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Angel City defender Savy King was recovering from heart surgery following her collapse on the field during a National Women’s Soccer League match on Friday night.

King was taken to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles following the medical event in the second half of Angel City’s match against the Utah Royals. Doctors who evaluated King discovered a heart abnormality, and she underwent surgery Tuesday.

“She is now resting and recovering surrounded by her family, and her prognosis is excellent,” the team said in a statement.

King’s family released a joint statement thanking the team’s medical staff, King’s fellow players and the hospital medical staff for her care.

“On behalf of our entire family, along with Savy, we have been so moved by the love and support from Angel City players, staff, fans and community, as well as soccer fans across the country,” the statement said. “We are blessed to share Savy is recovering well and we are looking forward to having her home with us soon.”

Players on both sides were visibly shaken as trainers rushed to King’s side after she went down in the 74th minute of Friday’s match. She was attended to for some 10 minutes before she was stretchered off the field on a cart.

Angel City said King was transported to the hospital but was responsive and undergoing further evaluation.

“We are grateful to the Angel City medical staff as well as to local paramedics who handled this difficult situation seamlessly,” the NWSL said in a statement on Saturday.

In an Instagram story, Washington Spirit national team forward Trinity Rodman offered prayers for King and her family, adding: “In no world should that game have continued.”

The league said in its statement that it would review its policies to determine if changes needed to be made.

NWSL rules for 2025 state that the league “recognizes that emergencies may arise which make the start or progression of a Game inadvisable or dangerous for participants and spectators. Certain event categories automatically trigger the League Office into an evaluation of whether delay or postponement is necessary.”

There were 12 minutes of stoppage time added to the match. Angel City won the game 2-0.

King, 20, was the second overall pick in the 2024 NWSL draft by expansion Bay FC and played 18 games for the club. She was traded to Angel City in February and had started in all eight games for the team this season.

Trump offers an optimistic vision of relations with countries in the Middle East. The Supreme Court’s upcoming hearing on birthright citizenship will tackle the power of lower courts. And the Menendez brothers were resentenced in their parents’ 1989 killings. 

Here’s what to know today.

Trump says he’ll end sanctions on Syria and seeks to deepen ties with Saudi Arabia

President Donald Trump spoke of a future for the Middle East steeped in prosperity, business deals and technological advances as he announced the U.S. would end sanctions against war-torn Syria and signed a $600 billion investment agreement with Saudi Arabia in his first visit to the region since his second term began. He also offered an image of rising regional powers steeped in homegrown economic self-development. 

Applause followed Trump’s promise to withdraw sanctions in Syria. But in announcing his “fervent wish” that Saudi Arabia join the Abraham Accords, the diplomatic agreements Trump’s first administration made between Israel and several Arab nations, the president drew silence from the room. The ongoing conflict with Hamas remains a sticking point for Saudi Arabia, which has reaffirmed its support for a Palestinian state in recent months. 

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The $600 billion commitment from Saudi Arabia to invest in the U.S. includes $20 billion in AI data centers and other technologies, while companies like Google, Salesforce, Uber and Oracle will invest $80 billion in projects across both countries, according to a White House statement.

Also in attendance at yesterday’s ceremonial events were Sam Altman of Open AI, Palantir CEO Alex Carp, billionaire Blackrock co-founder Larry Fink and the leaders of companies like Amazon and Coca-Cola, to pitch Saudi investors as the kingdom promises to spend on technology, infrastructure and more. Elon Musk was also present.

Trump’s rhetoric and vision of a prosperous future with the region contrasted the words of former President Joe Biden, who deemed Saudi Arabia “a pariah” before taking office. And while rejecting the idea that U.S. policy should judge foreign leaders’ morals, he swiped at destructive forces in the region, calling out Iran for causing “unthinkable suffering in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and beyond.”

Today, Trump met with Syria’s new president in a major breakthrough for the former jihadi commander.

Read the full story here.

Also looming over Trump’s visit this week is Qatar’s proposed gift of a luxury plane to be used as a new Air Force One for the president. Trump has said he would accept it. However, aviation experts said converting the 747 jet would cost over $1 billion and might not be completed by the end of Trump’s term in 2029. The jet would have to be dismantled, part by part, to ensure there were no listening devices or other vulnerabilities, and then fitted with sophisticated systems for secure government communications. That’s not all.

More politics news:

• Key House committees are debating critical portions of a sweeping package for Trump’s agenda, from how much to cut Medicaid to what to do about the state and local tax deduction, with Speaker Mike Johnson still hopeful for a vote before Memorial Day weekend. 
• A proposal from some House Republicans to cut more than $290 billion from the SNAP program has critics fearing the effect on low-income families at a time when food prices are climbing.
• Proposed Medicaid rule changes — which would include new work requirements, co-pays and tougher eligibility checks — could result in an estimated 8.6 million people losing coverage, an analysis found. Doctors are fearing the worst.
• More than a month after Trump’s “Liberation Day,” the White House celebrated tariff agreements with China and the U.K., which it called starting points. But so far, the U.S. has given up more than it has gained. 
• A federal grand jury indicted Wisconsin judge Hannah Dugan, who was arrested by the FBI for allegedly obstructing government agents seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant. 

SCOTUS’ birthright citizenship hearing to focus on judges’ power

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments tomorrow over President Donald Trump’s plan to end birthright citizenship, but the court is not actually using the cases before it to give the final word on whether Trump can reinterpret the long-understood meaning of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. Instead, it will focus on the question of whether lower-court judges have the authority to block the policy nationwide.

The Trump administration is asking the court to limit the scope of the birthright citizenship injunctions so that they apply only to individual people, organizations that sued or potentially the 22 states that challenged Trump’s executive order. In recent months, his administration and allies have raged at judges for issuing “universal injunctions” concerning birthright citizenship and other policies which a DOJ official characterized as a “direct attack” on presidential power. While broad injunctions have also been used against former Presidents Joe Biden (18 during his term) and Barack Obama (19 during his two terms), Trump, who saw 86 injunctions during his first term, has sought to use executive power to circumvent Congress more than his predecessors.  

Five of the six members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority have, in various cases, raised concerns about universal injunctions and suggested they should be curbed in certain circumstances. Read the full story here.

Cassie’s testimony of abuse and humiliation at Diddy’s trial

R&B singer Cassie, whose real name is Casandra Ventura, took the stand on the second day of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ federal sex trafficking trial, detailing years of alleged abuse by the music mogul. Ventura is the prosecution’s star witness, and her 2023 lawsuit against Combs, which was settled privately one day after it was filed, became a framework for the government’s sprawling case against the music mogul. 

In her first day on the stand, Ventura, 38, gave graphic and emotional testimony of alleged physical abuse and control that included dayslong, drug-fueled sexual encounters with male escorts under Combs’ direction. She said she first participated in the “freak-offs” around 2008, when she was 22, and they continued while she dated Combs on and off before the pair split in 2018. The sex would occur in Combs’ homes, her homes and hotel suites around the world, and Ventura said they might find escorts off Craigslist, paying them between $1,500 and $6,000. Combs appeared to listen intently during the testimony.

“I felt pretty horrible about myself,” Ventura said. “I felt disgusting. I felt humiliated.” 

Ventura, who first met Combs in 2005 when she was 19 and signed a 10-album deal with his Bad Boy label, also testified that her music career stalled when arranging “freak offs” for Combs “became a job.” She went on to say that angering Combs would result in physical and ongoing psychological abuse. 

Read more about Ventura’s testimony and her allegations against Combs. She’s expected to take the stand again today, and her testimony could last through the week.

NBC News is following the trial closely. Sign up for the Diddy on Trial newsletter to receive the latest news, including insights and analysis from our team inside the courtroom. 

Menendez brothers resentenced, eligible for parole

After months of delays, opposition from Los Angeles County’s district attorney and a series of witnesses who advocated for them, Erik and Lyle Menendez are now eligible for parole in the 1989 killings of their parents at their Beverly Hills home. Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic said in a ruling yesterday that the brothers would be resentenced to 50 years to life, adding that he did not believe they posed an “unreasonable risk” if released. Now, a California parole board will weigh whether the men are suitable for release and is expected to submit its clemency recommendation next month to Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

The brothers, who have been serving life sentences without the possibility of parole, gave statements after yesterday’s ruling. Lyle said he made no excuses for killing his parents or for seeking to have people perjure themselves on his behalf. Erik echoed those comments. Read the full story here.

Read All About It 

• The FDA announced it will pull prescription fluoride drops and tablets for children off the market, arguing that the best way to prevent cavities is to stop eating so much sugar.
• Baseball’s all-time hits leader Pete Rose, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and other deceased players were taken off the MLB’s permanently ineligible list, making them eligible for the Hall of Fame.
• Georgia police are dropping charges against a college student who they admit was mistakenly pulled over, but she’s still in ICE custody and faces deportation.
• A new study found that men die at twice the rate as women from “broken heart syndrome” even though the condition is more common in women.
• UnitedHealth Group announced a new CEO, a surprising shake-up as the company navigates the aftermath of UnitedHealthcare leader Brian Thompson’s killing.

Staff Pick : A genealogy scavenger hunt

I’ve always been fascinated with learning about Louisiana’s history and unique cultural stories. As someone who has done extensive family research myself in the state, it’s exciting to uncover unexpected connections. The process feels like a scavenger hunt.

So when I started seeing chatter about Pope Leo XIV’s ties to New Orleans on social media, I connected with genealogist Alex DaPaul Lee, who has assisted me in previous archival searches for my reporting in Louisiana. He told me that he had discovered evidence of Leo’s ancestral roots, which show his Creole background through his great-great-grandmother, Celeste Lemelle.

But historic documentation from Louisiana, as we saw while looking through the Lemelle family’s records, can reveal both the highs and lows of history: ownership, status, literacy, freedom and wealth, juxtaposed with racism, social class divides, slavery and discrimination. All of it adds spice and complexity to the perfect bowl of gumbo. 

The resulting story of Pope Leo’s lineage shines a light on our imperfect American history while bringing an extra layer of pride to people from Louisiana. — Maya Eaglin, NBC News correspondent

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Sign up to The Selection newsletter for hands-on product reviews, expert shopping tips and a look at the best deals and sales each week.

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Tyrese Haliburton arrived for a photoshoot in a Las Vegas casino last summer holding onto a pair of silver-tipped cowboy boots and a grudge.

Before the Indiana Pacers guard slipped into a denim outfit and in front of a magazine’s camera, he rattled off all he was grateful for: consecutive appearances at the league’s All-Star game, a contract that would pay him an average of about $52 million annually, and an invitation to play for the United States in the Paris Olympics.

Yet what Haliburton seemed especially thankful for was something else entirely — a perceived criticism that “everybody thinks my success in the first half of last season was a fluke,” he said.

For a player who had gone from effectively being cut from his teenaged travel squad to an NBA All-Star in less than a decade while fueled by collecting slights, it might as well have been like being handed a gift.

“I’m at my best,” Haliburton told me then, “when people are talking s— about me.”

One year later, the NBA is learning that still holds true.

Since being named the NBA’s “most overrated” player in April by an anonymous vote of his peers, as polled by The Athletic, Haliburton has authored a revenge tour that has landed Indiana in the Eastern Conference Finals for a second consecutive season. The Pacers are now four wins away from their first appearance in the NBA Finals in 25 years.

As Haliburton was making all five 3-pointers he attempted in the second quarter of Tuesday’s Game 5 against Cleveland — en route to 31 points in the series-clinching victory that knocked out the Eastern Conference’s top seed — none less than LeBron James referenced, and refuted, the overrated label.

Haliburton has appeared to relish getting the last laugh. After hearing chants of “overrated” in Milwaukee during a first-round series Haliburton, who grew up in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, won the series by driving past Giannis Antetokounmpo, one of the NBA’s toughest defenders, for a basket with a second remaining in overtime. He celebrated with a post on X for emphasis.

Of the 90 players who voted for most overrated in The Athletic’s poll, 14.4 percent chose Haliburton, or about 13 players overall in a league of 450. It could have followed Haliburton’s markedly slow start to the season as he struggled to play through injury. Still, the poll followed expletive-laden criticism on a podcast from Hall of Fame point guard Tim Hardaway Sr., who said Haliburton “thinks he’s all that.”

The sentiments from players both active and retired, though pointed, were hardly universal. But they were all Haliburton needed, said Bryan Johnikin, who coached Haliburton as a teenager on a Milwaukee-based AAU team and remains close to the guard. He has watched Haliburton’s heroics help Indiana beat Milwaukee, then take down Cleveland, with little surprise.

“I’m not, personally, because as soon as I know they called him overrated or said he don’t belong, it really motivates him,” Johnikin said.

Johnikin met the guard when Haliburton was 14 years old and wounded after learning his former AAU team wasn’t keen on him to return.

It was Johnikin’s role as Haliburton’s new coach, he said, to understand what motivated the point guard. Being passed over for Wisconsin’s “Mr. Basketball” honor, awarded to the state’s top high schooler, did the trick. So did arriving for college at Iowa State as a relatively low-level recruit and leaving it as a much-debated draft prospect in part because of the low release of his jump shot.

What those evaluations perhaps missed was Haliburton’s ability to think his way through a problem, Johnikin said. Knowing pace of play typically drops from the regular season to the playoffs, Indiana has done the opposite, running at the postseason’s third-fastest pace.

“I guarantee you, if you put everybody that’s in the playoffs, put them in the classroom, he’s gonna be the smartest guy,” Johnikin said.

Haliburton has averaged 17.5 points, 9.3 assists and 5.5 rebounds in the playoffs, where the Pacers are 17 points better per 100 possessions with Haliburton on the court versus when he sits; no Indiana teammate has a higher on/off rating.

“Hali, that boy he making a lot of people look crazy with that ‘overrated’ s—,” former NBA player Dorell Wright said on a podcast with Dwyane Wade this week. “We need a recount.”

“His game don’t look like you expect it to, right?” Wade said. “He’s got an unorthodox form … he ain’t going to be top 10 in the league in scoring, but he’s still going to dominate the game.”

Among NBA superstars Haliburton, who runs a YouTube channel in which he plays video games against his brother and prefers mid-sized Indianapolis to the league’s shinier, big-city markets, has a notably placid personality. Yet as a devoted fan since childhood of professional wrestling and its theatrics, he is also quick to embrace the villainous role of the “heel.”

In addition to his breakout NBA season, and earning an Olympic gold medal in 2024, one of Haliburton’s personal highlights last year was being written into a skit during WWE Smackdown, in which he and New York Knicks guard Jalen Brunson stared one another down. (In real life, the two are friends.)

These playoffs have felt like a long, extended stare-down with the rest of the league. Haliburton followed his series-winning comeback against Milwaukee by stunning Cleveland with a game-winning 3-pointer to cap another improbable comeback in Game 2. Research by ESPN found that since 1998, teams were 3-1,640 when trailing by seven or more points in the final minute of the fourth quarter or overtime. In this postseason alone, Indiana accounts for two of those three wins.

“I think there is always commentary behind what I do, positive or negative, and I mean it’s hilarious because a lot of times it’s people who know nothing about me have so much to say,” Haliburton said after a second-round victory. “It’s usually people who don’t come around or don’t spend any time around me that have the most to say, but that’s all part of it. I’m a basketball player, I love what I do.

“… I feel like criticism is sometimes warranted, sometimes it’s not but it’s all a part of it.”

Last year, during warmups before Game 7 of a second-round series against New York in Madison Square Garden, Haliburton noticed a specific fan he heard making critical comments and became determined to make him a one-fan motivational tool, turning to glare at the fan after every basket. The Pacers won, and it reinforced to Johnikin a strategy that could be worth every postseason penny in the Eastern Conference Finals — where they could face the Knicks or Boston Celtics — and possibly the NBA Finals.

Indiana should “just pay people to sit in the front row and just talk crazy to Ty, because that’s when he gets going,” Johnikin said. “I’m not worried about him when he goes to New York. Spike Lee and the rest of them talking crazy, he loves that. I call it the ‘it factor.’

“If you talk crazy to Tyrese he’s gonna go, for sure.”

NEW YORK — Robert Benton, the Oscar-winning filmmaker who helped reset the rules in Hollywood as the co-creator of “Bonnie and Clyde,” and later received mainstream validation as the writer-director of “Kramer vs. Kramer” and “Places in the Heart,” has died at age 92.

Benton’s son, John Benton, said that he died Sunday at his home in Manhattan of “natural causes.”

During a 40-year screen career, the Texas native received six Oscar nominations and won three times: for writing and directing “Kramer vs. Kramer” and for writing “Places in the Heart.” He was widely appreciated by actors as attentive and trusting, and directed Oscar-winning performances by Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep and Sally Field. Although severe dyslexia left him unable to read more than a few pages at a time as a child, he wrote and directed film adaptations of novels by Philip Roth, E.L. Doctorow and Richard Russo, among others.

Benton was an art director for Esquire magazine in the early 1960s when a love for French New Wave movies and old gangster stories (and news that a friend got $25,000 for a Doris Day screenplay) inspired him and Esquire editor David Newman to draft a treatment about the lives of Depression-era robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, imagining them as prototypes for 1960s rebels.

Their project took years to complete as Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard were among the directors who turned them down before Warren Beatty agreed to produce and star in the movie. “Bonnie and Clyde,” directed by Arthur Penn and starring Beatty and Faye Dunaway, overcame initial critical resistance in 1967 to the film’s shocking violence and became one of the touchstones of 1960s culture and the start of a more open and creative era in Hollywood.

The original story by Benton and Newman was even more daring: they had made Clyde Barrow bisexual and involved in a 3-way relationship with Bonnie and their male getaway driver. Beatty and Penn both resisted, and Barrow instead was portrayed as impotent, with an uncredited Robert Towne making numerous other changes to the script. “I honestly don’t know who the ‘auteur’ of ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ was,” Benton later told Mark Harris, author of “Pictures at a Revolution,” a book about “Bonnie and Clyde” and four other movies from 1967.

Oscar-winning triumphs

Over the following decade, none of Benton’s films approached the impact of “Bonnie and Clyde,” although he continued to have critical and commercial success. His writing credits included “Superman” and “What’s Up, Doc?” He directed and co-wrote such well-reviewed works as “Bad Company,” a revisionist Western featuring Jeff Bridges, and “The Late Show,” a melancholy comedy for which his screenplay received an Oscar nomination.

His career soared in 1979 with his adaptation of the Avery Corman novel “Kramer vs. Kramer,” about a self-absorbed advertising executive who becomes a loving parent to his young son after his wife walks out, only to have her return and ask for custody. Starring Hoffman and Streep, the movie was praised as a perceptive, emotional portrait of changing family roles and expectations and received five Academy Awards, including best picture. Hoffman, disenchanted at the time with the film business, would cite “Kramer vs. Kramer” and Benson’s direction for reviving his love for movie acting.

Five years later, Benton was back in the Oscars race with a more personal film, “Places in the Heart,” in which he drew upon family stories and childhood memories for his 1930s-set drama starring Fields as a mother of two in Texas who fights to hold on to her land after her husband is killed.

“I think that when I saw it all strung together, I was surprised at what a romantic view I had of the past,” Benton told The Associated Press in 1984, adding that the movie was in part a tribute to his mother, who had died shortly before the release of “Kramer vs. Kramer.”

A lifelong movie fan

Benton was born in Waxahachie, Texas, outside of Dallas. He owed his early love for movies to his father, telephone company employee Ellery Douglass Benton, who, instead of asking about homework, would take his family to the picture shows. The elder Benton would also share memories of attending the funerals of outlaws Barrow and Parker, Texas natives who grew up in the Dallas area.

Robert Benton studied at the University of Texas and Columbia University, then served in the U.S. Army from 1954 until 1956. While at Esquire, Benton helped start the magazine’s long-standing Dubious Achievement Award and dated Gloria Steinem, then on staff at the humor magazine Help! He married artist Sallie Rendigs in 1964. They had one son.

Between hits, Benton often endured long dry spells. His latter films included such disappointments as the thrillers “Billy Bathgate,” “The Human Stain” and “Twilight.” He had much more success with “Nobody’s Fool,” a wry comedy released in 1994 and starring Paul Newman, in his last Oscar-nominated performance, as a small-town troublemaker in upstate New York. Benton, whose film was based on Russo’s novel, was nominated for best adapted screenplay.

“Somebody asked me once when the Academy Award nominations came out and I’d been nominated, ‘What’s the great thing about the Academy Awards?’” Benton told Venice magazine in 1998. “I said ‘When you go to the awards and you see people, some of whom you’ve had bitter fights with, some of whom you’re close friends with, some people you haven’t seen in ten years, some people you just saw two days before — it’s your family.’ It’s home. And home is what I’ve spent my life looking for.”

NEW DELHI — The Indian government on Tuesday disputed President Donald Trump’s claim that the U.S.-mediated ceasefire between India and Pakistan came about in part because he had offered possible trade concessions.

Addressing a weekly news conference, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, said top leaders in New Delhi and Washington were in touch last week following the Indian military’s intense standoff with Pakistan, but that there was no conversation on trade.

“The issue of trade didn’t come up in any of these discussions,” Jaiswal said, referring to the conversations held between Vice President JD Vance and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Indian counterpart, S. Jaishankar.

Following Saturday’s understanding between India and Pakistan to stop military action on land, in the air and at sea, Trump told reporters on Monday that he had offered to help both nations with trade if they agreed to de-escalate.

“I said, come on, we’re going to do a lot of trade with you guys. Let’s stop it. Let’s stop it. If you stop it, we’ll do a trade. If you don’t stop it, we’re not going to do any trade,’” Trump said.

“And all of a sudden, they said, I think we’re going to stop,” Trump said, crediting trade leverage for influencing both the nations’ decision. “For a lot of reasons, but trade is a big one,” he said.

The militaries of India and Pakistan had been engaged in one of their most serious confrontations in decades since last Wednesday, when India struck targets inside Pakistan it said were affiliated with militants responsible for the massacre of 26 tourists last month in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any links to the attackers.

After India’s strikes in Pakistan, the two sides exchanged heavy fire along their de facto borders, followed by missile and drone strikes into each other’s territories, mainly targeting military installations and airbases.

The escalating hostilities between the nuclear-armed rivals threatened regional peace, leading to calls by world leaders to cool down tempers.

Trump said he not only helped mediate the ceasefire, but also offered mediation over the simmering dispute in Kashmir, a Himalayan region that both India and Pakistan claim in its entirety but administer in parts. The two nations have fought two wars over Kashmir, which has long been described as the regional nuclear flashpoint.

New Delhi also declined Trump’s offer for mediation on Tuesday.

“We have a longstanding national position that any issues related to the federally controlled union territory of Jammu and Kashmir must be addressed by India and Pakistan bilaterally. There has been no change to the stated policy,” Jaiswal said.

Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late Tuesday that Pakistan was expelling a staff member of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, accusing him of unspecified inappropriate activity and giving him 24 hours to leave the country.

In a tit-for-tat move last month, India and Pakistan reduced each other’s diplomatic presence in Islamabad and New Delhi. So far, none of the expelled diplomats have returned. Pakistan and India routinely expel each other’s diplomats over allegations of espionage.

A federal grand jury Tuesday indicted a Wisconsin judge arrested by the FBI for allegedly obstructing government agents seeking to detain an undocumented immigrant.

The two-page indictment accuses Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan of confronting members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and falsely telling them they needed a judicial warrant to conduct their operation. It also accused her of directing the undocumented immigrant and his lawyer to exit through a separate door to sidestep federal agents.

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Dugan was arrested last month and charged with obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States, and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

The maximum penalty for the counts is a total of 6 years in prison and up to $350,000 in fines. Dugan is scheduled to enter her plea to the charges Thursday morning.

Dugan’s attorney Craig Mastantuono said in a statement Tuesday that the judge maintains her innocence.

“As she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court,” Mastantuono said.

Dugan’s arrest in April marked an intensification in the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and its attacks on judges, sparking protests in Milwaukee.

On the day of her arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News: “If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are, if you are helping hide…anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

Dugan was released on bond after appearing before a federal magistrate judge.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court temporarily relieved Dugan of her duties last month while the case moves forward, an action the court said it took on its own and to protect public trust in Wisconsin courts.

A man who tried to open a cabin door and then attacked a flight attendant with a broken metal spoon on a passenger jet in 2023 has agreed to a deal that includes his release.

Francisco Severo Torres, 34, agreed to plead guilty to assaulting or intimidating a flight crew member following the incident on a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Boston, prosecutors said Tuesday.

The agreement, as filed in Boston federal court Monday, includes release for time served, 60 months of supervision upon release, compliance with mental health treatment, and fines and forfeiture.

The charge carries a maximum sentence of life behind bars.

The court on Tuesday ordered Torres be released to his mother, who resides in his hometown of Leominster, about 50 miles east of Boston. It also ordered Torres to appear July 17 for formal sentencing, according to a conditions-of-release filing.

Prosecutors said that on March 5, 2023, about 45 minutes before landing, Torres tried to open a plane’s door.

Responding flight attendants stood by the door, and when Torres approached again, he said he would “kill every man on this plane” and said he was “taking over” the aircraft, the office of the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts said in a statement on Tuesday.

The office cited cellphone video of the incident.

Torres then tried to stab one of the flight attendants in the neck with a broken spoon, the office said. No injuries were reported.

Passengers and flight crew subdued and held the man for authorities, who took him into custody when the plane landed at Boston Logan International, the office stated.

The FBI on Tuesday credited its agents and Massachusetts State Police for helping bring the case to a close.

United Airlines said in a statement the next day, “We have zero tolerance for any type of violence on our flights, and this customer will be banned from flying on United pending an investigation.”

The case included a motion to order a psychiatric evaluation, but it’s unclear if the order was executed. Torres’ court history includes an unsuccessful lawsuit against a hospital for allegedly refusing to serve him almond milk despite his vegan diet. It was dismissed.

Torres’ conditions of release also include no travel outside the state and, as filed in federal court, “No air travel, no trains.”

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Two South Carolina legislators have requested an investigation into the state’s firing squad execution last month after lawyers for the inmate said his autopsy showed the shots nearly missed his heart and left him in extreme pain for up to a minute.

The Democratic and Republican representatives asked the governor, the prison system and leaders in the state House and Senate for an independent and comprehensive review of the April 11 execution of Mikal Mahdi.

They also want the firing squad removed from the methods of execution that an inmate can choose until an investigation is complete. Condemned prisoners in South Carolina can also choose lethal injection or the electric chair.

Reps. Justin Bamberg and Neal Collins wrote in their letter that the request doesn’t diminish the crimes Mahdi was convicted of, nor was it rooted in sympathy for the 42-year-old inmate. Mahdi was put to death for the 2004 shooting of an off-duty police officer during a robbery.

“This independent investigation is to preserve the integrity of South Carolina’s justice system and public confidence in our state’s administration of executions under the rule of law,” they wrote.

Bamberg, a Democrat, and Collins, a Republican, are deskmates in the South Carolina House.

Prison officials say the execution was conducted properly

Prison officials said they thought the execution was properly conducted. House and Senate leaders did not respond. Republican Gov. Henry McMaster said he sees no need to investigate.

“The governor has high confidence in the leadership of the Department of Corrections. He believes the sentence of death for Mr. Mahdi was properly and lawfully carried out,” spokesman Brandon Charochak wrote in an email.

Even without an investigation, what happened at Mahdi’s execution may get hashed out in court soon. A possible execution date for Stephen Stanko, who has two death sentences for murders in Horry County and Georgetown County, could be set as soon as Friday. He would have to decide two weeks later how he wants to die.

Mahdi had admitted he killed Orangeburg Public Safety officer James Myers in 2004, shooting him at least eight times before burning his body. Myers’ wife found him in the couple’s Calhoun County shed, which had been the backdrop to their wedding 15 months earlier.

Just one autopsy photo

The autopsy conducted after Mahdi’s execution raised several questions that the lawmakers repeated in their letter.

The only photo of Mahdi’s body taken at his autopsy showed just two distinct wounds in his torso. A pathologist who reviewed the results for Mahdi’s lawyers said that showed one of the three shots from the three prison employee volunteers on the firing squad missed.

The pathologist who conducted the autopsy concluded that two bullets entered the body in the same place after consulting with an unnamed prison official who said that had happened before in training. Prison officials said all three guns fired and no bullets or fragments were found in the death chamber.

“Both bullets traveling on the exact same trajectory both before and after hitting a target through the same exact entrance point is contrary to the law of physics,” Bamberg and Collins wrote.

Shots appeared to have hit low

In the state’s first firing squad execution of Brad Sigmon on March 7, three distinct wounds were found on his chest, and his heart was heavily damaged, according to his autopsy report.

The shots barely hit one of the four chambers of Mahdi’s heart and extensively damaged his liver and lungs. Where it likely takes someone 15 seconds to lose consciousness when the heart is directly hit, Mahdi likely was aware and in extreme pain for 30 seconds to a minute, said Dr. Jonathan Arden, the pathologist who reviewed the autopsy for the inmate’s lawyers.

Witnesses said Mahdi cried out as the shots were fired at his execution, groaned again some 45 seconds later and let out one last low moan just before he appeared to draw his final breath at 75 seconds.

Little documentation at the autopsy

Bamberg and Collins said Mahdi’s autopsy itself was problematic.

The official autopsy did not include X-rays to allow the results to be independently verified; only one photo was taken of Mahdi’s body, and no close-ups of the wounds; and his clothing was not examined to determine where the target was placed and how it aligned with the damage the bullets caused to his shirt and his body.

“I think it is really stretching the truth to say that Mikal Mahdi had an autopsy. I think most pathologists would say that he had ‘an external examination of the body,’” said Jonathan Groner, an expert in lethal injection and other capital punishments and a surgeon who teaches at Ohio State University.

Sigmon’s autopsy included X-rays, several photos and a cursory examination of his clothes

Prison officials have used the same company, Professional Pathology Services, for all its execution autopsies, Corrections Department spokeswoman Chrysti Shain said.

They provide no instructions or restrictions to the firm for any autopsy, she said.

The pathologist who conducted the autopsy refused to answer questions from The Associated Press.

Bamberg and Collins also want the state to allow at least one legislator to attend executions as witnesses.

State law is specific about who can be in the small witness room: prison staff, two representatives for the inmate, three relatives of the victim, a law enforcement officer, the prosecutor where the crime took place, and three members of the media.

Wild chimpanzees have been observed self-medicating their wounds with plants, providing medical aid to other chimps and even removing others from snares left by human hunters, new research suggests. 

The behaviors — which are documented in a new study published in the journal Frontiers in Evolution and Ecology on Wednesday — provide new clues about the origin of medical care in humans. 

The study combines historical data and about eight months of new observations, including many captured on video and in photos. It provides added evidence that our closest living relatives will chew plants and apply makeshift poultices to wounds, clean other animals’ wounds by licking them, and use leaves for a hygienic scrub after sex or defecation. Chimps were also seen pressing wounds and dabbing medicinal leaves to wounds. 

The results, particularly as they provide evidence that chimpanzees who are not kin care for one another, add new fuel to the debate over whether humans are the only species capable of providing prosocial, or altruistic, care to others. 

“One of the things humans have clung onto is that we’re this very special species, because we are capable of altruism and we’re capable of empathy,” said Elodie Freymann, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford and the first author of the study. “Animals are helping each other out. They’re capable of identifying others in need and then addressing those specific needs.” 

Chimpanzees and bonobos, another primate species, are the closest genetic relatives to humans. The study adds to a growing body of research that suggests the concept of health care could have evolved millions of years ago, before humans were a species. 

“It’s likely that our shared common ancestor also would have been capable of these care behaviors as well,” Freymann said.

A growing body of research suggests other animal species might self-medicate, with varying levels of sophistication. Elephants, for example, have been shown to consume leaves used for medicinal purposes by humans, and some researchers suggest the animals are addressing specific needs, like digestion.

The volume of research into animal medication behaviors is increasing and outside researchers said this is important evidence that could open a window into our humanity’s past.  

“In our ancestors, we have examples of health care in humans since Neanderthals or even before, but what’s very interesting is that we still don’t understand fully how these kind of exploratory behaviors evolved,” said Alessandra Mascaro, a primatologist and doctoral candidate at Osnabrück University in Germany, who was not involved in the paper. “We are just scratching the surface.”

In 2022, Mascaro published a study showing that chimpanzees in Gabon applied insects to their wounds, and she hopes more observations will help determine how the animals developed that behavior.

Studying chimpanzee medication behaviors is challenging work because the behaviors are relatively rare.

In this study, Freymann spent two four-month periods in the Budongo Forest in Uganda, following wild chimpanzees familiar enough with human researchers that they’ll ignore their presence. It can be physical and demanding to follow chimps.

“There can be days where you’re just sitting at the base of a tree while they eat for eight hours, and there can be days where you’re hacking through vines and crossing rivers and stuck in clay pits — your day is completely determined by what the group feels like doing,” said Freymann, who would take notes about what the chimps ate, if they were sick or injured and how the animals interacted.

Freymann observed several instances of chimpanzee care behaviors during her field work. She also came across a historic logbook of observations kept at the research field site, which featured instances that didn’t fit into previous research studies. She found patterns of medical care that dated back into the 1990s.

“When people pool their results and their observations, you can start seeing these amazing stories kind of come into view,” she said.

Between her own observations, the logbook and additional data sources, Freymann documented 41 cases of wound care in chimpanzees, including 34 incidents of self-care and seven of care for others, the study says. Four instances of care for others involved animals that were not closely related. 

“The findings show that some types of prosocial behavior towards nonkin may be more widespread than previously thought,” said Isabelle Laumer, a primatologist and cognitive biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany, who was not involved in the new research. “More detailed investigation is needed.”

Mascaro, who researched the health behavior of chimps in Gabon, said the new research in Uganda showed that chimps in different geographies exhibited medical care behaviors, which bolsters confidence that the behavior is common across the geography of the species.  

“We didn’t know much about the chimpanzees on that side of Africa,” Mascaro said. 

Self-medication has been documented in other primates. Laumer published a study last year showing an orangutan in Indonesia repeatedly chewing leaves and applying the material to a wound on its face to heal a wound received in a fight. The plant the orangutan used to medicate is not usually eaten by the species, but it is known to humans as a pain reliever.

This line of research, broadly, suggests that primates are capable of finding and determining the medicinal value of plants. 

“Chimpanzees rely on the forest, not just for food, and not just for shelter, but really as a medicine cabinet,” Freymann said, adding that it’s important to preserve the forest resources primates depend upon.

She added that humans likely learned from these creatures and evolved a sense for medicinal plants in the past. And she suggested that pharmaceutical companies could use these animals’ knowledge to identify useful medical resources in the future. 

“If we want to hone in on these amazing medicinal resources, watching and learning from the animals is an incredibly effective way to do it if it’s done ethically and responsibly,” Freymann said.