COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Workers at a site in South Carolina that once made key parts for nuclear bombs in the U.S. have found a radioactive wasp nest but officials said there is no danger to anyone.

Employees who routinely check radiation levels at the Savannah River Site near Aiken found a wasp nest on July 3 on a post near tanks where liquid nuclear waste is stored, according to from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The nest had a radiation level 10 times what is allowed by federal regulations, officials said.

The workers sprayed the nest with insect killer, removed it and disposed of it as radioactive waste. No wasps were found, officials said.

The report said there is no leak from the waste tanks, and the nest was likely radioactive through what it called “onsite legacy radioactive contamination” from the residual radioactivity left from when the site was fully operational.

The watchdog group Savannah River Site Watch said the report was at best incomplete since it doesn’t detail where the contamination came from, how the wasps might have encountered it and the possibility there could be another radioactive nest if there is a leak somewhere.

Knowing the type of wasp nest could also be critical — some wasps make nest out of dirt and others use different material which could pinpoint where the contamination came from, Tom Clements, executive director of the group, wrote in a text message.

“I’m as mad as a hornet that SRS didn’t explain where the radioactive waste came from or if there is some kind of leak from the waste tanks that the public should be aware of,” Clements said.

The tank farm is well inside the boundaries of the site and wasps generally fly just a few hundred yards from their nests, so there is no danger they are outside the facility, according to a statement from Savannah River Mission Completion which now oversees the site.

If there had been wasps found, they would have significantly lower levels of radiation than their nests, according to the statement which was given to the

The site was opened in the early 1950s to manufacture the plutonium pits needed to make the core of nuclear bombs during the start of the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Now the site has shifted toward making fuel for nuclear plants and clean up.

The site generated more than 165 million gallons (625 million liters) of liquid nuclear waste which has, through evaporation, been reduced to about 34 million gallons (129 million liters), according to Savannah River Mission Completion.

There are still 43 of the underground tanks in use while eight have been closed.

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Dozens of dairy cattle were on the moo-ve Monday at Michigan State University.

About 80 cows hoofed it to their new home, the Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center, a $75 million facility the East Lansing school says will allow agriculture, veterinary and other students to learn on a modern farm that’s equipped to replicate the most high-tech operations in the world.

George Smith, who heads up Michigan State’s AgBioResearch department, called it a “21st century cattle drive.” Crews erected a fence between the two buildings and herded the animals via claps, calls and whistles.

The remaining 180 cows are expected to be herded to the new building on Tuesday.

Michigan’s dairy industry leads the nation in milk production per cow, according to Smith, adding dairy also is the No. 1 contributor to the state’s agricultural economy.

The new complex is significantly larger than the existing dairy farm, which was constructed in the 1960s and was so limited in space and equipment that researchers have a backlog of up to two years on funded projects.

The existing MSU Dairy Cattle Teaching and Research Center currently houses 250 dairy cattle and supports the research of faculty in the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Veterinary Medicine. The new facility features a 165,000-square-foot cattle barn that will expand research capacity by increasing herd size to 680. Those cows will arrive in batches in the coming weeks and months. The new space also includes modernized barns, feed centers, milking parlors and labs.

“Our old facility didn’t have the technical capabilities to be able to train our students for what to expect when they graduated, what dairy cattle production looks like today,” Kim Dodd, dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine, said Monday.

The new digs are opening at a time when other land grant universities in the agricultural Midwest are scrapping their dairy cattle teaching programs.

“While other institutions are disinvesting in dairy programs, we are investing in the future of the dairy industry in the state of Michigan, because it’s so critical to the state’s agricultural economy,” Smith said.

A $30 million investment by the State of Michigan provided the initial funding for the 18-month project, with the rest being contributed by alumni, donors and stakeholders in the dairy industry.

“Who doesn’t love ice cream,” Smith said. “Who can’t get excited about new opportunities in the field of dairy science?”

Two funeral homes allegedly gave grieving parents their deceased son’s brain in a box, which began to smell, leaked into their car and got on the father’s hands when he moved it, according to an updated lawsuit filed this week.

The father, Lawrence Butler, said the discovery was overwhelming at a news conference Thursday, leaving a horrific memory that mars the other memories of a “good young man,” their son, Timothy Garlington.

“It was, and it is still, in my heart that I got in my car and I smelled death,” he said, emotion breaking his voice. Garlington’s mother, Abbey Butler, stood nearby, wiping away tears.

After Garlington’s death in 2023, the Butlers had his remains shipped from one funeral home in Georgia to another in Pennsylvania, where they picked up his belongings, including a white cardboard box that contained an unlabeled red box.

At Nix & Nix Funeral Homes, Abbey Butler couldn’t open the red box, said the Butlers’ attorney, L. Chris Stewart, at the news conference.

Several days later, the red box, which was in the Butlers’ car, began to smell and leak fluid, Stewart said. When Lawrence Butler picked it up, the fluid covered his hands, “which was brain matter. It’s insane,” Stewart said.

When they called the funeral home in Georgia, Southern Cremations & Funerals at Cheatham Hill, they were told it was Garlington’s brain and some mistake had been made, Stewart said. The Butlers returned the box to Nix & Nix, he said.

The company that owns Southern Cremations, ASV Partners, declined to comment when contacted by the AP.

“The parents last memory is holding their son’s brain,” said Stewart in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I had to get rid of that car,” Lawrence Butler said, “I just couldn’t stand the idea that the remains were in that car.”

The lawsuit says that both funeral homes negligently mishandled human remains and intentionally, wantonly or recklessly inflicted emotional distress.

Stewart said he had consulted other funeral homes, and that at no point in the process is the brain “separated from body in that fashion and shipped in that fashion.” If it ever is, he said, then it is in a sealed bag and labeled biohazardous.

Whether or not Nix & Nix knew a brain was inside the box, Stewart alleges, they shouldn’t have handed the box over to the Butlers because it was not on the list of belongings sent from Southern Cremations.

Julian Nix, the manager of the titular funeral home, told the AP that “it was definitely not our fault” because Southern Cremations had sent them the unlabeled box.

Nix said they reported it to authorities once they learned what was inside. An investigation had been done by the state board overseeing funeral homes that found they weren’t responsible, he said, but the documents proving that weren’t yet available.

The Butlers are seeking compensation and answers to what went wrong. They also hope the lawsuit acts as a warning, so that similar incidents won’t happen again.

Garlington, a veteran of the U.S. Marines who was working in financial aid for schools, has since been buried in Washington Crossing National Cemetery. Stewart, who declined to say how Garlington died at age 56, said the Butlers still don’t know whether Garlington’s brain was buried with the rest of him.

“They fear, which is totally understandable: is he resting in peace?” he said.

A big bull moose has spent the summer lingering around a popular Adirondack mountain hiking trail, prompting New York state wildlife officials to close the path as they monitor the potentially ailing animal.

The Goodman Mountain trail in the Horseshoe Lake Wild Forest has been temporarily closed since June 6 due to the oddly behaving animal. The moose is staying on or around the trail near the summit, sometimes sitting and sometimes foraging in a small area, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Attempts to coax the moose from the trial have failed.

“This is very unusual behavior,” agency research scientist Dave Kramer said Thursday. “Typically at this time of year, moose will have moved down into the lower elevations where they’re primarily browsing on aquatic vegetation.”

Kramer estimates the moose stands about 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall at the shoulder and weighs 900 pounds (408 kilograms) or more. The spread of its antlers indicate it might be around four years old.

And it’s a mystery why the moose won’t move on.

The agency has said an “underlying illness influencing behavior” was suspected. Moose are susceptible to a couple of different parasites that can lead to their deaths.

Wildlife staffers were recently able to get close enough to observe the moose’s behavior but did not find obvious signs of disease.

“Although the moose does appear a little thinner than we would expect this time of year,” Kramer said, adding that it is difficult to make conclusive diagnoses of animals in the wild.

The moose has not shown signs of aggression. But the trail in the town of Tupper Lake remains closed in part over concerns that the large animal could pose a danger to people if approached too closely.

The state is keeping tabs on the moose with three trail cameras, and wildlife staffers make regular treks up the mountain.

“His body condition hasn’t deteriorated to a point where we’re concerned that he’s struggling,” Kramer said. “So right now we’re just kind of monitoring periodically and assessing each time.”

New York state is on the southern edge of moose range. The state’s population was wiped out in the 1800s but has gradually grown from animals that wandered in from other northern states and Canada starting around 1980. There might be roughly 700 moose in the Adirondack region.

Conservation officers in January saved a bull moose that fell through the ice of Lake Abanakee elsewhere in the Adirondacks.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal appeals court handed a victory Wednesday to Mike Lindell, ruling that the MyPillow founder doesn’t have to pay a $5 million award to a software engineer who disputed data that Lindell claims proves that China interfered in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

The that an arbitration panel overstepped its authority in 2023 when it awarded $5 million to the engineer, Robert Zeidman, of Las Vegas, who took Lindell up on his “Prove Mike Wrong Challenge.”

“It’s a great day for our country,” a jubilant Lindell said in an interview. “This is a big win. It opens the door to getting rid of these electronic voting machines and getting paper ballots, hand-counted.”

Lindell, one of the country’s most prominent propagators of false claims that the 2020 election was a fraud, lost in a different case in Colorado last month. A jury ruled that Lindell defamed a former employee of a voting equipment company by accusing him of treason, and awarded $2.3 million in damages.

Lindell said he is appealing, and that he actually considers the verdict a victory because MyPillow itself wasn’t found liable.

President Donald Trump and his allies lost more than 50 court cases trying to overturn the 2020 election results, and his own attorney general at the time said there was no indication of wide-scale fraud.

As part of a “Cyber Symposium” Lindell hosted in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 2021, Lindell offered $5 million for anyone who could prove that “packet captures” and other data he released there were not valid data from the 2020 election.

Zeidman entered a 15-page report that he said proved the data wasn’t what Lindell claimed. Contest judges declined to declare Zeidman a winner, so he filed for arbitration under the contest rules. A panel of three arbitrators, including one named by Lindell, concluded that Zeidman had satisfied the rules and awarded him $5 million.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim affirmed the award last year. He expressed concern about how the arbitrators interpreted what he called a “poorly written contract,” but he said courts have only limited authority to overrule arbitration awards and ordered Lindell to pay up.

But the appeals court ruled Wednesday that the arbitrators went beyond the contractual language of the official contest rules in deciding how to construe them, instead of sticking to the document itself. The appeals court said the rules were unambiguous, even if they might have favored Lindell.

“Whatever one might think of the logic of the panel’s reasoning, it is contrary to Minnesota law. … Fair or not, agreed-to contract terms may not be modified by the panel or by this court,” the appeals court wrote, and sent the case back to the lower court with instructions to vacate the $5 million award.

Zeidman attorney Brian Glasser urged people to and “judge for themselves if the Eight Circuit’s decision today is more persuasive, or rings in truth louder, than the unanimous contrary decision of three arbitrators who heard all the evidence, including one appointed by Mr. Lindell.”

WOODSIDE, Calif. (AP) — Nestled in forests around the world, a gentle army of giant wooden trolls want to show humans how to live better without destroying the planet.

The Danish recycle artist Thomas Dambo and his team have created 170 troll sculptures from discarded materials such as wooden pallets, old furniture and wine barrels.

Twelve years after he started the “Trail of a Thousand Trolls” project, his sculptures can be found in more than 20 countries and 21 U.S. states. Each year Dambo and his team make about 25 new trolls, which stand up to 40 feet (12 meters) tall.

“I believe that we can make anything out of anything,” said Dambo, speaking from his farm outside Copenhagen. “We are drowning in trash. But we also know that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

An installation of six sculptures called “Trolls Save the Humans” is on display at Filoli, a historic estate with 650 acres of forests and gardens in Woodside, California, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of San Francisco.

“They bring us back to be connected to the earth and to nature,” said Jeannette Weederman, who was visiting Filoli with her son in July.

Dambo’s trolls each have their own personality and story. At Filoli, the troll Ibbi Pip builds birdhouses, Rosa Sunfinger plants flowers and Kamma Can makes jewelry from people’s garbage.

“Each of them has a story to tell,” said Filoli CEO Kara Newport. “It inspires people to think of their own stories, what kind of creatures might live in their woods and make that connection to living beings in nature.”

Dambo’s trolls don’t like humans because they waste nature’s resources and pollute the planet. The mythical creatures have a long-term perspective because they live for thousands of years and have witnessed the destructive force of human civilizations.

But the six young trolls at Filoli have a more optimistic view of human nature. They believe they can teach people how to protect the environment.

“They want to save the humans. So they do this by teaching them how to be better humans — be humans that don’t destroy nature,” said Dambo, 45, a poet and former hip hop artist. “They hope to save them from being eaten by the older trolls.”

Dambo’s trolls are hidden in forests, mountains, jungles and grasslands throughout Europe and North America as well as countries such as Australia, Chile and South Korea. Most were built with local materials and assembled on-site by his team of craftsmen and artists with help from local volunteers.

“My exhibition now has four and a half million visitors a year globally, and it’s all made out of trash together with volunteers,” said Dambo, a poet and former rap artist. “That is such a huge proof of concept of why we should not throw things out, but why we should recycle it.”

WESTBURY, N.Y. (AP) — A man was hospitalized in New York after he was pulled into an MRI machine because he walked into the exam room wearing a large chain necklace, police said.

The man, 61, had entered an MRI room while a scan was underway Wednesday afternoon at Nassau Open MRI. The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by his metallic necklace, according to the Nassau County Police Department.

Police said the incident “resulted in a medical episode” that left the man hospitalized in critical condition. Authorities did not release his name and did not have an update on the man’s condition on Friday.

A person who answered the phone at Nassau Open MRI on Long Island declined to comment Friday.

MRI machines “employ a strong magnetic field” that “exerts very powerful forces on objects of iron, some steels, and other magnetizable objects,” according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, which says the units are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room.”

The largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth was sold for just over $5 million at an auction of rare geological and archaeological objects in New York on Wednesday, while a juvenile dinosaur skeleton went for more than $30 million.

The 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock named NWA 16788 was discovered in the Sahara Desert in Niger by a meteorite hunter in November 2023, after having been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike and traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, according to Sotheby’s. The estimated sale price before the auction was $2 million to $4 million.

The identity of the buyer was not immediately disclosed. The final bid was $4.3 million. Adding various fees and costs, the official bid price was about $5.3 million.

Two advance bids of $1.9 million and $2 million were submitted. The live bidding went slower than for many other objects that were sold, with the auctioneer trying to coax more offers and decreasing the $200,000 to $300,000 bid intervals to $100,000 after the proposals hit $4 million.

The red, brown and gray meteorite is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby’s says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).

It was also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, the auction house says.

“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in an interview before the auction. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”

It’s not clear exactly when the meteorite was blasted off the surface of Mars, but testing showed it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby’s says.

Hatton said a specialized lab examined a small piece of the red planet remnant and confirmed it was from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.

The examination found that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says.

It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn’t just some big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.

Bidding for the juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis dinosaur skeleton started with a high advance bid of $6 million, then escalated with offers $500,000 higher than the last and later $1 million higher than the last before ending at $26 million. The official sale price was $30.5 million with fees and costs. The original estimate was $4 million to $6 million.

Parts of the skeleton were found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. It’s more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long.

Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it’s ready to exhibit, Sotheby’s says.

The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby’s says.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.

The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.

Wednesday’s auction was part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and featured 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.

Residents in a Miami suburb used an ax, fire extinguisher and garden hose to rescue four people from a small plane that crashed into a tree in yet another mishap near a busy South Florida airport.

“It was nothing short of heroic,” Angelo Castillo, the mayor of Pembroke Pines in Broward County, said Tuesday.

But Castillo is frustrated. He said there have been more than 30 crashes in the past five years on or around North Perry Airport, which serves small planes. A local street is named for 4-year-old Taylor Bishop, one of three people who died when a plane crashed into an SUV in 2021.

“We need better assurances that these planes are not going to keep falling out of the sky,” Castillo said. “The airport was a dairy farm before World War II. Now it’s the busiest general aviation airport in Florida. But within a five-mile radius, there are approximately half a million people.”

A pilot and three passengers were approaching the airport in a Cessna T337G when the aircraft crashed into a tree in the Pines Village neighborhood around 8 p.m. Sunday, authorities said.

“Residents put their dinner forks down to get out there,” Castillo said. “Some had garden hoses to put the fire out. There were cuts and bruises, but all four survived.”

Giovanna Hanley said the plane crashed near her mother’s house where she was staying.

“Within seconds, my hero Father in Law was breaking glass and pulling out the injured. … This is personal. This is angering. This is unacceptable,” Hanley referring to plane crashes.

An email seeking comment from North Perry Airport was not immediately answered Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.

Castillo, meanwhile, wants an independent investigation of local air safety.

“People are up in arms, and I can’t blame them,” he said.

NEW YORK (AP) — For sale: A 54-pound (25-kilogram) rock. Estimated auction price: $2 million to $4 million. Why so expensive? It’s the largest piece of Mars ever found on Earth.

Sotheby’s in New York will be auctioning what’s known as NWA 16788 on Wednesday as part of a natural history-themed sale that also includes a juvenile Ceratosaurus dinosaur skeleton that’s more than 6 feet (2 meters) tall and nearly 11 feet (3 meters) long.

According to the auction house, the meteorite is believed to have been blown off the surface of Mars by a massive asteroid strike before traveling 140 million miles (225 million kilometers) to Earth, where it crashed into the Sahara. A meteorite hunter found it in Niger in November 2023, Sotheby’s says.

The red, brown and gray hunk is about 70% larger than the next largest piece of Mars found on Earth and represents nearly 7% of all the Martian material currently on this planet, Sotheby’s says. It measures nearly 15 inches by 11 inches by 6 inches (375 millimeters by 279 millimeters by 152 millimeters).

“This Martian meteorite is the largest piece of Mars we have ever found by a long shot,” Cassandra Hatton, vice chairman for science and natural history at Sotheby’s, said in an interview. “So it’s more than double the size of what we previously thought was the largest piece of Mars.”

It is also a rare find. There are only 400 Martian meteorites out of the more than 77,000 officially recognized meteorites found on Earth, Sotheby’s says.

Hatton said a small piece of the red planet remnant was removed and sent to a specialized lab that confirmed it is from Mars. It was compared with the distinct chemical composition of Martian meteorites discovered during the Viking space probe that landed on Mars in 1976, she said.

The examination found that it is an “olivine-microgabbroic shergottite,” a type of Martian rock formed from the slow cooling of Martian magma. It has a course-grained texture and contains the minerals pyroxene and olivine, Sotheby’s says.

It also has a glassy surface, likely due to the high heat that burned it when it fell through Earth’s atmosphere, Hatton said. “So that was their first clue that this wasn’t just some big rock on the ground,” she said.

The meteorite previously was on exhibit at the Italian Space Agency in Rome. Sotheby’s did not disclose the owner.

It’s not clear exactly when the meteorite hit Earth, but testing shows it probably happened in recent years, Sotheby’s said.

The juvenile Ceratosaurus nasicornis skeleton was found in 1996 near Laramie, Wyoming, at Bone Cabin Quarry, a gold mine for dinosaur bones. Specialists assembled nearly 140 fossil bones with some sculpted materials to recreate the skeleton and mounted it so it’s ready to exhibit, Sotheby’s says.

The skeleton is believed to be from the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago, Sotheby’s says. It’s auction estimate is $4 million to $6 million.

Ceratosaurus dinosaurs were bipeds with short arms that appear similar to the Tyrannosaurus rex, but smaller. Ceratosaurus dinosaurs could grow up to 25 feet (7.6 meters) long, while the Tyrannosaurs rex could be 40 feet (12 meters) long.

The skeleton was acquired last year by Fossilogic, a Utah-based fossil preparation and mounting company.

Wednesday’s auction is part of Sotheby’s Geek Week 2025 and features 122 items, including other meteorites, fossils and gem-quality minerals.

____

Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut.

DENVER (AP) — A Denver museum known for its dinosaur displays has made a fossil bone find closer to home than anyone ever expected, under its own parking lot.

It came from a hole drilled more than 750 feet (230 meters) deep to study geothermal heating potential for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The museum is popular with dinosaur enthusiasts of all ages. Full-size dinosaur skeletons amaze kiddos barely knee-high to a parent, much less to a Tyrannosaurus.

This latest find is not so visually impressive. Even so, the odds of finding the hockey-puck-shaped piece of rock were impressively small.

With a bore only a couple of inches (5 centimeters) wide, museum officials struggled to describe just how unlikely it was to hit a dinosaur, even in a region with a fair number of such fossils.

“Finding a dinosaur bone in a core is like hitting a hole in one from the moon. It’s like winning the Willy Wonka factory. It’s incredible, it’s super rare,” said James Hagadorn, the museum’s curator of geology.

Only two similar finds have been noted in bore hole samples anywhere in the world, not to mention on the grounds of a dinosaur museum, according to museum officials.

A vertebra of a smallish, plant-eating dinosaur is believed to be the source. It lived in the late Cretaceous period around 67.5 million years ago. An asteroid impact brought the long era of dinosaurs to an end around 66 million years ago, according to scientists.

Fossilized vegetation also was found in the bore hole near the bone.

“This animal was living in what was probably a swampy environment that would have been heavily vegetated at the time,” said Patrick O’Connor, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Dinosaur discoveries in the area over the years include portions of Tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops-type fossils. This one is Denver’s deepest and oldest yet, O’Connor said.

Other experts in the field vouched for the find’s legitimacy but with mixed reactions.

“It’s a surprise, I guess. Scientifically it’s not that exciting,” said Thomas Williamson, curator of paleontology at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science in Albuquerque.

There was no way to tell exactly what species of dinosaur it was, Williamson noted.

The find is “absolutely legit and VERY COOL!” Erin LaCount, director of education programs at the Dinosaur Ridge track site just west of Denver, said by email.

The fossil’s shape suggests it was a duck-billed dinosaur or thescelosaurus, a smaller but somewhat similar species, LaCount noted.

The bore-hole fossil is now on display in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, of course, but there are no plans to look for more under the parking lot.

“I would love to dig a 763-foot (233-meter) hole in the parking lot to excavate that dinosaur, the rest of it. But I don’t think that’s going to fly because we really need parking,” Hagadorn said.

RUIDOSO, N.M. (AP) — Residents were glued to the windows at a riverside brewery in Ruidoso, New Mexico, as a flash flood swept through town, carrying rocks and debris.

Nervous chatter filled the taproom at Downshift Brewing Company, where about 50 people were sheltering from monsoon rains that caused the Rio Ruidoso to swell to more than 20 feet (6.1 kilometers) on Tuesday, a tentative record. The gasps in the room grew louder as an entire house floated by, knocking down trees in its path.

The turquoise paint on the front door of the single-story white house with brown slats was barely visible under layers of mud. But local artist Kaitlyn Carpenter, who was filming the flooding on her phone, recognized it immediately as the family home of one of her best friends.

“I’ve been in that house and have memories in that house, so seeing it come down the river was just pretty heartbreaking,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

No one was inside the house that day. Carpenter said her friend stays elsewhere during the summer since the mountain town is prone to flooding.

Her image of the house has been widely shared as a stark symbol of the flood’s destruction.

Three people who were at a riverside RV park died after being swept away in the river, including two children. Dozens of homes have been damaged, and streets were clogged with mud and debris.

Farther down the river, pieces of metal and other debris were twisted around tree trunks. Broken tree limbs were wedged against homes and piled on porches. The water was thick with sediment and many roads still remained closed Wednesday.

The popular summer destination has been especially vulnerable to flooding since the summer of 2024, when the South Fork and Salt fires raced across tinder-dry forest and destroyed hundreds of homes. Residents were forced to flee a wall of flames, only to grapple with intense flooding later that summer.

MAGALIA, Calif. (AP) — Prosecutors say a woman’s home in a remote area of northern California was so badly damaged by a series of burglaries that bears were able to get inside, causing additional destruction that compounded her financial losses.

The Butte County District Attorney’s Office said it filed burglary charges over the past week against 11 people for the break-ins at the home of a 64-year-old woman outside Magalia.

The homeowner first reported a burglary in April 2024, authorities said. That was followed by a series of additional intrusions that drove her from her home. With the house being empty, bears went inside.

Along with the 11 suspects, Butte County prosecutors said, another five suspects have been tentatively identified and charges against them are pending.

Five of the 11 were still in the county jail as of early Saturday, all facing a burglary charge. Others have posted bail or were released on their own recognizance, according to the district attorney’s statement. Ten are residents of Magalia, while the other is from nearby Paradise.

Magalia is about 92 miles (148 kilometers) north of Sacramento in a region of vast national forests. The woman’s home is in the Lovelock area, just north of Magalia.

ATLANTA (AP) — More than 200 people across a half-dozen southern U.S. states have now reported witnessing a mysterious object streak across the sky on Thursday, but no one is certain exactly what it was.

The object was likely either a meteor or space junk, with most sightings of the streak of light and fireball coming from Georgia and South Carolina around 12:30 p.m., according to a report from the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City, Georgia.

People express amazement in witness accounts

As of Friday afternoon, at least 215 reports of the object have poured into the American Meteor Society with many people expressing wonder and amazement in their reports.

“It was a bright fireball,” a woman in Bethlehem, Georgia, wrote.

“It did have a bright tail that disappeared with it, and left behind a smoke trail,” she added. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

A man in Milledgeville, Georgia, reported that “I believe it hit the ground.”

The roof of a Georgia home is pierced

A resident of Henry County, Georgia, reported a rock coming through their roof around the time they heard the sonic boom from the fireball. It left behind a hole in the ceiling about the size of a golf ball and a crack in a laminate floor at the home southeast of Atlanta, according to the National Weather Service office in Peachtree City, Georgia.

“We are presuming that a piece of the object fell through their roof,” the weather service said in a brief statement on social media.

Dashboard and doorbell cameras across several states in the southeastern U.S. states caught glimpses of the fireball that appeared to be plummeting straight down.

Broad daylight sighting is rare

Meteors and other space debris frequently enter Earth’s atmosphere, but it is rare for an object to be so bright it can easily be seen in broad daylight. Videos of the event showed clear skies on Thursday, allowing many to see the object falling.

“First time to ever see an event in daylight like this,” a man in Cumming, Georgia, north of Atlanta, said in his report to the meteor society.

“It was so bright in the middle of the day… brighter than the sun,” a woman in Dublin, Georgia reported.

Bright fireballs are caused by friction as an object enters the atmosphere and slows down considerably. Almost all objects break into minuscule pieces before striking the ground, according

Gilbert was with his family when a gunman murdered two of his family members, a prominent Minnesota legislator and her husband, and the golden retriever was beside them as they lay in state Friday at the state Capitol.

He is all but certainly the first dog to receive the honor, having been put down after being badly injured in the attack. There is no record of any other non-human ever lying in state, and the late state Rep. Melissa Hortman, the state House’s top Democrat and a former speaker, is the first woman. The state previously granted the honor to 19 men, including a vice president, a U.S. secretary of state, U.S. senators, governors and a Civil War veteran, according to the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library.

Gilbert has received a flood tributes like Hortman and her husband, Mark, ever since news spread online that he had been shot, too, in the attack early on the morning of June 14 by a man posing as a police officer. The accused assassin, Vance Boelter, is also charged with shooting a prominent Democratic state senator and his wife, and authorities say Boelter visited two other Democratic lawmakers’ homes without encountering them.

The dog’s injuries were severe enough that surviving family members had him put to sleep at a veterinary clinic in the Hortmans’ hometown of Brooklyn Park, a Minneapolis suburb. The clinic, Allied Emergency Veterinary Service, called Gilbert “sweet and gentle” and “deeply loved” on a GoFundMe site raising money for the care of local police dogs.

Hours after the shootings, a nonprofit that trains service dogs, Helping Paws Inc., on Facebook of Gilibert with the murdered Minnesota lawmaker, both smiling. The Hortmans provided a foster home to dogs to help train them to be service animals, and one of them, Minnie, had graduated on to assisting a veteran.

But Helping Paws said in its post that Gilbert “eventually career changed.”

One of Hortman’s fellow lawmakers, Democratic Rep. Erin Koegel, told AP that the golden retriever had “flunked out of school” and that “Melissa wanted him to fail so she could keep him.” Gilbert had been deemed ”too friendly” to be a service dog,

DULUTH, Minn. (AP) — An Alaskan brown bear at the Lake Superior Zoo in northeastern Minnesota has a gleaming new silver-colored canine tooth in a first-of-its-kind procedure for a bear.

The 800-pound (360-kilogram) Tundra was put under sedation Monday and fitted with a new crown — the largest dental crown ever created, according to the zoo.

“He’s got a little glint in his smile now,” zoo marketing manager Caroline Routley said Wednesday.

The hour-long procedure was done by Dr. Grace Brown, a board-certified veterinary dentist who helped perform a root canal on the same tooth two years ago. When Tundra reinjured the tooth, the decision was made to give him a new, stronger crown. The titanium alloy crown, made by Creature Crowns of Post Falls, Idaho, was created for Tundra from a wax caste of the tooth.

Brown plans to publish a paper on the procedure in the Journal of Veterinary Dentistry later this year.

“This is the largest crown ever created in the world,” she said. “It has to be published.”

Tundra and his sibling, Banks, have been at the Duluth zoo since they were 3 months old, after their mother was killed.

Tundra is now 6 years old and, at his full height on his hind legs, stands about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall. The sheer size of the bear required a member of the zoo’s trained armed response team to be present in the room — a gun within arm’s reach — in case the animal awoke during the procedure, Routley said. But the procedure went without a hitch, and Tundra is now back in his habitat, behaving and eating normally.

Other veterinary teams have not always been as lucky. In 2009, a zoo veterinarian at Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium in Omaha, Nebraska, suffered severe injuries to his arm while performing a routine medical exam on a 200-pound (90 kilogram) Malaysian tiger.

The tiger was coming out of sedation when the vet inadvertently brushed its whiskers, causing the tiger to reflexively bite down on the vet’s forearm.

BRISTOL, Conn. (AP) — Firefighters had to rescue a man who got stuck in the chimney of a Connecticut parks building while trying to retrieve his dog from a bathroom when the doors automatically locked for the night.

Police were called Sunday morning to Rockwell Park in Bristol for a burglary complaint and were told by parks employees that someone was in the chimney. Firefighters responded to the scene and got the man out after having to remove parts of the chimney and building, causing $5,000 to $10,000 worth of damage, police said.

The Bristol man, who was not injured, was arrested and charged with burglary, trespassing and criminal mischief. He was released on bond and ordered to appear in court on July 7.

A message seeking comment was sent to an email address listed in public records for the man. Phone numbers listed for him were not in service. Online court records did not list a lawyer for him.

The man got stuck near the flue of the chimney of Mrs. Rockwell’s Pavilion, a building named after a beneficiary of the park. Locks on the doors to the bathrooms are on new timers and automatically lock at 10 p.m. every night, said Erica Benoit, community engagement coordinator for Bristol Parks, Recreation, Youth and Community Services.

It’s not clear how the dog got stuck in the bathroom or how long the man was in the chimney. The doors can be opened from the inside after they are locked for the night. The dog was unharmed, police said.

“It is a bit of a crazy scenario,” Benoit said. “Our parks staff is working with the police department and the fire department to make sure that doesn’t happen again. If he had just contacted police in the first place, we might have been able to avoid the situation.”

HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) — A high school in the suburbs of New York City will be seeing double on graduation day this weekend: Among the nearly 500 students in its graduating class, 30 are twins.

It’s a tight knit group. Some of the students at Long Island’s Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School have known each other since kindergarten, their parents meeting through a local twins club. Some even still plan family vacations together.

These days, some of the twins are on a group text chain, which has helped them cope with their newfound notoriety as graduation day approaches.

“Honestly when we’re together, the room is electric,” said Sydney Monka, as she attended graduation rehearsal with the other twins earlier this week. “We’re all very comfortable around each other and we all have these shared experiences so we’re all bouncing off each other. It’s really cool.”

They’re twins but not identical

Save for the shared last names, though, the pairs may be hard to spot as they walk the stage Sunday at their high school graduation, held at Hofstra University in Hempstead.

The students are all fraternal twins — meaning born from different eggs and sperm — so none of them are identical. Many of the twins are different genders.

That doesn’t make the bonds any less tight, says Bari Cohen, who is attending Indiana University in the fall.

“Especially for boy-girl twins, a lot of people think it’s just, like, siblings, but it’s more than that, because we go through the same things at the same time,” she said of her brother, Braydon Cohen, who is headed to the University of Pittsburgh.

Most, when prodded, give a playful shrug at the curious phenomenon in the high school, which is located in an affluent, largely white district about 35 miles (56 kilometers) east of Manhattan.

“I guess there’s just something in the water,” said Emily Brake, who is attending the University of Georgia, echoing a common refrain among the twins.

“We’re all just very lucky. I think it’s just a coincidence,” added her sister, Amanda Brake, who will be attending Ohio State University.

Others acknowledge there’s more than Mother Nature at work.

Arianna Cammareri said her parents had been trying for years to have kids and in vitro fertilization was their last option. Back then, it was more common than it is now for IVF babies to be twins or triplets.

There also may be a genetic component at play.

“There’s a few twins in our family, like I have cousins that are twins, so I guess that raised the chances of having twins,” added the incoming freshman at Stony Brook University, also on Long Island.

Other schools with large sets of twins

Large cohorts of twins are not unusual at Plainview-Old Bethpage. The high school had back-to-back graduating classes with 10 sets of multiples in 2014 and 2015, and next year’s incoming freshmen class has nine sets of twins, according to school officials.

Among the other schools around the country with big sets of graduating twins are Clovis North High School in Fresno, California, with 14 pairs, and Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Maryland, with 10 pairs.

Last year, a middle school in suburban Boston had 23 sets of twins in its graduating class, though that’s still far shy of the record for most multiples in the same academic class. New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, had a whopping 44 twin pairs and a set of triplets in 2017, Guinness World Records.

After graduation

Most of the twins at Plainview-Old Bethpage are heading off to different colleges.

An exception is Aiden and Chloe Manzo, who will both attend the University of Florida, where they’ll live in the same dormitory on campus and both study business, though with different majors.

“We’re going to see each other a lot,” Chloe said wryly.

“Deep down, my mom knew it would be easier if we went to the same school,” she added. “You know, like moving in, graduation, going to sports games.”

Some were apprehensive about living far from their longtime partner in crime.

Emma and Kayla Leibowitz will be attending Binghamton and Syracuse University, respectively. The fifth generation twins say they’re already making plans for frequent visits even though the upstate New York schools are some 80 miles (130 kilometers) apart.

“I think it’s gonna be really weird because we really do everything together. She’s my best friend. I really can’t do anything without her,” said Emma.

“We’re sleeping over every weekend. I’m coming for football games — like all of it,” said Kayla.

Others were looking forward to getting some breathing room.

Sydney and Kayla Jasser said they’re both studying fashion design — but at different colleges. Sydney is attending the University of Delaware while Kayla will be attending Indiana University.

“We could have went to the same college, but we just wanted to be able to be independent since we’ve been with each other forever,” Kayla said. “It’s good to get out there and have our own experiences.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — A 15-year-old boy says he feels “pretty lucky” after being struck by lightning in Central Park on Thursday when a round of thunderstorms swept through New York City.

Yassin Khalifa, a high school sophomore, he was in the park with friends enjoying a picnic when the storm suddenly rolled in.

“I leaned up against a tree, and I told them, ‘Oh, guys, let’s ride out the storm,’ which in hindsight might not have been the best idea,” Khalifa said.

Khalifa said said he was knocked unconscious for several minutes. Crystal Mateo, 17, she witnessed the scene and saw Khalifa’s friends frantically calling for help and trying to revive him.

“It was scary,” she said. “I was crying.”

Khalifa told WABC he was conscious when he was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he was treated for burns on his neck and leg. Khalifa said he’s expected to make a full recovery.

“Apparently, I’m pretty lucky, because my spine was directly against the tree and no nerve damage happened. So I’m like, not losing any sort of motor function,” Khalifa said. “So I’m pretty happy about that.”

Lightning kills around 30 people a year in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Strikes, though, are usually not fatal. About 90 percent of people injured by a lightning bolt survive.

Rescuers fetched two men struck by lightning from a Colorado peak in what they believe were the highest helicopter rescues on record in this mountainous state.

One man remained hospitalized in fair condition Friday while the other was treated at a hospital and released.

The rescues happened late Thursday near the summit of Torreys Peak, a 14,300-foot (4,360-meter) mountain about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west of Denver. Torreys Peak is ranked variously as the 11th or 12th highest summit in Colorado and is less than 200 feet (60 meters) shorter than the state’s highest mountain, Mount Elbert.

The men from New York state, whose identities weren’t released, had decided to summit the mountain during a road trip, Alpine Rescue Team public information officer Jake Smith said.

They first called for help around 5 p.m. after getting off course on their way up a technical route. A different route doesn’t require climbing gear or expertise.

“It doesn’t sound like they had a ton of prior experience. I think it was probably just a lack of awareness,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers on the ground.

Rescue officials guided the men back on course, and they made it to the summit. Minutes later, one of them called back to report they had been struck by lightning.

About 30 rescuers went up the mountain while another team used a Colorado National Guard Blackhawk helicopter to get the more seriously injured man, who was nonresponsive and in critical condition, off the peak using a hoist at 14,200 feet (4,330 meters).

He was flown down to an ambulance and taken to a local hospital, then to a Denver hospital with a burn unit, Smith said.

The helicopter made another trip around midnight to fetch the less seriously hurt man by partially touching down on the mountain.

The rescuers believe Colorado’s previous record for a helicopter rescue was 13,700 feet (4,175 meters). Such rescues are challenging because thin air causes helicopters to lose lifting ability the higher they fly; the Blackhawk has an altitude limit of about 19,000 feet (5,800 meters).

Hikers and climbers often prefer to ascend during the morning and avoid the Rocky Mountain high country on summer afternoons. Thunderstorms are common and can develop suddenly with dangerous lightning, hail and plummeting temperatures.