A retired Army officer who worked as a civilian for the Air Force has pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit classified information about Russia’s war with Ukraine on a foreign online dating platform.
David Slater, 64, who had top secret clearance at his job at the U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, pleaded guilty to a single count before a federal magistrate judge in Omaha on Thursday. In exchange for his guilty plea, two other counts were dropped.
Slater remains free pending his sentencing, which is scheduled for Oct. 8. Prosecutors and his lawyers agreed that he should serve between five years and 10 months and seven years and three months in prison, and the government will recommend a term at the low end of that range. The charge carries a statutory maximum of 10 years behind bars.
U.S. District Judge Brian Buescher will ultimately decide whether to accept the plea agreement and will determine Slater’s sentence.
“I conspired to willfully communicate national defense information to an unauthorized person,” Slater said in a handwritten note on his petition to change his plea.
Slater had access to some of the country’s most closely held secrets, John Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
“Access to classified information comes with great responsibility,” Lesley Woods, the U.S. attorney for Nebraska, said in the same statement. “David Slater failed in his duty to protect this information by willingly sharing National Defense Information with an unknown online personality despite having years of military experience that should have caused him to be suspicious of that person’s motives.”
Slater retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2020 and worked in a classified space at the base from around August 2021 until around April 2022. He attended briefings about the Russia-Ukraine war that were classified up to top secret, court documents say. He was arrested in March 2024.
In his plea agreement, he acknowledged that he conspired to transmit classified information that he learned from those briefings via the foreign dating website’s messaging platform to an unnamed coconspirator, who claimed to be a woman living in Ukraine. The information, classified as secret, pertained to military targets and Russian military capabilities, according to the plea agreement.
“Defendant knew and had reason to believe that such information could be used to the injury of the United States or the advantage of a foreign nation,” the agreement states.
According to the original indictment, the coconspirator regularly asked Slater for classified information. She called him, “my secret informant love!” in one message. She closed another by saying, “You are my secret agent. With love.” In another, she wrote, “Dave, I hope tomorrow NATO will prepare a very pleasant ‘surprise’ for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin! Will you tell me?”
Court documents don’t identify the coconspirator, or say whether she was working for Ukraine or Russia. They also don’t identify the dating platform.
Amy Donato, a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Omaha, said Monday that she couldn’t provide that information. Slater’s attorney, Stuart Dornan, didn’t immediately return a call seeking further details.
CENTER POINT, Texas — Local and state officials who responded to the catastrophic flooding this month in Central Texas defended their actions in an interview with NBC News, saying they did everything in their power to save lives and are now considering what more could be done to prevent future tragedies.
“Our teams did everything that they possibly could with this gruesome, devastating situation that happened, and we would not change the way we did that. And I think we saved as many people as we could,” Dalton Rice, the city manager of Kerrville, said.
He spoke with NBC News alongside Jeff Holt, a Kerr County commissioner, and state Rep. Wes Virdell, over the weekend, before a new round of heavy rain and flooding threatened parts of the region. The officials said they did their best to coordinate evacuations and rescues against uncontrollable forces of nature, but noted that a permanent emergency operations center, more diversion dams and better cellphone service in certain areas might help save lives in future floods.
Hundreds of people were rescued in the early morning of July 4 as the Guadalupe River surged to unprecedented heights in less than an hour, its intractable current carrying homes and vehicles for miles downstream. At least 132 people died in the flood, including campers and counselors at a girls’ summer camp, and more than 160 people are still missing.
Flash floods are common in the Texas Hill Country, where Kerrville is located, but National Weather Service forecasts predicted less rain than ultimately descended on July 4 — and by the time officials learned that lives were in jeopardy, many homes along the river were already submerged or washed away.
“It happened so rapidly that nobody, nobody could have anticipated it,” Rice said.
Kerr County and Kerrville officials held separate meetings Monday about the ongoing flood response. Officials mostly steered clear of addressing speculation over how leaders communicated about the events on July 4, but one noted that he had received death threats.
Rice told NBC News the water level was normal in his morning run along the river at about 3:30 a.m., during which he planned to survey the Fourth of July festivities. At 5:20 a.m., he started getting phone calls and text messages about the water surging. By that point, evacuations were already underway at campgrounds and RV parks.
Holt, who is also a volunteer firefighter, received an alert from the Center Point Volunteer Fire Department at 4:59 a.m. that help was needed along the river. He had been up with his cat, who was agitated by the storm, for the past hour and a half.
“My cat would not leave me alone, actually scratched my eyeball when I was sleeping,” he said.
In anticipation of heavy rain, some first responders from the Texas Division of Emergency Management were already stationed in the area, along with volunteer swift water rescue teams. Holt assisted with evacuations at around 5:30 a.m. at the Old River Road RV Park in Kerrville, he said, where some people were still fast asleep as the water encroached.
“We all came in to meet probably the hardest day we’re going to see in our lives, and I’m a 30- year combat Marine,” he said.
Dalton Rice, the city manager of Kerrville; Jeff Holt, a Kerr County commissioner; and Wes Virdell, a Texas state representative who represents Kerr County.Aria Bendix / NBC News
Virdell, a Republican state lawmaker who represents Kerr County, woke to messages about the flood at around 8 a.m. He got in his car as fast as he could, he said, and drove to the scene from Brady, more than an hour and a half north of Kerrville.
“I just threw, I think, one shirt, some gear or whatever in there, and my wife hopped in with me, and we drove 90 miles an hour,” he said.
Would alerts have made a difference?
In the wake of the disaster, questions have swirled about whether residents were adequately alerted about the dangers facing them, and if such alerts could have made a difference.
Since its approval in 2009, Kerr County has used a phone notification system, known as CodeRed, to deliver emergency messages to residents who opt in. Officials have not said whether CodeRed alerts went out to warn about the weather and evacuations, or who was driving the decision of whether or not to send them.
NBC affiliate KXAN in Austin obtained audio of a volunteer firefighter in the city of Ingram asking a county sheriff dispatcher at 4:22 a.m. if they can “send a CodeRed out to our Hunt residents, asking them to find higher ground or stay home.” The dispatcher responded: “We have to get that approved with our supervisor.”
KXAN reported that one person near a flooded area said they received a voicemail at 1:14 a.m. from a number traced back to CodeRed, while another area resident received a CodeRed alert at 5:34 a.m. about the National Weather Service’s “flash flood warning,” suggesting inconsistencies among recipients countywide.
Parts of the county also have spotty cell service or none at all. Others may not have had their phones with them, like the young girls who were staying at Camp Mystic in the unincorporated community of Hunt, where officials say at least 27 campers and staff members died.
Holt, the Kerr County commissioner, said the county judge and sheriff typically must agree on issuing alerts such as a CodeRed. From his perspective, evacuating people on the ground, he said, “felt like we were all in the fight already, and didn’t need necessarily a call out for it.”
“It’s not easy for anyone, especially if you live on the river and your own home is flooding and you can’t get to the [emergency operations center] because you live on Highway 39, which is the case with a county judge,” Holt added. “He is caught up in the disaster and trying to respond from home as much as possible.”
Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said at a July 5 news conference that he lives along the Guadalupe River and his properties were devastated by the flood.
As a city manager, Rice said, “CodeRed was not on our mind” at around 5 a.m. when evacuations were underway.
“We were actively communicating with emergency responders in the community,” he added. “It’s very tough to say, would that [alert] have been effective?”
Hours after the flood, Rice helped establish an emergency operations center at the Hill Country Youth Event Center, where state, county and city officials — including the county judge and sheriff — could coordinate their response.
Virdell, the state representative, praised the effort to synchronize local and state operations, noting that two county commissioners worked out of the emergency center while the remaining two assisted with active rescues.
“People know me as sometimes being hard on government, government efficiency. What happened here was one of the most efficient things that I’ve ever seen between all the agencies working together,” he said.
‘They’re just playing a blame game’
Questions over the timeline of events continued Monday as elected officials in Kerr County and Kerrville held public meetings.
“This flood was impossible to accurately and precisely predict,” Mayor Joe Herring said at the end of the Kerrville City Council meeting. He previously said he was awakened to the flooding by a call from Rice at about 5:30 a.m. and received no emergency alerts that morning.
At the Kerr County Commissioners’ Court meeting, residents praised the response from emergency crews amid exhaustive search and rescue operations. Kelly, in his first public appearance since the news conferences immediately after the flood, said he would not be answering questions.
“This is not a press conference today,” Kelly said. “This is a business meeting, and we’ve got business that we have to do in the midst of this disaster response.”
Commissioner Rich Paces said Monday he has received death threats in response to prior actions the county has taken over funding. He clarified that Kerr County received $10 million in federal money from the American Rescue Plan Act, a trillion-dollar Covid relief package signed by President Joe Biden in 2021, but that the money was for a radio system to help with emergency response — not a flood warning system.
“It’s sad to see the evil that’s out there as well. In the midst of all this beauty,” Paces said, referring to the donations and support. “You know, I’ve been getting death threats. Can you imagine, and people cursing us for decisions that we’ve never had a chance to make? And they’re just playing a blame game,” he said.
Lessons learned
More than a week after the flood, state and local officials said they’re focused on recovery operations — including locating the bodies of missing people — rather than identifying any points of weakness in their emergency response.
“Right now I don’t want to spend my time having to go back and look at timelines, because our focus is on the operation,” Rice said.
Holt said the county likely needs more diversion dams to strip off water in the flood zone, an action that would require signoff from private landowners.
And while officials were able to quickly organize an emergency operations center, establishing a permanent one would be a wise long-term solution, he added. He described the need for officials to rehearse for emergency scenarios like flash floods at a single location that’s built for that purpose, “instead of relying on [the Texas Division of Emergency Management] to bring us all together.”
Virdell said it’s also important to find out whether sirens were useful during the disaster, since people sleeping indoors may not have heard them. One resource that may have helped, he added, is better cellphone service along the river in Hunt.
“I’m going to be requesting that some of the cellphone companies work on putting towers in that area,” he said. “I think that’s going to make a big difference because we didn’t have communication with a bunch of the camps.”
A spokesperson for the Eastland family, which owns and operates Camp Mystic, said the camp’s director, Richard “Dick” Eastland, who died that day, received a flood warning from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. on his cellphone. He alerted his family via walkie-talkies, the spokesperson said, but it’s unclear if the camp had means of communicating with authorities other than cellphones. Eastland was last seen evacuating girls from the Bubble Inn cabin, where the youngest campers were staying.
Virdell said he has been looking into whether satellite communication could help generate alerts in coordination with the National Weather Service.
However, he noted, even those tools might not have been enough to avert disaster on July 4: “The general consensus is, everything was done that could be done at that moment.”
Aria Bendix and Morgan Chesky reported from Center Point, and Erik Ortiz from New York.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was not in a Miami courtroom Monday, but his name loomed large as a jury was selected for the federal trial of a civil lawsuit over the 2019 crash of a Tesla Model S that killed a pedestrian and left another badly injured when the car was in Autopilot mode.
“Anything that involves Elon Musk is very hard for me,” one potential juror said.
Another would-be juror said she could not be fair and impartial to Tesla because of the company’s “ethics, ownership and what I have seen in the news about its relation to the government.”
The case is the first suit against Tesla related to fatal crashes involving the electric vehicle company’s Autopilot system to go to trial.
And it comes months after Musk’s work as a top advisor to President Donald Trump made the billionaire a household name, synonymous with the massive federal workforce cuts undertaken by his brainchild, the Department of Government Efficiency.
The richest man in the world’s subsequent falling out with Trump over the president’s federal tax reform and spending bill made headlines and injected fresh drama into typically staid congressional votes.
A Tesla lawyer noted to the prospective jurors Monday, “It’s hard to hear the name Elon Musk and not have a view, positive or negative.”
“This case isn’t about Musk. But he is connected to the company,” the attorney said, as they asked if jurors had views about Musk that they could not put aside.
Three would-be jurors raised their hands to say that, yes, they did have opinions Musk that would make it impossible for them to approach the case impartially.
“It would be hard. I understand he isn’t Tesla. But he is very tied to the Tesla brand,” one man said, adding that he was unsure if he could set aside his views.
Two other jurors who had earlier voiced negative opinions of Musk reiterated those views to Tesla’s lawyer.
The attorney asked one juror about what that man wrote in response to a jury questionnaire about hearing things in the news related to Tesla.
Two other jurors who previously spoke against Musk spoke again and shared the same opinions.
“This case is more about what happened rather than who it’s for,” the man replied.
“I’m pretty independent,” he said. “I can be impartial, it’s about the accident and what happened.”
Six women and three men were selected for the jury.
The suit in U.S. District Court was filed against Tesla by the family of Naibel Benavides, the pedestrian who died from the crash and by her boyfriend, Dillon Angulo, who was seriously injured. The driver of the vehicle, George McGee, is not a defendant at the trial, and he reportedly settled with the plaintiffs earlier.
The plaintiffs allege that Tesla’s Autopilot feature was defective and unsafe.
It is one of more than a dozen cases in which Tesla has been sued over fatal or injurious crashes where the company’s Autopilot or Full Self-Driving (Supervised) modes had been in use by a driver.
FSD is the premium version of Tesla’s partially automated driving system. Autopilot is a standard option on all new Tesla vehicles.
Tesla’s website currently describes Autopilot as “an advanced driver assistance system that enhances safety and convenience behind the wheel.”
“Additionally with Full Self-Driving (Supervised), you can drive your Tesla vehicle almost anywhere, making lane changes, select forks to follow your navigation route, navigate around other vehicles and objects and make left and right turns under your active supervision,” Tesla says.
After the jury was selected, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said in an opening statement, “Evidence will show for years before and after this crime, Tesla ignored warnings.”
“You will hear evidence about those motivations and why Tesla did what they did,” the attorney said. “Was it the Silicon Valley ethos of moving fast and breaking things? That is going to be the determination.”
“What is not in dispute is that the driver that crashed was careless, distracted, on his phone and dropped it, then grabbed it,” the attorney said. “He plowed into my client at approximately 60 miles an hour.”
“This is a case about shared responsibility. Tesla will take no responsibility for the failures of their Autopilot system. Evidence will show that every actor needs a stage and Tesla set the stage for the preventable actions that bring us here,” said the lawyer.
Evidence will be introduced at trial that shows Musk made public statements about “superhuman” sensors on Tesla vehicles, the attorney told the jury.
At one conference, Musk said the car was “safer than a human,” according to the lawyer.
Tesla, in a statement provided to NBC News, said, “The evidence clearly shows that this crash had nothing to do with Tesla’s Autopilot technology. Instead, like so many unfortunate accidents since cell phones were invented, this was caused by a distracted driver.”
“To his credit, he took responsibility for his actions because he was searching for his dropped cell phone while also pressing the accelerator, speeding and overriding the car’s system at the time of the crash. In 2019 when this occurred, no crash avoidance technology existed that could have prevented this tragic accident,” the company said.
Sheriff’s deputies were forced to respond to the discovery of a creepy teddy bear that looked like it was made of bloody human tissue before it was found to be harmless, Southern California authorities said Monday.
The macabre scene unfolded in Victorville, about 85 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles, at a bus stop next to a gas station on Bear Valley Road, officials said.
A “doll that was possibly made of human skin” was found a little bit after noon on Sunday, according to a coroner’s statement.
A deputy coroner investigator “determined this doll was made of a fabricated material and was not of human origin” before a forensic pathologist also “confirmed that the object was not human and contained no human tissue,” the statement said.
“Our investigation found these dolls being sold on a website with the claim that the dolls are ‘made of human skin,’” the coroner said.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Monday that he will continue his run for New York City mayor after losing to Zohran Mamdani in last month’s Democratic primary.
Cuomo stepped down as New York governor in 2021 after being hit with numerous sexual harassment allegations, but had been considered the front-runner in the Democratic primary due to his longstanding political ties and influence in the Democratic establishment.
Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, wound up surging ahead of Cuomo in the final weeks of the campaign as he touted a progressive vision for a new direction for the city.
In his post on Monday, Cuomo sharply criticized Mamdani as offering “slick slogans but no real solutions.”
“We need a city with lower rent, safer streets, where buying your first home is once again possible, where childcare won’t bankrupt you,” he said, leaning into the messaging that was at the core of Mamdani’s campaign. “That’s the New York City we know, that’s the one that’s still possible. You haven’t given up on it and you deserve a mayor with the experience and ideas to make it happen again — and the guts to take on anyone who stands in the way.”
He also seemed to acknowledge complaints from some of his supporters that he had not campaigned enough during the primary.
“Every day I’m going to be hitting the streets, meeting you where you are, to hear the good and the bad, problems and solutions, because for the next few months it’s my responsibility to earn your vote. So let’s do this,” he said.
And while he and his allies repeatedly hammered Cuomo’s experience fighting back against President Donald Trump as a foundational piece of his bid, the idea that the city needed an experienced hand to stand up to Trump, Cuomo only mentioned Trump in passing during his remarks. Instead, he grounded most of his pitch to voters on everyday issues, including affordability concerns Mamdani leveraged into his successful bid.
While Cuomo didn’t outline the mechanics for how he’ll run in November, he’s expected to run on the ballot line belonging to the “Fight and Deliver” party, which he created a few months ago to plan for this very scenario and give him a Plan B if he failed to win the Democratic nomination.
Cuomo conceded the primary on election night last month, but it was unclear at the time whether he would continue on as an independent.
“Tonight was not our night. Tonight was Assemblyman Mamdani’s night, and he put together a great campaign, and he touched young people and inspired them and moved them and got them to come out and vote, and he really ran a highly impactful campaign. I called him. I congratulated him,” he said at the time. “He deserved it, he won.”
Cuomo will also face the current mayor, Eric Adams, a former Democrat who’s running for re-election as an independent. Former prosecutor Jim Walden is also running as an independent, while Guardian Angels founder and radio show host Curtis Sliwa is the Republican nominee.
Mamdani’s opponents have argued that they could have another chance to defeat him in the general election, even though the city leans overwhelmingly Democratic. They have sought to frame the Democratic nominee as too liberal to be palatable to general election voters, a frame Mamdani has bucked by arguing his campaign is “relentlessly focused on the needs of working people.”
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — In Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, two populations are under threat: the iconic blue crab and the crabbers whose livelihoods have depended on this fishery for hundreds of years.
This season, survey counts of the iconic crustaceans hit one of their lowest points on record. That has driven up costs at restaurants at a time when disposable income is scarce and inflation is driving up costs of food and other consumer goods.
Luke McFadden, 29, who has been crabbing since he was 18, says he’s seen a rough start to the season.
“We’re trying to offer them to the consumers as cheaply as possible, being able to cover our cost,” he said. “But I get it, you know, it’s tough out there.”
Crabber Luke McFadden.Cesar Gonzalez / NBC News
At the family-run crab house, Pit Boys, in Annapolis, Maryland, a dozen crabs will cost customers between $75 and $140, depending on size, according to seafood manager Charlie George. That’s “a lot higher” than previous years, an effect he and others attributed to fewer crabs in the bay.
According to the 2025 blue crab advisory report, the total blue crab population has dropped to an estimated 238 million, down from 317 million last year. That’s the second-lowest level since the annual winter dredge survey began in 1990.
Multiple factors may be to blame, including pollution, climate change and the invasive blue catfish spreading through the Chesapeake Bay, said Chesapeake Bay Foundation Executive Director Allison Colden. Catfish were introduced into the bay in the 1970s and 1980s to support recreational fishery.
“Since that time, they have spread through almost every river and stream within the Chesapeake Bay region,” Colden said. “They are voracious predators.”
ATLANTA — Curveballs have been thrown a curve by a modern game valuing velocity over variety, disappearing from the major leagues by more than 20,000 annually.
The Athletics have thrown curves on just 2.5% of pitches this season. The overall big league figure dropped from 10.7% in 2019 to 8.1% last year, the lowest since MLB started tracking in 2008, before rising slightly to 8.5% this season.
There were 22,962 fewer curveballs in 2024 than five years earlier.
“You don’t really see a lot of people throwing 12-6 curveballs anymore,” Tampa Bay pitcher Shane Baz said. “They’d rather have a hard cutter/slider. It’s a lot easier for guys to throw a sweeper than it is a 12-6 curveball.”
Baz’s 28.1% is seventh in curveball use among those who have thrown at least 1,000 pitches this season.
Baltimore’s Charlie Morton, first at 39%, learned to throw a hook from his dad.
“He was reading some article or maybe he was reading some pitching book,” Baltimore’s 41-year-old right-hander said. “You basically throw it like you’re re-throwing a knife.”
Curveballs have been around for a century and a half
Hall of Famer Candy Cummings, a 145-game winner, is credited with inventing the curveball in 1863 when he was 14, discovering the movement when he threw seashells into the Atlantic Ocean. Some attribute the curve to amateur pitcher Fred Goldsmith in 1870.
With an average velocity of 80.2 mph, curves are the slowest and loopiest of breaking pitches, often disrupting the timing of batters set for smoke. The phrase “thrown a curveball” has become part of the English language, much like “screwball,” more a phrase than a pitch these days.
Sandy Koufax, Nolan Ryan and Clayton Kershaw were among the consummate curveballers, bamboozling batters as balls they gave up on dropped like hang gliders into the strike zone.
“It’s become an industry of throwing over pitching,” New York Yankees senior adviser Omar Minaya said. “When you pitch, you use different pitches. What we’re seeing in the industry as a whole, especially with showcases, is people are looking more at velocity than pitchability — as a scout, I said that unfortunately.”
Former pitcher Dallas Braden, now a broadcaster, longs for those days of deception.
“You almost sympathize with the hitter in the moment because you’re like: Damn, I couldn’t have hit that. He couldn’t hit that. Nobody could have hit that,” Braden said. “The eephus is now almost like as close as we get, when a position player is on the mound, to an aesthetically pleasing pitch like that, just the visual presentation of the pitch starting in the clouds and ending up at the ankles.”
Nike’s “Chicks Dig the Long Ball” commercial defined baseball in the Steroids Era. These days, the slogan might as well be: “Velo Rules!” There were just 214 pitches of 100 mph or more in 2008. There were a record 3,880 two years ago and this year is on track for 3,252.
In tandem, starting pitcher use has dropped. Starters have averaged just under 5 1/3 innings this season, down from 6 1/3 innings in the 1980s. Their pitch count averages 85.7, down from 97 in 2010
Average four-seam fastball velocity is a record 94.4 mph this season, up from 91.9 mph when MLB started tracking in 2008. But fastballs — four-seam, two-seam and cutters, have dropped from 62.1% to 55%.
Those missing hooks and heaters have been replaced by sliders, sweepers and slurves. They are 22.6% of pitches this year, up from 13.9% in 2008, and their average velocity has risen to 84.8 mph from 83.4 mph.
Colorado throws curves the most often at 15.6%, not that it has brought any success to a team that entered the break at 22-74, on track for a 37-125 finish and the post-1900 record for losses.
The Athletics haven’t thrown 10% curveballs since 2017.
“If you look around the game, swing and miss has taken more of a priority, so guys are trying to throw more sweepers with more horizontal movement, or they’re trying to throw the slider really hard at the bottom of the zone,” Athletics pitching coach Scott Emerson said. “They’re worried about contact with the curveball.”
Veteran pitchers note the curve’s decline as youngsters integrate into staffs.
“As you’re an amateur going to the big leagues guys are looking at velo. Guys are just looking at stuff,” Yankees ace Gerrit Cole said. “Velo is important and it pays.”
Maybe because the pitchers who throw curves are committed, batters have a .225 average this season on curves, down from .263 on fastballs and up slightly from .222 on sliders, sweepers and slurves.
“That’s just how the game is trending: to throw it as hard as you can, spin it the best you can and hope the hitter doesn’t hit it,” Emerson said. “The hitters are up there trying to swing as hard they can. If they hit it with hard contact, make 27 swings that are really hard, you got a chance to hit a homer here and there. And it’s taken away from the contact-type pitchers.”
Brad McMichael, 45, died on Friday from injuries he sustained from the large animals he had purchased a day prior. Jones Police Chief Bryan Farrington said in a statement that the emergency call for help came at about 8:35 p.m. local time on Friday night in the small town of Jones, about 20 miles outside of Oklahoma City, police said.
First responders, however, were “initially unable to reach the victim due to the aggressive behavior of the animals.”
Brad McMichael.via KFOR
First responders killed one water buffalo, allowing them to get to McMichael, who “had sustained multiple deep lacerations that proved to be fatal,” Farrington said.
As first responders continued their work, a second water buffalo “became increasingly agitated and posed a threat to emergency personnel” and those on site that were also dispatched, according to the police statement.
The two animals had been purchased a day earlier, police said.
“It is believed that while tending to the animals, he became trapped inside their enclosure,” Farrington said of the victim.
Running the farm had been a “dream” come true for McMichael.
“Most are aware by now we lost Bradley on Friday in a tragic accident,” according to a Sunday statement posted by McMichael Farms. “His farm was his dream, and I had the privilege of helping him with it for a little while.”
The value of a single bitcoin surpassed $120,000 early Monday, the latest record price for the digital token that has set multiple all-time highs in recent weeks amid bullishness about developments on Capitol Hill and concerns about inflation and the U.S. dollar’s declining value.
Because it remains prone to large price swings, bitcoin’s trajectory tends to track that of riskier assets like tech stocks — although it has outperformed those soundly in 2025. Year to date through Friday, only gold — up 27.7% — has outperformed bitcoin, up 25.9%. By comparison, the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 index has gained 8.7%, while the broad S&P 500 has climbed 7%.
Early Monday morning, the nearly 20 million individual bitcoins in existence are worth a combined $2.4 trillion, making the entire asset class the world’s fifth-most valuable, surpassing Amazon and closing in on Apple, according to crypto news site CoinTelegraph.com. Apple had a $3.1 trillion market valuation as of Monday morning.
Most of this year’s gains have come in the past few weeks. They’ve been fueled by a host of factors, including the partial pause in President Donald Trump’s trade war and the passage of his tax cut and spending bill, which, on balance, cuts taxes while also increasing the U.S.’s debt — both bullish for increased bitcoin investment.
Finally, there’s beenincreased interest among large financial firms in crypto thanks in part to crypto-focused legislation.
Indeed, the GOP-led House of Representatives has declared this week “crypto week” as it takes up three different bills related to regulating digital assets, including the GENIUS Act, which would clarify how companies can issue their own digital tokens. According to Reuters, Democrats — many of whom remain opposed to making crypto more mainstream — are expected to offer several amendments to the bills, though it was unclear whether any would be successful.
Crypto’s recent uplift has added some $620 million to Trump’s estimated net worth, Bloomberg reported earlier this month. Some Democrats see those gains as reason enough to oppose legislation that would pave the way for wider crypto adoption.
“These bills would make Congress complicit in Trump’s unprecedented crypto scam,” Rep. Maxine Waters of California, the top Democrat on the House financial services committee, said in a statement.
There’s debate about how much higher bitcoin will go the rest of the year. Its trajectory remains strongly tied to the outlook for global interest rates. When these are relatively lower — as they have been recently — there’s more money available to purchase riskier assets like bitcoin.
But with developed economies that have historically kept government spending in check now set to increase funding, interest rates are likely to begin ramping up in response to inflation concerns,
“The risk that central banks shift focus back to the risks of re-accelerating inflation may develop into a potential headwind for Bitcoin in the latter half of the year,” Matthew Weller Global Head of Research at FOREX.com said in a note published earlier this month, “especially with fiscal policy (government spending and tax cuts) becoming more accommodative.”
A German doctor went on trial in Berlin Monday, accused of murdering 15 of his patients who were under palliative care.
The prosecutor’s office brought charges against the 40-year-old doctor “for 15 counts of murder with premeditated malice and other base motives” before a Berlin state court. The prosecutor’s office is seeking not only a conviction and a finding of “particularly serious” guilt, but also a lifetime ban on practicing medicine and subsequent preventive detention.
Murder charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison. If a court establishes that the defendant bears particularly severe guilt, that means he wouldn’t be eligible for release after 15 years as is usually the case in Germany.
Parallel to the trial, the prosecutor’s office is investigating dozens of other suspected cases in separate proceedings.
The man, who has only been identified as Johannes M. in line with Germany privacy rules, is also accused of trying to cover up evidence of the murders by starting fires in the victims’ homes. He has been in custody since Aug. 6.
The doctor was part of a nursing service’s end-of-life care team in the German capital and was initially suspected in the deaths of just four patients. That number has crept higher since last summer, and prosecutors are now accusing him of the deaths of 15 people between Sept. 22, 2021, and July 24 last year.
The victims’ ages ranged from 25 to 94. Most died in their own homes.
The doctor allegedly administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxer to the patients without their knowledge or consent. The drug cocktail then allegedly paralyzed the respiratory muscles. Respiratory arrest and death followed within minutes, prosecutors said.
The doctor did not agree to an interview with a psychiatric expert ahead of the trial, German news agency dpa reported. The expert will therefore observe the defendant’s behavior in court and hear statements from witnesses in order to give an assessment of the man’s personality and culpability.
So far, it is unclear what the palliative care physician’s motive might have been, dpa reported. The victims named in the indictment were all seriously ill, but their deaths were not imminent.
The defendant will not make a statement to the court for the time being, his defense lawyer Christoph Stoll said, according to dpa.
People stand at the Berlin Regional Court ahead of Monday’s proceedings.Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa / picture alliance via Getty Images
The court has initially scheduled 35 trial dates for the proceedings until January 28, 2026. According to the court, 13 relatives of the deceased are represented as co-plaintiffs. There are several witnesses for each case, and around 150 people in total could be heard in court, dpa reported.
Among the cases now being heard in court is that of a 56-year-old woman who died in September.
On Sept. 5, the doctor allegedly administered an anesthetic and a muscle relaxant to the physically weakened woman in her home without any medical need. However, fearing discovery, he then made an emergency call and falsely stated that he had found the woman in a “condition requiring resuscitation,” according to the indictment. Rescue workers were able to resuscitate the woman and took her to hospital, dpa reported.
The indictment said that “in continuation of his plan of action and in the knowledge of the injured party’s living will”, according to which the woman did not want any life-prolonging measures, the doctor is said to have called one of her daughters and apologized for violating this will. With the consent of both daughters, artificial respiration was discontinued and the woman died on Sept. 8 in a Berlin hospital.
An investigation into further suspected deaths is continuing.
A specially established investigation team in the homicide department of the Berlin State Criminal Police Office and the Berlin public prosecutor’s office investigated a total of 395 cases. In 95 of these cases, initial suspicion was confirmed and preliminary proceedings were initiated. In five cases, the initial suspicion was not substantiated.
In 75 cases, investigations are still ongoing in separate proceedings. Five exhumations are still planned for this separate procedure, prosecutors said.
Among the cases still being investigated is the death of the doctor’s mother-in-law, who was suffering from cancer, court spokesman Sebastian B�chner said. Local media reported that she died during a visit by the doctor.
Earlier this month, German investigators in the northern town of Itzehoe said they were examining the case of a doctor who has been suspected of killing several patients.
