Palm Springs is famous for its wind farms. They may look a lot ...

If you've ever driven from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, you know you're getting close when you see the wind farms. Twenty minutes west of the desert resort town, in the gap between Southern California's two highest mountains, thousands of turbines fill the landscape on either side of Interstate 10, taking advantage of a natural wind tunnel.

Some wind machines are hundreds of feet tall, with wingspans as long as a football field. Others are tiny by comparison, with clunky lattice towers and spinning rotors that wouldn't stretch from home plate to the pitcher's mound on a baseball diamond.

The iconic landscape could change dramatically in the coming years.

Already, energy developers here have replaced some aging wind turbines with state-of-the-art models. The newer turbines are much bigger, and far more powerful, than the machines first installed in the 1980s. That means fewer wind turbines are needed to create the same amount of energy. In fact, fewer turbines can create more energy.

But many 1980s-era turbines are still standing in the San Gorgonio Pass, the gateway to Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. Developers have an incentive to begin replacing the older machines before the end of 2019, when a federal tax credit is set to expire.

Even if the federal tax credit doesn't inspire immediate action, the San Gorgonio Pass of the future could generate much more electricity than it does today, despite having far fewer wind turbines. Wintec Energy founder and president Fred Noble, who built the area's first wind farm in the 1980s, thinks a full "repowering" could reduce the number of wind turbines in and around Palm Springs from more than 2,000 to only 600 or 700.

"This industry started here. And then we went out and populated the world," Noble said in a recent interview. "And now these machines that are coming up on 25, 30 years old have done their job and need to be replaced."

Fewer wind turbines could also mean clearer views of the mountains. The remaining turbines would be taller, but there would be much more space between them.

"As you go bigger, it also opens up the viewshed," Noble said.

There are plenty of reasons for energy companies to repower aging wind farms in the San Gorgonio Pass and other parts of California, including a new law requiring the state to get all of its electricity from climate-friendly sources by 2045. Nancy Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Association, an industry trade group, sees unique benefits to replacing old wind turbines with newer ones.

"You can get twice as much energy or more out of the same site," Rader said. "It's good for California if we can squeeze twice as much energy out of the same land area."

But the repowering of the San Gorgonio Pass also faces obstacles. It's cheaper to build new turbines at undeveloped sites than to replace old ones. A statewide slowdown in renewable energy development could discourage companies from upgrading the Palm Springs wind farms before the federal tax credit expires. California could also meet its climate-friendly energy goals by importing wind power from Wyoming or New Mexico.

"Economics is really number one at the end of the day, and patience to get the project done," said Florian Zerhusen, chief executive of BayWa r.e. Wind, a San Diego-based company that recently bought and sold hundreds of wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass. "There is a need to take these 30-plus-year-old turbines out and replace them, clean up the valley. But the economics have to work, and you have to have patience."

Many Coachella Valley residents didn't take kindly to the wind industry when it first arrived in the San Gorgonio Pass nearly four decades ago. Industrial energy generation was seen as incompatible with the valley's reputation as a relaxed tourism destination.

In 1985, Palm Springs sued the Bureau of Land Management to block further wind development on federal land north of the city, and to try to force the removal of some existing turbines. Then-Mayor Frank Bogert said the machines were "ruining the views of the mountains and desert floor and creating a living hell for residents who live near them." A few years later, Palm Springs city council member Bill Foster wrote in a Desert Sun opinion piece that the wind turbines had been "as damaging to Palm Springs visually as strip mining has been to towns and villages in Kentucky and West Virginia."

Palm Springs eventually learned to live with the wind industry, annexing much of the land beneath today's wind farms to bring in tax revenue. The turbines contributed to the state's renewable energy goals and became an iconic part of the desert landscape. The Palm Springs Bureau of Tourism features a photo of a wind farm on the "About Palm Springs" page of its website, with snow-capped Mt. San Jacinto in the background.

Today, the wind farms are a political winner locally.

In 2014, then-Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet called the San Gorgonio Pass "the most environmentally safe wind energy site in North America."

"I am proud of the significant role Palm Springs has played in pioneering wind energy," Pougnet said, as part of a statement released by the advocacy group Environment California. "I look forward to how advances in wind energy technology will allow energy producers to expand the important role they play in our clean energy supply."

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POLITICAL FIGHT: Trump wants to open California desert to more solar, wind farms

It's no surprise why developers wanted to build near Palm Springs: The gap between the San Bernardino and San Jacinto mountains is a natural wind tunnel, with average wind speeds between 15 and 20 miles per hour. Even better, the mountain pass isn't far from millions of energy-hungry homes and businesses in the Los Angeles area.

"All things considered, this is the best place in the world for wind energy," Fred Noble said. "No snow, sea level, no ice, very good wind, wind in the top 5 percent of what you'd find anywhere. And a big electrical infrastructure that can take the power."

Noble's company built the area's first wind farm in 1982, putting up 212 turbines on a plot of land he owned north of Interstate 10 and west of Indian Canyon Drive. Over the next decade, energy developers built more than 4,000 wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass. Even more turbines were built at two other wind hot spots in California, the Altamont Pass east of the Bay Area and the Tehachapi Pass east of Bakersfield.

After the country's first big wind farms were built in California, the industry boomed nationwide. There are now more than 58,000 turbines in the United States, with some of the biggest clusters in Iowa, Oklahoma and Texas, according to a map created by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Wind farms produced 6.3 percent of the electricity generated by U.S. power plants in 2017. In California, 6.2 percent of the electricity generated by in-state power plants came from wind farms last year.

Noble's company, Wintec Energy, eventually replaced its 212 original turbines with 35 larger machines. Those were later replaced with five even larger machines. Today, the five turbines generate six times as much energy as the original 212, Noble said.

"It's just the difference between a Model T Ford and a Porsche," he said.

In 1992, the San Gorgonio Pass wind turbines produced about 550,000 megawatt-hours of electricity. By 2017, production had risen to nearly 1.5 million megawatt-hours.

The same trend could continue into the future.

According to data compiled by federal agencies and the wind industry, there are about 2,300 wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass. Nearly 450 were built this century, but more than 1,600 were built in the 1980s. The older machines are mostly clustered between Highway 111 and Interstate 10, and north of the freeway near Whitewater.

Nancy Rader, who leads the California Wind Energy Association, thinks the federal data may underestimate the number of aging wind turbines that stand to be replaced. Her own count shows 324 megawatts worth of wind turbines in the Palm Springs area that were built from 1980 through 1995, compared to 160 megawatts in the federal data.

Many of those machines are still in good shape. Rader compared them to old cars.

"You can keep an old car running forever if you just keep it in good shape. Something wears out, replace it," she said. "A lot of those old turbines, especially the Danish ones, are like that. They're workhorses, and you can keep them operating a long time."

Still, wind turbines are generally designed to last for 25 to 30 years, to match the length of a typical utility power purchase contract, Rader said.

"They're really designed to have that life, and after that, they do start falling apart," she said. "That's how long bolts are designed to last."

Over time, it gets more expensive to keep old wind turbines running — sometimes so expensive that it doesn't make sense to keep operating them without a guaranteed contract to sell the electricity. So it's not surprising that as utility contracts signed in the 1980s have expired in recent years, some turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass have stopped spinning. At the site of Fred Noble's original wind farm, two dozen machines have sat idle since their contract with Southern California Edison ran out in 2015.

"We can't get a contract that makes them viable to run," Noble said.

Despite California's ambitious push to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources, developers say there's been a slowdown in new contracts for wind and solar projects. They cite several reasons for the slowdown, including the fact that the state's big utility companies have already bought most of the energy they need to meet the state's next target, which requires 33 percent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2020.

Another factor is the growth of locally run energy programs, known as community choice aggregators or CCAs. From the Bay Area to Los Angeles, cities and counties are getting into the energy business, giving people an alternative to Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric. By some estimates, the three investor-owned utilities could lose 80 percent of their market share in the next decade. The uncertainty makes it difficult for the big utilities to sign new long-term contracts.

CCAs are making plans to buy lots of wind and solar power. But critics say CCAs have mostly signed short-term contracts to buy renewable energy from existing projects. The problem, they say, is that CCAs don't yet have the credit history to sign long-term contracts and get new projects built — or replace aging wind turbines with new models.

New renewable energy purchases are "basically at a standstill" in California, according to V. John White, executive director of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, an advocacy group. And even when the logjam breaks, it might make more sense for utilities to buy low-cost wind power from out of state. That's because the best wind hot spots in California — including the San Gorgonio Pass — have already been developed, and it's cheaper to build new wind farms than repower old ones.

"The New Mexico wind is really convenient for us to access," White said.

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In theory, now is an ideal time to repower aging wind farms. Congress voted in 2015 to extend a federal tax credit for wind energy, but on a schedule that would phase out the tax credit over several years. Companies can get 60 percent of the original tax credit for new or repowered wind projects that start construction in 2018, and 40 percent for projects that start construction in 2019. Then the incentive will disappear entirely.

In other states, developers are taking advantage of the last few years of the tax credit. A common practice is "partial repowering," in which turbine owners replace key components on their machines to qualify for another 10 years of tax credit eligibility.

Nationwide, about 2,000 megawatts of wind turbines were partially repowered in 2017, all in Iowa and Texas, according to a report from the federal Department of Energy. The repowered turbines can often produce as much as 40 percent more energy, according to Anthony Logan, an analyst at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables.

But in California, the expiring tax credit may not provide enough incentive for energy companies to tear out their old wind turbines and replace them with new ones.

"We need to at least begin construction on new wind or repowered wind by the end of next year. And nobody's going to do that if we don't have contracts," White said.

Another roadblock to repowering wind farms is more technical: The economics improve with scale, as do the benefits of the federal tax credit. The thousands of wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass are owned by many different companies, and it can be difficult for a company with just a few machines to make the economics of repowering work.

"It can get done, but it really takes someone with deep pockets to go in and make it happen," said Florian Zerhusen, chief executive of BayWa r.e. Wind.

Fred Noble, who built the first wind farm in the San Gorgonio Pass, believes the future of repowering is "pretty much in the hands of the large utility companies," including NextEra Energy Resources. The Florida-based company is one of the country's largest renewable energy developers, and in 2011 it replaced 115 turbines from the 1990s with 33 new ones in the San Gorgonio Pass. NextEra owns another 15-megawatt wind farm in the area, but a spokesperson declined to comment on any future repowering plans.

Officials at the Bureau of Land Management say two companies are in the preliminary stages of applying for repower permits on federal land in the San Gorgonio Pass. New York-based Terra-Gen plans to take down 126 turbines and replace them with seven newer models, according to Bureau of Land Management spokesperson Stephen Razo. The other company with repower plans, Brookfield Renewable, acquired a 30-megawatt wind farm in the Palm Springs area in 2012.

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Fred Noble has now sold most of his wind turbines. But he still owns the land beneath them. On a recent afternoon, he drove his four-wheel-drive SUV across the the rough dirt roads that crisscross that land, north of Interstate 10 and west of Indian Avenue.

Noble passed a small solar farm before arriving at two of the four biggest wind turbines in the Palm Springs area. When the tips of the blades reach their highest point, the machines are 410 feet tall. Their power capacity is three megawatts apiece — 120 times more powerful than each of the 212 machines Noble originally built nearby in 1982.

Noble feels certain the San Gorgonio Pass will be populated with more machines like these in the future — and more solar panels too, and batteries to store the energy they produce, for times when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. He thinks it's possible the federal tax credit will still be revived, as it has been in the past. But more than that, he knows California has made a commitment to climate-friendly energy. He's confident the Palm Springs area still has a role to play in meeting that commitment.

"I think it'll get repowered because the wind is so good here. And I think it'll be with solar, because that's what makes sense," Noble said. "At the end of the day, what is going to get built out here is combining wind and solar and batteries."

Sammy Roth writes about energy and the environment for The Desert Sun. He can be reached at sammy.roth@desertsun.com, (760) 778-4622 and @Sammy_Roth.

Goodbye 2022 -- and good riddance. Markets close out their worst ...

New York CNN —

Wall Street has said goodbye — and good riddance — to 2022, a year most investors would rather forget.

All three major averages were down on Friday, clocking their worst year since 2008 and ended a three-year winning streak.

The Dow fell 73 points, or 0.2% Friday, the last trading day of the year. In 2022, the Dow fell about 9%.

The S&P 500 was 0.3% lower Friday, leaving it down about 20% for the year.

The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 0.1% Friday, close to its lowest level since July 2020. The tech-heavy index has been battered this year, falling 33%.

European stocks also closed out the year on a sour note, down 11.8%, securing their worst annual run since 2018.

Few safe havens for investors

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, snarled supply chains and another year of Covid turned markets on their head this year. Inflation surged around the globe and central banks hiked rates at a historic pace to keep price hikes from spiraling out of control. China, the world’s second-largest economy, periodically shut down entire cities to contain the pandemic. Energy supplies were cut off, but recession fears send demand falling in the second half of the year anyway. Intense storms and climate change upended markets, too.

That left few safe places for investors to park their money.

And while stocks had a miserable year, bonds fared even worse. Inflation, massive rate hikes and a super-strong dollar left bonds unattractive to investors.

The return on the S&P US Treasury Bond Index was -10.7% in 2022. The 30-year US Treasury bond, at its low, sunk to its worst return, -35%, in a century. Corporate bonds had a miserable 2022, too: The return on bonds issued by S&P 500 companies was -14.2% this year. The Bloomberg Aggregate US Bond Index had its worst year since the index’s inception in 1977, according to FactSet.

Inflation, which briefly rose above 9% in the United States — a 40-year high — hurt economic growth, even as consumers continued to spend. But it mostly damaged corporate profits.

S&P 500 companies’ earnings are expected to have grown just 5.1% this year, well below the average annual increase of 8.5% that Wall Street posted over the past 10 years, according to John Butters, senior earnings analyst at FactSet.

Energy, which boomed as oil and gas prices surged earlier this year, made up the entirety of Wall Street’s profit gains. Excluding energy, S&P 500 earnings would have fallen 1.8% this year, Butters predicted.

Middling-to-miserable profits sent stocks sharply lower throughout the year. Global equity markets lost $33 trillion in value from their peaks.

Generac Holdings, an energy technology solution company, is the worst performing stock in the S&P 500 this year, down about 74%. Coming in second is dating app company Match Group, down 70%.

Growth stocks, or shares of companies that are expanding their business quickly, got hammered particularly hard. Investors value these firms based on expectations for future profits. Those look less enticing in a world in which interest rates are going up.

Elon Musk’s Tesla is down about 70%, making the auto tech company the third-worst performer this year. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, also makes an appearance in the bottom 10 stocks — down 64% in 2022.

That’s a huge shake-up: At the start of this year, Tesla was the fifth-most valuable company in the S&P 500 and Meta was sixth. Tesla is now the 11th most-valuable firm in the index and Meta is in 19th place.

Even Amazon, Apple and Microsoft — tech names that have become staples for investors — took major knocks as investors adjusted to an environment in which rates were rising.

There were some winners. The energy sector has returned more than 60% this year, significantly outperforming every other S&P 500 sector. No other sector has gained even 5% year-to-date.

Occidental Petroleum has been the biggest gainer in the S&P 500, up about 120% this year. Constellation Energy is in second place, up about 110%, and Hess comes in third with a gain of around 95%.

As the sheen came off markets, one of the biggest stories has been the disastrous meltdown in cryptocurrencies. After a dramatic run-up in 2021 to record highs (remember the dogecoin rally?), investors were confronted with an epic collapse. The implosion of parts of the industry once viewed as relatively stable, such as Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange, sent traders running for cover.

Crypto insiders acknowledge it will probably take years to rebuild confidence. As regulators circle, the heady days of minting profits off memes feel like a distant memory.

Nicole Goodkind Julia Horowitz David Goldman

Google's stock just got a lot cheaper for average investors | CNN ...

New York CNN Business —

One share of Google’s parent company Alphabet is suddenly a lot more affordable for Main Street investors — following a massive stock split that took effect Monday.

Alphabet (GOOGL) split its two classes of shares (GOOG) by a 20-to-1 margin, a move that reduced the price of one share from just over $2,200 on Friday to about $110 on Monday.

The stock split doesn’t change Alphabet’s market capitalization. The company is still worth nearly $1.5 trillion, making it one of the most valuable firms on the planet.

But the split has two potential benefits. First, it may make Alphabet shares more enticing for everyday investors. Second, it increases the odds that Alphabet could eventually be added to the prestigious Dow Jones Industrial Average.

That’s because the Dow, which lists only 30 stocks, is weighted by price — in contrast to the S&P 500 and many other indexes that weight by market value. So if the Dow were to include a stock with a super high price, that would heavily skew the index’s daily performance.

Insurer UnitedHealth (UNH), which trades at more than $525 a share, currently has the highest weighting in the Dow, making up about 11% of the average. Meanwhile Apple (AAPL) is the 13th biggest Dow component, despite the fact that it has a market value of $2.4 trillion, nearly five times that of UnitedHealth (UNH).

Apple was added to the Dow in 2015, but only after a stock split in 2014 reduced its share price.

The list of Dow components is the subject of some discussion. Even though Dow includes Apple, Microsoft (MSFT) and business software giants Salesforce (CRM) and IBM (IBM), some critics think the century-old market barometer still needs a further revamp for the 21st century. That could mean adding Alphabet as well as Amazon (AMZN), another market behemoth that recently split its stock 20 to 1.

Amazon (AMZN) now trades at about $115 a share, down from pre-split levels above $2,000. But the company is still worth about $1.2 trillion, nearly double the combined market valuations of retail giants Walmart (WMT) and Home Depot (HD), both of which are in the Dow.

Several other high-profile companies have also recently announced intentions to split their stocks, including Tesla (TSLA) and meme favorite GameStop (GME). That could lead to more interest from average investors, especially those who look for momentum plays on social media sites like Reddit.

Doughnut hustle not so hot now, 'chalkbus': News from around our ...

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Monroeville: The south Alabama courthouse linked to Harper Lee’s novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” is receiving a preservation grant. The program Partners in Preservation says the old Monroe County Courthouse is receiving $125,000 to repair serious structural problems in a wall. Recipients were announced following an online vote. The 115-year-old former courthouse is now a museum that tells the story of Lee and fellow writer Truman Capote, who were both from Monroeville. Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book used the red-brick structure as the model for a pivotal trial scene in her story of racial injustice. The two-story courtroom was then recreated as a Hollywood set for the 1962 movie based on Lee’s novel. Partners in Preservation is a project of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and American Express.

Alaska

Anchorage: Leaders of the state Senate majority and minority say Attorney General Kevin Clarkson is violating the state constitution by not defending a law that encourages construction firms to use Alaska workers on state contracts. The Anchorage Daily News reports Senate President Cathy Giessel and Minority Leader Tom Begich, in separate letters, say Clarkson should be defending the law until it’s ruled on by a judge. Clarkson says he took an oath to defend the U.S. and Alaska constitutions. He says local-hire law violates those constitutions, and it makes sense to stop enforcing it. At the time of its passage, Alaska’s local-hire law was believed to be in accordance with the law, and it has remained in force for 30 years. A construction company challenged the law this year.

Arizona

Tucson: In this city widely credited as the birthplace of the 1980s Sanctuary Movement – an effort by churches to help refugees from Central America and shield them from deportation – a group of activists is looking to revive that history of aggressively resisting immigration authorities. Voters will decide Tuesday whether to designate Tucson as Arizona’s only sanctuary city, a direct challenge to President Donald Trump and to the anti-illegal immigration law that put a spotlight on the state nearly a decade ago. Many in Tucson are eager to send Trump a message that disapproves of his immigration policies. But even some on the left worry the measure would merely draw the ire of the president and his allies in the Arizona Legislature without improving conditions for migrants.

Arkansas

Little Rock: North Little Rock has its eyes on the future as the city builds upon its downtown district, but school district officials want to make sure it doesn’t forget the past when it comes to the Ole Main High School building, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports. The North Little Rock School District recently announced plans to form a task force to provide direction to the Board of Education on how to preserve the historic building that is adjacent to the current high school, which opened in 2015. Board members will suggest one person each for the committee along with three at-large positions and one designated position for the North Little Rock History Commission. The task force will meet and report to the School Board. Board President Tracy Steele said he has already fielded numerous calls from people who want to be on the board.

California

San Francisco: The start of the commercial Dungeness crab season will likely be delayed by a week to lower the risk of whales getting entangled in fishing lines. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife said opening day of the season may be postponed from Nov. 15 to Nov. 23. The department said the earlier date presents “a significant risk” of whale entanglement. CDFW Director Charlton Bonham said fishing, environmental and management agencies were consulted before making the preliminary decision. The recreational crab season began Saturday. State health officials warned people not to consume the internal organs or guts of crab caught in two coastal areas due to the presence of domoic acid, a naturally occurring toxin that can cause vomiting or diarrhea when consumed.

Colorado

Denver: A state legislative committee formed in the wake of a fatal shooting at a suburban school has proposed five bills that legislators hope will make schools safer. The Denver Post reports the interim committee didn’t introduce any bills on controversial topics, such as gun control or arming teachers, during its work following the May 7 attack on STEM School Highlands Ranch. Police, teachers and others told committee members that Colorado has good programs to prevent violence, but they aren’t used consistently statewide. Lawmakers also expressed concern about gaps and duplication in the state’s school safety programs. The committee’s draft bills approved last week for consideration by the 2020 Legislature include bills that would reorganize the Safe2Tell anonymous tip system and create a working group to continue studying school safety.

Connecticut

Hartford: The leader of a coalition of cities and towns across the state says municipal officials are facing an “environmental crisis” of diseased trees, warning the first significant snowfall this year could bring down hundreds across the state, as well as thousands of tree limbs. Connecticut Conference of Municipalities Executive Director Joe DeLong sent a letter Thursday to Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, seeking additional resources and help dealing with the fallout of trees infested and subsequently weakened by emerald ash borer beetles and gypsy moth caterpillars. Over the weekend, utility crews were restoring power to communities affected by a strong Halloween night storm that left behind numerous downed wires. In Marlborough, local officials say many of the limbs fell on power lines because the trees were too brittle to withstand the high winds.

Delaware

Newark: Beginning early next year, the city’s police officers will be wearing one more piece of equipment: body cameras. At a Newark City Council meeting last week, council members approved a nearly $630,000 request for video equipment, including 60 body cameras. The devices cost about $350,000. The rest of the money will go toward replacing dashboard cameras in Newark patrol vehicles and updating video equipment in interview rooms. The $628,867.77 required for all the equipment, which will be provided by Axon, formerly known as Taser International, will be paid out over five years. Federal and state grants will cover $152,640, while the other $476,227.77 will be paid through Newark’s 2019-2023 Capital Improvements Program.

District of Columbia

Washington: The mayor and the chair of the D.C. Council have nominated two people to represent the city on the regional transit authority board. The Washington Post reports D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson nominated former federal transportation official Stephanie Gidigbi to serve as one of the district’s two voting members on the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority board. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser nominated Lucinda Babers, a deputy mayor for infrastructure. The board spots were vacated when Councilman Jack Evans and Corbett Price resigned their seats after an ethics scandal. Evans resigned this summer after a legal memo saying he knowingly violated board ethics became public. Price later resigned after he lied about the findings of the ethics probe. The full D.C. Council must approve the nominations.

Florida

Orlando: A new report is recommending a new board, inspector general and ethics standards for the scandal-plagued Florida Virtual School. The Orlando Sentinel reports the recommendations released Friday by the Florida Department of Education also say Florida’s public online school needs to implement cybersecurity measures. The school had a data breach last year, and its former general counsel resigned following an investigation by the Sentinel that documented accusations of improper spending and behavior. Gov. Ron DeSantis and state lawmakers ordered a state takeover of the online school, which operates as its own $240 million public school district serving more than 200,000 students. All Florida public high school students are required to take at least one virtual class, and many choose the school as the provider.

Georgia

Atlanta: A memorial service was held over the weekend to remember the victims of the Atlanta child murders in the 1970s and 1980s. WSB-TV reports dozens of people, including some family members of the victims, gathered for the service Saturday. The string of murders of mostly black boys terrorized the city between 1979 and 1981. The service included the lighting of candles, songs and a procession of hearses. “The pain is still here,” said Catherine Leach, who lost her son Curtis Walker 40 years ago. Wayne Williams was given two life sentences in 1982 for convictions in the deaths of two adults, thought to be among 29 black children and young adults killed. Police blamed him for the other killings but never charged him. There has been a renewed push to reexamine evidence in the case.

Hawaii

Honolulu: An environmental advocacy group has filed a lawsuit against a federal agency for what it says is a failure to protect habitat for 14 endangered species on Hawaii island. The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports the Center for Biological Diversity says the failure to designate critical habitat for the plants and animals in a timely manner is a violation of the Endangered Species Act. The lawsuit names Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as defendants. The national organization says the Fish and Wildlife Service listed 15 plant and animal species in Hawaii as endangered in October 2013. The lawsuit says the agency was required under the act to designate critical habitat but has only done so for one of the protected species.

Idaho

Boise: About 35,000 Idaho residents have signed up for Medicaid under expanded coverage in the first few days it has been offered. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare said Monday that’s more than a third of the estimated 91,000 people who are eligible. The agency started taking applications Friday. Idaho voters authorized Medicaid expansion last year with an initiative that passed with 61% of the vote, but lawmakers earlier this year added restrictions requiring five waivers. Federal officials have yet to approve any of the waivers, but enrollment is proceeding with coverage starting Jan. 1. The expansion provides Medicaid to people earning up to a maximum of 138% of the federal poverty level. That maximum is about $17,000 a year for one person and $35,500 for a family of four.

Illinois

Peoria: Officials at Bradley University are marking the first phase of a $100 million new business and engineering building. The (Peoria) Journal Star reports university officials dedicated the building in a Friday ceremony attended by hundreds. Officials say the building’s design will allow students to better collaborate with an open atrium and wide hallways. Crews are still putting the final touches on the 270,000-square-foot Business and Engineering Convergence Center as faculty and staff move in. Classes will start within a few weeks. The building will have 200 offices, dozens of classrooms and more than 40 specialized labs. Work is yet to begin on the second phase, which will include the building’s final wing and require demolition of the old engineer building.

Indiana

Indianapolis: A state legislative panel is recommending that Indiana’s legal age for buying cigarettes be raised from 18 to 21. The Legislature’s public health study committee approved the recommendation last week after hearing testimony recently on the change that has failed to advance among lawmakers for several years. The Journal Gazette reports the proposed age change would cover both traditional and electronic cigarettes. Committee chairman Sen. Ed Charbonneau of Valparaiso says he doesn’t expect action until at least the 2021 legislative session, when a new state budget is considered, because Indiana cigarette tax revenue could decline with the change. Sen. Vaneta Becker of Evansville countered that the state might see a loss in tax revenue initially but will save on long-term health expenses.

Iowa

Iowa City: The University of Iowa has developed a temporary card to allow students who lack other forms of identification to vote in Tuesday’s election. The card was created at the nudging of student government organizers committed to making voting more accessible to students in the wake of changes to the Iowa Code in 2017 requiring IDs at the polls. Student government collaborators are hopeful this week’s combined city-school election will serve as a test run for the temporary IDs, leading up to the 2020 presidential election. According to the Iowa secretary of state’s office, unregistered residents can vote on the day of an election by showing proof of residency and a school-issued photo ID – but that ID must include an expiration date. The UI’s standard student ID card does not include one, but the temporary cards do: Nov. 6, just one day after the election.

Kansas

Topeka: Abortion opponents pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban the procedure in the state are meeting resistance from other anti-abortion groups. Two legislative committees have recommended that lawmakers consider the issue during the 2020 legislative session. The recommendations come as lawmakers try to determine how to respond to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling that the state’s constitution guarantees a right to abortion. Kansas News Service reports that at a hearing last week, some advocates pushed for a “personhood amendment” that would ban all abortions in Kansas. But some of the state’s largest anti-abortion groups say the personhood amendment is not practical. Anti-abortion legislators have generally deferred to Kansans for Life on abortion policy issues for more than two decades. That group argues that an incremental approach builds public support for greater restrictions.

Kentucky

Grand Rivers: Officials say they’ve installed a riverbed bubbler and sound system in a lake as an experimental and environmentally friendly way to keep an invasive fish from spreading. The Paducah Sun reports federal, state and local officials are holding an event Friday to showcase the deployment of the bio-acoustic fish fence at Barkley Dam in western Kentucky. It will be evaluated over the course of the next three years, although officials hope to see some preliminary results next year. Several agencies in Kentucky and Tennessee are combining funding, technology or staff to help stop the spread of Asian carp. Lyon County Judge-Executive Wade White says if the bio-acoustic systems proves effective, it will likely be used in other places to deter the spread of the fish.

Louisiana

Lafayette: A volunteer search-and-rescue group says it has changed its name to avoid confusion with a similarly named organization whose leader is accused of taking money from a fundraiser meant for children. The director of Pinnacle Search and Rescue, formerly known as Cajun Navy 2016, told KADN-TV it sped up its name change when the president of a separate group called America’s Cajun Navy was charged with fraud two weeks ago. News outlets report the change also comes as its own president, Jon Bridgers, faces fraud charges after a homeowner said he agreed to do contracting work on a house but never finished. Pinnacle Search and Rescue director Ben Husser said some were confusing the two organizations. Both groups include private boat owners who assist rescue operations.

Maine

Portland: Gun control advocates say they plan to keep pushing for tighter gun controls in Maine, despite the failure of a flurry of proposals to move forward during the coming legislative session. Democrats proposed several changes to the state’s gun laws for the session that begins in January, but the Legislative Council rejected most of them and tabled one. Proposals need the council’s approval to move on to legislative committees and the full Statehouse. Members of the Maine chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America say the proposals would’ve protected children from potential school shootings and gun accidents in the home. Republican Sen. Jeffrey Timberlake, who sits on the council, said the proposals didn’t rise to the level of emergency legislation, which is the purpose of the session.

Maryland

Germantown: A decision by a county executive to ban a police station from displaying a “thin blue line” flag is drawing criticism from Gov. Larry Hogan. The wooden flag was a gift from a local resident in recognition of National First Responders Day. It was to be displayed in the 5th District Station. News outlets report that Democratic Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said the flag provides a symbol of “support” to some but is a symbol of “dismissiveness” to others. The “thin blue line” flag has been labeled by some as a response to the Black Lives Matter movement. Hogan, a Republican, said in a series of tweets Sunday that he was “offended and disgusted” that Elrich had prohibited officers from displaying the flag.

Massachusetts

Wellfleet: A marine biologist is reporting a sharp rise in number of sunfish stranded on Cape Cod beaches. The unusual-looking migratory fish, which can grow to nearly 9 feet long and weigh thousands of pounds, can be found in mid- to late summer off the state’s coast. Marine biologist Carol “Krill” Carson tells the Cape Cod Times that a couple dozen or more are usually found stranded on beaches annually. So far, about 130 have been stranded this year. Carson says this year is “out of control,” noting the stranding season starts in mid-August and runs through ecember. She has a network of about 30 volunteers who assist her in returning the fish to the sea or taking tissue samples if it’s dead. The sunfish is capable of long migrations to the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico in the winter.

Michigan

Lansing: The state is lowering or eliminating fees assessed on people who register to use marijuana for medical reasons. The Marijuana Regulatory Agency announced last week that new rules are in effect. The application fee for a two-year registry card is now $40, down from $60. A $10 fee to update, replace, add or remove a caregiver has been eliminated. Caregivers, who supply patients with marijuana, will no longer have to pay a $25 background check processing fee. Marijuana Regulatory Agency Executive Director Andrew Brisbo says the state has worked hard to streamline the process for cardholders, not only lowering costs but also making it easier for patients to apply for and receive their cards.

Minnesota

St. Paul: An enterprising college student who drove to Iowa every weekend to buy hundreds of Krispy Kreme doughnuts that he then sold to his own customers in the Twin Cities area has been warned by the confectionary giant to stop. There have been no Krispy Kreme stores in Minnesota for 11 years. Jayson Gonzalez, 21, of Champlin, Minnesota, would drive 270 miles to a Krispy Kreme store in Clive, Iowa, pack his car with up to 100 boxes of a dozen doughnuts, then drive back north. He charged $17 to $20 per box and said some of his customers spent nearly $100 each time. Gonzalez said he did not receive a discount from the store in Iowa. But less than a week after the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported on his money-making scheme, Gonzalez received a phone call from Krispy Kreme’s Nebraska office telling him to stop. In a statement Sunday night, Krispy Kreme said it’s looking into the matter.

Mississippi

Glendora: Men carrying a white nationalist flag were caught on security cameras trying to film in front of a new memorial to lynching victim Emmett Till. Patrick Weems, executive director of the Emmett Till Memorial Commission, says cameras captured the incident Saturday. Security footage from the commission shows the men, one carrying a neo-Confederate group flag, filming at the site. They are seeing running away when a security alarm sounds. Weems says he believes they were filming a propaganda video. Till was 14 when he was beaten and killed in 1955 after he whistled at a white woman. The memorial is at the site where Till’s body was pulled from a river. A bulletproof memorial to Till was dedicated Oct. 19 after the first three markers were vandalized.

Missouri

Cape Girardeau: A program that helps young men reach their full potential is earning accolades from southeast Missouri leaders and members of the Legislature’s Black Caucus. The Southeast Missourian reports the Honorable Young Men Club provides mentoring for students in the Cape Girardeau School District, but its organizers hope to expand elsewhere. The program was begun in 2016 by four former Southeast Missouri State University football players, including one now with the Baltimore Ravens, Aaron Adeoye. The other three recently hosted a gathering to show the benefits of the program. The event was organized by former Republican Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder. Co-founders say students who participate in the program have better grades, higher attendance and fewer suspensions than their peers.

Montana

Billings: Figures from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis indicate that Montana outpaces neighboring Wyoming when it comes to recreation economies. The Billings Gazette reports that based on data from 2017, the analysis puts Montana’s total outdoor recreation value at $2.3 billion, compared to $1.6 billion in Wyoming. This is the first national report to drill into state-by-state recreation economies. Rachel VandeVoort, director of the Montana office of Outdoors Recreation, said the state-by-state analysis is helpful in making decisions, such as investing in habitat, protecting public or private lands, or contributing funding to new opportunities. University of Wyoming economics professor Rob Godby attributes the disparity between the two states to Montana’s larger population and more urban areas, which means more businesses catering to hunters, anglers, skiers and bikers.

Nebraska

Omaha: The Salvation Army’s annual Tree of Lights campaign is set to get underway in the area this week with the annual lighting of metal Christmas trees in front of American National Bank branches in central Omaha and in Council Bluffs, Iowa. In Omaha, hundreds are expected to gather Friday for the lighting of a 75-foot tall, 2-ton metal tree with more than 60,000 LED lights and 600 lit snowflakes, topped by a 6-foot star. The event features live music, food, reindeer and other Christmas-themed offerings. Across the Missouri River, the Salvation Army will also light a Christmas tree atop the American National Bank branch in Council Bluffs and serve refreshments. The lighting ceremonies kick off the Salvation Army’s red kettle bell-ringing drive.

Nevada

Reno: A new commander has been chosen to lead Nevada’s 152nd Airlift Wing, also known as the “High Rollers.” Col. Jacob Hammons, an F-16 pilot from Las Vegas, replaced Reno native Col. Eric Wade during a change-of-command ceremony Saturday at the Nevada Air National Guard base. “(I’m) excited, ready to get going,” Hammons said. The 152nd Airlift Wing includes 1,016 airmen, most of whom serve one weekend a month and two weeks each year as traditional guardsmen in a reserve force that supports the federal government overseas, according to the Nevada Air National Guard. The unit provides tactical airlift worldwide and expeditionary combat support. It also operates the U.S. Forest Service’s Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System, which transforms cargo aircraft into firefighting air tankers.

New Hampshire

Concord: Fifth graders across the state are heading to the polls this week to elect the next “Kid Governor.” This is the second year the state has participated in a national civics program aimed at encouraging civic engagement by teaching students about the history of voting rights, the qualities of good leaders and the mechanics of campaigns. More than 450 students in six New Hampshire schools participated last year, selecting Lola Giannelli, of Nashua, as their first Kid Governor. She has spent the past year promoting efforts to protect animals from abuse. The seven candidates hoping to succeed her have platforms that include topics such as bullying, underage tobacco use, and college and career awareness. Voting started Monday and ends Nov. 12.

New Jersey

Trenton: Nearly a third of the state’s lawmakers also work in other government jobs with payments that not only increase their pensions but also raise ethical questions about whom they serve when they cast votes in the Legislature, an investigation finds. The 37 lawmakers holding more than one government job or contract racked up nearly $2.7 million in additional taxpayer income beyond their $49,000-a-year Statehouse salaries, the investigation found. Due to quirks in state law, longtime lawmakers can still pad their pensions even though a series of reforms in the past decade limited the plump payout for newer legislators. Good-government groups say so-called double-dipping creates an increased risk of conflict, potential favoritism and a drain on public dollars.

New Mexico

Carlsbad: Members of this arid state’s congressional delegation are looking for ways to combat water scarcity here and across the West. U.S. Sen. Tom Udall is blaming climate change for growing water scarcity, worrying that New Mexico snowpacks are getting smaller and unable to adequately feed the Rio Grande and the rest of the state’s groundwater supplies. He and other lawmakers last week introduced the Western Water Security Act of 2019. They say the goal is to strengthen New Mexico’s water infrastructure and focus efforts on conservation and the restoration of water supplies throughout the West. The latest federal drought map shows a big pocket of moderate to severe drought over the Four Corners region, where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet.

New York

New York: The city’s police commissioner is retiring after three years, and a top deputy will succeed him as the leader of the nation’s largest police department, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday. James O’Neill, 61, moved the police department away from controversial “broken windows” policies and oversaw continuing drops in crime. He will remain on the job until next month, when he leaves for a job in the private sector. Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea, a 28-year department member who started as a patrolman in the south Bronx, will be the new commissioner. Shea rose to prominence as the department’s statistical guru, and de Blasio said he is “one of the best-prepared incoming police commissioners this city has ever seen.”

North Carolina

Raleigh: A treasure hunter who accuses the state of misusing his images from Blackbeard’s flagship says he’ll ask for 10 times the damages he originally sought, now that a court ruling has come down in his favor. John Masters of Intersal Inc. says he plans to seek $140 million in damages from North Carolina following the ruling Friday from the state Supreme Court that the case must return to Business Court. He said an expert witness had put Intersal’s losses from the state’s use of more than 2,000 images and more than 200 minutes of film at $129 million. He’s seeking another $11 million for losses over a permit that the state denied him, which would have allowed Intersal to search for a Spanish ship. Almost a quarter-century ago, Masters’ father discovered the wreckage of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, which ran aground in Beaufort, in what was then the colony of North Carolina, in 1718.

North Dakota

Bismarck: State wildlife officials say the number of tags issued for the upcoming deer hunt is up by about 10,000. The Game and Fish Department says about 67,500 deer tags have been issued. Wildlife division chief Jeb Williams says the deer population is trending up in western North Dakota, while the eastern part of the state has been slower from the rough winters of 2009, 2010 and 2011. The Bismarck Tribune reports Williams says there are fewer acres idled under the federal Conservation Reserve Program than a dozen years ago, which means less habitat. In 2018, 64% of tag holders harvested a deer, a little below the department’s benchmark of 70%. The season opens at noon Friday and ends Nov. 24.

Ohio

Columbus: The Ohio Veterans Hall of Fame will honor 20 veterans at this year’s annual induction ceremony. Members of the 2019 class will be inducted Thursday at the Radiant Life Church in the Columbus suburb of Dublin. Gov. Mike DeWine and Deborah Ashenhurst, director of the Ohio Department of Veterans Services, will honor the class with medals. Officials say the public is invited to the 10 a.m. ceremony. Former Gov. George Voinovich established the Hall of Fame in 1992 to recognize outstanding professional achievement, service to the community and selfless acts of veterans following their military service. Honorees include astronauts, volunteers, community leaders, veteran advocates and former government officials, among others. The 2019 class joins 875 Ohio veterans inducted since the Hall of Fame was created.

Oklahoma

Oklahoma City: More than 400 inmates walked out the doors of prisons across the state Monday as part of what officials say is the largest single-day mass commutation in U.S. history. Monday’s release of inmates, all with convictions for low-level drug and property crimes, resulted from a bill signed by new Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt. The bill retroactively applied misdemeanor sentences for simple drug possession and low-level property crimes that state voters approved in 2016. Stitt has made reducing Oklahoma’s highest-in-the-nation incarceration rate one of his top priorities and has appointed reform-minded members to the state’s Pardon and Parole Board. The board last week considered 814 cases and recommended 527 inmates for commutation. However, 65 are being held on detainers, leaving about 462 inmates to be released Monday.

Oregon

Salem: A timber investment firm is selling more than 3,000 acres along the Columbia River that has been used to grow poplar trees. The Capital Press reports Greenwood Resources had used the land to grow poplar trees for the U.S. paper industry, but experts say international competition and a low profit margin have made that difficult. Poplar plantations arose due to steep logging declines on federal land in the Pacific Northwest as paper companies worried about acquiring sufficient wood chips to run their plants. But that shortage never materialized, and efforts to grow larger poplar trees for use in furniture construction were stymied by competition from alder wood. Alder trees grow naturally in Pacific Northwest forests and don’t need to be grown on plantations, making them cheaper.

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh: After four years of testing, the Pennsylvania Turnpike says it plans to move ahead with a $129 million project to become a completely cashless toll system in two years, eliminating hundreds of toll-collecting and auditing positions along the way. Turnpike CEO Mark Compton told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last week that “the goal is to have the system completely cashless by the fall off 2021.” Toll booths will still be at some exit ramps until 2026 to record E-ZPass signals or photograph license plates so bills can be mailed to drivers. The jobs of the 600 remaining toll collectors and toll auditors will be eliminated, but officials say they will have the opportunity to move into other turnpike jobs or to take classes at the turnpike’s expense.

Rhode Island

Providence: Gun safety advocates want the state’s family court judges to require more domestic abusers to surrender their firearms. A report released Monday shows 34% of domestic abusers are being ordered to surrender their weapons in final orders of protection. That’s an increase from 5% before a 2017 state law regarding firearm surrenders took effect. In cases where a defendant is ordered to surrender firearms, 36% filed an affidavit – as required under the law – to prove they no longer have the weapons. The report was compiled by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action. Besides court files, it relies on observations of trained volunteers who monitored 289 domestic violence protection order cases between October 2018 and May 2019. Some judges disagree about how the law should be interpreted.

South Carolina

Charleston: State authorities are looking into the finances of Emanuel AME Church, which received millions in donations after a racist attack left nine worshippers at a Bible study dead in 2015. The Post and Courier reports State Law Enforcement Division spokesman Tommy Crosby confirmed the investigation last week but declined to elaborate. The church’s former secretary, Althea Latham, says she spoke to SLED agents recently about the handling of those donations. Latham has long contended that her contract wasn’t renewed less than two months after the shooting because she questioned processing and transparency surrounding the money that was coming in. Church leaders have said her contract simply wasn’t renewed. Latham hopes accountability will resolve lingering suspicions over the donations.

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: Feeding South Dakota is launching its yearly Thanksgiving Meal Drive as the nonprofit aims to help thousands of families who couldn’t otherwise afford the holiday. Givers who are looking for a way to help can donate food or money to Feeding South Dakota through Nov. 23. The nonprofit hopes to distribute 3,400 turkeys and meals to families across South Dakota on the Saturday before the holiday. Donors Greg and Pam Sands will match any online financial donations up to $15,000. A $20 gift is enough to pay for a turkey dinner for a family of four, according to Feeding South Dakota. People can make financial donations online or by phone at 605-335-0364, ext. 126.

Tennessee

Ashland City: Neal Ryder was growing produce in part to make his own baby food for 3-month-old son Griffin when he grew a whopping 22.6-pound sweet potato. Ryder says he didn’t realize a sweet potato could grow that big and didn’t consider himself a record-setter “by any means,” but he might have done just that. Guinness World Records shows that the heaviest sweet potato in the world was grown in Spain in 2004. It weighed 81 pounds and 9 ounces, according to Guinness World Records and the Great Pumpkin Commonwealth. Though Ryder’s sweet potato is a fraction of the world record, it could make Tennessee history. Last year, an East Tennessee woman grew a sweet potato that rang in at nearly 14 pounds. News reports from that time claimed it was a record.

Texas

San Antonio: The mesquite, an iconic tree in the Lone Star State, provides a blessing and a curse, the San Antonio Express-News reports. Ranch manager Farron Sultemeier notes its beans provide late summer feed for cattle and wildlife. But it spreads ridiculously fast and is almost unstoppably invasive. Texas mesquites also produce thorns sharp enough to injure livestock and puncture a car tire. And they grow so gnarly and twisted, the wood is virtually useless for anything other than imparting a bold smokiness to meat – a signature of Texas barbecue. But that soon may change with two new, improved varieties developed by California-based Altman Plants. These experimental trees grow erect, spineless and fast, while still being able to survive and thrive in the harsh, semi-arid climate of South Texas. Altman Plants recently shipped about 150 of its two experimental hybrids – dubbed Mojave and Sonoran – from California to the San Antonio nursery where they’ll be propagated. Specimens should be available for purchase within a year.

Utah

American Fork: A VW bus painted like a black chalkboard is inspiring creative drawings and bringing people together in this city. No matter where he parks the “chalkbus,” owner Jonathan Sherman says he comes back to find great new art adorning the sides. The Daily Herald reports that the story behind the bus inspired a documentary by college students at Utah Valley University. Sherman also lets bands cram into the bus to play music while he drives around town. Sherman, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says the bus seems to provide something people are missing by connecting them. He takes it each year to the Out of Darkness Suicide Prevention Walk in Salt Lake City and lets people draw on it there.

Vermont

Bennington: A private boarding school in New Hampshire has made a bid to buy a closed Vermont college. The Bennington Banner reports the head of Oliverian School in Pike, New Hampshire, and the board chairman of the former Southern Vermont College confirm the private school has offered $4.9 million for the 371-acre campus and buildings in Bennington. “We feel that our students and faculty would thrive here,” says Will Laughlin, head of Oliverian School. Southern Vermont College officials said the closure last spring after graduation was due to a decline in enrollment and related debt issues that face other small colleges in the Northeast. According to Oliverian School’s website, it’s an alternative college preparatory boarding school for adolescents who have not thrived in traditional settings.

Virginia

Richmond: A Catholic congregation of religious women that serves the elderly is leaving the state after 145 years. It’s the seventh time in six years that the congregation has pulled out across the country because fewer women are joining the order. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports Little Sisters of the Poor has about 30 locations in the U.S. and others in more than 30 countries. Its mission is to serve the elderly in nursing homes around the world. It came to the Richmond region in 1874. The order announced last week that it would be leaving St. Joseph’s Home in Henrico County. The 11 sisters who are leaving don’t yet know yet where they’ll go. But they could be sent to any home in the world that’s run by the religious order.

Washington

Olympia: State officials are notifying voters of a registration error that could affect about 1,000 people attempting to cast a ballot in the state election scheduled for Tuesday. The Seattle Times reports officials have contacted voters by phone and email after detecting a problem with voter registrations submitted through Washington’s health plan website. The website provides a voter registration option for people enrolling in health or dental coverage and transmits the information to the Secretary of State’s Office. Officials say the Washington Health Benefit Exchange underwent a system upgrade in August that caused some voter registration information to be transmitted to the wrong account in the state system. Officials say the Secretary of State’s Office discovered the registration error last week and fixed the problem by Thursday evening.

West Virginia

Charleston: A wildlife official says a monthlong series of fall tours to see elk drew visitors from eight other states. Chief Logan State Park naturalist Lauren Cole told the Charleston Gazette-Mail that 227 people went on the sold-out tours in September and October. The elk were at the nearby Tomlin Wildlife Management Area and were imported from Kentucky and Arizona. They’re part of a Division of Natural Resources effort to restore the species to the state. Cole says elk were seen on 19 of the 20 tours. She attributed the one tour where elk weren’t seen to a group of hunters who were pursuing raccoons with dogs. Cole says visitors also saw deer, wild turkeys, rabbits and a black bear. The tours also were offered last year.

Wisconsin

Madison: The University of Wisconsin-Madison is using rolling robots to deliver food. The school entered into a contact with Starship Technologies this summer to get access to a fleet of 30 robots that resemble coolers on wheels. The robots can navigate sidewalks autonomously, although human controllers can take over at a moment’s notice. Students and faculty can order food from several university restaurants through a Starship app on their phones and watch the robots’ progress as they travel to their address. Users will get an alert when the robot arrives. Each delivery will cost $1.99. That money will go to Starship Technologies. The robots began deliveries Monday on the campus’ north side. University officials hope to expand service campuswide once the robots have mapped the entire area.

Wyoming

Cheyenne: Gov. Mark Gordon says he is open to the state pursuing a nuclear waste storage facility, though he doesn’t personally believe it’s the best industry for Wyoming. Gordon told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle’s editorial board last week that if a good reason can be found for such an industry in Wyoming, and it has adequate safeguards, he’s not going to stand in its way. The governor says he will wait to see what the Legislature finds in its studies of the idea before making a decision. This week in Casper, the Joint Minerals, Business and Economic Development Interim Committee will consider a bill authorizing the governor to negotiate with the U.S. Energy Department to store spent nuclear fuel rods within the state.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alex Jones trial: Sandy Hook parents ask jury to return $150 million ...

New York CNN Business —

The lawyer for two Sandy Hook families that have sued right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones asked a jury on Tuesday to award his clients $150 million in damages in a trial that will determine how much money they receive.

“Now that is a huge verdict to be sure, but it is one that will do justice to the level of harm done in this case,” Mark Bankston, the attorney for the plaintiffs, said in his opening statement.

“Harm that was done to the parents, grieving parents of murdered children who have had to endure for 10 years, the most despicable and vile campaign of defamation and slander in American history,” Bankston added.

Bankston said the $150 million figure amounted to $1 for each person who believes false information about the Sandy Hook shooting pushed by Jones, which he argued is about 75 million. The additional $75 million would be to compensate the parents for the emotional and mental anguish they’ve endured over the last decade due to harassment from Jones and his followers.

Jones, who is also being sued in Connecticut by the families of other Sandy Hook victims, was found legally responsible in October for false claims he made about the tragedy that claimed 26 lives.

The judge in the case, Travis County District Court Judge Maya Guerra Gamble, issued default judgments against Jones because he refused to comply with court orders.

Jones baselessly said in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting that the incident was staged. Facing lawsuits, Jones has since acknowledged the shooting occurred. He said in a 2019 sworn deposition that a “form of psychosis” caused him to make his false comments.

In his opening statement, Bankston said, “By just one month after the shooting Alex Jones would become patient zero for the Sandy Hook hoax, he had created a sensation.”

Bankston also walked the jury through what he said was a decade-long timeline of Jones’ efforts to push the Sandy Hook hoax narrative, saying that despite a public plea from one of the parents to Jones asking the radio host to stop spreading false information, Jones “doubled down,” targeting the parent in video content and calling him an actor lying about having a child who’d died in the shooting.

In his own opening statement, Andino Reynal, an attorney for Jones, accused the plaintiffs’ lawyer of misleading the court.

“What we heard was a conspiracy of lies,” Reynal said of Bankston’s opening remarks.

Reynal sought to portray Jones as someone who had merely made mistakes when covering the Sandy Hook shooting and suggested the quick nature of the news cycle was in part to blame.

“If you understand the news cycle and how it works, commentators, people on talk shows, they get information, they run with it,” Reynal said. “Alex Jones was wrong to believe these people. But he didn’t do it out of spite.”

“The evidence will show he did it because he believed it because he thought it was important coverage,” Reynal added.

Thousands of people were questioning the shooting, not just Jones, Reynal argued, due to what he called “bad coverage” by the mainstream media.

“Alex Jones doesn’t trust the government. Millions of Americans don’t trust the government,” Reynal said.

Evidence to be presented during the trial will show Jones didn’t cause harassment of the parents, Reynal said. He also questioned whether the parents heard Jones’ content about the school shooting.

Reynal said he is “honored” to represent Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems.

“He is one of the most polarizing figures in this nation,” Reynal said. “And I am honored to represent him not because I agree with everything he says, but I agree with his right to say it and I agree with every Americans right to choose what they watch and listen to and what they believe.”

During the proceedings on Tuesday, Gamble admonished Jones for speaking to the news media during a recess.

“We’re not going to have that happen again,” Gamble said.

Gamble said every participant in the trial is “ordered to be silent” about the case when outside the courtroom “or if there is any member of the jury in sight.”

Lauren Del Valle Oliver Darcy
Lauren Del Valle
Oliver Darcy

'Minions: The Rise of Gru' breaks box office records | CNN Business

New York CNN Business —

The Minions went bananas at the box office this weekend.

Illumination’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” — the latest animated film in the Despicable Me franchise — made an estimated $125 million domestically for its four-day opening weekend, according to Universal.

That gives the film the record for biggest opening over the July 4th holiday weekend, overtaking “Transformers: Dark of the Moon,” which made $115 million in 2011.

The opening is a huge shot in the arm for theaters. The industry has been anxiously waiting to see if families — who have been somewhat reluctant to bring their children to the movies during the pandemic — would return to theaters. While there have been family-friendly hits such as “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” this question became more pressing after Disney (DIS)’s and Pixar’s “Lightyear” flopped at the box office last month.

But the performance of “Minions” shows that not only do families want to come back, but they’ll come back in large numbers for the right film.

“Families want to be in theaters,” Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic theatrical distribution, told CNN Business. “They want the social event of it all.”

Why “Minions” did well is likely a mixture of good reviews (it holds a 71% score on Rotten Tomatoes), being the next installment in a franchise that’s made roughly $4 billion worldwide — and possibly even TikTok, after the social media site created a viral trend that had moviegoers dress up in formal wear to see the film.

“Minions” was originally set for release in 2020, but was delayed multiple times due to the pandemic. While other family films decided to go to streaming, Universal held “Minions” for theaters — a strategy that paid off handsomely this weekend.

“A knockout performance by ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’ may not have been guaranteed, given the less-than-stellar results for some recent family films,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore (SCOR), told CNN Business. “But the undeniable appeal of those silly Minions contained in a perfectly executed movie-theater-only confection was pure cinematic catnip for kids and parents.”

Now, theaters hope to keep the hot streak going as they prepare for what could be one of the biggest films of the year: “Thor: Love and Thunder.” The latest Marvel film, which has Chris Hemsworth reprise his role as the God of Thunder, hits theaters this weekend.

Raven Industries retools to regain strength

Jodi Schwan

jschwan@sfbusinessjournal.com

No matter what the weather does, it's going to be a dry spring for Raven Industries Inc.

That much became clear several weeks ago, when new orders for the company's high-tech agricultural products came in lower than expected in what typically would be a busy season.

"It's just going to be a year where those orders aren't coming," president and CEO Dan Rykhus said. "It's worse domestically, but there aren't very many bright spots globally right now for ag equipment."

Earnings from the company's most recent fiscal year, which ended Jan. 31, tell the next part of the story. Operating profit in Raven's applied technology division, which serves the agricultural market, was down $22.4 million and drove an overall 26 percent drop in net income.

With stagnant new orders, the company started making cuts. Jobs that became vacant went unfilled. Leadership looked for ways to trim discretionary spending. The more drastic measures came last week, when Raven laid off 115 employees, including 75 in Sioux Falls.

Restructuring is part of a broader strategy to reduce the company's exposure to volatility in the markets it serves, which include energy and defense along with agriculture. At one point, the applied technology division accounted for 65 percent of earnings. The new Raven is envisioned to be more balanced.

"This dramatic restructuring was necessary because of our end-market conditions and to preserve the core of our business," Rykhus said. "This is a first step in our course to recovery."

For those who know Raven, this is not a new approach. In its nearly 60-year history, the company has reconfigured itself multiple times. It was founded by General Mills Inc. employees to develop high-altitude research balloons to help in space exploration. It later branched into plastics and electronics.

Because Raven knew how to make controls for balloons, it got into controls for farm equipment. The company also has done business in the fiberglass industry and made outerwear sold by Lands' End and L.L. Bean.

Rykhus joined Raven in 1990. At that time, nearly one-third of revenue came from apparel.

"And over time, the U.S. was not competitive in sewing trades, so we moved out of that business," he said. "We've gone through this many times. We're having a season where we're stepping back a little, but we're doing it to be successful in the long term."

Something else has changed at Raven, however. While the company has designed and manufactured some of its own products for years, it also manufactured items for clients.

A couple of years ago, leadership decided to move away from contract manufacturing and focus entirely on developing, manufacturing and selling its own products.

Those outside contracts are ending at the same time that some of Raven's markets are in a downturn.

Revenue from contract manufacturing business dropped to $27 million in fiscal 2015 compared wtih $50 million the previous year, and it's expected to bring in less than $6 million in 2016.

"It was the right move to make," board chairman Tom Everist said. "We are suffering through that runoff at the same time we're having a downturn in ag, but would we have done something different if we knew how things would go? I wouldn't say that. The contract manufacturing is not the future of Raven, and it's best to have exited that. You might say we didn't do that soon enough."

Today's Raven is focusing on longer-term prospects in each of its three divisions, from new product development to strategic acquisitions.

"We're still a strong company," said Steven Brazones, who became chief financial officer late last year. "We're in some headwinds now, but the fundamentals of the markets we're in are very strong."

Adding Integra

Years in the making, Raven acquired Madison-based Integra Plastics Inc. earlier this year as a way to strengthen its engineered films division.

"Synergies are exceeding expectations," Brazones said. "We are on track for all the cost savings we identified and have identified additional synergies."

The Madison plant employs about 45 people and is finishing a 72,000-square-foot addition. Integra also has a production facility in Brandon that Raven has temporarily taken offline.

"We're doing that as a precautionary measure until we understand what's going on in the energy market," Rykhus said. "We believe in the long term as demand picks up we'll be utilizing that facility. The intent is not to sell it. It's to ... bring it back online and call back our employees when conditions improve."

The engineered films division has been hit by the decline in the energy market. While decreasing oil prices help with raw-material costs, they also mean Raven customers in the energy industry aren't buying as many films.

"Their (Integra's) energy component was about 35 percent of their business as was ours when we acquired them, so both businesses have been impacted by the downturn," Everist said. "We still think it was a good acquisition and a good addition to the Raven portfolio even at the price we paid for it."

The $48 million acquisition came through $9 million in cash and the rest in Raven stock. It was structured that way to qualify as a tax-free merger.

Three funds of Sioux Falls-based Bluestem Capital Co. were invested in Integra. The majority of Bluestem investors are from the Sioux Falls area.

"We're happy with the transaction," Bluestem founding partner Steve Kirby said. "We think Raven is a solid company doing everything it can in this ag environment in particular to move forward. Obviously with soft commodity prices, it's presenting new challenge to the ag community ... but we have all the confidence in the world in Dan Rykhus and his team."

Raven's stock was valued at $24 a share when the deal closed. It hit a one-year low of $16.91 per share after earnings were released last week and since has climbed back to $20.10 when the market closed Monday.

"Certainly, it impacts people locally, and I think overall Raven impacts the local economy not just with the workforce but very concentrated ownership in our market as well," said John Barker, president of Elgethun Capital Management, which has Raven in its portfolio. "The business has been very successful. It's been an incredible investment up through 2013, so there was a lot of excitement and buzz around the stock, and now we're seeing pullback."

Raven is misunderstood by the market because of its internal structural changes, said Henry Le in a piece for the investment website Seeking Alpha. He considers it a good buying opportunity and has invested in the company.

"The long-term view of the North American agriculture market remains optimistic without question," he said. "The world's population is rising, and the need to feed the hungry has never been greater. (Raven's) technology helps meet this challenge by improving crop yield and reducing the cost of production. Over the long run, increasing global demand for food will generate solid growth, and (Raven) is positioning itself to reap the benefits."

In flight with Google

Raven isn't able to say much publicly about its relationship with Google Inc., but occasionally the tech giant will release information updating Project Loon, its effort to use high-altitude balloons to bring Internet service to remote areas of the world.

Raven started designing and manufacturing those balloons a few years ago.

In a March interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, Google's senior vice president of products detailed Project Loon's progress. When the balloons first launched, they stayed aloft for less than a week and could provide 3G signals on a good day.

They now average more than six months in the air and keep nearby smartphones running at 4G or LTE speeds. The balloons still are being refined, and Google wouldn't estimate when they would be ready to deploy on a broader scale.

"We want it to be real full-speed, full-color Internet," Mike Cassidy, who leads Project Loon, told Bloomberg.

Google has disclosed that the balloons cost tens of thousands of dollars each, compared with millions for a satellite with a comparable range.

"The program is going fantastic," Rykhus said. "They've been very vocal lately about how important Project Loon is to their success."

An article for the tech website The Verge included the following, "As Google Glass undergoes a reset, and driverless cars remain years away from commercial viability, Loon looks increasingly like the poster child for bringing a disruptive technology out of Google's labs and into the real world."

While Loon aims to expand the lifespan of its flights, Cassidy praised how fresh balloons can be developed in months.

"New technologies come, new compressional algorithms, the electronics can be updated, so you have a pretty fresh fleet in the air at any time."

It sounds like promising potential business for the company designing and manufacturing the products.

"The goal is Project Loon's success," Rykhus said. "The goal isn't selling Google a bunch of balloons. That will happen if the project is successful, and both parties have come together around that objective."

The Aerostar division achieved a near-record profit contribution in the fourth quarter, excluding contract manufacturing. It has been helped by earnings from Vista Radar, which Raven acquired three years ago. Its technology enables detection of small, slow-moving objects.

In the absence of major U.S. military campaigns, which generated business in the past, Vista is providing a significant boost. There is increasing interest among contractors and foreign governments who are U.S. allies, Raven said.

"Think of the worst places in the world today. That's where they want to have this surveillance," Rykhus said. "We're very good at sensing a person walking or a jet ski moving through waves toward a sensitive object."

As Rykhus prepares to mark five years as CEO this summer, the goal is to get back to the years when the company grew operating income in excess of 10 percent.

The leaner Raven is about 1,000 employees, including 885 in South Dakota. Most of those are in Sioux Falls, where the company sees itself as a job creator in Sioux Falls and takes the role seriously, Rykhus said.

"Our role in the community is to provide a stable company that delivers above-average returns and creates jobs. We don't lose sight of that," he said. "It's a company that has a solid values system that drives us. We have a vision to solve great challenges, and we'll get through this."

Golden State Warriors top Forbes' most valuable NBA franchise list ...

CNN —

The Golden State Warriors are the most valuable franchise in the NBA, according to Forbes.

It means for the first time since Forbes started valuing NBA franchises over 20 years ago, a team other than the New York Knicks or the Los Angeles Lakers top the rankings.

The Warriors are now worth $7 billion, said Forbes, 25% more than last year. The team generated $765 million in revenue and $206 million operating income during the 2021-2022 season, both the most in NBA history.

The Warriors won their fourth NBA championship in eight years in June, led by talisman and face of the franchise Stephen Curry.

The New York Knicks, who have topped each of Forbes’ last seven NBA franchise rankings, came second with a value of $6.1 billion followed by the Los Angeles Lakers with a value of $5.9 billion.

The Chicago Bulls ($4.1 billion) and the Boston Celtics ($4 billion) complete the top five, with the average NBA franchise is now worth $2.86 billion, 15% more than a year ago.

Forbes says the NBA is “back on its pre-Covid growth trajectory” and the league is expected sign a new media deal in 2025-26 that will be worth at lest double the current deal of $2.66 billion-a-year.

For its methodology, Forbes says: “The information used to compile our valuations primarily came from the teams, sports bankers, media consultants and public documents, such as arena lease agreements and bond documents.”

Zelle fraud is rising as big banks neglect victims, Senate report finds ...

This story is part of CNN Business’ Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free, here.

New York CNN Business —

Zelle, the popular payment app, is under fire for how it handles (or rather, doesn’t handle) fraud and scams that have exploded on the platform in recent years.

The New York Times called Zelle out in two reports earlier this year. That grabbed the attention of US senators, who pressed the CEOs of the nation’s large banks that own the platform in hearings last month and began an investigation into the service.

Here’s the deal: On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s office said its investigation into Zelle showed that fraud and theft are not only rampant but getting worse. And once people report fraudulent transactions, banks are reimbursing only a small fraction of the swindled customers.

Sen. Warren questions bank CEOs about Zelle during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Sept. 22. Jacquelyn Martin/AP

“Big banks own and profit from Zelle but are failing to make their customers whole for both authorized and unauthorized fraudulent activity on the platform, despite their claims that it is safe,” Warren’s office wrote.

Key things to know:

Zelle (rhymes with “tell”) was created in 2017 as the banking industry’s answer to Venmo and Cash App.

The fintech companies behind those apps were doing what big banks had failed to do for decades — make transferring money to your friend who just paid for dinner easy and free and fast.

So the big banks got together and created Zelle, which was lame and almost no one used it till around 2020, when digital payments took off in response to the pandemic.

Zelle is now by far the largest peer-to-peer payment system in America. Last year, according to Zelle, transactions totaled $490 billion, up 59% from the year before. (PayPal-owned Venmo, its closest rival, handled $230 billion.)

The service is operated by Early Warning Systems, a fintech company owned by seven of the US’s largest banks.

Naturally, where the internet and money collide is where scammers get to work.

Zelle’s size and accessibility — it’s built right into participating banks’ apps — make it the “preferred tool of fraudsters and other bad actors,” according to the report from Warren’s office.

Among the investigation’s key findings, which corroborate anecdotal evidence reported by the Times:

Banks are not repaying 90% of cases in which customers were tricked into making payments on Zelle.

An estimated $440 million was lost by Zelle users through frauds and scams in 2021. But banks “appear not to have provided sufficient recourse to their customers.”

“Authorized” vs “Unauthorized:” Under the a federal rule known as Regulation E, banks are technically only liable to cover fraudulent activity when it involves “unauthorized” transactions. Say, when someone steals your credit card and makes purchases without your permission. But if someone persuades you to send them $500 through a phishing scam, banks consider that “authorized” and won’t reimburse those funds.

BUT… The bank data reviewed by Warren’s office suggest even the bulk of unauthorized cases are going unpaid. For example: PNC Bank indicated that its customers reported 10,683 cases of unauthorized payments totaling over $10.6 million. It refunded only 1,495 cases, totaling $1.46 million.

Zelle sought to downplay the report and didn’t specifically address Warren’s allegations Monday. In a statement, the company said: “Tens of millions of consumers use Zelle without incident, with more than 99.9% of payments completed without any report of fraud or scam,” adding that the proportion of fraud and scams has steadily decreased as its user numbers have climbed.

The Bank Policy Institute, a banking industry group, also disputed Warren’s findings and claimed that Zelle’s rivals Venmo and CashApp receive more reports of disputed transactions.

“Zelle is the safest peer-to-peer network,” it said in a statement Monday. “For any real discussion of online fraud, the focus belongs elsewhere.”

BOTTOM LINE

It’s kind of crazy to remember how anyone moved money among friends before the advent of payment apps. Did I actually carry cash with me? On the first every month did I take my little checkbook out and literally write out my portion of the rent on a magic slip of paper and then just hand it to my roommates? Wild. It would not surprise me if the original idea for a payments app came from a restaurant server who was fed up with splitting bills unevenly across eight different cards.

But that’s the pre-internet world Regulation E was made for. It’s a 1978 rule that only got a 21st century electronic payments update by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau late last year. It wasn’t made for the world of instant payments, and could hardly have envisioned how easy the internet would make it to swindle people out of their money.

Warren’s report on Zelle could add pressure on regulators including the CFPB to update its guidance.

“Given this uncertain landscape and the banks’ abdication of responsibility, regulatory clarity is needed to further protect Zelle users,” researchers wrote in the report, noting that the CFPB has regulatory authority over peer-to-peer platforms including Zelle.

NUMBER OF THE DAY: $1.26 million

Kim Kardashian, the reality TV star, cosmetics entrepreneur and budding private-equity manager, was hit with a $1.26 million fine for touting what turned out to be a worthless crypto token to her millions of Instagram followers.

Kardashian failed to disclose that she was paid $250,000 for the endorsement. Her hashtag “#ad” in the June 2021 post wasn’t enough to satisfy the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition to the fine, Kardashian agreed to refrain from any crypto asset promotions for three years.

“This case is a reminder that, when celebrities or influencers endorse investment opportunities, including crypto asset securities, it doesn’t mean that those investment products are right for all investors,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler.

UK U-Turn

In a development that I can only assume means that Liz Truss is a Nightcap reader, the British government is reversing part of its tax proposal that was so unpopular it nearly tanked the UK bond market last week.

Here’s the deal: The newly installed government of Prime Minister Liz Truss had announced a massive slate of tax cuts that have amounted to a windfall for the nation’s wealthiest people, slashing the top rate of income tax to 40% from 45%.

That provision “had become a distraction,” the finance minister said Sunday.

The proposed cuts of more than $50 billion were aimed at turbo-boosting growth. Instead, it caused panic. The pound plunged to its lowest level against the US dollar, and sparked chaos in the market for UK debt because they will require a large increase in government borrowing.

It was a dumpster fire of a plan that no mainstream economist supported.

But, as my colleague Mark Thompson writes, the about-face is more of a symbolic gesture than a genuine reckoning. It will likely reduce the overall size of the tax-cutting package by about £2 billion.

“This move is rather symbolic, being less about the amount of money it will save (low billions) and more about the poor signal it had delivered of ideological (unfunded) tax cuts,” wrote Chris Turner, global head of UK markets at ING.

Bottom line: The Truss government’s unfunded tax cuts, which set off a panic in financial markets and put Downing Street in a standoff with the Bank of England, remain, uh, unfunded. The BOE’s bond-buying intervention may have bought the government some time, but Truss has shown no signs of budging on her fringe trickle-down economic theory.

Truss’ finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, “still has a lot of work to do if he is to display a credible commitment to fiscal sustainability,” said Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, on Monday.

“Unless he also U-turns on some of his other, much larger tax announcements, he will have no option but to consider cuts to public spending: to social security, investment projects, or public services.”

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San Antonio migrant truck deaths: 53 people have died | CNN

San Antonio CNN —

A distant cry led a worker Monday evening to a tractor-trailer abandoned on a desolate country road under the blazing Texas sun on the outskirts of the city.

On this barren stretch of scrubland adjacent to railroad tracks, the perilous journey north for dozens of undocumented migrants – many of them Mexican – ended in the back of a scorching tractor-trailer, nearly 150 miles north of the US border with Mexico.

In all, 53 people died in what one Homeland Security Investigations’ agent called the deadliest human smuggling incident in US history. Some victims could be younger than 18.

“This is nothing short of a horrific human tragedy,” said San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg.

A local businessman described the back road where the semitruck was abandoned as “la boca del lobo” in Spanish, or “the mouth of the wolf,” because it is remote and pitch black.

The road runs parallel to Interstate 35, a major north-south route in the central United States for traffic and commerce from the southern border. The interstate stretches from Laredo, Texas, to Duluth, Minnesota, near the Canadian border. From San Antonio, it meanders north to Austin, Waco, Fort Worth and Dallas.

Law enforcement personnel investigate the tractor-trailer Monday in San Antonio. Jordan Vonderhaar/Getty Images

It’s a route often exploited by smugglers at a time when record numbers of migrants are being intercepted at the US-Mexico border.

“This sheds light on how dangerous human smuggling is,” said Craig Larrabee, Homeland Security Investigations San Antonio acting special agent in charge.

“In the past, smuggling organizations were mom-and-pop,” Larrabee told CNN. “Now, they are organized and tied in with the cartels. So you have a criminal organization who has no regard for the safety of the migrants. They are treated like commodities rather than people.”

A cry for help leads to ‘stacks of bodies’

Just before 6 p.m. on Monday, a worker in a nearby building heard a cry for help and alerted local authorities to the abandoned truck, according to San Antonio Police Chief Bill McManus.

The doors to the hulking trailer were partially open when the worker arrived. Inside, he saw the bodies, the chief said.

Forty-eight people were dead at the scene and two died later at hospitals, said a federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

By Wednesday morning, the Bexar County Medical Examiner’s Office (BCMEO) said it had received a total of 53 bodies.

They were migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and possibly El Salvador.

One body was found outside the trailer.

Inside the truck there were at least 22 Mexicans and two Hondurans, the federal law enforcement official said.

Seven Guatemalans were among the dead, and another Guatemalan was in critical condition at a hospital, according to the nation’s foreign minister.

“We’re not supposed to open up a truck and see stacks of bodies in there,” San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said told reporters on Monday. “None of us come to work imagining that.”

Survivors, suffering from heat stroke, were hot to the touch

These dangerous and sometimes fatal human smuggling operations, transporting people in crammed trailers and vans with no air conditioning, are common along the southern border.

In 2017, 10 migrants died and dozens were injured from heat-related conditions in a tractor-trailer discovered at a San Antonio Walmart about three miles northeast of the latest incident. The driver of the truck was sentenced to life without parole in a federal prison.

Police and other first responders work at the place where dozens of migrants were found dead Monday in San Antonio. Eric Gay/AP

On Tuesday, San Antonio resident Angelita Olvera left two colorful crosses in honor of the victims near the site of the latest tragedy.

“I didn’t know them,” she told CNN of the victims. “They are sons, mothers, fathers and grandchildren.”

Temperatures in San Antonio on Monday ranged from the high 90s to the low 100s.

Sixteen survivors – 12 adults and four children – were rushed to local hospitals. Suffering from heat stroke and exhaustion, the patients were hot to the touch, according to Hood. On Wednesday, 11 people were still in local hospitals.

The trailer had no air conditioning. There was no sign of water inside. It was unclear how long the victims had been dead.

“They were still in there, awaiting help, when we arrived … meaning just being too weak – weakened state – to actually get out and help themselves,” Hood said of the survivors.

Felipe Betancourt Jr., co-owner of a trucking company in Alamo, Texas, told CNN the semitruck abandoned on Monday used the same federal and state identifying numbers as one of his vehicles. The truck in San Antonio is the same color as his red Volvo semi, but is not owned by his firm.

A man pays his respects at a makeshift memorial for the victims in San Antonio. Eric Gay/AP

Refrigerated semitrucks are insulated and meant to keep the temperatures stable, Betancourt said, but “if it’s carrying something hot inside, it won’t let the heat escape. The temperatures can reach up to 125-130 degrees when the doors are shut.”

On Monday, the truck went through a checkpoint north of Laredo, Texas, according to US Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat whose sprawling district includes Laredo and San Antonio.

Homeland security officials are investigating the deaths, along with local police.

Three people were taken into police custody away from the trailer, Chief McManus said. They are believed to be part of the smuggling conspiracy, according to ICE.

Two men, Juan Claudio D’Luna-Mendez and Juan Francisco D’Luna-Bilbao, were charged federally with “possession of a weapon by an alien illegally in the United States” in connection with the incident, according to criminal complaints filed Monday in US District Court for the Western District of Texas. It is unclear if the two men charged are among the three people detained earlier.

Investigators at the scene traced the Texas registration plate on the semitruck and to a residence in San Antonio, the affidavit said. The suspects were arrested during traffic stops after leaving the residence, according to the complaints, and numerous weapons were recovered in a car and truck driven by the suspects.

‘Brothers and sisters who died following their hope of a better life’

The victims were 40 males and 13 females.

Some of them could be under 18 years old, according to Tom Peine, a Bexar County spokesman.

So far, the medical examiner’s office has potentially identified 37 people, BCMEO said in a statement Wednesday. Medical examiners in neighboring counties were assisting due to the number of victims.

Some victims had one photo ID while others had multiple IDs or none, complicating the identification process, Peine said.

Consular officials from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras also vowed to help identify victims and assist survivors. The medical examiner was also in touch with the consulate of El Salvador though the nationalities of the victims are still being determined, Peine said.

“Far too many lives have been lost as individuals – including families, women, and children – take this dangerous journey,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on social media.

The Biden administration earlier this month launched what Mayorkas called an “unprecedented” operation to disrupt human smuggling networks amid soaring numbers of migrants at the southern border.

President Joe Biden described Monday’s discovery as “horrifying and heartbreaking.”

“Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry,” Biden said.

Pope Francis, via Twitter, urged prayers “for these brothers and sisters who died following their hope of a better life.”

650 died trying to cross US-Mexico border last year

Migrant rescues are increasing across the nation’s southern border.

Since October, more than 14,000 searches and rescues have occurred along the border with Mexico, according to US Customs and Border Protection – including those from dangerous water crossings. That’s up from 12,833 searches and rescues in fiscal year 2021, with more than three months left in this fiscal year.

At least 650 people died while trying to cross the US-Mexico border last year, the highest number since 2014, according to the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency.

Monday’s tragedy brings the total number of deaths for the first six months of the year to 290.

On Tuesday, helicopters buzzed over the desolate stretch of road where the trailer was abandoned as authorities searched for other migrants who might have been on the truck.

Olvera, the resident who left crosses near the scene, recalled joining neighbors in 2017 to pray for the 10 migrants who died in a broiling tractor-trailer parked at a Walmart.

She used to live in Piedras Negras, Mexico, Olvera said, fighting back tears, and is too familiar with the poverty some migrants have died fleeing.

It’s a tragedy that has repeated itself throughout the years. In 2003, 18 migrants, ranging in age from 7 to 91, were found dead in the back of a semitruck in Texas with about 100 other people as temperatures soared past 100 degrees, investigators said. The driver in that case was initially sentenced to life in prison, but in 2011 was resentenced to nearly 34 years in prison.

Ray Sanchez Nicole Chavez Priscilla Alvarez