(KTLA) -- As Bruce Willis celebrated his 68^th birthday Sunday, the actor’s family and loved ones, including wife Emma Heming and ex-wife, actress Demi Moore, took to social media to celebrate the icon who is suffering from frontotemporal dementia (known as FTD).  

In 2022 the “Die Hard” star’s family revealed that he would be stepping away from acting following a diagnosis of aphasia. Then, in February of this year, it was announced that Willis’ condition had progressed and he had been diagnosed with FTD, a form of dementia.  

On Sunday, Heming shared an emotional message on social media about the difficulty of having a loved one suffering from such a serious illness.  

“Today is my husband’s birthday. I have started the morning by crying,” she said in video posted to her verified Instagram account. “I always get this message where people always tell me that, ‘Oh, like, you're so strong. I don't know how you do it.' I'm not given a choice. I wish I was but I'm also raising two kids in this," Heming said.  

To their followers, Heming said she feels the love and warmth “directed to my husband and our family” and that the connection helps her.  

In video posted to Twitter by Moore, Willis and his family can be seen gleefully singing happy birthday before the 68-year-old blows out birthday candles.  

“Happy birthday, BW! So glad we could celebrate you today. Love you and love our family,” Moore wrote in her post. “Thank you to everyone for the love and warm wishes – we all feel them.”  

Earlier this year, Willis’ family made it clear that the actor would want to use his platform to raise awareness about FTD.  

“We know in our hearts that – if he could today — he would want to respond by bringing global attention and a connectedness with those who are also dealing with this debilitating disease and how it impacts so many individuals and their families,” they said. 

CHICAGO — Pitchfork announced Monday the 2023 full lineup and dates the festival will return to Chicago.

According to the music festival, this year’s summer concert will be held in Union Park from Friday, July 21, through Sunday, July 23. 

Headliners include The Smile, Big Thief, and Bon Iver. Other musicians include Alvvays, Perfume Genius, Weyes Blood, King Krule, Snail Mail, Ric Wilson, Rachika Nayar, Koffee, Kelela, Julia Jacklin, Yaya Bey, Soul Glo, Killer Mike, Jockstrap, Florist, 700 Bliss, Sen Morimoto — and many more.

SEE FULL LINEUP HERE

Pitchfork Music Festival tickets are available now through the website.

For more information, go to: PitchforkMusicFestival.com.

NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon plans to eliminate 9,000 more jobs in the next few weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.

The job cuts would mark the second largest round of layoffs in the company's history, adding to the 18,000 employees the company said it would lay off in January.

In the memo, Jassy said the second phase of the company's annual planning process completed this month and led to the additional job cuts. He said Amazon will still hire in some strategic areas.

“Some may ask why we didn’t announce these role reductions with the ones we announced a couple months ago. The short answer is that not all of the teams were done with their analyses in the late fall; and rather than rush through these assessments without the appropriate diligence, we chose to share these decisions as we’ve made them so people had the information as soon as possible,” Jassy said.

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Two students were injured after a shooting at a Texas high school on Monday and a suspect is in custody, police and school district officials said.

The shooting happened on the Lamar High School campus in Arlington outside a school building, news outlets report.

The school was placed in lockdown and once that is lifted, students will be released for the day, Arlington Independent School District spokeswoman Anita Foster said in an email. Others, including parents, were urged to stay away from the campus while Arlington Police investigate, she said.

The two injured students were receiving medical care, according to the district. Their conditions were not known, the Arlington Fire Department said.

Arlington police said the scene was secure in a tweet at 7:21 a.m.

Monday was the first day back to class after the district's spring break last week.

(The Hill) -- Dollar Tree has announced it will stop selling eggs in its stores, according to Reuters, as the price of everyday food continues to surge due to ongoing inflation hitting grocery shoppers. 

The discount retailer is a major destination for shoppers throughout the United States and Canada, many of whom often shop on a budget and rely on its cheap prices for everyday grocery products. According to Reuters, Dollar Tree anticipates restocking its egg inventory in all stores later this year. 

The retailer also announced back in 2021 that it would increase its prices from $1 to $1.25, as it planned to reintroduce some products in its stores that were discontinued due to the $1 restrictions. 

Amid already soaring prices, egg costs hit a record high in January due to an outbreak of bird flu, but fell 6.7 percent last month, according to Labor Department data. Now, with Easter around the corner, the price of eggs is 55.4 percent higher than a year ago. 

Still, rising inflation continues to hit consumers' pockets in key categories, especially at the grocery store. 

The Hill has reached out to Dollar Tree for comment.

HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. — Eight-year-old boy Cooper Roberts who was shot in the Highland Park parade shooting received the Socrates award for his perseverance, along with CPD officer Danny Golden.

Both Cooper and Golden are paralyzed from the waist down. Golden was shot in the back outside of a bar while he was off duty in July.

Cooper and Golden will receive lifetime grants that cover prescription drugs, in-home care and therapy costs.

"The award stands for Socrates Creed which means 'sound mind, sound body' and these young guys have a whole world ahead of them," Chris Brennan from Brennan Rehabilitation Foundation said.

Brennan himself suffered a spinal cord injury and has been years since he regained the ability to walk. He created the award to support others going through recovery.

(The Hill) -- Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber announced a curfew on Sunday after two fatal shootings over the weekend on Ocean Drive amid an influx of spring-breakers and out-of-city visitors.

"As I've said many times, we don't ask for spring break in our city. We don't want spring break in our city. It's too rowdy, brings too much disorder and it's simply too difficult to police," Gelber said in a video message to residents on Sunday.

"While most may come here to enjoy the amenities of Miami Beach, the overwhelming volume of visitors, a few that come with bad intentions in the presence of guns creates a wholly intolerable situation."

The latest shooting occurred on Sunday morning at about 3:30 a.m., where one man was shot and later died at a hospital, and another was wounded, Miami Beach police said. The police confirmed on Twitter that it was a "targeted and isolated" incident.

Miami Beach police said they responded to another scene where two people were suffering from gunshot wounds on Friday night at about 10:40 p.m. Police said in a statement on Twitter that one of the victims died in the hospital, and the other was left in critical condition.

"Both shootings were between visitors to Miami Beach and did not involve residents," Gelber said. "In both cases, police were literally seconds away from the incidents and arrests were made within minutes. That said, it is clear that even an unprecedented police presence could not prevent these incidents from occurring."

Gelber said the curfew was to start at 11:59 p.m. Sunday and last through until 6 a.m. Monday. The city announced in a press release that the city manager will likely impose an additional curfew Thursday through next Monday, March 27.

The press release cited "excessively large and unruly crowds" as the reason for the implementing the curfew.

Miami Beach has long been a popular spring break destination among college students, and officials have previously needed to enact emergency powers to control the large crowds. Gelber said in his video message that the high volume of people has created a "peril that cannot go unchecked," especially over the last three weeks.

"While our daytime programming has helped with crowd control and daytime incidents and arrests are down from last year, the volume of people in our city, the unruly nature of too many and the presence of guns, has created a peril that cannot go unchecked," he said.

The curfew requires businesses to close by midnight. Hotels can still remain open, as long as they are only operating with guests staying at their business.

The release states that the curfew will not apply to people traveling back and forth from work or residents of the city going to or from their homes.

The city imposed a midnight curfew during the same period last year after shootings on Ocean Drive.

(NewsNation) — An American college student was found dead while on spring break in Mexico, amid the State Departments' warnings to avoid the country due to violence.

Henry Meacock was a student at Ohio State University, visiting Mexico earlier this week for spring break, according to reports.

The university confirmed his death but exact details of when, where and how Meacock died have not been released.

“The Ohio State community has suffered a tragic loss, and we extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Henry Meacock,” OSU said in a statement. The university is also directing students to the counseling center for support.

Thousands of students are still going to Mexico to for spring break.

Another student is on life support at a Florida hospital after being airlifted out of Mexico.

Liza Burke, a senior at the University of Georgia, traveled to Cabo San Lucas earlier this month to celebrate spring break with her friends.

Burke said she had a headache, lay down, but was unable to wake up, according to her friends. She was taken to a Mexican hospital and later flown back to the U.S. for treatment after her family raised $142,000 in days with a GoFundMe campaign.

Sources told NewsNation Burke suffers from a genetic condition that causes her brain to hemorrhage, a condition she has had before her trip to Mexico.

The FBI is still looking for the three Americans who went missing last month and investigating the killings of another two.

Last month, the State Department issued a Level 4 “do not travel” warning for many parts of Mexico. As of March 9, many of those warnings remained in place. That includes the Guerrero state due to crime, and five states due to crime and kidnapping: Colima, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas (where two Americans were killed earlier this month), and Zacatecas.

The State Department advises tourists to “reconsider travel,” a Level 3 warning, to seven more states: Baja California, Chihuahua, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Morelos and Sonora. If you are traveling to popular tourist spots like Cancun or the Riviera Maya (listed as top destinations for 2023 by AAA), the government urges you to “exercise increased caution.”

Violence also has struck spring breakers in Florida.

Miami Beach officials imposed a curfew beginning Sunday night during spring break after two fatal shootings and rowdy, chaotic crowds that police have had difficulty controlling.

The city said in a news release the curfew would be from 11:59 p.m. Sunday until 6 a.m. Monday, with an additional curfew likely to be put in place Thursday through next Monday, March 27. The curfew mainly affects South Beach, the most popular party location for spring breakers.

The release said the two separate shootings Friday night and early Sunday that left two people dead and “excessively large and unruly crowds” led to the decision. The city commission plans a meeting Monday to discuss potential further restrictions next week.

Last year, the city imposed a midnight curfew following two shootings, also on Ocean Drive. The year before that, there were about 1,000 arrests and dozens of guns confiscated during a rowdy spring break that led Miami Beach officials to take steps aimed at calming the situation.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BAGHDAD (AP) — On the banks of the Tigris River one recent evening, young Iraqi men and women in jeans and sneakers danced with joyous abandon to a local rap star as a vermillion sun set behind them. It’s a world away from the terror that followed the U.S. invasion 20 years ago.

Iraq 's capital today is throbbing with life and a sense of renewal, its residents enjoying a rare, peaceful interlude in a painful modern history. The wooden stalls of the city’s open-air book market are piled skyward with dusty paperbacks and crammed with shoppers of all ages and incomes. In a suburb once a hotbed of al-Qaida, affluent young men cruise their muscle cars, while a recreational cycling club hosts weekly biking trips to former war zones. A few glitzy buildings sparkle where bombs once fell.

President George W. Bush called the U.S.-led invasion on March 20, 2003, a mission to free the Iraqi people and root out weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein's government was toppled in 26 days. Two years later, the CIA’s chief weapons inspector reported no stockpiles of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons were ever found.

The war deposed a dictator whose imprisonment, torture and execution of dissenters kept 20 million people in fear for a quarter of a century. But it also broke what had been a unified state at the heart of the Arab world, opening a power vacuum and leaving oil-rich Iraq a wounded nation in the Middle East, ripe for a power struggle among Iran, Arab Gulf states, the United States, terrorist groups and Iraq’s own rival sects and parties.

For Iraqis, the enduring trauma of the violence that followed is undeniable — an estimated 300,000 Iraqis were killed between 2003 and 2023, according to the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University, as were more than 8,000 U.S. military, contractors and civilians. The period was marred by unemployment, dislocation, sectarian violence and terrorism, and years without reliable electricity or other public services.

Today, half of Iraq's population of 40 million isn’t old enough to remember life under Saddam or much about the U.S. invasion. In dozens of recent interviews from Baghdad to Fallujah, young Iraqis deplored the loss of stability that followed Saddam’s downfall — but they said the war is in the past, and many were hopeful about nascent freedoms and opportunities to pursue their dreams.

___

Editor’s note: John Daniszewski and Jerome Delay were in Baghdad 20 years ago when the U.S. bombing began. They chronicled the unraveling of the country that followed, in text and photos. They returned 20 years later for this special report on how the country has changed over two decades — especially for its young people.

___

In a marbled, chandeliered reception room in the palace where Saddam once lived, seated in an overstuffed damask chair and surrounded by paintings by modern Iraqi artists, President Abdul Latif Rashid, who assumed office in October, spoke glowingly of the country’s prospects. The world’s perception of Iraq as a war-torn country is frozen in time, he told The Associated Press in an interview.

Iraq is rich; peace has returned, he said, and there are opportunities ahead for young people in a country experiencing a population boom. “If they’re a little bit patient, I think life will improve drastically in Iraq.”

Most Iraqis aren't nearly as bullish. Conversations begin with bitterness that the ouster of Saddam left the country broken and ripe for violence and exploitation by sectarian militias, politicians and criminals bent on self-enrichment or beholden to other nations. Yet, speaking to younger Iraqis, one senses a generation ready to turn a page.

___

Safaa Rashid, 26, is a ponytailed writer who talks politics with friends at a cozy coffee shop in the Karada district of the capital. With a well-stocked library nook, photos of Iraqi writers and travel posters, the café and its clientele could as easily be found in Brooklyn or London.

Rashid was a child when the Americans arrived, but rues “the loss of a state, a country that had law and establishment” that followed the invasion. The Iraqi state lay broken and vulnerable to international and domestic power struggles, he said. Today is different; he and like-minded peers can sit in a coffee shop and freely talk about solutions. “I think the young people will try to fix this situation.”

Another day, a different café. Noor Alhuda Saad, 26, a Ph.D. candidate at Mustansiriya University who describes herself as a political activist, says her generation has been leading protests decrying corruption, demanding services and seeking more inclusive elections — and won’t stop till they’ve built a better Iraq.

“After 2003, the people who came to power" — old-guard Sunni and Shiite parties and their affiliated militias and gangs — "did not understand about sharing democracy,” she said, tapping her pale green fingernails on the tabletop.

“Young people like me are born into this environment and trying to change the situation,” she added, blaming the government for failing to restore public services and establish a fully democratic state in the aftermath of occupation. “The people in power do not see these as important issues for them to solve. And that is why we are active.”

___

Signs of the invasion and insurgency have been largely erased from Baghdad. The former Palestine Hotel, Ferdous Square, the Green Zone, the airport road pockmarked by IED and machine-gun attacks have been landscaped or covered in fresh stucco and paint.

The invasion exists only in memory: bright orange flashes and concussions of American “shock-and-awe” bombs raining down in a thunderous cacophony; tanks rolling along the embankment; Iraqi forces battling across the Tigris or wading into water to avoid U.S. troops; civilian casualties and the desperate, failed effort to save a fellow journalist gravely wounded by a U.S. tank strike in the final days of the battle for Baghdad. Pillars of smoke rose over the city as Iraqi civilians began looting ministries and U.S. Marines pulled down the famous Saddam statue.

What appeared to be a swift victory for the U.S.-led forces was illusory: The greatest loss of life came in the months and years that followed. The occupation stoked a stubborn guerrilla resistance, bitter fights for control of the countryside and cities, a protracted civil war, and the rise of the Islamic State group that spread terror beyond Iraq and Syria, throughout the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe.

The long, staggeringly costly experience in Iraq exposed the limitations of America’s ability to export democracy and chastened Washington’s approach to foreign engagements, at least temporarily. In Iraq, its democracy is yet to be defined.

___

Blast walls have given way to billboards, restaurants, cafes and shopping centers — even over-the-top real estate developments. With 7 million inhabitants, Baghdad is the Middle East’s second-largest city after Cairo, and its streets teem with cars and commerce at all hours, testing the skill of traffic guards in shiny reflective caps.

Daily life here looks not so different from any other Arab metropolis. But in the distant deserts of northern and western Iraq, there are occasional clashes with remnants of the Islamic State group. The low-boil conflict involves Kurdish peshmerga fighters, Iraqi army troops and some 2,500 U.S. military advisers still in country.

It is but one of the country’s lingering problems. Another is endemic corruption; a 2022 government audit found a network of former officials and businessmen stole $2.5 billion.

Meanwhile, digital natives are testing the boundaries of identity and free speech, especially on TikTok and Instagram. They sometimes look over their shoulders, aware that shadowy militias connected to political parties may be listening, ready to squelch too much liberalism. More than a dozen social media influencers were arrested recently in a crackdown on “immoral” content, and this month authorities said they would enforce a long-dormant law banning alcohol imports.

In 2019-20, fed-up Iraqis, especially young people, protested across the country against corruption and lack of basic services. After more than 600 were killed by government forces and militias, parliament agreed to a series of election law changes designed to allow more minorities and independent groups to share power.

___

The sun bakes down on Fallujah, the main city in the Anbar region that was once a hotbed for al-Qaida of Iraq and, later, the Islamic State group. Beneath the iron girders of the city’s bridge across the Euphrates, three 18-year-olds are returning home from school for lunch.

In 2004, this bridge was the site of a gruesome tableau. Four Americans from military contractor Blackwater were ambushed, their bodies dragged through the streets, hacked, burned and hung as trophies by local insurgents, while some residents chanted in celebration. For the 18-year-olds, it’s a story they’ve heard from their families — distant and irrelevant to their lives.

One wants to be a pilot, two aspire to be doctors. Their focus is on getting good grades, they say.

Fallujah today is experiencing a construction renaissance under former Anbar Gov. Mohammed al-Halbousi, now speaker of Iraq’s parliament. He has helped direct millions of dollars in government funding to rebuild the city, which experienced repeated waves of fighting, including two U.S. military campaigns to rid the city of al-Qaida and the Islamic State group.

Fallujah gleams with new apartments, hospitals, amusement parks, a promenade and a renewed gate to the city. Its markets and streets are bustling. But officials were wary of letting Western reporters wander the city without an escort. The AP team’s first attempt to enter was foiled at a checkpoint.

The prime minister’s office intervened the next day, and the visit was allowed, but only with police following reporters at a distance, ostensibly for protection. The disagreement over security and press access is a sign of the uncertainty that overhangs life here.

Still, Dr. Huthifa Alissawi, 40, an imam and mosque leader, says such tensions are trifling compared with what his congregation lived through. Iraq has been engulfed in war for half of his life. When the Islamic State group overran Fallujah, his mosque was seized, and he was ordered to preach in favor of the “caliphate” or be killed. He told them he’d think about it, he said, and then fled to Baghdad. He counted 16 killings of members of his mosque.

“Iraq has had many wars. We lost a lot — whole families,” he said. These days, he said, he is enjoying the new sense of security he feels in Fallujah. “If it stays like now, it is perfect.” ___

Sadr City, a working-class, conservative and largely Shiite suburb in eastern Baghdad, is home to more than 1.5 million people. In a grid of thickly populated streets, women wear abayas and hijabs and tend to stay inside the house. Fiery populist religious leader Moqtada al-Sadr, 49, is still the dominant political power, though he rarely travels here from his base in Najaf, 125 miles to the south. His portraits, and those of his ayatollah father, killed by gunmen in Saddam's time, loom large.

On a clamorous, pollution-choked avenue, two friends have side-by-side shops: Haider al-Saady, 28, fixes tires for taxis and the three-wheeled motorized “tuk-tuks” that jam potholed streets, while Ali al-Mummadwi, 22, sells lumber for construction.

Thick skeins of wires hooked up to generators form a canopy over the neighborhood. City power stays on for just two hours at a time; after that, everyone relies on generators.

They say they work 10 hours every day and scoff when told of the Iraqi president’s promises that life will be better for the young generation.

“It is all talk, not serious,” al-Saady said, shaking his head. Sadr City was a hotbed of anti-Saddam sentiment, but al-Saady — too young to remember the fallen dictator — nevertheless expressed nostalgia for that era's stability.

His companion echoes him: “Saddam was a dictator, but the people were living better, peacefully.” Dismissing current officials as pawns of outside powers, al-Mummadwi added, “We would like a strong leader, an independent leader.”

___

When news spread recently that a musician born and raised in Baghdad whose songs have gotten millions of views on YouTube would headline a rap party hosted at a fancy new restaurant in western Baghdad, his fans shared their excitement via texts and Instagram.

Khalifa OG raps about the difficulties of finding work and satirizes authority, but his lyrics aren't blatantly political. A song he performed under strobe lights on a grassy lawn next to the Tigris mocks “sheikhs” who wield power in the new Iraq through wealth or political connections.

Fan Abdullah Rubaie, 24, could barely contain his excitement. “Peace for sure makes it easier” for young people to gather like this, he said. His stepbrother Ahmed Rubaie, 30, agreed.

The Sunni-Shia sectarianism that led to a pitched civil war in Iraq from 2006 to 2007, with bodies of executed victims turning up each morning on neighborhood streets or dumped into the river, is one of the societal wounds that the rappers and their fans want to heal.

“We had a lot of pain ... it had to stop,” Ahmed Rubaie said. “It is not exactly vanished, but it's not like before.”

Secular young people say that unlike their parents who lived under Saddam, they’re not afraid to make their voices heard. The 2019 demonstrations gave them confidence, even in the face of backlash from pro-religious parties.

“It broke a wall that was there before,” Ahmed Rubaie said.

___

Iraq’s prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, took office in October. A former government minister for human rights and governor of Maysan province, southeast of Baghdad, he won support from a coalition of pro-Iranian Shiite parties after a yearlong stalemate. Unlike other Shiite politicians who fled during the Saddam era, he never left Iraq, even when his father and five brothers were executed.

Working in a former Saddam palace that U.S. and British officers and civilian experts once used as headquarters for their frenetic attempts at nation-building, al-Sudani still grapples with some of the issues that plagued the occupiers, including restoring regional relations and balancing interests among Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds. He said building trust between the people and government will be his first priority.

“We need to see tangible results — job opportunities, services, social justice,” al-Sudani said. “These are the priorities of the people.”

___

One of the Shiite militias that took part in that campaign against the Islamic State group is Ketaib Hezbollah, or the Hezbollah Battalions, widely viewed as a proxy for Iran and a cousin to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. It also is part of the political coalition that established al-Sudani’s government.

Ketaib Hezbollah’s spokesman, Jafar al-Hussaini, met AP at an outdoor restaurant in Baghdad’s Dijlas Village, an opulent, 5-month-old complex of gardens, spas and a dancing fountain overlooking a bend in the Tigris, an idyllic Xanadu that looks like a transplant from uber-wealthy Dubai.

Al-Hussaini voiced optimism for the new Iraqi government and scorn for the United States, saying the U.S. sold Iraq a promise of democracy but failed to deliver infrastructure, electricity, housing, schools or security.

“Twenty years after the war, we look towards building a new state,” he said. “Our project is ideological, and we are against America."

___

Far from such luxury, 18-year-old Mohammed Zuad Khaman, who toils in his family’s kebab café in one of Baghdad’s poorer neighborhoods, resents the militias’ hold on the country because they are an obstacle to his dreams of a sports career. Khaman is a talented footballer, but says he can’t play in Baghdad’s amateur clubs because he does not have any “in” with the militia-related gangs that control sports teams in the city.

He got an offer to train in Qatar, he said, but a broker was charging $50,000, far beyond his family’s means.

War and poverty caused him to miss several years of school, he said, and he's trying to get a high school degree. Meanwhile, he takes home about $8-$10 a day wiping tables and serving food and tea. He is among those Iraqis who would like to leave.

“If only I could get to London, I would have a different life.”

___

In contrast, for Muammel Sharba, 38, who managed to get a good education despite the war, the new Iraq offers promise he did not expect.

A lecturer in mathematics and technical English at the Middle Technical University campus in Baquba, a once violence-torn city in Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, Sharba left in 2017 for Hungary, where he earned a Ph.D. on an Iraqi government scholarship.

He returned last year, planning to fulfil his contractual obligations to his university and then move to Hungary permanently. But he’s found himself impressed by the changes in his homeland and now thinks he will stay.

One reason: He discovered Baghdad’s nascent community of bicyclists who gather weekly for organized rides. They recently rode to Samarra, where one of the worst sectarian attacks of the war happened in 2006, a bombing that damaged the city’s 1,000-year-old grand mosque.

Sharba became a biking enthusiast in Hungary but never imagined pursuing it at home. He noticed other changes, too: better technology and less bureaucracy that allowed him to upload his thesis and get his foreign Ph.D. validated online. He got a driver’s license electronically in one day. With infrastructure improvements, he's even seen some smoother roads.

Security in Diyala isn’t perfect, he said, but it’s less fraught than before. Not all his colleagues are as optimistic, but he prefers to focus on the glass half-full.

“I don’t think European countries were always as they are now. They went through a long process and lots of barriers, and then they slowly got better,” he said. “I believe that we need to go through these steps, too.”

On a recent evening, a double line of excited cyclists threaded a course through the capital’s busy streets for a night ride, Sharba among them. They raised neon-green-clad arms in a happy salute as they headed out.

As daylight ebbed into a crimson sunset, it wasn’t hard to imagine that Iraq, like them, could be on the way to a better place.

____

John Daniszewski is AP’s vice president for standards and editor at large. Jerome Delay is chief photographer in Johannesburg, South Africa. AP reporter Qassim Abdul-Zahra and Abby Sewell, AP's Syria, Lebanon and Iraq news director, contributed to this report from Baghdad.

BEIJING (AP) — Genetic material collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of COVID-19 were identified show raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, adding evidence to the theory that the virus originated from animals, not from a lab, international experts say.

“These data do not provide a definitive answer to how the pandemic began, but every piece of data is important to moving us closer to that answer,” World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Friday.

How the coronavirus emerged remains unclear. Many scientists believe it most likely jumped from animals to people, as many other viruses have in the past, at a wildlife market in Wuhan, China. But Wuhan is home to several labs involved in collecting and studying coronaviruses, fueling theories scientists say are plausible that the virus may have leaked from one.

The new findings do not settle the question, and they have not been formally reviewed by other experts or published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Tedros criticized China for not sharing the genetic information earlier, telling a press briefing that “this data could have and should have been shared three years ago.”

The samples were collected from surfaces at the Huanan seafood market in early 2020 in Wuhan, where the first human cases of COVID-19 were found in late 2019.

Tedros said the genetic sequences were recently uploaded to the world's biggest public virus database by scientists at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

They were then removed, but not before a French biologist spotted the information by chance and shared it with a group of scientists based outside China that's looking into the origins of the coronavirus.

The data show that some of the COVID-positive samples collected from a stall known to be involved in the wildlife trade also contained raccoon dog genes, indicating the animals may have been infected by the virus, according to the scientists. Their analysis was first reported in The Atlantic.

“There’s a good chance that the animals that deposited that DNA also deposited the virus," said Stephen Goldstein, a virologist at the University of Utah who was involved in analyzing the data. “If you were to go and do environmental sampling in the aftermath of a zoonotic spillover event … this is basically exactly what you would expect to find.”

The canines, named for their raccoon-like faces, are often bred for their fur and sold for meat in animal markets across China.

Ray Yip, an epidemiologist and founding member of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control office in China, said the findings are significant, even though they aren't definitive.

“The market environmental sampling data published by China CDC is by far the strongest evidence to support animal origins,” Yip told the AP in an email. He was not connected to the new analysis.

WHO's COVID-19 technical lead, Maria Van Kerkhove, cautioned that the analysis did not find the virus within any animal, nor did it find any hard evidence that any animals infected humans.

“What this does provide is clues to help us understand what may have happened,” she said. The international group also told WHO they found DNA from other animals as well as raccoon dogs in the samples from the seafood market, she added.

The coronavirus’ genetic code is strikingly similar to that of bat coronaviruses, and many scientists suspect COVID-19 jumped into humans either directly from a bat or via an intermediary animal like pangolins, ferrets or racoon dogs.

Efforts to determine the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic have been complicated by factors including the massive surge of human infections in the pandemic's first two years and an increasingly bitter political dispute.

It took virus experts more than a dozen years to pinpoint the animal origin of SARS, a related virus.

Goldstein and his colleagues say their analysis is the first solid indication that there may have been wildlife infected with the coronavirus at the market. But it is also possible that humans brought the virus to the market and infected the raccoon dogs, or that infected humans simply happened to leave traces of the virus near the animals.

After scientists in the group contacted the China CDC, they say, the sequences were removed from the global virus database. Researchers are puzzled as to why data on the samples collected over three years ago wasn’t made public sooner. Tedros has pleaded with China to share more of its COVID-19 research data.

Gao Fu, the former head of the Chinese CDC and lead author of the Chinese paper, didn’t immediately respond to an Associated Press email requesting comment. But he told Science magazine the sequences are “nothing new. It had been known there was illegal animal dealing and this is why the market was immediately shut down.”

Goldstein said his group presented its findings this week to a WHO advisory panel investigating COVID-19’s origins.

Michael Imperiale of the University of Michigan, a microbiology and immunology expert who was not involved in the data analysis, said finding a sample with sequences from the virus and a raccoon dog “places the virus and the dog in very close proximity. But it doesn’t necessarily say that the dog was infected with the virus; it just says that they were in the same very small area.”

He said the bulk of the scientific evidence at this point supports a natural exposure at the market, and pointed to research published last summer showing the market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge and concluding that the virus spilled from animals into people two separate times. “What’s the chance that there were two different lab leaks?” he asked.

Mark Woolhouse, an infectious diseases expert at the University of Edinburgh, said it will be crucial to see how the raccoon dogs' genetic sequences match up to what's known about the historic evolution of the COVID-19 virus. If the dogs are shown to have COVID and those viruses prove to have earlier origins than the ones that infected people, “that’s probably as good evidence as we can expect to get that this was a spillover event in the market.”

After a weeks-long visit to China to study the pandemic's origins, WHO released a report in 2021 concluding that COVID-19 most probably jumped into humans from animals, dismissing the possibility of a lab origin as “extremely unlikely.”

But the U.N. health agency backtracked the following year, saying “key pieces of data” were still missing. And Tedros has said all hypotheses remain on the table.

The China CDC scientists who previously analyzed the Huanan market samples published a paper as a preprint in February suggesting that humans brought the virus to the market, not animals, implying that the virus originated elsewhere. Their paper didn't mention that animal genes were found in the samples that tested positive.

In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Energy had assessed “with low confidence” that the virus had leaked from a lab. But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree, believing it more likely it first came from animals.

Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.

Check out Dean's interview with Keanu Reeves on the latest film of the John Wick franchise.

Reeves shares more on his interest in violent films over the years.

MORTO GROVE, Ill. —  A 72-year-old woman is in serious condition after being struck by a vehicle in Morton Grove Sunday night.

According to Morton Grove police, a car was travelling southbound on Harlem in the 9200 block when it struck the woman in the roadway.

The woman was transported to Lutheran General Hospital with serious injuries.

The driver is currently in custody pending further investigation.

The Monday forecast is looking near 50 with breezes and isolated showers.

Spring officially starts Monday at 4:24 pm. Partly sunny skies today with highs near normal in the uppers 40s. Expect some breezy winds and a chance for a few isolated sprinkles this afternoon.

We’ll continue a warming trend through midweek with highs into the upper 50s by Wednesday. Rain moves into the forecast late Tuesday into Wednesday, lingering into Thursday. 

DENVER (KDVR) -- A digital camera thought lost forever has resurfaced after 13 years in a Colorado river.

Coral Amayi lost the camera while tubing on the Animas River in 2010, shortly after her best friend's wedding.

"I had gotten tossed from my tube at Smelter Rapid," she said. "And I came back up, got my tube, and my camera was missing."

Amayi was heartbroken, knowing many of the photos on the camera hadn't been uploaded to her computer.

"I remember getting back to my boyfriend's house and uncontrollably crying and upset," she said. 

The deep water and fast current quickly left her accepting defeat, knowing she'd never see the camera again.

That is, until this week when an angler stumbled upon something strange sticking out of the ground in shallow water. 

"I was walking along and saw it sticking out of the sand," Spencer Greiner said. “It was in rough shape, so I really didn’t have any hopes of getting anything off of it, I was just planning to throw it away, and then curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see what was on it.”

Greiner used a screwdriver to pry open the door to the memory card, where water rushed out. 

(Credit: Spencer Greiner)

"I was like, 'Yeah, this is probably not going to work at all,'" Greiner said. "But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately, and I was like, 'Oh cool, let's see what sort of treasures we're going to find on this memory card.'"

Greiner quickly found photos of a tubing trip, bachelorette party and wedding and knew he had to find the owner.

So he turned to a Durango Facebook group, posting some of the photos, asking: "Did you get married on June 12th 2010 in the Durango area? Did you have an ugly brown stretch station wagon at your bachelorette party? Do you recognize any of these people? If so please contact me."

Greiner said within an hour, people started recognizing themselves in the photos.

"It was less than an hour after I made the post, and the groom from the wedding was like, ‘That’s me and my wife!’" Greiner said. "So I was shocked that it happened so quickly.”

The couple quickly tracked down Amayi, who was at a work conference, to tell her the good news.

"I was just totally dumbfounded," Amayi said. "And I got up and was like dancing in the bathroom, and I was like, 'Who am I going to tell?! I need to tell this to somebody like right now.'”

Greiner is planning to send Amayi all of the photos this week. 

He believes the camera traveled 1.2 miles from where it was lost to where he found it downstream. 

“For it to have been in the river for 13 years, I thought that was just astounding really,” he said. 

"It just blows my mind that an SD card still worked after all that time," Amayi said.

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) - Willie Cager, a member of the 1965-66 Texas Western national championship winning team, died at the age of 81 on Sunday morning, according to his family.

Cager’s death came on the exact date Texas Western defeated Kentucky, 72-65, in the 1966 NCAA men’s college basketball championship game 57 years ago.

Cager was part of the 1966 Texas Western squad that made history. Hall of Fame coach Don Haskins put out an all-Black starting five in the NCAA Championship game against Kentucky. It was the first time five Black players started in a NCAA title game.

Cager, a sophomore at the time, was one of the five Black starters in the championship game. Cager started the game alongside Bobby Joe Hill, Orsten Artis, Willie Worsley, and Dave Lattin.

Texas Western went onto defeat an Adolph Rupp-led Kentucky team, 72-65, in the NCAA men’s college basketball final in College Park, Maryland.

In that championship contest, Cager contributed eight points and six boards.

Texas Western's journey to the 1966 NCAA championship was depicted in the 2006 film "Glory Road." 

Cager appeared in 77 games for the Miners from 1965-68, averaging 8.5 points and 5.3 rebounds while playing under head coach Haskins. 

Cager made El Paso home later in his life and became a fixture in the community. Cager worked as the coordinator of the Ysleta Independent School District's After School Basketball Program. Cager also launched the Willie Cager Foundation. 

He has two sons, Kareem and Kenya, and a daughter, Kendeea.

ORLANDO, Fla. (The Hill) – House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sought to tamp down former President Donald Trump’s call for protests in response to a possible arrest of the president in connection to a Manhattan District Attorney investigation.

“I don't think people should protest this stuff,” McCarthy said in a press conference at the House GOP issues retreat on Sunday when asked about Trump's statement.

McCarthy suggested that Trump was calling for others to “educate people about what's going on.”

“He's not talking in a harmful way,” McCarthy said. “Nobody should harm one another … And this is why you should really make law equal because if that was the case, nothing would happen.”

“If was this to happen, we want calmness out there,” McCarthy said, calling for no “violence or harm.”

Trump said on Truth Social on Saturday that he could be arrested on Tuesday in connection with the Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s investigation into a hush-money payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels during his 2016 campaign.

“Protest, take our nation back!” Trump said, sparking worries about potential violence.

Trump also encouraged protests over false claims that the 2020 election was stolen on Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters violently breached the U.S. Capitol.

McCarthy has also condemned Bragg's investigation and called it a political attack, promising investigations into whether any federal funds were used in connection with the probe.

McCarthy said he expects action from Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the House Judiciary Committee Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government, relating to Bragg's investigation of Trump.

“Lawyer after lawyer after lawyer will tell you this is the weakest case out there,” McCarthy said. 

“The last thing we want to have is somebody putting their thumb on the scale simply because they don't agree with somebody else's political view. That is what's wrong, and that's what infuriates people. And this will not hold up in court,” McCarthy said.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), a supporter of both McCarthy and Trump, has also said that "we don’t need to protest" the potential arrest.

“I don't think there's anything wrong with calling...for protests. Americans have the right to assemble and the right to protest,” Greene told reporters in Orlando on Sunday, adding that Trump “doesn't have to say peaceful for it to mean peaceful. Of course, he means peaceful.”

Greene said that she would not personally be out protesting any arrest, but plans to support Trump at an upcoming Texas rally. 

“I don't need to protest,” Greene said. “I know what I'm going to do with the 2024 election. I'm going to vote every single Democrat out of office that I possibly can, and I'm going to spend all of my energy fundraising and fighting to end this extreme corruption in America. That's what I think we should do.”

But Greene added: “People have a right to choose.”

CHICAGO —  Police search for suspects after two people were shot and killed on Chicago's South Side.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Millions of fish have washed up dead in southeastern Australia in a die-off that authorities and scientists say is caused by depleted oxygen levels in the river after recent floods and hot weather.

Residents of the Outback town of Menindee in New South Wales state complained of a terrible smell from the dead fish.

“The stink was terrible. I nearly had to put a mask on,” said local nature photographer Geoff Looney.

“I was worried about my own health. That water right in the top comes down to our pumping station for the town. People north of Menindee say there’s cod and perch floating down the river everywhere,” he said.

The Department of Primary Industries said the fish deaths were likely caused by low oxygen levels as floods recede, a situation made worse by fish needing more oxygen because of the warmer weather.

Police have established an emergency operations centre in Menindee to coordinate a massive cleanup this week.

State Emergency Operations Controller Peter Thurtell said the immediate focus was to provide a clean water supply to residents.

“There is no need for community concern as the initial assessment has determined multiple viable solutions to maintain water supply to the Menindee township and surrounds,” he said.

State agencies also started to release higher-quality water where possible to boost dissolved oxygen levels in the area.

“We’ve just sort of started to clean up, and then this has happened, and that’s sort of you’re walking around in a dried-up mess and then you’re smelling this putrid smell. It’s a terrible smell and horrible to see all those dead fish,” said Jan Dening, a Menindee resident.

Mass fish kills have been reported on the Darling-Baaka River in recent weeks. Tens of thousands of fish were found at the same spot in late February, while there have been several reports of dead fish downstream toward Pooncarie, near the borders of South Australia and Victoria states.

Enormous fish kills occurred on the river at Menindee during severe drought conditions in late 2018 and early 2019, with locals estimating millions of deaths.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump’s calls for protests ahead of his anticipated indictment in New York have generated mostly muted reactions from supporters, with even some of his most ardent loyalists dismissing the idea as a waste of time or a law enforcement trap.

The ambivalence raises questions about whether Trump, though a leading Republican contender in the 2024 presidential race who retains a devoted following, still has the power to mobilize far-right supporters the way he did more than two years ago before the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It also suggests that the hundreds of arrests that followed the Capitol riot, not to mention the convictions and long prison sentences, may have dampened the desire for repeat mass unrest.

Still, law enforcement in New York is continuing to closely monitor online chatter warning of protests and violence if Trump is arrested, with threats varying in specificity and credibility, four officials told The Associated Press. Mainly posted online and in chat groups, the messages have included calls for armed protesters to block law enforcement officers and attempt to stop any potential arrest, the officials said.

The New York Young Republicans Club has announced plans for a protest at an undisclosed location in Manhattan on Monday, and incendiary but isolated posts surfaced on fringe social media platforms from supporters calling for an armed confrontation with law enforcement at Trump's Florida estate, Mar-a-Lago.

But nearly two days after Trump claimed on his Truth Social platform that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday and exhorted followers to protest, there were few signs his appeal had inspired his supporters to organize and rally around an event like the Jan. 6 gathering. In fact, a prominent organizer of rallies that preceded the Capitol riot posted on Twitter that he intended to remain on the sidelines.

Ali Alexander, who as an organizer of the “Stop the Steal” movement staged rallies to promote Trump’s baseless claims that Democrats stole the 2020 election from him, warned Trump's supporters that they would be "jailed or worse” if they protested in New York City.

“You have no liberty or rights there,” he tweeted.

One of Alexander’s allies in the “Stop the Steal” campaign was conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who amplified the election fraud claims on his Infowars show. Alexander posted that he had spoken to Jones and said that neither of them would be protesting this time around.

“We’ve both got enough going on fighting the government,” Alexander wrote. “No billionaire is covering our bills.”

That stands in contrast to the days before the Capitol riot when Trump stoked up supporters when he invited them to Washington for a “big protest” on a Jan. 6, tweeting, “Be there, will be wild!” Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol that day, busting through windows and violently clashing with officers in an ultimately failed effort to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden's victory.

Since then, about 1,000 participants in the melee have been arrested, many racking up steep legal bills and expressing regret and contrition in court for their actions. Some have complained of feeling abandoned by Trump. And conspiracy theories that the riot was fueled or even set up by undercover law enforcement informants in the crowd have continued to flourish online, with Trump supporters in the last two days citing that angst as a basis for steering clear of a new large-scale protest.

“How many Feds/Fed assets are in place to turn protest against the political arrest of Pres Trump into violence?” tweeted Rep. Marjorie-Taylor Greene. The Georgia Republican also invoked a conspiracy theory that an FBI informant had instigated the Jan. 6 riot.

“Has Ray Epps booked his flight to NY yet?” she tweeted on Sunday.

Epps, an Arizona man, was filmed encouraging others to enter the Capitol. Conspiracy theorists believe Epps was an FBI informant because he was removed from a Jan. 6 “wanted” list without being charged. In January, the House committee that investigated the Capitol attack said the claims about Epps were “unsupported.”

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab who has tracked the “Stop the Steal” movement online, said anxiety over being entrapped by so-called agent provocateurs feeds a “paranoia that if they go and do violence, they may get caught and there may be consequences.”

“It seems to reduce a lot of people's willingness to make big statements about being wiling to go out” and engage in violence, he said.

A grand jury is investigating hush money payments to women who alleged sexual encounters with Trump. Prosecutors have not said when their work might conclude or when charges could come.

The conflicted feelings over how far to support Trump in his fight against prosecution extends into the political realm as well. His own vice president, Mike Pence, who is expected to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination, castigated Trump in an ABC News interview this weekend as “reckless” for his actions on Jan. 6 and said history would hold him accountable — even as he echoed the former president's rhetoric that an indictment would be a “politically charged prosecution.”

“I have no doubt that President Trump knows how to take care of himself. And he will. But that doesn’t make it right to have a politically charged prosecution of a former president of the United States of America,” Pence said.

The opening day of the House Republican conference in Orlando, Florida, was quickly overshadowed with the news of a potential indictment. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other House Republicans called the possibility outrageous and criticized District Attorney Alvin Bragg for what they called “reckless crime” in New York City.

McCarthy said he has assembled congressional investigators to probe if Bragg used Justice Department grants to pursue the Trump case. But despite the heated rhetoric toward Bragg, Republican leaders stopped short of Trump’s calls for protesters to “take our nation back.”

“I don’t think people should protest this. I think President Trump, when you talk to him, he doesn’t think that either,” McCarthy said.

PEORIA, Ill. (WMBD) -- The Breakfast Cereal Market has a yearly revenue of $21.3 billion in the United States. With many famous brands, from Lucky Charms to Cheerios, what is Illinois's most popular cereal brand?

According to IllinoisBet.com, data was taken from Google searches over the last year to determine the most popular cereal in Illinois.

According to the findings:

These numbers were released ahead of National Cereal day on March 7.