Back from summer vacation! Jodi shares the unexpected favorite part of their New York family trip, Sam did something brave (or dumb?) while he was away – AND Murphy puts his foot in his mouth with a pregnant woman.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — One person died, three people were missing and 16 were rescued from the waters off San Francisco after a pontoon boat sank Tuesday afternoon while carrying mostly family members as part of a memorial service, authorities said.
Crews arriving on the scene near Alcatraz Island found a three-deck pontoon vessel almost fully under water with the motor still running and leaking fuel, San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen said.
By Tuesday evening, authorities were searching for the missing in open ocean on the western side of the Golden Gate Bridge. The search, which involved divers, helicopters and vessels, was expected to continue all night, officials said.
Authorities updated the initial number of missing people from two to three after hearing from witnesses.
“Right now we are in full rescue mode,” Crispen said, adding that three people who suffered injuries falling from the boat were taken to a hospital and expected to be released Tuesday night.
Alcatraz Island, once a federal prison infamously inescapable due to the strong ocean currents and cold Pacific waters that surround it, is now a tourist destination. It is located in San Francisco Bay about a mile (about 1.6 kilometers) north of the city’s shoreline, in an often windy area that attracts sailboats and other recreational vessels.
Videos of the scene showed boats deployed to rescue people who had been on the vessel, which was largely submerged with objects floating nearby.
The boating mishap was initially reported as a fire, “but we now don’t have any evidence of that,” Crispen said.
The person who died was alive when plucked from the frigid waters by rescue crews but later died. A dog onboard also died.
All those rescued were taken to Gashouse Cove Marina, a small craft harbor in San Francisco.
Aaron Anfinson, captain of the Bass-Tub, told the San Francisco Chronicle his boat was carrying guests toward the Golden Gate Bridge in “pretty windy, a little choppy” waters when a man on a smaller vessel flagged them down and pointed to a pontoon boat in the middle of the bay that appeared to be on fire.
By the time the Bass-Tub reached it, the flames were out, but the pontoon was sinking. Some people were already in the water while others remained aboard, Anfinson said, adding that they tried to hand out life jackets to the passengers.
One woman’s head was injured.
“We figured we would get her first,” Anfinson said. A deckhand lowered a swim ladder and threw a life ring into the water to help pull her aboard.
“It was scary,” Anfinson said. “I don’t want to see anybody in that situation.”
Fire Lt. Mariano Elias said the vessel, described as a “pontoon pleasure boat,” was about 600 yards (about 550 meters) from Alcatraz and the emergency call came in just after 3:30 p.m.
Crispen said the vessel was believed to have launched near the St. Francis Yacht Club in San Francisco. A person who answered the phone there said the club did not have any information on what happened.
Live video from the scene showed a man and a woman wrapped in blankets and sitting on a curb before walking to a nearby ambulance. A yellow tarp covered a body on the dock.
The Coast Guard and Oakland police also helped in the rescue, Elias said.
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Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon, and Hallie Golden in Seattle, and photographer Noah Berger in San Francisco contributed to this story.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Dylan Cease started a parade of pitchers that shut down a slew of baseball’s best batters in a display of the pitching dominance that rules the sport.
“I thought before the game about starting with a changeup and I thought it would be funny,” he said.
He didn’t. And the hitters were not laughing.
Cease struck out the side in the first inning, combining with 10 relievers on a three-hitter that led the American League over the National League 4-0 in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.
Cease fanned Kyle Schwarber, Juan Soto and CJ Abrams around a walk in the first inning, when he got six misses among 15 swings. He became just the seventh pitcher to strike out three in an All-Star opening inning after Carl Hubbell (1934), Warren Spahn (1949), Jim Palmer (1977), Dave Stieb (1983), Pedro Martinez (1999) and Brad Penny (2006) — four of them Hall of Famers.
After speaking with Justin Verlander, the senior AL All-Star, Cease gave up the idea of starting with a changeup and instead threw Schwarber a 96.9 mph four-seamer.
“Verlander talked me out of it,” Cease said. “So we started with the heater and then I was glad we did.”
Pitchers struck out 27, a record for a nine-inning All-Star Game, 15 of them by AL hurlers.
“That’s the game now. Guys’ stuff is unbelievable,” said AL manager John Schneider, also Cease’s skipper in Toronto. “I think the bullpen guys kind fed off of it. They were all excited coming off the mound. It speaks volumes to how good the pitching is, for sure.”
All-Star MVP Cody Bellinger hit a two-run single and Ben Rice followed with an RBI single in the first against Cristopher Sánchez of the host Philadelphia Phillies.
Miguel Vargas of the Chicago White Sox added an eighth-inning home run off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Justin Wrobleski, who was pitching on his 26th birthday, for the game’s only extra-base hit. The AL won for the 18th time in 23 games and holds a 49-45-2 advantage overall.
“The pitching was just dominant today,” Bellinger said.
Singles by Soto in the fourth, Pete Crow-Armstrong in the eighth and Otto Lopez in the ninth were the only hits by the NL, which failed to advance a runner past first.
Parker Messick, Michael Wacha, Joe Ryan, Nick Martinez, Cade Smith, Drew Rasmussen, Jacob Latz, Louis Varland, Aroldis Chapman and Bryan Baker finished the 10th All-Star shutout and first since the AL’s 2-0 win in 2013 at New York’s Citi Field.
Some starting star power was missing, with Jacob Misoriowski, Paul Skenes and Shohei Ohtani all unavailable. Just six pitches reached 100 mph, the fewest in an All-Star Game since 2021.
Bellinger and Rice both singled on up sinkers from Sánchez, who struggled through a 34-pitch inning that included three hits and two walks.
“It just took me a little time to soak it all in and enjoy it,” Sánchez said through a translator.
Managers and starters entered through replica Liberty Bells in front of each dugout, walked to home plate and used a feathered quill to sign an oversized lineup card, as if they were Founding Fathers affixing names to the Declaration of Independence. MLB donated the card to the Hall of Fame.
Dirt around the plate was surrounded by 13 stars, one for each of the Colonies.
After the fourth inning, a video was played of kids bicycling to a sandlot game with a narration by Oscar-winning actor J.K. Simmons. As footage was played of Ray Charles singing “America the Beautiful” at Game 2 of the 2001 World Series, the kids biked onto the field and started interacting with the All-Stars as fireworks went off above the ballpark.
“We were all one of those kids,” NL manager Dave Roberts of the Dodgers said. “Some of these kids might never get a chance to be on a major league field. So for them to have that opportunity to be — have a conversation with an All-Star is something that they might never get that chance again, right?
Bellinger thought back to his youth.
“We’re all little kids at heart playing this game even though it’s a challenging game,” he said. “We’re all still those little kids with big dreams.”
Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero was hit on the outside of his left hand by a 97.6 mph sinker from St. Louis closer Riley O’Brien in the third inning and immediately left the game. The 23-year-old, fourth in the major leagues with 28 home runs, stayed down for a few moments before he popped up and ran straight into the clubhouse. X-rays were negative.
Mike Trout, a 12-time All-Star who hadn’t played in the game since 2019 because of injuries, went 0 for 3 with a strikeout.
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks ticked higher Wednesday following strong profit reports from BlackRock and other big companies. The tentative gains came as oil prices swung to their highest levels in a month because of the war with Iran.
The S&P 500 rose 0.4% after flipping between modest gains and losses through the day, and it’s back within 0.5% of its all-time high set last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 150 points, or 0.3%, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 0.6%.
BlackRock helped lead the market with a rise of 6.6% after the company behind some of the most popular investment funds reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Laurence Fink said its iShares funds topped $6 trillion in assets under management during the quarter, roughly doubling in three years.
Bank of New York Mellon rose 5.1% after adding to the spate of strong earnings reports from many of the biggest U.S. banks a day earlier. Cintas climbed 4.4% after the provider of office uniforms, restroom supplies and other products likewise delivered a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts forecast.
They helped offset a drop for Elevance Health, which fell 8.5% even though it reported stronger profit and revenue than analysts expected.
Expectations are high for U.S. companies’ profit growth during the spring. They’ll need to beat them to justify the big moves their stock prices have made, with indexes near their records.
All told, the S&P 500 rose 28.81 points to 7,572.40 and is within 0.5% of its record set early last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 150.37 to 52,658.64, and the Nasdaq composite climbed 162.22 to 26,269.23.
The broad U.S. stock market got a lift from another report showing inflation slowed last month. It said inflation at the wholesale level slowed to 5.5% from 6% in May, and it was much better than the acceleration that economists expected.
The day before, a separate report said inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling was also not as bad as economists expected last month.
Such numbers take pressure off the Federal Reserve, which is considering raising interest rates. Higher rates would keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow the economy and hurt prices for all kinds of investments.
Following the inflation report, traders see just a 10% chance that the Fed will raise its main interest rate at its next meeting in a couple weeks. That’s down from the nearly 42% probability they saw on Monday, before the inflation reports, according to data from CME Group.
Also helping to pull down expectations was a speech from John Williams, president of the New York Fed. He said that “there are encouraging reasons to expect that inflation has peaked and should edge down in coming quarters.”
Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, meanwhile, gave few clues on what to expect in testimony before a Senate committee. “Any central banker would be happy to have data going in the right direction,” he said about this week’s encouraging inflation reports, but “these are all imperfect measures of the state of underlying inflation.”
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.55% from 4.58% late Tuesday and from 4.62% the day before.
Upward pressure on inflation remains because of the war with Iran, which has seen days of back-and-forth strikes by the United States and Iran across the Middle East.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly topped $86 in the morning before falling back to settle at $84.95 per barrel, up 0.3% from the day before.
In stock markets abroad, South Korea’s Kospi index jumped 6.2%.
Seoul’s market is dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and its main index has already had drops of 8.9%, 7.9% and 5.3% so far this month because of sharp swings for stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence boom.
In Amsterdam, ASML reported stronger revenue growth for the latest quarter than it had forecast. CEO Christophe Fouquet said continuing progress in AI has customers accelerating their expansions, and the maker of chipmaking machinery gave a forecast for upcoming revenue growth that topped analysts’ expectations.
ASML’s stock in Amsterdam slipped 0.4%, but its stock that trades in the United States rose 2.2%.
Its strong forecast helped calm some of the worries that have sent AI-related stocks spinning recently. Chief among them is the possibility that their prices shot too high in the euphoria around AI.
In China, stocks rose 1.4% in Hong Kong but fell 0.3% in Shanghai after the government said the world’s second-largest economy expanded at a 4.3% annualized pace last quarter, down from the 5% growth rate at the start of the year.
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AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed to this report.
Thousands of visitors were told to evacuate a remote Minnesota wilderness area accessible only by boat as wildfires send dangerously heavy smoke over the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this week.
More than 100 wildfires are burning in Canada, where a train crew in northern Ontario filmed themselves surrounded by flames before being safely evacuated. Winds are carrying the smoke southeast.
Warnings about unhealthy air conditions Wednesday extended from Minnesota through Toronto and into New York. Unusually hot summer temperatures were expected, too.
The best advice is to stay indoors to avoid both the smoke and the extreme heat, said Tyler Hasenstein, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
“Those two things coinciding with each other is not good from a health perspective,” he said.
In far northeastern Minnesota, rangers were trying to warn people that the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was closed Tuesday because about 17 fires caused by lightning more than a week ago were spreading through the vast wilderness accessible primarily by canoe.
Rangers estimated anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 people were inside the 1.1-million-acre (445,000-hectare) wilderness, which is almost the size of Delaware, Superior National Forest spokesperson Joy VanDrie said.
“It’s an arduous job,” VanDrie said of rangers and campers having to canoe for hours or even carry their boats over land to evacuate.
No injuries or deaths have been reported. Rangers were going through every lake and waterway and officials estimated they had about 90% of the people out Wednesday.
Campers rescued this week said skies quickly darkened from smoke and they could feel the heat as they paddled or were taken by boat to safety.
Jan Bailey was camping with her husband, daughter, son-in-law, two grandchildren and three dogs when they noticed wispy smoke on the horizon. Two hours later, they could see a raging firestorm. A paddleboarder with a satellite phone fled to their campsite and they called forestry rangers who sent a boat to rescue them and others.
“We had fire on both sides of us at that time,” Bailey told Minnesota Public Radio. “So we’re just weaving between the lakes. It’s a little smoky. Campsites are going up.”
Even authorities in Canada pitched in. They rescued two groups of youth campers Wednesday who had crossed the border. One group was stuck on an isolated sandbar, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said.
VanDrie didn’t know when the area might reopen. Minnesota officials said some fires in the Boundary Waters will be allowed to burn indefinitely but will be monitored to ensure they don’t threaten people or property.
Dan Westervelt, associate professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, said severe drought conditions combined with heat in Canada and the U.S. have created “a perfect storm for really dry conditions to provide a lot of fuel for these wildfires to burn.” Research shows warming temperatures from burning coal, oil and gas are making fires more frequent and intense.
High levels of fine particulate matter in the air from wildfire smoke may be unhealthy for sensitive groups, such as children and people with heart or lung conditions. The particulates can cause shortness of breath, coughing, dizziness or fatigue and aggravate heart and lung diseases and other chronic health issues.
Experts suggest wearing a N95 mask if you have to be outside and keeping your indoor air cleaner by closing windows and running an air purifier or air conditioner.
It’s been a particularly busy and deadly fire season in the U.S. About four dozen large fires are currently burning across 15 states, from Minnesota and North Carolina to Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Oregon and California, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
Prolonged drought and record low snowpack levels combined to make conditions ripe for rapid fire growth.
In Minnesota, officials warned large fires could burn for months. In Minneapolis, the high Wednesday was expected to be 96 degrees F (36 C) and temperatures above 90 F (32 C) were expected the rest of the week.
“It could well be we’re having significant fires throughout the summer until we have snow. Snow would be a good thing,” said Patty Thielen, director of the state Department of Natural Resources.
The smoke was so thick that the sky turned orange like Mars in northern Minnesota, said Matt Taraldsen, supervisory meteorologist with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Part of the danger of the heat and smoke there is that only about half the buildings have air conditioning, Taraldsen said. Residents usually would open windows to keep cool “but when there’s dense smoke, you can’t do that,” he said.
Taraldsen’s mother said she woke up in her Duluth, Minnesota, home Wednesday morning and everything smelled like a campfire. When she opened her door, her eyes watered and she had to use her inhaler to ease her asthma.
Typically, Theresa Taraldsen said, she can see the St. Louis River from her yard but it was all a white wall of smoke Wednesday.
“You literally couldn’t see nothing,” she said.
Officials in Michigan and Wisconsin warned residents about air quality issues that could last for days. People in New York reported smelling smoke Wednesday afternoon and the problems extended even to Maine, where residents were reporting a yellowish and brownish color in the sky.
The most intense smoke could spread as far south as Washington, D.C., by midday Thursday.
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Associated Press writers Susan Montoya Bryan and Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A blood test may predict if apparently healthy older adults are likely to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms in the next five or 10 years, researchers reported Wednesday.
That information could be reassuring or terrifying, but for now it’s a potential tool to speed drug development by helping to identify and enroll high-risk people into studies of possible Alzheimer’s treatments or preventive strategies.
Already large clinical trials are testing if certain drugs could prevent or at least delay the disease — and if any of those pan out, doctors will need an easy way to tell who should try them.
The scientists behind the new study stress that it’s too soon for healthy people to seek out the so-called p-tau217 test, which is currently used to help diagnose whether people experiencing cognitive problems have Alzheimer’s or another disorder.
“Wait and get tested when you can potentially do something about it,” stressed Dr. Reisa Sperling of the Mass General Brigham Neuroscience Institute, the study’s senior author. “At this point it wouldn’t change what I would tell someone to do. I’d still tell them to eat well, sleep well, exercise a lot and stay engaged.”
The new findings showed that symptom-free older adults who harbored very high levels of p-tau217 had a 38% risk of developing cognitive impairment over five years. That risk grew to 78% by 10 years.
The research was published in JAMA and presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London.
It’s not clear exactly what causes Alzheimer’s, but its telltale markers are brain-clogging amyloid plaques and neuron-killing tau tangles. The p-tau217 test measures a form of tau that correlates with how much plaque buildup someone has and gives a hint about tangles, Sperling said.
The Mass General Brigham team analyzed data from 2,684 older adults who were healthy when they’d joined some long-running Alzheimer’s studies, receiving the p-tau217 blood test at enrollment and yearly cognitive checkups. Between the earliest enrollment in 2004 and last year, about 478 had developed cognitive impairment.
Study participants with very low p-tau217 levels likewise had a low risk of developing cognitive impairment over the five- to 10-year period.
There’s a conundrum in predicting Alzheimer’s: Lots of people harbor high levels of amyloid plaques yet never get dementia. A leading theory is that at some point amyloid buildup triggers an abnormal type of tau to form tangles, leading to symptoms.
Sperling said the blood test data offers some new clues. While different intermediate levels of p-tau217 signaled progressive risk, only the very highest level seemed to correlate with other evidence about that tipping point.
“This is a gradual process where amyloid and tau build up in the brain and this blood-based biomarker is telling you how far you are in that process,” she said.
Scientists not involved in the study praised it but also offered some reasons to be cautious. One is that only a small fraction of study participants had been tracked for a full decade, so there’s less confidence in the 10-year risk estimate than the five-year risk estimate.
Also, the predictions could be clouded by other factors — older people may be at risk of dying from something else, or have heart-related problems that can cause vascular dementia rather than Alzheimer’s, noted Drs. Suzanne Schindler of Washington University in St. Louis and David Wolk of the University of Pennsylvania in a commentary published in JAMA.
The blood tests “are not yet precise enough to guide individualized prognosis,” wrote Schindler, who also studies p-tau217’s prognostic potential, and Wolk. Still, they said the new work has “provided a crucial piece of the puzzle.”
Already “we have people coming saying, ‘I want this blood test. I have a family history of Alzheimer’s disease,’” said Jessica Langbaum of the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix, something she strongly discourages — for now.
“These findings are quite strong,” Langbaum added, and a predictive blood test would be “really important” — but only if ongoing studies eventually find a drug that could help people before symptoms begin.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — President Donald Trump addressed a defense summit at the U.S. Army War College on Wednesday but spent little time talking about battlefield issues — even as the war in Iran has reduced the U.S. supply of critical missile and interceptor systems.
Seated at a roundtable with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Republican Pennsylvania Sen. David McCormick, Trump said the gathering would generate around $10 billion in pledged investments from domestic defense and technology companies, without providing details.
“The talent and innovation in this room will keep America safe for many years to come,” Trump said.
He spoke shortly after the U.S. military launched another round of missile strikes that Trump had previously promised against Iran as a ceasefire to end that war remains in tatters. Trump made brief references to the war and a January military operation to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, saying, “We’re really doing well with Iran.”
“Iran is unhappy right now,” he said.
But his lengthy speech spent more time drifting into themes Trump repeats during his political rallies, boasting about — and sometimes exaggerating — his administration’s accomplishments. Trump also diverted into a broadside against the use of windmills in Britain, questioned having steam catapults on U.S. ships and pondered the Battle of Gettysburg.
“What a war that was, when you read about it,” the president said of the Civil War.
Trump suggested that oil from Venezuela would eventually pay for what the U.S. spent toppling Maduro some 50 times over — though he also said private oil companies would profit more than the country. After a long aside about the use of magnets to improve catapults on vessels, Trump finally offered, “I hope I’m not boring anybody.”
“I’m getting it all out now,” he added. “All the anger I have when I hear about electric catapults that don’t work.”
Later, Trump advised, “I’ll tell you how to make money: Do magnets.” At another point Trump declared, “I watch more tractors than any human being on earth.”
The gathering in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was organized by McCormick and also featured Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Army Secretary Dan Driscoll; CIA Director John Ratcliffe; and Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Summit attendees included JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, Blackstone President Jon Gray, Lockheed Martin CEO Jim Taiclet, General Dynamics CEO Phebe Novakovic, Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, SpaceX director Antonio Gracias and artificial intelligence firm Palantir chief technology officer of analytics Shyam Sankar.
“I’m in a world where I’m shaking hands with celebrity business people, mostly,” Trump said.
Trump has come to the critical swing state seven times during his second term, including last month, when he went to a Mack Trucks facility in Macungie.
Trump carried Pennsylvania in 2016 and 2024, and McCormick is not up for reelection this cycle, but Republicans are increasingly concerned about the war and the persistently high cost of living as well as the president’s low approval ratings as they look to maintain control of Congress during November’s midterm elections.
As he frequently does, however, Trump complained Wednesday that affordability and the rising cost of living that have increasingly worried voters were issues the Democrats have fomented for political purposes.
“That’s a fake word that they use, they caused the affordability problem,” he said, before referencing one of his friends, whom he didn’t name, having bought a private plane just for the tax benefits.
Trump spoke at a similar gathering organized by McCormick last year in Pittsburgh that sought to make the city a hot spot for advancement in energy technology and robotics. Then, the senator announced $90 billion in pledged investments in those sectors across Pennsylvania.
Before Trump’s arrival, multi-analytics threat detection leader ZeroEyes, which is based in Conshohocken, outside Philadelphia, announced a planned $10 million investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning research and development.
Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics says it plans to open a new 10,000-square-foot (930-square-meter) manufacturing facility designed to boost integration of robotics into defense manufacturing processes and better expand the nation’s defense industrial base.
Unmentioned during Trump’s appearance was an analysis released in May that found that U.S. military contractors will need at least three years to replenish stockpiles of Tomahawks, which are used to strike targets deep inside enemy territory, as well as Patriot and THAAD interceptors, which defend against incoming missiles and drones.
Stocks have dwindled as the U.S. has repeatedly fired strikes on Iran, adding to concerns that American forces would have limited firepower in any potential future conflict with China.
Trump also recently pledged to give Ukraine a license to produce Patriot air-defense systems, which could be a major development in its war with Russia, though turning the idea into real weapons is also likely to take years.
Trump has sought to correct the shortfall by seeking a historic $1.5 trillion defense budget proposal for 2027. But a package authorizing such spending levels is stalled in Congress, and, even if it eventually moves forward, loads of additional time will still be required to expand production capabilities to accommodate such weapons systems.
Jake Loosararian, co-founder and CEO of Gecko Robotics, said U.S. defense companies have “got to supercharge supply chains” to reduce how long it takes for new technology to be ready for widespread production.
“President Trump uniquely understands the importance of pragmatic impact today,” Loosararian said. “He also understands big, beautiful things for tomorrow.”
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The NBA will be doing some international business alongside the FIFA World Cup final in the coming days, as it moves closer to the planned launch of a new league in Europe sometime in the fall of 2027.
Commissioner Adam Silver, speaking after the league’s Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday night, said he and Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum plan to talk to a number of groups interested in owning teams that will play in the new league.
And since many of those interested parties will be heading to the New York area for Sunday’s World Cup final, it made sense to take meetings, Silver said.
“We’ve had tremendous interest from multiple cities in Europe, including cities that we didn’t ask for bids from,” Silver said. “And we discussed with our board today that we’re in the process of finalizing those bids for an initial group of cities.”
The NBA and FIBA, the sport’s global governing body, announced plans last year to pursue a new European league — ending years of speculation about when or if such a move would happen. The plan remains in place for the new league to launch just over a year.
“Things are where I hope they would be,” Silver said.
The lengthy probe into whether the Los Angeles Clippers circumvented salary cap rules related to an endorsement contract between Kawhi Leonard and a now-bankrupt California-based digital bank that touted itself as environmentally friendly remains active, and Silver said he wants it completed sometime this summer.
It is now a thornier issue, given that a trade is in place to send Leonard from the Clippers to the Toronto Raptors. The teams put that trade on hold last week pending the outcome of the probe, and that could take weeks to decide.
The teams made that decision and the issues “were well-known to the teams,” Silver said.
“They chose not to live with that uncertainty,” Silver said.
The NBA enlisted outside counsel — Wachtell Lipton, a New York-based firm — to conduct the investigation and Silver said he gets regular updates from the league’s general counsel on certain elements of the probe.
“The investigation needs to run its course,” Silver said.
The probe, as detailed by the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, could lead to penalties that include a substantial fine, the loss of draft capital — and, potentially, even the voiding of a player contract — if the league finds there was a deliberate circumvention of cap rules.
The league’s process of deciding on whether to expand to Seattle, Las Vegas, either or both continued with multiple conversations this week. Silver reiterated something he’s said several times, that he’s hopeful a decision will be made by the end of 2026.
A handful of potential ownership groups have declared interest publicly.
“Some groups have been public,” Silver said. “The majority of groups have not been public.”
If the league expands, the likely target is for the 2028-29 season.
Silver said he believes the collective bargaining agreement is working as intended, and defended the “second apron” — one of the salary-related elements of the deal between the league and its players.
“Every collective bargaining agreement is a result of a series of compromises,” Silver said. “And that’s what this one is as well, but certainly from my standpoint, from a competitor’s standpoint, this is working very well.”
The current collective bargaining agreement includes aprons — payroll levels that, if exceeded, seriously limit a team’s options on player movement and acquisition. And they have come under fire in recent days, with newly installed National Basketball Players Association executive director David Kelly saying the union will fight it in the next collective bargaining agreement.
“We are not fans of the second apron,” Kelly said last week. “We did not propose the second apron. We should have done a better job of fighting back against the second apron, and in the future, we will have a much more unified union, and we will do a better of fighting it back against a second apron.”
Kelly was responding to a question surrounding something NBA veteran Kyle Kuzma wrote on social media earlier this month. Kuzma said “the first and second apron are starting to function like a hard cap on player value, team continuity, and player movement.”
The current CBA is scheduled to remain in place through at least the 2028-29 season. And for the record, not all players are up in arms about how the CBA is working.
“Thank God for second aprons and the first aprons,” Houston star Kevin Durant said during the regular season when asked about the league’s run of parity — with eight different franchises having won titles in the last eight seasons.
Miami Heat managing general partner and Basketball Hall of Famer Micky Arison was unanimously elected as the board’s next chairman. Arison will take over the role at the league’s September board meeting.
Arison — who has the second-longest tenure of any current NBA team governor at 31 years and is the longtime chair of the board of directors of Carnival Corporation — is assuming the role that outgoing Toronto governor Larry Tanenbaum has held since September 2017.
“I am grateful for Larry’s nearly three decades of stewardship of the Raptors and his commitment to helping guide our league as NBA Board Chairman over the past nine years,” Silver said. “Micky’s long record of service on the Board, his strong relationships with his fellow team owners and his deep understanding of our game and business make him an exceptional choice to assume this important leadership role.”
Tanenbaum thanked the league’s owners for their support and said he wishes Arison success.
“I look forward to working closely in this new capacity with Adam, the league office and my fellow team governors to champion our teams and players, ensuring we continue to deliver exciting and unforgettable experiences for our fans,” Arison said.
Silver said he’s hoping to have a decision on the format of the All-Star Game by the start of the regular season.
The league tried a U.S. vs. World mini-tournament this past season, and it generally was well-received. Talks between the league and its players are ongoing on the format and if any potential tweaks are needed. “I think we’re off to a good start,” Silver said.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
Heavy downpours in South Texas washed out highways and stranded motorists Tuesday as forecasters warned that a threat of more severe weather could bring dangerous flooding to already drenched counties near the border with Mexico.
Storms dumped up to a foot of rain in some rural areas of Texas, leading to dozens of high-water rescues across the region and officials shutting down portions of a busy highway for hours near Uvalde, about 80 miles (129 kilometers) west of San Antonio. A flood watch also included Kerr County, where catastrophic flooding last year along the Guadalupe River killed more than 100 people.
No deaths or injuries Tuesday were immediately reported.
The National Weather Service warned that storms overnight could dump more than a foot of additional rain to some places into Wednesday, creating potentially catastrophic impacts from flash flooding in areas west of San Antonio. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a disaster declaration for dozens of counties.
“Intense rain rates and compounding effects from multiple rounds of storms will result in a dangerous flash flooding threat through Thursday,” the National Weather Service said.
Authorities on Tuesday posted videos of a rescue crew in a boat down flooded streets and one vehicle being swept away by fast-moving waters. Five people were rescued by members of the Texas Game Warden Search and Rescue Team and four were rescued by a local game warden, said Maggie Berger, a spokesperson for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.
In Uvalde, officials said there had been at least two dozen water rescues. They opened a local event center for anyone displaced by flooding. In Sabinal, officials were also making plans for a shelter.
PHOENIX (AP) — Pat Oliphant, an influential political cartoonist known for creating caricatures of U.S. and world leaders, died Monday. He was 90.
Oliphant died at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from age-related issues, said his son, Grant Oliphant.
A multidimensional artist who also created sculptures, lithographs and oil paintings, Oliphant was widely considered the most syndicated editorial cartoonist in the U.S. During the 1980s, his daily political cartoons appeared in more than 500 publications in the country and around the world.
For over five decades, Oliphant’s work ridiculed powerful figures — from President Lyndon B. Johnson to Donald Trump — with a blunt and meticulous stroke. He drew Jimmy Carter with large teeth and lips, alluding to his background as a farmer and the cultural stereotype of adaptation to rural work, and depicted Ronald Reagan, whom he thought was uninterested in the suffering of the American people, with a cork in his ear.
Those who knew Oliphant said his gift was to merge the shrewdness of an observer of the political scene with a witty sense of humor into art.
“He redefined what it meant to be a political cartoonist and to be fearless in his work,” said Bill Banowsky, director of the documentary A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant. “His work has a fierce pursuit of bringing injustice to light. And he was very effective.”
Oliphant tackled controversial subjects that were largely deemed unacceptable by the establishment at the time. That included the Catholic Church and its pedophilia scandals in 2002 and Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza in 2008. But his ethnic caricatures also drew complaints about false stereotypes and racism from organizations like the Asian American Journalists Association and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1935, Oliphant started as a copy desk aide at a local newspaper, where he discovered his interest in art while seeing a cartoonist at work. His first in-house cartoonist job was at The Advertiser in his hometown.
“He decided cartooning could merge his interests in art and commentary,” Grant said. “He wanted to be the best in the world.”
About a decade after he moved to the U.S., Oliphant joined The Denver Post in 1964 and won a Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1967. He thought the prize committee had honored the weakest piece of work he’d submitted for consideration, and criticized the prize process itself afterward.
He later joined The Washington Star and moved to Santa Fe in 2002.
Oliphant began losing his eyesight due to glaucoma around the age of 80 and had to retire from professional cartoon work, Grant said. Still, he painted at home in Santa Fe.
“He loved the creative ferment of Santa Fe. We had constant parties at his house far into the night with a wide range of thinkers, musicians and writers,” said Hampton Sides, a Santa Fe-based writer and friend of Oliphant. “He enjoyed the constant interplay of ideas.”
With the current political environment, Grant said it seems society has lost the capacity to receive humor and debate and contrary opinions.
“My father challenged the idea of the political establishment being sublimely serious as it is,” Grant said. “We really need that in today’s America.”