of his family, as France saw a fifth night of unrest after the police killing of a teenager. Overall violence, however, appeared to lessen from previous nights.

Police made 719 arrests nationwide by early Sunday following a mass security deployment aimed at quelling France's worst social upheaval in years.

The crisis posed a new challenge to President Emmanuel Macron's leadership and exposed deep-seated discontent in low-income neighborhoods over discrimination and lack of opportunity.

The 17-year-old whose death Tuesday spawned the anger was laid to rest Saturday in a Muslim ceremony in Nanterre, a Paris suburb where emotions over his loss remain raw. He has been identified publicly only by his first name, Nahel.

As night fell Saturday, a small crowd gathered on the Champs-Elysees to protest his death and police violence but met hundreds of officers with batons and shields guarding the avenue and its boutiques. In a less chic Paris neighborhood, protesters set off firecrackers and lit barricades on fire as police shot back with tear gas and stun grenades.

A burning car hit the home of the mayor of the Paris suburb of l'Hay-les-Roses. Several schools, police stations, town halls and stores have been targeted by fires or vandalism in recent days but such a personal attack on a mayor's home is unusual.

Mayor Vincent Jeanbrun said his wife and one of his children were injured in the 1:30 a.m. attack while they were sleeping and he was in the town hall monitoring the violence.

Jeanbrun, of the conservative opposition Republicans party, said the attack represented a new stage of "horror and ignominy" in the unrest, and urged the government to impose a state of emergency.

Regional prosecutor Stephane Hardouin opened an investigation into attempted murder in the attack, telling French television that a preliminary investigation suggests the car was meant to ram the house and set it ablaze. He said a flame accelerant was found in a bottle in the car.

Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne went to l'Hay-les-Roses to meet Jeanbrun along with Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin and other officials, and promised that "we're going to do everything to bring order back as soon as possible."

Macron planned to hold a special security meeting Sunday evening with Borne, Darmanin and the justice minister.

Skirmishes erupted in the Mediterranean city of Marseille but appeared less intense than the night before, according to the Interior Ministry. A bolstered police contingent arrested 55 people there.

Nationwide arrests were lower than the night before. Darmanin attributed that to "the resolute action of security forces."

More than 3,000 people have been detained overall since Nahel's death. The mass police deployment has been welcomed by some frightened residents of targeted neighborhoods and shop owners whose stores have been ransacked — but it has further frustrated those who see police behavior as the core of France's current crisis.

The unrest took a toll on Macron's diplomatic standing. On Saturday, a day before he was scheduled to depart, he postponed what would have been the first state visit to Germany by a French president in 23 years.

Hundreds of police and firefighters have been injured in the violence, although authorities haven't said how many protesters have been hurt. In French Guiana, an overseas territory, a 54-year-old died after being hit by a stray bullet.

On Saturday, Justice Minister Eric Dupond-Moretti warned that young people who share calls for violence on Snapchat or other apps could face prosecution. Macron has blamed social media for fueling violence.

While concerts at the national stadium and smaller events around the country were canceled because of the violence and some neighborhoods suffered serious damage, life in other parts of France went on as usual.

Fans tuned into the start of the Tour de France cycling race in neighboring Spain; Marseille hosted a championship in pétanque — a game involving rolling metal balls as close as possible to a small wooden or plastic one; and families who could afford it headed for summer vacation.

In the capital, tourists thronged to the Eiffel Tower, where workers set up a nearby clock counting down to next year's Paris Olympics. A short walk from Nanterre, a shopping mall bustled Sunday with customers from all walks of life.

Hundreds of mourners stood on a road Saturday leading to a hilltop cemetery in Nanterre to pay tribute to Nahel as his white casket was carried from a mosque to his grave. His mother, dressed in white, walked inside the cemetery amid applause. Many of the men were young and Arab or Black, coming to mourn a boy who could have been them.

Nahel's mother told France 5 television that she was angry at the officer who shot her son at a traffic stop, but not at the police in general.

"He saw a little Arab-looking kid. He wanted to take his life," she said. Nahel's family has roots in Algeria.

Video of the killing showed two officers at the window of the car, one with his gun pointed at the driver. As the teenager pulled forward, the officer fired once through the windshield. The officer accused of killing Nahel was given a preliminary charge of voluntary homicide.

Thirteen people who didn't comply with traffic stops were fatally shot by French police last year, and three this year, prompting demands for more accountability. France also saw protests of police violence and racial injustice after George Floyd's killing by police in Minnesota.

The reaction to the killing was a potent reminder of the persistent poverty, discrimination and limited job prospects in neighborhoods around France where many trace their roots to former French colonies.

In 2005, France was shaken by weeks of riots prompted by the death of two teenagers who were electrocuted in a power substation in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois while fleeing police. Several buildings there were set on fire this week -- including the town hall, a high school, library and a supermarket.

"I feel hate toward the police officer who killed Nahel. He wanted to kill him," said 15-year-old Abdel Moucer, a Clichy resident. "In 2005 when Zyed and Bouna were killed, we had no video and no social media. Today we have all seen what happened.''

But Moucer lamented the recent violence and the damage it has wrought on disadvantaged towns like his.

"I feel sad, I don't know why they set the town hall on fire," he said.

At the foot of a bridge near the Eiffel Tower where generations of couples have attached padlocks to symbolize lasting love, a Senegalese man selling cheap locks and keys shook his head when asked if Nahel's killing and the ensuing violence would change anything.

"I doubt it," he said, giving only his first name, Demba, for fear of retaliation. "The discrimination is too profound."

With just five words, a recent tweet from Kraft Heinz sparked a bit of a debate about how you should store your ketchup.“FYI,” began the tweet from the United Kingdom-based branch of the food and beverage company. “Ketchup. Goes. In. The. Fridge!!!”Video above: Which condiments should be refrigerated?Kraft Heinz, whose ketchup is among its popular condiments, shared the heavily punctuated statement on Tuesday in a tweet that reached over 4 million people. A day later, the company asked the public via a Twitter poll whether they kept their ketchup chilled or in the pantry.“Where do you keep yours? It has to be … in the fridge!” the poll stated. The answer of “fridge” appeared to be the consensus, according to 63.2% of over 13,000 votes cast, the poll’s results showed. Meanwhile, 36.8% of respondents said they preferred their ketchup in the cupboard.Some Twitter users who voiced their distaste for cold ketchup pointed out that ketchup bottles are stored at room temperature on tables at restaurants. Other users didn’t understand the need for a debate, asserting that once the ketchup bottle is opened, it belongs in the refrigerator.In 2017, a Twitter user posed the same question to the United States branch of Heinz through the social media website.At the time, Heinz responded, “Because of its natural acidity, Heinz Ketchup is shelf-stable, but refrigerate after opening to maintain product quality."

WASHINGTON —

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the central bank may have to tighten its oversight of the American financial system in the wake of the failure of three large U.S. banks this spring.

Related video above: Analyst discusses what lies ahead in the market as fed pauses rate hikes

Powell said in prepared remarks delivered at a banking conference in Madrid that tougher regulations put in place after the 2007-2008 financial crisis have made large multinational banks much more resilient to widespread loan defaults, such as the bursting of the housing bubble that led to that crisis.

But the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and First Republic Bank exposed different vulnerabilities that the Fed will likely address through new proposals, Powell said.

He did not provide details, but other Fed officials have said banks should be required to hold more capital in reserve to guard against loan losses.

Such proposals are likely to face resistance from the banking industry and some congressional Republicans, who argue that the Fed had the necessary tools to prevent the bank collapses but failed to use them.

One reason regulators missed the threats to the three banks was "the natural human tendency to fight the last war," Powell said.

The 2008 financial crisis occurred because of widespread defaults after the housing bubble burst. But Silicon Valley Bank failed for different reasons: A rapid increase in interest rates sharply lowered the value of its bond holdings, because they paid out lower interest rates than newer bonds.

"These events suggest a need to strengthen our supervision and regulation of institutions of the size of SVB," Powell said. "I look forward to evaluating proposals for such changes and implementing them where appropriate."

In a question and answer session, he indicated that the rules needed to be updated to account for how quickly a bank run could happen.

"A bank run used to be people standing in line at an ATM," the Fed chief said. "That's very different from what we saw at Silicon Valley Bank," with depositors using smartphones to move money instantly.

Fed supervisors had spotted bank vulnerabilities, including exposure to rising rates, but were working within a system that moved too slowly to head off trouble, Powell said.

"The supervisors were on the right issues, but they were operating under a standard playbook where you escalate things fairly carefully, fairly slowly," he said.

An ongoing review of Fed supervision would "try to find ways to be more agile and, where appropriate, more forceful," Powell said.

Banks with $100 billion to $250 billion in assets — which included all three failed banks — were freed from some requirements in 2018 under legislation passed by Congress and rules issued by the Fed.

Last week, Powell faced significant pushback from Republicans during House and Senate hearings over the potential for tighter rules. Michael Barr, the Fed's top regulator, has said the central bank might require larger banks to hold more capital in reserve.

Yet GOP members of Congress charge that such requirements would limit banks' ability to lend and slow the economy.

Powell said during those hearings that a proposal might be issued next month. But he repeated Thursday that any new rules would require a public comment process and would be phased in over time, meaning they might not come into effect for several years.

"The bank runs and failures in 2023 ... were painful reminders that we cannot predict all of the stresses that will inevitably come with time and chance," Powell said. "We therefore must not grow complacent about the financial system's resilience."

___

AP Business Writer David McHugh contributed from Frankfurt, Germany.

The 2023 BET Awards celebrated 50 years of hip-hop with tributes to the genre’s earliest voices, late legends, and new talent during a performance-packed show that consistently felt like a party.Sunday's biggest surprise was a rare public performance by Quavo and Offset, the surviving members of Migos, who did a rendition of “Bad and Boujee” in front of an image of Takeoff, who died in a shooting last December. He was 28. Related video above: Celebrities pay tribute to Tina Turner“BET, do it for Take,” the duo shouted near the beginning of their set, as their backdrop switched from the image of a space shuttle to one of Takeoff pointing in the air.Throughout the show, whether it was Tupac, Warren G, Notorious B.I.G., Biz Markie or Pop Smoke, performers and emcee Kid Capri paid homage to late hip-hop stars, often by quickly highlighting a taste of their best-known hits. In a show where the awards are few and far between, Capri and BET kept the emphasis on the music.Busta Rhymes took home the Lifetime Achievement Award, handed to him by Swizz Beatz — one of the highest honors at the ceremony, given to Sean “Diddy” Combs at last year’s ceremony. The 12-time Grammy Award nominated rapper, producer, and pioneering hip-hop figure is widely regarded as one of the great MCs, with seven Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 hits to his name.Diddy, Janet Jackson, Chuck D, Missy Elliot, Pharrell Williams, and Mariah Carey recorded a video tribute to Rhymes.“Alright, Imma wear it on my sleeve. I do wanna cry,” Rhymes started his speech, as his eyes started to water. He talked about his six children, being kicked out from his hip-hop group Leaders of the New School, and learning how to rebuild by going into studios, sharing a cigar with whoever was in the studio, and “quickly whipping up a 16 bar verse. … By default, I pioneered the feature,” he said. “A lot of greatness from out people in our culture is by default. Because it’s just a magic we have.”An energetic tribute to Rhymes followed — the MC teamed up with Spliff Star for “Ante Up Remix”, “Scenario,” “Look At Me Now”, “I Know What You Want”, before a long list of A-listers jumped in: Scar Lip with “This Is New York”, Coi Leray with “Players,” BIA with “Beach Ball,” among them. Halfway through the performance, Rhymes shifted gears to celebrate dancehall alongside Dexta Daps “Shabba Madda Pot,” Spice, “So Mi Like It,” Skillibeng, “Whap Whap”, and CuttyRanks' “A Who Seh Me Dun (Wait Deh Man)."Elsewhere, too, old school hip-hop heroes and modern stars mixed it up onstage, performing tracks celebrating rap’s most influential cities and innovation. For Miami, Trick Daddy and Trina rocked through “Nann” and Uncle Luke took on “I Wanna Rock (Doo Doo Brown).” For Atlanta, Jeezy ripped through “They Know”, T.I. hit “24’s,” and Master P did “No Limit Soldiers” into “Make ‘Em Say Ugh.” And for hip-hop’s reggae influence, Jamaica’s Doug E. Fresh and Lil ’Vicious did an acapella version of “Freaks,” Mad Lion performed “Take It Easy,” and PATRA nailed “Romantic Call.Capri spun some of Tupac’s “Hail Marry” to tease a crash course on West Coast rap: Warren G’s “Regulate,” Yo-Yo’s “You Can’t Play With My Yo-Yo,” Tyga’s “Rack City”, and E-40’s “Tell Me When To Go.”An ode to trap started with Capri spinning the late Pop Smoke’s “Dior”, before Chief Keef nailed “Faneto” and Ying Yang Twins did “Wait (The Whisper Song.”)Audience members sang along (and a few hopped up on stage) while Capri and MC Lyte keep the hostless show moving. It was a mostly hiccup-free show — save for a brief moment of dead air, a hitch during Patti LaBelle's performing and the show running nearly four hours — particularly noteworthy for an event scheduled in the midst of the ongoing Hollywood writers' strike, addressed by singer Muni Long as she introduced Kalii and her TikTok hit, “Area Codes.”LaBelle honored the late Tina Turner with a performance of her hit “The Best,” telling the audience at one point she couldn’t see the words. “I’m trying, y’all!” she said before powering into the chorus.A masked Lil Uzi Vert opened the show at Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater before it jumped into a quick history lesson. Capri walked the audience through a medley of the earliest days of New York City ’80s rap culture featuring The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight,” MC LYTE’s “Cha Cha Cha”, D-NICE’s “Call ME D-Nice” and Big Daddy Kane’s “Raw,” into a partial cover of “Just A Friend,” an homage to the late great Biz Markie.“I would not be in this business on the stage tonight if it wasn’t for one person,” Big Daddy Kane said introducing the song. “Rest in peace.” He invited audience members to sing along to the song’s infectious chorus.The coveted best new artist award went to Coco Jones, in a category which featured only female performers. “For all of my black girls, we do have to fight a little harder to get what we deserve,” she said in her acceptance speech. “But don’t stop fighting even when it doesn’t make sense. And you’re not sure how you’re going to get out of those circumstances. Keep pushing because we are deserving of great things.”It was followed by a supermarket-themed performance of AP’s pick for club song of the summer, Latto’s “Put It On Da Floor Again,” sans featured artist Cardi B but no less catchy. It ended with a text tribute: “RIP Shawty Lo,” a screen read. Teyana “Spike Tey” Taylor won video director of the year, which was accepted by her mom Nikki Taylor – like a true matriarch, she interrupted the show to videocall her daughter and let her have the moment.The show did a somber turn for its in memoriam tribute to Black luminaries, including jazz legend Wayne Shorter, “The Wire” actor Lance Reddick, actor and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte, NBA star Bill Russell and Houston rapper Big Pokey, who died earlier this month. New York rapper Ice Spice ran through a few of her own hits, beginning with “Munch (Feelin’ U),” while being lowered on a basketball hoop to dance in front of a bodega for “Princess Diana” and “In Ha Mood."

Most children in the U.S. who die from an accidental shooting are playing around with guns at home or mistaking them for toys, according to a new study. The research suggests that over 90% of guns used in such shooting deaths were left unlocked and loaded.

Video above: Kids in the U.S. more likely to die by guns than anything else

The study, published Monday in the scientific journal Injury Epidemiology, looked at cases over a nearly a decade in which children under 15 accidentally killed themselves or another child with a gun. Most of the shootings happened at the victim’s home, where, in 8 out of 10 cases, the gun belonged to an older relative.

Over 40% of the time, these unintentional deaths happened among kids ages 2 to 4, the researchers found.

“It’s worth trying to figure out, ‘how do we encourage parents to embrace safe storage?’ ” said Dr. Nichole Michaels, senior author of the study and principal investigator in the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital. “Because that’s the way that we prevent these fatalities. These are preventable deaths: We can keep guns out of the hands of toddlers and older children.”

In the United States, guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And for every child who dies due to gun violence, more than two more are treated in an emergency room for a gun-related injury, costing the U.S. health care system $109 million each year for initial hospitalizations.

For the new study, scientists at the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio examined instances in which children and teens accidentally shot themselves or another child, resulting in a fatality.

They used the National Violent Death Reporting System, a database maintained by the CDC that tracks the circumstances surrounding violent deaths by compiling information from coroners’ reports, hospital records, death certificates and more.

“It is comprehensive to a level that just nothing else exists like it at all,” said Dr. Eric Fleegler, a professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Harvard Medical School who was not involved in the study. “It’s probably, to the best of my knowledge, the most comprehensive in-depth look at unintentional firearm fatalities among kids.”

Filtering through data from 2009 to 2018 across 33 states, the team counted 279 cases in which kids under 15 accidentally died due to firearm injury. Not included were scenarios where, according to researchers’ screening of the database, the shooter was over 15 or the shooting was driven by mental health struggles.

About 64% of the accidental gun deaths, the study found, happened at the victim’s home, where in most cases, the gun belonged to a relative or a parent. Playing with the firearm or mistaking it for a toy were the most common circumstances of death. The report found that guns were left loaded and unlocked in 92% of fatal shootings for which information about the firearm was available.

“People do not view guns as a safety risk,” Fleegler said. “They view guns frequently as the exact opposite: as a mechanism for protecting their family. The notion that guns protect us and they don’t, potentially, put us at risk is where the troubling thought process begins.”

‘Everything was a gun’

According to the study, most of those accidental gun deaths were self-inflicted. That was particularly true for kids under 5, who unintentionally shot themselves in 8 out of 10 cases.

“That is really an impactful finding, because what do we do to prevent these injuries?” Michaels said. “Nobody wants to see guns in the hands of toddlers.”

For older kids, ages 10 to 14, nearly a third of the shooters were friends of the victims. According to Michaels, injuries could occur if children mistakenly pulled the trigger, thought a gun was unloaded while hunting or other had another kind of fatal mishap.

For Dr. Chris Rees, a physician and professor of emergency medicine and pediatrics at Emory University, the findings confirm what he sees in the emergency room.

“I see children very, very often in the emergency department, even 2 or 3 years old, who present after having been involved in a firearm accident of some sort,” said Rees, who was not involved in the new research. “They come in shot in the foot, shot in the head, shot in the chest or shot anywhere because they don’t really understand what the firearm is and what it’s capable of doing.”

The study also found that over 92% of the shooters and 80% of the victims were males. Although the researchers aren’t sure what drives the gender gap in gun deaths, some experts attribute it to societal expectations and gender norms for men.

“When my oldest child was a little kid, everything was a gun,” Fleegler said. “A stick was a gun; a fork was a gun. It is a kind of a sociological phenomenon in our country … that boys tend to play with guns.”

‘It’s a team sport'

Experts recommend some key things families can do to avoid the risk of an accidental shooting.

Keeping firearms locked and in secure locations, out of the reach of kids, is a critical step that researchers agree could help stop young children from harming themselves or others. Simply hiding firearms rather than locking them, Michaels said, can be like hiding holiday gifts: Naturally curious kids end up finding them.

“It’s really up to parents to embrace this safe storage idea,” Michaels said. “We recommend removing firearms from the home, and if that isn’t an option, the firearms should be stored, unloaded, and locked away from the ammunition.”

Michaels and Rees also recommended open conversations with other families. If a child is going to play at another home, parents could ask the other family if they have firearms that are safely stored.

Physicians, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, believe that it’s the job of pediatricians to educate families about safe gun storage practices with youth around, just like “car seats and bicycle helmets,” according to Fleegler. In his experience, when he asked about gun safety in the home, most parents’ responses were the same: “I hadn’t thought about it.”

Due to an uptick in pediatric gun injuries, several hospital emergency rooms, including Fleegler’s, also provide free gun locks to patients’ families.

But experts agree that hospitals and doctors alone can’t take on the challenge of youth gun violence. Rees said schools, parents and politicians all have a role to play in promoting safe practices.

“I think it’s a team sport,” Rees said. “I think everybody is against people getting hurt and dying from firearms. It’s a public health crisis, and we need to approach it as such.”

Frito-Lay has issued a voluntary recall of Tostitos Avocado Salsa dip because it may contain an undeclared milk allergen, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Related video above: FDA recalls frozen fruits due to possible listeria

People with an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk could face “a serious or life-threatening allergic reaction” if they eat the dip, according to the FDA release.

The front of the salsa dip jar is correctly labeled, but the side that lists its nutritional information does not include the allergen on the label.

The recall affects the 15-ounce Tostitos Avocado Salsa that was sold nationwide in stores and online and that could have been purchased as early as April 5, 2023, according to the FDA.

No other Tostitos products were impacted by Frito-Lay’s recall.

“If consumers have an allergy or severe sensitivity to milk, they should not consume the product and discard it immediately,” the release stated.

Last month, Frito-Lay issued a dairy-related voluntary recall of some of its Lay’s Classic Potato Chips packages, according to the FDA.

The recall, which happened after a consumer complaint prompted an investigation, involved packaging that may have had undeclared milk ingredients from sour cream and onion chips, according to a news release.

When millionaire Steve Fossett's plane went missing over the Nevada range in 2007, the swashbuckling adventurer had already been the subject of two prior emergency rescue operations thousands of miles apart.

That prompted a prickly question: After a sweeping search for the wealthy risktaker ended, who should foot the bill?

Video above: What went wrong? Search for answers in Titanic sub implosion

In recent days, the massive hunt for a submersible vehicle lost during a North Atlantic descent to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has refocused attention on that conundrum. And with rescuers and the public fixated first on saving and then on mourning those aboard, it has again made for uneasy conversation.

"Five people have just lost their lives and to start talking about insurance, all the rescue efforts and the cost can seem pretty heartless — but the thing is, at the end of the day, there are costs," said Arun Upneja, dean of Boston University's School of Hospitality Administration and a researcher on tourism.

"There are many people who are going to say, 'Why should the society spend money on the rescue effort if (these people) are wealthy enough to be able to ... engage in these risky activities?'"

That question is gaining attention as very wealthy travelers in search of singular adventures spend big to scale peaks, sail across oceans and blast off for space.

The U.S. Coast Guard declined Friday to provide a cost estimate for its efforts to locate the Titan, the submersible investigators say imploded not far from the world's most famous shipwreck. The five people lost included a billionaire British businessman and a father and son from one of Pakistan's most prominent families. The operator charged passengers $250,000 each to participate in the voyage.

"We cannot attribute a monetary value to Search and Rescue cases, as the Coast Guard does not associate cost with saving a life," the agency said.

While the Coast Guard's cost for the mission is likely to run into the millions of dollars, it is generally prohibited by federal law from collecting reimbursement related to any search or rescue service, said Stephen Koerting, a U.S. attorney in Maine who specializes in maritime law.

But that does not resolve the larger issue of whether wealthy travelers or companies should bear responsibility to the public and governments for exposing themselves to such risk.

"This is one of the most difficult questions to attempt to find an answer for," said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, noting scrutiny of government-funded rescues dating back to British billionaire Richard Branson's hot air balloon exploits in the 1990s.

"This should never be solely about government spending, or perhaps not even primarily about government spending, but you can't help thinking about how the limited resources of rescuers can be utilized," Sepp said.

The demand for those resources was spotlighted in 1998 when Fossett's attempt to circle the globe in a hot air balloon ended with a plunge into the ocean 500 miles off Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force dispatched a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft to find him. A French military plane dropped a 15-man life raft to Fossett before he was picked up by a passing yacht.

Critics suggested Fossett should pay the bill. He rejected the idea.

Late that same year the US Coast Guard spent more than $130,000 to rescue Fossett and Branson after their hot air balloon dropped into the ocean off Hawaii. Branson said he would pay if the Coast Guard requested it, but the agency didn't ask.

Nine years later, after Fossett's plane vanished over Nevada during what should have been a short flight, the state National Guard launched a months-long search that turned up the wreckage of several other decades-old crashes without finding the millionaire.

The state said the mission had cost taxpayers $685,998, with $200,000 covered by a private contribution. But when the administration of Gov. Jim Gibbons announced that it would seek reimbursement for the rest, Fossett's widow balked, noting she had spent $1 million on her own private search.

Video below: Maryland man mourning after friend died on OceanGate submersible

"We believe the search conducted by the state of Nevada is an expense of government in the performance of government action," a lawyer wrote on behalf of the Fossett estate.

Risky adventurism is hardly unique to wealthy people.

The pandemic drove a surge in visits to places like national parks, adding to the popularity of climbing, hiking and other outdoor activities. Meanwhile, the spread of cell phones and services has left many feeling that if things go wrong, help is a call away.

Some places have laws commonly referred to as "stupid motorist laws," in which drivers are forced to foot the emergency response bill when they ignore barricades on submerged roads. Arizona has such a law, and Volusia County in Florida, home to Daytona, enacted similar legislation this week. The idea of a similar "stupid hiker law" is a regularly debated item in Arizona as well, with so many unprepared people needing to be rescued in stifling triple-digit heat.

Most officials and volunteers who run search efforts are opposed to charging for help, said Butch Farabee, a former ranger who participated in hundreds of rescue operations at the Grand Canyon and other national parks and has written several books on the subject.

Searchers are concerned that if they did charge to rescue people "they won't call for help as soon as they should and by the time they do it's too late," Farabee said.

The tradeoff is that some might take that vital aid for granted. Farabee recounts a call in the 1980s from a lawyer who underestimated the effort needed to hike out of the Grand Canyon. The man asked for a helicopter rescue, mentioning that he had an important meeting the following day. The ranger rejected that request.

But that is not an option when the lives of adventurers, some of them quite wealthy, are at extreme risk.

At Mount Everest, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in permit and expedition fees to climb. A handful of people die or go missing while hiking the mountain every year — prompting an emergency response from local officials.

While the government of Nepal requires that climbers have rescue insurance, the scope of rescue efforts can vary widely, with Upneja estimating that some could cost "multiple dozens of thousands of dollars."

Nepal's Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a message seeking comment.

On the high seas, wealthy yachtsmen seeking speed and distance records have also repeatedly required rescue when their voyages run astray.

When the yacht of Tony Bullimore, a British millionaire on a round-the-world journey, capsized 1,400 miles off the Australia Coast in 1997 it seemed he might be done for. Clinging to the inside of the hull, he ran out of fresh water and was almost out of air.

When a rescue ship arrived, he swam desperately toward the surface.

'I was starting to look back over my life and was thinking, 'Well, I've had a good life, I've done most of the things I had wanted to," Bullimore said afterward. "If I was picking words to describe it, it would be a miracle, an absolute miracle.'

Australian officials, whose forces rescued a French yachtsman the same week, were more measured in their assessment.

"We have an international legal obligation," Ian McLachlan, the defense minister said. "We have a moral obligation obviously to go and rescue people, whether in bushfires, cyclones or at sea."

Less was said, however, about the Australian government's request to restrict the routes of yacht races — in hopes of keeping sailors to areas where they might require less rescuing.

___

Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine contributed to this story.

A short-lived revolt by a rebellious Russian mercenary commander ended with his troops beating a retreat, but the extraordinary challenge to President Vladimir Putin's two-decade hold on power could have long-term consequences for his rule and his war in Ukraine.

Video above: Putin says 'inevitable punishment' for those who chose 'treachery'

Putin's image as a tough leader had already been badly bruised by the Ukraine war, which has dragged on for 16 months and claimed huge numbers of Russian troops. Saturday's march toward Moscow by forces under the command of his onetime protege, Yevgeny Prigozhin, exposed further weaknesses, analysts said.

It also meant some of the best forces fighting for Russia in Ukraine were pulled from that battlefield: Prigozhin's own Wagner troops and Chechen ones sent to stop them.

After calling for an armed rebellion aimed at ousting Russia's defense minister, Prigozhin and his fighters appeared to seize control of the Russian military headquarters in Rostov-on-Don that oversee fighting in Ukraine.

They then advanced towards Moscow largely unhindered. Russian media reported that they downed several helicopters and a military communications plane. The Defense Ministry has not commented.

They were halted only by a deal to send Prigozhin to neighboring Belarus, which has supported Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Charges against him of mounting an armed rebellion will be dropped, according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and Prigozhin ordered his troops back to their field camps.

The government also said it would not prosecute Wagner fighters who took part, while those who did not join in would be offered contracts by the Defense Ministry.

Video below: Yevgeny Prigozhin speaks from Russian military facility

Though Putin had vowed earlier to punish those behind the armed uprising, Peskov defended the reversal, saying Putin's "highest goal" was "to avoid bloodshed and internal confrontation with unpredictable results."

That amnesty stands in contrast to the fines and jail sentences Russian authorities have meted out to thousands of people who have criticized the war, even obliquely.

And while it ended the immediate crisis, it may have set in motion a longer-term one, analysts and observers said.

"For a dictatorship built on the idea of unchallenged power, this was an extreme humiliation, and it's hard to see the genie of doubt ever being forced back into the bottle," said Phillips O'Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. "So, if Prigozhin might have lost in the short term, Putin is likely to be the long-term loser."

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that the challenge to Putin came from within.

"I think we've seen more cracks emerge in the Russian façade," he told NBC's "Meet the Press." "We have all sorts of new questions that Putin is going to have to address in the weeks and months ahead."

Prigozhin, who sent out a series of audio and video updates during his revolt, has gone silent since the Kremlin announced the deal.

It's not clear if he's in Belarus yet or whether any of his Wagner troops would follow him.

In response to questions from The Associated Press, Prigozhin's press office replied that he could not reply immediately but "will answer the questions when he gets a normal connection."

Video taken by The Associated Press in Rostov-on-Don showed people cheering Wagner troops as they departed. Some ran to shake hands with Prigozhin, who was riding in an SUV.

The regional governor later said that all of the troops had left the city. Russian news agencies also reported that Lipetsk authorities confirmed Wagner forces had left that region, which sits on the road to Moscow from Rostov.

Moscow had braced for the arrival of the Wagner forces by erecting checkpoints with armored vehicles and troops on the city's southern edge. About 3,000 Chechen soldiers were pulled from fighting in Ukraine and rushed there early Saturday, state television in Chechnya reported. Russian troops armed with machine guns put up checkpoints on Moscow's southern outskirts. Crews dug up sections of highways to slow the march.

By Sunday afternoon, the troops had withdrawn from the capital, and people swarmed the streets and flocked to cafes. Traffic returned to normal and roadblocks and checkpoints were removed, but Red Square remained close to visitors. On highways leading to Moscow, crews repaired roads ripped up just hours earlier in panic.

Anchors on state-controlled television stations cast the deal ending the crisis as a show of Putin's wisdom and aired footage of Wagner troops retreating from Rostov-on-Don to the relief of local residents who feared a bloody battle for control of the city.

People there who were interviewed by Channel 1 hailed Putin's role.

But the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War warned that "the Kremlin now faces a deeply unstable equilibrium."

The "deal is a short-term fix, not a long-term solution," wrote the institute, which has tracked the war in Ukraine from the beginning.

Prigozhin had demanded the ouster of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whom Prigozhin has long criticized in withering terms for his conduct of the war in Ukraine.

The U.S. had intelligence that Prigozhin had been building up his forces near the border with Russia for some time. That conflicts with Prigozhin's claim that his rebellion was a response to an attack on his camps in Ukraine on Friday by the Russian military.

In announcing the rebellion, Prigozhin accused Russian forces of targeting the Wagner camps in Ukraine with rockets, helicopter gunships and artillery. He alleged that Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the General Staff, ordered the attacks following a meeting with Shoigu in which they decided to destroy the military contractor.

The Defense Ministry denied attacking the camps.

Congressional leaders were briefed on the Wagner buildup earlier last week, a person familiar with the matter said. The person was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. The U.S. intelligence briefing was first reported by CNN.

A possible motivation for Prigozhin's rebellion was the Russian Defense Ministry's demand, which Putin backed, that private companies sign contracts with it by July 1. Prigozhin had refused to do it.

Ukrainians hoped the Russian infighting would create opportunities for their army to take back territory seized by Russian forces.

"These events will have been of great comfort to the Ukrainian government and the military," said Ben Barry, senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Wagner troops have played a crucial role in the Ukraine war, capturing the eastern city of Bakhmut, an area where the bloodiest and longest battles have taken place.

The Kremlin's offer of amnesty to Prigozhin was negotiated by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, which might have raised his stature in his relationship with Putin.

The 62-year-old Prigozhin, a former convict, has longstanding ties to Putin and won lucrative Kremlin catering contracts that earned him the nickname "Putin's chef."

Wagner has sent military contractors to Libya, Syria and several African countries, as well as Ukraine.

___

Associated Press writers Danica Kirka in London, and Nomaan Merchant in Washington, contributed.

For the first time, U.S. regulators on Wednesday approved the sale of chicken made from animal cells, allowing two California companies to offer "lab-grown" meat to the nation's restaurant tables and eventually, supermarket shelves.

The Agriculture Department gave the green light to Upside Foods and Good Meat, firms that had been racing to be the first in the U.S. to sell meat that doesn't come from slaughtered animals — what's now being referred to as "cell-cultivated" or "cultured" meat as it emerges from the laboratory and arrives on dinner plates.

The move launches a new era of meat production aimed at eliminating harm to animals and drastically reducing the environmental impacts of grazing, growing feed for animals and animal waste.

"Instead of all of that land and all of that water that's used to feed all of these animals that are slaughtered, we can do it in a different way," said Josh Tetrick, co-founder and chief executive of Eat Just, which operates Good Meat.

Video below: A study offers a warning related to the production methods of lab-grown meat as it relates to the environment

The companies received approvals for federal inspections required to sell meat and poultry in the U.S. The action came months after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration deemed that products from both companies are safe to eat. A manufacturing company called Joinn Biologics, which works with Good Meat, was also cleared to make the products.

Cultivated meat is grown in steel tanks, using cells that come from a living animal, a fertilized egg or a special bank of stored cells. In Upside's case, it comes out in large sheets that are then formed into shapes like chicken cutlets and sausages. Good Meat, which already sells cultivated meat in Singapore, the first country to allow it, turns masses of chicken cells into cutlets, nuggets, shredded meat and satays.

But don't look for this novel meat in U.S. grocery stores anytime soon. Cultivated chicken is much more expensive than meat from whole, farmed birds and cannot yet be produced on the scale of traditional meat, said Ricardo San Martin, director of the Alt:Meat Lab at the University of California Berkeley.

The companies plan to serve the new food first in exclusive restaurants: Upside has partnered with a San Francisco restaurant called Bar Crenn, while Good Meat dishes will be served at a Washington, D.C., restaurant run by chef and owner Jose Andrés.

Company officials are quick to note the products are meat, not substitutes like the Impossible Burger or offerings from Beyond Meat, which are made from plant proteins and other ingredients.

Video below: Lab-grown meat could have a worse carbon footprint than animal agriculture, UC Davis study says

Globally, more than 150 companies are focusing on meat from cells, not only chicken but pork, lamb, fish and beef, which scientists say has the biggest impact on the environment.

Upside, based in Berkeley, operates a 70,000-square-foot building in nearby Emeryville. On a recent Tuesday, visitors entered a gleaming commercial kitchen where chef Jess Weaver was sauteeing a cultivated chicken filet in a white wine butter sauce with tomatoes, capers and green onions.

The finished chicken breast product was slightly paler than the grocery store version. Otherwise, it looked, cooked, smelled and tasted like any other pan-fried poultry.

"The most common response we get is, 'Oh, it tastes like chicken,'" said Amy Chen, Upside's chief operating officer.

Good Meat, based in Alameda, operates a 100,000-square-foot plant, where chef Zach Tyndall dished up a smoked chicken salad on a sunny June afternoon. He followed it with a chicken "thigh" served on a bed of potato puree with a mushroom-vegetable demi-glace and tiny purple cauliflower florets. The Good Meat chicken product will come pre-cooked, requiring only heating to use in a range of dishes.

Chen acknowledged that many consumers are skeptical, even squeamish, about the thought of eating chicken grown from cells.

"We call it the 'ick factor,'" she said.

The sentiment was echoed in a recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Half of U.S. adults said that they are unlikely to try meat grown using cells from animals. When asked to choose from a list of reasons for their reluctance, most who said they'd be unlikely to try it said "It just sounds weird." About half said they don't think it would be safe.

But once people understand how the meat is made, they're more accepting, Chen said. And once they taste it, they're usually sold.

"It is the meat that you've always known and loved," she said.

Cultivated meat begins with cells. Upside experts take cells from live animals, choosing those most likely to taste good and to reproduce quickly and consistently, forming high-quality meat, Chen said. Good Meat products are created from a master cell bank formed from a commercially available chicken cell line.

Once the cell lines are selected, they're combined with a broth-like mixture that includes the amino acids, fatty acids, sugars, salts, vitamins and other elements cells need to grow. Inside the tanks, called cultivators, the cells grow, proliferating quickly.\

Video below: A cultivated meat company recently used mammoth DNA to create a meatball, but it's not available for consumption

At Upside, muscle and connective tissue cells grow together, forming large sheets. After about three weeks, the sheets of poultry cells are removed from the tanks and formed into cutlets, sausages or other foods. Good Meat cells grow into large masses, which are shaped into a range of meat products.

Both firms emphasized that initial production will be limited. The Emeryville facility can produce up to 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products a year, though the goal is to expand to 400,000 pounds per year, Upside officials said. Good Meat officials wouldn't estimate a production goal.

By comparison, the U.S. produces about 50 billion pounds of chicken per year.

It could take a few years before consumers see the products in more restaurants and seven to 10 years before they hit the wider market, said Sebastian Bohn, who specializes in cell-based foods at CRB, a Missouri firm that designs and builds facilities for pharmaceutical, biotech and food companies.

Cost will be another sticking point. Neither Upside nor Good Meat officials would reveal the price of a single chicken cutlet, saying only that it's been reduced by orders of magnitude since the firms began offering demonstrations. Eventually, the price is expected to mirror high-end organic chicken, which sells for up to $20 per pound.

San Martin said he's concerned that cultivated meat may wind up being an alternative to traditional meat for rich people, but will do little for the environment if it remains a niche product.

"If some high-end or affluent people want to eat this instead of a chicken, it's good," he said. "Will that mean you will feed chicken to poor people? I honestly don't see it."

Tetrick said he shares critics' concerns about the challenges of producing an affordable, novel meat product for the world. But he emphasized that traditional meat production is so damaging to the planet that it requires an alternative — preferably one that doesn't require giving up meat altogether.

"I miss meat," said Tetrick, who grew up in Alabama eating chicken wings and barbecue. "There should be a different way that people can enjoy chicken and beef and pork with their families."

SEATTLE —

The company whose submersible vanished in the North Atlantic on a tourist dive to the wreck of the Titanic was repeatedly warned that there might be catastrophic safety problems posed by the way it was developed, documents show.

Related video above: Underwater noises detected in search for missing submersible

With five people aboard a vessel that if still functioning would have a dwindling amount of oxygen, an expanding international fleet of ships and airplanes is searching for the Titan, operated by OceanGate Expeditions. The undersea exploration company based in Everett, Washington, has been making yearly voyages to the Titanic since 2021.

In the first piece of good news since the search began, a Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises, though the vessel has not been found, the U.S. Coast Guard reported early Wednesday.

David Lochridge, OceanGate's director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached "extreme depths," according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

Lochridge's concerns primarily focused on the company's decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring — cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure — to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick carbon-fiber hull.

"This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull," Lochridge's counterclaim said.

Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 13,123 feet, where the Titanic rested. But, according to Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 4,265 feet, and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 meters.

OceanGate's choices would "subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible," the counterclaim said.

However, the company said in its complaint that Lochridge "is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan." He was fired after refusing to accept assurances from OceanGate's lead engineer that the acoustic monitoring and testing protocol was, in fact, better suited to detect any flaws than a scan would be, the complaint said.

OceanGate Chief Executive Stockton Rush defended the approach in a speech to a conference in Seattle last year hosted by the tech news site GeekWire. He described how he had taken a prototype down to 4,000 meters: "It made a lot of noise," he said.

So he brought the vessel back up, and on a second dive, it made the same troubling noises, even though it should have been dramatically quieter. The company scrapped that hull, which had been constructed by a marine manufacturer, and built another one with an aerospace supplier, Rush said.

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the company said the missing sub was completed in 2020-21, so it would not be the same as the vessel referenced in the lawsuit.

OceanGate also received another warning in 2018, this one from the Marine Technology Society, which describes itself as a professional group of ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers and educators.

In a letter to Rush, the society said it was critical that the company submit its prototype to tests overseen by an expert third party before launching in order to safeguard passengers.

Rush had refused to do so.

Rush was piloting the vessel that is now missing.

The letter, reported by the New York Times, said society members were worried that "the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry."

In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian magazine, Rush complained that the industry's approach was stifling innovation.

"There hasn't been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years," he said. "It's obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn't innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations."

A submersible carrying five people to see the remains of the Titanic at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean is still missing despite a massive search operation – but banging sounds were reportedly heard in the area Tuesday as time runs out.

Search teams heard the sounds in 30-minute intervals Tuesday, according to an internal government memo update on the search. Banging was still heard four hours later, after additional sonar devices were deployed.

A subsequent update sent Tuesday night suggested more sounds were heard, though it was not described as “banging.” Still, it indicates “continued hope of survivors,” the update said.

CNN has reached out to OceanGate, the US Coast Guard in Boston and Canadian authorities for comment. Rolling Stone was first to report the news Tuesday night.

The Titan submersible had been on its way to the famous wreckage, off the coast of St John’s, Newfoundland, in Canada, when it lost contact with its support ship, leaving the people on board with only enough oxygen for a few days.

Here's what we know so far:

How did they go missing?

The submersible was part of an eight-day journey conducted by OceanGate Expeditions. The trip is based out of Newfoundland, with participants first traveling 400 nautical miles to the wreck site, which is about 900 miles off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

The submersible began its two-hour descent to the wreck on Sunday morning. It lost contact with the Polar Prince, the support ship that transported the vessel to the site, 1 hour and 45 minutes into its descent, officials said.

Search operations began later that day.

It’s still not clear what happened to the submersible, why it lost contact, and how close to the Titanic it was when it went missing.

Who's on board?

The five people on board include one pilot and four “mission specialists,” said Rear Adm. John Mauger, commander of the U.S. Coast Guard’s First District.

OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush is among those onboard, according to a source with knowledge of the mission plan.

A British businessman based in the United Arab Emirates, Hamish Harding, is also onboard, according to a social media post by the company he owns, Action Aviation.

“The sub had a successful launch and Hamish is currently diving,” the company said in an Instagram post on Sunday.

Harding was one of the first people to travel the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean – the deepest known point on Earth.

On Saturday he wrote of the Titanic mission: “I am proud to finally announce that I joined OceanGate Expeditions for their RMS TITANIC Mission as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic.”

Harding had posted on social media Saturday saying that diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet was scheduled to be on Sunday’s dive with him. Nargeolet has led several expeditions to the Titanic and supervised the recovery of many artifacts from the wreck, according to the E/M Group, where Nargeolet was director of underwater research.

CNN has attempted to reach out independently to Nargeolet with no success.

A Pakistani businessman, Shahzada Dawood, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, were also on board, according to a statement released by the family on Tuesday. Contact has been lost and there is limited information available, it said.

Shahzada Dawood is a trustee of the SETI Institute, a research organization in California, according to its website. He is also vice chairman of Dawood Hercules Corporation, part of the Dawood Group, a conglomerate of various businesses owned by the family.

Authorities have not publicly identified the passengers on board, and said Monday they are still notifying their families.

The OceanGate website says its expeditions, which cost upwards of $250,000, typically involve one pilot, a “content expert” and three paying passengers.

How much time do they have?

Coast Guard officials estimated on Monday afternoon the submersible had “somewhere between 70 to the full 96 hours” of oxygen – potentially giving rescuers until Friday to locate and retrieve the vessel.

On Tuesday, U.S. Coast Guard officials said at a 1 p.m. ET news conference that the submersible has about 40 hours of oxygen left.

But there are a number of challenges, including the remote location, local weather conditions, the state of the submersible – and the extraordinary depth of the ocean in the area they went missing.

The deepest ever underwater rescue was that of Roger Chapman and Roger Mallinson, who were rescued from the Pisces III submersible at depths of 1,575 feet in 1973. They were trapped for 76 hours before finally being hauled to the surface.

The Titanic wreckage is much deeper, sitting nearly 13,000 feet below sea level.

What is the submersible? What’s it like inside?

A submersible is different from a submarine in a few key ways. It has limited power reserves, so it needs a support ship on the surface to launch and recover it. It can’t stay underwater for as long; the Titan typically spends 10 to 11 hours during each dive to the Titanic wreck, compared to submarines that can stay underwater for months.

The Titan is made of carbon fiber and titanium, weighing 23,000 pounds, with safety features to monitor the structure integrity of the vessel, according to OceanGate.

It’s also small and sparse on the inside, with about as much space as a minivan, according to CBS correspondent David Pogue, who took a trip on the Titan down to the Titanic wreck last year. There is only one toilet, and no seats; passengers sit cross legged on the floor. There are no windows except the porthole through which passengers view the Titanic.

With no GPS underwater, the submersible is only guided by text messages from the surface ship. On Pogue’s trip, communications broke down during a dive and the submersible was lost for over two hours, he said.

The pilot steers the sub using a video game controller – but if that fails, a hard-wired system can control the propellers, according to Aaron Newman, who took the dive on the Titan in 2021 and is now an OceanGate investor. Thrusters are powered by an external electrical system, while an internal system powers communications and a heater, he said.

What search operations are underway? How might it be rescued?

Multiple agencies from both the US and Canada are involved in the search, looking both on the surface and underwater. More than 10,000 square miles have been searched as of Tuesday.

Boats, aircraft and radar equipment are scanning above water in case the submersible had surfaced. Sonar buoys and sonar equipment on ships are also being used to detect sounds below water.

The US Coast Guard, US Navy, US Air Force, Canadian Coast Guard, and Canadian military are all coordinating the search and potential rescue operations. France has also sent a research ship, equipped with an underwater robot, to join the search.

Deep sea-mapping company Magellan, most famously known for its one-of-a-kind deep sea imagery of the Titanic, is also working to get its equipment to the site.

But finding the submersible is just the first step; rescuing it could be a whole other challenge.

Depending where and at what depth the submersible is found, there could be limited options for rescue vessels.

For instance, the US Navy’s nuclear-powered submarines usually operate at 800 feet or less – meaning they can’t dive down to the ocean floor, where water pressure on the submarine hull could make it implode.

During the 1973 rescue, authorities used other submersibles and a remotely operated, Navy-developed recovery vessel to attach lines to the Pisces III – which were then used to pull it back to the surface.

It’s not clear whether these methods could work for the Titan, given the uncertainty around its location.

Have there been safety concerns before?

The incident has prompted discussion around the safety of deep-sea tourism, with some pointing out that OceanGate has come under criticism before.

Two former OceanGate employees separately brought up similar safety concerns about the thickness of the Titan’s hull when they were employed by the company years ago.

A statement from a research lab also appears to show conflicting information about the engineering and testing that went into the development of the vessel.

OceanGate’s legal representative boasted the Titan’s “unparalleled” safety features in a 2021 court filing, saying it had been built with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory – but the university said the lab had never dealt with the design, engineering or testing of the Titan.

Industry leaders also expressed concerns five years ago about the company’s “experimental approach” to the Titan submersible and its trip to the Titanic, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society said it penned a letter to Rush, the missing CEO, in 2018. The group warned of potential “negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” said the letter obtained by the Times.

OceanGate has not responded to a request for comment on the letter, or on the two former employees’ claims.

WASHINGTON —

President Joe Biden's son Hunter has been charged with failing to pay federal income tax and illegally possessing a weapon and has reached an agreement with the Justice Department, according to a letter filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

Related video above: The Justice Department is nearing a decision on whether to prosecute Hunter Biden for tax crimes

As part of the agreement, made public Tuesday, Hunter Biden will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses and is expected to reach an agreement with prosecutors on the felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user. It is somewhat unusual to resolve a federal criminal case at the same time the charges are filed in court, though it is not totally unheard of.

The deal ends a long-running Justice Department investigation into Biden's second son, who has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden. It also averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks or distracting headlines for a White House that has strenuously sought to keep its distance from the Justice Department.

The news comes as congressional Republicans pursue their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden's business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of his finances. It also comes days after a 37-count indictment came down against former President Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents on his Florida estate, another case with even more dramatic political implications.

Joe Biden has also faced questions about his son's business dealings and drug addiction.

This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.

Adults ages 19 to 64 in the United States should be screened for anxiety disorders, according to a new recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force released Tuesday.

The final recommendation, published in the medical journal JAMA, marks the first time the USPSTF has made a final recommendation on screening for anxiety disorders in adults, including those who are pregnant and postpartum. The task force found “insufficient evidence” to screen for anxiety in older adults.

The USPSTF, a group of independent medical experts whose recommendations help guide doctors’ decisions and influence insurance plans, also continues to recommend that all adults be screened for major depressive disorder, including those who are pregnant or postpartum and older adults.

The recommendation is consistent with the task force’s 2016 recommendation on depression screenings.

While rates of clinical depression had been rising steadily in the United States, they jumped significantly during the Covid-19 pandemic. In general, about 1 in 6 adults will have depression at some time in their life, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And although depression and anxiety are different conditions, they commonly can happen together – and such screening recommendations can help clinicians identify which patients may need treatment for both conditions or one versus the other.

“Anxiety disorders are common, and they can really impact people’s quality of life, and what the task force found is that screening for anxiety disorders in the general adult population can lead to identifying these conditions early and then, if those people who are identified get linked up with appropriate care, they will benefit,” said Dr. Michael Silverstein, vice chair of the USPSTF and director of the Hassenfeld Child Health Innovation Institute at Brown University.

“So it really is extremely good news for the delivery of preventive services for the American public,” he said. “We also found that in the older adult population, which is defined as age 65 and older, that the task force really needs more evidence to weigh the risks and benefits of screening for anxiety disorders. And for that older adult population, we’re calling for urgent new research.”

‘We have not been treating mental health at the same level as physical health’

USPSTF researchers noted in their anxiety screening recommendation statement that most people with anxiety disorders don’t receive treatment within the first year of symptoms, if ever – showing a need for more robust screening.

“Only 11% of U.S. adults with an anxiety disorder started treatment within the first year of onset; the median time to treatment initiation was 23 years,” the researchers wrote. “A U.S. study of 965 primary care patients found that only 41% of patients with an anxiety disorder were receiving treatment for their disorder.”

Once the new screening recommendations are practiced in the real world, the results may reveal that anxiety disorders are much more prevalent than previously thought, said Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, who was not involved in the recommendation statements.

“Anxiety has been way under the radar for a long time, and so I think it’s good that they are recommending for the broad population to be screened. When we start screening for anxiety, we’re going to find a lot more of it than we thought we had,” he said, adding that the nation should also prepare to make mental health services and treatments more easily accessible amid the ongoing mental health crisis.

“I think it’s an opportunity for us to get our hands around this crisis before we have a mental health emergency,” Benjamin said. “So we definitely have to do more. We know as a nation, we have under-invested in mental health. We have not put as much money into mental health. We have not been treating mental health at the same level as physical health. And we know that people who need mental health services are really struggling to find providers to care for them.”

What screening looks like

Medical professionals can screen for anxiety disorders using questionnaires and scales, such as asking about feeling on edge, not being able to stop or control worrying or having trouble relaxing, for example.

Some questions used to screen for depression include asking about feeling hopeless, having trouble concentrating, losing interest in daily activities or thoughts about hurting yourself. Major depressive disorder is defined as at least two weeks of mild to severe persistent feelings of sadness or lack of interest in everyday activities, according to the USPSTF.

Any positive screening result should be confirmed with a diagnostic assessment to determine the severity of symptoms and identify any other psychological concerns, and then patients should be given care. Potential harms of screening include the risk of a false positive, leading to unnecessary appointments or unnecessary treatment, according to the USPSTF, but for most adults, screening and follow-up care can reduce symptoms of anxiety disorders and depression.

Effective treatments for anxiety disorders can include talking with a therapist, known as psychotherapy, or medications such as antidepressants or beta blockers, as well as relaxation or stress management therapies. Treatments for depression also can include antidepressant medication or psychotherapy, alone or in combination.

If left untreated, major depressive disorder “can interfere with daily functioning and can be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular events, exacerbation of comorbid conditions, or increased mortality,” according to the USPSTF recommendation. Only about half of people with major depression are identified.

A call for more research on suicide risks

Research suggests that anxiety disorders and depression may be associated with suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts and other types of suicidal behaviors.

But the new USPSTF recommendations state that there is not enough evidence to recommend for or against screening specifically for suicide risk in adults who are not showing signs or symptoms, which is consistent with the task force’s 2014 recommendation on the issue.

“So if someone goes to the doctor or their primary care provider and expresses the idea of self-harm or wanting to hurt themselves or wanting to die by suicide, by all means, that provider needs to do everything they possibly can to help the patient in front of them,” Silverstein said.

“As a task force, we are not reviewing the evidence for that population,” he said. “We’re reviewing the evidence for people who come to their primary care provider without any signs or symptoms and having either the primary care provider or someone in the primary care provider’s office ask them a series of screening questions to assess their risk for suicide.”

In the new recommendations, the USPSTF calls for more research on suicide risks among people who are not showing signs or symptoms.

“Someone experiencing death by suicide is a tragedy,” Silverstein said. “Because the suicide rate in this country has been increasing, there are so many people who have experienced a loved one having died by suicide. So this recommendation is really important, and that importance to me underlines that the American public deserves the highest quality evidence around screening for this really, really serious condition, which is suicide risk.”

Mental health experts and advocates emphasize the importance of suicide risk assessments among adults diagnosed with anxiety and major depressive disorder.

“Although not called out in the USPSTF Recommendation Statement, a positive screen result for anxiety should be immediately followed with clinical evaluation for suicidality,” Dr. Murray Stein and Dr. Linda Hill, both of the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an editorial that accompanied the new recommendations in JAMA.

“The uptake of these new anxiety screening recommendations should provide an impetus and an opportunity for primary care clinicians to become more comfortable with diagnosing and treating anxiety disorders, which may require additional training,” they wrote. “Anxiety disorders can be distressing and disabling, and appropriate recognition and treatment can be life-altering and, in some cases, lifesaving, for patients.”

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Good afternoon. My name is Colonel Chris Parris, Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. I'd like to introduce several members in the party behind me. Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens, deputy commissioner of operations. Lieutenant Colonel Joanne Reed, deputy commissioner of staff district Attorney, Corey Cook from Juniata County and the Pennsylvania State Troopers Association President Dave Kennedy. It is with deep regret and sadness that we are here to speak to you today about *** both harrowing and tragic day for the Pennsylvania State Police and our family. Yesterday, June 17th, 2023 we had two troopers shot in the line of duty. We are confirming that. Lieutenant James Wagner, age 45 who enlisted in the Pennsylvania State Police in 2002, *** 21 year veteran who currently serves as the station commander at Troop G Bedford barracks in Bedford County. He was *** member who was shot. He also serves as an active member in the Naval Reserve. He is married and *** father of three sons, all of whom currently serve on active duty with the United States Coast Guard. He is currently listed in critical condition at Hershey Medical Center, the second member trooper Jacques Rael, age 29 who enlisted in the Pennsylvania State Police in 2020. He would have celebrated his three year anniversary of becoming *** trooper on June 29th of this month, he was stationed at Troop G Lewistown in Juniata County. He is married. Our hearts and prayers are with these brave troopers and their families, their dedication and service to the commonwealth and its residents will always be remembered. I would like to begin by telling you about the events of yesterday by offering *** qualifier that this event transpired over multiple hours over multiple scenes causing *** massive response from many departmental segments. My hope is to now give you an approximate timeline of the incident as it unfolded across these different locations. Keeping in mind that we're very much in the middle of an ongoing and active investigation. So the incident begins yesterday at approximately 11 AM at Troop G Lewistown barracks in Juliana County. *** 2008 Chevrolet pickup arrived in the parking lot of the barracks at Lewistown. It drove through the parking lot and it was noted on the closed circuit video surveillance by people inside of the barracks which was occupied at the time. Mr Stein got out of his vehicle and fired several rounds from *** long rifle into marked patrol cars. Obviously, this garnered the attention of the members who were attempting to provide the services that we do all across the Commonwealth. Mr Stein then got back into his truck and drove away. We were able to identify him and we immediately began *** search. We activated *** major case team and other department assets to include one of our helicopters to aid in that search of attempting to locate Mr Stein. Lieutenant Wagner was serving as the officer of the day for troop G. So troop G is headquartered in Holidaysburg. It's made up of several counties in the midst state. Lieutenant Wagner serves as the station commander of Bedford barracks. As I discussed the role of the officer of the day in the state police is to serve either in *** station commander or commissioned officer role to supervise operations during what would be considered uh off regular hours. So Lieutenant Wagner was leading from the front making sure that the operations were running smoothly in troop G when this situation unfolded. At approximately 11 AM, Lieutenant Wagner joined the search for Mr Stein at approximately 12 45. Lieutenant Wagner encountered Mr Stein in Mifflin town borough, Juniata County. During this encounter, Stein engaged Lieutenant Wagner with *** long rifle shooting him and critically injuring him. At this point. In the incident, multiple citizens and witnesses arrived to provide aid to Lieutenant Wagner and use the radio that was in his car to summon additional troopers and ems and first responders to help troopers citizens, E M T s and other first responders arrived at the scene and they attempted and successfully provided lifesaving first aid to Lieutenant Wagner. He was subsequently transported to Lewistown Hospital and from there was life life flighted to Hershey Medical Center where he currently remains, as I said in critical condition. So we have an incident that begins at 11 AM and now we have the encounter around approximately 12 45 myself personally, I was in Philadelphia yesterday with the governor and the president attending *** briefing about the projection of the interstate 95 collapse and continued construction project. I had been briefed immediately after the shots were fired into the patrol car. I was subsequently notified upon uh Lieutenant Wagner's uh being engaged by gunfire and critically injured. I attempted to immediately begin traveling west from Philadelphia and I arrived at Hershey Medical Center around approximately 2 30 simultaneous to Lieutenant Wagner being life flighted in. So we have multiple scenes up until this point, multiple things going on and an ongoing search and manhunt for Mr Stein at that point, simultaneous to all of this occurring, Lieutenant Colonel George Bivens, deputy commissioner of operations was able to uh get into *** helicopter and begin assisting and directing the search from the air of Mr Stein. At this point, I would like to turn it over for his firsthand account of how the rest of the incident unfolded before I come back up and continue with the uh press conference. So Lieutenant Colonel George Bivins, thank you, Colonel. Let me start by painting *** picture for you of the situation that our troopers found themselves in, they had already encountered gunfire from an individual with *** very large caliber rifle, one that would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them. In spite of that, uh they heroically in my estimation, uh continued this search very aggressively. They were using *** number of resources the department has available to them. We were attempting to track this individual and my characterization of it is that he was playing somewhat of *** game of cat and mouse with them. There were phone calls, there were attempts to uh uh to try and negotiate with him, but there were phone calls from him providing *** location and then he wouldn't be there. He was, he seemed to be setting our people up for potential ambush while they were in the process of covering multiple um through multiple municipalities and jurisdictions. Um One of our troopers traveling down Bum Gardener drive towards Swamp Road, unfortunately, was ambushed by Mr Stein from the area of swamp road with *** gunshot that struck trooper through the windshield of his patrol car killing him. Other troopers came to his assistance. Stein escaped down swamp road. Um, got into uh uh somewhat still rural but residential area, uh some woodlots and things in there and, um, and our people were attempting to locate and flush him out of there. One or more of our members engaged him did flush him out. I was overhead at that point with *** helicopter and uh we were able to coordinate getting additional patrols to try and intercept him what I witnessed. Uh And I will tell you in, in my many years with the Pennsylvania State Police and many serious situations was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed. As he, uh, Stein drove through *** field, uh approached Harshberger store and *** small restaurant there. He drove to the parking lot. There were people in the lot that were patronizing that business. Our troopers put themselves between those people and, and by force with their, their vehicles and by engaging him, forced him away from the business and back out toward Gardner Drive. There was an exchange of gunfire in the edge of that parking lot. Stein then drove across Bumgarner Drive through *** residential yard and garden and became stuck against *** row of trees on that property with our people continuing to engage him. It was immediately after that situation had been stabilized that we discovered the fate of trooper. He was beyond assistance at that point. But I want to stress to you what I saw out there with our people putting themselves in harm's way was an amazing thing. They kept all of those, the residents, the customers of that store safe and did so by standing between those folks and Stein. So I'm gonna turn it back over to uh, the colonel for some other thoughts. But, uh, um, I just want to tell you as the Deputy Commissioner of Operations, how proud I am of, of each and every one of those troopers. Thank you. Yes, thank you, Lieutenant Colonel. I would be remiss if I didn't specifically thank the citizens, the E M T S dozens and dozens of troopers across multiple installations who responded to this incident as well as the life flight crew and the Hershey medical staff who have assisted us to this point which is still very early in the investigation. There were multiple scenes uh that had to be investigated, mapped uh evidence, forensically gathered and it was *** very complex operation through last night into the very early mornings and continues at this hour as well. We are currently working with the District Attorney of Juniata County, district attorney Snook for *** full and unlimited investigation into this incident. His people are working uh with our people with full and unlimited access on that investigation. This is *** tragedy for the state police. We ask for your continued prayers for not only our troopers, one killed, one wounded but also their respective families and all of the troopers that were involved in this incident yesterday. I have to say in, in my opinion, watching, I'm being briefed on what occurred yesterday. It's *** miracle that no members of the public were injured or killed as *** result. Uh As the Colonel on *** very personal note, I have to say that I'm humbled to come here and serve every day as the Commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police. I'm humbled by the work that our people do. Some of which may not get the greatest uh attention, but it goes on anyway. Uh, unfortunately, I can say that this is not the first time one of our installations was attacked and yet, and still our people continue to do an admirable job running and driving to the gunfire to protect the communities that we serve, to protect the residents of the commonwealth and to protect the communities in which they work. I also would like to thank Governor Shapiro who has offered his unconditional support. He has been to the Hershey Medical Center to offer his continued support for the Wagner family and his administration who has supported the Pennsylvania State Police uh through this difficult time as we move forward. Uh The investigation will require continued assets to be brought in outside of troop G which we are doing. There has been no drop off in the services that we provide and the expectation of the public should remain that uh if they call and they need service, we will be there to give it. As I said, we will do *** full fair competent thorough investigation. We will look into this matter at this point. There are no clear motives which we can point to, but the investigation is is very much ongoing. I'm struck by the level of violence that this investigation over these uh hours as it transpired. Uh And I remain humbled and in awe of the way that our people rallied and brought the resources needed to bear to protect the community. So with that, I would open it up to uh questions and Pennsylvania City police or police at all prior to this incident at this point in the investigation, I really only feel comfortable that we're working on the timeline. And obviously, there's *** *** full uh focus of the investigation into the not only immediate uh time frame leading up to this but also uh what the entire operational picture of Mr Stein looked like um spell the name of the trooper that passed as you. I just wanna make sure we have that correct. We will get it to you. We also have *** photograph, verbal exchange between Stein and officers at any point. I would, I would allow that to question Lieutenant Colonel Beman. The only exchange occurred uh via some phone calls that had occurred. He was calling the 911 center. And again, we were attempting to contact him and negotiate, but there was no direct communication at any of the scenes. I don't know if you can answer this or not, but um was I just, I just totally forgot my question. Someone else. I do have one more. Why do you presume he was calling the 911 centers. I know you described it as *** game of cat and mouse. But are you able to kind of explain just so I can get *** better idea in my head? And is there *** number? I can't give you the number of calls uh at this time? Uh that's all part of the ongoing investigation. And, and again, uh speaking to his motive uh would be beyond my ability At this point. I can only characterize uh what we actually observed. And again, I characterize it *** game of cat and mouse. He was calling 911. Yes, ma'am. And what that's why I remembered it. The fact that state troopers don't have body cameras is that going to affect the investigation at all. It will have no impact on the investigation. And we are in the process of acquiring body cameras for each of our patrol officers out there. *** contract has been awarded and we're in the implementation phase now, right? The Cooper that was killed bus drive that would have been about roughly 2 30 in the afternoon and everything else played out in very short order there. So we had two scenes prior to that and we had three scenes in close proximity, the scene where he was shot and killed another scene uh just out swamp swamp road near another residence, uh where troopers engaged him and then finally back near the restaurant and uh the final resting point. And so *** fairly large area. But, uh, all within site of, uh, of each other, the number of people inside they were told to lock down in place. There were people inside the restaurant and yes, they did lock down. We tried to keep, you know, people got out of the parking lot and, uh, and our troopers were in the lot done. Were they inside, do you know? Or they were not kept inside for *** long period of time? Once the scene was safe, they were out, they did remain on site for *** little while because we needed to process that scene. And we had shell casings and evidence that needed to be collected. They could have been disturbed. We also had some, uh, some crashes, some of our patrol cars and it was such *** fluid situation that our patrol cars, our members were literally bailing out of the cars while they're moving. They were, they were under fire and the cars crashed into, uh, one or two of the, at *** low speed but crashed into one or two of the, um, um, customers vehicles that were there while our people were bailing out to engage this gunman. It's *** long rifle. Can you give *** specific on what that gun was? Was that part of the investigation? Uh, it's *** part of the investigation. What I would tell you is, it's *** 4 58 magnum caliber gun. I can't give you the make and model of it. Um I would tell you that it is *** exceptionally large caliber rifle for, uh, that would customarily likely be used for very large game hunting. Mr Stein's mental state during the whole thing, was he having like seem like he have *** breakdown or anything with that again, that will be part of the ongoing investigation video and there were so many rounds and I saw the evidence markers. Do you guys have any idea how many rounds were actually fired? We do, I'm not prepared at this point to provide that again, that's all part of the investigation. But we do *** very careful investigation that will count for every round. We know how many rounds of ammunition in any gun that our members are carrying. And so we do round counts, for example, afterwards, so that we can verify how many rounds they expended. We try to account for every single one of those where the casing ends up and also where the round went. And so that's one of the reasons it takes so long to process some of these scenes and particularly in *** case like this when I tell you that it was an amazingly intense gunfight. Um I'm sure you've heard some of the audio that um that I've heard released out there, that was about one piece of the exchange. Um I would estimate hundreds of rounds exchanged. And uh the only analogy I could draw as *** war zone. Uh It was, it was that intense but that was the only way they could prevent him from becoming *** threat, more of *** threat to those civilians. Last question. I'm so sorry when you reached out to the shooter's family, have they been cooperative? How, what has been their response? We have reached out. I don't want to characterize right now what that response has been. But, but again, our interaction with them is all part of the ongoing investigation, provide the uh three addresses to the locations. Yes, we'll get. Ok, Stein from, he was from how you got, Stein was *** resident of Thompson Town, Pennsylvania, Juniata County. And the vehicle that was involved was registered to him, which was very uh preliminarily and then ultimately verified to be to be him after he showed up at the barracks through the video surveillance that we have again, not to be labor, but that to speak *** word about it, the, the large caliber rifle or the nature of the ballistics between *** handgun and *** long gun, in particular, *** rifle, uh the ability to reach out and effectively direct fire with *** rifle over exponentially greater distances uh made this situation extremely, extremely dangerous. In terms of uh if we look at the physical plant that we're at right now, these uh areas open uh for hundreds of yards, they would all be readily um utilized to shoot and use, use this long rifle and to drive into that scene, knowing that uh, our barracks had been attacked and troopers had taken fire. Uh I'm really in awe of the work that was done for that. Absolutely. I'm, I'm glad you asked that question. So c please maintains *** very robust members assistance program. We have several full time members who are engaged right now. Uh We obviously have *** family uh, in need at Hershey Medical Center. They are being taken care of. We obviously have *** grieving family that is being taken care of. We have *** line of duty funeral to plan. Uh We have an investigation to continue on site. Uh I will tell you that I had the opportunity after being at Hershey Medical Center to interact with several of our people just to check and see how they are doing. And my advice to them was to make sure that they are taking care of themselves and their families. Uh Today being Father's Day, I tried to wish them *** happy Father's day for those to whom it applied. Uh We will continue with the psychological services to include *** psychological diffusion and *** debriefing as well as other steps, the Tactical Assurance Program, all part of the ongoing investigation uh as we move forward to uh to look at it at everything that occurred here. Uh In the long term, unfortunately, having been part of an incident like this before, I would characterize our people as exceedingly resilient, but at the same time, uh very human and my personal advice to them last night, which I know has been echoed through those formal channels of the member's assistance program is pay very close attention. Stress is in the eye of the beholder. I've seen people endure very traumatic incidents and be able to deal with it, uh, seemingly unaffected. I've seen others who've returned and then had some issues and uh had to deal with those thereafter. I've seen people who needed some help before that were fully committed. Uh, and I can't underwear again. Dozens and dozens of troopers, uh responding from all different locations, multiple troops uh to provide assistance. And it was *** very chaotic. And uh as I said, the two words that stick out to me are, are tragedy and harrowing. It was *** tragic and harrowing day and me say that again. I'm sorry. No, that's ok prior to yesterday's events. Have there been any threats made to the bar? No, none of which were aware, but that's part of the ongoing investigation. Anyone else? I appreciate you all being here. We wanted to take this opportunity to answer the questions that we felt that we could, uh I wish to those applicable Happy Father's Day. It's *** very difficult day. The loss in, in many ways is more than we than we can bear, but we will bear it. Um But we ask for your continued prayers and support. And again, I can't say enough about the people in the immediate location of this incident. And this, this was as Lieutenant Colonel Vivi said as harrowing as it gets. Thank you very much.

A spate of weekend mass shootings and violence across the U.S. killed at least six people, including a Pennsylvania state trooper, and left dozens injured.Related video above: News conference on fatal shooting of Pennsylvania state trooperThe shootings follow a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that experts say accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. They happened in suburban Chicago, Washington state, central Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Southern California and Baltimore."There's no question there's been a spike in violence," said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. "Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists."Researchers disagree over the cause of the increase. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.As of Sunday evening, none of the weekend events fit the definition of a mass killing, because fewer than four people died at each location. The figure does not include the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the cases matches the widely accepted definition of mass shootings.Here's a look at the shootings this weekend:Willowbrook, IllinoisAt least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a suburban Chicago parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.The DuPage County sheriff's office described a "peaceful gathering" that suddenly turned violent as a number of people fired multiple shots into the crowd in Willowbrook, Illinois, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.A motive for the attack wasn't immediately known. Sheriff's spokesman Robert Carroll said authorities were interviewing "persons of interest" in the shooting, the Daily Herald reported.A witness, Markeshia Avery, said the celebration was meant to mark Juneteenth, Monday's federal holiday commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation."We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped," Avery told WLS-TV.The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation."Gathering for a holiday gathering should be a joyful occasion, not a time where gunfire erupts and families are forced to run for safety," Pritzker said.Washington StateTwo people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing "randomly" into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.A public alert advised people of an active shooter in the area and advised them to "run, hide or fight."The festival carried on until early Sunday morning, Grant County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kyle Foreman said. Organizers then posted a tweet saying Sunday's concert was canceled.Central Pennsylvania One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens, who went up in a helicopter to coordinate the search for the 38-year-old suspect."What I witnessed ... was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed," Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that "would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them."A motive was not immediately known.St. LouisAn early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded nine other teenagers, the city's police commissioner said.St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old and had injuries including multiple gunshot wounds. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.Shell casings from AR-style rifles and other firearms were scattered on the ground.Southern CaliforniaA shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. They were taken to hospitals and two were listed in critical condition, the statement said.Authorities said they found another 16-year-old boy with a gunshot wound when they responded to a call about a vehicle that crashed into a wall nearby.BaltimoreSix people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26, Baltimore Police Department spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said.

A spate of weekend mass shootings and violence across the U.S. killed at least six people, including a Pennsylvania state trooper, and left dozens injured.

Related video above: News conference on fatal shooting of Pennsylvania state trooper

The shootings follow a surge in homicides and other violence over the past several years that experts say accelerated during the coronavirus pandemic. They happened in suburban Chicago, Washington state, central Pennsylvania, St. Louis, Southern California and Baltimore.

"There's no question there's been a spike in violence," said Daniel Nagin, a professor of public policy and statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. "Some of these cases seem to be just disputes, often among adolescents, and those disputes are played out with firearms, not with fists."

Researchers disagree over the cause of the increase. Theories include the possibility that violence is driven by the prevalence of guns in America, or by less aggressive police tactics or a decline in prosecutions for misdemeanor weapon offenses, Nagin said.

As of Sunday evening, none of the weekend events fit the definition of a mass killing, because fewer than four people died at each location. The figure does not include the shooter. However, the number of injured in most of the cases matches the widely accepted definition of mass shootings.

Here's a look at the shootings this weekend:

Willowbrook, Illinois

At least 23 people were shot, one fatally, early Sunday in a suburban Chicago parking lot where hundreds of people had gathered to celebrate Juneteenth, authorities said.

The DuPage County sheriff's office described a "peaceful gathering" that suddenly turned violent as a number of people fired multiple shots into the crowd in Willowbrook, Illinois, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of Chicago.

A motive for the attack wasn't immediately known. Sheriff's spokesman Robert Carroll said authorities were interviewing "persons of interest" in the shooting, the Daily Herald reported.

A witness, Markeshia Avery, said the celebration was meant to mark Juneteenth, Monday's federal holiday commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, learned they had been freed, two years after the Emancipation Proclamation.

"We just started hearing shooting, so we dropped down until they stopped," Avery told WLS-TV.

The White House issued a statement calling the violence a tragedy and saying the president was thinking of those killed and injured. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement that he was monitoring the investigation.

"Gathering for a holiday gathering should be a joyful occasion, not a time where gunfire erupts and families are forced to run for safety," Pritzker said.

Washington State

Two people were killed and two others were injured when a shooter began firing "randomly" into a crowd at a Washington state campground where many people were staying to attend a nearby music festival on Saturday night, police said.

The suspect was shot in a confrontation with law enforcement officers and taken into custody, several hundred yards from the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival.

A public alert advised people of an active shooter in the area and advised them to "run, hide or fight."

The festival carried on until early Sunday morning, Grant County Sheriff's Office spokesman Kyle Foreman said. Organizers then posted a tweet saying Sunday's concert was canceled.

Central Pennsylvania

One state trooper was killed and a second critically wounded just hours apart in central Pennsylvania on Saturday after a gunman attacked a state police barracks.

The suspect drove his truck into the parking lot of the Lewistown barracks about 11 a.m. Saturday and opened fire with a large-caliber rifle on marked patrol cars before fleeing, authorities said Sunday.

Lt. James Wagner, 45, was critically wounded when he was shot after encountering the suspect several miles away in Mifflintown. Later, Trooper Jacques Rougeau Jr., 29, was ambushed and killed by a gunshot through the windshield of his patrol car as he drove down a road in nearby Walker Township, authorities said.

The suspect was shot and killed after a fierce gunbattle, said Lt. Col. George Bivens, who went up in a helicopter to coordinate the search for the 38-year-old suspect.

"What I witnessed ... was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed," Bivens said, lauding troopers for launching an aggressive search despite facing a weapon that "would defeat any of the body armor that they had available to them."

A motive was not immediately known.

St. Louis

An early Sunday shooting in a downtown St. Louis office building killed a 17-year-old and wounded nine other teenagers, the city's police commissioner said.

St. Louis Metropolitan Police Commissioner Robert Tracy identified the victim who was killed as 17-year-old Makao Moore. A spokesman said a minor who had a handgun was in police custody as a person of interest.

Teenagers were having a party in an office space when the shooting broke out around 1 a.m. Sunday.

The victims ranged from 15 to 19 years old and had injuries including multiple gunshot wounds. A 17-year-old girl was trampled as she fled, seriously injuring her spine, Tracy said.

Shell casings from AR-style rifles and other firearms were scattered on the ground.

Southern California

A shooting at a pool party at a Southern California home left eight people wounded, authorities said Saturday.

Authorities were dispatched shortly after midnight in Carson, California, south of Los Angeles, KABC-TV reported.

The victims range in age from 16 to 24, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said in a statement. They were taken to hospitals and two were listed in critical condition, the statement said.

Authorities said they found another 16-year-old boy with a gunshot wound when they responded to a call about a vehicle that crashed into a wall nearby.

Baltimore

Six people were injured in a Friday night shooting in Baltimore. All were expected to survive.

Officers heard gunshots in the north of the city just before 9 p.m. and found three men with numerous gunshot wounds. Medics took them to area hospitals for treatment.

Police later learned of three additional victims who walked into area hospitals with non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.

The wounded ranged in age from 17 to 26, Baltimore Police Department spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge said.