There’s been a break in 30-year-old cold case mystery at the Jersey Shore after experts confirmed skeletal remains found on three beaches belonged to a 19th-century boat captain.
The bones from a leg, arm and fragments of a cranium discovered on the beaches of Ocean City, Margate and Longport between 1995 and 2013 had yielded no answers until now.
Authorities said the remains belong to 29-year-old Captain Henry Goodsell, who died at sea 181 years ago.
“Our job was to figure out who that individual was that the bones belonged to,” Cairenn Binder of the college’s IGG Center said.
Initially, experts weren’t even sure how old the bones were.
“We kind of kept going back and forth between, are they historic? Are they not historic?” New Jersey State Police Forensic Anthropologist Dr. Anna Delaney said. “This is absolutely amazing because after all of this time, Henry has his name.”
Students at the school launched a search for genetic relatives and built out family trees that revealed ancestral ties to Connecticut. They also started looking into records of shipwrecks. It was that creative step that really helped them narrow in on the person’s identity.
“Delving into those they identified this ship, which then led to the ship captain,” Ramapo’s IGG Center Director David Gurney explained.
Goodsell was the captain of the Oriental which was a schooner that was transporting marble from Connecticut to Philadelphia for Girard College in 1844. But, on that voyage, the Oriental went down just off of the coast of Brigantine and the entire crew was killed.
Investigators were able to track down Goodsell’s great-great-granddaughter in Maryland. She provided a DNA sample that did confirm the captain’s identity.
“To our knowledge, this is the oldest case that’s ever been solved with investigative genetic genealogy,” Binder said.
As of this writing, Goodsell’s family does not want his bones so they will stay at a state repository indefinitely.
In the summer of 2021, Paris Saint-Germain had seemingly everything it needed to get the one thing it didn’t have: a reputation as one of global soccer’s big winners.
Its roster appeared built out of a video game. Kylian Mbappé, the 22-year-old World Cup champion from France, alongside Brazilian superstar Neymar and, in a breathtaking signing, Lionel Messi, the Argentine many considered the world’s best player of all time. The collection of three of the world’s best goal-scorers — and a total payroll of nearly $430 million — was made possible by the club’s equally staggering resources.
Since 2011, PSG has been owned by an arm of Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, which spent freely to establish it among the world’s most accomplished clubs. Although PSG routinely won France’s top soccer division, it had never won the Champions League, Europe’s annual and most prestigious club tournament, and only once played for the title.
Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Neymar of Paris Saint-Germain before a friendly match against Riyadh XI at King Fahd International Stadium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2023.Aurelien Meunier / PSG via Getty Images file
By some metrics, the two-year run featuring Mbappé, Messi and Neymar was a smashing success. Star-studded PSG raked in more than $1 billion in revenue, according to the club. But by exiting the Champions League in the round of 16 in 2022 and 2023, and with Mbappé, Neymar and Messi playing together in only about a third of their potential games, PSG never came close to conquering Europe on the field.
All three stars eventually departed, replaced by younger, less expensive successors. For most clubs, that would have signaled the start of a rebuild.
Instead, just two years later, a less-heralded, less-expensive version of PSG could win the most coveted title that eluded its starrier predecessors when it plays Internazionale of Milan in the Champions League final Saturday in Munich.
A Champions League trophy would be notable not only for PSG, one of the most prominent clubs never to have won the tournament. Only one team from France has ever won it, and that was 32 years ago.
PSG enters as the favorite because under manager Luis Enrique, it operates no longer as a star system but as a team, said NBC Sports analyst Robbie Mustoe, a former English Premier League player.
“There’s a lot of evidence that having star players in a team doesn’t make a team, and PSG is such a great example with Neymar and Lionel Messi and Mbappé and everybody else they’ve had there,” Mustoe said. “It takes an all-around team, and you can’t really have passengers too much now. And what I mean by that is players that switch on when they have the ball and switch off when they don’t have the ball.
“PSG is such an amazing example of this, where they changed the manager, they obviously got rid of all the star players, they went younger, they went hungrier.”
Even with Mbappé only 22 years old in 2021, the average age on PSG’s roster that season was 27.8, two years older than on its average opponent, thanks to 34-year-old Messi’s joining 29-year-old Neymar and 33-year-old Ángel Di Maria.
This season, the team’s average age is 25, two years younger than that of its average opponent, a reflection of PSG’s decision after the 2023 season to “completely change its strategy” of roster construction, Alice Lefebvre, a reporter for Agence France-Presse who covers PSG, said by email.
“The club’s management have stopped obsessing over the Champions League, as they had done until now, and have officially stated that they are giving themselves time to build a project around the young players and youngsters coming through the Parisian training program,” Lefebvre wrote. “As the season progressed, despite some internal tensions between a few players and Luis Enrique at the start of the season, a new spirit began to permeate the team. Everyone plays for everyone, and everyone presses for the ball, just as the coach wants.”
Enrique and sporting director Luís Campos recruited younger players including French winger Désiré Doué, 20, a breakout star for whom the team paid $54 million to acquire last summer, João Neves and Willian Pacho. The oldest mainstay is 31-year-old Brazilian defender Marquinhos. The majority of the team is either in its prime, such as leading scorer Ousmane Dembélé, or entering it, like 22-year-old Bradley Barcola, whom Enrique has called “the best passer in Ligue 1; he’s one of the best dribblers in Europe.” The arrival in January of Khvicha Kvaratskhelia from Italy strengthened PSG’s ability to attack.
Weaving it all together is Enrique, who was used to high-profile, high-pressure jobs before, after having managed Barcelona to a Champions League title, then coached the Spanish national team. When PSG hired him in 2023 after Messi had left and Neymar was in the process of exiting, Enrique arrived with a specific project, Lefebvre wrote, of getting young players who would defend and attack in unison. In Champions League competition, PSG owns the fourth-highest passing accuracy and the third-highest possession percentage.
“As long as Luis Enrique is here, the strategy will remain one of youth rather than stars,” Lefebvre wrote.
Enrique was also tasked with overhauling a change in attitude. The team would be built no longer on the potential brilliance of three players, but on the doggedness of all 11.
“A Paris Saint-Germain player has to get used to starting, coming off the bench or even not being called up,” Enrique told reporters amid the team’s Champions League run. “We make sure that every player who comes on is at 100% and gives his all.”
Perhaps the coach’s best work has been coaxing a career-best season out of Dembélé, whose potential had always been evident. Barcelona signed Dembélé in 2017 with ambitions of his becoming the successor to its outgoing star Neymar. Instead, during six inconsistent seasons combined, he scored 24 goals and assisted on 34 more.
Ousmane Dembélé had 21 goals during the domestic season for PSG. Visionhaus / Getty Images
When PSG needed its own Neymar replacement in 2023, it placed its hopes on Dembélé, too. This season, his second for PSG, Dembélé scored 21 goals during the domestic season and eight more in 14 Champions League matches, and he added 10 assists between the two.
Enrique’s coaching has mimicked Dembélé’s role earlier in his career at clubs in France and Germany, allowing for “more freedom to go everywhere on the pitch,” Dembélé said this week.
“I have my bearings,” he said “I just try to create space and to cause a bit of chaos in midfield. This has been paying off so far.”
Relative to its past, PSG reined in its payroll this season to $220 million, a number that is nonetheless still larger than that of the three next-high-spending teams in France’s top division combined and that would also rank second-highest in England’s Premier League, the world’s richest domestic soccer league.
What is different is that now PSG could have a trophy to show for all that spending. While past PSG teams weren’t prepared to “suffer,” said Mustoe — a buzzword in global soccer with the loose definition of a team’s ability to endure its struggles — this year, “they have a team that suffers with immense ability,” he said.
PSG proved it during the knockout stage of the Champions League, when advancing relies on the aggregate score of a two-game series. PSG lost in the round of 16 to Liverpool at home, then held firm to win on the road on penalties and advance. After it beat Aston Villa in the quarterfinals, it won again on the road to open its semifinal against Arsenal, then advanced to only the club’s second Champions League final with a home win on May 7.
“If we were to analyze everything that has happened in the UEFA Champions League this season, I think it would make a great thriller or horror film or even a very good series, because it has had a bit of everything,” Enrique, who managed Barcelona to a Champions League title a decade ago, said this week.
“I think we should be proud of what we’ve achieved. However, we have to finish the job because what we’re really aiming for is to make history.”
PINGTUNG COUNTY, Taiwan — Below a windy lookout, three U.S.-made mobile rocket launchers lurched forward at a military base in Taiwan, preparing for their first live-fire test on the Beijing-claimed island.
“3, 2, 1… launch,” a Taiwan military officer counted down over a loudspeaker. A total of 33 rockets were then fired toward the Pacific Ocean, in the opposite direction from the Chinese mainland. Making a thunderous sound, each erupted in bursts of flame and trailed white smoke that arced high into the air.
The historic test of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or HIMARS, took place this month at an undisclosed location in Pingtung County, on the southern tip of Taiwan, as Taipei scrambles to overhaul its military and get President Donald Trump’s backing amid growing military threats from China.
The rocket system could be crucial if Taiwan ever came under attack from Beijing, which has not ruled out the use of force in annexing the self-governing democracy.
Manufactured by U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin, HIMARS mobile launchers are equipped with guided rockets that have a range of about 185 miles — far enough to reach coastal targets in the southern Chinese province of Fujian on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
It is the same rocket system that Ukrainian forces have been using to target Russian positions — though unlike Ukraine, Taiwan paid the United States more than $1 billion for the weaponry.
The island has received 11 of the 29 HIMARS launchers it has purchased, with the rest expected to arrive ahead of schedule next year.
Though the U.S. has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, it is the island’s biggest weapons supplier. Billions of dollars in arms deals with the U.S. have helped Taiwan build up asymmetric tools such as drones, missiles and upgraded fighter jets.
As China ramps up military and other pressure, Taiwan has also extended compulsory military service to one year from four months, doubled mandatory annual refresher training for reservists to two weeks, and pledged to increase its defense budget to more than 3% of GDP.
Taiwanese soldiers during an exercise at a military base in Kaohsiung on May 16.Daniel Ceng / Anadolu via Getty Images
While the U.S. remains a “very important” strategic partner, Taipei “fully recognizes” the need to strengthen its own defense capabilities, said Sun Li-fang, a spokesperson for Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
“Ensuring Taiwan’s security is our responsibility and our top priority,” he said. “We take this matter very seriously.”
But it is difficult for Taiwan to build a modern fighting force, Sun said, in the face of “inherently disproportionate” threats from China, whose 2.8-million-strong military is more than 18 times larger than Taiwan’s number of active-duty personnel.
In the year since Taiwan President Lai Ching-te took office, China has held several rounds of large-scale military exercises that Adm. Samuel J. Paparo, the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, warned this month are not drills but “rehearsals.”
The Chinese military also sends warplanes and ships toward Taiwan on near-daily sorties and in recent days held an amphibious landing drill in the Taiwan Strait.
To deal with such “tangible and real” threats, it is “crucial” that the U.S. and Taiwan continue their military cooperation, Sun said.
In addition to HIMARS, the U.S. and Taiwan have advanced their cooperation with an intelligence sharing deal that Sun called a “game-changer.”
“We typically don’t go into detail because intelligence and information sharing are sensitive,” Sun said in his government’s first public comments on the subject.
“That said, this kind of intelligence exchange is extremely helpful for us in understanding threats from the enemy and making appropriate defensive deployments.”
In congressional testimony this month, a retired U.S. Navy admiral also publicly acknowledged for the first time that there are about 500 U.S. military personnel stationed in Taiwan, more than 10 times the number previously disclosed.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te visiting a military base in Kaohsiung on May 16.Daniel Ceng / Anadolu via Getty Images
Even as it works with the U.S., Taiwan is unsure about the extent of the security commitment from Washington, which has long maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity” when it comes to whether U.S. forces would defend the island against a Chinese attack.
Further muddling the picture are comments Trump has made about Taiwan, the global leader in advanced semiconductor manufacturing, “stealing” chip business from the U.S. and not paying enough for its own defense.
Officials in Taipei have also been rattled by the collapse of U.S. support for Ukraine as well as the threat of steep tariffs on Taiwan’s exports, which Trump has set at 32% in addition to a 10% baseline.
“You have different voices emerging from the United States, so that creates more uncertainties for Taiwanese,” said Andrew Yang, Taiwan’s former minister of national defense. “Which voices or narratives should we listen to?”
Reservist Jason Chu, 30, said that among those around him, there was a “growing” sense of responsibility to defend Taiwan.
“The biggest difference lies in our mindset,” said Chu, an engineer. He said that while many people in Taiwan most likely think of their training as a duty at first, often they later begin to think of it as protecting their country.
People in Taiwan have watched with concern as war drags on Ukraine, another democracy targeted by a larger, autocratic neighbor — and some have even gone to join the fight against Russia.
Tony Lu went to Ukraine in 2022 first as a volunteer, then as a fighter. He said he thinks people in Taiwan need to be ready.
“No one wants war — I don’t want it either,” he said. “But we don’t have a choice.”
The FBI’s top two leaders said in interviews on Fox News that the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide, and they promised to release a surveillance video from the federal jail in New York City where Epstein was found dead.
Officials in the first Trump administration ruled that Epstein’s death in 2019 was a suicide. But it has remained the subject of conspiracy theories suggesting he was murdered because of his connections to high-profile celebrities and politicians.
Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, a former pro-Trump podcaster, said Thursday morning on Fox News that the video showed that no one entered or approached Epstein’s cell at the time of his suicide. Bongino also said no forensic evidence had been found suggesting that another person was present.
“There’s no DNA, there’s no audio, there’s no fingerprints, there’s no suspects, there’s no accomplices, there’s no tips, there is nothing,” said Bongino, who asked members of the public to share any evidence of wrongdoing in the case. “If you have it, I’m happy to see it.”
“There’s video clear as day,” he added. “He’s the only person in there and the only person coming out. You can see it.”
In a separate interview Wednesday night on Fox News, FBI Director Kash Patel also said Epstein had died by suicide, and he promised to release additional information about the case.
“We are diligently working on that,” Patel said. “It takes time to go through years of investigations.”
In a Jan. 4, 2024, podcast, Bongino played a clip in which a journalist said she was “100%” convinced that Epstein was killed “because he made his whole living blackmailing people.” Bongino told his listeners that he’d heard the same claims from another reporter and that they were “super important.”
“This is where I get really upset at the media,” Bongino said later in the podcast, contending that reporters had “done almost like no — maybe because I was an investigator before, it’s like, I’m amazed at how few people are putting two and two together.”
Roughly two weeks before Trump named Bongino FBI deputy director, Bongino spoke again about Epstein. He said again that a reporter had told him about the existence of tapes that Epstein used to blackmail powerful people and then mentioned an allegation he’d heard involving Bill Clinton.
“I’m not ever gonna let this story go,” Bongino promised on Feb. 10. “I’m not letting it go ever.”
FBI Director Kash Patel at a Senate committee hearing on May 8.Andrew Harnik / Getty Images file
For years before they took office, Patel and Bongino also claimed that the Biden administration and corrupt “deep state” actors had “weaponized” the FBI against Donald Trump.
They accused the bureau of covering up what it knew about pipe bombs placed outside the offices of the Republican and Democratic national committees in Washington before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol. They suggested that FBI operatives helped ignite the Capitol riot. And they said FBI agents committed crimes and tried to “overthrow” Trump.
But large numbers of Trump supporters who believe those claims are publicly asking: Why aren’t Patel and Bongino arresting and prosecuting the people Patel labeled “government gangsters”?
An FBI spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In his interview on “Fox & Friends,” Bongino also said the job was taking a toll on his family. “The biggest lifestyle change is family-wise,” he said.
“It was a lot, and it’s been tough on the family. People ask all the time, do you like it? No. I don’t,” Bongino said. “But the president didn’t ask me to do this to like it — nobody likes going into an organization like that and having to make big changes.”
Last weekend, Bongino announced on X that the FBI is re-examining multiple cases from the Biden era, including the 2021 pipe bombs at the DNC and the RNC, the 2022 leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade and a small bag of cocaine that was found in the White House in 2023.
On Thursday, Bongino said the FBI is close to solving one of the three cases, without saying which one.
“We got a fascinating tip on one of these cases, one of the three,” he said. “We’re going to run it out. We’re not going to be able to make that public, obviously, right away, because we have to make sure.”
Host Dan Bongino on “Fox & Friends” on June 18, 2019.Roy Rochlin / Getty Images file
Focus on pipe bomb case
Three weeks before the Trump administration took office, the FBI released what it said was new video of the masked person planting bombs outside the Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington. But FBI officials said they hadn’t identified a suspect or even determined for certain whether the figure was a man or a woman.
Before he was named deputy FBI director, Bongino accused the FBI of lying about that person on one of his podcasts. “I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on Jan. 6th, four years ago, and just doesn’t want to tell us because it was an inside job,” he said.
In an interview with conspiracy theorist and political commentator Julie Kelly, Bongino said, “I’m convinced the person who planted that pipe bomb at the DNC on Jan. 6th was there to create a fake assassination attempt because they needed to stop Republicans from questioning in front of a national TV audience what happened in the 2020 election.”
Patel also said in his Fox News interview Wednesday that the FBI has new leads in the pipe bomb case. He accused the Biden administration of having “slow-rolled” the investigation but offered no specific examples.
Bongino defended reopening the investigation into who left a small bag of cocaine in the White House during the Biden administration. Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, argued that the probe was relaunched for safety reasons, not to score political points.
“I was a Secret Service agent. A potentially hazardous material made its way into the White House,” he said on Fox News. “Nobody seems to know how it got there, and nobody seemed to get to investigate it fully. … What planet do we live on where that’s not of public interest?”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988, or go to 988lifeline.org, to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can also call the network, previously known as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, at 800-273-8255, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources.
Jalen Brunson scored 32 points, Karl-Anthony Towns added 24 points and 13 rebounds despite a bruised left knee and the New York Knicks stayed alive in the Eastern Conference finals by beating the Indiana Pacers 111-94 on Thursday night in Game 5.
The Knicks won on their home floor for the first time in the series and prevented the Pacers from earning the second NBA Finals trip in franchise history. Indiana will try again Saturday night at home.
Knicks fans chanted “Knicks in 7! Knicks in 7!” in the final minutes as New York extended its first trip to the conference finals since 2000 and kept alive hopes of becoming the 14th team to overcome a 3-1 deficit to win a series. No team has won a conference finals series after dropping the first two games at home.
Two nights after giving up 43 points in the first quarter, the Knicks held the Pacers to just 45 in the first half and limited Tyrese Haliburton, who had 32 points, 15 assists and 12 rebounds Tuesday, to just eight points and six assists.
Brunson, outplayed by his point guard counterpart Tuesday, rebounded with his franchise-record 20th postseason game of 30 or more points with the Knicks.
Bennedict Mathurin scored 23 points off the bench for the Pacers, who had won six straight road games. Indiana shot just 40.5% from the field in by far its lowest-scoring game of the postseason.
Brunson scored 14 in the first quarter as the Knicks held a 27-23 lead — giving up 20 fewer points than in the first quarter of Game 4, when they trailed 43-35.
Towns, who was questionable to play after hurting his left knee in a collision late in Game 4, picked up the slack with 12 in the second, when Brunson was scoreless.
Brunson came back with the Knicks’ first eight of the third quarter as they opened a 20-point lead midway through the period. The Pacers cut that in half before New York regained control with a 12-0 burst, highlighted by Brunson’s four-point play, to make it 86-64.
BEIJING — U.S.-China trade talks “are a bit stalled,” requiring the two countries’ leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News in an interview Thursday local time.
“I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks,” he said, adding that there may be a call between the two countries’ leaders “at some point.”
“I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent said. “They have a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President [Donald] Trump makes his [preferences] known.”
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last spoke in January, just before the U.S. president was sworn in for his second term. While Trump has in recent weeks said he would like to speak with Xi, analysts expect China to agree to that only if there is certainty that there will be no surprises from the U.S. during the call.
China has maintained communication with the U.S. since the agreement in Switzerland, Chinese Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yongqian told reporters at a regular briefing Thursday.
But regarding chip export controls, she said that “China again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its wrong practices … and together safeguard the consensus reached at high-level talks in Geneva.”
That’s according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks.
When asked whether China would suspend rare earths export controls announced in early April, He did not respond directly. Restrictions on items that could have both military and civilian applications reflect international practice, as well as China’s position of “upholding world peace and regional stability,” she said.
“The U.S. decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to an official English transcript. “It uses ideology and national security as pretext.”
Six dead gray whales have been found in the area of San Francisco Bay over the last week, officials said Wednesday, in a year when there has been an unusually high number of sightings in the area.
The gray whales were found dead from May 21 to Wednesday, when one was found washed ashore at Point Reyes National Seashore, the California Academy of Sciences said.
On Monday, two were found the same day — one on Alcatraz and one at Point Bonita, it said.
In most of the cases, no necropsy, which is like an autopsy for an animal, was performed. The partial necropsy for a yearling gray whale found at Bolinas was inconclusive, and results from the necropsy on the whale found Wednesday are pending, the academy said.
The whales have died as an unusually large number of them have been spotted in San Francisco Bay, officials said.
Why the whales died was not clear.
“That is the open question, the why,” Giancarlo Rulli, a spokesperson for the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, told NBC Bay Area this week.
“Why not only are there so many deceased whales in the region, but why has it been a banner year of having more sightings in San Francisco Bay of live whales than we have seen in at least two-plus decades, if ever?”
So far this year 14 gray whales and a minke whale have died in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, the academy said, and the deaths of three of them were found to be from boat strikes.
More gray whales have been sighted in the bay this year compared with last, it said — 33, compared with only six in 2024.
Some have looked normal and others emaciated, it said.
“The reason or potential reasons behind the massive spike in sightings this year are still being investigated by researchers,” the academy said. “It is expected that gray whales will be in the bay for another one to two weeks before continuing their annual northern migration to arctic feeding grounds.”
Gray whales used to be common in waters throughout the Northern Hemisphere but are now regularly found only in the North Pacific Ocean, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They travel around 10,000 miles in an annual round-trip migration, it said.
Gray whales are known to be curious around boats, which means they are often seen on whale-watching trips, the agency said. They can grow to around 49 feet long and weigh about 90,000 pounds.
Because of the long migration, the whales are sometimes hit by vessels and entangled in fishing gear, which are among their top threats, the fisheries service says.
Bernard Kerik, who was New York City’s police commissioner on 9/11 and later pleaded guilty to tax fraud before being pardoned, has died. He was 69.
FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed his death on Thursday on social media, saying it came “after a private battle with illness.”
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani reflected on his long history with his former police commissioner on his show Thursday.
“We’ve been together since the beginning. He’s like my brother,” Giuliani said through tears. “I was a better man for having known Bernie. I certainly was a braver and stronger man.”
Kerik, an Army veteran, rose to the pinnacle of law enforcement before a fall so steep that even a city jail named after him was renamed.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to federal tax fraud and false statement charges, partially stemming from over $250,000 in apartment renovations he received from a construction firm that authorities say counted on Kerik to convince New York officials it had no organized crime links. He served three years in prison before his release in 2013.
President Donald Trump pardoned Kerik during a 2020 clemency blitz. Kerik was among the guests feting Trump after his first appearance in federal court in Florida in a case related to his handling of classified documents, attending the former president’s remarks at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club.
Kerik was appointed by Giuliani to serve as police commissioner in 2000 and was in the position during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He later worked for the former mayor of New York surrounding the efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss.
Patel described Kerik in a post on social media as “a warrior, a patriot, and one of the most courageous public servants this country has ever known.”
“He was decorated more than 100 times for bravery, valor, and service, having rescued victims from burning buildings, survived assassination attempts, and brought some of the world’s most dangerous criminals to justice,” he said. “His legacy is not just in the medals or the titles, but in the lives he saved, the city he helped rebuild, and the country he served with honor.”
“Éclaircissement” was the winning word, but for Faizan Zaki it spelled success.
The 7th-grader from Dallas won the Scripps National Spelling Bee Thursday, after last year coming in second place on the big stage.
Zaki showed little hesitation as he spelled éclaircissement, which means the clearing up of something obscure, in the final word to win the title of national spelling champ.
Nine spellers made it to Thursday’s final round, from Arizona, California, New York, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
This year is the 100th anniversary of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. In that contest, there were just nine participants.
How times have changed. This year, 243 young people competed in the Spelling Bee, which kicked off on Tuesday in National Harbor, Maryland.
Those 243 young spellers made their way to the national competition after qualifying in regional contests in March.
Almost all of the kids who made it to the nationals were there for the first time, organizers said. Fifty-three were in the 2024 national contest while 178 were national first-timers.
Just after 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Shreveport police were called to Alsco Uniforms on Hollywood Avenue after employees reported finding what appeared to be a mummified infant wrapped in laundry.
“It was a very disturbing scene,” said Cpl. Chris Bordelon. “Officers found what was a small infant, what was described as mummified.”
Detectives determined the linens came from Golden Gate Funeral Home in Dallas. Police said the child died on May 3 and was scheduled to be cremated following a funeral service on May 17, but the body instead ended up in a shipment of laundry bound for Shreveport.
“It was a very bizarre set of circumstances,” Bordelon said. “Our violent crimes team began their investigation and were able to track down the load of linens.”
Detectives believe the infant had been embalmed, based on the strong odor and early signs of decomposition observed at the scene.
“The detective on scene even told me it smelled strongly of formaldehyde, which is something that’s not typical of any of our crime scenes,” Bordelon said.
The baby was found wearing clothing embroidered with the initials “K.M.,” the only identity police have officially confirmed.
No foul play is suspected, but investigators said the incident appears to involve negligence.
“This clearly is some type of act of negligence, whether it be on the part of a cleaning service for the funeral home or the funeral home itself,” Bordelon said.
The remains are now in the custody of the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office, which is coordinating to return the child to the family in Dallas.
Authorities said that the Texas Funeral Service Commission has been notified and that the investigation will continue across state lines.
“There are laws when it comes to discarding of bodies, and the funeral home and or any individuals involved could be subject to those laws,” Bordelon said.
NBC 5 reached out to Golden Gate Funeral Home, which declined to comment.
“This is an unfortunate set of circumstances that no family should have to go through,” Bordelon said.
